In the branch, the Manager is the thing

So I was at another dinner last night. It was full of bankers, of course, but I can't tell you who was there or where it was, because the whole thing was under Chatham House Rules. I shouldn't even be mentioning it, so if you tell anyone, I will have to send someone out to kill you.

But I couldn't resist this tidbit:

You can have a really old branch, with really, really, legacy technology, in an extremely poor location, and it will still be successful if you have a great manager.

So much for all our investments in experience, one-view-of-the-customer, and whizz-bang gadgets.

Its obvious in retrospect. Super star performers can always pull the cat out of the hat, and sometimes they don't even need the hat.

What a pity super-stars are in such short supply.

Comments

[David Hannam]

Hello James

The branch manager....now that takes me back. Having spent 26 years in Banking before going over to the "dark side"......my view is that in the same way that Health and Safety and news reports of bad people lurking round every corner have created a false or heightened sense of fear....the rise of compliance and the penalties for failure have reduced the number of banking superstars in the Retail world. The flexibility and trust that were the way of my generation of banking managers, has been replaced with process and procedures, and a reduced sense of empowerment rather than a greater sense......the opposite of the intention I suspect.

Regards

David
07879 025067

David