Inside the C-Suite: How Senior Finance Leaders Think

Welcome to IONA Asks, part of ubc, iona's undergraduate journal. I'm Ferdinand, your host. Today I'm joined by Akash, who taught my managerial accounting course at ubc Sauder. Beyond teaching, Aakash has held senior finance leadership roles, including time in the C suite, and brings a practical perspective on how finance strategy and leadership come together in real organizations. Today I'd love to focus on your career journey, what senior finance leadership actually looks like day to day, and a few lessons you've learned along the way. Aakash, welcome to the show. Thanks Ferdinand, for having me. Looking back, what are some of the key steps and turning points in your career that led into your senior finance leadership roles? Could you run me through? Sure. I can kind of run that down. I can tell you like I never woke up one day saying, hey, you know, I want to be a finance geek or I'm going to be a CFO or anything like that. You know, similar to, to you, you know, I, after high school I was at ubc. Didn't really know what I was going to do in high school. We typically, you know, at my, my time you were always taking science courses because if you weren't taking science courses, you were just kind of seen as dumb and stupid. That's what it was back then. So going into university, I didn't really know any difference. So I said, oh, I'll guess I'll just keep doing the science courses with the hopes of maybe I'd go to med school. Not that I wanted to be a doctor, but I thought that's kind of the only, the only path. So after my first term and having to take physics, bio, chemistry, I said forget this, I don't want to be doing, doing this at all. So I, I decided at that point that science is, weren't going to be for me. And my goal for the next semester was, you know, just finish out the semester and try to figure out life. That's. That was the goal. And I remember it was a, There was one day, wet day, kind of like today outside, and I was kind of stumbling and I thought I'd get something to eat at the student union building. It was called. We didn't have the nest back then. It was just called the sub. And it just. Was it the building next to the. Next to it? Yes, the old one. And they, and it just so happened that there were having a career fair there. And so I was walking around this career fair and you had different organizations, you had RBC there, you had different hotels, rental companies. So it was just a big smorgasbord of vendors and booths of, you know, promoting a profession or their, their company. And I came across a booth and what caught my eye was the backdrop. And the backdrop was a picture of a Learjet with well dressed people getting off of it. And I stared at this and I said, you know what, I think I could do this job right. I was looking at that and I had no idea what it was about. And I said, oh, you know, what is this? And they said, oh, we're the Institute of Chartered Accountants and you know, this is. And I said, how do you become one? Like I had no idea what accounting was. No one in my family had any background in business or accounting. My older sister was a dentist. So like, you know, she was no help either. So is. They just said, well, you know, if you want to be an accountant, you have to go to the faculty of commerce, usually major in accounting. And this is kind of the path. And I was sold at that point because all I was fixated on was that Learjet. And I said, that's exactly what I'm going to do. So I wouldn't recommend anyone pick their career profession based on just looking at a fancy brochure or backdrop. But luckily from there it all kind of seemed to work out. Now after I graduated I went immediately into public practice. So I was working at Deloitte in Vancouver. So I started out in the audit practice, which is what most articling students would start out in. Spent a few years there. Once I got my designation I moved over into Deloitte's corporate finance practice, which was totally different because audit was looking at in the rear view mirror. So it's very much looking at what's happened. And now going into the corporate finance group is now you're looking in the future. So now it's like a total different mindset in terms of how you look at things and how you look at businesses. So there I was involved in a ton of variety of projects from businesses that were being bought. So helped do the, the due diligence on the acquisitions. Did a lot of real estate valuation work, did some transaction work on the sell side, but it was mostly on the buy side. And once I had a couple years there then I decided to jump off to industry and I went to an organization which was bcaa, which primarily people know BCA as evo, but EVO never existed back then. Is is it was pretty much an insurance company. You know, they underwrote home insurance risk and obviously they were an insurance broker. For travel, medical and insurance, it was primarily the, the insurance model. And just for the record, by the way, we were looking at Evo back then, I said, evo is a dog. It's never going to work. So what made you come to that conclusion back then? Just the math never made sense. And evo's taken off. Like, you see EVO all over the place, like all the time. And I still firmly believe that my conclusion was correct, is EVO is. I said evo would be great for the consumer, but it's not going to make any money. And, and it hasn't made any money for bcaa. So for bca, it's definitely been a lost leader. I know people love Evo and it's good for like BC publicity. Yes, absolutely. So, but, you know, that