12/30/2023
Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love.
Nope, at our family holiday, we were not talking about love. Yup, however, we might have been talking about that Van Halen song used on The Sopranos S3: E1. Feels like a double triple bonus of favorite things. So, what exactly were we talkin’ ’bout here? Well, the big Van Halen fan sitting to the right of me in this picture, Eric Rubenstein was talking about what makes a good investigator. It is something similar that makes a good auditor. The devil is in the details – not ‘devil in the details’ – ‘Runnin’ with the Devil’ – of course, another great Van Halen song. But rather, the Van Halen Brown M&M Demand. For years, Advize has posted small items in our job descriptions to see if we would receive questions or requests for clarification. We would request applicants to send certain types of emails or attachments in a particular way to see if our potential new hire is detail-oriented enough because this is such a key area for us in our audit and investigations world. For me, my name is a big one. My name is posted as one word; everyone who knows me knows that my name is Jeanmarie. When people apply or contact me as JeanMarie, I know that they might not have looked that close, and we cannot afford to make small mistakes for our clients. Answers from the applicant the way we requested. Without knowing it, we took a page out of the Van Halen book, as David Lee Roth, not too long ago, explained. The bowl of M&Ms was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band’s complicated contract. By having the ‘absolutely no brown ones’ in the concert rider, Van Halen tested to see if the venue would be able to keep up with their elaborate set-up. Thus, if the venue gave them M&Ms without the brown ones backstage, then Van Halen felt confident that the quality and safety needs for their large-scale shows were going to be met.
By Jeanmarie Loria, MBA, PMP, CPC
