Case Study: An Affair, An Agency And An Agenda

Give to a pig when it grunts and a child when it cries, and you will have a fine pig and a bad child. — Danish proverb

Tula Bedi looked at the windmills in the horizon through a film of angry tears. She felt she had hit dead end, but as she often told herself: “I am a true-blue Sikh — we don’t take nonsense unless it saves lives or puts food into empty stomachs!” Tula was not giving up and she was not feeling sorry.

This is a premeditated attack… Here on, I will fight till I have rubbed every dishonest nose on the ground…

“Yes, you warned me that things were going on,” she said to Patrick Lea, her MD at Kontos, an ad agency. “But the ‘goings-on’ I thought would be professional stuff. But this stinks! Did you read the letter they have given me? It says, ‘skills and experience not-transferable.’ Really now! How come I have worked here 12 whole months, but it took as little as a weekend to discover this? I won back a $100-million account, which we had almost lost, and against 12 agencies… Does that look like skills not transferable? Patrick, my redundancy was predetermined!”

Did they think she was that naïve? Had she erred in going to HR and saying, “I want to register a complaint”? Had this precipitated matters?

Two weeks ago, Tula had met Patrick and formally discussed the opposition she was facing from a creative director, Sophie Turner. She had briefed Patrick about the variety of rude encounters with Sophie; about the discriminatory, abusive and unnecessarily aggressive remarks that bordered on manic. She had discussed it all with the CEO, Ralph Warner, too. (Each group company in Kontos was headed by an MD who reported to the CEO of the business. The operations were handled by the MD.)

Tula was the brand director at Kontos for a key client T&T, for Europe and Africa (E&A). Kontos was huge, reputed and popular. T&T — a large technology firm that described itself as ‘Where consumer aspiration experiences dependable technology’ — had three key product divisions, stated simply as B1, B2 and B3.

Over the years, T&T’s global management had been pushing for a single agency format (as against the five agencies they worked with), so they steadily rationalised the list. Mid-2008, just before Tula joined Kontos, T&T moved the global B1 account to its strategic and key agency, Tracy-Lee Inc. Naturally, Kontos lost T&T’s B1 account for E&A region. This meant a tremendous loss of revenue, especially during the trying recession years.

When T&T called for a global pitch, Kontos Europe held just one category of T&T — the B2 account for E&A. For Kontos, it was huge; for Tula it was a big part of her business group which would help her team keep their jobs.

T&T invited 14 agencies; 12 participated. The lead agency, Tracy Lee, was larger than Kontos and proffered better economies of scale. The pitch was competed at three levels: level one was a ‘Why You’, where Tula and team had to present and defend technical questions. The answers were critical to winning the first round.

Level two was a reverse auction, for which Tula had to convince Kontos’ chief global procurement officer that her rate card was optimal. Thereafter, this officer, along with Tula and her team, presented their bid to T&T.

By the time round two was done, Tula had become the talk at T&T’s US office. When T&T called Kontos for round three, the creative pitch, it was, in fact, saying Kontos’ rates were good and, therefore, found favour with the rest of the panel.

When MD Patrick Lea cheered and congratulated her, Tula called her grand dad. “I feel proven, vindicated! In a recession, when an account like Kontos goes into review, it does undermine your confidence. But now it’s so so so good!” Tula was relieved; she would not have to sacrifice the most hard working members of her team now.

They began preparing for stage three, and Patrick and Tula called their best creative directors for a meeting of ideas, along with the old team: Mikhail Fedor and Hazel Keepers, the account managers, and Jeannie Penn, the account director who had engineered rounds one and two. Then, out of the blue, came a mail from  Sophie Turner, another creative director, announcing herself as the creative lead on the account. Everyone was startled. Before long came a mail from her, “We don’t need Fedor, Keepers etc. Just background work and day to day help is what they ought to concentrate on.”

Tula was surprised. How can the core T&T team be asked to disappear into the woodwork? There had to be a process of joint discussion on the client, and its key needs. How can that be called off? Things were getting a bit awry; from strategic, the team was going to 100 per cent operational… Why should a strategic team shift to the back burner? Why should a winning team be suddenly quietened?

