Two and a half men in the boardroom
7 April 2011
Sean Russo
I USED to think that Charlie Sheen was just playing himself in “Two and a Half Men”. Based on recent events it seems he’s a better actor than most of us thought. Charlie Harper, the character performed to the script given him, looks to be very different to Mr Sheen, performing to a script he wrote himself.
Recently separated from my wife of 20 years and contemplating living as a bachelor for the first time in 30 years, while cohabiting part time with my 18 and 12 year old sons, I quipped to a friend: “It sounds like a script right out of Two and a Half Men. I just hope I am cast more in the role of Charlie than Alan”. This was in a time prior to Mr Sheen’s recent antics when we thought there was only one Charlie and nearly every man I know and quite a number of women wanted to be Charlie Harper. Not so anymore.
Perhaps more tellingly I have concluded that many of us only wish we could be more like Charlie Harper because consciously or sub-consciously we fear we are actually a great deal closer to his brother Alan than we like/want to admit.
Life is seldom about absolutes and in reality there’s probably a little of Alan and Charlie in all of us. As we see clearly in the show one of the things that brings out our inner-Alan is parenthood. A life without children and a spouse must surely be a life with fewer anxieties. With three kids I wouldn’t know (or don’t remember) but the lack of needing to set an example, protect, support and nurture another, etc, does seem to make Charlie’s life a great deal easier than Alan’s.
Contemplating this next chapter of my life, how I might write the script for my own version of two and a half men and how I might like to cast myself, I began to watch the actual show in a different light. All of a sudden it occurred to me the show is actually closer to many dysfunctional boardrooms than it is to the average living room.
Charlie is the CEO. His company is doing well, the winds are fair. Revenues keep climbing, on Chinese growth in demand for his jingles (substitute iron ore or the commodity of choice) that will never end. He takes risks most of us wouldn’t, with little regard for the consequences to himself or others and no care for costs. I am guessing he sold his shares, if he ever had any, long ago, for “tax related” or “personal reasons” (or he has an undisclosed derivative cover set up with a friendly investment bank) but he’s optioned up the wazoo so he keeps pressing hard. He has little to lose from his approach. No one is telling him he’s out of line and if they sack him he’ll get a life-altering payout and be back with a new job, from an old mate, inside 12 months.
Charlie’s ex-girlfriends are a long line of COO’s who tried to show him where he’s going wrong, which is why they are ex’s.
Alan is the "almost independent" non-executive director. No equity but he’s well paid (free rent). He tolerates Charlie, even slightly admires him, because he’d like to live that large, if only for a few hours. Deep down he knows there is danger but he doesn’t want to get thrown off the board (and out of the house) so he is rightly indignant on behalf of the shareholders but never votes against the CEO. Consensus is important!
Mother Evelyn is the non-executive chair who used to be the CEO. She recognises Charlie as the creature she spawned so she won’t stand against it; and hell, he makes her look good. More importantly he makes her feel young and vital which at her age is more important than the money she makes or shareholder returns.
Berta, the long serving maid, is CFO. The most in touch with the real world, she knows all the dirty little secrets, the real cost of running the place, she’s seen it all, knows it all. She knows the CEO’s not bullet proof and has no contingency plan should the jingle market soften but she also knows he pays well even though her competence is questionable. Hell, if she quits on principle he’ll quickly find another CFO. What’s the point of being poor for principles? And anyway, it’s the board’s job to pull him into line isn’t it?
Judith, Alan’s ex-wife, can play a number of roles depending on her mood. We will sometimes see her as the non-executive of the company having been a director of a company previously merged with HarperCorp. They would all prefer she wasn’t on the board and they would love her to leave but it was a deal breaker at the time of the merger so they agreed and now she’s around for the duration. Funny thing is that mostly she is the shareholders’ only hope but she somehow looks like the bad guy, even to the shareholder. Sometimes she’s playing the role as the only share analyst not in love with the company and enjoying its largesse, asking silly questions like, “what’s the contingency plan is if jingle revenues slow” or “is the shareholder interest being considered?” To Alan she’s just another reminder, along with Evelyn, why good governance suggests the previous MD shouldn’t be allowed to remain on the board!
And then there’s Jake, the shareholder. Just like the average shareholder, highly dependent on management and the board getting it right. He has trouble recognising the correlation between what he understands is right to do in the world at large and what seems to be rewarded at HarperCorp. Most of the time he’s too busy in his own world to really care and he just assumes that management and the board know what they’re doing. Largely because they get paid more than he does and they tell him he couldn’t possibly understand the complicated things they do in his best interest. They all talk about him and their concerns for him often – often in his presence but like he’s not present. After all, he really has no vote or doesn’t really understand how he can exercise it. Often he’s just a pawn in an Alan/Judith, Alan/Evelyn or a Judith/Evelyn power struggle.
The one shining light is that as he has grown up before us we have seen his worldly wisdom and healthy cynicism emerge. We can only hope this generation of shareholder might get more active and drive a return to companies that are run for their stakeholders by CEOs who are less celebrity and more servant.
Of course all this analysis ruined for me what had previously been a half hour on the couch imagining a life-less Alan. On reflection “Two and a Half Men” is a product of the bull market environment it has grown up in over the last decade. I believe its success is that it has reflected the very best and the very worst of the last decade in a way that made us laugh and cringe all at the same time. It has been wildly successful and yet despite its success, and perhaps because of it, it has blown up. That it has happened now as markets seem to be losing their confidence, governments are getting much more involved in markets, consumers are becoming more frugal and shareholders are becoming less tolerant might be a fluke. I don’t think so.
Amusingly for such a chauvinist program/company, HarperCorp actually had 50% female directors!
As for my circumstances and any similarities to Charlie Harper that I might have imagined (or quietly/wistfully hoped for), I doubt Charlie (or Alan since he sold his soul for a board seat) ever made school lunches or did laundry and set aside every second Sunday night to iron in front of the movie. Turns out I have the lead role in “Three Blokes, No Maid,No Dishwasher”. Were it compared to a company it would be private one. One executive chairman, two directors and we hold all the equity. The independence is great but the lack of OPM (other peoples’ money) means it’s lousy viewing.
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