The Frustrated CFO

"We Are Good Bosses," Says One Boss to Another

So, that's how these people manage to live with their own shitty selves!  They walk around with a clear conscience; with no doubt in their souls about their actions.  They don't think about the injustices and the insults of different caliber they spread around with every step they take.  They don't even qualify them as injusticies and insults.  Instead, they pat each other on the backs and tell themselves that they are good bosses!  Their self-delusion probably goes even further: I am terrified to think about it, but they might have convinced themselves that they are good people.  Honestly, the idea of these people going through their lives thinking that they are saints makes my skin itch on the inside.  

To tell you the truth, I prefer honest assholes, like the ones whose primary traits are itemized in the list provided by the Time's article attached on the bottom of this post.  They are at least somewhat conscious of their attitudes and  justify their behavior with the "business necessity."  You know: A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do - that sort of thing.  I also think that self-aware bastards are less casual with their cruelty.  Unless they are real sadists, they apply it knowingly and, therefore, sparingly.  

The conversation quoted in the title is not an allegory: I actually had the misfortune of witnessing it.  I had to summon all my will power not to burst out laughing at these jerks.  I've had pangs of suspicion that many business owners felt good about themselves, but this was the first time one of them actually voiced such self-deception in my presence.  Why was it so bitterly funny?  Because, the statement was prompted by their finally adapting a pension plan they promised their employees two years ago. 

These are employers who pick favorites and treat them with an obvious preference, while discriminating against others.  They forget to disclose new commercial initiatives, thus forcing everyone to run against time in order to turn their ideas into business realities.  They will not hesitate to make a "good-natured" joke at an employee's expense or brazenly comment on someone's deficiency.  The list can go on, and on, and on, and on...  What can I say?  Swell guys! 

But let's see.  What are (in my opinion) the attributes of a really Good Boss???

1.  Fairness and objectivity; no bullshit like, "I don't like that bitch's personality, so I don't care if she's going to leave, even if it'll hurt my company."

2.  Dedication to a merit-based system of rewards comprised of both tangible and moral incentives.

3.  Intelligence and business acumen that perpetuates the company's success and keeps employees gratified that they don't work for an incompetent idiot.

4.  High performance standards applied equally to everyone - first and foremost to his/her own work.

5.  Capacity to fully comprehend the abilities and  values of their direct reports.

6.  Sufficient organizational savvy to match subordinates' abilities with functional tasks.

7.  Acceptance of personal responsibility as a job-creator and human-resources leader.

8.  Strong emphasis on the development of employees' know-how and professional growth.

9.  Balanced combination of delegation and efficient supervision; none of that hands-off micromanagement crap I write so much about.

10.  An actual effort to understand people working for the company.

11.  Sufficient tact and self-confidence (!) to prevent casual personal insults, usually resulting from deeply seated insecurity.

12.  And this one is just for me: For once in my life I would like to work for someone with a good memory, because I'm fucking fed up with their forgetting time after time the stuff I say, write, and report to them.   

So, my dear business owners and other chiefs, try to test your performance against the criteria above and see how you do.  None of the "good bosses" I know would score enough for a "D" grade.

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9 Core Beliefs of Truly Horrible Bosses

The Boss Who "Cares" aka The Hypocritical Bastard

Hey you, hard-working people, regardless of your profession, stature, or rank! I am talking to all of you!  Beware of "NICE" BOSSES!

You know the type - he always smiles at you, tells you jokes (and laughs loudly himself), asks about your family (sometimes even during first interviews), says "thank you" at the end of the day, declares that he wants everyone who works for him to be happy, claims to keep your opinion in high regard.  

This is all BULLSHIT!!!  This boss is a liar and a hypocrite!  Don't think for a second that because he acts like that on the surface, he really cares and will do right by you in terms of things that really matter, i.e. create material (compensation, benefits, working space) and moral (respect, recognition) stimuli for you to work harder and feel satisfied with your own performance!  

In fact, this faux exterior should be taken as a first sign of a shitty character.  There is an old proverb that applies perfectly here: "He makes a very soft bed that will be hard to sleep in."  The only person such a boss cares about is himself!  At the end of the day, all that huggy, phony warmth is just for him and him alone.  And because people like that lie to themselves the same way they lie to others, he goes home honestly believing that he is a swell guy and a wonderful boss.  He simultaneously pats himself in the back and jerks himself off.

