Business Doctors - Management Consulting Gone Wild (6 page)

Schneider hadn’t actually studied gaming, but thought there was no harm in asking a few general questions. They were here on a study tour after all. Martin looked up at him reverentially and was again impressed by the way Schneider had not let the glitz take over unlike him.

Nonchalantly, Dave responded, “Our operations are pretty small. We manage our security with real people, not cameras.”

He pointed out to a few serious looking burly people standing around. They were all in regular clothes. Martin wondered how not being dressed in a uniform was really helping them. From their physique and the serious looks they were sporting, it was pretty obvious who they were and what they were doing there.

“Like I said, most of the guys around here are our usual customers. We’ve never had any problem with them. Our employees also have been with us for years, are trust-worthy and know their jobs well.”

Dave smiled contently, happy with his self-prescribed therapy for keeping problems away from his little den.

“Besides we’ve never had too many incidents of customers making a huge killing at our tables for it to raise any red flags. It happens a lot at the other casinos. We realize that and we return the trust. We don’t play no dirty tricks with our customers like some of the other casinos.”

Dave had been managing the show for several years and it wasn’t common for him to get such a patient willing audience. The strippers at the club always stole the attention. Topless performers versus a discourse on casino management. There was no competition.

“We don’t rig our slot machines, we don’t use loaded dice. Our customers know that and respect us for that. In this business, you hafta earn the respect of your customers, you see. Like any other business, it’s about relationships.”

“A little more finesse, some more brains, thin-rimmed glasses across that shining head…and this guy could’ve been a professor. Maybe you could hook him up with some B-schools as a guest lecturer,” Martin muttered to Schneider.

“Besides, we also try to keep our costs low. We spend on things that matter – the interiors, lighting, the exteriors, marketing - and the mailer stuff that I told you about.” Dave had launched into his lecture on financial management now. His listeners right now were perfect for the dry topic and were in fact lapping it up intently. Joe had, in the meantime, slipped away to catch a glimpse of the new strippers on stage.

“Having cameras would mean additional costs - for the equipment itself, for the people to control them, fix them, maintain them - these babies have a tendency to go belly up more frequently than you’d think. Many years back, we did think about getting them installed. But Mr. Woody also felt it would be unnecessary at that point in time. If things ain’t broken why fix
'em? Right?” Dave asked hoping for an approval as the four walked around the gaming zone amidst sounds of coins, dice and myriad music filling the room.

“That may be true, Dave,” said Schneider. Turning to Joe, he added, “But just for our study, do you think you’d be able to install a few cameras for a week and send the recordings across to us?”

Seeing Dave hesitate, Schneider added, “Not the high priced ones and none of the elaborate setup that’s required for the whole interconnected network. Even the simple ones that you get for computers should work. Place them near the ceiling and point them at the main tables. You should be able to get them from the electronic shop across the street pretty cheap.”

Dave looked at Joe, who had pulled on his favorite zombie-watching-a-documentary-film expression on his face. It was almost like his face automatically went into power-saver mode after a pre-defined period of inactivity. Martin wondered if he held on to the same expression while having passionate sex, if at all his brain was capable of producing the feeling of passion. The imagined visuals seemed pretty disturbing, and Martin discarded the thought.

Schneider kept pushing. “We don’t need a control room or people to monitor them like the big casinos do. Just ensure that the resolution of the recordings is clear enough to capture the table, the dice, the cards, the numbers on the roulette table and the people sitting around the table and send it across to us. We can’t obviously spend too much time here. So we’ll take these recordings and view them in fast forward mode. That should give us a quick idea of how things work across tables. Hope that’s not too much to ask for.”

Dave and Joe still did not seem convinced, “Do you think there is some hanky-panky going on here? Hey Joe, why did you say these guys were here for?” Dave started to show his aggressive side.

Before Joe could respond, Schneider cut in smoothly, “We don’t want t
o cause any discomfort. We are just trying to understand your business so we can help you do it better. If there is an issue, we can always tell Mr. Woody to resolve the conflict” – Schneider used the weapon of choice for consultants. It always worked to show the measly client members who they were working for.

