Planning the Beachhead Next week I am going to Rotterdam for a conference. It is a conference I attended last year, which in and of itself is meaningful in that it demarcates the passage of time in our current scientific and commercial initiative. Last year there were 150 in attendance. I suspect this year will be closer to 200 attendees. This is only the third year of this conference and given the money-making nature…
Integrity Matters Merriam-Webster says this: Definition of integrity 1: Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: INCORRUPTIBILITY 2: An unimpaired condition: SOUNDNESS 3: The quality or state of being complete or undivided: COMPLETENESS The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. Dwight D. Eisenhower…
Nor Any Drop to Drink The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was his longest major poem and was written in 1798 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. It is the story of an old seaman who takes a perilous voyage where he gets stuck in Antarctic waters until an albatross leads him out. The most famous line in the poem that most of us have heard is: Water,…
Money Laundering In 1994 I was asked by my superiors at Bankers Trust to take over the global private banking business. I had mixed feelings about the assignment since I had only been in my prior job for eighteen months (just about the time one gets a head of steam going) and private banking had been one of the backwaters of banking for years, being what was called a “walk the dog” service business. …
Remote Control If you are like me, you grew up with a romantic notion of what remote control meant. It involved gas-powered airplanes, speedboats, race cars, and even the Zenith TV in your living room. It implied this amazing and exciting ability to sit back and relax while you do minimal work to make your fun take place in hyper-speed. In that dream, you know exactly how the machine (whatever it is) operates. You understand…
Getting Over It I recently had breakfast with an old friend. This is someone who I had participated actively in recruiting for his job. I thought he was both highly qualified and appropriately aggressive, and that he would “move the needle” on leading the organization forward. There is a reason leaders are highly paid and much sought-after. Organizations need this impetus to progress and it is quite hard to accomplish. The euphemisms abound about…
Even the Vikings Had to Stretch Make no mistake, Wall Street is a battle zone. There is excess aggression and emotion everywhere you look. I have often thought that the only thing that separates successful Wall Street professionals from the rest of the world is their level of drive and ability to withstand pain. Sometimes the battle rages for gain alone, but often the battle is for the battle sake. Worst of all is…
Camel Money In the world of finance, everybody understands the term Camel Money. It means money that has, what we call on Wall Street, a high talk-to-ticket ratio. It is the money that has supposedly been flowing from the middle east since the Oil Embargo of 1973 and OPEC’s wanton thrashing of the U.S. consumer. That was when Petrodollars first came into visible existence and we began to understand that people who had scads of…
About the Battle Battles rage every day in every aspect of life. I am reminded today of a past battle which I feel is instructive and which I will characterize vaguely and with pseudonyms and made-up settings. It is a battle fought over a decade ago, so I suspect the statute of limitations (defined by law and by life) has long expired. Most involved in the battle probably wish it would just be forgotten, but…
The Inbox Years ago, when I came out of the bank training program I attended after Business School, I remember talking to a young British colleague who explained the experience he was having on the line for the first time. He was assigned to the Latin America Department and was the junior member on the Brazil Desk. That’s what we used to call coverage of s specified region or country, the _______ Desk. His comment…