The Frustrated CFO

Response to a Reader's Question: Take a Position Abroad or Stay Home?

One of my readers, a fellow female CFO, have sent me an email asking for an advice on the following dilemma she is trying to resolve for herself:

"Hi Frustrated CFO

Please advice.

I'm at a crossroad between choosing to work as a group cfo in overseas subsidiary in US or stay in home country (malaysia) and becomes a group cfo of a division.

Both has its merits and demerits but i'm a woman and study shows that most women do not end at top spot without sacrifice. My family and I would have to sacrifice more if i choose to go overseas. My husband need to put his business on hold and becomes a house husband for a while until we settle down. Its good for the kids as they will go to international school and gain mastery in english language.

Staying in home country is not bad either. I will be in a familiar condition, i will gain new exposure, nothing need to change and i can send my kids to good schools at a higher fee.

Most people will say that experience abroad will change how people perceive you as a leader and thus this will give you greater opportunities within or outside the group.

What do you reckon?

Thank you.

Rgds
Anonymous"

Honestly, it is apparent to me that deep in her heart Anonymous knows very well that, professionally speaking, the best thing to do is to take the job overseas. I always said that a career CFO or a Controller needs to view every job as a line on her resume. Nothing more and nothing less. And what can make a better resume entry than a position showing that your knowledge and expertise are viewed to be unmatchable by a local talent pool in a foreign location? This is a great stepping stone in anyone's career development.

Men don't even think twice about opportunities like that, family or not. But women are naturally more considerate creatures. Many of us try to achieve an impossible balance between professional careers and personal lives. This requires a lot of trade-offs - you cannot possibly have everything. You want spend more time with your kids than you can. You don't want to be too tired for your husband. But, at the same time, your career is a source of income and, more importantly, social independence. The last thing a strong woman wants is to give that up.

I am also a strong believer in exposing children to foreign cultures. It broadens their horizons and sets them apart. Most professional parents do it through traveling and student-exchange programs, but here is a fortunate opportunity of a complete immersion. It would be a shame to pass on that.

So, the only real difficulty is the husband. Is it fair to ask someone to put their business endeavors on hold for the sake of perpetuating your own career? It's really a very private issue that depends on individual personalities, and it can be blown into a very complex problem. However, in my opinion, at the end of the day, it comes down to two major considerations:

1. What will guarantee better financial future for your family as a whole? We are financial professionals - we know how to count. Estimate the future values of each possibility.

2. What will secure the psychological stability of your family? If you are excited about the overseas opportunity, but decide to stay home for the sake of your husband, will you subconsciously hold it against him? Will you let the resentment corrode your marriage?

If you can honestly answer these questions, it will ease your decision-making process. I promise.

I invite other readers to express their opinions on this subject in their comments.

Quote of the Week: Eclecticism

From a text-message exchange (Friday, February 24):

"YZ - Andrew Bird secret show tomorrow night at a small venue in Brooklyn... Got two tickets. R u down?

The Frustrated CFO - Always. I will crawl to secret shows if I cannot walk."

Quote of the Week

"There are days when it takes all you've got just to keep up with the losers."

                                Robert Orben

Showtime's "House of Lies" Showcases "Big Business"

Showtime methodically continues expanding its gallery of likable bastards - you know, those characters who consistently behave badly, violate conventional "morality" in every other screenshot, show complete disregard for their "fellow humans," and yet entice the adoring audience to watch their screen-capades every week, sins and all. Brian Kinney ("Queer as Folk"), Nancy Botwin ("Weeds"), Hank Moody ("Californication"), Jackie Peyton ("Nurse Jackie"), the Gallaghers ("Shameless") - they all have devoted followers who adore them despite their multiple faults and vices.

Now comes Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle), the ruthless management consultant who, together with his younger team members, would stop at nothing to rake more billable hours and expenses into their employer's purse. To make the main characters more or less palatable to the audience, and at times even lovable and pitiful, the show goes beyond the beaten path of showing their human side in personal situations - it pitches them against the somewhat two-dimensional, but decisively abhorrent, cast of clients who, in the viewers' minds, "deserve" to be taken advantage of, if for no other reason but to restore the sense of "social justice."

