Category: Nature of the Job

We Are All “Up in the Air”


MV5BMTI3MzYxMTA4NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDE4ODg3Mg@@._V1._SY317_ Back in the Fall of 2009, when "Up in the Air" was released, I didn't see it, but people told me I should have.  I watched it the other day.  Wow!  It is not just an excellent movie and the most realistic piece of American cinema I've seen since 2005.  It is also a gold mine of occupational themes that hit so close to home, it's unreal.  You know, the subtle truths about corporate existence, which are so familiar to those of us, who have been boiling in that soup their entire lives.  Thank you, Jason Reitman!

Our new economic reality of depressed businesses and desperate people serves as a recognizable background to the personal stories unfolding in front of us.  The uncertainty of survival in the contemporary corporate world is so pervasive, nobody knows what tomorrow shall bring.  "Living in the Now" is not a conscious choice of enlightened individuals anymore.  Whether a CFO or a receptionist, in companies large or small – every wage-dependent person lives one day at a time.

As the matter of fact, George Clooney's character, Ryan Bingham, is sent to large companies.  These companies can still afford to hire an outside firm to conduct the "separation" exercise for them, with fancy folders and severance packages. 

In small business environment, even during the best of times, you wouldn't think of spending money on protecting yourself from the brutal necessity of firing people with whom you worked side by side.  As a CFO/Controller, I've had my share of sitting across the table in a conference room, looking into a person's eyes and delivering the bad news.  I developed my own style as well: do it gently, make them feel better, give them hope…  Some even thank me at the end.  Just doing my job, like Ryan Bingham.

He, actually, works for a small company owned and managed by his boss (Jason Bateman), who (how typical!) changes his mind about the company's direction three times in a few depicted weeks.  Ingeniously, the filmmakers reduce smooth and dashing George Clooney to a powerless subordinate: his entire way of life is about to be changed by his boss's decision and there is nothing he can do about it.  "…Here's the boat?.. Do you want to be in the boat?"  You are either in or out.  You have no choice.  You swallow your pride and you go along.  Just doing your job.

What are we doing?  How do we go on and live with ourselves when we fire someone who is good at his job?  How do we sleep at night after dismissing hundreds of hopefuls' resumes?  And what happens when our own resumes get swept into trash?  Do people feel anything at all?  Those are our hopes that get dismantled.  Do we register the weight of what we do?  I don't know.

Everyone's life is up in the air, with no help coming.  Help ourselves? We can try to stay positive and continue struggling on – that's the best we can do.

 

CFO’s IT Conundrum: Owner’s Expectations


In many companies, CFOs and Controllers have absorbed the responsibilities of Chief Information Officers.  Unless the company is in business of creating technology or relies on it as the primary operational tool, it's only natural for the senior financial person to keep IT under her wing.  Even if the entire value chain is integrated into an ERP, 70% of the modules are ours anyway. 

Moreover, a lot of companies are not there yet.  At best, most smaller businesses today have integrated systems that cover all of their Accounting and HR functions, plus a bunch of special-purpose software for other needs.  

Leading IT function is a difficult undertaking for a CFO.  It is plagued by conflicting tendencies:

1.  On one hand, you want to be a strategic thinker.  You want to be an agent of change that will propel your company into the future.  You envision information seamlessly flowing from product design to financial statements.  On the other hand, you are the one standing guard over the company's purse.  Ideally, you don't want to spend any money at all.

2.  On one hand, you don't want to meddle in other VP's business.  They run their departments to the best of their abilities.  On the other hand, if you are to make decisions about informational support of their functions, you will have no choice.

3.  On one hand, you adore technological progress and  you love trees.  You dream of paperless offices.  On the other hand, you cannot let go of the comfort the filing room with all the source documents gives you.

This list of woes can go on and on.  However, none of the IT management issues can compare with the pain of your Boss's Expectations.  I am not talking about a techy entrepreneur here.  I am talking about your all-other-industries business owners.

Small business CEO's software expectations are usually focused on two aspects: implementation time and reporting capabilities.  In their minds, both are in direct correlation with money. 

As soon as the money are paid to the software vendor, they expect "all systems go" status.  The customization, the setups, the data transfer are all expected to happen with installation, which, by the way, is taking too long ("What are these people are still doing here?").

The reporting expectations are proportional to the amount of money spent.  Here are typical examples:

  • if you've spent around $100,000, the system is expected to "print" a report with any combination of randomly chosen data ("What do you mean, the data needs to be exported into Excel and analyzed? What did I pay all that money for?")
  • if you've spent around $500,000, the system should estimate December cash availability in March; the answer is expected while he is on the phone with you ("Can't you just look it up in YOUR system?")
  • if you spent over $1,000,000, the system must initiate a daily call to the boss's personal phone reporting in a soothing voice, how much profit was generated yesterday.

Anything short of that is "UNACCEPTABLE!!!"  And it's all your fault!   

