Business Doctors - Management Consulting Gone Wild (14 page)

“You guys done with your kiddie magic show?” Alex’s voice always seemed to have a confrontational tone to it. Andres came near Bullet, lifted her chin and brought his face close to hers, “You got some tricks for me too, babe?”

Chang whispered to his neighbors, “Here comes the
naked-on-the-ceiling
part -”

Before he could complete his sentence, Bullet grabbed Andres’ throat without any warning and slammed his face hard with her forehead.

“How’s that to begin with?” she asked, her hand still gripping his throat. Andres felt the piercing pain from Bullet’s nails that had dug into his skin.

Dazed by the sudden and unexpected response, he wiped his bleeding lips and nose with the back of his palm.

“You fuckin’ bitch!” he screamed furiously and lashed out at Bullet, slapping her hard across the face, sending her reeling to the floor.

Jason got up, pulled Andres towards him and punched him hard in the stomach. Andres collapsed on the floor, clutching his stomach with both arms, writhing in pain. Emiliano and Gabriel lunged towards Jason to get him off Andres. Alex stayed away from the action and watched it from a distance.

“Stop it, fellas,” yelled out a guard whose diverted attention had been brought back by the commotion. He called out to his fellow guards and rushed towards the group. The situation in the guesthouse was expected to be less volatile and less pressure-filled compared to prison. But that would in no ways guarantee that the convicts wouldn’t erupt without warning. A temporary lapse of focus could cost the guards dearly and their boss wouldn’t be too pleased with them for not keeping their volatile guests under control. They knew they had to quickly get a grip on the current situation before it got really ugly.

The convicts continued to rain blows and kicks on each other.

In the meanwhile, two quick-thinking guards that had darted into their control room reappeared with ski goggles donned on their eyes, and armed with pepper spray cans, sprayed the irritating fluid on the mass of battling mass bodies on the floor, and it had an immediate intended effect.

“Aaah, my eyes -” screamed out Andres amidst coughs. “I can’t see”.

Jason pulled back as well, rubbing his eyes and trying hard to breathe. Andres had bent forward and was coughing uncontrollably. “You bastards,” he continued while still struggling to get his breath back.

The guards grabbed the convicts and pulled them away. They knew that their job had been done, though the shouting and screaming continued.

“Get this into your thick heads fellas – if there is a next time, we will use tasers,” the guards warned as they walked out of the lobby. “You guys get to meet the boss tomorrow. If he finds out you’ve been squabbling like spoilt kids, then he will be happy to play father, or perhaps Godfather. So pick yourselves up and make yourself presentable.”

Bullet walked up to Jason and helped him get on to his feet, “You ok?”

“I don’t know -” Jason said, still struggling to breathe normally.

“Splash some water on your eyes. That should help,” Bullet tugged him towards the wash basin.

“There isn’t much of a difference whether we are inside those prison walls or outside. They all think we are dogs.” Jason muttered as he walked.

“If they did think you were dogs, they wouldn’t use pepper spray or tear gas on you,” the voice came from the adjacent room. It was Ryan.

“What?” Bullet asked, confused.

“Dogs, and for that matter horses, are not as sensitive to these chemicals as human beings are. Explains why the police can still use dogs and horses during riot-control operations. So contrary to what you think, the security guards think you are very much human. So keep that chin up.”

Ryan Logan was considered to be one of the intellectuals in the team. He kept to himself and did not interact much with the rest of the convicts. However, he did have his articulate moments. All he needed were the right ambience and the right audience.

“Keep your blasted wisdom to yourself. You wouldn’t be talking right now, if you had pepper spray in your eyes,” Bullet led Jason across the room.

“Yeah, that’s what you get for skipping college and taking the easy way out. Crime never pays,” Fernando said to Ryan hoping his statement would get him on Ryan’s side.

Fernando was generally treated by the rest of the guys as being too insignificant to be considered seriously. He was sinewy and bony in appearance. His meek voice and his overall deportment contributed to the image. But obviously the powers that be had found something in his records that made him worthy to be part of this group. Or maybe they got this one wrong.

