by Gordon Gray
Security Search
“Is this your bag, sir?” I groaned inwardly. My bag had been pulled to one side for a random search by security at Gatwick Airport and it very nearly caught me out. I had just got back from India and Doreen and I were off to Scotland for a long weekend’s break to celebrate our wedding anniversary. “Can you open it for me, please?” The security guy asked his standard questions and then started to take out various items in a slow and deliberate way. They have a wonderful way of holding things they remove by their fingertips as if they are about to catch something very nasty off my paperback book. This was obviously going to be very thorough. Doreen was standing beside me, watching with amusement as item by item my weekend bag was emptied.
A couple of years earlier, Doreen’s engagement ring and other jewellery had been stolen when the house was burgled and I had just had a replica ring made for her in India, which I had collected from the jeweller before I left Delhi. She knew nothing about it and I was going to give it to her as a surprise over our anniversary dinner in Scotland. It was to be my attempt at a romantic surprise on our short break. I suddenly remembered that the ring, in its velvet box, was tucked in a jumper in the bottom of my bag. Now, unless I did something, this guy would find the box, take it out and open it right in front of Doreen. Not what I wanted at all.
I waited until the security guard was well inside my toilet bag and examining the colour of the toothpaste, then I slid my hand slowly inside my bag while trying to look as though I was helping him by repositioning the bag a little further away from the toilet bag. I felt quickly around inside, luckily found the jumper with the ring box inside, palmed it into my hand and slid my hand back out and into my jacket pocket. I waited for him, or Doreen, to spot me but they didn’t. At last he pushed the bag across to me and with a “Thank you for your cooperation, sir, have a nice trip,” we were on our way. Phew! Made it. I furtively dropped the ring box back into the bag as we headed for the bar and that gin and tonic.
Jeff, there is always one
Unfortunately you can always depend on some bosses to let you and the company down. One of the new ones brought in shall remain nameless, but for the sake of the story we shall just call him Jeff. He was my new line manager. Jeff was in his mid forties, a large man, brash, loud and over confident. While being bright enough, he was lacking a certain amount of diplomatic flair and had a bullying approach to life. Jeff liked to give the impression that he would be the next marketing director, so do not cross him. He had a spiky ‘worn out wire brush’ hairstyle and because the sales director tended not to wear a tie, neither did Jeff. My first sales boss Ernie would definitely not have approved. Previously Jeff had run a service support division in Essex, but he had higher ambitions. I had actually met him once before but he chose not to recall that. We had been seated next to each other at an AMS company dinner two years earlier. Sitting opposite Jeff was the managing director of our division. Jeff spent the entire meal trying to keep a conversation going with the managing director, enlivened by dodgy, smutty jokes and personal ‘How I saved the World’ stories. He did this to the total exclusion of everyone else at the table. Other than a curt hello when he sat down, I do not recall one verbal exchange with him during the whole meal. It was obvious to all at the table that he was trying desperately to ‘impress’ the managing director. However, in spite of, or because of, all his obvious and odious crawling, he was still given a senior position in export sales and marketing by the managing director and when Andrew left, he appeared as my line manager.
During his first months with us, I had had few direct dealings with Jeff as I had been travelling and he had shown no interest in discussing India. However, one day while I was in Delhi, he phoned me to say that he had decided that he would come out to India the following week for five days and see what I was up to. I am not sure what that meant to him, but to me it meant that I needed to make sure he met all the key people with whom we were dealing. That meant that, as was usual when any senior manager or director came into the territory, I needed to set up a series of meeting with Indian Navy, Army and Indian MOD customers, Indian defence industry, BAE Systems staff in Delhi as well as with the key people in the British High Commission. That way, they would get a full and fair picture of what we were doing. At a few days notice, there was no way that I could set up the necessary meetings and I also knew that some customers would not be in town. Jeff was far from happy when I asked him to delay his trip so I could set things up properly. After some comments about what was I trying to hide, he reluctantly delayed his trip for three weeks but left me in no doubt that he thought I was keeping him out of India and was vocal in telling others in the office that I did not want him in India as I was up to something! He reacted as though I should be able to get admirals, generals and CEOs to change all their plans instantly, including foreign travel and leave, just for him to meet them.
Jeff arrived in Delhi and we met up in the hotel bar of the Maurya Sheraton late on a Sunday night. The bar was smart and dimly lit with soft music playing. Various items of golfing memorabilia decorated the main walls of the bar and a couple of silent sports channel TVs were suspended from ceiling. The plush, dark leather seating, arranged in small booths, provided an intimate and relaxing atmosphere. However, in spite of this relaxed and pleasant atmosphere, his very first words to me as he walked into the bar – even before I could say hello or offer him a beer – were “Look, we all know that you work less than 30% of the time when you are out here, so you need not try to tell me otherwise.” He made it sound as though all the directors of BAE Systems had had a special meeting and agreed that I was out here just having a good time. I am afraid that my reaction to such a crass comment was less than diplomatic. “Well, Jeff, either you are having a joke or you really have no idea what this job entails.” Jeff could not seem to decide which of these two options applied.
