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SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option CHAPTER SEVEN - Blindness, Vision, and Sheer Terror
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BLINDNESS, VISION, AND SHEER TERROR All growth
is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of
experience. I've got
to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.
The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human
rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding
their people a steady diet of hatred are over. I don't do
quagmires. A. Acting Executive Director
I called it the "hand of SAIAT" with five fingers consisting of: 1) customized training, 2) public enrollment programs, 3) testing and assessment services, 4) workforce development programs, and 5) training facility services. Testing and certification services generated revenue, and now the focus would be employers, getting out of the One Stop client business. I contacted every local elected official and danced happiest dog and pranciest pony for any supervisor or council member willing to see me. The new vision and new philosophy trickled up the city chain to Manager James Keene as Carol and I saw Mayor Walkup.
I then committed the most humiliating mistake of my career (so far). I trusted Jennifer and Duane. I had plenty of my own self-doubt to deal with as I steered the ship completely around, met with board member after board member, elected official after elected official, trying to salvage what I could of the wreckage. Jennifer kept asserting, "We're doing fine." I remember board members Wayne and John, both seasoned CEO's running their own companies, looking at each other, "How can we be fine if last year's funding was $900,000 and now it's $250,000? Where is the rest coming from?" Jennifer smiled, "We've increased sales." Okay, but those had pretty slim margins. Our classroom rentals were climbing and had fabulous margins, but enough to have us breaking even? The testing and certification services were generating cash. Because we were nonprofit, she did not produce P&L's and balance sheets, per se, but these other statements that well. . . I know. I know. Don't even. Suffice to say that your humble blogger, complete newbie in the world of running a company, trusted the finance person about the finances. In the summer of 2003, my ignorance delayed the experience of the impending terror. After learning of Glenn's departure, Sally Fernandez called me, inviting me to her office. Of course I accepted at once and met her a week later. After waiting in her conference room a couple minutes, in walked this petite, sharp looking dark-haired professional. Sally spoke of an institute she was running, the Technology Development Resources Institute, or TDRI, and that training was one of its components. Another training group, the Manufacturing Education Partnership, run by Ian Ellison, was also involved in the effort. Apparently through this organization, companies would grow and need to train workers as they ramped up. I asked which companies were ramping up, what training would be needed for how many people, and how soon. They looked at me like I was out of my mind. They then asserted that the time would come when workers would have to be trained, and they wanted SAIAT to be available to do the surge demand training. I voiced an eagerness to help any way I could. Now the Acting Director, I started going to more events. SAIAT desperately needed to be seen as something other than its prior reputation. I attended a SAIAA event in the Foothills that included several elected officials, especially state representatives. I met Senator Toni Hellon for the first time. Carol, several SAIAT board members, Sally Fernandez, and Ian Ellison were also present. In August 2003, I drove out west to the TIMPA Airfield. The vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Curt Weldon, R-PA, also watched unmanned aircraft do all sorts of maneuvers. The AINS (Autonomous Intelligent Networks and Systems) demonstration was associated with the ONR (Office of Naval Research) and featured tech types from various universities including Berkeley, UCLA, and MIT. The miniature UAV's (unmanned air vehicles) impressed the group, and I marveled at the coordination and collaboration involved. Eric Feron, a somewhat eccentric looking super-smart MIT professor had a fascinating toaster sized helicopter that zipped around like a hummingbird, featuring a micro-camera showing streaming video to its remote operator.
As I perhaps slightly embarrassed myself with my enthusiasm for Sally's smorgasbord, the bulb flashed. I was being the very person I had judged for being so into the food at SAIAT. To some, in particular our HTHW participants who scraped paycheck to paycheck trying to raise families on $8 an hour, the leftover catering from the Raytheon classes looked to them like Sally's food looked to me. I suddenly felt ashamed for my earlier judgment, and my eyes welled up. The insight went deeper, and it became clear to me that for some of the HTHW participants, the Raytheon leftovers were dinner. No leftovers and these students didn't have dinner. I stood watery eyed in the middle of Sally's fabulous home amidst some of the most successful and influential people in the community, thinking about students who came to class wondering if they would eat dinner that night. This whole scenario was captured perfectly in Schlesinger's masterpiece, Midnight Cowboy (1969), where Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight go to a New York hippie party. Dustin Hoffman sees the spread before him, "Oh, Jesus!" and starts stuffing sandwiches into his pocket. A woman confronts him, "It's free, so you don't have to steal it." Perhaps something about my Capricorn nature required a thicker tangibility for things to click. Was there anything real to this event? I didn't know. In either case, should the reader ever be invited to attend one of the shindigs at Sally's, where people get together to discuss economic growth and projects to foster projects around project development, I strongly encourage you to go. Perhaps now and then people will say something about cloth. Don't worry about it. Just smile and nod with an "Oh" and "Uh-huh" and "Really?" every so often. Change facial expression on occasion to feign approving comprehension, and GO FOR THE FOOD. Fabulous food causes people to make the same sounds they made during other pleasurable activities, so try not to moan. I got into a conversation with Sally's daughter, who oozed SES, a teenager without a care in the world. I asked her about her future aspirations, and she was interested in graphic design and media. She mentioned Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Photoshop. We discussed the rapid development of applications like these and their implications for marketing and artistic expression in general. I asked Sally's daughter for permission to wrap up a piece of the incredible chocolate to take home to my daughter.
