Connecting Treasurers with Peer Groups with Joseph Neu

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasury professionals about how they built their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next this week's show, slightly different. I'm joined by Joseph Noye, the founder and CEO of the Noye Group. Now, Joseph and I have known each other for a number of years, but Joseph actually founded NOI Group over 25 years ago and they provide insights to treasury and finance leaders, help them succeed in their careers and peer knowledge and exchange. Now, back in 2001, the group transformed, which I'll get Joseph to dig into. But you've got massive amount of iconic companies as part of the NOI Group, lots of different chapters if you like, and membership parts of the group. Joseph can actually without it being a total sales fest, as we were just talking before the show, but I think the work the NOI Group does is outstanding and the guys, you know, you've got to listen into this. I think actually Joseph's mission, if you like, is, you know, will come through as we talk. But originally, take us back, I was going to say you, you started your career a number of years ago, Columbia, Santa Barbara and things like that. You did your degrees and then came in and discovered treasury and you know, the world of finance things. Just take us back. I know it's a few years, dust off the cobwebs, but take us back to the beginning of your career, if you would and how then you eventually came to run the NOI Group and stuff. So over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. Great to be here. Big fan of your podcast. Thank you. So thinking back, I came to New York, to Columbia, you know, sort of with the intent of becoming a professor. You know, I have come from both my parents were teachers, so I had it in my head to do something that was going to teach people. My first week at Columbia, they had an orientation talking about the different specialties that you could do in the graduate program. And I sat through the one on international banking and finance and instantly realized that I needed to pivot study international banking and finance all through via the International Affairs School, International Public Affairs Columbia and the Columbia Business School. And that kind of got me on the path to be thinking about international banking and finance. So that sort of is the first bit. While I was at Columbia, I also had a specialization in Eastern European studies and economics, which gave the entree to a company that still was called Business International at the time. And this was a company that was founded in the 50s, I believe, really with the mission to help American companies do business overseas and become true multinational corporations even before that concept really existed. At one point it really was the premier information source for global business and that offered publications, research, advisory and consulting services as well as conferences and roundtables. The most famous employee probably Barack Obama, who worked there well before my time there, but he worked there a short time. He references it in his book, I think Dreams about My Father and cites that as the international consultancy. He doesn't mention it by name, but he cites an international consultancy which turned him off from working in the private sector, got him on the path that made him President of the United States. So that's a little bit of an interesting anecdote about Business International. But I was working there and on this project started while I was in graduate school with the research and consulting division. It was a, it was a market entry study. I think it was commissioned by the provincial government of Ontario to help Canadian companies enter into Eastern European markets which at the time were just opening up after all the Berlin Wall and the reform of the Soviet Union and the retreat of the Iron Curtain. That was a very interesting project but it also exposed me to other parts of Business International including their corporate finance division which had as part of their effort to help multinationals do business abroad. And they had also formed this group that helped build up the corporate finance and treasury function really at a time where things are thinking about cross border cash management, foreign exchange management were really at its early stages. It was a tremendous place to get some exposure to multinational corporate finance. Right about the time that I was ready to graduate they asked me to take over a research project that, that was titled Building the Next Generation treasury. And it involved a multi week research trip to Europe to interview heads of treasury centers and in house banks which were cropping up to support multinationals doing business in Europe but also globally. And that had garnered the attention of banks who wanted to study how these treasury centers and in house banks were transforming finance functions, Treasurying finance functions of their clients. I believe it was sponsored by Chase Manhattan bank, but I had studied banking finance so I had a bit of the language to understand what these people are talking about. But I really hadn't learned about treasury function per se because even at Columbia Business School at the time there was a lot of courses on various elements of corporate finance. I'D even taken a course on value at risk at that point, but there wasn't anything that really brought it all together. Of what the treasury function did. So it was a really great learning experience and I met a lot of great people. So that research project caused me to fall in love both with the subject matter of treasury, particularly as it exists for on the international plane for multinationals, but also the people involved. Really bright, doing really interesting things.