 But when it comes to serious, important staff...  This is the guy who will fight you tooth and nail for every penny of raise or bonus you want to give your direct subordinates at the end of the year.  It doesn't matter to him that you only want to reward those who applied themselves the hardest, grew, learned, developed, and that you keep it all within the budget.  He'd rather double his own withholdings (for being so wonderful!) than reinforce the merit.  In fact, he will say, "Didn't we pay for her plane tickets when she went to her grandmother's funeral?"  Yes, we did - you suggested it to  be "nice."  So, now you think that was in lieu of the annual performance bonus?

And this is the guy who will reply to every great proposal from the members of his executive team, writing the exclamation-point emails: "Thank you!" "Great idea!" "Brilliant!" But he will never green-light the actual implementations.  You will see the mean gleam in his eyes every time the life proves you right or someone on the outside of the business confirms that you understand it much better than he does.  If that happens, he will enter a crazy cycle, competing with you all the time, even though he is the boss and, therefore, already won by default. 

I believe that the best working environments are created not by cuddly fakeness, but by indiscriminate fairness, accommodation of professional growth, and respect of achievements (the principles I myself exercise).  If that's impossible to have, I prefer an honest brute instead of a "nice" hypocritical bastard.  In this economy (or, as I call it "new reality") only a few of us get lucky and find "better" jobs.  The rest must tolerate whatever hateful things they are forced to experience.  And that's Ok (there is no such a thing as a "perfect" job anyway), as long as you face the reality with the full understanding of the situation and don't get fooled by appearances. 

The Chronically Insubordinate "Nurse Jackie"

If there are people out there who can be identified as The Frustrated CFO's devoted readers, they probably have been to the author's Facebook page and know that, for the time being, Nurse Jackie is listed there as one of my top 5 favorite TV shows.  Besides the incredible ballsiness of the creators, who do not shy away from some of the most controversial issues of healthcare industry, social division, workplace dynamics, and intimate relationships, my highest appreciation goes for the show's realistic depiction of the overwhelming human frailty. 

There are no good or bad people on the show - everyone is a cunt with some redeeming moments here and there.  Nobody more so than Jackie Peyton herself, all her blemishes exposed under the microscope of the show's creators.  I have no right to judge, but I hope my readers will agree that Jackie can be considered severely flawed even under our contemporary, shifting moral standards.  She is a shitty mother, wife, friend, girlfriend.  It would be an unpleasant experience to simply bump into her on the street by accident.  She is a cheater, a liar, and... oh, yes, a drug addict.  As I always say, "Love the show, hate Jackie." 

I can hear the opposition screaming at me, "But she is a wonderful nurse!  She helped so many people!"  Here's what I have to say to that: Jacky Peyton is a highly skillful professional, but she is a terrible employee, who violates all rules of her workplace and, as a result, does more damage than good.  Moreover, she is an unethical employee who bestows her graces on a few people of her choosing, while screwing others.

Those who consistently watch the show probably anticipate my bringing up her current season shenanigans.  But no, I will not do that. Instead, I would like to give you an example of Gross Audacity strategically introduced to us at the very start of the series.

The main medical emergency of the Pilot was a young bicycle messenger with a brain bleed.  When he died, Jackie falsified his driver license to pass him as an organ donor, because she was of opinion that it was a "right thing to do."  Then she sat in front of his family and lied to their disbelieving faces about it.  The deceit deepened when she convinced the transplant team that Coop signed off the body release to them.  Jackie can lie like no one else!  And you know why she doesn't waver? Because she thinks that she is above personal wishes of a dead young man,  above rules and regulations, above subordination.  She believes that she can get away with anything as long as she follows her own perverse sense of right and wrong.  And that's fucked up!

Here is my question for those who still think that Jackie is a Good Nurse - if you had an employee like that on your staff, how would you deal with her?  By the way, this and many other cases could've landed dear Jackie in jail.  Loving mother, isn't she?

       

Pop Culture Impediment and Career Advancement

A couple of months ago I was working with a client, primarily concentrating on the improvement of accounting policies and the transition from QuickBooks to ERP. In the process, I interacted a lot with the company's staff accountant.

