Bank of America: Ken Lewis Learns Plots Points

What a difference a plot point can make.

Back in August, Jack Flack worried about Ken Lewis, who let the chip on shoulder show badly in Valerie Bauerlein's WSJ leder.

Why did Jack Flack worry? Because the story seemed like a classic rise-and-fall set-up piece, in which an ascending power-player learns that the same sword-rattlings that play well with chums and subordinates don't necessarily look that great in print... on page-one... of the Wall Street Journal. It's the kind of story that a few years later, when the business hits a rough patch, enemies and critics drag out and say, "See, you could tell all along he was too (insert adjective) for the job."

But Jyoti Thottham's current profile of Lewis in Time seems to reflect two big changes in the banker's interaction with the media.

1. Lewis seems to be a learner. While his quotes in Thottham's piece hardly reflect Immeltian dexterity or Palmasanian ease, he is clearly much more aware that your words become more important when you become a CEO, and that they also become more exaggerated when they appear in print. Consider the WSJ-before the after of the Time-after.

WSJ-Before: Yet he (Lewis) foresaw a watershed year for Bank of America, a chance to inflict pain on competitors that lacked its scale, diversity and cash. "This is the time I think we could go for the jugular, really be disruptive and take market share," he said, to loud applause (from BofA employees).

Time-After: As his competitors announced massive write-downs and losses in their fourth-quarter earnings reports, Lewis wouldn't allow himself to crow. "I don't feel great about ours either," he says. "If we had met our objectives, I'd be gloating, but we didn't."

2. The Countrywide plot-point changed the context. In classical terms, true plot-points are only those actions that genuinely change the state of play. Given the potential implications of a Countrywide collapse, the BofA deal did just that. While once positioned as a pure predator, the deal put Lewis in the position of actually having to deny that he did the deal for the benefit of humanity.

Lewis, 60, insists that he bought Countrywide for his shareholders, not the greater good. "In no way did any government agency call us prior to encourage us," he says. "I can't say they weren't glad that we did it. But we did it on our own."

The lesson? Ridding the business world of Angelo Mozilo can be very good for your image, no matter how tin your ear may have been in the past.

Even more so, the specific nature of the Countrywide disaster creates much a better backdrop for Lewis personally. In the Journal story, Lewis was an angry boot-strapper griping about "blue-bloods." In the Time piece, the former mortgage-rejectee becomes the great empathizer with embattled home-owners.

Once the deal closes later this year, Lewis pledges to do right by Countrywide's borrowers. "We will bend over backwards not to foreclose," he says. "We will find a way to work things out."

So has Lewis joined the ranks of the seasoned CEO charmers? Nah. While the Journal story seemed to have certainly opened his eyes to the public perils that come with being a CEO, Lewis still burns with unusual competitive intensity. Even when talking about the importance of listening, he can't help pointing out to Thottham that he's good at it, and some people aren't.

"I don't feel the need to be a dominant force through talking first or talking the most. That's not one of my needs," he tells me in an interview at the North Carolina bank's office in midtown Manhattan. "Listening can be a competitive advantage. Some people just can't do it."

But Lewis will be fun to watch. Highly competitive alphas who are willing to learn have been know to will themselves into growing completely new appendages.