“That won’t be necessary at all,” said Joe, after the documentary was over and turned to Dave, “Dave, do you think you’d be able to arrange for that?”

“No sweat, buddy,” Dave didn’t seem too pleased with the additional work that had been loaded on him, but the mere name of the boss was enough to bring out the charming professor again. Turning to Schneider, and in a vain attempt to get on to his good books, he added, “But if watching video is what you are interested in, then we have much better titles in our collection.” He looked at Joe. “Maybe you should gift them our newly launched series – ‘Wild Las Vegas nights’ – it’s got some real wild shit in it. It’ll be far more interesting to watch that rather than seven days of the boring stuff that you’ve asked for.”

Ignoring the comment, Schneider looked around for his colleague who seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.

“Where’s Martin gone?”

From what Schneider had read, Las Vegas had a bad reputation for making people disappear, especially those with prying eyes that were not appreciated by the bosses who ran the show. But this situation was different. Schneider and Martin were there
because
the boss wanted them to be there.

“I’m here,” called out Martin from behind a slot machine. “I thought we should also experience how it actually feels like to be a customer. It’ll help us understand the business better,” he said as he pulled down the slot-machine. “Damn! Two cherries and a mango. One more cherry and I could’ve retired a rich man tonight. So much for beginner’s luck.”

“We’ll make sure you get lucky before you end the day, Martin,” the sympathy in Joe’s voice seemed more genuine this time. “Speaking of cherries, let’s move on to the entertainment section.”

“Hold on, guys,” said Dave. “Before you move on, here’s a little gift for you.” Dave handed over a wad of ten Monopoly-like currency notes. “Peckernotes!” he announced. “Each of these is worth fifty credits and in our little shop one credit is the same as one dollar. You can use these credits for games and food.” As he explained, Dave seemed more excited than the consultants. “Or you might just want to exchange these for real cash and go home five hundred dollars richer without playing a single game. Naah, that last option is out. But I’d strongly recommend you to make use of them all during your stay here. And I’m sure our friend here, who already seems hooked onto our games, will ensure you exhaust them all before leaving Las Vegas,” he added looking at Martin who in turn gave him a lifeless polite smile.

“Obviously our Peckernotes will not work in other casinos. Another one of our clever marketing ideas to make you spend more time at the Pecker,” Dave wasn’t leaving any stone unturned to ensure he painted a favorable picture of how he ran the gaming business. He assumed all these updates were going to go back to the big boss in Los Angeles. This was Dave’s chance to make Mr. Woody realize the good work he had been doing all these years.

* * *

“Day’s special, please,” Schneider placed his dinner order at the
restaurant.

“I’ll have the same,
” said Martin. “I’m guessing at least a third of the guests who come here must be placing an order for the Day’s Special every day. I can imagine the cashier placing one finger on the Day’s Special button on his check printing machine.”

Both were famished from the activities of the day. They quickly devoured the dish they had ordered.

“Fantastic place, huh?” said Martin to Schneider at the dinner table. “Surely lives up to its Sin City label,” replied Schneider and looked at the waiter “Excuse me, can we have the check please?”

The waiter came back with the check. Schneider pulled out his credit card from his wallet.

“Should we test if those Peckernotes really work?” Martin asked Schneider. “Oh yeah, almost forgot about them,” said Schneider as Martin pulled out two notes from the wad and handed them over to the waiter.

“Sir, we cannot give back any change on this. You could still pay by cash if you’d like to,” the waiter waited for a response.

“Not a problem. We have to use them up anyway,” Martin replied.

As the waiter walked away, Martin turned to Schneider, “I want to save a few of those for the slot machines. I have to multiply my investment and go back with at least a grand in my pocket.”

“Did you notice anything weird around here?” Schneider wasn’t with Martin. He was thinking about something else.

“What do you mean?”

“Meaning, do you smell something fishy?”

“I know. My socks, right? It’s strange. I thought I had got them washed just two days back.”

“No, the way things happen around here. Everyone seems happy, Dave is happy, Ed is happy, the customers seem to be having a blast. Apparently it seems as if there’s nothing wrong. But the fact remains. They are still losing money on this business as well.”

