Name: Vertical ambition.

Age: As old as business itself.

Appearance: White, male and inexplicably proud of it.

“Vertical ambition” sounds like a team name from The Apprentice. You’re close, in that it’s slick and meaningless and sounds as if it might have something to do with sex.

What is it? It’s a win-at-all-costs mentality, where your life is judged on your ability to gain and hoard power through a series of ruthlessly earned promotions.

That sounds awful. I thought you’d say that. Are you a woman?

That’s none of your business. I’m just saying, because most women don’t have very much vertical ambition, do they?

Hang on ... These aren’t my words. Saatchi & Saatchi’s executive chairman, Kevin Roberts, said it, in an interview about why he wasn’t worried about the lack of women in leadership roles.

What did he say? A lot, including: “We have a bunch of talented, creative females, but they reach a certain point in their careers ... 10 years of experience, when we are ready to make them a creative director of a big piece of business, and I think we fail in two out of three of those choices because the executive involved said: ‘I don’t want to manage a piece of business and people, I want to keep doing the work...’ Their ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy.”

So women aren’t being shut out of leadership jobs because they’re working in an industry that’s systematically stacked against them. That’s right. In actual fact, women are shutting themselves out because they don’t like the idea of mercilessly climbing the career ladder every single day of their lives until they can finally reach their desired endpoint of being exactly like Kevin Roberts. Who knew?

Yuck. He also said that Cindy Gallop, who campaigns for women’s issues within the advertising industry, was “making up a lot of the stuff to create a profile, and to take applause”.

Has this gone down well at Saatchi & Saatchi? Absolutely not. He has been asked to take a leave of absence.

Do I have vertical ambition? Here’s a test: you’re up for promotion against your grandmother. Do you slit her throat in her sleep to ensure victory?

God! No! Then you don’t. I hope you can live with that.

Do say: “The executive chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi might not completely understand women.”

Don’t say: “Maybe this explains why Olay adverts are so rubbish.”