I was stunned late Friday afternoon by a report on CBCNews that TD Bank has been accused of Wells Fargo-like practices of defrauding depositors and investors. In my book, From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire, I have written about how the toxic workplace culture at Wells Fargo led to employees doing whatever needed to be done—including opening fraudulent accounts in depositors’ names—in order to meet unreasonable sales quotas. Which is why I asked, “Is your organization also a ticking time bomb?” Clearly TD Bank was ticking away even as employees were being forced to work outside their ethical boundaries to keep their jobs.
This begs the question: If you can’t trust your banker, whom can you trust? At the very least people want to feel as though their hard-earned money will be safe. Sadly, that trust is being eroded at the corporate level with toxic workplace practices and at the government level as regulations get slashed. Trump’s interest in slashing the fiduciary rule that requires financial advisors to act in their clients’ best interest is another example of this.
I’ve been accused of being extreme in my views about what is going on in business culture and government these days, even as I’ve sadly watched one prediction after another come true. I greatly wish I were wrong. I fear that “surprise fatigue” might set in, as the average person grows exhausted due to the 24-hour stream of bad news. That would normalize the abnormal—and we simply cannot allow that to happen.
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