Tag: Controllers

CFO Folklore: When Your Boss’s Secretary Becomes His Girlfriend


Here is a sensitive and complex topic – it involves people's personal lives and therefore should not be anybody else's business.  Yet it affects our work environment and impacts employees morale.  Always!  There are no exceptions.  

It is not a rare occurrence either.  In the past I had a boss who was seduced by his secretary and ended up leaving his family.  In another company I had to fire a general manger to avoid a possibility of sexual harassment law suit, while the company's owner was on his second marriage to a woman who was his former secretary.  And the list of stories I've heard from my colleagues, associates, subordinates and just friends is endless.

The nature of the boss/secretary professional relationship by itself has a somewhat intimate connotation.   They are near each other in the office space.  All day long the secretary attends to the boss's needs, frequently takes care of his personal matters, stays by his side when he works late.  Add to that the fact that most secretaries nowadays are younger women, as the class of "career personal assistant" is disappearing.   Plus, there is the appeal of power and a possibility of material benefits.  All this together creates an undeniably fruitful environment for trysts.  Hell, we have wonderful independent movies about it.



      

Unfortunately, it is not as much fun when you actually have to work with this in your face.

I frequently repeat in these posts that private businesses are absolute monarchies.  Historically, every single Royal figure had his or hers favorite,  i.e. an "intimate companion of a ruler," or, as OED defines it "one who stands unduly high in the favour of a prince."  The contemporary "rulers" are just upholding this "fine" historical tradition.

The key here is the unduly power bestowed on the favorite.  Again, I don't care about people's personal lives.  I really don't!  Moreover, if favorites were working ten times harder and their attitudes were twenty times nicer, I would consider that an improvement. 

However, that is not what usually happens.  In reality boss's secretarial lover stops working altogether.  I witnessed a hiring of an "assistant to personal assistant" to patch the hole in the workflow.  They become arrogant and acquire nasty disposition towards other people in the office.  Frequently they get promoted to managerial jobs they are not qualified to perform with salaries they didn't deserve.

In a small business, even with 500 employees, that's hard to hide.  Well, as a CFO or a Controller, you have your own powers and you don't really need to bother yourself with this unless she starts infringing on your scope of command (sadly, that happens too).  And yet your position exposes you to the unfairness of the situation in the most explicit way: you are the one who has to sign off her 50% raise; you are the one who has to approve her 12 weeks a year vacation time; those are your direct reports that get mistreated by her.  

Talking about terrible frustration!   

Woes of an Overwhelmed CFO


This quote has been attributed to different people, frequently (and erroneously) to even Andrew Jackson, but in fact it was John W. Raper who said,

"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it." 

Oh, man, he sounds healthy!  What a laid-back guy!  No pressure gets to him?  Where do you get that kind of attitude?  I want some.

Because, in professional life of a frustrated CFO or Controller having lots to do and not doing it spells disaster, anxiety and depression, not fun.  As the matter of fact, "not doing it" is frequently a symptom of a psychological condition experienced by high achievers with multiple responsibilities. 

Images Have you been there, in that scary place?  There is so much to do, your subconsciousness tells you that there is no way all these things can be done by you.   Your entire being refuses to embark on all these tasks – you stop doing everything.  You are so overwhelmed you become paralyzed.  Everyday you tell yourself that tomorrow you will get on with it, and then you close your door and play solitaire all day.  In other words, you are on your way to a fully blown burnout.

And if you work in a small or mid-size company, no outside help is coming:  there are no Employee Assistance Programs or Stress Management Trainings.  Nobody will even notice that something is wrong.  You are on your own! 

But, wait a minute…  First of all, take a fucking Xanax and force yourself to use the moment of relaxation it gives you to not do anything at all, but think about your situation.  Do it NOW! 

Aren't you the self-reliant person who always handled your own problems and overcame all obstacles in front of you.  How did you get here in the first place?  How did you come to occupy this executive position?  Where is that person?  There must be some grains of him/her left in you.

Now, take your favorite yellow (or gray) notepad and write down all those tasks that terrify you so much – beats playing computer games.  This very long list is your basis.  Now start the next list. Title it "Delegate" and transfer here all those tasks you can delegate to your subordinates, or other departments.  Every time you list an item to delegate, cross it out on the main list. 

