Crash of SVB & the Sin of the Golden Calf. What the ultimate sin teaches us about the wrongs of being a bystander

Last week Silicon Valley Bank (and a couple of others) came crashing down. Though SVB’s downfall came quickly, its demise has been in the works for some time. Most notable about the downfall is that multiple board members of the failed banks went through the same exact experience in the past with other companies they’ve led.

One could ask so many questions about these repeat offenders. Like why they didn’t voice concerns loud enough when the company started doing somewhat shady financial practices. Or once they got in too deep why they didn’t stand up against it? Or heaven forbid be a whistleblower.

The Bible teaches us that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. And that events occur at their specified time. SVB’s downfall is no exception and with no surprise happened during the week’s Torah portion of Ki Tisa. One of the biggest events that would impact the future of the Jewish people happened; the sin of the Golden Calf. The TL;DR version is Moses went up on Mt Sinai to receive the Torah and told the nation he’d be gone for 40 days and nights. The people miscalculated the time. On day 39 they thought Moses was late and then lost forever. ⏩ and a group of people built the golden calf to replace Moses.

I’ll share a beautiful idea I heard last Shabbat evening that I’ll then tie back into SVB’s collapse. The idea was shared by Rabbi Boaz Moari. As shared above about the story in Ki Tisa, Moses comes down, sees the golden calf, and smashes the 2 tablets of the 10 commandments.

He then calls on those who are on G-d’s side to join him in a battle against those guilty of the golden calf. 3000 people are killed in that ensuing battle. The following day he then gets up in front of the nation and gives them some radical candor and constructive criticism. He tells them they are responsible for a great sin. But wait?!? You may be a bit confused and that’s ok. Wasn’t it the 3000 people who actively participated in the golden calf and fought against Moses the sinners? Yes, they were. But the rest of the nation was guilty of the sin of being a bystander. How could the nation be guilty of doing nothing? Moses lambasts the people because they saw something wrong being done in front of their eyes but did nothing. Only 40 days prior they received the 10 commandments which the 1st 3 specifically state there is only 1 G-d. So it had to be crystal clear that any idol worship was bad news! The people should have battled this small group to ensure that the sin never happened.

The word for the calf in Hebrew is (Egel or עגל). There’s one other place in the Bible where the Egel or calf comes into play with sin. And of course, they are tied together. Later in the bible comes the situation where a murdered corpse is found between two cities. The high court would come and measure the distance between both cities. The elders and leaders of the city closest to the corpse would need to come out and go through a whole process. They would swear an oath that they knew nothing about the person or the murder. Rashi, the preeminent commentator of the Torah defined this as taking responsibility for the lack of hospitality. This visitor came and went through the town without anyone knowing it. Had the elders been aware of the visitor they would have provided him with food and shelter, and escorted him out of the city. So this incident would not have happened.

From this case, we learn the fault of being a bystander and not actively standing up to do what’s right. The city should have done better. They should have been on the lookout for guests.

The two cases of sins involving a calf come to teach us the importance of not being idle bystanders. When the opportunity comes to do what’s right and virtuous we must jump up and take action. Or when ideas or suggestions of going in the wrong direction, we must raise our voices. On the other hand, when something wrong is taking place that will danger the team or nation, we can’t keep our mouths closed.

I’m not privy to any conversations that have happened over the years at SVB or the other banks that have failed. So I can only make assumptions. Especially for those Board members who specifically experienced banks failing before. Where were they?

This isn’t a finance course or political discussion so we’ll change the topic to company culture. Over the past couple of posts, I’ve spoken about how companies like Google, Salesforce, and similar have simply abandoned company culture and employee happiness. They’ve abandoned putting the employee first. So what’s the relevance?

For those leaders at companies like this whose C-Suite or board are discussing a forced RTO or abandoning employee engagement, don’t sit idly by. If there are discussions around this, raise your voice. You as a leader know very well, the negative impact it will have on your team. All the data says, 90% of employees expect flexibility in where/when they work. So if the company leadership floats the idea of RTO, raise these statistics. Raise the 🚩 of what will happen to employee engagement and thus productivity if the plan is implemented. Ensure executives understand that an unhappy Sales team will sell less software. An unhappy Engineering team will take longer to push out worse-quality code. Protect your team by doing your best to manage up the chain. I fall back on Jocko Willink who is a master of managing up and explains what we leaders can do. This covers not taking action to do good.

If the company implements these changes, you as a leader need to do everything you can to support your team and their happiness. If you’re not doing pulse surveys, start doing them regularly using great tools like Kona where you can see analytics of employee happiness over time. Have more 1:1 conversations with your team to gauge how everything is doing. Share those findings with your manager. If you’re able to let your team go home early on days in the office (because you’ve taken them away from family) do it. Try to get even a small budget approved to gift your team. Do what you can to make your employees as happy as they can be with the situation. And of course, do what’s in your power at least to inform executive leadership of the negative impact their new policies have made on your specific team. Ensure you’re not sitting idly by when something wrong is happening.

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