Business Insight Zone

We’ve talked before about Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince, who hasn’t done a great job in the years he’s held that role. Here are several interesting items on Prince:

–Dana Cimilluca of the Wall Street Journal describes “The Chuck Prince-Michael Mayo Food Fight” during the company’s earnings call this week. Mayo is a top analyst for Deutsche Bank securites, and he thinks that Prince isn’t doing enough at Citi — indeed, that he should be shown the door.

–In another item, Cimilluca compares Prince to erstwhile Citigroup executive Jamie Dimon, who is, by any candid assessment, clearly the much better banker of the two. There’s no question that Prince is smart, but he simply doesn’t operate as effectively as Dimon. The contrast is glaring given how much Prince talks the talk of the concerned CEO, but then seems incapable of walking the walk like Dimon has done as CEO of Bank One and JPMorgan Chase.

–This delightful piece of R-rated snark from Bess Levin at DealBreaker outlines her view in the opening sentence: “Here’s are a bunch of things that Chuck Prince has done since he became CEO of Citigroup that could be characterized as ‘dumb’ …”

–This New York magazine piece ties Prince’s continued presence at Citi to his friendship with Robert Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary. It also outlines some of the key mistakes that Prince has made during his tenure, and especially the sort of promise-one-thing, deliver-another record of performance that had Michael Mayo so steamed during that conference call.

Especially given the contents of the New York magazine item, I’m led to think for the thousandth time about how the degree to which personalities cloud our judgments about performances. Consider this key quote:

One thing Prince has done right is assiduously court the three constituencies that matter most to his keeping the corner office: major shareholder Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia; Bob Rubin, chairman of the company’s executive committee; and the rest of the company’s board.

Now isn’t that the strangest thing in the world — the under-performer successfully “courting” (a.k.a. “kissing up to”) the muckety-mucks? It’s the same in any dysfunctional business (or division, department, work team, etc.) in the world, and we’ve all known the non-performer who survives on the basis of interpersonal skills rather than proven merit. It’s the sort of thing that tends to crush the spirit of the results-deliverers in the business, and to make a mockery of a company’s talk about executing better, getting back to basics, or whatever else. When a leader’s tenure is seen as the fruit of successful politicking rather than merit . . . it’s a back-breaker for the organization.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a huge believer in the “soft” skills of business, not least because I personally am long on intuition and empathy and pretty short on “hard” skills in technology, engineering, finance, etc.

But I’m also not posing as the chief executive of a Fortune 10 company.

Category: Executives, Finance & Real Estate, The working life