Category: Respect

Executive Gender Equality: The Perversity of Admiration


ImagesCALEGCPEEver since this company made into a couple of 2013 national lists of the fastest growing entities, we have been accosted by a slew of various business services offering their assistance and support: insurance brokers, real estate brokers, HR management providers, marketing consultants, etc., and most notably for me – bankers. 

The troubles that befell the banking industry a few years back resulted in its consolidation.  The competition among the diminished number of the key players in the field of institutional finance has stiffened.  They are fighting for clients with proven records of steady profitability, growing equity, and assets with high market liquidity, which, of course, are not that easy to find in our "recovering" economy.  Hence, they are after our business.

All the better for us: We are approaching the expiration date of the credit agreement with our current lender and are looking for a relationship that would be a more suitable match to the fast-growing company.  So, I'm doing what I've done quite a few times throughout my career: I'm meeting with a lot of bankers – explaining the business, answering their drilling questions, providing them with extensive data, spinning the info in the most thrilling way. 

While all this is going on, I cannot help but notice the increased percentage of women in the banking mix.  Well, that shouldn't be surprising, actually: according to many statistical reviews, more than 50% of the corporate middle management in this country are presently females.  I hear from our own sales staff that purchase managers of our customers' (industrial sector, by the way) are predominately highly technical women in their 30s.

Of course, as we climb further up the ladder, the numbers diminish: men dominate upper management to the extend of 70-80%, and only 10% of the C-level executives are women.  Still, I used to be the only "skirt" in a room full of male execs and financiers.  Now, there is a female contingent on the opposite side of the table in 3 out of 4 meetings.  Hell, the founder/CEO of this company is a woman.  Hence, our board of directors is 50% female (her and I) – we are the tough side of the directorship.   

So, here I am in our conference room listening to two representatives from one of the 10 largest banks in the world, who are making a presentation of their proposal (aka a Term Sheet in business dealings).  One of them is a diminutive woman of Korean origin in her late 50s – she is the boss, the North-East Regional Director, a big gun brought on to get the deal closer to the finish line.  With her is one of her many subordinates – a young and ambitious man in his early 30s.  If I end up choosing this bank, I will get him as my Relationship Manager (RM).

The menagerie is balanced by a man at my side – COO/owner/our CEO's whity husband.  He has his full charm on: he cannot help it – he has a soft spot for Pacific-Asian women.  Now he admiringly "complements" the banker-lady for being deceptively tough, i.e. looking pretty and soft, while being steely behind her eyes.  I tense up: here goes seclusive male chauvinism, and you never know how a woman will react to it. 

She handles it beautifully, though:  "Well, you know how it is – brain and beauty combined are lethal."  She turns to me: "Right?"  Well, I wouldn't know – never got a chance to rely on no beauty, just my brain.  But I don't say that.  I just smile. 

I wish my COO would do the same, but he somehow takes it as an invitation for further "admiring."  "Yes, you are absolutely right.  I couldn't put it better myself," and he embarks on telling the bankers how his wife, our CEO, is especially successful in sales because she is a woman who can speak "sweetly on the phone."  He actually uses those words.  "It used to take me," he says, "four phone calls before Dow Chemical would call me back.  But she  sweetly leaves a voice mail and they return her call within 5 minutes!"

He is absolutely overjoyed with pride.  The Korean lady's mouth gets very thin and she looks at me again -we both know: this is how it is.  The men will always find the way to treat us as if we were inferior, whether through insults or with "compliments."

I am disgusted, but I'm willing to dismiss this on the principle "forgive them, for they know not what they do."  And right then he turns his head to me, looks straight into my eyes, and says, "You cannot repeat it outside of this room.  L. always gets very upset when I say this, even though I mean it as a good thing."

Seriously, dude?  You've been warned about it before?  By your wife, who is also your boss?  And what?  You cannot help yourself?  Of course, you cannot, because it's written into your genetic code, like a primal instinct.  And you are too insecure to consciously fight it off!  If it was me…  But she is not me, in many ways she is very different.  And that's why he'd financed this business for her.     

Tech-Savvy CFO vs. Technologically Inept Owners: A Boardroom Chronicle


OstrichPremise:  

Based on true facts, this present-day farce unfolded right after the company at the center of the story signed a new office lease.  The entity's CEO, an infamous procrastinator and a successful decision-dodger, has delayed the execution of the document to the point when only 60 days remained before the moving-in day.

Up until now, the fairly young business always occupied a full-service furnished office suite, where everything from pen holders to receptionists is supplied by the landlord, including all telecommunications and IT administration.  However, by this point the successful business outgrew the little rooms and the shared common space of the suites – it was time for the company to obtain its own residence.

