Page 119 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

selection of borrowers who defaulted or exceeded their sanctioning
powers or did not follow the prudent guidelines of the bank.

Type-3 officers were the ones who were sent to the branch to
consolidate all that had been done by the aggressive lending officers after
they had been transferred from the branch. But for them (Type-3), the
bank would not be able to manage the risks and recover the loans to
save the bank from losses.

Type -4 officers, of a rare breed, were those who would be a balanced
kind.

They would pay equal attention on deposit mobilization, grant of loans
and their follow up for recovery and doing all this in proper proportions
as was expected from an officer in its true sense. Doing this balancing
work was the most difficult of all types of skills sets.

I considered myself of the rare Type -4 officer and had a challenging time
in managing my job all these years. Generally, I had been selected for
such kind of roles most of the time in the bank. I got promotion and was
transferred to an urban branch from a medium sized semi urban branch.
I found that here again I had to perform the role of Type- 4 officer.

Insights from the episode

1. Every manager is not good at the same skill set.
2. The incentives or rewards should be carefully crafted to motivate
officers to perform all the functions well, a pre-requisite of any
organization's survival and growth.

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