Category: Dealing with People

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. 

Quote of the Week: Red Reddington and The Frustrated CFO Concur in Defining the Key to Success


NBC_s-The-Blacklist-_Classified_-Trailer-on-Vimeo-5

The Frustrated CFO's preface:

I'm in the dental office, standing by the payment-processing counter with the endodontist.  We are waiting for one of the claim processors to estimate the out-of-pocket costs that will arise from the doctor's suggested course of action.  It's one of those full-service dental groups where they have all specialists, either on staff or itinerant.  This requires a matching number of assistants, plus administration – in other words, there are a lot of people around.  I'm here only for the second time.  Yet, I notice every person I've already met, "Hi, Vivien, how are you?"  "Hello, Christa."  (None of them wear name-tags or anything like that).  

The doctor asks, "How come you know everyone?"  Well, I don't know "everyone", but he seems like a nice guy, very pleasant, so I have an impulse for a wholehearted answer: "This is what I do.  If a person introduces him- or herself, I make an effort to remember the name.  Every time.  No matter who that person is – customer service representative on the phone, a salesperson in the store, a receptionist in whatever office, your dental assistant, people I meet in business gatherings.  If I have a chance, I immediately address that person by name.  …And that's how you succeed in life."

Well, my dear readers, "success" is a relative notion, of course – this rule is not going to make you billions, but, I promise you, it will definitely help in whatever your life's endeavors are.

One of the women sitting behind the counter, Hope the Office Manager, chimes in: "But I'm so bad with names!"  I just smile at her sweetly.  In my head I'm thinking, "And that makes you a terrible administrator."

Literally a couple of days later I'm watching the first season's finale of The Blacklist on demand.  Imagine my surprise at the perfectly timed like-mindedness when, about 15 minutes before the episode's end, Red Reddington bursts out the following tirade written for him by the series's writers (John Eisendrath et al.):

"I must say, I'm very good at finding people.  I've tracked enemies far and wide.  I once found a hedge fund manager hiding in the Amazon… on the banks of the Cuini River.  You know what the key to finding your enemies is?  Remembering everyone's name.  It's critical to my survival.  Anyone knows the head of some drag cartel in Columbia; some politician in Paris.  But I know their wives, girlfriends, children, their enemies, their friends.  I know their favorite bartender, their butcher…"        

On Service Quality and Self-Worth: Unknown 500


Clueless There are smart people out there who always place their personal interests ahead of everything else.  I wish I could be like that, but I'm not.  In my life, other people and things end up claiming higher priorities than Me.  I'm one of those schmucks who get overwhelmed by the sense of Responsibility, as in guilt (familial) and duty (professional), and push their private matters aside.  I know, I know – at the end of the day by abating those feelings I essentially attend to my personal needs anyway, but that's a psycho-philosophical issue we can contemplate.  In real time it feels as if I do everything for others and neglect myself. 

That's why it takes me six months to get my ass to a dentist.  And that's why I let a bunch of out-of-pocket medical expenses to accumulate before I'm pushed to the wall by the deadline to file for reimbursement from the Flexible Spending Account (FSA, aka use-it-or-loose-it pre-tax medical expense program).  It's not just me either – two of my employees completely missed the cut-off dates for filing their claims, thus losing the portion of the wages they have been contributing to the FSA.  Maybe my attitude robbed off on them.  And that's too bad, because no job deserves such loyalty unless you work for yourself or someone dear to you.

But, as Bill Cosby would say after a 30-minute introduction, this is not what I was going to talk about.  This should explain, however, why when I was filing my FSA claims online a couple of weeks ago I had to upload quite a few receipts (required as supporting evidence) covering pharmaceutical, medical, and dental co-payments.  

Here is what happened.  I entered all claims, uploaded scanned receipts, pressed the "Submit" button… and the system hanged.  You know, one of those dead freezes when nothing moves no matter what you do.  Okay!  Not a big deal for someone who's been dealing with computers and the Internet, like, forever.  Close the browser, open the browser, go back on the website, log in, retrieve the claims (thankfully saved), upload…  Same shit! 

