Do Yourself a Favor and Buy Your Boss Some Ginkgo


BooksI am currently reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.  Excellent book.  It's categorized by booksellers as a novel, but it is essentially a collection of stories stringed together by each character's connection to the book's most realized protagonist – the music-industry executive, Bennie Salazar.  I love that kind of staff.  Yet, it's not the author's writing skills that make this book important to me, it's the vivid emotional familiarity of people and situations.  Good writers manage to reach their audience in that way: you read a dialogue or an internal monologue and your heart aches with the painful recognition.

Let's leave the introspective explorations for some other discussion, though.  In light of this post's title I want to describe one particular scene in the book that seems to be taken straight out of my own experience with many a boss.

Bennie Salazar, the President of the record label he founded some years ago, is in his car with his right-hand and catch-all Sasha.  They just listened to the new material of one of the company's signed acts.  Sasha rules the two punk sisters unlistenable.  Bennie woefully wonders, what happened in the two years since he'd signed them on.  Sasha reminds him that it has been five, not two years.  She even gives him a precise time reference: she went to the contract signing straight from Windows on the World, i.e. when the Twin Towers were still intact.

Oh my God!  Did that ring a huge bell in my head?  Situations like this occurred with uncanny regularity throughout my entire career, no matter who the boss was.  We could be in the meeting with some bankers, for example, pitching the expansion of credit lines, and I would show a chart explaining how the company has been adding $40 million to its volume annually for the past five years.  Afterwards, the boss would ask me, if those numbers were true.  Are you fucking kidding me?  You've only seen the chart like a million times.  

And then there are endlessly repetitive requests: Could you send me that report for May (just sent it two days ago, but he doesn't recall)?  What was the bottom line in that forecast you compiled (what did you do with your copy of it)?  Let's finalize that new venture prospectus, okay ("we" did day before yesterday – it's on your desk)?  And so on and so forth.       

Sometimes it seems that the stress of running their own businesses causes these people to experience some form of amnesia or the early onset of Alzheimer's.  But that's not it, because their brains appear to be functioning just fine otherwise.  The fact that this memory issue is such a frequent occurrence among the entrepreneurs of various cultural and social backgrounds, operating in different industries, seems to indicate a psychological rather than physiological phenomenon.

It's my opinion that, when it comes to the retention of any type of information, these people have a luxury of allowing their brains to be extremely selective.  It's not like they make a deliberately verbalized decision, "I choose not to remember this."  But somewhere, deep in their subconsciousness, the opportunity to rely on various subordinates as human data-banks renders the memorization of routine data redundant.  It doesn't matter to them that this makes them look somewhat slow.  The value of your time wasted on verbally repeating and emailing the same things over and over again matters even less.

It's possible that the general improvement of memory functions attributed to Ginkgo can lower this mental resistance to absorbing information.  It may force certain tidbits to stick inside automatically.  Hey, if you are desperate enough, why not try it?  Just put it on his desk when nobody is looking and see what happens.  

An Aggravated Case of “The Servant of Two Masters”, or Working for a Married Couple


250px-Lucille_Ball_and_Desi_ArnazThey say (oh, those mysterious "they" of English language conventions – they do talk a lot), that there is nothing more expensive than a free advice.  I believe so too.  It's impossible to provide good advices without looking into particularities of each case, and nobody would do that for free.  That's why within these free-for-all posts I usually go with sharing of knowledge; if it's appropriate – with suggestions; and only if a statement can be safely generalized, I call it an advice. 

With that in mind, I am confidently offering the following as a friendly advice: never say that you "wrote the book on" whatever it is you think you know through and through.  It's never true.  None of these proverbial books of expert knowledge are ever finished.  Just when you think that you can close it and send it to the printers, there is a need to insert a new blank page and relate a freshly unique, never before experienced tale. 

One of such areas of expertise for me deals with typical characteristics and behavioral quirks of the entrepreneurial executives - those to whom I simply refer as "bosses."  My career allowed me to observe many of them in different situations – as my employers, clients, business and social relations, even charity connections.  I honestly thought that, based on this experience, I can predict the behavioral patterns of most business owners, including those sharing power and governance as partners. 

Alas, my anthropological study of bosses did have a gaping hole, which I would have never discovered if my life didn't expose me to peculiar antics of a married couple as business partners.  As it turned out, all regular characteristics of executive co-existence described in my previous post  "The Servant of Two Masters" still apply, but with some very specific aggravating additions. 

No matter how hard they try to keep it professional, they can never completely eliminate marital undertones.  While they usually manage to control the urges of affection, it becomes more difficult for them to rise above the intimate knowledge of each others' weaknesses when conflicts flare up.  I am not necessarily talking about full-blown battles of Lucy-and-Desi magnitude with hammer injuries.  But take my word for it – witnessing spousal tiffs and spats cause extreme discomfort; to the point that members of the executive board wish they were Hogwarts graduates with apparition licenses.  You just want to disappear.

One of my biggest complains about dealing with multiple owners always was that, unless you get them all in the same room, you must work with an assumption that what you explained to one is unknown to another.  You will need to repeat everything to each partner individually.  Well, don't assume that the situation is different just because the execs belong to the same household. It's even more unlikely that they will share your info at home.      

And then there are those very special casual dismissals husbands and wives reserve for each other – shrugging-offs and waving-offs, which are frequently more harmful to one's ego than verbalized insults.  The shit gets especially intense when the issues of personal value to the business or equitable compensation come up. 

All you can do is to pretend that you have gone momentarily blind, deaf, and inattentive – didn't see, hear, or notice anything.  More importantly, don't take sides: eventually your allegiance will be discussed at their kitchen table, or in bed, and both of them will hate you.

