Monday
So, this Bain Think Tank thing. It's weird. Donny Drucker and I sit up here, in a nook fitted out (by DD) with angry modern art and comfy chairs. Consultants make appointments to see us. They tell us what they're working on. We laugh at them. Then we brainstorm fantastic new ways to think about the problem, in real time, using gigantic floor-to-ceiling white boards. The consultants take notes, grovel, thank us, depart. Donny and I fool around with a large cappuccino machine and throw beanbag chairs at each other. We argue about whose turn it is to clean up the doodles. We take long restaurant lunches and draw three-dimensional diagrams on paper tablecloths.
Best of all, we fire off weekly Gee-Willikins e-mails to All Personnel about topics like Use of Nursery Rhymes as Metaphor for Competitive Advantage. My personal favorite: Jack and Jill are like Coke and Pepsi, water is shareholder value, the hill represents market share, price wars lead to falling down, Jack bumping his crown is where the CEO gets fired, and Jill falling after illustrates no strategy is sustainable over time.
I love my job!
Tuesday
Heide Vertig, the cleverest analyst ever at Armadillo & Pounce and these days a rising star here at Bain, drops in on our Think Tank while we're playing Ping-Pong. Good old Heide. She warns us, ever so gently, not to overdo things. Morty Tomato, one of the more feisty partners, has been overheard in an elevator muttering the words "muffin man" and "laughingstock." Heide, for her part, loves it, but I sense that she thinks it's all a massive joke. Decide not to disillusion her. People thought Galileo was crazy, too. As she leaves, Heide mentions that John Bonanza, once her husband and forever my Darth Vader, has opened a winery in Alaska. I put my hands over my ears. No more, please.
Wednesday
Theo is enjoying my new enthusiasm for bedtime stories. My wife finally comes in and tells us to turn out the light. Work into the small hours on a radical re-interpretation of Wee Willie Winkie.
Thursday
Trouble is definitely brewing. Rumors today that a petition is circling among the support staff that our Think Tank material is sexist, racist, and not funny. Donny is unfazed but I sense thin ice. We're having far too much fun for this to be legal, and I've been kicked far too many times not to cringe a little in anticipation of the blow. Decide to yank Wee Willie in favor of a thundery indictment of Time-Based Competition, a BCG concept. That'll have 'em cheering in the cubicles. May be too late, though. DD and I have been summoned to some nasty-sounding review panel tomorrow afternoon.
No bedtime stories tonight. Daddy's a little off-color.
Friday
Spend the morning in a turgid work session on the pharmaceutical business. Clients are present, so we are supposed to behave. But the consultants are getting bogged down in disputed patents, and finally I can be silent no longer. I seize the red pen and launch into a passionate plea for them to realize that musculo-skeletal drugs are like jam tarts. Letting generics into the market is pure theft by the knave of hearts. It's time to act like the kings we are and get those tarts back. There's a moment of silence and then the client CEO starts applauding. "That's what I think!" he says, all excited.
Word travels fast. At our afternoon review, the thumbscrews have been replaced by finger-food and champagne. We all toast the Think Tank, the future, the economy. Who knows, really? My career has been one random walk. We've had a little dip the past couple of years, but I sense an uptick. If I can just settle my litigation with Hertz and pay off my Red Sox bets, well, let's just say that I'll be a merry old soul indeed.
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