The project fit SAIAT so well I almost salivated on the phone. Training REAL workers REAL skills in REAL classrooms to do REAL jobs that REALLY existed with REAL employers. No cloth. No fabric. No trips to Europe. A company needed to train real employees and they needed to do it NOW. This was SAIAT! "No
problem," I assured her, "We can bring them up to speed. When will they have to
start using the Web site?" The employees would be all over the map regarding their skills. Some would have keyboard experience but know little about computers or mice. Fortunately, all they needed to do was know how to navigate a Web site, less trivial than one might think. What are those things on the screen? Moving the mouse does what? Clicking? Let alone left versus right click, and double click? If you have ever seen a person who has never gone near a computer, start trying to use one, you will understand what I am saying. I designed a self-assessment questionnaire to split the population into four groups: 1) those who had never even seen a keyboard, 2) those with keyboard skills but little or no knowledge about computers, icons, or basic Windows, 3) those with basic computer skills but no understanding of Web sites, and 4) those that did not require training. We received the call on Tuesday. Texas Instruments had the questionnaire by Thursday. We broke the training into three 4-hour modules; the first providing familiarity with the keyboard and mouse (Mavis Beacon based), the second providing familiarity with the Windows environment (icons, files, copy, paste, folders, directories, basic Word); the third concentrating on browsers and surfing Web sites, including two hours on the actual Texas Instruments site. Employees learned how to do operations such as clocking in and out, requesting time off, and processing medical insurance claims. I told Duane I needed first-rate instructors including one who spoke Spanish. He got them. TI administered the questionnaire to all the employees and created a list of who needed which modules. We created a schedule, and since they ran 24-hour schedules, so did we. The third shift would take the training from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. We trained 225 people around the clock in two weeks in groups of fourteen. For the 2 a.m. courses, I had a security guard meet the instructor at the front door and remain in the lobby while she taught.
Prior to this letter, I considered the individual a well meaning person. We all had our faults, but I had considered the guy fundamentally benevolent, just old school. He didn't hate or hurt women. So what if he was homophobic? So was half of the Republican Party. My own father, conservative Bible folk that he was, had little comfort with the gay thing. While running the place, Glenn didn't embezzle funds, cruise the world at company expense, or break the law, unless paying Samardak to do nothing counted. If we went after those who paid people to do nothing, we'd have to arrest 20 percent of our workforce. In general Perry had acted with the best interests of the organization at heart. His infatuation with Samardak? Well, some mysteries are never solved. Perry knew damned well his age didn't have anything to do with his dismissal. He acted out of malice. His military pension paid him over five grand a month to sit on his couch, stroke his wife, pet his tiny dogs, and go on cruises. Carol and Steve did exactly what I would have done, which was to not even dignify the letter with a response. After speaking with Carol I immediately called Steve. He asked, "How many employees do you have not counting independent contractors?" "Eight." Steve instructed me to carefully answer the interrogatories and send him the initial draft. The interrogatories drilled into our employment practices and number of employees. I wrote up the responses, sent them to Steve, who made minor modifications. Then the document went to our attorney, who made more minor tweaks and sent the response to Phoenix on his letterhead. Signing one's name on documents with intense notarized language did make one think. Steve joked, "If you were to decide to start lying about something, now would be a bad choice." The episode made no sense. Carol gave me a folder on Glenn. What a file. It showed that in late 2002, in the face of increasing board discontent and frustration, the guy had requested the title of CEO and a whopping 18 percent pay raise. The board, of course, rejected both requests and wrote an alarming performance evaluation that included language about the favoring of a possibly problematic employee. Far more significant and baffling was that at the time of his dismissal, in exchange for two months severance, he had signed an agreement not to file any complaints regarding the company. He had taken the severance and signed the document. Then he threatened to sue anyway? Regardless of legal mumbo jumbo, the understanding was that for two months pay, he would leave the company alone, and it would leave him alone. He took the money and then declared the agreement was not valid. I concluded that the guy thought the fear of a lawsuit or bad publicity would outweigh his four month salary request, and that the board would cave. He thought wrong. When they didn't even respond to his threat, his anger got the best of him and he followed through, violating the agreement he had signed in June 2003. He didn't need the money. The disgusting behavior altered the material you are reading. A month or so later, we got a brief notice from the attorney general stating that the case was dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction. November
2003 noted increasing frustration about GTEC and economic development. In
December, the Star ran a countering article about turf wars. They were
acknowledging over two dozen (last time it was ten) groups involved with
economic development related activities. They asserted that the narrowing of
GTEC's role was regrettable, and that confining it to recruitment of high-tech
firms was like playing chess with no queen. The push was for GTEC to operate in
all modes: job creation, recruitment, retention and expansion, the umbrella
organization of the original 1989 vision.
