Category: Dealing with People

CFO Folklore: When Your Boss’s Secretary Becomes His Girlfriend


Here is a sensitive and complex topic – it involves people's personal lives and therefore should not be anybody else's business.  Yet it affects our work environment and impacts employees morale.  Always!  There are no exceptions.  

It is not a rare occurrence either.  In the past I had a boss who was seduced by his secretary and ended up leaving his family.  In another company I had to fire a general manger to avoid a possibility of sexual harassment law suit, while the company's owner was on his second marriage to a woman who was his former secretary.  And the list of stories I've heard from my colleagues, associates, subordinates and just friends is endless.

The nature of the boss/secretary professional relationship by itself has a somewhat intimate connotation.   They are near each other in the office space.  All day long the secretary attends to the boss's needs, frequently takes care of his personal matters, stays by his side when he works late.  Add to that the fact that most secretaries nowadays are younger women, as the class of "career personal assistant" is disappearing.   Plus, there is the appeal of power and a possibility of material benefits.  All this together creates an undeniably fruitful environment for trysts.  Hell, we have wonderful independent movies about it.



      

Unfortunately, it is not as much fun when you actually have to work with this in your face.

I frequently repeat in these posts that private businesses are absolute monarchies.  Historically, every single Royal figure had his or hers favorite,  i.e. an "intimate companion of a ruler," or, as OED defines it "one who stands unduly high in the favour of a prince."  The contemporary "rulers" are just upholding this "fine" historical tradition.

The key here is the unduly power bestowed on the favorite.  Again, I don't care about people's personal lives.  I really don't!  Moreover, if favorites were working ten times harder and their attitudes were twenty times nicer, I would consider that an improvement. 

However, that is not what usually happens.  In reality boss's secretarial lover stops working altogether.  I witnessed a hiring of an "assistant to personal assistant" to patch the hole in the workflow.  They become arrogant and acquire nasty disposition towards other people in the office.  Frequently they get promoted to managerial jobs they are not qualified to perform with salaries they didn't deserve.

In a small business, even with 500 employees, that's hard to hide.  Well, as a CFO or a Controller, you have your own powers and you don't really need to bother yourself with this unless she starts infringing on your scope of command (sadly, that happens too).  And yet your position exposes you to the unfairness of the situation in the most explicit way: you are the one who has to sign off her 50% raise; you are the one who has to approve her 12 weeks a year vacation time; those are your direct reports that get mistreated by her.  

Talking about terrible frustration!   

CFO Folklore: Dealing with F@&ing Lawyers


Blog image As CFOs and controllers, we are constantly exposed to a variety of legal documents: security and financing agreements, leases, employment contracts, NDAs, new ventures formation, demand letters, term sheets, etc., etc.  And even though most of the financial professionals I know, including myself, are well-versed in these matters and can write a decent legal document themselves (hey, you cannot even get an MBA without taking Contractual Law), or at the very least can fully understand them, we are forced to deal with attorneys: a CEO feels more comfortable if he gets a bill. 

Hello!  This is business law.  We are not talking about defending anybody in court on murder or ponzi scheme charges, or suing somebody for fraud!  So, here is what usually happens.

Scenario 1:  I compose a document or construct an agreement outline addressing all necessary points, and send it to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with either, "This looks good," or he takes my points and, without changing anything, puts it into the format that he didn't even create himself – nowadays they all download templates from Blumberg's Law Products, which anyone can do.  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Scenario 2: We receive a contract (let's say a Credit Line Agreement), I read it, make a long list of all the points that I believe need to be further negotiated with the bank, and send the contract with my list to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with, "I agree.  Let me know when it's ready for my final approval."  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Ahhhhhh! 

Of course, there are special occasions when the intricacy of legalese needs to be explored and attorneys must be involved.  But, why the hell it's so intricate, anyway?  Doesn't it seem like a conspiracy to justify $450+/hour rates?  In organizational management we are always taught that some employees deliberately confuse their records to make themselves indispensable: nobody else can figure out what's going on.  Sounds familiar?

And the arrogance!  I can only think of one other profession that can compete with lawyers on the level of insolence – doctors.  They have no respect for anyone expect themselves.  Well, I am willing to forgive a cardiologist who has a courage to hold a human heart in his hands, or a neurosurgeon who may need to drill into my brain one day. 

