Did You "Wells Fargo" A Client Today?

Whether policy is a ball and chain to our clients - or to us - is a choice. Our choice.

Illustration by 2jenn/shutterstock.com

The premise of this article: Administrators are trained to comply with policy, trust colleagues in other specialties, and accept computer output as authoritative; error is treated as effectively impossible. These habits are superficially logical and support smooth operations. But compliance, trust, and unquestioning belief reliably drift into a surrender of judgment, producing denial of responsibility and worsening outcomes for the people we are meant to serve.

This news broke in 2018, but the lesson is eternal. Between 2010 and 2015 870 homeowners were incorrectly denied mortgage modifications by Wells Fargo, resulting in 545 foreclosures, due to an error in Wells Fargo underwriting software.

The Administrative Failure

This is an administrative failure with dire real world consequences for 545 families. Its magnitude does not mean “it’s management’s fault” exclusively. Administrative staff allowed this to happen.

I am an administrator, part of a community of staff that supports every function of every corporation.¹ The Wells Fargo case is extreme, but the problems that allowed Wells Fargo administration to fail are ubiquitous.

We trust systems. Systems are composed of processes, people and computers. When a document with an error arrives from a colleague, too often our thought is, “They must know what they’re doing.” When the document or data is from a computer, we’re certain: “It’s the computer, it can’t be wrong.”

Undue trust leads to administrators routinely making two mistakes:

1.      Inattention to decisions already made.

2.      Impeding rather than facilitating.

Mistake 1: Inattention

The problem at Wells Fargo started with a software error, but it should have propagated through the system no further than us: administrators.

The failure was not that a system made an error, but that the first instance of the error was followed by thousands of procedurally correct actions without anyone stopping to ask whether the outcomes made sense. The “can’t be wrong” cultural norm allowed algorithms to run Wells Fargo off a cliff and nobody blinked.

The administrators handling the mortgage information and resulting decisions didn’t understand that regardless of where information comes from – a colleague, a superior, a computer – once it lands on our desk it’s our responsibility, including questioning oddities and stopping the process until they’re resolved.

This was not a failure of intelligence or observation, but of judgment deferred to systems no one felt empowered to question.

Mistake 2: Impeding, not Facilitating

This is another form of the undue trust principle, this time trust in policies and the rules derived from them, coupled with a misunderstanding of the true purpose of these documents.

My career has been with federal contractors. Federal regulation and corporate procurement policy contain thousands of pages of rules. Internal clients, colleagues, even the government break these rules a lot because the rules are there to get things done right when the focus is frequently on getting things done fast. Right and fast are not compatible. The rules collide with needs and inherently impede, rather than facilitate, what people need done.

Rules restrict. They say “you must,” they narrow the options from infinite to a few, or sometimes only one. It’s natural for administrators to go with the flow and say “no” a lot.

The longer we’re in the system, trying to apply and enforce the rules, arguing with clients, seeing staff and managers break the same rule many times, it becomes easier to use “the policy tool” as a hammer and just hit people…‌who we may feel deserve it.

It’s a fallacy that because rules narrow the options their focus is “no.” The rules, and the policies that back them, are intended to be a roadmap to “yes” (if they’re properly designed). Administrators should be in that mindset: “yes, this is how we can do it.”

The client normally wants to go directly from A to E. They have a need, they see the goal. The administrative answer is often “No, you can’t do that.” Wrong answer. The right one is “We can do that, but to remain compliant we’ll need to go A-B-C-D-E. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you and a lot of the work is mine, not yours.”

That’s not easy, but understanding procurement – its methods, processes, policies and rules – is a profession. We, and all of you performing other administrative functions, are professionals and consequently paid as professionals because it takes work.

The Bad Policy

Policies can be poorly written from the start. They don’t foresee all possible circumstances and can be insufficiently flexible. They age and become obsolete, but often wait years before being amended or rescinded. I worked under a policy that defined a “large procurement” in dollars. The policy was 21 years old and was capturing routine purchases it was not intended to.

We can reclaim our powers of judgment and promote compliance with a clean, simple way through a policy that has an unintended consequence or outlived its usefulness: propose an override mechanism. (I’m assuming your department doesn’t already have one; you should ask.)

Policies received final approval from an authority in your company and that authority has the power to override them, by definition. I’ve worked in a system with this feature and the authority was only two levels above me, the Director of Contracting and Procurement.

