True Lies: Bill and Ben have a bout of fisticuffs

Our core value is "F- U"

Navel was a notoriously aggressive and arrogant technology company. The US Founder CEO loved sportscars, hot chicks, and probably hunted human beings for sport on the weekend. Meanwhile the customers who needed our tech but loathed our strong arm sales tactics and ever rising prices welcomed us grudgingly while praying for our demise with all the patient loathing of an ageing billionaire’s teenage wife stuck in a mansion and a pre-nup.

Navel was an abusive partner. One salesperson was light on their numbers one quarter so ran a license review of one of our biggest customers. Apparently the customer’s IT team had been a bit lax and $1m of unreported licenses were found. The salesperson was a hero. And the CIO of the customer ordered a purge of our software from their business with a bounty offered for every copy uninstalled. Whatever. Plenty more fish in the barrel.

Navel had a unique approach to staff engagement. Allegedly, one Monday sales cadence call opened with the words: “Good morning. We are embarking on a round of redundancies. This call is ending now and will reconvene in 2 hours. Those who join that call will still have a job.” *Click*

This was also the company where I sat next to the Regional Head of Sales Operations who would regularly complain to me about a particular sales team putting their customers’ brothel visits on their corporate credit cards.

This is the context for the story of Bill and Ben, regional SVPs of different business units. Bill coveted Ben’s bigger business. But Ben had a secret weapon, Slowcoach. Slowcoach was an ex-Accenture consultant who did all the analytics and planning and scheming for Ben. So Bill waited until Slowcoach got married and was away on his honeymoon before approaching the regional EVP, Little Weed, with a plan to reorganize the region with, big coincidence this, Bill as chief salesperson. Out-manoeuvred Ben fell apart and got drunk in his apartment at the prospect of his imminent castration. Slowcoach got wind of this and ended his honeymoon prematurely much to his bride’s annoyance. He threw Ben in the shower to sober him up and used a backdoor charge code to get a team of Filipino data analysts to take apart Bill’s data. Ben then fronted up to Little Weed to poke holes in Bill’s org model.

Ben and Slowcoach prevailed. Ben kept his job. And Slowcoach got promoted. From that point on, Slowcoach vowed to do Bill as “that f-er doesn’t fight fair”.

Obviously, all this behaviour has BVE - Big Versailles Energy. Obviously all this effort might have been better expended on improving the customer experience or the product capability. But when your position was as secure as Navel’s and your customers as trapped, then your executives are tempted simply to play games with each other.