I was greeted by a petite, fortyish blonde woman in blue jeans who was sitting at the front desk. “Can I help you?”

Before I could answer, she continued, “Are you Jack?” Though she apparently knew who I was, she smiled politely as though I were just another visitor, maybe the FedEx guy or a caterer, but certainly not the conquering general arriving to size up the spoils of his victory.

“I’m here for a meeting with Amy Stirling and Dick Janice.” I’m pretty sure that I didn’t smile, because I felt a sudden surge of self-consciousness and inferiority. I wondered if she noticed.

Without a trace of anxiety, she responded, “I’m Amy Stirling.”

Like a moron, I spoke without thinking, asking a question that was as unnecessary as it was inane. “Is this where you sit, Amy?”

She smiled in a puzzled kind of way. “No, this is the reception desk. Christa is on her honeymoon, so we’re all trying to cover for her. And I was waiting for you.”

Seeming to sense my discomfort, Amy continued, “Why don’t you go on into the conference room, and I’ll see if I can’t find Dick and Matt. Grab a drink from the kitchen if you want something.” She motioned to a doorway next to the conference room.

A minute later I was sitting alone at the oak table in the fishbowl room, opening a Diet Coke. And then it dawned on me.

So this is it. This is the physical source of the frustration and anxiety that Marty and I have been feeling.

Suddenly, I had an urge to get up and explore every nook and cranny of the office, to invisibly observe the meetings and listen in on the phone calls where they plotted to drive us crazy. That impulse was quickly and strangely replaced by an urge to leave.

I couldn’t decide whether I was more afraid of confronting the little monster I had been loathing for these past few years, or of discovering that it wasn’t as ugly as I had imagined. Whatever the case, it was too late to consider, because at that moment Amy and two of her colleagues walked into the room.

Dick seemed as friendly and calm as Amy, which I found disturbing all over again. Do these people even know who I am and why I’m here?

Fortunately, the last and youngest of the partners, Matt O’Connor, gave me a nervous vibe that reconnected me with reality. A freckle-faced redhead, Matt didn’t manage to smile when he shook my hand, and he looked away as soon as he could.

Dick spoke first. “Welcome to Half Moon Bay, Jack. I hope you didn’t have any problem finding our strange little office.”

I assured him I hadn’t, and we exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and the blue-striped lighthouse and the school building where they worked. Then I decided to take control of the discussion.

“Okay, so how are you guys doing?” I didn’t give them a chance to answer. “Things must be a little unsettling right now.”

I was afraid they were going to look at me as though they didn’t know what I was talking about and say “No, actually we’re good.”

Thankfully, they didn’t. Dick went first, smiling painfully. “I’d say things are at an all-time low from a morale standpoint.”

The others nodded, but Amy clarified. “It’s not that anyone’s going to jump out a window or anything. They’re just in shock, and a little worried. But they’re busy, and that’s good.”

“How is business these days?” I asked. Before they could respond, I felt the need to clarify. “I mean, normally I would have all that information before coming in here today. But I just found out about all this two days ago and I’ve been traveling, so—”

Dick interrupted, reassuringly: “Don’t worry about it. We’re all spinning a little right now.”

Finally, Matt spoke, in a slightly defensive tone. “We’re busier than we’ve been in a long time, and we’re completely maxed out in terms of bandwidth. We had to turn down two clients this month, good clients, because we just couldn’t handle the load. But just this morning we reluctantly agreed to work with a new client, and that’s going to be a push for us until a few people get back from vacation.”

Though I’m sure that I concealed my surprise, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

At K&B, we had never turned down a client, not if they could pay us. Even if we were strapped for consultants, we would borrow someone from another practice, accelerate our hiring, or, more often than not, just work people that much harder into the evening and on weekends. This must have been what Marty was referring to when he talked about the country club.

“Well, it’s great that you’re busy.” I tried my best to seem sincere, but I realized that I probably came across as patronizing. Whatever. “By the way, who is your new client?”

Amy responded first. “A supply chain company in San Mateo called Boxcar.”

This time I had to work even harder to hide my reaction.

Boxcar had been one of the potential clients in our sales pipeline, and I had them rated pretty high in terms of our probability of closing them. I hadn’t known they were even talking to Lighthouse.

As much as I wanted to ask about how they won the deal, I didn’t want to acknowledge my own loss. I decided to let it go and change the subject.

“So, how much do you know about Kendrick and Black?”

Amy went first. “Well, I know you’re headquartered in the city, and that you’re a lot bigger than we are. But to be honest, I don’t really know a lot about how you guys approach the market and how you work with clients. I’m assuming that you have a variety of different practices, but I couldn’t say what they are and how you compare to any of the other big consulting firms out there. They all kind of blend together for me.”

I have to admit that I didn’t believe her for a second. As a partner, she had to know more than that about one of her biggest competitors.

Matt chimed in before I could fill in the blanks for Amy. “You know, five or six years ago I sat next to someone on an airplane who worked in the Human Capital practice at K&B. I remember her telling me that you,” he directed his remarks at me, “have four or five offices around the country, and something like five different practices.”

I politely corrected him. “We’ve grown the number of offices to seven, one in London and another in Beijing, and consolidated our practices down to four. There’s strategy, which is my practice. Human capital, which includes HR and team-building and organizational stuff. Finance, which includes everything from mergers and acquisitions to investments. And M&O—manufacturing and operations—which I suppose is pretty self-explanatory.”

Matt was writing all of this down as though he really had no idea.

“What’s the culture at K&B like?” Dick asked.

“Well, it’s very collegial and professional and client-focused,” I responded without even thinking.

“How so?” Dick wanted to know.

“Well, I hoped you weren’t going to ask that, because I don’t really know what any of that means. We just say it because it’s printed in our brochures and on our website.”

