Setting Hours Expectations w/ Banking Team
I am a partner in a small business that is taking an asset to market with a middle market investment bank. I am the lead on my side. For context, I am on the younger side (mid to late 20s) and never worked as a junior in finance.
I was in the military so I closely followed the story of the death of the BofA Associate. I am not going to be responsible for running someone into the ground or making them miss important life events. That is ridiculous. I want to communicate to the team I do not want them working on this deal past 8 PM on weekdays and absolutely no weekend work. I softly suggested to the MD when we signed the engagement letter that "Things can wait. It can always wait a couple more days. We do not need to kill ourselves." Up to this point, I have tried to control it with my actions. For example, if I receive a deliverable for review on Thursday or Friday, I will tell the team I will not return feedback until Monday. However, juniors are still sending out rolling deliverables at 11 PM on weekdays and throughout the weekend. We are not in deal sprint mode right now.
What's the best way to firmly communicate my expectations without stepping on toes or telling senior bankers how to run their teams? Talk to the MD? Talk to the VP who is driving the deliverables?
Just be clear on your timeline expectations for each work product. "Here are my comments on the CIM/model/output, can I have a draft back to review by [reasonable date]" type thing. Also worth having a convo with whoever is actually leading execution, probably the VP.
Unfortunately, when you get to the sprint part, it's more buyers who will dictate timelines given a bid date.
Love this sentiment and wish we had more clients like you in the industry.
Unfortunately, even when the clients make clear their expectations aren't to receive everything ASAP, MDs will likely still push their teams hard to beat deadlines/ revert quickly because 1) that is the norm of how things are always done and 2) to get things done quickly so as to look good in front of the client (e.g., "no real rush here but let's get this done ASAP to get back to the client for review")
Thank you for being considerate about banking hours, that’s nice of you.
One thing to keep in mind though is that bankers are also working on other projects and even if something takes 2 hours, they may only get to it at night (and will want to do it to manage their workload). I previously had a client comment “why did he send something at 2am yesterday? That wasn’t necessary”. That calmed us down but in the end we would sometimes work on the same timeline but just wait the morning to press send.
that said, it definitely helps if you keep nugging the team and stating timelines or lack thereof clearly
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