John Fulton shares what it takes to work in treasury, drawing on his experience during the Covid pandemic. He covers the work ethic and qualities that help treasurers succeed when things get hard.
I think in this Covid situation today, you know, it's being a treasurer has actually taught me and I guess a lot of people that are in the profession, you know, stuff that you're prepared for, and Covid's actually been something that I think is shocks. This is Treasury 101. You're preparing for the worst and hopefully a better scenario will take place. But it does get you the ability to look at things in a different way. And sometimes you can't be criticized for being bored or anything people do listen to. You know, if you come up and say, look, hold on a minute, what about this? What about this, what about this? What is our plan if this happens? You know, going through that sort of decision matrix on what to do or risk. Matrix. Matrix on what to do is something that, that becomes ingrained in you as a result of working in the treasury profession. I'm a passionate person. I've got a lot of determination, not an intelligent person. I just tend to work well with people and if they share similar sorts of traits in terms of determination, passion, if they're a lot more intelligent than me or they're hard working, they've done the hard graph, that's what really stands out. You can be an experienced practitioner or an enthusiastic amateur. It depends what you're recruiting for. And in some roles, you, you're going to need that experienced practitioner. You know, you need people who are seasoned, they've seen the knocks, and those are the sorts you want in the seat to save your bacon when things go wrong. But you also want a healthy mix of enthusiastic amateurs who are coming up through the rungs and want to work hard. And working hard's the key. I do get concerned these days around work and effort and are people really working that hard? I remember in my early treasury days, I worked like a dog and I loved it. You know, it was from doing bank RECs to managing FX positions overnight and reconciling this and that. And I was really into it. But I worked really hard and worked long hours and didn't complain. I just got on with it. And that may have been as a result of working for my father and on the farm and all the rest of it. And we did work hard and it could be a healthy mix of that, I don't know. But I do look for people's work attitudes and they've got to demonstrate there that they've done something or a number of projects where they've really had to work hard. And I can work out very quickly whether it's spinning bullshit or not. And you can query them and you can question them. But I do maintain that you've got to demonstrate that you've got that that's hard working card in your pack and that you're willing to play that at any stage without question. I think the other item too, which, which is interesting is I think you've got to hang your hat on something like they've got to have had an interest or a challenge that makes you different. And it's something that you know, whether you've done an Ironman triathlon or you've climbed Mount Everest or you've done something that is going to make you an interesting, more interesting person, stand up from the crowd, you can talk confidently about it, you can talk around. How did you get to that? How did you set yourself up for that? Or were there failures, were there problems and how did you address it? And I think if you've got something like that that you can hang your hat on, then you are going to stand out because you're going to demonstrate that you've got the, or seeing the light somewhere that you wanted to get hold of it. But it's important, I think, that you've got to demonstrate you've not just had your nose in books, you've got to have done something called a sporting conquest or some sort of personal conquest or just something that you can say, look all rounded.