This means that the show doesn't go after small businesses - that could be risky as the viewers might feel compassion for the struggling owners, and, more importantly, it would demand from them a sufficient familiarity with commercial specifics. Moreover, even people with no exposure to actual business activities understand that no small company can afford Marty's team's first-class airfare and stretch-SUV limos.

In fact, the clients are all large businesses that seem to be plucked out of the media coverage, which makes them not just the Big Bad Wolves, but the familiar ones as well. These are the entities that, at the very least, come into the peripheral vision of the general public. You've got your proverbial bank, tainted by sub-prime mortgages and riding the bailout wave; an obnoxious teenage high-tech billionaire; a national budget-hotel chain helmed by racist Mormons, etc.

Not-businessy people ask me if the show reflects the reality of the every-day business life. My answer is, "No." And it's not because there are no consulting firms, businesses, engagements, and people like the ones we see in the show, or that the writers get the terminology wrong. Actually they get a lot of things right and I wouldn't be surprised if the writing staff compiled by Matthew Carnahan for this show has at least a few people with MBA's in their past. At times they even go too far in their realism: I wonder, for example, what percentage of the audience understands what KPI's are.

The reason the show has nothing to do with the life most business people live is that the Big Business's actual existence is unreal and makes no common sense. Their paper-financed operations, the influence on the government, the executive compensations, the excessive spenditures on... mmm... everything, the actions they get away with - they are surreal and grotesque. But, I guess, that makes it even more fitting for entertainment purposes.

That said, there were a few observations within the first 5 episodes of the show that not only rang very true to my ears, but some were already addressed in this blog's posts:

1. Within the first 10 minutes of the pilot, Marty explains to the audience how the "afterwork" is attained: make them feel like their business is going to fail without you and tons of billable hours will be generated (see 05/14/2011 post Case Study: The Marketing of Fear).

2. The member of Kaan's team responsible for crunching numbers and analyzing clients' financials looks timidly and acts awkwardly in social situations, representing the classical Hollywood stereotype of an accounting professional (see 10/26/2010 post He Looks Like an Accountant...).

3. The core substance of dynamics between various CEOs and CFOs so frequently discussed here (just go to the "Bosses" category) is accurately captured in a very schematic way, which actually manages to make it almost biblical in its generality: a prim-spined, heartless bully, bent on doing the things his way, whether it's good for the business or not (the Boss), on one side and a somewhat hunched, practical, reasonable, subordinate, but still powerful in his own sneaky way schemer (CFO) on the other.

4. Finally, the ultimate truth I have an occasion to repeat at least once every day: everything in this world is a matter of perception, or, as Marty Kaan puts it, "Data dump is the key; everything else is horseshit, except PERCEPTION, which is horseshit you can leverage."

Quote of the Week: R.I.P. Whitney Houston

"The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry."

                                            John Jensen

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-Deprecating Ageism, or Impressions From Tool Concert

When iconic bands like Tool go on tours the good tickets land onto scalping sites almost instantaneously. Well, a middle-aged CFO with uber-eclectic cultural tastes is used to it: the same is true for Radiohead, Kanye West, The Cure, Wilco, Florence and the Machine, etc., and The Met charges scalping prices in its own box office. The biggest concern is handling the crowd: you want to be on the floor, but you are too old to fight off the crashing violent tendencies and the crowd-surfing of the young fans. It's fine to be in the front row of the GA pit at the Radiohead concert as there is no pushing and shoving, but the Tool audience may get carried away in the pit.

So, when fate brings an assigned-seat concert (the audience rocks standing close to their ticketed seats) and as near as East Rutherford, NJ (Tool have not given a full performance in NYC since 2006), you thank the blessed benefactor for the floor tickets and go. After all, who knows if you can summon the courage for the next time.

