Problem was, at the highest level of the agency, a couple of the folks were skimming money from client accounts. They were good at it and kept it from all of us with a wall of excuses and "I'll handle it" responses when we, those of us who had to deal with networks and programs and planning were getting some unspoken cold stares. I won't bore you with the details other than the President and his Financial Officer stole about $30 million and that hole in the books finally caused more problems than could be solved.
I should have known the minute I stepped foot in the place. The tip-off was in the micro-management. In order to keep the shenanigans a secret, the owner had to keep people focused on other things. To do that, most of the staff, some 170 of them had to keep to assigned tasks without wandering around and finding things out. "You are not to question why, you are bound to do or die".
I bring this up as I had a conversation with some advertising folks yesterday and during our small talk interludes, the subject of micromanagement came up. I made sure it did. They gave good answers, not suspect ones. In fact the entire conversation seemed sane and reasonable and above all, honest.
It is a sad state of affairs and a pretty unfortunate commentary on life in general that one has to look for clues like that when instead one could be moving forward with the business at hand. These were good guys. But for cry'n loud.....