Category: Practical Advice

The Clueless Boss of a Frustrated Downshifter


Confused-animals-are-funny15-300x260The economy and the resulting miserable state of the job market forced many financial executives to downshift, i.e. take jobs way below their levels of expertise, authority, and adequate compensation.  It's been almost a year since I wrote about the heartbreaking reality of first finding such a position and then accepting it for the sake of having food on the table and keeping the roof over your family's head.  Yet, the painful topic is still relevant.

But let's look a little further.  We have an opportunity to examine an interesting situation brought to my attention by an actual downshifter – a former CFO of a, now defunct, $500-million-dollar firm.  After a year of a futile job-hunting he accepted, at 50% of his former compensation, a Controller's position in a young and small ($30 million) company, ran by two owners – a female CEO and her partner with a COO title.  

How many times did I write about accidental bosses?  And here we go again: this business has started because the two partners got lucky. They were in the right place at the right time with extensive connections and sufficient funding at hand.  Neither of them actually needed it to survive, but the opportunity were too exciting to pass up. 

Guess what?  The CEO never led a company before.  She never even worked in a commercial enterprise.  Her partner has an MBA from an Ivy League school, but he only worked overseas.  Neither have the chops to make good executives, yet both have undeniable talents and a lot of enthusiasm.  She is a sales ace and the toughest negotiator you can find.  He is incredibly detailed-oriented.

Not only that they managed to get the company off the ground eight years ago, they kept it growing with minimal labor resources, including  a single bookkeeper.  Hiring a senior financial person was definitely not among their priorities. Until…  Some people are just born lucky.  An even bigger  opportunity presented itself.  To implement it they needed more capital.  The dogged COO wore down one of the major banks into providing them with a substantial trade finance line.  Among bank's mandates was hiring a proper Controller. 

Enter our former CFO.

Because both execs are not very clear on the leadership functions, the division of responsibilities is blurred.  The COO was in charge of the Controller's hiring.  The CEO never even saw the candidate's resume or salary history.  When COO decided that this is their guy, the CEO was called in for a minute to shake the future Controller's hand.  

Yet, once our downshifter started working there, he realized that the woman's word was the final authority on pretty much all other issues.  Now, because she lacks corporate experience, she is not capable of assessing the Controller's performance.  In her mind, any other accountant would provide the same input as this guy, who managed in the first three months to correct more procedural, systematic, recording, and administrative errors than he did in 25 years before this job. Moreover, he contributes into the company's strategic decisions.  All that for a price of a low-brow peripheral Controller.  The CEO has no clue that what she's got was a gift; that she got very lucky again and obtained an Hermes bag for the price of a Coach.

This is a big problem.  If your boss doesn't understand your value, she cannot appreciate your contribution. The fact that someone with lower qualifications and less experience would not be able to attend to the sophisticated tasks you accomplish remains unnoticed.  As a result, you are helping to better the company without a chance for a fair reward. 

What to do in this situation?  You are not the type to brag every time you do something extraordinary.  The first thought comes to mind is to re-introduce yourself.  The guy who hired you didn't share your resume with his partner, so give her one together with your salary history.  You can say, "I understand you've never had a chance to look at it before and I think it's not fair for either of us."   I know some people will say it's tasteless, but the options here are limited.

Secondly, you must propose a proper evaluation system for all staff members.  Because these people have no idea how to go about it, they will turn to you.  This is your chance!  Provide them with the format that allows employees to list their own accomplishments.  Then, make sure that reviews are actually conducted.

Finally, if you don't get satisfactory acknowledgement anyway, start looking for another job.  Maybe you will be luckier this time around.  It's like I always say, employment at will works both ways: they can separate from you at any time, but so can you.

Quote of the Week: Women of Power as Mothers


Damages-promo-shot-damages-989542_284_449"Do yourself a favor… don't have kids… Ruins you ambitions, keeps you from what you want in life…  I'm not a good mother…  Kids are like clients, they want all of you, all the time.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my son…  Love's nothing, love's easy.  They come out of you, you love them.  What you do after – that's the hard part."

                    Patty Hewes (Glenn Close)

                    Damages, Season 1, episode 1

                    Written by Todd Kessler,

                    Glenn Kessler, Daniel Zelman

The Frustrated CFO's comments:

I watched this and thought, "Wow!  This is hard core.  You cannot dismiss the truth here."  A couple of episodes later Patty ships her disobedient and rebellious son to a Reform Academy.  He is snatched away kidnapping-style.  She is all about efficiency and getting her way. 

Can women have it all?  No, they can't.  Not, if they want a glorious career and "ideal" children. There is no such thing as an "ideal" child.  They are humans, not dolls, and just as fallible as their parents.  And the career?  Please… there is always something. 

What women can have are two zebras (if they are lucky!): white stripe is followed by the black one, and so on, and so forth.  Ups and downs at work, good and bad times with kids – the hard life… and that's if no real tragedies happen.

