Steve Rosenthal explains how Broadridge's treasury team hires versatile athletes instead of specialists, and builds discipline without regimentation to encourage innovation and critical thinking.
At the time, you know, you think you know what you're getting into, but you really don't until you live it. I think it was the whole notion of being, being really the central nervous system for the company and that's how those people really designed it. The, the management of the company's capital structure, financing, money movement, you know, dealing with all the cash every day was to me a really excellent propos position. And I got really excited about it right away. And that's without even knowing what the day to day was going to be like. And I can tell you that from there my passion really only grew. We're a very lean group and you know, expected to set up significant scale as the company grows. Now we've experienced some growth, but certainly not anywhere in relevant ratio to our company's growth. So we've had to find ways to make sure that we were building our subject matter expertise but not growing in terms of cost and people at the same rate that Broadridge was. And I'm happy to say that that's, that's been the case. In terms of people, we tend to train athletes and not position players. So what I mean by that, we find really smart, really agile people through our own management training programs or throughout other areas of finance that have a significant interest in Treasury. And we, when we do usually have openings specifically on the junior, we will transfer them into treasury and train them generically on every aspect of the treasury function. Once that's done, we marry that into the needs and requirements of the company such that that treasury athlete is now able to take their skills, their talent and translate it into treasury skill to meet the needs of specifically Broadridge. So, you know, the position player would be somebody who becomes very deep in cash management or very deep in investment portfol portfolios or very deep in debt structuring within the treasury framework. We don't do that. We train athletes. Our folks can gain expertise and understand all aspects of the treasury function. As they get more senior, they'll have a focus on one area or the other, but had been heavily trained throughout. That's really helped us create the scale that we've needed to keep our costs down, but also to be able to reinvent ourselves and evolve because our folks are those treasury athletes. It's a really good idea to surround yourself with people smarter than you. And I would only add to that, that's not only a great idea, but you can't be scared of it, right? So surrounding yourself with folks that can really bring new and innovative ideas. Look at things in a different way is extremely important. One of the ways that we manage our treasury organization creates a cultural basis. And the way that we think about that is we manage with loads of discipline but not regimentation. So we're very disciplined in all of our processes and very disciplined in our modeling, analytics and things like that. But we're not regimented with those things. So you don't have to do it my way to get to an answer. And you know, I find that really senior treas folks, but it's not just treasury folks, it's anybody getting set in your ways. And being regimented is a sure way to destroy critical thinking. It's a sure way to destroy and stunt new and innovative ideas. So creating the discipline around your processes and your organization is critical, but not making it regimented is just as critical. And surrounding yourself with really smart people use let them use, let them use their mind. Sam.