She is a sharp and ambitious young woman from Pacific Asia. I liked her very much and was particularly impressed by her outstanding work ethics (a rarity nowadays). She's been with the company for nearly two years and this was her first job after she got her BBA in Accounting.

Her knowledge of bookkeeping basics was pretty solid, which gave her much confidence. She was determined to leave the company and look for a job that would give her a faster career track. Never mind the fact that I've discovered a lot of errors and holes in those areas of company's records that pertained to somewhat more sophisticated concepts, such as Inventory/COGS conversion and revenue recognition.

It wasn't entirely her fault. She didn't have a benefit of working with a seasoned supervisor and wasn't savvy enough yet to understand that accountants were expected to look for standards pertaining to a specific industry. She is a capable individual, though, and most likely will get better with years. Hey, under contemporary standards, she is probably in a top 10% of quality workers. Those experience and knowledge gaps are not the reasons why I think it's unlikely for her to have a high-level career in an average American company.

Here is what happened during that consulting engagement.  Facebook filed S1, thus making public its hopes for a $5 billion IPO. The 02/02/12 issue of The Economist arrived at the client's office with a cover spoofing Mark Zuckerberg's profile on his own website, completed with Caesar's boast as a "status" and comments from various "friends," including Bill Gates, Matt Romney, etc.

Unfortunately, the "author" of the most amusing comment was obscured by the embedded subscriber's label - one could only see two letters "ge." I read, "The Death Star is fully armed and operational" and laughed, "This must be Google." The girl was standing next to me. She said, "It's 'ge,' not le' we can see." I explained, it's Larry Page of Google. She looked doubtful and also didn't understand, why I found it so funny. Something hit me and I asked, "Do you know what the Death Star is?" She shook her head, "No."

I didn't show it, but I was very surprised.  I understand that she was isolated from the rest of the world back home, but she graduated from high school and college here, in the States. I took her out for lunch and spent 40 minutes explaining: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Google - Facebook competition, "Stars Wars," the Dark Side, Jedi, the irony of the reference - all fresh news to her.

This incident put me into an inquisitive mode and from time to time I threw well-camouflaged, unobtrusive questions at her.

"What kind of music to you like?" "Pop." "Like who?" "You wouldn't know them." "Try me. I am extremely eclectic when it comes to all arts. Who is your favorite band?" "They are all Asian."

Some time later she ventures, "What are your favorite bands?" "It's a long list, but there is a Top 10 that I can never rank - like Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Queen..." She said she'd never heard those names. I am ready to give up, but still, "The Beatles is one of my Top 5." She has heard the name, but never listened to their music. My heart aches in utter pity.

Every night she watches funny videos from her home country on YouTube. How about TV? (C'mon, people all over the world watch American TV shows . In 2004, I flew from Amsterdam to Istanbul and saw a Dutch girl watching an episode of "Six Feet Under" on her laptop). Alas, not this girl, "I don't watch American television."

The question is, does this hard-working, diligent, and fairly bright person have a chance of ever becoming a partner in an accounting firm, or a corporate CFO, if the said companies are not under Asian management? Unlikely.

The higher you advance in your career, the more you have to communicate with people around you. Nobody sticks to just business, there is always the small-talk. People will be discussing the latest "Homeland" episode and she won't even know what it is? When everyone starts noticing, what will they think? In this country, pop culture is like English - a common language of the melting pot, and you must be able to speak it, or you will devalue yourself in the eyes of others.

To tell you the truth, in spite of my religious belief in the merit-based system, I don't think that this is wrong. You don't have to like pop culture and, like me, you can criticize its prevailing weaknesses all the time. Yet, not to be aware of it entirely - that's just strange. Someone who does her job well, but is so disinterested in her immediate surroundings, will be considered a reliable functionary, but unlikely to climb too high up the corporate ladder.