Actually, I didn’t say that. Instead, I gave him some generic pitch about working together across disciplines and going the extra mile for clients, blah blah blah. Frankly, I wasn’t sure there really was a culture at K&B, other than doing whatever you had to do to keep your clients happy and paying their bills. And to me, that seemed like the best kind of culture for a consulting firm.

“What about you?” Amy asked. “How long have you been there? What is your role at the firm?”

I was actually starting to believe that she really didn’t know anything about me, my firm, or what was going on here. If I had been in her shoes, sitting on the wrong side of a merger, I’d have tapped into every resource this side of the CIA to find out who and what and why things were happening. She seemed to be just going along for the ride.

“Well, I head up sales for our strategy practice. I’ve been at K&B for a little more than five years. Before that I served as a VP of strategic planning for a big medical device company. And before that I was at business school in Boston.” I paused, then embarrassed myself when I felt the need to add, “At Harvard.”

They seemed genuinely interested and gracious, even when I did my academic name-dropping.

Without changing his facial expression or tone of voice, Dick asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: “So, what do you guys plan to do with us, anyway?”

And there it was.

I should have felt worse for giving such a vague and empty, if not downright dishonest, answer. But isn’t that what companies say to the firms they acquire?

I wasn’t about to tell him how Marty felt about their firm. And I certainly didn’t mention that one of the most likely reasons they had been acquired was to remove a thorn from our side and add to our client list. If that were in fact the case, it would become evident soon enough, so there was no reason to make this initial phase of the integration more difficult than it already was.

Now Amy dove in, and her demeanor seemed to change in a subtle but unmistakable way. She was suddenly confident, if not just slightly aggressive. “Jack, how much do you know about us?”

I felt threatened. I stammered. “Well, you guys have a good reputation, as far as I can tell.” I wanted to be complimentary but without giving them too much credit and losing my authority. “I know you do most of your work in high tech, and so a lot of it is local.”

They nodded and seemed to be waiting for more details. When she realized that I had nothing else to offer, Amy dove back in.

“Okay, you’re right that most of our clients are here in the Bay Area, but they’re not exclusively high tech. We focus on local clients because years ago Michael Casey decided that there was plenty of work in this area to keep us busy and off of airplanes. So we travel only in rare and special circumstances.”

That was the first mention of the famous Mr. Casey, and I wasn’t going to do or say anything that would provoke more discussion of him. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

So I decided to ask a deflective question. “Your work is exclusively in strategy, am I right?”

Matt shot back, “No. We actually do a lot more than strategy.”

Dick smiled and explained, “We market ourselves as a strategy firm, but we almost always end up doing more, usually in the areas of organizational development and operational consulting.”

This was news to me. “So once you get a new client and prove yourselves, you sell other projects to them?”

Amy squinted. “Well, I don’t think that’s how we describe it. It’s usually just a matter of clients asking us to take on different projects, and so we’ve developed something of a competency in those areas. But we don’t really advertise any of that, because it really begins and ends with strategy.”

As much as I wanted to write all of this down, I didn’t want to come across as being too interested or surprised.

Then we were interrupted by a young woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt who carried a stack of binders into the room and set them on the table. Amy introduced her as Mary, one of the junior consultants at the firm, and she went on her way.

I picked up one of the binders, saw that it contained financial information and client records, and started to get excited. I love data, and I had a feeling that the meeting was about to get fun.

For the next half hour we tore through the binders, diving into the areas that were interesting to me. It would be an understatement to say that I was stunned by what I saw.

First, their client list was much stronger than I had expected. A shorter list than ours, without a doubt, but in some ways a more impressive one, I had to admit. But only to myself.

Their costs per client were slightly higher than ours, which I quickly learned was caused by the fact that they had very few junior consultants. In fact, their average consultant salary was considerably higher than ours, even though they paid their partners less than we did. Lighthouse simply had no legion of young, underpaid worker bees like we had at K&B.

Given their cost structure, I assumed that their profit margins would be lower than ours. This would seem to be inevitable. That’s why I had to look twice when I found the page on profitability. They were actually doing a little better than us!

“I’m afraid this doesn’t add up,” I said out loud—and immediately regretted. “According to these numbers, you guys make about three to five percent more profit per client than we do. That seems impossible!”

Amy and Matt turned the pages in their binders to the same one that I was looking at.

Dick was staring at me, as though he were trying to read my mind. “Why does that seem impossible?”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I mean, if you don’t use junior consultants, which leads you to have a higher salary structure than we do, which leads you to have a higher cost basis than we do, then the only way you could be making that much more than we are is if you—”

I don’t know if I paused or if she interrupted me. In any case, Amy finished my sentence: “If we charge higher fees?”

“Right,” I said, confident that this would be impossible. Kendrick and Black was a prestigious firm, and we were known, even criticized at times by clients, for charging so much for our services.

As I turned through the binder looking for a section on revenue and fees, I kept talking. “Granted, we probably have a little more overhead, but not enough to explain—”

This time no one had to interrupt me. I stopped in mid-sentence as I found the page with the firm’s fee structure. Not realizing that I was actually saying what I was thinking, I quietly blurted out, “No way.”

“Is something wrong?” Dick seemed genuinely concerned.

It took me a while to realize he had asked me a question. “Wrong? No. No. It’s just, well, do you guys actually charge your clients these rates?”

Amy took my binder to confirm what I was reading. “Let me see. Um, no. This isn’t right.”

I was relieved. Then she explained.

“We changed this last month. Our fees should be about seven percent higher.”

Normally I would have played it cool and found a way to disguise my amazement and save face for myself and my company. But the cat was already out of the bag. “You have got to be sh--ting me!”

They smiled, which I took to be a mixture of amusement at my language and pride that I was impressed. “Yeah,” Dick confirmed. “That’s what we charge.”

I had already started digging a hole, and I wasn’t in a position to stop shoveling. “Don’t your clients complain? I mean, these rates are really high.”

The three of them seemed genuinely puzzled.