was. I remember clearly sitting on the board table saying, I don't. This evo is a dog. This is not gonna work at all. And we never called it evo. It was just known as car sharing at that point. So marketing hadn't branded it yet. And from there I was exposed to, at bca, I started, this is where my career actually really started because I got put into the role there of managing BCA's money and not just the assets for the insurance corporation, because insurance Companies in, in B.C. and Canada are regulated is insurance companies need to put capital aside to, as you can imagine to say for a rainy day if there's a catastrophic event such as an earthquake in Vancouver, that the insurance company has the proper liquidity and capital to meet those obligations. So I began managing money for the insurance corporation. So here I was kind of doing portfolio management, setting up what the proper asset allocations would be. And once I got my feet wet during there, then I was also given the keys to manage money for the employee's pension plan. So like, it was like, holy crow. Like this is now, you know, I'm all of a sudden, you know, dealing with over half a billion in assets. And I remember I was at a, at a pension event and I ran into the, an individual who was on the board of managing the Canada pension plan. And he asked me saying, oh, you know, you know, what's the size of your pension plan? And I felt so stupid. I was like, oh my God. Like, I'm just, I'm talking to a, a fellow from the Canada pension plan. I said, my pension plan so small, it's like barely a rounding error. And I remember what he said to me. He said, you know, it really doesn't matter how many zeros you're managing the process that you do is exactly the same as what we do at Canada Pension Plan. There's no difference is you study the liabilities, you study what the maturities are going to be. You design a asset mix plan that you hope will cover those liabilities in the future. And I thought, wow, you know, that's, you know, one I was really taken back because you know, I, I was so young there, I thought like, oh, you know, probably say oh, get out of here, I don't need to talk to you. You're so, so small. But was this in your late 20s? I was in my 20s still, so I didn't even turn 30 yet. So hearing that and you know was, was such an enlightening moment that you know, sometimes we, we cut ourselves short that oh, I'm only managing like this small piece or students graduate and let's say they go to an organization saying oh, I only, I'm only responsible for this small piece and stuff and what I do is insignificant. And this, you know, this, that conversation really kind of turned a light bulb that yeah, you're right. Like the process is exactly the same. And, and then from there I left BCA and I started managing money for the BC Teachers Federation. So everyone hears about Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. So I was managing something similar for the, the B.C. teachers, obviously not at the same scale as Ontario, but I was managing a much larger portfolio with the B.C. teachers Federation. And then from there I went into banking. So I was in the credit union system for, for five years. And with the credit union system was quite interesting because in Canada we have a very, our banking is, is an oligopoly. It's complete oligopoly on there. And the only competitors to, to the big banks are kind of these small credit unions scattered throughout the the country and stuff. So and at Blue Shore we kind of made it a point saying hey, we want to be a niche player and we want to target the affluent is. That's what we kind of want to build here. So it, it kind of made sense in terms of really trying to be different because then how else do you differentiate? And you know, banking is a very homogeneous commodity is. So I really like the strategy lean of saying, hey, we want to target the, the affluent. It's bold, it's aggressive and there's a lot of doubt saying hey, will it even work right? Do people, people even see us at that? So had a great. Then I moved over and I took the CFO role at BC Children's Hospital foundation, which is the largest foundation in OR at that time was on asset size. So this was over half a billion in assets. And we funded capital projects and research at BC Children's Hospital, which is run through phsas, and did that for a couple years. And then I got to the point where I kind of said, you know, I'm really tired of being in meetings all day and I'd kind of like a. A change in chapter and. And I found my way back to ubc. So kind of a bit of a full circle moment, but that's kind of my kind of career and a quick span of kind of the, the journey that I went through. And when you were in those roles, what would you see in people that would move on to greater success? Was it some how they interacted with their managers? Was it how they did their work? Was it them asking for more work? Like, what's something you saw them do? Yeah, that's a really good question. Is. Is. I like to believe, you know, if someone asked me, you know, what. What's kind of your towering strength. And I never go to the, the analytical side is, is for me, I say, like, I feel I have a talent in recognizing rising stars. And of the rising stars that, that I kind of noticed the thing that I would say separates. You know, take. Take the 80%. The 80% are kind of your. You check in, you check out, you do your work, you're not causing any problems, but I would say you're in your 80%. What, what differentiates that top 20 from the 80 is really the attitude that you bring is how do you show up every day and