A client reports increased sales during a sales contest. The odd thing is that sales are up across product lines. Including products that have nothing to do with the contest!
The geese along the waterfront here in Portland have a babysitter’s club. Two adults watch while the rest munch bugs on the grass. Or munch grass on the grass. I have no idea what it is the geese eat. Birds of a feather though.
Walking home from the PSU Market today, I spot a black Benzo, mid 80s model, 380 SL, rag top. Sweet little car. Real estate agent car. Guy’s right there. We chat. Sure enough, he’s a real estate agent. He can tell I’m not serious. Chats anyway. You never know. Just being part of a sales process attracts more sales processes. Why? Who knows. I sure don’t.
I don’t know what Jamie Dimon does. The largest company I’ve worked for had 300 employees. In that sort of environment, the CEO knows everyone by name. Knows, probably not their tasks, but certainly their role and their mission.
So I don’t have a clue what it’s like in a company when the CEO not only doesn’t know everyone, he has limited knowledge of a project that might impact 1 or 2% of the firm’s overall value.
But I do know something about culture. About how hard it is to defend. And about how tenuous are the positive perceptions he have of ourselves, and how easily we’re led astray and into darkness.
It hasn’t come out yet if the recent losses involved what they call ‘rogue trading’, or even anything nefarious. It doesn’t have to though. Even if this was legit biz. It clearly wasn’t the type of business Jamie Dimon envisions JPM doing. It’s the type of business that’s done by someone saying Fuck it, we’re Wall Street, we win every time, we don’t have to manage risk.
Markets are all about managing risk. If you’re not managing risk, then you’re not really playing the game. You think you’re a quarterback but you’re not. You’re a guy standing at a pinball machine wearing a football helmet. And when the bill collector comes, it’s hard to pretend you’re earning a quarterback’s salary when in fact, it’s one in the afternoon and you’re playing kid’s games in a bar.
So what next, Jamie?
Here’s what I see: I see Goldman Sachs losing a handle on its culture to the point where reps are referring to clients as Muppets. I see JP Morgan Chase losing a handle on its culture to the point where trading strategies are blowing up in their face.
To me, Wall Street needs help. Where would I start? Well, since I’ve already copped to naïveté, how’s this: Storytelling time. Seriously. Maybe as simple as a tight, punchy, to the point Don Draper-style marketing campaign. Something to start the process of explaining the good that Wall Street does in the world.
You heard me right. The GOOD that Wall Street does.
(I’ll skip the part where I say, if you don’t think Wall Street does or has done any good in the world over the last 100 years, you need a reality check buddy)
So what am I saying? A flowery, oil-industry-esque campaign to convince middle America of Wall Street’s beneficence?
Hardly.
Wall Street needs to get across the message to SHOW THEMSELVES the good that they do.
Because lately, Wall Street does a lot of bad too. And the best way to allow yourself to do bad, is to forget that you do good.
note: Of course there’s a lot more work to be done here than just some storytelling. The question is where to start. And where I would start would be with reminding the people behaving like jackals that they’re people too, or they were once, and that they can be again.
Who had the vision for all this? Who had the courage in 1993 when this whole thing was a desultory thirty-some-odd square blocks to put their foot down and say, No, this has potential. This has the possibility to become great. Better than great. Nigh-near the next nexus of the western world.
Forget the money. I mean as a reward. ‘Getting rich’. Yeah, somebody got rich down here. So what. The money came because the money always comes. This is about having the courage to believe in something grand. Something that came about through a mountain of work. That’s the reward here. The money was ancillary. Like the score in a game of Super Mario Bros.
A big part of the power of Stanford is that, at Stanford, you’re around people who believe they have the authority, the right, the mandate even to shape the world as their mind sees it should be. We are social animals. We act as those around us act. We build authority based on the authority of our peers. Being accepted into a group of positive-thinking world shapers seems to be worth most prices, even those heavy on the markup.
This isn’t the only power of Stanford. And I don’t know it any better than any other interloper who’s never gone to school or taught there. But I get this much at least.
Banda in the Hillsborough hills. Contractors out hammering in the Bay Area sun. Men at work, transforming stale 60s and 70s sensibilities into 2012′s ideas.
For the next five years the FB IPO will resonate around the bay. The sounds of Banda, and hammers hitting nails.
Web 2.0 IPO season = Wall Street’s ways of transferring capital into these Peninsula hills.
In the Spring we watch the Strawberry Line march north. First they come in from Peru. Then Southern Mexico. Then Baja. Then California, those Lodi berries that are oh so good. Then finally we get them locally. Oregon berries. The Seascapes varietal first. Faintly sweet, fleshy berries. Tillamooks and Aromas arrive next, delightful fruit, sweet like the season. Finally the Hoods. Full berries, bursting with sweetness and pungent flavor. The epitome of strawberry.
The line is about three weeks late this year. La Nina. Deviation from mean in oceanic temperature affecting west coast climate from Seattle to Santiago. Second year in a row. Climatologists suggest that a third consecutive year is highly unlikely.
We observe seasonality in markets as well. Commodities especially, and especially especially in the grains and the softs. Market seasonality differs in expectation: A springtime surge in gasoline prices is likely but not guaranteed, whereas strawberry season may be weeks or months late, but it’s highly unlikely that strawberries would be wiped out altogether. So we look at the expected deviation of a deviation. How many wavelettes make up a wave.
