Leaving Earth Vol. 1 (Leaving Earth Omnibus)

by Kaal Alexander Rosser

  'Oh, I'm going to make it harder still. I've seen you handle two hats well. They are just the wrong hats. So I'm offering you this: stay on the management team as VP of Space Division, and take on the job of setting up what I'm tentatively calling the R&D Division with Stew and Steve Branch.' Grum saw Hank's eyes widen and glitter with suppressed excitement. 'Or, stay on the board, but lose your special responsibility to Research, and instead create and chair the R&D governance committee, as well as joining any other committees who will tolerate your ethics.' Now Grum saw conflict and doubt.

  'You don't like making it easy, do you?'

  'For someone of your calibre? It'd be an insult.'

  Hank laughed, again. 'Flatterer.'

  'If you choose to remain on the board, know that I am intending to remove and special responsibilities from all individuals, and will be replacing them with committees. That includes things like removing the title of HR director and setting up a compensation committee, for example. Also, I'm not intending that this should happen in one week. You'll have time to choose your successor and get them ratified by the board.'

  'Oh, I think you know who I'd choose!,' Hank said, and winked.

  Grum composed himself into a poker face. 'I'm sure I don't, in fact.'

  'Oh, come on…'

  'Apropos of nothing in particular…' Grum interrupted loudly, over the top of Hank, before could say anything disastrous. 'Did I ever tell you exactly why Vann didn't want to work for me any longer?'

  That stopped Hank in his tracks, and he eyed Grum, curiously. 'No. I don't think you ever did. Ready to tell?'

  'She didn't want to follow me up the management chain, Hank. She wanted her role to be one where she could get her teeth into an engineering problem every day. Be careful to promote those who want the management role and can do it, Hank. We don't need any resentful veeps around.'

  'Very interesting, Grum,' Hank said, his eyes narrowing with calculation. 'And point taken, I assure you.'

  'Great. Well, I'll leave that decision with you. I'd appreciate knowing which way you're leaning when you decide, but it doesn't have to be by the next board meeting, like I said.'

  'OK, Grum. I'll think on it.'

  'Bye for now, then.'

  Grum left Hank's office and headed back for his own.

  Technically, he was Schroedinger’s veep. He both was and was not VP Core Power. In USSMC's corporate structure CEO was synonymous with President of the Company, even though no-one used the title. Grum was glad of that because he thought it sounded idiotic. So if he was CEO, he could not be a vice-president, but he was the Division Head of Core Power, which was a VP role. So, one of the things he had to do, post-haste, was find someone to take over Core Power. The obvious choice was Stew, even though it smacked of nepotism, and he was happy running SyncDep. But SyncDep was going away. Parts of it would be subsumed into the new R&D Division, and parts would disappear inside Core Business.

  Chapter 19

  JUST as he put his hand on the door handle to enter his old office, he thought a new thought.

  Should Core Power even be in existence any more?

  That was a bit of a shock to the system. It was right to think it, of course. That's the only way you get to examine new perspectives. You come up with an idea, then test it, examine the evidence, and draw a conclusion. So if the claim was that Core Power as a Division now had no validity, what were the tests?

  Well, what was a Division? This was business and not science, so that was somewhat woolly. You could have a Division like Space which technically did not have any departments within it, just a collection of programmes and projects, but they were so huge that it rated Divisional status. Leaving Core Power aside for the moment as that was the Division under evaluation, there were Divisions like Medical and Core Business which were chock full of highly specialised departments all belonging to an obvious family. That's why some of the functions of SyncDep belonged in Core Business. They were common resources for the business as a whole, regardless of specialism. In fact, the only point of definite commonality Grum could find was that a Division had a VP at its head, and to head up a Division you needed to be a VP. Not very good as a definition.