John Grabo and I had a professional, intelligent conversation where he presented the Tech Park's math. I told him I had some homework to do. My research was thorough and showed that SAIAT wasn't going to be training a soul in that place anytime soon. Our rental operations would have been crippled. If the TDRI actually did anything at this time, I couldn't find it. There was no tangible training demand. I killed the conversation regarding a SAIAT move to the Tech Park. One project involved working with numerous law enforcement agencies to develop a practical and inexpensive robotic airplane, which could be used in surveillance activities. Another project involved Christine Glanz's idea for technology that allowed disabled people to use computers by moving their heads. A pair of glasses would link a sensor to the computer monitor and the mouse would be controlled by mouth. What happened? I had more pressing affairs. Controller Jennifer continued to tell me that we were breaking even. Duane continued to promise we could market and fill boatloads of courses with eager students, but the clock kept ticking and progress was slow. Board doubts about Duane continued to escalate, but we all believed Jennifer accurately tracked our finances, although John and Wayne flexed their foreheads when looking at her figures. Completely out of the blue, at a board meeting (no advance notice) she announced without concern that she had revised the budget to show a $200,000 loss for the year. WTF!!! Jennifer had spent the last seven months insisting we were breaking even. Sometimes, learning a lesson from personal experience was better than learning from the mistakes of others. This was not one of those times. Every jaw in the room dropped. Dead silence roared. John and Wayne looked directly at each other, then down at her numbers, then back at each other. Having sensed trouble all along, they were furious. Wayne spoke out loud, looking downward, addressing himself as much as anyone, "We've been flying blind." BJ avoided eye contact, upset. Carol turned color and looked at me with an expression that put me in a place infinitely worse than any scenario depicted in a Southwest Airlines, "Want to get away?" commercial. I winced and braced for termination. I was given a stay of execution. We were all embarrassed at that moment, and if Jennifer (and perhaps Duane as well) had thought that delivering this bombshell in this manner was the most effective means of destroying me, she was mistaken. Having comfortably dropped the bomb, Jennifer sat in apparent comfort seemingly unaware that the board, while prepared to grill me proper, had also heard her insist we were breaking even for six months when her entire function was to know and report the financial circumstances of the organization. No one would ever look at her the same way again. No longer trusting her, I tore into the financial statements, not hers but those of the banks, and I learned that matters were even worse. We were losing $30,000 per month. I lost a controller and gained a bookkeeper. We emerged from the clouds with clear P&L's and balance sheets providing brutal clarity of the terror of the situation. Bank statements came to me first. From that day on, no one would ever tell me how we were doing financially. I would tell them. I broke the bleeding into functional categories, not expense elements. Somehow I didn't think this lease figured into the Eller business plan for becoming self-sufficient. These were the amounts due monthly for each of the five years: Year 1
month 1 - 6: $9,453.34 (Pima County paid) Our San Francisco-based landlord, Thilo, was a mean-spirited thug. Intel reported he was trying to sell the building and desperately needed to show two long-term contracts (of the three spaces in the building) in order to screw MAS real estate into buying the place. According to reports, less than two long-term contracts, and no deal. Without SAIAT, he could not count to two. I called him February 2004, "SAIAT's bleeding to death and by summer you will have no tenant and no rent. If rent is not cut by more than half, we will close. I am willing to give up space, whatever, but you are never going to see the money in the current contract." He stammered about his generosity with the county during the first two years, and I told him SAIAT's bank didn't give a rat's ass about his generosity with the county. We split the facility in two, upgraded the warehouse to first-rate classrooms and labs, and he paid for it. The contract slashed the rent from $20K to $10K in a new five-year lease that had reasonable (2 percent) increases after years two and four. I despised Thilo. He was one of THOSE landlords who milked and neglected. He didn't perform proper maintenance, band-aided everything rather than perform proper upkeep, but by god, he sure knew how to cash the rent check. I knew the air-conditioners on the roof were woefully neglected as was the roof itself. Thilo had Max and Angel, his buddies, in charge of maintaining the building. Their mission: spend nothing. We fought tooth and nail as I tried to pull his fangs out of SAIAT's neck. I won some issues and lost some, such as having to pay $3000 for an extra circuit for the computer labs. His angle: I didn't specify in the electrical drawings that computer labs needed more outlets. The drawings did say they were computer labs. What, pray tell, did one put into computer labs? You get the idea, but just one more example. Our neighbor, DES, had electricity included in their lease. SAIAT did not. As our electric bill spiraled summer 2004, I grew so furious I had TEP throw our breakers and shut us down completely. DES lost power in several of their offices as well as some AC units. That SOB was feeding off the SAIAT meter to supply electricity to DES at SAIAT's expense.
