I arrived at the York office on Monday morning still reeling from the emotional turmoil of the previous days with Ruth.
It was a huge modern warehouse which held our contractor's plant, maintenance workshop, an store of immediate materials, and the administration offices, all under one metal clad roof.
It was bright, modern, efficient and without soul.
A CCTV camera lens surveyed me, as the PIR set off the entry alarm. A screen showed Julie in the general office who had been allocated the part time task of visitor reception.
"Good morning. Oh, Mr Wisheart, there'll be a lot of folk pleased to see you. Come in. Ms Norton asked me to send you straight to her in Mr Wil- the MD's office."
I passed through the open-plan estimating purchasing and accounts office, which we had automated with direct data transfer to and from the sites, and then to the sales and design office, again computer based. I knew the systems and most of the people, because Mark Wilcox and I had set up the horizontal management structure with its machine-based method of working.
Executive country was small. We had a board room, and three offices and a single secretary. There were, or had been only three directors, Mark himself, a marketing man Bernard Gresley, and the commercial director William Edwards.
Betty Longford their secretary, rose from her chair as I approached. We had known each a long time.
"Graham. Thank goodness. It's been hell over the last weeks. We keep building the jobs, the computers keep us straight, but everyone's full of questions and no-one has any answers. Potential clients ring up for Bernard, and suppliers and current and past clients for Mark or William. And there isn't someone to say whether we should tender for a job or sign one we've finished. I've gone out on so many limbs doing what I thought the three of them might might do, signing pp. I'm scared witless I've bombed the company but I felt we had to keep it going."
Liz silently came out of the office behind Betty.
I took Betty's hand. "Whatever you have done is bound to be right. Don't worry. We'll try and get everything screwed together, but take-overs are never comfortable. Now calm down, take a deep breath, and please come and help Liz and me do some necessary first tasks."
"Good morning, Liz."
"Hi. You're prompt."
"Let's get started," I said.
"Don't I get to call the shots?" asked Liz with a grin.
"After we've done some damage limitation. Our clients, our suppliers and the staff have not been properly informed.
"If you want to retain something of value, we will do this first, otherwise all you'll have is a bunch of computers spread over the UK talking to each other about cement that's not being supplied or poured or reinforced, and bricks that stay in piles where they happen to get left.
"Just first answer some questions. Are we going to honour existing contracts? Beware, because if the answer is no, I'm off."
Liz smiled, "Told you you were MD material. The answer is yes of course."
"Are we tendering for new work?"
"Yes except where Foot and we here are in competition."
"Bad decision," I said, "how much does it cost Foot's to do a million pounds worth of bidding?"
"I don't have that statistic."
"Well think about it, they have a totally manual system and an estimating department of ten people. Ours is three and a bunch of programs and the tendering output is roughly the same."
"How do you know how many they have?"
"We were subcontracted to build a motorway bridge and I spent some days in their office. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"You'd do better to say they shouldn't tender when we're on the same list."
"That's a difficult decision."
"Why?"
"Well we're supposed to be taking Wolfenden over. It's controversial."
"Come on, we must make the marriage as good as we can, that doesn't mean preserving the worst bits just because they're the right side of the bed. That's not uncontroversial, that's perverse.
"I tell you one thing Liz, that top slot in Waterloo House isn't for those who make perverse decisions. You want it. You go for it. I know why they wanted this company, it's the system. OK, get our system to do Foot's work where we get a cross over."
"OK, Graham, I trust your judgment."
"Right - what we have to do is issue a letter to all our Clients saying we want their valued business now and in the future, and that they can communicate with us as they did before. That the MD is Liz, and pending our getting new sales and commercial directors they should talk to Eric and Ray respectively as the managers, or if there's a problem to Liz direct.
"Look, Betty you're as good a letter writer as any, why don't you put that together for Liz to look at whilst we discuss some other things."
Betty nodded, and,looking less worried, went out.
"Liz, why not get Foot's sales manager, Smedhurst, to sit in here for the time being, not the director - he's a fool. Smedhurst will get business for you, particularly if he's not held back by his boss."
"Do you think I have enough clout to make that happen?"
"You'll never know 'till you try," I grinned, and pushed the telephone towards her, "I think that your sudden prominence will make everyone far keener to please than they will be later on. Go with the roll. Have some fun. Talk to the MD. The worst he can say is eff-off. I don't think he will. I'd also hit him with your tendering decision."
Liz made her requests persuasively and animatedly.
Triumphantly and with sparkling eyes, she half shouted, as she put the phone on its rest, "Yess. He starts Wednesday, and they're going to E mail their list of current tenders."
"Told you."
"This is going to be fun isn't it Graham?"
"Not all the time, and for some none at all."
