You survived the blast.  The corporate fallout will kill you eventually so consider today a death deferred.

This day you saw a colleague meltdown and then blow up all over the conference room. Spittle flew, her laptop screen cracked, a white board was kicked over and lots of f-bombs used for punctuation.  Your guess is that Bob* was just one chair throw away from a security escort out of the building.  You just looked at your hands while the event played out.

Any reasonable group would have listened to Bob months ago and ended this ineffective program.  What Bob didn’t know is that he was surrounded by drones.  In drone speak our portfolio was green across the board.  A normal person would say our success metrics are contrived, irrelevant to our business, and resist genuine measurement.  Bob, poor form to and call us out like that.  You see we had to cut you off.  Emotions are for people.  We are drone.

This emotional failure is so bright it will mask your own incompetence for months to come.  As you share very small talk in the copy room, with some of the program steering group members, you think back to when your focus was on tangible results.

Time to put those thoughts away.  The fiscal is wrapping up soon and you need to use that budget or lose it next year.

*Bob is not her real name