Day 1 — The Ghost in the Machine

It's 8:15 AM CET on a Monday morning. You're sitting at your home office desk — a converted spare room in your apartment with dual monitors, a standing desk you never actually stand at, and a window overlooking a grey European sky. Your first day on the SAP SuccessFactors EMENA deployment at Nestlé starts not with a badge or a building tour, but with a Teams notification.

Claudia Meier — PMO Director and your direct boss — has sent a calendar invite for 8:30 AM CET sharp. Not 8:31. Not 8:29. 8:30. The subject line reads: 'Onboarding — Project Status and Expectations.' The invite description is three lines long and ends with: 'Please be on time. I will share my screen at 8:30:00.' You glance at the handover notes from Markus Bühler, the previous PM who quit three weeks ago. His final paragraph reads: 'Claudia is fair but exact. If your status report is 2 hours late, she'll notice. If your RAID log has a gap, she'll find it. Don't fight it — build it into your rhythm.'

You join the call at 8:29. Claudia is already there, camera on, background a pristine Vevey office with Lake Geneva visible through the window behind her. She looks exactly like her LinkedIn photo — sharp, composed, and fully prepared. Before you can finish saying good morning, she begins.

"Good morning. Welcome to Nestlé Enterprise Technology. I'll be direct — we lost 11 weeks with the previous PM and I don't intend to lose more. I'm going to walk you through the project status, the governance structure, and my expectations. Then you'll have questions. Let's begin."