It’s been a while since I penned one of these personal vignettes.
I am in the process of interviewing for a few junior positions here at the firm (one in sales, one in research), and the question typically comes up: how does one become successful in one’s commercial or business life? Especially for those entering the workforce for the first time and seeking a career path.
The answer to that one is quite simple: don’t settle to fill your minimum job requirements. Shoot higher than that because that is the only way to prove to your employer that you are ready for new responsibilities and obligations (and the better compensation that comes with that!). It’s like playing chess – think of the next two or three moves.
I can only draw on my own experiences, and while there are many, the one that resonates the most as a young, budding Street economist was an incident that occurred back in the Fall of 1988 when I was working as an intermediate-level economist at the Bank of Nova Scotia.
Warren Jestin, a mentor and role model and someone I have discussed in prior vignettes, was the chief economist at the time. He had a regular 1 pm meeting every Monday (it was called the “Liability Meeting”) and it included the eight most senior people at the bank, including the CEO, Cedrich Ritchie, and the president, Gordon Bell (both were intimidating individuals, to put it mildly). In my first year at the bank, like clockwork, Warren would walk into my office with the same questions about two hours before the Liability Meeting began. Not my opinions, mind you, the guy was and is brilliant. But queries about some of the data.
At one point, I had a eureka moment. I found a way that could fit all the data that I knew he needed for the meeting onto one page of paper, and how to automate it. So, I came into the office for three weekends and managed to do it. The piece of paper looked like the sort of play cards that NFL coaches hang onto on the sidelines, but it wasn’t color-coded or laminated. But I was able to get some of the regions on the page shaded! It had everything – the broad trends in the economic numbers, financial market data, and the credit aggregates. All on one page (there was a time when I excelled at Excel spreadsheets… but that was then)!
Once I finished this self-imposed task, I knocked on Warren’s office door the following Monday at around 10 in the morning. I said (sheepishly), “Warren, can I talk to you for a few minutes? I want to show you something”. He goes, “Sure, come in.” I hand him the piece of paper. He asks, “What’s this?”. So, I told him that I noticed that he has the same or similar data questions before every Liability Meeting, so I thought maybe I would prepare a one-pager to have in front of him. Silence. Then he says, “When did you find time to do this?”. I responded, “Oh, I came into the office over the past three weekends”. He then asked, “But why?”. To which I said, “Well, I consider it to be a core part of my job here to make your job easier”. Silence again. With a certain degree of trepidation, I said, “Warren, do you like it?”. He smirked (generally a good sign) and responded with this: “Can you slide in M2 and M3 at the bottom?”.
Six months later, I was promoted to Senior Economist. It wasn’t for anything else than just punching through my job description, sacrificing three weekends, taking initiative, and showing my boss that I had his back. Memo for anyone who wants to climb the proverbial ladder.