And Joseph, when you say you discovered it, if you like, what was it that piqued your interest about treasury? Because that was 20 years ago. And I know with mine, people said to me, oh, how are we to 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 flippantly put it, and it's, you know, semi serious as well. I said treasurers tend to be the first of the bar 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 think there's a lot of intellectual interest just from a pure finance practice standpoint that treasurers do. They're really on the cutting edge of a lot of finance practices, 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 really great people fun to hang around with. So that obviously helps so much of what I do now as a people business. If the people weren't really great, it would be hard to do what I do today.

And then. So you got interested, you love this. Can you find this? And then you were sort of managing editor, the Economist Intelligence, or how did that then sort of transform into this role? Or when did you say, actually, I could do this? And founded the NOI Group. How did that sort of transition happen?

Well, first off, you know, I probably failed to mention that while I was at Business International. The economists had bought them back in the mid-80s, I think, but they finally got around to rebranding the company as the Economist under their Economist Intelligence Unit subsidiary. With that, they started Institute a number of different changes. As part of those changes, they asked me to take on some of the publication side of the business. So that is kind of how I transitioned from the research side of things to publication side of it. And became managing editor of their. What used to be called the Business International Money Report, which kind of the. One of the first newsletters in the international treasury field. They renamed it Finance and Treasury right around the time that I took it over. And that sort of exposed me to what it takes to run a newsletter, write insightful pieces on a regular basis. I think we were publishing every week, plus all the other things that come with the newsletter business of programming seminars under the Economist Conference's brand name, doing roundtables, etc. It was very useful experience on two levels. One is taught me that you can pick up the phone and really call anyone without fear. It helps to say you're calling from the Economist. If you say you're calling from the Economist, chances are people will pick up the phone and talk to you. It also taught me over time that if you give people something back in the conversation, they're going to talk to you again. So it gave me a lot of confidence that I could pick up the phone and to speak to anyone, literally anyone in the world. And it was also a relatively unstructured environment. So, you know, I think, you know, my boss at the time was rarely around, so I basically just decided what I was going to do, wrote my own projects. You know, I think I even put together trips out to Asia. I interviewed the treasurer of Toyota in Japan with a Japanese interpreter. So I learned sort of the ins and outs of how to do things like that, but also how to run your own show. I think that's what really helped me solidify my prior ambitions, to think about one, doing something that was educational and teaching people, but also entrepreneurial. There was a period where rumors started circulating that the Economist Intelligence Unit sell off this division, that I was working for, the newsletter in particular. And rather than wait for that to happen, one of my clients convinced me, since I was running most of the newsletter and a lot of the ancillary business on my own anyway, that I should just take that on my own and found my own company. So that's what launched the NOI group 25 years ago. Been doing that ever since.

So 25 years ago, it's not changed. It's exactly the same world as it was before. Treasury hasn't changed. It's exactly the same kind of world of memberships, publications and everything else. Obviously that I'm saying that with my tongue firmly. What an evolution we've both seen. When I started in treasury recruitment myself 20 plus years ago and to now, and people have talked about social media, but way before that, there was LinkedIn, you know, I started with the Rolodex, you know, text me that, dates me and things. But it's all about relationship from day one. And that remains a key thing. I know that's a key thing about the Nori Group, but maybe if you would, okay, you did that. But what was the ethos then? What were the right, I'm going to establish my own company. And everything else wasn't just about the cash. I know it's about you giving back and stuff like that. Obviously you need the cash as well. But maybe if you would explain about who Noi Group are. Bit of a sales pheasant, explain to people and then explain what you try and do for your clients. And so again someone here, I know you're very well known in the us, but say in UK and Europe, less well known. Maybe if you would just give the sort of quick guide to who you are and what you do.

