The Frustrated CFO

Scenes from a Business Lunch, or the Obnoxious Rudeness of Business Owners

Speaking of lunches (and I swear this is my last holiday post of the year)...

Because there are so many corporate holiday events in December, many business people from all over the country and overseas come to New York City during the month.  Customers, suppliers, vendors, associates, partners, and other relations visit their customers, clients, etc.  So, on top of the parties, you've got lunches with out-of-towners. This is a perfect opportunity to observe the business-owners' behavior in a "casual" group setting (as opposed to conference rooms and other natural habitats).

For many visitors this is also a good occasion for combining business and pleasure (after all, NYC is still #6 most favored tourist city in the world and #1 nation-wide) and quite a few bring their spouses along.  Some are actually in business with their spouses.

At the most recent lunch outing of this kind my guests were a manufacturing business owner by himself, another business owner with a wife, an alpha-female head of a consulting group, and a husband and wife attorneys sharing a corporate legal practice. Fun bunch!  Don't worry kids, it's only going to get worse!

The manufacturer asked for a coke and downed it really fast; then had it refilled several times throughout the meal.  This, naturally, resulted in a fast accumulation of a lot of gas in his stomach, which he unceremoniously belched out every 10 minutes, or so.  It was obviously a habitual occurrence, because he did not even bother to apologize.  It's amazing, how we learned to hide our emotions in "business" situations - everyone pretended not to notice it, even though once in a while one could catch a hint of a smirk or disgust (depending on the personality) playing on the lips of other guests.

[Side note: This reminds me of another experience in my arsenal of wonderful memories.  Early in my career I worked for a company, whose owner, in my mind, will forever carry a title of The Farting Boss.  He was middle-aged, but had a younger second wife and wanted to loose weight by drinking glass after glass of Slim Fast.  This made him very gassy.  The man mastered the skill of silent farting, but the smell was literally unbearable.  Imagine my situation - we sat in the same room.  Good times!]

The lady consultant first tried her sales pitch on every guest around the table, but quickly lost her enthusiasm, when she realized that nobody is interested in her services, except for me.  Since my company already had a contract with her, she did not see a reason to waste anymore time on us and turned her attention to the Blackberry, answering emails between bites and white-wine sips.

The married businessman first attacked his wife in a very loud whisper (it could be heard even at the neighboring tables) for wearing shoes with heels.  This apparently slowed down his purposefully brisk gait that went well, I am sure, with his aggressive mannerisms.  After the woman's eyes welled up with tears he abandoned her to fight it back on her own and observed the rest of the battlefield in front of him.  Dismissing the burping guy and all females as inferior creatures, he concentrated his self-affirmation efforts on the attorney sitting across the table from him.

They went at each other like two roosters in a Filipino cockpit.  "Have you read this?"  "Do you know that guy?"  "I bought Apple at $25 and just sold it at $375." "I am keeping mine - it will be $500 a share in a year."  "I closed that famous private equity deal this year." "I brought this much venture capital to my business."  "I am opening new factory in China."  "We have a law office in Hong Kong!"

God!  I contemplated the scene thinking, "The things we must tolerate to earn a living!"    

CFO Folklore: An Insult of the Month

After a long period of solicitation, due diligence, term sheet amendments, and credit agreement negotiations, a company finally closed a new multi-million dollar credit line with a major national bank. Now, it's time to build working relationships with different departments: the CFO is busy establishing communication channels with the treasury services, trade finance, foreign exchange, collateral control, and so on, and so forth. There are conference calls, meetings, lunches.

This is an introductory period for both sides - a short lull between the stormy deal-making and the times of daily grind that lie ahead. There is not much business yet to discuss, so the conversations, especially during lunches, turn to probing each other's backgrounds and chatting about general topics.

During one such first-meet lunch with yet another banker, the CFO, a person of broad interests, talks about this and that, displaying familiarity with various subjects.

Banker (in a very friendly, non-offensive, even appreciative tone): You know a little about everything, don't you?

CFO (waiting for the second part of the expression, but none is coming; so she takes offence): Well, that would make me very superficial, even shallow. I assure you that there are a few areas of knowledge within and outside my professional scope, in which I can claim in-depth expertise.

They look at each other silently for a moment than move onto a discussion of the bank's operational features, both hiding their own grudges.

The Frustrated CFO's situational analysis:

My personal experience of dealing with American bankers throughout my entire career is that the majority of them are not overly bright. I assure you that I am not saying this out of disrespect - it's just a fact of life. The European banking is altogether a different matter. Overseas, the banks are smaller and the profession itself is still considered to be a prestigious occupation, even if you don't deal with investments and make million-dollar bonuses. Some of the European bankers I know graduated at the top of their classes and were recruited right out of the business schools. Ours - they are mostly average.