But these legal MoFos?  The complex of knowledge I possess is far greater than that of any specialized attorney I know.  I ask, for example, if there are grounds for fiduciary violation in a case, and he ($550/hour) responds, "I have to look it up."  Yet, they dare to be condescending nevertheless!  Just last week a lawyer sent me a retainer agreement and wrote in the cover note, "It's a bit formal, but I hope you will understand it."  Are you fucking kidding me?!  I have four academic degrees and 20 years of executive experience (and he knows), and my own retainer agreement for consulting services, which I wrote myself, has more substance than your copied bullshit.

The worst thing about them, though, is that fucking professional camaraderie.  Try to talk to an attorney about a harm caused to you by another lawyer.  You think you are going to see fairness so wonderfully shown on "The Good Wife", or any other of those TV court dramas?  Nope!  They stop listening – THEY DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT IT!  That's why ABA had to create grievance committees and appoint people who are obligated to review the complains, because otherwise there wouldn't be anybody you could tell about lawyers' violations.  Why do you think legal profession is not regulated by any government agency?  Because the legislature consists mostly of legal professionals.  They will never do anything against one another.

In "Philadelphia", just before dying, Tom Hanks (a gay attorney) tells Denzel Washington (another attorney who just won a discrimination case for him) an old joke: "What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start."  They both like the joke.  Denzel's character even repeats it to someone else right away.  A very hopeful movie in many respects: the case is won, a formerly homophobic Mr. Washington's character finds in himself to defend a gay guy, AIDS-ridden Mr. Hank's character dies knowing he won, and his partner (played by Antonio Banderas) is somehow is not infected.  And the lawyers like the joke!!!  Very hopeful, very far from reality.            

“Hegelian Dialectic” and Human Relations


200px-Johann_Gottlieb_Fichte This famous triad, incorrectly attributed to Hegel and even called by his name, was actually developed earlier, in the late eighteenth century, by the Neo-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It's an absolutely brilliant concept:

The thesis is an intellectual proposition.  The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition.  The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths and forming a new proposition.

This statement reflects the reality of human consciousness with a remarkable precision and can be easily illustrated with human relations.  We come to every moment of our life with some expectations of what reality around us is (thesis). When people, for one or another reason, act in unexpected way, a gap between our expectations and reality opens (antithesis).  Our impulse is to react to this gap in such a way that it closes:  we catch up to the new reality and act accordingly (synthesis).  Now, the new understanding of reality is formed (new thesis) – and so on, and so forth.

Understanding this dialectic helps to deal with unexpected changes of our environment as well as seemingly unpredictable and unexplained human actions.  Giving into an automatic reactions without understanding their reasons frequently results in regrettable consequences.  Reconciling the thesis and antithesis must be a thoughtful process. 

Fichte's primary philosophical interest was self-consciousness as a social phenomenon.  He argued that people can come to know that they exist only through reaction of others to them.  This is another fascinating subject of human relations.  If we move from philosophical sense of self-consciousness to the narrower psychological meaning of the word, we can say that people don't become self-conscious in isolation – it's the presence of others that makes us unduly aware of our appearance, behavior, speech and actions. 

Careers of many financial executives have suffered from acute social ineptitude rooted deeply in painful self-awareness.  The pervasive image of accountants as dull and uninspiring professionals, does not help the situation either.  Recognizing that it is not the people around you, but your own fear of them that cripples your advancement, may help you.  Alternatively, you can try what all acting teachers tell their theater students with performance anxiety – just pretend that everyone in the audience (or people around you) is a human-size chicken.

Images    

How to Read People Through Their Communication Styles


If you are a business executive, CFOs and Controllers included, you cannot avoid the necessity of being able to grasp people's motivations based on external behavioral indicators.  Every person we encounter has his own hidden agendas and incentives, which we must decipher in order to be successful.  I previously talked about the effect people's priorities have on their attitudes (see Priorities and Attitudes).  It is a proven fact that humans' motivations can be read from the way they move, talk, look at you, even from the poses they strike. 

