The following extract has been picked up from ‘Dum Dum Bullet’ – Sandeep Goyal, Chairman Dentsu Corporation India. I find his journey and transformation from being a farmer to a warrior very inspiring. The extract is timed around 1990s and Sandeep has been appointed the head of Rediffusion at Delhi. He is interacting with Bharti and Sunil Mittal as a client.
“Bharti was by far the biggerst ever new business I would ever win. Of course, one never knew that at that time. The magic of Sunil Bharti Mittal and the mega rise of his Bharti empre was nowhere on the horizon when we picked up those two interesting but small new business. But the learning in this story is not about the future of Bharti but that all agencies need to have two types of employees. The regular servicing types who handle day-to-day clients and are quite content to flow with the tide. For growth, agencies need to have a different breed who chase business, jump over hurdles and bring in new accounts. I call the regular types, the farmers.And I call the new biz types, the warriors.
I had always been a full-time farmer and a part-time warrior. The move to Rediffusion had taken me full throat into the war zone. New business pitches were like battle. And the battle had very clear winners and losers. I was very clear I always wanted to be on the winning side. That took a lot of hard work and a lot of heartburn. But winning the pitch came wiht its rainbow of glory.
When choosing a career, aolways ask yourself whether you are the farmer or the warrior. There is nothing right or wrong in being either. Only the operative rules are different. You can live an easy and peaceful life in any organisaiton as a farmer. You need to sow, irrigate, and harvest business every year. As a warrior, you live life somewhat dangerously (as they say in every bullfight, it is not the bull who loses every time). And many times those who live by the sword also die by the the sword. Because, as much as organizations recognise success and reward it, not very many organizations know how to cope with failure. It is then that they took convenient scape goats.
Any case, the choice is always personal. Live a thousand years without glory, or bloom for just that day…”
I know someone who reported to Sandeep Goyal at Interact. When I asked him what he thought about him the following conversation happened.
‘I mean no offence, but this man stabs people in the back. He is a great at creatives, but as a human being, I don’t think he is. He had a cohort Gullu that he used immensely.’
‘Gullu, you mean Sabhyasachi Sen, I read about him in the book.’
‘Yes that guy.’
‘He is hugely successful though.’
‘I never said he isn’t.’
‘You mean he stepped on a lot of people to be where he is?’
‘Yes, you can say that.’
After this conversation, the image I carry about Sandeep Goyal fits in perfectly well with his being the ‘brash warrior’. There have been too many cuts, gushes, wounds and deaths in Tipu Sultan’s life. That’s what makes him Tipu.