That's why I think that at the crucial moment of a split-second decision, the CFO went the wrong way. These mental "forks in the road" present themselves in our minds all day long. Sometimes we make right decisions, and sometimes (most of the times, for some) we don't. Looking at the situation from the outside, I gather that the banker did not mean to be brash. She was just limited. Most likely she only remembered the first part of the frequently paraphrased and transformed saying - know a little about everything and a lot about something, and used it, inappropriately, to complement the CFO's erudition. You know, it's like one of those bushisms, "Fool me once - shame on you, fool me - you can't get fooled again." You cannot take that kind of stuff seriously.

Quote of the Week: Double Jeopardy!

Contemporary Political Terminology for a $1000, please, Alex.

- A hippie with the trust-fund background.

 - What is

Version 1:    "a trustafarian?"

"MI-5" season 8, episode 3, written by Christian Spurrier and Sean Reilly.

Version 2 (still acceptable):    "an occupier of Zuccotti Park Avenue?"

                                                                                                            H.M.

Apple's iAd Division Celebrates Christmas

December is still with us and so are the corporate X-mas parties. The holiday cheer is inescapable for the dogged blogger like me.

Did you know that large public corporations, with their in-house event planners working schedules way in advance, always manage to have their parties as close to Christmas Day as possible? I guess it signifies how "family-like" those organizations are.

Apple's latest branching out child, the iAd division, held its party just six days before Christmas - on Monday, December 19th. Constructed out of the body parts of a mobile advertising start-up Quattro Wireless, acquired by the maker of iPhones and iPads in 2010, iAd was not moved to Apple Campus in Cupertino, CA. Instead, it stayed in the advertising capital of the world - New York City, albeit swapping the original small office in SoHo for a 45,000 square-foot expanse on Fifth Avenue at Union Square.

Everything needs to project an intended image! And so, they celebrated the traditional combination of year-end holidays in a semi-trendy restaurant in Chelsey, which is themed to alleviate nostalgic pangs of transplants from more humble regions of the US, while entertaining other patrons with a taste of Americana not found on the streets of Manhattan.

The spirit-lifting intent, customarily reserved for such parties, acquired a somewhat militant hue as iAd's execs came to the microphone, each with his own discourse on the same topic: "They all want to see us fail! But we will show them! We'll distroy them all!" Underneath all that bravado, however, there were unmistakable notes of fear. It's understandable, of course. iAd is locked in severe competition with Google for the $630 million market of ads streaming through smart phones directly into the sensory system of general public, incapable of ungluing itself from the beloved devices. The things are not going too well, though.

Apple first lost the edge when it couldn't outbid Google in acquisition of AdMob and had to settle for Quattro Wireless as a less desirable second choice. Advertisers have already rejected the original requirement of $1 million minimum commitment, which now has been slashed by more than 50%. And October departure of Quattro Wireless's founder Andy Miller, who originally accepted an Apple's VP position to lead the iAd team, only intensified the apprehension. This is public-company world - everything is about perception. The execs know their plight: today you are a big shot, but if you don't perform, you are out.

Booze and abusive behavior are traditional fear-drowning remedies for insecure males. The former was thoughtfully accommodated by the party organizers via the open-bar arrangement. Most attendees took advantage of the limitless supply; some with an enthusiasm of newborn calves, who need to be taken away from the udder lest they drink themselves to death. There was this one high-echelon specimen (let's call him The Boss's Boss) who was especially determined to stupefy himself, knocking down one gin after another. As he reached a certain condition, the desire to abuse could not be contained.

One of the waitresses serving the party was a remarkably attractive young woman (let's call her The Striking Girl). She had that star quality about her that causes double takes; something Nora Ephron once described as magnetism that makes a man across the room go, "Get me that!" An obvious target for a drunken bully.

He started by shoving a decorative tree onto her as she was passing. "I am pushing bush on bush," he sneered to other men around him. The Striking Girl didn't say anything - he was a customer. She remained poised and diligently went about her job.

You see, the thing about the hospitality industry in New York City is that a significant portion of waiting, bar-tending, catering, etc. staff consists of struggling writers, artists, actors, musicians - the creative hopefuls. Service jobs are usually divided into shifts and one can combine them into a flexible schedule that leaves time to attend to the true calling. The Striking Girl, as it turned out, happened to be an aspiring writer and a filmmaker, with her first short recently accepted to one of the New York's indie festivals. It explained her composure: she prepares herself to dealing with Hollywood and getting her ego bruised on daily basis.

So, she continued being friendly and pleasant to other attendees. When someone spoke with a Russian accent, she mentioned that she was born in St. Petersburg and was brought to New York as a baby by her political-refugee parents. The Boss's Boss, now never far away from her, heard that. "I have a friend," he said, "he just loves banging Russian pussy."