So Mike Noy Group connects corporate finance and treasury professionals who want to share and learn for mutual success. There's a lot that comes in that it's been an evolution to get to where we started 25 years ago with essentially a newsletter business to what we are today. It may be helpful to walk through that journey and the evolution to better understand how we got there and what we learned along the way because I think that is critically important to understanding both the value proposition of what we do and why we are the trusted leader of pure knowledge exchange for the treasury and finance community.

Go for it. I mean I think that's exactly right. So you know, maybe talk through the mission and you know what you guys do and I think people want to hear. So over to you sir.

So as I mentioned it's we started with the, with a newsletter international treasurer which really had the mission of helping practitioners of the, of the most difficult part of Treasury International treasury better understand how to be successful in their roles. And that was what carried the business for probably the first seven years. But as is typical of newsletter publishers, we also did various ancillary roundtables. I really fell in love with the roundtable format where you would bring together between 15 and 30 like minded professionals to talk about topical issues or a series of related topics and really dig in deep and interactive dialogue to have a real discussion to share and learn, think about solutions to problem and have real takeaways to bring back to the office and feel like you had spent a day productively. The issue with doing these roundtables is you were always pulling together the groups of Practitioners. And it dawned on me that rather than pulling together practitioners for certain topics, that if we created a membership group to bring the like minded practitioners together, there was always things that would come up for them to want to talk about. So that was kind of the kernel of the idea for our members peer groups. And around that time that I came up with that idea, I was asked by one of the treasurers that was on my advisory board at the time who was taking a job out in Silicon Valley. He was moving from New York to Silicon Valley to become VP Finance of a tech company there. I happened to know his predecessor in that job who was leaving to form his own company. And I said, well, why don't I introduce you to your predecessor. He can tell you, you know, where all the skeletons are and bit of the lay of the land and make you, you know, you can hit the ground running and make you more successful in this new role. We arranged a meeting and a lunch with another treasurer who was also friends with this outgoing VP Finance at the tech company. And we had a great meeting, talked about person's new role. They were taking all the ins and outs of how the finance organization at the new company was working. The treasurer was hosting us, also chimed in with what she was trying to do, reorganizing her treasury function. And it was just a really great conversation between the three of us over lunch. At the end of the lunch, treasurer that hosted us said, this was really great. I've been thinking about bringing together treasurers of other tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to have these sorts of frank conversations. And I shared with her my idea of putting together these membership groups. And we decided we would collaborate on doing a meeting together. And we did that in end of October in 2001 with a group that we dubbed the Tech20 Treasurers Peer Group. And it was a huge success. We had a great day and a half, two day meeting in Napa Valley. And that really served as the template for launching a network of peer loops for treasurers in different sectors on a cross industry basis and very importantly for most of their key direct reports, which creates a great synergy for us to develop and create a forum for knowledge exchange both for the leaders of the treasury function, the treasurers, all of their direct reports, and increasingly now because of all the value that we've created for the Treasury Department, other departments in the finance function have heard about it, which gives us the opportunity to move into adjacent roles in the finance function. Plus, you know, one of the most gratifying things is that A lot of our members have grown in their careers in large part due to what they've learned in their knowing group. Peer groups have advanced into bigger roles. And so we have, we've seen a great number of our members advance from being managers or directors of foreign exchange or cash management, become treasurers of their, of their companies, move to other companies, and even increasingly move up to CFO roles. So we have tremendous alumni network as well. And that's one of the most gratifying things about this, is seeing people advance.

And reach their full potential and with those groups. Joseph, and forgive me for asking, I know this, but somebody listening today might say, well, hang on, you're a big treasurer, you know, one of the top global treasurers. Why, you know, maybe it's all right if you're at that level, or maybe you're a sort of a tier below that and you're in one of the groups. It might be, as we call it, Chatham House Rules, where you can't share outside of the group and you respect privacy and things like that. But do people really bear their souls? Do they really share their hardships and things like that? Or, you know, how does that work? You know, how do they feel safe?

