Month: November 2013

Quote of the Week: More on the Notion of Irreplaceability


"One of these types of executives is represented by people who rendered certain services in the past… These are the people who do not consider it their duty to fulfill the decisions of the Party and of the Government, and who thus destroy the foundations of Party and state discipline… They Presume that the Soviet Government will not have the courage to touch them, because of their past services. These over-conceited aristocrats think that they are irreplaceable… What is to be done with executives of this kind? They must unhesitatingly be removed from their leading posts, irrespective of past services."

                                                                                        Joseph Stalin (January 1934)

The Frustrated CFO's commentary:

Usually all my posts are accompanied by pictures, but not this one – I don't put up photos of mass murderers.  Yet, I think that this quote tragically confirms my observation that entities, organizations, and systems can survive even after the most valuable, irreplaceable individuals are removed.  In this speech, delivered during the 17th Congress of the Bolsheviks Party, Stalin has laid the grounds for the Great Purge that was about to exterminate millions of the best and the brightest Russian citizens – political, economic, scientific, military, industrial, and cultural elite.  In fact, the eliminations started with the members of the said Congress, nicknamed by historians the Congress of the Condemned because two thirds of the people present during the oration were executed within the next three years.  Without them and without the continuously murdered and imprisoned in camps workers, agrarians, engineers, doctors, scientists, poets, writers, musicians, etc. the country was getting darker, poorer, more corrupt, and less educated.  But it's still there, on the map.  Even after the break up of the Soviet Union it's still the largest damn country in the world.

CFO Folklore: The Illusion of Irreplaceability


Orange-is-the-new-blackThis is what always happens with severely responsible and talented people who take pride in the quality of their work and apply themselves hard, regardless of the rewards and recognition, material or otherwise: They do an extraordinary job in every function they are assigned, they show initiative and undertake tasks beyond their scope of responsibility, they set their own lofty goals and high performance standards, they pull off feats of creativity and miracles of ingenuity.  Truly they accomplish things that no one else would in their place. 

More frequently than not they don't run around screaming about their achievements – after all, they simply cannot operate any other way and they don't care that nobody asked them to be like that.  They themselves know that they are the best.  Plus, people around them acknowledge such efforts in one way or another – subordinates show respect, peers get testy, etc.  And the bosses?  They either don't notice anything, because their heads are usually up their asses, or they are too limited to appreciate the ace-level pilotage they are witnessing. 

As someone afflicted by this condition, I can assert that there is nothing healthy about it.  Privately wallowing in the knowledge that you are "simply the best" and that your work ethic is a cut above everyone else's, while not being adequately rewarded for your efforts, is nothing more than an addiction to one's own ego. It's vanity of the worst kind, because it violates the principles of objectivism and merit-based recognition.  And, like any addiction, it is accompanied by a couple of supplemental attributes. 

One of them is the inevitable development of passive-aggressive behavior: no matter how many times a person is going to say that she does it for the sake of her own self-satisfaction, something deep inside wants to be celebrated for the extraordinary abilities, efforts, and results.  This secret desire is in a constant fight with an extreme dislike of boasting.  Thus, the feelings and impulses get mostly suppressed and come out in the form of classic indirect hostility and resentment.

Another attribute is the illusion of irreplaceability.  The tormented crazies convince themselves that without them the company will not be able to survive; that everything will fall apart and go to hell.  They believe that there is no way somebody else could be found to fill their shoes.  And why not?  Nowadays, people like that are quite rare.  It's most likely that, if an employee in question leaves on her own accord or is let go for some reason (because she becomes unaffordable or her attitude becomes unbearable), the employer will never ever have someone that good in the same position.  But does it really mean that losing these truly invaluable workers is an incurable disaster?  Are they really irreplaceable? Let me answer this question by doing what I frequently do – relating the readers to an example from popular culture. 

In case you have not had a chance to check out the Netflix/Lionsgate's co-production Orange Is the New Black, I urge you to do so – trust me, you will not regret it.  The show's creator, Jenji Kohan (widely known for her Showtime offspring, Weeds), is a member of a still rare breed of entertainment developers, who is able to focus on female characters without reducing the finished product to gender-specific genres.  Orange is the New Black takes place in a women's federal prison, and its ratio of male to female characters is about 1:10.  Yet, 47% of IMDb users who rated Orange is the New Black (8.5 stars overall) were males.

One of the primary characters in the first season of the show is an inmate of Russian origin, Galina "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew).  This formidable woman runs… no, she rules the prison's kitchen and has an influence on pretty much the entire social canvas of the place.  By the show's start she has apparently been there for years and assumed a role of a Godmother for a tight circle of her "daughters."  She can be a real bitch, and a newbie should think twice before contradicting her.  But the truth is she is doing a remarkable job, keeping her fellow convicts and the staff fed and even rewarded with treats under the conditions of ever-shrinking budget, broken fridge, and oppressive hostility from some nasty guards.  As early as the 5th episode, it is impossible for the audience to imagine the kitchen without Red.  Obviously, she herself thinks she is irreplaceable.

