The "A" Team

When Jack Thompson, president of Lund Structured Woods, decided to create a research and development department for the division, his decision met with universal enthusiasm.

"Why the hell do we need R & D?" bellowed Dirk McAllister, Lund's vice president of manufacturing, over a plate of chicken-fried steak, gravy, and curly fries.

"Keep it down, will ya?" responded Jack sotto voce as he looked sheepishly around to the adjoining tables at the Charlotte diner while shoveling a load of fries into his mouth.

"Why?"

"Because we're in a frickin' restaurant."

"It's a diner, Jack."

"Where I have lunch every day."

"Every day? What's your cholesterol?"

"Only 190, and my triglycerides are good too. Could you please pass the ketchup?" Despite Jack's daily ritual with gravy and fries, he was a fit man in his early sixties with a gray crew cut.

"Amazing, but why R & D?"

"Dave Lund ordered me to do it. He's the boss."

"Just because his family owns the business?"

"It's a good reason; plus, he's the new CEO of Lund."

"But he's young, new to the business, and doesn't know jack."

"Huh?" Jack asked with a puzzled look.

"It's an expression. He doesn't know jack shit about us. Structured Woods makes panels by waferizing trees and gluing them together in huge presses. It's as basic as it gets. What does Dave Lund think R & D can do?"

"I dunno—maybe develop some new products."

"Jack, this is all a bunch of Dave's Harvard Business School bullshit. He probably learned about this in some ivory-tower course about innovation. He's a former management consultant and hasn't done anything himself. This isn't frickin' Apple—we're a wood-panel company! And he's no Steve Jobs."

"I know, I know. He's doing a bunch of Harvard stuff that won't work, like the Lund Management Council, where we get together and talk about our core competencies."

"Our what?"

"Core competencies—it's business-school speak for `what we're good at.'"

"We're good at one thing, Jack: making boards for home construction, and lots of them, at the lowest cost. We don't need a council to figure it out, but creating an R & D department will only get in the way and increase our costs."

"I know."

"Well, what lucky sucker on your staff gets to manage R & D?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about ..."

Dirk McAllister was a gruff man in his midfifties who had spent his entire career in wood manufacturing. He welcomed change like the National Rifle Association embraced universal background checks. After getting his orders from Jack about R & D, Dirk devised a simple plan to handle the situation: hire the cheapest, most innocuous scientist possible and make sure he stayed out of the way.

To accomplish this task, Dirk needed to assemble an unusually weak team to screen and interview candidates. His first choice was obvious: Darrell Hartman, Lund Structured Woods's vice president of human resources and chief people officer. Darrell had a strong reputation for intellectual mediocrity. Some of his Lund colleagues even speculated that Darrell buys his clothes for full price at Jos A. Bank Clothier. He was equally known for political correctness and sentimentality—his title of chief people officer being a prime example.

The second choice was more difficult, but Dirk wanted to augment the soft side of his team with a woman. For this, he picked Lund's vice president of finance, B'linda Mae Jones. B'linda, whose nickname was Trophy (short for "Apostrophe"), was the clear intellectual superior of Darrell, but she was a die-hard women's libber, a perfect bias for hiring a gentler, more innocuous scientist. Trophy offered other benefits, notably her perfect, large breasts atop a slender five-foot-two body and a wild frock of long, curly blonde hair. Her breasts were the talk of Structured Woods and garnered the nickname Bonnie and Clyde.

To round out the team, Dirk asked the Charlotte office receptionist, Beverly Stroup, to join. Beverly was a petite, likable woman in her midthirties who idolized Darrell for his advanced sensitivity and executive capacities—an obvious sign of her dimness.

Dirk decided to locate his new scientist in Lund's manufacturing plant in Athens, Georgia, a three-hour drive from the Charlotte headquarters. The location would minimize Dirk's interaction with him or her. To keep the new scientist even farther out of the way, Dirk would build a cheap lab in the attic of the Athens plant, a desolate place with no windows that was full of plant fumes, a location sure to dissuade any capable candidates from taking the job.

Challenges like this brought out the best in Dirk.

To initiate the search for the new scientist, the team engaged a recruiter who had retired as a human resources manager at a Georgia manufacturing facility. He was a sole practitioner in his sixties, and Darrell had met him at a sensitivity-training workshop in Atlanta years earlier. The choice exceeded Dirk's hopes for incompetence.

Fortunately for Dirk, recruiting scientists in the world of wood products was nearly impossible—wood companies simply didn't have R & D. Wood was like sand—what was there to develop? But the recruiter persisted and introduced several candidates. The team rejected all for being under-qualified, despite Dirk's insistence otherwise. Dirk decided not to overrule his team, lest his strategy become too apparent.

Several weeks later, the team met in Charlotte to review another batch of resumes. The Charlotte office was in a one-story business park outside the city, with dirty carpets, horrible coffee, and motivational posters that Darrell had acquired to improve the morale of the organization. His favorite was a colorful skydiving formation with the caption, "Teamwork: Aim High."

Darrell, Trophy, and Bev sifted through piles of resumes, growing increasingly despondent that none had the right qualifications for the position. Trophy suddenly took an interest in one and queried the team, "Hey, have y'all seen this one? It's from a Dr. Chen, who's apparently Chinese. He's doing a postdoc at Michigan Tech."

Darrell looked up from his pile and said, "No, I haven't. What's his background?"

"He has a PhD in wood science from Beijing University and is now at Michigan Tech researching how to make wood composites lighter and stronger."

"Dr. Chen, huh?" Darrell said, thinking out loud. "That would be good for our diversity. What's his first name?"

"It just says Chen."

"Maybe he's like Madonna," Bev offered.

Two weeks later, the team assembled at the Athens plant to interview Dr. Chen. The plant was a monstrosity, with huge log piles, giant machines, and more than 150 employees. Its conference room had a large, rectangular table with cheap veneer, mismatched chairs, and motivational posters about teamwork and leadership. Dirk had arranged for coffee, Coke, and Diet Coke for his team and Dr. Chen, as well as chocolate doughnuts and bags of Doritos, Trophy's favorite. Darrell had brought detailed interview guides for each team member, complete with a color-highlighted list of topics not to broach, like asking the candidate if he was pregnant.

At 10:00 a.m., the plant receptionist, a woman in her twenties named Billie, knocked on the conference room door and entered.

"Excuse me, y'all, but Dr. Chen is here."

Walking...