The financial services industry and banking in particular has an internal culture struggle on its hands. Following the banking crisis and the slow recovery, organisations are under pressure to show that they have changed culturally, and can demonstrate openness and accountability at every level.

Add to this the recent news that UK financial regulation is to be overhauled, and we have a growing sense of urgency for cultural and behavioural change in Britain’s banks – many of which are already undergoing programmes and projects to improve their processes.

Overall, we think some of the business change and programme management functions in the UK’s banks are feeling the pressure to adapt and innovate.

 

Frank under pressure?

The culture in banking is notoriously competitive. It’s perceived as an environment where long hours are expected, where saying ‘no’ is a sign of weakness, and where ‘stressed’ is a natural way to function. In this context, open and honest exchanges may not be the norm.

In programmes of business change this brings its own problems. Project reporting will strive to sound positive and in doing so, may not accurately reflect the true state of the work. Because in a competitive environment, who wants to be associated with a faltering project?

 

A chance to manage change better

Project managers might tend towards ‘presenting’ the picture their stakeholders want to see, rather than a difficult reality. This is a missed opportunity to introduce transparency, manage change better and control projects.

Openness and a culture of accurate reporting means that the business knows where attention is required, where to draw focus, garner support and prompt the correct activity to bring the project back to a preferred status.

 

Challenges

Added to that is delivery pressure – a rapid pace of change creates an atmosphere of general busyness, where people aren’t necessarily busy on the right things. So what are some of the problems facing those involved in business change in banking and how do we begin to address them?

• Project management skills might be high. However, ‘change management’ skills and competences are not always prevalent in terms of engaging at the right level, driving business change and benefit realisation.

Do your people know what’s imperative when managing change? Here are the main questions to ask:

Aligning the strategy with all areas across the business, finding and telling the story of the business change and the conveying the importance of risk management culture and behaviours are often areas that need strengthening.

Planning should start at the beginning with the right people; the stakeholders. There needs to be a clear line of sight created for everyone – the ‘why’ for the change must be evident. The story of the business change won’t work unless it’s  compelling, evidenced and defendable – a value proposition.

Many employees will be positive and receptive to an anticipated change to the ‘practice’ model – seeing this as enabler to better career planning and development, better pastoral care or line management, clearer focus and work life balance.

Where there is support for change, employees may actually want to be more targeted and be regarded as influencers who can and do make a difference.  We need to enable employees to become business partners, engaged early as trusted advisors and establish what the barriers to this today are.

So, where are you now?  Do you have the boardroom mandate for change?  If so, are you prepared as an organisation and ‘ready’?  Once you know where you are, and importantly where gaps exist, you can build an action plan to address the gaps and optimise the business for change to stick.

Assessing where an organisation is now, means we can begin to really understand the current culture, and what is possible.

 

Further reading:

Three things you need to do to engage employees with change

Talking about making business change stick with The Telegraph

Managing difficult business change in banking