MERRY MEADOWS - Chapter 2 - Engaging with TCS

What led me to appear on the scene at TCS is another narrative that bears telling. It happened in dramatic enough fashion, with the International Chamber of Commerce Conference on Foreign Direct Investment in Karachi in 2003 as the catalyst. I was assigned to do the cover story on it by the Cupola Group’s (now Abraaj Group) Zameen Magazine headed by my erstwhile colleague from Dawn, Fawzia Naqvi.

It was a formidable assignment during the course of which I had interviewed in depth Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, then senior minister of Sindh for planning and development, and Waseem Haqqi, the chairman Board of Investment. I had also assigned considerable space to the Conference’s module on logistics and transportation of which Khalid Awan was the chair.

I was taking very seriously at this time the pursuit of freelance writing as a profession, but just not managing to generate sufficient traction, financially speaking. Once the Zameen magazine was out in print I approached my friend of old Ali Leghari, and presented him a copy, with the hope of getting some writing assignments from the TCS Newsletter Connect. Writing on corporate issues, I assumed correctly, would pay me more than writing freelance on social issues for mainstream media, in the shape of Dawn.

Ali Leghari at the time was manager special projects for TCS of which the TCS Newsletter Connect was one, but obviously not very high on the list of corporate priorities for TCS. It took six months and two lunch meetings with JJ and Ali, one at the DHA Club in Phase 2 and the other at the Arizona Grill on Zamzama, before I was signed up to write one article for Connect per issue every two months.

For each article I would be paid 6000 rupees. Compared to the 1200 per article that I had become accustomed to at Dawn, this was a major stride upwards in my monetary ratings. The offsetting factor at Dawn had been its wide readership, but a man can’t march on fame alone it was by now very clear to me.

The cherry on the cake, and a very hefty cherry at that, was my second signing, to write a book on TCS, for which I was to be paid 300,000 rupees, with half upfront.

It was the best news that had come my way for some time, and my son Rafeh was there to share in the joy, generated in equal measure by the news itself and the yummy food that was served up on both occasions at the DHA Club and the Arizona Grill.

Still in his preteen years, Rafeh was the anchor to my daily routine, his drop and pick up from school as well as the daily tuition center runaround keeping me grounded in the loving reality of a family man, and saving me from drifting off my moorings as is sometimes prone to happening during extended periods of idleness in the absence of adequate work. Why there was an absence of adequate work I’ll be getting into periodically during the course of this discourse.

I was jump started on my first article for Connect by a news item in Dawn that had everyone at TCS on pins and needles. A letter bomb had been delivered to the police headquarters by a courier service. Thank God it wasn’t TCS, but the act certainly warranted an exhaustive review of the security systems in place, and I was asked to put pen to paper in this regard.

The rest, like they say, is history of a most pleasant and very vibrant kind, but not without its cloak and dagger moments, the kind in whose telling I shall now engage in the pages to come.  

Discordant Notes

As my comfort zone with TCS increased my interactions became more frequent, and with it my understanding of the dynamics at work in TCS became clearer. Very soon I was embroiled in a three way tug of war. Najeeb Nayyer, as the head of marketing, had the functional ownership of Connect which at the time had Ghafoor Shahzad as its editor.

But JJ was the CEO, and as such the overall ownership for Connect’s content lay with him. That wouldn’t have been such a problem had JJ not personally been interested in publishing, and regarded Connect as a prime tool for public relations, marketing and human resource development. JJ’s years with the British Council had opened his eyes to this fact. So Najeeb was denied the active helmsman-ship of Connect, which he could justifiably have considered as his right in his capacity of director marketing, and was no doubt more than a little put off by this realization.

The day to day operations of TCS were being handled by Saqib Hamdani who, as the head of operations, was the pivotal man in the organization. This had left JJ as CEO precious little to do when it came to running the organization, leaving him the areas of human resource development and public relations to focus his attentions on, with Najeeb presiding on the marketing budget.

Tension simmered under the surface. Adding to Najeeb’s increasing frustrations was his own temperament suited more for the flare and flamboyance of marketing than the daily drudgery and pressure of the operations job.

But it soon became evident to him that when it came to allocating budgets and the hiring of personnel, the operations department far outweighed the marketing department. Saqib was getting all the money and hiring all the people, while Najeeb, in essence, was the joker in the pack putting on a song and dance act.

I was blissfully unaware of these undercurrents at work, never spending more time at the TCS Head Office than I had to. The 20^th anniversary celebrations of TCS were in full swing, and centered mostly on intellectually stimulating occasions designed for the CEOs of leading national and multinational companies who comprised the TCS blue chip customers.

These took place for the most part at the Royal Rodale Club’s auditorium on Khayaban-e-Sehar, with international celebrities invited as keynote speakers, memorable amongst who were Edward de Bono and Omar Khan.

JJ reveled in these occasions, and held the limelight, while Najeeb sulked in the background. I took copious notes on all these occasions. They not only grew me intellectually, but also enabled me to produced some very potent material for Connect that bore the appreciation of its corporate readership.  

These occasions at the Royal Rodale Club did not cost much in the greater scheme of the TCS marketing budget. They also yielded some priceless public relations with the top 20 percent of the TCS clients which generated 80 percent of TCS business.

Najeeb Nayyar remained in a high state of upset, however, feeding the TCS grapevine with a frenzy about how the Royal Rodale ‘shenanigans’ constituted an utter waste of resources, and how this money could have been far better spent on billboards, and advertising in the print and electronic media. Sour grapes really, but it didn’t help in making the top functionaries of TCS align and pull together.

Adding further fuel to the fire was the constant prodding and pinching that Najeeb received from his family in whose enterprise, Team Nayyer, Najeeb continued taking an active interest, diverting TCS resources in disregard to conflict of interest.

His brother and father taunted Najeeb for letting Saqib runaway with the prize. Wasn’t it Najeeb who had prevailed upon Khalid Awan to send Naveed Awan packing? Wasn’t it Najeeb who had convinced both Saqib and JJ to return to TCS and rescue it in its hour of need? Their reminders were relentless. In their view Najeeb should have been leading the show at TCS and calling the shots, not Saqib and JJ.

As they pumped Najeeb he swelled with indignation, but he was stumped, and he knew it. Left on his own he would, I am sure, have reconciled to his subordinate role to the two individuals whom he had helped recruit into TCS, or so he claimed.

But there was no leaving Najeeb alone where his brother and father were concerned. They felt that he had been short changed. Power play in the executive suite was in full swing, and it was polarizing the subordinate staffers. It was not good for business.

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur