the hand that holds the string

In the olden days, if you were the most feared guy in the organisation, you well and truly belonged to the finance department. After the advent of the amorphous entity called Quality and Compliance, the borders are not so well drawn out any more, but this has nothing to do with the bean-counters loosing their sting. Or the strings.

Consider why: being in finance means having to weed out projects which are not profitable. To be ruthless in terminating ideas that are fluffy outside and continue to be filled with just fluff on the inside. Its only by a similar and brutal process of rigorous selection that Sparta had become the mighty warrior state that it was. Which is why the guy with the heart had no place in the finance department. A project is either profitable for the company in the long run, or it is not - there is nothing sentimental about money. A finance man who plays the good cop is either plain incompetent or is wearing kid gloves, and being a sneaky silent killer is several degrees higher in scariness than being a plain-jane kind of killer.

My fear of finance managers went on to extend well beyond the office. From the guy who refuses to pass my expense statements to credit card sharks to bank managers who sell me insurance that I don't need. I have been bitten each time, but have learnt the lesson: QnC may be the new devils on the block; but the original fearful person remains Mr. Finance.

You know what caused the mortgage meltdown ? People were not fearful of finance enough.