Next time he caught her in the tiny space of the service station. "Did you come to apologize?" she asked calmly. He thrust his drunken mug into her fragile cheek and responded with,"There is no need for apologies. It's that St. Petersburg love, baby."

Hey, I am a middle-aged broad. I know only too well that chivalry is dead, buried, its corpse rotted into dust long time ago. Still, it's shocking that not a single so-called "man" felt an urge to speak up on behalf of the young lady.

Is this the type of culture Apple Inc. cultivates? Of abusively unrestrained bosses and silent yes-men?

I wonder, how the parents of the Striking Girl felt, when they learned of this incident? Is this the type of democracy and liberty we offer here, in the United States of America, now? Any corporate honcho is free to behave like a dirty animal, while everyone else acts as if their mouths taped shut?

By the way, did you know that corporate execs in public companies get stocks as part of their bonuses? Well, I've sold my Apple stock after that party. The thought that my holding on to them may contribute to the further rise of share prices and one day make the Boss's Boss richer made me sick.

Why Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern) from "Enlightened" Drives Me Mad?

I like whatever Mike White (a friend of Jack Black) does. Ever since "Chuck & Buck," "Orange County," "The Good Girl," and "The School of Rock" I've been a fan of his writing, which is always quirky and amazingly original. And his new series on HBO "Enlightened" is fantastic: honest, insightful, filled with an incredible array of complex and realistically fucked-up characters. On a human level, it makes me laugh, cry, sigh in recognition, squirm from awkwardness, nod and shake my head - all within the same episode.

Yet, the economist in me cannot stop being constantly mad at the show's protagonist, Amy Jellicoe (played by always fabulous Laura Dern, who shares the show's executive-production credits with Mr. White). And it's not because I don't believe in the phony enlightenment through expensive retreats and self-help books. It seems that the creative team shares my opinion on this issue - the persistent cracking of the artificial facade exposes the impossibility of achieving peace in the realm of contemporary American existence, plagued by social and monetary fights for survival. What really makes this CFO frustrated is the fact that this woman DOESN'T PERFORM ANY WORK, BUT STILL GETS PAID.

There is nothing wrong with coming to realization that there are important things in your life beyond the job. Take if from me, most people work for a paycheck, not for self-realization, including those at the very top of the business hierarchy.   That's a sad truth about our lives. However, "WORK" is an operative word. Coming to the office whenever, occupying yourself with personal matters throughout the day, and then waltzing out smiling before anybody else, like Amy does - there is only one word to classify that kind of an attitude: STEALING.

If the job heavily bears on your psyche and you feel that you will not be able to tolerate the meaningless work for one extra second, leave and quit getting paid. That's the honest thing to do. And Amy does find a job, which agrees with her newly-acquired outwardly predisposition. Guess what? It pays only $25K a year and she "cannot survive on that!" If only she could continue getting the regular direct deposits from the bad-wolf corporation, while contributing her time at the shelter - that would be a blissful combination!

Amy seems like a person who wouldn't be toiling for eight hours in front of a computer screen even for the most noble purpose - it's just too much for an "enlightened" person. But she especially despises the fact that her department analyses the employees performance metrics. I am not going to judge here what the corporation does with the results - there is not enough information in the show to do so, only vague hints. Yet, I can definitely say that there is nothing wrong with productivity analysis per se. Companies of all shapes and sizes must to do that, if they want to survive and prosper.

Socialist countries provided most people with work (albeit at incredibly low salaries), regardless of their efforts. Many people there would come to places of employment without any impulse to attend to their jobs. Look what happened to those economies! It's people like Amy Jellicoe who end up at Zuccotti park hanging out and screaming about the disappearance of the middle class, while the real members of that class continue going to work, doing their jobs, helping their businesses to survive. Those, who don't want to work are the reason why the quality of products and services continuously goes down, why the economy deteriorates right in front of our eyes.

Quote of the Week

In one of my previous posts (Warning: "Horrible Bosses") I've bashed the movie as a pointless, shallow, and phantasmagorical take on workplace relationships between senior staff and their bosses.  I've expressed the combined frustrations of a financial professional and an entertainment connoisseur about the pollution of our cultural environment with yet another low-value cinematic opus, painfully focused on one of the central topics of this blog. 

I still stand on the same position.  But that doesn't prevent me from objectively acknowledge that the silly flick has provided Colin Farrell with an opportunity to deliver his most farcical performance to date in his pitch-perfect American accent.  His Bobby Pellitt is a caricature of those real people I describe (the ones who think that GAAP and GAP are the same things).  The following exchange (Huffington Post nominated it as one of the funniest movie quotes of the year), written by Michael Markowitz and John Francis Daley, is both funny and probable:

Bobby:  We need to trim some of the fat.

Kurt:  What do you mean by trim the fat?

Bobby:  I want you to fire the fat people. They're lazy and they're slow and they make me sad to look at.