"Yes, there'll be shitty bits, and casualties."
"Another question are we going to honour sub contractors' and suppliers' bills."
"No question. I hate organisations that don't pay and promptly. You do business, you pay your way."
"Right that'll be Betty's next letter."
"How will she know where to send them?"
"All she has to do is create the appropriate selection criteria and it'll be automatic.
"Nobody in this office can do business without the system picking it up. The central computer databases every transaction of any kind, and if it doesn't know how to categorise it, it comes to the MD's attention. I expect there's a few built up now. There Were lots at first, but we have a self -learning neural net. One of the earliest built into a commercial application.
"Now what do we tell the staff? That's your letter to compile, and I think that should go to the Foot people as well. It ought to go on Waterloo House paper and be from your boss. Who do you report to?"
She laughed, "It all happened in such a rush I haven't a job description or anything formal like that."
"Wholly exploitable situation then isn't it?"
"How so?"
"You just tell anyone you work direct to Sir William, and get him to sign your letter. The main board will think of some way of taming you in time, but maybe by then you'll be in an unassailable position, and be able to tell them where to get off. At the moment you're such a hot potato no-one will volunteer to own you. Remember you heaved your last boss overboard."
I looked over Liz's shoulder at her screen as she compiled the draft letter. It was honest and from the shoulder, and asked everyone to stay calm until we had done the resource investigation, and that we were aiming to be as fair as was possible.
She turned, her voluminous hair brushing my cheek, "Will that be alright Graham?"
I stood back. "Fine. Sir William may alter it. I'd send it down to him, and ask his secretary to send the original to us via high resolution document transfer, and we'll use that to send an individually addressed one to every staff member. Presumably you have Foot's personnel database in your lap-top."
"Yes."
"Do you know how to export it to our system?"
"In principle, but I think it would be better if someone from here handled it."
"OK make a minidisc of it and I'll see to that, you deal with your boss."
"Before you go, tell me something."
"Yes, what?"
"Is everything all right with you?"
"In what way?"
"Well you look tired, and sad. You're being very good with me, but I sense you're doing it on your nerves."
"Well this isn't the best thing I've had to do - help wreck something I had a hand in creating."
She laughed slightly, "Well so far you seem to have preserved everything intact and its Foot that'll suffer. No I don't buy that. It's something else. Can I help?"
"No. Even so, thanks for the offer."
"If you want to talk, you know you can? Whatever it is. I still want to be a friend."
"Yes, I know. Thank you, but no. Not now."
"Graham, I'd like to talk to the staff here in a group. Have we somewhere we can do that?"
"Sit or stand?"
"Ideally sitting down, and I'd like seats for you and me behind a desk or table with a foot or so of height so we can see and be seen."
"I'll sort that for three o'clock. Give me half an hour or so and I'll come back."
"Thank you Graham."
I organised with the stores manager a space in the warehouse, and chairs for the thirty people and a raised podium of paving slabs.
I sketched it out on the warehouse's layout screen, from the office that overlooked the store floor. "That'll be OK won't it Jim?"
"Looks fine to me Graham. Two hours I guess, if we stop normal work."
"Yes do. Give me a buzz when it's done and I'll see if we need to add anything, oh and it's a bit chill just for sitting down. Could you get the tarps up first and then put a couple of gas blowers in to warm it up?"
" Sure. Will we be alright Graham? Jobs I mean."
"It's a question that will be at the top of everyone's list, and I can't honestly answer. We were bought because of our integrated system. I'm trying to get Liz, the lady you'll meet, to see that as the computers and the people together. Not just a bunch of grey cabinets and screens. If I succeed we may have few casualties here; if I don't we'll have more. I will try to make the exercise open and honest, that's all I can say."
I watched for a few minutes while the computer determined how to move the stores to create the space, and the automated overhead crane and fork lift trucks started to move the goods about.
Jim said, "I'll need a few people to help get the stuff from the office that's not in the environment of the handling system."
"I'll talk to George in the workshop and send him and the mechanics over to you."
George had the intricate, shiny, and sculptured parts of the cylinder head of a Caterpillar diesel engine spread in immaculate order on his bench.
"Would you do me a favour. We're having a meeting of everyone in the building and Liz Norton the new MD, and Jim is setting up a place for us to have it. Would you mind lending him your muscle men and lasses?"
"Yes, sure. Will we be able to ask questions?"
"Yes, but I doubt we'll be able to give answers to the most urgent one, 'will I have a job in five weeks time', because we have only started today."
I walked back to the office area, and gave the minidisc to Wendy Pace, the personnel cum wages guru.
"This is Foot's personnel file, can you add it to ours? Obviously encode them as Foot's but otherwise integrate the databases. Tell me where there's any missing information from Foot. Once that's done we'll need to get the computer to give us matches on a job for job basis, and print them out."