how do you treat people? And, and yes, that those 20% are smart, but is. They don't come across that they know everything. You know, a lot of the times is, hey, you know, I don't know this, but they have the resourcefulness and they're not shy asking for help. And. But what I find is, bar none, the, the. The skill set that I've recognized what kind of separates is, is the attitude is, is what presence do you actually have? You know, how do you present yourself? How do you treat people that report to you is are you a coach and a mentor to them, or you just, you know, shouting out statements of asking for things on how they wish to be done and if you can recognize someone that's good at developing people? Because I've always believed that you should never get married to the position that you're in because the position that you're holding is really temporary. Is. I always like to Think of it as, hey, I'm just keeping this spot warm for someone else. And my job as a leader is to identify who's that next person that can take the spot and kind of bring them up. And I think a lot of people find this hard to comprehend because we're so possessive and we think, oh, well, this is my chair. What do you mean? I want to groom someone to be my chair? Because then where am I going to be? And I don't think you should look at that. Look at it that way is if you're good at developing talent to take yours. An organization is going to make room for you somewhere else. Right. You've proven that you can build that talent up and you'll find another seat somewhere else. And let's say you groom someone up and they're ready to take reins, but there's no chairs available. Don't be afraid of seeing them leave the door. And I've always said, like, you know, I would love for someone to stay, but if it's time for them to leave because they've kind of maxed out their growth, that's great. Help them along the way because when they leave and they're successful somewhere else, they'll always go back and say how great the other organization was to them for their career. And I would say so a big thing to look at is attitude. And someone that is really thinks about a coach and mentoring role that it's not just me, me, me, but they're thinking of we. We. We is, you know, as corny as it sounds. You know, there was a shirt that I really loved. It said we is greater than me. And. And I. And I was like, oh, wow, that's like so profound. On there is to really be thinking about that team first mentality rather than on an individual basis. I've also heard from some managers I've talked to in the past that there's often a difference between people you hire at first, them having excellent kind of skills in one domain and them immediately being valuable to the company versus then managers and leaders later who are good at connecting dots, who are good at interacting with people who have broad interests but aren't necessarily the best at any specific silo. What kind of advice would you have to people that are more generalists but need to enter into, you know, a company or into a job competing with people that are very good at specific siloed skills? Yeah, that's. And, you know, I consider myself to be a generalist. I never specialized in a certain area, even back when When I started at Deloitte, a lot of people picked a specialization right away saying hey, I want to work in technology or I would like to be in oil and gas or I want to be in forestry. Is I said I'll do everything is I don't really want to pinpoint on a specific sector. And you raise an interesting question is you know, being a generalist is great as you have a broad tool set but to your point is you might have to be competing against someone that's a specialist in, in who's really good in one specific area. So how does that generalist survive? Well I would say that the generalist needs to, to sell that their ability to recognize business problems in different industries, different economic cycles gives them better insight than someone that is one dimensional is. Yes, that person that's one dimensional really understands that industry up and down really really well. But that assumes that that industry is just going to stay in a certain trajectory and business never runs that way. Is everything there's ebbs and flows, things kind of go up and down. And a generalist is in my opinion can respond better to those changing tides is when a market cycle changes their skill set of understanding when they were in a different scenario of how to react. I kind of look at it, you know, if we think about real estate today and if you were, if you've been in real estate in Vancouver for the last 25 to 30 years, the only thing you've known up until the last few years is a straight 45 degree line. Yeah. That it just goes up. That's all you've known. And recently in the last 24 to 36 months, we've seen really the tide changing and we've seen a lot of real estate developers go under. They've defaulted on their loans, they can't sell out their buildings and then there's others that still seem to be doing okay. And, and I think that goes back to kind of this conversation that we're having about you know, that generalist is knowing that nothing goes up forever and you have to be agile to, to respond to those, those changing environments. If you follow, you know, is good times and that's you and you've ridden that wave is once that turns is is you're going to really, really struggle to say how do we operate in a changing environment here? Because it's not just that customers aren't buying from you, it's also your staff feel it as well that hey, things are different