Then comes the kicker. Harry wants everyone to know that the board members -- that would be Walker, Ford, and the rest -- have already heard about his computer idea, and by the way, they're against it. They make more money than anybody else but don't want to give up even a small piece of their bonuses to help those who need help the most.
The board members are to blame for the lousy bonus, Harry seems to be saying. And what's more, they're greedy.
Clark may in fact have used the "G" word at that point, or he may not have; accounts differ. But his drift was clear, as was his preference. And the staff understood. The next day, they voted overwhelmingly to override the board and distribute the money for computers.
"I'm so proud of the staff," Clark says. "They went for it, and not only did they go for it, they felt really good about it. The people -- staff, employees -- are much more caring about everybody than the management team is."
Wrong, says Walker. "The board didn't really shoot the idea down," he says. "I was there. What the board had said was, 'What we're talking about in this room is essentially taking money out of people's pockets to underwrite a purchase on the part of a small subset of people. We don't want to make that decision for them." Moreover, says Walker, "Harry's perception of that meeting is that we achieved consensus, and people are happy with it. But I can tell you there's more division than that simplified picture of things would suggest. There were people who wanted the money but didn't say anything because they didn't want to be not doing the right thing."
On that point, Walker gets support from an unexpected source: Perez. "Because I'm more at the middle level, I get more feedback from the associates than anyone else does," he says. "I know that people needed cash over the computers." Besides, says Perez, if the staff told Clark what he wanted to hear rather than what they really felt, well, it wouldn't have been the first time: "He wanted us to believe that he was saying, 'You decide.' But I know that inside he really wanted to say, 'Support me.' Harry's a master at that; there's nobody better. I think he already knew what he was going to do."
Stalling was at the board meeting, too. There are not many issues on which she would side with Walker rather than with Clark, but this is one of them. She, too, takes issue with Clark's characterization of the board as greedy. If there's a greedy party, she suggests, maybe it's Clark. "I would never have considered reducing the bonus pool to pay for computers," she says. "Why should we do that when Harry could just pay for them?"
After all, Clark took his full bonus. That was never an issue. It may have been a disappointing year for MFS, but it was a very satisfying one for Clark personally. His compensation totaled about $750,000, he says, much of which, he's quick to add, was "zero net, a bonus to me to pay company taxes." On the other hand, he gave himself a raise this year, a nice one -- from $125,000 to $200,000. That's nearly three times Walker's salary, for example. What about Stalling's question, then: Why raid the bonus pool to pay for what, in Clark's tax bracket, amounts to pocket change?
At first, Clark seems taken aback by the question. "It's all my money," he says finally. "Know what I mean? I don't have to bonus them anything."
* * *
When Clark talks about Walker these days, he tries hard to be supportive. "What he did during my sabbatical in terms of his decisions was fabulous, absolutely fabulous," says Clark. "It was the cultural stuff, the way he handled things that hurt so much. My hope is that after a year or two he's going to get it." Clark still says Walker will become president of MFS one day. He insists that Walker is "getting the chance to succeed."
Meanwhile, though, Clark has continued to act in ways that marginalize Walker and further undermine his authority. After the bonus flap, Clark put an end to monthly board meetings in favor of weekly meetings involving both directors and managers -- a larger group over which Clark has more control. Also, he has removed Walker as director of operations and put in his place Gay Eichhoff, a veteran of the barn days. Walker is over in local improvement district administration now -- "learning the business," says Clark.
Walker says he doesn't resent the move. "That actually fit in some fairly useful ways my own plan for self-development," he says. But he does admit to wondering, sometimes, just where he stands with Clark. "Some of the things Harry has said about me," says Walker, "in a corporation like ITT Sheraton, if those things had been said, they would have been said about people who were looking for work."
And Walker worries about the way he's been isolated within the company. He knows that although he has spent almost a year at MFS, there are people in the company "who still have their suspicions" about him. For example, Ghironzi, who admits, "I'm still having a hard time with Tom, just passing him in the hall." And for that, Walker thinks Clark may be partly to blame.
"What he has done has contributed to that sense of isolation," Walker says. "It's a little like Ronald Reagan in the White House getting in front of the cameras and saying, 'It's you, the American public, and me against those rascally politicians in Congress.' You need to be careful with that. That kind of presentation doesn't breed unity."
Clark knows that, of course. So why does he do it? Maybe that's the trouble with Harry -- or part of it, anyway. He says he doesn't want to be The One. He says, "I don't have a need to be needed." To prove it he goes away. But what he proves, instead, is how much MFS depends on him.
So did Clark fail? Not necessarily.
"Sometimes I think if Harry had been born 100 years ago, he would have done really well in a small town where he took care of everybody, provided for them from birth to death, gave them all kinds of benefits," says Chuck Levine, a managing director and another longtime Harry watcher. "I think he would like that."
