Tag: owner

Scenes from a Business Lunch, or the Obnoxious Rudeness of Business Owners


Restaurant-TableSpeaking of lunches (and I swear this is my last holiday post of the year)…

Because there are so many corporate holiday events in December, many business people from all over the country and overseas come to New York City during the month.  Customers, suppliers, vendors, associates, partners, and other relations visit their customers, clients, etc.  So, on top of the parties, you've got lunches with out-of-towners. This is a perfect opportunity to observe the business-owners' behavior in a "casual" group setting (as opposed to conference rooms and other natural habitats).

For many visitors this is also a good occasion for combining business and pleasure (after all, NYC is still #6 most favored tourist city in the world and #1 nation-wide) and quite a few bring their spouses along.  Some are actually in business with their spouses.

At the most recent lunch outing of this kind my guests were a manufacturing business owner by himself, another business owner with a wife, an alpha-female head of a consulting group, and a husband and wife attorneys sharing a corporate legal practice. Fun bunch!  Don't worry kids, it's only going to get worse!

The manufacturer asked for a coke and downed it really fast; then had it refilled several times throughout the meal.  This, naturally, resulted in a fast accumulation of a lot of gas in his stomach, which he unceremoniously belched out every 10 minutes, or so.  It was obviously a habitual occurrence, because he did not even bother to apologize.  It's amazing, how we learned to hide our emotions in "business" situations – everyone pretended not to notice it, even though once in a while one could catch a hint of a smirk or disgust (depending on the personality) playing on the lips of other guests.

[Side note: This reminds me of another experience in my arsenal of wonderful memories.  Early in my career I worked for a company, whose owner, in my mind, will forever carry a title of The Farting Boss.  He was middle-aged, but had a younger second wife and wanted to loose weight by drinking glass after glass of Slim Fast.  This made him very gassy.  The man mastered the skill of silent farting, but the smell was literally unbearable.  Imagine my situation – we sat in the same room.  Good times!]

The lady consultant first tried her sales pitch on every guest around the table, but quickly lost her enthusiasm, when she realized that nobody is interested in her services, except for me.  Since my company already had a contract with her, she did not see a reason to waste anymore time on us and turned her attention to the Blackberry, answering emails between bites and white-wine sips.

The married businessman first attacked his wife in a very loud whisper (it could be heard even at the neighboring tables) for wearing shoes with heels.  This apparently slowed down his purposefully brisk gait that went well, I am sure, with his aggressive mannerisms.  After the woman's eyes welled up with tears he abandoned her to fight it back on her own and observed the rest of the battlefield in front of him.  Dismissing the burping guy and all females as inferior creatures, he concentrated his self-affirmation efforts on the attorney sitting across the table from him.

They went at each other like two roosters in a Filipino cockpit.  "Have you read this?"  "Do you know that guy?"  "I bought Apple at $25 and just sold it at $375." "I am keeping mine – it will be $500 a share in a year."  "I closed that famous private equity deal this year." "I brought this much venture capital to my business."  "I am opening new factory in China."  "We have a law office in Hong Kong!"

God!  I contemplated the scene thinking, "The things we must tolerate to earn a living!"    

Insecure Business Owner/CEO


130px-Pointy-Haired_BossPeople write about insecure bosses all the time. There are blog posts, articles, book chapters, cartoons, movies, and TV shows devoted to the subject of dealing with a superior who feels threatened by his subordinates.  Hey, bosses are people and a vast majority of humanity is plagued by insecurities of various forms and degrees. The authors usually predict two possible outcomes of having such a boss: you will either find a way to overcome the problem and turn this person into your ally, or you get fired.  Curiously, in these writings "the boss" in question is usually another hired employee perched on a higher step of the hierarchy ladder.  (It has always surprised me, why these advisers never consider a possibility of you finding the way of getting the insecure boss fired.)

However, when your insecure boss owns the company that employs you, it's a completely different situation altogether.  Here he (or she, or they) was, the big boss with a business that he's built, thinking that he is the shit, the sharpest tool not just in some lousy shed, but in a suburban Home Depot… Until you came along, with your diverse expertise, broad fundamental knowledge, etc.

