User:Khatalyst

Khatalyst is the online monicker of Kathleen Hawk. She has others, but this one relates to her efforts to serve as a change agent for companies and people. Her tool for facilitating change is mostly her ability (sometimes not up to the task) to share improved thinking and communication skills.

The Backstory

A published novelist, playwrite and poet in her 20s (that was a long time ago), Kathleen found herself plopped down in the arcane world of financial technology back in 1983. At the time, she had an unemployed college professor husband and a two-year-old son, and just needed a job. She talked her way into a consulting group that was helping banks figure out what to do about these newfangled ATMS. The consultants had a newsletter, and she helped write it.

It was a life-changing experience in a lot of ways. She learned that a boring blue suit was better than her fabulous fuschia suit, if she wanted to fit into the world of finance. She learned how to carry a briefcase and talk consultant-speak. She learned that consulting work causes people to drink and be unspeakably rude to each other, when the clients weren't around.

But the best thing was that, when her husband finally found a job, she fled with valuable knowledge that made her the top (and probably the only) freelance journalist covering automated banking services, like ATMS, home banking (which was just a dream then), electronic payments (likewise a dream), and similar topics. For the next decade, she wrote for newsletters, magazines and once even for the International Herald Tribune, when they wanted an article on those newfangled ATMs.

The Crisis

Success does not always breed contentment. Despite a freelance income that doubled year over year, and snazzy sinecures as consulting editor at several banking publications, Kathleen had difficulty reconciling her anti-business, anti-technology liberal arts biases with what she did for a living. Sometime in the late '80s, a trusted counseler who had given up trying to tell her to leave it and go back to novels, because she couldn't afford to leave it since her husband was again unemployed, advised her with a sigh: "Well, I guess you're going to have to love it before you can leave it."

Kathleen thought about what she liked in this Phillistine realm, and realized that she really got off on the human elements. E.g. the difficulties consumers faced in getting used to using machines for their banking, the even worse difficulties that bank employees faced when technology turned them into sales people, and the interesting facts about what personality types survived the massive reengineering projects caused by new automation. (That was before everyone realized that employee resistance actually killed these projects or made them so agonizingly lengthy or involved that that reeingineering became a bad word.)

So she focussed on the part she liked, sold lots of articles breaking new gound in adult learning related to automation, became much happier, spoke at a few conferences, and finally co-authored a book for the Bank Administration Institute on the challenges and opportunities of automation in creating a "customer-centric retail bank." It was beautifully written, entertaining as well as informative, and as far as she knows, no one ever read it.

Career Transition: The Slow Method

At some point, she realized that she was answering more questions than she asked. She had knowledge and insights tht people wanted. It occured to Kathleen that she could get out of the rat race of constant article deadlines and begin make her living as a professional smart person.

She figured out that meant she should be a consultant. But what to put on her business cards? What did she really have to sell? It took another few years to figure that out.

First, she got divorced and had to get a real job again. This time, it was running a handful of newsletters, all in financial technology, of course. It was a badly paid and grim experience. She once again talked her way into a completely different job. This time it was market research and consulting in the realm of -- what else? -- financial technology. The firm specialized in core systems research, but she was given all the "new technology" projects on electronic payment and automation of customer banking services. Cool!

But it did not last, because barely a year into it, she got a recruitment call from Microsoft's (!) PR agency. They wanted to fly her out to Portland and interview her for a few different jobs.

To make a long story short, she didn't go to work for that agency, but did go to work for another smaller agency that specialized in -- what else? -- financial technology. And hooray, it turned out to be the way to sell both her knowledge and her skills. A year later in 1995, she started her own PR firm. Which in that superheated technology environment grew like crazy, hiring employees and serving wonderfully interesting clients. She became moderately famous in her little world and moderately rich.

(By the way, she was completely deluded when she thought this was going to be less work than journalism. She not only worked 100-hour weeks, but she also had to learn how to keep everyone in the world happy. She developed deep compassion for those airline stewardesses who protested the "emotional labor" involved in having to smile all the time.)

Career Transition: The Fast Method

The Internet Bubble lost its bounce. 9/11 happened. Her clients started folding up their tents or becoming acquired or taking their PR in-house. There was the very expensive business with a much younger man. (She never had money before and had to learn some things the hard way.) And in just a few months, she found herself broken-hearted and with a very different financial situation.

But there was one very special client left. That firm provided her an opportunity to become deeply involved on a full-time basis with developing their marketing and PR. Which she did for several years, exercising her knowledge and skills on creating strategy, marketing collateral, thought-leadership initiatives, and basically helping the firm to bring a new product category to the awareness of the financial industry.

Outsider to Insider and Ultimately Zen Observer

Kathleen evolved from a disgruntled outsider who sneered at banks and computer to a knowledgable and enthusiastic insider who sold advice on what financial institutions wanted and how to talk to them. And now, most lately, a return to writing as she debriefs herself on what she's learned. What happened?

For one thing, she finally began to appreciate that she was, in a certain sense, in the center of the universe. Banking, brokerage, asset management, global capital markets, telecommunications, risk management, data management, customer services, all constantly evolving for more efficiency, more knowledge, more fairness, more speed, more ability to talk to one another. Yes, there were a lot of things that were easier to discuss at a cocktail party than financial technology, but nothing that affected the lives of individuals and companies quite so dramatically.

It's not like she didn't face some ethical issues. The impact of Western-style capitalism on emerging nations is an issue that is difficult to sort out. Closer to home, the impact of well-intentioned legislation and regulation on financial services can be unpredictible. (For example, the S&L crisis was actually caused by legislation that was supposed to help consumers by removing caps on interest rates paid for savings accounts. Go figure.) The necessity for the financial services industry to constantly battle a moving horizon of risk, while having to search for new profit opportunity in that same horizon, created white-knuckle situations that sometimes burned investors or consumers.

This is where Kathleen worked, and she had to deal publicly and privately with these issues. Nevertheless drawbacks like these were also educational opportunities for the industry as a whole, as well as for her.

The good news was that it was a clean, rational industry based on the simple principle of financial intermediation. That is, helping one party meeting another for mutual profit, and taking a small nibble of the deal for doing that service.

And now

After a year hiaitus for thinking about it all, Kathleen is currently juggling several book projects and is once again giving advice to financial technology companies, as well as writing the odd press release.

Books in process (working titles):

"Skin Deep" - a fictionalized account of that affair with the younger guy, mostly written for cathartic reasons, though it will probably the only best-seller of the bunch

"State Change" - A series of essays on learning opportunities faced by entrepreneurial CEOs of technology companies who want to stay involved with their companies after capitalization or acquisition

"The Rules of the Universe" - a "chicken soup" compendium of communications rules for people who prefer results to drama

"Influence" - a guidebook for journalists transitioning to a career in public relations

If any reader of this page wants to discuss any part of this with Kathleen Hawk, please e-mail me through Widipedia.