Short Story Series: Chronicles of the Office Strategy War Room

Story 1: The Genius Playbook

The conference room clock ticked ominously toward the top of the hour. Employees filtered in, some clutching laptops, others nursing coffees like they were the only things keeping them tethered to this mortal plane. At the head of the table sat Gavin, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Strategic Initiatives—a man who had made a career out of saying everything and nothing simultaneously.

Today’s battlefield: The Quarterly Strategy Meeting.

“Alright, team,” Gavin began, steepling his fingers in a way that suggested gravitas, despite the fact that he was about to contribute absolutely nothing. “Let’s zoom out before we zoom in.”

The room fell into contemplative silence, as though he’d just uttered the solution to world peace rather than a meaningless platitude. Heads nodded. Sandra from Marketing scribbled furiously in her notebook, possibly writing down zooming is key.

Dennis, a beleaguered project manager with a penchant for sarcasm, leaned over to his colleague Priya. “Translation: We have no idea what’s going on,” he whispered.

Gavin rose dramatically and approached the whiteboard—the sacred altar of corporate enlightenment. Grabbing a marker, he drew two overlapping circles.

“We need to operate in this middle space,” he declared.

Priya squinted. “Isn’t that just... the definition of a Venn diagram?”

Dennis shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. People are taking notes.” Sure enough, Sandra’s pen was flying across the page again.

“What’s the second-order effect here?” Gavin asked suddenly, turning back to the group with the intensity of a man who’d just solved a riddle posed by a sphinx.

Silence. People fidgeted. Priya opened her mouth to respond but quickly closed it, realizing she had no idea what that actually meant.

“Good question,” Sandra ventured hesitantly, hoping to buy herself time.

“Exactly,” Gavin nodded sagely. “We need to make sure we’re not optimizing for today at the expense of tomorrow.”

Dennis muttered under his breath, “Pretty sure that’s just procrastination with extra steps.”

The meeting trudged forward, Gavin deploying every tool in the corporate playbook. He spoke of “frameworks” without defining them, mentioned “focus areas” without specifying what they were, and made liberal use of the phrase “evolving thinking” whenever his diagrams were questioned.

But then—just as the meeting neared its inevitable, responsibility-free conclusion—Priya did something reckless. She cleared her throat.

“I think we need more clarity on next steps,” she said.

The air in the room shifted. Heads turned. A ripple of unease passed over Gavin’s face.

“Ah,” he said, pausing for a calculated moment. “Well, that’s why we need to remain agile in our approach.”

Priya frowned. “So... there are no next steps?”

Gavin chuckled, the kind of chuckle a CEO might give while firing someone. “No, no. We’ll circle back on that once we synthesize today’s discussion.”

Priya opened her mouth to push further, but Gavin was faster.

“Let’s make sure we’re capturing all of this,” he announced, his eyes locking onto Sandra like a heat-seeking missile.

Sandra’s soul visibly left her body. “Uh, sure... I’ll... uh... put something together.”

Dennis exhaled, shaking his head. “Genius move,” he muttered. “He’s walking out of here with zero responsibility and maximum credit.”

The team shuffled out, battle-worn but resigned. As Dennis reached the door, he felt a firm clap on his back.

“Great strategic thinking in there, Dennis. Keep it up,” Gavin said with a knowing smile.

Dennis blinked. He hadn’t said a single word the entire meeting.

And that was the moment he realized—Gavin was playing a different game entirely.