Well, as you can imagine, entering all information item by item, scanning individual receipts, etc.  took a "minute" already, so I wanted to resolve this bullshit ASAP.  I located the tech support number and dialed it, cursing under my breath the Flex provider for not offering a dedicated debit card option instead of this cumbersome claim filing. 

In the receiver a Steve answers.  Like I said, I'm an experienced Internet user, so I go straight to the core issue, "Is there a limit on the number of documents a user can attach to a claim?  Or maybe on the total size of attachments?"  Tech support is not customer service and it's reasonable to expect that they will catch on your short-cut approach.  Uh-uh!  Not Steve!  He asks, "What is the problem?" and I'm forced to explain the whole thing anyway.

He listens and says, "I've never heard about a size limit." (Note to all, only 1 out of 10 service people fully understands the system he supports.) "But I know what the problem is - you are having an Unknown 500."

Wait a minute, wait a minute: he knows that I'm having an unknown something?  That sounds strange, doesn't it?  But I keep my cool – I understand it's a system error: "What kind of error is it?"  In return he asks (you cannot get a straight answer out of this guy no matter what!), "Do any of the files you are uploading have a '+' or a '-' in their names?"  "No," I say, "they don't.  I know that that's not allowed.  In fact, one of the scans originally had dashes in the name, but I deliberately renamed it before the uploading."  That was foolish of me to volunteer all that information.  Because now he goes, "That doesn't matter, the system still knows that the dash was there."

Really, dude?  I ask, "Are you telling me that this FSA processing site is capable of recognizing in MY computer that a file USED TO have dashes in its name?"  He confirms, "Yes, that's correct."  "Not the size of all the attachments, but the expunged name?  Are you sure?"  He confirms again.  Okay, humor me: "So, how can I remedy this?"  "Log out, shut down your computer, reboot, and then you should be able to upload your receipts," he advises.                     

Bill Cosby is definitely on my mind today, because it was him who said "as ridiculous as some things may sound, there come desperate times when you are ready to try anything."  My rational mind did not believe for a single second that it would work, but it was a proposition of a quick fix and time is of the essence.  So, after I'd hung up, I followed his suggestion.

Of course, it didn't work!  What did you think?  The guy pulled that tech recommendation out of his ass!  Didn't even offer to stay on the line with me to see if it was going to work!  Who does that?  I'll tell you who: unqualified, unprofessional, poorly trained, half-asleep, semi-retarded bitches that pervade our lives.

The right thing to do at this point would be to delete the original claims and file them in two batches instead of one.  Then call the tech support, find a supervisor (I noted Steve's full name)…   But my time is more important, so instead I downloaded the entered info into a claim form, put it together with the receipts, and did what we used to do "back in the day": faxed everything over.  You don't get a time-stamped system receipt that way, but it worked – I've got reimbursed in three days.

Meanwhile, the stupidity went unpunished.  Oh, well, we let go of things like that on daily basis.  What appalls me the most, though, is the audacity of this people!  You are called "Support," for crying out loud!  Someone in need calls you, you feed them some bullshit, hang up, and go on with your life?  And you get paid for it?  How do these people leave with themselves?  How do they go to sleep at night?  I have no clue.  I know I never worked like that. I simply couldn't.  But I bet it's much easier to be Steve.  I'm sure he never pushes his personal interests aside.  

Quote of the Week: A Business Owner’s Reaction to a Typical Banker


Angry_BossFrom an actual email:

"Frankly, I left our meeting here on Monday with the conviction that you attended under duress but would otherwise rather have been doing pretty much anything else.  PNC is a month behind every other bank, and we used up considerable goodwill with these entities to secure you and Alberto a seat at the table.  No other bank has been treated so deferentially, which PNC earned by being our lender in the past three years.  However, watching you play with your phone in your lap during our meeting and appearing otherwise bored suggested to me that there was a huge disconnect between what we have been attempting to do for PNC and how it is being perceived."