I guess, the front-man, Mr. Maynard James Keenan, who is mere 3 years younger than me, for a hot second felt middle-aged as well. The sentiment was rather of the nostalgic than the physical nature: he looked as robust as ever and his voice did not loose an iota of its incredible beauty and strength. But this is what happens: you get to a place and a memory of seeing Van Halen there 25 years ago hits you - fuck, I've been alive for quite some time already.

So, Maynard addressed the audience as if it consisted 100% of younglings born before his experience of the band with the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. This was absolutely unjustified - to my quick eye the distribution of attendees was pretty much even over a broad spectrum of age groups, from 19 to mid-50's, with slightly higher density of late 20s to early 30s. But as I said, he felt like it, so he promised us that the band will "try" to perform some tracks that they have not touched for some time... as long as they "don't forget" what they are supposed to do, because they "are old". "So," he said, "if you see us wondering away in search of mashed potatoes..."

This made me laugh. Not because it was funny (Maynard is capable of better jokes), but because it reminded of me of myself always telling younger people how "the most brilliant I've ever been was at the age of 25-27, when I was writing my dissertation," and how "I used to have a near-photographic memory, but it's not the same anymore," and how "when you get older, the expertise replaces originality," and so on and so forth.

Pretty much the same coquettish crap that Maynard was trying to feed us right before him and his band-mates pulled off a set to die for, a performance one can never forget (there was a woman next to us who said that she saw Tool eighteen times and this was THE BEST CONCERT EVER!). Indeed, they were rocking like fucking hell, testing the reality and the nature of humanity with their existential lyrics and mind-blowing visuals. Their force transcended all ages; the generations converged and disappeared, chanting in unison the haunting lyrics of "Forty-six & 2" and "Aenema."

You know what? We, boys and girls born in the 60s, the so-called Generation X - the first generation conceived with The Beatles and The Stones playing in the background, potty-trained with the Pink Floyd's accompaniment and hit over the head by puberty while Led Zeppelin was hitting the Big Time, we should really stop this self-deprecating bullshit.

Nobody bought Maynard's "old-age" tirade, just like nobody buys my "I am not the same" crap. I just wrote a book full of novel ideas, I still enter companies and within a few weeks uncover their weaknesses, embarking on solving their problems and quickly coming up with solutions.

Is anybody going to think of Quentin Tarantino (1963) or Richard Linklater (1960) as "middle-aged" directors? How about Eddie Vedder (1964) or Thom Yorke (1968), would we qualify them as "middle-aged" rockers? If the beloved Kurt Cobain (1967) did not act on his disdain for human existence and kill himself at the age of 27, would we think of him as "old" now? C'mon, his fucking widow (1964) still acts like a juvenile delinquent. I can go on and on.

For better or worth, we are made differently. We count our years and we think, "Oh, I should be changing," but we are not getting "old" and we don't want to. And I don't think we will. 25 years from now, if the world is still in one piece, I intend to be at a Tool concert and expect Maynard to rock his hardest ever.

 

 

"CFO Techniques" Technical Reviewer's Comment for Small Business CFOs

LinkedIn Groups

• Group: Small Business CFOs
• Discussion: How important is to have a Policy & Procedure for a small business?

"Marina Guzik references her recently published "CFO Techniques" book, and it truly is a terrific reference guide for savvy CFO's, containing valuable information about best practice considerations on a number of critical topics. She has done an outstanding job of writing an easy-to-read one-stop source of valuable tips on identifying and solidifying core business functions, and it was my pleasure to assist with its technical review. A must-read for those wishing to learn more about making their business the strongest it can financially be!"
Posted by Randy KRUG

Quote of the Week

"Money is always there, but the pockets change."

                                            Gertrude Stein

Follow-Up to "What if You Don't Look the Part?"

As my readers know from December 7th, 2011 post What If You Don't Look the Part, I am not much of a football fan.  However, I am a big fan of people showing haters what's what.  So...

Congratulations to New York Giants for winning their fourth Super Bowl!  Congratulations to Eli Manning for getting an MVP Award for the second time and orchestrating winning plays during crunch time in 50% of Giants' victories, goofy smile and silly hat notwithstanding!

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.