Shattered Covenants Book IV
The Chairman
by
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Ernie Grey completed his morning exercise routine promptly at 6:25 AM. He started his exercise program promptly at 6 AM and had equipped a small gym on the lower floor of their massive, three story, white Colonial home. The gym looked out on the back lawn and the pond with the gazebo. There were sliding glass doors providing Ernie a view of his property. The property line was down the hill another hundred yards. Ernie liked to exercise looking out at his property.
He started with forty push-ups and then performed seventy-five sit-ups before running in place for five minutes. Ernie completed the drill on his exercise cycle.
He finished at 6:25 on the dot, never 6:24 or 6:26 AM. On travel mornings, Ernie held his exercise to the push-ups and sit-ups in the morning, and he took a brisk walk in the evening before retiring. His hair was beginning to gray, but Millie had introduced him to coloring five years earlier and Ernie's hair continued to appear jet black. At 57 years of age, Ernie Grey prided himself on having the appearance of a man in his early forties. He was vigorous, energetic, and had been running McKenzie Barber for eighteen years. In three years, Ernie would be sixty, but he felt like 35.
He showered in the bathroom off the gym and stepped out of the shower in front of the full length mirror that Millie maintained in each of the house's four bathrooms. He appeared flat bellied and youthful. Ernie slipped into a terry cloth robe and jogged up the back stairs to the master bedroom.
Surprisingly, Millie was up. She had her dressing gown on and was finishing her make-up at the dressing table when Ernie emerged from the hall.
"Hey, it's Saturday," Ernie greeted his wife. "What are you doing up?"
"The same thing you are. We need to talk about a few things, Ernie," Millie said while applying her make-up. "I know that you're going into the office this morning. How are you getting in?"
"George is picking me up," Ernie answered. George was his driver.
"You've got George working on Saturdays too?"
"He's going to take Thursday and Friday off. I'll be in London. This will be a soft day for George. All he has to do is take me in and pick me up at 4 PM so I can get home and dressed for that bash tonight."
"Cocktails at the Historical Society will start at six, Ernie. I think you better have George pick you up by 3:30. I want you dressed in black tie by 5:30. I promised Karen Thatcher I would be there by ten of six. Wilbur will be there too. You're always complaining about how much work Robson Allen is doing for Wilbur's Bank. Here's your chance, Ernie, to spend some time with Wilbur Thatcher."
"I'll commit to 3:30, Mille, but it may rush us a little. I would love to spend ten minutes alone with Wilbur Thatcher and may even extend it to fifteen minutes."
"I thought I would cook you breakfast this morning, Ernie," Millie said rising from the dressing table. Millie's hair was cut short and her figure remained trim under the chiffon dressing gown. With her shapely legs, Millie could also pass for a woman in her early forties.
"What an offer!" Ernie said pulling on his underwear.
"Let's have an order, Mac," Millie commanded.
"One egg scrambled, toast, a small orange juice, and coffee," Ernie responded.
"Done! Mac!" Millie said and she kissed Ernie on the cheek while on the way out of the room. "I'll see you at breakfast." There was a nook off the kitchen. The house had gone up in the 1920's and had two owners before the Greys had moved in during mid-July of 1954. Kathleen had been two, and it was in the year before Prescott had been born. The house had been way over their heads financially. "We're betting the store, Ernie," Millie had said at the time. But it had worked out nicely. Ernie became a Partner, then the Administrative Partner, and finally Senior Partner of the firm. They had borrowed heavily from Millie's trust, and what they could from Ernie's trust. There really hadn't been a lot of savings at the time. Over time they returned the money to the trusts, but Ernie acknowledged that they never would have been able to buy the house without Millie's money.
They had been in the house at Morning Heights since 1954 and 24 years later, the mortgage was nearly liquidated, and the property had been assessed at $4.5 million dollars up from $100,000 in 1954. Morning Heights creaked a little and seemed to require a lot of annual maintenance, but Millie kept the house in mint condition. Millie knew every tradesman by first name, knew their children, and kept a schedule for continuous maintenance in a ring binder near the kitchen telephone. She would hold up the ring binder periodically and say; 'If anything should happen to me, everything about keeping up this house is in here. Come here, I'll take you through it. Think of it Ernie, you could turn the whole home management process over to an administrative person.'" Ernie always marveled at Millie's sense of organization and documentation. He acknowledged to himself that if Millie had gone onto business school, and joined McKenzie Barber, she could well be a Partner. This was one more female Partner than he had on this particular morning.