         

“The Social Network”: A Case of a Failed CFO


Social_network_Andrew_Garfield_04 It's the Oscars week.  You cannot escape the promotional hype unless you cut yourself off from all media. 

The movie leading in the preliminary rounds (Golden Globes, various Guilds, etc.) is "The Social Network."   It's not surprising – the popularity of this movie is rooted in public's preoccupation with sudden success and overnight rise to riches.

Well, the reason for me to write about this film is that I cannot miss the opportunity to discuss a character, who in 2004 thought of himself as a CFO of Facebook. 

When Mark Zuckerberg appointed Eduardo Saverin to be his CFO, it was a logical step for the 20-year-old code-writing CEO.  Saverin was a close friend; appeared to be versed in business matters; more importantly, he had personal funds, having just made $300K through savvy oil investments.  Is this enough to make somebody an acting CFO?  Of course, not.  However, one could have learned how to be one.   It was not the case here.

If nothing else, the movie provides vivid illustrations to what a real CFO should NEVER-EVER DO.

1.  The first thing that Mr. Saverin did wrong was not taking his appointment seriously. He did not bother to define his role, his functions, his practical responsibilities.  If you are not creating the product itself, you should be doing other things that make you irreplaceable.

2.  When you accept CFO position, you become your CEO's partner.  That means you develop common vision, you define company's mission.  When it's finalized, you shove your disagreements aside and you do your best to facilitate the success on the chosen path.

3.  You NEVER separate from the company.  All experienced CFOs know that things can happen behind your back even if you seat in the next-door office.  If you are on the opposite coast and out of touch, consider yourself out.

4.  With startups, you should always try to utilize your company's growth potential to the fullest and then capitalize on it.  If Mr. Saverin wasn't so arrogant and argumentative, he most likely would realize that  online advertising brings real money only on a big scale.  Hence the right strategy was to look for more investors for the company growing with an astronomical speed.  Instead, he wasted his time setting up appointments with advertisers.

5.  If you want to stay with the company, you shoud NEVER do anything to damage it out of spite: closing accounts, calling the cops – that's just wrong.

6.  And you ALWAYS, not just read, but study every single legal document you sign.

Following the film's paradoxical leitmotif of an awkward kid creating the largest social network on this planet, the filmmakers suggest that Mark Zuckerberg pushed Mr. Saverin out of Facebook, because Eduardo got accepted into The Phoenix Club at Harvard.   

"You may say that I'm a dreamer," but I want to believe that Mr. Zuckerberg and people around him realized they have no use for someone who couldn't contribute into the exploding enterprise's development.  Just screaming all the time, "I'm the CFO," doesn't make you one.             

 

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.

CFO Folklore: My “Favorite” Questions


Ah, the Holidays!  They put you in the mood for remembrance.  Families get together and stories of past times and lives start pouring out.  My grandfather was a brilliant man of the WWII generation.  He died when I was a baby.  Hence, I cannot remember this myself, but I've been told quite few times about his main pet peeve: he couldn't stand what he called "idiotic" questions.   Apparently, I've inherited this familial trait.

His being the times way before the political correctness permanently  stifled us, he had the luxury to call things as he saw them.  Nowadays, I use more neutral words.  I call them nonsensical questions.  I even trained myself to ignore stand alone occurrences.  However, there are two questions that pervade my professional life.  As all pet peeves do, they cause undue frustration.

The first question is consistently asked by my subordinates and peers.  You see, unless I attend to a confidential business matter, I always keep my office door opened.  I believe it is good for employees' morale to see a CFO working as hard as I do. 

So, these people see me all day long attending to my scheduled tasks, addressing issues, solving problems.  I am consumed by work.  Yet, EVERY TIME one of them needs me and comes to my door, they ask me THE SAME question, "Are you busy right now?"  In response I want to scream, "Of course, I am busy.  Can't you see?" 

It doesn't mean that I am not available to discuss their problem if it is of higher priority, or scheduling them for a later time slot if it can wait.  But why do they have to ask that question?  At staff meetings, I teach them to approach this situation in a more sensible manner: come, don't ask the damn question, instead state your issue and let me decide if it requires immediate attention.  Some learn, but the rest just cannot help themselves.

The second question is similar but essentially different in its nature.  It's usually asked by the boss.  And, as we already discussed, there is nothing you can do, but to bite your tongue.  He has something on his mind, so he comes to your office.  Here it comes, "What are you doing right now?" 

The involuntary first reaction is, "What do you think?  I am doing nothing.  Just sitting here enjoying myself."  But he does not imply you are not working.  This is how their minds work: whatever is on his mind is the most important thing to him right now and in his opinion should be to you as well (even though you don't even know yet what it is).  This attitude renders your current preoccupation irrelevant.  Now, it is up to you to navigate the situation properly into the safe harbor.  Over the years, I've developed an arsenal of methods.  I am sure you have too, but if you need my help, please, don't hesitate to email.