Sophie began to shut Tula out. When she chose her own team to work on T&T, Tula was taken aback. That team had never worked on T&T; it had never been on a technology account; and, as Mikhail Fedor pointed out, ‘they don’t even know the client for God’s sake!’

How could a creative team that had never known the B2 product, nor the client, work on such a complex account? Tula began to grow restless. This clearly was not an agency decision; a plot was staring her in her face. This was something Sophie was steering. I am not naïve.

Tula decided to have a chat with Sophie, only to save the account. But Sophie had led her to the door and said, “The next time, ask my secretary if I wish to meet you.” And then, “@$+! off! And don’t you dare rat on me!” Five heads in the hall turned, and instantly looked away. Nobody messed with Sophie.

The whole office was talking by now. Patrick was frustrated but tongue tied. Ralph, too, had heard about the hallway rudeness, but laughed it off saying, “So, did you give it back to her?” Ralph’s attitude surprised Tula. He said, “Well! There is almost nothing you can do. She reports to Gregg Timms, the COO for Kontos worldwide, and well… she is also his girlfriend.”

Tula: Ralph, I am trying to earn honest bread, please. Sophie does not behave like this with anyone else on T&T. 

Ralph (smiling): Her actions are divisive, manipulative and affect your ability to manage ably, yes? Don’t get me wrong. Your own team has told me this several times. But I can’t help you.

Tula was uncomfortable. She quickly got on to the network and asked around and was told: Sophie — divorced, COO’s girlfriend, relatively poor on ideas but good at client management, but known to mess up agency-client balance with an over-enthusiastic client-orientation.

The next day, there was a crisis. Sophie had unilaterally and gushingly agreed to deliver a job to T&T in 48 hours. Except those 48 were Saturday and Sunday. Tula could not have her team work weekends; it was not even necessary. When she asked Patrick to change that, in walked Sophie to the hub where Tula and the team sat, but going up to Hazel she said, “I see you doing all the work here. Well, I have agreed to some tight deadlines with the client. Her highness doesn’t agree, but then who needs her anyway? We can do it by ourselves, can’t we, sweetheart? Let’s go out for a coffee to discuss this after lunch?”

Hazel retorted rather quickly, “Oops, not free at all today. Drop us an email about what you need, we will take care.” When a red-faced Hazel reported this to Ralph, he only managed to say, “Oh dear!”

This time Tula took it up with HR verbally and mentioned Sophie’s rude viciousness, asking for an amicable resolution; if not, the client would suffer. HR gave her a toll free number to call and take counselling support. 

Meanwhile, Sophie was miles ahead. She had begun to hold client meetings without Tula, meeting T&T liaison teams independently, even flying to Germany for these. 

Now the rudeness began to show. During a top brand management meeting, it was Tula’s turn to present successful campaigns. CEO Ralph, along with Sophie’s team, began egging Tula to ‘wrap up fast’ using gestures and remarks and interrupting her. Patrick was severely annoyed when Sophie added, “What is she saying? Does anyone understand her?”Slapping the table angrily Patrick asked Ralph to apologise for influencing ‘people’ and told ‘people’ to shut up.

Sophie took to wooing the client rather lavishly, while also making Tula look like a lowly, pointless junior clerk. T&T’s E&A regional office was getting uncomfortable with the confused messages, because Tula Bedi was the one they had a long standing relationship with. Before they could do anything, Sophie, working with the precision of a Swiss watch, chose a new account management team, demolishing Tula’s existing team on T&T. 

Tula decided to record every misdemeanour. When she pinned Ralph to addressing this, he simply said, “I haven’t come all the way to ruffle any feathers!” Wow, thought Tula, that sums up why he is so hesitant to help! Why the CEO is so useless, leadership so failing! Ralph was clearly trying not to ruffle the COO’s feathers (Sophie’s boyfriend and worse, his own dotted line relationship). But Patrick had been alarmed by certain typical tones and slants in Sophie’s language and style, which he recognised as discriminating, and made with an intention to degrade and bully Tula. On one occasion when he accosted Sophie with the accusation that she was withholding information from Tula on key briefs to make her look incompetent, Sophie dared him to prove it.

Tula demanded action. She asked her MD and CEO, “How are we sitting here as a business group and allowing a creative director to simply flout norms and rules? And how is it that Ralph, as CEO, is unable to swat Sophie on this?”

