Coping
In 1997 I was on the Management Committee of Bankers Trust Company after twenty years of rising through the ranks and having taken on a wide diversity of roles in many different businesses. I had served in mostly line management capacities, but had also had a few staff positions, all with a growing breadth of responsibilities. In other words, I had risen through the middle management levels and was one of the firms leadership ten who made and effected policy. It was an important achievement to me and while I was not inclined to think I would likely rise to the CEO spot since I was a bit too much of an outspoken maverick, I took my position and duties very seriously, not just in running my assigned businesses, but also in the overall governance of the venerable institution Bankers Trust was. At that time, our new CEO decided that his game plan (which seemed clearly aimed at preparing the company for a sale that would be quite lucrative for him) was less about organic growth and more about acquiring bolt-on pieces to make our firm look more and more interesting to others in the buying mode. He had made one smallish acquisition of Wolfensohn and Company (an M&A boutique of solid reputation) and had started the process of acquiring Alex. Brown & Sons of Baltimore, a more substantial boutique investment bank. It was a meaningful one-two punch that pushed Bankers Trust to its resource limits, both in terms of funding and in terms of managerial breadth. It is also noteworthy that the folks at Alex. Brown did not lack for strong self image. Before then I never realized how much people from Baltimore think its the center of the universe…seriously. The process of wrangling Alex. Brown into position for a well-controlled take-over was challenging for all of us for different reasons.
My particular challenge turned out to be that the flamboyant martial-arts-practicing, duck-hunting, cigar-chomping Chairman of Alex. Brown, Buzzy Krongard was a character that needed a perch after the acquisition. He was a realist that he would no longer be running the show, but he wanted a transitional position while he wrangled a top spot at the CIA for himself (he loved spycraft and his son was a Navy SEAL). The decision made by our CEO was that he would be given leadership of the combined private client business of Alex. Brown and the private banking arm of Bankers Trust (my area of business at the time). That put me in the position of being the only member of the Bankers Trust management committee to be put into the position of reporting to an Alex. Brown person. The head of the private client business (technically my counterpart there) was Buzzy’s best friend and they spent evenings at Buzzy’s house smoking cigars in Buzzy’s hot tub. That counterpart was a decorated Vietnam veteran who had been seriously injured in battle and had worked ever since his recuperation at Alex. Brown. His blood was Alex. Brown red (Bankers Trust’s color was, naturally, blue). The two of us were the two direct reports to Buzzy.
This was a very trying career moment for me. Having attained what was likely my most senior post at my first and only employer of over twenty years, it was a bit upsetting to find myself in the highly uncertain spot I found myself in. One of my mantras throughout my career was to salute and follow the orders of my superiors with minimal regard for what it meant to me personally. I believed in that approach and wanted to be loyal to my CEO, who had promoted me to the management committee rank to which I aspired deeply. But the position I was being placed in felt like a no-win situation for me and being singled out for this situation at a time that should have been a triumph for a management committee member of Bankers Trust. It was at that same time that I was in the mainstream of my involvement with Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management as a member of the very elite Advisory Committee. I considered it an honor to be on that AC and had been asked to spearhead the big final push in fundraising for the new building, That was a whole other story.
I had been asked to join the Advisory Committee when I was appointed the CEO of BT Bank of Canada in 1990. That seemed to outsiders like my development office friends at Cornell like a big deal and they always wanted up an comers on their AC. I didn’t have the heart or the humility to tell them that that position was anything but a promotion and that the Canadian operation had been one small part of my prior brief in 1989 and that I was effectively being demoted to a considerably lesser position as penalty for an error of omission in not having somehow prevented a loss in a large cotton loan one of my divisions presided over. I also believed in paying your dues and taking your medicine so I was in the process of moving to Toronto to take the ground-level post. But Cornell understood none of that and thought being CEO of a whole bank was a good thing. Once on the Advisory Committee I worked hard to earn my place and took seriously both the challenge to be a gift-giving leader and do the job that most needed doing and was always unwanted, going out and fundraising among fellow alumni. I was asked in 1996 to lead the charge on the new building fund. Since I had already made a leadership gift of several named rooms, they assumed I was a natural for the task. Part of that duty was to go up to Cornell regularly to gather updates on the building progress to help with the push to the finish line.
This was less a new building and more a completely renovated old building, one of the historic ones on central campus, Sage Hall. The plan called for it to be gutted to its outer shell and then rebuilt inside that shell. It was a significant task that would cost almost twice as much as a new build, but would maintain some of the natural history of the campus. I had bought (actually taken a 99-year lease) on a house just off the Cornell campus, which I own still today. At that exact moment, it was undergoing its own renovation, yet again paying more to keep some of the old to compliment the new. I had to stay at the Statler Hotel on that particular visit, and they gave me a high room overlooking the Sage Hall construction site.
As I sat in my room and pondered the intersection of my confluence of events with my career challenges, my fundraising challenges and my personal home rebuilding challenges, I watched the Native American steelworkers crawling all over the Sage Hall construction site. They are quite famous for not fearing heights, but the way they jumped from girder to girder without protection or safety apparatus sent a chill up my spine. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I crashed, unable to handle all the responsibilities and thoughts of peril I was facing. I had no construction or workplace safety obligations, but it was as though the native Americans were a symbol for the risks I was facing in my life and the fact that I was dangling and out of control. I experienced my first and only anxiety attack. I literally began to shake and then I broke down sobbing in a most unusual way for me. I had never really been aware of my encounters with stress and here it all was, in my face and overwhelming me.
That was when I saw an ad in a hotel room magazine for Copenhagen Chewing Tobacco/Snuff that showed a cowboy bent under the weight of a saddle, doing his chores. It said, “Some men never compromise….they cope!” I cut that ad out and had it framed. It sits on my home office wall yet today and it reminds me whenever I feel under pressure that everyone, even the noble cowboy, must bow to the force of coping.
P.S. Buzzy went to the CIA and put me in charge of the combined divisions over the head of his old pal. We funded Sage Hall and it was on budget and schedule with no Native Americans hurt in the process. My house renovation was glorious and it is the pride of my granddaughters who use it regularly. Things work out if you can just cope past the tough parts.