It's Not Luck (19 page)

“Now you see the next step,” I continue, eager to finish. “From what we said, it is obvious that ‘Marketing is not oriented to take advantage of the most promising and almost virgin direction—that of market segmentation.’ ”

“Almost virgin,” Jim chuckles. “In a little while he will write, ‘a little bit pregnant.’ ”

I throw him a nasty look.

“No offense, Alex. Just joking. I do appreciate where you are leading us. It is obvious now. Many companies are trying desperately to find new marketing ideas. We all know how difficult it is to come up with innovative ideas in a well-beaten direction. Everybody is trying to do it. While at the same time few are attempting to aggressively segment what seems to be a uniform market. We are simply blinded by the notion of a single price. You are absolutely right.”

“Now that everything is tied together we can easily find the core problem,” I declare.

“How?” Jim is still left with some curiosity.

“Trace the arrows. See which entity is the cause—directly or through other entities—of all the UDEs.

They bend over the tree, tracing the arrows down. They do it for a while. Then Jim raises his eyes, “Congratulations, you have made it. All our listed UDEs (and probably many more that we haven’t listed) are derivatives of one statement. ‘Managers are trying to run their companies by striving to achieve local optima.’ And I’m not going to say that I suspected it right from the start.”

“So what’s next?” Brandon asks.

Before I can answer, Jim raises his hand, “No, Brandon. My head is spinning, and so is yours. If you want to know what is next, schedule another meeting with Alex, and count me in. But please, not next week. I’ve had enough for now.”

17

“Thank you, Daddy.” Sharon kisses me on the cheek, takes her barely opened gift and goes to her room.

“What’s with her?” I ask.

“It’s nothing.” Dave is busy scattering around scarves. “Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal. Ha, this is a beauty, Austin Villa.” He wraps it around his neck. “Did you know that last week they succeeded in . . . . ”

Since the Mondial, Dave is fascinated with soccer, especially European soccer. What can possibly be interesting about soccer?

Happy that he is happy with my gift, I turn to Julie. “What’s the matter with Sharon? I thought that having, what’s his name, as a boyfriend put an end to her moods.”

“It’s Eric, and she’s better but not perfect. Nothing to worry about,” Julie assures me. “In a day or two she’ll snap out of it.”

“I think I’ll go up and talk to her. It will be nice to cheer her up a little.” I missed my girl too much.

“You can try.” Julie doesn’t give it much chance.

“May I come in?”

No answer, at least no answer that I can hear. I open the door slightly. Sharon is lying on the bed reading a book.

“May I come in?” I repeat.

Sharon puts down the book.

I choose to interpret that as a yes, and sit myself on her bed. She moves a little to give me more room.

I entered. That’s good, but what am I supposed to do now?

“What are you reading?”

“Some dumb book.” She pushes it to the floor.

“How is Eric?” I try again.

“Okay.”

“And school?”

“Fine.”

I’m starting to bore even myself.

“You know Sharon,” I try to be more direct, “I’d like to talk to you about something that really bothers me.”

“What is it?”

“We don’t have anything that we like to talk about. Not even a single subject that we like to discuss with each other.”

“Oh Daddy, can we do it some other time? I’m too tired for it now.”

Flop.

Okay, one last try. They say that teenage girls are sentimental. Maybe this will work: “Sharon, when I was in Europe the nights were very lonely. I missed all of you a lot. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t feel like reading, I didn’t feel like going anywhere. For no real reason I was in this terrible mood where nothing seemed worth doing.”

No response.

“Are you in the same situation? No real reason, just that everything looks plain dull?”

“Daddy!”

“Okay. I’ll leave you alone. But tell me one thing. Do you have a real reason for your depressed mood?”

“Of course I do. What do you think?”

I gently smile at her. “I don’t think that you do.”

“What do you know?” She sits up. “Do you understand that I cannot see Eric until Monday? Do you know that I’ve been forced to betray Chris’s trust in me? I don’t have reasons? Do you know how irritating Debbie can be? Everything that I do with Eric is childish. This girl is simply jealous. I know that it sounds pitiful to you. Unimportant girls’ stuff. Daddy, I’m not in the mood. Can I be left alone. Pleeeease.”

I concede. “Yes, jealousy can be very irritating,” I say, and stand up. “But sometimes we have to comply with it. That’s life I guess.”

“Debbie is my best friend. That’s what makes it so hard.”

“On the other hand,” I’m opening the door, “if you want Debbie to continue being your friend and not a pain in the neck, you’d better do something.”

“What?” She stands up as well. “What can I do?”

I go to her desk, pick up one of her pale pink pages and start to write. “Your objective, as I understand it, is to ‘Maintain a good friendship with Debbie.’ In order to achieve that you must ‘Accommodate Debbie’s behavior,’ which under the current circumstances means that you must ‘Tolerate Debbie’s jealousy.’ ”

“But . . .”

“Yes, Sharon, you have a but, a big but.”

“Thank you, Daddy!”

I ignore the pun. “You see, on the other hand, in order to ‘Maintain a good friendship with Debbie’ you must make sure that you’ll ‘Not allow friendship to deteriorate to ownership.’ ”

“Deteriorate to ownership . . . Correct! That’s what I keep on telling her.”

“Which means,” I complete the cloud, “that you must

‘Not tolerate Debbie’s jealousy.’ You are caught in a real conflict, my darling. And since I know how much Debbie means to you, no wonder you’re bothered.”

“ ‘Not allow friendship to deteriorate to ownership.’ I’m going to tell that to her. She must understand that she doesn’t own me. That I’m allowed to have a boyfriend. Especially someone so cool as Eric.”

