Category: Business

The Frustrated CFO’sTalk on International Trade Turns into Gender Equality Q&A


Business_women1If you took my absence from these pages during the past few months as an indication of my giving up on the blog, you were wrong.  This activity is important to me.  If nothing else, it lets me "talk" without being interrupted.  It's just that the time slot in my overscheduled life, usually allotted to the writing of the blog posts, had to be temporarily relinquished to an extracurricular activity of preparing for a talk I was invited to give to a professional group called Women in International Trade.

Oh, no-no-no!  I'm not talking about OWIT (the Organization of Women in International Trade), the big non-profit with global reach headquartered in Washington, DC.  This group is much smaller - sponsored by a reputable New Jersey CPA firm, it is pretty much localized to the international-commerce entities and banks (like PNC) with offices and operations in that particular state.  It's not like they don't welcome sisters-in-trade from everywhere, it's just how their network happened to develop: commercial clients of the said CPA firm, trade finance clients of the said bank, the local government bureau that deals with exports – all of them work and live in New Jersey.   

And the reality is, there are a lot of big and small international businesses located in New Jersey.  That's where you can have large office buildings that cost a fraction of what they would in Manhattan; there is plenty of open space for manufacturing and storage; there are Hudson ports that can berth oceanic freighters, etc., etc.           

Truth be told, I would never know about these particular Women in International Trade if it weren't for one of the group's member who is also one of my former trade finance bankers and a friend.  She is the one who mentioned me to the sponsoring CPA firm's Chief Growth Strategist - a force behind a lot of women initiatives in the Garden State. 

They've been inviting me to participate in various women's and co-ed business events for some time.  But I have to admit that when you live and work in Manhattan, the hassle of getting to an 8 o'clock breakfast meeting in New Jersey's Essex County makes such invitation very unattractive.  I mean you need to drive or get a limo.  You'll do it for business, of course, but for a semi-social gathering… that's a bit too much. 

Of course, your attitude totally changes when the same professional group invites you to appear for them as a speaker.  Vanity is a terrible sin – it demands constant massaging of one's ego.  That's why some of us write books that bring meager royalty, give lectures without fees, etc.  Plus, unlike the vast majority of people, I actually enjoy sharing my knowledge.  And not for narcissistic, show-off reasons – I get a kick out of recognizing to myself, "I taught her that."  So, naturally, I agreed.

After the initial invitation, I kicked a list of possible topics at the talk's organizer and we settled on two that we both agreed would be the most interesting to international-trade professionals: the position of trade finance in the value chain and KPIs specific to international commerce.  I was advised of the reglament: 1.5 hours talk and 30 min Q&A.

"Well," I thought, "If you are going to talk shop with a group of working women for 90 minutes at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday, you'd better make it engaging and gratifying," and went to work.  The rule  of thumb is that 90 minutes of talking translates into about 15,000 words.  And that's actually is not very short.

Of course, if you are the one who proposed the topic in the first place, you most likely know the subject at hand through and through; you have already developed original ideas and time-proven recommendations; your thoughts and opinions are well formulated.  And that's great, but if you are not a professional lecturer who does this sort of things all the time, you still need to outline what you want to say; you have to construct your delivery in a coherent and logical way; you must prepare an exciting Power Point presentation that would prevent your audience from getting drowsy, and use cultural references to make your points memorable.  Yeah!  If you want to impress people, it's a lot of work.  As I said, vanity – it costs you.  

The third week of January came, and there I was, in New Jersey, shaking hands with the organizers and the attendees – by all appearances a group of successful and confident women, whose statuses make it okay to be out of the office in the morning hours for the sake of this event.

I proceeded with my presentation and it went well: they paid attention, they were interested, they nodded, they offered sensible and appropriate comments, they loved my visual tricks, and they sincerely laughed at my jokes.  The time ran out.  "Do you have any questions?" I asked.  I was convinced that I've had a pretty good idea about the points of the talk that could've prompted further inquiries.

Imagine my surprise when the first comment/question I've received was, "You are obviously a strong woman.  In your professional capacity, how do you handle male resistance to your authority or any other sorts of gender difficulties?" (Notice how the question was formulated: The woman had no doubt that I've encountered such obstacles ans she wanted to know how I dealt with them.)  

Slightly taken aback by the sharp shift of gears I skipped a bit, but really – just a bit.  I don't need to prepare for a gender equality discussion; I was born ready for it.  So, I briefly described my experience: the unfair treatment; the skewed perception; the idiotic remarks; the preferences given to nitwits because "they have to support their families" (many of us have to do the same); which battles I pick; what I say and how I say it; when I bite my tongue and walk away; how I lie in wait and then find a way to teach them a lesson, etc., etc.

