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Wells Fargo claims it isn't the leadership - it is just a few thousand bad apple low-level employees and they have been fired. http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/

Wells Fargo claims it isn't the leadership - it is just a few thousand bad apple low-level employees and they have been fired. http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created-phony-accounts-bank-fees/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-create...

rectang 9y ago
If you design a system that makes it inevitable that people will misbehave, you own their misbehavior.
- trgv 9y ago
  Morally perhaps, but not legally. It's sad really. It seems to me that the whole Wells Fargo scandal is ultimately a lesson about how this company abused their employees and set them impossible tasks like "each customer should have X credit cards and Y accounts." But that's not what people seem to have taken from it. Instead, the whole incident has been presented as "just another big bank defrauding its customers." In reality though, the goal of the fraud was not to enrich anyone, it was just for these employees to keep their jobs. It feels like this whole incident could have spurred a conversation about the toxicity of these kind of unrealistic sales goals that provide no benefit to the customer, but it didn't.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    The goal was to enrich a smaller number of people higher up the chain than the employees who actually committed the fraud. Your argument also is a strong case for why leadership is almost certainly to blame, since they are the only ones who were enriched or helped at all.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
QAPereo 9y ago
If I hired thousands of people who under my supervision committed millions of crimes I would expect to be held accountable. Furthermore questions of fact such as Wells Fargo's claims are the kind of thing you expect to be settled in a court or least a pretrial hearing.
will_brown 9y ago
That's not far off from Uber's corporate PR. After all Uber is only taking requests from riders, connecting riders to drivers, and processing payment for the entire transaction...really Uber is just a tech company, it's the drivers illegally operating as unlicensed taxis/rides for hire. Some Uber drivers literally have criminal records for driving for Uber, Uber even recruited and paid bonuses for drivers to unknowingly leave counties where they were operating legally to counties they were violating the law, think anyone from Uber corporate is going to jail anytime soon?
- icebraining 9y ago
  Some Uber drivers literally have criminal records for driving for Uber Where?
fossuser 9y ago
I find it interesting when organizations use the 'few bad apples'analogy for this kind of thing. The full statement is 'A few bad apples spoil the barrel' - which comes from the concept that a rotting apple lets off ethylene gas which will cause the apples surrounding it to also turn. This is probably a better analogy than intended for the companies that incorrectly use it since bad behavior spreads like a corrupting influence through an organization and fixing it would really require larger changes than just getting rid of a couple people.
- kowdermeister 9y ago
  Spot on. Looks like the few bad apples are the leaders who created such a system that incentivized employees to mess with customer accounts.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  There's also the delightful expression: "A fish rots from the head down." I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that you can have a few thousand instances of "rot" without there being somewhere higher in the company it's being spread from. If 1% of the company is "rotting", then something in leadership is "rotting".
  - mtgx 9y ago
    When you have a thousands of "rotten apples" it's clearly a systemic problem.
- kbutler 9y ago
  The intent of the saying is encouraging you to identify and remove bad apples, so they don't spoil the rest. The analogy is apt, but the question is identifying the bad apples - and asking if those on top are the bad apples spoiling the barrel.
stephengillie 9y ago
I was friends in college with several other students who worked as entry level Wells Fargo tellers. They were individually performing the account shenanigans described. To them, it was just a loophole to be exploited to pad their account opening numbers. Tellers were basically stack ranked on the number of new accounts they opened each month. None of them work for Wells Fargo anymore, and most have moved onto tech management or recruiter roles in the area. I'm not close friends but we're still in the same social circles, and I haven't heard of repercussions impacting them.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Should the punishment be on them, the company or both?
maxxxxx 9y ago
I see that in medical too. You have plenty of SOPs but management tightens deadlines to the point that it's obvious that you have to take shortcuts to meet them. Management then can point then to the SOP but in reality they created the conditions for non-compliance.

rectang 9y ago

If you design a system that makes it inevitable that people will misbehave, you own their misbehavior.

trgv 9y ago
Morally perhaps, but not legally. It's sad really. It seems to me that the whole Wells Fargo scandal is ultimately a lesson about how this company abused their employees and set them impossible tasks like "each customer should have X credit cards and Y accounts." But that's not what people seem to have taken from it. Instead, the whole incident has been presented as "just another big bank defrauding its customers." In reality though, the goal of the fraud was not to enrich anyone, it was just for these employees to keep their jobs. It feels like this whole incident could have spurred a conversation about the toxicity of these kind of unrealistic sales goals that provide no benefit to the customer, but it didn't.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  The goal was to enrich a smaller number of people higher up the chain than the employees who actually committed the fraud. Your argument also is a strong case for why leadership is almost certainly to blame, since they are the only ones who were enriched or helped at all.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

QAPereo 9y ago

If I hired thousands of people who under my supervision committed millions of crimes I would expect to be held accountable. Furthermore questions of fact such as Wells Fargo's claims are the kind of thing you expect to be settled in a court or least a pretrial hearing.

will_brown 9y ago

That's not far off from Uber's corporate PR. After all Uber is only taking requests from riders, connecting riders to drivers, and processing payment for the entire transaction...really Uber is just a tech company, it's the drivers illegally operating as unlicensed taxis/rides for hire. Some Uber drivers literally have criminal records for driving for Uber, Uber even recruited and paid bonuses for drivers to unknowingly leave counties where they were operating legally to counties they were violating the law, think anyone from Uber corporate is going to jail anytime soon?

icebraining 9y ago
Some Uber drivers literally have criminal records for driving for Uber Where?

fossuser 9y ago

I find it interesting when organizations use the 'few bad apples'analogy for this kind of thing. The full statement is 'A few bad apples spoil the barrel' - which comes from the concept that a rotting apple lets off ethylene gas which will cause the apples surrounding it to also turn. This is probably a better analogy than intended for the companies that incorrectly use it since bad behavior spreads like a corrupting influence through an organization and fixing it would really require larger changes than just getting rid of a couple people.

kowdermeister 9y ago
Spot on. Looks like the few bad apples are the leaders who created such a system that incentivized employees to mess with customer accounts.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
There's also the delightful expression: "A fish rots from the head down." I'm deeply skeptical of the claim that you can have a few thousand instances of "rot" without there being somewhere higher in the company it's being spread from. If 1% of the company is "rotting", then something in leadership is "rotting".
- mtgx 9y ago
  When you have a thousands of "rotten apples" it's clearly a systemic problem.
kbutler 9y ago
The intent of the saying is encouraging you to identify and remove bad apples, so they don't spoil the rest. The analogy is apt, but the question is identifying the bad apples - and asking if those on top are the bad apples spoiling the barrel.

stephengillie 9y ago

I was friends in college with several other students who worked as entry level Wells Fargo tellers. They were individually performing the account shenanigans described. To them, it was just a loophole to be exploited to pad their account opening numbers. Tellers were basically stack ranked on the number of new accounts they opened each month. None of them work for Wells Fargo anymore, and most have moved onto tech management or recruiter roles in the area. I'm not close friends but we're still in the same social circles, and I haven't heard of repercussions impacting them.

lostlogin 9y ago
Should the punishment be on them, the company or both?

maxxxxx 9y ago

I see that in medical too. You have plenty of SOPs but management tightens deadlines to the point that it's obvious that you have to take shortcuts to meet them. Management then can point then to the SOP but in reality they created the conditions for non-compliance.