Guess what?  Towards the end of the season, the combination of some people's foolishness and others' unsavory scheming gets her kicked off the throne and out of the kitchen.  So, what happens?  Do the lights go out in the mess hall forever?  Do the prisoners get shipped to another facility to be fed?  Nah ah!  Another head cook is found right there in the general population and installed in front of the range; she brings in her own crew; the cooking continues somehow.  True, there are no more yogurt favors, the menu is severely skewed towards Latin-American cuisine, and even the oatmeal comes out spicy.  But the plates are not empty, people are not starving.  Life goes on, while Red is driving herself insane with displacement anger.        

So, the answer to the above question is: No, you are not irreplaceable.  It may take a whole team of less adequate and more expensive people to pick up your tasks.  And collectively they will accomplish less and it will not be brilliant, but it will be just good enough for the business to continue, at least in the short run.  Let me assure you that nothing will fall apart, because doing things half-assed and with little care has become a widespread norm.  Everyone accepts poor quality at a higher cost nowadays, and so will your bosses.  And you, with your talents, skills and unsolicited attempts to jump over the high-standard bars, are just an ego freak.      

Social Networking May Still Redeem Itself as an Instrument of Commercial Quality Control


 YelpToday, our minds automatically go to facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. when someone uses the words "social network." The Rudin/Sorkin/Fincher team made a movie about Mark "I-violate-your-constitutional-rights"  Zuckerberg and used those words as a title!  

And it's absolutely ridiculous, because establishing and maintaining connections with friends and "the right people" have been vital for the human species since, like, forever.  Folks have always built their settlements, villages, towns, and cities with designated places for meetings.  Back in the day (and I don't mean the 1980s), households accepted visitors on certain days of the week; and even on a random day one could come by and leave a calling card with the family's help.  And who can deny that, ever since the first Industrial Revolution, the patterns of commercial and financial developments were determined by the who-knows-who principle.  It's just that the outreach was far more limited.   

Of course, the magnitude of Internet networking is breathtaking.  In the early 1990s, when the Internet has connected all seven continents, the miracle of instant world-wide access to knowledge, culture, entertainment, or people was the most important and alluring aspect of this new technology for me.  I still experience a thrill every time I look at this blog's dashboard and see that during the last 24 hours my posts have been read not just at home, but also in Denmark, Canada, Germany, South Africa, UK, Vietnam, Australia, Portugal, Spain, India, France, and Taiwan.  I love it.

Yet, I hate facebook and Twitter.  Okay, push your eyebrows back down and let me explain. I don't hate social networking per se: It's convenient to receive updates on your favorite artists and it's important for business: I've been on LinkedIn since the times it operated exclusively on the basis of professional invitations.  But I abhor the contemporary "social network" phenomenon and what it represents: the unrestrained hunger for attention, the vile combination of pathological exhibitionism and a sickly kind of voyeurism; the violation of privacy and the desire to be violated.  I cannot stand the stalking by exes, the spying by employers, the snooping by the government agencies – all that shit.

That said, there are some companies with one or another form of social networking at their cores, which I consider not only healthy, but also greatly important due to their positive impact on the commercial environment, especially the consumer sector.  I'm not naive and I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs behind these businesses consciously elected to influence the quality of goods and services.  Most likely they simply shaped their business models utilizing the exploding patterns of collective participation in the Internet experience, but in the process they unwittingly created an influential force that has a power of strengthening and weakening businesses.       

In 1979, Tim and Nina Zagat started imploring their friends into scoring restaurants they visited, eventually turning their social pastime into a ranking business, which was bought by Google in 2011 for a reported $151 million.  Being an old-fashioned medium from the start, however, it remained the same under the new high-tech ownership: It's still unclear how the rankings are formulated.

It was Pierre Omidyar's hobby-project turned international conglomerate with an annual revenue of $14 billion, aka eBay that pioneered the concept of building market-place reputations based on the fully-disclosed opinions of the "community members," i.e. users of the eBay services.  While everyone was screaming (understandably so) that people will cheat, lie and steal, eBay founders stuck to the most fundamental of the commercial principles: in order to succeed you need to keep your ratings high, because one unresolved accusation of unsavory practices may kill your future transactions for good.  It's like what G.W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me – you can't get fooled again."

Today, thanks to rating algorithms utilized by various online businesses, we came to rely on communal ratings and individual opinions whenever we buy electronics, computers, household appliances, books, or select entertainment on Netflix, or order food delivery on Seamless, or pick a hotel on TripAdvisor, or make decisions about telecommunications providers.  Many of us not only peruse the viewpoints of others, but also actively participate in the polling process by sharing our own thoughts about this or that product, service, establishment, thus affecting a new system of commercial quality control.     

It is safe to say, in my opinion, that Yelp has become a flagship of the communal marketing model.  Again, not because the ideas of commercial quality control and merit-based rewards are so important to them, but for the sake of the advertising income ($138 million in 2012).  Nevertheless, assessing performance and assigning rewards (aka ratings) is exactly what "yelpers" (members expressing their opinions) do.  

