Critical Chain - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [20]
"Me, too." Fred smiles. "But I'll bet on our ‘around the clock' idea to eventually lead us there."
"Forget it. With the inflated egos of our engineers, it will never work."
"Maybe we'll find a way," Fred says, but even he doesn't seem to have much hope.
"Dr. Silver's safety is much more promising." Ruth stands firm.
Mark doesn't take sides. "Should we report to Isaac Levy that maybe another avenue is starting to open up?" he asks.
"Too early," is Ruth's opinion.
"Much too early." Fred is firm.
Chapter 7
When Chris is shown in, B.J. is behind her desk. He puts her memo in front of her and sits down, not saying a word.
B.J. picks up her memo and pretends to read it, slowly. "Well?" she says at last.
"It's totally unacceptable!" Christopher Page declares.
"Why? Your budget was approved based on a forecast. The forecast proved to be exaggerated by over three hundred students." She is firm. "What's so strange about trimming the budget according to actual registrations?"
"That's not the way to run a business school," he states, making a considerable effort to control his frustration. "We are not a mom and pop grocery store. We cannot and should not change with every small fluctuation. We have to work according to a long-term strategy."
"What long-term strategy?" B.J. softly inquires.
That throws him off balance. There is no strategy, unless one calls the tradition of increasing the budget by fifteen percent each year a strategy. On the other hand, he doesn't want to continue the debate about the future of the business school at this meeting.
"Chris, the business school must trim the budget according to actual registrations," she repeats.
"It's impractical and you know it," he answers impatiently. "The fact that there are fewer students per course does not reduce the cost of giving the class."
"We can reduce the number of courses," she insists.
"Too late," he says, categorically.
"No, it's not," she is as firm. "In the last two years the school has increased the number of elective courses by over fifty percent. You don't have to wait for next year, you can trim some next semester."
"It will be an administrative nightmare," he objects.
Ignoring him, she sails on. "And in so many required courses you are running two or even three parallel classes. Merge them. We can do with fewer adjunct professors."
Twenty minutes later, defeated, Page retreats from B.J.'s office. She is not happy, either. She knows she won just a battle. The business school's committees are still processing recommendations for tenure and are still actively pursuing donations for another building. She has no doubt that if she throws her weight around she can block them.
B.J. makes up her mind. She presses the intercom. "Please get me Bernard Goldsmith," she requests of her secretary. Bernard picked B.J. up at the airport. When they reached his car, B.J. said, "Let's not go anywhere, just drive."
He is not surprised. They had discussed it before. A car is one of the few places they can have a discussion without being interrupted.
Two minutes later they are on the highway heading away from town. The traffic is light.
"Bernie, I don't know what to do," B.J. almost whispers.
Bernard has known her for a long time. He knows that he doesn't have to help this strong and sharp woman to clarify her dilemma. She wouldn't talk, not even to him, before she verbalized it clearly to herself. She came to him to try and find an answer. So he patiently waits for her to continue. He has to wait for quite some time.
"Remember our last conversation, in Washington?"
"The drop in applicants for our business schools," he says, demonstrating that he remembers.
Of course he does. Being the president of a university, which has a large business school, Bernard is naturally interested in the subject. Not just interested, concerned. He was concerned before