Business Doctors - Management Consulting Gone Wild (3 page)

Raymond, the head of the casino business, was not privy to Woody’s expression from where he sat. Encouraged by the fact that the boss had not killed Jacob yet, he added, “We should also kill the cops who are targeting us -”

“Don’t be an ass, Ray. That would take us down faster than the Titanic, moron!’ Alfredo argued, “We don’t have any great pull with the cops these days, most of our buy–ins have sold out. Don’t you know that killing a cop is like asking for a bullet through your brain.”

“Why don’t we gun down the heads of Moe, Harry and Smithers - and also the guys who left us to join them,” a voice pitched in. The energy in the room reached a crescendo, every one incensed and upset, screaming for blood.

“Shut the fuck up,” Woody roared. “I always suspected your brains were up your asses and now you’re proving it. Obviously, there isn’t anyone in this room who’s got a fucking clue about how bad our situation is and what we should do. I give you a day more to think about this. When we meet again tomorrow, you’d better have some ideas that won’t make me blow your brains out.”

Subdued, the men made themselves scarce. Woody alone in the Dungeon, poured himself a large peg from the decanter and offered himself to the oblivion of the hard alcoholic beverage.

* * *

Woody
, for a large, violent man, was physically gentle with his wife. It went against his nature to physically hurt a woman especially one as lovely as Angie.

Given the morning’s tiff, Angie had dressed to kill, hoping Woody would give in to the temptation. From the raw animal, Woody transformed into a blue-eyed boy eager to please. Whether it was Angie’s smooth skin or the smooth single malt, it had the desired effect.

Lying in bed after making love, Woody was sated but was still anxious about his businesses’ predicament. He clipped a cigar, lit it and inhaled deeply.

Angie pulled the blanket over her nakedness, feeling suddenly lonely.

Today was a rare night, when she had Woody for herself. With her hubby finding solace outside more often than at home these days, she was often left unsatisfied. The fact that Woody was a tiger in bed, made the desire more acute. Angie would often swallow her disappointment, her insides trembling with the need for fulfillment.

Today, her expectations were different
.
Angie knew something was gnawing at Woody from within. But she also knew he wasn’t ever going to get her views or her help. She had tried on several occasions to offer her support, but Woody had, politely at first and more firmly in the past few days, asked her to mind her own business and not his. But Angie was made of firmer material and after tonight’s performance, decided to push her luck one more time.

Eyes unusually bright, Angie twisted towards her husband asking,

“You wanna talk about it?”

Woody usually never discussed business with her. But these were not usual times. With huge discomfort, he cursorily explained the Dungeon’s proceedings. Laying bare his business problems was tough on his ego.

Angie thought for a minute while her husband puffed at the cigar.

“What do you do when you have toothache?” she queried.

“What?” Angie’s question seemed totally disconnected from the serious topic that they had initiated. Her query made no sense. Was Angie displaying early signs of short-term memory loss?

“You playin’ with me?” Woody asked.

“Humor me, Woody.”

“Well, I go to a dentist.”

“And what do you do when one of your key men get held up in jail?”

“I get my lawyer to bail him out,” Woody shrugged.

“And when you want to know what you can do with the shitloads of money that your men used to get you in the good old days?”

“My banker handles it. You know all this Angie, what are you trying to tell me?”

“All I’m saying is, when you have a problem that you don’t fully understand, you approach an expert for help, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. So?”

Angie did not respond and allowed Woody to think for a while.

The extrapolation seemed easy, but it took him a while. “So if I’m facing problems in my business now, do you mean to say there are, er, business doctors who can help?”

“Yes, there are. They are called management consultants. Sounds a little more sophisticated than
business doctor
,” Angie forced a smile, hoping it would diffuse the tension a little.

“And where can I get myself one of them consultants?” Woody was curious.

“There are plenty of them. Most of the big guys in the business will not even look in your direction when they get a whiff of who’s trying to seek their help. Their reputations are at stake. The smaller ones may not be worth approaching, as they may end up screwing your business worse than your own men. They’ll just speed up your downfall.”

