On the stroke of nine Toni Russo, tieless, accompanied by two members of his partnership team entered the room and immediately opened the meeting. He introduced them to the assembly. Before formally outlining their vision for the new County Mouldings operation, he invited each of the attendees around the table to introduce themselves and provide a brief outline of their designated role. ‘Be brief ladies and gentlemen, please. This is today’s operative word, for there is much work ahead of us.’
First out of the blocks was Gerald Fox. Curtis glared. Still the figures hadn’t materialised. Quickly into his stride Fox was promising a great uplift in orders and markets. But his attempt – as Curtis saw it – to hold court, was skilfully annulled by chairman Russo.
With a hand over his mouth a covert smile signalled an easing of the nerves for one, Curtis Cardinali. The presentations continued – some were more professional than others.
Then it was his turn! The new, young production manager. On completion of a brief biography and an even briefer production strategy, due to the fact he had no sales figures to go on at all, he felt deflated. It had not been one of his finer moments. Nerves had got the better of him. He sat down. He pushed well back into his seat as if to withdraw from the conversation. Internally he seethed, blaming the slippery salesman...
As a general conversational break occurred, Curtis pulled Fox aside, saying quietly, ‘Aye, thanks a bunch Foxie, you really screwed me. So, like, any chance? Those figures, remember?’ Gerald Fox, didn’t respond, but turned away seemingly ignoring the young production manager.
The inaugural meeting of the CML top-table-team while maybe not completely amicable had nevertheless been a business-like opening to an ambitious project. The only visible reaction to Curtis’s earlier action had been from a contemplative Toni Russo: a twitch of an ear and the slightest of nods towards him.
As the members dispersed to their various offices and work stations, Curtis was held back. This for the over-eager but naive Cardinali would be the first time – not the last – that he would encounter another facet of the Russo management style.
He was calmly advised that a briefing on the production tie-ins to sales would have been a minimum requirement. There were expected protocols to be followed during board meetings.
Curtis responded with a straight statement of fact. ‘Fox hasn’t supplied them. He’s dropped the bloody ball and he’s a bit of a p—’
Toni cut him off with a raised hand. ‘And for sure,’ he said, ‘There is no place around this table for sports field analogies or indeed bust-ups. Listen and learn young fella. Okay? You have a good day down there. We’ll talk later, say four o’clock – ish?’
Curtis, nodded, and left. In his naivety he had discovered that his learning curve had a long way to travel within this brand new world of top-table management. He would listen and he would learn, albeit under a cloak of embarrassment.
As he entered the haven that was his shop floor, he smiled and called his fledgling team together for what would no doubt be the opening of many more production planning sessions. The reincarnation of County Mouldings Ltd. had commenced.
‘It’s team of new brooms ready to sweep away the ashes of yesterday,’ he said. He thought it a good line.
* * *
The conversation within the Cardinali household that first evening was brief. Curtis retired to bed not long after devouring his evening meal: his early start, the meetings, his ticking off, and the long drive home had all taken their toll.
A five thirty a.m. alarm came all too soon. His wife’s previous suggestion that he find Monday-to-Friday accommodation closer to the factory had acquired an elevated level of credence. But thoughts of his previous English B&B experience had momentarily flashed into his mind, thus adding something of a counter balance to that which seemed to be an obvious solution. More so, would missing out on his son’s development be too much to bear. Time would tell…
Chapter 24 : Fast Tracking
The upside following his initial wrist slap from Toni was that the ‘numbers’ he had been requesting landed on his desk a few days later.
In response, he fast-tracked a full production forecast back up towards the big boss’s desk. The building of an effective or even semi-cordial ‘production-to-sales’ relationship might, he reckoned, take a little longer.
Recruitment throughout the CML phoenix continued apace. Likewise, down on the shop floor the now not so naive manager Cardinali, in tune with the facilities team, had succeeded in firing up the full redundant suite of injection moulding presses and automated packing machinery. With the aid of experienced foremen and charge-hands – most of whom were ex-employees – the bulk of back-orders were readied for despatch.
Curtis had been particularly clinical in choosing his people. He had succeeded in whittling out the so-called trouble makers, union hard-liners and known wasters whose activity had in many ways been a contributory factor in the failure of the previous business. His team, like himself, wanted nothing more than to prove that the shop floor can and would produce and perform. Targets had been agreed, set and for the most part, achieved.
All too soon, it was time for Curtis to move departments. He was being fast-tracked. The Russo strategy had always centred on having knowledgeable people, his people, in key roles. Curtis Cardinali was such a case.
His journey would include spells in procurement, sales, and accounts, especially credit control as well as a return to matters, personnel. If this was not tough enough, he, along with other key company executives were regularly enrolled on business training courses. Although he wasn’t totally aware of his leader’s overall objective, he was sure that his own journey would be life changing... if he lasted the course.
Russo, he soon discovered was a work-horse. In return, his ‘star’ pupil had promotion after promotion foisted upon him – his reward for responding to the challenge. In a little over a decade, Curtis rose from production manager, to operations manager, to a directorship, becoming a board member and finally, in 1989, managing director. Toni Russo however, retained the mantle throughout of chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman.
