Business Doctors - Management Consulting Gone Wild (17 page)

In school, his friends would tell him, “Nature has its way of balancing out everything. You don’t have one of the five basic senses. It could mean there’s some other talent that you have that overcompensates for that shortcoming. That’s how super-heroes are born, dude!”

He had fallen prey to stupid dares - like eating 50 hot chillies. He didn’t feel the after-effects of his super-heroism till the next day. Painful memories from his childhood days had taught him to keep his peculiar condition under wraps, till he discovered his super-power.

Schneider’s random thoughts raced back to the activity for the day. He hoped that the combat rounds were going according to plans. He also hoped that Stephanie, in his absence, was able to control the situation. Of course, there were guards to ensure that basic security was not compromised. If anything did go wrong, somebody would call up to update him. After that self-consoling train of thought, his focus was back on Angie. Why had she called him? Why did Woody turn a blind eye to his rendezvous with his wife? Possibly he had complete faith in Schneider. Or maybe Angie was right. It didn’t matter to Woody as long as his job was being taken care of.

“Dumbass!” screamed Schneider and honked long and hard as another car sped past him, wrenched itself into
the lane right ahead of him without as much as a blinker, and doing twice the speed limit, sped away and disappeared into the traffic.

Back in the competition ring, Kenny and Chang were slugging it out. Kenny was wielding a Japanese Bō, a long stick about six feet long. However, this one seemed to be specially prepared for the competition and had padded ends to restrict damage. It almost resembled a giant ear cleaning bud. Chang preferred the Meteor Hammer, which was essentially a long rope with weights at both ends. From the action in the ring, it was clear that Kenny had never handled the weapon before. He was relying on muscle power to hit out and on lady luck to make it land. The only reason he had picked up this weapon was because it looked strong and seemed to posses the capability to inflict serious damage on the opponent. What he lacked in technique, he hoped to compensate in the form of an intimidating looking weapon.

Judging by the force with which Kenny had been striking out at Chang, it seemed clear that he was waiting for that one lucky shot that would bring Chang to his knees, if not have him flat out on the floor. Kenny was a strong man. His muscular frame showed that he had been working out and had the strength that was needed for an event like this. But the missed blows were sapping him of his energy. Chang appeared too agile for him and focused more on defensive moves. He was evading the blows rather than blocking them. But this was intentional. He was counting on Kenny losing steam in a few minutes, so he could change strategies and turn on the offensive heat. And it happened sooner than he had anticipated. The speed and frequency of Kenny’s blows started tapering off in a few minutes. As his
muscles were being overworked, they pumped out more lactic acid and strained hard – his energy curve had started to flatten out.

The only rule Cody had explained to them was that to win, they had to bring their opponents on their backs. There were no time limits. The only way out was to score a technical knockout or wait for the opponent to lie down voluntarily. That was the equivalent of throwing in the towel.

There had to be one clear winner. With all the protective gear, a real knockout seemed unlikely. But when you put a few amateurs in the ring and hand them weapons, the entire situation pulls on a cloak of unpredictability. That was the fear on Stephanie’s mind.

For the opponents fighting it out in the ring, the heavy padding and the helmet were getting in the way and hindering their free movement around the ring. Their restrained movements didn’t seem natural. All their experience from
the street brawls that they were so used to, where they would be wearing light clothes that wouldn’t pad them against blows but leave them free to rain some with ease, wouldn’t help them here.

Chang knew this was the time to move in. He held on to the rope at one end and projected the other end straight at Kenny’s face. Kenny had not seen this coming and made no attempt to dodge it. With a loud clang, the weight hit his helmet and Kenny’s bō dropped to the floor. The blow did not hurt him much, thanks to the helmet, but it did catch him off guard and stun him for a fraction of a second, the result being that his weapon now lay a few feet away from him. Chang pulled the rope back and in a sweeping motion threw the weight back at Kenny’s feet. As the metal ball twined around his feet, Chang yanked the rope with all his might, bringing Kenny down with a thud. Before his twice stunned brain could recover and react enough to enable him to get
back on his feet, Chang swooped in and in a few quick motions had his arms and his feet tied together in a tight knot.

“That was awesome, dude. You’ve been watching too many of those dubbed Shaolin movies?” Gabriel said as Chang came out of the ring. Gabriel had been excused from the day’s physical challenges, due to his injury. But contrary to what a few interns had assumed after his earlier failure, he was very much in the team. 

“It felt more like a Cowboy Team Roping event…the way he got Kenny all tied up like a steer in the end. So we got a closet cowboy, huh?” Jamal asked.

“Neither. I’m more of a Professional Wrestling fan,” said Chang sipping on the energy drink. The short but intense four-minute bout in the ring had sapped his energies.

“So what’s with the drunken-monkey-meets-stoned-snake Kung Fu style that you demonstrated in there?”

“I did practice Tae-kwon-do for a short while. But that was a long time back. The footwork helped.”

“Ryan Logan and Jason Stone,” Stephanie called out. “In the ring please.”

Ryan and Jason had put on their gear and had moved to the weapons area.

Kenny moved closer to the ring to give some unsolicited advice to Ryan before the bout. “The gear covers the head and the torso,” he said, stating the obvious. “But it exposes the legs. Apart from padding for the knee-caps, there isn’t much down there, ya know. Prime target. See what Chang did? Choose a weapon accordingly.”