Matt fielded this one. “Not really. I mean, sure, sometimes a client will tell us they can’t afford us. That’s a reality in any business. But generally they’re fine with our fee structure.”

Amy finished the thought. “And once we’ve worked to build a relationship with them, they almost never mention it.”

I cannot deny that it was at that moment that I started to get angry inside. Why, I don’t know. Looking back, I suppose it was jealousy, but at the time, it felt like they were rubbing salt in my wounds, reminding me how much better they were than me, than my firm.

I tried to back off and save face at the same time. “Well, obviously there are some other things going on here that explain all this. And there is probably room here for you guys to reduce your cost structure.”

I could tell they were suddenly dumbfounded. And I knew what they were thinking. You think we’re overpaid? You want to cut salaries?

It was as though any goodwill we had built up so far during our meeting had vaporized in that moment. But before they could say anything, two employees started to come into the room, followed by a trickle of others.

Amy looked up at the clock. “Oh, it’s already ten-thirty. We’re having our employee meeting.” She looked at me and said without enthusiasm, “We were hoping you could speak to everyone.”

This was not going to be good.

Well, if I was going to be a beast, I would be a good one, I decided.

When the gathered employees had settled down, Dick began. “Thanks for coming, everyone. We thought it would be a good idea to have Jack Bauer ...” He turned toward me—as a few barely audible chuckles came from those who noted that I share the name of the well-known television character—and went on, “introduce himself and tell us a little about what we can expect in the next few months.”

And with that he turned to give me the floor.

“Thanks, Dick. Yes, I’m Jack Bauer, but not the super- agent on TV.” No one laughed. I had used that line with clients and employees and strangers on the rental car shuttle a thousand times, and I’d always elicited an appreciative reaction. Today, nothing.

“I’m one of the senior partners at Kendrick and Black, and I work in the strategy practice there. I’m going to be assuming the responsibility of overseeing Lighthouse and figuring out how to integrate you all into K&B.”

A hand went up in the back of the room. One of the torch-bearing townspeople, a guy in a sport coat.

“What do you mean by integrate?”

“Well, let me be clear about something. We did not purchase your firm because we think you’re broken. Obviously, you’re doing something very well.”

I didn’t notice any sense of relief among the townspeople. I might as well have been droning on like one of the grown-ups on the Charlie Brown TV specials. Still, I continued.

“But with any acquisition, in order to achieve synergies, you make some adjustments to ensure that you’re aligning your assets in the way that maximizes your potential.” Even I thought that sounded like consultant speak.

Another hand went up, this time from a woman with a pitchfork. “Why isn’t one of our partners running Lighthouse during the transition?”

The room went cold and silent.

I lurched for comic relief. “Well, first of all I’d like to ask you all to be a little more direct. It seems like you’re holding back.” To my relief, this elicited a hearty round of laughter, though I detected more cynicism in it than affection.

Unbelievably, Dick jumped in to save me. I think. “Listen, guys. Someone from Kendrick and Black has to be responsible for us and connect us into their management structure. It isn’t like they were just going to leave us alone and have us send smoke signals over the coastal range every quarter letting them know how we’re doing.”

A few heads nodded to acknowledge the wisdom of his answer.

Amy spoke up, “And it’s not like the three of us are going away. Jack isn’t going to be here every day. We’ll still be handling the day-to-day operations.”

I couldn’t decide if she was helping me or trying to put me in my place. I let it go, not wanting to come across as defensive. But I couldn’t resist exerting my authority a little.

“Right. I’m still responsible for my own client portfolio and for heading up sales for the rest of the strategy practice at K&B. So I’m on the road plenty, and I’m depending on you,” I looked to the part of the room where Dick, Amy, and Matt were standing, “to hold down the fort.”

That sounded patronizing, and I knew it. Fine. “But you’re going to have to be open to some change. Whether that has to do with sales, consulting fees, salary structures, I don’t know. But as you all know, when executives say they plan to make no changes to the company they’ve acquired, they’re lying.”

Amy spoke next. “Jack, can you tell us a little bit about how K&B is organized, and how it’s changed over the years?”

I was glad to move the conversation into less troubled waters, so I spent the next twenty minutes providing an overview of my firm, and generically answering a few innocuous questions about trends in the industry and company benefits. People seemed to lay their torches and pitchforks down for the time being, though I was sure they kept them within reach.

I was feeling like I was going to get out of there relatively unscathed and with no further damage, until someone asked about the culture of the company. “I hear that Kendrick and Black is a sweatshop, and that there is little work-life balance.”

The fact that it wasn’t really a question, but more a statement, made me feel slightly defensive. I made a bad decision. “Well, I don’t know about that. But I will tell you that there are people in our office after six o’clock at night, and if you were to show up on a Saturday you wouldn’t be the only one there. I’d say we have a culture of accountability and dedication to clients, and that it’s not a great place for someone who prefers a country club,” and, as if I hadn’t already done enough damage, I continued, “or a playground.”

I was sure that the pitchforks and torches were going to start flying, but instead, there was just an extremely awkward silence, followed by Dick bringing the session to an abrupt close.

“Okay, everyone, if there aren’t any more questions.” He paused for less than a second before continuing. “Thanks for your time. We’ll be keeping you posted.”

And with that they filed out of the room, a few of them stopping by to shake hands with me, but without any real commentary.

I thought that maybe I had survived the worst of it. I was wrong.

Amy dove in. “Okay. I think we need to spend some time together, and soon, figuring out how this is going to work.”

At that point I was really wishing that Marty had come with me, and I was starting to feel like he had simply chickened out. Or maybe I wanted to chicken out myself. Whatever the case, I needed some time to regroup.

I tried to be calm and unruffled. “Yeah, and we’re going to need more than a few hours.” I paused and looked at my watch. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to be back in the city in an hour, and I’m out of town the rest of the week.”

Dick frowned and was about to say something, so I made my unpopular pitch. “Why don’t we get together on Saturday in my office and hammer all this out?”

