Boss Life

by Paul Downs

  Are you sympathetic toward your clients?

  Sure, they’re nice people, mostly, and they want us to help them. Sometimes they get to be irritating—Eurofurn—but that’s just the way it is.

  Do you want your clients’ approval?

  Who doesn’t? Having them disapprove is hardly the path to success.

  Are you willing to accept their excuses for delaying a decision or ending the project?

  Sure. What else can I do?

  Do you try to get them to make a decision?

  Not really. Our proposals speak for themselves. If they appreciate good work, they’ll realize that we’re the guys to go with.

  What do you tell yourself when a sale is lost? Do you blame external factors or accept responsibility?

  Well, the economy has been pretty bad the past few years, and it looks like it might be getting worse again. And our product is good, our prices are fair. We’re doing the best we can. We’re not the cheapest guys around, and so we can’t be a good fit for everyone. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be. Everything I’m doing has worked for years; we’re just going through a bad patch right now.

  Do you hold regular sales meetings?

  Like, sit-down-with-an-agenda-and-watch-the-boss-bloviate meetings? Why bother? We’re all in the same room. It’s like a continuous meeting already.

  Do you provide coaching and feedback for your salespeople after every proposal?

  I should definitely do that. I told the guys to cc me on every proposal they send, and they’ve been pretty good about it. I don’t always have time to look through them, though.

  Are you a good listener?

  Of course I am. I have a unique ability: I can listen to a person talking to me and type an e-mail at the same time. It’s the only way I can get work done when my workers keep interrupting me. And I’m considerate. If they start to tell me something, and I’m still thinking about something else, I’ll very nicely ask them to start over.

  Do you constantly look for new salespeople?

  You mean someone who understands how to make our product, and knows our software, and can zip through a couple proposals a day? They aren’t out there. It was enough trouble to get Nick and Dan up to speed. I don’t have time to start that process over.

  Do you use reasonable hiring criteria when choosing salespeople?

  I think so. Nick was the only guy working for me who could talk on the phone, so he was the obvious choice. Dan had dealt with clients in his previous job, maybe not selling, but at least he had spoken to them. And he showed up at the right time.

  Do you need approval from your salespeople?

  Like letting them veto decisions I make about the company? Or are you asking whether I feel good when they respect me? I’m not sure what this means. But I don’t think those guys see the big picture, and I don’t have time to explain everything to them before I make my mind up. So no, I guess not.

  Do you accept mediocrity from your salespeople?

  Look, sales is chancy. Success and failure come in clumps. I don’t know why those guys can’t make a sale every day; it’s probably the same reason I can’t make a sale every day, not that I actually know why that is. I don’t like picking up the slack when they don’t sell, but that’s what the boss has to do sometimes. And what am I going to do anyway, fire one of those guys?

  Have you ever fired a salesperson for poor performance?

  I’ve only had two salespeople. I’m not sure that Dan has what it takes, but firing him would be pretty harsh.

  Why not?

  This question isn’t on the test, but the other questions lead me directly to it. Dan is lagging way behind Nick in sales. He hasn’t even passed the two hundred thousand mark, and we’re almost halfway through the year. I was hoping for at least eight hundred thousand from him by December, but it looks like I’m not going to get it.

  I submit the results. Dan and Nick have just rolled in. I don’t feel like discussing the test with them—the line of questioning has been disturbing, to say the least. I e-mail them the link to their own assessments, asking them to complete them as soon as possible. As for my own test, I wonder how I’ll score. It’s strange to answer a bunch of questions about how I do my job and whether I’m heading in the right direction. I’m not used to being challenged in this way.

  —

  SATURDAY EVENING I FLY to Dubai, which is the last thing I want to be doing, not least because the trip will cost more than four thousand dollars. I arrive on Sunday afternoon. I have three meetings on Monday in Dubai. In the evening, I fly to Kuwait City, where I have four meetings on Tuesday and one on Wednesday morning. After lunch, I’ll fly back to Dubai to catch an early-evening flight home.