HR Capitalist Believes That Operational Guidelines Are Optional

Last week (Wednesday, January 26th, to be exact), my fellow Typepad blogger HR Capitalist (www.hrcapitalist.com) posted a short musing on the subject of what he calls "Rules Orientation." Not a very clear term, it basically attempts to encompass the process of introducing new hires to the way the business is done in the company, i.e. operational guidelines. And the thesis is that it's not always necessary and the choice depends on the propensity of the candidate: if he wants the structure, give it to him; but if he doesn't like to be restrained by the rules, let him figure out his own way. The latter apparently is especially "good" for the companies that operate without rules in the first place - the mayhem kind of businesses.

(Side note: I cannot suppress my high cultural standards and must make a note about the inappropriateness of the "Fight Club" reference. I just cannot stand the pretentiousness of people who don't even understand what they are watching, but try to appear deep. Let me tell you, it took a lot of discipline, military organization, and RULES to properly run Project Mayhem. Remember? "The first rule of Fight Club is..." and so on - rules 1 to 8. Even The Narrator's psyche was protected from Tyler Durden within as long as the rules were followed. Once they were violated, the spell was broken.)

These kind of ideas and recommendations are somewhat surprising, coming from a career HR guru. How narrow is the employment niche of, what he calls, "low rules" candidates? In my opinion, minuscule - maybe some small haphazard consulting company with no supporting staff and a life expectancy of a couple of years, or a startup based on an IPhone App that will be hot for a few months and then lost in the sea of 300,000+ solutions.

In any other type of business, or even in the same kind but with a little bit of structural complexity, project deadlines, customer base, etc., operational guidelines guarantee faster immersion into daily duties. The only employees that should not be bound by protocol are the creative staff (designers, architects, artists, etc.); and even those need to abide by the rules of conduct, employment agreements, client-time billing, etc.

The biggest question is, who the hell can afford nowadays the unstructured learning curves of people not powered by certain procedural standardization? Especially if they are very good - you don't really want them to waste time on "figuring out" their personal ways of going about the job.

Moreover, I guarantee you that no small or midsize business, with its flat organizational structure and intense concentration of responsibilities, can let a no-rules screwball (or rather cannonball) into its already vulnerable system. Just imagine for a second someone like Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) running around your workplace, releasing leopards, breaking all conventions, and eventually reducing the result of long-time effort to a pile of disconnected fossils.

But I shouldn't be really surprised that this post was written. This is a typical problem with many narrowly-focused specialists, including HR gurus. They lack the ability for systematic thinking, are not capable of viewing business as an integral organism, where everything contributes to the ultimate success, and, thus, rarely make good executive material.

I am all for matching employees abilities to their appropriately assigned tasks and specifically talk about it in the last section of "CFO Techniques", but I cannot imagine trying to fit into any organization those people who cannot follow any rules.

A CFO's Democratism Gets Tested

In most smaller companies, CFOs and controllers include general HR functions into their scopes of responsibilities - that's a given. The flat organizational structures, though, with their spatial and psychological proximity of top executives to the staff, play peculiar tricks on those in charge of the company's human relations.

Very frequently a CFO takes a role of a buffer between the owner/CEO and the rest of the company's employees. She feels obligated to soften the impact of the direct dealing with frequently harsh and hard attitudes of the boss.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: more frequently than not entrepreneurs don't have an experience of ever being in a position of an employee and, therefore, they have very little understanding of the staff's mentality. On the other hand, a CFO maybe a right-hand person now, but she is still just a salaried employee, most likely grown into her current status by climbing through the ranks. If she is a decent human with a conscience, she is sensitive to the needs of valuable employees and cares about their well-being (if they are useless, let someone else care about them).

It's likely that an excellent CFO would enjoy a comparatively preferential treatment by a CEO: more disciplinary leniency, nicer attitude, better perks, general amiability, etc. When it comes to other employees, their efforts and achievements may be remarkable, but they are not as evident to the boss, and that reduces their value in his eyes. I've had one CEO openly tell me that if I want a certain benefit (let's say flexible spending account) for myself, he would be fine with obtaining it, but he did not care about the rest of the "worker-bees."

So, the CFO takes it upon herself to protect other employees from undue tyranny and act as their speaker when it comes to betterment of the employment conditions, whatever they are: raises, bonuses, vacations, benefits, etc. Sort of like a representative of the XYZ Company's employees union. And when she discusses this situation with her friends and family, she expresses her disdain for the undemocratic ways of her boss, taking pride in her efforts to right the wrongs.