Over the years, Woody had figured out that his wife was bright, though he wasn’t always sure where she was coming from. He looked at her with new eyes.

“Well? What do you suggest I do then?”

“Well, I can draw up a list for you of the usual suspects and you can decide for yourself?”

“Hmm, I am not convinced that this’ll help, but only to make you happy, sugar. It can’t possibly get worse than this.”

Angie had been thinking of this for a few months and already knew what to do. Once Woody was asleep, she used the power that she had only recently discovered when during one of the many parties she attended, a nerd looking nouveau billionaire was attributing his riches to the knowledge he had gained from the internet. After that, she had spent her lonesome hours searching for everything she had ever loved. Coming up with the list of business consultants was the easy part – she took two names from the first page of the  internet search results, two from the
fifth and two from the tenth page on the list and made a mental note of her pitch to Woody the next day.

The following morning, she got up early, changed to her pink sheer satin thigh length inners, and made breakfast for Woody. Woody got up to the breath of freshly brewed coffee

“Well, well, well. Looks like I am rediscovering why I fell in love with you, darling”, he said with a gaping mouth as he rediscovered the lust for Angie, seeing her at her seductive best.

“Oh come now Woody, don’t you have the meeting this morning to take care of? Here, I made a list of six business doctors you can talk to.”

“Arrghhh…how on this blasted earth am I gonna decide who’s good? Couldn’t you have simply given me the best guys for our job?”

“Patience, baby – here, let me help you out. The first two you see are the big fish. I don’t think we need to spend so much money. In any case, these guys are steeped in stupid concepts of ethics and morality.”

“Yes, makes sense. Didn’t you say this last night too?”

“Did I? Anyway, let’s move down the list. The next two could be worth a check, but these guys are really wannabes. They are neither the top guys nor the guys hungry for business; if I were you, I wouldn’t even risk calling them!”

“Alright, let’s get this over with – with this rate, I wonder if you are going to make a fool of me at the end of all this!”

“Now we come to the real guys. They will probably give you the same expertise but at a fraction of the cost of the big guys. Plus most of them will be willing to at least talk to you. Of the two on the list, I have heard about the last name in the papers. You may want to start with them”

“Huh, you could have saved me the time and just given their name in the first place. But it’s alright. At least we know who else is out there”

Woody got up from the table and left to meet his loyal posse.

Angie smiled. The inception was complete.

* * *

Woody walked into the Dungeon at 11:00 A.M.

“You’ve had your time to think. Any ideas, anybody?” Woody scanned the group quickly. He wasn’t expecting brilliant bursts of creativity from the group.

“Mr. Woody, Sir, I thought a lot last night and have a few more ideas to share,” started Ray, who had initiated the
kill-em-all
pitch the previous day.

Unwilling to hear another boatload of stupid ideas, Woody cut him off short, “We won’t need them. At least not till we speak to the experts.” He paused expecting their reaction.

“What experts?” Phil asked.

“I am calling in experts who will help us get back in the game.”

“Whaddya mean boss?” Ray asked. “You have a tie in with the Army, the Navy? Experts!!?”

Good. The setup had worked. This was the moment Woody was waiting for. It was time to show them why he was the boss. This is where he could come in and share his wisdom with the rest of the team, in a language the idiots would understand.

“Let me explain.” Woody sat on the edge of the table and looked intently at one of his goons. “Ray, what do you do when your tooth hurts real bad?

“I use a spanner, and yank it out real hard. The big ones you get at Walmart for $19.99 work really well.”

Woody shook his head in despair. Ray wasn’t exactly a top contender for Mensa membership. This was going to be more difficult than Woody had thought. He turned to Alfredo.

“What do you do when one of your guys gets thrown into the slammer?” Woody looked at Alfredo optimistically.

“I make sure we kill him before the cops have had a chance to interrogate him and get all our secrets out of him,” Alfredo responded coldly. There was no way his loyalty would permit the cops to use his own ammunition against him or his boss.