Schneider looked at Martin who was pulling at his sock. Martin realized it and said, “I’m listening, go on.”

“We’ve got a day more to spend here in Vegas. Apart from thinking of ways to use up those Peckernotes, keep an eye out for anything that seems out of place or odd. Oh, and by the way, make sure you have the day one answer and hypothesis ready before we catch up for breakfast tomorrow. After all, who knows, Woody may call me tomorrow to check on how things are.”

Martin grumbled under his breath and grunted in
the affirmative. He never understood how they could come up with the solution on the first day of an assignment when the client had usually spent years grappling with the issue. But with multiple consulting assignments, he had learnt that their clients expected them to have superpowers that helped them know the answers to all the problems at once. So they had to have an answer ready. Though the answer could be wrong, it was important to have a point of view and support it with good looking, data-driven presentation slides.

Martin heaved a sigh of relief that at least this client was almost up in arms against the use of a projector. They went back, with Schneider getting on a call to guide one of the other teams. Martin still had to toil the night away, preparing the answer he could provide to Schneider the next morning.

Chapter 5

On Monday morning, the chopper carrying the consultants and Joe took off from Las Vegas and headed back towards Los Angeles. Three nights in Vegas seemed too short for Martin and he had vowed to come back for an extended vacation after this assignment was over.

After landing, as Martin got out of the chopper and started walking out of the building with Joe and Schneider, he was already thinking ahead.

“This trip was useful to get a peep into how you run your businesses. But in our world, we usually start a project by value stream mapping and organization structure assessment” said Martin to a dumbfounded Joe.

Joe had decided that he had had enough of this mumbo-jumbo, and, by reflex, was about to mutter an obscenity when Schneider cut in “Er, what Martin means, is we would like to understand your key processes like recruitment, payouts, and promotions to understand how you manage your business”.

Though the re-phrased statement didn’t cause too much enlightenment, Joe showed some level of comprehension at the word
recruitment
.

“Ah, we are planning to meet a few new recruits tonight. Do you think you’d be interested in seeing how we get them onboard?”

“Er, at night? “ Martin queried.

Joe sniggered, punching Martin on the arm in a comradely fashion.

“Heh heh - this you smarty pants must see. I’m gonna enjoy watchin’ ya faces tonight.”

He rubbed his hands crudely in glee, while Martin gingerly rubbed his arm. Joe’s playful punch hurt. For a change, Joe actually had a smile on his face. And it was scarier than his regular stoned look.

Schneider and Martin exchanged glances, wondering what exactly they had gotten themselves into. Their new client had treated them to a free joy ride and a fair bit of hospitality. But they figured there was still time to back out of it, if things turned out seriously unpalatable.

Martin responded, “Sure. Recruitment is a key factor for the success of any organization.”

Delivering clichéd corporate lines had become second nature to Martin. And yet again, Martin’s corporate gems hit Joe at point blank range and were blown to smithereens without making any impact.

“It would be interesting to see how you manage that for WFB. Are they coming over to the L.A. office?” Schneider was curious.

“Nope. We meet them at The Eagle in the late evening. If you don’t already know, it’s a pub on Wilshire Boulevard. And yes, you can leave your suits and ties at home when you come over, ya know what I mean.”

Considering the number of the times Joe ended his statements with ‘
ya know what I mean
’ Martin got the feeling Joe was expecting his guests to know more than they did. As consultants it was natural for them to dig deeper, but the inclination to do so in this assignment and with
this
client representative just didn’t seem to be the same.

However none of their earlier consulting projects were half as bizarre as this one. So Schneider and Martin were naturally curious and mildly excited by the prospect of observing the recruitment process which promised something they hadn’t experienced earlier.

* * *

That evening back in their office, both men informally discussed their thoughts and Martin voiced his misgivings about the entire venture.

“Michael, this Woody guy and the entire outfit gives me the creeps, I mean these guys are goons. Loaded with dough, but still goons.” 

