Connecting Treasurers with Peer Groups with Joseph Neu

Foreign.

What was it that piqued your interest about Treasury? Because, you know, that was 20 years ago. And, you know, I know with mine, people sort of said to me, oh, how we become a Treasury recruiter? I said, I discovered these treasury guys. People had said about accountants and various bits. But I found treasury people, found my people, treasury professionals, that one of the things were very relationship focused, very forward focused. And for me it was, I flippantly put it, and it's, you know, semi serious as well. I said treasurers tend to be the first of the bar, I and often the last to leave it because they are very forward and stuff like that. And I said, I thought these are people I could work with. You know, was it that or was it more the intellectual bit about treasury and how it affects the company? Or what was the thing that sort of piqued your interest, hooked you, as it were?

Well, I think it was both. I mean, I think there's a lot of intellectual interest just from a pure finance practice standpoint that treasurers do. You know, they're really on the cutting edge of a lot of finance practices, know, just listening to what they were doing and the practical application of IT to support businesses, I think was really intriguing. As you point out, there are also, you know, really great people fun to hang around with, so that obviously helps. So much of what I do now is a people business. If the people weren't really great, it would be hard to do what I do today. It's important obviously to make people feel safe and create a trusted environment. And so, you know, one way to look at what we do is sort of a curator of connections and trusted connections, so that if we bring people together in a room, they're all people that we've talked to, gained an understanding of what it is that they're working on and struggling with. Obviously we do have, as you pointed out, the equivalent of childhouse rules that, you know, what's set in the room stays in the room. But, you know, we're also trying to bring, bring people together with the IDE that they're sharing and learning for mutual success. With that ethos, everyone feels like they're going to get something back from what they give. As the world moves more and more into digital and online social media communication, et cetera, the importance of the face to face meeting, I think grows because it's what establishes the trusted relationships. So that unlike just going out on LinkedIn and to your connections on LinkedIn, you actually have met these people, had an intimate conversation with them, know what makes them tick, what they're working on, what they're struggling with and what they know. So you can get much more value out of an exchange with a network like that than you, than you can with more informal connections or, you know, even if you're part of an association that has a much broader mandate and audience.