                                                                                                    Business Owner

CFO Folklore: Don’t Let the Boss Argue Your Case for You


Opposite DirectionsIn a small business with a flat organizational structure, where every exec performs 10-15 jobs, there is always a possibility of timeline conflicts.  It's like cooking ten dishes on a four-ring range: eventually you run into a point when the same burner is needed for two pots.  Which one to put on?  There is really no such a thing as a right decision at times like that – you must simply follow your instincts.

Let's say your are in the final stages of negotiating a Credit Agreement renewal with your main institutional lender.  It's Thursday, 03/13.  You have scheduled a meeting with the bankers, their attorneys, and your own esteemed corporate lawyers for tomorrow afternoon to press on with a few remaining crucial changes before the deal is released for the approval by the bank's Credit Committee on Monday, 03/17. 

At 5 pm your phone rings:  It's your tax attorney hesitantly letting you know that his team must meet with you urgently tomorrow, because they just figured out that the company may have tax exposures in Illinois and Wisconsin; the extensions are due on Monday, 03/17 (somewhat hysterically); and, he is very sorry to tell you, but he is not quite sure about this and that's why they need to seat down and read you into the details of the Code, so that you can express your opinion, because nobody understands the business better than you do.  No, it cannot be in the morning, because it's tax season and everybody's schedule is full as is; only the afternoon is workable for everyone who needs to be there (except you, of course, but who cares).

By the time you hung up, it's too late to reschedule the bank – most bankers leave at 5 pm, just like the government.  Now, you've got a dilemma.  Bank or taxes?  Of course, you can tell the tax lawyers to suck it up and do their well-compensated jobs without getting you involved.  Yet, you cannot – that's not how you do.  But the bank is incredibly important: the last stages of negotiations are the hardest, because nobody wants to give up the last frontiers.  On the other hand, you are literally the only person in the company who can express taxation opinions.  At least the owner has been in a tandem with you on the contest of wills with the bank.  However, he is easily mauled by financial predators if he is left on his own.                  

But what are you going to do?  It's the balancing act – you have to optimize.  You cannot be in two places at the same time.  So you decide that the tax meeting is the one you must attend and send your boss to the other one alone.  And, of course, you prep him on Friday morning.  You go over all important points of the agenda with him and outline your position on every issue (in writing, for better retention).  Then you silently pray to Hermes/Mercury, the patron god of all CFOs, and go on to your appointment.

You don't disturb him during the weekend, but as soon as he shows up at work on Monday (around 1 pm) you pull him into your office.  "Well, tell me," you inquire.  He beams at you: "Oh, it went very well.  They practically accepted all the conditions on the list you gave me.  You should have the amended Term Sheet by tomorrow morning."  You are cautious: "Practically?"  And he clarifies, "There is one item.  They said they couldn't do anything about migrating from weekly reporting to monthly.  But I figured that was okay, right?  Just this one thing?  And what?  It's like a nine-line report, or something?  Probably a few buttons on your system, right?"         

Well, it's actually a 52-line statement with 5 supplemental schedules. It takes two of your staff accountants several hours to update all raw data and 2.5 hours of your valuable time every Friday to compile the reports. This was one of the top 10 most important items you've introduced into the negotiations right from the start.  Of all items that's what he decided to let go?  And what is it with bosses?  Why do they always assume that everything you do is effortless – fast and easy?  Just because you are toiling away without making any fuss?! 

You feel like Zorg from The Fifth Element.  "I am very disappointed!!!" growls Gary Oldman inside you.  If you want something done correctly, you'd better do it yourself!  Unfortunately, you don't have his powerful ZF-1 under your desk.  So, instead of simultaneously throwing flames and blasting freeze-rays, you grab your phone like a weapon and calmly explain, "These weekly reports end up costing you a lot of salaried hours that can be used more productively otherwise.  So, let me call and talk to them about it again."