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 the event just after his putt on the 18th hole. That was the rumor, anyway, no doubt embellished for metaphorical effect. In truth it might have been the 11th or some other intermediate hole. The same rumor was accompanied by grapevine reports from relatively credible internal sources that initial negotiations had involved only the CEO, the CFO, and the head of audit, and with the knowledge of only three members of the board.
From hearsay originating in the law department I learned that the newly appointed general counsel of the bank had been as surprised as the president but under very different circumstances. The lawyer had been promoted out of a large Norwest division in Colorado (from a previous bank acquisition by Norwest) and was in the process of moving his family up to headquarters Minneapolis. In fact on moving day morning, the story went, the Allied Van Lines driver and helper rang the doorbell at the lawyer’s home in Denver. After an exchange of greetings the friendly driver inquired about the reason for the lawyer’s move.
“I’m heading up the law department of Norwest Bank in Minneapolis,” he said.
“Huh,” the driver grunted. “So how is that effected by the merger?”
“What merger?” the lawyer asked.
“Here,” the driver extended the morning newspaper that he’d lifted off the front step. “It tells about it right there at the top.” Indeed, the headline read, “Wells Fargo and Norwest Merge.” It was news to the new general counsel.
During lunchtime a week or two later I encountered in the skyway an old bank hand who always had his ear to the ground. We stopped to chat, and I asked him what he knew about the merger. “What I heard from a very reliable source,” he said, “was that [the CEO] wanted to be able to play outdoor tennis 12 months out of the year—something he could do where Wells Fargo is headquartered [San Francisco] but not here in Minnesota.”
I recalled the CEO’s categorical statement at an employee-wide meeting a few months before the merger: “We have no present plan to jump on the bank merger bandwagon.” My source with his ear to the ground, said “Well, we know that wasn’t worth the hot air that came out of his mouth.”
Dan’s promotion created a vacuum. Speculation as to who would fill it now ran wild throughout the leaderless department. It ran particularly hot among my peers, as I watched several jockey for position. Amidst the conjecturing, three of my managers entered my office late one day to ask for some time. When I said “Sure,” one of them closed the door. Two grabbed chairs while the third leaned against the small conference table.
“We think you should run for Dan’s job,” said Lon, whom I’d hired away from Oppenheimer to manage a $3 billion trust for the U.S. Department of Education in connection with the liquidation of a student loan guaranty entity originally based in Minnesota.
The prospect had previously occurred to me but only for about 90 seconds. Who would want the stress of herding a daily stampede of squirrels? After a half hour discussion, however, I was persuaded to consider the possibility more seriously. On the bus ride home that evening I gave the job more thought. Sure, it would be stressful but it presented a wonderful opportunity—a chance to experiment with ideas I’d developed over time; everything from compensation plans to technology integration to expanded business opportunities . . . and clearing out lots of dead wood . . . and in the process, making the department a most desirable and inspirational place to work. The beauty of corporate trust, I thought, was that it was big enough to validate experiments if they succeeded, making them transferrable to other corners of the corporation, yet at the same time the department was small enough so that if experiments failed, they wouldn’t blow up the bank.
The question was how to get the job now that I’d decided to run for it.
In consultation with my trusted managers, I pursued a detailed campaign. A cornerstone was winning the endorsement of the Minneapolis-based chief minion of “Mortgage Man” in Iowa—Dan’s former boss; the guy who would name Dan’s replacement. I’d observed the minion every time he accompanied his general when the latter came to Minneapolis for his power-meetings in the C-suite and his perfunctory after-thought meetings with Dan and my peers and me. The minion was one of those corporate lifers who by whatever means had landed a cush job with no discernible function other than serving as a high-ranking officer’s adjutant. Our own department’s version was the “My Favorite Boss!” woman.
To convert the minion into my enthusiastic advocate, I took him out to lunch and mapped out a proposed reorganization of our department that would give him a real job—along with an impressive title and added comp to go with it. When dessert and coffee arrived at the end of our two-hour lunch, the minion was “all in.” I knew that my primary competitors for the job would never think of such a strategy. They’d dismissed him as a non-entity, a briefcase caddy.
Another key part of the process, of course, was my interview with “Mortgage Man”—down on his home turf in Des Moines. I drove to it using one of the bank’s fleet cars. I took with me an extra copy of Endurance by Alfred Lansin, the riveting story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica, which turned into a record-breaking journey of sheer survival.
After exchanging niceties, “Mortgage Man” led me to his office. Once we’d arranged ourselves, I pulled out the book and passed it across the front of his desktop. “Have you heard of this book?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “picking it up, turning it over, and putting it right back down.”
“It’s the amazing tale of survival against all odds in the Antarctic. But more to our purposes,” I said, “it’s an extraordinary book about excellence in corporate management. It ought to be required reading among all managers at my level and up.”
“Huh,” he grunted with a disappointing lack of interest.
“You can keep the book,” I said, somewhat deflated.
I moved on and tried to put my best foot forward for the interview. On the return trip I felt reasonably optimistic about my odds of being appointed to the job.
The next step was a call from HR informing me that I’d made it to the final round. The race was now between me and [Jeff], manager of the department’s vast Maryland operations. Ever since Dan’s predecessor, Keith, had orchestrated the acquisition of Jeff’s business line, Jeff had periodically found his way to Minnesota for departmental meetings, confabs and “off-sites.” He was new to “Minnesota Nice” and outwardly contemptuous of it. He was largely inscrutable except for cold-blooded comments, and he looked at his Minnesota peers as financially undisciplined. It was impossible to engage him in conversation about anything other than business on the anvil of hard financial realities. People were scared of him.
In the same call from HR I was informed that “Mortgage Man” would be relying heavily on HR’s polling of peers of Jeff and me.
I figured I had a distinct advantage. Except for the “My Favorite Boss!” woman, I’d managed to cultivate cordial relations with my Minnesota-based peers. After all, our offices were on the same floor of the same building in downtown Minneapolis. We knew one another well and had talked much among ourselves in the run-up to Keith’s humiliating exit and during Dan’s well-intentioned but uninspiring reign on his path to bigger and better things—for himself. And most critical of all, everyone was afraid of Jeff. He had no allies, no friends among the Minneapolis group of peers.
But in this I’d made a gross miscalculation. Jeff got the nod. Upon learning of this result, I immediately called him to offer my congratulations and my assurance that he could count on my support.
“In the process of running for the job,” I told him, “I refined a lot of ideas I’ve long held for improving the department. I’d be happy to share them over lunch the next time you’re in town. But whether you like them or not, again, you can rely on my total support.”
Jeff didn’t say yes, no, or maybe; not even a grunt of acknowledgment. Just awkward silence affirming his inscrutability.
I could handle it, but what disillusioned me was what I later learned through the grapevine: each of my peers, who’d been consistently outspoken about their distrust and dislike of Jeff, had made a cynical calculation. If they were on record as having supported Jeff, and I were to get the job, they knew me well enough that I wouldn’t hold it against them. But if they were on record as having endorsed Eric, and Jeff were to get the job, they would faced the real risk of retribution. To protect their own hides, they found it easy to give Jeff the thumbs up.
After polling my peers, my source informed me, HR reported back to “Mortgage Man” that the group supported Jeff unanimously. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
