| Wall Street "No" |
If you never pushed they would never call you. Only when you do, after many anxious days and nights, do you lean that their silence was a “Wall Street No”. When you push you learn that they have decided “to take a pass”, “not to pursue the opportunity” or some other weasel word that gives you no come back to appeal your case. Sadly this arrogance is not limited to the financial community but is prevalent in all walks of business life these days. Anybody trying to sell anything experiences it regularly and people looking for jobs find the same cavalier attitude. People simply will not tell you “no”, and “yes” simply means “maybe” When I came to live in America in 1986 there were three things that struck me – Americans are more comfortable with new things than old things, that the concept of “rights” was more important than the practical aspect of the liberties that might be infringed, and that a firm handshake on a deal was nothing more than a mild expression of interest. The first two are the subject for a different article than this, and I will simply address the third one here. My experience in England was that a handshake expressed a real commitment. When I arrived here, I found something very different – something that amounts to a lack of respect or professional courtesy. I reference professional courtesy because I am not talking about low-level people here. The malaise seems to have reached up all the way into the “professions” and I have had lawyers, accountants and bankers who simply don’t return calls. If you don’t call people back, don’t give them straight answers and inhabit the “maybe” camp it sends a message that your time is more important than the person phoning you. Is that the message that you want to send? Do you want to treat the people trying to see to you the same way you are treated? Think how that makes you feel and ask whether you want to be perceived that way. Do unto others as you would like them to do to you is not a bad credo to adopt.
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