Chapter 19 - VINCENT’S APOLOGYVincent asked employees to attend a meeting.
Not mandatory.
No press.
About eighty came.
He stood without bodyguards beside him.
That was deliberate.
“I owe you an apology.”
People went silent.
“I did not steal wages.”
He paused.
“I did not know David was stealing wages.”
Another pause.
“But I built a company where managers believed bad news should stop before it reached me.”
A server looked up.
Vincent continued.
“I rewarded numbers before asking enough questions about how they were produced.”
“I let my reputation become useful to people who wanted you afraid.”
“And I assumed silence meant things were working.”
He looked around.
“It didn’t.”
No applause.
Good.
Apologies did not require applause.
Then a cook raised his hand.
“What happens when you forget this?”
Vincent almost smiled.
“Then use the systems we built to make it expensive for me to forget.”
That answer got a few laughs.
More importantly, it was true.
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Good governance did not depend on Vincent becoming permanently enlightened.
It depended on making future failures visible.
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