Both Patrick and Ralph individually confessed that they had raised this issue several times with senior management, that, of course, all that was unfair, and that Tula was remarkable and her work was what had saved them the $100-million account. But they had no voice in the matter and had been asked to lay off. Tula stood there agitated and shaking, shocked by the helplessness of her seniors as Ralph said, “Sophie is the COO’s girlfriend, no less, Tula. Plus, she reports to him; no one can do a thing about it, including me. Sorry, seems like Sophie runs the show here.”

Tula’s team meanwhile began to feel the pinch of their boss being harassed, for it meant that their careers would hit the ground as well. unless they made smart moves. But no one was willing to do that. At least, not yet.

A light week came along and Tula took an extended weekend off to Italy. When she returned to work on Monday, an unpleasant surprise awaited her. An email marked to all welcomed Jeannie Penn as the T&T account lead! Tula went numb. Jeannie was an account director, who reported to her! Nothing made sense and she asked Patrick what the story was.

Patrick: Worse, Tula, Jeannie is scheduled to fill your shoes. Don’t quote me on this, please. She has been designated senior account director, with brand responsibility and she will report to the global brand director in Sweden.

Tula: In Sweden? Since when did we have a GBD anywhere?

Patrick: A person called Jack Henge has been appointed as of yesterday. He plays bridge with Greg Timms (the global COO and boyfriend), or he used to, at least. I mean, now he cannot, because he will be stationed in Germany while Greg is in Wales.

Tula: What are you saying Patrick? You don’t make any sense. So what if he plays bridge or Bingo? We had a global diktat that a brand will report to the home CEO and will have no global dotted line! And what is Jeannie doing when I am brand director?

Patrick: Nothing, except that a new account needs a new structure, and Sophie has been put on top of the new structure. Obviously, she did not want you. It’s a lot of waffle.

There was another email: it congratulated everyone in T&T biz group for the new account win, and was sent to everyone in the Kontos family worldwide, by COO Greg Timms, but brand director Tula Bedi was not mentioned.

Wow, she thought. Here was a worldwide organisation that hired 9,000 people across 90 countries, and ran a business worth upwards of $3 billion, and its top management ran it with the skills of a night club DJ. The very essence of professional management now laughed her in the face.

Gregg had manouvered the entire organisation and the theory of management, to please his lady love. He was so enamoured that he could neither see his duty nor his wrong doing. He had kept the whole organisation under his spell so that they dreaded to distress Sophie, the organisational lady love. Wow, thought Tula..., in India, where her extended family lived, love for a lady had led a man to build the fabulous Taj Mahal!

Sophie would not have anything less than a position right next to her knight on the organisation chart, as an equal! Sophie was the only creative director who reported to the global COO (her boyfriend) in a different country. This put her sort of outside the organisation structure and impossible to deal with. That was how she managed to have direct meetings with Germany.

Tula had grinned, “Not impressed! Indian men prove their love by plucking the moon for their lady love or proving that the day is, in fact, night. There are Bollywood songs on this.” Ralph nodded slowly, “Yes, I have heard Indians are mystical.”

“Yes,” said Tula, “and you have seen nothing yet Ralph.... We are oh-so mystical.”

Tula looked at the date of the email announcing the new organisation structure and did a double take. That mail was sent on the Thursday night before she went on the extended weekend, so that it reached people just as she left — that meant they had it all planned!

She thought, they were two consenting adults, but how did that allow them to, one, change the organisation’s structure; two, appoint a new brand director; three, demolish a functional team and randomly shift the client business to a bunch of people who had had nothing to do with imaging business? They are playing with the trust of a client who has put a 100 million into the hands of an agency, based on image, published profit and loss and Statement of Intent!
Wow! How naïve all this is! And I used to think my three-year-old son is naïve for thinking he was Spiderman!
Tula’s mind was made. She was going to approach HR. She would raise Cain! This was no more just about her ego and her job; it was about the organisation.

