Category: Coping Advice

Your Boss: Value and Madness of an Entrepreneur


Many of my correspondents (CFO's, Controllers, Financial Directors) tell me that the biggest source of their stress and anxiety is the Boss.  I am sure we will be addressing this topic many times in different stories.  President, CEO, Owner, or whatever title they have chosen for themselves, more frequently then not, these entrepreneurs are the main reasons for our frustration.

Some of them are courageous and brilliant who actually foster and lead, others are batty and lucky who succeed in spite of themselves, and the others are lazy and disinterested who ruin everything even with our best efforts in place.  Regardless, they have few things in common. 

First of all, we can never forget that they are the ones creating jobs.  That's a tremendous achievement.  They've got to be madly brave to go out in the world and implement their ideas, sometimes against all odds.  If they succeed, they build companies that not only create products and services, but also employ people and pay them salaries.  They take insane risks and end up with entities that can afford to hire CFOs, Controllers, Financial Directors, i.e. us.  And even if the Bosses are not the founders, but heirs and the business just fell into their lap, until they destroy it, they are the employers and our salaries are coming out of their pockets.

Of course, as financial execs we kill ourselves in order to either facilitate their success and prosperity or stop them from  killing the business.  And even though we are concerned with our own material well-being just like anybody else, at the end of the day all of our efforts in a private company end up to be about guarding the owners' private purses.  That kind of a responsibility to a person in the office few steps down from your own brings the level of pressure to a completely different level.  It is not the same when your "owners" are some unknown masses of mutual fund investors.

But the most prominent common denominator of all small and mid-size CEOs is that they are all afflicted by the same disease – something I call an entrepreneurial bug. The business development machines in their heads run forward ahead of everything else.  They want everything to be done yesterday, and those who cannot make it happen or voice their concerns are considered to be obstacles on their way to success. 

Because it is up to us, CFOs and Controllers,  to make sure that the back office, the financing, the structures, the control procedures, etc. are on the par with new developments, we frequently find ourselves at odds with our Bosses.  We are called negative, uncooperative, difficult, etc. etc.  Nevertheless, we must be strong and do our jobs right, because if we fail to cover their fast running asses, everyone will get hurt, including the Bosses.

Time Organization as Anti-Frustration Tool


Business strategy, financial plans, cash flow projections – obvious tasks in any CFO or Controller's routine.  These functions are integral parts of our job descriptions and inability to perform them would simply disqualify us as senior financial professionals.  No matter how sophisticated, at the end of the day they have to do with allocating limited resources over specified periods of time. 

Well, what about our very own personal intellectual resources? Are all of us capable to allocate them in an efficient manner?

Practically every single employer (in subconscious recognition of the responsibilities scroll's heftiness) feels obligated to mention multi-tasking, work-under-pressure, and tight-deadlines in their job ads for financial execs.  And yet, nobody ever asks during interviews about the candidates' actual time-management skills. 

It is very flattering to our professional class that bosses simply assume their present and future CFO's and Controllers to have their own self-organizing tools, but the sad truth is very few of them do.  They consistently spend long hours on a single task, while the day runs away from them leaving huge volume of unattended work behind, which over time may pile up into a mountain.  And it applies to other execs as well, but I don't care about their well-being in the context of this blog. 

To my fellow financial professionals in the small and mid-size companies, however,  I want to say three words: schedules, lists and schedules.  Yes, schedules two times – short-term and long-term.  I have briefly mentioned scheduling before in my post on prioritization (The Importance of Prioritization for CFOs and Controllers), but this topic is never exhausted. 

I want to emphasize that the value of time organization lies not only in the increased professional efficiency but, more importantly, in its ability to reduce job-related frustration and anxiety.  Schedules and lists create a framework for your multi-tasking and provide you with stability of a clear action plan.  They especially help those prone to experience anxiety about forgetting the "back burner" projects. 

