I strolled through to Park Lane, turned left and left again, and navigated my way back to the hotel. Having decided to overnight in Slough in order to be up bright and early for tomorrow's stint at the factory, I crossed over to reception to ask if I could leave my things in the room, back tomorrow night and off to Germany on the Tuesday. It was a man on duty, pale complexion, red hair, one of your haughty, disdainful types despite the training. These people should get themselves a job which keeps them a long, long way away from any member of the public, in particular the paying public. And certainly from a member of the paying public whose good mood has been moderately diminished by stock market events.
I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him. I waited. He waited. Oh well. Some training was needed here, a kind, well-meant and benevolent act to help him indulge in some necessary self-improvement. "GOOD DAY TO YOU," I said in an excessively loud voice, causing a stir among a group of elderly tea drinkers on the other side of the lobby. He didn't blink an eyelid. "Can I be of assistance?" he asked. Not even a 'sir', can you imagine that? And so I looked at him again, an ice-cold look, a piercing look, a look which lasted long enough for him to know that there was a problem here. "GOOD DAY TO YOU," I repeated into his face again and waited to see what would happen.
The face began a battle with itself and you could virtually see his inadequate brain grappling with the realization that this bastard of a customer was expecting a courteous greeting from him, a greeting which his convoluted mass of nervous tissue had no desire to supply, a major conflict occurring among the poorly-wired neurons within his skull, a serious paroxysm of cerebral disturbance. And this tortuous activity eventually produced a mumbled syllable which I interpreted to be '…day'. I knew of course in advance, when I put my question to him about the room, that the answer would be no, unfortunately not possible, not unless we bill for it, hotel policy you understand sir. But, aha, I had achieved a 'sir' at least.
No point in calling the manager on this one, he would probably say the same thing; but a small additional piece of training for this incapable sod was called for. A piece of 'training by fear' in fact. Just to make it better for future hotel clients.
"May I have your name please?" I demanded, handing him my inquisition look, at which I swear he turned, if you will forgive the unauthorized usage of a slice of musical text from the sixties, a whiter shade of pale. He took hold of the name card fixed to his jacket lapel and waited until I had read it. I made sure he saw me writing it down on the F.T., and then I asked for the bill and paid with the credit card. He will be suffering, no doubt about that. He will be wondering what I intend doing. And he will be more polite to me the next time he sees me, I would happily bet on that. Also he will say good morning sir, or good day sir, or good evening sir. But he really shouldn't be here at all, this is a hotel where good rooms cost £450 per night. By no means unduly expensive for the area, but a modicum of customer-friendly service is nevertheless to be expected. And if I don't receive it, I often opt for the application of remedial action.
My intentions in these cases are good ones. It is a form of training. I intend no harm. I am merely attempting to assist. And the fact that I often fail is unimportant; it is those few occasions when I succeed that count. Thanks to me, someone, somewhere, is improving him or herself right now.
I went up to my room, packed my suitcases and called for a bellboy to take them down to my car in the garage. More often than not, I drive over to England. The cost is the same as flying if you take into account the taxi costs at both ends. The trip itself is made up of four and a half hours driving time to Calais, an hour and a half on the ferry to Dover—grab some sea air, have something to eat, do some onboard shopping—and up to two hours to reach London. It also means that I can travel at a time convenient to myself and return whenever I decide to, sometimes in the middle of the night. I can take more luggage, my suits stay nicely pressed hanging in the car, and I have a vehicle with me during my stay with no rental costs for my employer. The latter goes down well, thanks to my lies about trying to save them money on my expenses.
* * * * *
I left London on the M4 motorway, past Heathrow and Windsor and took the Slough Central exit, Slough being pronounced 'Sluff' by its detractors of which there are many and with good reason. This exit leads directly to a hotel I use which is located before you reach the town proper. It was early afternoon when I checked in. The hotel belongs to one of those good American chains, pleasant service, rooms always of the expected quality and everything as it should be, you can count on it. Just the way I like it. You can keep those English hotels with their crooked stairs, innumerable fire doors obstructing the passage of both yourself and your luggage along innumerable narrow corridors, creaking floorboards, tiny rooms and ridiculous shower contraptions.
I left the serious luggage in the car, went up to my room, unpacked my overnight case and lay down on the bed, time for some brief relaxation. Except that Mr. Jeremy Parker had made an abrupt and unwelcome intrusion into the gourd of my skull again.
O.K., I told myself, that's it, you are going to get him out of your brain once and for all, you are going to check out a couple of items on your laptop and if any of his facts are significantly wrong, you will have reconfirmed what you have already decided, namely that he belongs on the pile of flotsam (or jetsam if you prefer) which constantly floats past us on the tides of our lives.
Well, I checked. His facts were accurate, only minor differences. Which indicated nothing, so what? I checked my emails, nothing requiring any action on my part, and I decided to do a bit of computer training with me playing White against the King's Indian Defence. I stuck to the classical system in which White plays an early knight to f3.