  So, how should a Division be defined? Better still, is it the wrong question? Space could easily just rename most of its perpetual programmes as departments and it would function like any other Division, so was that the definition, then. Regardless of the subdivisions within it, a Division was a grouping of functions which "belonged" together? Grum really did not want to go into the definition of "belong", and the business would never understand why he felt it necessary if he did. But then, there was a department within Medical which dealt with space research as it related to the human body. Things like… Spores and radiation effects and stuff. Grum was not entirely certain exactly what they did. No branch of biology had ever been his strong suit. You wanted the decay rates and emission profile of the different isotopes of Radon? No problem. How they affected the human body? Er… Badly?

  But that was by the by. Why was that department in medical and not Space? Because it was medical research on space related matters, not the other way around. The primary function was medical, and so taxonomically, it fit under the Medical Division. OK. Now Grum felt he was getting somewhere. So. Examine Core Power for this feature. Does it exist? Kinda, yes. All of the departments under Core Power were related primarily to some kind of power generation technology. Now, as a matter of expediency, he and Hank had stuck the nuclear research programmes under Space to get them out of the reach of the old board, but that was not really an argument, now.

  So everything under Core Power was in the right place, at least according to the name of the thing. But, there was another aspect. All these pigs were not equal. Fission and Solar — in fact most of the renewables — were definitely all about the generation of power with existing technology, but Fusion? Gravitics? Even the fifth generation fission programmes. They were all R&D, and belonged in that Division, most assuredly. But if that was true, what about the rest? Well, the rest was pretty much the Nevada Antimatter Power Facility. Except that was not producing power directly. It was producing products which produced power. So did the Nevada Facility even belong in Core Power any more? It was more a manufacturing plant than anything else these days, and would become even more so if the R&D moved to the new Division, so… Not, then. Really "Core Power" should really only own the utility-level generation technology.

  Even that was a difficult case to argue, though. Because none of those departments were generating power directly. The technology was in use, elsewhere, to be sure, but even the current technologies were really just R&D databases for the other programmes. So what was left? Nothing. It could all be broken up and subsumed into other Divisions without losing a thing, and it would make more sense. Except Nevada. Nevada was still an anomaly which Grum would have to think about.

  But not for very long, it seemed, because the answer came to him even before he finished thinking the thought to think about it later.

  USSMC's first very own spin-off company. IPO the bugger. Rename it. Make Ben the CEO and give him the problem of making the bugger entirely profitable. That way everyone there would be safe and if he wanted to keep R&D staff, he could have his pick and good luck to him.

  Blinding idea, Grum. Well done!

  'Excuse me, sir?'

  Grum left his self-congratulatory thoughts and realised that he had not completed the motion of pushing down the handle to open his door. How long had he been standing there like that?

  'Excuse me,' the same voice said again. 'Are you stuck, sir? Do you need help?'

  'Grum straightened and one of the muscles in his back gave a little pop. He winced as he turned to face the owner of the voice. 'No, no. Sorry to worry you, er…'

  'David, sir, Dave Roborough. We bumped into each other once in SyncDep.'

  'Oh, yes. The guy I abused horribly. Sorry again, about that.'

  Dave smiled. 'Really not a
n issue, sir.'

  'Grum,' said Grum, absently.

  'Sorry, sir?'

  'Call me Grum. Everybody does. I'm fine, really, just got lost in thought for a moment, there.'

  'Twenty minutes that I saw, si- Grum.'

  'Really? Oh well. You left me like that for twenty minutes?'

  'Well, we were all wondering what to do.' Dave gestured behind him and Grum caught sight of half a dozen people urgently trying to look busy. He laughed and shook his head, turning back to his door.

  He stopped and turned back. 'Aren't you normally very busy in SyncDep? I seem to remember no-one having much time to wander off, let alone twenty minutes.'

  'Ah, well, I was actually sent to find you, si- Grum.'

  'Stew sent you to find me?'

  'Ah, not exactly. Steff said: "go and find the CEO, so he can deal with this". See, it's about Stew. He's behaving… Oddly.'