Once the need for self-organizing tools is recognized, you will be capable to design your own.  And I believe that it is important for every CFO, Controller, etc. to develop their individual practical schedules and lists based on their actual business circumstances and preferences.

Just as a reference point let me share that, at the very minimum, I usually have the following lists: (1) functional breakdown of departments with tasks assigned to each group/person and their time frames;  (2) a list of mandatory daily functions; (3) a list of periodic reports with fixed dates, responsible parties and intended recipients (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual); (4) a long-term list with projects that are not crucial to immediate commercial goals, but are necessary to bring the company to the next level, with tentative start dates.

Accordingly, at any given moment I have four schedules: (1) today's schedule, which I usually prepare previous night; (2) current and next weeks outlines; (3) current and next months highlights; (4) tentative 4-month plan.   

I would like to emphasize that FLEXIBILITY is a key: don't let yourself to be trapped into an obsessive rigidity.  Changes and diversions are to be expected and there is no reason to get worked up about them – after all, we live in a very fast-changing business world.

 


 

       

You Are Responsible for Your Own Emotional Control


There are two main reasons for my putting so much emphasis on the management of frustration and stress.  First of all, I consider this skill to be one of CFOs and Controllers' prerequisites for efficient functionality: if you don't get a grip on your own emotions you cannot manage the multitude of your tasks at the level that will satisfy your own high standards.  Secondly, this may be the only responsibility that you cannot delegate.  Whatever method of self-control and frustration release you use, you are the only one who can recognize the symptoms and initiate the process.

And in that respect I am in agreement with the recent article on AOL Health by Stephanie Twelto Jacob with a terribly corny title Happiness Roadblocks and a lot of new-age-y formulas that a sensible reader will be able to weed out easily.  I mean, even if you take Aristotle's thought about path to happiness as your initial thesis, it doesn't mean that you should tailor your entire article to fit the narrow interpretation of its language.

Shortcomings aside, I found four sensible points in this article that match my own concept of psychological self-management and fit perfectly into this blog's discussions of work-related frustration and anxiety.  Here are my interpretations:

1.  Choosing to expect the worst at all times in order to avoid disappointments (the policy I've been employing for years myself – guilty as charged) creates not only psychological, but also, through stress-related chemical reactions, physical effects on us.  Plainly speaking, it keeps our bodies in a constant adrenaline overdrive.

2.  I hear my colleagues talking all the time about someone else working at half the effort for twice as much money, having expense accounts, better insurances, larger bonuses, etc, etc.  Comparing your difficult life to somebody's supposed perfect existence creates unnecessary additional frustration.  Don't contrast and compare.  Most likely these people's lives are not as rosy as you perceive it.  Trust me – life is a difficult exercise for everybody.  More importantly, spending your emotional energy on this imaginary competition is a waste of your own valuable resources.

3.  Accepting the unfairness of life is the best defensive mechanism available to us. When things are not based on equality and justice it does not necessarily mean that you always loose.  My intended audience is supposed to consist of educated people in senior management and executive positions.  In comparison to people with the same intellectual capacity who were not able to go to college and graduate schools and be eligible to work in free-market society, we are not doing that bad even if we didn't have connections or luck to become multi-millionaires.

4.  Stop looking for substitution of contentment.  It is not your boss's, your subordinates', your spouse's, your kid's or your new purchase's job to make you feel better about yourselves.  Nobody but yourself truly knows who you are and what your value is.  It is you who possess that intelligence, that expertise, that volume of knowledge and you know your worthiness.  Be proud of your own achievements.      

