co-author: Mike Conant
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Tom had been on permahold for the last 25 minutes and he was pissed. He had a ten o’clock conference call with Jack Burns and it wasn’t like him to play hard to get. He pulled up his PIM to check his schedule for the day before logging on to check his e-mail.
(e-mail message)
Tom
We’ve been waiting for the access code to the demo line for the last three days. What’s the score? We also need a ballpark figure on the initial start-up costs for the telecounseling system – with and w/o live operators. Please get back to me ASAP as we still have a lot of ground to cover before Thursday.
Jack
The demo was supposed to be up and running so that Jack’s team could call in and interact with the system before they flew in to talk turkey on Thursday. Leon hadn’t given them the access code yet. What was Leon doing? Somebody had their signals crossed and this just wasn’t the time for it. There was too much riding on this deal to flub a simple pass. For start-up companies like XpertSystems it was a race to put the pedal to the metal on the information Superhighway where the only two possible fates were either to become a successful spin-off or to spin out of orbit and burn up like a shooting star. It was survive, hang five or eat shit and die. Tom’s head began to whir. He’d have to touch base with Jack on the double and get Leon on the line for a reality check.
Ever since Obama came into office with the promise of sweeping changes in health care, scores of high-tech startup ventures were scrambling for a stake in a new, wide-open market in which computer-aided health care systems would play an ever increasing role. The buzzword was interactivity. How and with whom, nobody knew. The larger players – pharmaceutical companies, MCOs, medical device manufacturers – were cautiously surveying the field, looking for new alliances and technologies to bolder their shrinking comfort zones. A decade of bottom-up research pointed to the obvious. In broad strokes, treating illness was not the solution to the problem. It was preventing it. The health care industry couldn’t cope. The nation was losing billions.
XpertSystems was a high-tech startup company in the fast lane business of health care systems. One of a slew of companies teething on the cutting edge of what would soon become one of the hottest new technologies in the country. Like most of their competitors, survival meant cutting a deal.
Word had it that the merger between XpertSystems and JJHMI was off. What looked like a win-win situation across the board suddenly fizzled out, evaporated into thin air, and bit the dust. Xpert Systems was about to go belly up if it didn’t find an investor P.D.Q.
Tom hung up and dialed Leon’s number. Tom hated calling Leon. It wasn’t that he disliked him. He just didn’t know how to ‘access’ him, as Leon would put it. For that matter, nobody did. He had spent ten years working on black box systems for Kodak before coming to Xpert to run the systems division and everyone just assumed he was wired enough to do the job. The scary thing was that nobody really knew what Leon did, let alone how to judge it, and Leon wasn’t about to tell. It was impossible to pin him down. The only phrases Leon was known to utter were: “hey, cool” and “piece a cake.” The first was a signal of approval and the second was a stock answer to any technical question. He’d been a team player long enough. Now it was his turn to call the shots. After ten years with Kodak he was sick of toeing the line for big-wigs and decorated desk jockeys, and what with all the downsizing, rightsizing, outsourcing and partnering schemes doing the rounds in corporate America all he wanted now was to suck up to a cash cow and have it made in the shade.
“Hey, Leon. What’s the word?”
“Today’s word is suck. It rhymes with …”
“C’mon, cut the crap. I got a message from Jack Burns. He says they don’t have the access code to log onto the system. You said they’d have it three days ago.”
“Hey, the turkeys have it but they don’t know it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means these dudes aren’t all that cool. They’re drooling over all sorts of new technology and don’t even know how to use a telephone. So what am I supposed to do?”
“Did you get the patch for the VPro card?”
“Yeah. It’s talkin’.”
“Can you record the new scripts and shake it out in time for a demo this afternoon?”
“My guess is yes.”
“Talk to me, Leon! We’re down to the wire.”
Hey, I’m telling you everything I know, warts and all.
“Can you debug it in time for the demo? That’s all I …”
“Piece a cake.” Leon clicked off.
“Piece a cake! What else did I expect?”