There is no point in trying to play at a certain level unless you continuously add to your knowledge of the various systems, their possible variations, their possible sub-variations and the concepts hiding behind them all. The concepts are important, you need to know why you are making the moves you are making, you need to know what your positional objectives are and which are the pressure points. Among other things, it saves thinking time if your opponent makes an unusual—and therefore possibly weak—move; after all, you only have 2 hours on your clock for the first forty moves. It also helps to keep you concentrated on the strategic aims and tactical possibilities as you move away from the opening theory and into the middle game.
At some point in time I snoozed off. I woke up just before 8 p.m. and strolled the ten minutes to one of Slough's Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi enclaves—I can’t tell the difference—and into the Taj Mahal. I ordered what I always order there, a Madras curry, hot but Indian style hot, not one of the scalding infernos they prepare for the English and which serve as a feigned justification for the consumption of large quantities of beer. My curry was washed down as usual with some water and a white house wine, cold and dry.
Back at the hotel, I spent a couple of hours checking through my notes for tomorrow's management presentation. It makes for a better performance with everything more or less rehearsed and partially memorized. And then it was into bed, and I fell asleep reading 'Serenade'.
DAY 4
Allow me, if you will, to briefly explain how I came to be a self-employed consultant and how I do my work.
After university, I started working for a multinational which eventually transferred me to its international headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva, sitting placidly on its lake at the spot where the Rhône exits, with its Jet d'Eau, its old town, the French Mont Salève dominating its southern skyline, the Jura mountains to the North, France just five minutes away, the Alps just around the corner, the elegant Swiss-French mother-tongue, and the girls; oh yes, the girls.
Thanks to the multitude of international organizations and multinational corporations based there, it seemed to me as if there were millions of these creatures all over the place. Just looking at them warmed the cockles of my heart, and other cockles as well.
Life's ocean waves continued to be kind to me. They washed me gently ashore and into several available female coves, if you will forgive the choice of phrase. They also threw large chunks of luck my way at work. Over a period of several years, I worked on major projects in our manufacturing operations in France, Italy and Spain and in our marketing subsidiaries in Scandinavia and Greece. I learned about production, purchasing, finance, treasury, sales and marketing and other things, and I learned to listen to employees at all levels—mainly because most of them knew a lot, and I didn't.
And after a few years, I resigned. I resigned because I figured I could enjoy life a lot more and also earn a lot more money, and more quickly, if I were my own boss. And whether or not that would be so, is something you never find the answer to unless you go and do it. A risk. Yes indeed, it is difficult to discover new horizons if you are too afraid to lose sight of the shore in the first place..
And another reason was because Geneva, like everything else on this planet, was being severely devastated and destroyed by the non-stop construction, the streaming masses of human reproduction and the improperly controlled immigration. Ask any elected birdbrain. More, he will proudly tell you, is better.
And the ghastly areas full of African, Asian and Eastern European prostitutes, pimps and drug-pushers, and the corresponding growth of sex clubs and sex shops, a million vibrators and dildos on sale, all housed in buildings growing shabbier and shabbier by the minute, were now visually available to the young genevois children and were assisting them, no doubt, in their early understanding of what this planet is all about—even in the erstwhile pristine, educated, and romantic city of Geneva.
Progress is what our elected birdbrains call it, and all of it engineered or permitted by themselves; except of course that we have to listen to their bleating about how nothing is their fault. Indeed they are paid large salaries, but they have neither the authority nor the responsibility, it must have been somebody else.
So Geneva had disappeared (I’ll go back one day to see if they have managed to reverse any of the city’s self-inflicted diseases), and I became a self-employed consultant. No capital required. I deal with loss-making companies only, usually manufacturing ones, and only those of up to a maximum of around 500 employees; more than that and I would need a team.
It takes me between two and three weeks to tell them whether I can get rid of their losses in the short-term, short-term being within 12 months—or whether I can't, I don't see it, maybe somebody else can. I do this by interviewing employees at various levels, and I use the two ears and one mouth ratio, i.e. I listen a lot. And for a very good reason—at any level, these people tend to know more about their business than I do. I also look at the companies’ products, I go through their balance sheets—many a slimy worm creeps out of that swamp, I can tell you—and I do a thousand other things. And if I can see how to get the company churning out some profits again and if they want me to stay and do it, then I cost €1,200 per day plus expenses.
Cheap, I tell them. If you hire a consultancy firm, they will send you a production expert, a sales expert, a marketing expert, a finance expert, a purchasing expert and maybe other experts as well and it will cost you a daily fortune. And you may well end up with a report full of recommendations, many of which are not feasible, or are inappropriate, or require large amounts of capital investment which is simply not available. And, of course, after the report you will be involved in more vast consultancy fees if you want them to stay and help you to actually do something about it.
I, on the other hand, write no reports. I fix things. I believe there is a solution for every problem. There are plenty of people who don't of course. There are plenty of people who believe there is a problem for every solution. Or there are the people who can see a problem but assume there is no solution. Or, worse still, there are the people who cannot even recognize that a problem exists.
