Juliet's School of Possibilities Read online

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  Copyright © 2019 by Laura Vanderkam

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Vanderkam, Laura, author.

  Title: Juliet’s school of possibilities : a little story about the power of priorities / Laura Vanderkam.

  Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, [2019] |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018045725 (print) | LCCN 2018047875 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538950 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525538943 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Women--Vocational guidance. | Success. | Self-realization. | Vocation.

  Classification: LCC HF5382.6 (ebook) | LCC HF5382.6 .V36 2019 (print) | DDC 650.1082--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045725

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Power of Priorities

  Group Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  October’s red and gold leaves blazed bright as Riley Jenkins drove south along the Garden State Parkway. Lovely enough, she thought, but even the fall colors failed to lift her mood. Nor could she summon the energy to be excited about her destination: her firm’s women’s leadership retreat in the little town of Maris, along the New Jersey coast.

  It wasn’t that she resented working on a Saturday. Riley couldn’t think of a Saturday she hadn’t worked since landing her job with MB & Company, the consulting firm, after earning her Wharton M.B.A. four years before.

  No, it was the opportunity cost of spending her Saturday with colleagues when she should be finding clients.

  After all, it was clients who got you ahead at MB, the most elite of all firms. It was clients who gave you power at this place she had long wanted to work. She remembered learning of its mystique in a casual conversation with a professor years ago, back when she’d been an undergrad at Indiana University and waitressing to cover costs that her scholarship didn’t. MB let you work with CEOs. Prime ministers. You could solve their most important challenges and hence impact the world at a scale few other careers allowed. It didn’t matter if you weren’t yet thirty years old. You could earn copious cash while jetting around the world—in her first year, double what her staid Midwestern parents earned, combined, at their peak. Stick it out to partner and you’d take home millions.

  Riley prided herself on responding to clients as close to instantly as possible. In her four-year rise from star hire through project manager to an associate partner, she had rarely made clients wait more than an hour. She set up her phone to let her know when they emailed as she drove her rental cars around (having grown up as a small-town Indiana girl, she still felt strange about hiring drivers). Her assistant knew not to book her on flights that didn’t have internet access.

  But then . . . Her mind zipped back to last week’s showdown with her evaluator. Jean had guided her into that horrible beige conference room in the NYC office that she saw—thankfully—only when she wasn’t at client sites. “Riley,” she had begun. The older woman had kept taking her glasses off and rubbing her eyes. Riley soon understood why Jean was dreading this conversation. Riley was being put in the “Challenges” bucket in MB’s elaborate rating system. It was below “Average” and only one step above “Resignation Suggested.” (MB was too genteel to ever demand a resignation or, the height of tawdriness, actually fire someone.)

  Riley played the scene over and over in her mind as the exit numbers on the Garden State Parkway ticked down. “I have never been below average in my life,” she told Jean.

  “Well, it’s ‘Challenges’ for MB,” Jean had said. “That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be excellent somewhere else.”

  Was that a threat? Riley didn’t want to go anywhere else. She’d wanted to be an MB consultant with the same zeal with which her college roommate and best friend Skip had wanted to protest drone strikes. She couldn’t imagine anywhere else offering this pace, this variety, and yes, this paycheck.

  “I don’t get it,” Riley had said. “I do everything the clients want. I get them just what they ask for faster than they expect it.”

  “Yes, yes.” Jean had looked around that beige conference room, as if she thought someone might be spying on them. Then she lowered her voice. “Listen, Riley. Here’s the thing. You’re four years in. Newly in leadership. Everyone I interviewed said you’re floundering in the role.”

  “But I’m . . .” She had started to protest. Floundering? Riley Jenkins did not flounder at anything.

  “Riley, listen to me. I am trying to help you here. Your upward feedback in particular was terrible. Your team members say you’re so unfocused and distracted that they work around the clock, but they never know if they’re working on the right things. Look—up until now you could just do what the partners told you to. Which you did.” She had taken her glasses off again and searched for the right image. Finally: “You’re like the world’s most powerful drill. Point you at something and you drill a hole instantly.”

  “Um, OK.”

  “But at this level you need to think about where the drill should go. And frankly, your clients and your colleagues don’t see insight there. You need big ideas. Ideas your teams get excited about. Ideas the clients haven’t even imagined. Ideas that you can suggest—so then they have to hire MB, right?”

  “I see,” Riley had said.

  “It’s about the business case, Riley. Making partner is about being able to sell big ideas.” Jean had suddenly glanced around, worried. “Sorry, convince people that they need to engage MB to study your ideas. We don’t use the word ‘sell’ around here.”

  “Of course.” That strange MB fussiness. “I will work on that.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Please do.” She sighed. “Being in ‘Challenges’ means I need to document every thirty days that you are making real progress. If you are not, that’s when other ratings come into play.”