The fact is that people actually work more hours when they are overseas and away from the office than they do when they are in the UK working from nine to five. Keeping up to date on the many different navy and army projects and keeping them moving forward, with all the customer departments involved, government-owned defence suppliers and local private industrial partners scattered all over India, from Delhi to Bangalore and Kolkata to Mumbai, made the ten or fifteen working days of a normal trip pretty hectic.
However, I did not feel that this was the time to explain the basic facts of life to our Jeff. I hardly knew him at all as we had never had a proper conversation, either business or personal, even though he was my line manager, so I was even more surprised with his next question. “Why did you and your wife not have any kids?” As this is something that we have never discussed with anyone, I can only assume it was his attempt to put me at ease and establish a more warm and intimate friendship building on the relaxed atmosphere of the bar. This comment, following on from the “you only work 30% of the time” statement had my hackles bristling. My immediate reaction was “Mind your own bloody business.” I joked that we never had time with me being away in India so much.
The next night, he asked me something about my background and from his surprised reactions it was very clear to me that he actually had no idea about my naval background, what I had done, which companies I had worked for, or what my professional experience actually was. He seemed to think I had been born last week, never sold a brochure before and had started the India job yesterday, but that he, Jeff, was going to teach me everything.
“You have read my CV, haven’t you, Jeff?” I asked. “No?” he said in a bewildered way without even blushing, as if my CV was totally irrelevant. I sighed and wondered how any manager of a team of salesmen can send them halfway round the world without knowing at least what they have done in the past?
The following morning, we had a meeting arranged with a vice admiral in the Indian Naval HQ. It had taken me three weeks to get the meeting set up, security papers submitted and meeting confirmed as he was one of those who had been o
ut of the country. The admiral was in a key position for us and it was vital that he formed a good impression of our Jeff. I knew the admiral well from his time in London at the High Commission of India where he had been the naval advisor. He was a highly intelligent, articulate and extremely dedicated officer and known to be a high flyer. He was also an extremely courteous gentleman. I had briefed Jeff on the topics to be discussed and the key questions to ask, so was totally taken aback when after just ten minutes in the admiral’s office, just as we were starting to discuss business matters, Jeff decided he would tell the admiral a dirty joke. I shuddered as he began, as I knew what was coming. It was not funny, even at a schoolboy level, and it put the admiral in an embarrassing position. Not surprisingly, after just a few more minutes, the admiral drew the meeting to a close. We had not covered the topics or gained any information that would help us in our projects. Jeff said afterwards, “I think that all went rather well, don’t you?”
Lunch that day was with a senior defence officer from the British High Commission in one of the Delhi hotels. And Jeff’s first question on being introduced? In a loud voice for all to hear, he said, “Ah, so are you a real spy then?” As I said, Jeff lacked certain diplomatic skills!
He had said he would stay for the week, so I had arranged meetings for the Thursday and Friday. By Tuesday, he had met half a dozen people, but was bored and decided on Wednesday morning that he had seen enough of India and wanted to go back to the UK. He changed his flights and left me to cancel the meetings arranged for the Thursday and Friday. He flew back to the UK on the Thursday but not without first needlessly upsetting the young girls at the hotel reception as he checked out by being rude to them over a petty issue about how his magnetic door key card hadn’t worked two nights before. This is also the man who openly boasted that he had secretly taped his job interview with the marketing director so if it did not go the way he wanted it to, he ‘had evidence’. Such was the calibre of our ‘management’. I left BAE about a year later and a few months after that I heard that Jeff had been sacked by the new managing director, so perhaps there is justice somewhere.
The patience and commitment needed to win major programmes is best illustrated by BAE Hawks in India. It took BAE, as it was then, led by the resident BAE man in Delhi; a super guy called Peter Ginger – over sixteen years to secure the Hawk jet trainer contract in India. People in the UK used to say, “Well if it takes that long in India, perhaps it is not the right market for us.” In fact, this was not just one bidding process. Because of competitor wrecking tactics, changes in the requirements and other local issues, all of which had to be properly investigated by the Indian MOD. It took a number of re tenders and re bids, and numerous visits by senior company directors and technical teams, before the deal was finally agreed and closed. It was the focus, patience and commitment shown by BAE and Peter Ginger that won the order. However, if we looked at the UK MOD procurement, they would see similar time scales. The main combat system contract for the new Type 45 ‘Daring Class’ destroyer was awarded in 1999. However, work actually started on the design for the new combat system in the 1980s when a NATO project called NFR-90 or ‘The Nato Frigate Requirement for the 90s’ was set up. That project then changed and became Common New Generation Frigate (CNGF), before changing again to Project Horizon and finally becoming the UK Type 45 Project. A lot of this was due to changing views and requirements of our European partners, as well as the RN and the UK MOD. Even so, UK suppliers were spending money on design work, visits, meetings, prototypes, demonstrations, trials etc for over sixteen years before they saw the final supply contract. So maybe India is not that slow after all. Both projects are, however, large and are probably the exception to the rule, but they illustrate that companies must be prepared for the long haul if they want to become successful.
