Important Lessons

Important Lessons

Whew, that one is behind me or is it? Life since 2011 seems a disappointment, but the reasons are probably mostly my fault.

1)      Employment is elusive

2)      Having enough information is rare

3)      Sales success is achievable (I have seen others do it)

a.      Or, how data will change the rules

4)      Duplicating success requires a great deal of sacrifice (mostly time)

5)      Marketing for results will mean changing what you are

6)      Getting some wins along the way helps create useful benchmarks

7)      Constant self examination

8)      This may not be for you/me

 

I made a shot at selling yachts for an online brokerage company and decided to call it quits this weekend. Today I will examine 2, 3, 4, 7, & 8.

#2—Having enough information is rare.

            Today’s employment guru’s, resume’ writers, and “why can’t I get a job advisors” usually put at the top of the “to do list” suggestions to the job hunter that they should know the company from which they seek a job. Easy enough to do with large publicly traded organizations. Fairly easy to do with smaller companies if they have had some recent success in their market niche. Difficult to do with small organizations unless there is some local community presence or another access point, i.e. employees past and present. The challenge is learning the organizations culture, the collective expectations of leadership, organization goals, and mostly importantly how they measure success. A question I learned to ask was “what do you expect me to be doing after 90 days?” Another way “what bench marks I am expected to have achieved after 180 days.” If these questions are not answered satisfactorily, there is trouble on the horizon. I would suggest there may be a disconnect between the frontline and the leadership. Getting this kind of information the further up the structure you job search is going would seem critical to me.

3# -- Sales success is achievable

            Eighty percent of the sales in any organization is achieved by only twenty percent of the sales force. The 80/20 rule applies in so many aspects of life this seems like it should be a given. In many sales organizations the value of a team member is measured on the return provided by the investment in them. If you have cost, there is an expectation the sales team member will return that cost in the form of sales plus some for profit. It costs the company 100 units a year in sales to cover the cost of your continued employment then that number becomes the lowest target to measure your value. Increments above that minimum target measure your success (i.e. bonuses, awards and recognition.) Pretty simple. More and more organizations are structuring themselves to minimize the cost of the sales team. What do you think working from home means? This decentralized structure makes it difficult for leadership to directly observe methods, efforts, styles and compare to results. What replaces these tools? Data. The top members of the organization (in terms of results) will set the benchmarks in activity. Calls made, emails sent, etc and their results examined. Individual market demographics are ignored as the each sales team member will be measured by activity or some other type of data. The expectation by leadership being, if you are making those numbers sales success shall surely follow.

#4 – Duplicating success requires a great deal of sacrifice

            Data will not change what is required of the successful. Everything translates into time committed. As I sit here now, my thoughts wander from what I “used to do,” to recent experience, “does the current generation have it.?” Every successful sales person I have ever met was singularly focused no matter how much time it took to achieve their sales goals or what other aspects of their life was ignored in the doing of it. Anybody who is out there saying you can achieve a high level of success without this commitment is blowhard or an idiot. There is no shortcut here. I am sorry but there just isn’t.

#7 – Constant self examination

            Is this something I really want to do?

            Am I totally committed?

            What, about myself, do I need to change?

            Just a few questions for the defense. Re-aligning oneself is an essential element. Both for success and sanity. In the end you will make a choice whether you want to continue doing what you are doing, whether or not you can commit to keep doing it, can you change yourself or your lifestyle to make it happen. Remember the biggest lie you tell is the one you tell yourself.

#8-- This may not be for you/me

            See #7

 

With this last little gig, selling boats, it all came down to the above and a few sub-factors. The good news is watching how organizations use data to measure success and plan for the future will be fun. If the house is glass, throwing rocks from the outside is gas.

 

 Alayne Fleischmann the famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) JP Morgan whistle blower appeared on CNBC this morning to talk about what she saw at JPM. The first thing out of her mouth (maybe the second) was the examination of income statements by borrowers in a pool of securitized loans. The example she used was a manicurist stating she had an annual income over $100000 and that was some multiple above the industry estimates JPM used at the time. These kinds of discrepancies were ignored by senior management.


More on her story.


Carl Quintanilla asked if the borrowers would be prosecuted for fraud and Fleishmann said some maybe. I doubt if the manicurist will come into the SEC's sights.


This story goes way back to 2002-2007. This was a strong boom period in the housing industry. American's were confident in the economy.