Max and Angel were gone. I went on a cost-cutting rampage. While we were not ridiculously irresponsible, the controller had not been controlling. Skipping the list, for just one example we had a six-yard dumpster costing $150 a month. We could do fine with a two-yard at a third of the price. We paid $25 a month to have a courier pick up our deposits. I chose to make the deposits myself. Every other sentence out of Duane's mouth was, "We have to buy. . ." No, we
didn't. He insisted, "But you have to spend money to make money!" I called Broadband Labs and cancelled both the email service as well as the hosting of our web site. We will host our own, thank you very much. While the new salesperson was successfully networking in the community as I'd instructed and generating some training sales to businesses, Duane persisted in thinking in terms of the general public and individual students. Hindsight provides the ability to write clearly now, but at the time it was not obvious that he was not implementing my instructions. The SAIAT policy was to establish relationships with local employers, get to know them, and then respond to any requests for training. Duane continued to push the idea of scheduled classes marketed to the public. The blood kept flowing, and my life started to unravel. I got a terse email from the wife, "I want to talk to you tonight." B. The Wife, the Dogs, and the Divorce The last time this occurred I learned of two credit cards and $8,000 of debt racked up without my knowledge. Some people, if breathing, want to buy something. I had come home one day, and she had that look. Okay, where was it and how much did it cost? The Solo-flex ran $350. She did not touch the thing ONCE. I came home another day, and a man and woman were spray painting our address on the street curb. I smiled at them, and they looked at me. The woman remained cool as a shark, but the guy had a hand in the cookie jar expression. I went inside. The wife had paid them ten bucks, "If there's an emergency, the ambulance can find our house quicker." Okay, ten bucks. I didn't say a thing, but I ran back outside, if nothing else just to crucify the cookie thief best I could with my face, but they were long gone. My sense was that the instant I entered the house the guy had turned to the woman, "Let's get the hell out of here before that husband comes back out." We didn't have a blender. We had a Vita-Mix. A Vita-Mix was a blender that cost $500. She bought it because we were going to use it to make all sorts of incredibly healthy concoctions that would improve our quality of life. Following a recipe of some kind she put broccoli, apples, nuts, bananas, wheatgrass juice, salmon, whatever, into this thing and then whipped it to smithereens the results of which no one in the house would touch, let alone eat, uh, drink. I poured some of the stuff into the dogs' dishes, a huge mistake. Now everyone hated me. It insulted and infuriated the entire household, especially the dogs.
Regarding the Solo-flex, the wife came to her senses and recovered her money selling it to some idiot who wouldn't touch it either. The Vita-Mix cut ice like butter. I skinned and deseeded a juicy lime, grabbed some Hornitos tequila and triple sec, and in the hands of your humble blogger the Vita Mix discovered its future. When I met the wife, she was a single mom with a six-year-old kid who had a horrible medical condition called multiple exostosis, which meant that bones grew on top of bones. A bump in the middle of a femur caused no trouble, but bumps crippled the joints. Alyssa had to have multiple surgeries where they cut into her joints, separated flesh from bone, and shaved or ground down the bumps and ridges. Blades and saws cut into knees, fingers, ankles, and the worst, her right hip, which required shaving close to a large artery. The hip surgery involved terror. I pulled out the biggest gun I had, my father, a deeply religious and connected Christian Protestant. When the church would get a new minister, my father conducted the interview with two or three other church leaders. When the hip surgery was about to occur, I called him. I asked him to pray for her and pray hard. He did. The surgery succeeded over the longest ten hours of my life. In another surgery, the doctor also had to break the leg at a place above the ankle, place steel rod fixators into the bones, and as the separated bones tried to mend, we turned a screw that slowly pulled them apart. This stretched the bones. By the age of eight, Alyssa had a Ph.P, the doctorate of physical pain. Her six year daughter liked my six year old daughter. I will spare the reader, but trust I had understandable reasons for marrying this person. We did a Brady Bunch, each having a six year old daughter, and learned the reality that couples spanning too wide an SES gap faced tough odds. My beginnings were middle-class modest but wholesome and comfortable. Everyone loved everyone. No violence. The wife did not have this privilege. I will skip a long explanation and just note that we had different philosophies regarding integrity, entertainment, and what crippled more marriages than most realized, fiscal restraint. I got home. We shut the door. She kept it short, "I want a divorce." She was
200 percent right. I thought a moment, and what a moment. We looked at each other in silence. She waited for me
to speak. I kept my
words soft, "I want to thank you and acknowledge you for
having the courage I didn't have." The wife
was gone. An Arizona native, the wife packed a revolver fully loaded with those shredding bullets designed to inflict maximum damage. When women kill, it is almost always their significant others. It could have been worse.
