Booknotes: Bob Benmosche - Good For the Money

☙ Bob Benmosche came out of retirement in August 2009 to lead American International Group’s turnaround. Although few doubted it was even possible, under his leadership, AIG repaid the $182.3 billion taxpayer bailout, with the government claiming a profit of more than $20 billion.

☙ His my-way-or-the-highway style worked well in this turnaround/crisis situation. He was just what AIG needed. A colorful and outspoken leader, his memoirs are full of colorful stories. Throughout his career he dedicated a great deal of time to leadership development throughout the organizations he led. Benmosche died of lung cancer on February 27, 2015 six months after he left AIG. Here are some quotes from his memoir, Good For the Money: My Fight to Pay Back America:

☙ Within any organization, leadership is indeed a shared responsibility. That idea must become part of the entire operation’s DNA. People must feel they have the freedom to do all kinds of things, including making mistakes, or they will never succeed.

☙ If it ain’t broke, break it and make it better.

☙ Play the hand that’s dealt you. If there’s a less-than-perfect opportunity, but it’s the only one on the horizon, you grab it and make the best of it you can.

☙ If you have no choking chain of debt around your neck, you don’t have to be obligated to do things that don’t make sense. If you do not have that financial freedom, you find yourself trapped in life.

☙ Could the nation’s crisis been handled differently? But we needed to do something. But instead of just acting, and moving forward and fixing, we started to play the blame game. That’s where we failed. We failed by saying we’re going to create laws, we’re going to put people in jail, there should be a law against people who make bad judgments. If that happened the entire country would be in jail because all of us made mistakes in our lives. That’s the issue I have. It’s not with the actions the nation took; it was the blaming and the viciousness that went on after the actions were taken.

☙ I needed employees to stay with proper compensation. The expertise of those who understood the deals was crucial to undoing the damage.

☙ I understood the public’s anger. But there is a difference between appreciating the outrage and becoming captive of it. There was no way we were going to save this company if I dwelled on it. My responsibility was to rebuild, not atone. Bad business practices got us into the mess, but the country had to be reassured that good practices could get us out of it again.

☙ These bonuses are not rewards at all; they’re part of one’s normal compensation.

☙ Being yourself is never a mistake. Even if what you do is sometimes taken the wrong way.

☙ When you talk to people about what you’re doing, just tell them the truth. Don’t sugarcoat it. Tell it like it is. And if you manage to do what you’re saying you’re going to do, if you can pull that part off, it will pay off for you over and over.

☙ Sometimes, the most obvious observations simply need to be verbalized.



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Posted by Michael McKinney at 06:53 PM
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