by Adam Leigh
How dare they do this to me. This was not about my ability, but rather Julian’s need to win. Leadership is often jettisoned from an organisation for reasons of incompetence and poor performance. At that moment, some four years after we launched, we were valued at over £450m. We had five hundred staff in fifteen countries. We may not have been a fully grown unicorn, but we were certainly a mythical creature of some sort.
You may have found this narrative mawkish and think I am too emotional to succeed at this level. Maybe, despite my bias, Julian’s minor-celebrity glitz makes you inclined to sympathise with him. I don’t really care, because when I was ejected from my own business, I had the seething indignation of an Old Testament God disappointed in the way his creation had turned out. Vain Julian, psychotic Dimitri and pompous George were all in my sights.
The accusation that had been levelled at me many times was that I was a nice enough bloke, but a bit soft. I definitely had a set of values I tried to follow: be polite, be kind, remember the feelings of others. They can sustain and fuel ambition but sometimes get in the way, and I convinced myself that, until I signed any paperwork, this was not over. You can’t overturn the results of a general election but perhaps you can order a recount if you feel that the maths wasn’t correct.
Sarah tried to talk to me, but I didn’t really engage. I told her that I needed to be alone and figure out a solution. I could tell that she wanted me to accept defeat graciously and return to some form of family normalcy. She argued that I had created a company that had made us wealthy beyond reasonable expectation. Indeed, if I sold out, we’d be incredibly wealthy. Imagine what a happy life we could have, not to mention the good we could do. She repeated this whenever she could.
In total exasperation late one evening, when I was totally unresponsive to her argument, she lost her cool and shouted, “Alex. I have been a total bloody saint over the last five years. I have stood by as you have left the family to seek your fortune. You have not been there for us, so I am begging you to give up. You have lost, Julian has won, and yes, he is a complete shit. He betrayed his wife and now he has betrayed you. Maybe he’ll get his comeuppance. Catherine has moved on and now you need to.”
Her passion inspired a totally different reaction to what she had hoped for. I felt a surge of excitement and gave her a huge and unexpected hug. It was not because she had outlined a happy future. It was because she had used the words ‘comeuppance’ and ‘Catherine’ in such close proximity. Suddenly my path to redemption was clear, as I recalled the conversation Julian and I had had about his divorce.
Julian had won the majority of support based, perhaps, on a false assumption of share ownership. I ran out of the kitchen, leaving a bemused Sarah wondering why I was so skittish. Shutting the door to my study, I phoned Catherine.
***
We met for breakfast the next day. Catherine was suspicious of why I needed to see her urgently and it had taken some cajoling to alter her schedule, but I made it clear that it was crucial to her financial well-being. As soon as we ordered coffee, I told her what had happened.
“Well, Catherine, I know how it feels to be dumped by Julian too.”
Not the most sensitive opening remark, I realised. It was met with angry admonishment.
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Julian has led an uprising and I’ve been fired so that he can be sole CEO. I’m out.”
Her face maintained its sternness. She didn’t seem that surprised. “I’m sorry to hear this, but these things happen, and often do when Julian wants his way. You must be devastated, Alex. But what has it got to do with me? I’m not a member of the board.”
“No, but you have an interest in his shares, don’t you?”
She didn’t respond and was not making this easy.
“Julian told me he was arguing with you over the value of the company as part of your settlement.”
“I’m amazed he did that. He knows our negotiations are confidential and, with enormous respect, Alex, you have a mouth the size of Cheddar Gorge. I really wouldn’t want you to know my interests. What you probably think is that I’m stealing your precious company when all I’m trying to do is protect my children.”
She couldn’t have been more wrong. Well, except the bit about my big mouth.
“That’s not fair. Sarah and I always felt that you had been treated terribly by Julian. Really, we did. Which brings me to a crucial question. I don’t need to know all the details, but please answer this. Do you have control of more than 30 per cent of Julian’s equity?”
She paused for a second, as if contemplating a marriage vow, and then slowly nodded, looking me directly in the eye. “I do.”
“Then, if you’re interested, we can both enjoy a spot of rather pleasant revenge.”
***
I don’t know how I expected her to react. In the event, it certainly wasn’t glee, rather a muted sadness. She listened to my war story and the legal advice I had been given. If we could prove that Julian did not have full control of his equity because it was part of his divorce settlement, then he did not have the necessary support of the board. I had won.
Catherine eventually pledged her full commitment to me. It was not because she particularly sympathised with my plight. I’m not even sure she really liked or respected me that much. Rather, she was angered and saddened by Julian’s enduring dishonesty. She didn’t want her children to grow up benefiting from the spoils of his lack of decency. If he felt impelled always to do what suited him, she, conversely, was going to do what was right for everyone else.
Five days after the first meeting, I convened another emergency gathering of the board. I was reliant on the tenacity and aggression of my lawyers to ensure the legality of my actions and they, in turn, faced a barrage of angry responses from George and Julian. But to no avail, and despite Brooke and Cole being back in the US and only on video, we gathered late one Tuesday afternoon in the same meeting room. I had managed to invoke a procedural misdemeanour as the reason for a second vote, allowing me to keep my new ally a secret from the enemy.
