Unless you follow the world of high finance and banking you probably missed this one but there are lessons for us all.

Robert Kelly is the now former CEO of The Bank of New York Mellon. He was a widely respected executive who fell from grace quite rapidly. While there are differing reasons for his departure one thing is certain. He decided to leave the bank to become the CEO of the much larger Bank of America. He communicated this to his Board. However, the HUGE compensation package he was looking for from BOA was going to get very close and negative scrutiny and BOA wavered on the offer. Kelly went back to the Mellon Board and said, “never mind, I am staying.” Hmm. How do you think that was received?

But here is the big point I want to make. Kelly thought he was doing great. He thought the Board loved him – and for a while they did. But things change and the Board really wasn’t happy with him. In February of 2011 the Board assigned five directors to meet with Kelly to discuss his poor performance. To quote a Fortune magazine article, “the board believed it was sending him a major warning signal.”

However, Kelly didn’t see it that way. He thought it was simply the annual review. An annual review where he got a $5.6 million bonus including 100% of his target based on individual performance. (Let’s review that point…the board SAID he was doing poorly but they PAID him as if he was doing great…OR OR OR they avoided the crucial and difficult conversation and never really SAID what they thought they were saying.) Have you ever thought you told someone something but it turns out they didn’t get the message? Maybe you were the problem because you didn’t communicate directly and clarify the message.

What about performance reviews? They are often merely an exercise in filling out a form and they only look at the past few weeks of performance. They often do not cover the entire year (because that would mean you took notes on performance for the entire year and who has time for that?) or they only focus on a few isolated highs or lows. In other words, they are not done well. Heck, if the Board for Bank of NY can get it wrong – and give a bonus even though they are not happy – I guess we all can.

But…that doesn’t have to describe you.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2011 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Excellence, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.