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"When you are in charge of an omelet you have to break eggs."

"Let somebody else break people," she says bitterly. "I'm thinking of resigning."

B.J. is not a person to say such a thing lightly. With effort, he restrains himself from referring to her shocking statement and says, "You don't break them. You do them a big favor."

She almost chokes.

"Listen to me," he continues in a harsh voice. "Let them get out now. They are young. They are bright. They will carve themselves a good niche. Every year that you allow them to stay diminishes their chances. The market will be less appreciative of their knowledge and they will be less able to adapt."

She doesn't answer. Five minutes later, she puts her hand on his. "Can you please return to the airport. I can still catch the six o'clock flight."

They drive in silence.

When she leaves, she kisses him on the cheek, "Bernie, you are a good friend."

Chapter 8

There's a knock on my door. I raise my eyes from my work and see Jim already coming in with a stack of papers in his hand.

"It's beautiful," he says, and drops them on my desk. "With your twenty-six cases on top of the ones I've gotten in the past two years, we now have plenty for a good article."

He pulls up a chair. "Here are my suggestions for the various sections." He thumbs through the pile and at last hands me a handwritten page. I'm an expert at deciphering Jim's handwriting, but this one is stretching the limit.

"Overdue and overruns," I finally guess the first subtitle. "Rick, there is a lot of research published on the subject, and for most of our cases we don't have the exact numbers. So, what I suggest is that you assemble the most appropriate references and we'll report that our findings confirm the previous research."

So far it translates into a minimum of two boring days in the library, I note to myself, wondering what is still to come.

"The emphasis should be on categorizing the official and the unofficial reasons for the snafus," he continues. "I've scribbled a list of sections. Feel free to add."

So these serpents are the sections. I hand him back his page, saying, "It's better if we discuss each one of them."

After about twenty minutes I have the full list. I estimate that there are about seventy reports in the pile. How much time will it take me to go over all the reports, doing such an elaborate content analysis? A lot. It's boring work, but I have to do it. I can't give it to one of Jim's Ph.D. students.

But that was the deal. I teach the course and I do the dirty work. Then I have the honor of writing the first draft of the article and the second and the . . . And on each draft Jim's name will appear before mine.

I'd better not think this way. It's actually his course and his idea, and I do need to publish articles. I must stop these negative thoughts and be thankful for the opportunity.

I tell him about the pattern the class discovered: the lower the position of the manager the more the finger points not just outside the company but inside as well.

"Interesting," he comments. He thinks for a little while and then grabs the pile and starts going through it. I turn back to my work. At least ten minutes go by. Jim puts the pile down and starts to pace the room.

"Interesting," he finally says. I refrain from commenting that he had the same opinion fifteen minutes ago.

"Rick, I think that we should make this very interesting finding the center of the article. Our cases certainly back it up. Fortyfour different organizations, ranging from non-profit service organizations to industry; seventy-eight different projects, ranging from less than thirty thousand dollars to over three hundred million, and the same pattern appears in almost all of them. Rick, it's great! At last we have something important around which to center this impressive, in-depth survey. We should even choose the title in accordance."

Making so much