Linking Marketing-Human Resources and Operations
“People are not made of numbers. They are made of hopes and dreams, passions and partnerships, talent and tenacity.”
Credit Suisse advertisement
Years ago, like all fresh graduates, I looked for a job with hope and yes also with passion. I remember one interview in particular at the branch of Bank of America in Antwerp, Belgium. The manager told me a story, the unique story of the bank, which was at the basis of its very own “corporate culture”. The original name of the bank was Bank of Italy!
The bank was founded at the beginning of last century by an Italian immigrant, Amadeo Peter Giannini, in San Francisco in 1904. The story goes that, whilst the city was severely destroyed in 1906 due to the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, Mr. Giannini kept his bank open with a desk at Washington street wharf with a “Bank of Italy” sign over it. He advised his colleagues, who wanted to keep the banks closed in the destroyed city, to: “beg, borrow or steal a desk and follow my example in the street”.
At that time branch banking, in the United States, was a novelty and it took years of legal battles to allow for state wide branch banking. Bank of Italy acquired many small local banks and
gradually built a state wide retail bank, later renamed Bank of America, often referred to as BoA, which evolved into a powerful organisation with its most glamorous days at the very beginning of the eighties.
Mr. Giannini wanted a bank for “the little fellow” rather than the “big fellow” who, according to him, was much less loyal to an organisation. A major feature of his management style was that he believed in openness and the sharing of his values. The bank was known for the open door policy. The managers kept their office door open as a sign of their availability to all, employees and customers alike, irrespective of the seize of their bank accounts. When a new bank was acquired, Mr. Giannini had the building restructured so that officers
of the bank were working on an open platform in order to assure fast circulation of information and accessibility.
Gradually the organisation evolved into a very distinctive organisation in comparison with the peer banks at that time such as, for instance, Crocker National Bank or Wells Fargo.
I had the pleasure to join the bank after graduation. Working for Bank of America was unique. The culture was one of winning. Most of its staff shared the feeling that it was possible to move from a humble level to the executive level, from a national base to an international base. Exposure, learning, job rotation were all in the cards. It was up to the staff, it was the staff’s culture, at least in the international division of the bank. Not only was it a unique experience, it was a unique learning ground!
The bank has evolved since then and has gone through rough waters, mainly because of a tremendous unmatched position in its mortgage portfolio in the mid-eighties combined with substantial loan losses. The present BoA is a very different bank now. Its headquarters are presently in North Carolina. The bank is still amongst the largest financial institutions in
the United States.
When there were training meetings at BoA, we were not talking about the bank but about “our bank”. There was osmosis between the bank’s future and our future, at least so
we felt. In any event, there was a strong culture! This feeling for young graduates of being part of something big and that excellence was the answer to the profession, has never left us and has become for quite a number of us, not only a professional culture but a personal attitude. Indeed, there was room for people with passion, talent and tenacity.
I have selected the opening sentence of this introduction to “Corporate culture” from a recent advertisement from Credit Suisse. Today, this is quite an unusual statement for a bank. It is
not a coincidence that this advertisement was launched shortly after the last crisis. It indicates recognition of the need of values, such as the ones shared by Mr A.P. Giannini. It is a sort of “back to the basics”, back to the original culture of banking, or at least what it supposed to be.
But is the sentence above just a statement or does it reflect a corporate culture? Are these nice words or are they factual? Indeed, quite a few wizardly structured products seemed to indicate that the key to banking, certainly investment banking, was making money by all means. The idea that a transaction should be a “win-win” situation seemed to have vanished in quite a few organisations through complicated mathematical formulas. The culture, at least, so it appeared to outsiders of the banking system in general became more like: “the winner takes it all”.
Not all banks were in the situation of making profits at all cost and not all needed to revise their marketing campaign
and related message. Not all needed a massive government bailout. Not all institutions had a culture like that. Why the difference? The simple answer is a matter of risk taking or lack of willingness to indulge into complex transactions where the final purpose was unclear? Maybe the answer is a matter of policy but in all likelihood the matter is an issue of corporate culture!
But, what is corporate culture? The purpose of this book is to underline key issues related to corporate culture in a simple manner. Why have banks, which basically sell the same products, such different cultures? What determines that a customer feels more at home with one bank rather than another one?
The idea of this book generated during quite a number of discussions with the Serbian bank association, with whom we have published four books, the latest one being “What is a bank – Linking key banking functions?”
The reader may remember a comment often made in my previous books – be it in “Marketing of financial services” or the “Ethics, corporate values and the prevention of money laundering” or “Bank Branch Management” – that people are the make or break factor of any organisation. I do often underline that the difference between one bank and another bank lies in people and systems, not so much in products, nor in product attributes.
People…look at the advertising of major airline companies! We hardly see them claiming they have the best planes or the best pilots or even that they usually take off and land on time.
We see them advertising with smiles of members of staff. But what brings the best out of people?
Why are people in one organisation more committed than in another one? Why would people be committed, especially when performing repetitive tasks, which is the case in banking! How and why would they get over boredom and switch into a higher gear in order to search for excellence? More importantly how do customers react to the difference in culture? Moreover, how do they feel there is a difference?
The structure of the book is not random. After a lot of thought, and probably based on my specialisation on marketing, I selected after a first brief chapter on banking, a first major issue: “Corporate image, branding and communication”. The reason for this is the broken image of major institutions. The massive intervention of Governments, as a result of the sub-prime crises, has long lasting effects in the minds of the customers. The saying that “the most important asset of a financial organisation is its reputation” was undoubtedly confirmed. A system
break-down could only be avoided thanks to a historical coordinated intervention, for the first time ever, by three major central banks, i.e. the US Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.
Other chapters followed from this starting point and are admittedly less structured than a classical book would be. Hopefully this originality will be appreciated especially
by the employees motivated to pave the way forward. The case studies in the book are the result of a search done by Miss Dragana Markovic from the Serbian Bank Academy, for her BA thesis, on a few selected organisations in Luxembourg, where I live. The idea behind this is that it is interesting to have a student looking at corporate culture in an unfamiliar environment. The students of Hoa Sen Universtity in HCM City in Vietnam equally contributed in the elaboration of a meaningful questionnaire during the course on market research.
The book is intended for all members of staff, irrespective of the level of responsibility, interested in their own future, their own culture and how they blend into the corporate culture. It might be the starting point for further specialisation in this field. Indeed, I consider that we should motivate employees to the point that they consider that their careers are in their own hands and that the employers are the helping hand! It should be a win-win situation.
Roger Claessens, Dragana Markovich, Remich & Belgrade,
August 2011