And don't tell me you cannot delegate anything – this is an emergency, you can and you must!  If you are a one-person show, this is the right time to talk to your boss(es) about hiring help.  Go to them with both lists – they might "surprise" you by saying they had no idea your were so overwhelmed.

The remainder of the base list needs to be further divided into four parts:  

  1. Top priority (today and next three business days)
  2. Short-term plan (next two weeks)
  3. Long-term plan (next six to eight weeks)
  4. Tentative plan aka the back burner (next 4 months, or so).

The only list you are going to look at now is that much shorter Top Priority list.  Calculate how many tasks you have there – let's say 8.  If you work like me, your working day is at least 10 hours.  The 4 business days allotted to this list is 40 hours.  This means you have 5 hours for each task.  That's it – start working on the first one.    

Still cannot do it?  Then you are in need of serious help – find yourself a good doctor.

You can find more advice in this post Time Organization as Anti-Frustration Tool.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Just Your Average Opportunistic Boss


220px-Terminator1984movieposter Who can resist this?  The Governator has cheated and lied?  Noooo, you are kidding!!! I am sure millions of bloggers hit the keyboards running.

But wait a minute, I already wrote about this – just little over four months ago: CFO Folklore: When Your Boss's Secretary Becomes His Girlfriend.  Well, not about Arnie per se, but about bosses having affairs with their employees. 

Obviously, it was based on incidents I have witnessed in business, as a financial professional.  I wrote the piece from the inside perspective of frustrated CFOs and Controllers, who are forced to deal with that.  Yet, I used very generalized terms, because it is the most typical type of infidelity. 

I don't think I have to remind you about all political scandals with exactly the same premise.  I never thought that the only reason these incidents ignited public attention was people's relishing the dirt.  It is the relevance of these situations to every-day life that attracts people: "Oh, he is just like that dick I work for."  As the matter of fact, that January post is the third most popular item on this Blog – people relate.

There is always an enterprising (rarely smitten) young and ambitions intern/staffer/secretary/page (she or he) in the office of a powerful older man, who,  driven by desire to excel in life without too much effort, will pursue the boss with all her (his) youthful enthusiasm.  And of course, the older person is weakened: his male nature already has a propensity for imprudence; his morals are corrupted by power; he is ridden with temptation to taste something 20-25 years younger…  "What a poor man to do?"

As the matter of fact, small business owners have it better than more powerful public figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bill Clinton.  The latter risk public humiliation and popularity votes; the former have almost nothing to fear in their little absolute monarchies.  

The truth is, I liked Mr. Schwarzenegger up until he went into politics.  I admired his drive to rise above his muscles.  He actually always seemed liked a pretty decent man to me – someone who, if he fell out of love, would just come clean, divorce her and then go on making babies with another woman.  I should have known that as soon as "political reasoning" kicked in, lying would commence.  That they kept quiet, so he wouldn't loose his supporters – it's just disgusting.  

It is uncanny, but the former action star's news of an out-of-wedlock child, hit much closer to the real-life prototype of Boss and His Secretary story I wrote in January – I've just recently learned that the secretary in question is actually pregnant, while the boss is still legally married to his wife of twenty years.  

I would like to propose a little contest.  My readers, if you know of a single male business owner over 50 year old, with the staff of more than 20 people, who never had any indiscretions, please let me know.  I will sing praises to him in these virtual pages.

How to Read People Through Their Communication Styles


If you are a business executive, CFOs and Controllers included, you cannot avoid the necessity of being able to grasp people's motivations based on external behavioral indicators.  Every person we encounter has his own hidden agendas and incentives, which we must decipher in order to be successful.  I previously talked about the effect people's priorities have on their attitudes (see Priorities and Attitudes).  It is a proven fact that humans' motivations can be read from the way they move, talk, look at you, even from the poses they strike. 

