Since I’ve been working on The Mistake Bank, I’ve kept a sharp eye out for public mistake stories. Many have found their way into blog posts and really have added to the first-person stories users have contributed.
So when the Financial Times reported that Bank of America chairman Ken Lewis said that his taking $20 billion in bailout money from the US Treasury was “a mistake,” I eagerly looked for the original story so I could excerpt it here. Despite the terrible decisionmaking, greed and denial in the financial industry about its months-long meltdown, there has been little in the way of authentic apologies or even honest reflection.
Sad to say, reading Lewis’ story was disappointing. From the video on the FT site, starting at the 2′25″ mark, here’s what Lewis’ words are:
I wish we had not taken uh…as much as we did, because it..it put us in a league too far out of some of the others who had not taken as much. And clearly we were doing that in an abundance of c…caution, so… uh…if I had to admit a… tactical mistake, I would have taken less than we took.
This story is in my opinion from someone who has not fully reflected on the mistakes he made. This feels like a marketing positioning statement, and March 2 was not the first time he had distanced B of A from Citibank, a very troubled institution. (”Ken Lewis sent out an internal memo explaining why Bank of America is much healthier than ‘our competitors,’ which obviously means Citi,” from a story published on February 24, a week before the FT story.)
One clue is in the words: “If I had to admit…” is a phrase used by someone who is cornered, not someone who has reflected and come to grips with his decisions. “Tactical” is another weasel word–it’s meant to signify “unimportant.” Lewis is like the job interviewee, who, when asked for his most significant weakness, tries to find the most innocuous failing to preserve his chances of getting the job.
As we know, that tactic often has the opposite effect.