I hadn’t really asked a question as much as made a suggestion. And even though I knew they would hate the idea, I wasn’t going to back down. It’s time you guys learned that life on the playground is about to change, I thought to myself, unsuccessfully fighting off pride and insecurity.

“How about eleven o’clock?”

To their credit, none of them let me see whatever shock they were feeling. They went to their PDAs to check their schedules.

“I’m coaching a soccer game at nine-thirty, so the earliest I can make it is noon.” Matt looked at me in a way that suggested defiance and permission at the same time.

I wasn’t about to be completely unreasonable. “Does noon work for you guys?” I looked at Amy and Dick.

They nodded.

“Okay, then. I’ll make arrangements for lunch. Let’s plan on being there until four o’clock or so.”

They entered the appointment into their devices as I gathered my things to go.

Then Matt looked at me. “Are you always such an ass, or is this going to get better?”

Well, he didn’t actually say that, but I know that’s what he was thinking.

I thanked them for their time and showed myself to the door. As I drove away, I decided that the schoolhouse that they called an office was childish, after all, and that these people needed some adult supervision.

And I had a feeling that Saturday was going to be interesting.

“So, tell me about it. Was it fun?” He grinned like a high school kid questioning a friend about a recent date.

I took my time, milking the drama. “Well, fun isn’t exactly the word I would use.”

“Okay, what word would you use?”

“Strange. Painful. Those would probably work.”

Marty’s interest only grew. “Why? What happened?”

And so I began to explain my brief visit to the playground, which was how we started referring to Lighthouse. Marty was riveted, and I have to admit that I probably exaggerated and embellished a little, trying to play to him.

Then I mentioned that we had lost the Boxcar deal to Lighthouse. Marty was stunned.

“You were there just last week. I thought we had the thing closed.”

I shrugged. “It gets worse. They said they almost didn’t take the gig because they’re so busy. A bunch of people are on vacation or something.”

Marty shook his head, and I could almost feel his blood pressure rising.

The last thing I wanted to do was make him any angrier, but I knew that I had to show him the binder. He took it from me before I could finish explaining what it was. As he flipped through it, I considered whether I should point out the fee structure or just let him discover it on his own. It didn’t take him long.

“Well, this can’t be right,” he said confidently. “Did you see this page on revenue and fees?”

I nodded. “Actually, it’s a little higher. And their clients don’t seem to mind.”

“Bullcrap,” he declared, continuing his perusal of the binder. “I know what we quoted Boxcar, and there is no way they’re paying anything close to these rates.” Marty paused. “Call them.”

“Who? Boxcar?”

“No. Call someone over at Lighthouse and ask them what they’re charging.”

I hesitated. “You’re not serious.”

“Of course I’m serious. I want to know.”

“Don’t you think that will look a little desperate? Or pathetic? Especially so soon after my—”

He cut me off. “I don’t care. Listen, we bought them. We own them. They work for us. I don’t care what they think.”

I wasn’t convinced, so he said, “Here, I’ll call them myself.”

“No, no. That would be even weirder. I’ll do it.”

Ten minutes later I had my answer. Boxcar was going to pay Lighthouse 10 percent more than we had quoted them! Marty was livid.

“This makes no sense.” He looked out the window. “I’m coming to your next meeting with those guys. When is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Saturday? Why?”

“For one, I’m on the road the rest of this week.” I decided to confess. “And to be honest, I wanted to make a statement about how their work lives are going to be changing.”

Marty frowned. “I’m going to the Cal game on Saturday. Let’s do it tomorrow instead.”

“Tomorrow? Isn’t that a little soon?”

Marty shook his head. “Not for me. I’m open after one. We can clear out the rest of the day and go through dinner if we have to. Jim will be here too, so he can stop by and meet his new employees. Do whatever you have to do to rearrange your schedule.”

“I’m supposed to be in Dallas tomorrow.”

“For the Rockridge meeting? Forget about it. You don’t need to be there. This is more important.”

The thought of having to back out of that meeting on such short notice wasn’t a pleasant one for me. And I didn’t like the idea of having Jim Kendrick involved, not this early in a process that was already off to a predictably rocky start. But I could see that Marty was bent on doing this, and I knew him well enough to know that he would get his way.

I did compromise just a little, agreeing to start at two o’clock so that Matt could make it back from a morning session with a client. Luckily, that client was located in San Francisco, which would cut down his travel time to our office.

Our office was in the Transamerica building—the pointy one that pretty much defines the skyline of San Francisco. Unlike Lighthouse’s headquarters, ours was built to impress. The main conference room where we would be meeting was on the twentieth floor and provided a view of Alcatraz, Angel, and Treasure islands, with plenty of bay shipping and sailing traffic to keep the scene moving. The lobby wasn’t Old World, but had a sleeker, slightly minimalist feel, a combination of stainless steel, black leather, and mahogany accents.

Though we didn’t always wear suits to work, more often than not we wore a tie and a sport coat. Our friends from Half Moon Bay were more of a khaki and loafer crowd.

By one forty-five, Dick, Amy, and Matt had arrived and were waiting in the lobby. They certainly hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. I felt much more confident greeting them in my territory, and I decided I would try to make them comfortable.

“Hi everybody. You’re early. Traffic must not have been too bad.”

Matt explained that his client event didn’t go as long as he had anticipated, and his co-workers said their trip was a breeze. They didn’t seem to be holding any obvious grudges from our interaction the previous day. I tried to be gracious.

“I’m glad we could do this today instead of Saturday. Whenever we can avoid working a weekend that’s a good thing.”

They politely agreed, and I brought them into the conference room.

As all visitors did, they marveled at the view, and each of them seemed to have a story about a field trip to Alcatraz or a sailing adventure on the Bay. Amy pointed to Coit Tower at the top of Telegraph Hill and explained that her husband had proposed to her there fourteen years ago.