Woody was close to losing his temper, but decided to give it one last shot. He addressed Jacob, “What do you do on pay day, when you get your hands on all that cash?”

“No brainer, I blow up some of it on booze and stash away the rest in my backyard for a rainy day. I ain’t half as dumb as I appear to be, ya know. So, what’s with the
expert
story, boss?”

Obviously this wasn’t going in the direction Woody had presumed. It all sounded so smooth the previous night, with Angie. Maybe it was the ambience. But Woody had no intentions of wearing sexy lingerie or getting in bed with his men, just to replicate the ambience from the previous night. He decided to move on to the main message.

“Never mind. We’ll need to get in touch with the business doctors to see if they can come up with ideas to fix up this mess. Joe, here’s their contact information. Get them over for a discussion, pronto. And for heaven’s sakes, play it real quiet. I don’t want them knowing that they are getting hired by the underworld.”

“Won’t they find out eventually?” Joe raised the least nonsensical point of the morning. He was Woody’s Man Friday. He wasn’t responsible for any specific business. But being the boss’s right hand man gave him an exposure to almost all businesses.

“Yeah, I guess so. But let’s hook them in first. We don’t want them to leave the town before meeting us and never return.
”

Chapter 3

Michael Schneider was staring out at nothing in particular from the window of his corner office in Santa Monica. It provided a fantastic view of the hills, which would be snow-capped for a greater part of the winter season. On clear days, the ‘HOLLYWOOD’ sign would be visible, though the individual letters did not really stand out clearly due to the distance.

Unfortunately, for Schneider, business itself hadn’t been as fantastic as the panoramic view. Sitting atop a plush thirty-storey tower, Schneider had chosen one of the higher floors. The swish interiors of the office, the great location and the impressive demeanor with which Schneider carried himself could cause any onlooker to be envious of his position. The interiors were done up in classy contemporary décor with pottery art pieces and authentic imitation paintings adorning the nooks and walls. There were open spaces and also a small recreation room to maintain the ‘fun’ factor. This was more of a ruse to project the image of a cool workplace and the room was the least inhabited place in the office. Despite all the apparent extravagance, Schneider was a worried man.

The monthly business review meeting was expected to start in the next thirty minutes and Schneider wasn’t expecting any fireworks this month either. After having worked with leading management consulting firms in downtown Los Angeles, he had ventured out on his own in the late nineties to launch his own – Schneider Associates.

In the initial years, business had been great. His clients were mainly technology startups around the area, flush with cash pumped in by venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. In a short span of three years, Schneider’s consulting team had grown from modest beginnings to twenty-five consultants working with roughly twenty clients per year. A
boutique
, as they called themselves.

Each project, or study as Schneider liked to call it, could last from anywhere from a week to over a year, with team sizes usually ranging from one to a dozen, sometimes more. It was a strange business, but one that attracted top talent. Most firms hired their recruits directly from the top business schools and trained them to digest flexibility in everything - flexible team structure, flexible reporting bosses, flexible industry expertise and flexible functional roles. The only thing that was non-flexible was a firm’s demand on the individual’s life. But then who said management consulting was for the f
aint-hearted. The boutique firms were usually started by Partners hoping to have little less flexibility and a little more control – the team comprising of consultants that were already trained by the big guys.

Recession had spread its net far and wide. The
dot com bust
was a major blow to the clients that Schneider served. Many of his consultants moved on to greener pastures, few and far to begin with. Fortunately, Schneider and his loyal team, whatever was left of it anyway, had managed to survive the downturn by taking on a wider range of clients across new industries. In a way that was a challenge – clients from new industries expected consultants to have relevant experience, and for a boutique of the size of Schneider Associates, given the constraint on the number of employees – which gave it the
boutique
feel – they were occasionally stretched too thin. But they did not have much of an option. Now, a decade later, the economy was staring at the possibility of a long hibernation and it seemed like history was repeating itself.

