Chapter 20: Onward and Upward

As the movie Road Trip swung through its first couple of weeks in top movie houses across the country, Cricket’s book made a huge splash in the publishing marketplace.

Dave had to laugh. The movie was getting rave reviews from the critics, such as the top number of tomatoes, stars, cookies and other attributes to imply a strong recommendation to the public to see the movie. The movie brought in about three hundred million its first weekend in theaters; more than enough to cover the cost of making the film.

The book reviews were milder. Why? Because the movie had been made into a ‘R-rated’ feature film, but the book contained dozens of ‘X-rated’ love and sex scenes some of which would make a sailor blush. Cricket had a wild imagination, and when she was horny, which she often was while writing the book, she put her fantasies down on paper.

Nonetheless, the book was selling well according to Cricket’s agent and the publishing house. Apparently, twenty thousand copies of the book had been sold. Dave thought that was low but when he read about how many best sellers actually sold, he was amazed at how low some of their numbers were. Some ‘best sellers’ didn’t even top ten thousand copies in sales.

Cricket was overjoyed. She sat on the patio one afternoon with a box of books the publisher had sent her and autographed every one for each member of the Circle, her family, and a few other friends. She wrapped them up to give as Christmas presents, but she wanted people to know what she’d planned so they didn’t duplicate her present.

Many in the Circle bought Road Trip and had Cricket autograph the book for their parents or other friends outside the Circle. She was happier to find that people actually liked the book.

Online sales of the e-book passed a hundred thousand the first week, and the rate of sales on a daily basis was increasing. This was where the real money was, and where the publishing house and Cricket would make most of their money.

Mike had Circle-X Productions release a feature length film entitled Road Trip: The XXX Movie. It was seventy-eight minutes long and a condensed rip-off or parody version of the book. Many of the Circle women appeared in the film including Alice Angel, Kat, Wendy, Dori, Bridget, Taylor, Candy, and even Cricket. Mike took on the onerous task of playing the main character riding his motorcycle around and having mostly sexual sessions with various women, meaning he just had to fuck all those beautiful women. It was tough job, but he forced himself. In the first week on the website, he sold ten thousand downloads of the film, a new record, by far, for any of the Circle-X films.

Everybody in the Circle seemed exceptionally busy through December. It wasn’t only shopping; it was the end of the year and so there were many tasks at work that people wanted to finish before the New Year began.

Dave was wrapped up with end of year financials and staffing plans for the coming year. What surprised him was when Art Tanner, the head of administration for the power utility announced that a major organization in his group was underway. At the afternoon Executive Committee meeting, he reported on the major restructuring and said that the next day he and the woman responsible for the changes would brief the whole executive team. He wanted all the changes to go into effect on January first.

The next day, Dave, Derek, and the other ten members of the ExComm filed into the executive conference room. Tanner was in there setting up some charts and the computer projector. In response to a question he said the meeting would take about an hour and a half depending on questions.

Dave was stunned when Nikky Thomas came into the room, dressed in a skirted business suit, and carrying a highly professional air about her despite her tiny size. She was wearing high heels, too; shoes that added about four inches to her small height. She looked and acted like a senior executive.

Tanner stood and greeted her. They had a few words, and then he introduced her to the executive team. He added, “Nikky Thomas is a new first line manager in our finance group, but she had some ideas that she started to pursue about how we could better accomplish our administrative tasks more efficiently, effectively, and transformationally. She took this on herself, on her own time, and eventually someone called it to my attention.

“I have to say when it was called to my attention that person was concerned that she was operating without sanction. I called her in and we talked. She told me her ideas, and convinced me about what she wanted to have done. I gave her the air cover to proceed. She’s got every i dotted and t crossed as far as I can tell. I’m turning the meeting over to her, but be kind. Nikky is a college grad, and she’s eighteen, and a dynamic powerhouse.”

Tanner gestured and Nikky hitched herself out of the leather chair she’d taken. She stood at the end of the table with the executive team lined up on both sides of the table, along with some other executives who’d been invited to the meeting.

Nikky went to a flip chart and drew ten small circles on it. She colored one in. “I work in this Circle. My boss and mentor challenged me to make improvements in how we operated. When I started to look at the situation, I realized that the group I took over was in one of the ten in the admin area. The average span of control above me was four, whereas I have fifteen men and women in my department. That was the same for the other bubbles on this chart.” She rattled off the names of the departments as she pointed to each bubble.

“Our work depends on input from five other bubbles. Four other bubbles depend on what we do to some extent. I couldn’t improve what I did, without getting onto their turf or vice versa. As near as I could tell the last improvements in this division were back in the 1990s just as many of you joined the company. Things have been pretty static since then because no body wanted to cross any of the organizational lines that had been drawn back then.

