Sirens broke through the dead silence of night and woke James from his sleep. For a moment, “Where am I?” Then he realized he was safe at home in his bed. Of course. Good. But the siren had made him sweat. Why? Everything was fine, always was fine. Why was it so rattling, he wondered.

He went fitfully back to sleep, but finally landed back in a deep sleep like he usually did. He’d never been a great sleeper. How he’d always loved the night – for staying up. While the rest of the world was fast asleep or getting ready for bed, James was watching an old movie, reading a book or nursing a last call at the Devonshire.

But the sleep wouldn’t last long. His alarm clock rang shortly later and it was time to slo-mo out of bed, hit the bathroom and shower. Never needing or wanting too much sleep, the shower was a necessary wake-up call every morning. After the usual morning routine, it was off to work.

He couldn’t get the siren out of his head though. It was like an annoyance, a reminder. What the hell was that, he wondered. He was driving to work now. Headlights coming at him softly in the morning glow as he headed toward the city. He’d always loved living in his town while working in the city. Best of both worlds. Comforts and space in his quiet neighborhood, the hustle of action and commotion in the city.

The radio station was playing a few of his favorite songs when one song featured a police siren in the background and James immediately broke into another sweat. He pulled over to the side of the road. “Damn, what is that?” Fully awake now, he knew it shouldn’t haunt him like in his dreams, but he didn’t know where this fear, this unsettling was coming from.

He looked at the clock and returned to the road. Everything is going to be okay, he thought, a mantra he memorized after talking with a friend shortly after 9/11. Everything is going to be okay.

He pulled into the parking garage and headed to his workspace. Grabbing a coffee, he sat down and noticed that a large part of his team was headed to another meeting. He followed and quickly nodded good morning to those nearest him. It was just an HR update on Covid protocols the company was adapting, as many companies were doing, as they faced a world changed by the pandemic.

As the meeting ended and everyone headed back to their workspaces, a fire engine raced down the street nearby, sirens blaring. This time, James did not flinch but it did bring him back to the siren that earlier that night had awakened him.

With the comfort of a new day, he was no longer disconcerted by the siren. But why couldn’t he let it go? When he got back to his desk, he quickly looked on his computer and did a quick Google search to determine what that middle of the night siren was all about. He didn’t see much, no accidents, crimes, fires or incidents. How could that be, he wondered. After a bit, he gave up; after all, it could have just been a police car responding to a suspicious sighting that had materialized into nothing.

James pulled up the file on the new enhancement to the company’s primary service. He was tracking developments in renewable energy projects all over the globe to provide leads to clients who were looking to expand their reach.

He was proud of his work and his company’s growth. While many were preaching, they were doing. They were connecting an emerging army of contractors with training companies and renewable energy developers to forward the growth of this breaking industry. What had the forecast been? $200 billion? One trillion? He couldn’t quite remember since that had been covered in orientations and presentations a few short years earlier. Now the horse was out of the gate and his company’s challenge would be maintaining their leadership role. It already was a roller coaster ride, but his company continued to thrive and innovate and remain on top. Nothing like first to market, he thought.

He opened a spreadsheet to get updates on the overnight reports and he could see they were ahead of projections. Quotas were rough, man, but that was the Sales Department’s problem. Thank God I’m not in Sales, he thought. But his girlfriend Shayla was and she enjoyed the challenge of facing a roomful of clients or prospects and pointing out the obvious to them. For in her mind, it all was obvious. Either you’re with us or on your own trying to figure out what your next move should be. We’ve got your back, she felt. Your next company move is right here in our reports, recommendations, scenarios, forecast models. You can buy into just some of it – dip your toes in the water, so to speak – or you can go whole hog. Or somewhere in between. In the meanwhile, your competitors are charging ahead. Clock’s ticking! Effective presentation – traditional but oh so good.

Shayla was not afraid of the pressure. Why should she be? In her mind, she’s working for the market leader, she’s on top along with the rest of her salesforce; the future’s wide open. And the planet isn’t waiting too much longer for relief. So everything is on their side, she thinks.

Then the explosion came. It was far away in the city, a factory fire had gone rogue and a few old oil tanks had succumbed to the advancing heat. The sirens raced toward the scene. James was again startled and then a light sweat broke out on his forehead. He knew it was not an immediate danger to him or his company but his sense of dread again kicked into gear. Luckily, no one was hurt.

He always had experienced sirens, especially in this city. Things were great, Shayla was great. This was no big deal except for the factory and its people and customers. He didn’t look for metaphors or innuendos, did not try to ascribe “meaning” to this everyday event. He went back to work.

And then he noticed it. Right there on the spreadsheet. As a Data Analyst, he’d always had a sixth sense when it came to numbers and especially to outliers. As he scanned the rows and columns, there it was. Everything was trending up, just as they forecast. Except for this one blip. And he had caught it. Immediately, he drilled down into the data and began cross checking with other data fields.

Down, down he flew, his sweat now replaced with adrenaline, that rush that came when he was onto something. There had been a slight flattening of the growth in the wind energy sector that had not even been noticeable earlier. Now it was heading downward in the Northwest region of the U.S. Instantly, he alerted his boss and they called an immediate meeting with Sales and the Finance department to try to manage this development. James led the meeting and showed on the monitor the data he had found. Everyone discussed the developments and began reviewing market and customer activities before and after the date of the slide. “I’m glad James caught this now so we can wrap our heads around this and take the necessary steps to get back ahead of this,” his boss announced. “People in Finance, let’s review our projections with this and see how it affects our model. Sales, let me know if we need to reach out to any of our customers with a company comment or if just a few strategic phone calls to reassure key clients is sufficient. Let’s continue to monitor and reconvene here in three hours.”

James looked at Shayla and he knew she would be busy until then, locking horns with the rest of the Sales team, perhaps sussing out a client or two for their market assessments (we just want to corroborate what you are seeing, boots on the ground). Standard practice when you’re on top of the market: stay there, don’t panic; under promise and over deliver; yada yada yada.

And James thought, it is how you mitigate disaster or even a blip – you don’t wait until the factory explodes and the sirens are on the way. You get out ahead of it and you put the fire out before it gets started.

He had done his work and now Shayla would shine too, along with the rest of Sales. They smiled at each other and she shot him a thumbs-up. Now it was back to work. Damn, it wasn’t even lunch time yet and it had already been a hell of a great day. He tossed the rest of his coffee in the trash.

Chris Ebel
12/16/21

Photo credit: @Mattox