Succession Planning

Held and led today my last , formal board meeting as pension chairman. In attendance were pension trustees and external accountants, actuaries and auditors. Issues were many (order of magnitude of assets under management is close to USD 400 Mio., BTW) and several of the outcomes were known to be legally-binding and/or to have long-term implications. One of these issues was the appointment by the trustees (a Swiss peculiarity, maybe) of a successor to truly yours. No one had come forward since Feb. , when I had first announced my decision to go on early retirement . One of these trustees, around 4:30 pm (we had been at it since 2:00 pm) raised his hand. ALL the other trustees spontaneously went: " YEAH! GREAT! YOU'RE THE MAN!...." .

He looked dumfounded . And then said, in a somewhat sepulchral tone: "Thanks, I'll take it"

He later confided to me that he had only raised his hand to propose a coffee break

Sounds like they all knew that you would be a hard act to follow!

After Work

You'll probably end up like several of my peers that have gone by the corporate wayside. They were hired by their old company as consultants and paid 2-3 times the money they had made on the inside and seemed to all work a lot less. If I were you...... I'd keep an ear open for any subtle inuendos.

I chose a profession with no benefits but no mandatory retirement and since I love doing it I won't mind working. (as long as I can remember the words to sing and notes to play) Here's my favorite saying,

" Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body...... but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming........ WOW, WHAT A RIDE !"

Thanks PianoMan. Gather you are a professional musician. Mind giving me (us?) some details? Regards. Jamie

Mini Resume

I'll make this short and sweet. I've been playing piano and singing since age of 4. Started giving private music lessons at 15. Played my first professional "gig" at 16 playing a B3 organ in a rock band. (B3 - R3....is there a connection?) Played piano with a jazz quartet the first year of college. Next two years playing stand up bass and singing with touring folk group. Went into the Army as a tank driver and came out singing with the Army Chorus in Europe. (Great 3 years) Back to folk music from '70-'75. Did a year in L.A. doing studio voice overs and a few flicks. '77 back to Kansas City and doing a piano bar setup in the evenings and still studio work during the day. Inducted into the Kansas City Jazz Hall of Fame in '99. Sure beats working for a living!

There was a TV series on years ago called Pinnacle. It interviewed major CEO's and CFO's. When asked why they chose their profession...... a majority said it wasn't because what they were doing would make them a lot of money. It was because they loved what they did and if they loved it, it wasn't work. If it wasn't work, they didn't mind staying an extra hour at the office or taking things home to work on at night or over a weekend.

Musicians march to the beat of a different drum. We do our job and then go someplace else and "Jam" until all hours of the morning just because we love what we do. I wonder how many other professions do the same? Okay.......that's about it.

PianoMan said:

I wonder how many other professions do the same?

Click to expand...

Not many, I'd submit, outside of... artistic fields.

25 years ago or so, when I was living Italy doing marketing work for a US company, I went back to guitar playing (which I had quit at the age of 15)... which evolved into playing with local friends... which evolved into writing a semblance of music (real hand-written scores, though, no computerized stuff) and trying to play it with them...which then evolved into my submitting these numbers, home-arranged fancy chords and re-invented bass lines included, back home, i.e. to the Swiss Society of Composers (SUISA).

Talk about potential, self-inflicted humiliation!

But, lo and behold, that Society, upon receiving my utterly puerile work, wrote back that it had not only deciphered the chicken scribbles but actually PLAYED (piano-tested?) the... music they were meant to express, that it accepted me as a member, with compliments and lots of wishes , free of charge, with a free quarterly mag and other free benefits and... with lifetime legal copyright protection on those few scores of mine.

No one, of course, has ever infringed upon such copyrights

Thanks much for the exchange, Pianoman. Truly.

Jamie