“Well, they’ve been static inside the utility division. Meanwhile, the Internet happened. Technology advanced. We have the cloud. The use of sophisticated databases exploded, but not here. All our systems were designed to support ‘departmental’ operations not to optimize performance of the utility. Add-in some other technological advances in the past twenty-five years, such as networking, and we have lots of unrealized opportunities to make things better.

“I erased all the lines, blew up the bubbles, and started over focusing only on what end results the division needed to have transpire. I talked to Mr. Tanner about the goals of the administrative division and what it had to accomplish in terms of managing money and people. I preserved those as a kind of mission statement for the result and started designing the division anew.” Nikky went to the computer on the table and hit the space bar. The first slide came up.

“This is the result.” Everyone leaned forward.

Nikky continued, “There’s a complete reassignment of staff based on each individual’s skills, education, experience, and career goals according to the staff development process. There are a few surpluses, and there’ll be more. My estimate is that we can do the job ultimately with no new hires in administration for the next five years at current attrition rates. No one will get fired or lose their job, but we will transition everybody to new jobs.

“You can see we’ve redefined the departments. There are now only four: one for HR and three for financial operations. The span of control in each area will be around twenty-to-one, but the way the new jobs are defined that won’t be like adding new staff in the present organization.”

Nikky went on about each group and department, as well as the functionality of each area.

Dave shot Derek a glance and got a huge smile in return. Derek was very pleased with what he was hearing.

Nikky had started talking about how she’d already coordinated the revised organization with the unions and received their blessing. Tanner chimed in on a few points. She went on and talked about retraining a few people, especially in the new systems that would assume a large part of the redefined workload.

The VP of Information Technology stood and talked about the revisions to the systems. She’d already overseen the construction of new front ends on the major systems so they could quickly be adapted to the new organization without requiring a complete rebuild. She did want to rebuild, but the front ends would make any further changes transparent to the users. She alone would save millions and reduce the number of errors significantly.

There were more and more questions as the first hour passed on the clock. Nikky handled most of them with élan, with Tanner stepping in occasionally.

Derek finally spoke, adding his enthusiastic approval to the reorganization and accolades for Nikky Thomas. “This is the kind of thinking we need all through this company.” On that note the meeting broke up.

Dave went up to Nikky, “Do you have any appointments the rest of the day?”

“No. This was the only thing I had. I was so nervous. Did it show?”

“Nikky, you were stupendous and amazing, and the utmost executive professional. Everyone here has been awed by your grasp of the organization, technology, the human side of the equation, even the unions, and you brought it all together in short order.”

“All the hard work will fall to Mr. Tanner and HR,” she claimed.

“Follow me.” Dave led Nikky from the executive conference room to his own office. They stopped and chatted with Donna for a moment before going and sitting on the couch in his office.

Dave spoke, “Nikky, I love you. I love being your mentor. I have an idea that you will have to weigh in light of your own career objectives. I would like you to become my Executive Assistant.” He added a few sentences about the work in the position.

Nikky gasped, “Oh, my God. That’d be so cool.”

Dave shook his head. “Maybe. I feel I’m being a little selfish in my thinking, but as I told you might happen, I’ve lost my objectivity where you are concerned. I think you should talk to Donna, Sheri Seaton, and Nancy Mason about what this working environment is like. Give me a few minutes and they’ll know my thinking about the position. I’ve been thinking about filling it, but I waned to find the right person. They have to ‘fit’ with me and my personality.”

Nikky snickered and whispered, “Like you fit inside me?” She grinned widely.

“You are not getting this position because of that. Well, I take that back. I became aware of you more than usual because of that. I also fell in love with you. I am not one to have reservations about working with people I love. I love Donna, Nancy, and Sheri, as you know.”

She whispered, “Derek loves them, too, and I was teasing, but I’d would like to make love with you again tonight. I am on a high right now, and making love with you would be the perfect complement to how I’m feeling.”

Dave nodded and smirked, “When we get home. I’d like that, too. Now, please get selfish and look after your own best interests and not mine. Talk to some of the people that work for me including the three women I recommended. See whether you think this position would be something that could springboard you into something you’d really want. An EA position is temporary; a person in the job shouldn’t stay there for more than a year or two. It’s a staff position, and you should start to think about getting into a line position. One requirement for this job, and one I insist on, is that you are open and vocal about when you think I’m full of shit or too full of myself. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t take the job.

Talk to Donna right now and I’ll go tell Nancy and Sheri what I’m thinking, so they’ll be ready to advise you as well. By the way, Donna has no compunction about telling me when I’m off base about something. Ask her.”

Two days later, the announcement was posted on the company bulletin board for all to see:

Memo