Schneider was not worried about survival. He had come up the ranks the hard way – not that there was an easy way really, but only a few survived the way to the top. He was concerned about thriving. The recession had caused the exponential growth to flatten out, and Schneider was trying to find ways to keep the uptick going. His plans for expansion had already been choked by the gloomy market – those ideas, for now, were confined to manila folders that were safely put away, in anticipation of better days to come. There were no new projects and the existing ones were on the verge of being wrapped up.

Schneider stepped out of his office – and strode to the deli across the street. The regular lunch time crowd had dissipated and he ordered a sandwich – ham on rye. Schneider did not enjoy food. He ate to live. The idea of ‘
live to
eat’
did not align with his life’s philosophy. Gourmet meals and power lunches never impressed him. Power lunches were just that – showcasing of power, lunch was incidental. With his taste deficiency condition, most food felt tasteless to him anyway.

This was also the reason why he managed to stay thin despite the erratic work and eating schedules. At over six feet, Schneider had a lean physique which he serviced at least thrice a week with a regular gym routine. His dogged determination reflected not only at workplace but had permeated into his personal life too. High cheek bones and sharp features made him a force to reckon with. He got plenty of adulation in the boardrooms and from the female flight attendants.

He demolished the sandwich absently and stalked back to his office. The meeting was due in minutes. He walked into the meeting room, just as Colin and Martin were taking their seats.

“Acme Manufacturing is holding back its expansion plans, so all new investments have been put on hold indefinitely,” explained Colin, an engagement manager with Schneider Associates, getting straight down to business. This was unusual. The team would generally spend the initial minutes discussing the football game on the previous night, the new big-budget movie that was expected to hit the screens over the weekend, the blonde bombshell that one of them bumped into at the bar. But none of that figured in today’s discussion.

“For us, I’m guessing, this means they will not re-engage us for our consulting services,” Schneider deduced. Colin nodded.

“I’m hoping they will want us to complete the current assignment,” Schneider continued. “Considering they are our biggest client right now, I assume we have most of our consultants deputed on-site with Acme, right?”

Colin nodded again.

“How many months of billable hours do we have with them before our consultants head back home?”

Schneider had moved on from
fixed-fee
projects to a
per-hour
charging model with all their clients. In simple terms, this meant the more time they spent at the client locations, the more they earned.

“Approximately a month more to go and we’d see roughly eleven consultants back on the bench. It’s not going to be a pretty sight.” Collin responded.

Being
on the
bench
referred to the time that the consultant spent between projects – when the earlier project had been completed and the next one was yet to begin. Big name consulting firms usually maintain a large bench. For projects that require staffing on short notice, they tap into their bench. Owing to the additional overhead that comes with such a luxury, boutiques usually maintain thin or no bench at all.

While in rosier times, this meant paid vacation for the consultant, in such times, a day too many and you could have the pink slip finding its way onto the most unsuspecting victim’s desk.

Though he already knew the answer, but being the hopeless optimist and survivor that he was, Schneider checked “Any more queries for follow-on work from our current clients?”

During the course of a project, more so towards the concluding phase of an assignment, it was not unusual for clients to discover new problems or
critical areas for improvement
within their business. Schneider’s well-trained consultants assisted the clients in this
discovery
process and professed their unshakeable commitment in addressing the new issues as well. Fertile ground for showing the consulting firm’s genuine concern for their clients’ business and ensuring the long-term profitability for Schneider Associates as well.

This was a tight balancing act as the firm had to ensure none of these suggestions could have been covered under the original scope of the contract. It was surprisingly easy to do with all the flashy yet meaningful presentations they doled out to the clients during the course of a project. Usually by the end of a project, most clients were too star-struck to take an objective stock of the situation.

“Nothing from our existing clients. However we do have a new lead. We received a request from a company called WFB asking us to come over for a discussion at their head-office in downtown,” said Martin Adams, another engagement manager in the room.