  That’s a lot of meetings, especially considering that I’m not sure whom I’ll be meeting or whether the PowerPoint I have prepared will be impressive. I hope that my client list will be enough to show that we’re legitimate.

  I’m also painfully aware of my company’s limitations. We’re not large, we’re not profitable, and the business seems to be collapsing. How can I be confident that I’ll survive long enough for this effort to pay off? How do I walk up to strangers, shake hands, and make a convincing promise of a prosperous and profitable future? I have no choice. I’ll put my problems at the back of my mind. I’ll just do it.

  The next morning, I meet Bahar O’Brien. She’s my Commerce Department contact in Dubai and she’ll be accompanying me all day. She’s cordial but reserved. Just her tone of voice is enough to put me in my place: today’s American businessman, come to Dubai in search of riches. And, she seems to imply, not a particularly impressive specimen. Now I’m wondering about my suit—a summer-weight wool affair, in an attractive sand color, perfect for the Middle East. Or so the salesman had assured me back in Philadelphia.

  Our first meeting is at the Al Reyami Group, a local conglomerate that does a little bit of everything, including design and construction. When we arrive, our contact doesn’t remember making the appointment, but he tells us he has twenty minutes. I pull out my laptop and start the show. The first slides show the table we made for the World Bank, an enormous oval forty feet long and twenty-four feet wide. One picture shows the finance ministers of the G20 countries sitting around it. Instant credibility. Our contact leans back in his chair with a smile. “I think we have something for you. I need to check with my boss. Give me a minute.” He’s back in five and takes us to see the head of the design department. I run through the slides again, and he calls one of their project managers. Twenty minutes later, we meet him and two designers. He tells me that they are renovating the local office of a multi-national petroleum company that I’ll call BigOil, and that the client wants a very large boardroom table. By chance, they are having a meeting to discuss this at two p.m. Can I attend? Absolutely. I never expected a shot at an actual project on this trip. Home run on the first pitch.

  The second stop is an architectural firm. The receptionist takes us to their boardroom, which is dominated by a large walnut table. We could have made it. I’m on my knees examining its underside when my hosts walk in. I scramble to my feet and shake hands with the firm’s owner and his general manager. After my slide show, they comment, “Very nice work. We could have kept you really busy ten years ago. Now there’s not much going on. The recession is still bad. We’re barely surviving ourselves.” Why did they take a meeting with me? Curiosity: they’ve designed a lot of boardrooms and wanted to see somebody else’s approach. We chat, and I learn more about the local market. Nobody in the area specializes in boardroom tables. The local custom furniture market is dominated by much larger firms that offer a full range of products, from upholstered furniture to wall paneling. They promise to contact me if a job turns up, but I don’t think I’ll hear from them again.

  Our last stop is half an hour away. During the drive, Bahar confirms that Dubai’s boom has p
assed. We drive by stubs of roads that terminate in empty desert and the skeletons of partially completed structures covered in dust. Bahar’s descriptions are a variation on a theme: “This was supposed to be a [luxury shopping mall, luxury hotel, luxury international business hub], but the owners went broke.” Even so, we pass small gangs of workers, their heads wrapped so that only their eyes are visible. The forecast today is for a high of 115 degrees. And it’s not a dry heat. They wear pants and long-sleeve shirts, buttoned to the wrist. I wonder what brought them here. I’ve heard that local pay is, by my standards, abysmal. If working in a foreign country under a broiling sun for peanuts looks like a good idea, the other choices must be truly awful.

  Our third meeting is in a strip mall. It’s a store selling residential furniture, but there’s no one visible inside. In a back office, we find a middle-age man leafing through a magazine. Bahar tells him that she’s arranged to see Mr. Bubbedin. Unfortunately, Mr. Bubbedin has gone to Chicago. Would this gentleman like to see my presentation? He shrugs. I rip through the slides. He compliments me in a perfunctory way and tells me that I should have been here ten years ago. It was crazy back then, money flowing like water. I take his card, but there’s nothing for me here.