As all logical people know, lease signing is only the beginning of a relocation process.  A lot of work needs to be done before a company can feel at home and be fully operational in its new place of business.  And nowadays, the IT infrastructure becomes a prerequisite to everything else.

This flat-structured small business has a misfortune of having a board of directors that consists of three technologically clueless owners (the type who cannot connect a printer to a PC) and a CFO.  The latter has been combining her financial and accounting responsibilities with those of a CTO throughout her entire career.  Needless to say, she understands what needs to be done, knows how to go about it (nobody else does in this company), and is more than qualified to make all necessary decisions.  Yet, the Board has a rule: anything that involves spending money must be approved by all four members.

So, here is the chronology of making a single decision under the described circumstances:

Motion 1 – 60 days till D-Day.  Upon receiving the fully executed lease from the lawyers, the CFO writes an eMemo to the owners requesting a Board meeting in order to develop an action plan that would ensure successful and painless relocation.  The plan should assign responsible parties and establish deadlines for each task.

The owners don't acknowledge that the issue was raised and two weeks pass in a complete silence regarding this matter.

(Side Note: All four executives are actually heavily involved in their day-to-day responsibilities.  They communicate extensively every day discussing various commercial concerns, while avoiding difficult extraordinary topics.)

Motion 2 – 46 days till D-Day.  Recognizing that the owners have fallen into their typical pattern of pretending that the problem doesn't exist (this happens every time an issue lies outside of their comfort zone), the CFO makes another attempt to mobilize the Board to set up an action plan.  This time she speaks to each of them in person.  They all nod in agreement - "Tomorrow," they say.  The CFO squeezes a two-hour time slot into her crazy schedule.

Three days pass without anything happening. 

Motion 3 – 43 days till D-Day.  The CFO feels the time pressure – at the very least she must start working on IT components, regardless of the owners' ostrich behavior.  The business will be simply paralyzed without an adequate infrastructure.  She really has no room in her schedule for all research, comparison, and optimization of  various ISPs, telecoms, and IT administrators…  But who else is going to do it?  So, instead of pestering the owners again about the "action plan," she writes a very specific inquiry:  "Please confirm your agreement with my taking charge of the groundwork for obtaining the Internet service, telephony, and IT administration support."  Without waiting for replies, the CFO starts working on the subject of the highest priority, i.e. the Internet connection, by reviewing nine ISPs whose services are available in the new building.    

Motion 4 – 41 days till D-Day.  At different hours, the CFO receives messages from the owners – all three are worded very similarly: "Thank you for asking and forward thinking.  Please go ahead with the projects." She can almost hear their sighs of relief - somebody else has made the decisions for them!!!  The CFO closes her eyes for a second and thinks, "The same shit every time.  I wish at least once I would let things run their course - just to see what would happen if I didn't worry about all of this, if I didn't jump in."

By carving little chunks of time in her schedule to deal with this shit, the CFO manages to come to her final ISP conclusion in 5 business days: to accommodate all of the  company's needs (including VoIP) she needs a reliable fiber-optics broadband.  She narrows down her choices to two ISPs – the award-winning Cogent with dedicated connectivity and Verizon's newest product FiOS Quantum ran through communal cables shared with all other users in the vicinity. 

Motion 5 – 36 days till D-Day.  She immediately gets quotes from both: Cogent values itself highly – $700/month with a three-year contract, plus $1,000 installation fees; Verizon's rate is only $129/month with a two-year contract.  Even with such a disparity in pricing, it's a simple choice as far as the CFO is concerned – she knows that Cogent will provide uber-fast, uninterrupted connection, and if something happens, she can be on the phone with an engineer within 30 seconds.  Verizon, on the other hand…  well, we all dealt with Verizon at one point or another.  Yet, for the owners all this technical staff is as difficult as Icelandic; the huge price difference, however, that's easy.   So, the CFO goes back to Cogent's salesperson and dangles FiOS Quantum at $129/month in front of his nose (virtually, of course).  He is taken aback – he had no clue that Verizon had started offering this brand new service in that building.  He cannot stop himself from uttering, "That's a compelling alternative."  The CFO doesn't dissuade him from this train of thought; she waits.  And he says that he would go to his director and try to get her a better deal.

Motion 6 – Same Day. Cogent wants the business – the salesperson reverts in two hours, dropping the price to $500/month with a three-year contract or $400/month with a four-year contract.  Both rates are exclusive of taxes and charges.  With this reduction in hand, the CFO immediately prepares a presentation for the Board, breaking down her selection process step-by-step and making a strong case for Cogent through detailed comparison and scoring of all providers.  She sends it out to the three owners and requests a board meeting to make the final decision.