It's important obviously to make people feel safe and create a trusted environment. And so 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 talk to gain an understanding of what it is that they're working on and struggling with. Obviously we do have, if 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 idea 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. There's a very interesting book called Give and Take that was written by Adam Grant, who is a professor at the, at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. And it was actually recommended to me by one of our sponsor partners. The founder of the company recommended this because he said this is really a large part of what you do is bringing together people with a give to get formula. So in Give and Take, the research indicates that the most successful people are givers as well as the least successful people. And what separates the successful givers from the less successful givers is successful people are smart about who they give to, being smart about who you give to is about giving to people that are going to give something back and not just take from you. And so a big part of what we do is create a forum, a group and a network. Other smart givers that understand that if they're going to give something or to get something back, they're going to be connected with other people that are going to be doing the same. That's a huge formula for success in your career as well as in life, but it's also the best formula for knowledge exchange because if you bring people together that understand that they're going to get something out of conversation, there's going to be key insight, experience that they're going to get, but they're also going to be expected to give something. And really, the more that they give, the more that they should expect to get back. So we're sort of the curator and facilitator, the trusted intermediate that creates this forum of mutual success. That's a safe area that's bringing together more people, smart givers who are willing to share and learn for mutual success.

And we'll include the link to actually that book as it sounds great. I actually, very early on in my career read the Stephen Covey book about Seven Habits of Success and everything else, and it sounds very relatable to that. And the way that I've seen it is sometimes the sort of, I think he called it the emotional bank account or the sort of trust bank account and where you're sort of. It's just like making deposits to, you know, sort of. And then you're going to get back if you do it, you know, in a planned way. But the more that you put in, the more you get and, you know, you don't want to be overdrawn. And always, as you said, if you always taking. There's never an investment there. But it sounds like it's similar in your, you know, in that group function, that if you do pay it in, you know, in terms of a physical way, you know, cash and things like that, you know this. But it's more, you know, a difference than that. And you say we talk about this as a sort of a forum, a membership group, where do you see the value of that? You know, when there's lots of stuff, you know, we've got the LinkedIn stuff and all that stuff, but more, why would someone listening today say, actually that's something I need to be part of? And again, and we're not just a sales festival. I know know the value you guys add. And we did some great meetings and building that network, the membership, what else would you say to those Again, the people listening today saying that actually that sounds like something I need to sort of. And again we'll put links to you in the show notes, but when someone's looking at it, what would you sort of say why you do it? And things.

I think first of all we have, I and my team that I've cultivated have 30, 30, I have 30 years combined. We probably have much more than that experience and subject matter expertise in this area and we put a lot of work in developing an agenda that is going to spark the right kind of knowledge exchange for what people are working on, challenged with today, but also forward looking in terms of what they should be thinking about down the road. So it's not just someone who's come in as a facilitator who knows nothing about the subject matter. We actually bring that to the table as well, which helps us understand what's said in the room, which allows us to build that into insight, which helps people take away something and use it, become more successful. It also attracts other people to the network that make for really good connections and elevate subsequent exchanges that go on. So part of the cadence of our meetings and increasingly the connections that we make with members and otherwise in between the meeting is all about trying to create this virtual circle of building connections, facilitating exchanges and sharing and learning is another way to think about knowledge exchange, to drive insight and to drive mutual success. You know, again harkening back to this smart giving model, you know, we do that primarily through the face to face meetings and our twice annual meetings, but increasingly it's about carrying that forward on a continual basis. And as the world moves more and more into digital and online social media communication, etc. 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 you know has a much broader.

Mandate and audience and with the meetings themselves. Do you like group? I know that you group some sort of, not just the same industry, but sometimes the same size of companies so that they have similarish issues you know, so an SME type smaller organization obviously has very different issues to a global multinational and different sizes of multinational know that you split it that way. But with the meetings themselves, do you have themes that come through it or what sort of, when you're adding that value, do people say, oh, I need to be to that one? Because it's about, you know, the latest IT technology, you know, gone about all the time. We did a podcast today with someone about it, but. Or is it, you know, what's the sort of the structure of those? What's the. How do you work it out?