    

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part V: What Is to Be Done?


30-march-bruni-6-blog480Continued from the Previous Post

There is a moment of truth (actually, two truths) at the end of "Tiny Furniture." Aura (Lena Dunham) tells her mother, "I want to be as successful as you are." And that's all it is about: not the Story, not the characters, not the message, not the art; it's about fame and recognition. If you ever watch her talk-show interviews, notice how she never looks at the audience. She doesn't care what their reaction to her is. She is intent on the celebrity host in front of her – always ready with some statement of admiration.

In response to Aura's (Lena's) admission, her mother (Lena Dunham's real mother) says, "Oh, you will be more successful than I am. Really, believe me." And that's, ladies and gentlemen, is a promise made by someone who knows a full power of her influence. Many mothers are ready to sacrifice their lives for their children, but only a few, have means to part the Red Sea of obstacles in the way of their offspring's march to success.

Some people, I am sure, will be surprised by the extent of this five-part "feature article." Well, what can I say? Nepotism is one of my themes. It happens everywhere and pretty much in the same manner, but an entertainment case is easy to breakdown into crucial components for everyone to understand.

Lena Dunham is not a talentless person. She is apparently an intelligent and well-read cinephile. Most likely, if I met her casually, I would enjoy talking to her. But she did benefited from nepotism unfairly – her output did not deserve all the noise around her. Maybe eventually she would arrive there anyway, with more mature and important material. Instead, she got ahead of other talented and brilliant young people, who are deprived of the ability to deliver their important messages to the world because they have no connections and no funds to produce their projects or hire PR firms.

And that's, boys and girls, where your already hopeless economic predicament becomes even more hopeless. The resources that could've been used for worthier projects (or jobs that could've been filled by worthier candidates) go to those who have connections. Some Internet writers predict "Lena Dunham's inevitable world domination," and they are absolutely correct – the connected people will always know how to work the world machine to their advantage.

So, 150 years after Chernyshevsky, I have to ask the same question, "What is it to be done?" Well, I am not claiming to be a revolutionary. As a matter of fact, I always say that Compromise is my middle name. You don't get to have any career at all if you don't play along at least to some degree.

So, the only advice I can render is this. If you have a real talent and desire to succeed, don't give up. Work hard and produce deliverable products; fight your fears and insecurities; build your own connections; keep people in your iPhone, even if you don't like them; knock at all doors and use whatever resources you can gather to help you reach your targets. I cannot promise that it will work, but if you don't keep trying, only lena-dunhams will always win.

The End

HBO’s “Girls” Still Play with “Tiny Furniture” – Part IV: What’s the Big Deal?


Tumblr_m2899wSXn01qzpqd1o1_1280Continued from the Previous Post

So, why "Girls" are lauded as unique, original, ballsy, even revolutionary?

Is the writing that astonishingly good? Well, for me good writing means story and character development; the more layers, the better. And as hard as I tried, I have not seen any of that in "Tiny Furniture" or in "Girls." In fact, the most fitting description of the situational comedy that came off Lena Dunham's printer so far would be sketches, sticky notes transplanted from a mac-book onto the proverbial silver screen. I've seen 90-second student movies with more story substance. Yet, what else can we expect from someone who experiences "a joy of writing." Let me give you a quote from Thomas Mann: "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." But, of course, the great Noble Prize laureate was talking about REAL WRITING.

Is it the recognizable dialogue plucked straight from today's conversations? The use of the momentary phraseology that is on everyone's lips today and completely forgotten tomorrow? But I thought Diablo Cody has already been improbably celebrated and rewarded with an Oscar for that.

Is it the fantastic directing skills? Seriously? Some of the shot choices make me dizzy. Acting? Ms. Dunham's acting is limited to changing her real-life masks (you know, cheerful buddy one minute, snooty bitch – another), but acting out a scripted emotion – so far it comes off wooden. The whole hire-who-you-know method didn't work too well for the rest of the cast either, except for maybe Jemima Kirke, who is a natural.

Is it because the creator is 26? Well, we've been blessed by young filmmakers before. The brilliant and defiant Harmony Korine was 22 when he wrote astonishingly raw "Kids," 24 when he wrote and directed "Gummo," and 26 when his heart-breaking "Julien Donkey-Boy" came out.

Is it because the creator of the show is naked a lot? Apparently Ms. Dunham thinks it's groundbreaking – she talked about it in many interviews. But let me tell you: every cultured kid from New York, regardless whether her/his parents are artists or financial execs, have been exposed to truly revolutionary artists who used their naked bodies as artistic media: Matthew Barney and Marina Abramovic come to mind first and foremost. These people already broke the ground and the young creators who've seen them have stepped over the naked barrier.

Is it sex? Oh, excuse me, the awkward sex? Common, the show is on the cable channel that brought us Real Sex series.

And who can seriously claim that it's edgy, when we have "Homeland" and "Nurse Jackie" on Showtime?

So, you see, there is nothing special or unique about it. It's just a carefully designed media campaign. But it works, it always does. It managed to create the hype, to convince viewers that Lena Dunham, through her personal experiences, represents the entire generation. 3.8 million people watched the first three episode.

In reality, Lena Dunham's personal experience and power of imagination are so limited that every time the situtation goes outside of her immediate surroundings, she needs a co-writer. But it doesn't matter. That three-episode viewing statistic was enough for HBO to renew the show for the second season even before the 4-th episode aired. As Hannah's boyfriend says in that crucial third episode, "We are only as blind as we want to be."

To be Concluded