E-mail comes back to bite Countrywide CEO
May 22, 2008 by Tisa Silver
Filed under Finance
Last week I gave my students some tips on work and life after college. One tip was to use spell check and grammar check before sending out e-mails. One tip that I left off this year was “don’t send anything via company e-mail that you wish to remain private.”
In today’s world of chain messages, carbon copies and forwards, the use of what I refer to as “e-discretion” is paramount. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo has provided us with a stellar example of e-discretion forgotten.
Several customers have reached out to Countrywide for help with overwhelming mortgage payments, some used a form letter from LoanSafe.org. Upon reading a message from Daniel Bailey, Mr. Mozilo intended to forward his comments to internal recipients but inadvertently hit “Reply.” A direct quote from Mr. Mozilo’s response stated, “Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet. Disgusting.”
As if Mozilo is not in enough trouble already…last week investors were given the green light for a lawsuit alleging that management misrepresented the company’s financial condition last year. As a result of the sub-prime mortgage mess, Countrywide took a $1.2 billion loss in the third quarter and the stock has dropped 89 percent over the past year.
Mr. Mozilo concluded the year having collected upwards of $140 million, $20 million of which was designated as “performance based” stock awards. Wonder if the awards were for customer service? ;)
I think “e-discretion” is a very important topic that has not really been addressed to the extent that it should be. Most email systems now have a spell check system, however, I cannot begin to express how many times I’ve gotten an email that contains the words, “forgot to attach.” I agree with this blog in that people need to be more careful in double checking their emails, especially CEOs!
“E-discretion” is definitely very important. I have received plenty of emails with typos from people that should have appeared more professional. However, not only are typos an important issue but also the appropriateness of an email’s content. Many companies can see and keep track of things that are done on the company’s network. At one job I use to work at an employee had been recently fired for this very thing (and other things as well). The company had kept a record of numerous inappropriate emails that he had sent from his work site. It is important to make sure everything you send over the internet is something you wouldn’t mind keeping a record of.
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