Thomas W. Jones on From Willard Straight to Wallstreet and What Happened at Citigroup

In this interview, Thomas W. Jones talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, From Willard Straight to Wall Street: A Memoir.



“Give yourself a personal gift of 100% effort to achieve your highest potential.” ~Thomas W. Jones

Citigroup had entered a contract related to mutual funds, and the Securities and Exchange Commission had claimed that the contract concerned wasn’t fully properly disclosed to the mutual fund board. The Citigroup legal department had vetted the contract in all details, and while Citigroup settled the complaint, they didn’t include the otherwise usual provision that the senior management group concerned was also included in the terms of settlement. The SEC took this to mean that Citigroup had investigated the matter and concluded that the senior managers were at fault, hence the lack of inclusion of the senior managers in the terms of settlement - something which Tom remarked was “cynical” of then-CEO Charles Prince. This resulted in the full force of the federal government, through the SEC bringing charges against him, being brought on Thomas, and Thomas, rather than settle, spent eight years clearing his name. This process cost “millions” of dollars, and Thomas pointed out that the cost of his defense will not be recovered. He noted that, while the case against him was ongoing, he wouldn’t be able to hold a senior job in a regulated industry if one was in a fight against the regulating body, and that he chose to fight the charges because he was right and because he didn’t want those whom he worked with to think that there was anything shady about him. As he wasn’t employable, he thus needed to find a way to generate the funds needed for his legal defense as well as to support his family.

Thomas has noted that the way corporate America has changed since the 1970s, when he began working. As an example of this, Thomas notes that the CEO of General Electric, in the 1970s, retired with a package worth $10 million (around $50 million in today’s money); today, that CEO will retire with a retirement package worth $1 billion, and this cascades down the line, with the second in line getting a half billion dollar retirement package, the third in line getting a quarter billion dollar retirement package, and so on. He notes that this means that most of a company’s wealth is tied up with the top executives, and recalls that, in the 1970s, people viewed joining a major company to be a lifetime career move, with generous retirement and medical benefits. Thomas remarks that, in the 1970s, during a time which he called a period of “benevolent capitalism,” companies structured their guaranteed retirement packages so that retirees got around 65% of their working salary. All this changed, he notes, in the 1980s, when corporate raiders would buy and then control companies and then increase the companies’ cash flow by stripping out the costs (which included medical and retirement benefits and jobs) and then reselling those companies at a higher value, thanks to the apparent increased profitability of the company due to its increased cash flow. This led to later CEOs getting a mentality of wanting to cut costs wherever possible, and this shows itself in today’s environment, where retirement benefits are no longer fully funded by a company and medical benefits are greatly reduced. According to Thomas, this has resulted in a fear of people are able to keep up, and is a source for millennial thinking that capitalism isn’t the way to go, and perhaps socialism is. (In some comments made after the interview, Thomas remarked that the era of benevolent capitalism began after the Great Depression, when those in power realized that the common people had lost faith in the capitalist system and were likely to turn to socialism and communism.) He also notes that this has led to the transactional nature of work at present, which then breeds insecurity and which creates to tone of politics and the angry discourse that is prevalent today.

Where racism is concerned, Thomas notes that, at the present, the amount of progress that has been made isn’t front and center, whereas the issues that still need to be addressed are. He notes that there is still discrimination and believes that racist crimes, while these still do occur, are far less frequent now compared to fifty or a hundred years ago, as well as notes that the police back then weren’t punished for their actions. “It’s not perfect,” he notes, “but it’s moved in the right direction,” pointing out that people from non-white groups are now members of the middle class, thanks to this progress. Thomas also adds that the quality of education also plays a role in opportunities for everybody, but that, under the present system, as education is funded by local property taxes, those communities which collect a lesser amount of property tax will have fewer resources available for education that those which can collect more from their property taxes. This would explain why wealthier people, who cluster into higher-income communities, can afford good public education systems for their children, while those from lower-income communities cannot; and this means that children from the latter communities aren’t as prepared as those who come from the former communities.

Thomas has an investment fund which invests in startup businesses, and he enjoys being involved in this because of the energy and creativity of the people who are starting up new businesses. “This entrepreneurial energy is the secret sauce that makes America more successful than any other country around the world,” he notes. His fund identifies if a would-be business has a product that can solve a particular problem, as well as any added value when this product is applied and the size of the market. The revenue that can be generated is also considered, and the startup company is thus set up in a way where it can make the most impact.

Thomas emphasizes that the United States has come so far, as a country, from where it used to be, and while it should recognize that there is still some issues that need to be resolved, all should be proud of what has come out. On a personal level, he notes that the discipline of doing one’s best, of giving 100% every day, enables self-actualization, where one achieves one’s full potential. “You’re the only person who can do that,” he remarks.


