"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me."
Erma Bombeck
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
Aristotle
Premise:
Based on true facts, this present-day farce unfolded right after the company at the center of the story signed a new office lease. The entity's CEO, an infamous procrastinator and a successful decision-dodger, has delayed the execution of the document to the point when only 60 days remained before the moving-in day.
Up until now, the fairly young business always occupied a full-service furnished office suite, where everything from pen holders to receptionists is supplied by the landlord, including all telecommunications and IT administration. However, by this point the successful business outgrew the little rooms and the shared common space of the suites – it was time for the company to obtain its own residence.
As all logical people know, lease signing is only the beginning of a relocation process. A lot of work needs to be done before a company can feel at home and be fully operational in its new place of business. And nowadays, the IT infrastructure becomes a prerequisite to everything else.
This flat-structured small business has a misfortune of having a board of directors that consists of three technologically clueless owners (the type who cannot connect a printer to a PC) and a CFO. The latter has been combining her financial and accounting responsibilities with those of a CTO throughout her entire career. Needless to say, she understands what needs to be done, knows how to go about it (nobody else does in this company), and is more than qualified to make all necessary decisions. Yet, the Board has a rule: anything that involves spending money must be approved by all four members.
So, here is the chronology of making a single decision under the described circumstances:
Motion 1 – 60 days till D-Day. Upon receiving the fully executed lease from the lawyers, the CFO writes an eMemo to the owners requesting a Board meeting in order to develop an action plan that would ensure successful and painless relocation. The plan should assign responsible parties and establish deadlines for each task.
The owners don't acknowledge that the issue was raised and two weeks pass in a complete silence regarding this matter.
(Side Note: All four executives are actually heavily involved in their day-to-day responsibilities. They communicate extensively every day discussing various commercial concerns, while avoiding difficult extraordinary topics.)
Motion 2 – 46 days till D-Day. Recognizing that the owners have fallen into their typical pattern of pretending that the problem doesn't exist (this happens every time an issue lies outside of their comfort zone), the CFO makes another attempt to mobilize the Board to set up an action plan. This time she speaks to each of them in person. They all nod in agreement - "Tomorrow," they say. The CFO squeezes a two-hour time slot into her crazy schedule.
Three days pass without anything happening.
Motion 3 – 43 days till D-Day. The CFO feels the time pressure – at the very least she must start working on IT components, regardless of the owners' ostrich behavior. The business will be simply paralyzed without an adequate infrastructure. She really has no room in her schedule for all research, comparison, and optimization of various ISPs, telecoms, and IT administrators… But who else is going to do it? So, instead of pestering the owners again about the "action plan," she writes a very specific inquiry: "Please confirm your agreement with my taking charge of the groundwork for obtaining the Internet service, telephony, and IT administration support." Without waiting for replies, the CFO starts working on the subject of the highest priority, i.e. the Internet connection, by reviewing nine ISPs whose services are available in the new building.
Motion 4 – 41 days till D-Day. At different hours, the CFO receives messages from the owners – all three are worded very similarly: "Thank you for asking and forward thinking. Please go ahead with the projects." She can almost hear their sighs of relief - somebody else has made the decisions for them!!! The CFO closes her eyes for a second and thinks, "The same shit every time. I wish at least once I would let things run their course - just to see what would happen if I didn't worry about all of this, if I didn't jump in."
By carving little chunks of time in her schedule to deal with this shit, the CFO manages to come to her final ISP conclusion in 5 business days: to accommodate all of the company's needs (including VoIP) she needs a reliable fiber-optics broadband. She narrows down her choices to two ISPs – the award-winning Cogent with dedicated connectivity and Verizon's newest product FiOS Quantum ran through communal cables shared with all other users in the vicinity.
