xapt – Adam Bager

This splendidly waspish remark is attributed to the writer, Gore Vidal. He was, himself, immensely successful, though acclaimed more for his ‘unserious’ writing than for his political novels, which I find, frankly, quite indigestible. It was these thoughtful and interminable novels about politics that he wished to be remembered for (rather in the way Leonard Bernstein longed to be remembered for his vast symphonies instead of West Side Story, when most of us would have been glad merely to have written one good tune from the show).

Gore Vidal wrote screenplays too, mystery novels under the pseudonym Edgar Box, made a lot of money, and mixed in the Princess Margaret set. But, struggling, despite his success, with some crippling insecurities (I suppose) he suffered fools very gladly indeed, in that it gave him immense pleasure to be both socially and intellectually superior to almost everyone he met. In most cases he was certainly the latter, but I can’t help thinking that those who are conscious of the former have already failed miserably in some way.

Envy is also a sentiment of the young. When we are striving for success or recognition, other people’s talents and successes are an affront. We must grin or grimace determinedly when we hear news of some friend’s astonishing triumph, triumph of a kind that has, as yet, eluded us. But as we age, we begin to take genuine pleasure in others’ success. Success and failure are not the necessary and balancing outcomes of a zero-sum game.

On the way to Bucharest airport yesterday, my colleague, Ioana, and I popped in to see our former colleagues, those working for the company that LLP Group sold 19 months ago. It was LLP Dynamics then, and is Xapt Romania now. Not so successful then, but conspicuously, confidently successful now. Microsoft’s Dynamics suite of software was never my cup of tea, and certainly, under my direction (and others) the company hadn’t thrived. I knew I couldn’t solve the underlying problems, and by the middle of 2013 it was wearing me down, so selling it brought me some guilty relief (and some cash, too, of course, though nowhere near the amount we’d lost). Guilty, perhaps because I felt I might be putting my own interest before my colleagues’. I was the captain, and I was abandoning the ship.

But it wasn’t like that. The sum of human happiness has been greatly increased by the sale – my happiness I was sure of, but theirs too, as I could see yesterday. Now Xapt Romania is doing very well indeed. It’s the largest and best Dynamics AX reseller and consultancy in Romania. It’s profitable, it’s growing (now it employs nearly 50 staff), and it feels happy to me. Hats off to Mihai Madussi and his team.

It’s actually ok to fail, even if others succeed!

And, let’s face it, we haven’t failed everywhere. What’s left of LLP Group, (LLP Group, LLP CRM and systems@work) is still very much more my cup of tea, and it’s doing very well indeed.

In December last year I visited my former colleagues in Bucharest. They work for the Microsoft Dynamics division which we sold to Xapt Hungary at the end of 2013. Our remaining LLP Group staff still work in the same office so we often meet and we’re still friends.

‘How is business?’ I asked, expecting gloom (since Bucharest is a gloomy place in the winter and it was a dark day), but I was surprised to hear that business was going rather well.

‘We’re selling more software than before. We’re the market leaders. Not only because we’re the best, of course, but because some of our competitors are now in jail.’

I’ve always insisted that we do business without offering bribes and favours and I like to think that even after 27 years in former communist Eastern Europe I am still not tempted. It’s meant that we’ve lost some business that we should have won, and it’s meant that most public-sector tenders have been closed to us.

But it seems that honesty really is the best policy in the long run.

My golden rule when offering any kind of hospitality or gift to an existing or potential client is that the recipient must be able to mention it to his or her boss, or owner, indeed to anyone. Losing business because of this rule was occasionally upsetting for our sales team, as for me, but they were proud of our principles nevertheless. Now they can be smug.

LLP never offered bribes, but some of our competitors did, and a few of them are now in jail, their businesses hobbled. Romania has been trying hard to clean up its act. It’s taken a long time, but corruption may finally be in decline in Central and Eastern Europe, even in the Balkans. I am an optimist.

Here are some of the sorrier tales from Bucharest:

Siveco former president Irina Socol placed on house arrest.

Two Romanian businessmen taken in for questioning in Microsoft licenses case.

Justice awaiting in Microsoft file