Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MARCH 16, 2024 – Eventually, war stories go the way of war: they end by exhaustion. That’s a bit how I felt yesterday after concluding Chapter Thirteen – “New Beginnings” of my series War Stories. I have many more “war stories,” but if I’ve tired of telling them, surely my (dwindling) readership has tired of …
MARCH 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Once launched the book was on a roll. Our neighbor directly across the street happened to be building a business promoting local authors. She offered to help me gratis to enhance her resumé. She landed multiple signing events at area bookstores and appearances on locally popular talk shows. Before the …
MARCH 14, 2024 – (Cont.) When I emerged into the public space of the bookstore, I was flabbergasted. In implementing my marketing efforts for the signing event, I’d given no thought to crowd limitations imposed by the Minneapolis fire code. The entire downtown workforce seemed to have turned out. If half of them bought a …
MARCH 13, 2024 – (Cont.) Several months before my inaugural signing event at the Barnes & Nobles store in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, I happened to be in the store for another lawyer’s book debut. The book itself was flimsy in form and substance and smacked of a DYI project. I knew full well …
MARCH 12, 2024 (Cont.) It so happened that a year before I was fired, David, a member of the law department applied for an open position in my group. He made it to the final round and was scheduled to meet with me. We’d never even heard of each other before the job had been …
MARCH 11, 2024 – (Cont.) That evening I went for a long run—a very long run. As I circled Lake Como in St. Paul, a mile from our neighborhood, I resolved to see my firing as a positive event. Just as a Politburo member’s “catching a cold” had been laughable code for “falling from power,” …
MARCH 10, 2024 – (Cont.) Two weeks later, the newly anointed boss came to town to meet his former peers, now subordinates. He was as inscrutable as ever. I imagined that behind his back he carried a sharpened ax. From his perch in Dan’s old office, he began a series of one-on-one meetings with his …
MARCH 9, 2024 – (Cont.) As most of my peers and I had foreseen, the day arrived when Dan departed for a bigger and better job in the corporate empire of what was now Wells Fargo Bank. The merger had taken everyone by surprise, including the president of Norwest Bank, who reportedly was informed of …
MARCH 8, 2024 – (Cont.) If the copyright police in the law department had caught wind what I was up to, they would’ve wrecked the party. A few months before they’d come down on the “My Favorite Boss!” woman, who had bamboozled Dan into appointing her as head of marketing for the whole department. One …
MARCH 7, 2024 – (Cont.) About 18 months after he’d taken over the reins, Dan announced that he wanted us—his direct reports—to take turns leading the department’s periodic “business update” meetings. These had been all-department gatherings in the ballroom-turned-corporate meeting venue at a downtown hotel, led by our fearless leader and featuring the department’s year-to-date …
MARCH 6, 2024 – (Cont.) As Dan found his stride, his minions fell into line behind him, and we all landed “in the dough” thanks in large part to the Clinton Era economy. My own group was ringing the bell consistently from quarter to quarter. In a public company, however, there’s no rest for the …
MARCH 5, 2024 – (Cont.) In time Keith’s replacement, [Dan], was named. He had no background in corporate or even personal trust. In the wake of Keith’s tumultuous reign, we needed law and order, and Dan was the perfect man for the job. Orderly, cordial, even-keeled and disciplined, he lacked originality, but after Keith’s unchecked …
MARCH 4, 2024 – (Cont.) As the president plunged straight into his interrogation of me, what flashed across my memory was the chain of my career junctions, starting on a memorable day nearly a decade earlier. At that time I was in the middle of my second stint at First Bank, which later became USBank. …
MARCH 3, 2024 – (Cont.) I prepared meticulously for my interrogation, reviewing meticulously the record of my association with Keith from our very first encounter. I relied heavily on my daily journals covering the previous three years. A few minutes in advance of the appointed time I made my way to the C-suite. It was …
MARCH 2, 2024 – (Cont.) The man who “sometimes couldn’t believe how smart [he] was” wound up blowing himself up. As time passed, my peers and I noticed ever-increasing disturbing behavior on his part. The full range of his antics reflected an ego that exceeded whatever room—or building— Keith occupied. Among other examples was his …
MARCH 1, 2024 – (Cont.) One of the most bizarre experiences I had during my corporate life was the ignoble departure of the guy who’d hired me. Hmmm . . . one sentence into the story and I’m getting way ahead of myself. When I first met Keith [a made-up name to protect him and …
FEBRUARY 29, 2024 – (Cont.) Perhaps the biggest display of repulsive arrogance I experienced in the workplace occurred during an “off-site” meeting of my department at Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly. The idea was for partners and associates to gather at a corporate meeting center where isolated from our (land line) phones and (desktop) screens and …
FEBRUARY 28, 2024 – What I found fascinating about working in large organizational settings were the endless lessons in applied psychology—or was it simply an endless loop of the seven deadly sins?[1] I’m certain that my work places weren’t exceptional in this regard. We humans are a baffling species, especially when we occur in combinations …
FEBRUARY 27, 2024 – Recently our eight-year-old granddaughter asked my wife and me, “When you were young, did you have technology?” I thought of several snarky responses, such as, “How old do you think we are?!” and not as defensively, “Yeah. The wheel and the lever.” A less sarcastic reply to her innocent question might’ve …
FEBRUARY 26, 2024 – (Cont.) Our firm had a client who bought a local short-line railroad out of bankruptcy. The company had gone off the rails financially, and our client was able to purchase it for scrap value. Except our client, being a very clever fellow, knew it was worth far more than salvage. While …
FEBRUARY 25, 2024 – Whether your career has been bagging groceries, teaching generations of first-graders, pushing paper then its digital equivalent in a government office, playing clarinet for decades in a symphony orchestra, filling prescriptions at the last standing locally-owned pharmacy, restoring thousands to health in an operatory of the cardiology wing of a hospital, …
FEBRUARY 24, 2024 – (Cont.) Few secrets can remain secrets forever, and even before Al Gore invented the internet, people figured out the means to investigate, uncover, and sound the alarm. One day well into the buyer’s due diligence period, I received a call from one of the lawyers handling the buyer’s application for a …
FEBRUARY 23, 2024 – (Cont.) No one was the wiser to Ray’s little escapade with the 55-gallon drums. The guys in the haz-mat suits did their thing, oblivious to the fact that Ray and his buddies dressed in ordinary work clothes had loaded up the drums, ferried them all the way across town, unloaded them …
FEBRUARY 22, 2024 – Anyone who’s dealt with the sale, purchase, financing, or development of commercial real estate knows that you have to cross the bridge over potentially troubled environmental waters. Back in the day, landowners dumped out the back door—or back 40—pretty much anything they wanted to. A lot of it was very nasty …
FEBRUARY 21, 2024 – (Cont.) What I experience performing or speaking in front of a crowd varies depending on the size of the crowd. I tend to be more nervous in front of 10 readily identifiable people than I am before a sea of anonymous faces. For the bondholders meeting we’d expected the latter—legions of …