Tag: work environment

CFO Folklore: My “Favorite” Questions


Ah, the Holidays!  They put you in the mood for remembrance.  Families get together and stories of past times and lives start pouring out.  My grandfather was a brilliant man of the WWII generation.  He died when I was a baby.  Hence, I cannot remember this myself, but I've been told quite few times about his main pet peeve: he couldn't stand what he called "idiotic" questions.   Apparently, I've inherited this familial trait.

His being the times way before the political correctness permanently  stifled us, he had the luxury to call things as he saw them.  Nowadays, I use more neutral words.  I call them nonsensical questions.  I even trained myself to ignore stand alone occurrences.  However, there are two questions that pervade my professional life.  As all pet peeves do, they cause undue frustration.

The first question is consistently asked by my subordinates and peers.  You see, unless I attend to a confidential business matter, I always keep my office door opened.  I believe it is good for employees' morale to see a CFO working as hard as I do. 

So, these people see me all day long attending to my scheduled tasks, addressing issues, solving problems.  I am consumed by work.  Yet, EVERY TIME one of them needs me and comes to my door, they ask me THE SAME question, "Are you busy right now?"  In response I want to scream, "Of course, I am busy.  Can't you see?" 

It doesn't mean that I am not available to discuss their problem if it is of higher priority, or scheduling them for a later time slot if it can wait.  But why do they have to ask that question?  At staff meetings, I teach them to approach this situation in a more sensible manner: come, don't ask the damn question, instead state your issue and let me decide if it requires immediate attention.  Some learn, but the rest just cannot help themselves.

The second question is similar but essentially different in its nature.  It's usually asked by the boss.  And, as we already discussed, there is nothing you can do, but to bite your tongue.  He has something on his mind, so he comes to your office.  Here it comes, "What are you doing right now?" 

The involuntary first reaction is, "What do you think?  I am doing nothing.  Just sitting here enjoying myself."  But he does not imply you are not working.  This is how their minds work: whatever is on his mind is the most important thing to him right now and in his opinion should be to you as well (even though you don't even know yet what it is).  This attitude renders your current preoccupation irrelevant.  Now, it is up to you to navigate the situation properly into the safe harbor.  Over the years, I've developed an arsenal of methods.  I am sure you have too, but if you need my help, please, don't hesitate to email.

You Are Responsible for Your Own Emotional Control


There are two main reasons for my putting so much emphasis on the management of frustration and stress.  First of all, I consider this skill to be one of CFOs and Controllers' prerequisites for efficient functionality: if you don't get a grip on your own emotions you cannot manage the multitude of your tasks at the level that will satisfy your own high standards.  Secondly, this may be the only responsibility that you cannot delegate.  Whatever method of self-control and frustration release you use, you are the only one who can recognize the symptoms and initiate the process.

And in that respect I am in agreement with the recent article on AOL Health by Stephanie Twelto Jacob with a terribly corny title Happiness Roadblocks and a lot of new-age-y formulas that a sensible reader will be able to weed out easily.  I mean, even if you take Aristotle's thought about path to happiness as your initial thesis, it doesn't mean that you should tailor your entire article to fit the narrow interpretation of its language.

Shortcomings aside, I found four sensible points in this article that match my own concept of psychological self-management and fit perfectly into this blog's discussions of work-related frustration and anxiety.  Here are my interpretations:

1.  Choosing to expect the worst at all times in order to avoid disappointments (the policy I've been employing for years myself – guilty as charged) creates not only psychological, but also, through stress-related chemical reactions, physical effects on us.  Plainly speaking, it keeps our bodies in a constant adrenaline overdrive.

2.  I hear my colleagues talking all the time about someone else working at half the effort for twice as much money, having expense accounts, better insurances, larger bonuses, etc, etc.  Comparing your difficult life to somebody's supposed perfect existence creates unnecessary additional frustration.  Don't contrast and compare.  Most likely these people's lives are not as rosy as you perceive it.  Trust me – life is a difficult exercise for everybody.  More importantly, spending your emotional energy on this imaginary competition is a waste of your own valuable resources.