It varies but you know, there are, there are a few constants. So one of the contents is each meeting. Usually it's the first session that we have a discussion of current projects and priorities, which you know, are somewhat based on pre research that we we've done from surveying and discussion with members to identify what they're, what they're working on, what their challenges are. And we have an opening session where we select the key projects that people are working on that are either shared commonly or that we feel like are going to be coming up on the radar screens for others in the group. And we get those identified and narrated by the members so that they can connect, share and learn both within that session, but more importantly subsequent to that session to get together with others that are working on similar things, that they can work on those projects in collaboration or they can find others that have sort of been there, done that before, that have experience that can give them the shortcuts they need, that's going to save them huge time and money and be more successful with that effort. So that's sort of the core foundation of each meeting. Then we may take a theme or a number of issues that are top of mind and drill into those in the remainder of the session. One of the more interesting thematic meetings we did recently is in our last meeting cycle we did meeting that was completely dedicated, almost completely dedicated to developing finance talent for the future. And we brought in treasures along with few of the companies we brought in their HR finance leads either from HR function or some of the companies actually have in the CFO's office a finance talent specialist that guides development, training, hiring, retention and the like to sort of get their view on what talent of the future is looking like and what the companies are doing to develop finance leadership for the future. And then we had it hosted at, you know, one of the members is on the advisory board of the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington in Seattle. So we had them hosted and they brought in sort of the academic business school perspective of both what they're seeing and what they're doing to develop finance leaders of the future. And it was very eye opening and interesting.

What was most interesting about that? Well, you know, when you're looking to the future, I think, you know, we as a, obviously we host it with a Treasury recruitment company. So we, you know, and again, we're going to do more with you guys, you know, in 2020. But what was the thing that sort of jumped out with you or did you think, wow, this is what the guys listening today need to be thinking about? Or were there particular areas or was it just an overall wow, this is great.

You can kind of break it up into the validation of sort of the obvious things that we're hearing about that you meet people in the finance function that are more digitally savvy, more comfortable with data data analysis, increasingly using technology to automate treasury activities, be smarter about decisions taken and taking out the sort of low value transaction work and shifting it toward higher value analytical work and increasingly working with the businesses to support them from a finance perspective. So that's one piece of it. But the bigger picture challenge I think for the future is if we start to roll forward, maybe it's not five years out, but more like 10 years out, because the tendency is to overestimate the amount of change on a five year horizon, but vastly underestimate it on a ten year horizon, that some of the focus on technical skills, and this probably applies to Treasurers in particular and Treasury Departments in particular are going to be made easier by technology enablement. Then you're going to have AI smart machines that really have been taught through machine learning and eventually sophisticated more AI to understand a lot of the technical aspects of treasury and other parts of the finance function. But that's going to take away potentially the kind of silo effect and ivory tower that treasury has, has tended to exist in and also change the dynamic between having Treasurers and Treasury departments being seen as distinct from the rest of the Finance function. It's going to further enable a trend that we see increasing and that is the rotation through treasury as part of a broader strategic finance leadership. So we're seeing at the treasure level, for example, we're seeing more and more of our members that are coming into the treasury role. Maybe they've been in treasury earlier on in their career, but they're now the Treasurer on a three year rotation, call it, without having a lot of technical treasury experience. So they're having to come up the curve quickly. And having a smart giver network can obviously help do that. And NEU Group is there to help them as well. But what makes that possible now is having a team or a number of directors in the key technical treasury roles that really have a deep treasury knowledge rolling forward in the future. Some of that is likely to be replaced by smart machines, if you will. And I think that if you're embarking or considering a career now in treasury and finance, that has to be a real scenario that you're looking at and thinking about skill sets you develop and hone over the early part of your career so that when you get to that point that you're completely disrupted and still have a quality job when it comes to that. And I think there's two views of that. There's the one extreme that we're all going to be on permanent vacation earning an income off of what the tax on the robots earn, which I think is probably not likely to happen, or pursuing our passion projects and hobbies. But this is likely is going to be that we're going to be as humans freed up to do really the most interesting part of things humans do, interacting with other, with other people and the more mundane things that get in the way with that will kind of be taken over by machines. We did a session a month ago talking about this and someone characterized it as having a really smart digital assistant that is just there to do just about anything. You can imagine come back to you with the report that you want the finance structure analysis, you want the how to. How to go out and execute this bond deal in the right way. And then you just as the treasurer or what have you would sort of review that put a human judgment layer on it to see does this really make sense and send it off on its merry way, which will change the nature of these roles dramatically. But also I think the career path of people in treasury and I think from a really positive standpoint, it used to be we had discussions with treasurers of do you want to be treasurer for life or do you have aspirations to go on and become CFO or do other things in the finance function? I think the tendency is going to hew more to that over the next five and especially ten years pretty dramatically and it's going to be really fun to watch and see that transition. That's kind of what keeps me getting up every morning really excited about what we do is because we have a, we have a front row seat at seeing these transformations in the treasury finance area happen. And Also be a part of the discussion and exchange to go through them together successfully. That's really exciting.