Looking at no one in particular, Ryan said, “Turning to crime is the easy way out, they say. I say - bullshit. It’s the other way around, bro. For legal activities, or at least those perceived by society as legal, people get countless chances to be successful. In crime, you get only one chance…to be unsuccessful. A single fuck-up and your ass gets whooped up so fast, it makes your head spin. Think about it, the police, and the people in their cozy homes who want scumbugs like you off the streets, your rivals - they are all after your blood. Criminals are under far greater pressure than their regular civil counterparts to perform and be successful. What does that mean?”

No one made any attempt to answer.

“It means criminals need better skills, more commitment and sharper instincts than the civilian no-gooders that the system tries to protect. You need to be one step ahead of that very system. And for that I salute you all.”

Fernando who was hearing all this without any expression, stood still for a few seconds, his chest heaving visibly as his breathing became faster. Without any warning he lunged forward to hug Ryan.

Ryan winced and pushed him away. Fernando composed himself and backed off. “I dunno what you just said, dude. But it kicked ass big-time. It makes me proud to be doing what I’m doing. When I get outta this place, I’m gonna invite you over to meet my parents and explain this again to them. I always wanted them to be proud of me. But that never happened. They never felt I could accomplish anything in life - they felt I was it. They put me down so many times as a worthless piece of shit, I actually started believing it. Till now, bro. With what you just said, you’ve really made me feel I’m worth much more than that.” Fernando wiped his tears. “Can I give you a hug?”

“No!” came the stern reply, “Keep that for your mother…and don’t you ever try that with me again.”

Chapter 1
3

On the day after the semi-riot, all convicts had assembled in the lawn in the morning. With the guards keeping a close eye on the groups, all they could exchange were dirty looks as opposed to fisticuffs. They would soon come face-to-face with the Boss, but had no clue whom or what to expect.

“I’m guessing it’ll be a familiar face,” Gabriel said to Alex. His skin had turned a queer shade of red and orange after the pepper-gas incident on the previous day.

“It could be an old rival looking for revenge,” Alex replied. “So you’d better start thinking about everyone that you’ve managed to piss off in the last few years.” His tone was half-serious and accompanied by a half-grin, making it difficult to guess if he thought that was a real possibility.

Emiliano continued fuelling the fire, “Or the police? The CIA? It might just be a twisted variation of the good-cop-bad-cop story, getting us out of jail to extract confidential information that we refused to divulge in there. They’re hoping that the temptation of being let off free will get our tongues wagging. Or it could be worse. They could use us for some secret assignment for the government and then bump us off.”

The possibilities, though bizarre, couldn’t totally be wiped off as a figment of Emiliano’s imagination. There was hushed silence for a while.

“G’morning gentlemen,” said Schneider and scanned the faces around him, and his gaze stopped on Bullet. “…and lady,” he added as an afterthought.

He cursorily noticed the black eyes, the bruises and the limping. The reports of the skirmish that had reached him were true. He continued, “I was going to suggest that we spend the first few minutes on mutual introductions, so everyone knows everyone else before we talk business. But I see that you’ve already spent enough time getting introduced to each other through, for lack of better words, let’s say “team activities.” So let’s get down to business straightaway.”

This was not the first time Schneider had come face-to-face with hardened criminals. But the Dungeon proceedings seemed like a cakewalk compared to what he was up against now. He would have preferred Woody as the master of ceremonies, but his client had other plans. What made it worse was that the people he was addressing were not regular convicts. They were
escaped
convicts, which made them a breed apart. The physical and psychological security that confinement offers visitors in a prison setting was non-existent here. Schneider had to exude composure and confidence. If he didn’t, he would be perceived to be weak and his new set of contacts would devour him in no time. That would be the end of the project.

The cold stares that he was getting from the group were not helping. Any of the convicts standing in front of him
could explode without warning and there’d be little time for him to react. Or maybe it was all in his mind.

“My name is Michael Schneider. I’ll be your guide over the next few days.”