His boyish face expressed his fear and dismay at the venture. Martin, the scion of an elite Boston-based family, was groomed in etiquette.  His parents would be alarmed and embarrassed if he turned tipsy at a social occasion. Such was the honor and disdain of his tribe.  They would probably disown him if they knew the kind of people he was currently associating with.  

Schneider patted Martin on the shoulder trying to reassure him. Martin was a bit high-strung and needed a firm hand to guide him along the straight and narrow path. Schneider was just the man to do it.

“Listen buddy, take this from me. In all my fifteen years of consulting experience, I believe we’ve hit pay dirt. This is an opportunity of a lifetime.  Just think of it - you won’t get this kind of exposure anywhere. No business school or management textbook or consulting apprenticeship is going to give you this kind of exposure.” Martin wasn’t sure about the once-in-a-lifetime part but knew for sure that the latter part about education was true.

“WFB needs us. My hypothesis is that Woody does not have a head for intelligent business and we do.  He has the dough and the bottom line is that if we blow this job, Schneider and
Associates
-” Schneider stressed the last word, “- will go kaput.”

Martin still looked unconvinced. He specially cringed at the overutilization of the word ‘hypothesis’. Heavily abused in the consulting world, it gave consultants the license to form any opinion and dish it out, as if it were true
.

“But these guys are criminals -”

Schneider continued unfazed, “Sure, they are criminals. But to us it’s just business as usual. We are not gonna coach them on how to do the dirty work that they do, we are just gonna fine-tune the cash-flow aspects and give them some solid tips and advice on how to make money and stay profitable. Do you see anything wrong with that?”

“N-no - but isn’t this unethical?” Martin said a tad belligerently. “What about our reputation?” After placing a high value on his own reputation and his family’s, the firm’s standing was also important in Martin’s scheme of things.

“My friend, don’t you get it - if we have no business - we have
no
reputation! We are doing what we normally do – business analysis - except in an unusual field this time. And that is
not
a crime.”

That settled it. Martin did not push back again, though he did not nod either. Taking this as a cue, Schneider said, “Let’s look at your week one analysis and the framework you plan to use to structure this situation”.

Martin knew that the heart-to-heart was over and it was back to business. “I was thinking of using the issue tree as the businesses will snugly fit into the MECE principle.”

A brief smile spread over Schneider
’s face as he remembered his early days as an Associate when he’d try hard to categorize things as ‘mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE, pronounced
me-see
)’ and was curious to see how Martin would apply it in this situation.

Martin expertly started drawing the issue tree on a piece of tissue paper. He started with WFB written in a circle on extreme left. Then he made eight branches with each of Woody’s different businesses sitting in a circle at the end of the branches. He then proceeded to develop the ‘tree’ further for the casino business based
on the insights gathered over the last weekend. This is where he had to practise extreme caution – to ensure the branches did not overlap and that all branches put together equated to the previous node on the tree. For the casino business, Martin drew three branches, one for number of visitors, one for time spent by each visitor at the casino and the final one to represent the average revenue for the Pecker per customer.

Looking at the evolving tree, Schneider knew that they had a good structure in place and things will be easy to explain to the client from here on.

* * *

“It seems so deserted, hardly a soul around. Are you sure we got the address right?” asked Martin as he stepped out of the cab in the evening, with Schneider. “I don’t see any sign that says The Eagle.”

They looked around, the entire area seemed lifeless. A bit unsure of their bearings as the place was unsavory and smelly, Martin was worried that they had gotten the address
wrong. The cabbie dropped them off and zoomed away into the darkness.

Martin and Schneider stood facing a series of dilapidated faded brown brickwork buildings. The entire rundown neighborhood seemed deserted with little sign of activity. The eerie calm was broken by an occasional rasping sound and a shriek from somewhere deep in one of the buildings.

The men from Schneider Associates checked the scrap of paper bearing the address scribbled by Joe.

“Are you sure we are
where we should be? I don’t see any offices nearby,” Martin gestured pointing. “I can only see that place – looks like a convenience store or something of that sort.”

