Lessons from leaked 'monkey-officer' emails

The absurdity with journalism, I have come to learn over the years is that what often turns out to be a great story, is in most cases also about a sad event; covering the leaked ‘monkey officer emails’ this week not only emphasized that reality but also the importance of cross-culture communication. I met, on Thursday evening, Arah Sadava, AB bank’s Managing Director since April, for an exclusive interview at the end of which I felt not only sorry for her but also for the bank whose image now has a dark stain that will take some time to clean off. The burden of cleaning off that stain squarely falls on Sadava’s shoulders; another crisis she finds herself handling after leading a bank during the Ebola epidemic in Liberia. In the aftermath of the leaked emails, Sadava said the two managers explained, with remorse that the term ‘monkey officer’ is a common management jargon in Europe referring to an officer who handles various petty tasks/problems in an organisation. The problems are the ‘monkeys’ and the monkey officer, normally a person with no specific assignments, is always on standby to be assigned to handle any monkey/problem that appears; that’s the role that the two managers were suggesting for Akheem Bwitonzi, the local staffer. Sadava, who is from Philippines, told me that she had never heard of the jargon herself but given the context her managers used the term and the many years of working with both women, she believed they didn’t intend to be racist. Speaking from a neutral point of view, it’s quite possible that Ann Gossner and Marijana Grujic innocently started a fire that engulfed a bank’s image that they have worked so hard in the past to build. But that’s where cross-culture communication comes in; between the two ladies, the monkey officer jargon perfectly made sense; but to the person who leaked the private emails, most likely an African, the term immediately rang bells of racism and wanted the whole world to know about it. Moving forward, the bank might need to consider hiring some Rwandans to sit in some of its senior management positions to avoid suspicions. Look at it this way, if it had been a Rwandan manager suggesting ‘monkey officer’ role for another Rwandan, chances are next to zero that the person who leaked the emails could have suspected any racism at play. But with two European managers discussing an African whom they clearly wanted to dismiss but were finding it hard, the use of the term monkey was always going to be received out of context. Unfortunately, mistakes can be costly and if the monkey officer emails were a mistake, they equally were quite costly not only to the bank’s image but also the international institutions that own the bank and Germany as a country where some of the institutions are actually based. Many of you might have read comments by Germany’s envoy to Rwanda Ambassador Peter Fahrenholtz, regarding the incident. Although he came out to strongly condemn the alleged racist remarks, Fahrenholtz also found some of the direct attacks on his country equally unfair. A single bad apple can actually cost the image of an entire nation. How can corporate organisations like AB bank avoid such scandals in future? The first move is to ensure having a mix of both local and expatriate managers to handle operations and managerial decisions. Organisations also need to take communication seriously. A popular management jargon in Europe is never going to be immediately understood in Africa given a number of factors at play. It’s quite possible that Gossner and Grujic innocently used the term Monkey officer without any intentions of being racist but the fact that someone leaked it on suspicion of being racist points to a deeper problem within the bank. Obviously events in the past week point to possible tension between junior staff and management which the bank’s Managing Director needs to move very fast to fix otherwise the cracks will show again. Also, in such a cross-culture environment, expatriate managers should consider avoiding terms or jokes that are likely to put them in a difficult position to explain when stumbled upon by others who don’t understand their context. Most importantly, these monkey emails were supposed to be private exchanges between top managers that we should never have accessed; how someone found them is something that should also concern the bank’s clients. How safe is their data? The lessons of data security are for us all to take out of AB bank’s ordeal. Your secret emails could easily end up in the public domain; it’s therefore wise that you choose your words carefully even in the most private of correspondences.

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Lessons from leaked 'monkey-officer' emails