ABSTRACT
Narvell T. Mann had been sitting in the corporate conference center now for more than four hours. He had listened, or mostly listened, to three different vice presidents and two directors explain to him and the other twenty-six people in the room about the financial health of the company. Narvell’s boss, the director of engineering, was now going into great detail about numerous engineering projects. He appeared to be well equipped with enough charts, graphs, and data to make any engineer proud. After another twenty minutes of long-winded and quite detailed answers that Narvell thought to be mainly hot air, his new boss, Bill Cooke, finally came to a close. Looking around the room, Bill asked, “Does anyone have any questions?” Then, not really waiting for anyone to raise their hand, or open their mouth, Bill continued, “Great. Mr. Schmidt, I believe that’s all we have for you today.” With that, Bill took his seat on the front row of the conference center.
