I was lucky enough today to attend the launch of New City Agenda's latest report, on Cultural Change in the FCA, PRA and Bank of England – Practising what they preach?
As you can imagine, with a title like that, the report held lots of insight that aligned very strongly with the Walking the Talk methodology and views on what it takes to achieve cultural shift.
There were two key comments that particularly struck me during the course of the session.
The first was a comment from Robert Jenkins, Adjuct Professor at London Business School and former policy maker for the Bank of England, that ‘inaction speaks louder than words’. This strongly resonates with our belief that you get what you tolerate. In the context of the regulators, the risk of turning a blind eye not only creates a culture in their own organisation but creates ripples throughout the industry.
The second was a comment from Andre Spicer, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, suggesting the long term health of the financial services sector relies on a movement from maximising shareholder value to maximising stakeholder value. I was delighted to hear that a recent study conducted by CASS has found a growing movement globally for this shift.
This is music to my ears. I believe that the drive for ever-increasing (and, in my opinion, unsustainable) shareholder growth is having a detrimental impact on the patterns of behaviour we see in organisations, the health of the people inside organisations and the health of our planet. Moving to stakeholder value will allow many organisations to create significantly more sustainable and healthy patterns of behaviours.
A copy of the report can be obtained by clicking here - I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the report in the comments section below.
Read a case study of a client in the UK banking industry here.