now and they're all of a sudden looking to leave the organization. So you're getting it from both sides is you're not. You're losing it from customers. And then also from an organizational effectiveness perspective as well. Would you say you being a generalist was also one of the factors in you not, let's say, staying at Deloitte for 20 years or at BCAA for 20 years, but instead seeking out kind of new. Yeah, I would completely agree with that comment. And, and even, you know, going back to, like, the portfolio management pieces, whether it's BCA or whether it's the teachers or whether it's the hospital, they could have hired someone that was specific with years of portfolio management, could have done the traditional CFA route, you know, could have been an investment consultant or whatnot. They could have gone that route. But, you know, instead they went with the accountant who became a portfolio manager. And because I think, you know, they would have seen that there's also a lot broader skill set where you can kind of connect things to how the business also works and to understand the cash flows coming in and the cash flows going out. And I would, I would agree with that, that that generalist has helped me now in some aspects. It wouldn't have helped me if all of a sudden, let's say I, I told you saying, you know, Fernand, I want to go into. I want to go to a gold company, you know, who's a mining producer. Yeah, I think that would be a tough nut to crack. Not saying it wouldn't be impossible, but it'd be tough for a generous like myself to crack that nut. Now, I think that would be a little bit difficult versus someone that would have experience in there, but by no means would it be difficult. So, but, so what I'm saying with the generalist piece is certain aspects, it keeps you nimble, you can move, but if you are going to make a really pointed move in your career, it may hurt. Yeah. So, like, you know, gold is one example. You know, oil and gas could be another one. But apart from those two, you could really, I would say, you know, the world's your oyster in terms of where you, where you want your career to go. I'd like to kind of now pivot a bit towards your time, specifically as cfo and kind of, because I feel like when people think about cfo, they often think about someone that deals with numbers and says no a lot to a lot of things. That kind of being the primary duty, making sure that people don't overspend and kind of the party pooper often how that is pretty Accurate. How would you describe kind of the day to day role and how you interact with the CEO and other members on the board? Yeah, it's a, it's a really good question. And you know, a lot of people, a lot of young people, when they ask me, you know, what exactly is the role of a cfo? And I always go and give a Star Trek analogy which sometimes doesn't land with the younger folks as like, you know, if we go back to, you know, the original Star Trek is you got Captain Kirk, you know, who's the, you know, really flamboyant, lots of charisma, you know, he's the captain, he's got tons of good swagger on there. But even Captain Kirk knows that he and the Enterprise would not be successful if it wasn't for Spock. And I would say Spock is kind of like your cfo, right? Spock is cfo. And usually the captain being Kirk or whomever is really someone more from a marketing background. Right? They're just trying to make things happen, put deals together, not taking no for an answer, really trying to connect it. And, but, but the CFO there is to advise the, the CEO and the rest of the executive that hey, the decisions that were, that we're going to take come with some risks and these are the risks. And you know, if we get it wrong, this may be the impact. If we get it right, it's going to be a great impact, but making sure that everyone is aware of, of what those risks are. So to your point, you're actually, you're right. Like sometimes the CFO seen as a party pooper, and I think the more successful CFOs are ones that will kind of say okay, how do we get to yes? Rather than saying no, okay, how do we get to yes? And what are the steps taken to, what are the steps needed to get there? And if you're a CFO that's just going to say no all the time, you're not going to work, you're not going to work well for the organization and people will just kind of tune you out. So I'd say the ones that are really successful know when to use no. But is you want to be labeled as trying to get to yes. And sometimes it's not possible and sometimes you would say it's not that it's not a good idea or it's not, it's not something that we can't execute. It's just not the right environment to do it in is knowing that, hey, we may want to do this in a couple years because a finance responsibility is to allocate resources and to look at, hey, if we're going to deploy capital, let's say, on a new acquisition, well, if we weren't going to deploy this capital on a new acquisition, what else would we use that capital for? And to kind of look at the trade off of, of different options. So that's what I would say is the primary responsibility of a cfo. And I can tell you is I've been CFO when times have been good and times are bad. And, and I would say it's a lot harder being a good CFO when times are good. Because when times are good, people are thinking there's unlimited amount of money and it's party every day. And you trying to communicate and have people aware that, hey, these are risks on the horizon that we need to be mindful and careful of. And to get that message to land is super difficult when times are bad. It's not that it's