I knew hatred and violence (more on violence later). Maybe in the next universe the next god will arrange things so this shit didn't happen. Judge me all you want, go for it, but the reader has no right to judge the wife. I miss those dogs, in particular Lucky. What a sweet, loving animal. I also miss Alyssa. I could not prevent her suffering, but at least I provided the health insurance and co-pays for all of those surgeries. C. Cloth Carnage, Politicians, and Cigar Man SAIAT continued to bleed profusely while the community discussed growing frustration with economic development. In March 2004, a new panel was formed that would assess the structure and accountability of economic development efforts in Tucson. The panel's leadership team included Mayor Bob Walkup, Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson, University of Arizona President Peter Likins, Raytheon Missile Systems President Louise Francesconi, and UniSource Energy Corp. Chairman Jim Pignatelli. The panel would make recommendations by summer on the coordination and structure of economic development activities across southern Arizona. What activities? We had Pima County's Office of Economic Development, the City of Tucson's Office of Economic Development, the Greater Tucson Economic Council, the University of Arizona's Office of Economic Development, various Pima Community College programs, Goodwill Industries of Tucson, SAIAT, the Micro-business Advancement Center, Hermie Cubillos JobPath, and others. People voiced concerns about duplication of effort. "This panel is saying to the community that we need to get all sectors of economic development on the same page," Larry Aldrich said. "We're not there." I could hardly be described as aggressive, but all local elected officials without exception received letters and phone calls from me offering to visit their office or have them meet me at SAIAT for a tour and presentation. Most agreed, and I met many at their offices including Supervisors Ray Carroll, Ann Day, Ramon Valadez, and of course Sharon both at her office and at the SAIAT facility. On the city side, Carol West came to our place as did Fred Ronstadt. I visited Kathleen Dunbar and Shirley Scott at their offices. I frankly enjoyed meeting everyone, and most of the discussions were intelligent and informative. My politically independent nature continued, as my interactions found great people in both parties. When Senator Giffords entered the lobby, I became very nervous and self-conscious. She radiated an energy. I remember thinking, "This person is going to Washington!" the instant I shook her hand. We had lunch and then ended up in my office for a PowerPoint presentation. Gabrielle seemed to devour information the way I did. She was the first and only person (so far) I'd met that had this particular flavor of information absorption, except she didn't have all that blood under the bridge. Her future looked bright. As I mentioned, Clinton's Labor Secretary Robert Reich sent a team of people to learn about Magma Copper, resulting in President Clinton's meeting our CEO. I'd read several of Reich's books and considered the man a genius. Many of SAIAT's ideas were based on his writings. My presentation included a quote from him, and Senator Giffords turned to me, "Bob's a good friend of mine." On entering my office, her eyes scanned the environment, paused on the photos of my daughter, and then her eyes locked on a plaque on my wall. Did she ever know which plaque to pick. Ignoring the typical degrees and not even glancing at the Java certificates, she stared at the Magma Copper Leadership Development Program Plaque signed by Burgess Winter, CEO of Magma Copper Company. She turned
to me, "What was this?" Her eyes
widened and she inhaled sharply,"Huh!" Oh, twist my arm. I couldn't help poking
around and learned that the senator had sold her dad's tire company in 1999 to
Goodyear, conceding that the new owner could offer better pay and services. I
considered it a preview of the Wal-mart phenomenon. I figured Discount Tire was
kicking her sideways. Gabrielle was quoted in the press, "I didn't want to be
the last person to be arranging the chairs on the Titanic." This occurred to the suppressed elation of several others in the room. I was pulling six figure fangs out of SAIAT's neck. To summarize FY 2004, Jennifer had disguised our losses for a while, but then we woke up. I focused on slashing costs and cutting overhead to respond to our dramatically reduced funding. The main themes involved: 1) cutting the building and rent in half, 2) eliminating the HTHW program, and 3) staff re-alignment. By the summer of 2004, I had cut the bleeding from $30,000 to $10,000 per month. The ground was getting closer. I met Senator Giffords for dinner early July to discuss the leadership development program, and we spoke for four hours. We discussed leadership, the nature of leadership, the essence of leadership, my training on leadership, and her training on leadership. It clicked for her, "That's why your math program does so well. You're not just teaching math. You're leading a course." Exactly, and I introduce the concept of "leading a course" which is distinct from "teaching a class." Public speaking ranks highest on the list of frightening experiences. Death ranks second. Few find addressing even a couple dozen of their peers easy. I've seen macho tough Harley riding tattooed bad boys turn to jelly. The worst teachers are those that address this by "checking out" from the people in the room. They stand in front of the room and do what they do, but no connection exists. They either talk to the board (ever have one of those?) or they address some non existent student at the back of the room. To get at course leadership, let's stick to classroom led events and stratify along effectiveness. At the lowest level, teaching involves standing before a group and explaining something while others watch with minimal connection between speaker and audience. Two key skills take us up the ladder of effectiveness, the first being the mastery of the material and the ability to explain in a logical, easy to understand flow supplemented with the generation context and meta-content (think big picture and showing how the pieces fit). Inept instructors forget to do this, and students