Learning Curves Read online

  Jen nodded and sat still as Harriet kissed the top of her head and marched off across the park.

  Poor Tim, Jen thought to herself as she watched her mother disappear. Poor all of us.

  She sat for a minute, watching people walking through the park, enjoying the peace and quiet. Then she picked up her bag. It was time to get going.

  Someone sat down next to her and Jen took it as a prompt to get up and go. But as she heaved the bag over her shoulder, the person spoke to her.

  “So, is this where you do your own internal analysis?”

  She looked up, startled, then felt her stomach somersault. It was Daniel.

  “I . . . um . . . well, in a manner of speaking,” she said carefully, glad that the cold air was preventing her face from going red this time. He was even better looking close up, with little curls around his hairline and the longest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man.

  “So . . . do you work near here?” she asked after a pause. “You work in bookselling, don’t you? I’m Jen, by the way.”

  Daniel laughed. “Pleased to meet you, Jen. I’m Daniel.”

  Jen raised her eyebrows and he looked a bit embarrassed. “Yes, okay, I guess you knew that already.”

  He looked away quickly as if to regain some control over the situation. “Anyway, you were asking about my work? I suppose you’d call it bookselling,” he said easily. “Although I rarely get to actually sell any books these days. Have you heard of Wyman’s?”

  Jen nodded. Wyman’s was one of the bigger bookstore chains, and they were all over London.

  “I was there just the other day!”

  “Well then, you know who I work for.”

  Jen wondered what to say next. She didn’t know much about bookselling—only book buying, which, she figured, probably wasn’t the same thing at all.

  “I was really interested in what you were talking about the other day,” she said after another pause. “The choice between ethics and profit, I mean. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about.”

  Daniel looked at her interestedly and Jen found herself staring into his eyes, which turned out to be a soft greeny brown, and was unable to look away.

  “Who did you work for before this?” he asked, and Jen managed to tear her eyes away, only to look straight back into his again.

  “Green Futures,” she said. “The consultancy firm.”

  “I know what Green Futures is,” Daniel said quickly. “Harriet Keller, the storm trooper of ethical business. You work closely with her?” Jen nodded.

  “Well, I can see why you’re interested in ethics, then. To be honest, it’s not really my speciality—you’ll know a lot more than me if you worked for Harriet Keller. I just wanted to get the point across that you have to know what you want, otherwise you don’t have a chance in hell of getting it. Now, we should probably be making our way to Bell Towers, shouldn’t we? Aren’t I meant to be lecturing you to death at three P.M.?”

  Jen grinned and stood up. There were little droplets of ice forming on her coat and yet she felt incredibly warm as they walked back toward Bell.

  She certainly knew what she wanted now. All she had to work out was how to get it. Maybe her mother’s ideas weren’t so bad after all, she thought to herself as she walked, sneaking little peeks at Daniel all the way back to the office. Maybe things were finally looking up.

  That weekend, Jen found herself at her kitchen table, attempting to write her internal analysis assignment. Every time she wrote something, she read it with Daniel’s eyes and immediately deleted it. Too naïve, too outlandish, too boring. She wanted to write an assignment that would make him look at her differently. An assignment that would bowl him over, make him want to talk to her about it, maybe over dinner . . .

  She shook herself. No one ever fell in love with an assignment, she told herself firmly. And even if they had, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been about internal analysis.

  She looked at the question again. “Conduct an internal analysis of an organization or industry of your choice, using the models and theories discussed in the course.” It was straightforward, at least. No trick question there. But it was also about as inspiring as . . . well, as something very uninspiring. Jen sighed.

  Unless . . . she frowned. If she were to do an internal analysis of a bookseller, that would get his attention, wouldn’t it? If she could come up with things that Daniel hadn’t even thought of . . . Okay, maybe that was unlikely bearing in mind that she’d been learning about internal analysis for a few weeks and he was teaching it. But still, he might find it interesting. He might even be flattered.

  Smiling, Jen got up and made herself a cup of tea, then sat back down to work.

  “I’ve ordered your usual.”

  Jen grinned at Angel. “Thanks.”

  “So you were working all last night? Like, actually doing an assignment? I thought you were doing this course under sufferance?” Angel’s face was incredulous.

  “I know, I surprised myself. But there’s this guy who lectures us. Daniel. I just . . . well, I wanted my assignment to be good.”

  Angel laughed. “You’re actually going to get really into this MBA, aren’t you? You’ll end up working as a Bell consultant or something. It’s so wonderfully ironic. . . .”

  Jen grimaced. “I am not going to be a Bell consultant. And I still think MBAs are hideous. But if I’m going to do it, I may as well do it properly . . . Know your enemy and all that.”

  “So this Daniel is the enemy?”

  Jen blushed and Angel raised her eyebrows.

  “Not exactly.”

  “I don’t know anyone as complicated as you, Jen. Really, I don’t know how you manage sometimes.”

  Jen looked at Angel curiously. “I’m not complicated at all. I’m perfectly straightforward.”

