Most banks say culture matters. The problem is that many leaders treat culture as if it can be assigned to a committee, delegated to HR, or discussed during a monthly meeting.
It can’t.
The highest-performing banks understand that culture is not a side project. It’s a leadership responsibility. While every employee has a role in protecting and reinforcing the culture, accountability for creating and sustaining it rests squarely with the CEO and executive team.
In this week’s video, discover why culture committees often fail, why good intentions are not enough, and why top-performing organizations rely on leadership-driven systems instead of volunteer-driven initiatives.
Here are the key takeaways:
• Why every employee owns culture—but leadership owns the system
• The costly mistake banks make when they delegate culture to committees
• How top 5% organizations create sustainable culture change that drives performance
Strong cultures don’t happen by accident. They happen when leaders deliberately build systems that reinforce the right behaviors, values, and expectations every day.
Want to discover how top-performing banks engineer cultures that consistently drive growth, deposits, and profitability? Join our free upcoming masterclass, “Culture Is Not a Feeling—It’s a Performance System,” on June 11 at 1:00 PM CT.
Watch now.
Sometimes two different ideas seem to be challenging each other. So you’ve probably heard me say everybody has a role in managing the culture of the organization, and you’ve also heard me say you can’t delegate culture.
Let me allow these distinct distinctions to play out so that you can rest through this concept. Yes, everybody needs to understand that they’re responsible for culture. So when they see somebody who’s doing something that’s not within the culture guidelines, they need to be able to say, “That’s not how we do things here at ABC Bank,” so that everybody understands they are in charge of culture.
That said, culture can’t be delegated. Basically, the CEO and the executive team are one hundred percent responsible for driving the cultural systems within the organization. Make sure they are aligned. Make sure the team members are matching the values and behaviors of the organization.
Make sure to acknowledge those who are doing it. Make sure to talk through it with people who are not doing it to let them know this is how we do things around here.
Delegating this to a culture committee—God forbid. I’ve probably talked to a hundred people now who said they were on a culture committee. And when I asked them, “How’s that going?” they said, “We meet every Tuesday, but not so well,” because culture committees don’t get it done. Cultural systems driven by the executive team and executed, perhaps, by some of these other people could make sense.
Again, always study people who have their information in order. If someone has driven and changed culture within an organization radically and sustainably, then probably just putting them on a committee is not going to get the job done. They mean well, but the world doesn’t go around with a bunch of do-gooders. The world goes around with those who bring mastery and excellence because that’s the only way to be a top five percenter—to understand what gets done by a top five percenter and how we can implement that here with perfection so that we know exactly the result we’re going to get.
Why?
Because we followed the only system proven to work.
Culture asks, “Will your people leap over tall buildings in a single bound to make sure your client is successful in their business or personal financial goals?” “Will you go beyond bank “product” to create Unique Selling Propositions that rock their world and cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of impact for them? And will your people have fun doing it so that your system is sustainable?
Ready to stop wasting your marketing dollars and grow your profits and safety with a predictable model of organic growth of top and bottom lines?
Thousands of bank executives are waking up to 2013 saying, “SALES training! Of course! It’s SALES training we need.”
Yeah, well sometimes the first thing that pops into our heads isn’t a keeper. Sales training is fine, but it’s NOT what you need to solve your problem and create a sustainable solution.
So you’ve decided to acquire another bank. For nearly 25 years, I’ve been giving the same advice about acquisitions: DON’T DO IT. I’ve had good reason to give that...
Growing a bank isn’t some mysterious process that involves tea leaves and oracles. It’s more like building a house or tuning up a car’s engine, with a power tool for every step and a hand tool for every part you need to work on. Effective builders have a “franchise system”—the proven best way to do things that minimizes mistakes and maximizes results per hour spent.
The process begins with one crucial step: Find out what matters to your best customers, then build hundreds of Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) around those components and list them explicitly in your marketing materials.
Most banks focus on what they should do. That’s a good thing. But too few seriously evaluate what they are currently doing that has to stop. Awareness of the common characteristics of low-performing banks can keep you from falling victim to any of these practices before you join the group.
Let’s start with the first four:
Let’s face facts. You know it is true. Banks stink at sales culture.
Most say they’re working on it…but most have been “working on it” for three decades now
For starters, if you want it to be read and followed, it’s one page long. No, not 3 to 5 pages—ONE! And it starts by identifying target niche markets because that’s what the whole plan has to be about.
Of course, it’s commonly known that 50% to 80% of mergers fail to meet expectations—in fact, they’re economically a disaster.