Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Alumni Q&A: business consultant Jason Seiden

The business consultant, author of “How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What’s Left of your Career” and Kellogg ’02 alumnus, discusses consulting ethics, negotiation strategies and how to mess up your first interview.

Courtesy of Jason Seiden

Daily: In your opinion, what do the businesses that the recession is going to wipe out have in common?

Jason Seiden: There’s a practical answer to that, and there’s a more conceptual answer to that. The practical answer to it is the businesses were playing too close to their own end zone. The banks and their overnight borrowing rates, and you realize these companies are cutting it real close every night. When you have no margin for error, and you get whopped with something, you have a problem. Similarly, a small company that runs on credit and cash flows, all these things are going to really affect a company like this in a bad way in a time like this. More conceptually, it’s a really simple answer. The companies that don’t work out are not well led. It’s really easy to make money in the good times. A well led company will find a way to survive.

D: Have you ever had a client who had a business model you considered to be immoral? How do you deal with that?

JS: I have not. I’ve actually been surprised how high integrity the people I’ve work with are. I think a lot of the issues you have are not because you have this immoral industry, it’s more because you have this confederacy of dunces, the way the system is set up, the incentives are not always aligned with where society would like to see them aligned. How you want to slice and dice a mortgage? If the market says we want these securities to be more liquid so that we can put them in our portfolios, then someone says, “Hey, here’s a way to make mortgages more liquid, let’s do it this way.” There’s nobody in the system who’s job it is to say, “What happens if we create additional liquidity in the market?” So you have this confederacy of dunces where decisions get made, stuff gets implemented and the after effects can surprise people. I haven’t been in a place where I’ve had unethical clients, as an industry. I’ve had individuals who I don’t think were straight up with me, and they didn’t last long as my clients. There was an employee of a client who I literally thought had no moral code, and I walked from his office to the CEO’s office and I said, “I have an issue, and I can’t wait for the full report; you need to hear this now. I think you have someone on your team who has no moral code and I don’t think he has (any) reason to be on this team.” The CEO ended up acting on that.

D: How did you know he had no moral code?

JS: It took about three hours to determine it. I gave him every opportunity to prove me wrong. It got to the point where I was asking him questions that I thought were pretty black and white when it comes to what the correct answer would be, and I couldn’t get him to give me anything other than a relative response. There’s gray in everything, so I don’t look at a single instance as evidence. But repeatedly hearing somebody say, “This product wasn’t right for the client, but I had a sales target to hit, so I sold it to him anyway and that’s $10 million. Then they wanted to hire me, and I should have fired my old client, but I wasn’t sure who was going to stay in the company, so I didn’t cancel the contract, so I could leave the door open.” You hear that stuff consistently over three hours, it’s a pretty big clue.

D: You’ve taught graduate level classes in negotiation. What is the best way to understand the person you’re across the table from?

JS: When most people approach negotiations, they approach them functionally; they think about what they want. “I want more, I want this person to do better,” you just think about what you want. If you can step back and say, “I’m dealing with an individual. What did he think getting out of bed today? Did he have a family? Did he kiss his wife goodbye? Was there somebody strange sleeping in his bed when he got up this morning? Who is this person? When he or she goes out on the weekends, is this somebody who goes out looking for conquests or looking for relationships?” If you can start to ask those questions, you’ll get a flavor for what the person needs out of the negotiation, and you can start getting yourself to operate more on that social plane, where you see the person though the mold. You know that they have a job with a company that’s supposed to sell me X, Y, Z but they’re still a human being, they have particular needs, they go home to a different house, they want to get something out of this. Start asking yourself those questions, and you’ll be a much better negotiator.

D: Tell me about your book. What are some of the ways to “self-destruct” coming out of college?

JS: Overdress the first interview. Ask about salary during the first interview. It’s like asking someone out on a date, “How much is it going to take to get some action?” That question just kills ya. When you’re applying for a job, asking for a salary is asking, “So what am I gonna get out of this?” Overdressing indicates an over-inflation of your self worth. You can like nice things, but you need to understand what your salary range is going to be. If you show up in designer shirts, you’re sending a signal that you’re not going to be satisfied with $35,000. You’ve got to have a normal e-mail address. The number 69 cannot appear in your e-mail. It just can’t. It’s 2009 and I’m still seeing that.

D: As for Northwestern, what did you learn in your time here outside the classroom?

JS: All the stuff that you asked about, negotiation and everything else, was learned outside the classroom and by realizing we all suck. We’re all great, but we all have our not-strong points too. I learned where money and people connect. I learned how capitalism is supposed to work the right way. The short of it is that money flows only to the extent that we can make it flow. Human beings are imperfect. So what I learned was not to fight the imperfections, not to cry about the injustice, but to accept it as the outcome of a system that supports imperfect people. I learned to be okay with that.

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Alumni Q&A: business consultant Jason Seiden