"I get the picture. Sadly I've done it before. What're my chances Graham?"
Wendy was usually tough and enthusiastic. The construction industry was no arena for wimps. But Wendy had a warm side, and had been through a take-over before. She had not been treated well, and had also been given the task of making men redundant when closing a ship yard. She now had acute forebodings of what might be to come, and looked troubled.
"We have someone who is fair calling the shots and she listens to reason. It won't seem fair to those who lose their jobs but the reasons will, I think, be straight and commercial. I know you're likely to feel vulnerable. Personnel and wages are prime targets for eliminating duplicates.
"We have a more efficient system. Handling the thing from this office, at least gives you a chance to show Liz what you can do. Your counterpart at Foot won't, at least for a time. I don't know him or her, so I can't rate you as people. You've one advantage. Their details are in that disc, yours aren't over there.
"Try and make an ally of Liz. When you find the information you need from Foot make a point of bringing it to her, and you can start getting to know her. I hope you win through, we've known each other a long time, and you've seen me through a rough patch."
"You sound slightly detached Graham. Logically you should have a place in the scheme of things. I know you asked for a step down when your wife took ill, but you could resume a career path now surely?"
"I've asked Liz not to include me in her future plans."
"Oh, why?"
"I've perceive a certain futility in what I'm doing."
"How so?"
"Well we build a by-pass or two extra lanes on a motorway, and we spend millions of pounds and months and months at it. Ten days after we've finished it the traffic snarls up somewhere else. You suppress one war in Africa. Then next year the population's gone up by twenty percent and there's still famine. Humanity is chasing the tail of its own fecundity. Up to recently I thought we could build our way out of it. Just a few more motorways and dams and hospitals and power stations and we'd get on top of it. I'm not convinced any more. And if I've lost that conviction perhaps I ought to be doing something else."
"What?"
"Ah, there's the rub. I don't know.
"Wendy, Liz wants to get everyone into the warehouse at three prompt. Can you make that happen? We've set up an environment in there for Liz to talk to the assembly. Put the phones on computer answering."
I returned to Liz. She was surfing our system through the MD's terminal which could access anything. I said, "We could make this a little easier for you if we use the boardroom. There we can get the computer to project on a screen and there are two terminals, all I have to do is repassword the system to allow those terminals the same access as this one."
"That's a good idea, but I was just getting a feel for it at the moment. It's a really good system. You know, apart from the site people you could run all Foot's work with it, there's no capacity problem."
"Not strictly true. We found it impossible to run any job that hadn't been started from scratch in the system. God knows we tried. When we put the system together we had to run out the contracts manually in parallel with the new ones through the system. We hadn't budgeted it that way, and we had two very bad years of results. We could accept the equivalent extra volume, but Foot will have to finish any job for which an estimate has been prepared their way."
Liz said thoughtfully, "The implication is, if we want to make the best of this, that new work raised by both organisations comes here, and site staff from Foot gradually transfer to Wolfenden.
"That's the unthinkable," said Liz, "the Foot organisation offices more or less disappear, and this stays intact."
I said, "Pick a good commercial director if they have one, and recruit a sales director or promote Dewhurst. Then you want an MD, so you can clamber into a main board position."
"Which just has to be you.."
"No, I told you Liz. It's not a viable option. I don't want it. I feel tired and jaded. I want to do something else for the next segment of my life."
"Well who then?"
"Give it to the Foot man. It'll shut him up if nothing else."
"He has a major and fatal drawback for the job though. He abhors computers and anything to do with them".
"Ahh, I didn't know that." I said, "and it is a problem. You might think about Betty."
"She's only a secretary."
"Oh - and who does that remind you of?"
"Sorry. Stupid remark.
"Graham you're making me think the unthinkable. The only reason the main board went with the takeover was the representations from Foot. If we shut them down I'd not survive the resulting furore."
"Liz, I'm sure we were treading on their heels, They wanted to take out their increasingly successful competitor. The reason for that success is our structure and investment in IT which reduces our costs. If you explain it properly, the main board won't doubt the wisdom of your plan."
"Whew, I feel we've moved so far from what I expected, that I need a breather. I've got cold sweats."
"Well, it is lunch time. Do you take lunch? Or would you rather I left you alone with some of your own space."
"I hadn't planned anything. Is there somewhere quiet we can go? I need to relax even if only for half an hour. Graham you drive, I hate driving."
"Sure. Why?"
"I always feel it's the bit in between. I can't concentrate because I don't feel it's worth it, so I have to be very methodical about it so I'm slow and at the same time erratic, which isn't good. I prefer the train."
"Won't be long before you can command a chauffeur driven limo." I chuckled.