And—I tell my potential clients—you will find nobody like me, but nobody, who can be contractually fired overnight if you don't like his performance, and without having to state a reason of any kind or pay me a single day's extra fee.
So, that's me, I've been doing this for years now. Word gets around, and I have had plenty of customers in plenty of countries. I have the languages, and where I don't, English is the magic elixir. And it doesn't matter what the companies' businesses are, I learn quickly. I am successful and I always have customers. So far, that is.
* * * * *
It was raining again this morning, hard and wind-driven. I checked out of the hotel, slung my overnight case into the back of the car and drove across town to the industrial estate and into the car park of Clark's Industrial Adhesives & Fasteners PLC, the name of the subsidiary. It manufactures and markets industrial adhesives, glue to you and me, lots and lots of different kinds in lots and lots of different-sized metal containers and other forms of packaging. It also manufactures a wide variety of industrial rivets. This is admittedly an illogical manufacturing mixture, except for the fact that in many cases the customers are the same for both product types. The glue has high profit margins, the rivets low ones. If I were to stay involved long enough to be involved in some of the more strategic issues, I would have to look closely at what benefits and negatives this kind of production mixture was propagating.
It was an unkempt, poorly maintained building, not unusual for a loss-making company with no money, but the sign with the company name brought a smile to my face, as it did every time I walked up to the entrance. When I arrived on the first day, the sign was off the horizontal, a letter had fallen off, it was grimy, it hadn't been cleaned in years, it was off to the side of the entrance and it was small, as if the company were ashamed of identifying itself, or even ashamed of itself, period. Now, in the scheme of things, while I agree that nothing could be less important than a sign, small items can often be an indication of how matters of greater consequence are dealt with. And there is something called pride, no matter what the situation is. And so I played my first card, I ranted on about the sign, I offered to personally lend them the cash to replace it with a brand new larger one—a no risk offer of course, there was no way they would accept such a thing—and I shamed them into doing something about it. And now we had something all the employees, all the customers, all the suppliers and anybody else arriving at the premises could appreciate. A huge new sign, yellow lettering on a dark red background, directly above the entrance and washed down once a week.
This had nothing to do with improving operations or profitability of course, but it set the tone, here is a consultant who makes things happen. I walked past reception, no-one there. There should be, it's 8.30 a.m. I'll have to talk to them about that. I got myself a coffee at the machine and entered the boardroom, first door on the left. I was early, the presentation was due at nine o'clock, but I like them to see that I'm always the first one there, something else which sets the tone.
In the first management meeting several months ago, two of them came in late, quite happy about it, full of the joys of life. "Gentlemen," I said, addressing everyone, "I have always noticed that people who arrive late for meetings are very happy. They are always smiling and laughing. But those who are sitting around doing nothing while waiting for them are not so happy. They are nervous, they are busy people, they have things to do all day long, sometimes very urgent things. Tell me," I asked the latecomers, "why are you smiling?" And that of course stopped any late arrivals in future meetings. Not very courteous, I admit, nor intended to be. But the intentions were good ones, setting the tone again.
At five minutes to nine everybody was there and I switched on the beamer.
There were six of them, CEO, CFO, V.P. Sales & Marketing, V.P. Production, I.T. Director and, yes you always have one, H.R. Director, all men. The latter certainly performs a necessary function but, believe me, any CEOs tend to come from engineering, sales or finance. Never from H.R. and quite rightly so, for reasons I prefer not to expound upon. And if I
am wrong and somewhere you know of a CEO who came from Human Resources, then that would be the illustrious exception which makes up the rule. Yes.
"Good morning gentlemen," I said, in my louder than usual presentation voice and smiling a big smile. I always smile, it sets the tone, and in any case this was a sincere smile, they were all pretty nice guys.
"As you know," I continued, "we have implemented many things in recent weeks, fairly rapidly thanks to you gentlemen, and some are already having their effect on the P&L. Other items are still in progress. But there is more to come, and today is going to show us how we can create an estimated 17,000 hours additional annual production at no additional cost. Now I haven't spent my time attempting to value these hours but we're not talking labor productivity costs here which I would put at around £800,000 per year. We’re talking about what is the value of the additional production which would be achieved with these additional hours, in other words what is the value-added?"
I clicked to the next image.
Nothing more, I keep it as simple as possible. I don't like my presentations to be full of script with me repeating parrot-like whatever is on the screen in case they can't read.
"I have been doing some work on machine set-up operations and I have a comprehensive summary here showing set-up hours per year for each individual machine, the time each set-up takes, and how frequently the set-ups are performed on average per day or per week or whatever. As we know, setting up a production machine to make a different product, or produce a different product size, costs time. And during this time neither the machine nor the employee or employees involved are producing anything. This is, quite simply, lost production time." I handed six copies of the summary to the CFO on my left and they went around the table, each taking one.
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