Gallup Poll Americans Confidence in the Economy


Lenders really loosened up on underwriting standards during the housing boom.


Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Report


 In fact across all programs money was easier to obtain. Commercial property, boats, autos, everything. This euphoria contributed to an atmosphere that any resultant consequences could be out run. New types of securities entered the market place to give more false confidence in potential fallout. Of course we all know what happened.


Now back the Carl and Alayne. Of course the opinion is among many is the borrower must bear some responsibility for this. It is tough to disagree with this position but I am going to. Also add that it is a matter of degree. From my view people tend to put their responsibility in a sack if the professional tells them what they want to hear. I saw a lot of this in the mortgage business. I left before the other shoe dropped. The subprime lenders were thriving, second mortgages were the instrument of choice to satisfy the collateral aspect of the three "C's" of credit. Those second mortgages were the lynch pin of the infamous 80/20 loan structure. When the adjustable rates on the second adjusted, the borrower could no longer pay the mortgage. (Another C ignored --Capacity or ability to pay.) The securities were no longer securing much of anything. Subprime did not just accommodate those with poor credit, but mostly those with no money. No down payment, no twenty percent.  These same subprime lenders quickly disappeared from the market, but how did they contribute to this fiasco, and what was going on that Fleishmann saw?


It is a long sordid story and is best examined, in my opinion, through the many writings of Michael Lewis. My favorites Liar's Poker and The Big Short.


Michael Lewis Books on Amazon


Anyway bankers were convinced the securities backing up the loans were strong enough to weather the probable losses as a result of defaulted loans. This belief fueled a supply that met the demand for housing. There is plenty of blame to go around from President Clinton's support of "Everyone should Own a Home," to the Bush Administration that saw housing growth as an anodyne for a sluggish economy. Some suggest then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, kicked the future into motion in 1994! I digress.


Because the securitizing of loans purchased provided the comfort a number of new originators of loans appeared on the market. These so called "B/C" lenders offered loan programs that could be bundled and sold in the secondary market as securitized debt. The market was so open it became easy to fudge on the three "C's". There were plenty of incentives to originators and lender representatives to get loans booked. For the consumer if the originator said "all we have to do is say you make this much and the loan will go through.


 "Wow, you mean we can get the house." Responsibility starts shaking in his boots.


"You can move in at the end of the month," winks the Professional. After all he knows what he is doing right?


"Well what happens when the second loan adjusts the rate in three years (or five or whatever?)" Responsibility sits up in his chair.


"No problem, property is appreciating in your neighbor hood at about twenty percent per year." Professional pauses, and smiles, "you will be able to refinance into a fixed rate loan then as you will have plenty of equity."


"Allright, where do we sign." Responsibility grabs its chest and falls to the floor. Nobody calls 911.


You see Carl no one will blame the borrower, unless it is some big business with a battery of lawyers to shield them. Those we will never hear about. What you should be worried about with the story's you tell every day is when do you call 911 for Responsibilities chest pains?

Whew, mid-terms over

Naw not your college mid-terms; mid-term elections.

Everybody is into data, I should have kept a spread sheet of the oversize postcards in my mail. I just know it was higher than normal. That's 'cause in my state we want to smoke grass and have labels on GMO's. The amount of money spent--goes into the high YIKES! factor. For the dollars spent we could have fixed a lot of bridges, added some teachers, upgraded some treatment plants. Ranting about the mis-allocation of money on wrong headed policies is a waste of time. Is it not?

(Don't you love how I move from using contractions to not using contractions?)

Well, we are done. We get marijuana but labels are too close to call (as of this writing.) Judges can work, the State does not have to issue ID cards, no sex discrimination, and no open primaries. In the larger context most of them were house keeping issues. The legislature remanded three measures to the voters, the others were citizen initiatives. Citizen initiatives translates into out of state money looking for a market. Kind of a cool idea, change a law, and make money from the change. That is the way it works. You have to look deep to make a rational decision about the benefit to the community. Will legal grass benefit anybody? Yeh, the users. Supporters argued police won't waste their time on un-important work, i.e. busting users. Does anybody have any data on how many arrests were made in the state over any period of time of illegal recreational use of pot? Doubt it. The rest of us can just have another reason to worry about driving down the road.