Now imagine such a CFO taking a position with a new company - small, young, still pretty much in development stage. The owners are very liberal and treat everyone like equals. Moreover, the CFO is the last person being hired. Those few other employees have been there from the start. Nobody needs protection. Furthermore, there is one person who has been there the longest, starting as a CEO's assistant. Not that she gets any special perks or something like that, but she definitely feels very secure.

This should make the democratic CFO very happy. After all, wasn't she fighting for equality of other employees all the time before? Yes, it's nice; wonderful, really; exactly what she hoped to find... Except that... Being "the chosen one" was kind of a guilty pleasure too, an enjoyable self-esteem booster. And the gratitude of others for all that blow-cushioning effort was very rewarding as well. As important as the democratic principles were to this CFO, the old tyranny is somewhat missed.

That's how we, humans, are. For various reasons and purposes, mostly subconsciously and without any malice, we create these little lies that alter our self-image and other people's perception of us in one way or another.

It reminds me of my UK friend of many years, Gerald Hamer's, revelation concerning his constant bitching and moaning about endless international traveling he had to endure throughout many years of his impressive career as financial broker and adviser. "In truth," he said, "deep inside I love the goddamn airports; the sub-par plane food; the inevitable delays; god-forsaken Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, with its diamond mines one week, and unbearable humidity of Bahrain another. I wouldn't want it any other way."

So, all you, democratic CFOs out there, work as hard as you can and fight for your employees' well-being with all you've got, but be honest with yourself: you enjoy being special, the Most Valuable Player in the field.

Trying to Impress by Talking Too Much? Ur Doin It Wrong.

Life screws with people: neglectful parents, inconsiderate spouses and partners, selfish children, boorish bosses, and disdainful co-workers create scores and scores of attention-deprived people desperately seeking approval.  Most frequent manifestation of this subconscious desire is excessive, out-of-place talking - lengthy stories with self-boosting subtext. 

This type of behavior is usually classified as social awkwardness.  I don't know a single person capable of keeping a grip on himself under any circumstances.  Once in a while certain conditions come together and something activates the stupid switch even in the most brilliant people.  I've seen some pretty impressive humans falling into this mode during lectures, important meetings, fundrasing parties, and social gatherings. 

During 2010 New York's World Science Fair, I attended a panel Consciousness: Explored and Explained with the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation) and the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi.  It was monitored by the actor and director Alan Alda (better known as Hawkeye Pierce of M*A*S*H) - a fairly smart guy who got close to popular science by hosting PBS's Scientific American Frontiers.  One concept that Giulio Tononi has described was too much for Mr. Alda to grasp.  He restated the scientist's words once, was corrected, then again, and again.  Finally, he realized that he wasn't getting it, but he couldn't help himself - he kept talking, and talking, and talking...  

Hey, sometimes I catch myself doing it and thinking, "What's going on?  Why am I relating my interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire to this uninterested person?" But only very self-aware people are capable to recognize the symptoms and stop themselves.

Consequently, the degree of this affliction widely varies.  In some people it gets triggered by a selected audience (sometimes even one particular individual), or specific circumstances.  I had a sort of a paralyzing effect on my boss of two years ago.  He would be acting his aloof self around everybody else, but every time he would come to my office, he ended up ranting.  Eventually, I became wary of starting even super-important discussions with him.  It was always, "Let me tell you,.." and we would be off on an absolutely irrelevant tangent.  At one point he was telling me that he shares a surfing coach in East Hampton with Gwenyth Paltrow and Chris Martin.  I kept thinking to myself, "I am not impressed, dammit!"         

In many people this trait blows up to extreme proportions: people simply cannot stop themselves.  They don't need any special circumstances or triggers - they grab every chance they get to talk, even if they have nothing to say.  In public these people are usually extroverted, talking non-stop.   The overwhelming popularity of Facebook and Twitter is the testimony to the pandemic proportions of verbal diarrhea.

In social situations you can simply walk away, or turn your phone off to stop seeing three tweets per minute.  However, you cannot do the same at work.  You have to deal with it one way or another.  Ok, so not everyone can find the right way to tell their bosses to shut up.  And my advice - don't do it.  Even if it seems that you've done it in the mildest way possible, they never forget it.  And, as we all know, no one can hold the grudge as long as bosses do.  On the other hand, when it comes to your peers or subordinates, the issue must be addressed if it interferes (and it does) with the normal course of a meeting, an assignment, or a working day.