  Riley had said nothing. Jean played her cards close, like the big players in the casino where Riley worked one summer years before, but she knew what this meant. If she hadn’t made a sale in thirty days, she was out.

  That had been a little over a week ago. The truth is, she had no idea how she was going to find space for brilliance. She couldn’t not do what her clients and colleagues asked, and their demands already filled every available minute. They filled minutes that weren’t available. She had been up so late the past few nights working on a proposal for
her major client, a chain of extraordinarily hip cafés called The People’s Coffee Shops (or PCS, for short), that her brain could focus on little beyond finding time for a nap.

  She glanced at her phone’s GPS. Fifteen miles until the turn. Thirty minutes until she would arrive at this mysterious retreat location called Juliet’s School of Possibilities, owned by the eponymous domestic maven. Riley had seen Juliet’s TV shows occasionally in hotels when she was too stressed to sleep. How to host the perfect bridal shower. How to decorate a living room for $100. Apparently she ran corporate retreats too. The women’s leadership group of the Northeast US offices had booked a weekend there to bond over cooking, crafts, and bike rides along the boardwalk.

  Riley wasn’t sure how welcome she was. Nadia, a power player in the New York office, had said it was going to be just partners. Unfortunately, there were so few female partners at MB that they needed to dip down a level on the ladder to fill the retreat center and thus have the place to themselves. Riley—miffed at this—added it in as a reason not to go, along with a vague sense that she hadn’t seen her boyfriend, Neil, in a while. A week? No, two . . . three? It didn’t seem possible that time had sped by so much since their last date—pints at a beer garden, with Riley feeling more energized by every round of conversation with the brilliant entrepreneur. He had invited her to come meet his extended family soon. She had started daydreaming about Thanksgiving.

  Then Elsa, the chief marketing officer at PCS, mentioned being a fan of Juliet. Elsa moonlighted as a supermom to three boys in whatever time she wasn’t shining a spotlight on the farmer who’d grown the wheat used in PCS scones. She proclaimed her jealousy that Riley got to go. It was the nicest thing Elsa had said to her the entire previous weekend. Riley and team had been cooped up with her for a miserable two days in another beige conference room, the weekend meeting happening because Elsa’s husband and their boys were off camping with the Cub Scouts. Elsa had to meet with her CEO soon. Elsa had asked for ideas to bring to him. The team had flailed around in different directions all the following week before frantically cranking out a proposal to get it in by 9 p.m. Friday. This was right after Elsa’s children went to bed, and hence when she looked at things. She wrapped up her emails by 11 p.m. That they hadn’t heard anything by Saturday midday wasn’t a good sign.

  After a few more minutes of stewing—we must see progress in thirty days—Riley couldn’t help herself. She dialed the manager on the proposed project. “Hey, Frank, it’s Riley,” she said. “You haven’t heard from Elsa, have you?”

  “Oh, hey,” Frank said. He sounded like he’d just woken up. “I hadn’t checked email yet this morning.” Riley seethed. It was almost noon. How irresponsible was that? “Let me look . . . Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not good. She’s reaching out to other consulting firms. This isn’t what she’s looking for.”

  Riley grabbed the second phone she kept so she could look at email while running other apps on her first phone. She spotted an emergency pull-off spot—this was definitely an emergency—and swerved slightly as she eased over to hunt through her inbox. She perched the phone on top of the wheel and scrolled down. “How could I miss that?”

  “Strange—I don’t think you’re copied. Well, too bad. But Steve—you know Steve? He’s amazing to work with. He’s likely getting some projects in another part of PCS. So we win some, we lose some . . .”

  Riley gripped the wheel as she drove back onto the highway. But I can’t lose some right now, she thought. She had three weeks. “OK, thanks for letting me know.” She could not keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

  As she signaled to pass a truck lumbering in front of her, she let out her breath slowly. Riley was not an emotional person. But she . . . liked Elsa. Admired her. Why hadn’t she even copied her? Had Riley misread so much? She glanced at her phone. It was a Saturday. It was presumptuous to call a client on a weekend. But she had to know.

  “Hello?” the woman answered after three rings.

  “Elsa? This is Riley. From MB.”

  “Oh.” Riley could hear the noise of a soccer game in the background.

  “Can you talk now?”

  “Not for long. Robbie’s playing goalie.”

  She plunged in. “I just heard from Frank that you were reaching out to other consulting firms about ideas to take to Jacob.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Elsa shouted something at a child on the field. “To be honest, the proposal you sent me was just . . . how shall I put this? Amateur.”

  Riley had to hit her brakes as a Prius cut in front of her. “I’m sorry—did you say amateur?”

  “It’s like you put no original thought into it whatsoever. If I wanted to write the damn thing myself, I would have done that.”

