“You won’t find anyone better than us. We’re the best this town has to offer when it comes to big projects.”
More fool this town. “I’m sure you are.”
“And you won’t find anyone good who is cheaper. You get what you pay for. Pay peanuts and you’ll get monkeys!”
Pay millions and get expensive monkeys. “We may not need the services of external consultants to manage our program at all.”
“That’s ridiculous! Everyone knows that organizations can’t do this kind of work themselves. You’ve got to get in the experts.”
We did and now we don’t need you anymore. “Thank you for all your assistance, Scott.”
“Tom won’t stand for you losing us.”
“It’s not Tom’s decision. It’s mine.”
He snarls. “You’ll be very sorry you made this decision, Mere.”
I open the door and wait for him to leave.
Fifteen minutes later Tom arrives in my office. “Lin! What on earth? Scott says you’ve terminated their contract!”
“Their share of the program budget is over five million for providing services we either don’t need or can get at a quarter of their hourly rates. And we’ve spent over a million on them already with nothing to show for it.”
“There was a huge amount of work analyzing our requirements and evaluating the options.”
“But what was the point when the solutions they suggest are so far out of our budget we can’t even negotiate? I’ve already told you I think their summary is a waste of time and money, Tom. And it’s an area in which I am an expert. Are you questioning my judgment?”
The blood is pumping through my veins, but my face is calm, my Asian eyes still. Fire flares in Tom’s eyes. After a few moments he looks down at his hands.
“You’re the boss.”
“Yes, Tom, I am.”
When he has gone, I stand up and massage the back of my neck. I pace back and forth across the pale-gray carpet, before stopping by the window where the sea tosses beneath a turgid sky. No yachts today.
Fighting with Tom makes me feel edgy, unsettled. But my first duty has to be to Hera. I have to make the best decisions for us to meet that launch date with a viable business.
Of course there are risks. There are always risks.
Chapter 17
I watched a documentary once that talked about corporations behaving like psychopaths, in that every decision made by corporations will always be in their own best interest, with no thought given to the public good.
I haven’t found business leaders to be quite so universally self-seeking. Sure, some people always aim for spending the least amount of money and making the most profit, but many will also consider the interests of the wider community when they make their decisions. In the longer term, organizations do better when they have a stronger staff and better relationships with their customers and suppliers. Ripping people off is bad for business.
The motives for corporate behavior can be confused, too, by whose money they spend. If it’s not their own money, then you get even sillier decisions made, often decisions that reflect the imperative to avoid risk, avoid making a mistake, rather than a decision that may have some risk but has a better chance of a positive outcome. The Government flunkies in particular will favor that which avoids damage to their own reputation over frugality.
I am still trying to understand the motives of Hera’s directors.
The directors have assembled in Wellington for the monthly Board meeting: Robert from Vegas, Dao from Hong Kong, Hobb from Sydney, Stanton from Auckland, and Pita from Christchurch.
“I thought those packages were too expensive,” says Robert when I outline the systems solution Fred and I have established.
“We’ve managed to trim back what we need, and we’ve negotiated directly with the suppliers,” I reply. “We propose to implement them without VNL and integrate them ourselves.”
Mark Stanton is frowning. “That is a risk.”
“We’ve mitigated the risk,” I reply quickly. “The package vendors will help, and we’ve identified the extra expertise we need for anything we can’t handle.”
I flick to slides on the technical architecture and talk through the road map and then show a set of slides showing the respective work streams.
No one asks how we came up with the time frames for each task. If we had followed a normal waterfall approach, we would be struggling to show a plan that would have the systems ready in less than a year. So, instead, we worked backward from the given date and squashed the tasks until they fit.
But it will be very tight. Only Robert knows enough to understand what I’m talking about. The other directors say nothing.
Stanton has a blank look on his face. I think he wants to talk about risk again, but first he glances around at his fellow directors.
“The price is less than half that of the alternatives,” I repeat the mantra. “And now it fits within the budget.”
Robert smiles his small smile that shows his shiny teeth, and Pita Lane smiles his wider one. Hobb nods and Dao tips his head slightly. Stanton states that the systems suite and associated spend are approved. Helen records the minutes.
We are now up to the thorny issue of the agreement with the local lines company, Vecson, from whose poles we need to hang our cable.
Robert looks across at Stanton, the smile flickering across his lips. “I thought your crowd had sorted this,” he says.
Stanton blinks and shuffles his papers. The seconds tick past. Behind his glasses Pita Lane is looking serious. His eyes move from Robert to Stanton and back again. Quon Dao is sitting very still. Only Stewart Hobb looks the same; cool, calm, expressionless. He has plenty of power back at Ozcom. I guess he doesn’t feel the need to get involved in this ego war.
Stanton swings around and snaps at me. “What happened?”
“Vecson is demanding an increase to the pole fees we agreed on, to cover future costs of the lines going underground, they say,” I explain. “The contract isn’t signed yet. We think they’re trying it on, knowing we can’t afford the delay of a court case.”
