"We at Rutherford Consulting always make sure our customers are happy, Mr. Kronic."
Paul Kronic looked at the woman who just answered his last questions with a sentence that sounded more like standard sales pitch than anything else.
He is running Kronic Entertainment Systems, a software company, specialized in computer games. After a success hit around one and a halve year ago, KES company was growing with a rate he never could have imagined. He started only four years ago with a single employee and now was the CEO of a company with close to 150 employees. He could not even recall the exact number at the very moment. Unfortunately the way his company is developing required that he has to rely more and more on external help and consulting. He was not a born manager, and he certainly was still more a computer geek than a business-man oriented in short or long term profit or since the beginning of the year in share-holder value. He needs help, simply to make sure the expansion of KES is not getting out of his hand.
Rutherford Consulting was recommended by a colleague from another software company. Quite honestly, he did not even fully understand what exactly they are doing. According to the sales brochure that he has studied extensively, they are making sure that management structures are setup properly and individually for each company, plus they are helping to improve the morale of every single employee and simply optimize the workflow in all departments. He was very skeptical, after all what would a typical consulting company know about the computer game industry? In addition, the services of Rutherford Consulting are not cheap at all and he needs to be convinced first that their input would actually work for his company.
Still curious after the good stuff he heard from other business about Rutherford Consulting, he decided to have them prepare an initial analysis of the management structure and employee power. The process would take a month and after the report and some changes already triggered by the consulting firm, he could decide to setup a longer agreement based on a special contract or simply cancel the whole thing.
Amy Tenor was the 'Senior Project Manager' assigned to the KES project by Rutherford Consulting. They meet each other for the first time just minutes ago. She looked incredible and after what she had said so far, he actually wondered if she was sent here because of her looks rather than her experience -- she could not be older than 26. He had to focus to look into her beautiful face rather than the cleavage that was displayed in front of him. She was dressed very professionally in a business dress with a pretty short skirt section however. Her blond hair was about shoulder length. He looked down for a few seconds to read the words on the business card of hers that was placed on his desk for some them before he looked again directly at her:
"Thank you Miss Tenor. Maybe you could elaborate a bit, how your initial analysis will work and how it might affect the work of my employees during that time."
"Oh please, call me Amy. There is no need to be so formal. We will be working very close in the next weeks."
"Yes ... Amy ... we can use first names. I am Paul."
"Oh no, please Sir ... I'd rather continue to stay formal but you can be as informal as you like with me." she smiled and Paul was not sure what to make out of that comment. He choose to ignore it. After a short period of silence, Amy continued: "I will be returning tomorrow with three junior employees of my team and we will start analyzing the employees in your company and the management structure, for example we will evaluate team work hierarchies, check your human resources department, and so on. This will by done by asking a few questions to various employees and by myself or members of my team attend meetings as observers. Please be assured that any possible disruption of the normal work flow will be kept at minimum level."
He nodded although he was far from sure if this is really working. She continued: "In our report that you will have on your table before the end of the month, you will get recommendations on improving and changing certain work-flow related procedures. If you are OK, a few selected staff members recommended by us will attend a short training course at Rutherford Consulting. Of course we will ask you for confirmation in each case but you might understand that we would like to select a couple of employees very early just to make sure that you can see how effective we are with our training seminars. We understand that our work here is seen as trial by you, so we'd like to get the opportunity to show as much as possible what we can do for you. Our intention is to work with you for a longer time and obviously you need to be convinced."
"OK Amy, I think I understand that part. But what happens if your methods are not so effective because you realize that my staff is not accepting your suggestions or simply not ready to change their work style?"