The override document is not a deep dive into policy theory or suggested rewrite language. It’s a page or less. In five minutes my manager could to clear me to go to the Director and the Director responded positively to any buyer bringing her a well-reasoned request.

This isn’t contrary to compliance. The request describes how policy has failed its intended purpose and created a problem, and the action to be taken to realign the situation to the policy’s intent. That is compliance.

The Policy “Safe Room”

Policy is often used as a safe harbor when things go wrong.

When there has been lack of attention to the big picture (mistake 1), policy and its resulting rules define areas of responsibility – narrowly, by necessity, and it’s a simple and technically honest answer to use policy as a shield emblazoned with “Not My Responsibility, Not My Fault.” (Technically honest, not ethically honest.)

Because of the necessary function of policy to restrict options, discussed above, there are innumerable ways to demonstrate how policy says “no” and avoid making judgment calls: mistake 2. The idea of policy as inherently negative is so ingrained little resistance to this stance will be offered by a chain of command. Judgment to get to “yes” is riskier than retreating to “no” that policy can support.

Fall back on policy and no one can say we’re responsible for a bad outcome, even when we knew it would be the result. Nothing is our fault – it’s policy.

The Truth About “Bad Clients”

We blame clients for not caring but they do; only not about the same things we care about. Just because they aren’t concerned with procurement competition levels or small business set-asides doesn’t mean they don’t care. It means they’re focusing on what they’re supposed to be focusing on – their product. It is not their job to focus on and follow procurement policy, it is our job – because that is part of our product.

I know the objections many will have. “They do this all the time. They won’t listen if we don’t hit them over the head. They do have responsibilities to procurement policy.”

I’ll concede some ground on that last objection, but even there we are often responsible for client misbehavior because we don’t offer help, guidance, and our time and expertise as a service, we demand adherence and threaten reprisal for failures many clients aren’t even aware of. Clients do have responsibilities to procurement policy – but not to overcome our faults in leading them to that knowledge.

They will listen when we stop creating antagonism with weaponized policy. It’s about the approach and a proper recognition of who is responsible for what. It’s about where our heart and focus is: on facilitating or impeding the client’s desired outcomes.²

The Broken Relationship – Fixed

The relationship where procurement thinks “the client doesn’t care” and the client thinks “procurement is a rule-bound pain in the butt” is an artefact created neither by a bad client nor by bad procurement people. This relationship of distrust is created in the interface where procurement process, goals, ideals and desires meets the client’s process, goals, ideals and desires.

In that point there’s mismatch – naturally, because their goals and ours have nothing in common. It’s not a fault, it’s actually a desirable differentiation that allows specialization. But leave this situation alone, pay it no attention, invest no effort in this interface, and it will blow up. Out of nothing – the non-existent “thing” of the procurement/client interface – will arise endless hostility.

Alternatively you can pay attention to the automatic decisions being made by policy and process, whether they’re actually correct and how they’re treating our clients. Remove policy from the client interface by taking full responsibility for it. Lubricate the interface with a heartfelt desire to help the client succeed.

Do it for yourself if not for the client. When an interface receives no care and the administrative machine is driving output with an ignored, rusted set of the gears, the clash of forces harms everyone. If you have one of these derelict client interfaces, the people on the other side desire a better relationship as much as you do. Someone just needs to begin.³

¹ I use procurement as an example but this discussion applies everywhere in administration.

² “Heart” seemed a silly word in a professional setting but I resolved to keep it. Heart is an asset we bring to administration, particularly to healing damaged relationships. We can attempt to mend a relationship with a calculated strategic decision to employ a new course of action, but it’s potentially more powerful to change course because our heart tells us to. Heart is visible; our clients can read it in our conduct and our choice of words. Heart helps to break the cycle of a bad relationship because it’s tenacious. The client won’t switch moods the moment we do. Our initial change of approach won’t be repaid immediately. It may be met with suspicion, even scorn. Our heart-felt desire to change for everyone’s sake is our greatest asset and source of strength to see it through.

³ Internal customer service is a whole other topic. I’ve written about managing such a relationship in Client Relationship Management for Internal Customers. It’s 7,000 words; you might want to start with the synopsis, CRM: It’s Opportunity Knocking.

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