I think it is and I think I know that. Well, sometimes I'm interrupting guests with questions but I just love when Joseph and I talk because Joseph's saying a lot of the stuff that's in my head. I'm sitting here going, yeah, that's cool, yeah, there's no need for me to interject and things. One thing I will say is we each and every week we try and keep this to sort of a half an hour, 40 minute show because that sort of looks like an average commute time for people. But before we wrap up today's show because I think there's more room for Joseph and I to talk about more, you know, because there were sort of two or three things I've written down here about, you know, what the value of having a membership network is and you know, building a network. And it got bits about employability which we, I did a workshop on last week in Luxembourg and, and I know there's a massive crossover in what Joseph and his FaceTime with his members and you know, mine was FaceTime with my clients and candidates. Now I don't think we've got enough time to cover that all on today's show. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to semi bring it to a head now about where Joseph sees Treasury. You just mentioned about there where we see it going with different things across it. But if someone's looking back at your background, they say, you know what, I want to be like that. But what I would say is we'll get Joseph back on for some special shows. You know, we've talked to in the past about treasury technology, we've talked about maybe employability. We do things. I think you've still got lots to contribute and we'll get onto that. But Joseph, I mean looking back at you and you know, the future and you know, if someone again wants to be like you, what sort of advice would you give to people?