Oh my God!  It was as if that question and my answer triggered a flood.  Apparently these women found my interpretation of the international-trade topics quite clear.  What they were confused about was why in 2015 we are still treated like second-class citizens.

At this point (the time was, obviously, running out), everyone talked fast.  Many things were mentioned: "honeys" and "sweeties," unequal raises, unreasonable promotions, difficulty of holding back the tears, female professional "ceilings," the insulting male disbelief at a good-looking woman who is also smart.  Amazingly, there were not a single person who didn't have something to add.   Nobody said, "I have no idea what you all are talking about."  You know why?  Because there were no men in the room.

One woman in her 30s who was just recently appointed to a Marketing Director position (her warpath has just began), asked me whether I was born "this tough."  Actually, I've thought about it before.  What I told her was that we (i.e. the women who want to succeed) are not born tough.  What we are born with is the ambition, the desire to be rewarded in accordance with our merits, the need to be treated as human beings regardless of our gender.  But, while we claw our ways towards whatever peaks we want to achieve, we have to acquire toughness.  We have to harden or they will eat us alive.

It is possible that I will never see most of the members of this group again, but when we were saying our goodbyes we felt like sisters.  I taught these women a thing or two about trade finance and performance analytics, and, in return, I've learned a lesson of my own:  There are no happy and satisfied women in international trade (and, I dare to extrapolate, in other business activities as well), because their ambitions and efforts are constantly curtailed on account of their gender, which is silly, irrelevant, anti-merit, and (call me an idealist) anti-American. 

MTA by the Numbers (Or At Least Those Few Available to Us)


MtaWhen NYC's cabs caught up with the 21st century and started accepting plastic for fare payments…

[Side Note: I always found it fascinating that the habitual check-out question, "Paper or plastic?" is technically applicable not only to the packaging choices but also to the forms of payment – cash (paper) or credit (plastic).] 

Anyway, when it happened I was ecstactic: one less reason to touch dirty bills, no more listening to a driver's bullshit how he just started his shift and doesn't have any small bills for change, etc. – many reasons, really.  Unfortunately,  there was a downside: all Credit Card Systems came with PIM's (Passenger Information Monitors). 

It could be just my personal experience, but I have not been bombarded by images and sounds in any other plastic-accepting cabs: not in London, or Tokyo, or Amsterdam…  But NYC's TLC (no, not "tender loving care" or T-Boz+Left Eye+Chilli, but the formidable Taxi and Limousine Commission) has swallowed Mad Men's lure long time ago - Inspiria Media has been brokering taxi-top ads' revenues into the agency's pockets for years.  They couldn't possibly pass on this incredible opportunity to make money by letting ABC, NBC, and random ass commercial advertisement to jump at you  as soon as the meter is on.

And I fucking hate it!  I really don't want all that noise and bullshit to exacerbate any further my already unpleasant experience of  an overpriced ride in a shitty car with a bad driver.  Yes, you can turn it off (assuming the touch screen still retains some capacity for response), but not right away.  Thus, if you are like me, you spend the first few moments of the trip tensely waiting for this thing to come alive, so that you can shut it up as soon as possible.

Sometimes you get distracted, though: the driver doesn't understand your instructions or he/she doesn't know how to get there - whatever the reason, but you don't get into the combat with the blaring device right away and you catch things, for better or worse. 

It happened to me several weeks ago and what my eyes didn't want to see my brain registered anyway.  The screen flashed at me the familiar MTA logo, the words "Budget Proposal," and then three bits of information in large and bold letters:

$14.2 billion annual budget

4% fare and tolls hike

$20 million service enhancements

I turned it off and tried to read my magazine, but the incongruity of these numbers kept eating at me.  I couldn't stopped myself from doing a bit of analysis.

$14.2 billion seems like a humongous number to a layman, but considering the scope of operations (Subway, LIRR, Metro-North, 341 bus routes, 7 bridges, 2 tunnels), it's not really such a big deal.  I mean, the stupid facebook spends $5.1 billion to keep their operations going and it doesn't own and maintain 15 thousand vehicles, nor it employs 70,000 people.  In fact, the entire staff of facebook is exactly 10 times less – 7,000.  So, no, the total number doesn't sound too overwhelming to me.

