The Winner

 
When I asked Dan the Vice President of Advanced Technology if winning was everything, he smiled with that gleam of superiority so common among achievers and said, “No. But then again, what else is there?”
        He’s the tree. I’m a vine climbing to the crown. He needed to mention outsourcing only once before I knew the lay of the land. I went to the Bigs, who believe that the heft in the wallets makes them omniscient. My talent is finding an obsession and agreeing. It’s amazing how guys with the world at their feet need approval. I lay it on thick until my antennae find another hobby horse to ride. The key is the hallway bull sessions, coffee break chats, and small talk at the urinals. If they’re done right, conferences are a formality. At the next status meeting, where project managers were grilled in excruciating detail about the gadgets their teams designed, I was put in charge of Korean outsourcing. They’re lollipops. War heroes are lollipops. I’m a winner.
        The assembly equipment required to make our factory automation amplifier wasn’t available in Korea, so the unit would have to be redesigned to conform to our sister company’s capabilities. I put Clarence, a brilliant whiteboard jargoneer, in charge. Through the grapevine I heard that he spent most of his time on a new communication protocol for Dan and let his technician design and build the prototype. The only thing that matters is the politics. Everything else is for losers.
        The three of us flew to Korea with the hardware. I was tired after the twenty-six-hour flight, so I arranged for the General Manager to take Clarence and me golfing while our technician wired the unit. In an hour I had the Big and his chief engineer eating out of my hand. Slants were spoiled rotten by their mothers, so they consider the rest of the world rivals for her affection. All I had to do was knock other people and wait for the big smile. That told me I had found a favorite enemy. Koreans hate Japs, so putting down Sony broke the ice. When we returned to the plant, tanned and relaxed, the prototype was a smoking ruin.
        I did my job. The tech didn’t do his. After we returned to Boston, I informed the Bigs that the Koreans were convinced they could create a unit identical to the old one, without a working model. Dan pushed through a requisition to purchase six amplifiers. All would have been well if the tech hadn’t opened his mouth about our golfing trip. He claimed that he had done all the work, while Clarence and I were window dressing. I went to his boss and demanded that the man be fired. Rule One: Never leave an enemy behind you. The manager told me a sad story that the tech had been with the company for five years and his wife was expecting twins. A winner gets results, not excuses. I sent him a memo pointing out that I was Dan’s right hand man and if personnel integrity wasn’t maintained in his department, funding would be cut. The following week, the tech was gone.
        There’s always plenty to do for a man who can get close to the right people. For six months I was busy running Dan’s pet project, which he was convinced would revolutionize the process control industry. I feed on zeal like a shark on meat. In my spare time I took my ATV to Maine, where I own land with some gorgeous lakes. Rumbling through the woods mashing down saplings, I felt that nothing could stand in my way.
        When the Korean amplifiers arrived, they sailed through Incoming Inspection. In order to put them into production, I needed approval from the software eggheads. They reported that at a particular speed with a particular load, the new units had two percent less power than the U.S. version. I got Dan to bombard them with memos, complaining that the difference was insignificant. The chief egg replied with some bullshit that because you couldn’t predict at what motion the lower power would cause a failure, the devices could bring a billion-dollar production line to a halt. The company had acquired six very expensive paperweights.
        I learned from that experience. Concentrate on your reports and put off producing anything as long as possible. When our stock crashed and the corporation was gobbled up by a crosstown rival, Dan brought me in as Director of New Initiatives. In the five years I’ve been there, I learned the mindset of the Bigs. They make an insane amount of money, and the only thing that can prevent them from collecting is a major mistake. Every time I said “What if?” I added six months to the schedule. My group has never built production hardware. Making things is for suckers. Winners climb trees.