A few unique traits place Yelp, Inc. in the avant-garde of this movement.  They encompass a wide spectrum of consumer services.  Right now you can find referrals on businesses in 20 main categories – from restaurants to religious organizations, further subdivided into specialties.  In less than 10 years they have achieved an international magnitude.  The listings are essentially combined efforts: detailed information about the business is provided by the commercial participants themselves (for a fee) and consumers supply their reviews, photos, and ratings.  The search engine is geographically oriented allowing users to find what's around them on the map. 

Also, Yelp, Inc. claims that they use an "aggressive" reviews filter, which rejects posts that are suspected to be biased or false.  As a result, according to their public releases, about 25% of entries are being dismissed.  And I can appreciate that. Like I said, rendering communal judgments on commercial establishments is a serious matter: ultimately it has a power of affecting the livelihood of individual businessmen.  So, the filtering is great as long as Yelp conducts their selections, rejections, and other manipulations fairly and without prejudice. 

Unfortunately, as with everything touched by greed, the communal quality control as executed by Yelp, Inc. may be seriously misused.  While I was writing this piece, TypePad's "related-posts" function has presented me with a few reports (including the one attached below) accusing Yelp of manipulating reviews in exchange for business clients' participation in the site's advertising programs (you can also read about it on Wikipedia).  And that's criminal.  Not only because it's nothing short of blackmail, but also because, by using individual consumers' personal and freely expressed opinions in this unsavory process, Yelp corrupts the participants' intellectual property and constitutional rights.  I sure as hell hope that these accusations are not true.  If they are, yelpers should file a class-action suit to bar Yelp, Inc. from using their reviews as the means of racketeering.    

Related articles

Inside Yelp's Wasp Nest: When Social Networking Meets Extortion

Quote of the Week: It’s “Elementary,” My Dear Readers!


Elementary_the_woman_heroine_a_lHolmes to Watson:

"Televisions are idiot boxes.  DVRs are idiots' helpers.  We are the idiots.  We're quite willingly giving them a part of ourselves: we teach them our tastes, our preferences, just so that they would know which program to record; never once stopping to consider the fact that our selections can be used to profile us."

                    Elementary, episode 2.8, "Blood is Thicker"

                    Created by Robert Doherty

One CFO’s Personal Tools for Frustration Relief


So, my fellow CFO’s and Controllers, as promised in my previous post, here are the few tricks I use to privately release my frustration after calmly presenting the composed image to the rest of the world.  They are in no specific order.  I pick whichever feels right at a particular moment.

(1.)  Go to the washroom, enter a stall, close your eyes and start cursing.  Five minutes of swearing usually gives a tremendous relief.  The volume doesn’t really matter.  If raising your voice helps you personally and you are sure nobody is around, go ahead.  For me, however, loud whispering (the way actors whisper on stage, so that everyone can hear them), works the best.  The dirtier the better.  Just pretend that you are in a Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino movie.  If you know other languages, use all of them.  Remember, don’t call the objects of your frustration by their names, but keep their faces in front of you mentally.

(2.) This release method is not my original.  It was shared with me by one of my European colleagues and she has learned it from someone else – I am sure it’s been passed on from one generation to another.  I can vouch that it works like a charm.  You have to create a “Page of Frustration.”  Draw some monster on it, something absolutely revolting.  Your artistic abilities make no difference.  You can ask a child to draw it for you.  The most important thing is to write the title and the destruction instructions on the page.  For example:  “Page of Frustration.  In case of emergency, throw it on the floor and stomp it to shreds.”     For some people “viciously crumple and tear it into small pieces” seems to be more appealing.  Whatever works! Make yourself a stack of copies and keep them in your desk.  Make sure that you don’t run out!

(3.) Another useful inventory for a chronically frustrated CFO or Controller is a favorite treat.  Don’t get me wrong – the last thing I want is for anybody to become a closet eater, consuming large quantities of food in search of unattainable solace.  No!!!  That’s not what I am talking about.  I am talking about very small quantities of very small treats, eaten at a very slow pace: three of Godiva chocolate pearls, or five gummy bears, 1/2 oz of trail mix, etc.  Separate them into these small portions in advance, keep only few in your office and consume only as a release remedy.  It works more as a meditative solution than as aggression liberation, but sometimes that’s all you need.

(4.) On my Front Page Raison d’etre, I talk about the therapeutic effects of writing.  And I maintain that committing your grievance to paper is the best form of releasing frustration, tension, stress and anxiety.   You can do it in different ways.  You can pour your heart out in a diary.  You can pretend to write a letter or an email to the source of your pain (without sending them out, of course) describing the situation, verbalizing your feelings, expressing your concerns.  Or you can go a step further towards more satisfying resolution.  You can write that email and send it to me.  Not only that I will become the receptacle of your turmoil, but I will give it even bigger audience by sharing it with other CFO’s, Controllers, etc.