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

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