When I worked at a third party administration (TPA) firm many years ago, I learned some valuable lessons, some about ERISA and some about human nature. I wasn’t exactly the favorite employee of the guy running the place. Let’s call him Manny. Manny had a way of making himself look competent, not necessarily by doing good work, but by surrounding himself with people who made him look good by comparison. One day, channeling Rodney Dangerfield’s line from Back to School, I quipped, “Manny must be competent, he surrounds himself with incompetents.” Let’s just say that didn’t win me any points in the office popularity contest. Manny’s real flaw wasn’t just surrounding himself with mediocrity, it was believing that tenure equaled loyalty. He thought that just because someone had been around for a decade or two, it meant they were loyal soldiers. But what he failed to understand, and what I eventually learned to be true in this business, is that many people stay because they don’t have better options.
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