Tom was just about to write an e-mail to Jack when the phone rang again. He thrust the receiver away from his ear and punched the speaker phone as soon as he heard the first rapid burst of clicking sounds coming through the line. Oh Christ, he thought, Gimme a break. Bill was on the line.
Bill, a wiry man in his early sixties, had been brought on board to act as CFO until the company could lure a well-networked hot shot to fit the bill. A job that suited neither his talents nor his high-strung disposition. Bill was a plodder and a kvetch, who always managed to turn any meeting he attended into a royal bitch session. To make matters worse, he had the screwball habit of clicking his dentures when he got excited. In a company teeming with baby boomers, he was definitely the odd man out. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d brought in a few VC’s looking to get in on the ground floor he would have got the axe a long time ago. The company was offering shares of its Series A Preferred Stock, throwing them at investors like like confetti to meet payroll. He also knew where all the skeletons were buried. About the only thing he had going for him was that he played by the rules. Bill wouldn’t dream of cookin’ the books or other creative practices employed by many profile hungry companies looking to woo investors. He had been warning the executive committee for months that the company’s burn rate was disastrously high; that they needed to trim the fat; get rid of the graphics department; outsource more work. But his biggest beef was with Tom’s division. It was a white elephant. The company just didn’t have the dough to dish out megabucks for R&D and certainly not to the tune of a cool 22 million. This was no salami attack. If Bill was a whistle blower it wasn’t his fault. Any sober management team would expect him to put his foot down and drive a hard bargain. Hell, he was a number cruncher, wasn’t he? He’d taken a stand against this project from the get-go and had fought it tooth and nail ever since. If he was seen as a wet blanket, so be it!
But if Bill was tolerated by the 9-to-5ers, the division heads and the executive staff, he couldn’t get to first base with the big wigs on the board. He didn’t drive a fast Lexus or have a laid-back Oregon address; wasn’t on loan from a fortune 500 company or brought out of retirement to make the big board bounce. In their eyes he was nothing but a bush league bean counter. A dipstick without a track record. He was despised by these blueblood Brahmins from Bean Town because they were the gurus. They were the scenery. They were the guys who’d been around the block. They were the upscale rainmakers; the movers and shakers and Bill had managed to blow their cool with a single, unforgivable blooper. Word had it that, at the beginning of his tenure, the board had flown up four moneybags from Hot Lanta for a thirty minute presentation. Just the financials, that’s all they wanted. Bill blew a comma, the board blew a fuse and the gentlemen from Hot Lanta blew off the rest of the meeting with: “we’ll get back to you when you get your act together.” From that moment on Bill was Wrinkle City: a wimpoid. A spreadsheet spastic. A big fat zilch and they wanted him screwed, blued and tattooed; sent to hell in a handbasket; run out of town on a rail. Bill was a third wheel for whom no one had any use and if this schmuck didn’t get the can soon, by god, they were gonna whack him.
“Where the hell is Debbie?”
“She’s in Indy with Rich. They’re presenting Lilly this afternoon.”
“No way, José! That was scheduled for the week after next.
It got bumped up.“
“Then bump it the hell …”
“Hey, relax. Don’t go ballistic. She’s been busting her buns for the last three weeks on this presentation. They’ve put her through all the hoops and keep shifting the dates because its no-go without Henderson.”
“Screw Henderson. Let Rich handle him. Get her on the red-eye tonight. I want her here for the meeting first thing tomorrow morning, understand! I’m not going up against their CFO with another dog-and-pony-show. It’s not gonna fly, Tom. He wants numbers—projections on the national rollout and that’s Debbie’s baby. If we don’t score at due diligence tomorrow he’s gonna pull the plug. We can’t shmooze these guys anymore.”
“What are you so worried about, Bill? We’ve got all our bases covered. There’s no way we’re gonna drop the ball now.”
“For Christ sake, get with the program, Tom! “We all agreed at last Tuesday’s huddle to put Lilly on the back burner until we closed the deal with DigiSoft. Didn’t you see their shopping list? I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
Tuesday’s meeting?