  “We spent all last weekend talking about what you wanted . . .”

  “And clearly you weren’t listening. I can’t say I’m surprised. You were looking at your phone the whole time. And then trying to listen in to a conference call with your travel department while I was talking to you.”

  “I . . .” Riley tried to remember. She had been sorting out a blowup about a client in Atlanta and a colleague’s continual questions about the logistics of a meeting in London that never happened. She was about to apologize, but Elsa interrupted her.

  “Look, if that represents your best thinking, I don’t see why we need to keep working together.” She paused. Riley supposed Elsa recognized how harsh that sounded. Her Cub Scout mom side now needed to smooth things over. Her voice softened. “Say, are you on the way to Juliet’s School of Possibilities?”

  “According to my map, I’m twenty minutes away.”

  “Delightful. Such a fascinating woman. Are you going to meet her? I assume she has other people do the retreats . . .”

  “One of my colleagues knows her, so she’s going to at least say hello.”

  “I just watched her fall food and decorating special. I made her acorn squash harvest bowls with pomegranate arils, and I shellacked these yellow leaves to make a wreath for my door. I’ll send you a picture, OK? Robbie—watch the ball! Don’t let them—hey! Out to John! Yes!!!! Good hustle! Riley, I gotta go . . .”

  And she was gone.

  Riley clenched her teeth. Amateur. How had this happened? Could things get any worse?

  What a question. Of course they could.

  Chapter 2

  Her phone rang before she managed to cut back into the right lane. Neil. As the call log popped up—it seemed he’d tried her several times in the last twenty-four hours—she remembered: They had in fact made plans for that night. She recalled a flurry of emails on Tuesday, or possibly Thursday. Her mind ransacked the mess of her calendar. Dinner? A movie? In the rush of concocting that doomed proposal for Elsa, she realized, she hadn’t told him that she was going to the retreat instead of staying in the city to work.

  She supposed she needed to tell him now. “Hey, Neil,” she said. “I’m really glad to hear your voice.” It was true. He was a calm presence amid the MB frenzy—the only person she’d dared confide in, albeit by text message, about her dismal performance review. “I saw you called and I meant to call you earlier but . . .”

  “I’m glad to hear your voice because it means you actually picked up the phone.” He spoke carefully—like Jean in that conference room, as she thought about it—but his voice had an edge. It wasn’t a tone Riley had heard from him before. She felt her stomach clench with an unease about where this conversation was headed.

  She tried to compose herself. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been so busy. My horrible evaluation has got me . . .”

  “You know I’m busy too. Everyone’s busy, Riley.”

  “Neil . . .” Something was definitely wrong. What had she done? She recalled from one of his messages that he’d just closed a second round of funding for his health data app, a thought that suddenly pained Riley
; he had wanted to get together that night to toast the accomplishment, but she’d said she didn’t have time. Was that it? She thought back to another toast—the April night they’d met. He had struck up a conversation with her at a bar where she was celebrating with her MB colleagues after winning a project with a major retail chain. The client had contracted for months of work. She was giddy with the promise of it—even more when this handsome and cerebral man had introduced himself. Rather than getting her number and texting to ask her out, he’d simply asked her to dinner the next night. In person. Did people even do that anymore?

  Then her mind whirled to all that had failed in implementation. Of the retail work and with her attempts to spend time with Neil too. Challenges.

  “Yet oddly, I manage to pick up when you call. And I show up when we have plans.”

  “I’m so sorry.” How many times could she say that? “I meant to tell you . . . I really want to see you, but I’m actually on the way to Maris on the Jersey Shore for that retreat I told you about. I was crashing on a proposal and I just forgot I hadn’t told you . . .”

  “Oh, you’re canceling our plans tonight too? I was talking about last night.”

  “Last night? What are you talking about?” He must have emailed her; she must have lost the note amid everything else. “We were supposed to go out last night?”

  “Remember, I got tickets for that Chekhov play. You said you wanted to go. So, since I respect your time and care about you, I wrapped up my work in time to meet you there. I tried calling you several times, but I figured out by intermission that you weren’t coming. At least I got to see the second half.”

  And as he was sitting outside the theater by himself, Riley thought, she had been juggling two conference calls that achieved nothing and frantically finishing a proposal Elsa wanted nothing to do with. “Neil, I’m—I just had to work and . . .”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Riley. You don’t have to leap at whatever is blinking in front of you. You don’t have to rip up everything for whatever seems urgent.” He coughed. Then, methodically, the blow: “Waiting for you last night gave me some time to think. I realized that while you are an absolutely amazing woman, I am not interested in being treated like this. A satisfying relationship requires a certain quantity of time and respect for the other person. Neither of which seems to be a priority for you at the moment.”