Tag: Controllers

Job Search: Unemployment & Depression


At the end of February, The Ladders featured Debra Donston-Miller's article Depression is Making Unemployment Longer, which reiterated the well-known fact that unemployment walks hand in hand with depression and anxiety, and that, in turn, diminishes your ability to get employed. 

It's a vicious circle, you know.   A person looses his job – that's on its own is a hard blow to his ego.  Nevertheless, he gets right on all job boards – Monster, CareerBuilder, etc.  – posts his resume and applies to every single opening that matches his qualifications.  As time goes by, he keeps lowering his expectations – now applications go out to jobs with smaller titles and lower salaries.  Still, the response is not too hot.  

Nowadays, the statistical probability of converting applications into a recruiter's or hiring manager's interest is around 2% for high-level financial professionals – CFOs, Controllers, Financial Directors, etc.  The national numbers of people not being able to find employment in one, sometimes two, and more years are scary. 

While you are waiting for the sparks in the dark, your spirits get lower and lower.  You become listless, loose interest in everything – depression really kicks in.  The anxiety of not being able to support yourself when the savings and unemployment compensation run out gets overwhelming.  You swing between over-hype of appraising your possession for possible liquidation and inability to move a muscle.

Still, you force yourself to apply every day, you do your networking, ask people around.  Finally, quantity turns into quality: you've sent out 100 resumes and someone finally called you.   You've had a positive response after the phone interview and now you are going for a face-to-face appointment.  Anxiety floods you – the workspace environment, which you have not experienced for several months, seems so alien to you. 

You are prepared, though – you are a seasoned executive with superior qualifications, a likable person, well-spoken, know how to handle yourself.  The interview seems to go well, but there are so many candidates, and you might have said something wrong just because the depression and anxiety ate some of your confidence away.  Every day you wait for a call back, but nobody ever does; nobody even sends an email to let you know that you did not qualify – people don't do those sort of polite things anymore.

Now, you are loosing hope altogether: it is more and more difficult to make yourself even to look at the job listings.  It seems like staring at the television screen all day without seeing what's on is a better option…

You know what?  I am not going to tell you that it will get better.  I am not a fortune teller.  I don't know it, but neither do you.  Yes, it's fucking tough out there!  As I always say,  we live in a new economic reality.  The truth is that you may need to rethink your entire life.  But you cannot let the depression eating away your time.  FIGHT IT!  Do you know what happens with every single day you waste on giving in to nothingness? It disappears and you will never get it back. 

The Ladders' article quoted cognitive behavioral psychologist Deb Brown, who suggests creating a routine for yourself as one of the helpful tools.  My readers know how big I am on time-management and routines.  Whether you are fighting the unemployment depression or job frustration, scheduling your time and filling your day with meaningful tasks always helps.   And when you are unemployed, you have an opportunity to do things that you never had time for before: study Spanish with that Rosetta Stone pack you've got for your birthday two years ago; transfer all those home videos onto DVDs, get yourself fit.  

You don't really need more than two-three hours a day to look for new openings and apply.  Spend the rest of your free time (FREE TIME – when do we have it otherwise?) catching up on your life.  And don't be a prisoner of your schedule either – let go of it for a day, when you feel frustrated.

And listen, even if things with employment never get better and some drastic decisions will need to be made, at least you will not need to look back at the long stretch of a complete misery right before that.       

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.


 
  

 

 

 

   

CFO Folklore: Defensiveness and Excuses


Coyote-Canis-Latrans-Puppy-28811856-0 It's funny how we, humans, manage to degenerate powerful natural instincts into regressive psychological traits. Look at that little coyote pup.  Something has attracted his attention.  He is in full alert, assessing the situation, deciding if its dangerous; ready to fight or flight – a perfect display of a healthy defense mechanism crucial for survival.  

People are granted the same insitincts.  Of course, those of us living in "civilized" conditions are rarely presented with real danger.  On the other hand, mentally we are constantly put to test.  The instincts are pushed into psyche, and there, they deteriorate into Freudian ego defense mechanisms, which can get neurotic and pathological.

CFOs and Controllers deal with defensiveness and rationalization (aka making excuses) all the time.  People become defensive at the slightest hint of criticsm, which frequently exists only in their imagination.  They don't understand that instead of helping them to survive, this degenerated mechanism makes them more vulnerable by exposing their insecuruty, fearfulness and anxiety.

A few years back I had an employee who was the best expert of trade finance documentation I've ever met.  At the same time, he was an incredibly difficult person.  Eventually I found out that this guy had a misfortune of being raised by an extremely critical adoptive father.  As unlikely as it sounds, in the early 80s, just 20 years old, he got hitched to a woman who hated everything about him.   As the result, he developed a severe case of defensiveness. 

Just invinting him to my office to discuss a business issue was enough to put him into a state.  Walking into my door, he already looked like an angry animal forced into a corner and ready to bite.  It would usually take me at least ten minutes of casual small talk to bring him back into normality, before I could address the matter at hand.

Of course, on few occasions I needed to point out a mistake or an inaccuracy.  What a nightmare! He wouldn't let you finish the first sentence: "I am swamped!  You gave me too much work!  It is impossible to deal with that bank!  I will not let you blame me for this!  " he would shriek, even though it was never about the blame.  His desire to shield himself from the imaginary threat was so strong – like a child, he would cover his eyes with his hand, avoiding your eyes.  He looked helpless, pitiful, and guilty.  Most importantly, the problems remained unresolved.  It was really painful.