  We return to Al Reyami, and in their boardroom we meet representatives from BigOil, Al Reyami, an interior design firm, and the audiovisual equipment contractor. The project manager announces to everyone that they have found someone from America to build the table. I run through the PowerPoint and show them a nifty 3-D model of the World Bank table. Then we start discussing details. The schedule is a potential problem. They’d like delivery in late August but it is already the first week of June. (Shipping from America to Dubai takes about thirty days.) But nobody seems too worried about schedule, so we move to other technical issues. We close by agreeing that I will prepare a complete design after I get back home.

  As I’m leaving, the project manager introduces me to a young man who has been sitting quietly in a corner. I’ll call him The Manager. He is in charge of Al Reyami’s woodworking facility, which builds custom furniture and millwork, including all Al Reyami’s conference tables. We will be direct competitors for this job. The meeting was set up for him to present his own ideas for the table, but he was never asked to speak. I apologize to him for taking the limelight. He is very gracious and says that he is quite impressed with my work.

  With a few hours to kill before flying to Kuwait, I ask The Manager whether he would be willing to show me his factory. I half expect him to say no, since a tour will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of his work, but he’s flattered to be asked and says that we can go there immediately.

  The factory is thirty minutes away. The Manager arrives just ahead of us and dashes inside. We scurry from our car after him—every second in the blazing sun is torture. The office we arrive at is tightly packed with cubicles, each with multiple workers. The Manager explains, “Engineering staff area. All are working on projects.” I ask The Manager how many workers he has, and he tells me about two hundred, give or take a few. Two hundred! That’s a pretty big operation. He tells me that he has 3,750 square meters, about 40,000 square feet. My own shop is 33,000 square feet. I have fifteen workers. Sam’s factory, similar in size to Al Reyami’s, has thirty-six workers.

  He runs through a long list of their products: millwork (woodwork that is attached to a building, like custom paneling, doors, and trim), furniture (chairs, accessory pieces, and cabinets, some upholstered), and tables (dining and conference). It would be tough to find a comparable operation in America, producing such a wide range of products under one roof. Our factories tend to be much more specialized. If someone asked me for upholstered work, I would sub it to an upholstery shop, and they would send table work to me. This specialization means that my workers get really good at a narrow range of tasks, which helps amortize the cost of their training. It’s difficult to make money in America if your workers are switching gears all the time. They can never develop a competitive level of skill and efficiency. So you must compensate with low wages, which don’t buy you a worker who knows several trades. It just doesn’t work.

  The Manager’s workers all come from India and are hired on a contract basis. He pays a competent bench hand about a dollar an hour. A typical skilled cabinetmaker in the northeastern United States will make about forty-five hundred dollars a month, not including taxes and benefits. For that money, I could hire at least ten decent Indian laborers. I currently have five bench cabinetmakers, who together (should) build between $180,000 and $200,000 a month worth of product. Replace them with fifty good guys for the same price and we’d churn out huge amounts of work.

  We arrive at a balcony looking down on the main shop floor, a space as large as my entire shop.

  I can see many workbenches, relatively few machines, and a lot of guys out there. I count them: forty-six workers visible. There might be more, as I can’t see all the first floor. Compare that to how many people I have in a comparable area: five. The Manager tells me that they’re producing all the furniture and millwork for an embassy in Ghana. We descend to the shop floor. It’s easily 100 degrees there. Many workers have towels wrapped around their heads to catch sweat. They move at the measured pace of workers accustomed to a long day of physical labor.

  The machinery is simple and cheap but of decent quality. The number of tools I see is maybe a third of what’s on my shop floor, and they have at least forty-six workers, and we have only five. I have multiple copies of all my tools so that none of my people have to waste a second waiting for someone to complete an operation. My yearly labor cost would buy me a new shop full of tools every six months, so having extra machine capacity is well worth it to me.

