The Bank Meeting

The Bank Meeting

fiction
edward w pritchard

A Buddhist Monk or maybe it was the Buddha himself was asked what was the measure of a successful life and he replied " an appropriate statement".

I was the new Bank President up in Akron in 1999 and was going to my first meeting with the troops. These were the middle managers, not the branch managers but the people, downtown in this small town of Akron who handled the day to day operating of this bank. This bank was only a part of a much larger entity based down in Cincinnati and only I knew that in a few years our entire organization would be sold and become part of one of the largest New York banks.

I wanted to quickly establish my policies, which were corporate policies, because I am a favorite of the Chairman of the entire company and he told me exactly what to do up here. I can do what I want but I have a few long term, 18-24 month objectives before we transfer most of the decision making jobs down to corporate. Of course I am going to make a lot of money in the next two years. That's good because I deserve it.

Striding into the meeting with my sleek black notebook underarm my first thought is, there's too many of these guys. Twenty and this is supposed to be a tight meeting just those who need to know.

Everyone is pretty much kissing my rear. About a dozen people are literally crowding to sit and lean into to me. We are talking about loan and portfolio quality and most of these guys can't see the big picture. There are scared and just trying to hang on.

A few of the perceptive ones can see the power shifting and are getting on board quickly. It's a good sign when someone pulls out their calculator as they agree with us.

After about half an hour I am done. However, my number two guy, who I have replaced after we promoted him and gave him a huge raise, wants to allow the troops to air a few concerns. No one says anything substantial. They just thank and thank.

One guy, I already had him marked to remove, said something that I think about a lot 10 years later in the midst of the 2008 housing, derivative and financial meltdown.

After listening to us for 20 minutes talk about tolerable losses and ratio analysis and 25% portfolio loan growth and our new profitability model; he looked at me and said succinctly:

"Measurement is not understanding"

That was long ago however, we can't live in the past.

END