Filmmakers frequently speak about the subtext.  One of the basic rules of screenwriting is "show, don't explain."  Some theorists attribute the importance of this aspect to the visual nature of cinematic art. But the truth is exactly opposite: the ability to read subtext is natural.  This is what makes a movie believable and real to the audience: people watch an actor perform (especially, if he is a good actor) and pick up on the little clues of the character's inner-workings, because this is what we do in real life too.  

Subconsciously, we are all capable of recognizing particular body movements and voice intonations as expressions of motivations and intents.  The trick is to find this innate ability in yourself, isolate it, bring it into the prefrontal cortex, perfect it and use it to your advantage.  Start by observing people's communication styles – the fastest way to identify their intentions, to read into their primary concerns.

When people speak in a staccato style and quickly move from one subject on to the next one, what can we tell about their intentions?  Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they are determined to minimize the time consumption of every task they undertake or direct, that they driven by desire of accomplishment?

On the other hand, someone who apologizes for expressing his opinion three times within the same sentence and asks to be corrected if he makes mistakes, obviously is striving for amicability.  The ones who wait for your cues or keep quiet all the time are obviously unsure of themselves and don't want to be noticed.  Yet, if someone doesn't say anything, but flares his nostrils and drums his fingers on the desk, don't mistake him for anything else but the passive-aggressive about to explode.  And so on, and so forth.

So, let's go back to the movie-making.  Of course, I had a good reason to bring it up.  Films provide us with an enormous cache of visual references familiar to millions of people.  I have chosen a trailer for Mike Nichols's "Regarding Henry" to illustrate this topic because the 24-year-old screenwriter J. J. Abrams (yes, that very same J. J. Abrams who screwed us out of a satisfying "Lost" ending) used a dramatic turn in the plot that fundamentally affects the protagonist (played by the great Harrison Ford).  His life, attitude, tastes communication style- everything changes within the same movie.  It's a stark example of how a person's inner life affects his behavioral traits.

 

Job Search: A Sad Tale of a Misdialed Area Code


Images Posts related to job search issues have become more frequent.  I guess, it is unavoidable with such a persistent problem – a lot of people are unemployed and the jobs availability diminishes every day, no matter what the big-time economists and government statisticians are saying. 

This story was related to me just last week and I felt compelled to share it here.  A fellow financial exec has been contacted by a recruiter with an opportunity for a CFO position with a service company.  The recruiter does not work for an employment agency.  He is with a consulting company that specializes in hedge fund and private equity brokerage.  They offer a broad range of assistance: from finding companies suitable for takeover or merging to post-closing transitioning.

Excellent!  Recruiters working for such consulting firms are less constricted than conventional headhunters from Robert Half et al.  Because they are immersed into an entrepreneurial world, they actually try to find talented people instead of counting the check marks they drew on a resume.

So, the two have an extensive phone interview, going over the financial exec's experience with various functions crucial for this job.  At the end, the recruiter is very positive and tells her he would make a presentation to his boss, the consulting firm's Managing Director.  A couple of days later he calls to inform her that he got a favorable feedback and wants to make an appointment for a telephone interview with the boss.  They set the day and time.  

Now (this is an important bit of information), the consulting firm is in Philadelphia, where predominant area code is 215.  The candidate is in New York City – 212 area code there.

Appointment time comes – the interviewee sits and waits by the phone.  An hour later – nothing happened.  She writes an email to the recruiter advising that the Managing Director did not call.  He writes back immediately saying that she did call, nobody picked up and she left a message.  How is it possible?  The woman in New York was by her phone all the time.  Well, we, CFOs, are quick like that – our job seeker realized right away that the Philadelphia woman, out of habit, must have punched 215, instead of 212.  

The recruiter and his boss probably looked at the call log and saw the wrong number too.  The interview was rescheduled.  But now, there is a subconscious resistance in the interviewer's mind – she is human, and we don't like admitting to embarrassing errors like that.  She re-schedules again, then again, then never calls. 

And just like that, the opportunity was gone.  What always bothers me when things like that happen, is that it is quite possible that this woman could have been the best thing that ever happened to the company.  She might have impacted the future of the enterprise in the most positive way.  It seems so unfair that stupid little things like this misdialed area code have such a big role in this Comedy of Errors we call life.