Purchase from Amazon: 
From Willard Straight to Wall Street: A Memoir by Thomas W. Jones

Thomas Jones’ first interview on AuthorStory can be found here:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Xwa3xSBYczM

AuthorStory Blog Link: https://authorstoryinterviews.blogspot.com/2019/10/thomas-w-jones-on-his-journey-from.html

AuthorStory Video Blog Link: https://authorstory-videos.blogspot.com/2019/10/thomas-w-jones-tells-his-story-of.html

Lisa Rehurek on How to Do Better in Business and Win More with RFPs

In this interview, Lisa Rehurek talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, The RFP Success Book.



“Don’t try to do it all by yourself.” ~Lisa Rehurek

RFPs are Requests for Proposals, which are issued by organizations such as large corporations or the government, who look for contractors or vendors who can supply the needs of that organization. RFPs can be as short as a few pages or, particularly in the case of the United States federal government, can run into thousands of pages. The responding businesses need to submit their requirements and experience and solutions for the proposal seeker to then see how good the fit is with their needs.

Because of the occasionally detailed RFPs issued, Lisa’s present business is to aid small businesses, which would most likely not have the necessary manpower or competency to respond accurately to RFPs, do just that. The RFP Success Book was born out of Lisa’s realization that she kept on repeating the same themes over and over again with her clients and in her blogs, and as such it would probably be best to put all of these themes into a book for all and sundry to read and learn from.

Lisa notes that, in addition to the technical requirements and specifications, RFPs can also include such requirements at legal, insurance, price points, deadline for submission and even if the response needs to be printed on recycled paper and what the specific margins and font of the reply should be in. While big companies have an in-house RFP team which works solely on analyzing RFPs, small companies - who may receive only six to ten RFPs a year - don’t have such personnel and are likely will not have the competency to do so, as these small companies are likely to be staffed by people who are dedicated to the company’s core business.

Lisa points out that successfully responding to RFPs is important for businesses, particularly if the contracts are worth millions of dollars and can last years. She notes that those submitting proposals should meet the requirements and understand what the evaluation criteria are, and also remarks that one of the top mistakes that businesses responding to RFPs make is not answering the question that is asked for, such as giving a ten-page answer on their company’s history rather than explaining their methodology to complete a particular task. Lisa also remarks that the businesses responding to RFPs should take particular note of multi-tiered questions, such as asking for different kinds of pricing and then providing the details to these.

Lisa notes that businesses should take note of what the client needs and wants. She also notes that responders should remember that, at the end of the day, it will be a person who will be reading the RFP response, so it should appeal and maintain that person’s interest accordingly as well as ensuring that the proper solution can be provided. Based on her experience, Lisa remarks that around ten percent of all RFPs are rejected outright, and that around half fail to impress with the proper solution. Getting an RFP rejection does have an impact on a business, she notes, as a lot of time and effort would have gone into answering the RFP, which could be torpedoed by one, single mistake.

Businesses should also be aware that an RFP is also essentially a sales and marketing call, and that standing out from a bunch of other RFP responses will increase one’s chances of successfully getting the contract concerned, according to Lisa. It is thus important that companies be able to translate their technical speak into something the RFP evaluator can understand, as the latter might not have the same level of technical expertise as those responding to the RFP may have.

Businesses, particularly those who get RFPs from the government, may have to play a waiting game, as their potential clients may take months before finishing evaluating the RFP responses they get, and this does have a potential impact on a business, where staff and resources are concerned, as these might not be sufficient to cover all of the contracts awarded. Management of RFPs is thus a vital part of a company’s business.

To those who would respond to RFPs, Lisa would say to really pay attention to answering the question as it was asked, and then to be as simple and as succinct as possible in their reply, as a business has only two or three seconds to appeal to, and attract the attention of, the one reading the reply. She also advises that businesses not get intimidated by the RFPs they receive, and to get help from others to successfully respond to these.

Purchase from Amazon: The RFP Success Book by Lisa Rehurek

Julia Sloan on Learning to Think Strategically

Julia Sloan talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Learning to Think Strategically (3rd Edition).




“You begin to see the problem so differently the minute you take pen to paper and start to draw your problem.” ~Julia Sloan

Julia’s area of expertise is on the learning aspect of strategic thinking, and in addition to being on the faculties of Columbia University and the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, she has worked with senior managers of companies, international agencies and nonprofit organizations throughout the world, primarily in Asia, the Middle East and Africa on how to strengthen their strategic thinking. She has been working on the research for twelve years and has worked in the field of strategic thinking for eighteen years. She decided to write Learning to Think Strategically after realizing that people were making no distinction between strategic thinking, strategic planning and other, similar concepts that had become merely buzzwords, rather than concepts to be assimilated.

Julia notes that there is a difference between strategic thinking and strategic planning. Strategic thinking focuses on the problem at hand, and the purpose here is not to think of solutions to the problem but to go deep and get to the real problem concerned. She also notes that strategic thinking is informal, intuitive and emotional, highly reliant on what she calls “arational” thinking, which makes it rather messy. Strategic planning, on the other hand, is more linear and the topic of what most strategy literature deals with. Strategic planning is also formalized, rational and structured, and Julia notes that, once people differentiate between strategic thinking and strategic planning they do well.