“We’d win any case,” he says flatly.
“They’ll stonewall as long as possible.”
The other Board members wait for Stanton to respond since the law firm handling the negotiations are his nominees, part of the privileged circle of Old Boys that make up the corporate legal fraternity in New Zealand.
Stanton scowls. I watch while his brain tosses around the situation, trying to find a way through the problem. His fists clench on the edge of the table.
“You should have made sure the contract was signed,” he snarls at me.
Speed up a lawyer? I’m good, but I’m not a fricking magician.
“There is one option that might work,” I say when it becomes clear he is thwarted. “We could hold aside the additional amount they’re proposing but keep it under our control rather than paying it over.”
“They’re not likely to agree to that,” he says dismissively.
“We won’t tell them,” I reply. “No need to spell it out. We’ll just withhold that part of each invoice when they finally get round to billing us and we finally get round to paying. Which won’t be until after we go live. And then we challenge it.”
The other directors are leaning forward. Robert nods. I can see his eyes flicker as he thinks about how this will work.
“We would need to make sure the contract spells out that the reason for the fee being increased is to pay for future undergrounding costs,” he says. “And we would need to be careful with the dispute and penalty clauses. Yeah. Okay. Might work.”
Pita Lane looks alarmed. “I can’t support this. It is dishonest.”
Hobb glances at him. “Vecson started it.”
Stanton, too, is shaking his head. “Hera’s reputation would be damaged.”
“Hera would survive to have a reputation,” states Robert.
“We’ll put it to the vote
,” says Stanton.
He and Pita Lane vote against, and the other three directors vote in favor.
Stanton clears his throat. “Record the decision that we’ve agreed to set aside funding for future undergrounding,” he says. “But not that we don’t plan to pay it over.” He eyes me. “That will be your job.
“Next item on the agenda,” he says. “Hmm.”
“My shareholders think it better that we change the chair now, at this critical point leading up to the launch,” says Hobb.
Stanton blinks. “You can leave us, Lin,” he says.
At the end of the meeting, Robert comes into my office.
“Hobb won the chair,” he says. “Which might be a problem.”
“Why?” I ask.
Robert stands by the window and stares out. “He cares about Ozcom’s interests and nothing else.”
I tilt my head back and rub my neck. “So it depends on Ozcom’s interests.”
“Which are to protect their trans-Tasman business. They’re not at all interested in the residential services. Much of what is planned is totally irrelevant to Ozcom.”
I look at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“They might want to change the plan. Dramatically.”
I stare into Robert’s old, clever, artificially enhanced blue eyes. We know each other so well.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It might make sense to Ozcom.” Robert walks to the door and pauses.
“Take care, Lin,” he says, and then saunters out.
Chapter 18
Tom and I have called a truce in our relationship. He is cautious about disagreeing with me, and in turn, I am letting him guide more of the decisions.
“Any progress on the planning permits?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They’re not budging.”
The council are playing us like a fish—they let us run then they haul us back in. We are caught on the line, flapping ineffectually this way and that.
“Can the Government broadband people help?”
“I’ll set up a meeting for next week.”
Deepak walks in with a folder full of papers and a hangdog look on his face. “I’m worried about the figures, Lin. The salary costs are coming out higher than the figures I used in the model.”
“Find out what has changed to increase the costs and then talk it through with Marion. Then tell me how you’re going to get the costs back down again.”
The damned budget was too tight in nearly every aspect.
Marion puts her silver head around the door. “Lin, do you have any time this afternoon?”
“Don’t tell me. The union is demanding we change the contracts again?”
Marion smiles. “No, we’ve got the final agreement with the union. We said we were thinking of setting up our own separate union, which seemed to do the trick. I just wanted to ask if you could say hello to our new graduates.”
Hera is giving four graduates their first job, the most important and the hardest to get. Old-timers sometimes complain that it’s too much effort to teach them, but Marion says that passing on knowledge should be part of everyone’s job.
“When do you need me?”
“Come and have afternoon tea with us. Three o’clock?”
“Helen, can I do a three p.m?”
“You can do three thirty but only for fifteen minutes.”
I turn back to Marion. “Will that do?”
She smiles and pencils me in and I return to my desk, which looks increasingly like a rubbish dump. My office is no longer simple and uncluttered. The days seem to start in crisis and end in crisis.
“Do you want me to get you a sandwich?” asks Helen. But when she brings the sandwich, I take a couple of bites and leave the rest.
“Clevaco are downstairs,” she says.
While she goes to collect them, I rise and rub my neck, then pace back and forth across the carpet, worrying about whether we can get the switch through customs and commissioned in time for the interconnect tests. While Hera will have its own network and its own customers on that network, you have to interconnect with the other telco networks in order for your customers to talk to everyone else, and that means a tense and formal agreement with Kiwicom, our competition.
