“What’s there to think about?  See you at six.”  Rob chided his colleague, Alex, a second year analyst from Penn.  Tonight is the courtside party at the Tournament of Champions, Grand Central Terminal.  “Come on, attitude.” jeers Rob.  Alex, saving his arm, nods the yeah-yeah-ok and hobbles his way through the lobby of the New York Sports Club.

Rob Allerman shakes his head smiling as they escape into the unseasonably mild January afternoon.   He’s upbeat even though he lost yesterday in the first round of the Grand Open. He moved up to 5.0 this year and expected to be trounced.  Rob is Alex’s self-appointed squash coach and a first year Marketing & Sales fellow at McKinsey.  The California transplant from Stanford has had to find his way around New York City streets and The Firm’s arena of team problem-solving.  Recently he and Alex have been appointed to the McDonald Corp USA Campaign, “Plan to Win” engagement.

His yellow cab caught green light after green light from Upper East Side to the West Village. The blur of the buildings lulled Rob into thinking about his participation in the “Plan to Win” strategy session next Monday, specifically how to turn around the client’s declining profits by optimizing the customer experience.  How did the CEO put it, “we will build opportunity on the basis of our mission statement – quality, service, cleanliness and value”?   In true Elaine Benes fashion, Rob points in the air, “Fake, fake, fake, fake.” The cabbie flashes him a look.  They’re falling down the ladder standing, he thought to himself.  Good.

Save the knees, Rob’s body reminds him as he starts to spring up the five flights of stairs to his railroad apartment.  And find out what that smell is his nose begs him on the landing below.   He lets out a sigh as he turns the key and pushes the stubborn door open.  High ceilings and free heat, his friends like the place.  A well-appointed kitchen and a luxurious bed, Rob relishes this time and place of his life and momentarily stops in gratitude before catching a nap.

That evening, a quarter moon overhead, Rob pauses in front of Grand Central Terminal and looks up at the classic Beaux-Arts building.  “Grand, they got that right,” he murmurs.  Alex was waiting for him under the time clock.  They pick up their tickets in Will Call and agree to get a drink before the party starts.  They find a lounge, order beers, no wait a Sonoma County zinfandel for Rob, and recount the events of the tournament.  

“You made it to the second round, Alex.  Your first tournament, for christ’s sake.  I thought you played well considering.”

“I felt like a ping-pong ball in that last match.  Never did find the T,” Alex said discouragingly and added, “More, lots more star drills, right coach?”

“You may have been running the whole time but you were running balanced.  I’m telling you that’s huge. You’re naturally smooth,” Rob said just as four women pass by and smile.  Rob and Alex grimace at each other and exchange a moment of silence.  

Walking to courtside absorbed by the extraordinary architecture, Rob in a museful way blurts, “Alex, I want to talk to you about McDonalds.”  Alex gives him the side glance meaning, really? 

“Yeah”, Rob stops momentarily then continues, “I have serious dissension with the case. They want to make the customer happy each time he visits a McDonald’s store.  In my mind that is incongruous with natural law.  I cannot support their tactics, their product, or their existence.”   Alex gives him a quick side glance and an apologetic shrug as they enter the transformed Vanderbilt Hall.  The NY Squash party is in full swing but the real action is taking place in the glass box.  They find their seats on the left wall and follow the games with intensity.  “Look how much contact those players have with each other,” Rob cracked.  “Look at them; that battle for the T.  Someone said the excitement of squash is best experienced in close combat. God, I love it.  Alex, we’re going to work on your over clearing.  You seem to be afraid to get close to your opponent.”  The crowd responds wildly to a spectacular nick and the score is tied. 

“You seem to be afraid to get close to your opponent,” Alex said after a while.

“Huh?”

“McDonalds.”

“Afraid?” Rob asked.

“Well, what do you want to say to them?  What would your issue analysis look like?  Let’s practice. I’ll be your coach.”  At this the hall fills with enthusiastic applause, the glass box door swings open and the final match of the evening is concluded.  On the way out the crowd kind of sways and bumps into each other and you hear an occasional friendly, “Let” “Yes, Let”.  The buzz of the evening is about second seed Nick Matthew, who lost his second game, but won the match handily in the fourth.  

Rob and Alex part ways in the direction of their trains, agreeing to meet tomorrow late-morning for a bike ride.  Alone again in the train, Rob seriously considers whether he should take himself off the engagement. No, his development leader has pounded into his head the game plan; all McKinsey consultants are obligated to dissent if they believe something is incorrect.  His mind keeps echoing the question, what do I want to say?   Is this what they mean by the Emotional Revolution?

The next morning Rob fact checks his ideology against former McKinsey Director and past National Squash Master of the Netherlands, Mickey Huibregtsen’s Rebuilding Society from the Ground Up: Corporations and Citizens as a Source of Inspiration for Society. There it is, first sentence: “Our societies have come to the end of the road. We need a fundamental reconstruction of the systems and institutions that now govern us and redefine the roles of all the players with a stronger focus on making things work by respecting the human dimension.”  Respecting, retrieving the human dimension would eliminate unhealthy mass-produced processed food.  “There I said it, that’s what I want to say.”  Rob held and then expelled his breath against the window.  He used his hand to wipe clear a circle to see out.

Alex and Rob met at City Hall and biked over the Brooklyn Bridge.  Over coffee, Rob expounded and practiced his statements and assertions.  Alex coached him on how to develop a viable renewal plan.  “There is only one way of dealing with complexity and that is by making things simple”, Alex said. 

“I have an idea.  Have you ever been to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Alex? The abandoned buildings at the Brooklyn Navy Yard?”

“No.”

“Do you know how the game of squash began?” Alex shook his head.  “From a game called Rackets played in England’s debtors’ prisons in the 18^th century. The prisoners modified the game of fives, basically handball, by using tennis rackets which made the game faster.  They used a prison wall, sometimes at a corner to add a sidewall.  Yeah. Fast forward, the hard ball was replaced with a softer squashy ball and here we are.” Rob reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a squash ball. “Are you game? Want to find a couple walls at the Navy Yard and play fives?”

“Sure. Back to basics.  I can live with that.”