Expressions Plastiques de Folie
How did we arrive at a corporate culture where financial middlemen feel entitled to a hefty percent of the GDP? Everyone suspended reality and acted in a big folie-à-deux-zillion.
In the beginning, corporations became campuses, with massages and chefs and private jets to the Loire Valley for off-sites. Working schmoo employees could live a 6+ start lifestyle as if they could pay for it. This begat in SoCal a bunch of faux-Europeanish strip malls. (I won’t name the developer). Faux pediments, faux marble, faux statuary, faux bell towers, faux bells ringing when it’s just a recording of bells; Faux retailers to make your life as if: as if you are in Italy; as if you are a world class athlete; as if you are a professional chef.
And so, the people of these faux cultures began to believe in the folly: plain vanilla finance people were rewarded as if they actually produced value, instead of off-loading risk; managers were given officer titles and responsibilities as if they actually had the job; people spent time on presentations as if the presentation were the end product. It’s a faux job, and a faux economy.
I just had a pleasant conversation with a clerical worker at a company. This individual fills in complicated contracts and administers them in a database. In discussing the company, this individual was so impressed with how much could be learned at the company, and how gorgeous the campus was, with the gym and the daycare and the restaurants and how the people were so smart. The company’s stock has gone from flat to down to flat over the past 10 years. Yet, employees could live as if they had a six star lifestyle, and as if they were on a University campus, as if that would help the wheels of commerce.
And so, all these employee-lifestyle benefits have been on the shareholder’s dime. When I’ve been employed by such places, it strikes me as the secret poison pill, an anti-takeover measure: who would want all these garish buildings and this real estate and this bloated managerial hierarchy? Don’t get me wrong, I like a 6+ star life and private jet rides as much as the next freeloader. But I’m always uncomfortable seeing employees spending corporate money as if it belongs to them, rather than the shareholders.
The departments that end in “R” – IR, HR, PR - are there to protect this culture. Investor Relations was a clerical person’s part time job to send out stock information, until companies started hiding stuff and needed professional mouthpieces. There was no Human Resources (or at least not as elaborate) until the companies had to cover up workplace practices so they wouldn’t be sued. And PR? Unless you are in the media business, a good copywriter and a business wire service and chatting up certain WSJ reporters and explaining to your buddy who controls CNBC that you don’t want to go on worked pretty well. The hangers-on, the compensation consultants, the interior designers, the managerial consultants, always strike me as leeches. Bah humbug.
I saw a real company once. It was in a drab office building overlooking the East River. The mise-en-scène was a foreground with a ’60′s ish rusted metal radiator with a dead aloe plant on top, and the Hoffa-body-esque East River in the background. It was around 8 in the morning, and I looked around for the coffee room. The receptionist, who was dutifully at her desk smoking, helpfully pointed her finger, with a very well done bejeweled magenta finger nail, at the elevator and said to take it to street level and there was a coffee place around the corner. Finally, the 75-year old principal appeared all smiles: he had just completed his taxes and “had earned more than he ever had in his life.”
These earnings weren’t faux — no financial risk removal or leveraging real estate. These earnings were from real work resulting in real profit. His costs were low, yes, and also his employees were well paid. He hired and kept those that did their job well, not necessarily those with elite degrees (although there were some). The employees operated without a lot of micromanagement, and were home at reasonable hour in the evenings. There wasn’t a lot of hand wringing about clothes or appearances (obviously) or even protocol. If you said, “Hey, how about a private jet to Loire Valley?” they would have thought a dumb joke and probably laughed politely, but thought internally, “don’t waste my time, you schmoo.”
Obviously workplaces should have decor that’s a little less depressing, but this was a place where you could almost hear the wheels of commerce humming: people were working for an end result; there was self-aggrandizing, but it was after results, not in lieu of.
The AIG bail-out-with-bonuses seems sort of inevitable to me, particularly since AIG was just a tool of the investment banks. How did we get to the corporate culture where zillion dollar bonuses are expected? By suspending reality, operating in a faux world, and all agreeing on a folie-à-deux-zillion.
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