In many ways Curtis was fortunate because akin to his chairman, whose ear he had, he was very much ‘hands-on’. His long factory hours often coupled with lengthy business excursions abroad. He was more fortunate to have an understanding wife and life partner in Jacqueline. She had given birth to another son a few years before and the family had long since bought a new-build detached property in a housing estate on Belfast’s southern outskirts. Curtis’s only regret had been that his mum, Phyllis, his rock, had not seen his final promotion to Managing Director. She had, for all too few months, held her second grandson, but cancer had taken her in as swift and relatively painless a way as could be hoped for in the circumstances. His Aunt Margaret was still around, albeit in a nursing home and Jac’s dad Archie had slipped quietly away quietly in his sleep a year before Phyllis. Curtis considered himself blessed.
As for Toni Russo, he was still a proud man, if not somewhat relieved. His protégé had continually produced the goods for him. The CML project of which Russo had also become the sole shareholder was financial secure. Its dramatic market success however, continued to breed competitor interest: buy-over approaches and merger offers came, and were rebuffed.
Russo of course knew only too well that further expansion and an injection of new capital would be needed to continue to head off aforementioned commercial hostilities. It had also become clear that CML was fast out-growing its current location. Their acquisition of another firm – a manufacturer of marine hardware – a significant customer of CML, had further heightened that need for more space. While positive, the unveiled plan would be seen in some quarters as a double-edged sword. For, on the north side of Belfast this expansion would be welcomed, its departure from its south-side base would heap more pressure on an already run-down industrial area.
An advanced factory unit of the required square footage together wi
th an option of extra land, stood unoccupied, but ready. The ink was hardly dry when Toni Russo stepped forward to address the local media. And so, the new chapter of CML had begun.
Unbeknown to anyone, especially Curtis, Toni had for some months been battling bouts of ill health, not that it showed. He dismissed concerns as nothing more than over-work in bringing the project forward. Certainly on return from ten days at his Caribbean hide-away he had transformed his complexion, and regained the Russo of old’s stature. In the office he maintained in the CML building, just down from where Curtis now sat, an ash tray again overflowed with cigar ash, while several new and very large computer screens focused his eyes as a new-fangled mobile telephone glued itself to his ear.
Curtis, in the meantime had assumed responsibility for the merging of the newly acquired National Yacht Fittings (NYF) business while overseeing the move of the entire operation, northwards. His workload had significantly increased; Toni Russo, camouflaging his own health concerns, worried privately about his man. Frequently he asked himself if his protégé could handle such pressure going forward. Curtis Cardinali however, had developed an ability to not only handle pressure, but rise above it.
On top of this, the Cardinali’s were in the process of moving house again. Sale completed, they had acquired for themselves what had been a fine dwelling in its day. It commanded uninterrupted views across Belfast Lough with the Copland Islands to ‘port’, the iconic Samson and Goliath, Harland & Wolff shipyard’s yellow cranes and Belfast docks to ‘starboard’... the new factory, now a mere twenty minute drive away. While Curtis’s focus remained that of factory business Jacqueline’s priority was converting a tired old residence into their new home, while being a mother to her quickly growing boys.
Since returning from his holiday Toni had become something of a regular visitor at the Cardinal’s. To cover his habit of ‘dropping by’ he would often say, ‘Dining alone can be a lonely pleasure at times’. He was also quite efficient on the DIY front. Disregarding her husband’s occasional frowns, Jacqueline had always made him welcome. Such get-togethers had also provided opportunities to toss around ideas which by their very nature would never gather momentum around a board room table.
Toni also valued Jac’s opinion. He considered her an extremely sharp business mind, a sounding board and sometimes an asset to his overall strategizing. Indeed, after one such gathering – a birthday meal in his honour, conversation drifted towards business matters. This was in spite of Jacqueline’s attempts to keep it light.
Curtis, now holding court, continued to bemoan the changed situations of the work-place, together with his suspicions about various senior appointments of late.
‘Curtis, you’ve said enough, I get it, honest. But Rome, as they say, wasn’t built in a day. Another refill, if you please,’ Toni said, holding out his glass.
With Toni’s wider experience of crisis management the conversation had developed late into the night. With the sups of their final liquors on the back of their tongues both men agreed that it had been an extremely rewarding session. It was time for bed. Jacqueline had long since given up on them. Toni, who was in no fit state to drive, stayed overnight.
It would be a quiet morning; the hostess smirked as she served up a fried breakfast, asserting that it was a certain cure for hangovers. Both men allowed the carbohydrate overload of fatty food to clear their heads.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
By the middle of the next month, the merging of the NYF business was ahead of target but factory output remained sporadic. Toni although not so visible around the plant, remained conscious of Curtis’s previous concerns but more especially, the output issues. So much so, and at the earliest convenience, a crisis meeting of directors and senior managers had been called.
It was convened within the sparsely furnished new office block. Niceties were missing from the agenda. Equally, the minutes would likely not make easy reading. The majority of attendees agreed that the company had emerged from a hectic period in good shape. But it was the experience of a doubting Russo that began to whittle out more issues than those already listed on the agenda. The meeting reopened, the original agenda ditched...
