We stop. I watch him hand his ticket across the counter.
"But it's too simplified," I tell him. "It doesn't tell me any- thing. I mean, if I'm moving toward my goal I'm productive and if I'm not, then I'm not productive-so what?"
"What I'm telling you is, productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is," he says.
He takes his ticket and starts to walk toward the gate.
"Okay, then," I say. "You can look at it this way. One of my company's goals is to increase efficiencies. Therefore, whenever I increase efficiencies, I'm being productive. It's logical."
Jonah stops dead. He turns to me.
"Do you know what your problem is?" he asks me.
"Sure," I say. "I need better efficiencies."
"No, that is not your problem," he says. "Your problem is you don't know what the goal is. And, by the way, there is only one goal, no matter what the company."
That stumps me for a second. Jonah starts walking toward the gate again. It seems everyone else has now gone on board. Only the two of us are left in the waiting area. I keep after him.
"Wait a minute! What do you mean, I don't know what the goal is? I know what the goal is," I tell him.
By now, we're at the door of the plane. Jonah turns to me. The stewardess inside the cabin is looking at us.
"Really? Then, tell me, what is the goal of your manufactur- ing organization?" he asks.
"The goal is to produce products as efficiently as we can," I tell him.
"Wrong," says Jonah. "That's not it. What is the real goal?"
38
I stare at him blankly.
The stewardess leans through the door.
"Are either of you going to board this aircraft?"
Jonah says to her, "Just a second, please." Then he turns to me. "Come on, Alex! Quickly! Tell me the real goal, if you know what it is."
"Power?" I suggest.
He looks surprised. "Well... not bad, Alex. But you don't get power just by virtue of manufacturing something."
The stewardess is pissed off. "Sir, if you're not getting on this aircraft, you have to go back to the terminal," she says coldly.
Jonah ignores her. "Alex, you cannot understand the mean- ing of productivity unless you know what the goal is. Until then, you're just playing a lot of games with numbers and words."
"Okay, then it's market share," I tell him. "That's the goal."
"Is it?" he asks.
He steps into the plane.
"Hey! Can't you tell me?" I call to him.
"Think about it, Alex. You can find the answer with your own mind," he says.
He hands the stewardess his ticket, looks at me and waves good-bye. I raise my hand to wave back and discover I'm still holding the cigar he gave me. I put it in my suit jacket pocket. When I look up again, he's gone. An impatient gate-agent ap- pears and tells me flatly she is going to close the door.
It's a good cigar.
For a connoisseur of tobacco, it might be a little dry, since it spent several weeks inside my suit jacket. But I sniff it with pleasure during Peach's big meeting, while I remember that other, stranger, meeting with Jonah.
Or was it really more strange than this? Peach is up in front of us tapping the center of a graph with a long wood pointer. Smoke whirls slowly in the beam of the slide projector. Across from me, someone is poking earnestly at a calculator. Everyone except me is listening intently, or jotting notes, or offering com- ments.
"... consistent parameters... essential to gain... ma- trix of advantage... extensive pre-profit recovery... opera- tional indices... provide tangential proof..."
I have no idea what's going on. Their words sound like a different language to me-not a foreign language exactly, but a language I once knew and only vaguely now recall. The terms seem familiar to me. But now I'm not sure what they really mean. They are just words.
You're just playing a lot of games with numbers and words.
For a few minutes there in Chicago's O'Hare, I did try to think about what Jonah had said. He'd made a lot of sense to me somehow; he'd had some good points. But it was like somebody from a different world had talked to me. I had to shrug it off. I had to go to Houston and talk about robots. It was time to catch my own plane.
Now I'm wondering if Jonah might be closer to the truth than I first thought. Because as I glance from face to face, I get this gut hunch that none of us here has anything more than a witch doctor's understanding of the medicine we're practicing. Our tribe is dying and we're dancing in our ceremonial smoke to exorcise the devil that's ailing us.
What is the real goal? Nobody here has even asked anything that basic. Peach is chanting about cost opportunities and "pro- ductivity" targets and so on. Hilton Smyth is saying hallelujah to whatever Peach proclaims. Does anyone genuinely understand what we're doing?
40
At ten o'clock, Peach calls a break. Everyone except me exits for the rest rooms or for coffee. I stay seated until they are out of the room.
What the hell am I doing here? I'm wondering what good it is for me-or any of us-to be sitting here in this room. Is this meeting (which is scheduled to last for most of the day) going to make my plant competitive, save my job, or help anybody do anything of benefit to anyone?
I can't handle it. I don't even know what productivity is. So how can this be anything except a total waste? And with that thought I find myself stuffing my papers back into my briefcase. I snap it closed. And then I quietly get up and walk out.
I'm lucky at first. I make it to the elevator without anyone saying anything to me. But while I'm waiting there, Hilton Smyth comes strolling past.
"You're not bailing out on us, are you Al?" he asks.
For a second, I consider ignoring the question. But then I realize Smyth might deliberately say something to Peach.
"Have to," I say to him. "I've got a situation that needs my attention back at the plant."
"What? An emergency?"
"You can call it that."
The elevator opens its doors. I step in. Smyth is looking at me with a quizzical expression as he walks by. The doors close.
It crosses my mind that there is a risk of Peach firing me for walking out of his meeting. But that, to my current frame of mind as I walk through the garage to my car, would only shorten three months of anxiety leading up to what I suspect might be inevitable.
I don't go back to the plant right away. I drive around for a while. I point the car down one road and follow it until I'm tired of it, then take another road. A couple of hours pass. I don't care where I am; I just want to be out. The freedom is kind of exhila- rating until it gets boring.
As I'm driving, I try to keep my mind off business. I try to clear my head. The day has turned out to be nice. The sun is out. It's warm. No clouds. Blue sky. Even though the land still has an early spring austerity, everything yellow-brown, it's a good day to be playing hooky.
I remember looking at my watch just before I reach the plant
41
gates and seeing that it's past 1 P.M. I'm slowing down to make the turn through the gate, when-I don't know how else to say it-it just doesn't feel right. I look at the plant. And I put my foot down on the gas and keep going. I'm hungry; I'm thinking maybe I should get some lunch.
But I guess the real reason is I just don't want to be found yet. I need to think and I'll never be able to do it if I go back to the office now.