AIG Meltdown: Leadership Scandal + Criminal Charges

AIG Turmoil Incoming president OUT Ex executive on trial at aig, two different executives are now tied to very different misconduct stories. First, there's John Neal, the incoming president, who was supposed to start December 1st. You know, just in a couple of weeks, he suddenly withdrew after the New York Times started asking AIG whether it knew about a past incident at his former employer, qbe. Years ago, Neil had a romantic relationship with his personal assistant and failed to disclose it to the board as the company's code of conduct required. When the board found out, they slashed his bonus and he later stepped down as CEO. Then there's David McElroy, the former head of AIG's general insurance unit. He's now facing criminal charges in Vermont for allegedly getting a woman blackout drunk at an AIG retreat and sexually assaulting her in in her hotel room. He's pleaded not guilty and insisted was consensual, but prosecutors say otherwise and a trial is scheduled for March. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you want to be the big buck CEO, you can have a lot. You can be the master of the universe, but you can't date employees and co workers any longer. Sorry. Those are the rules in the modern world. Let's dig a little deeper here. So it's easy for me to get high and mighty here because I have a small company. I work with my wife from home, so issues like this don't affect me very directly. But I'm here to help you out because you may be very early in your career, you may be working in a large corporation, and you may be a human being. Okay, what do I mean by that? Human beings can't necessarily control their emotions. Human beings fall in love with people that they spend time with. And guess what? In the modern world, you spend about a third of it sleeping about bunch of time commuting, grabbing food here and there. You spend most of your waking hours. If you're like a lot of people between the ages of 22 and 65 around people you work with, and this is why Bill Gates married someone who worked for him. It's why a lot of people marry people they work with. Maybe it's someone who worked for them. Maybe they worked for that person. Maybe it was just a colleague in a bigger organization. It happens. Guess what? The rules have changed now if you want that highest level of prestige of hey, being the CEO, it's just not going to cut it with your board of directors anymore. It's not wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Boys will be boys. Don't Tell anyone, because the whole world is going to find out. So if you are ambitious and you're a hard worker and you're a human being and you want love in your life, you can say it's unfair. You can say there was no coercion. You could say, well, I wasn't in the direction line of command or chain of command. The reality is you can have love with someone you work with, or you can continue to get promoted and not demoted. It's going to be harder and harder to get both. Now, I remember when my career was starting 40 years ago, not only was this sort of thing not frowned upon, it was actively encouraged. In some offices I worked, even some government offices I worked in, it was encouraged to date people you worked with and to date people you. You managed. It was a different time. I'm not saying it was okay then, but it's a different time, and some people have not gotten over that change. Are we getting occasionally into the era of, oh, too politically correct? You said someone looked nice that day, and that's. That's harassment. You should be fired. I don't think we're really going that far. I don't see any examples of highly paid, high profile, highly competent CEOs who are getting fired because they gave somebody a compliment. So let's not play the politically correct, conservative claptrap routine here. It is a fact that many people in the workplace, typically women, feel like they don't have power to say the no to the boss. And these relationships can be coercive and they can be messy, and they can be disruptive. And if nothing else, no one else in the office wants to get in between a lover's spat. And that's why it's just not a good idea. I'm not going to say it's immoral to ever date anyone that you share office space with, but I can tell you it's not a good idea in current climate. Now, five, six years ago, things really peaked with the whole MeToo movement. You could argue, as in the case of comedian Aziz Asari, where things went too far of seeing people's careers ruined just because someone didn't interpret a signal the right way in a dating situation. But when it comes to dating people you work with and you are the big boss or one of the big bosses or one of the honchos with the seven figure income and somebody you think is cute or attractive with a five figure income is smiling at you a lot. Hold on. Timeout. It's just not a good idea. There are Plenty of other fish in the sea to use a hectic expression, Date elsewhere, find people elsewhere. I realize a lot of the most successful people in the world, the most celebrated people in the world did in fact form their most permanent love relationships. Their spouses, the parent of their children by first meeting in the workplace. But that's just one of those areas where things change, I would argue most of the time, not all the time. Most of the time things change for the better. 40, 50 years ago it was considered shameful to be gay. Not so much anymore. That's a good thing. I'm pretty good, believe me. My portfolio is very happy that Tim Cook has been able to manage Apple and make it ten times bigger frankly than Steve Jobs ever did. And nobody even cares about the fact that Tim is gay. So societies change, standards change, the ethics of workplace do's and don'ts change and this is simply one of them. Now what surprises me is I'm just wondering was this somehow a surprise to aig? I can't imagine that they didn't know about this. And again, John Neal, who was supposed to take the the top position at AIG Dec 1 just a couple of weeks from now did have a romantic relationship with his personal assistant at QBE eight years ago and he didn't disclose it to the board which he was supposed to have done. Although it is tricky having a relationship with your assistant. I mean their very job is to care of your every need or I should say some of your business needs. Maybe that's how he got into that trouble and he had to step down because of this. So it's one thing if you are a CEO of a small advertising agency with 30 employees in a mid sized town. Not saying that's an excuse to do things improperly, but there's some leeway when you're dealing with a very small company. But AIG is one of the biggest insurance financial services companies in the world. They can get top talent without scandals and problems because the last thing they want is more negative publicity like they did with David McElroy. Now this was the executive president he mentioned in the newsread overseeing AIG's general insurance unit. He went to Vermont on a work summit and he and apparently another woman got really really drunk and the next morning she wakes up half naked. I won't get into which half and needless to say, they have different recollections how the evening proceeded and who consented to what. So even if you're traveling for business, just realize it's still business. Yes, if you're at some exotic locale, things are different. Things are exciting. Nice restaurants, maybe a nice wine list. Be careful. My recommendation would be if you enjoy alcohol. If you enjoy wine and you're around people in the workplace, maybe you have the second glass poured, but you only drink one. Let's make one a limit. I'm not saying you have to be a teetotaler and everyone else is toasting the great year or the new boss. You can participate in that. But wow, a lot of careers have been derailed because after the third drink, the fourth drink, or that full bottle, you get very loving all of a sudden. That happens to people and the next day perceptions change. So be careful. It's a warning to anyone these days. Could be man or woman in the workplace. If it's true trust, true love, maybe think about keeping it on the back burner until one of you is working at another organization. I realize sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants to unfortunately quote Woody Allen, which I like to do. But you do have to realize you're playing with fire and you're potentially jeopardizing your entire career.