American Dreaming - 1990's / Part X

The initiative was the brain child of all of the Senior Staff of the new combined company. Our Regional VP (former COO of our operating unit and my mentor) Jack Riser had been reassigned to be the COO of the Corporate functions in Falls Church, VA in the new regime. The initiative was to form working groups that had representation of all IT functions from all of the offices within the organization (some 28 offices in the country) and review what each company had in place as far as custom software, corporate claims payment systems, telecommunications, messaging, provider and customer relations and HR functions.

I was charged with a seat on several working groups (Claims payment, Telecommunications, Data Services and Overall Architecture). As a result of this designation, I was going to be spending two to three days a week flying back and forth from Albany, NY and Washington, DC to participate in these work group meetings assisted by a small army of consultants.

The work was really quite interesting. It was certainly a very complex setting for what was, in essence, an exercise in human nature. I watched a massive amount posturing, mass justifications and even some thinly veiled pleading for reduced change. Both former organizations seemed to be embroiled in a tug of war with attempting to lobby for the technology choices that were inherent in each of their respective corporate cultures to invariably “win out” and become part of the IT function of the newly combined company.

I understood this posture but endeavored to learn as much as I could about our former rival’s technology infrastructure and to some extent have an open mind in any assessment. I believe I was pretty effective in gathering information on the technology choices in place as well as the management functions and help desk organizations because I attempted to be neutral or a minimum non-threatening. My counterparts did not reciprocate my collegial posture or practice during this assessment. Their inquiries were almost posed in the tone and manner of threats. They didn’t enjoy or look for debate or consensus but rather relished and sought out confrontational situations. It was around this time that I took to referring the triad of the three highest managers in that former organization as the Ferengi (an ode to a Star Trek race of aliens that were noted for their greed and hunger for power).

The Ferengi were tireless in their pursuit to prove out their points that the servers they used were far better than the more commonly used equipment we had deployed for the production applications. They continued to reiterate that the investment and reliance on NeXT machines was a worthwhile one (even though the company that created and maintained that technology was drawing its last breath during this year). Their arguments were delivered with such passion and venom that if I didn’t have to deal with them as intimately as it seemed I must, I would have begun to feel sorry for them.

The consultants we were working with compiled all the information as well as all the operational requirements. At the end of a yearlong effort, we were finally ready to present our findings to the board of directors of the combined company. I was selected along with two of the Ferengi lieutenants to represent IT during the presentation. Following my usual pattern in those days, I flew down to Washington DC on a Monday morning to prepare for the presentation.