not fun, but the organization, everyone's listening to you. Whatever you say, they are listening to every word and they're going to do every word that you say. If you say we need to cut our labor cost by 10%, they'll say, okay, tell us, we'll do it, let's do it. And so everyone's going to be on austerity measures and stuff. Okay, we're going to get rid of business travel and we're going to cut all this out. You know, people do it because you're just trying to survive and everybody wants to kind of keep, keep their job going and stuff too. So as much as being a CFO may be unpleasant when times are bad, it's probably a lot easier to do your job because everyone's listening. It's a lot harder when things are going really well. You can imagine, like the real estate companies of people, you know, the CFO saying, well, you know, interest rates eventually are going to go up. They can't stay low forever. And someone's probably saying, oh, you're just worried too much. Right? We don't need to worry about that. You know, these are, you know, these are, it's, it's different this time. So it's a lot tougher for CFOs to win that battle. You need to be a very good communicator in good times. Yes, you do. And, and it's not that you want to be portraying that the sky is falling like Chicken Little, but you want to make, you want the organization to respect that there's risks out there. And the success that an organization is having today may be a function not just of good management, but it just may be a function of just, hey, the trend is in your favor. You got favorable wins, so you've benefited from, from that. So it'd be a combination of two. It's, it's really easy to get, get so fixated that hey, your success is because 100% is due to great management decisions. That's rarely the case. Is usually it's a combination of a different, different factors. And, and to make sure that you can foresee what may change later on, you know, is the difference between those great companies and good companies. Do you have an example of a time where during good times in your role as CFO you had to tell people that they shouldn't do something? Yeah, like it's, it's funny you say that because I can, I probably been in most organizations that I've been in and usually comes to, you know, when doing the budget cycle, when doing the budget cycle, everybody wants more money. Yeah, they want to, they want to spend more, they want to try more. And I've always been a proponent of that. And in fact I've always said too is hey, we should put money aside for projects that have a low chance of success that hey, if they fail, it's fine that they fail, but we want to. And the reason we should put money aside that is because you want individuals in the organization to be innovative that at some point things are going to turn, but you want to put that in. And trying to manage saying no to people when things are good is super difficult because you're saying, hey, you know, I don't think we should be spending 10 million for this. You know, can we do it in eight? And the, and the natural rebuttal to that is well, why does it matter? Like we're, we're making money hand over fist right now. Why do we want to put that aside? Well, you know, is we may want to just hold on to the two. Not saying don't do it, just do it within 8 million rather than a 10 million envelope and we will keep the two for a rainy day, you know, to see, you know, because that, that may come into, may benefit us later on. And in organizations where that works well is when you're measuring performance more on a balanced scorecard that you're, you're measuring performance based on long term. If all the executive management and senior managers are rewarded on short term objectives, then there's a major clash There because they, everybody, you know, wants to maximize their compensation. And so if you're going to interrupt that it's tough for them to buy into it, right? Very, very tough to buy into it. And, and that's where then kind of the infighting and politicking can happen within an organization. One of the. And it never happened in my organization it is, we would all, in every organization we'd have a balanced scorecard. But it was a combination of individual metrics plus corporate metrics. But there was one organization that I came across this year and I was totally blown away is all their executives and senior managers for their balance scorecard are measured by purely on corporate objectives, just long term objectives, no individual objectives. And when I was talking to them about that is they said is for them is they wanted to remove the politicking between hey, it's us versus them. It's. Could you explain what personal as opposed to. Yeah, absolutely. So let's say, let's say I'm running, I'm a manager and we have different products and an individual goal may be is where they say hey Akash, we want you to increase revenues of your product line by 30%. We want revenues to be higher by 30 and maybe we want profit to be higher by 10. So those would be very individual to my specific product versus if the, the goal for the organization to say Akash, you know you're, it's really important for your product to do what you do but we're not going to compensate you on that. We're compensating you on a whole as we do as an organization. So for the organization the goal is to increase revenue by 15% over the next two years. So now it doesn't really matter to me where that 15% is achieved from can be achieved from anywhere. But we're all on the same page. So I'm not just looking at oh I need to get my product to, you know, to see the growth there