Chapter 1

Clifford Fitzpatrick eased his car into the parking lot at the headquarters of Murphy Manufacturing Company in the outskirts of Milwaukee. He saw a parking place immediately adjacent to the building entrance with a newly-painted sign reading President and immediately below the title, C J Fitzpatrick. He pulled into the spot and parked.

Cliff Fitzpatrick was a trim six feet two with sandy brown hair and blue eyes. He looked like an athlete and moved like one. As he got out of the car, he looked down the row of what were obviously executive parking spaces and saw that most were still empty. It was eight-fifteen on a Monday morning in early April but Cliff was not surprised. Although he had been told that working hours at Murphy Manufacturing began at eight o'clock, the late arrival of executives was just one more sign of a general slackness in the operation.

Normally an early starter, Cliff had waited a few extra minutes this morning, his first at Murphy and his first as its president. He wanted to give the other people a chance to arrive before him. He noticed there was a row of signs similar to his own running down the line of preferred parking spaces. Clearly, the sequence of names was the corporate pecking order presented for all the world to see.

Cliff entered the building and was greeted by name by the receptionist. Obviously, she had been told to expect him and had been watching for him. Going up to the second floor, which served as the executive offices of the company, he went around to the corner where he knew his new office was. He found his secretary, Sandra Donnell, sitting expectantly at her desk awaiting his arrival.

She rose from her chair and held out her hand. "Good morning, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Welcome to Murphy Manufacturing!"

Cliff was surprised at the firmness of her grip. "Good morning, Miss Donnell, could you arrange for someone else to cover our phones for a while? I want to talk with you and I don't want us to be disturbed." While the girl made arrangements Cliff entered his office and sat down in the big chair behind the desk.

Cliff Fitzpatrick was thirty-two years old, five years out of Harvard Business School and two days out of Cumings & Company, one of the world's preeminent management consulting firms. He had accepted the position of president of Murphy while recognizing the risks. He had agreed with Ezra Stiles, the trustee of the Murphy estate, on specific performance objectives to be achieved by September 30 ... just six months away. At the same time he recognized that, had he been unwilling to accept the very ambitious targets he would not have been offered the position.

Cliff was relying on being able to make dramatic improvements in operations, even if not quite up to the objectives he had agreed to. Privately, he believed them to be unattainable, but he thought he could get close enough to have his contract renewed anyway.

He thought about the decision he had made. Murphy was in the Fortune second 500 in size with sales of about $500 million a year. It was an old-line automotive supplier with a good reputation in the industry. However, Cliff's investigation before taking the position showed conclusively — to him at least — that the company was in trouble. It was a victim of dry rot on the inside. The numbers were all trending in unpleasant directions although the trends were not yet apparent to the outside.

He reminded himself that he had an appointment with a securities analyst from Chicago who was scheduled to visit him on Friday. Cliff suspected that the analyst who claimed to follow Murphy had noticed the trend in the numbers. He knew it would take some fast talking to avoid a very negative report which would be followed by a sharp drop in Murphy's stock price. Because of the ownership position of the Murphy estate — about 65 percent of the shares — the stock did not qualify for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange and so was traded on the American Stock Exchange instead.

Cliff was a man in a hurry. He recognized that the odds against a successful turnaround — achieving the promised operating results in just six months — were very high. Weighing against those odds, though, were two other factors. First, he had saved some money while he was with Cumings, and had received a big jump in salary — to $200,000 a year — when he joined Murphy. Second, there was Stephanie Simpson. Stephanie was the beautiful dark-haired daughter of George Simpson, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and largest individual shareholder of Ajax Industries, Inc.

When they were together in bed Saturday night, she again tried to get him to refuse the Murphy position and join Ajax instead. He was madly in love with Stephanie — or thought he was — so he could not really sort out his feelings. From the first time he mentioned to her that he was thinking of leaving Cumings and going into private industry, she had been after him to join Ajax as a staff vice president. He reflected that she had almost run through the full gamut of her emotions as she tried to persuade him, stopping just short of rage.

Cliff examined the relationship he enjoyed with this beautiful girl who had a successful career of her own in public relations, although, he admitted, she was working on the Ajax account. She was five feet six inches tall with dark hair and a voluptuous figure. He reflected that she was soft all over. Occasionally, as a great favor she would permit him to share her bed as she had on Saturday night.

Thinking about the offer from Ajax, Cliff decided that it was more a gift to a prospective son-in-law than a real job. He didn't like the idea of being a kept man, even though Stephanie had been introducing him to her friends as her fiancé.

Cliff wanted to make it on his own in a company he was running. He recognized that only the problems at Murphy, coupled with his performance objectives and the very short time horizon to reach them, had made this opportunity possible. He was objective enough about his position to know that the situation he faced was the only one in which an ex-consultant with no direct management experience would have possibly been considered. Well, Cliff thought, there was my time as Gunnery Officer on a destroyer. That was managing something. Murphy with its eight hundred employees was only his second shot.

Cliff looked at Sandra Donnell as she entered his office. She was a tall girl — about five feet eight, he thought — with a lovely face and a very trim figure. She was conservatively dressed in a tweed skirt and a loose fitting beige sweater worn with a single strand of pearls. The tan color set off her hair which was a lovely shade of auburn. He noticed that she did not have the very fair complexion that normally accompanied the hair color. In fact she had a tan suggesting she had vacationed in the sun recently. She had her stenographic notebook with her and took a seat next to his desk. Her pencil was poised for dictation.

