Tolerating behaviours and creating a Bad culture.

With the recent Scandal under which, the biggest bank in US, Wells Fargo has been for the last days, much has been going on and the bank as well as the CEO have been on the spotlight. More than than 5,300 people have been fired, using the old saying of bad apples.

This makes me think about practices most companies and leaders tolerate, that may not necessary be productive neither wanted. But, before you continue reading this, If you still don´t know what I´m talking about, clic here to get a quick brief summary on the scandal and go back here. 

Wells Fargo CEO, John Stumpf

The story says that employees illegally, and without customers consent, opened millions of accounts in order to achieve the goals and targets set by managers.

The bank, of course, blames the employees who archly did this, without managers and supervisors knowing. Of course this shows the poor leadership practiced in the bank, starting from the CEO: John Stumpf who said:

On average 1 percent [of employees] have not done the right thing and we terminated them. I don’t want them here if they don’t represent the culture of the company

As you can see in the rest of the article from Washington Post, he blames employees, and explains little about the company, the management practices that need to change or completely stopped. The culture of the company might be one, pushing for metrics, forcing employees to do whatever needs to be done to get the quota and then tolerating when those same employees took wrong, illegal decisions.

My first thinking is about the supervisors or managers who saw the emails linked to the ghosts accounts. Email addresses with names of 1234@ or noname@ i believe aren´t hard to notice, so my question is, did managers or executives knew about what was going on and did nothing? Did they encourage this behaviour' or decided to tolerate it?

Wells Fargo CEO said he seeks for perfection and I truly believe that in order to achieve perfection we need to stop tolerating the small things that drive a company´s culture. Why is it ok to tolerate that workers do things just to comply with a "requirement"? Why is it ok to tolerate the thinking that quality is quality´s department responsibility? Why is it ok to tolerate results/metrics manipulation in order to show everything is ok? Why is it ok to tolerate indifference to improvement? Why encourage the thinking of not invented here? Why is it ok to allow meetings to start late? Why is it ok to have meeting that lead to nowhere?

Those small activities in my opinion aren´t small at all. They reveal the true culture of a company, beyond the slogans or quality policies hanging on walls.

One might think that there is no comparison between allowing a meeting to start late and allowing workers to open fake accounts. But maybe, one thing let to another. First you allow a meeting to start late, allow that meeting go nowhere, then you start allowing people to deliver wrong information, late, then you start allowing people to tweak a little the metrics, and so on.

I believe that leaders and managers, need to be aware and correct these behaviours in order to maintain the right culture in the company. To achieve perfection details count. Details are important because reveal the company´s culture, and the kind of leadership that is held across managers and top executives. If executives and managers allow "these small details", we shouldn´t blame workers, but the system the company created that allowed wrong behaviours every day.

Wells Fargo might have forgotten one of the most controversial points from Dr. Deming:

Eliminate numerical quotas for the work force.

In this case, this point from Deming is perfect for Wells Fargo situation. They created this crazy numerical quotas that forced people to do extraordinary things to achieve them, because of the fear to be fired. Workers shouldn´t fear something at work. They should enjoy and find purpose in order to give their best. As Dr. Deming demonstrated long ago.

What are your thoughts regarding this unacceptable Wells Fargo behaviour? Do you think am I being too tough when comparing meetings and opening bank accounts?