The torrent of words and pictures had the desired effect. Everyone was so stunned no one thought to ask about dragons.
“Clearly,” Wiz continued, “what is called for is to install a reorganization that promotes a new strategic vision, a tightly focused vision that energizes the new tomorrow.
“While continuing the traditions of the past-“ the mayor smiled and nodded “-we must meet the challenges of the future-“ it was Dieter’s turn to smile “-and provide bold new approaches to the organization’s needs.” That brought a nod from Rolf.
“We must empower ourselves to consistently use our organizational resources to install this vision. This means using team management-focused techniques to create the need to change and to produce organizational systems which reinforce the vision.”
The picture on the screen showed a USDA map of the United States with the dates of the average last frosts marked.
“That doesn’t look like anything around here,” one of the more alert councilmen put in.
“Those are magical isoclines,” Wiz said hastily.
“Still don’t look like the country around here.”
“It’s a transmorphic projection. Maybe we’d better come back to this later. Next.”
The next slide was a pie chart, showing sales of Sara Lee pies for 1993.
The trouble with trusting a demon’s judgment, Wiz realized belatedly, is that it doesn’t have any. He was damn glad none of his audience could read English.
Wiz smiled brightly. “By now you are doubtless interested in the specifics of my recommended action plan. As soon as I have finished, my assistant,” a nod to Malkin, “will distribute copies of the white paper emphasizing the highlights. Meanwhile, let us examine the critical challenges we must meet to empower our vision of empowerment.”
The demon flashed up a slide showing someone going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
“The first challenge is organizational. The traditional organization emphasizes musty, sterile parliamentarianism at the expense of action which would clearly reflect the true makeup of the council.” That brought nods from the mayor, Dieter and Rolf, all of whom were absolutely convinced the council was really behind them.
“This means your present decision-making process is diffuse and suboptimal. We must proactively react to counteract this tendency with a broader vision which is only available at the top.” The mayor beamed and Dieter frowned.
“However, given the present organization this is clearly impossible because of the workload such a top-down environment imposes on the mayor. Therefore the key to repositioning the products and services to build a corporate advantage is install an action-direction vision by creatively teaming together. To that end, we create an Office of the Mayor to actualize the latency by creative teaming. Working directly with the mayor on this critical team will be innovation powerhouses representing the major resources within the present council. While the mayor will clearly be the team leader he will benefit from the synergy and creative flow of ideas from the team structure.”
Again smiles from the critical three. The mayor saw it as a way to subordinate his main rivals to him and the other two saw it as giving them a power base close to the top. That alone should guarantee absolute gridlock, Wiz thought as he paused for breath.
That was a mistake. “What about the rest of the council?” demanded one of the councilmen off to the side. “What about money?” demanded another.
“Yes, money. What about money? What about taxes?” several other voices chimed in.
“I’m glad you raised that critical point,” Wiz said brightly. “That is the second platform of my recommendations, but perhaps we can deal with it out of turn.
“The important fiscal consideration is to provide revenue enhancement without increasing taxes. In fact, as you can see clearly from this revenue elasticity chart-“ up went a phase diagram of the melting point of lead-tin-antimony solder alloys “-the projected revenue needs can be met with a decrease in current taxes.
“Clearly what is needed is a proactive, projective infrastructure investment of the revenue stream.”
“There ain’t no revenue,” one of the councilors objected.
“That is precisely why you apply the revenues projectively,” Wiz assured him. “As you can see from this next chart-“ up flashed a bar chart showing the amount of track laid by the Indian railways from 1850 to 1900 “-the revenues can be applied to development in a fashion which will encourage and develop the trade.”