The Ethicist Randy Cohen Talks About Your Boss


You worked real hard day in and day out.  You applied yourself to the very best of your abilities.  Finally, you have reached the senior/executive management position.  Now, you are the CFO, the Controller, the Director, "the right hand," "the most important person in the company without the title" – it doesn't matter what they call you: you've achieved it.  And it's irrelevant that the business is small – in this small pond you are a big fish.Does this mean that now you can tell your boss, the owner of the company, to stop watching porn on your computer after work and leave it on overnight?  Even my favorite columnist Randy Cohen, cannot give you a clear answer in his response to one of our peers' query in June 27th New York Times Magazine - The Ethicist: Porn in the Office.He is trying, though: yes, it is not right that the boss doesn't close the browser, that he leaves it for the next user to see, but he doesn't really do anything illegal either, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah… 

The point is that our dear entrepreneurs do not separate themselves from their businesses.  They treat their place of work as their second home: watching porn, meeting with their friends, letting their kids and pets run around.  This could be a $200 million business you helped to build, but THEY REALLY DON'T CARE WHAT ANYBODY THINKS.  It wouldn't even come to their minds to consider the possibility that somebody may be offended, or simply surprised, by the images on the computer screen.  And it is not about porn.  It's one thing today and another tomorrow – the principal (pun is always intended) attitude is always the  same.

And the unfortunate truth is that no matter how important you are to the company, you cannot criticize them, because they will never forget it.  They will hold the grudge forever, because subconsciously they feel that they are untouchable royalty in their little kingdoms and NOBODY dares to point out their shortcomings.  And if you are experienced and shrewd enough, you will not say a boo (neither would I).

So, here you are, frustrated out of your mind by the unbalance between your professional achievements and organizational position on one side and inability to exercise your personal freedom on the other.  All I can advise you to do at this point is to pick your favorite from my list of coping devices listed in One CFO's Personal Tools for Frustration Relief. That's all you can do.

The Frustrated CFO Is Getting Anxious


I am really anxious to move away from abstract discussions on the nature of stress we experience every day and start showcasing stressful incidents and frustrating professional issues near and dear to every CFO, Controller, etc.  However, before I do that I feel we need to address one more theoretical subject – correlation of Frustration and Anxiety.

As I already mentioned several times, frustration is a normal reaction (whether extra- on introverted) to situations in which we face obstacles to our achieving goals or actions that contradict our standards, etc.  Every person experiences it from the moment he or she is born.  In this blog, with examples from daily war of survival, I argue that my peers, CFOs, Controllers, and other financial execs in entrepreneurial environment, operate in a state of chronic frustration.

Anxiety, on the other hand, no matter how many scientific definitions are out there, boils down to sense and fear of danger, whether real or non-existent.  The symptoms and sensations are the same if you are genetically predisposed ("wired") for anxiety or forced into it through the lifetime of conditioning.

Because it is far more fascinating to try to explain why some people feel anxiety and panic attacks for no tangible reasons at all, cognitive science is primarily preoccupied with the types of anxiety that are caused by chemical imbalance, hereditary factors, etc.  If you are interested to learn more about the latest research advancement in this area, I particularly recommend an almost a year old, but still very accurate and exhaustive, New York Times Magazine article Understanding the Anxious Mind. 

And, of course, most of us belong to the army of Americans (tens of millions of people, actually) who are worried about the economy, their job security, the money they lost in various market shakeups, the environment, the future of their children, etc. etc. Economic and environmental issues are big reasons why so many people seem to be on the verge of a breakdown.

That said, in the context of this blog I am primarily interested in the undeniable fact that chronic frustration with your job leads to stress and acute anxiety.  Just like Pavlov's dogs we are conditioned by frustration to fear those situations that cause the unpleasant experience.

We try to accomplish a particular task, meet our regular obstacles (bosses interventions, subordinates incompetence, time constraints), fail to achieve our goal, get frustrated – and (surprise-surprise), now we feel anxious every time we start that task, because subconsciously we anticipate frustration and fear the pain.  The anxieties accumulate into stress, and now we feel trapped.  If the situation is not managed, we can spin out of control.

And that is why it is so important to find methods of releasing frustration out of your system (please see my post One CFO's Personal Tools for Frustration Relief) and, just equally important, find resolutions for your professional problems by elevating your managerial, organizational, behavioral and technical skills – issues I hope to discuss in the future based on the incidents from your professional life.