Of course, I had confided in Moshe a few days earlier what was going to happen. He was malevolently elated when I revealed my strategy on the phone to him, shrieking the same bizarre phrase: ‘You are a business commando after all.’ He told me that I needed to exert maximum pain on Julian, which was ironic given that he had seemed tacitly to support him in the first boardroom battle. Still, the ensuing narrative appealed to my sense of the theatrical – after all, I had nothing to lose other than my dignity.
I had been able to keep my secret well. Julian and George maintained a glacial silence when I entered the room with my lawyer, doing everything they could through hostile body language to maximise my discomfort. I must have irritated them significantly because I could not stop smirking and had to stop myself from singing aloud, I know something you don’t, na na na na na. George refused to look up from his papers and muttered with ill-concealed contempt, “Can we begin this farcical waste of time.”
I was by now feeling immortal, so decided to challenge his rudeness. “Well, that’s not a very chairman-like way to begin a meeting, George.”
He looked up sharply, his face suggesting he was contemplating having me bumped off. I grabbed my phone and, like a teenager ignoring a parent, pressed send on a text to Alice, giving her the signal to make an entrance. Then, in a benign and soothing voice, I simply said: “Please can we wait thirty seconds. I have asked someone to join the meeting.”
I counted the seconds in my head, staring at a ceiling tile, afraid to catch Julian’s eye for fear of giggling, bursting into tears or turning into a pillar of salt. Eventually, the heavy door opened, and a timid and apprehensive Catherine entered with Alice. I made the introductions with a triumphant flourish, suggesting I had finally become nasty in pursuit of my dream.
“Julian, I believe you know your ex-wife.”
His face crumpled into a look of horror, like someone accid
ently stepping into an empty lift shaft and hurtling to an unpleasant demise. He knew what I was doing and that he had been outflanked. The other protagonists could not disguise their emotions. Moshe was loving every minute, Alice and Samantha were struggling to contain their excitement. Jane was relatively indifferent, making me realise that she didn’t care about people, only a healthy return. I was thrilled to see the discomfort of the perfidious Dimitri. He tried to be very friendly, anticipating the success of my putsch. His charm was unconvincing and my response to it decidedly lukewarm. Catherine looked extremely sad – torn between a desire for justice, residual love for Julian and resentment at my palpable smugness at victory. After all, my gain was her loss of a marriage.
George was petulantly argumentative, questioning the process aggressively. Fortunately, his arrogance was met with the meticulous calm of my legal team. We made it clear that Catherine had ownership and hence voting rights, therefore the first decision was invalid. I almost skipped out of the room when we were asked to leave once more for the voting, and made the immature gesture of elaborately holding the door open for Julian, who shuffled down the corridor with drooping shoulders.
His dismissal twenty minutes later was brief. Moshe delivered the news to him, because in our absence he had successfully wrenched the role of chairman from a seething George. Moshe’s summary was bereft of sympathy.
“I find it hard to thank you, Julian, for your efforts as I dismiss you. I really have never trusted you and so I am not that sorry to see you go. Alex has our full support now. He has shown that he is tougher than we have all given him credit for. It’s a new era and, Julian, you are going to miss all the good bits.”
Calmly, Julian rose from his chair and spoke briefly to Catherine, touching her lightly and affectionately on the shoulder. He gathered his things and walked towards me with a broad grin. Unruffled as ever, he shook my hand and smiled enigmatically.
“Well played, Alex. You have won and surprised us all. I’m still a major shareholder and will be watching with much interest how you get on. Interesting times ahead. Interesting times.”
With that, the ship was mine.
23. Dawn Chorus
There was little time for celebration or recrimination. No sooner had we signed the paperwork for Julian’s departure than we were raided by the Information Commissioner’s Office, the flying squad of data protection.
A dawn raid was a bit old hat for us. Except this time, it wasn’t the police weeding out opportunistic drug dealers, but a serious operational challenge based on alleged shady practices. The Information Commissioner might sound like an upmarket librarian but is actually a senior government official able to levy a whopping fine, instigate criminal proceedings, accelerate a parliamentary sub-committee investigation or just create reputational mayhem. After an initial consultation with our lawyers, it seemed we might be in for all four.
For an ethical business rooted in family life, it appeared we had not behaved well. There was evidently a political opportunity to castigate our arrogant ambition and reveal the shoddy practices prevalent in pushy digital businesses. They came at us all spreadsheets blazing with the initial raid, accompanied by the theatricality of a press tip-off ensuring obtrusive cameras and aggressive journalists. It wasn’t quite the scrum you’d get at the announcement of a royal baby, but it was unpleasant to have to push my way through the melee while avoiding my natural instinct to proclaim innocence to anyone that would listen.
At the heart of the case was the worrying revelation that we had used the database of a supermarket’s loyalty scheme to hack our early growth. With chilling certainty, I remembered when Dimitri told us that he had got hold of some data from some faceless online associate on the dark web, as a return for a favour. He made it clear to us it was completely safe, and we should just get on with it without being so conservative.
