Category: Blog

As a behavioural change consultancy that specialises in helping leaders to shape their business around common culture and shared values, one or two of us will have been looking on from afar at the events in the banking world over the past few days with the thought that “the banks really need us!”.

For the public, the LIBOR scandal is further evidence for the established story of corrupt, money grabbing investment bankers lining their own pockets at everyone else’s expense. ‘You just can’t trust these people’ we’re told, their malign influence seeming to threaten confidence in the whole system. Commentators are beginning to question whether in large commercial banks the rogue element of aggressive investment bankers will always triumph over the supposedly staid and meek retail bankers – a rotten apple that spoils the whole barrel.

The Government’s response has played to this narrative with Cameron committing at this week’s PMQs “to legislate to split the banks as Vickers suggested”.

I’m in no position to judge whether the Vickers solution of ring fencing retail banking provides the structural resilience found lacking during the financial crisis; but the storyteller in me worries that it’s a bit like asking a divorced couple to continue living in the same house. It might be tolerable, even practical to start with, but it’s difficult to see how it’s healthy for either party in the long term.

The Vickers recommendations are a response to the problems that caused the crisis, but banking and financial services are so critical to the UK economy that both retail and investment banking operations also need growth stories. There needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel, a vision that keeps the fantastically clever, hardworking people of the City getting up and going to work in the morning while the rest of the country looks down their nose at them.

If you accept the analysis that retail and investment banking are essentially two different businesses – one an essential public utility, the other a global, innovative game of high finance – then perhaps they need to go on two separate journeys. How can you create a bank where both cultures flourish? We hope we’ll get the call, but will we be talking about one story or two?

I was in a meeting with a client’s communications team last week when one of the more skeptical members of the team gave the familiar refrain: “the Executive don’t really expect us to explain the strategy to every single one of our employees do they? They should start living in the real world. Most people aren’t bothered and most people won’t get it”.

In these circumstances we usually fall back on the good old NASA cleaner story: JFK is visiting NASA when he stops a guy sweeping the corridors to ask him what his job is. The cleaner replies: “I’m putting a man on the moon”. Imagine the energy you could release if you could connect your employees to your higher purpose, we tell clients. As we’ve seen countless times, give employees a reason ‘why’ and they’ll strive to make their own contribution to the group’s success.
But on the flight home, the cynic’s comment got me thinking: not all companies need their cleaners to understand the company’s vision and strategy. Indeed it can’t be coincidental that most companies now see more value in outsourcing their cleaning requirements to third party providers.

So my challenge to the cynic is this: if you don’t think your employees need to understand and feel part of your company’s story, do you think they should actually be your employees? Would they ultimately contribute more if they did the same job, but worked for a third party provider? In short, might your company’s story provide a good guide as to what ought to be the proper limits of your company?

This isn’t to say that cleaners shouldn’t belong to a company’s story. Everyone deserves a reason ‘why’, a explanation of what the group is trying to achieve and a guide for how they can contribute – a story that helps them find meaning in their work. But this doesn’t mean everyone has to find meaning in the same story.

I very much enjoyed Fast Track's blog on Culture vs Strategy. It highlights the need for a strong, believable strategy to underpin the success of a business, regardless of how great or strong the culture. Bob Frisch gives a number of examples where companies have gained competitive advantage as a result of a great strategy, making the point that while culture reinforces the strategy (and indeed can be a critical success factor when it comes to the winners' stakes), culture can't be depended upon alone to make a company great.

I'm interested in this because we do a lot of work with companies that are looking to change their culture. Typically, to become more collaborative, inclusive and empowering (after all, if you want lasting change, you won't achieve much by sticking to a paternalistic, command-control culture). And they're not changing culture for culture's sake…the end game is to change behaviours which will achieve better performance in line with the strategy. For example, adopting different ways of interacting with customers, driving efficiency or sharing knowledge so that others can adopt best practice in their ways of working.

So if strategy is critical to gaining competitive advantage, with the added value being a strong culture to reinforce it, it makes total sense to begin any culture change with a clear, compelling and credible strategic narrative as the starting point. To change our behaviours we need to know why, what our business's ambition is, what the new world will look like if we do, what it will take to get there and how we can all contribute through different ways of working and changing mindsets. And once the culture starts to change, reinforcing it constantly with stories of success that link directly back to the strategy and vision. Culture and strategy: the two go hand-in-hand.

Market research is critical to businesses who need to clearly define their target audience and constantly optimise their product offering. It can be both qualitative and quantitive, yet by its very nature it tends to be presented in a dry, statistical format. Research is one of those things that brand managers, advertisers and business leaders can't live without, but surely must dread some of the presentations where endless statistics are spouted. It's nobody's fault; it's just that human beings aren't wired to receive and absorb information in this way.

This article, published recently in World Research, talks about how storytelling can enhance 'boring' presentations and bring dry, abstract data to life. Researchers take note: by weaving stories into presentations you can pack an emotional punch that will a) make your presentation more compelling, b) make the data more meaningful c) help people absorb the information better and c) build your own brand. It's a no-brainer.

Have a read.

As the furore about RBS's Stephen Hester's bonus, banks and senior executive pay reaches boiling point, news emerges that trust in CEOs has plummeted, as, according to PR Week, 'members of the public increasingly look to 'people like themselves' for credible information'. And these levels of trust are declining. By nine per cent, year-on-year, it seems.

Edelman's annual Trust Barometer tells us that only 30 per cent of UK respondents found CEOs to be believable spokespeople for their organisation. And let's not forget here the CEO – and his leadership team – of the country: the government. According to Edelman's findings in 17 of the 25 countries surveyed, government is now trusted by less than half to do what is right.

As someone with a background in PR, I know only too well that journalists would far rather talk to a CEO than a PR agency or in-house PR team. CEOs are more likely to answer tricky questions than your average PR; they're more newsworthy, and as a leader of the business a CEO is more likely to give a wider perspective and more significant insights than a more junior spokesperson would be able – or prepared – to provide. This creates a sticky situation. The very people being sought to share information about their company are those whom, apparently, we trust the least. So as employees how can we follow them with commitment? And as customers how can we buy from them with confidence?

The inference of course is that from an organisational point of view, trust lies in the lower echelons of businesses. PLU's. People like us. And if that's the case there has to be far better communication within organisations so that the 'trust carriers' are well informed, well-briefed and treated with respect (let's not forget how social media and the immediacy of sharing news has played havoc with traditional channels of communication, where the fall-out of an ill-placed, insincere or untruthful message can be immense (facebook's membership alone equates to the size of the fifth largest country in the world). Put a foot wrong and millions know about it, instantly.

And it's not just consumers who want a voice…to share their experiences and opinons online with a massive, faceless community. Employees do too. They want to be heard. They want what they say to be valued. They want to see their leaders walking the talk, not just paying lip service. Never more has a culture of collaboration, empowerment and involvement been so important. It's PLU's, see, who are at the sharp end of business; who really know 'what's going on'. And they want their say.

So is the implication to give more power to the people to act as the mouthpiece of the organisation, or to rebuild trust at the top? Well, it's both. The clever CEO will recognise that being a true and authentic role-model to his people, while listening to their views and opinions (and acting on them) is the way forward. And encouraging his leaders and teams to act and behave in the same way.