For a while, Barry Freedman was truly my champion. During the airline schedule planning project at AT&T, he aggressively promoted my work to our management and to the two airlines who paid real money for the AT&T-SP system. When AT&T management could not see the difference between real work and pointless project process, he secured a position as the directory of a new Operations Research group at Northwest Airlines and a position for me in that group. My first project there was simulation and yield management software that became the Enhanced Network Value Indexing (ENVI) system. For over a year, Barry promoted my work at Northwest Airlines.

     Then Barry left for Conrail.

     Only then did I find out that Barry had made two major mistakes at NWA. First, he promoted the work and not the people doing the work. After he left, I approached the people in Marketing and found out they had no idea who had written ENVI. Second, he had relied on his authority to get things done rather than to build relationships with other organizations. The animosity towards him spilled over onto the group, particularly its charter member.

     Flushed with the success of his two big software project successes, AT&T-SP and ENVI, I'm told Barry promised great things at Conrail. But he was lacking the secret ingredient at Conrail that he had at AT&T and NWA and, again I'm told, his failure to deliver results cost him his job. And what was the secret ingredient that made it possible for Barry to deliver AT&T-SP and ENVI? Having me there to do the job, of course. When he went to Conrail, there was no job offer for The Adam. And, after a while, there was no job for Barry.