I took us towards Castle Howard, and we stopped at a pub in Bulmer. It was quiet; the food choice was limited, but there was a good wood fire, and ham sandwiches, and we drank tonic water. Liz took her suit jacket off in the warmth and sipped her drink.
"I've booked us into the Dean Court, do you know it?"
"Yes, it's opposite the West front of York Minster. Cars are a bit of a problem, they take them away and park them somewhere. We'd best take one unless you want independent transport. Leave one at work."
"Seems sound. You know, what's happened so far has really thrown me."
The sandwiches arrived.
"Mmmm," she said, taking a big enthusiastic bite, "I'm so hungry. I couldn't face breakfast on the train, I was so excited, my first high flying job on my own.
"Getting back to work,- if what you're suggesting is right, the misery is not going to be at Wolfendale but at Foot's, which just runs down as the contracts finish, and the new work Wolfendale gets, absorbs Foot's site staff.
"What worries me is getting this over to the board. We'll have to work out the cost of doing it both ways, otherwise someone's going to dig their heels in and say we haven't costed the alternative, and just chosen our course on a gut feel. And they'll note the time I've spent in your influence and make five from two and two."
I said, "I may be able to help there. We have a number of computer models of company set ups, one is ours as it is, and another is an organisation like Foot, as we were. We did this to test whether our current set up would work. We ran the two in competition with each other over a ten year simulation. I'm sure if we played around with the data we could model Foot's organisation absorbing Wolfenden and vice versa to see which ended up the better. You may need to go to Foot's on your own to get some info. If they see me they'll smell a rat and keep silent. We'll need to take Rosemary our statistician into our confidence, because she's the one to do the job."
"Hey, hey. What's this? You employ a statistician? We don't even have one of those at Waterloo House. What do you employ her for? That must be a dispensable overhead."
"Most valuable employee we have. Don't tell her or she'd want a raise. She's already the highest paid employee bar, well, me, now."
"For God's sake why?"
"Suppose there's five of you bidding for a job."
"Yes."
"And suppose it costs you fifty thousand to do a proper bid, and ten to put something together that just looks as though you tried."
"Uh-huh"
"And suppose somebody said, 'you haven't a snowball's chance in hell of getting that job because the probability is one in ten with that lot competing so just put in the thing that looks as if you'd tried.' What's the result?"
Liz looked at me with her bright blue eves and a smile on her lips, "Graham, I love it when you talk sexy, but just give me the damn answer."
"You've saved forty thousand quid."
She frowned, "But if you'd really tried you might have won the job; and recovered your tender costs. That doesn't make sense."
"That's why we have a statistician. She gives us the odds, or at least a better edge. We spend the money on the jobs we're more likely to get and less on the ones we're not. Ergo we get a better proportion of ones we try for, and lose less on the ones we don't get.
"And Rosemary's there continuously refining her computer models and telling us 'Forget that one, it hasn't got our name on it. Often she can point out to our sales staff where a competitor has made a mistake and underpriced, and occasionally we get to warn the client they're in for a rough ride, so he gives the job to us."
"I'm very sceptical."
"Ok my lady. Don't listen to me. Look at the facts. You review Foot's tendering cost per million quid of work won, and ours. Now I haven't access to that but I'll lay a pound to a pinch of shit they're at least three times ours."
After fussing with her handbag and wallet she put a ten pound note on the table.
"OK Graham. Fifty to one and there's a ten pound note on the table."
I too put a note on the table, "Done. No problem, there's my tenner. Just be sure you have the five hundred."
She looked at me with her blue eyes sparkling, "You give me a charge you do. Just make sure that Ruth gives you what you need, otherwise I shall feel very pissed off for both of us.
"Oh look at the time," she cried, "I haven't finished my sandwich, and I need to prepare for the staff."
"You don't need to prepare," I said,"just be Liz and in control and be fair. We'll love you."
"Graham, what are you saying?"
"There are people you follow because they sense the time, the history, and the moment and give you an aim that's right. You have that charisma, and in the context of this little world of ours I love you, in a wholly different way from Ruth. I will lay down my life for either one of you as human beings who I feel should survive, because they speak to something in me."
"You are a complicated animal."
"Not a chance. Finish your sandwich and your drink. You will hack the meeting whatever preparation you make because you sincerely want to do the right thing. Sixty percent of management people want to advance themselves at any cost. They more often than not fail, but not often enough. Leave me to protect your pretty back in Wolfendale. Look out for enemies elsewhere."
She finished her sandwich and drink, put on her suit jacket, gathered herself together and we walked out of the pub. I opened the car door for her.
She looked at me speculatively, then stroked my cheek in an uncharacteristically serene and tender gesture and said quietly, "Thank you for your comradeship."