However, there are a couple of aspects that make this number into a bothersome issue:

First of all, where the fuck they are planning on getting this kind of money?  What appears to the general public as mountains of cash being shoveled by MTA out of ever increasing fares and tolls is not really all that bountiful.  The agency claims around 8.5 million riders per day.  Let's be generous and assume that it's like that 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.  At the current fare rate this yields $7.735 billion a year.  The Bridges and Tunnels arm collects measly $600 million.  That brings us to $8.335 billion.  Well, okay, they will hike it up by 4%, squeezing another  $333.4 million out of the Metropolitan area residents.  Still that's less than $8.7 billion altogether.

Before we go any further let me explain something, in case you don't know:  As an entity, MTA is that weird creature called Public Benefit Corporation. Without going into too many obscure details let me just point out that this beast is essentially a Chimera – a combination of a private entity with rights to contract debt independently of the State (the Lion), a municipal agency (the Snake), and a non-profit organization (the Goat).  One must keep these bizarre characteristics in mind when faced with the wild and weird facts swirling around this organization. 

For example, as a public benefit corporation and a non-profit, MTA should not be making any profits or have excess cash.  How could they anyway, if they constantly claim that they don't have enough money to cover their budget?  Yet, during the audit of 2013 fiscal year ordered by the City Comptroller state auditors found an absolutely unanticipated $1.9 billion (!) surplus.  Nobody is explaining to us how it could possibly happen: nearly $2 billion of unused cash have been discovered within the fiscal system of this "always-struggling" agency and let's leave it at that. 

Well, say they put this extra money back into operations (as they must) – that still brings them to only $10.6 billion against the $14 billion needed.  So, where the $3.4 billion will come from?  We know: from the loans MTA is authorized to take independently! Wow, $3.4 billion of debt!  Can you imagine the financial cost on that?  Even in the most preferable situation, i.e. institutional (big banks) secured (all those fixed assets to pledge) loans at 2.5% – that's $85 million in an annual interest expense! And if they cannot obtain a sensible deal like that because their creditability has gone down the shitter, we are talking 5%, 7.5%, 10% or more – you do the multiplying. 

However, that's actually mere peanuts.  If you are wondering where the majority of MTA's current budget actually goes, I can tell you - to keep those 70,000 employees well compensated.  Around 60% of the authority's current budget ($7 billion) is used to pay labor costs including payroll, pensions, and overtime.  And the Chairman's salary of $350K a year plus his $3,500 per month housing allowance are not an issue here.  I mean, it's really not a big deal for a head of such a huge organization.  However, they have some bus drivers and train operators making over $100K, with averages around $56K.  And guess what? MTA estimates that the increase in labor costs will amount to $260 million during this current fiscal year.  

This makes that third number, the $20 million in service enhancements, sound like a bad fucking joke.  That's all that will be spent on improving our public transportation experience, 0.14% of the budget?  Common people, it's 13 times less than you plan to spend on raises! 

You know how small this number is for the system that transports 8.5 million people a day?  Let me give you a reference point.  You can buy precisely ONE used private jet with the same sum of money.  CEOs of Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs and GE each made that much in 2013 annual compensation.  Moreover, they were nearly at the bottom of the top 100 highest-paid CEOs list.  And Robert Downey Jr. made 4 times more the same year.  This means that, if he felt generous, he could've made our commute at least two times (after taxes, of course) better, than MTA will.                   

You Are the Most Knowledgeable CFO EVER… How sad!


BrainiacPerspective Let me explain to the handful of readers who actually noticed my absence from these virtual pages that this is what it takes for a small business to close a $20 million three-year capital financing deal with a global bank (such as Citi):  You basically have to put your entire fucking life on hold. 

That is, of course, if you are someone like me - a CFO who rolls up her sleeves and plunges herself into the nitty-gritty of negotiating every single definition, every single term, every single condition, and every single covenant of the Term Sheet and then the  Credit Agreement in a pursuit of getting the best deal possible; someone who has the grasp of a fox terrier, who can shove pushy bankers and lawyers right back where they belong, who is not afraid of the ambiguous formulations, obscure terminology, and legal jargon.

But that's it, isn't it?  In order to be able to get exactly what you need out of any deal that involves money-holders and their supporting infrastructures you need to know your business better than anyone else and their business better than they do.  You need to speak their language and your comprehension of it must be more nuanced than theirs.  It's nothing short of a battle for the business survival, and if you don't prevail you and those who rely on you lose.  It's like in Game of Thrones: Tyrion's Champion, Prince Oberyn, mortally forfeits the battle to The Mountain, and that spells really bad news for Tywin Lannister's youngest son.  