  Their work quality is good, but they’re doing it in a different way than we would. They’re using cardboard templates, and all the parts are being hand cut and assembled. We used to do things this way ten years ago, before we got our CNC machine. This factory doesn’t have one.

  I notice that lots of workers are just standing around, doing nothing, generally near someone who is doing work. Are they apprentices? Helpers? I give the phenomenon a name: the Stand-Around Guy. An example: three workers surround one who is cutting a part with a hand saw. As the end of the part swings near them, the Stand-Around Guys gently touch it, as if to steady it. When it moves away, they drop their hands back to their sides. They’re pantomiming real work, adding no value whatsoever. Sometimes the ratio of primary worker to Stand-Around Guys is astonishing. I see six guys using a jointer to trim a panel that weighs less than a hundred pounds. One worker could do this, but in my shop, our CNC machine would cut the panel to exactly the right size, and the whole operation would be unnecessary.

  We pass through different areas: assembly, sanding, finishing, a carving station, and an upholstery shop. I see Stand-Around Guys everywhere. I also see some very skilled workers—one guy is cutting intricate veneer patterns with a knife (we use a fifty-five-thousand-dollar laser to do this), and another is carving beautiful flowers (we buy carvings from Indonesia). The upholsterers are doing a nice job, and the finish on the furniture pieces is of good quality.

  I can’t ask The Manager why so many of his guys are unproductive—it’s kind of a rude question. I’m also afraid to ask whether this factory is profitable. I have one number to consider: The Manager told me that he’d charge about thirty-three thousand dollars for the BigOil table. We can make it for about forty-five thousand, but it will be a very different product. With our CNC cut parts, assembly and installation will be much faster and easier. The Manager’s table will require a lot of fussy handwork. Before we got our CNC, we had spent huge amounts of time fitting top pieces to each other. After we got the CNC, our time for making complex tabletops dropped by more than 40 percent. Adding a sophisticated sanding machine dropped build time another 20 percent.

  It’s time to go. We thank The Manager and leave. What a nice guy. I would
hire him in a second. Instead, I have to compete with him. His willingness to show me his operation tells me two things: first, that he’s proud of it, and second, that he’s not worried about me as a competitor. He has some huge advantages. He’s local, so he doesn’t have to sprint to meet the deadline. And he’ll be around after delivery to take care of any problems.

  On the way to the airport, I consider what I would do if I were running his factory. I’d identify the fifty most productive guys, double their wages, fire the rest, and spend two-thirds of the money saved on better machinery. That sounds pretty brutal, but it’s what has happened in every factory in America—the ones still operating, that is. The alternative for American managers is to take production overseas. And many of them have done that.

  The Manager was a smart guy, so he must be aware of the American manufacturing paradigm: buy fancy machines, use skilled workers, and operate with as few of them as you can. Why doesn’t he do it this way? One advantage of his model is lower initial investment. His machines didn’t cost much. And he can lay his guys off whenever he feels like it, cutting his operating costs drastically. That’s a nice option for riding out slow patches, as long as he’s sure of getting a new set of workers whenever he needs them. He told me that his guys get their training in India and that there’s no shortage of people with the skills he needs.

  Another thing his model has over ours: lots and lots of jobs. His factory gives two hundred workers a place to go every morning, a way to feed their family, and the pride of making good work. I would guess that the Stand-Around Guys are his B- and C-level performers, who wait for the moment the factory needs a large number of workers, irrespective of their skills. What does the future hold for B- and C-level workers in America? I don’t have any on my shop floor. And the next generation of robots may take out all my A-minus guys, too. The end point of our trajectory is the elimination of people in factories. My biggest marketing struggle is convincing people that our product, which incorporates a lot of hand labor, is worth the extra money. I could come up with tables that require less labor, and sell them for less money. They would be crappy and cheap. A lot of companies have already taken that route, so I’d be entering a mature market where my product is a commodity. Without very deep pockets, I can’t compete that way.