Filmmakers frequently speak about the subtext.  One of the basic rules of screenwriting is "show, don't explain."  Some theorists attribute the importance of this aspect to the visual nature of cinematic art. But the truth is exactly opposite: the ability to read subtext is natural.  This is what makes a movie believable and real to the audience: people watch an actor perform (especially, if he is a good actor) and pick up on the little clues of the character's inner-workings, because this is what we do in real life too.  

Subconsciously, we are all capable of recognizing particular body movements and voice intonations as expressions of motivations and intents.  The trick is to find this innate ability in yourself, isolate it, bring it into the prefrontal cortex, perfect it and use it to your advantage.  Start by observing people's communication styles – the fastest way to identify their intentions, to read into their primary concerns.

When people speak in a staccato style and quickly move from one subject on to the next one, what can we tell about their intentions?  Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they are determined to minimize the time consumption of every task they undertake or direct, that they driven by desire of accomplishment?

On the other hand, someone who apologizes for expressing his opinion three times within the same sentence and asks to be corrected if he makes mistakes, obviously is striving for amicability.  The ones who wait for your cues or keep quiet all the time are obviously unsure of themselves and don't want to be noticed.  Yet, if someone doesn't say anything, but flares his nostrils and drums his fingers on the desk, don't mistake him for anything else but the passive-aggressive about to explode.  And so on, and so forth.

So, let's go back to the movie-making.  Of course, I had a good reason to bring it up.  Films provide us with an enormous cache of visual references familiar to millions of people.  I have chosen a trailer for Mike Nichols's "Regarding Henry" to illustrate this topic because the 24-year-old screenwriter J. J. Abrams (yes, that very same J. J. Abrams who screwed us out of a satisfying "Lost" ending) used a dramatic turn in the plot that fundamentally affects the protagonist (played by the great Harrison Ford).  His life, attitude, tastes communication style- everything changes within the same movie.  It's a stark example of how a person's inner life affects his behavioral traits.

 

Job Search: A Sad Tale of a Misdialed Area Code


Images Posts related to job search issues have become more frequent.  I guess, it is unavoidable with such a persistent problem – a lot of people are unemployed and the jobs availability diminishes every day, no matter what the big-time economists and government statisticians are saying. 

This story was related to me just last week and I felt compelled to share it here.  A fellow financial exec has been contacted by a recruiter with an opportunity for a CFO position with a service company.  The recruiter does not work for an employment agency.  He is with a consulting company that specializes in hedge fund and private equity brokerage.  They offer a broad range of assistance: from finding companies suitable for takeover or merging to post-closing transitioning.

Excellent!  Recruiters working for such consulting firms are less constricted than conventional headhunters from Robert Half et al.  Because they are immersed into an entrepreneurial world, they actually try to find talented people instead of counting the check marks they drew on a resume.

So, the two have an extensive phone interview, going over the financial exec's experience with various functions crucial for this job.  At the end, the recruiter is very positive and tells her he would make a presentation to his boss, the consulting firm's Managing Director.  A couple of days later he calls to inform her that he got a favorable feedback and wants to make an appointment for a telephone interview with the boss.  They set the day and time.  

Now (this is an important bit of information), the consulting firm is in Philadelphia, where predominant area code is 215.  The candidate is in New York City – 212 area code there.

Appointment time comes – the interviewee sits and waits by the phone.  An hour later – nothing happened.  She writes an email to the recruiter advising that the Managing Director did not call.  He writes back immediately saying that she did call, nobody picked up and she left a message.  How is it possible?  The woman in New York was by her phone all the time.  Well, we, CFOs, are quick like that – our job seeker realized right away that the Philadelphia woman, out of habit, must have punched 215, instead of 212.  

The recruiter and his boss probably looked at the call log and saw the wrong number too.  The interview was rescheduled.  But now, there is a subconscious resistance in the interviewer's mind – she is human, and we don't like admitting to embarrassing errors like that.  She re-schedules again, then again, then never calls. 

And just like that, the opportunity was gone.  What always bothers me when things like that happen, is that it is quite possible that this woman could have been the best thing that ever happened to the company.  She might have impacted the future of the enterprise in the most positive way.  It seems so unfair that stupid little things like this misdialed area code have such a big role in this Comedy of Errors we call life.