The problem is that most corporate financial executives don't see it that way: just like many other salaried employees, they don't care to know anything beyond bare necessities and they don't feel fiscally responsible for their companies' wellbeing.  Hence, the low levels of professional awareness and circumvention of sophisticated issues is observed in most CFOs and Controllers today.  And it ends up costing employers a pretty penny in unnecessary legal, accounting, and consulting fees.

Hey, you don't have to take my word for it.  By the way, all numbers below are real and quotes are taken verbatim from various communications. 

Let's see.  When the bankers presented us with the Term Sheet back in March, I did not get either our corporate attorneys nor independent CPAs involved at all.  The bank's credit risk group and I spent two months going back and force, until I got the document into an acceptable shape (estimated savings on legal and financial consulting fees - $50K).  As a part of the Term Sheet, I insisted on the bank's due diligence and legal expenses (changeable to us) being capped (estimated savings – $35K).  

The Citibank people, stuffed to the gills with data and reports I've provided to them during this process, kept telling the other members of my Board of Directors things like, "Oh, that Marina, she is amazing! She is the best!  She is so tough!"  They would write emails like: "Thanks, Marina.  This is very helpful, plus your expertise is tremendous!"  As if I was performing some magic tricks – I was just doing my job… thoroughly.  When the Term Sheet was signed and sent to the bank my future relationship manager asked me in confidence (referring to the owners), "Do they understand that the only reason they are getting this deal is you?"  Hmm…

After successful due diligence and final approvals from the bank's Credit Committee, the Agreement package (186 pages of documents) was emailed to me by Citi's lawyers.  The lead attorney asked me in the cover email to provide him with the contact info of my legal representation, so that lawyers could start dealing with each other directly.  I was like, "Fuck, no!" 

You see, as soon as you officially appoint a lawyer as your representative, the other side is not allowed to discuss anything directly with you.  Here's what happens:  Let's say the bankers propose an additional clause or some adjustment; they call their lawyer; their lawyer contacts my lawyer; my lawyer, who doesn't know much about the intricacies of my business and is not allowed to make any decisions on his own, delivers the request to me.  And then in the opposite direction: I formulate my response; now I have to explain to my lawyer all details in a digestible format so that he can deliver them to his legal counterpart; the latter than communicates them to the bank.  

Are you counting the connections?  We are talking quadruple billable hours on both sides!  And it's like that for every single issue and point.  I'm not doing that! I say, "Excuse me, sir, but for now you will be talking directly to me – at least until all business and financial kinks of these documents are ironed out.  Okay?"  

Professionally lawyers are just as obnoxious as doctors – they think that their diplomas make them better than other people (yet, they discuss economic matters with me as if they too had a PhD in the subject and an MBA).  So, at first the bank's attorney bristles, but, as I start beating him up on one point after another, he gets quite tamed and develops respect.  He actually says, "I hold you in high esteem," which is very nice, because the majority of these assholes don't ever want to admit that you are their equal (estimated legal fees savings – $30K).

Finally, I was satisfied with the contract and introduced my attorney into the mix.  He literally had ten comments on the legalese and after that the process turned into technical preparation of documents between the two legal firms. 
 
Total closing fees savings upon signing: $115,000. 
 
I am his client, so my attorney feels free to make a frank comment: "I have to say, you are the most knowledgeable CFO I've ever met, and I'm not even talking about your understanding of the contracts.  It's everything.  Most of the time I talk to your peers and they are like…  I'm sorry…  They don't know shit."

On the day the deal was closed one of the shareholders wrote to me: "…Your performance transcended what could reasonably have been expected from a typical CFO."  

Well, that' nice, isn't it?  Except that all these praise-singers probably think that I'm flattered by their compliments (as if I live for their approval).  But I am embarrassed: I keep thinking how all those ignorant CFOs and Controllers taint the image of my profession.  And everybody thinks that you are just like the rest of them until you prove otherwise. 

People say to me, "What difference did it make for you personally?  Did you get a deal-completion bonus?"  And some ask, "Why try so hard?  You don't even care about 'business' things as much as you do about art!"  

They are absolutely correct: Yes, some music passage, or a scene in a play, or an image, or a hand-written poem will make me cry; yet, most people with whom I work can't even imagine tears in my eyes.  And no, I didn't get an extra bonus.  And I don't consider this my personal vocation.  But the circumstances of my life made this into my paying occupation and I have to measure myself by my own standards: as long as I must waste a huge chunk of my life on making other people rich, I'd better do it to the best of my abilities.  Why other CFOs don't feel like that?  Well, everyone probably has her own story, but mostly it's that plunging-quality-of-everything effect I like to write about so much.  It's pervasive.                             