  Angel stirred her herbal tea. “Jen, you spend your life rebelling against things, then rebounding back again. Your father, your mother, Gavin. I lose track myself!”

  “And you’re so straightforward?” Jen challenged. “You say you don’t want an arranged marriage or to be an Indian wife, but you never have a serious boyfriend. You won’t drink coffee because of all the toxins, but I bet you were necking vodka shots last night as per usual . . .”

  Angel’s eyes twinkled and she put on her best demure face. “Vodka’s very pure, you know. But okay, enough. I didn’t say that complicated is bad, did I? It could have been a compliment.”

  “Was it?”

  Angel laughed. “Yes and no. So, this Daniel person. Is he a good man? And has he got any money?”

  Jen nodded as her muesli, yogurt, and bagel with jam arrived. For someone who said she hated her mother’s attitude toward men and marriage, Angel managed to sound a lot like her sometimes. “You’d like him,” she said with a smile. “He isn’t like Gavin at all.”

  “Then I like him already. But he’s your teacher, right? So nothing’s going to happen?”

  Jen shrugged and started eating. “He’s probably married with five children. But it doesn’t stop a girl dreaming, does it?”

  8

  “External analysis is perhaps the most interesting aspect of strategy.” The lecturer at the front of the hall paused dramatically, and stared around the room ensuring that everyone’s attention was focused directly on him.

  Jen stared at him indignantly. Where’s Daniel, she wanted to ask. Why was internal analysis dealt with so quickly? It was just getting interesting . . .

  The past few weeks had been a blur of swotting up on internal strengths and weaknesses, drinking far too many cups of coffee with Lara and Alan, and skulking around in corridors not learning very much from the conversations she overheard, but taking copious notes anyway. She now knew about the love lives of what felt like half the consultants at Bell Consulting, as well as who was applying for new jobs and how little Bruce Gainsborough, whoever he was, was rated by his colleagues. But she knew next to nothing about her father or his trip to Indonesia.
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br />   Still, she’d finished her assignment for Daniel and done rather a good job on it, if she said so herself. She imagined him reading it, imagined him thinking about her as he read it, then shook herself.

  “Internal analysis will only take you so far,” the lecturer was saying. “As with people, looking inside yourself is not really going to help you decide your future. No, being self-aware may be a prerequisite, but then you need to start looking outside to the opportunities and threats on the horizon before you can work out your place in the world. And so it is for business. Consider the context of the business—who are its customers, what do they want, where do they live? Consider competitors— how strong are they and can you preempt their next move? What about your suppliers? Are they efficient? Cheap? What are the issues they’re facing? And then think about the wider environment—what’s happening in the world outside the business? Flood, famine, boom, bust, brain drain, immigration—they are all going to have implications for a business. It’s your job to identify those implications, and to devise a strategy to make the most of the opportunities, and minimize any risks.”

  Make the most of opportunities and minimize risks, Jen thought to herself. That’s what she needed to do at Bell. Her opportunities included bumping into Daniel accidentally on purpose, spying on her father, and listening in on more conversations in the elevator. The risks included being accused of stalking Daniel, being found out by her father, and being asked why on earth she was in the elevator all day long.

  “So, introduction over, let’s look at some basic models,” the professor was saying. “The PEST is always useful—that’s Political, Economic, Social, and Technological influences. Would someone like to suggest a company, and we can work through the PEST on it?”

  A young man in the front row shot his hand up. “How about a condom company?” he asked with a slight smirk, and everyone in the room agreed vigorously. Jen cringed— she was never going to live this one down, obviously.

  The lecturer looked disconcerted. “A condom company, you say?”

  “We’re comfortable with condoms,” the young man said as seriously as he could manage. “They’re flexible enough to really analyze effectively, and you can really . . . capture the, uh, key issues.”

  A ripple of laughter spread around the room and the lecturer sighed.

  “Very well then. Political influences on a condom company?”

  There was silence.

  Jen caught the eye of the lecturer and immediately wished she hadn’t.

  “What about you,” he said immediately. “Give me a political influence on a condom company.”

  Jen thought frantically. “Um, how about the government’s commitment to reduce the level of teenage pregnancy?” she ventured.

  “Good!” said the lecturer with a smile. “That’s one. It’s an influence that could work either way—either the government could hand out free condoms, in which case our condom company has to make sure that they hand out its brand, or the government could preach abstention, which could mean fewer sales. If its brand is important and is about fun, like Mates, it may actively distance itself from government handouts because they’re seen as ‘responsible.’ So yes, lots of good stuff there. Who can think of others?”

  Jen felt a little smile creeping onto her face at the compliment.

  “AIDS awareness,” said someone else.

  “Yes, but that’s not political. A government’s attitude to AIDS is what’s political—do they acknowledge there’s a problem and want to tackle it or are they ignoring it? Both will have implications for our company. Okay, economic influences?”

  Lara stuck her hand up. “The cost of rubber,” she said with a grin.

  “Absolutely. Very big influence,” the lecturer said to a great deal of giggling around the room.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Social influences?”

  “How much people are shagging,” someone at the back shouted out, to more giggling.