“Guide? You gonna take us sight-seeing in your tour bus, Mikey-boy?” Alex was the first to take him on. Not having a familiar face from the underworld or the police staring him in the eye had encouraged him. Schneider knew that his face, his physique and his attire weren’t exactly geared up to invoke fear in the hearts of tough convicts. He also knew that the eyes staring at him were waiting to see and judge his reaction. He knew for a fact that their first impression of him would be etched in stone.  It would reflect in their attitude and behavior towards him for the rest of his stay there.

“Figuratively speaking, yes,” Schneider hoped that his audience did not latch on to the shakiness in his voice and the moistness that was building up on his forehead.

“Right now, you don’t know where you are going. And if you don’t know where you are going, you could land up anywhere - including the prison cell that you happily left behind,” Schneider looked to his left. “Right, Hendrik?”

He hoped his response would demonstrate that he knew more about each individual standing in the room than the group knew about him. He hoped that his knowledge conveyed power.

But Schneider wasn’t too happy with his response to Alex’s provocation. It didn’t sound tough enough. All these years, a couple of them in business school and the rest in the corporate world hadn’t prepared him for this. A few minutes of contemplation and he could’ve thought of a much better comeback. Nevertheless, he hoped he had succeeded in keeping the wild creatures on their leash for the time being.

Martin and a team of four consultants had been spending weeks to prepare for this event but that did not seem to be of much help. The standard conventional terminology for such an event was
team-building workshop.
The fact that this would lead to some pruning of the team was only an after effect. They had researched from their bank of workshop formats they had used in the past but none seemed to fit the bill. They had to resort to the good old
back-to-the-drawing-board
option topped with a generous helping of
out-of-the-box thinking
approach to problem solving. For those who hadn’t gained an appreciation of the corporate world vocabulary, what this really meant was - going to the root of the problem they were trying to solve. For this, Martin had suggested using another consultant-favorite tool –
value-stream mapping
. This involved mapping the processes at WFB through which they created
value.
Or in other words, how they earned money. For each of the businesses, the team started with the recruitment process and then looked at how WFB made their plans. For instance, currently, WFB had the same recruitment process for all the businesses. This was clearly inadequate as the skills required for excelling in the casino business were as close to those for kidnapping as chalk was to cheese.

Next in line was the process of understanding how each of the business made money and then how they used that money to further expand the line of business. This complicated looking process ensured that consultants could have intelligent discussions with the real process experts and not be written off as fly-by-intellectuals with no domain knowledge.

The fact that the process was laborious also ensured they were able to create reams of presentation slides to amaze their clients. In WFB’s case though, all this was back end stuff which Woody was unlikely to ever be interested in. But Schneider, like most big firm Partners, was a stickler for processes and hence the team had a bulging folder ready for him before he had walked into the guesthouse.

“And why, Mr. Guide, are we here?” Bullet’s tone, though defiant, wasn’t as intimidating as Alex’s.

This also brought Schneider back from his sojourn and frustration of not having a projector and slides to get across to his audience.

Such questions and such tones were much easier to handle though. The query had managed to shift the spotlight from Schneider back onto the convicts’ situation.

“You are here because you are special,” Schneider’s glistening forehead was still shining, but his heart felt less likely to jump out of his chest now.

“Oh yeah? Well, my mom thought so too,” Alex tried again. This time the rest of the crowd didn’t seem too keen on seeing him verbally bash up Schneider. The topic had veered on to an area that was more important to each one of them. They had been trying to find out the answer to this question ever since they arrived. And finally, they were standing before someone who appeared to know the answers. Humiliating this new kid on the block wasn’t as important anymore. On several occasions, instinct and conditioning had propelled them to react in ways that were counter-productive. This wasn’t the time to lose control.

After a jittery start, Schneider had captured the attention of the rest of the guys and he couldn’t let Alex snatch it away from him. Schneider’s best bet right now was to ignore Alex and continue addressing the rest of the group.

“You
are
special,” Schneider repeated his last sentence. “And apart from
yo momma
, there’s someone else out there who thinks you don’t deserve to be in prison.”

“Are you a cop? CIA? Secret agent?” Gabriel still had Emiliano’s comments in mind.