 


Elementary Business Literacy and Creative Integrity


Contract-signingSuffering from the recent loss of my dear kitty, nowadays I frequently find myself  opting for a lighter than usual entertainment fare.  I guess, at the moment, my ability to absorb sorrow and turmoil is at its limit.  This is not a good time for Lars von Trier.  So, at midnight on Saturday I idly let my remote to surf me to a sterilized version of Bridget Jones's Diary on some random non-premium cable channel.  

I must say that, when it comes to art, I strongly oppose any form of censorship.  This Film Is Not Yet Rated disturbed the hell out of me.  And I am offended by YouTube's barring the viewing of Marina Abramovic's art for users under a certain age.  For me, this is an equivalent to preventing teenagers from entering the Met. 

Someone like me couldn't possibly imagine that a benign movie like Bridget Jones's Diary would require alterations for a late-night showing on a "digital value" channel.  Of course, there is some sparse cursing (which, by the way, sounds much milder with the British accent), but other than that…  

Well, the false morality defenders found a way to shuck the most whimsical parts out of the movie, leaving only soppy husks.  Let me give you a little taste.  In the original, when Bridget quits her publishing job, she tells Cleaver, "If staying here means working within 30 yards of you, frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's ass."  Snap!  The neutered version offers, "washing Saddam Hussein's car" instead. And that "home movie" of 4-year-old Bridget and 8-year-old Mark at the end – it completely disappears.       

The problem isn't only in the censorship as a principle.  The whole point of Helen Fielding's character, the innovativeness of her novel (which gave rise to the whole slew of books, movies, and TV shows – from Sex and the City to Girls) is in these feisty details.  So, when somebody butchers it like that – it's nothing less than a desecration of artistic prerogatives. 

Moreover, Miramax and Working Title Films, the production companies that brought the novel to the silver screen, are famous for the edgy, breakthrough movies.   The former, for example, is responsible for bringing Pulp Fiction into our lives.  Go on IMdB and see the complete rosters of these companies' impressive achievements.  

But here is how the money-making in movies works.  The production companies facilitate the creation of the product and in this case Miramax was even responsible for the US theatrical release.  But after the big-screen runs are over,  most movies get pushed through other distribution channels, usually handled by home entertainment divisions of big studios, far removed from the creators and the ideas of artistic integrity.  These companies cover DVD and Blu-ray releases as well as the television circulation.  While the alteration of DVDs has been ruled by the courts in 2006 as an "illegitimate business" and a violation of federal copyright laws, the decision doesn't apply to television versions.  Those can be mutilated.    

The question is, whether the moviemakers, who sign contracts, which give distributors rights to rape their artistic creations any way they like, do it knowingly.  Are they such whores that they would sacrifice their creative integrity and sell their children to bordellos of family-friendly television for an extra buck?   

Well, call me a hopeless idealist, but I don't believe that all of them are.  At least some of them do care.  (Hey, counting money is my profession, but I know that there are more important things in life than raking the dough.)  But what I can absolutely guarantee is that 99.99% of them don't have any understanding of business and legal matters.  They rely on their agents, managers, and attorneys to defend their interests.  Well, that's just silly. 

At the end of the day, the only people who have an incentive to protect the art are the artists themselves.  The elementary business education and rudimentary understanding of how their industry works would do them tons of good.  At the very least they should be able to ask the right questions and request the correct clauses to be included into the contracts before they ink their famous names on the signature lines. 

Lessons from the Author of “CFO Techniques”


GI_98327_CFO TechniquesOr Ten Things Your Publisher Will Forget to Tell You.

Disclaimer:  The following conclusions are based on a specific experience of one first-time author with one particular publisher.  Marina Guzik does not infer that any other writer of professional books, working on her first or n-th opus for any other, or even the very same, publisher would encounter the same disappointments. 

1.  There will be no color inside your book.  Color printing is expensive and the publisher's intent is to keep the production cost to a bare minimum.  So, all your colorful charts and graphs will be in fifty shades of gray (pun is always intended). The good news is that many people read eBooks now and those are full of color.

2.  As I found out after the signing of the contract, publishers of professional literature utilize a practice of technical reviewing.  Regardless of your credentials, depth of knowledge, experience and professional stature, the publishers will need to hire someone for 2 cent per page to serve as a technical reviewer for your book.  This person's job is to verify that you did not make any errors in definitions, calculations, etc.

3.  Amazingly, this technical reviewer will get his bio printed prominently in the Front Matter right after your own, the author's.  Moreover, the publisher's production department will not have enough common sense to at least make it shorter than the one provided by the humble author, who thought it was unnecessary to list all her accomplishments.

4. Speaking of production.  Somehow their compiler squashes words together, cuts out letters in the illustrations, and does other weird things to the final book layout.  So, after everything is done, you will still need to reread your book in its entirety, fishing out this stupid shit, before giving your final-draft approval.  

