What Exactly Did Bill George Say?

During a late-afternoon perusal of New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog, we were amused to find an interesting little “quote” from one of our very own—HBS professor William W. George (better known as simply Bill George). “If you don’t pay them for their performance, you’ll lose them. It's much like professional athletes and movie stars," George had said, supposedly referring (as the blog had initially suggested) to bankers.

A little…intrigued by this statement, we called George’s office to see what was up.

George could not be reached for comment, but his people did give us a copy of the Big Think interview from which the quote was extracted.

The transcript makes it immediately clear that the Daily Intel had taken George's statement way out of context. He had been talking about “traders," not “bankers"—a fact that would have been made abundantly clear by a cursory glance at the sentence preceding or following the quote. To get the scoop, we called the author of the post, Jessica Pressler of New York Magazine.

A little later, she called us back to let us know that she had checked the interview transcript and understood the mistake in her post. It has now been changed to reflect more accurately the meaning of George’s words.

We don’t really think this little kerfuffle is a federal issue, but we do feel a little bad for George, who was just trying to make the point that long-term performance should be rewarded with long-term compensation.