Desperately Seeking Vernon

It sounds to me as if it would be easy for you to put me in touch with Vernon Jordan, I say. "I don't know him," Ames says. "He's a good friend of Michael Jordan, the executive who used to be at CBS. He's in New York someplace. I don't have a number. I doubt Vernon would be willing to talk about it. Well, that's enough said."

Googling for Michael Jordan, executive, is like looking for a needle in the basketball star's haystack. After a couple of hours, I finally find the Michael Jordan that I'm looking for. He's now with venture firm Global Asset Capital, in San Francisco. And he doesn't return phone calls.

Just like that, I've already used up 2 of my 4.6 handshakes.

So I pick up a new thread. I call an old friend, Gerry Roche, the premier executive recruiter for more than three decades at Heidrick & Struggles. No one has a sweeter handshake than Gerry, who has found scores of board-position candidates.

I ask Gerry to take the temperature of boards. Does he think they're over? "No generality is worth a damn, including this one," he says. "Boards still have power. Right now, I'm involved with the CEO search for Chubb, the best property- and casualty-insurance company out there, and the board of directors is running the whole thing. Boards are still boards. They realize that the old model of getting together the night before and having a nice dinner and then smoking a cigar and going into a rubber-stamp meeting is long gone. Boards know full well that they are under intense scrutiny these days."

I'm desperately seeking Vernon, I tell him. Can you help? "Well, I don't know," he says. It's clear that I'm a friend, but what I've just asked for is the combination to a vault that contains a secret beyond my security clearance. There's a pause. He hedges: "There's someone at American Express, a guy who's close to Vernon. Call Aldo Papone, a former chairman -- still a very important guy." Bye-bye, handshake number 3.

Hello, number 4. Papone doesn't return calls. I'm down to my last 0.6. I call Ann D. McLaughlin Korologos, former labor secretary, who is the ranking female board member, currently with seven board seats to her credit: American Airlines, Catalyst, the Fannie Mae Foundation, Kellogg, Marriott, Microsoft, and RAND Corp. And she doesn't return calls either.

Which oddly confirms the theory that suddenly power is unseen, unheard, and unavailable -- but ready to strike at a moment's notice. Power is not leadership. When you stop to think about it, the circles may not even overlap. You could think of it like this: Leadership is having a lot of skin in the game. Power is working through others at a distance.

A former White House official told me that Vernon Jordan could have had any job that he wanted in either Clinton administration. But he chose none, because giving up his many board seats for a mind-blowing position alongside the president would not have been an even trade. All of the prestige, the spotlight, and the genuflection of leaders of the world's great nations -- what a comedown. Better to be a node of great distinction, tucked securely in the quiet middle of everything.

Vernon, I know you're out there. If you're reading this, call me. Secretly, of course.

Harriet Rubin (hrubin@fastcompany. com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Find a catalog of her columns on the Web, here.