3.  Accepting the unfairness of life is the best defensive mechanism available to us. When things are not based on equality and justice it does not necessarily mean that you always loose.  My intended audience is supposed to consist of educated people in senior management and executive positions.  In comparison to people with the same intellectual capacity who were not able to go to college and graduate schools and be eligible to work in free-market society, we are not doing that bad even if we didn't have connections or luck to become multi-millionaires.

4.  Stop looking for substitution of contentment.  It is not your boss's, your subordinates', your spouse's, your kid's or your new purchase's job to make you feel better about yourselves.  Nobody but yourself truly knows who you are and what your value is.  It is you who possess that intelligence, that expertise, that volume of knowledge and you know your worthiness.  Be proud of your own achievements.      

Business Owners’ Favorite Style of Management


Some people are born with incredible natural aptitude for managing people.  Many years ago I observed a girl on a playground.  She was about 5 years old playing with a group of children the same age.  At one point some play rules, or another important issue, needed to be established, and I was amazed not only by the assertion of authority, but also by the uncanny logic exhibited by this extraordinary little person.  She started with a commanding, "Children, listen to me!" and continued laying out a proposal that nobody has any inclination to dispute.  I remember thinking to myself, "That's a naturally born leader!"

Unfortunately, people like that constitute a small percentage of general population and, strangely enough, they are even rarer among business owners.  Just because someone had a great idea and entrepreneurial drive to establish their own business doesn't mean that they also have sufficient managerial aptitude.  Only few of them had formal business management education and most of them never worked for anybody else long enough to gain on-the-job expertise.  

This pretty much leaves their leadership skills at intuitive level at best.  And if the sixth sense fails them… well, all kind of sad things occur: they cannot see the difference between a pompous phony with an impressive voice spewing well formulated lies and genuinely knowledgeable, but quiet workaholic; they have very little or no understanding of delegation of duties; frequently they cannot even figure out their own roles in the company.  

The most common executive management conundrum such Presidents/CEO's (especially first generation of business ownership) encounter after the enterprise reaches the "established" stage of development can be described as follows.  Their entrepreneurial talents draw their minds to further commercial improvements, to generation of new ideas that will help to expand and strengthen the business.  At the same time, the wonderful feeling of accomplishment plays dirty tricks on them: subconsciously they want to rest on their laurels – they feel that they deserve to work less, to take summers off, etc. etc.  Moreover, since the business is their child that they have born and reared applying their own talents and titanic efforts, they have incredible aversion to the idea of letting other people to completely take over vital tasks of the company's ongoing functionality and maintenance.   

(Side note: I am really tempted to state here that the majority of them are control freaks.  However, I don't have scientific evidence for that, just my own and my colleagues experience. More importantly, it does not make a difference, both obsessive and perfectly balanced CEO's display the same symptoms.) 

You have to agree that this position is absolutely psychotic.  What do they do?  They resort to their favorite style of management – what I personally coined several years ago as "Hands-Off Micromanagement."  

Let me show with this example how this control style may manifest itself. On one hand, the CEO can completely forget that you are working on establishing a $10 million credit line with a new bank, or that you have just upgraded your accounting system to a new version that basically made the entire budgeting function automatic.  But on the other hand, he keeps asking without a fail every month why the Federal Express bill is $2,000 – when he was starting the business it was never more than $100.

I am sure a lot of my fellow CFO's and Controllers have recognized the disease as they have to deal with it and the frustration it causes on daily basis.         