 

 

"CFO Techniques" Has Been Released Today

Available on Amazon

From the editorial note:

"CFO Techniques: A Hands-on Guide to Keeping Your Business Solvent and Successful is a comprehensive and instructive working manual for multitasking chief financial officers and controllers working in the fast-paced commercial environment. Every senior financial professional with an ever-broadening span of control will benefit from this complete outline of the core activities—with specific descriptions of individual tasks—comprising the daily agenda of a successful CFO or controller. It covers everything from traditional responsibilities like budgeting and financial reporting, to more innovative tasks like performance analytics and business strategy development.

While emphasizing specific guidelines on what it takes to excel as a company’s head of finance, the book refrains from overwhelming dryness by using cultural references, real-life examples, and a casual tone. With its bite-sized, easy-to-read chapters, CFO Techniques serves as both an invaluable desktop reference handbook and a good bedtime read. Whether you need a quick recommendation on treasury procedures, adhering to GAAP, keeping funds safe from embezzlers, or advice on dealing with the CEO, you will find the answers in this book."

Joke of the Day

Based on an actual conversation.

New CFO: "Half of your in-transit inventory is not recorded on the books, because you have not followed the cost-recognition rules since you started this company six years ago."

CEO: "The books? Which books? Do you mean the Excel spreadsheet we call Order Book?"

New CFO (doesn't know whether to cry or to laugh): "Your books - your financial records! They are not in accordance with GAAP."

CEO: "GAP? What that cheap store has to do with our inventory?"

Quote of the Week

"Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to teach children."

                                        W. H. Auden

 

 

 

Insecure Business Owner/CEO

People write about insecure bosses all the time. There are blog posts, articles, book chapters, cartoons, movies, and TV shows devoted to the subject of dealing with a superior who feels threatened by his subordinates.  Hey, bosses are people and a vast majority of humanity is plagued by insecurities of various forms and degrees. The authors usually predict two possible outcomes of having such a boss: you will either find a way to overcome the problem and turn this person into your ally, or you get fired.  Curiously, in these writings "the boss" in question is usually another hired employee perched on a higher step of the hierarchy ladder.  (It has always surprised me, why these advisers never consider a possibility of you finding the way of getting the insecure boss fired.)

However, when your insecure boss owns the company that employs you, it's a completely different situation altogether.  Here he (or she, or they) was, the big boss with a business that he's built, thinking that he is the shit, the sharpest tool not just in some lousy shed, but in a suburban Home Depot... Until you came along, with your diverse expertise, broad fundamental knowledge, etc.

Now, you start discovering all kind of stupid stuff.  If you are indeed an experienced person, you are not running around like an idiotic show-off screaming that everything is wrong.  No, you tread lightly.  At the same time you must do your job and, therefore, correct the stupid stuff.  So, you say careful things like, "Excuse me, I mean no disrespect, but this and that is not done properly and will result in long-term losses; and, by the way, your accounting doesn't comply with prescribed rules."  You have no choice but to reveal painful observations such as, "You know, that operating system you bought just before your hired me (couldn't you wait?) on recommendation of someone you know, sucks!  You were misled - it's not an ERP, it's a retarded cousin of a real ERP twice removed."

Moreover, from time to time, things come out of your boss's mouth that are not just silly, they are embarrassingly incorrect.  Of course, you can ignore it, and yet you cannot, because if you don't clarify his confusions and educate him, he may say something stupid in front of your bankers, or investors, or auditors.  So, you have no choice but to find an appropriate way to straighten him out, raise his sophistication.

And even though you openly express due respect for his entrepreneurial abilities and acute commercial intuition, he cannot avoid feeling inadequate, insecure.  It's unpleasant and he doesn't like it at all.  Yet, unless you become rude and inappropriate, your job is secure.  The idea of firing you wouldn't even come to his logical conscious mind.  First of all, he knows that the company (i.e. his wallet) needs you and your improvements.  Secondly, you took over quite few tasks, freeing him for business development.   Finally, he doesn't have time or desire to go through the search process again.

Still, from time to time the subconsciousness feels pangs of wounded ego.  When that happens, he'll do anything to make himself feel better.  He will find one or another way to get back at you.  If you have an accent (Irish, Italian, Slavic, French), he will interrupt you in the middle of a meeting and ask the outsiders if they understand at least 30% of what you were saying, even though your English is fluent.  Your writing skills are likely to be far more superior than his, but he will make you run drafts of emails to important people by him, claiming their "political importance."  He may get into habit of reminding you that, considering your compensation, he expects a lot from you, even though you have exceeded all his expectations already.  And so on, and so forth...  

This behavior is childish.  The mere knowledge that it's rooted in his insecurity should help you to brush it off.  Don't let yourself to be hurt by it.  Don't think, "This is not fair, I am helping his business."  Don't take it as an insult.   Accept it as a testimony to your superiority.