“Hang on, my phone’s ringing. I’m guessing this must be Joe,” said Schneider, as he looked at his cellphone. “Hi Joe. Yes, we are here. We got off at the Baker junction like you suggested but I don’t see any signs. Where? Oh the building straight ahead. Yes, I see it. I can see lights flickering. Ok, we’ll be there in a minute - hang on.”  

The men reached the structure. It definitely looked like a seedy establishment with two bouncer-like men at the entrance. Were they guests or bouncers?

The words ‘The Eagle’ were engraved just above the doorway, barely distinguishable in the dim lighting. An old, decrepit picture of an eagle accompanied the name.

Schneider pulled out his phone again and called. “Hey Joe, you there?  What do I tell the big guys at the door? Oh, the back entrance - left and down? Yes I see it - we are going down now - the door seems locked. Should I knock? Someone is opening the door now. Ah, there you are.”

“Welcome to The Eagle!” announced Joe as he opened the door, “Martin, I’m glad you decided to leave the moustache at home this time,” said Joe.

“What makes you think so? I have it in my pocket, just in case.” Martin wasn’t going to take any chances with his reputation, and let it get dented so easily.

“Does Mr. Woody own this place?” asked Schneider.

“Yes he does. See? The learning has already begun, ya know what I mean,” responded Joe. “Follow me.”

The pub looked livelier now, with loud music playing in the background. It took a few moments for them to get accustomed to the dim light in the pub. Martin could almost smell his fear at first as he was more accustomed to the hangout places in star hotels. All the girls, and a few guys he crossed eyes with, appeared to be beckoning Schneider – hinting at the sinful pleasures the place promised.

“That’s ours. Pull a chair,” Joe pointed at an empty table, jolting both of them from their jog down the pleasure road.

“See that table there,” Joe gestured towards a group of three people in one of the corners away from crowds. “That’s Nick, our recruiter and with him are our two new guys who are hoping to join us. Most of our new candidates usually come in with recommendations from our existing members. It’s very rare for us to take in anyone that we don’t already know. Many are from their own families - cousins, sons, brothers - on rare occasions, sisters,” said Joe.

“They looked stoned?” Martin glanced over to the corner table where the newbies were sitting. “I guess we’ve come a little late. Judging by the number of empty bottles on the table, looks like the party’s over.” Martin seemed a little disappointed.

“On the contrary, my dear amigo, the party is just starting,” Joe comforted Martin.

A few minutes later, Nick got up from the table and started walking towards the back-door. The new recruits followed him. “C’mon, time to move,” Joe got up from the table and moved towards the back-door as well.

“Where are we going? I thought the exit is on the other side,” Martin wasn’t too sure what was happening.

“Just follow me,” Joe said curtly.

The door opened to a small open area that looked like a backyard. The two recruits were standing right in the center with Nick. Beyond the backyard, over the low wall, Schneider could vaguely make out the road, and the seedy underbelly of L.A. beyond.

“I’m getting a phone call from the boss, but the signal here is weak. Maybe he just wants to find out if we are taking good care of you. I’ll have to go near the entrance and take the call. You guys stay here and take your notes. I’ll be right back.” said Joe.

Nick said something to the two new members and went back into the pub. Four other tough looking guys emerged from the pub and gathered around the recruits. Without any warning one of them landed a powerful punch on the first recruit’s jaw. As if this was a cue, the other members descended on the two recruits and began raining punches and kicks
on them from all directions. The prospective recruits tried to put up a brave fight, but were clearly being outnumbered. Both of the new recruits were soon sprawled on the ground, their faces bleeding profusely.

“They’ll die if this continues,” a shocked Martin whispered to Schneider. “Where’s Joe? And where’s Nick?” they were both nowhere in sight. “How could they leave these kids for the rival gangs to beat up?”

“Hey! Stop it,” yelled out Schneider as he walked towards the group beating up the recruits.

“Michael, come back. Where are you going?” Martin tried feebly to get his colleague back. But it was too late. The intoxicated group turned their attention to Schneider and
continued the violence. Schneider tried to dodge the blows and landed a few punches and kicks on the aggressors, successfully bringing two of them down. Though not as drunk as his opponents, he was still at a severe disadvantage and outnumbered.