Fire his or her ass as soon as you can. Period. No producer, regardless of size of revenue is worth putting your career at risk. We could end this section right here. This is one of the few topics that there is no gray area on. But we get it. You have pressure for revenue and headcount and diversity and the list goes on and on and on. So you are thinking: he’s not that bad, or no one will ever know, or you’ll pull the trigger when you need to or whatever.
Unfortunately, the landscape is littered with shattered careers where a manager made the bad decision to cover up something nasty. One of the worst cases was Sammy who managed a big producer (we’ll call him Dick) who was taking an internal wholesaler around to see clients. Dick was driving. As the story goes, he pulled over to the side of the road and offered to pay the female wholesaler if she would give him a blowjob right then and there and then upped the financial offer when she said no. When they got back to the office she reported it to Sammy, but made him promise not to tell anybody. He promised but then smartly called legal.
The story is a bit murky from here, but the woman lawyer in legal, after taking to the Regional, decided to do nothing. Some months later the wholesaler casually mentioned the incident to her boss in headquarters. He immediately went up the legal food chain until the original lawyer was fired as was Sammy and Dick, and the Regional coincidentally took a much smaller job at a much smaller firm shortly thereafter.
Failed audits. Major compliance failures. Boom boom rooms. Fraud. Theft. Grabass on steroids. Unfortunately, this industry is chock full of stories like this. And yes, managers like Sammy are normally the fall guy. The bad guy producer will usually find a home as someone will hire them for their production, but no one wants to hire a manager who made a bad decision to protect someone who did something bad. But you say Sammy did everything right but was fired anyway. Yup. Sucks bigtime.
Look at it this way: in many firms, finding something bad, blowing the whistle, and then firing a revenue producer of any size is often a badge of honor. Yep, it may mean a pay cut in the short term. But that is far better than a 100% pay cut resulting from being unemployable in the industry. Nope – not fair. Suck it up cupcake, it’s what you sign up for. Really, at many firms, managers are hired to protect the firm and senior management. Don’t like it? Go sell vacuum cleaners. Drive for Uber. Sell your body for any number of depraved acts.
What is worse than shooting a bad actor is wanting to shoot someone only to be overruled up the food chain. Now here is the hard truth: if you ever find yourself in that position your options are all bad:
Do nothing and hope it all just goes away.
Resign on principle and in your resignation letter disclose exactly why.
Resign on principle but do not disclose why in your letter.
Send a registered letter with return receipt to legal disclosing everything.
Send the same letter to any and all regulatory bodies. This too is a career ender as no one will hire a manager that goes to the regulators, but it will generate a nice settlement for you later.
Keep a file with all the evidence including hard proof that you disclosed to several people and they overruled your decision. Print emails or store them on a flash drive or other storage device. Keep this file in your office and a copy at home. Try to record phone calls. Document. Document. Document. No, none of this will keep you from getting fired if it all comes out later but it will dramatically increase the size of your unlawful discharge claim and significantly enhance the wording on your regulatory files. And by the way, hire a good employment lawyer – preferably one with a background in financial services.
No doubt there are some bad actors that are bulletproof. No doubt there are some morally bankrupt firms and senior managers. In the end, if you find yourself in one of these horrible places, you have to look at yourself in the mirror. Do the right thing. There are many cases of what goes around comes around but it always seems to take way too long for that to happen. In the meantime, protect yourself. A little paranoia is OK too.
Unfortunately, even if you have a fantastic boss and his boss is fantastic, organizational charts change all the time. Senior management moves around – inside firms and across firms. The only person who can protect you is you. So don’t be naïve like Sammy was.
So let’s review. What do you do with the bad guy? That’s right. You must fire them. There is no second option.
If only it were that easy. And what if the case isn’t all that clear cut? What if someone just makes their first mistake? That’s tougher. And a different case study.
Have you ever dealt with the bad guy? Tell us your version of the outcome. We change all names and don’t reveal identities. Email us at manageia2@gmail.com
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