* * *

Schneider parked his car outside Woodyvilla, got out and started walking towards the main door. He looked at his watch. Fifty minutes. Not bad. It usually took him over an hour. But this was off-peak time for traffic. But then
did luck shine on him as a one-time consolation prize, to deliver him in an expedited fashion to what could be doom?

He nervously trotted up the steps leading to the door. He rang the bell and wondered what she would be wearing today.

Before he could visualize an answer to that question, the door opened slowly and he could see a security uniform.
I’ll be
damned
, he thought.
Angie’s SOS call was an invitation for another role-playing session?

As he prepared to be handcuffed and led into the bedroom, he realized something when the door opened fully.
Hey wait, this isn’t Angie.

“Hello, sir. Ms Woody will join you in a few minutes. Please be seated.” said the tough looking guy in a deep voice that had no resemblance to Angie’s.

Schneider proceeded towards the seating area and made himself comfortable.

“Since when did you start having security guys
inside
the house? I thought you liked to be all alone…the privacy, personal space thing. What happened?”

Angie just smiled. “What would you like to have?”

“Just some cold water.”

“Heard that you are getting the new guys kick each other’s backsides today? You made them do push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and God knows what else. Do you know they’ve started referring to this as the
boot camp
.”

Traditionally used by the military, the term had been picked up by the corporate world to refer to any physically or mentally intensive training course.

“Yeah, I did hear a few references to it. It’s an experiment,” Schneider thought for a while and corrected himself. “In fact, this whole bloody assignment is an experiment. I thought I’d be able to do my regular consulting work, make a few grand in fees to keep my company in business and move on. But every day that I spend on it, I realize I’m being sucked into deeper shit.”

Schneider no longer seemed bothered that he was talking to the better half of the man who ran this pile of shit, but thought he should apologize anyway.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“It’s ok, Michael. So…this experiment…what exactly are you trying to accomplish with these competitions?”

“In a nutshell, I’m trying to customize the recruitment and induction phases that we normally follow in the corporate world to WFB’s way of working.”

“Okay. That was a good impressive sounding answer, Michael. Your regular corporate clients would have appreciated it.
But I don’t. Can you give it to me in normal English?”

“WFB needs people. Good people. You probably know that by now. The first few months that we spent with Woody’s teams highlighted this need clearly. That was Phase One for Project Lean & Mean.”

“Lean & Mean,” Angie repeated, with a slight smile. “Just like your work, I can see that you guys are pretty innovative when it comes to names.”

“That’s our way of adding a little flavor and character to our projects,” Schneider felt pleased that his small contribution to the project was getting appreciated. It was a detail that generally got overlooked by clients. However there was more to it than just being a non-descript code-name. It was a personalized moniker.

“It helps us differentiate between the various assignments that we are engaged in. After a while they all seem and sound the same.” Then after a little bit of thinking, he added, “Not this one though. This one’s a beast. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d have to face a situation like this.”

“Why do you say that? Didn’t you say they all look the same? What makes this so different? And why wouldn’t your regular solutions work here?” Angie asked.

“Conceptually, the solutions that we’d use with other businesses apply here as well. What makes it really tricky is the implementation.”

While Angie listened attentively, Schneider continued. “Let me give you an example. For my company, if I saw a need to get more people, what would I do?”

“Post the job ads in the papers, over the internet, go to universities and business schools?” Angie guessed.

“You are right. That wouldn’t work here, right?” Schneider continued, “So we had to think of an innovative way to reach out and get people with relevant skills for WFB’s businesses.”

“And you thought the best way would be to break into prisons?” There was a whiff of derision in Angie’s voice.

“Can you think of better options?”

Angie thought for a while and then shook her head. “To be honest, I can’t.”

“That was step one in the overall solution.” Schneider’s profession had trained him to approach problems in a structured systematic manner. This reflected in the way he handled his firm, his assignments and also in the way he handled questions. He’d spent time preparing the foundation and painting the background before addressing the real query.

“Step two, would be to test them to see if they are really worthy of being inducted into the organization. In the corporate world, we’d do this by interviewing candidates and subjecting them to various technical and psychometric tests. This gives us an insight into their intelligence and emotional maturity levels. Again, there’s no way that approach will work for WFB. And this is where our competitions come in.”

“So you want to test the IQ levels of escaped convicts by getting them to fight?” quipped Angie.

“No,” Schneider was trying hard to keep his thoughts focused on the discussion, but his eyes would start drifting. Angie’s body language, her posture, the slight pout and the naturally seductive eyes made it difficult to keep his thoughts straight. What was she trying to do this time? If all this drama had just been to get him back in bed, she wouldn’t be talking shop for such a long time. He’d have been staring back at the grand chandelier by now, and she’d be executing lots of action further down, using her expert pair of hands and other appropriate body-assets. Maybe she was just trying to understand the project a bit better. She had a voracious appetite for knowledge and information in general. Schneider’s library tour around Woodyvilla had revealed that facet of her personality. He was also quite convinced that she was absorbing everything that he was trying to convey.

“What we’ve done so far hasn’t really focused on their mental strengths or the skills that they’ve been brought over
for. This was just to test their general physical fitness, their endurance. That’s the bare minimum one would expect from anyone hoping to join Woody’s business.”

“Can’t argue with that,” said Angie, her questioning tone had taken a break.

“The next few events that I’ve planned for them move beyond physical strength. We’ll find out if they can work in a team. We’ll see if they can recognize a problem. We’ll see if they can analyze the problem and come up with solutions.”

“I’m guessing you won’t make them sit on school-desks and make them solve puzzles and high-school math problems. There’s obviously something more interesting planned.”