Measure 88 was one of those yes means no and vice versa. Since it went down resoundingly it appears we will continue to act as immigration enforcers for the Fed's (I think.)

The surprise was the defeat of open primaries. The big winner in this is, or course, the state party central leadership. Who would need them if primaries were open? The singling out of the "most electable candidate and turning on the money tap to them and the resultant control would have been lost. Guess Republican's and Dem's must have worked together on that one. A joint PAC maybe--naww woulda' never happened.

For a mo-bedda re-cap read my favorite college professor from whom I never had class:http://russdondero.squarespace.com

The Summer of Mediocrity

 

Four occasions three related to customer service one of leadership (that means they are all about leadership.)

Switched from Comcast to Frontier for TV, phone, and internet.  Why? Less expensive. What’s good, less money. What’s bad, lousy web access (bill pay,) poor follow up, lots of calls to get stuff fixed, scheduling install at their convenience.

Upgraded service at vacation home. What’s good, it all works, inexpensive package, no contract. The bad, their schedule, and it was a forced move. They cut off the old analogue service and printed the upcoming change on a statement (small print.) We found out when a renter called.

The heat pump quit. That is, it lost its cooling capacity. Paid to recharge the compressor (lasted a day.) Told we needed to pay diagnostic cost to find leak, $1300, then they could fix. Days and days battling to convince them covered under extended warranty (from the Big Box we bought through.) I had to do all the calling the vendor did not lift a finger. Three weeks to get fixed—house got hot!

Attended a function at one of the graduate schools of my old alma mater, and the alumni association award was introduced by an employee of the university rather than a representative of the alumni association. What the hell?

Here's to you Mom

108 years ago (in March actually)  "Winnie", as her friends called her, was brought forth into the world. She is the perfect example to exhibit that God knows what is doing. She married young and had four children quite spread apart. This writer was the last and probably the most difficult. "Untimely snatched," as Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar.  Quite a feat in middle of the 20th Century.

I have a picture of a canvas tent up to its eaves in snow. A wood stove chimney visible in field of white. She would say "I raised two children in a McCall, Idaho winter. I can do anything." She was of course referring to my two oldest siblings. As it would be a few decades later before my arrival in her and Dad's life. That statement sticks with me and a number of friends have heard the story. Many of you influenced by her constant good cheer, warm welcome, and cinnamon roles. She was of friend of God and prayed to Jesus and I never doubted her faith. She set an expansive table for her family even when we didn't all give thanks and behave as properly as we should. Her love for us all never diminished, even when we disappointed. I know that as sure as I sit writing this essay.

Even though I miss her counsel, she still influences my thought, personality, and belief's. Her DNA flows in my veins and for that the Almighty must approve. One of her Granddaughters, our number two, called her an and old soul. The wisdom visible in the sharp eyes as hers pierced yours and you know the correctness of that statement. She taught me forgiveness for others and my own sins. She taught me the value of thought, and cooling my temper. She taught me to love others even when they caused me pain. Difficult lessons steeped in life and living. She taught me that mathematics was important even as I struggled with high school algebra. She taught me the value of a poker face in the face of trial (and cards.) The lessons go on and on.

I think she would approve of the effort, and many of the results of my labor and choices, and strongly disapprove of many others. Isn't that what a mother is supposed to do? Never raised a hand to me that I recall, but the weight of disappointment in bad behavior was far more crushing than any corporal punishment. The thing is I remember only a very good life with my parents, and my mother did her part. Sorry for the bad choices Mom, hope you find joy in the good ones.

I miss you. Happy Mothers Day.

Sunday Mornings and Balkinization

I can't decide if Sunday morning news shows are good or bad for me. Invariably they get my blood pressure up (bad) but my intellectual juices start flowing (good & bad.) I remember there is a channel changer (good.) Tolerating the effete intellectual snobbery of the left (they assume I am stupid and incapable of taking care of myself) or the self righteous puffery of the friends of the oligarchs wanting to make sure I don't get too smart. I know both chip away at me when I listen to them and the guy on the left makes a point, I get it, the guy on the right makes a point (he sounds better when he is not running for president) makes a point and, guess what, I get it. That is when exhaustion (and rising blood pressure sets in.)


Today, most of the discussion revolved around whatisname owner of the Clippers, Benghazi, and White House Correspondents Dinner. Ok the Pres said some funny stuff. Wasn't ingratiating enough. His popularity poles are still in the septic tank, but the quips on Congress were good. Nothing new though as Mark Twain and Will Rogers already satirized Congress better than anybody since.