While we were still gawking and talking, Marty arrived. He greeted our guests graciously, asking some of the same questions and making some of the same comments about the commute and the view and his relief at not having to do our meeting on Saturday. That was a little embarrassing.

And then we sat down and got started.

“Okay, I think the most important thing we can do today is go through each of our methodologies. What models and tools we use with our clients. How we evaluate our success with them. How we break out our fees.”

Marty jumped in. “As you guys know, there are as many different approaches to consulting as there are consulting firms in the world, and I’m guessing that what we do is pretty different.”

“What is that based on?” Matt asked, but not in a defensive way.

“Excuse me?” Marty was suddenly either confused or slightly pissed off.

“I mean, what makes you think that our services and our methodologies are different from yours?”

Marty hesitated. “Well, for one, the size of your firm would indicate that you might do less research than ours. And the mix of consultants you have, in terms of experience, would suggest that you have a less ...” He hesitated. “A less rigorous model in terms of data analysis.”

Amazingly, none of the Lighthouse folks flinched. Although they certainly didn’t nod their heads in unison to corroborate what Marty had said, they didn’t seem at all put off by the presumptuous remark. After a few awkward moments of silence, Dick spoke.

“Why don’t we get started? I’m excited to see how all of it compares.” He seemed just a little too polite, and I couldn’t decide whether I should feel like I was being conde scended to.

He continued. “Why don’t you guys go first?” I agreed, opened up my laptop, connected it to the projector on the table, and started my presentation.

For the next ninety minutes, I took them through our entire catalog of tools and models and methodologies. They had plenty of questions—genuine ones, it seemed to me—and Marty and I fielded them with confidence and self-assurance. After we were done, Marty suggested we take a fifteen-minute break, and I showed our guests where the bathrooms and kitchen were, and how to log onto our wireless network to check e-mail.

Marty and I regrouped in his office.

As soon as the door was closed, he started in. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. What do you think they’re thinking? Is that Matt guy cocky or what?”

I wasn’t sure I agreed with Marty’s assessment, but I cer tainly wasn’t going to play devil’s advocate with my boss. “I think it’s going fine. They seemed to be taking lots of notes, and I think they probably learned some things. Not that they’re necessarily unsophisticated, but I’m guessing their tools are a little less up-to-date than ours.”

He was waiting for me to go on, so I did.

“I think they’re probably a little overwhelmed, wondering what we’re thinking.”

“What about Matt? What’s his deal?”

“He’s just insecure. And probably for good reason. He’s pretty young.”

At that moment the phone rang. Marty looked to see who it was. “That’s Kendrick.” He picked it up.

After no more than seven seconds of conversation, he hung up and announced with an almost sinister smile on his face, “Jim will be joining us for the next half hour or so. This will be interesting.”

We left, for round two.

“You think they left?” I joked to Marty, slightly under my breath.

He laughed sheepishly. “Maybe they just decided ‘To hell with it.”’

At that moment Amy and Matt came in, followed by Dick, who was carrying a flip chart.

Before we could ask, Amy explained, “Joanne at the front desk found this for us.”

Dick set up the easel at the front of the room, and we took our seats.

“Okay, this shouldn’t take long,” he announced. “Our methodologies are pretty similar to yours.”

That was not what I wanted to hear, but I didn’t believe him; I decided that I’d be the judge of whether he was right.

Before he could begin, however, Jim Kendrick came into the room.

“Excuse me, everyone. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I thought I should come by and say hello.”

I stood and introduced my boss’s boss to the visitors. They took turns shaking hands while Jim explained that he was the company’s namesake and managing partner.

When the formalities were over, Jim dove right in. “I’m sorry for interrupting, but I’d like to ask a few questions and then let you get back to your work.” He didn’t wait for anyone to acknowledge or accept his apology, but continued.

“Can you all give me a quick overview of your backgrounds? As you know, Michael Casey and I did this deal in record time. I’m sure I’ve glanced at your resumes, but I have to admit that I remember very little detail about you personally. You’ll have to forgive me for that.” Again, it wasn’t really an apology, but rather an explanation. Still, I thought he was being remarkably gracious, at least for him.

Dick went first. “I’ll start. I helped Michael start the firm, so I’ve been with Lighthouse almost fifteen years. I went to Chico State and studied agricultural engineering, and after figuring out that I was tired of the smell of manure, I got a job selling insurance.”

Everyone laughed politely.

“Then I was hired by a friend to be a line manager at an automobile manufacturing plant here in the Bay Area, where I worked my way slowly up the ladder. We had a parade of management consultants come through the factory, and I got to know one of them pretty well, and when they offered me a job, I took it. Five years later I met Michael, and two years after that we decided to start doing executive recruiting and coaching.”

How old are you? Ninety-five? I wanted to ask.

Jim seemed mildly interested in Dick’s story, but it was Marty who was particularly enthralled. He asked the first question.

“How did you guys decide to become a management consulting firm?”

Dick continued, “Well, right away we realized that our clients needed basic strategic help more than anything else, so we started doing that for them. Then they started referring us to other execs who needed help, and before we knew what was happening, we had a growing strategy practice. So we ditched the executive recruiting, moved out to Half Moon Bay, and started what is now Lighthouse.”

“Why did you name it Lighthouse?” Jim wanted to know.

For some reason, I decided to explain. “There’s a great little lighthouse not far from their office near the coast.”

None of my three best friends seemed to mind that I answered for them.

Jim turned to Amy. “How about you?”

She explained that she had attended Fresno State University in the central valley of California where she grew up on an almond farm. She studied business, moved to the Bay Area to be a management trainee at a retail store, then took a line position doing marketing and public relations at a technology company and worked her way up the ladder before joining Lighthouse as a junior consultant.

“And two years ago Michael and Dick forced me to become a partner.” She laughed.

“Forced you?” Marty didn’t understand.

Dick said, “Yeah. She said she wasn’t ready.”

