Warning: “Horrible Bosses”!


ANISTON-HORRIBLE-BOSSES A quick warning to my readers, dealing with difficult bosses on daily basis as a part of their job descriptions:  You will not be able to relate to the protagonists of "Horrible Bosses."

It  is not a comedic representation of the workplace environment, which I always welcome when it's done well.  It's a physical farce of the "Hangover" kind.  It has nothing to do with the reality of professional life.  As the matter of fact, it did not need to be about work at all.  The preposterous premise that three men, who know each other (!), abhor their bosses to the point that they (all three of them at the same time!) decide to commit murders, cancels any possibility of intellectual thinking behind the story (what story?!).  The people depicted in the movie – both bosses and employees could have been anybody.  This could be about husbands vs. wives (or other way around), students vs. teachers, athletes vs. coaches – you get it, right?  And everyone acts like a clown.  I wouldn't mind the shenanigans if the heroes had any recognizable characterizations.  Do you know anybody who would agree to drink a full glass of Scotch in his boss's office at 8:15 AM?

It's just so sad that it always happens like that in Hollywood.  First someone has a commercial success with a certain concept – vampires, zombies, ordinary people getting themselves into rediculously farcical situations, etc.  Then bunch of unoriginal "filmmakers" follow suit – concept remains the same, but characters and circumstances change slightly.  AND NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE STORY!  It's all tricks and gimmicks.

How unfortunate that fantastic Kevin Spacey, whom I deeply respect and who gave me two of my top twenty theatrical experiences (in "The Iceman Cometh" and "A Moon for Misbegotten") has agreed to make this.  I know he needs money for all the great artistic endeavors he champions, like TriggerStreet and The Old Vic, but still.  You want to see him play a really scary boss, get Swimming with Sharks (1994) from Netflix.

Just watch the two videos below for comparison.

 



        

CFO Folklore: Dealing with F@&ing Lawyers


Blog image As CFOs and controllers, we are constantly exposed to a variety of legal documents: security and financing agreements, leases, employment contracts, NDAs, new ventures formation, demand letters, term sheets, etc., etc.  And even though most of the financial professionals I know, including myself, are well-versed in these matters and can write a decent legal document themselves (hey, you cannot even get an MBA without taking Contractual Law), or at the very least can fully understand them, we are forced to deal with attorneys: a CEO feels more comfortable if he gets a bill. 

Hello!  This is business law.  We are not talking about defending anybody in court on murder or ponzi scheme charges, or suing somebody for fraud!  So, here is what usually happens.

Scenario 1:  I compose a document or construct an agreement outline addressing all necessary points, and send it to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with either, "This looks good," or he takes my points and, without changing anything, puts it into the format that he didn't even create himself – nowadays they all download templates from Blumberg's Law Products, which anyone can do.  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Scenario 2: We receive a contract (let's say a Credit Line Agreement), I read it, make a long list of all the points that I believe need to be further negotiated with the bank, and send the contract with my list to the corporate attorney.  He comes back with, "I agree.  Let me know when it's ready for my final approval."  A couple of weeks later I get a $2,000 bill.

Ahhhhhh! 

Of course, there are special occasions when the intricacy of legalese needs to be explored and attorneys must be involved.  But, why the hell it's so intricate, anyway?  Doesn't it seem like a conspiracy to justify $450+/hour rates?  In organizational management we are always taught that some employees deliberately confuse their records to make themselves indispensable: nobody else can figure out what's going on.  Sounds familiar?

And the arrogance!  I can only think of one other profession that can compete with lawyers on the level of insolence – doctors.  They have no respect for anyone expect themselves.  Well, I am willing to forgive a cardiologist who has a courage to hold a human heart in his hands, or a neurosurgeon who may need to drill into my brain one day. 

But these legal MoFos?  The complex of knowledge I possess is far greater than that of any specialized attorney I know.  I ask, for example, if there are grounds for fiduciary violation in a case, and he ($550/hour) responds, "I have to look it up."  Yet, they dare to be condescending nevertheless!  Just last week a lawyer sent me a retainer agreement and wrote in the cover note, "It's a bit formal, but I hope you will understand it."  Are you fucking kidding me?!  I have four academic degrees and 20 years of executive experience (and he knows), and my own retainer agreement for consulting services, which I wrote myself, has more substance than your copied bullshit.

The worst thing about them, though, is that fucking professional camaraderie.  Try to talk to an attorney about a harm caused to you by another lawyer.  You think you are going to see fairness so wonderfully shown on "The Good Wife", or any other of those TV court dramas?  Nope!  They stop listening – THEY DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT IT!  That's why ABA had to create grievance committees and appoint people who are obligated to review the complains, because otherwise there wouldn't be anybody you could tell about lawyers' violations.  Why do you think legal profession is not regulated by any government agency?  Because the legislature consists mostly of legal professionals.  They will never do anything against one another.

In "Philadelphia", just before dying, Tom Hanks (a gay attorney) tells Denzel Washington (another attorney who just won a discrimination case for him) an old joke: "What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean?  A good start."  They both like the joke.  Denzel's character even repeats it to someone else right away.  A very hopeful movie in many respects: the case is won, a formerly homophobic Mr. Washington's character finds in himself to defend a gay guy, AIDS-ridden Mr. Hank's character dies knowing he won, and his partner (played by Antonio Banderas) is somehow is not infected.  And the lawyers like the joke!!!  Very hopeful, very far from reality.            

Quote of the Day


"I didn't want to be rich, I just wanted enough to get the couch reupholstered."

