Achieving Your Delusions
Stone had delusional aspirations. Then he reached them.
Somehow he made it to the inner circle of a start-up that went viral. Based on his (tiny? invisible?) skill-set, it was a right-place-right-time fluke. He had more energy than self-management. He embarrassed himself in team meetings. Stone’s overconfidence was like a Cyndi Lauper ringtone going off during a funeral.
The founder of the enterprise had a vision that seemed nebulous. Stone wasn’t alone in missing it. While the team celebrated exploding follower stats, rocketing sales, and fawning press, the founder never bought into his own success. He habitually went off the grid just when the camera crews showed up, which drove Stone frantic.
Then the competition fought back, rumors of intellectual property theft hit the blogs, valuation plummeted, and #crucifyhim started trending.
Through it all, Stone’s aspirations just kept rising. It was like he mixed his own Kool-Aid and threw it back. He would go with the founder to prison. He would take a bullet for him. Even the founder told him, “You’re delusional.”
After a whistle-blower helped the FBI find the founder, Stone became dangerously erratic. He pulled a Glock on one of the agents, then disappeared. Next anyone heard of him, he’d given interviews saying he was never actually employed by the corporation, disavowing the entire enterprise.
On the day the founder lay in a pool of his own blood, shot dead in what the FBI called an “unfortunate incident,” Stone showed up at headquarters only after the rest of the team had dealt with the media, joining them as they stared at the conference room walls and peered out of the closed blinds.
This is when Stone achieved his delusions.
The same team that had watched the coroner zip the founder’s body bag had to put out a statement three days later that the founder was back. That was weird enough, but the story veered into the bizarre.
The team also had to announce that the founder, before leaving to open new markets in emerging countries, appointed Stone chief operations officer. What was he thinking?
Well. That’s not exactly the Bible’s account, but it’s close.