Four days of silence passes.  The CFO understands: it's too fucking much for them, they don't want to deal with this, they are hiding.

Motion 7 – 32 days till D-Day. The CFO has no choice but to write to the owners again: "Let me remind you that installing the Internet connection must precede all other IT and telecommunication actions, including setting up the phone system, the computer network, etc. – basically everything that we need for the business's operations.  And it will not happen overnight!"  This gets CEO's attention.  She comes over to the CFO's office and says, "Let's decide by tomorrow the latest."

Two days passes.

Motion 8 – 30 days till D-Day.  One of the owners (already in possession of the previously distributed detailed presentation) sends an inquiry, "Can you make a comparison for me between Cogent and Verizon?" as if he just woke up to the issue. 

Motion 9 – Same Day.  The CFO prepares a simplified comparison chart intended for a 4-year-old audience.  Meanwhile, she tells Cogent that the decision is not settled yet and that she will appreciate if the provider gives up something else – like do away with the $1,000 installation fees and make rates flat, all-inclusive (taxes, charges, etc.)  The salesperson conferences in his Director and they yield.  The CFO simply cannot lose this deal: she goes around and collects the owners' consents in person. 

Motion 10 – 29 days till D-Day.  The CFO signs the contract with Cogent.

Curtains 

And this is just Act I.  Ahead, there are still decisions on a VoIP system, an IT Administration service, furniture, equipment… 

CFO Folklore: The Illusion of Irreplaceability


Orange-is-the-new-blackThis is what always happens with severely responsible and talented people who take pride in the quality of their work and apply themselves hard, regardless of the rewards and recognition, material or otherwise: They do an extraordinary job in every function they are assigned, they show initiative and undertake tasks beyond their scope of responsibility, they set their own lofty goals and high performance standards, they pull off feats of creativity and miracles of ingenuity.  Truly they accomplish things that no one else would in their place. 

More frequently than not they don't run around screaming about their achievements – after all, they simply cannot operate any other way and they don't care that nobody asked them to be like that.  They themselves know that they are the best.  Plus, people around them acknowledge such efforts in one way or another – subordinates show respect, peers get testy, etc.  And the bosses?  They either don't notice anything, because their heads are usually up their asses, or they are too limited to appreciate the ace-level pilotage they are witnessing. 

As someone afflicted by this condition, I can assert that there is nothing healthy about it.  Privately wallowing in the knowledge that you are "simply the best" and that your work ethic is a cut above everyone else's, while not being adequately rewarded for your efforts, is nothing more than an addiction to one's own ego. It's vanity of the worst kind, because it violates the principles of objectivism and merit-based recognition.  And, like any addiction, it is accompanied by a couple of supplemental attributes. 

One of them is the inevitable development of passive-aggressive behavior: no matter how many times a person is going to say that she does it for the sake of her own self-satisfaction, something deep inside wants to be celebrated for the extraordinary abilities, efforts, and results.  This secret desire is in a constant fight with an extreme dislike of boasting.  Thus, the feelings and impulses get mostly suppressed and come out in the form of classic indirect hostility and resentment.

Another attribute is the illusion of irreplaceability.  The tormented crazies convince themselves that without them the company will not be able to survive; that everything will fall apart and go to hell.  They believe that there is no way somebody else could be found to fill their shoes.  And why not?  Nowadays, people like that are quite rare.  It's most likely that, if an employee in question leaves on her own accord or is let go for some reason (because she becomes unaffordable or her attitude becomes unbearable), the employer will never ever have someone that good in the same position.  But does it really mean that losing these truly invaluable workers is an incurable disaster?  Are they really irreplaceable? Let me answer this question by doing what I frequently do – relating the readers to an example from popular culture. 

In case you have not had a chance to check out the Netflix/Lionsgate's co-production Orange Is the New Black, I urge you to do so – trust me, you will not regret it.  The show's creator, Jenji Kohan (widely known for her Showtime offspring, Weeds), is a member of a still rare breed of entertainment developers, who is able to focus on female characters without reducing the finished product to gender-specific genres.  Orange is the New Black takes place in a women's federal prison, and its ratio of male to female characters is about 1:10.  Yet, 47% of IMDb users who rated Orange is the New Black (8.5 stars overall) were males.