                                                                            Kate (Mrs. Zero) Mostel

The Frustrated CFO Attends a Panel on Risk, Probability, and Chance


IMG Annual World Science Festival took place this week in New York City.  It is a wonderful fair with over 40 events and I try to catch at least two or three.  One of the discussions, I felt, was important for me to attend this time was The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance. 

Not only that I find practical application of mathematical, statistical and cognitive theories to business risks, economic uncertainty and commercial intuition to be imperative for strategically inclined CFOs and Controllers, but also my upcoming book on functionality of hands-on financial executives will have a chapter on Risks.  Besides, I've enjoyed books penned by two of the panelists – Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: how randomness rules our lives and Gerd Gigerenzer's Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (both are featured on by book list to the right).  And even though the distinguished panel, which also included mathematician Amir Aczel and MIT's professor of Computational Cognitive Science Josh Tenenbaum, ran out of time before they got anywhere near concepts of risks, they have touched on quite a few other fascinating concepts  that have direct application to our professional lives.

Here are few highlights.

I.  Self-confidence vs. probability and empirical evidence.  Our ambitions and drive to succeed mandates nurturing of confidence.  Business schools and work experiences show us that only assertive people who stick to their positions, even if they are based on guesses, achieve their goals.  Here comes, the Monty Hall Paradox – a logical statistical problem with an odd, but empirically demonstrable result. 

It is a probability puzzle based on the TV program Let's Make a Deal originally hosted by Monty Hall.  In the first round, the contestants on the show had to chose one out of three closed doors – two concealing goats and one hiding a car.  Then, the host would open one of the remaining doors revealing goats.  Now, that this door is eliminated, the following question is posted: do you want to switch or retain your original choice.  The confident, "believe-in-yourself" people like us most likely will stick to their guns.  Yet, years of replicating the experiment showed that changing your original choice doubles the probability of winning the car: from 1 in 3 to 2 in 3.  This maybe a good indication that there is nothing wrong with rethinking your position – it may actually be beneficial.

II.  Influence of visual presentation on interpretations of data.  Throughout our careers we have been using graphs, charts, dashboards, etc. in presentations of performance results and other information, because experience shows that it impresses the data recipients better than numbers in tables or narratives.  The reason it works so well is because our instinctive cognitive abilities are much better than conscious digestion of facts.  We are capable of processing visual data flowing at us without even thinking about it. 

Like in the chart below, which shows the relationship between marketing expenses (Y-axis, in thousands of dollars) and sales (volume represented by the bubbles, in millions of dollars).  Just by glancing at the chart anyone can see that the larger bubbles (sales) correspond with higher marketing expenses.  Biologically, it is not that much different from our ability to discern danger when we walk through the jungle.  So, when we design our graphic presentations, we should keep that in mind and try to create images that don't just look pretty, but actually transmit the most valuable messages.

Bubble chart

III.  People's blind belief in numbers.  This is something that all financial professionals constantly use while communicating with lenders, investors, bosses, commercial partners, etc., without even thinking twice about underlying scientific theories.  Everybody knows, when you pitch a proposal, renew a credit line, or report on the business results, the more numbers you throw at "them," the better.  Presence of the numbers in a message on its own creates the illusion of certainty, regardless of their substance. 

Advertisers know that very well too.  When we hear in a commercial that 9 out of 10 users of this new cosmetic product saw an improvement in their appearance (or whatever), we automatically accept this as a proof of great achievement.  People forget that because these values are assigned by humans, they cannot be precise.   First of all, what is the definition of "improvement?"  And what if I tell you that the product was used on a group of 30 healthy, good-looking people, ages 20 to 25.  Will you still think that it will work on you as well?

“Hegelian Dialectic” and Human Relations


200px-Johann_Gottlieb_Fichte This famous triad, incorrectly attributed to Hegel and even called by his name, was actually developed earlier, in the late eighteenth century, by the Neo-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It's an absolutely brilliant concept:

The thesis is an intellectual proposition.  The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition.  The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths and forming a new proposition.

This statement reflects the reality of human consciousness with a remarkable precision and can be easily illustrated with human relations.  We come to every moment of our life with some expectations of what reality around us is (thesis). When people, for one or another reason, act in unexpected way, a gap between our expectations and reality opens (antithesis).  Our impulse is to react to this gap in such a way that it closes:  we catch up to the new reality and act accordingly (synthesis).  Now, the new understanding of reality is formed (new thesis) – and so on, and so forth.

Understanding this dialectic helps to deal with unexpected changes of our environment as well as seemingly unpredictable and unexplained human actions.  Giving into an automatic reactions without understanding their reasons frequently results in regrettable consequences.  Reconciling the thesis and antithesis must be a thoughtful process. 

Fichte's primary philosophical interest was self-consciousness as a social phenomenon.  He argued that people can come to know that they exist only through reaction of others to them.  This is another fascinating subject of human relations.  If we move from philosophical sense of self-consciousness to the narrower psychological meaning of the word, we can say that people don't become self-conscious in isolation – it's the presence of others that makes us unduly aware of our appearance, behavior, speech and actions. 

Careers of many financial executives have suffered from acute social ineptitude rooted deeply in painful self-awareness.  The pervasive image of accountants as dull and uninspiring professionals, does not help the situation either.  Recognizing that it is not the people around you, but your own fear of them that cripples your advancement, may help you.  Alternatively, you can try what all acting teachers tell their theater students with performance anxiety – just pretend that everyone in the audience (or people around you) is a human-size chicken.

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