A year later, Bellweather was profitable again.

We restored the employee bonuses that had been cut during the bad months.

We reopened the apprenticeship program Lucan had killed to improve a quarterly number.

And when it came time to name a new president, we did not choose a showman.

We promoted an engineer — a woman who had held her team together through the worst of the debt, who had never once been to an “emergency strategy retreat,” who had simply done the work.

She cried in my office when I told her, and then she got straight back to work, and I knew the company was finally in the right hands.