The Heart of the Matter
In the early 1990s, I spent much of my life on airplanes between Southern California and Mexico City.
I was a consultant.
Those were the years when headcount reduction, masked as strategic transformation, was my specialty. I excelled at it, though it took an emotional toll. Systems, processes, problem-solving—these comforts came easily. Dealing with people did not.
People came later.
At least that is what I believed at the time.
Don Henley’s The Heart of the Matter played constantly in my portable CD player. For those under forty, a CD player let us listen to the same twelve songs over and over.
I listened to it in airports.
I listened to it in taxis.
I listened to it late at night in hotel rooms.
At the time, I thought I understood why.
I was lonely.
With my wife Carrie and our young daughter back in California, I missed them terribly.
One of my largest assignments during that time involved helping turn around a Kodak division in Mexico. What began as a consulting engagement eventually became something much larger.
One Friday evening, our team presented evidence of widespread executive fraud and theft to Kodak leadership.
When I returned to Mexico City the following Tuesday, the entire local leadership team had been terminated.
Kodak executives flew in.
Delivered the news.
Flew home.
I stayed behind.
Suddenly, I was El Jefe.
At least on paper.
What I remember most about that day is not the fraud.
It is not the promotion.
It is not the responsibility.
It is standing before roughly 2,000 workers and telling them their leaders are gone.
I never told them why.
I couldn’t.
Truthfully, I wouldn’t have if I had been asked.
As the news spread through the plant, many cried.
This confused me.
I was young enough to believe that exposing wrongdoing would be celebrated by everyone.
The fraud was real.
The theft was real.
One executive even expensed a bull a week for lessons and half days off.
Yet the workers weren’t mourning the loss of order or standards.
They were mourning their leaders.
The leaders who provided the uniforms they wore each day.
The laundry service that cleaned them.
The meals that helped feed their families.
The buses that brought them to work.
For the workers, the company and leadership were inseparable.
The more I knew, the less I understood.
At the time, I didn’t recognize the line from Henley’s song playing out in real life.
But I would eventually see it.
For the next year, I remained the gringo in charge.
What almost nobody knew was that I spoke Spanish.
Not perfectly.
But well enough.
Well enough to understand what was being whispered as I walked through the plant.
Usually some version of puta madre.
Rarely a compliment.
I never let on.
So, instead, we went to work.
We improved systems.
Implemented gain sharing.
Introduced new operating disciplines.
Built measurement and accountability.
Quality improved.
Production improved.
Pride improved.
Over time, the whispers became less frequent.
Trust arrives much slower than authority.
Kodak gave me authority in a day.
But earning the workforce’s trust took nearly a year.
During that year, I spent more time with my driver, Carlos, than almost anyone outside of work.
Carlos navigated Mexico City while I navigated the plant.
He was my driver, my guide, my protector, and eventually my friend.
He had twelve children.
All girls.
Every Friday before heading home, I would empty whatever pesos remained in my pocket and hand them to him.
“For the girls.”
Then, Kodak arrived unannounced once again.
This time with a graduate of its leadership development program.
He was young, ambitious, six-foot-five, and possessed exactly zero interest in learning Spanish.
I became a trainer and advisor while he took over.
The systems continued improving.
The numbers continued improving.
The whispers returned almost immediately.
Eventually, I spoke Spanish in front of the supervisors.
The surprise was visible.
The reaction wasn’t.
No one seemed angry.
Most seemed relieved.
By then, most understood what I had spent a year trying to demonstrate.
I wasn’t there to change them.
I was there to help.
When the transition was complete, there was no ceremony to mark the change.
No plaque.
No farewell gathering.
I met privately with the supervisors.
Without my successor.
Some shook my hand.
Some hugged me.
Then I left.
Still, the person I remember most is Carlos.
One day, while shuttling me between Kodak and McCann-Erickson, where I was also helping with a turnaround, we got a flat tire.
I was late for an important meeting.
Carlos was mortified.
Sweating.
Apologizing.
Certain he had failed me.
I went for a walk.
Bought lunch.
Returned with two paper sacks.
We sat on the curb, eating sandwiches, while he continued to apologize.
I missed the meeting.
Nothing bad happened.
The managing director and I had drinks later that evening.
Carlos waited all day and drove me back to the hotel around ten that night.
The girls received extra pesos that week.
On my final Friday in Mexico, after everything, Carlos and I hugged goodbye.
And we both cried.
Thirty-five years later, as I write these words, I find myself crying again.
What surprises me most, as I look back, is not what I remember.
It’s what I don’t.
I don’t remember the KPIs.
I don’t remember the production targets.
I don’t remember the financial outcomes.
I don’t remember the title.
I remember Carlos and the workers.
I remember the whispers and the hugs.
For years, I thought the song was about loneliness.
And maybe it was.
But listening to it today, I hear a different line.
“The more I know, the less I understand.”
Back then, I thought the heart of the matter was fraud.
Or leadership.
Or performance.
Or success.
Today, I can barely remember the numbers.
What I remember are the people.
Carlos.
The workers.
The supervisors.
The tears.
The hugs.
The whispered puta madre.
The strange thing about memory is that it rarely preserves what we think is important at the time.
It keeps what mattered.
And every time I hear Don Henley sing “The more I know, the less I understand,” I think of that younger self, flying between California and Mexico, so sure he was there to fix a factory.