find it difficult to ask big picture questions. The second skill involves the connection with the participants. No matter how clearly one can explain material, one's teaching abilities are capped at a low level if one cannot interact with the audience, and interacting with the audience involves rich and deep distinctions. To interact with the people in the room, one has to pay attention to them. How much attention? Is the instructor paying attention to the students or to what he is saying, or is he self-conscious and assessing how well the course is proceeding? What's the instructor really trying to accomplish in front of these people, anyway? Sure? Effective instruction involves multi-tasking the delivery of the material with the management of the room's response. Mastery of the material at all levels coupled with the ability to dance from level to level to address the participants' non-verbal requests combined with the ability to distinguish these unspoken requests produces a gifted instructor, provided one additional ingredient is added: leadership. Effectively "leading a course" requires the simultaneous awareness of a conversation with each individual in the room, managing 15, 20, 25, 50, 100 separate conversations as effectively as if one were speaking with one person, noting facial expressions, body language, sense of understanding, connection, and emotional experiences. Truly leading a course involved the ability to have an effective level of awareness of what each participant was experiencing as the course unfolded. This produces a completely different experience from sitting in a class where the instructor does not know if a particular individual is in the room. Taking a course led by a course leader, one felt as engaged as if in a one on one conversation. You could not "check out" or disengage for more than a few seconds, or the instructor would be looking right at you, "Susan, what's going on?" My participants in the Math Skills Enhancement course (MSE) learned an average of over three years of mathematics in twelve weeks and raised their wages an average of $2.50 per hour. What do you think I was doing? I apologize if I sound arrogant, but I am angry. I poured my heart out at SAIAT for this community. People I trusted told me to my face that I was doing excellent work. People told me that they were friends. They invited me to Austin. They said they supported SAIAT and liked what I was doing. Then they butchered me. They hacked me to pieces like an animal in a slaughterhouse. Then they lied about it. We'll get to that. Returning to the dinner with Senator Giffords, our discussion on leadership and its development probably occurred over 75 minutes. All I remember from the other 165 minutes is that her mother likes art. By July 2004, I was facing my own hell. At a higher profile level, all doubt had ceased regarding crosshairs on Steve Weathers. City Council Member Fred Ronstadt (Republican) stated that there was cause to expect better results. Council Member Steve Leal (Democrat) noted his lack of enthusiasm for the slogan, "Tucson, Opportunity Accelerated." The community was going to take Steve Weathers out. Did he know? I had plenty of SAIAT's bleeding to think about and didn't have time to worry about Steve. The summer of 2004 was the most stressful period of my life. Could it get worse? Yes. Our community leaders created two groups to look at economic development. One group was the Blue Ribbon Panel. This consisted of the mayor, Supervisor Bronson, University of Arizona President Peter Likens, PCC Chancellor Ray Flores, UniSource CEO James Pignatelli, and Raytheon Missile Systems President Louise Francesconi. The other group came from the county, and they called themselves the Economic Development Advisory Committee. They had the mission to get the economic development conversation sorted out once and for all. We needed to develop a clear understanding of who was supposed to recruit, who was supposed to do retention and expansion, and who was supposed to do workforce development, and we needed to eliminate duplication. We didn't know this? I thought GTEC was supposed to recruit, city OED retained and expanded, and the county developed the workforce. No? Well, it actually could be confusing. These people were not stupid. For example, was the Arizona Department of Commerce Job Training Grant workforce development or retention and expansion? Did this program also help attract businesses to the community? People had grown tired of cloth and fabric. The need for the city and county to cooperate was a no-brainer. Mayor Walkup and Supervisor Bronson loudly proclaimed this fact. Bronson said, "I would hope we take a regional focus and emphasize accountability and transparency. I don't care who gets credit as long as we get the job done." The water around GTEC in July of 2004 was clearly turning red. Numbers fell dismally below expectations. Marana and Oro Valley could point to essentially nothing for their investments, and all but zeroed their funding. Weathers was swimming in bloody water, and so was I. By the end of July, the forces behind the demise of GTEC began to rapidly consolidate and grow teeth. The Citizen stated, "Top elected city and county officials, plus top university and community college administrators, have decided to take direct control of economic development efforts for the Tucson region." Of course, they did not say, "GTEC is toast." Instead, the following verbiage was put forward: "A new, nonprofit entity would be established. This entity would put in place a system to strengthen the coordination, collaboration and communication among the three dozen or so public and private groups that work to create jobs, expand business and keep companies from leaving town." According to a James Zwilling 7/30/2004 ITB article, of these three dozen, eighteen said they helped with recruitment, fifteen said they did retention and expansion, and five said they did workforce training. We had eighteen agencies doing recruitment? The community would create a new entity, a 501 c6 with a board of directors that would be like the Blue Ribbon Panel or close. Amazingly or perhaps just being politically correct, Weathers stated, "I think it's great. Let's move forward and execute." In this context, I understood