Ok I digress.


The point I thought I might be making is the from the Republican vantage point the federal government is too big, and the reason our economy does not grow is because the federal budget and regulatory burden puts too heavy a weight on business. What businesses are they talking about? Seems to me it is local government that makes the deals with the Intel's of the world to not pay property tax (or at least pay very little to build a plant.) Did the IRS send me a letter and say, 'hey I know you broke your neck last year to earn the paltry $30grand so you can send us a check for $10K. So here is some money back.' I have done this before.
The county, with the states blessing, has never said 'I know you are trying to pay your bills and we'll discount your property tax for the cubby you have upstairs where you spend 10-12 hours a day on the phone and email so you make some commission to pay your taxes!' 


I am not in charge of anything but my, uhhh, can't think of anything, never mind. Since the Supremes said I can now write a check for $50jillion or so to my favorite candidate maybe I can buy some influence in Congress. Oh WAIT I do not have $50 jillion! Shit what do I do now? Write.


The Republicans are correct in one respect. The Federal government is too big. The Dem's are right about one thing also. The Fed's have to regulate what crosses state lines. Everything does these days. The regulatory process is antiquated, managed by incompetent princes grasping desperately to eroding fiefdoms. That is no reason to get cranky, it just means it is time to go. What the Republicans don't get is the de-centralization of government will lead to further polarization of the parties and politics. Not all states can afford to pump money into their local economies by giving away the store to those who will move their business. Republicans say jobs are in small business--no one at any governmental level cuts them a break. This uneven distribution of dollars is apparent in any school district (particularly ones supported by property taxes like they are in my state) when less is spent per student in one part of the district than another. How about variations in one state to another of student teacher ratios ; 15 to 1 teacher ratio in one and in another it is 32 to 1. Who has the advantage? For the US to compete on the global stage this antiquated notion that what is done best is done at the local level is nonsense in the face of enormous concentrations of money in locations away from these local jurisdictions.


Now I am no populist, but the oligarchs are in control, and the right sleeps in their pocket next to their. . . well never mind. What is missing is an understanding on both sides there has to be some kind of balance. You can sing whatever songs you want about what we are doing well, but the bottom line people is, it is not enough. Until the both parties recognize the governments role, and I will talk about that again later, the US will continue killing its middle class, decline in too many indexes to count against foreign competition, and this is a concoction for catastrophe.


The Founding Fathers were brilliant, and to be admired and revered for whatever life the "Republic" has. The thing they could not envision was the concentration of power through money corrupting their vision. In addition they could not foresee the power of global communications. (Maybe Ben Franklin did.) Rupert Murdoch does and so does that nut bag in North Korea, damn it I am digressing again.


Ok, I have vented enough. Please note this is the first directly political post I have written. There will be more. I just don't care anymore who I piss off. Right thinking has to start somewhere.

Random Thoughts

 

Driving the car is the best producer of random thoughts. Sometimes I can even string them together into these brief oral (if I talked to myself) essays. The other day some of the random thoughts revolved around news stories.

1)      An out of work gentleman who decided to complete some “random acts of kindness.”

a)      All about himself and how it made him feel (the curse and embracing of self indulgence.)

2)      The supreme’s deciding it was ok (5to4) that political candidates can receive up to something like 59M in donations from single individuals

a)      I doubt the founding fathers considered the unbridled expenditure of money as a first amendment right.

b)      Does it matter? The presumption (looking at the last general election) a couple of billion on the campaign—most of it for television ads in specific markets. Is television broadcasting relevant anymore when more and more people get news from other sources? Of course not all of it is reliable, but good stuff is “out there.”

3)      The frustrations of finding work after a certain age and the gross assumptions made for any body of any certain age and perceived work performance, work ethic, and commitment.

a)      Comments about older workers being too expensive, too inflexible, and (implication) too short lived vs. poor work ethic and self absorbed.

b)      My experience; plenty of skills, but mostly irrelevant to employers. The fit vs the skills. The reality is technology is a larger part of the work dynamic and my experience (although very comfortable with technology and always an early adapter) I do not have the specific skills in specific applications. In other words generalists are not valuable. Even entrepreneurs have very specific skill sets to bring to the new product, offering, application, or whatever. So who will be the global, big picture thinkers of the future?

c)      This produces another random thought: is technology dumbing us down? Do we get so used to a machine cranking out the data we don’t know the underlying math? It is one thing to know in generalities how an internal combustion engine works. It is quite something else to know how to make it work.