“Look, we can’t possibly bring anybody up to speed by tomorrow. I mean nobody can pinch hit for her.”
Up to speed?
Tom flushed. “What meeting? What are you talking about?”
“You’re out of the loop, Tom. Don’t get me wrong. You’ve wowed the pants off a lot of people with that big picture of yours but you can’t seem to get it through your thick skull that JJHMI isn’t buying this company to invest in a black hole and that’s exactly the way they see your division right now. Look, I’d really like to press the flesh with you on this one but let’s cut to the chase. We’ve always been up-front with each other. Right? So let me put my cards on the table. I know how far you put your ass on the line but show me one component in that Rube Goldberg that’s in place. Show me something that really works. That’s the bottom line, Tom. Forget the bells and whistles. So you brought demand publishing on stream without a hitch. So what? What’s the big deal with that? It’s not the ticket and it’s not going to cut the mustard. It’s old hat. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is doing it. Besides, everyone knows that Leon’s taking the kudos for it and at least he’s got the smarts to sit pretty, keep his mouth shut and not stick out like a sore thumb. You’re way out on a limb with this AI shit. It’s too far down the pike and you know it. These guys aren’t bozos. They’re not gonna be snookered into dropping a bundle on live telecounseling as a quick-fix workaround. I mean, that pie in the sky got thumbs down in quick time! Face the music, Tom. These guys are hardball players and your vaporware ain’t gonna stick.”
“Bill, would you spare …”
“NO! I’m on the horn right now and you’re gonna listen to the whole nine yards!
“I don’t know what you’re tuned into but there’s been a lot of scuttlebutt going around lately and you’re on the receiving end. So let me clue you in pal because what I’m about to tell you isn’t watercooler gossip. JJHMI won’t cut this deal with you on board. They put that in writing. I didn’t want to have to be the one to break the news. But hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Tom, nobody wants to see you walk the plank, but if you ask me, it’s time you get off your high horse and bite the bullet otherwise you’re gonna be out the door in no time flat. You could start by mending some fences.”
“Who the hell are …”
“I’m talking about Debbie. That’s who! If I were you I’d get my ass in gear and touch base with her because she’s really miffed. She thinks you’ve been trying to steal her thunder. You’ve been soft-pedaling her entire program as a stripped-down version of your own brainchild and you were tactless enough to make it look like a gender issue. She’s going ape. I mean she’s on the war path.”
“Gender issue? My ass!”
You won’t have an ass if you don’t worm your way back into her good graces.
You’re in deep shit, Tom. That’s the bare-assed truth! If you want to have a job next week, you’d better be prepared to eat humble pie because you’re way out in left field right now and you got nobody to go to bat for you.” Bill clicked his teeth and then clicked off.
As a division head, Tom was privy to most information at the executive level. So why wasn’t he informed of this meeting?
The businessman broke into a prickly sweat. He sat at his desk and stared blankly out the window as he struggled to organize his thoughts. For the first time in his 4 years at Xpert he was uneasy about the future. Very uneasy. In fact he was scared. All bets were off. Anything could happen now. What started as a ‘friendly’ merger was rapidly turning hostile, at least as far as he was concerned. Instead of getting a golden handshake he was getting the shaft. Four years of burning the midnight oil and now his division was going down the tubes. At best, he’d have to answer to a new boss. At worst, his division was headed for the chopping block and his neck with it.
The company had four divisions: sales and marketing, systems, product development, and R&D.
Tom’s division was responsible for core R&D as well as keeping the marketing people happy. This meant that he had to come up with a constant stream of demos and prototype systems slick enough to blow the competition out of the water without promising more than he could deliver.
Outro?
Call Debbie?
What’s the word Debbie? Can we do lunch tomorrow, let’s say around two?
He calls her cellular phone. Her Handy.
I, Alan N. Shapiro, have just “coined” the word Handy in the English language as a synonym for cell phone or mobile phone. I stole it from German-Denglish, executing a double-reverse-secret-back-to-the-basket-over-the-shoulder-layup-running-jump-hook shot.