or I'm going to need to push retail to make sure there's a lot more horsepower marketing my product versus my friend who's over there with his product because his product sells automatically. So. So that would be kind of the difference of looking at it more at a, at a top level where you're incentivizing people on how the organization does as a whole rather than you specifically for an area that belongs to you. Okay, interesting. And within the C suite, which kind of other position would you see the most conflict with usually? Would it be. I would definitely say it's Marketing, Always marketing. I don't. And I love marketing people. Don't get me wrong. And I, and I'm. I also said this too. I said the CEO usually is a marketer, and it fits them better. It definitely fits them better, but is usually most of the debate is with definitely the marketing folks, because the marketing folks. There's a line that I would always be told, which even to this day irks me, is they'll say, oh, gosh, we need. In order to make money, we need to spend money. That's a line that just drives me nuts. Oh, in order to make money, we need to spend money. I was like, yes, that's true to a point. But at some point, we should have scalability. There should be that stickiness where his is, hey, you know, after a few years, we should be getting momentum where we're not having to spend as much, you know, to, you know, we can use the example we were talking about earlier, like Evo. Evo really doesn't need to market anymore. Right. Their vehicles are on there just kind of churns. And there's that, you know, you have a good experience, you tell your friends, oh, you know, we don't need to take an Uber or whatnot. We'll just take an Evo and Uber it on the way back so it just becomes organic. If you're constantly having to push money into it is, you have to ask yourself, is, is what you're selling, does it have that stickiness factor to it? So that I would say is number one. Number two, I would say is usually with hr. And hr, I would say is usually is good partners with, obviously finance. But hr, there's been so many times they would come in and say, oh, you know, this year we want to do a review of our benefits. I say, that's a great idea. But I can tell you, Ferdinand, I have never seen a benefits review where it says, oh, we should cut our benefits, right? It's always been, let's increase even more. Let's give people more. We'll give them a gym membership or we'll give them a. A health and spending account. No one has ever said, wow, you know what? We're really generous compared to our peers. We should pare it down. So there's things that I was like, okay, let's not call it a benefits review. Let's just call it as, hey, we want to upgrade things and it's going to cost us more. So. And, and I think, you know, where it comes in is if organizations are just honest with themselves and just saying, hey, HR said we want to review our compensation to make sure that we're competitive. We don't want to be falling behind kind of peers and losing talent. Great. Right? That, that's a, that's a great answer. It's pretty hard to argue that answer. But if you're going to cloak it and say, oh well, we're not going to increase it. We're going to just do a review and see what happens. Well, you know that, that may be a little disingenuous and, and that's where, you know, the trust, the trust part can, can take time to rebuild afterwards. But I would say those are kind of two with the, the most, I would say the most tension. And to be frank though, organizations need tension. You don't want, you don't want everyone on the same page to say, hey, we agree is you want a healthy dose of conflict, but a healthy dose of conflict is you want it where the ground rules are set, that everyone knows we're all on the same team. Team. We're all on the same team and we're just trying to make the organization better. We may have different views. Is where it becomes toxic is if all of a sudden, if people are just thinking of themselves and they're trying to maximize their own compensation and that could be at the denture, but at the detriment of the organization as a whole. Do you find that kind of. When you say or need to say no to a decision or you need to say we don't have the budget for that, can you just unilaterally do that or is it usually in organizations where the C suite like votes on it or what's the procedure? Yeah. So every organization is different. Is some, you know, if it's very top down, is they. The decision for that may lie with the CFO and CEO where it's a more bottom up approach. There may not be that veto issue where it has to be agreed upon as the C suite as a whole. So that I've seen it in, in both ways, and there's pros and cons on both of those too, is the one thing that I would avoid if, if someone's telling you no, the responsibility of that person telling you no, they need to be clear and articulate. Why. So it's, you know, CFOs that just say no with no explanation or context. They're only hurting themselves because what will inevitably happen, which also drives me nuts, is the person saying no, Ferdinand, if I say no to you without any context is there's this mentality of, I'm going to complain to mom and dad. So you and I may have the same boss. So let's say both our boss is the CEO, I've said no to you without giving you a really good explanation. Then the next time you're meeting with the CEO, you're going to say, oh, Akash just said no to me for didn't give me a good reason. I put all this work into it. I think it's a good idea. And now you're essentially throwing me under the bus. Then I