As hard as they tried, the team was not able to schedule a follow-up meeting to continue the discussion of Rich’s 360- degree feedback. Every time someone proposed a time, at least one person on the staff had a scheduling conflict. Usually it was Jamie.

As each day went by, the momentum around having the meeting faded. Unfortunately, the bizarre dynamic that had developed during those last fifteen minutes in Napa did not. In fact, over the course of the next month, it began to take on a life of its own.

For the first time in his entire career, Rich was feeling just a little uncomfortable when he ran into his colleagues in the halls. Although barely perceptible, it was undeniable to his staff that Rich had lost some level of confidence. Although he would never sulk, his words and actions seemed more forced than they had been in almost five years. The impact of this subtle change manifested itself in troubling ways.

For one, decisions seemed to be taking longer during weekly meetings. Even the frequency of communication from Rich to employees began to fade somewhat, and it lost much of its crispness as Jamie’s new communication specialist took on more of the responsibilities for deciding when and how much information to disseminate.

And there were other subtle but unsettling signs of change. Telegraph’s stringent hiring process began to lose some of its teeth as Jamie made “adjustments,” as he called them, always based on a legal issue of some sort. Rita, beaten down by occasional lawsuits, tended to back Jamie on these matters, giving him just the momentum he needed.

With the confidence that came with his new-found job security, Jamie even managed to chip away at a small part of the firm’s performance management system, reducing some of the autonomy that managers had in rewarding employees with performance bonuses, and decreasing the frequency of mandatory reviews. He advocated these changes in the name of “greater management flexibility.”

Of course, none of this would have been possible under normal circumstances. But the incremental nature of the changes, combined with Rich’s slightly damaged confidence, kept the group from realizing what was happening and stopping it.

It wasn’t until more than two months after the annual off-site meeting, when Rita and Mark met with Rich to discuss the final details of the Walnut Creek acquisition, that the severity of the situation hit home with the Telegraph executive team.

During that meeting, Rich did something that they had never seen: he backed off on a major strategic decision. “Mark, why don’t you do a little more analysis before making any commitments to these people.” He stood to leave the meeting. “You guys can make the decision without me. Just let me know what you decide.”

After the meeting, Rita and Mark agreed that it was spooky to see their boss being unsure of himself, even weak. They decided they wanted to do something about it, but they didn’t know what.

The next week, two things happened that proved to be the wake-up call Telegraph needed.