"Do you go by Sandra, Sandy, or something else?"

Startled, she looked up and then smiled, "My friends call me Sandy."

"May I call you Sandy, then? And I would appreciate it if you would call me Cliff. I'm used to informality even though I gather it's not the style here at Murphy. In fact, I haven't encountered such formality since I worked on a consulting assignment for an old-line insurance company. There — if you can believe it — even in internal memos an executive was referred to as 'Assistant Secretary Smith'."

"Of course you may," she replied with a quick smile. "And you're right. Things have become rather formal around here lately. I haven't been here that long myself on a full-time basis, but I gather things were more informal when Mr. Murphy was still active in the company. I hope you don't mind, but I scheduled a staff meeting for you at ten in the board room to meet the senior executives. Do you have some dictation for me?"

"No, Sandy, I don't. I want to level with you. This is going to sound strange since we only really met a few minutes ago..." Then he remembered. "But you were present when I met with Mr. Stiles, weren't you?"

She smiled, and he noticed again how her smile lighted up her face. He also noticed laugh lines suggesting that she smiled often. "I was here hiding in the corner. I'm surprised you even noticed me. I never did learn why Mr. Stiles wanted me to be in the room, though."

"At any rate, I'm the stranger around here and I need all the help I can get. Sandy, let's be honest. If you don't like me, you can cut my throat ... or rather, just watch as I cut my own. I have several changes in mind, beginning right now. I would like to sound you out first and get your thoughts on the probable company reaction. Would you mind?"

Sandy looked a bit skeptical. "That wouldn't make me a spy, would it?" she asked.

"I certainly hope not!" he retorted. "I just want your opinion. I have the feeling that you know a lot about this place. Am I right? After all, you have been the president's secretary for quite a while, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir. I worked for poor Mr. MacDougal for three years after I got out of school. Is the staff meeting at ten o'clock okay?"

"That's fine. Now, some basics: First, where does a guy go for coffee around here?"

Sandy reddened. "I'm sorry, sir! I forgot to ask if you wanted any. Mr. MacDougal ended the coffee service on the executive floor over a year ago. I think someone spilled coffee on some business papers or something. But I could get some for you from the cafeteria if you would like?"

"Why don't we both just take a walk? I never did have much of a chance to look around." He smiled and added, "But you're going to have to lead. I don't have the foggiest idea where things are around here yet."

As they walked through the building, Sandy pointed out the executive dining room. They stopped and he looked inside. It was really quite elegant, paneled floor to ceiling in oak. There were a number of tables and what was obviously a head table placed across the end of the room.

"Your place is at the center of the head table as you probably guessed," she said blandly.

"Who operates the dining room? Company employees?"

"No, sir. There's an outside caterer who is supposed to be quite good. His people operate the whole thing. The company people who used to run it before the renovation — the ones who are left from Mr. Murphy's time — are now down in the employees' cafeteria. That's where we're headed."

They entered the cafeteria which was off the factory floor. The first thing Cliff noticed was all the noise from the plant floor spilling through the paper-thin walls. The second was how rundown everything looked. Some of the people were valiantly trying to clean but without great success. Sandy introduced him to Janet Simmons, the manager. Mrs. Simmons was a strikingly handsome woman who seemed out of place in the cafeteria. She shook hands and welcomed him to Murphy.

Sandy seemed a bit embarrassed to have Cliff with her. "I'm sorry, Janet, but Mr. Fitzpatrick insisted on coming with me. I didn't have a chance to warn you we were on our way."

Cliff didn't say anything but was puzzled by the comment. He bought four coffees and insisted on carrying them back upstairs while Sandy opened doors. When they returned to his office and closed the door, he looked at the girl and said, "I did something wrong, didn't I? I can see it in your eyes. What was it?"

"Cliff, that wasn't nice to Janet. You embarrassed her."

"I'm sorry. But what did I do?" he asked contritely.

Sandy smiled at him and grimaced. "You didn't do anything. I did something. I had promised that I would warn Janet if any executives headed towards the cafeteria. You see, she managed the executive dining room before the caterer came in. She's more than a little upset about meeting you under these conditions."

She looked at him steadily and then continued, "While we're on the subject, you have just seen a union grievance: The union doesn't think it's right for the executives to eat subsidized meals while the workers who make much less than they do have to pay full price."

"I don't think it's right either. Is it true?"

Her eyes were downcast, but he saw her briefly nod. Her head came up, she looked up at him and replied, "Actually, its truer than they know. The executives pay one dollar apiece for their lunches. I think the company's direct subsidy is about ten dollars apiece, and that doesn't cover the maintenance of the dining room or kitchen."

Cliff again noticed how tall she was. He was used to towering over women, but wearing her pumps she was only a few inches shorter than he. "Sandy, I said at the beginning I wanted to use you as a sounding board. Here comes the first idea: This company is in tough shape. But working here, I'm sure you already know that."

Sandy looked like she was about to protest, but then merely nodded. "Things are not too good," she reluctantly agreed.

"We're agreed on that, anyway. Now, if we're going to get this company turned around at all — let alone within the six-month period I agreed to in my contract — everybody has got to pull his weight. We can't afford grievances, and frankly, I can't afford prima donnas in the executive suite either. I gathered from your comment that executives are rare on the factory floor?"