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 practice of hiring sycophants to do his bidding. Before long the sycophants outnumbered those who adopted a more cautious approach, and after it was too late we all seemed to be aboard a runaway train.
Keith was a born salesman—or maybe it was “natural charlatan.” By force of personality, not to mention physique, he was a veritable cannonball. His advantage over the bank’s top leadership was that he talked a better game than any of them ever could. Besides, he presided over a traditionally arcane and low-profile corner of the bank that was alien turf for the “golf team,” as I labeled the abundantly compensated C-suite executives. Keith had little trouble talking circles around them. For all too long they wrote him a blank check. Doubtless that was easier—and safer for their egos—than trying to understand enough of his malarkey to challenge it.
In tandem with his ambitious acquisition campaign, Keith exhibited behaviors that revealed a disturbing lack of integrity and fidelity. Having direct experience with some of his maneuverings, I found myself in the camp of his skeptics—both by choice and by his marginalization of my division. Worse, actually, were his attempts to reduce the influence of the department’s risk management group by folding them under my group in his latest reordering of his departmental org chart. When I refused to play ball (an apt metaphor, given Keith’s purported prowess as a former semi-pro fast-pitch softball hurler), Keith threw a hissy fit and kicked my desk so hard he limped on his way out of my office.
Things reached their culmination 1,200 miles from headquarters. For months Keith had been working on his biggest acquisition to date—the purchase of a large mortgage document custody business from a gigantic financial firm. If the nature of the business itself wasn’t the least bit sexy, its employee base, physical facility, and revenues would catapult Keith to a place of notice within the bank. Surely he thought it would provide him with an expanded platform from which to scale the summit of his ambitions.
In keeping with the tradition of corporate mergers and acquisitions, a large party bash was planned to celebrate the closing of Keith’s grand transaction. The affair took place in Baltimore—situs of the newly acquired business—and Keith flew out with his favorite sycophants. None of the skeptics was invited, and thus, none of us witnessed first-hand the antics that achieved instant legendary status.
The story we heard, however, was this: At the closing dinner to which all 700+ employees of the newly acquired outfit were invited, Keith and his sycophantic entourage were seated at a row of elevated tables facing hoi polloi. In his typical fashion Keith gave his patented speech about the boundless growth of his reign and how the moon was nothing but an amusing “spacemark” on the department’s collective journey to Mars, Jupiter, and the stars beyond—under his visionary leadership, to be sure.
I can imagine the “WTF?!” reaction among the legions he addressed—by and large privates and corporals engaged in the repetitive task of data entry and physical filing of millions of residential mortgage documents.
What would be Keith’s undoing, however, was what followed. According to the news that preceded their return to the Twin Cities, Keith—and several of the sycophants—had exhibited behavior well beyond the pale of corporate norms. During the celebratory proceedings that followed the speech-making and dessert, Keith and sycophants imbibed to the point of shedding all restraint.
As is often the case, those who over-indulge express their inner selves and true feelings about their colleagues. In the instance at hand, Keith climbed up on the table and to the thump-thump-thump of pounding music, he danced in a matter that was later described as “lewd.” After that shocking performance, one of the sycophants—equally juiced—joined him. A push led to a shove and to everyone’s dismay, an all-out altercation broke out between the general and his adjutant—there on the elevated table in full view of the troops.
For Keith it was the beginning of the end. Camouflaged by the distraction of Keith’s thunderous downfall, the sycophant managed to slither back to his corner relatively unscathed.
It took some time before the “golf team” could summon the courage to deal with what had been a long smoldering problem: a very loose cannon. Bombs bursting in air above the hotel ballroom near Fort McHenry, however, couldn’t be ignored.
When the formal investigation was announced, everyone assumed that sooner rather than later the ax would fall on Keith’s neck. What no one could predict was how matters would unfold after Keith’s departure. Who would replace him? And in the inevitable house-cleaning that accompanied a regime change, how many other heads would roll? The jockeying for position soon began.
The first step in the investigation was a series of interviews of Keith’s direct reports. What I thought strange, however, is that the president would conduct the interviews. Normally such inquiries were conducted by an outside law firm. In the case at hand, my peers and I were notified by the president’s office of the interview schedule. I was the lead-off batter.
When I read the email I broke into a cold sweat. What occurred to me was the possibility that Keith’s head would not roll; that in imitation of the original Bonaparte, Keith would stage a comeback, marshall his sycophants, alter the narrative, and regain control of his destiny. After all, who could manage the far-flung business that he’d just annexed to his growing empire—an empire the “golf team” had never visited and would never understand? As the first interviewee, I would be laying down the opening testimony. If I chose to be totally candid, how could I trust my peers to be equally candid? What if they weren’t? What if in the interest of self-preservation, they hemmed and hah-ed, hedged and “uh . . . -ed” to the point of compromising the case against Keith? If word got back to Keith that I and I alone was his accuser, the ax would fall on my neck.
My theoretical alternative was to be less than candid, but I felt physically ill by the mere contemplation of that course of action. Was it a character flaw even to harbor such thoughts? For the three days between the email and my actual interview, I agonized over the danger of my circumstances. I resented Keith for having placed me there. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
