In the past two days I have had business calls with two financial professionals in connection with a process of possibly joining a board (something I generally am not inclined to consider). Why don’t I like boards and board membership? Not really for the same reason that many in my position have. Many people are troubled by the potential liability of board membership, but that is much less my concern than the potential for some combination of board political shenanigans and boring business mechanics. What I loved about business was the creativity of invention and innovation and what I disliked about business was the workaday processes and grinding that simply must take place for businesses to gain efficiency and optimize themselves. Very rarely does success come just from one of those sides of the business equation. During highly exuberant times it is possible for a creative spark of strategy to ignite the imagination of a potential buyer even where there is fundamentals are still lacking or weak, but those are truly unique situations. During difficult drugging environments its not unusual for people to focus exclusively on the nitty gritty of shaving pennies here and there and eliminate consideration of anything new or innovative as a distraction or frivolity. Those extremes represent perhaps 10% of the situations on either end of the spectrum with the vast 80% of the time falling in the middle where its the combination of both capabilities that lead to success.
My experience is also that people tend to either be content or process people. I had a boss thirty-five years ago who told me in my first review after taking over a big, unwieldy new business (new for me, but otherwise a very old business), that I was an excellent content manager and was learning to be a good process manager. That was his polite way of telling me that I had my arms around the content and creative part of the equation just fine, but that I had a lot to learn yet about the process side. I always remembered it as a standard of good management by him and it educated me about the bifurcation of business along these lines and my tendency towards one extreme versus the other. I began thinking of people along that spectrum and found that a very useful context for evaluating managers (though not the only criteria).
I have spoken before about the fact that in the world of Wall Street, specialization tends to be king with people becoming so specialized and expert in their arenas that they are both very strong process managers and somewhat insular to the next big thing. In many ways, Wall Street likes that happening to people because they want people to keep their heads down and keep bringing out the production. As for the next play, that’s for the manager to concern themselves with and not the dealmakers. If the gold vein being mined by the dealmaker runs out, so be it…that’s the dealmaker’s problem and its presumed that the smart ones will retool accordingly. I was never a fan of that cycle, as pragmatic as it may have been. It values the franchise and the bottom line over the high quality of the human capital being deployed and I think as a believer in human capital over financial capital as a driver of prosperity, I never felt that process model was as optimal as others did.
I have recently watched my oldest son, Roger, as he has found his way in the world of business. He and I both knew nothing about business when we came of age. I should have known more since at age 12-14 I ran little businesses as part of my golf course work in Maine. One year it was caddying (a pure service business), the next summer it was running the ninth hole concession stand at a remote spot on the course where I was allowed to use the structure and a golf cart for transport and draw product and ice from the clubhouse larder (the honor system) and then price things up as I saw fit, and then the last summer I was a “corporate” salaried employee of the pro shop working for salary and bonus (tips for shagging balls for the pro and from the pool guests for shagging drinks from the bar). You would think that would make me commercial in my thinking, but it really didn’t. The jobs I had during college were just that…jobs. I didn’t start a business or do anything entrepreneurial, I was a hotel house boy, a kitchen steward, a short-order cook, a driveway tarer, a landscaper, a coder, and a faculty tennis club manager. The closest I came to being something other than raw labor was the last job and even that consisted mostly of maintaining the courts rather than managing anything other than the schedule for the courts. There is something about hard work and labor and being of service that simply seems to be in my blood.
After business school I went into the corporate world of Wall Street and found that my proclivity for hard service work catapulted me upward by virtue of the results that I was able to achieve by keeping my nose to the grindstone…but it didn’t feel like a grind to me since there was room for innovation right from the get-go and that innovation was noticed and appreciated in a business that hadn’t routinely involved so much creativity. I think my timing was right as the industry was ripe for change and I was lucky enough to be at a firm that prized that creativity. But as for the business of business, I was forced to learn to do enough of that to move my businesses forward, but it was never the dominant activity for me…it was an adjunct activity at best. That is not so unusual in the corporate world, or at least some parts of it.
My son Roger, on the other hand, has not had the benefit of business school or the runway into the corporate world (though he has had a job or two in that realm…but the roles never rang his bell so much as it did mine). His path involved as much or more of the hard labor and service work as miy path did, but he transitioned from that to entrepreneurship with an almost complete focus on process, only spiced with creativity to keep things interesting. His bias at this stage is largely about getting the process solid and then and only then layering on some innovation. That makes him a far better businessman than I ever was. I was a good executive and leader, but he is a good businessman and leader…and there is a meaningful difference that I very much respect.
When I talk to these board members that want me to potentially join them, I find myself loving the content of the business involved and looking forward to the opportunity to participate in the creative effort in an arena that I have always enjoyed and found fascinating. I know how to handle the drudgery of board work too (balance sheets and budgets) but that isn’t why I would be asked to join should that happen. I’m not needed for that part of the equation. Where I can help is probably in driving the strategy towards an interesting outcome for the investors by helping the company drive its clients better and better. Walking down this path is surrounded by memories and the memories that resonate the loudest are about being of service and getting the creative juices flowing.