Would you say, you know, some of it is universal and that is, I think a lot of what I've done which is, you know, has been a knowledge seeking journey. A lot of this, you know, going back to my original research project that got me into the treasury field with the Economist Intelligence Unit was really all about having intellectual curiosity for different subject matter, being open to, to that, but also being willing to think outside the box and look at it from an intellectual or a symbolic standpoint. I'm a Big fan of. I think it's Peter Drucker's concept of the symbolic analyst, where you go through life really looking at the symbolism thing of things in abstract terms because it helps you to understand them better. And I think that's going to be a great skill for any job going forward. And increasingly for the finance roles as some of the technical bits get taken over by smart machines. That's one element of it. I think the other advice that I would give is really driven to a large extent, what I've done is that to be successful and to reach your full potential, which is really kind of a personal driver of mine, I really like to see people advance and reach their potential because everyone has some sort of special skill or superpower, but they also have some sort of kryptonite that gets in the way. And it can really help you to hone your superpowers and manage your kryptonite by. By sharing and learning with others. And I think, you know, we talked about this before. I think that comes across in the other podcasts that you've done. The issue is, is that, you know, everyone's got a day job, so to speak, and building out a network, identifying other smart givers and having a curated peer group or broader network is not something that everyone has time for or other. Some people may not be great at that. So there is an opportunity just to understand that there are organizations like Noy Group, there are other ways to do it as well, but leverage those on an outsourcing basis, because that is another skill, I think for the digital future that is going to be very important, is that you don't really have to know everything. There is the old adage, it's not what you know, but who you know. And I think as we roll forward in the digital world, which I think the pace of change is only going to be accelerating, that that becomes increasingly important. And finally this. Think about what it is on a really human level. And this is where personal connections become important and actually taking time to get in the room with other people and interact with them becomes really important because that's really what makes us unique as human beings. And regardless of how smart machines become in the future, I don't know that they're going to ever interact as well as we as humans do. And so coming up with how that works in this really applies universally to every field. But I think is critically important in the treasury and Finance field because people in finance tend to like the numbers, structure and outcomes. And I think that's going to remain important. But the flip side of that logic and numbers and quantitative analysis or something machines are going to get really, really good at and it's going to be hard in the long term to compete with that. So thinking about how to develop both the translation and storytelling skills to make sense to other humans of what the machines are telling us we should do and make sure that it works on a human level is infinitely important. And so I would just encourage everyone as they, whether they're embarking on their career or finishing up their career, to embrace that and get excited about it. But even if you're at the end of your career, you've got a lot of knowledge and experience to relate back to what is coming. And I think you've probably seen this as well. We're kind of at an inflection point, I think, where there's a lot of treasurers. You can probably say this of all the financial leadership, even at the CFO level, that is about to turn over to a much younger generation that's closer to being digitally native. So the pace of change just with that, that shift is going to open up a lot of new thinking and change within organizations that you have to be ready for. But if you're at the latter stage of your career, like I think I am, as I get older, I'm really thinking about more how I can take my knowledge and experience that I've accumulated over this journey of 30 plus years researching and interacting and analyzing the treasury and finance world, how I can bring that knowledge and insight and share it back to this new digitally native generation is going to be one more receptive to thinking out of the box and change I think to going to be much more comfortable in deploying technology faster and hopefully smarter. But maybe don't have a lot of this historical experience and insight and let's try not to call it legacy insight that's getting in the way. Let's embrace new ways of thinking about and relating knowledge to apply to this rapidly changing world. And my final comment would be all the changes going on, it's almost impossible for any individual to keep up with. So having a group of people that you trust to touch base with periodically, whether it's in a formal membership period like noy group or even informally, is the value in that is just huge because it's really the only way that you can keep up and just validate that you're not alone in being overwhelmed.

Yes, brilliant. I mean, I just think that exactly what, that's exactly what you guys within your group that's what you provide for people and I think people will put connections to the NOI group in the show notes and things. I just think we'll have a nice summary of what Joseph said there. I think at the end of the day he's a great person to have in your network. The work that you guys do really helps and supports the treasury, you know, treasury, it's different when some weeks I talk to a Treasury professional about their careers. I think what you and I sort of different angles but onto the same people and we sort of provide that triangle if you like, if you're the peer bit. We're doing the sort of coaching with their careers and everything else. I think there's so much crossover, I just.

Yeah.

Just love it. No, so it just remains. If you think it's good to have Joseph in your network, feel free to connect to him. Then he, you know, and you want to know more about the NOI group, you can connect there. We'll get Joseph on the show again, you know, because we talk, you know, and I sit here and listen because I'm interested in what Joseph has to say. So I think you guys will enjoy that as well. All that remains to me to say actually, by the time this comes out, It'll be probably 2020, but all the best for the next year and as we go move on through 2020 and success for you guys. Joseph, thanks for your time today and look forward to seeing you later on in the year. Thanks for your time.

No, thanks, Mike. It's been a been a pleasure. Happy holidays to you. Come good into the new year. It's going to be a really interesting one there. There's never a lack of interesting things to talk about in the treasury finance world, but I have this feeling that the next three to five years and starting next year, interesting things to talk about and the pace of change is going to accelerate rapidly. So hopefully we can continue the exchange. I wish you well with all you're doing.

Thank you very much, sir. Look forward to seeing you. Thanks very much for your time.