What they remember.

The tunnel

We had been in the car for about ten minutes when he told me. Corporate black Mercedes, city traffic behind us, heading to a meeting with the VP of one of the national oil and gas majors — a multibillion-dollar project, a proposal we had spent six weeks building. I'd been running through the presentation in my head — the cost estimate, the angle I'd lead with. The CEO tends to hand the floor over after the introductions. No warning, just: and now Vitalii will walk you through what we have. I was ready.

Then we entered the tunnel. And he said it like he was commenting on the weather.

"We are not offering the technology we had promised"

I didn't ask why. I had been in the company long enough to know how decisions like this get made.

When he's the one telling me, it's already settled — there is no way back. He said it the way you say something when it's simply how things are done. It was his world, his culture. I had been brought into the team partly to bridge the gap between the company's ways of working and the clients we were partnering with.

We had spent six weeks on that proposal. There was no alternative on the market at the time — we knew that. We had more or less convinced ourselves it was already in our pocket. A done deal. And now, somewhere between the city center and the tunnel exit, something shifted in my chest. Not nerves. Frustration. A quiet anger. The feeling that this was unfair — that I was being dropped into a situation I hadn't created, and now had to find a way through.

I started typing. Our business development manager was already at the venue. I needed him to pull specific slides before we walked in. And as I was writing the message and trying to reconstruct the narrative — what we were now offering, how to frame it and I hit something I wasn't ready for. What we were proposing now was, from any technical angle, more or less identical to what our competitor was putting on the table. And the VP sitting across from us had a team of specialists who knew this technology the way surgeons know anatomy. They would see it immediately.

I kept trying to find an angle. There wasn't one. I couldn't stand in front of those people and tell them our proposal was stronger — because it wasn't, and they would know that. I also couldn't walk in and say: what we're bringing you now isn't what we promised, and we know it's not great. It was a genuinely unsolvable situation. And the building was getting closer.

We walked in. CEO gave the introduction, I took over, acknowledged the original direction we had discussed, and explained what we were bringing instead. The specialists in the room knew immediately. They knew that I know it too. I kept presenting. The CEO sat composed. We answered questions. We left.

I don't remember the drive back.

A different room

What I remember is a different meeting, a different company, a different manager — years earlier, not long after I had started working internationally. A client review had gone badly. The team on our side had underperformed. The client was grilling my manager in front of everyone, and the path of least resistance would have been to let the accountability land where it belonged.

He didn't do that. He held the line. Calmly, without drama, without throwing anyone under the bus. He absorbed it.

I wasn't the one he was protecting. I had nothing to do with the underperformance. But I have never forgotten it. Years later, in a different country, working for different people, I still think about that meeting when I think about what it looks like to lead.

What stays

The thing about your reputation is that nobody carries your best moments with them. They carry how you held yourself when the plan fell apart.

We spend a lot of energy preparing for the moments that go well. That preparation matters. But it's not what stays. What stays, for the people in the room, is what you did when the floor moved. Whether you kept presenting. Whether you protected your team. Whether you stayed composed when you had every reason not to be.

I was angry in that tunnel. I thought it was unfair. Almost four years later, I can see it differently — I can appreciate the composure in how my CEO handled it, the maturity in how he walked into that room committed to delivering what value he could, even with a weakened hand. I couldn't name that at the time. But I was watching it.

The uncomfortable moment isn't the interruption to your career. It's the part that gets remembered. Not just by others — by you too, eventually, when you've had enough distance to see what it was.

This week

Think of one situation you are currently in where the plan has already changed and you are managing how to walk into the room anyway. Not whether the situation is fair. Not what went wrong upstream. Just: what does it look like to show up well in it?

You've got this. I'm rooting for you.

Until next Saturday, Vitalii

Find me on LinkedIn. You're reading The Next Move — a weekly newsletter by Vitalii Lavelin.
​