Hola!!

I am going to tell you straight up that teamwork is over-rated. People whom pretend to be team players are the biggest threat to the team. People who actually sound off and make noise before it becomes worse makes better team players than the one that will acquiesce on everything single thing. Teamwork is actually having the team outcome as an end itself and not the treat as a means to which the end is actually the individual itself.

This is so easy to see when you see inauthenticity. Inauthentic is when you take a step back when you speak everything. It is like you are calculating your own interest when you make every move. A team player should be second nature, this means that regardless of the environment, you basic nature should always shine true. This means that if you are an introvert, you work best in the back office, if you are a diplomatic person, you are work in the middle office and if you speak well, you are in the front office. Hence if the back office accuse the front office for not talking too much, then you can always exchange job for a day and see how each other fare for a day. I can safely tell you that the back office person will die in front of the customer- it took me very long to hone the skill and I tell you that it is hell of a lot of difference.

The front office person faces the customer and knows the difficulties of the buying customer- and if you are customer oriented person- independent of management intervention- shouldn't you try to bend to the will of the front office person. Assuming that the front office person says the truth and not to put himself/herself in front of the line.

There is a reason why I desperately shift from the back office to the front office because I want to know how to drive a business but my experience with people that execute the transactions have an attitude that front office people are extremely cocky and only wants their way. If the customer is not cocky, we do not need to be cocky. Blame the management for being customer-focused and not the person that deals with it.

I can safely tell you that the person that executes the deal is really different from the person selling the deal. It is a whole new ball game, the customer does not want to hear why the hell you have to sign this and why you have to do this. They only want to get the things done- people executing the deals doesn't understand that we have to treat you as internal customers just to get things done.

I once have to fight so hard for a customer that I am not sure why I am fighting so hard. It is like the people there don't want to do a deal. I mean if you have an unique product which only you have, you might get away with being rude, but when you have generic products, there isn't much difference and how fast and how easy and how comprehensive you get it done is the only differentiating factor.

There are some people who complain that I don't follow up with customers after doing the deal- people in service line have the luxury of waiting to come to them and not the other way around. This means that it is not their problem, if there is no business. If you are the one hunting for deals, your job is always to keep expanding your network to sniff out deals.

They say I have terrible relationship management skills, which means that I don't go out with customers to have dinner with them. In this world and in my line, relationship management is measured by how much you discount you can give me. Those people with a recurring customer base does this very simple thing: they wait for the previous person to exit and to take the portfolio and do very minimal contact and leave it to other's to do their job. They will have a recurring piece of business but they did not increase the pie at all. They still think that the previous person is still in the job and they panicked only when people start leaving. That's when management comes down hard and then by then they just make another person leave and take their portfolio. I have seen it happen so many times that the only reason I stayed was to pick up all the skills. I have mentioned before that when I leave the whole team literally disappears.

That is not the way to run a business and become managers. Of course some of these people do become managers but they run the business by doing what all corporate managers do and what they do before they become one. They find the weakest and cut them off as soon as possible. They reduce cost and find cheap young things to replace them.

Their business model is as such: cut cost, find the cheapest one and fire the weakest and drive the highest performing ones so hard that the rest have no choice but to overworked or leave, or engage in a form of politics that is malignant. I was not interested in becoming a manager of this form. You are not running a business- you are a manager. No proper business model runs like this because you have the benefit of the top management driving the revenue for you and everyone looks at the topline and not always the bottomline.

When I see some of former colleagues going to these areas, I cannot help but think that sigh, the circle continues. They will die if they leave this place- they have nothing else up their sleeve. This means that they are condemned to be in this industry and hope for handouts for the managers. It means that they are not in control of their destiny even if they have constant stream of income. They will play the find the chair before the music stops game all the time. They really don't have the "skill" to understand a "business" per se. Am I envious, no. Do I feel lousy, no. Do I feel inadequate, no. If I really want to play the game, they will not stand a chance at all. It is because, I am looking beyond this, and that is why I let it slide.

If they want to truly run a business, I can be partners with them- but it is precisely this type of tactic that I abhor which means that I want to have nothing to do with them. But of course, they believe they have a good deal, that's why I just keep quiet. Anyway, I bought a house with my mom. I would have sold it away had it not been for her.

Let's just say, I am in the money, I don't need to find the musical chair when the song ends- because I have wealth- and I have more skills in my bag then if I continue and fight with them for these quite parochial jobs- it must be said. I can also tell you: they will be condemned to middle management mediocrity, that much I can tell you for sure.

No one runs a business like that- only the top managers and executives know and real business people know. That is the managerial and corporatist perspective. And not the capitalist view- they are not one and the same. A manager and a capitalist are two different animals altogether.

Now you know why I have no "friends" my age!!

[P/S: you know why heads and CEOs and even billionaires visit me a lowly banker, because I am being groomed that's why I am the star- you stupid!!. Thank you.]

[ To paraphrase the MasterCard advert: Some moments are priceless, for everything else there is MasterCard!!]