Rumor Has It… Trouble Is Brewing in Private-Equity World


Storymaker-slideshow-holy-monks-brewmasters2-514x418The other day I had a meeting with some big shots from Citibank's commercial landing.  Every single person at the table felt disappointed.  On my side of the negotiations, everyone was shocked that the bank came up with some really sneaky changes to the Term Sheet we have originally accepted.  Citibank's covert operatives were distressed to realize that their maneuvering didn't work on us and, moreover, we are absolutely ready to walk away from the deal. 

Nobody was disgusted more than me, though: I've rejected other lending candidates in Citi's favor based on the conditions of that damn Term Sheet; I've spent so much time and effort making sure that the deal comes to conclusion and closes by June 15th; I've conducted so many detailed discussions with the bank officers; I've plied the Credit Risk Group with tons of information and provided elaborate answers to every single of their drilling questions – dammit, what a waste!  I started getting up from the table, determined to say a cold goodbye ("Good day, sirs… I said, 'Good day'," or something like that) and leave everyone in the conference room to their own devices. 

But the bank's team leader didn't want to give up.  This seasoned warrior (whose bonus depends on the number of deals she closes) quickly swallowed the bitter pill of defeat and started deliberating the possibilities of remedying the unfortunate situation.  By way of explaining and excusing their underhanded tactics, she embarked on a tale of pressure and oppression all national banks suffer from the Office of the Controller of the Currency (OCC) that, empowered by the US Treasury's mandate, tightened the regulatory screws on all commercial lenders operating in small and middle markets.     

Ring-ding-ding!  The government is making it more difficult for small and mid-size businesses to borrow operating funds?  Tell me more!  

I can only attribute her sudden loquacity to the awkwardness of the impasse we have reached, to the thickness of the room's air that required some sort of easement before our dialogue completely choked.  Not only that she went into details of the new pre-lending qualification requirements for private businesses such as lower leverage (i.e. debt/equity) and higher fixed-coverage (EBIT + fixed costs/fixed costs + interest) ratios, but she also divulged some information bankers almost never discuss – she told us about a specific deal just killed by the bank's risk underwriters for the sake of compliance with the government's wishes.

It was the nature of the transaction in question that surprised me at first – a typical leveraged buyout (LBO) of a privately-held manufacturer, with a well-known private equity (PE) firm and a mezzanine lender already in place.  Citi was expected to step in as an institutional lender covering 55% of the contractual purchase price.  I might've been wrong, since I'm not exposed to M&A on daily basis, but I was under impression that banks are usually hungry for the high-yield rewards of such deals, especially considering the prominence of the PE behind it. The fact that this case was presented to us as an example of insufferable regulatory interference kind of confirmed my suspicion that Citi's bailing out was an unexpected turn of events for the bankers themselves.

So, did they get the explanation from their Risk partners? Yes, they did: The due diligence suggested that the deal had a high probability of a quick turnaround.  In other words, it was expected that the PE firm would quickly flip the acquired company's stock for a nice profit leaving the company to deal with the loan repayments.  Ok, but isn't that the nature of any private equity transaction, regardless of whether the ownership is sold fast or kept in-house for years?  The loan repayments always come out of the company's operational cash flows.  The liability is a part of their balance sheet.  Hmm…     

Anyway, the talkative tactics worked and we all decided to go back to our respective drawing boards instead of walking away from a very promising relationship.  Good!  But the story of the killed LBO kept gnawing at me. 

Ok, on the surface, it may seem that the government is working hard on protecting taxpayers from a possibility of another bailout.  But

  1. Citigroup was one of the first bailees to repay the government ($51 billion) with the highest profit on the bailout list (additional $13.5 billion).
  2. As we know, it wasn't the commercial lending, but the sub-prime mortgages and the securitization thereof that was at the core of the financial crisis and the subsequent bailout.  That is why the government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac top the bailout chart with $187 billion of the received support between two of them.
  3. Of the top 20 bailout recipients the one with the largest debt still outstanding since 2008  is General Motors (as of 05/29/2014, $11.5 billion is still due)- an automaker, a public company, a NYSE's Blue Chip.      