get called saying, oh, well, why did you say no to Ferdinand? I said, well, is not that his idea was bad. It's just that, you know, we just don't have the ability, based on the metrics we're trying to hit, to do that now. And he's like. And he or she may say, that's totally sound. Well, did you tell them that? Well, he should have known. Well, we can't assume, right? So you got to make sure you. You articulate that and hopefully at the same time that the person receiving that message gets it. And you're not having to tell mom or dad that, oh, the CFO hurt my feelings here and said no to what I was looking at. And so those things can get a little bit dicey because that does tend to happen. And where the C suite needs to decide is there's two ways decisions get made there. Either it's the person that screams the loudest, which is not healthy. That may work one or two times, but that's gonna. That's gonna lose a lot of brand will if just by screaming the loudest. And then the other is where you just kind of look at it and you. You measure it and say, okay, we're gonna decide between either A, B, or C. These are the pros and cons. Do they align to our strategy and do the ROIs? Are they within tolerance? It's not necessarily that you have to take the highest roi. You should take what's going to align to your strategy the most, and you kind of pick and choose. Now, that's a time consuming. That's. That does take a significant amount of time, but it is probably a healthier way for an organization to prioritize spending and projects that they want to undertake. That's interesting. I'd like to kind of just broadly kind of go over maybe two or three lessons that you learned in your role of senior leadership that you'd wish you'd known earlier. Kind of going into it some Things that, you know, you saw that, gosh, if I would have known this, it would have made life a lot easier. Yeah. The number one thing is just how difficult managing people is. No, you don't learn that in school. Like, yes, you take an organizational behavior class, but nothing can train you for how to deal with people. Like, I've had to deal with people coming into my office just to have. Just to start crying and the first time. And I was like, I don't even know what to do. Like, you know, it's like, do you need a tissue? Right. Like, I. So some of those things are. So the people component is just so difficult to get a good grasp on. And I would. I wouldn't say I'm good at it. I'd say I'm okay at it, but okay through, you know, where things, like, I felt really flat on my face because I didn't know how to. How to deal with people really well. And. And I would say that's probably the biggest thing is if people. Someone could have told me how difficult it is in terms of managing people and hearing about, oh, someone's not coming to work because they got this medical issue that they're dealing with and trying to figure out, to backfill this or just understanding that. I remember there was once a woman that came into my office, and this was after I kind of felt a little better. She came to my office. She. And I said, oh, you know, tricia, what's wrong? It's like, oh, nothing's wrong. Do you have a minute? I said, yeah, come on in. Have a seat. And she goes, you know, I need to tell you something, and I'm really sorry, but I'm pregnant. And the first thing I said to her, I said, trisha, why are you apologizing? You don't need to apologize to me that you're pregnant. I said, congratulations, Right? Like, she goes, oh, I know. Like, this is. The timing doesn't work. I go, we don't. Time, you know. Yeah. You know, children and stuff like that. So, you know what? Don't worry about, like, oh, you don't worry about us. We're. We're. We're gonna find a way to. To move on. And, you know, you focus on your health, and when the baby comes, you take the time you need to focus on being a mother. And when you're ready to come back, you know, we're here with open arms. Right. And trust me, there's nobody that would want you back more than I would. Right. So. And in just having that, that response that I had just kind of came through experience of, of kind of seeing people and stuff because I'd see people that say, oh, shoot, you know, I talked to colleagues in different, oh, this person's going away, what am I going to do? And stuff like that. It's like, well, if we're, if we can't run our organization where we can't handle someone leaving, we have too much risk. There's way too much risk in this organization that we're so dependent on certain roles and positions that, that, you know, we're doing a bad job in our risk management piece. So, so those are some things that I would have learned with people. The, the, the second part that in terms of just understanding is again, on the people side is what you may think your style of communication works. Another person that style of communication may not work for them is. I'm, I like to think I'm pretty blunt and candid. You probably see that in class. Right? So is for some people, it works really, really well, is they want to be told, hey, this is how. This is what it is and this is what you need to do. Other people, you may need to give deliver messaging a lot more gently, especially North America. There's a lot of North America especially. Right. North America, especially that the way you deliver messaging. And I, and I think this is going to be even tougher now than it was even in, in my day just because there's so much emphasis on feelings and be your authentic self and yada yada, yada, which I'm not saying is all is bad. I was, I'd like to think though, an organization