Now, you start discovering all kind of stupid stuff.  If you are indeed an experienced person, you are not running around like an idiotic show-off screaming that everything is wrong.  No, you tread lightly.  At the same time you must do your job and, therefore, correct the stupid stuff.  So, you say careful things like, "Excuse me, I mean no disrespect, but this and that is not done properly and will result in long-term losses; and, by the way, your accounting doesn't comply with prescribed rules."  You have no choice but to reveal painful observations such as, "You know, that operating system you bought just before your hired me (couldn't you wait?) on recommendation of someone you know, sucks!  You were misled – it's not an ERP, it's a retarded cousin of a real ERP twice removed."

Moreover, from time to time, things come out of your boss's mouth that are not just silly, they are embarrassingly incorrect.  Of course, you can ignore it, and yet you cannot, because if you don't clarify his confusions and educate him, he may say something stupid in front of your bankers, or investors, or auditors.  So, you have no choice but to find an appropriate way to straighten him out, raise his sophistication.

And even though you openly express due respect for his entrepreneurial abilities and acute commercial intuition, he cannot avoid feeling inadequate, insecure.  It's unpleasant and he doesn't like it at all.  Yet, unless you become rude and inappropriate, your job is secure.  The idea of firing you wouldn't even come to his logical conscious mind.  First of all, he knows that the company (i.e. his wallet) needs you and your improvements.  Secondly, you took over quite few tasks, freeing him for business development.   Finally, he doesn't have time or desire to go through the search process again.

Still, from time to time the subconsciousness feels pangs of wounded ego.  When that happens, he'll do anything to make himself feel better.  He will find one or another way to get back at you.  If you have an accent (Irish, Italian, Slavic, French), he will interrupt you in the middle of a meeting and ask the outsiders if they understand at least 30% of what you were saying, even though your English is fluent.  Your writing skills are likely to be far more superior than his, but he will make you run drafts of emails to important people by him, claiming their "political importance."  He may get into habit of reminding you that, considering your compensation, he expects a lot from you, even though you have exceeded all his expectations already.  And so on, and so forth…  

This behavior is childish.  The mere knowledge that it's rooted in his insecurity should help you to brush it off.  Don't let yourself to be hurt by it.  Don't think, "This is not fair, I am helping his business."  Don't take it as an insult.   Accept it as a testimony to your superiority.  

Your Boss: Value and Madness of an Entrepreneur


Many of my correspondents (CFO's, Controllers, Financial Directors) tell me that the biggest source of their stress and anxiety is the Boss.  I am sure we will be addressing this topic many times in different stories.  President, CEO, Owner, or whatever title they have chosen for themselves, more frequently then not, these entrepreneurs are the main reasons for our frustration.

Some of them are courageous and brilliant who actually foster and lead, others are batty and lucky who succeed in spite of themselves, and the others are lazy and disinterested who ruin everything even with our best efforts in place.  Regardless, they have few things in common. 

First of all, we can never forget that they are the ones creating jobs.  That's a tremendous achievement.  They've got to be madly brave to go out in the world and implement their ideas, sometimes against all odds.  If they succeed, they build companies that not only create products and services, but also employ people and pay them salaries.  They take insane risks and end up with entities that can afford to hire CFOs, Controllers, Financial Directors, i.e. us.  And even if the Bosses are not the founders, but heirs and the business just fell into their lap, until they destroy it, they are the employers and our salaries are coming out of their pockets.

Of course, as financial execs we kill ourselves in order to either facilitate their success and prosperity or stop them from  killing the business.  And even though we are concerned with our own material well-being just like anybody else, at the end of the day all of our efforts in a private company end up to be about guarding the owners' private purses.  That kind of a responsibility to a person in the office few steps down from your own brings the level of pressure to a completely different level.  It is not the same when your "owners" are some unknown masses of mutual fund investors.

But the most prominent common denominator of all small and mid-size CEOs is that they are all afflicted by the same disease – something I call an entrepreneurial bug. The business development machines in their heads run forward ahead of everything else.  They want everything to be done yesterday, and those who cannot make it happen or voice their concerns are considered to be obstacles on their way to success. 

Because it is up to us, CFOs and Controllers,  to make sure that the back office, the financing, the structures, the control procedures, etc. are on the par with new developments, we frequently find ourselves at odds with our Bosses.  We are called negative, uncooperative, difficult, etc. etc.  Nevertheless, we must be strong and do our jobs right, because if we fail to cover their fast running asses, everyone will get hurt, including the Bosses.