The deeper he dug the more issues were forced to the surface. For example: product quality generally, late delivery and particularly, the increase of low margin business. It had been a reality check. Some of people around that table Curtis knew, would be finding themselves under an even more concentrated spotlight; the director of sales development especially. Curtis, who had been at the receiving end of Russo’s rebuff on many an occasion over the years had never witnessed his ‘hero’ just so angry.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
Barely two months later Curtis had been summoned to the ‘big’ office; it was late afternoon, a Friday. The majority of staff had already clocked off. There was no warning, explanation, or agenda. Normally his secretary, Alice Black, a middle-aged woman his mother had recommended to him as a brilliant administrator, would have had such summonses formalised. But this time, it was just an internal phone call; no clues. Thoughts of his first ticking-off all those years ago and more recently, that ‘angry’ board meeting flashed by as he trod a cautious trail down the corridor.
Curtis was ushered in, but not this time towards the boss’s antique dark-wood desk. Toni was on a phone call and pointed towards a seating area shoe-horned into a corner of his compact office. It was an area illuminated by a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window offering up uninterrupted views across the rolling country side. As he sat himself down he was minded of a bygone meeting at the Europa hotel beside a similar window configuration, but differing scenery.
Intriguingly a moulded plastic tray loaded with a cafetière two cups and a couple of scones – a cherry and a blueberry – had already been placed on the low antique table. Neither of its intended customers used milk or sugar. The table was very much in the style of Toni’s desk.
Curtis remained puzzled as to why he had been summoned. He was also undecided on whether to pour or sit tight. The reality of his situation was that this was the last thing he needed; his own timeline, or more especially his wife’s, dictated that he needed to be home! A much needed long weekend family break had been organised. ‘Should he call her?’
It seemed like a lifetime before the boss wound up his telephone conversation. Eavesdropping he realised that Toni was very much the listener. It seemed intense, whatever was being discussed. Sitting there he suddenly felt like an imposter, a spy. He had of course, noticed a change in his leader’s recent persona; a bit more impatient, and more grumpy than his usual cool self. He’d lost too much weight. The phone call seemed to be never ending. It really sounded serious and, of a personal nature. Again he considered excusing himself.
The secretary’s office seemed to be the obvious option. An inbred curiosity however, held him frozen to the spot, at least and until the call had been concluded. Such was his concentrated staring out of the window he had become almost hypnotized by the pirouetting and swooping of birds feeding on newly seeded fields. Regardless of his state of mind, Curtis’s overriding thoughts though, were revolving in the wind; what the heck is this all about. Come on boss, hurry up!
Negativity was never too far away because production was still having issues. The transfer to the new site was still suffering from, as he titled them, growing pains. Schedules were being continually modified, and there were rumblings of unrest around the shop floor. But Curtis had all the reasons for the ‘issues’. Even though he was armed to his teeth with his business ammunition, he was a man who really did not want to be sitting there. Certainly not eating scones and drinking coffee on a Friday afternoon. In the back of his mind those Cardinali dark thoughts lurked still. He speculated briefly if this was a prelude to his... last supper.
His leader finally set down the receiver. Curtis noticed the effort required for Toni to rise from behind his desk, his strained breathing pattern and more so, his pallor. The Curtis wit had instantly offered up an off-the-cuff
tension easing wise-crack. 'Jeez, man what have you done to yourself? You’re like an old man. No doubt, out late again and playing the young fella.’ In quick response his leader changed a pained expression back to a smile. Albeit seemingly forced.
Taking a further breath he said, ‘Curtis, my boy, I have something that I need to tell you... something which unfortunately is rather serious. But first, let’s get stuck into these scones; a blueberry for you, yes?’
What? Rather serious he says then in the same breath he forces me to enjoy afternoon tea. Scones, scones, what on earth do I want, or need an ‘effing scone for at this time of the day? Jeez, it’s Friday afternoon! I should be on way towards the weekend, not stuffing a friggin’ butter gorged pasty down my throat. What the hell is he up to? Oh heck, Jac’s going to kill me.
As Toni was about to speak, Curtis spoke across him. 'Boss, what’s this really all about? Come on, get to the point, or put me out of my mystery.’
'Curtis, be patient, what I hav—’
'Ah come on Toni, I need to be gone. Remember, I told you that we are...’
'Agh for Christ sake Curtis shut up. Will you just for once, sew those lips together and listen to me. Listen.’
Caught completely on the hop Curtis was instantly cautioned. During the outburst, Toni had dropped his knife, which in turn had spread a buttery trail down the inside leg his light grey trousers, before settling on the carpet. Curtis made to reach forward.
'Fucking leave it!’
Curtis froze. He’d never actually heard him swear, even during that last debacle with the board; at least not with as much rancour. But it was more than that, this man standing, crouching hovering was suddenly not the man that he had always looked up to, wanted to be. Was it the low sun shooting its rays through the tall window which emphasised his translucent skin and sunken eye sockets? It held Curtis’s gaze. In that moment Toni had morphed into an aged man. Oh Holy shit, I do not like the sound of this.
A Letter to a Lucky Man Page 17