But HR’s Meg Winkle said, “If you lay it so bare, then it will be out in the open and then you cannot deal with Sophie.” Then noting Tula’s expression, she said, “Honey, think about it. We will need to tell Sophie all that you are reporting… word will spread. You will come to be seen as a rattler. Oh, or is it tattler? Must check…”

Once again the doubt and confusion came back. Tula thought of her grandfather, of little Siv, of the house mortgage, of her patient husband Karan. Then the creative pitch danced before her eyes. So close to winning and yet so complex-ly far… damn you Sophie, damn! It was Catch 22.

HR was not willing to approach senior management in a manner that would not damage Tula’s situation. I still have to work with Sophie; a formal investigation will alienate her even more… Heck! Should I wait and watch, then?
Then she recalled Sophie’s cruel words. Last month, Tula was raising money for a local charity, and Sophie had sneered, “Raising money for the poor people back home?” Tula was now clear about her next step. She would file a complaint with HR. Oh, but what if they sacked her for complaining? HR did things like that… Oh, but they couldn’t. By contract, they would have to give her four weeks’ notice.

Tula had 10 days to go to complete one year at Kontos. Filing a grievance would be like declaring war. Resigning was not even a thought in her mind. Completing the year was important to collect some extras that were hers by right, and she did need those to pay off her mortgage.

But Kontos moved in quick, urged by Sophie’s ploys. They declared Tula redundant, just 10 days before she completed her year. And the economy proffered that opportunity because recession was the big bad word, so that redundancy was legal even if unfair. Foul and unethical considering that Tula had only recently won the T&T account for Kontos. Ungrateful because Kontos, which was laying off people week after week to stay afloat, had a short memory.

It was smart, very very smart. Now Tula could not claim unfair dismissal. They had seen to it. Now, Tula would technically not have completed a full year. That meant she also lost her right to claim unfair dismissal.

It was not the sacking per se. It was the planning and conniving. This way the senior management had snuggled back into the good books of the COO and his lady love.

Now it was war. Tula, the true blue warrior, was not going to take any nonsense. She called her lawyers.

(To be continued…)

Classroom Discussion
Business benefits from the best heads; but matters of the heart reveal the foolhardy

casestudymeera at gmail dot com

Is it luck that determines success in one's career?

Often enough we believe that an element of "luck" is what gets some of us the lucky breaks while others get left behind in the "me too" category. I have always begged to disagree thanks to my inside view of the careers and decisions made by any number of successful executives. Taking risk at the right time, betting your all on what your gut tells you is going to be the future, willingness to leave your "comfort zone" (location, money) often decides the winners. This article that I came across reinforces this. It also tells one that the success factors remain same whether it is in the realms of scientific research or the corporate world....Happy Reading...

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article392121.ece

A day in the life of a recruiter - interesting read!

For those of us who think that a recruiter’s job is mere cakewalk, there’s more to it than meets the eye. A lot of sweet and toil goes into finding the ‘right candidate’ and matching the skills with the job in hand. It takes not only analytical skills but also tremendous emotional intelligence to really understand the candidate and fit him/her in the most suitable job. And you thought that recruiters only have to go through a sheet of paper that just mirrors some facts about the candidate?! 

Anu Parthasarthy, founder and CEO, Global Executive Talent agrees, “A good recruiter needs to understand the client business well which implies a lot of reading to be updated on the new technology trends, consumer market trends, government regulations(local and international)etc.” She further adds, “It also involves tracking competition specifically with respect to current clients.” 

A typical search assignment involves a lot of ground work in researching the potential candidate landscape and broadcasting the search across multiple media to get to the right candidates. This calls for a great team effort with the recruiter being supported by researchers. 

The day for a recruiter begins with a great planning and more often than not ends up in chaos as many unplanned activities take place. “A typical day starts with a meeting/call with the team to analyze the research, pool knowledge about available candidates and plan for next steps,” shares Parthasarthy. 

“Then the day will have a couple of scheduled meetings/calls with clients and candidates. There will also be calls with other people to get references, candidate leads etc which can help further in closing the assignments,” she adds. Besides this, some part of the day is also spent in preparing dossiers on candidates being presented, status reports for clients and in-house administrative work. 

And then of course there is the joy of contributing to a person’s life by getting him the job s/he so relentlessly worked towards day in and day out. “It feels great when your candidates tell you that you impacted their professional life positively,” shares Parthasarthy. “I have had situations where candidates came back after 7-8 years and shared the progress they made within the company. It gives a tremendous feeling of fulfillment,” she concludes.