It was a time of mounting political interference through nefarious data manipulation. How else could one account for Trump or Brexit? A commercial enterprise stealing the shopping-basket information of innocent people across the country was, therefore, a breach too far. A great story, particularly in a quieter news week.
We were a large enough organisation to throw money at professional help, hiring a top crisis management PR agency and some eye-wateringly expensive data protection lawyers. At a furious Moshe’s behest, a team of ‘data security’ experts arrived to make our previous behaviour opaque where possible, sort of like clearing a dodgy internet history.
A meeting room was commandeered, blinds drawn, coffee machines, printers and paper shredders logged into a separate hacker-proof network. At no stage did anyone ask us the obvious question, ‘Did you do it?’ We were a death-row murderer establishing a robust defence without ever being asked if we’d pulled the trigger. Actually, it was all rather exciting. Having recently risen from the dead like the better-known biblical Lazarus, I was feeling invincible. This was just another test I needed to pass to show I was a calm statesman in a crisis.
Despite the pressure, I was revelling in the palpable discomfort of Dimitri, who could sense his imminent demise, which I hoped to accelerate. He had shown no loyalty in the battle with Julian and there was no need to protect him. What an opportunity to pin all the blame on him. I was settling my scores.
The charges were more than just stealing data. Unbeknown to me, we had allowed Moshe’s team at SmickSmack to have access to our own global database. His initial financial support had been predicated on giving Avi Ram unfettered access to our back-end engine. He hoped our growing consumer brand would help the encrypted security products he was developing for retail businesses. His reasoning was vague and, besides, we just wanted to get the company going, so we didn’t really challenge him as much as we clearly should have. Moshe’s corporate empire boasted a Byzantine and impenetrable structure and, with no official UK or EU office, was judicially hard to pin down. Not so his naive associates, who had left footprints and fingerprints all over the crime scene.
A fidgety Dimitri came to see me a day after the raid. We had hardly spoken since the boardroom theatrics, so I cultivated a nonchalant ‘you mean nothing to me’ demeanour; feet up on the desk, scrolling through emails and ignoring his desperate need for eye contact.
“How much trouble are we in, Alex?”
“We?”
“This affects us all, surely?”
“Of course it does. But you might want to consider getting some legal representation, as a lot of the accusations have your name attached to them. This could potentially be a criminal offence.” I was really enjoying this now. Good karma, as they say in ruthless Buddhist circles.
“Alex, you know very well that we took the decision together that day. You, me and Julian. This is about all of us.”
“What day are you referring to? I remember many conversations with you in the early days about hacking growth, but I don’t remember sanctioning you to embark on a supermarket sweep of illegal data.”
My memory was, however, entirely clear about him procuring a ‘dark web favour’. He had chided me for my nervousness and, like a reluctant schoolboy encouraged to go shoplifting with his naughtier friends, I had sanctioned the crime with Julian. There was fortunately no evidence of this conversation.
Dimitri looked at me with confused horror. I had always been a constant support, unconditionally encouraging, irrespective of his mercurial behaviour. He must have realised this change of attitude stemmed from his siding with my enemy, and his brilliant mind, bereft of any natural empathy, could not cope with the withdrawal of affection. He shook his head and stuttered the plea “Please do the right thing” as he sloped back to his desk, shoulders visibly sagging. Any pleasure was momentary, my conscience reminding me that cruelty was not a sign of good leadership.
This was further confirmed when I recounted the story to Sarah. I thought she would exonerate me with the passion of a lioness protecting her young. Instead, she called me a callous bastard, and said that irrespective
of the provocation, she was ashamed that I would take pleasure in revenging a perceived wrong. I went to bed rather embarrassed by my inability once more to separate personal slight from professional behaviour.
The next day, Clark Templeton came to see me, oozing false bonhomie. Since Julian’s departure, he had become my de facto deputy through the insistence of Moshe and Brooke. It was hard not to have a cordial relationship with him, because he was ineffably polite and solicitous to everyone. That he was driven by a sense of his own worth, believing his voice to be the wisest, was the real threat I feared.
He had been highly efficient in conceiving new revenue streams. In the space of eighteen months, he had developed a huge new initiative for us, PrimaParent Learn. Rightly, he argued that above entertaining their children, parents wanted them to have the best education possible to prepare for their future. Since we were about providing unparalleled experiences, surely parents would be prepared to pay for additional learning support for their kids. Technology made this easy to roll out globally. If we could safely recruit retailers and experience providers, we could certainly also enlist the brightest and best tutors available. Cleverly, we were ahead of our time, teaching remotely using basic video services like Skype.
Buoyed by his unassailable importance to the business, increasingly he treated me with a benign condescension. He would pretend to defer to my CEO decisions, but his eyes would stare through me, pondering an alternative opinion like a satellite navigation system automatically rerouting on encountering traffic.
He grabbed me shortly after my conversation with Dimitri and asked if he could have a quiet chat. The war room was free from lawyers and consultants and we sat at the enormous oak meeting table with our coffee, surrounded by a rainforest of paper. Clark looked concerned, choosing his words precisely to suggest he only cared for my well-being.
