VELOCITY - DEE JACOB [96]
“But sometimes growth in every quarter or every year just isn’t possible,” argued Amy.
“Well, of course we sometimes tolerate an occasional step or two downwards, as long as it’s brief, as long as the upward slope is resumed within a quarter or two,” said Nigel. “But Amy, I must say you fail to inspire my confidence.”
Amy took a breath and said with determination, “My pledge to you, Mr. Furst, is that I will get Hi-T Composites growing again.”
“Right. Well, listen, I’m leaving for Europe in a few hours. And after Europe comes India, and then China. Anyway, I’ll be gone for three weeks. The week after I return is Management Council – the Crystal Ball, as many quaintly refer to it. I’ve been debating whether I should even include you. However, I will give you until then – almost a full month – to come up with a turnaround plan. Why I am so lenient with you, I do not know. That said, your plan had better be logical, fact based, and show conclusively that you will return Hi-T to profitability and … ?”
“Growth,” Amy parroted.
“Exactly. And, Amy, if you show up as you did last year with some pathetic rag of a thing that underwhelms … well, don’t. This is really your last opportunity. You had best get it right.”
Wayne wandered around his office – which was not huge – too agitated to sit down and too distracted by any number of feelings to deal with any of the slew of tasks that demanded his attention. He felt stung by what Amy had said to him. He was angry at her, and angry with himself at the same time. Yet he knew, too, that down the hall at that moment she was getting beaten up, and that on some level he was responsible for it.
He had known, or at least had suspected, that this day would come – while hoping all along that it would not, that somehow things would just fall into place and everything would start to work. And yet, despite his own zeal for what he was doing, he had been having his own doubts about this wonderful thing that he and many others were attempting to bring about.
When in charge of LSS at the corporate level, he had constantly fought a growing disillusionment about Lean from a number of Winner managers. Granted, some of them never really grasped the premise. At least a few were so jaded that everything coming out of their mouths was lip service of one form or another. Just the same, he could not deny that many of the LSS efforts within Winner were lackluster in terms of impact. Wayne himself had always believed it was a matter of implementation, that, for instance, political agendas – and Winner was highly political – and lukewarm commitment must have mitigated the results.
But now here he was facing the same thing, a kind of “so what?” result from all the hard work, even though he and everyone associated with LSS had enjoyed the complete support of Amy Cieolara. In all honesty, he could not fault her for expecting more. Still, it was very puzzling to him. How could a set of concepts seemingly so powerful – and just plain right – yield so little in terms of overall performance?
In his office now, Wayne brought up his schedule on his computer. There were two meetings that day, one of some importance, but neither of them as important as sorting out what the heck was going on – not so much what had gone wrong, as what had not happened? He sent emails to everyone saying that he would not be attending, and then quickly left the building, got into his white SUV hybrid, and drove toward Oakton.
Going to Oakton was hardly necessary. By now Wayne could close his eyes and see in his mind everything in the place. But the drive was at least uninterrupted time alone, and he wanted very much to walk through the plant and try to assess firsthand what the impact of LSS had been so far. He called Kurt Konani to say that he was on his way.
“Good,” said Kurt, “because I’m kind of in