  'Really?' Grum wondered exactly what behaviour for Stew would be considered odd, given that he was a department AVP who barely spent any time in his department.

  'Yes. He went into the duty manager's office, told her to get out, and locked the door. He said something about it being his office for five more minutes at least.'

  Grum let go of the door handle, finally, and washed his hand over his face. He's figured it out.

  'There was swearing involved, sir. We're all quite worried.'

  'I'll bet there was, and I'll bet you were. And it's Grum.'

  'Sorry.'

  'No matter. Lay on, MacDuff!'

  'Er…'

  'Let's go.'

  If Stew had been swearing — and Grum had no reason to think it was otherwise – it had stopped now.

  The door to the office stood open but everyone, including the normally calm Steff, was stood well back looking worried. Grum saw her look in his direction and an expression of relief broke over her like a wave.

  'He's in there, Grum. But none of us dare enter. It's most unlike him. Growling and cursing, and…' her eyes widened as the rhythmic tapping, coming from the direction of the office, made its presence felt. Stew was standing there with a thunderous expression, rattling his fingertips across the door-frame like an angry parent.

  Two can play at that game, thought Grum. 'You. Inside.' Grum raised his hand finger extended pointing past Stew into the office.

  '…and now a wood comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!' declared Stew.

  Grum sighed. 'By this great clatter, one of greatest note seems bruited. Let me find him, fortune!'

  Stew's eyes widened, then narrowed. 'Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed, being of no woman born. Yet I will try the last.'

  'Ouch. That hurts. Get in.' Grum stalked over to the office door and pushed Stew inside, but not roughly. He shut the door. 'Now, what's this all about?'

  'Oh, and don't come the disappointed dad with me. That's why I switched to Macbeth! Neither of us can win at the parent game.'

  'Fair enough. So, you've worked out that it's time.'

  'That you think it's time, yes.'

  'And so it is.'

  'You're going to break up SyncDep.'

  'Yes. Like we always planned. Only it's not Kelvin, it's me. But it's still the right thing to do. It doesn't belong in Core Power.'

  'No. It doesn't.'

  'Especially as I think I'm going to break up Core Power, too.'

  Grum could see that he had shocked Stew with that.

  'Why?'

  'It's not a proper Division. It doesn't have coherence, especially after I start stripping things out and putting them where they belong.'

  'But…'

  'I'll run you through the plan when I've properly formulated it. And I'll be putting you in charge of its dismantling and disposition. Then I think I'm going to nominate you to run the R&D Division,' Grum paused to think about the structure. 'Which actually means you'll be getting a good chunk of your old team back. Or they don't go away, or something. I don't know. I'll work out the framework of how it should end up, then you can deal with getting it there.'

  'VP R&D?'

  'Yes. Does that mean I can…'

  'Bump up the duty managers who stay with you to co-ordinate — as you always have done — up to AVP? Sure. Why not?'

  'OK!'

  'Good. Now say you're sorry.'

  'Oh, don't start.'

  Grum laughed. 'OK, then, I won't. But no more histrionics, right?'

  'Sorry, boss.'

  'And don't you forget it! Now, in the meantime, while I'm doing the framework thing. I need you and SyncDep to do a couple of things.'

  'OK. Like what?'

  'I have agreement from the board to continue shelling out on any critical or emergency care for the disaster survivors. We'll debate the full compensation package next week, but for now I want you to make sure that anyone from that débâcle gets the best of anything and everything they need, right?'

  'Right! Consider it done. Everyone will be on board for that.'

  'Good, because the other thing we need to do is get the organisation running again. I'm going to be speaking to all the heads of department and senior managers to see who best fits into the roles open in the management team, apart from Space which I'm leaving to Hank.'

  'Hank's leaving?'

  'I don't know. I've given him the choice of the board or VP, but not both. So, we'll see.'

  'You know there's someone else who straddles that line…'

  'I know, but it's only temporary. Especially as I'm going to be demonstrating exactly why there should be separation. But until they deal with me, I'm going to fix USSMC properly so this kind of… Of… Of fucked up situation cannot happen again.'

