It didn’t take very long at all before I got my first summons to meet with Mr. Kimchi.
He and Lou had their offices on the other side of the building from where I was spending most of my time. They were these gorgeous glassed-in offices that looked so professional and sharp. Lou and I decked out his office with family pictures, and all of his golfing trophies from his fancy former life.
Every time I walked passed Lou’s office during the day, he looked so productive and happy. He was on the phone a lot, and he took meetings all day every day. Even his health seemed to be on the uptick — so all was well with Lou. Relatively speaking, that is…
Mr. Kimchi’s office was two doors down from Lou’s office, and I remember stepping in to tell Lou that Mr. Kimchi wanted to speak with me. Lou rolled his eyes a little and said, “Baby, get ready to be bored to tears.”
It was the first time Lou said something negative about Mr. Kimchi, even though I knew he’d been fighting off the urge to for a week or so.
When I entered the office, Mr. Kimchi had a serious look on his face. I didn’t worry too much because his face was never overly animated. But when I sat down, he immediately started talking to me about this plan he had for reworking the compensation structure for the company.
Mr. Kimchi seemed very determined for me to understand what he had in mind, but there was clearly a concern that I might not get it. He was very tense, and this meeting felt important. So I grabbed a pen from Mr. Kimchi’s collection, and I hunkered down to take some notes.
When he saw that I was ready, Mr. Kimchi proceeded to draw all of these circles and boxes on a yellow legal pad that he placed between us on the desk.
He would say, “You think the peeeehpol and the prohhducts are the most important things in the company, but that is nawt true. Nawwwt true. It is the sysssstem, you understand, OK? It is the sysssstem! I’m am building a sysssstem that will change everything.”
For the next hour, I tried to follow Mr. Kimchi, and all of his concentric circles and stacked boxes as he explained how he planned to pay the people in the company through an elaborate compensation strategy. He seemed to love to draw a circle…followed by another circle, and then an occasional square.
