Category: Business

Quote of the Week: “Horrible Bosses”


I still think that this is a silly, phantasmagorical flick.  But that doesn’t prevent me from objectively acknowledging the mastery of Colin Farrell’s acting. He delivers there his most farcical performance to date in his pitch-perfect American accent.  His Bobby Pellitt is a caricature of those real people I frequently describe here—those who think that GAAP and GAP are the same things. 

Huffington Post nominated the following exchange as one of the funniest movie quotes of the year. It’s both funny and quite probable—believe me.

(Written by Michael Markowitz and John Francis Daley.)

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.

You can watch the whole clip here: Horrible Bosses

 

Showtime’s “House of Lies” Showcases “Big Business”


ImagesShowtime 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."

HR Capitalist Believes That Operational Guidelines Are Optional


ScrewballLast 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.

Strategic Planning vs. Crisis Management


“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II” (written by Steve Kloves, based on a novel by J.K. Rowling’s):

HARRY POTTER

We have to go there, now.

HERMIONE GRANGER

What? We can’t do that! We’ve got to plan! We’ve got to figure out —

HARRY POTTER

Hermione! When have any of our plans ever worked? We plan, we get there, all hell breaks loose!

And that, my dear readers, in a nutshell, is the principal difference between the two action-plan extremists.

In the red corner, equipped by multipage projections with color graphs and tables, are those who believe that strategic planning is the only way of life and one must ponder and weigh every situational possibility before taking any step forward (or backward). In the blue corner, wearing their firefighting suits with confidence and valor, are those who are convinced that when the shit hits the fan they will be able to immediately assess the entire spectrum of life-threatening circumstances and successfully handle the crisis.

Any kind of extremism is bad, kids, m’kay? In religion, politics, personal views, and business management. Different situations require different approaches. Only a balanced combination of executive instruments, including long- and short-term plans as well as emergency-response methodology, can guarantee an enterprise’s ability to efficiently evolve and weather any dangers that constantly arise in the volatile commercial environment.

In my book, “CFO Techniques”, I have devoted an entire section (Part VIII) to strategies and planning as crucial components of CFOs’ and controllers’ functionality – the important responsibilities that change financial managers from bean-counters to CEOs’ executive partners. Participating in analysis of opportunities and construction of well-devised action scenarios offers us a possibility to affect companies in the most significant way. Remember, that those executives who let companies run their course without looking into the future and carefully plotting their steps for further development, leave the businesses vulnerable in the face of the fast-advancing competition.

On the other hand, crisis management efforts applied in situations that present themselves without any warning are of extreme importance as well, particularly in small and midsize businesses, which are highly susceptible to the slightest deviations in market, financial, economic, and political environment. Moreover, these companies frequently have less than sufficient reserves to tide them over tough times. Implementation of a disaster-rescue mission requires high level of composure and rationalization. Those who’ve read my “About” note know that I consider my “fire-fighting” skills to be the most valuable to my employers and clients.

It is a mistake to think, though, that even a very experienced CFO can wing it without contemplating some sort of advance “what-if” scenarios. In fact, a crisis management policy is just another form of a strategic plan. On top of that, proper preparation for emergencies requires broader expertise and deeper knowledge of various commercial, marketing, technological, financial, legal, and organizational matters.

The truth is that a successful executive must be capable of devising a carefully-weighed and calculated strategic development plan with all visual bells and whistles her digital arsenal can afford, but in her special folder she always keeps a set of comprehensive tactical procedures for effective extinguishment of fires and post-disaster survival.

SOPA, PIPA and “CFO Techniques”


GI_98327_CFO TechniquesThe inner conflict many intelligent people experience over Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), is an old problem for me. For many years before the pharmaceutical and media lobbies brought the issue of proprietary rights infringement in the Internet age to Washington DC, I've been torn between two firm believes of mine: (1) that content creators (writers, musicians, artists, designers, etc.) are entitled to get paid whenever their creative products are used for commercial purposes (i.e. to make money), and (2) that the information available on the Internet cannot be restricted by any means.

That's why more than 10 years ago, I thought of Napster as a violator of musicians' rights to financially benefit from their products. It was obvious to me that the whole purpose of the "file-sharing service" was Sean Parker's publicity stunt to show off the Fanning brothers' technological platform with a purpose of selling it and profiting from it (which is exactly what happened).

YouTube, whose owners obviously always intended to capitalize on the advertising, is also at fault when it lets the users to upload copyrighted material without paying the content owners royalty out of their revenues. On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong with YouTube being a promotional portal for young artists, musicians, filmmakers, and such (including the crazy exhibitionists catering to voyeurs), who upload their own creations knowingly in hopes of receiving the tangible benefits of being noticed.

Of course, the most conflicting entity is Google. On one hand, we cannot exist without their search engine (I am well aware that there are geeky alternatives out there, but let's face it – Google dominates); on the other hand, when it comes to the Internet advertising they are the closest example of a monopoly we've got in our screwed up economy. Moreover, Google attains its riches by using every single one of us, the information-seeking users. Ultimately, it's in their interests to tag counterfeiters and bootleggers, because users are looking for them. And I guess they know that their hands are not exactly clean. Why else would they settle with the Department of Justice to pay $500 million for allowing Canadian Pharmacies' advertisement?

Presently the issue of the online copyright infringement hits very close to home for me. A bunch of unlicensed eBook-hacking sites are offering "CFO Techniques" downloads for free. Neither me nor my publisher is getting a single penny out of this, while the sites' owners get advertising income, revenues on sales of their users' information, and ability to pollute the hapless freeloaders' computers with the spyware invisibly attached to the plug-ins required for viewing the books. They profit unfairly using MY PRODUCT. And that's not fair.

Still, even this wouldn't force me to support the half-assed anti-constitutional laws like SOPA and PIPA. Why? Because if these laws are passed, I could go to jail for offering my readers a clip from "So, I Married an Axe Murderer" within my post about The Best Boss in Cinematic History , even though I derive no material benefits from this blog (none at all). I'd rather people steal my shit than go along with freedom of speech violations in the name of copyrights protection.

Yet, I am all for fighting piracy in an intelligent way that doesn't take our civil liberties away. And the "financial benefit" criteria seems to my CFO mind like a sensible approach. If a site takes any form of payments or generates advertising revenue through deliberate peddling (not just illustrative usage) of unlicensed and unpaid for content, the enablers of payment processing and advertising portals should stop providing their services to this site. This would be not much different than YouTube's actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): they get a notice and remove the violating content.

Money is the key. I always said that the best way to fight terrorism is going after the financial sources. The now supposedly dead Osama Bin Laden without his multimillion wealth would've been just a thug on the street. Facebook without the advertisement revenue would be just a well-designed electronic hangout with no prospects for an IPO (expected in May this year).