UK
THE OUTSIDER: Anoraks rule, not OK
4 September 2008
Maybe I’m just a grumpy old man. But at least I’m not alone. An old corporate finance colleague told me a few months ago that he’d officially passed his sell-by date. He had now reached his give-away date. He knew because he had attended a management committee and finally reached the point where he really could not understand much more than half of what the teenagers round the table with their PhDs in string theory were talking about. He felt like a dinosaur.
Of course, most of the teenagers had never actually met a client. Clients were something the dinosaurs dealt with. The teenagers thought only in terms of market counterparties, useful for laying off risk, generating alpha, or whatever the buzzword of the day happened to be.
No presence or charisma
It was probably just as well that the teenagers did not meet clients, because people who have made it to the top of industry might not be impressed by geeks in jeans and sneakers, nerdish finance anoraks with no social skills, nothing of interest to say outside their own narrow sphere of activity and certainly no presence or charisma beyond what you find in the average computer gamer.
If that sounds prejudiced, it’s because I am. At one level, the geeks are incredibly smart. The kids who got pushed around in the playground discovered the biggest trainset and got to play with it. By making their business complex to the point of dullness – it sends me to sleep just thinking about what they do – they built a wall around themselves, added a couple of noughts to the end of all the sums (sadly, including their own bonus numbers when they got lucky) and they swung the firm’s balance sheet around to produce results that dwarfed what could be achieved by careful cultivation and servicing of difficult, demanding corporate clients who did a fee-paying transaction every couple of years. It just wasn’t fair.
No manners or culture
If this sounds like stereotyping, I’ll plead guilty as charged. I don’t like these people. They have no manners, no culture, they wouldn’t know how to tie a bow tie, let alone entertain clients at Glyndebourne (OK, they might make it as far as Chelsea), and these days they’re in charge. How outrageous is that?
But every cloud has a silver lining. The good news about the turmoil in the markets is that clients are back in vogue, at least for now. Balance sheets are stretched to breaking point, the geeks’ trainset is looking battered and kind of yesterday, and the boys are having to learn a little humility, which is good for everyone, but especially them. Even in bad times, there is a God.
David Charters’ latest book, The Ego Has Landed, is published by Elliott and Thompson, price £9.99.
David, I agree with your idea that those nerds need to be sociable. But your views seem very biased, to say the least.
Yes, clients are important and most of the business comes because of socializing. But Financial services industry has perhaps overdone 'client entertainment'. You don't need nerds but you don't need dinosaur either who hardly have any depth in their discipline and just survive because industry somehow values how well one can tie and bow-tie?
And that points to the main shortcoming we have in business as a profession. Lots of people make to the levels they should not have just because they were social/connected/entertaining. And that is why we see CEOs/Sr Mgmt making so many dumb decisions which become part of b-school cases.
Agree, that business is about people (too). But there has to be a certain level of professional skill. I have seen so many people being hired by bulge-brackets just because of their appearance and blah blah ... people who fail their courses in Finance 101 and Accounting 101!
So 'people' part is imp but should not be overdone!! Financial services is not an entertainment. Promote ppl based on appearance & industry 'll be doomed.
Axesss 04 Sep 2008
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