execution. For the next fiscal year, the County slashed GTEC's funding from $500,000 to $200,000. When funding is cut by more than 50 percent, start saving files, preparing documents, and crafting the exit. Remember this. I will get my turn. Well, no one was talking about creating a new SAIAT, but that provided no comfort. Talk circulated that both GTEC and SAIAT were falling apart. The ice under my feet grew thinner. We were still losing money. The board's opinion of Darth continued to decline, and I was starting to take heat that perhaps, like my predecessor, I was sweet on a problematic employee. Everyone's voices grew shriller. While not insubordinate, Duane continued to think in terms of marketing to individual students. Carol finally got so frustrated that she called a breakfast meeting to make perfectly clear what presentation she wanted from Darth at the next board meeting. The meeting occurred on the same day I had to present to the economic development panel that would determine SAIAT's funding for the next year. After the breakfast, I asked Darth if he was clear what she wanted him to present, and he assured me that he was. I told him that this meeting would be important for him. The plane was still hurtling toward the ground and rumors that SAIAT would be closing grew louder. Intel suggested that considered us dead already. I updated the date on my letter of resignation. I needed to talk to someone intelligent for advice. Senator Giffords met me for coffee at Ike's. I confessed my predicament, and she required three quarters of a second to understand everything, "Unconscionable, absolutely unconscionable," she said. I had never seen her angry before. She then told me of several executive directors whose nonprofits had been tossed off cliffs. After the bankruptcy and closure, they used the experience to generate even better situations for themselves, including elected office. What she said that helped the most was: "Listen, just make sure that you control the variables that you can and do your best. There's no point in driving yourself crazy over variables you can't influence." I felt better after seeing her and started thinking about the variables I could control. I could not control what Pima County's Economic Development Advisory Committee was going to do regarding our funding, but I could control my presentation. I knew they were on a mission regarding duplication, so I centered my speaking on two themes: 1) our losses and the shift to correct them, and 2) our uniqueness and duplication. I spoke around noon, and Don Martin of Competitive Engineering, chairman of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council's economic development task force and committee member, grilled me proper. James Zwilling of ITB captured it this way in his August article:
Matt Foraker, SAIAT's managing
director, requested $200,000 in funding from the county for fiscal year
2005-2006, $50,000 more than it received this year SAIAT asked for the increase
in funding to help the organization transition from a grant funded non-profit
agency to a corporate funded agency. Presentation complete, I charged back to SAIAT for the board meeting. Duane sent me his slides a few hours before the meeting. Of course, I had no time to review them, and when he stood up to do his thing, it was abstract theoretical bullshit that made positively no sense to a single person in the room and had zero correlation, ZERO, to what Carol had specifically requested over breakfast two weeks earlier. He might as well have been speaking cloth. While he spoke the board crucified me with sharp, darting looks (all well deserved). I had not seen or approved of his work ahead of time. I would never endorse such a presentation. Although I had been busy preparing for the committee, there was no excuse. Carol was so upset she had to leave the room. After her departure BJ went samurai with a sword in each hand and sliced Duane to smithereens in front of all of us. After the
meeting BJ approached me, "Did you ask to see his presentation ahead of time?" She cut me a look and held it. I could see the tombstones in her eyes. On August 27, 2004, Citizen writer Brad Branan stated the obvious that seemed to go unaddressed, Arizona's education problem. He cited it as the principle cause of the city's poverty rate. At the time of the article, one in five people lived in poverty. Nationally it was about one in eight, and in both the nation and the city, it was getting worse. I will spare the reader, but keep in mind who was president of the country at this time. Marshall Vest noted, "Education is the key. We have a high drop out rate at the high schools." Pima County School Superintendent Linda Arzoumanian remarked that Pima County lobbied for daylong kindergarten, supported by Governor Nepolitano as well as Senator Gabrielle Giffords, which the Arizona legislature agreed to fund. Linda noted, "Economics and education play hand in hand." Marshall Vest added that Tucson had an abundance of low-paying jobs. He then hit the nail on the head: "Companies with higher-paying jobs were reluctant to come to Tucson because the city had a poorly educated workforce." August 2004 ranks among the worst of my life. The stress crushed me. I tasted blood and could barely eat. I lost over ten pounds that month. The taste in my mouth was far stronger than the period before Glenn's departure. I could even smell it (blood does have a distinct smell), iron thick in the air. I updated the date on my letter of resignation and told Carol that if the board thought I was the problem, I would leave gracefully. No wailing or protest. I had failed. I visited another board member privately and voiced my willingness to step aside and let Duane run the place. Her response was that Duane would run the place over the bodies of twelve dead board members, including hers, and added, "If you resign, SAIAT will close." The place was hanging by a thread. I got a call at 9 p.m. the night of Wednesday, August 16 from an upset Carol. By the end of the call, we were both shaking. I knew the board was crafting the closure of the organization, and that I would receive some kind of document demonstrating the board's efforts to help me and provide responsible direction. Carol called an emergency meeting for late August.