“They told me they’d fire me if I didn’t do it,” she half-joked.

This was all just a little too cute for me, so I moved the conversation along.

“What about you, Matt? What’s your story?” I tried to sound friendly, but I wasn’t sure it came out that way.

“Well, I’m a little younger than these geezers.” We all laughed. “I’ve been with the company for four years.”

He just stopped his bio there, so I decided to become the lead interrogator.

“What did you do before that?”

He looked at Dick and Amy with a smile and seemed slightly nervous. “Well, I worked at my grandfather’s bakery.”

Again he stopped, and again I pressed him. “And where did you go to school?”

Without hesitating, he replied, “Notre Dame.”

Dick and Amy laughed.

“Why is that funny?” Marty wanted to know.

Matt explained, “Because the Notre Dame I went to is actually Notre Dame des Victoires, which is a little Catholic high school in downtown San Francisco.” He paused. “I didn’t go to college.”

Jim was now staring at Matt as though he had just claimed to be an amphibian.

Marty was playing it cool. “So, how did you come to join Lighthouse, Matt?”

Amy jumped in to rescue her younger colleague. “Matt’s being a little modest here. The bakery he’s referring to is Fanucchi’s.”

Everyone in the Bay Area knew about Fanucchi’s. Their delivery trucks were everywhere, and you could find their products in any grocery store or restaurant within a hundred miles of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Amy continued, “That’s a two-hundred-million-dollar company. And Matt wasn’t just working there, he was in charge of operations. At age twenty-four.”

Dick explained the rest. “We were consulting to Matt’s dad, the CEO, and spending a lot of time with Matt and the rest of the management team. A few years later they sold the company to General Mills, and Matt became available.”

“Why did you want to be a management consultant?” I asked Matt.

“He didn’t,” Amy explained. “We recruited him.”

Matt added, “Which was hard, because I wanted to go to college. But I was approaching thirty and had two kids.”

Dick smiled. “We made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

They laughed.

We didn’t.

Dick explained, “This kid had read more business books and case studies than ten Harvard MBAs combined.” He paused and looked at me. “No offense, Jack.”

I waved it off like it was no big deal, but the worst little part of me wanted to punch him in the face.

Jim Kendrick then said what we were all thinking: “Well, I have to admit that I’m a little surprised by your lack of education and formal training. Which I guess is my own fault because I pulled the trigger on this deal without the benefit of doing any real research.”

Any warmth in the room seemed to suddenly disappear.

Marty piled on gently. “I’m curious. Is there anyone at your shop who has a graduate degree?”

Dick nodded. “A couple of them have MBAs.”

Matt smiled. “And Christa has a master’s from UCLA.”

“Who’s Christa?” Marty wanted to know.

“Our receptionist,” said Amy. “She studied classical literature and is an aspiring screenwriter.”

True to form, Jim ended his appearance as abruptly as he started it. “Well, the next few months are going to be interesting, folks.” He smiled at his guests, shot Marty and me a raised-eyebrow look that said What did you get us into? and left the room.

Finally, it was Amy who spoke. “Dick, why don’t you go ahead and take them through our stuff?”

Marty nodded his agreement, so Dick went to the flip chart, where he spent the next hour summarizing the various tools that he and his colleagues used to help their clients.

I should have taken notes, because a few of the tools he presented were actually interesting and a little different from ours. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking

I was learning anything new.

By and large, though, the Lighthouse methodology was indeed very similar to what we had been using at K&B as long as I had been there. I found this immensely frustrating. So did Marty, and he did a poor job of hiding it.

“That’s it?” he asked, trying his best not to sound critical or judgmental.

Matt reacted. “It’s not much different from what you guys presented. Were you expecting more?”

Marty searched for an answer.

Before he could come up with one, Amy offered, “We could certainly go into more detail, if you really want us to. And there are a few other things we’ve used on occasion. But I was thinking you were more interested in an overview.”

Now Marty was ready to respond, and I could tell he really tried to be nice. “No, no, you don’t need to go into more detail. Your overview was right on. It’s just I thought your approach would be, I don’t know, more comprehensive or something.”

I decided to change the line of questioning, in search of a major point of differentiation between our firms. “Can you guys tell us how much time your consultants spend at a client? I realize it probably varies, but what’s a fairly typical situation?”

Dick raised his eyebrows and looked at his colleagues, as if to say I haven’t really thought of it that way before.

“Let’s see.” He looked out the window. “Like you said, it varies from client to client. But if I had to guess, I’d say we’re on site with our clients on average ...” He hesitated. “Maybe four or five days a month.”

Amy and Matt nodded their agreement.

“Wow.” Marty was mildly shocked.

“Does that sound like a lot or a little?” Amy asked.

“A lot! What in the world are you doing there?” Marty was genuinely curious.

“We’re working,” Matt explained, without the slightest hint of sarcasm.

“And how many clients do you usually work with at any one time?”

“You mean the firm, or individual consultants?” Amy asked.

“Individual consultants.”

“Most of us have three or four at a time.” she said.

Now Marty frowned, like he was trying to solve a puzzle, or a crime.

“You have three or four clients at a time and you spend as much as five days a month with them?”

They nodded, and Marty seemed to be on the verge of asking his big question, when all of a sudden he did an impression of Jim Kendrick by bringing the meeting to an abrupt end.

Taking a deep breath, he announced, “Okay, then. Thanks for rearranging your schedules for us today. This has been really helpful. I feel a lot better about moving for ward. I want to get you guys out of here and on the road before traffic gets too bad.”

The three visitors seemed as stunned as I was, but went with the plan to avoid any weirdness. Ten minutes later they were gone, and Marty and I were back in the conference room debriefing.

“This just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“Then why did you close down the conversation so fast?”

“Because in situations like this, the only way to figure out what’s going on is to see for yourself. It’s no different from some of our clients. You can sit around and talk about it all you want, but sometimes you just have to walk the fac tory floor.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. “So what did you have in mind?”