The best way to approach it is with a friendly private talk.  Most likely the person is not aware that what he is doing is an obvious display of insecurity, and that people recognize it as such.  Explain to the person that he achieves the exactly opposite results: while trying to impress and seeking approval, he gets co-workers and supervisors annoyed.  To earn this person's trust, you can share your own experience in similar situations (just like I did here).  Most importantly, tell them that the best way to make a difference and get appreciated is by doing the best job they can. 

The Weakest Link in a Corporate Finance and Accounting System

Let’s say, as a CFO or Controller you have all policies outlined and procedures carefully designed.  Everything is properly documented and bound into books and manuals, which are readily available for orientation, training, and daily reference.  Through intensive internal audit program all components have been examined; everything have been tested in practice.  Whatever did not work well has been tweaked; cumbersome procedures were replaced with more straightforward ones; the inferior ones have been improved.

Finally it has been determined that the internal control system is both effective and efficient in accomplishing the company’s goals and the executive management’s objectives.  Is it reasonable at this point to expect that everything should be working like that expensive watch I keep mentioning as a model of a perfect mechanism?  Unfortunately, not. 

We don’t exist in the virtual world of The Matrix trilogy, where everyone is manipulated by the digital code.  In real life it is the other way around: our well designed systems and structures depend on being properly handled by people.  Their proficiency and diligence determine how well the policies and procedures are being performed.  The truth is that every task performed by an employee is vulnerable to occasional unintentional errors, consistent sloppiness, and even deliberate mishandling.

Any designer of functional systems, with frameworks that include people as key elements, knows that humans are the weakest links in the chain of actions.  Long time ago, when computers were so huge that a single unit occupied a hall the size of the New York Public Library’s Reading Room, all programs and data were coded on punch cards.  A punched out spot was read by the computer’s card reader as a character or a digit.  These cards were manually created by operators trained to use a keypunch machine.  Guess what?  Two separate people produced every card in duplicate.  No exceptions. If the cards did not match, they have to be re-punched.  Thus, the risk of human error was managed.

Such duplication of staff is unthinkable now.  Today, we rely on computer systems to reduce at least the most common of the risks.  The rest of flaws must be caught through vigorous and persistent scrutiny of performance quality.  Monitoring is the cornerstone of internal control and one of the most important responsibilities of a supervisor.  It brings the entire system together and assures that policies, procedures and people concur.  A series of timely and thoughtful tests should become a part of your, or your internal auditors’, routine.

Remember:   If not corrected, every mistake your employee makes will end up in financial data, documents and reports, for which you are ultimately responsible.  One erroneous entry may affect your bank’s collateral statement or a presentation to the board of directors.  Omissions will impair strategic decisions.  Communication mishaps can impact commercial relationships.  These flaws will most definitely be a poor reflection on your reputation as a financial leader.  You have to create filters that will catch the debris before they pollute the results of your hard work.

You can read about various practical techniques of reducing accounting and finance systems' vulnerability to human factor in my upcoming book "CFO Techniques" (Apress, 12/02/2011), now available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.    

The Frustrated CFO Takes Lessons from Robert McKee

Human beings are like sponges - the second we are born we start acquiring general knowledge of things from everything around us.  It is a natural process. 

When it comes to intellectual knowledge, however, we tend to make our own choices.  Some people read Pynchon, others prefer Sports Illustrated.  Some go to see Black Swan, while others would never miss a new Transformers installment. 

It gets even more selective for specialized knowledge -  higher education, professional publications, technical books, etc.  Even with the subjects of human psychology, relationships, our understanding of the world around us (all frequently featured in The Frustrated CFO's posts), people are more likely to go for books written by "specialists." 

But the truth is that the nature of human interactions and the principles of emotional response to life do not change from industry to industry and from trade to trade. They are universal and I have learned long time ago that the knowledge of things pertaining to human experience can come to us from anywhere.  There is a reason I frequently present my topics by referring to books, TV programs and movies - the best examples of these art forms pursue the truth of life; that is why we can relate.

