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Carol Hymowitz has a great column in this morning's Wall Street Journal titled. "Companies Need CEOs To Stop Spinning And Start Thinking." The basic thrust of the column is that CEOs, particularly, need to stop issuing press releases and start paying attention to performance. It's good stuff.

But there's one part of the column that I loved. Hymowitz tells about Rich Kovacevich and Wells Fargo and why they haven't been hit as hard by what's erroneously called "the sub-prime crisis" or "the credit crisis." Sub-prime lending and credit are part of the mess, to be sure, but they're not what the crisis is about.

This is an integrity crisis. It's about people making loans, who pretty much threw standards out the window because they knew they would never be the ones trying to collect. And because the chickens would never come home to roost on their roof, they figured they could really do well if they could exploit unsophisticated lenders and their dreams of home ownership.

This crisis is about other people bundling loans that were pure crap into fancy investment vehicles and then labeling them as "high grade" or "golden" or some such silliness. It's about the leaders of large financial institutions looking the other way as long as the numbers came up big.

That's why the Wells Fargo story was a good one to hear this morning. I'll let Ms Hymowitz sketch it out.

"Richard Kovacevich, chairman of Wells Fargo, and his lieutenants deliberately steered clear of the riskiest sorts of subprime mortgages – 'stated income' or 'low documentation' loans [Wally's Comment: what some cynical originators called 'liar loans'] to borrowers with sketchy credit. They stayed out even though it caused them to lose market share in the short term that would have generated big loan fees.

'We talked about what other [banks, investment firms and mortgage brokers] were doing,' but decided 'it's economically unsound' and 'doesn't make sense,' he says.

By making such risky loans to financially stretched borrowers, 'you're basically saying, "Defraud me,"' adds Mr. Kovacevich, whose bank has avoided the huge losses incurred at rivals. Giving that kind of loan 'isn't in our DNA.'"

When the cocktail hour comes around tonight I'm going to raise a toast to Mr. Kovacevich and his team. I'm not toasting their business judgment, as good as it is. I'm toasting their character and the strength to avoid practices that weren't right and weren't right for Wells, even when everybody else seemed ready to pile on the bandwagon.

Here's to you Mr. Kovacevich and your team, and to you Ms. Hymowitz, for a story that made my day.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.