Motion 5 – 36 days till D-Day. She immediately gets quotes from both: Cogent values itself highly – $700/month with a three-year contract, plus $1,000 installation fees; Verizon's rate is only $129/month with a two-year contract. Even with such a disparity in pricing, it's a simple choice as far as the CFO is concerned – she knows that Cogent will provide uber-fast, uninterrupted connection, and if something happens, she can be on the phone with an engineer within 30 seconds. Verizon, on the other hand… well, we all dealt with Verizon at one point or another. Yet, for the owners all this technical staff is as difficult as Icelandic; the huge price difference, however, that's easy. So, the CFO goes back to Cogent's salesperson and dangles FiOS Quantum at $129/month in front of his nose (virtually, of course). He is taken aback – he had no clue that Verizon had started offering this brand new service in that building. He cannot stop himself from uttering, "That's a compelling alternative." The CFO doesn't dissuade him from this train of thought; she waits. And he says that he would go to his director and try to get her a better deal.
Motion 6 – Same Day. Cogent wants the business – the salesperson reverts in two hours, dropping the price to $500/month with a three-year contract or $400/month with a four-year contract. Both rates are exclusive of taxes and charges. With this reduction in hand, the CFO immediately prepares a presentation for the Board, breaking down her selection process step-by-step and making a strong case for Cogent through detailed comparison and scoring of all providers. She sends it out to the three owners and requests a board meeting to make the final decision.
Four days of silence passes. The CFO understands: it's too fucking much for them, they don't want to deal with this, they are hiding.
Motion 7 – 32 days till D-Day. The CFO has no choice but to write to the owners again: "Let me remind you that installing the Internet connection must precede all other IT and telecommunication actions, including setting up the phone system, the computer network, etc. – basically everything that we need for the business's operations. And it will not happen overnight!" This gets CEO's attention. She comes over to the CFO's office and says, "Let's decide by tomorrow the latest."
Two days passes.
Motion 8 – 30 days till D-Day. One of the owners (already in possession of the previously distributed detailed presentation) sends an inquiry, "Can you make a comparison for me between Cogent and Verizon?" as if he just woke up to the issue.
Motion 9 – Same Day. The CFO prepares a simplified comparison chart intended for a 4-year-old audience. Meanwhile, she tells Cogent that the decision is not settled yet and that she will appreciate if the provider gives up something else – like do away with the $1,000 installation fees and make rates flat, all-inclusive (taxes, charges, etc.) The salesperson conferences in his Director and they yield. The CFO simply cannot lose this deal: she goes around and collects the owners' consents in person.
Motion 10 – 29 days till D-Day. The CFO signs the contract with Cogent.
Curtains
And this is just Act I. Ahead, there are still decisions on a VoIP system, an IT Administration service, furniture, equipment…
"Raymond 'Red' Reddington:The concept of a Last Stand sounds so heroically romantic, doesn't it, Donald? But there is a good reason why we didn't see what happened to Butch and Sundance – being riddled by bullets and left to rot under the scorching Columbian sun. It's not a sequel maker, and if you surmise nothing about me by now, know this: I am going be around for the sequel.
Agent Donald Ressler: You really going to do a field transfusion?
Reddington: Oh, come now, Donald! Just think how much smarter you'll be afterwards.
Ressler:Why the hell are you doing this? It's pretty obvious I hate your guts. I can't imagine you hold a lot of love for me… why save me?
Reddington: Because that's what you do when someone is dying in front of you. Allies today, enemies tomorrow – the world is a complex place, further complicated by men's fickle nature…
…Donald! Donald!! Feeling any wittier yet? Any strange cravings for beluga caviar or Marcel Proust?
Ressler: I know you don't think much of me, but you don't get to be assigned to the case like yours unless you pass muster…
…We are not going to live through this.
Reddington: I think we will.
Ressler: How?
Reddington:Have you ever sailed accross an ocean, Donald?
Ressler: No.
Reddington: On a sailboat, surrounded by sea with no land in sight, without even a possibility of sighting land for days to come. To stand at the helm of your destiny – I want that one more time. I want to be in Piazza del Campo in Siena and feel the surge as ten race horses go thundering by. I want another meal in Paris… I want another bottle of wine, and then another. I want the warmth of a woman in a cool set of sheets; one more night of jazz at the Vanguard. I want to stand on summits and smoke cubans and feel the sun on my face for as long as I can. Walk on the Wall again, climb the Tower, ride the River, stare at the frescos. I want to seat in the garden and read one more good book… That's why I won't allow that punk out there to get the best of me, let alone the last of me."
"The Blacklist", episode 1.9
Written by Joe Carnahan
"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.
This 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.
The Frustrated CFO 