I was talking to someone and he shared with me one of the principles which were told to him by his professor at his college. The professor said that consider a company with a president and some vice-presidents. Then if a situation comes where the company has to select a new president from among the vice-presidents, the one who would be selected would, more often than not, be the one who is in charge of Finance department. The person who told me this gave a few examples where he himself has experienced the same. Even I had observed this in some cases in the corporate world, where a retiring CEO is replaced by the existing CFO e.g. Indra Nooyi becoming CEO of Pepsi from CFO.
One of the reasons for this is that working in the Finance department makes you knowledgeable of a large variety of issues concerning the company. Every employee of the company is affected by different departments of the company to different degrees. But most of these are indirect. What happens at the company’s marketing department, the production department etc. is important but only at a macro level. Also, the involvement is minimal.
But when it comes to the Finance department, it is a different story. Firstly, the connection comes every month (in fact, saying every minute would not be an exaggeration) from the pay packet, the sole reason for people working. (If you disagree, and are ready to give a list of the reasons, apart from compensation, why you work then; ask yourself, what would you do if I give you say $50 million; would you still be doing your job?). Next, finance is at the core of everything. You have a worthy project in mind, you are confident of its success etc. but one of the first things you ought to do is to prepare a plan keeping in mind, what the management will feel about the revenue generation as well as the costs associated; whether the finance people have enough funds at their disposal; how can I put across to the people who would fund this, in a manner in which they understand what I am planning and why they should release their money.
The fact that you ensure that the finance people understand everything reiterates the fact that they become more and more knowledgeable. Also, as funds have to be sanctioned by the Finance department, irrespective of the department concerned with the project, everyone has to make contact with the finance people sometime or the other. And as such, the finance guys (I have recently realized that guys has become so common a term to address, that even a group of females is being referred to as guys; maybe this is because females keep on saying that they are in no way inferior to males) know everyone and everyone knows the people in finance. This makes them the default choice for the top position.
One other unrelated thing. There’s a conception that parents always consider their children as kids, irrespective of the age (physical or mental) of the children. The person I was talking to gave another remarkable insight. He says parents do not feel that they have no longer remained modern. This is due to the fact that they have always been “more modern” in their teens, when they saw themselves with their own parents. Now, they cannot somehow digest that their children are a few steps ahead of them.
One other thing he mentioned was that we should always remember the people with whom we shared some kind of relationship; wherein, it was not necessary for these people to behave in a manner which would be beneficial to us, but they did. Suddenly, what came to my mind was my stay at IIT. Though I can write the book with the most number of pages on this, I will cut it short to about one post. At IIT Delhi, I had been assigned a particular hostel, J but I started staying at my local guardian’s place, and so I no longer had any hostel room allocated for me.
Though there were not many close friends, I had formed a kind of group (now, incorporated in the bigger group called ‘bpappu’©) with fellow students of my department who were staying in one particular hostel, S. Initially, my contact with them was limited to the academic area and had not extended to their hostel rooms. It was not long from the time that I first went to their rooms, that I became an integral part (at least I see it as such) of the group and the hostel at large. People of other hostels at IIT started assuming (and still do) that I originally belong to hostel S. When someone asked about my hostel, I started to say ‘hostel S’. However, when someone asked my room number, the answer was not that apparent. Not giving the room number was also not an option (in that case, I would have to tell them the entire story). So, I started giving them room numbers of any one of the group members.
Some specific mentions are essential. Mr. KS has been very instrumental in my incorporation in the group. With nowhere else to go, I used to stay at his room for most part of the day; when we did not had classes or when we wanted to think that there were none; when I wanted to just vile my time; and even when I had some motivation to work. In short, if I was not in a lecture I was at his place. Initially, I used to think that he would not be comfortable with my staying in his room, but his sheer adjusting nature left me dumbstruck. I still feel that if I had been in his place, I would not have such an understanding behaviour. He never said ‘no’ to my proposal to watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S, regardless of whatever his plans were and the time the proposal came.
Mr. RKM, Mr. AR were the people with whom I spent my nights. Now, before, you start jumping to conclusions, I mean these are the people in whose rooms I used to sleep at night. There was a single bed in their room so one had to sleep on the ground. However, unlike what normally would happen elsewhere, these two did not mind sleeping on the ground, if they saw that I had already fallen asleep on the bed. If the times we slept did not overlap entirely, they took care that I was not disturbed by their (and for that matter, anyone else’s) movements in the room. On the other hand, I was not that sensitive to their sleep and did not give the same kind of treatment (which they, surprisingly, never complained of.
Mr. NJ was the kind of person who would do anything for a friend. Though a nocturnal creature and sometimes hard to meet for a few days, yet, when in times of need, he was always the first to reach. He was the first to offer to give me a duplicate key to his room. The feeling was as if it was my own room. It made my life very easy as otherwise I always had to search for some hostelite (so that I do not find all rooms locked) before I can think of going to the hostel.
Though there are many others which require a mention, it is because of my laziness that I am ending here. Hope they will overlook my offense.
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