"I am not afraid of computers taking over the world. They're just sitting there. I can hit them with a two by four."
Thom Yorke
(suggested by Yana Alexandra Crow)
Tag: radiohead
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.
Self-Deprecating Ageism, or Impressions From Tool Concert
When iconic bands like Tool go on tours the good tickets land onto scalping sites almost instantaneously. Well, a middle-aged CFO with uber-eclectic cultural tastes is used to it: the same is true for Radiohead, Kanye West, The Cure, Wilco, Florence and the Machine, etc., and The Met charges scalping prices in its own box office. The biggest concern is handling the crowd: you want to be on the floor, but you are too old to fight off the crashing violent tendencies and the crowd-surfing of the young fans. It's fine to be in the front row of the GA pit at the Radiohead concert as there is no pushing and shoving, but the Tool audience may get carried away in the pit.
So, when fate brings an assigned-seat concert (the audience rocks standing close to their ticketed seats) and as near as East Rutherford, NJ (Tool have not given a full performance in NYC since 2006), you thank the blessed benefactor for the floor tickets and go. After all, who knows if you can summon the courage for the next time.
I guess, the front-man, Mr. Maynard James Keenan, who is mere 3 years younger than me, for a hot second felt middle-aged as well. The sentiment was rather of the nostalgic than the physical nature: he looked as robust as ever and his voice did not loose an iota of its incredible beauty and strength. But this is what happens: you get to a place and a memory of seeing Van Halen there 25 years ago hits you – fuck, I've been alive for quite some time already.
So, Maynard addressed the audience as if it consisted 100% of younglings born before his experience of the band with the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. This was absolutely unjustified – to my quick eye the distribution of attendees was pretty much even over a broad spectrum of age groups, from 19 to mid-50's, with slightly higher density of late 20s to early 30s. But as I said, he felt like it, so he promised us that the band will "try" to perform some tracks that they have not touched for some time… as long as they "don't forget" what they are supposed to do, because they "are old". "So," he said, "if you see us wondering away in search of mashed potatoes…"
This made me laugh. Not because it was funny (Maynard is capable of better jokes), but because it reminded of me of myself always telling younger people how "the most brilliant I've ever been was at the age of 25-27, when I was writing my dissertation," and how "I used to have a near-photographic memory, but it's not the same anymore," and how "when you get older, the expertise replaces originality," and so on and so forth.
Pretty much the same coquettish crap that Maynard was trying to feed us right before him and his band-mates pulled off a set to die for, a performance one can never forget (there was a woman next to us who said that she saw Tool eighteen times and this was THE BEST CONCERT EVER!). Indeed, they were rocking like fucking hell, testing the reality and the nature of humanity with their existential lyrics and mind-blowing visuals. Their force transcended all ages; the generations converged and disappeared, chanting in unison the haunting lyrics of "Forty-six & 2" and "Aenema."
You know what? We, boys and girls born in the 60s, the so-called Generation X – the first generation conceived with The Beatles and The Stones playing in the background, potty-trained with the Pink Floyd's accompaniment and hit over the head by puberty while Led Zeppelin was hitting the Big Time, we should really stop this self-deprecating bullshit.
Nobody bought Maynard's "old-age" tirade, just like nobody buys my "I am not the same" crap. I just wrote a book full of novel ideas, I still enter companies and within a few weeks uncover their weaknesses, embarking on solving their problems and quickly coming up with solutions.
Is anybody going to think of Quentin Tarantino (1963) or Richard Linklater (1960) as "middle-aged" directors? How about Eddie Vedder (1964) or Thom Yorke (1968), would we qualify them as "middle-aged" rockers? If the beloved Kurt Cobain (1967) did not act on his disdain for human existence and kill himself at the age of 27, would we think of him as "old" now? C'mon, his fucking widow (1964) still acts like a juvenile delinquent. I can go on and on.
For better or worth, we are made differently. We count our years and we think, "Oh, I should be changing," but we are not getting "old" and we don't want to. And I don't think we will. 25 years from now, if the world is still in one piece, I intend to be at a Tool concert and expect Maynard to rock his hardest ever.
Radiohead: A Case of Strategic Mismanagement
Speaking of Radiohead (I am referring to my last "Quote of the Week" post)…
No, let me first say that I LOVE Radiohead. They are one of my top 5.5 (it's complicated, ok?!) favorite bands. I have been to their shows, with pit tickets, standing for over seven hours in line to be in the first row, in front of the stage with big Ed's shoes in my face, watching Jonny Greenwood perform his musical voodoo, observing Thom Yorke drooling all over the mike, while articulating "I salivate like with myxomatosis," as if he was actually afflicted. I saw them perform "True Love Waits" for the first time ever. Good times!