“I think you need to spend most of your time in Half Moon Bay and at their client sites for the next few months. Something doesn’t make sense, and we need to understand it.”

“But I can’t afford to be down there all the time. I’ve got—”

Marty interrupted me. “Who’s the new client you just took on?” he asked.

“You mean Cymerc?”

“Yeah. Forget about them. They’re my client now. And hand off the SkyWest project team to Craig. I’ll run sales for a few months. That’ll allow you to dedicate pretty much all of your time to your Lighthouse team.” Something occurred to him and he smiled. “Hey, maybe you can work with Boxcar after all.”

The look on my face must have betrayed my dread at what the coming months had in store for me, because before I could say anything, Marty stopped me. “I know this sucks for you. Just make this work, so Kendrick doesn’t think we’re total idiots. I’m ten months from retirement, and this is the last thing I need.”

I felt like I was going to be sick. I had no idea how the next few months would change my life.

Amy arranged for me to have a desk and phone line installed in Half Moon Bay, and she sent me more information about their clients so I would arrive on Monday morning well-informed.

As I sat on the couch in my family room on Saturday afternoon digesting as much as I could, my wife, Diane, started asking all the right questions.

“Tell me again why you guys bought this company.” Diane knew how unenthusiastic I was about my new assignment, and she wanted to help.

“I don’t know. It was definitely Marty’s thing more than anyone’s. And it was more about pride and morbid curiosity than strategy.”

“That’s ironic, given what you guys do.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Consulting firms do a lot of things that would be considered ironic. Or hypocritical. Ego is usually at the heart of it.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s your ego in this?”

I put my papers down. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’ve been more of an idiot in the last few days than I have been in a long time. But I just don’t like these people. I don’t like competing with them. I don’t want to be friends with them. I just wish Marty had never convinced Kendrick to do this deal so I wouldn’t have to worry about any of it.”

“What is it you don’t like about them?”

“I don’t know. They’re just—”

Diane interrupted, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘I don’t know’ so many times in one conversation.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, it’s all confusing to me. I just find them to be a little too casual and oblivious and easygoing. And I can’t stand the thought of that firm standing in the way of me taking over the strategy practice.”

“How can they stand in the way?”

“Well, if this integration doesn’t go well, and if we can’t figure out why their financials look better than ours, Jim Kendrick certainly isn’t going to be feeling great about giving 27 percent of the firm’s revenue to me. All of a sudden my career seems to be riding on my ability to deal with a bunch of people who look like they should be working at the Gap.”

She smiled in a warm and motherly way. “I think you need to leave your ego behind when you go out there on Monday.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I dove back into my reading. I knew Diane was right, but I also knew I was nowhere near the point of being able to do what she suggested.

When I caught my first glimpse of the blue-striped cylinder marking my approach to my new office, I decided that I didn’t like lighthouses after all. Wishing I could bring Diane with me to work, I pulled myself out of my Lexus and went inside.

“Surprise!” The entire office was there shouting to me, and Dick was holding a big cake with the words “Welcome to our company, Jack Bauer!” stenciled in blue icing across the chocolate top. They lifted me onto their shoulders and began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

Of course that’s not what happened. In fact, there was no one sitting at the front desk. It was eight-fifteen in the morning and barely anyone was there. I did find an envelope on the front desk with the name “Jack” written neatly across the front. Inside was a note from Amy, in which she indicated where my desk was and that we would have a meeting at nine-thirty. She did write “Welcome” at the bottom, which was a far cry from a cake, but nice to see, I had to admit.

My desk was in the building across the quad from the reception area, in the same part of the office that the three partners shared. Getting used to sitting in the open, without privacy, was going to be an adjustment for me. But then again, so was going pee-pee in a urinal built for a fifth-grader.

By the time our nine-thirty meeting rolled around, I was glad for something real to do.

This was our weekly executive committee meeting, and once again, I found myself sitting alone with my three new BFFs.

“How was the commute, Jack?” Matt seemed genuinely interested, even warm.

“Twenty-eight minutes door to door,” I reported. “Not bad. That’s actually ten minutes faster than my ride to the city.”

We made small talk for a few minutes until Dick kicked things off.

“Okay, what we usually do at these meetings is talk about what we’ve got on our plates for the week, how we’re doing in terms of our primary goals for the period, and then take on one or two key issues that might be fixable in the near term.”

I nodded.

“But today, we thought we’d give you a chance to ask us any questions you might have.” He paused and changed his tone just slightly. “And ask you a few of our own.”

I responded without thinking much. “Why don’t you go first? I’m guessing you’ve given some thought to the questions you have for me.”

Dick smiled, looked at his colleagues, and took a breath. “Okay, here’s the deal, Jack. We’re going to have to work together, at least for a while, and so we might as well be honest with each other. We’re a little confused about some things, and we’d appreciate it if you told us where you’re coming from.”

Taking a deep breath myself, I tried to think about Diane’s advice. “Fire away.”

Amy began, “Okay, I have a question, and I don’t want you to think I’m attacking you.”

“That usually means an attack is coming,” I smiled.

Amy was quick to explain, “No, no. That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s okay. I was joking. Go ahead.”

A little calmer now, she continued. “Alright, I’d like to know why you haven’t asked us a single question about Michael Casey.”

Suddenly I felt myself blushing, and I was sure they noticed. I tried to be cool. “Well, I don’t know.” There was that phrase again. “I guess I just assumed that if there was something you wanted me to know ...” I paused, which gave Dick a chance to interrupt.

He wasn’t buying it for a second. “There is a lot you need to know about him.”

I braced myself for a lecture, but it didn’t come.

Mercifully, he went on, “But that will come in time as you learn more about the company. First we want to make sure that you get to know our clients, what’s going on with us right now, that kind of stuff.”

