Mad Max or The Flying Dutchman

I learned about Jan Hussing and his pyrite parachute when a friend took me to meet him. Jan had fleeced my friend's son, and my friend wanted his son's money. Jan had told the son that, once the son’s employment contract was completed, his employer could not stop the son from changing jobs; Jan further said that it was not, in fact, a real job change, but an internal transfer; finally, Jan promised to double the son’s salary. The net result was that the son lost a secure job and worked several months for Jan without getting paid.

My friend had gone to meet Jan alone, but had not gotten any of his son’s salary. So my friend brought me along, hoping for better results. I was impressed by Jan’s two meters ten height, but told my friend, 'My advice is to give up on Jan. He is never going to give your son his salary. Stop wasting your time.’

A few days later, my phone rang. 'Hello, this is Dr. Max Nyiri with the Institute for Strategy and Complexity Management. We need someone like you. Could you come for an interview?'

My answer was yes. It was a slow week/month/year, and I could have used some work.

I met Max, and he explained: 'We do strategy stress-testing. Most implementation plans run into problems, but our exclusive software can predict and prevent all problems, saving companies 2/3 or more of the costs of implementation. We can also guarantee that they will finish on time and under budget. It is much cheaper to proactively predict and prevent problems than to react to the problems and try to solve them.'

It is quite true, of course, that it is much better to prevent problems than to create them and then be forced to solve them, and every organisation wants to finish all its projects on time and under budget. I was curious to see if Max actually had such software.

(I suffer from the feline’s fatal flaw, and I’m running out of lives, but I couldn’t help myself, I’m too old to change.)

Max continued, 'I need someone like you, with your experience. I want you to meet some customers. Please tell them you work for me. Don't give them your business card, tell them to go through me.' I agreed. I sat and listened as Max gave the above spiel. Over and over. The clients seemed happy to hear it. As it happened, they'd just given Max $5,000 for a seminar on improving their strategy, and didn’t mind hearing again how smart they were for booking the seminar, and how they were going to save their organisation 2/3 of the cost of implementing its strategy, and that they would also be able to guarantee that all their projects finished on time and under budget.

After the clients had gone, Max said, 'I'm only giving you this job because Jan recommended you. Jan is one of my best friends, and I know if he recommended you, you'll be a good worker. And I can see you have a lot of experience, and we need experience. I have 15 young PhDs in Holland working for me, but universities don't give degrees in experience. I need you to come with us to Abu Dhabi tomorrow. Meet us at our hotel at 7 am.'

I had to catch a taxi at 6 am to get to Max's hotel, where we took a taxi to Abu Dhabi. We went from potential client to potential client. Max had a young American named Adam who did all the computer demos, in PowerPoint. Clients didn't get to see the wonderful software Max had told me about. It was the same spiel over and over and over, and I fell asleep during one of the spiels. Max was annoyed.

Max showed me a brochure with his business plan: his Institutes, according to the brochure, each earn more than €100,000 a month, and he's selling the UAE branch for €1,000,000, so it will return 120% per annum. Max was hoping one of these people would hand over €1,000,000, and he said my falling asleep was going to put them off.

We got back to Dubai around midnight. Max didn’t have any money to pay the taxi driver, but promised to pay after another day of travel to Abu Dhabi, and the taxi driver agreed. Max said we had to leave at 6 am for the second round.

The next morning, after just a couple of hours of sleep, I left my place at 5 am, and went with Max to Abu Dhabi again, a trip that ended late that day. The day was much like the previous one, with the same spiel over and over, about stress-testing strategies, and about finding a partner to set up the UAE Institute for Strategy and Complexity Management. After three exhausting days, Max went back to Holland, Adam went back to America, and I hadn't seen any money. Max had said I was an 'equity partner,' meaning that if any of the clients gave Max money, I'd get a share, but no salary, nothing unless one of the clients I'd met gave Max some money. Max said Adam was working on the same basis. I never learned if Adam paid his own way over from the US for his share of the soon-to-come €1,000,000, or if Max covered Adam's airfare. But, by then, I was sure I was never going to see any money, and I hoped I was rid of Max. I'd really gone along to see what this Institute was about, but I still didn't know how, exactly, the Institute proposed to stress-test strategies, or how its unique software could predict and prevent all problems a business might face, while also preventing time and budget overruns.

The next week, however, Max called. He said I was now with the Institute, and I was to only use the official Institute e-mail to communicate with him, and that he’d created an e-mail account for me. He continued talking for about six hours. And he called the next day and every day after that, and talked for six, eight, or ten hours. He always said the same thing over and over and over, about his great software, and his strategy stress-testing. I was too polite to hang up. And I sent back, using his e-mail, polite messages thanking Max for his attention, unwanted though it was.

Talking to Max all day every day meant I missed several other things I’d hoped to do, including the Chinese DVD lady. I apologised that, being on the phone with Max, I couldn’t peruse her DVDs, and said I had to listen to a crazy Dutchman. Little did I know.