5.  As you get closer to the finish line, the publisher will randomly move the book's release date back and forth, due to some internal considerations (like printing arrangements), without letting you know.  So, don't book that wrap party for yourself (did you think for a second that the publishers will do it?) until the book is actually out. 

6.  If the publisher includes a Promotion clause in your contract, which states: "We’ll promote the Work, using Our reasonable judgment about the methods and amount of promotion," you should understand that it means they will not spend a penny on promoting your book – there will be no advertising, no sales tables at the professional conferences, and stuff like that.  There will be nothing, except their "wonderful PR team's" campaign.  

7.  There are Publishers and there are publishers.  If your book is with Wiley, for example, it will be handled by a stronger public relation team.  On the other hand, smaller, less known publishers are staffed with people who didn't make it into the world of the big-time PR influence.  They don't have connections and their rolodexes are skimpy.  They don't have a pull to call on, let's say, a reviewer at Financial Times and recommend your book.  So, their entire "promotional campaign" amounts to posting a public release on PRWeb.com and, allegedly, mass-emailing it to their undisclosed distribution list. 

8.  That single promotional tool, the public release, will be written in a wooden, cumbersome language.  Moreover, it will misrepresent some crucial aspects of your book.   And when you rewrite it yourself to make it snappier and smarter, they will completely ignore your version and post their own anyway.  They will add insult to injury by misspelling your name under your quote.    

9.  If you dare to express your frustration with all this bullshit on the pages of your blog, which is specifically designed as a venting outlet, they will lash out at you and then shut you out: they will not even list your book among their featured titles.

10. Last, but not least, the various eBook versions (Nook, Kindle, ePub, PDF, MOBI) will not be protected by any resellers.  They will be ripped off every legitimate site, including that of your publishers', and offered for free on the Internet.  Thus, your copyrights will be brutally infringed and your meager ability to earn any royalty off of your own work will be drastically diminished.  The publishers will not do anything about it.  They will not even reply to your emails on the subject.  

You have to appreciate, though, what they do tell you in advance:

1.  Even though there are 6 million companies with less than 100 employees in this country and you wrote a book that can help them to survive, you can consider yourself lucky if a few thousand copies will be sold in several years.  How many small-business owners and their downtrodden senior financial managers have you seen improving their organizations by the book?   

2. Hence, there is no fame or fortune in writing professional books; 

3. It's not the book itself, but what you do with it.

Knowing this keeps you real.  If you are not going to promote the book at your own expense, or utilize it to enhance your professional exposure, accept the fact that seeing it published simply massages your ego.  Nothing more.  

In Defense of Business Owners: Scope of Responsibility


Many of my fellow small business CFOs and Controllers mistake my singling out a BOSS as one of the main frustration triggers for an ardent enmity towards business owners.  The truth is quite opposite.  As the matter of fact, most of the time I find myself on the same side as my boss; shoulder to shoulder, fighting the daily war of commercial survival. 

Yes, it’s tough to deal with their complex of unlimited powers.  At the same time, I always say that business owners create our jobs and that alone merits respect.  I also never imply that all CFOs and Controllers are made equal.  I’ve met plenty of inadequate, limited, lazy and dangerously indifferent financial execs who damaged the companies they were supposed to guard.  In due time I’ll write about them as well.

But we interact with out bosses more than anybody else and that’s why they are prominently featured in my posts.  Being a CFO or a Controller makes it inevitable that everything a CEO does or doesn’t do becomes a concern and frequently a touchy subject. 

And one of the touchiest subjects is the Scope of Responsibility.  I cannot even count how many CFOs and Controllers have complained to me over the years about perceived imbalance between their scope of responsibility and that of their bosses.  

This disconcert derives from two sources.  First of all, it’s the much-discussed here overwhelming multitasking of the senior financial management.
Secondly, it’s the confusion about what exactly the Scope of Responsibility is.  Even though the position’s breadth of influence on the business is important, it is not just the number of tasks and duties you perform.   The key factor is the depth of the impact executive decisions make on the company’s future.  

The way I always looked at it is as follows.  If you are fortunate to work for a brilliant entrepreneur who, given sufficient time and support, is capable of generating ideas that will ensure your company’s prosperity and growth, that should be his ONLY task.  I consider it my job then to take away from him all functions I can handle myself in order to free him for what he does best.  I don’t let bankers or vendors bother him; I don’t allow him to fiddle with numbers; I don’t ask him to learn the operational system.  As the matter of fact, I prefer them not even know Excel.  All I want them to do is to create business strategies, network, establish new commercial relationships.

Let me leave you with this simile of sorts.  Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke cannot read sheet music (neither does Sir Paul McCartney, by the way).  His musically educated multi-instrumentalist  band-mate Johnny Greenwood have been deliberately resisting for 25 years now to teach Thom any musical grammar out of fear that it may diminish Yorke’s creativity.  That’s a great executive support strategy.

And let me tell you: I’ve been to multiple Radiohead concerts through the years and I wouldn’t change anything about Thom Yorke. Nothing at all.