Doing my best to take my wife’s advice, I rose above my own pride and pettiness. “Well, I’ll admit that I’d like to know more about why Michael decided to sell the business. It still doesn’t make sense to me.”

Amy took this one. “Obviously you know why he left in the first place.” It was a question more than a statement.

I shook my head.

Dick was incredulous. “You mean they didn’t tell you? What did they tell you?”

“Just that it was for personal reasons. Wanting to spend more time with his family or something.”

“But that can mean anything. It’s usually code for ‘He screwed up big time,”’ said Matt.

I agreed. “Yeah, I figured it was something like that.”

Everyone paused, amazed at what I didn’t know.

“So, is anyone going to tell me the truth?”

Dick nodded his head, but he wasn’t happy. “Sure. I just can’t believe no one told you any of this. What kind of firm do you work for?” He paused. “I’m sorry, it’s just a little bizarre to me. Anyway, Michael has three grown kids, and his oldest daughter lives in Texas with her family, two young girls.”

He paused again, and I waited patiently for him to continue.

“Six weeks ago she and her husband were sideswiped by a semi truck. Her husband died, and she sustained very serious injuries.”

“What about the kids?” I wanted to know.

“They were at home.”

I was relieved, but only for as long as it took to realize the situation those kids were now in.

Amy picked up the story. “Michael and Liz, his wife, went there immediately. She hasn’t been back since. Michael’s just come back to wrap up the sale of the company. He’s now in San Antonio taking care of his daughter and her children.”

It took a few moments for me to recalibrate what had been in my head for the past week and to digest the situation. And then something hit me.

“I’m guessing you know his daughter pretty well, being that this is such a small company.”

Amy nodded. “We went to her wedding. My daughters were her flower girls. Dick’s the godfather to one of her daughters. We all went to the funeral.”

It wasn’t like anyone in the room was about to cry; they had certainly already begun the process of dealing with this. But I was surprised at how much it affected me. I thought of my own kids, and the fact that I had never even met Marty’s children.

After a few moments to digest this, I came up with a question, which I asked delicately. “So, why did he sell the company? Why didn’t he just let you guys run it, or sell it to you?”

Dick smiled at his colleagues in a way that said, There’s that question again.

“Selling it to Kendrick was the right thing to do,” he explained.

“Why?”

“Well,” Matt said, “for one, Michael’s never coming back. His daughter’s injuries are serious ones, and he was adamant that taking care of her family was his new full-time job.”

Damn it. I had to respect Michael Casey. I had really hoped that I could keep loathing him.

Matt went on. “Selling it to us would have put a huge, risky burden on us. If Michael’s departure hurt the business, the value of the firm could have disappeared. Michael wanted us to share in some financial upside, and this was the right time to do it.”

“Besides,” Amy explained, “if things don’t work out with K&B, we can always take a year off and go start another firm.”

I couldn’t argue with the logic I was hearing. “So why do you think K&B did the deal?” I wanted to get their perspective.

“You want our honest answer?” Amy asked.

I opened my eyes wide and nodded my head as if to say I can’t wait to find out.

“Well, we think that you—not you personally, but someone over there—didn’t like us and wanted to get rid of us. Not like the mafia or anything.”

We laughed.

“But it sure didn’t feel like a marriage made in heaven.”

“And then there’s the deep pockets.” Matt explained. “Kendrick and Black can afford to take a flyer on us, but that’s a lot of money to our little firm. We received a nice little payout, and we get to keep our jobs.”

I didn’t want to tell them that there was a good chance some of them wouldn’t. As it turns out, I didn’t have to.

“And if some people don’t get to keep their jobs,” Dick explained, “then they’d get a severance package to add to their payout, which would be more than enough to bridge them through to their next job.”

It was at that moment that I was about to embrace these people—not literally, of course—and become part of the team. But then it dawned on me. They were actually in a better position than I was! If things didn’t go well with the merger, they’d be fine. Probably better off. But my career would be in serious trouble.

The more I learned about Lighthouse Partners, the worse I felt about myself and about the state of my career. And that put me in a horrible situation. I had to make this merger work with a bunch of people who constantly reminded me that I was sometimes a complete ass.

Fortunately, my wife was a much better person than I was.

Sitting down in the kitchen, I explained my predicament.

“So I’m stuck with these people for at least a few months, I’m guessing. I don’t particularly like them, which might not be fair, but it is what it is. And if I can’t salvage this thing, Marty is going to look bad and throw me under the bus when he retires.”

Diane listened patiently.

“This is all Marty’s mess, and he’s making me deal with it. It isn’t fair,” I complained.

“You’re right. It isn’t fair.” Diane was neither patronizing nor cold. “But it wasn’t fair that those kids lost their dad, and that their mom can’t care for them, either.”

“I know that. I realize that I seem like a selfish jerk right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m being asked to do something that isn’t possible.”

“Why do you think it isn’t possible?”

“Because Kendrick thinks they’re a bunch of yahoos from the beach. Marty can’t stand them. I’m supposed to make the deal work, but in a way that allows Marty and Jim to keep hating them. And now I realize that these people would probably be better off if the whole thing blew up. Heck, a year from now Marty will be retired, these Lighthouse people will be sitting at home counting their severance packages, and I’ll be looking for a job and trying to explain why I flamed out at one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the country.”

Diane smiled at me.

“Oh, I hate when you do that.”

“What?” she asked.

“Give me that smile that says you know what I should do.”

She laughed. “I think you know what I think you should do.”

I shook my head. “I got nothing.”

“Come on. You should go in there and learn everything you can about that little firm, and make this the best acquisition that Jim Kendrick has ever done.”

Before I could say anything, she went on, “And who cares if Marty gets the credit? You’ll still get promoted, and you’ll be better for the experience.”

I shook my head again—not to disagree, but because I knew she was right and that I was going to have to become a better person to make this work.

“I hate personal growth.”

Diane laughed and gave me a hug. I thought about Michael Casey’s daughter.