The Goal

233

"Will I see you again on Saturday?" she asks. I smile a little "Yeah, sure. Sounds good." She says, "I'm sorry about what happened." "I guess we'll just have to keep trying until we get it right." We both start smiling. Then we do some of that nice stuff that makes an argument almost worth the agony.

I get home just as the sun is starting to set. The sky is rosy pink. As I'm unlocking the kitchen door, I hear the phone ring- ing inside. I rush in to grab it.

"Good morning," says Jonah.

"Morning?" Outside the window, the sun is almost below the horizon. I laugh. "I'm watching the sun set. Where are you calling from?"

"Singapore," he says.

"Oh."

"By the way, from my hotel I'm watching the sun r ise ," Jonah says. "Alex, I wouldn't have called you at home, but I'm not going to be able to talk to you again for a few weeks."

"Why not?"

"Well, it's a long story and I can't go into it now," he says. "But I'm sure we'll have a chance to discuss it some time."

"I see..." I wonder what's going on, but say, "That's too bad. It puts me in a kind of a bind, because I was just about to ask for your help again."

"Has something gone wrong?" he asks.

"No," I tell him. "Everything is generally going very well from an operations standpoint. But I just had a meeting with my division vice president, and I was told the plant has to show an even bigger improvement."

"You're still not making money?" he asks.

I say, "Yes, we are making money again, but we need to accelerate the improvement to save the plant from being shut down."

I hear the trace of a chuckle on the other end of the line, and Jonah says, "If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about being shut down."

"Well, from what the head of the division has told me, the possibility of a shut-down is real," I tell him. "And until he says otherwise, I can't afford to take this lightly."

"Alex, if you want to improve the plant even more, I'm with you all the way," Jonah says. "And since I won't have the oppor- tunity to speak to you for awhile, let's talk about it now. Bring me up to date on what's happening."