One of the primary characters in the first season of the show is an inmate of Russian origin, Galina "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew).  This formidable woman runs… no, she rules the prison's kitchen and has an influence on pretty much the entire social canvas of the place.  By the show's start she has apparently been there for years and assumed a role of a Godmother for a tight circle of her "daughters."  She can be a real bitch, and a newbie should think twice before contradicting her.  But the truth is she is doing a remarkable job, keeping her fellow convicts and the staff fed and even rewarded with treats under the conditions of ever-shrinking budget, broken fridge, and oppressive hostility from some nasty guards.  As early as the 5th episode, it is impossible for the audience to imagine the kitchen without Red.  Obviously, she herself thinks she is irreplaceable.

Guess what?  Towards the end of the season, the combination of some people's foolishness and others' unsavory scheming gets her kicked off the throne and out of the kitchen.  So, what happens?  Do the lights go out in the mess hall forever?  Do the prisoners get shipped to another facility to be fed?  Nah ah!  Another head cook is found right there in the general population and installed in front of the range; she brings in her own crew; the cooking continues somehow.  True, there are no more yogurt favors, the menu is severely skewed towards Latin-American cuisine, and even the oatmeal comes out spicy.  But the plates are not empty, people are not starving.  Life goes on, while Red is driving herself insane with displacement anger.        

So, the answer to the above question is: No, you are not irreplaceable.  It may take a whole team of less adequate and more expensive people to pick up your tasks.  And collectively they will accomplish less and it will not be brilliant, but it will be just good enough for the business to continue, at least in the short run.  Let me assure you that nothing will fall apart, because doing things half-assed and with little care has become a widespread norm.  Everyone accepts poor quality at a higher cost nowadays, and so will your bosses.  And you, with your talents, skills and unsolicited attempts to jump over the high-standard bars, are just an ego freak.      

The Knee-Jerk Reaction to KPI’s Showing a Loss


Ren-and-stimpyI fucking LOVE how every time you give small business owners, who are usually personally responsible for commercial side of the business, bad news about the company's performance (i.e. report losses), the first thing they do is start looking for faults in accounting instead of strategically correcting their own buying/selling practices.

"Are you sure no extra/double costs were somehow recorded by accident?"

What the fuck is that even supposed to mean?  And yes, I am fucking sure!  I've only been doing this shit for 25 years!!  You, on the other hand, found out that accounting exists only 2 years ago, and I was the one who told you!!!

The same shit – company, after company, after company…  It's like a fucking natural instinct – the goddamn knee jerk.   

The Distortion of Bill of Rights in Small Business Environment


Regardless of your position – CFO, Controller, operational staff, CSR, janitor -when you accept “employment at will” arrangement in a privately-held company, you inadvertently give up the majority of your rights granted to you by the US Constitution.  Since the Bill of Rights is automatically presumed, it is not necessary to include freedom clauses into Employee Handbooks, Rules of Conduct and other such documents.  Look through them again whenever you have a chance:  they primarily describe what the company expects of you, not the other way around.

Closely-held companies are not democracies.  They are owners’ kingdoms, absolute monarchies.  And most of the time there is nothing you can do about it.  Let us look at some of the Amendments.

1.  Free Exercise of Beliefs.  Having been always based in NYC precluded me from ever witnessing open discrimination of employees for their religious believes.  At the same time on many occasions I’ve observed explicitly expressed irritation about people’s taking their PTO to celebrate religious holidays.  Quite a few times I saw the candidates being rejected based on the unspoken possibility  of their observance.

2.  We do not have Freedom of Speech as employees.  We try to keep our political, social and cultural opinions to ourselves if we know they contradict those of our bosses. Frequently we are not even given an opportunity to retort abusive, accusatory, or unfair verbiage directed at us or at our subordinates.

3.  We cannot exercise Right to Assembly.  I myself as a supervisor is pretty strict about people congregating for reasons not related to their jobs during work hours.  At the same time I am not as obsessive about it as some business-owners who throw tantrums every time they see people talking.

4.  The Protection from Unreasonable Search is violated time and again in the workplace.  The business files, emails, etc. are rightfully belong to the company you work for, and if you are openly asked to follow established policies of information sharing, files locations and full disclosure, you should willingly comply.  But many employers use System Administrators to secretly look through their employees’ emails, files, etc.  They open doors with spare keys and look into draws containing personal affects.  They use special programs to record IM communications, etc, etc.

5.  Not a single right guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment (due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination) is considered when you are judged, persecuted and punished by your boss.  Fairness is laughed at in business environment.  A lot of CEO’s, with whom I dealt over the years either as an employee or through business and social networking, considered my personal determination to be as fair as possible and judge people on their merits in all situations as one of my “strange” qualities.  

One right we, as employees, can enjoy under “employment at will” arrangement is the very special freedom it guarantees you: just as your employer can fire you without warning, you can quit on a moment’s notice.   That, of course, if you can afford to do so.