The Path To The Corner Cube - A Project Management Fable, Chapter IV: I Meet The CFO

 

As Randy’s Proposal Management Team was scooping up their papers and heading towards the conference room exits, the door suddenly swung open, and a man walked in. He was around 5’ 10” tall, with dirty dishwater blond hair, cut short, wearing a button-down white shirt and suit jacket. His tie bar had a small token of a prominent accountant’s professional society embedded in it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the young and pretty Quinn was startled – she was clearly not expecting to see…

“Mr. Lindstrummer!” Oscar greeted. “How are things?”

“Hey, Joel.” Randy interjected. “What brings you down here?”

“I heard that the, umm, famed PM detective, Stanly Raspberry was here. Is that you?” he asked as he approached.

The way that everyone else in the room kind of stepped back, as if in observation mode, was almost as if they were expecting the kind of reaction you get when throwing metallic sodium into rain puddles. This effect, along with Quinn’s reaction, immediately informed me of two things: one, Quinn was an empath, and two, Lindstrummer didn’t attain his lofty position via merit. Some of the people in the room were afraid of him.

“Guilty” I demurred.

“I’m Joel Lindstrummer, the CFO of Acme Corporation” he began. “Thank you for coming round and evaluating our project management situation” he continued, somewhat disingenuously, “but I don’t know how much improvement you can bring. Jane and her Team are doing a bang-up job! Isn’t that right, Oscar?”

“We do our best, sir” Oscar replied, with a nervous laugh.

“They’re not the only ones doing a good job” I began. “I read the prospectus on Acme’s latest commercial paper offering – your Team is showing a fairly high rate of return on the company’s assets, yes?”

Lindstrummer smiled approvingly.

“Oh, yes. Not only are we ahead of the prime interest rate, we’re ahead of Monolithic!”

“And you’re sitting atop a new technological development.” I added.

Lindstrummer’s eyes narrowed.

“How do you know about that?” he demanded.

“Don’t worry” I consoled. “My signed non-disclosure agreement is in my contract package.”

“Still” he grumbled, as he looked around the room. Oscar looked like he would have rather been anywhere in the world other than that conference room.

“Does my knowing about the technical advance upset you?”

Lindstrummer’s countenance changed in an instant.

“No, not really” he smiled. He knew I was there to challenge his push that any use of the new development had to be evaluated solely based on its impossible-to-calculate return on investment. And he knew I knew.

“So, what exactly does Jane have you doing? And why does that involve Randy’s Proposal Management Team?” Lindstrummer purred inquisitively.

“The usual” I sighed. “Advance the capabilities of the Project Managers, enhance their management information systems – that sort of thing.”

“Soooo, training?”

“Maybe. I haven’t formulated my final technical solution or approach.” I replied.

Lindstrummer stared at me for about ten seconds, without uttering a word.

“Joel” Randy said, breaking the tension in the room, “have you had a look at my purchase request for the update to the proposal tracking database that I sent in last week?”

“No” Lindstrummer began, almost absentmindedly, but then, all at once, appeared to re-engage in the moment. “Oh, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re still evaluating it. I’ll let you know soon, Randy.”

I was stunned.

“Wait, your Team isn’t running a proposal management system, Randy? How are you doing it?”

“Spreadsheets. Fortunately, Quinn is very good at pivot tables.”

“She would have to be” I replied, doing a poor job of hiding my disappointment at the level of management information system maturity that Randy’s Team was having to deal with while awaiting Lindstrummer’s permission for the clearly needed upgrade.

“It’s all good, Randy” Lindstrummer began. Somehow, words of consolation coming from this guy’s mouth had an artificial vibe to them. “If this software leads to less overtime for your Team, the ROI will be worth it.”

“Just out of curiosity, Mr. Lindstrummer, what if the ROI is calculated below your expectations?” I asked.

“Like every other major purchase consideration in the business world…” Lindstrummer began, condescendingly, “…it will fall in the prioritization list, perhaps even below this fiscal year’s expenditure limit.”

“Fascinating. I’d be very interested in learning how Randy’s Team having an enhanced capacity to manage their proposal backlog was quantified in order to participate in that evaluation.”

“It wasn’t, Mr. Raspberry.” Randy interjected. “The Return on Investment calculation for my software request was predicated solely on savings in payroll.”

“I see.”

Lindstrummer looked annoyed, as if he had a sense that I had already gleaned too much from our interaction, but couldn’t quite put his finger on the exact knowledge I had extracted.

“You’ll have to excuse me, I’m off to another meeting.” Lindstrummer offered as he left the conference room. As soon as he was out of earshot, the entire room seemed to heave a sigh of relief.

“I bet he’s just a blast at birthday parties.”

“If you were smart…” Suzanne said, “…you wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

“I’m not sure he’s as smart as everyone seems to think.”

“Why would you say that?” Randy challenged.

“His tie bar has the logo of a prominent professional society. Truly brilliant people virtually never feel the need to inform others of their accomplishments.”

Looks of sudden realization flashed across the faces in the room.

“Smart or not, Daystrom listens to him, and will be making a call on the utilization of the new tech fairly soon, Mr. Raspberry.” Oscar reminded me. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Not me, but you, Oscar. Can you stick around for a few minutes?”

As the conference room emptied, I handed Oscar the paper I had been writing on during the morning meeting.

“This is what I need…”

Next Week: The data pull to solve the case!