Why do MDs pretend to be busy?

I don’t know what it is with my MDs, they never give comments until the hour or half hour before the call with the client. If not then, it will be like 10pm the night before when everyone’s been twiddling their thumbs for the last 4 hours. I know damn well that their calendar is empty too and they sure as hell aren’t spending this time with their family lol. This seems to be a common pattern across firms too. Can anyone explain why MDs behave like this?

9 Comments
 

Hear you and I changed shops for exactly this reason. Need to be at a shop where there is minimal pitching and more live execution. 

 
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I had a MD who I actually loved to work with. Something urgent came up, and he was supposed to be meeting a prospect. I called his house phone and his son picked up since he wasn’t responding to texts/voicemails I left him (summer break so the 12 yo was home). He said, yeah, dad left on a bike ride 2 hours ago. No idea when he will be back. 

I jokingly called him out on it the next day, and he said you gotta do what you gotta do. Pretty solid life lesson. Turns out the meeting got canceled and he was pissed about it. We later sold that company for $400M which is solid for a LMM tech boutique. He usually got it right and never lied to me. Great guy. MDs are people too. 

 

They have no incentive to care about juniors’ time. The work will get done regardless so what difference does it make to him whether he provides the comments at 6pm or screws around at the gym/club and gives the comments at 10pm.

The only way to fix this is to put in guardrails to force MDs to be more efficient. Juniors can’t work past 2am etc. That will never happen.

 

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