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Like a Sturgeon – Trumped for the Very First Time

17 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Amercian Express, AMEX, authenticity, caviar, Donald Trump, followership, GOP, humility, I'm Crazy for You, insight, Leadership, Like a Virgin, listening, Madonna, Marco Rubio, Papa Don't Preach, vulnerability

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You guessed it; I was at the Madonna Concert last night that is quickly becoming legend for the late arrival of the pop diva. Notified by the event management we arrived ‘fashionably late’ at 8.45 all geared up for the announced 9pm start. As it was, that meant a 12pm finish and a late (or should I say early) repose. Madonna graced us with her presence at a few minutes before 11.30pm and my head hit the pillow at 2.30am, pretty much blowing my productivity the day after and making me somewhat of a hazard driving home from work on a pretty meagre zzzz diet.

So there were two and three quarter hours we had to while away. Thanks to American Express this wasn’t as onerous as it might have been. Indeed, had it not been for access to the American Express cardholders lounge at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, we probably would have baled out before the concert started (like some people I know) throwing the $299 per ticket in the trash. So at a time when one person trashed their own brand – Madonna, another organisation – Amex once again stood out as a company that gets what it means to delight their customer.

Madonna on the other hand doesn’t seem to give a damn, or as she might more aptly call it ..a f*@k. It was a concert ridiculously punctuated with expletive ridden monologues which were Madonna’s forlorn endeavour to come across as some sort of freedom fighter, social evangelist and all round rebel with a cause. It didn’t work. The audience were treated to what amounted to no more than a cringe laden, school-girl giggly clichéd series of sexual innuendo (ooohh in your end Oh – you get the picture). The way she treated her two main protagonist dancers, both black, was heavy in racial stereo-typing and the production of a banana from the waist coat of one of them was to me offensive. Still it’s Madonna and she can get away with that, after all she is a freedom fighter right?

That made me ponder. Does anyone in her entourage vet this stuff and call it for what it is, or does she have a sycophantic coterie that tell her exactly what she wants to hear? Madonna, it appears to me, puts herself in the rarefied air of someone so special that she affords herself a license that few others would be given. She is the caviar of the music world – a multi-million selling recording artist who has successfully traversed the vagaries of musical trends across four decades. Amazing given she is actually a child of the 1950s. This seems to afford her certain rights not available to us mere mortals.

While spending time in the Amex lounge I went on Twitter and caught up with the day’s events which was pretty much dominated by the US Primaries. There were numerous news organisations reporting on the recent wins by Trump progressing him further and further towards winning the GOP nomination. What characterises Trump’s campaign is a kind of aggression that appears to appeal to a certain segment of the US population. This in turn is causing riotous behaviour at the various rallies associated with Trump. Trump has quite often suggested that someone should be punched in the face and on more than one occasion his ‘disciples’ have followed through on this. Why wouldn’t they? Here is a leader, possibly soon to be the most powerful person in the world, advocating a behaviour that they are only too willing to carry out if it is given sanction.

Leadership requires many things. We often describe it as the ability to take people with you, as well as persuade many to your particular point of view. Quite often successful leaders don’t make good leaders if success is defined by the size of the following you garner. Hitler after all had much of the German nation in his thrall but that did not make him a good leader. Madonna in her own way is a leader. She has influenced many generations of women, and has advocated a more direct approach on issues of sexuality and equality. That doesn’t make her a good leader. Other attributes are necessary to tick all the boxes in the leadership stakes.

To be honest I have never been a great fan of the leadership as a discipline in its own right brigade. Leadership to me is a subset of effective management. To take it away from management suggests that it is the preserve of a select few, an elite, and this propagates the view that leaders are born and not made. Leadership has a set of skills that can be learned and with practice true leadership results. Some of the hallmarks of good leadership are:

  • Humility – knowing when to take your foot off the pedal of self-promotion and narcissism;
  • Listening – to get advice and to shape this into the way you behave;
  • Followership – if you were never a good follower at some stage what insights do you have over your dominions?
  • Broad Shoulders – if you put yourself in front you need to be prepared to take on board the slings and arrows of criticism and to handle this with grace. People who do not agree with you aren’t necessarily stupid;
  • Being an example – knowing that people are watching means you have to do right and to be seen to do right; a plain fact so many in Office get wrong;
  • Sticking around – people want to see you there through thick and thin. If you bail out and move on then people do not get exposed to the true you;
  • Vulnerability – no-one is full proof and no-one is the complete person so showing the areas where you are not strong but get the necessary assistance to cover for this deficit provides comfort to those who follow you. This is not a prophet we follow after all; it is a human being;
  • Insight – you need to understand the power of your words and actions over those who have vested in you their hopes and aspirations;
  • Authenticity – if you cannot show the true you the audience for your ideas or leadership will spot it pretty easily and your following may well be based on fear and not a genuine desire to be led.

Neither Trump nor Madonna appear to display many of these characteristics. When Trump talks about people who decry his campaign he labels them, especially female reporters, as idiots and advocates they get beaten up. His rival Marco Rubio was ‘Little Marco’ in some strange reference to his genitalia. Last night Madonna made reference to genitalia on a number of occasions and also suggested that the audience should fight for the bouquet she was about to throw into the audience and that the person who got it should be punched in the nose.

Like and respect are the two emotions that followers afford their leaders. Neither I would give to either. Surely they know the impact of what they say? If not it is the responsibility of those around them to provide wise counsel. Blind adoration is not what we do when we anoint a leader. I suspect that Trump and Madonna wouldn’t be happy knowing this. When the Primaries get to the later stages where it really matters I don’t think the chorus in Cleveland are going to be singing to Donald ‘We’re Crazy for You!’ If upbraided for being late at concerts Madonna may well regale us with ‘Papa don’t preach.’ Here’s my response from a one-time admirer. ‘I’ve been losing sleep!”

 

 

All Credit to Shorty

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Tags

AAA, Alan Greenspan, Allianz, Amercian Express, AMEX, ANZ, Bear Stearns, BOQ, Brad Pitt, CDOs, Commonwealth Bank, Deutsche bank, Dick Smith, Get Shorty, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Margot Robbie, Mastercard, NAB, Rating agencies, Steve Carell, Steve Smith, The Big Short

 

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I did something a little odd last week. I saw The Big Short with my stock broker. It wasn’t intentional. I had just settled into my seat then along he came with his family and plonked himself down right in front of me. An ex-Goldman Sachs man, I had cause on more than one occasion to lean forward and give him a reminder nudge (of the ‘nod nod’ ‘wink wink’ variety) or comforting hand on shoulder.

Great movie. Eminently watchable, even for those for whom the world of banking and finance holds little interest. It takes the audience on the magic carpet ride that was the Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) in the US Housing market and the shameless acts of the banks and, worse still, the ratings agencies. The cast were routinely in fine form especially Steve Carell and the very brief interlude by  Margot Robbie explaining what a CDO is, while drinking champagne in her bubble bath, worth the price of the ticket alone.

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I once populated the world of Private Equity in London so have some of the flavour of the heady environment, or more accurately bubble, in which these rarefied species exist. In fact I have been at one time a bubble-dweller myself. Never threw a dwarf – I admit- but did see dwarves thrown. It is, by nature, a high adrenaline ride where self comes before team, comes before company, comes before common good. This is portrayed accurately by the Ryan Gosling character as he sets up his company Deutsche Bank for a fall and himself for a windfall (as a funny aside I right clicked Deutsche to get the correct spelling and it came up with douche which when inserted in a sentence as  ‘douche bank’ sounds remarkably and accurately like something else).

I haven’t come here to bury the banks, nor praise them though. I just want to reflect on some issues around the Customer. What the film does very well is show us how little regard was given to the customer in the all the deception that was the CDO scandal. Wrapped up as much more stable than they were, sub-prime mortgages were bundled and then rated as AAA by the ratings agencies and the banks flicked these on as ‘copper-bottomed’ investments to the unsuspecting institutions and the public. There might be those who would suggest that it’s caveat emptor out there and sophisticated investors must be ever vigilant. While schadenfreude is a lovely cold gazpacho, it is worth reminding ourselves that along with the ‘filthy rich’, local councils and charities were duped into what they thought were sound investments and we all suffer as a result.