The Ethicist Randy Cohen Talks About Your Boss


You worked real hard day in and day out.  You applied yourself to the very best of your abilities.  Finally, you have reached the senior/executive management position.  Now, you are the CFO, the Controller, the Director, "the right hand," "the most important person in the company without the title" – it doesn't matter what they call you: you've achieved it.  And it's irrelevant that the business is small – in this small pond you are a big fish.Does this mean that now you can tell your boss, the owner of the company, to stop watching porn on your computer after work and leave it on overnight?  Even my favorite columnist Randy Cohen, cannot give you a clear answer in his response to one of our peers' query in June 27th New York Times Magazine - The Ethicist: Porn in the Office.He is trying, though: yes, it is not right that the boss doesn't close the browser, that he leaves it for the next user to see, but he doesn't really do anything illegal either, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah… 

The point is that our dear entrepreneurs do not separate themselves from their businesses.  They treat their place of work as their second home: watching porn, meeting with their friends, letting their kids and pets run around.  This could be a $200 million business you helped to build, but THEY REALLY DON'T CARE WHAT ANYBODY THINKS.  It wouldn't even come to their minds to consider the possibility that somebody may be offended, or simply surprised, by the images on the computer screen.  And it is not about porn.  It's one thing today and another tomorrow – the principal (pun is always intended) attitude is always the  same.

And the unfortunate truth is that no matter how important you are to the company, you cannot criticize them, because they will never forget it.  They will hold the grudge forever, because subconsciously they feel that they are untouchable royalty in their little kingdoms and NOBODY dares to point out their shortcomings.  And if you are experienced and shrewd enough, you will not say a boo (neither would I).

So, here you are, frustrated out of your mind by the unbalance between your professional achievements and organizational position on one side and inability to exercise your personal freedom on the other.  All I can advise you to do at this point is to pick your favorite from my list of coping devices listed in One CFO's Personal Tools for Frustration Relief. That's all you can do.

The Frustrated CFO Is Getting Anxious


I am really anxious to move away from abstract discussions on the nature of stress we experience every day and start showcasing stressful incidents and frustrating professional issues near and dear to every CFO, Controller, etc.  However, before I do that I feel we need to address one more theoretical subject – correlation of Frustration and Anxiety.

As I already mentioned several times, frustration is a normal reaction (whether extra- on introverted) to situations in which we face obstacles to our achieving goals or actions that contradict our standards, etc.  Every person experiences it from the moment he or she is born.  In this blog, with examples from daily war of survival, I argue that my peers, CFOs, Controllers, and other financial execs in entrepreneurial environment, operate in a state of chronic frustration.

Anxiety, on the other hand, no matter how many scientific definitions are out there, boils down to sense and fear of danger, whether real or non-existent.  The symptoms and sensations are the same if you are genetically predisposed ("wired") for anxiety or forced into it through the lifetime of conditioning.

Because it is far more fascinating to try to explain why some people feel anxiety and panic attacks for no tangible reasons at all, cognitive science is primarily preoccupied with the types of anxiety that are caused by chemical imbalance, hereditary factors, etc.  If you are interested to learn more about the latest research advancement in this area, I particularly recommend an almost a year old, but still very accurate and exhaustive, New York Times Magazine article Understanding the Anxious Mind. 

And, of course, most of us belong to the army of Americans (tens of millions of people, actually) who are worried about the economy, their job security, the money they lost in various market shakeups, the environment, the future of their children, etc. etc. Economic and environmental issues are big reasons why so many people seem to be on the verge of a breakdown.

That said, in the context of this blog I am primarily interested in the undeniable fact that chronic frustration with your job leads to stress and acute anxiety.  Just like Pavlov's dogs we are conditioned by frustration to fear those situations that cause the unpleasant experience.

We try to accomplish a particular task, meet our regular obstacles (bosses interventions, subordinates incompetence, time constraints), fail to achieve our goal, get frustrated – and (surprise-surprise), now we feel anxious every time we start that task, because subconsciously we anticipate frustration and fear the pain.  The anxieties accumulate into stress, and now we feel trapped.  If the situation is not managed, we can spin out of control.

And that is why it is so important to find methods of releasing frustration out of your system (please see my post One CFO's Personal Tools for Frustration Relief) and, just equally important, find resolutions for your professional problems by elevating your managerial, organizational, behavioral and technical skills – issues I hope to discuss in the future based on the incidents from your professional life.