“What about the other reasons that you mentioned?” I politely inquire.

“Forget it. This is the real thing.”

I think that it would be a mistake to stop here. If the other things were not important, Sharon would not go into a withdrawal. Debbie alone wouldn’t have done it.

“Sharon, I think that we should continue on.”

“Why?”

“Because you are too quiet. If it were just Debbie’s jealousy, then probably you would have raved about her, you would have tried to find ways to put some sense into her skull, but it’s unlikely that it would have caused you to crawl into your cocoon.”

“Crawl into my cocoon? I didn’t crawl into anything. Look, I didn’t ask . . .”

“Sharon,” I stop her before she goes too far. “The other things might not look really important. But I suspect that to you they are, and in a deeper sense than you yourself appreciate.”

“I don’t understand.”

But at least she understands that I’m not trying to blame her or, even worse, to pat her on the head.

“I guess that I can help you find why the other things are troubling you to the extent they are. Do you want to try?”

“If you insist.”

“Take a clean page,” I say, and hand her the pen. “Now, let me show you how to start with a troubling event and finish . . .”

“Wait,” she sighs. “What do you mean by troubling event?”

“You know, those irritating things that don’t seem important but nevertheless haunt you for hours, sometime days.”

“Yes,” she smiles. “I have a few of them.”

“You see, the mere fact that something troubles us more than it should indicates that this event has somehow caused more harm than is apparent on the surface.”

She thinks about it.

“My speculation is,” I carry on, “that the things that are bothering you cause you to compromise on something that is really important to you. Do you want me to show you how to start with one of these troubling undesirable events and reveal the real damage?”

“Do you think that I can do it?” She sounds skeptical.

“Let’s see. What was the thing about Eric that you have to comply with? You said something about not seeing him for a while?”

“Yeah. He has some lousy exam on Monday. It’s a long story.”

“Okay. Write here, on the right, ‘Not see Eric until Monday.’ ”

As she writes, she comments, “I will have to go alone to the party. Isn’t it awful?”

“Now, below it write what you want.”

“I want to see him every day.”

“Fine. Write it down. Now, to the left of it, write why it is so important to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why is it important to you to see Eric every day?”

“Because it is. He is my boyfriend. We have to be together. Isn’t it obvious?”

“So write, ‘Be close to Eric.’ ”

In my mind I quickly check the validity: In order to ‘Be close to Eric’ I must ‘See Eric every day.’ Why? I don’t dare ask.

“Now comes the difficult question: In order to satisfy what need do you comply with not seeing Eric? Why do you think you should not see him until Monday?”

“I told you, he has to pass the exam. He claims that it’s important. At least to his mother it’s important. Actually it is. If he fails again he will have to switch to a lower course and he wants so much to be an engineer.”

“I’m happy to see that you don’t allow your friendship to deteriorate to ownership.”

“You mean demand to see him every day?”

“Yes. If you want a good friendship you must consider the other side’s needs.”

She thinks about it. “I guess you’re right.”

“So, in order to satisfy what need do you comply with not seeing Eric? Write the answer down.”

“I still don’t understand. What should I write? Because of Eric? That’s what you want me to write?”

“In order to satisfy what need?” I repeat.

“The need to consider his needs.” She’s a little irritated at me being so picky.

“That’s it,” I say. “Write it down.”

When she does I show her why it pays to be precise. “Try to read it now adding the words ‘In order to,’ and ‘I must.’ See if it makes sense.

“In order to ‘Consider Eric’s needs,’ I must ‘Not see Eric until Monday.’ I still think that he could be more flexible. Now what?”

“What is your common objective? Why is it important to you to consider Eric’s needs and at the same time be close to him?”

“Because, because . . . I know it, but . . . ”

“Look at the previous cloud,” I try to help. “The one we wrote about Debbie.”

She glances at it and then smiles. “It’s almost the same objective. ‘Maintain a good friendship with Eric.’” She completes her cloud.

“In order to maintain a good friendship you must be with him, but at the same time you must consider his needs. You see, Sharon. Not seeing Eric until Monday puts you in conflict, which jeopardizes an important objective of yours.”

She doesn’t really listen. “Daddy? I think that my cloud about Eric is exactly Debbie’s cloud about me.” She looks again at Debbie’s cloud.

It gives her a new perspective.

“Do you understand Debbie’s behavior better?”

“You know what? I’m sure that Debbie and I can agree about what friendship is and what is becoming ownership. This will be a great discussion. Maybe Morn will allow me to sleep over at Debbie’s house tonight.”

And with that, my gazelle is gone.

Before I reach the door, she’s back. “She agreed. Oh, thank you Daddy. Thank you so much.”

It’s a good feeling.

“Do you want to try to decipher your third complaint?” Not that it matters now, but I want to spend a little more time with my full-of-life girl.

“Why not,” she agrees. “What was it?”

“Something about Chris.”

“Oh yes.” She is serious again, “It’s bad.”

“Rather than telling me what happened, why don’t you write it down, as a cloud?” “I’ll try,” and she sits down.

First she writes, “Give math homework to Kim.” Below it, “Don’t give math homework to anybody.”

It’s interesting. I wait patiently for further developments.

After about a minute or two of twisting she writes to the left, “Keep my promise to Chris.” And above it, “Save Kim.”

“The objective is obvious, ‘Maintain good friendships.’ But does the whole thing make sense?” she asks.

“It does, if you’ve done the math work together with Chris,” I say.