Imagine a sliding scale for Pay at Wells Fargo:
$40K to $24.5M
➡️you➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️CS
Now imagine a sliding scale measuring “value* and performance. One would imagine that an executive’s value would increase proportionally with pay, right? I.e., your Mgr should know 5x more than you, be 5x more productive, have 5x your skills…bring 5x your value to the org. And your Managing Director: 20x, Senior EVP: 100x, Charlie: 300x
Ironically, the higher you go up The Wells Fargo Pay Scale, our executive’s value and performance plummets. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
At Wells Fargo, the higher the pay/positions - the less engaged our leaders are with the business because they are
- from the outside, and
- Job-hoppers/Short-timers, or
- Managing positions they know nothing about thanks to Spans & Layers
Now, employees are training their new Managers. Surviving Managers are trying to explain the fundamentals to new oblivious Directors who have no institutional knowledge but want to make reckless changes to prove they are “change-agents”. Everyone is withholding information in hopes of gaining an advantage in the new dog-eat-dog culture.
The new senior leaders are all running in circles, talking out of both sides of their mouth, and giving each other attaboys. Under their arrogance, communication has all but disappeared, chaos has ensued, and they have failed at the most basic skill - cultivating “buy-in”.
Charlie can’t answer a random question, can’t speak without a script, has no people-skills, was wrong about when he could get the Federal Asset Cap lifted (“2021”), has failed to restore faith in the bank, has alienated his employees, destroyed the culture, and 10 or more new violations have popped up under his leadership but no accountability for those failures. Lots of busy-work but no success. Why are we paying him $24.5 Million per year??
And… hard to believe… he’s busy laying off the only people who understand the business and who know how to do the work
I suspect there is a Netflix documentary in our future, “Wells Fargo: The Most Arrogant Guys in the Room.”