The Last Angry Man
Fred was livid and inconsolably so. The thing was, he didn’t really know why. He was generally an upbeat and pleasant sort that usually started each day with a smile and an optimistic outlook. There had to be a reason he was so angry so he decided to set about figuring why.
Fred had had more than an average amount of success in his life and in his career. Yes, it had taken him three times to find his soulmate in Wilma, but he had, indeed, found that soulmate and he was as happy with her as he could be. He had three kids who were off on their own courses and while The Bank of Dad was not yet completely closed, it was getting drawn on less and less and there was more and more self-reliance at play in the next generation (all three technically Millennials, but spanning the official cohort range). No, none of his kids was named Pebbles and both Fred and Wilma certainly had heard all the Yabba-Dabba-Doo jokes you can imagine over their time together. They didn’t even know anyone named Barney or Betty, which was probably a good thing. But they couldn’t resist and they did choose to name their Bichon Frise Dino, so they could hardly blame people for kidding them about their names.
Fred actually looked a little like Jackie Gleason, but he was neither a Madison Avenue bus driver nor a granite quarry worker. He was a banker who had suffered his way through forty years on Wall Street and come out the other end with his soul more or less intact. He was now the leader of a start-up company that he had gotten enticed into about fifteen months ago. Let’s discuss the enticing part. Fred was 65, but simply had too much energy and too active a mind to be put to sleep on the porch. He knew a lot about retirement as a guy who had taught the courses and written the books on that very topic along the way. He understood the dynamics of retirement as well as anyone, both the financial and the psychosocial. But fundamentally he was like anyone else, he wrestled with the issue every day. Some days his head was in the retirement clouds and some days he was actively engaged in his work.
One of the things Fred had always found to be true was that the motivation of the team was a function of the motivation around them. He viewed that as one of his secret weapons because he came into work every day with a light spirit and a can-do attitude. It was infectious and people liked to be around it. It fed off itself in that motivation breads engagement and engagement breads more motivation and around it all goes as the business revs up and gets its legs. Unlike Wall Street, where for the last ten years of his career, Fred had felt like a dinosaur (I’ve got to rethink my analogies for Fred). Everyone around him was his kids’ age. He even once ran into a colleague he was pitching on a deal and learned in mid-pitch that he was the son of one of his fraternity brothers from college. Now that shit can make you feel old and that you’ve overstayed your welcome.
This job was different. Of the sixteen people in his office, six were his age, six were Millennials and four were in that fifty-something zone. That was demographically unusual, but Fred’s understanding of the working age cohorts made him think that it was more likely than not going to become the norm over the next few years. More people nearing retirement were finding it either financially or psychosocially unattractive. People were going to stick around longer and that was all there was to it. As companies began scratching the bottom of the employment barrel, they began to accept and even embrace this aging workforce concept. The secret was to find ways to keep the older crowd jazzed about the future and the opportunities such that they drove growth in the business. Growth was becoming the holy grail of business, always sought but rarely found.
So, Fred was OK with the arrangement. He even liked the fact that his years of managerial experience made it a relatively easy job on most days even though there was still plenty to worry about overall. But Fred was also human and that meant that he wanted his colleagues to be on the journey with him. Therein lay the rub.
Fred’s gang on the Executive Committee consisted of four partners. He had been in a venture capital partnership with three others for twenty years and it was decidedly not like this. There they had all committed to a goal and were equally driven to achieve that goal for the sake of….wait for it….yes, their retirement security. They hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, but in hindsight they had all contributed about equally (in different, but complementary ways). This gang of five was very different. While they all had their skillsets and there was a high degree of complementariness, they were all driven by and working towards very different goals.
To begin with, where the old venture gang had equal shares in the outcome, this arrangement had one founder with 60% of the stock, one founder with 20% (but that came in via hard money investment, not the brainchild stake of the first founder). As for the other three (Fred among them), the ones who were really making the donuts, they were hired guns who drew salaries or charged for their time and had sliver-thin stakes. Three of the five were wealthy enough that this gig was not their make-or-break situation (Fred was one of those) and the other two, including the big primary founder, needed this as a source of income to support their lifestyle.
In theory, all of those differences could be overcome to form a cohesive team to drive the business, but that’s not what was happening. The big founder, realizing that his contribution to the main mission was getting less and less relevant, was flittering off to find a new shiny penny to play with. His money partner was a necessary ingredient to accommodate this butterfly chasing, but for some reason he was inclined to provide that accommodation (I might prefer to call it enabling). The two others were onto another effort, something they were always inclined to do anyway (they were both natural networkers). That left Fred holding the proverbial bag. The hot potato as it were.
Fred was a big boy in every sense. He was used to being the leader of the pack and he was used to having to be the self-starter that got everyone else started, but he was not used to being abandoned by his colleagues, especially when the sledding was getting a little tougher than normal.
Some of his brethren, while hardly a band of brothers, did rally and say they were absolutely not abandoning ship, but did admit that their major shareholder was sailing away toward his own sunset on a new dingy. Fred wasn’t sure that was such a bad thing and he wasn’t even so sure that he needed all of the team to get the boat on an even keel. It’s just that no one likes being left behind. The gang members were dining morning noon and night together, plotting and scheming on their new shiny pennies. Fred just shook his head in amazement.
This day, one of the uber-networkers came in and asked Fred why he was in a bad mood? Fred hadn’t even realized he was in a bad mood, nor did he really feel like he was in a bad mood until that moment. But given the opportunity to exploit the question, he decided he would get into a bad mood over his abandonment issue. He railed about the situation and then in a similar meeting with uber-networker #2, he did it all over again. This was fun. It was fun being the angry man and being the last man standing made the epic saga of the last angry man all the more poignant.
Fred decided to go home early that fine day and go pinch Wilma since he was very happy to have her by his side and would much rather dine with her than any of the mongrel pack of partners. Let them sail off. Let them wine and dine together. Fred and Wilma would spend the evening in each other’s company and Fred would wake up tomorrow with renewed purpose and a snootful of ambition and motivation, enough to push the whole damn bunch of them forward for the next round.