Where strategic thinking is concerned, the underlying structure consists of divergent thinking, creative thinking, conceptual thinking, polarity thinking and critical reflective processes, which include critical dialogue, critical reflection and critical inquiry which questions underlying assumptions and beliefs to get at an issue’s premise, which is usually invisible. Julia also points out that these are not taught in business environments, and she mentioned the case of a medical technology company which was able to use strategic thinking to change course from the strategic plan they had created to close a plant in one area and open another in another country as well as purchase a company, which enabled them to be the top three companies in their particular industry.

Julia notes that strategic thinking is needed in corporations because of globalization, and that those organizations who aren’t aware of strategic thinking tend to force others to think the way the people where the company came from think, and when things go bad fingers get pointed about who is to blame for a failure in innovation and strategy. She points out that strategic thinking is a learnable human activity, rather than a cultural concern, and that anyone can thus learn how to think strategically. That said, Julia admits that culture teaches people what to pay attention to, how to identify patterns and how to make decisions, and that, once these cultural traits are gotten past, the learning process is the same anywhere.

Julia notes that “strategic thinking” has become a confusing, blanket term, and gives an example of what is really desired from someone who is essentially told, “I’d like to promote you but you need to show more strategic thinking.”

Julia envisions the teaching of strategic thinking all the way from elementary to graduate school by paying attention to the domain of arational thinking, which includes polarity thinking and metaphors. She points out that these are not easily measurable the way rational thinking methodologies are, and are thus not convenient to teach. Drawing is an activity that she highly recommends as a way to access strategic thinking, as Julia points out that she has used this method for senior managers and that children can use these as well, and the methods can be taught at all levels.

Julia points out that Learning to Think Strategically focuses on the learning aspect of strategic thinking, and how the latter is differentiated from other types of strategic tools, and that those who imbibe its lessons enhance their mental agility. The third edition includes some new concepts and matter that weren’t included in the previous editions, such as the triangle model as well as the two cognitive clusters that support both strategic thinking and strategic planning.

Purchase from Amazon: Learning to Think Strategically (3rd Edition) by Julia Sloan.

Gina Catalano on Tandem Leadership Management

Gina Catalano talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her latest book, Tandem Leadership: How Your #2 Can Make You #1.



“Execution is what’s going make your big idea a great idea.” ~Gina Catalano

Gina had run a few manufacturing companies before starting her own consulting business, where she noticed that entrepreneurs were brilliant with the product or service they delivered but struggled to build their business team, particularly with people who could do the duties they themselves did. Gina worked with these entrepreneurs, using the principles she learned to scale up their businesses.

The book, Tandem Leadership, was originally intended for entrepreneurs of small companies who are seeking to expand their business, but it turned out to be useful to anyone. It sprang from a comment made to her at a seminar, when someone told her that a book on leadership would help out companies that were struggling with their management team. As one of the reasons she wrote it was to help others whom she couldn’t help out in her consultancy business, Gina had originally created the book in a standard “how to” format. But after some conversations with her editor, she reverted to writing the book in storytelling format, akin to fiction, which was fine with her, since she had always thought of writing a novel. In addition to telling a part of the story and presenting the principles Gina wanted to point out, each chapter has a few questions for the reader to reflect on.

Gina agrees that not much attention is paid to the COO (#2) position where management books and doctrine are concerned and mentions that she originally intended to write Tandem Leadership from the point of view of the #2 organizational leader. She points out that even solopreneurs have key partners or a virtual assistant who acts as their #2 and that, over the course of her career, she has had the opportunity to be both a COO and a CEO. She uses the metaphor of the bicycle to make her point about how much easier the work is when two people are involved.

Gina remarks that, the sooner an entrepreneur thinks about the things that the entrepreneur is doing (which can be passed on to someone who can do the work for a lesser cost than the entrepreneur does), the better, even if hiring someone is still months down the road.
Gina works with entrepreneurs to create the future that appeals to them (such as having more time to be with their children) and which they can look forward to with all the available free time and resources that come with handing off some responsibilities to others and earning more money.

Gina admits that entrepreneurs usually don’t have a picture of what it’s like to have a #2, or what kind of #2 they would have. She remarks that #2s should complement the CEO rather than being just like the CEO (which emphasizes the blind spots both would have) or being the opposite of the CEO (which creates some loopholes). Gina says that CEOs are outwardly focused, while the COO is internally focused, is better at the CEO at some things, such as handling people, and are more interested in getting things done than in getting credit. She recommends that CEOs just tell their COOs what needs to be done and then let the COO to do things by themselves, rather than running close herd on them. Gina recommends that a CEO meets with his or her CEO regularly and effectively, meeting more often and in shorter time spans rather than getting involved in long meetings.

Gina is presently working on her next book, which is intended for #2s, and may also write something regarding succession in family businesses. She also remarks that being open to doing things in a different way, and then sticking with it long enough to master it, will get one further down the road than changing things every so often.

Gina Catalano’s website for her book, Tandem Leadership: How Your #2 Can Make You #1, is tandemleadershipbook.com.

Purchase on Amazon: Tandem Leadership: How Your #2 Can Make You #1 by Gina Catalano