“Nope,” Schneider replied shaking his head. “None of the above.”

“You surely aren’t from around the hood, coz if you was, I’d know you. You’d have to be big enough to blow that kinda cash on getting us out. So who are you and why did you get us out of prison?” Jamal asked with a dead-pan expression, devoid of all the flowery rhetoric that had been coloring the discussions so far.

“Let me answer the second question first,” Schneider started walking slowly towards his left without taking his eyes away from the group. He was still consciously analyzing his own body language to ensure it matched his pseudo-confident voice.

Retaining his eye contact had another advantage. He felt safer. The convicts were more likely to jump him and bring him to the ground, if his attention got diverted. Why they would do that was beyond his logic. Also, the fact that he was accompanied by WFB guards did not give much of a boost to his morale.

“I did not get you out of prison. I did play a role in presenting your names and showing that you were special - to the person who actually got you out. It’s a long story that we don’t need to get into now.”

“So you are not the boss?” asked Ryan.

“I’m not. I’ve been a guide to the boss in the last few months and now he’s requested me to be your guide as well.”

From the experience with Woody, Schneider thought it would be easier if he stuck to the analogies that his audience best identified with. Mr. Guide and Doctor seemed to be justifying their existence just fine.

“Stop confusing us, will ya?” it was Jason this time. “Stop playing games with us and tell us what we are here for.”

Schneider had to communicate directly. But he couldn’t reveal too much all at once. A little bit of mystery was still important to retain control on this group.

“Ok, we’ll tackle each query. First, who got you here? Gabriel is right in saying that the boss has to be someone who has the nerve to go against the establishment and the muscle to yank you out of your dingy, rat-and-roach-infested cells. I am not him. He couldn’t be here today to welcome you all, but you’ll meet him over the next few days.”

After a short pause he added, “At least some of you will.”

“Question two. Why are you here? Well this is something that will be harder to take a shot at -” he saw few empty faces, “- so let me help you out. The organization that has brought you here is undergoing a major restructuring.” Schneider realized the group he was talking to, were not probably the most well-read bunch of intellectuals, and many of his words may not have made any sense to them – especially nuances of words such as
organization restructuring
. But what was said was said and it was best to stop analyzing every statement, every word critically and just focus on getting the message across.

“The boss felt he could use a few good hands to steer his own boat, through the choppy sea on to calmer waters, and finally to the shore.” Schneider still couldn’t help wonder why he was using poetic language in front of an audience that looked far removed from the world of art.

“You mean to say he’s in deep shit,” Chang re-phrased it for him. Considering that
The Boss
was still an apparition to them, Chang didn’t feel the need to mince his words. 

“Well, I wouldn’t say that. Let’s put it this way. He is one of the kingpins of this field. But he is planning to become
bigger, just like all other players that are active in his areas of business.”

“What businesses?” Chang shot back another query.

Schneider knew the questioning would get more intense.

“Many that you might be familiar with, and some that might be new. You’ll find out more as we proceed.”

“What are you planning to do with us?” asked Jamal.

“Each of you have skills that the boss values. You’ve demonstrated that in some way or another in your lives before you got thrown in jail. We’d like to test those skills and ensure that they haven’t become rusty after you were put behind bars.”

“Hah, let me guess. You think if you say
Jump,
we’ll all go
How high
? What makes you believe that?” it was Bullet this time.

This was one question that Schneider was ready for. He looked at the sky, took a deep breath and exhaled audibly. He looked back at the group and smiled. His exaggerated gestures were triggered after sensing that the people in front of him were virtually on their knees begging for more information.

“For a moment, look at yourselves and think – do you really feel that you are in a position to negotiate? I think the answer to that is quite obvious. But that’s not the only reason why you’d want to be enthusiastic about this. So here’s another incentive. Consider this as a new lease of life. I can provide you the map you need right now - to get out of your dead-end lives and move to a better place. You get to stay out of prison
and
as a bonus your stone-walled career gets a shot in the arm as well. If the boss finds your performance impressive enough, he may pull you under his wings. You get his protection. You get a chance to lead a good life.”