On the bright side, once a major contract has been secured, then the company should be able to look forward to many years of support contracts, upgrades, supply of spares, training courses, replacement systems, refurbishment and the next generation back fit contracts – provided, of course, that they can satisfy the customer with the initial systems. In addition, success in country A helps to breed success in country B.
Monsoon
In the height of summer Delhi does get very hot, but with air-conditioning in all hotels, cars and offices, it is not really a big problem. You know it is a hot summer in Delhi when it is too hot outside for the visiting air stewardesses to lie out by the hotel swimming pool. However, it is probably the monsoon rains that cause the most inconvenience.
The monsoon caught up with me again in Delhi as I came out of Naval HQ. I handed back one of two passes and my escort waved me out of the building. Before I had walked 10 paces towards the gates, the heavens suddenly opened. I now had no choice but to carry on and get wet. I just hoped that the taxi and driver were nearby and watching out for me. To get to the main gate, I had to walk about 75 yards and hand in my other pass; then once outside, try and find the car. Parking outside Naval HQ was very limited and the MOD police moved cars on all the time. I had told the driver that I would be outside at about 1200, so to look out for me coming out. It was just after 12 now. I was very wet by the time I got to the gate and the security guard looked at me as if I was mad, but there was nowhere to shelter. I set off through the vertical rain to search for the driver. I skidded and slipped, stepping into huge puddles as I squelched along. I looked along the road immediately outside the HQ. He was not there. I set off along the adjoining street and finally after walking the full length of the road, found the car in a small side road and fell in. The driver was, like most Indian drivers waiting for their passengers, fast asleep. By now, I was totally sodden right through to my skin. My suit looked and felt like a wet chamois leather. The driver looked at me incredulously.
“Sir, you are wet!” was his illuminating utterance when he was awake enough to look at me.
“A little,” I growled. “Now, back to the hotel. Anyway, why were you not driving round the roundabout at 12 o’clock so I could see you?”
“Sir, I did not think anyone silly-billy enough to walk outside in such terrible rain, so I wait here safely until it stops!” He said this with a smile of totally happy innocence.
“Thanks” I said as I sullenly sunk into my sodden suit and shoes.
When I got back to the hotel room the only thing to do was to remove everything and call the laundry.
Goodbye Lunch
Before I left the company, the three senior officers of the defence staff at the Indian High Commission very kindly invited me out for lunch in the Quilon Indian restaurant in London. This is one of the best in London and a rare treat. It was a very kind thing to do and very much enjoyed and appreciated. Thank you, guys.
BAE Systems’ Marketing Director Mike Routh and Mr G welcome General J.J. Singh to the BAE Systems stand
Demonstrating the latest Command system to an Indian Admiral
Elephant at The Maurya
Old Delhi
Roadside repairs
CHAPTER 12
USA
New York
It was nighttime and dark outside; there was not much to see except the dark edges and banking along the urban freeway as the taxi sped away from JFK Airport. It was 1980 and I had been sent out to the USA to give presentations and demonstrations of the new ARPA computer radar to the New York shipowners. It was my first time to New York. Suddenly, we came over the top of a rise on the freeway and there in front of me a panorama of light erupted. Through the windscreen I watched in awe as the golden, white lights of the Manhattan skyscrapers rose magically out of the freeway. Great cliffs of bright sparkling lights filled my view. As we got nearer, I could make out the few famous buildings that I recognised: the Empire State, the Chrysler Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. We entered Manhattan over one of the East River bridges and the taxi worked its way across and down through the one-way grid system until it stopped outside my hotel.
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I was booked into the Summit Hotel on Lexington Ave. After twenty-four hours, I was into the New York speak and was staying at “The Summit on Lex at 51st”. The hotel was not the greatest and the room was simple, small and overlooked a side street off Lexington; but I did not care, I was in New York. Across the street from my window was a NYPD (New York Police Department) precinct office. Now, I was living the TV shows. I explored my room. It had a multichannel American TV and an empty fridge and a big bed.