  'Right you are. Just so long as we're on the same page. It is bad practice, but… I trust you'

  'OK. Are we good? Because I've got to go and work on this reorganisation plan.'

  'We're good. Go. Be CEO.'

  Grum grinned, and left. As he passed Steff on the way out, he gave her a thumbs-up, and then jerked the thumb over his shoulder towards the office door. She smiled and began walking that way.

  Chapter 20

  THE re-org plan was mostly just putting departments and programmes into boxes then rearranging them until it made sense. The one thing he was not sure of was the business of making the Nevada Complex into its own company. He would have to research that. It was not like deducing the rules of the business game, or extending the allegory of management and leadership to cover new levels. This had rules that he did not even know existed, he was sure of that.

  Worse still. He did not know who to talk to about it. No-one he knew had done that sort of thing. If Kelvin were still here, he would have gone to him, but he was not there to ask. He had always been a bit suspicious of Kelvin, but now he found that he actually missed the guy, just a bit.

  The board meeting the following week was not an unqualified success. The votes for removing special roles from directors and setting up committees, for spinning off the Nevada Facility as its own company, and for providing on-going care to anyone who was caused injury in the disaster, were all approved — although the last only with an amendment that allowed for quarterly review.

  Each time it was with the same four abstentions. In fact, the only time they voted was to opposed the re-organisation of USSMC's structure. The rest of the board were split on that, so the proposal was narrowly voted down. On the grounds of company safety. It was felt by those voting against, that this was the wrong time to be approaching a re-organisation. The safer course was simply to rebuild and see where they were in, say, a year or two.

  To Grum it was logical that trying to rebuild a broken system would lead to having the same broken system, and therefore it was better to build a new system and use that to rebuild the company. Those with the most to lose — bar Hank — did not agree. Of course.

  He also had to report that federal and state funding of their various projects, except the solar PV roll-out in Nevada, had dried up and
would not be re-instated until there had been a full inquiry into the disaster.

  This was another point of contention. Grum felt that it would be better to go to the inquiry showing that USSMC had done something to address the management and governance failures which had led to the disaster, while just over half the board thought that it was better to wait for the recommendations from the inquiry.

  The debates had been long and somewhat heated on occasions.

  That threw a spanner in Grum's works, somewhat. He had hoped that the days of dealing with the board's recalcitrance by taking sub-rosa actions were behind him, but it looked as if he would have to continue in that mode for at least a little while longer.

  Chapter 21

  GRUM had not seen Mr Grey since the hospital, so to find him standing in the old office was a surprise — and not an entirely welcome one. The man was standing by one of the chairs in front of Grum's desk, staring impassively at the main screen.

  As Grum moved across the threshold to the office, Mr Grey seemed to activate, and immediately started speaking.

  'I gather, sir, that things with the board are not all entirely well?' No greeting, no "sorry for intruding on your office", nothing, just straight to business.

  That irritated Grum — and then he wondered why. Probably because when Stew and the others do it, it's banter. Or it's important. Or… Something like that anyway.

  He also wondered why he had precisely zero urge to correct the man's usage of the word "sir". Probably the same reasons, or…

  I just don't like him. 'Mr Grey. I would appreciate prior knowledge of your visits.'

  'Certainly, sir. As and when that is possible and advisable.'

  'It is always advisable.'

  'Regrettably not, sir. To return to the matter in hand. Is there any action you would like me to take in relation to the obstructionists on the board?'

  Grum shivered. His mind immediately jumped to the sort of action that he felt this man would take if he said yes. It was ridiculous, of course. That sort of thing just did not happen in the real world. And yet… There were those times when similar obstructions had been removed in one way or another. As far as he knew, no-one — not even Hank — had seen or heard of the old VP since his departure. Nah. Crazy talk. 'No action, thank you. I am dealing with it.'