Those who have seen Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" may remember the screenwriting guru character played by Brian Cox.  Well, he is a real person - one of the best theoretician's of creative writing in the world Robert McKee.  After several decades of writing for theater and television, Mr. McKee found his true calling in formulating a set of fundamental principles for compelling storytelling, which became the framework of his world-touring STORY seminar.   He also compiled them into a bestselling book by the same name.

I happened to know a young screenwriter who attended McKee's seminar twice and described it as a life-changing experience - not just as a writer, but as a human being.  You see, Robert McKee teaches how movies should be written so that they penetrate straight into the audience's soul.  So, inevitably he touches on the subjects that reach far beyond cinematic matters.  That, together with the fact that his films recommendation list pretty much matches my own roster of favorites, persuaded me to buy his STORY book.

What can I tell you?  This is a very brilliant man.  Anyone who loves movies should read this book...  And everyone who considers himself a student of human nature should read this book.  It is impossible to convey all the wisdom Robert McKee generously shares, but his study of "the principle of antagonism" is particularly invaluable.  

He goes beyond the conventional knowledge that antagonistic conflicts are at the basis of existence (and a story, of course).  He concludes that there are three primary antagonistic forces for any positive value, progressing from contrary to contradictory to "the Negation of the Negation," which, unlike in math where two negatives make a positive, is "a force of antagonism that's doubly negative."  

He further constructs illustrative charts for such values as love, truth, consciousness, wealth, communication, success, bravery, loyalty,  justice, wisdom, and freedom.  I find the last three absolutely universal and applicable to many conflicts we encounter both in our professional and personal lives.  They are reproduced below.  It's mesmerizing: you look at them and it's like a reel of your life's events, fitting perfectly into these diagrams, unspools in front of your eyes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Just Your Average Opportunistic Boss

Who can resist this?  The Governator has cheated and lied?  Noooo, you are kidding!!! I am sure millions of bloggers hit the keyboards running.

But wait a minute, I already wrote about this - just little over four months ago: CFO Folklore: When Your Boss's Secretary Becomes His Girlfriend.  Well, not about Arnie per se, but about bosses having affairs with their employees. 

Obviously, it was based on incidents I have witnessed in business, as a financial professional.  I wrote the piece from the inside perspective of frustrated CFOs and Controllers, who are forced to deal with that.  Yet, I used very generalized terms, because it is the most typical type of infidelity. 

I don't think I have to remind you about all political scandals with exactly the same premise.  I never thought that the only reason these incidents ignited public attention was people's relishing the dirt.  It is the relevance of these situations to every-day life that attracts people: "Oh, he is just like that dick I work for."  As the matter of fact, that January post is the third most popular item on this Blog - people relate.

There is always an enterprising (rarely smitten) young and ambitions intern/staffer/secretary/page (she or he) in the office of a powerful older man, who,  driven by desire to excel in life without too much effort, will pursue the boss with all her (his) youthful enthusiasm.  And of course, the older person is weakened: his male nature already has a propensity for imprudence; his morals are corrupted by power; he is ridden with temptation to taste something 20-25 years younger...  "What a poor man to do?"

As the matter of fact, small business owners have it better than more powerful public figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bill Clinton.  The latter risk public humiliation and popularity votes; the former have almost nothing to fear in their little absolute monarchies.  

The truth is, I liked Mr. Schwarzenegger up until he went into politics.  I admired his drive to rise above his muscles.  He actually always seemed liked a pretty decent man to me - someone who, if he fell out of love, would just come clean, divorce her and then go on making babies with another woman.  I should have known that as soon as "political reasoning" kicked in, lying would commence.  That they kept quiet, so he wouldn't loose his supporters - it's just disgusting.  

It is uncanny, but the former action star's news of an out-of-wedlock child, hit much closer to the real-life prototype of Boss and His Secretary story I wrote in January - I've just recently learned that the secretary in question is actually pregnant, while the boss is still legally married to his wife of twenty years.  

I would like to propose a little contest.  My readers, if you know of a single male business owner over 50 year old, with the staff of more than 20 people, who never had any indiscretions, please let me know.  I will sing praises to him in these virtual pages.