This Leadership Thing

My phone rang at 9:30 p.m. one Thursday evening. I recognized the caller immediately as my boss, a senior director. The caller said, “Mike, you have a new assignment. Beginning tomorrow morning, you are the new QA [quality assurance] lead for our next-generation product, with a staff of fourteen. The project is eighteen months old and has missed all its delivery dates. Your team has worked twenty-six consecutive weekends.”