Story 372
The Fear of Accountability That Breaks ERM Tech & Data
There’s a particular form of organizational dysfunction that has survived Fraser’s transformation narrative: the management practice of shuffling underperforming employees across the team, or considering them for an unearned promotion to prevent them from quitting.
Why? To avoid creating an HR record reflecting poorly on the Managing Director.
This extreme form of short-termism trades long-term organizational capability for short-term conflict avoidance.
It’s a costly form of resource mismanagement that compounds over time as performance issues don’t disappear. The cycle repeats.
Meanwhile, senior personnel are treated as errand-runners rather than strategic resources, their authority systematically undermined by minute micromanagement that overrides their scope.
It creates a perverse mediocracy where compliance with the manager’s fragile ego is rewarded over operational excellence or risk intelligence.
This pattern correlates with a specific hierarchical dynamic: upward subservience paired with downward bullying. Managers who are unable to challenge flawed direction from above compensate by tightening control below.
The substitution of self-preservation politics for actual leadership – that looks a lot like the pre-transformation Citi, doesn’t it?