Harvey Weiss, VP of the Government Systems Group at Digital Equipment Corporation breezes into the conference room and starts his monthly staff meeting: “Doug, Linda gave your topic the first 30 minutes. What’s up?”

I reply, “Harvey, Bruce has a thorough slide deck asking to buy a new piece of equipment for the engineering team.”

Harvey says, “Hi Bruce. Put up your last slide”. Bruce looks aghast and turns pale.

Harvey gently says, “Relax, Bruce. It’s OK. The last slide is the one where you ask for the order. Put it up. Maybe I’ll just say yes, and we can all get back to work sooner. If I have questions, I know you have the answers somewhere in all those other slides.”

One ask-for-the-order slide and three detail slides later, Harvey turns to his Finance Manager and says, “Yeah. Let them buy it. It’s worth the $100K.”