Not So Fast Abernathy
One of my favorite old go-to jokes is about the Marine drill sergeant who has to find a way to tell one of his recruits that his mother has died. He is not a warm and fuzzy guy, so he comes up with what he thinks is a good way. At the next muster, once the troops are lined up at attention, he says, “Everyone who has a mother, take one step forward!” When the recruits all take the step, he yells out, “Not so fast, Abernathy!” It’s a morbid joke as anything about death must be, but its a fun joke because it acknowledges the challenge of bringing forth bad news and uses a common comedic trick of misdirection to create humor. If explaining comedy can’t take the fun out of a joke, nothing can. But I still love the joke and use the catchphrase all the time to effectively say….”not so fast….”
I wrote yesterday about adjusting to the reality of getting older and slowing down. That’s all well and good and I stand by my story and feel that there are moments when we all want to back off the merry-go-round and sit one out now and then, or perhaps decide to stop riding the merry-go-round. I will note the use of the merry-go-round in that metaphor because those childlike joyful rides are the ones that really aren’t so very thrilling unless you can barely walk, in which case the combination of the centrifugal force drawing you to the edge and the up and down of the carousel horse might be the most thrilling sensation you have ever felt in your two years of life. The roller coaster is the ride that much better describes the thrills of adulthood and the dangers that can ensue if you don’t hang on and go with the flow. Some people never want to ride the roller coaster, but most of us get on a merry-go-round at some point. And that is probably even more so if you choose not to ride the roller coaster and yet feel like you can’t let a day at the amusement park go completely to waste on the bench. So, in the later stages of our term at the amusement park of life, we either ride the merry-go-round or just give into the bench.
Since I have ridden both rides literally and figuratively, I am totally comfortable siting on the bench when I’m at a real amusement park. That is my way of saying that I get my kicks in riding other thrill rides than the physical Disneyland rides. Writing is a thrill ride, at least the way I do it, with trying to make fun of things without offending anyone too much. Teaching is a thrill ride and I can ratchet up the excitement by not sufficiently preparing and staring down the barrel of a three-hour lecture with a classroom of paying students wanting to learn something from me…and ready to mark me off on an evaluation if I screw up. And expert witness work is the most thrilling of all the rides since I know just enough about a case until I really dig into it to pitch myself as an “EXPERT EXTRAORDINAIRE” and then backfill my knowledge to be sure I can do the job properly. Then there is the added thrill of getting deposed by the other team that wants nothing more than to completely discredit you and strip you bare of any semblance of dignity. You really have to be confident to let someone disrobe you in public and point out every skin tab and mole. So far, I have enjoyed that challenge and have found that 45 years of experience has made me quite a credible expert in a number of fields and that I know far more than I ever realized about a wider array of things.
I had a particularly great class last night in my Advanced Corporate Finance course. Having been away for two weeks, I gave the class a team assignment to formulate a case on the topics of either capital structure (Weighted Average Cost of Capital) or derivatives. They almost all chose the former since cap structure is more intuitively understandable than derivatives. The 26 students split into 7 teams ranging from 2-5 students. I would declare two of the cases exceptionally good, with two others very good, and then one sort-of good, one generic and only OK and one quite not so good. In other words, a pretty standard dispersion of work from a diverse class. I am less surprised by the good cases and more surprised by the two weak cases since this is a required course for a finance concentration and self-selection implies that only people who feel confident in finance should want to take it. But the two exceptional cases were so good that they almost scared me into thinking these students were too good for me.
The class was scheduled to be about public company finance and I had my friend Ann, who is Chairman of a NYSE-listed company speak to the class. She did an amazing job not only in delivering valuable finance content to the class on subjects like complex financings and stock repurchase programs, but she also showed the class two important things that they really must come to understand. The first and simplest one is the lesson of diversity. Ann is one of the few female Chairs of a listed company and we understand that while the glass ceiling has been broken now, it hasn’t been broken enough and she is still more a rarity in that role than not. The second is the important lesson of how a Chairperson needs to act and present. Ann did an extremely good job of presenting a competent and confident example of how a leader needs to speak and respond to questions (no matter how tough or stupid they may be). This strikes me as quite different than how a politician might deal with questions and may be a tell as to why trust is so lacking amongst politicians where good leaders engender trust as a tool for good leadership.
When Ann was finished, I then used the top three cases from the students to delve into the topic of cap structure. Interestingly enough, the three cases were of public companies, one old blue chip (Ford), one modern Silicon Valley titan (Apple) and one new age start-up (Rivian, the electric truck maker…which had the added benefit in its contrast to Ford). What was serendipitous and so worthwhile was that the cases highlighted all the fundamental issues of public company finance that I sought to teach them in this class. The only thing not really captured in the cases was dividend policy, which, fortunately, got injected in the form of a question during the discussion about whether a dividend cut would be an alternative financing avenue. The whole class was invigorating to me and the students, judging by the post-class discussions I overheard. It was a wonderful feeling for me as a teacher to have the universe come together so well.
And so, on the subject of coming to the end of my rope on teaching….not so fast, Abernathy. If I can find ways to have more of these classes and fewer ones where I feel I am droning on and talking to blank stares, I would wish to teach to my dying day. The challenge for Abernathy is to figure out how to balance the preparation and methods of teaching in such a way as to make these great classes the norm and not the exception. But at least for this morning, I am feeling strong like bull and wanting to work until the end of time…or at lest until I feel I need a nice calm sit on the bench.