On Saturday morning I wake abruptly from a vivid dream in which I was sitting with a bunch of hobbits and I’d forgotten to put on any clothes. The hobbits had enormous cocks sticking out of their breeches and they were arguing about systems integration—and then I woke up.
The sky is clear and the sun beats in. Indolence washes over me, that wonderful feeling of lassitude when you don’t have to do anything in particular or be anywhere at a definite time. No one is expecting you to make a decision or do something for them, or put on a smile and act in the way they expect you to act.
I think it’s called freedom, or maybe it’s just called the weekend.
Ah, I say to myself as I stand by the window, gazing at the glistening harbor, and waiting for the coffee to finish gurgling its way into the little jug. You can’t beat Wellington on a good day. And I decide not to go into the office today.
There is a knock at the door. For a mad moment my heart leaps in shock when I see a hobbit standing there, but then I realize it is a human child.
“Michael!”
He holds out a damp and soggy twist of white cardboard and brown paper. Inside are two battered chocolates.
“I am very sorry,” he says. “This is all that’s left.”
“You don’t have to share your chocolates with me,” I say, handing them back.
“They’re not mine, they’re yours. Polly got them.”
“Polly got them for me?”
He sighs. Definitely, a stupid adult. “Polly ripped the bag open and ate them. Sorry.”
“Oh.” We both stare at the two dark brown truffles. “Was there a card?”
He shuffles. “I’m not sure. Polly might have eaten it. But Mum said your name is on this bit,” and he shows me a chewed piece of brown paper with the words “L Mere” and the house address, scrawled in black felt-tip pen.
“Someone sent me a congratulations present, I guess. Oh, well, never mind,” I say and pat him on the head before closing the door.
But as I drop the remnants in the rubbish, I hear what sounds like something being murdered in the front yard and I hurry down the stairs.
Outside, Karim is sitting on a sheepskin rug that wriggles beneath him. Not a rug, no, it is the truffle thief herself. Sally crouches beside Karim pouring something down the dog’s throat. Polly struggles, but Sally holds her mouth closed and massages the dog’s throat.
Sally looks up and sees me and frowns. “Release her,” she says and Karim starts to rise.
Polly shoots out from under him, stops, vomits, and then vanishes down the path toward the back of the house. Another retching noise can be heard.
Sally and Karim smile at each other. “Mission accomplished,” says Karim.
“You’d better wash your hands,” Sally replies.
I am having a very stupid day. I don’t understand what they were doing.
“Poison,” she says.
“What! Polly’s been poisoned?”
“She was hyperventilating. Dogs aren’t allowed chocolate. It’s poisonous for them,” Sally says sternly, as if I had voluntarily chosen to stuff her mutt with truffles. “We’ve given her something to make her vomit it back up.”
I look down at the pile of dog vomit and back at Sally.
“What?” she says. “God, you’ve got that inscrutable look on your face again! Haven’t you seen dog puke before?”
“Sorry,” I say and move my mouth into a smile. “Is that better?”
Sally snorts and rises to her feet and walks over to the hose.
“What’s it like being a CEO?” asks Karim. “Is it exciting?”
“I don’t know that I’d call it exciting. It’s very busy.”
“But you tell pe
ople what to do? And you get to do whatever you want?”
“It’s a lot harder than you might think. And no, I don’t get to do much of what I want.”
He looks back at me and frowns. “So what’s the point?”
“Well,” I pause to remember, “there’s an important job to be done. That’s a large part of the satisfaction.”
Michael dances out of the house and grabs his mother’s hand.
“Honey, go with Karim and lay the table for breakfast,” she tells him.
When they have entered the house, Sally looks searchingly at me. “I guess you don’t approve of me.”
I let the false smile fade. I have been avoiding Sally. “I enjoyed going out with you guys, but I am just so busy.”
She bends down to turn on the hose and starts washing away the regurgitated truffle mess.
It isn’t enough. “I can’t afford to be drunk in public. Now I’m the chief executive, I have to be Caesar’s wife as well as Caesar.”
“Poor little you!”
“Poor little me.”
Sally gives me a look, then returns inside the house and closes the door.
I try to ignore the feeling of loss and drive to the supermarket to replenish my wine supplies. I seem to be going through a lot of wine, late at night, by myself, where no one can see, and where there is no chance I’ll do something stupid.
Later I pour myself a glass and climb to my rooftop terrace.
The wine is cold. The Jacuzzi is hot. There is a full moon tonight, but the clouds restlessly obscure its light. My body floats just beneath the surface. As the water gently caresses my skin, I can relax at last.
It would be nice to have someone with whom to share my triumph. Surely there’d be no harm in a little distraction?
I think of Luke’s green eyes and handsome face. Out of bounds.
I think of Tom’s tanned cheeks and perfect mouth. His strong brown hands. Doubly out of bounds.
Handy Nicholas?
I shudder. No and no and no.
Before I go to bed, I fish out the piece of wrapping paper that had contained the bag of chocolates. I turn it back and forth, but there are no sender’s details and the corner with the stamp has gone.
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