Enough women in boardrooms?

Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line
Author: D. MURALI


Do women in corporate boardrooms continue to be an exception rather than the norm? “Yes, very true,” agrees Anuradha Parthasarathy, Founder & CEO, Global Executive Talent (www.globalexecutivetalent.com). Even the ones that are there are typically from the owner family, she adds, during the course of a recent email interaction with Business Line. 


A management graduate from BITS-Pilani, Anu was the Head of Marketing for Wipro's International Operations Division before founding Nexus Search Consultants, co-founding e4e, and then the current firm as a cross-border senior executive search enterprise based in the US.

Excerpts from the interview:


Your views on how women's presence on boards can be increased.
Women independent directors who have been recruited for their skills are rare. The problem starts at a different level — do we even have enough women at the CXO levels who can then be potential candidates for board positions? No.


So, when companies start looking to shortlist candidates for board positions 99 per cent of the candidates who surface will be men. Board positions today are tough, needing a fairly stringent evaluation process. Also it is a two-way street — the candidates too will evaluate the company to decide if they want to join the board.


Eventually, even the 1 per cent will fall off as it is next to impossible to have a high enough hit rate to select from within the miniscule pool. It is also a fact that most CEOs and investors are men and, therefore, will end up selecting a board which looks and feels more like them.

The only way we can ensure that there are enough women on the board will be through affirmative action; where they deliberately seek out the few women wherever they are and make them an attractive offer to join their board. Why would a corporate do that? Couple of reasons why they would take this extra trouble:


Legislative mandate as in Norway which insists that corporates reserve a certain number of board seats for women.


The CEO is convinced that women board members have a very powerful and positive impact on how well the company is run — that is, his short-term and long-term growth and profitability depends on having women on board. But we do see countries such as Japan with abysmal representation of women on boards still showcasing market-leading companies which are well run by all metrics. Hence it is not an open and shut case.

The only way, therefore, this situation can change at least in the next decade will be when enough women reach and stay at the top of the corporate pyramid and thereby increase the overall available pool of meritocratic candidates.


This will happen only if we get enough women in every layer of management. The only success story so far in this context is ICICI.


Why do women lose out in the mid-career phase?
Conventional wisdom will say that women are biased towards spending more time and effort in bringing up children when they are in their 30s. Hence they opt out of the corporate rat race. However the real reasons are different.

Once women put themselves through professional education such as engineering, management, etc., they are keen on building a good career. In fact, many qualified, educated women feel depressed and frustrated in the latter part of their life because they feel that they did not live up to their potential.


However, even today the corporate world is built by men, for men, of men. Often lip service is paid to the concept of supporting women and encouraging them to work — it is easy to reel out policies for the benefit of PR. But results speak louder than words and it is there to see.

Even in the IT industry, which unlike other industries depend on women for talent, there are not enough women at the top.

The easiest approach is to blame the women, but we all know that at heart all of us share the same aspirations to rise to the best of our potential — unfortunately women get pushed out, thanks to the non-conducive work environment.

We have a culture where there is a lot of emphasis placed on the physical time spent at the workplace. Networking after office hours over drinks is the key to getting to know about new opportunities. Again women hardly participate and get left out of consideration.

Going up also requires women to move out of back-office positions and take on line roles such as sales which can lead to P&L positions. However, travel within India, especially to remote places, is still very tough on women and will warrant taking undue risks in terms of safety.

Finally, the infrastructural facilities conspire to undo even the best intentions — hours to commute to work, no reliable childcare facility, absence of neighbourhood schools, and a school system which expects parents to supervise and tutor kids.

Do Indian companies pursue diversity, in general, and gender diversity, in particular? Where are the hurdles?
Indian companies have started talking about gender diversity especially the ones which want to be seen as progressive and which are catering to a global customer base. American companies want to do business with vendors who proactively pursue diversity, especially gender diversity.

However, as I said earlier, there is more lip service than real intention. And the reasons aren't far to see. Corporations are driven by the short-term, quarter-to-quarter performance goals. They will only bother about gender diversity if they feel their performance is getting affected by not having enough women at different levels.


This realisation can change attitudes overnight. Else we will need the Government to mandate “quotas” for women — in India they have enough on their plate to bother about this and it will have zero popular support.