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About the Book
Book IV, The Chairman, is the fourth book in a cycle of seven books entitled Shattered Covenants. Shattered Covenants narrates the formation, rise, decline, and fall of McKenzie Barber, a global management consulting firm. The Chairman, Ernie Grey, after eighteen years as McKenzie Barber's CEO is beginning to reflect on succession. He is standing without opposition for his fourth six-year term as the Chairman of McKenzie Barber. The Chairman is narrated from Ernie Grey's point of view. He has been absolute monarch of McKenzie Barber. Instinctively, Ernie recognizes that the market for consulting services has changed, and that McKenzie Barber can no longer grow organically. Ernie Grey made an early choice in Hamilton Burke III, not unlike the manner in which John McKenzie, the founder, had picked out Ernie early in his career. He has moved Burke overseas through the French and the UK practices and brought him back to the US as McKenzie Barber's first Partner in Charge of Strategic Planning. The old line Partners fail to recognize Burke's emergence as a serious Chairman successor. Burke is the ultimate swashbuckling successor, a bachelor, former decorated Green Beret with a French mistress who owns a steel mill and who has an eye for receptive ladies. He is bigger than life with a matching ego. Ernie Grey has commissioned Burke to serve as the change agent to structure the McKenzie Barber in the 1980's. Book IV introduces Ernie Grey's initial flirtation with Toni Alter, a young woman junior in age to his own daughter. Ernie's wife, Millie, is carrying on an affair with Cornelius Vanderkelen, the powerful Chairman of International Petroleum Company (IPCO). The Vanderkelen fortune has been built on oil. Ernie is invited to join the IPCO Board while the Chairman, Cornelius Vanderkelen, is sleeping with his wife. Book IV, the Chairman, covers a three-month period during which Ernie Grey makes a decision on his successor. Prior villains and knaves introduced in the earlier three books of Shattered Covenants reappear in Book IV. They include the villainous Clyde Nickerson, General Buzzsaw Pritchard, who joins McKenzie Barber to head FSO, McKenzie Barber's Washington based defense industry consulting practice. Joe Baxter, who is finally elected a Partner, Roger Dirks, the Chairman contender, who is removed from contention following his stabbing by a Spanish dancer, Frank Alvardi , Baxter's executive compensation mentor who resembles Joe DiMaggio, Walker Frederick, who merchandises his employee benefits consulting practice to McKenzie Barber and a host of other characters with fluid tongues, sharp elbows, and aggressive financial expectations. The final lines of Book IV summarize The Chairman. The McKenzie Barber Partners Meeting of 1978 marked the end of the old order. There was no going back!
About the Author
Dwight Foster, the author of Shattered Covenants, is a native of Minnesota who was transferred to New York City in 1980. He retired as a consulting partner from an international public accounting firm in January 1990 to form an executive search firm.
Shattered Covenants is a first novel, which represents an eight year project dealing with the passing of leadership in a professional services firm. Shattered Covenants is Book III of a series of free standing novels relating to the formation of a major management consulting firm, its rise, zenith, decline, and ultimate compliant merger with a principal competitor. Shattered Covenants deals with the passing of CEOs (i.e. kings) and their ultimate effect on the careers and lives of the courtiers and rank and file professionals who follow the leadership of the CEO.
The author has spent his business career in the consulting industry and, for the past eleven years, has headed up a well-recognized executive search firm. Dwight Foster has published previously in management studies and magazine articles and is quoted from time to time in the national press. His experience in the practice of executive search and familiarity with organization and business models over the past thirty years provided the motivation to write a sweeping novel. The primary narrator of Shattered Covenants, Joseph Baxter, Jr., is the son of a labor martyr from Minnesota's Iron Range who rises to a Board Room, world traveling executive compensation consultant. Baxter is a modern day Candide who develops the cunning to survive in a ruthlessly competitive business world.
Dwight Foster is a University of Minnesota Alumnus, the father of two adult children, and is married to Dorothy Choitz Foster, a well-known consultant to the cosmetics and fragrance industry. The Fosters maintain an apartment in New York City and a permanent home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.