And even though I usually religiously adhere to my own rule of separating the Artist from the Man (otherwise you end up hating everything – people, including geniuses, are nasty creatures), I agreeably pay attention to some of Radiohead members' personal principles: anti-music-establishment, free distribution, less flying, and stuff like that. At the same time, I am very objective. I don't idolize anybody. If something is stupid, I'll call it that, regardless of who did it. Plus, this is a CFO's blog, so when it comes to executive decisions I am especially vigilant.
Soooooo, the latest incident involving Roseland Ballroom (NYC) concerts really irritated me as a blatant display of a gross strategic mismanagement. Supposedly to make sure that real fans get them and not the scalpers, the release of tickets for September 28th and 29th concerts was held off until Monday, September 26th, 10 AM. And what was the wonderfully unique channel of distribution? The fucking Ticketmaster!!!
How out of touch with reality these people and their support staff are??? Don't they know that the days of conventional scalping are long gone? Today, you can be sitting somewhere in Nebraska with your little reloading software, buy tickets and immediately start electronically scalping them as PDF attachments.
I personally clicked "Find tickets" at 10:00 AM. The fucking Ticketmaster advised that my waiting time was 5 minutes. Nevertheless, in 3 minutes flat, I was informed that the tickets were not available anymore. 180 seconds – God bless the electronic age! Obediently I went to the "resale" (read – scalping) TicketsNow site (owned by the fucking Ticketmaster) – the tickets were already listed with prices ranging from $650-$1,500 for GA. The concerts turned out to be the exclusive events for people with money. Most of them cared more about the status of attending than about the music.
Talking about a complete failure of a business action plan! Is there anybody around Radiohead with a common sense to suggest a more intelligent strategy? You want to deliver yourself to your true friends? You are a super-group. Instead of going through Live Nation, you can rent your own venue and sell the tickets the old-fashion way: at the box office, with a limit of two tickets per person. Your real fans will sleep on the street through the night for a chance to see you! It's really not that complicated. But I guess, like with everything, it's too much to ask for a logical reasoning nowadays.
Essentially, a rock band is a small business – no different then, let's say an advertising agency. The set up is the same – there is a core creative staff and a bunch of supporting functions around it: administration, financial management, legal services, etc. My readers know how important small businesses are to me – I believe they need to be cultivated and nurtured as the only option for saving the world's economy. But, again, I am very sensible about it. It's not all businesses that need support – only the ones that are well organized and have smart leadership.
Hey you music fans, don't get mad at me (I'm on your side), but it's possible that most rock bands, after riding the initial fandom wave, eventually end up sucking because they don't know how to run their business well. There were only five really great songs on "In Rainbows" and this last album Radiohead finally squeezed out (I did say I was very objective) is really just so-so.
From time to time Mr. Yorke says that it "didn't jive in the studio," and I keep worrying that, after 26 years together, they will go out of business. I don't want that to happen, because I am sure many people, including me, would be happy to see them doing OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac stuff on stage for another 25 years, even if they don't write anything decent anymore. But they really need to figure out a sound business model to be able to do that. And, please guys, get some strategic management advice about that "tickets to real fans" program. I promise you, this will make already eternally grateful fans happy.
Quote of the Week: Occupy Wall Street
Intro to the quote:
Observing Occupy Wall Street protesters right there by Zuccotti park, my cynic mind could not help itself to see social, rather than political event. Guys and gals hanging around, having a good time. Many analysts from all over the world have been trying to understand if these people have any agenda, if their protesting have some sort of intelligent purpose. And there is nothing… Just young people with nothing better to do being upset that they cannot become rich and famous overnight. Very few of them have attained above average complex of general knowledge and they know nothing about work ethics. In their poorly constructed bursts of words they bring up "disappearance of the middle class," but none of them understands that you are not born into middle class – you have to work for it, and maybe after 20 years of professional excellence you can claim your rightful place among its members. The paper wealth of Wall Street phenomenon is a perversion, no question about that. But securities balloons are not the only reasons middle class disappears in this country. None of the protesters want to work real jobs to earn their daily bread, or start small businesses that would keep them physically and mentally busy 24/7. Instead they want to magically transport themselves into the very places occupied by people with million-dollar bonuses they claim to despise.
And then there was that September 30th plot concocted by the protest organizers in order to get more people on location by announcing a Radiohead appearance?! People who supposedly oppose the concept of misleading, blatantly lied to the general public! What's up with that? There could only be three possible explanations why these protesters did not run away in shame after the falsification was exposed – they are either blind, stupid, or really have nothing else to do.
Meanwhile, the electronics were polluted with the false news of Radiohead's "spontaneous concert", and exchanges among some people I know have produced some wonderful pearls (I know a few very smart people). One of my funniest friends felt sorry for the "poor hippies crawling over each other's stomped bodies."
But the first prize definitely goes to the following quote:
"It's the perfect cherry on top of their worship of spectacle rather than substance."
Zach Caceras
The Frustrated CFO 