Wait a minute, wait a minute!  Private business vs. public company?  These Treasury moves have nothing to do with the fiscal protection of the nation.  It has to do with the government's continuous prevention of the stock-market crash and massive panic that will follow.  Too scared to deal with the long overdue adjustment, it has been doing everything in its power to direct both public and corporate investments into the shares gambling of mythological proportions. 

The private businesses and the private equity investors act against this insane agenda by laboring hard under the natural commercial formula of growing capital through realized profits generated by functional enterprises.  To undercut these efforts, the proverbial "they" are willing to sabotage private businesses, which hoi poloi knows nothing about, in order to continue ballooning the stock market cancer, so that the general public with their Ameritrade accounts and 401(k) plans invested into "emerging" markets is kept at bay.

Well, I will not fold!  I will get that Citi line!  As hopeless as it may be in the long run, I take a great satisfaction in the fact that my daily work is essentially a part of the Fiscal Resistance. 

CFO Folklore: Delusional Self-Involvement of Business Owners


Bee-catAs my readers know, years ago I've made a career choice of avoiding large corporations and their tall organizational structures.  I prefer small and mid-size companies allowing opportunities of direct interactions with business owners – the very people responsible for recognizing one's efforts and allotting rewards.  It's not for sissies, of course, because in this environment you cannot hide your incompetence or laziness in a mass of indistinguishable drones – you and your work are on the spot and in full view all the time. 

Even for a highly skilled professional with a strong work ethic it's not easy to be constantly exposed to this very special breed of people - the entrepreneurial bosses, who, God bless them, unwittingly provide me with endless writing material.  I guess it will be several years into my retirement (assuming I will live that long) before the urges to highlight this or that aspect of their psychology and behavior will ceise.

It's uncanny how many common characteristics are shared by private business owners.  For example, all of them operate under the same delusion that employees care (or should care) about their companies just as much and exactly in the same way as they themselves do.  It's especially amazing to me because most of them are pretty levelheaded and highly functional people, yet they insist on this deranged assumption that doesn't fit into any rational frame of thought.

For a business owner his company is his life's endeavor, his singular purpose, his channel of expression and fulfillment, his source of pride and wealth, his outlet of personal freedom.  The owner/CEO's opinion overrides everybody else's; he is the only one with a full authority to direct the company's development in any direction (to a success or to a downfall); ultimately he holds all employment strings in his hands; he can say or do whatever he wants (within the limits of the law, of course); nobody watches his time, assesses his performance, addresses his shortcomings.

On the other hand, for an employee, no matter how dedicated, loyal, hard-working, conscientious, and highly positioned, a job is just a job – a line on a resume.  It cannot possibly be anything else, because there is no such a thing as a job security anymore, no matter where you work.  If the current employment ends, there most likely will be another one after.  Nowadays, probably shifting down, but maybe shifting up - who knows?  There must be something, or there will be oblivion.  For many of us, a job is just a source of sustenance, not the means of self-satisfaction.  And when it comes to personal freedom… I already wrote about it four years ago (Bill of Rights in Small-Business Environment ).

Clearly owners and their employees are conditioned to look at the business from different platforms.  It is preposterous to assume equal attitudes from unequal parties.  Yet, the faulty presumption persists and is manifested by various business owners quite frequently.  I'm sure many of you have experienced it first-hand. 

On the rare occasions, when opportunities to be frank present themselves, I try to explain to CEOs that their employees have their own individual life agendas: what's good for you, your business, and your pocket, Mr. Boss, is not necessarily all that important to them.  Sometimes I even draw Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:  you see, I say, you cannot expect them to be proud of working in your wonderful growing company if they cannot make ends meet and feel overworked. 

Agh, it's no use!  Just the other week I was discussing (via email) with one of my clients, whose company made the 2013 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the nation, whether I should enter them into consideration this year as well.  It's my assessment that the negative outcome (everyone was complaining about the endless solicitation calls from various service companies) outweighed the pleasurable, yet hard to measure, positive impact of the resulted publicity.  He had no rebuttal to that particular argument.  Instead, he replied to me with the following:

"The ranking is something about which we can all be proud, and which thereby directly affects the morale of our staff, who both see results of their hard work translated into an accolade and have the pleasure of working for a company that has been honored.  I know I bathed in the warm glow of the company's recognition."

Of course he did!  It's his company.  He is rightfully entitled to tell about it every single person he meets.  But can you believe the gall?  They "have the pleasure…"!  Seriously?  Even the ones with $40K salaries and one-week-a-year vacations?  Uh-uh, Mr. Boss, the pleasure is all yours.