I got a hateful phone message and email from Duane's wife, "I hope you sink with that ship." I felt like calling her back, "The next time your husband works for an organization, and the chair of its board invests the time to share a meal with him to make a request, he had better comply with that request. I was on your husband's side. He was not on mine." The next month, for the first time since I had taken the helm, SAIAT did not lose money. The board formally promoted me to executive director. On Monday, September 28, dropped by the 10th floor of 130 just to say hi and check in, and ended up in Tom Moulton's office. He shut the door (shit), "There's been an email." Duane had emailed a supervisor. Moulton would not say which supervisor, but he didn't have to. It had to have been Sharon Bronson, Chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. "What did it say?" "Well," he cleared his throat, "it says that you're a drug addict, probably cocaine, and an alcoholic. You are utterly incompetent and have no idea what you are doing. You have no work ethic, are gone most of the time, and don't do anything." He paused, reading the computer screen, "It says that the chair of the board is a complete idiot with less than half a brain. A city employee actually runs SAIAT. You are totally inept, completely worthless, and a terrible excuse for a human being. When he informed the board of directors of your sheer irresponsibility, incompetence, and utter dereliction of duty, you and the board fired him for blowing the whistle." This had gone to the chair of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and then to County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry. It could have been worse. I did not get to see the email, but clearly it read hot. A professional hit would have read cool.
CEO Burgess heard about the fiasco and was not pleased. Burgess Winter was a for real CEO of a Fortune 500 company and when stupidity happened, people suffered. My assassin, having missed his target, was executed (God-sanctioned firing squads don't miss). He was told to leave the country and never again seek work in the United States copper industry. My manager, also humiliated, suffered. In front of everyone, he lost me (I was transferred to another department), the assassin, and one other employee. He lost three people and looked like an idiot. His well-known aspirations for VP virtually evaporated. The VP's figured that he clearly did not see the value I was providing, so losing me did not constitute any loss. Obviously the assassin had too much time on his hands, and my boss probably didn't need SC either in light of this hanky panky occurring under his watch. The assassin surfaced months later fixing conveyor belts at a copper mine in Chile, reinforcing yet again Machiavelli's, "Do not wound if you cannot kill." I had not been completely innocent in the 1995 situation. I had made mistakes and behaved in ways that gave the assassin ammunition, which he masterfully used to craft a picture that was simply not true. I must accept responsibility for providing the seeds that made me a target. I had been at the University of Arizona for five years. I learned the hard way that the culture of our higher education institutions differed from that of a copper smelter. The experience left me profoundly sympathetic to the wrongfully accused. My heart goes out to the innocent who find themselves accused of crimes that bring forth undeserved condemnation and contempt. I will never forget January 19, 1995. Duane's amateurish email's inane attack on Carol, a respected former state representative known by many people, crippled its credibility. When was an extremely busy and fully employed city worker supposed to be running SAIAT? The board met every month and knew what I was doing. The notion that I did nothing evaporated on impact. As far as I could tell, his message did not contain a single fact. I looked
at Tom, "Well?" In the background were the facial expressions. Me: Any questions? Her (if I read correctly): Welcome to what it is to run a business. A phone call shot information up the city chain, and a board sub-committee and I met to discuss recent events. I offered to have a lab cut my hair and do the analysis that identifies everything I'd consumed for the past six months. I looked them in the eye and made a serious offer. If they wanted to cover their bases and be able to say they responded to the allegations, then cut my hair and let the lab do the investigation. They wouldn't even consider it. Tom joked, "Based on those cost reduction efforts of the past year, I must say you're the most focused addict I've ever seen." They laughed. The network rippled feedback from the advisory council that my presentation had been the best of all the agencies. True or not, SAIAT got the $50,000 increase in funding that I had requested, to $300,000, which gave us a chance. I thought I had saved the organization. I thought the heart and soul that I had poured into the place had borne fruit. Around Thanksgiving 2004,
I met Cigar Man. He approached me in the cigar shop, "Are you the guy
that runs SAIAT?" We walked
and smoked. Cigar Man shared with me, "Everyone expected you to close." WTF!!
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