Chapter < One

INTRO

In the beginning, there was a proposal.

In the beginning before that, there was a feasibility study. And a second. Ultimately, the feasibility studies were dropped in favor of focus groups. When the focus groups were found to be skewed in terms of needing a younger demographic, a direct mail survey was performed.

The percentile of responses was less than anticipated. A telemarketing survey was conducted. However, the firm performing the survey was soon indicted on criminal harassment charges and the data impounded. Finally, the Committee had little else to go on. The proposal was carbon copied to all relevant parties’ assistants, who read the report and toplined it for their bosses. A meeting was called for, and all the relevant decision makers were there, except the vice-president of operations, who was out of town and had to be conferenced in. The majority of the Committee favored the proposal, and those who didn’t were mollified by some modifications to the original proposal. Said modifications were really re-wordings that didn’t substantially change the intent or the degree of the proposal, but those disagreeing weren’t informed of this, and they slept better at night not knowing it.

Before enacting anything, the Committee Chair called in a consultant. The consultant came in, reviewed the proposal and its amendments, understood the intent and its effects, analyzed the working structure of the company, and judged the time it was going to take for him to invest in networking the necessary new relationships, and coordinating the proposal. He also upped his fee by 17%, which in turn had to be approved by the VP of Operations, who was still out of town. His assistant was bullied into approving the request by proxy by the VP of Marketing’s Assistant, who had been there longer, and knew the Ops assistant wanted to be promoted out of that job anyway, as the VP of Ops was always sexually harassing him.

The Consultant agreed to a lesser per diem for meals and the proposal was enacted. For the first time in its long history, the company was about to headhunt outside its normal parameters. Not just outside the field, the city, indeed, the country. It was about headhunt a candidate for its new Director Of Marketing from an entirely different pool of talent. It would headhunt this candidate from a place that had plenty of experience in selling the public things it didn’t need, forcing them to endure its products based on only the most flimsy of promises. It would headhunt this candidate on a place called Earth, in a city called Hollywood.

It took the Consultant only a few weeks to find the perfect candidate. With a smile and a handful of necessary travel items, he embarked on the journey to Hollywood and took a position where he could observe this master of his craft at work.

The moral of the story, of course is it takes a village to hunt the right head.