Seldom does an evening at home pass (except of course on Netflix) that we aren’t seduced by advertising that the banks are wonderful and they really have our best interests at heart. Take for example Steve Smith, our illustrious cricket captain (and good reliable bloke), who with the assistance of Commonwealth Bank (our largest and of which I am a shareholder) helps out a long-suffering cricket Mum with a makeover while he takes the kids to cricket. Who can CAN make this happen? – Commonwealth Bank of course. This is competing with the ‘NAB gets you’ clearly targeted at small business, until they call in the loan and then really get you. Bank of Queensland poses the question as to whether you can really love a bank? The advert’s underlying thesis is you can – BOQ who else? Try asking Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers account holders that question.

The fact of the matter is a lot of money is being spent duping us, the public, and I think we all know this but tolerate it. Perhaps the difference here between the CDO scandal and the current advertising is we didn’t know what the banks were doing before the GFC with CDOs etc. It would appear Alan Greenspan didn’t so you can’t blame us. The common ground here is that there is a serious and morally questionable re-calibration of the truth in both cases. Take for example Dick Smith going into liquidation with the possibility of workers not receiving their entitlements. If the financial press is anything to go by, the decision by the banks to ‘pull the pin’ was based on timing whereby Dick Smith had received its inventory and sold it but not paid most of its suppliers (Apple and Samsung being two notable savvy exceptions) and cash had been generated by the sale of gift cards, most of which have not been redeemed and will not be honoured. I would love to see the Steve Smith advert re-cast with the long-suffering cricket Mum being given the day off, not to go to the day spa, but truck herself around the shopping centres trying to buy something using her Dick Smith gift card. My hunch is she would look a lot more frazzled on returning at the close of play!

Getshort

The myth that we have constantly fed to us is that the banks value us as a customer. I had my own first-hand experience lately with my Com Bank Mastercard that put this to the test. Having used the Allianz travel insurance associated with using my card to buy a holiday, I unfortunately had cause to claim based on a delay and missing flights and accommodation in the UK and Spain. Allianz, if their adverts are anything to go by, are a ‘Yes: What’s the question?’ kind of company. Their advert has their lovely Call Centre person going ‘Ah Allianz’ finishing the sentence of the poor fool who had just done something stupid and exclaiming ‘Ahhhhhh!!’. My experience was slightly different. Without drawing this out my response from them was  ‘Ah Allianz…NO’. So I thought I would cancel my credit card given Allianz was merely an agent acting on behalf of Commonwealth Bank. And so I proceeded to do so. That was an interesting exercise in tenacity requiring a few conversations with the call centres. Never in one of the conversations did any of those I spoke to at the Bank ask what they could do to put it right and what would keep me as a customer. I’ve never had one late payment and I’ve always paid in full by the due date. The cynical out there might suggest that’s why they couldn’t care less about me breaking my ties with them. Contrast that with Amex who I rather uncharacteristically had an issue with recently. They asked me what they could do to make me feel valued and while I was putting my mind to that, they proffered 30,000 rewards points. To scale that, I would have to spend $30,000 to get that through my own endeavours. Wow!

At our place we have found as we have moved from the articulation of the concept of cherishing the customer, and put our efforts into actually meaning this, – rather than getting the client to think we mean it – our business has grown. That doesn’t mean you can’t have the stern discussions when needed. That doesn’t mean there are some customers you actually don’t want. But the key here is honesty, integrity and being authentic. These are fantastic characteristics to have in business, as they are to have in life. In The Big Short Brad Pitt plays the character with the conscience. When the two young protégés celebrate when they realise they have just struck pay-dirt when shorting against the housing market, he makes it clear that their ‘whooping and hollering’ is a preface to a worldwide collapse leaving millions out of work and destitute. A timely intervention.

I’ll leave you with some lines from the movie.

‘The banks got greedy and we can profit from their stupidity.’

‘Fraud has never ever worked. Eventually things go south. When the hell did we forget all that?’

‘You target strippers with bad loans?’ ANZ might find this line a little close to the bone!

‘The American people are getting screwed by the big banks.’ You slot a country of your choice in here.

Chilling words and all arising from deception. A deception that is perpetuated in our living rooms every night. Don’t take my word for it, suspend judgement until the final line of the movie just before the credits roll….

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