needs to have some professional standards and boundaries. But I would say that's probably going to be a bigger challenge of knowing is what kind of communication style you're going to use today, which is tough. Like this is. I remember the largest team that I had that I was managing had over 37 people. And if I had to think consciously every time, okay, what communication style am I going to use today with this person versus this person? My God, I don't know what I would do. But, but nowadays, like, you really, besides just being good technically, really have to have a good handle on the emotional intelligence side and knowing who it is that you're talking to, what, what style they kind of like. So really you're trying to, trying to be this parent and trying to understand what works best for this child. That's, that's very insightful. And I guess what that kind of got me to think about a Little bit. Is. Is employee retention within a department a metric that's used by some organizations to assess the effectiveness of a leader? Yeah, absolutely. Some will look at it. So there's two ways. There's two things that I'm most familiar with is one is most organizations will use what's called an annual engagement survey. Is they'll hire a third party, which is usually like an Aon or I don't know who it's called now, but anyways, they'll engage a third party to do a employee engagement survey. And the survey will ask questions about, you know, your manager, the organization, the leadership, etc. Etc. And a score is built out of there. So that's one measure on there. Another measure that is looked at is employee turnover. Because the theory there is if you're, if you have a high turnover level, there may be clues that the leadership is not sound. Is there's that old adage that people don't leave companies, people leave bad managers. So that is an area that does get looked at. Where you want to see. Another one that I would look at is just also absenteeism is you could just look at the absenteeism rate as an organization as a whole. If your department typically has lower absenteeism, it's probably you got a good leader. Yeah, right. That's usually a good case. And so, you know, if you were to man take a look at leadership based on absenteeism, employee turnover and engagement survey, you pretty have a good. You'd have a pretty good feel of how that's looking for. Another thing too is if you, if your organization's large enough and you have people vacancies and a lot of people are applying into it, that's also a good sign too, saying, oh, I want to work for that individual. Most people don't say I want to go to this department. It's usually saying, oh, I really like that individual, that I really want to work on their team. So that, that's usually a good sign of a good leader. My last question would be, is there a book or habit you'd recommend for students who want to build stronger business judgment and leadership skills? So that I wouldn't say, I'll answer that. I'll do a little bit of a scenic answer there. So the first thing I would tell any young person is if you go to work and just do these three things is one, show up, put your phone away, don't get distracted by your phone, show up, put your phone away and say, yes, those, these three things take no skill Right. Learning to say yes, putting your phone away and showing up. Take no technical skill. What grades? Like, none of those matter. But if you do those three things, I'd say you're 80% there. 80% there because you're going to be seen as someone that, who's come to work, you're, you're coming in, you're all in, you're ready to go. And hey, I'm not saying don't enjoy your phone on your lunch break and all that kind of stuff, but when you're there, be engaged to be present and stuff. And that saying yes component is. You asked me the question is, what separates those, you know, the real haves versus the have nots. And the haves that I've seen is, are always willing to say yes is they don't come out and say, oh, well, that's really not my job. Or I don't know how to do this. Is. They'll say, yeah, I'll do it. Figure it out. Exactly. I will figure it out. I don't, I mean, I surely don't know the answer yet, but I'm gonna put some time into this. I will figure it out and I'll ask them, ask some questions along the way. I'll ask it. That comes. Ties into that attitude thing that I was, I was telling you about and stuff. And in terms of books to read, I would say anything on kind of emotional intelligence is you'd want to kind of read in terms of leadership. And there's lots of stuff out there. I think it's Daniel Goldman stuff. It's not the easiest read, but it's kind of super important on there. But nothing can really prepare you for dealing with people. You just have to. You're gonna. And allow yourself. You're gonna fall flat. Just learn from your mistakes, apologize when you need to apologize and move forward. Is. But picking up things on just how emotional intelligence works is super important. Like right now is Ferdinand, you and your colleagues, you're focused on building your IQ muscle. Yeah. And when you graduate, IQ doesn't matter as much. It's really focusing on your EQ muscle, which at this point is really low because you just haven't been exposed to it. It's really trying to build that emotional intelligence piece. Well, Akash, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate your time and the practical perspectives you gave us today. And thank you to our listeners for tuning into IONA Asks. You can find more episodes through the IONA Journal of Economics and on Spotify. Until next time, thank you.