The real story behind the Merrill Lynch,Bank of America merger

On a rather long, often delayed trip to the West Coast, I had the opportunity to read Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America by Greg Farrell. While it is a fascinating tale of the clash of two very different organizations, one about to fail and another on life support, it was of particular interest to me as a former BofA employee. The descriptions of the culture of the bank and in Charlotte was spot on.

I became an employee through the merger of a bank in Baltimore to NationsBank in 1993 , the predecessor of BofA. I remember the teams pouring in from Charlotte to help us "learn" the bank's way of doing things. Even then, it was clear that we were the acquired and they were in charge. It was described as a meritocracy and it was; if you hailed from Charlotte. Based on this story, that appears to still be the case today.

With even a slight understanding of the history of Merrill Lynch, you can only imagine the conflict. This is a great read and gives a good behind the scenes look at the near collapse of the financial system.

Commonwealth Bank and the social media policy debacle

If you are involved in social media, you've probably heard about the recent blow up on Commonwealth Bank of Australia's social media policy. A copy was obtained by a news organization and published last week.

As noted in the article, most of the policy is pretty benign. Where they got in hot water was the reference to "Inappropriate or disparaging content and information stored or posted by others..." and then specifically gave the example of a friend posting an inappropriate comment about the bank on a FaceBook page. In that event, it is incumbent on the employee to notify others in the bank or face the possibility of disciplinary action.

Our organization has a social media policy. Every organization should have one. However, it is a huge leap from managing employees and their social media presence to the actions of their "friends". I use the quotes intentionally because many "friends" in social media would not be considered friends in the true sense of the word. In this case, the organization has set unrealistic expectations and, quite frankly, an extremely difficult policy to monitor.