Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Fiscal De-evolution


            There has been a lot of attention in the media recently concerning the large and growing number of executives that are being brought to justice for a wide variety of crimes related to business and finance. This can be seen in articles such as those posted on Natural News or by reviewing cases posted by the IRS concerning compliance and enforcement.
            The problem has become so wide spread that the issue is even drawing attention in humor-based elements of pop culture such as Hello with Cheese.
            The terrifying thing is that this is not a new phenomenon or a sudden outbreak of immoral business tactics.
            Many of the major corporations that are collapsing in the wake of scandals recently were actually started during the depression era. The men who started these companies were able to fight their way up and prosper under extraordinarily harsh economic conditions. And, today these same companies are unable to even turn a mild profit without the executives being hauled away in handcuffs.
            Without insight this situation seems implausible. The thing to remember is that those early businessmen came from a generation where even day laborers hid their money in their mattress. Finding creative and devious methods for controlling one’s finances was a survival tactic, and those who became successful were the best at managing strategies of questionable ethical foundation.
            Today’s executives are the third and fourth generation products of those families. They were raised wealthy and never had to develop the skills for controlling dubious fiscal strategies as a matter of survival. They have simply been raised on stories of previous generations attitudes without the need to develop those skills on their own since they have never experienced a cash shortage or had a need to fight to get ahead.
            This means that executive corruption has always existed. It isn’t a new occurrence. The forensic accountants haven’t gotten better at catching criminals. Society in general has not developed an improved awareness giving them the ability to detect fraud. The simple truth is that today’s executives just aren’t very good at being criminals.

                                                            http://www.dernwerks.com/HWC/?p=278



           

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Negotiation


            For my graduate class in Negotiation and Deal Making I was assigned to interview an individual in my field in relation to their thoughts and experience within the scope of practical business negotiations. My first consideration was to seek out what might be termed a “power player”, or someone who routinely deals in the more complex aspects of intense hardline negotiations.
            This did result in a humorous moment when a representative of one specific law firm told me that they would be more than happy to provide me with an interview on the topic. But, I would be required to pay their standard hourly rate for the duration of the interview. In retrospect, perhaps I should have tried to negotiate the price.
            Then, after quite a bit of consideration, I decided to take a different route. It occurred to me that following the exact methods of the usual hardline negotiators would only show me how they perceive themselves. I decided that the best tactic would actually be to interview someone who has a wholly different approach to negotiation techniques and would therefore be able to provide me with an outside view of serious negotiators in a way that they are rarely able to see themselves.
            For this reason I chose to interview a wonderful woman named Linda who is a HR Director for a major retail chain. I have consistently been impressed by the way that she always maintains a positive attitude and can stay friendly and cheerful in the face of any amount of stress. This choice for the interview turned out to be more informative than I expected.
            Much has been said about the power of positive thinking. More importantly everyone can easily see how being around people who have a positive and open attitude lifts their own mood. The interesting thing is that being friendly and cheerful can actually be your most powerful weapon in a hard negotiation.
            Hard line negotiation tactics are about focusing your anger and seeing the other party in the negotiation as your opponent or enemy. However, this becomes incredibly difficult when the person on the other side of the table treats you like a friend and refuses to become flustered by any type of aggression.
            This then eliminates the primary tool that hard line negotiators have to rely on. Without their aggression as a driving force they become flustered and are left off balance. This means that by simply being a good person it is possible to get past the defenses of aggressive hard line negotiators in order to obtain a far more viable agreement.
            This unique point of view is exactly what I was hoping to find by interviewing someone who operates outside of the standard negotiating methodology. And, I have to admit that I am truly happy to find that there is a genuine technique for dealing with difficult negotiations that allows a person to remain cheerful instead of treating every interaction as though they are walking into a bar fight.