So we will cross this hurdle when we hit the talent crunch. A talent crunch will force companies to compete for women by providing a better then “home” environment so that they would choose the corporate world over the “home” world.


Companies should feel that they need to attract enough women, retain and grow them if they are going to build a high performance, stable team. They should believe that having women in their midst will change their perspective positively. They should want women in their ranks to understand the customer and market needs better.


As of now, unfortunately (women will not like hearing this), these are not “felt” needs.

Transformational Leadership and its relevance to the VC/ PE community - excerpts of my speech in APEX 2010

2009 was in many ways a watershed year for Indian entrepreneurs and investors. Pre 2009, growth was overwhelming – the challenge was to swim with the rising tide – making sure you were ready with the capital and people to grab the opportunity.  Talent was scarce but we knew how to compete against the MNC’s and grab our share with the right mix of cash, stock and lure of an adventure trip. But the first big blip was a true eye opener.

Suddenly the blue chip recruits did not feel motivated to stay on and take the tough decisions of firing and cutting costs – now that the paper upside looked very remote.  Not only was the appetite for tough times missing but also there was very little learning that could be leveraged for down times – most had seen only ups with very few having tasted and survived such an unpredictable global downturn.  Soon enough the runway which the professional thought that they had negotiated for themselves, disappeared. Owner promoters and founders were anxious to conserve value and were quickly reneging on their committed support. The time looked right for sabbatical as more executives decided to take off rather than plunge themselves into messy waters. The NRI’s and the expats did not like the look and feel of the new biz model which could not pay for international schools and gated communities.

Very soon investors too realized that the real returns were only available when they could up the ante to the next level: create companies with new business models not “me toos” copying successful western ones both in the venture and PE world.  Is the real return in “building Amazon” for India or changing the way books are written, published and distributed? Is the Indian PE investor going to gain by building yet another auto company or should he be betting on building a new way for transporting people from point to point? 2009 proved to be a wake-up call. It removed the easy options and pitted investors in the more unknown, risky but higher rewards path of building businesses which will redefine rather than recreate traditional western business models. I believe we are at the very early stage of this great journey which will reshape our view of the business world.

So what kind of leadership will this demand?? It calls for leaders who understand the big shifts that are happening in the world intrinsically not at a superficial level.  Who are able to then distill these changes to paint a vision for what businesses need to do differently – redefine their landscape in some ways. Like the good guys who saw mobile payment as a means to redefine conventional banking not just a “mode of payment”. Who then have the passion for proving their vision and therefore are willing to commit themselves to executing through ups and downs. These are people who are driven by the impact that they can see themselves making and not by business cards and cars they drive. Such transformational leaders are required at the helm of businesses today whether it is a VC funded start-up growing wings or a PE funded company redefining its path. This is not more of the same and therefore executives who have perfected the art of “doing more of the same” better and better will be found misfits for such roles.

Most of these leaders are hidden till we search, probe and unearth them for unless we have the right message they are not interested in reaching out. Often enough these are executives who have experimented & failed not the traditional, always successful, born with a silver spoon stereotypes that we paint for our leadership talent. They are often not in visible jobs as they have been very busy making change happen wherever they are. They are not the “stars” hailed by media and feted by every new MNC which sets shop in India. They have been entrenched in execution perhaps in some unfashionable businesses in the dusty town and cities of India or Indonesia. The challenge lies not only in finding them but also in giving them the runway they need to succeed. More often than not, transformation is a slow process in the beginning and gathers speed only later – Rome was not built in a day!

As investors you need to prepare that runway by making sure that there is full backing and support from founders/ family owners etc. to make the change happen. Transformational leaders need empowerment and a free hand to recruit and build teams which will help them execute.  In fact this is the magnet that attracts such folks.

The good news is that we have in our midst today people who can rise up to this challenge and in fact potential leaders who are waiting for the right opportunity to prove themselves.  For today more than at any other time ambitious executives are hitting the glass ceiling faster and the frustration levels are high – right time for all the investors here to wear the recruiting hat!

My message for 2010 – let us build a cadre of transformational leaders who can redefine the business landscape from India. Whose values, ethos and outlook are quintessentially Indian even as they perceive the world as their arena.