4)      Obama care, Cover Oregon, and Oracle’s failure.

a)      Why isn’t the State of Oregon taking Oracle to task? Did the RFP not include a clause to hold them accountable for failure to perform?

 

There were some other molecular percolation but those were mostly story ideas.

As an older worker I cannot be expected to understand company goals?

As an "experienced" job seeker I am drawn like a moth to a light when I see a blog or ezine headlines with content about the job market, older workers, (especially old vs young), worker demographics, worker expectations, and my favorite; the gross generalizations and conversations around what is clearly anecdotal evidence. I am beginning to feel like I should be a protected class! It is inaccurate to describe all young workers as "lacking a solid work ethic", and older workers as "unable to molded to the companies goals." I am not making this up--check LinkedIn or Harvard Business Review. I would cite the reference but it would make me gag.

There is not a single shred of quantifiable evidence to suggest one class or age worker is better or worse than another. What I will suggest is this is evidence of a poor state of leadership, across all sectors private and public, and most organizations inability or incompetence to develop capable ethical leaders. If the leaders cannot get the right people on the bus it will not make any difference what the organizations goals are--it is doomed to mediocrity at best, a prolonged death spiral at worst.

Employee performance is purely an individual behavior. Group behavior is made of the individuals involved. This is stating the obvious. So why make generalizations about a segment of the population and their ability to do work. Beats the hell out of me, except it is the refuge of the brain dead and those who do not, cannot, will not lead their teams. Organizations need to wake up to this rot and cut it out, but they will not because they are lead by people with these flaws. It is not entirely their fault. The insane pressures to meet quarterly or monthly stock values, budget cutbacks, and revenue goals all the while beating back regulatory attacks, rapidly changing IT needs, greater expectations by end users, consumers, and stakeholders it is a wonder the collective brains don't blow up. The result is the snake eating the tail and degrading performance rather than enhancing it and the dumbing down of the infrastructure to "streamline" decision making and stakeholder interface. They refuse to embrace the Marine Corp's rule of three and prefer to do more with less.

I came face with this last week when I applied for a position with a large regional bank. An email was sent with instructions to access a virtual job tryout. Hopefully this is not a trade marked label. It comprised of several sections including financial statement analysis, budget evaluation and performance, customer problem resolution, and staff management issues. Of course it had to include the variant on the good old Meyers-Briggs MMPI. Now I have taken variations on the "personality evaluation" so many times that it is pretty easy to game the system. Unfortunately I still tend to over think some of the answers. Like why in the hell is there a never fifth choice of "IT DEPENDS!" Probably because at least 90% of the responses would be the fifth choice by at least 50% of the participants. When you participate in these inane little exercises you will notice most of the questions are repetitive, just asked differently, -- they are looking for an insidious pattern.

Waaal this one was no different. The questions I over thought were the ones about how I would handle/manage/react to getting involved in "problems" within the entity. Should I seek them out and eradicate the little bastards  or let other people (presumably staff) bring them to my attention. No set of questions ever demanded the FIFTH CHOICE like these. And I did not game them very well. My expectation is the bank wants people to go looking and asking, "Is everything OK?" Now we all know we don't want the real answer, we want the answer to be "Great, Boss, never better!" I think by now you know where this is going. To me this need to ferret out problems by inquisition is useful but be rarely used. The TEAM should be capable and willing to communicate with the leader without fear of reprisal, recrimination, or punishment 'cause the whole team is responsible for moving the organization to its goals. RIGHT? A collective positive response is expected here.

My perception is leaders (managers) in this organization do not grasp the rule of three, do not mentor their managers to build effective teams (they are incompetent to do so) and the front line manager is yanked around by expectations of the organization to meet budget projections, business development expectations, while responding to the needs of customers, staff, and upper level (said with tongue in cheek) management  while on a crappy salary working 70 hour weeks. Sounds like a lotta fun. Needless to say I have not heard from these folks. You can guess my answers.

Actually I think this is a sad thing and I do get preachy don't I? Well this is my blog.

Best of 2014 to you.