Here is my advice: don't get defensive when you are criticised, justly or unjustly.  Listen.  Think.  Evaluate.  Maybe you will hear some constructive insights.  Maybe you could have done something differently and achieve better results.  Recognizing that will give you an opportunity to (1) disarm your opponent by owning up to your mistake and (2) find ways to avoid this situation in the future.  At the very least, you will save yourself from an emotional sparring match that cannot resolve anything.  Trust me.  I've been there – on both sides.

Bean Counters vs Breadwinners


I hope my fellow CFOs and Controllers don't mind my calling us "bean counters."  After all, I am one of them and, hence, it's Ok.  It's like with all derogatory terminology – if you belong to the group, you are allowed to use it.  And if that name-calling has upset you, beware – this is just a beginning.

The truth is, many of my peers are just that – the bean counters limited to their narrowly defined tasks, thus contributing to the frequently observed conflict between finance and accounting on one side and the revenue generators on the other.  Both sides have to tolerate each other, but it is a precarious armistice. 

CFOs and Controllers think that sales and operational people don't work too hard, while getting high performance-based compensation.  They are loud and overconfident, while not necessarily well educated and intellectual.  They are never in the office, taking long lunches with customers and prospects.  When they are in the office, they are on the phone most of the time.  They take paid trips to foreign lands and get car allowances for their domestic travels.  They jeopardize the company's well-being with their grandiose "strategic" deals that end up losing money.  Most importantly, they wouldn't be able to do anything without our funding their transactions, controlling their profits, calculating their commissions and reporting their results.

On the other hand,  VP of Sales and COOs think that they are the moving gears of the company.  They despise the bean counters for stifling their "important" deals with "useless" profitability criteria, for knowing how much money they make and for suspecting that there is nothing behind the confident appearance – just the rolodex and lots of air.  Most importantly, they feel that their unique ability to bring business is not respected enough.  Money is not everything, you know.      

The fact is, however, that a sales (or procurement, or operations, or trading,) ace does possess a truly unique ability to generate revenue with skills that frequently have nothing to do with education, professionalism, or intellectual expertise.  There is a reason you don't need a college degree to obtain trading, brokerage, insurance, or real estate licenses.  You definitely don't need an MBA to become a VP of Sales.  These jobs require intuitive abilities and social skills of a very special sort.  Trust me, not too many people are born with those talents.   The real great ones are quite rare. 

It must be said that I am one of the few CFOs who always support the people responsible for bringing business to the company, even if they don't like me.   Many of my colleagues forget that all our functions are secondary and subservient.  Everything that we do either facilitates the breadwinners' success (and failure) or reports it.  That's all. 

Without them I wouldn't have my job.   They are the ones responsible for generating enough dough to cover my salary, benefits and bonuses.  And if I could do what they can, I would have. 


Writing Angry Letters Is Therapeutic, Sending Them Out Is Foolish


I remember reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People when I was about sixteen years old.  Early in the book, he talks about dangers of criticism and gives examples of written but unsent letters: by Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain.  It made a great impression on me.  I cannot avoid being critical entirely – the tongue is difficult to control.  However, I made a rule of letting stinging letters to stew for 2 days.  Then I re-read them.  If I still think it necessary, I send the letter.  90% of the time it doesn't get sent.

This is a recurring topic for management training gurus, self-help writers and bloggers.  They say,"Write an angry letter, if it makes you feel better, just don't send it." Unfortunately, no matter how many times people hear that advice, they write and send flaring mail, causing commercial and social damage.  If the problem was not persistent, there wouldn't be any demand for products I have described in the Cautionary Tale About Artificial Intelligence Progress.

As CFOs and Controllers, we deal with a lot of irking and ireful people.  With my firm believe in therapeutic qualities of writing, I always advise to let the paper or the monitor to bear your negative emotions.  As supervisors we also have to manage the anger of our subordinates.  How do we prevent hostile writing from going out?

In the times of hand-written letters, it took longer to complete them.  Plus, you had to stuff, seal, stamp and post the envelope.  By the time you were done, you might have changed your mind about the whole thing.   Dictating a letter worked even better.  Saying the angry words out loud had a potential of making you sound ridiculous even to yourself,  leave alone those girls in the typing pools.

Emails made us more vulnerable to our impulsiveness.  In the beginning, at least the ISPs were slow enough for you to recall the unwanted message.  Nowadays, soft keyboard, easy mouse, and fast internet create a volatile combination.

Here are few preventive measures I can recommend:

1.  Always leave "To", "Cc" and "Bcc" fields of the email header blank until you are absolutely positive you need to send it.

2. Re-read your letter at least three times right away and then yet another time later.

3. I have previously described my habit of putting stick-ons, stating "Please re-read all your emails before sending them out," on the sides of employees' monitors.  If you know that you suffer from the short writing fuse, then stick one on your own monitor as well.

4.  Whether for my electronic or conventional mail, the 2 days stewing rule works very well.  You should try it too.

5.  The Frustrated CFO actually offers a healthy alternative allowing you to go a step further than just writing your message.  Sharing your stories here lets you spill your frustration onto the virtual page and actually send it.  Not to the object of your anger, but to me – an understanding and compassionate reader.