“WFB -” Schneider tried to recollect where he had heard the name before. “They are into real-estate, right? The construction industry is in the pits and I’m guessing WFB projects are heading in the same direction. They probably want our help in evaluating exit options for their existing projects. Or maybe they are thinking about a stake sale in their loss making business. Or who knows, they may have a stash of money tucked away somewhere and may want our advi
ce on investment options”. Schneider doled out the list of usual suspects.

Over the years, he had learnt that the way to make a statement in his line of business was by being well-read and being able to hold a meaningful conversation even with an industry veteran. Dishing out some obvious facts one after another usually did the trick.

“What else do we know about them?” Michael asked.

“We’ve never worked in the real-estate industry business before, Michael. Do you really want to pursue this lead?” Martin sounded a little apprehensive.

“You are a consultant, Martin. You are an expert in areas you’ve worked in, and more so in areas that you
haven’t
worked in,” Schneider tried to pacify Martin’s concerns.

“Our clients pay us big bucks for our superior analytical skills and for the inspiring presentations that help boost their sagging confidence levels. The fact that we may have prior experience in an industry does help us make a deck that may qualify our position better. But even without that, we can always create something which shows how we are building a new practice. In the early years we over-focused on the technology industry. See where that got us. Now we need to diversify, and this is an excellent opportunity to spread our net wider. Right now our knowledge about their business is of secondary importance. We can work on it once we get our foot in the door and you’ll surprise yourself with the quality of your own recommendations,” Schneider winked at Martin.

“And why am I telling you something that you know so well anyway. You’ve been with me through the technology bubble.”

Martin wasn’t looking too convinced.

Schneider went on, “You know how we re-invented our firm. Keep your chin up, buddy. I’d say there’s no harm in talking to them to find out what they have in mind.”

Martin took a deep breath, almost as if he was finally buying into Schneider’s arguments.

Schneider continued. “It’s not that we have our hands full anyway. Let’s see if we can re-deploy some of our guys working on the Acme assignment for a few months. It’ll be another feather in our cap and another name to add to our presentation slides.”

“Well,” Martin shrugged and shook his head.  “I’m not totally with you on this, Michael. But what the hell. Let’s do it.”

“Thanks, Martin,” said Schneider.

Martin’s nod was very important for him. Though Martin never vociferously opposed any of Schneider’s suggestions,
his body language would clearly give away his feelings. But once, Martin would say yes, Schneider knew he would give his hundred percent to the assignment.

It’s not as if Martin had much of a choice. In the consulting food chain, Martin was only the second from the bottom, the starting link being the lowly consultant or associate. Those with an undergraduate degree would join as
analysts and then head off to business school in a few years. After working in the consultant role for several years, some would become engagement managers. A few firms would have a ceremonial post like an associate principal. The doyens of the industry were known by names such as Partner, Director, Managing Director and all the other designations that brought awe in the minds of clients and internal teams alike.

Schneider looked at his other colleague, “Colin, continue working with Acme and see if we can squeeze out a few more weeks of work before we bid them adieu.”

“Martin, you’ll join me for the initial pitching process at WFB. Work on a presentation that highlights our expertise in various industries.”

“Aye aye captain,” Martin responded.

“The regular format – credentials, testimonials, accomplishments, the logo-slide,” Schneider knew he didn’t really need to add the details, but he always liked to be clear in his instructions and leave little room for subjective interpretation. “You know the drill. Add a new slide that’s relevant to WFB’s business. Get on to the internet and plug in some figures to show our deep understanding of the real estate market. But more importantly, see if we can dip into our wider expert network to get some real insights that have worked elsewhere. We have to come up with numbers we can show them to prove the value of our services. They should be able to smell money.”

Schneider had started small with a bunch of very smart hand-picked consultants. As the founder of the firm, apart from the actual consulting work, he also managed most of the administrative and commercial aspects of the business. But as the business expanded faster than he had imagined, he needed a reliable hand to efficiently handle the day-to-day responsibilities. He singled out Martin, one of his most trusted and knowledgeable consultants, to be the next in command. There was no reason for Schneider to regret the decision. Martin proved his mettle from early on. He managed the office and the clients while Schneider was away on his business tours.