  The lecturer sighed. It didn’t matter how old your students were; as soon as you had a group of people in a lecture theater they reverted to teenage humor.

  “Someone turn that sentiment into a social influence,” he said with a sigh. “What about you?”

  He was looking at Jen, and she reddened again.

  “Um, how about rates of marriage?” she tried. “And demographics—how many people are having children at what age, that sort of thing.”

  “Good. Why?”

  “Because if there are lots of people married or in relationships who don’t want to have children, condom use will go up.”

  “Excellent. Thank you. And finally, technological. Anyone?”

  Alan put his hand up. “New developments like the male pill,” he said seriously.

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “Vibrators,” Lara said quickly.

  “Explain?”

  “Well if they’re good enough, women may not need sex with men anymore. . . .” She got a little round of applause from the few women in the room.

  “Interesting idea,” the lecturer said, “which we won’t explore now—I’ll leave that to you, shall I? Now, when you’ve done your PEST, you need to—” He was interrupted by the door opening. Jen looked up and froze. Her heart started pounding and she could feel the blood drain from her face.

  “Mr. Bell!” the lecturer said, immediately straightening his posture and looking far more formal than he had five minutes before. “What a nice surprise. Would you . . . um . . . like to have a seat?”

  George smiled broadly. “You just carry on, Julian,” he said affably. “Thought I’d just take a quick look at this year’s intake if it’s all right with you.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Yes. We were just doing the PEST analysis,” the lecturer said, obviously flustered. “On a . . . manufacturing company.”

  George nodded and started walking to the back of the lecture theater.

  Jen looked around desperately, then dropped a pen on the floor and dived down after it. This was one risk she hadn’t foreseen. And it could be the end of everything. Shooting a look at Lara, she hid under her desk and held her breath.

  Lara looked at her curiously, evidently confused, and Jen tried to indicate that she was trying to hide, which she did with a series of hand gestures that frankly could have meant that she was hoping to travel to the moon one day. Still, Lara seemed to get the message and quickly deposited her coat over Jen.

  “Mr. Bell?” she asked sweetly, turning round to face him. “What’s your take on the wacky world of condoms?”

  Daniel grinned as he flicked through Jen’s assignment. Bookselling. She’d done it on bookselling. Was she trying to tell him something?

  It wasn’t bad, either, he thought to himself. It was certainly more interesting than any of the other things he’d read that day. Management reports, financial statements, supply chain strategies . . . Why was it, he wondered, that the better you were at something, the less you got to do it? He’d been a great bookseller. And what had happened? He’d been promoted and promoted until he didn’t do any bookselling anymore. Didn’t get involved in promotions, in buying decisions, any of it. He just got to sit around talking to his chairman about cost efficiencies and to his finance director about whether to put a bookstore in Mall A or Mall B.

  What should he write, he wondered. “A very interesting assignment with some good, original ideas”? No, that was way more complimentary than anything he’d written on any of the other assignments he’d marked so far. He needed to be consistent. But “Good. Interesting ideas” seemed somehow too curt.

  She was bright, obviously. And her ideas were interesting. Maybe he’d wander down to Bell some time this week, bump into her, and give her verbal feedback. Over coffee or something . . .

  He frowned. She’d probably be totally freaked out. Fuck it, maybe she was actually interested in bookselling. Maybe that’s why she’d been so keen to talk to him, so keen to ask him about what he did. She wasn’t interested in him at all.


  He smiled to himself wryly. Never mind, Daniel, he told himself. Nothing wrong with being an optimist.

  Then, carefully, he wrote “A−. Very good work.”

  Lara was staring at Jen with her eyebrows raised. Jen, meanwhile, was staring into her coffee, trying to think of a suitable explanation for her behavior in the lecture.

  “So what, you’re terrified of authority figures?” Lara tried, a little smile on her face. “Or are you a convicted criminal on the run?”

  Jen cringed. She looked closely at Lara and took a deep breath. “Lara,” she started nervously, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Lara’s eyes narrowed. “Was it you who nicked my notes on the balanced scorecard?”

  Jen shook her head crossly. “No, of course not. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Okay, then, shoot.”

  Jen gulped, then put her hands together nervously. “You know this course. This consultancy firm.”

  Lara nodded like she was talking to a five-year-old. “Yes, Jen. That’ll be Bell Consulting. I know it, you’re right.”

  Jen punched her lightly in the arm. There was nothing for it—she was just going to have to come out with it.

  “You have to promise—and I mean promise—not to tell anyone. At all. Ever.”

  Lara’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, a secret. Okay, my mouth is sealed. What’s the gossip?”

  “I’m . . . well . . .” Jen began, her heart beating loudly.

  “Yes?” Lara prompted impatiently.

  “I’m George Bell’s daughter. He doesn’t know I’m here, doesn’t know I’m doing the MBA, and he can’t know.”

  “You’re what? You’re his daughter?” she said incredulously, spitting out coffee as she spoke. Jen wiped the coffee drops from her hand and nodded.

  “And he doesn’t know you’re here?” Jen nodded again.