Dear Readers, last week I talked about first impressions at a bank’s front office – the role of staff and their challenges.  Now let us look at the role of management.

Role of Management         

There is a saying that “a good tree is known by its fruit”. It should be noted that before someone takes a decision on which bank with which s/he wants to open an account certain factors are considered. Some of the key factors are convenience (efficient services), safety, and availability of credit opportunities. Hence, the need to address the challenges at the Front Office should be seen by management as crucial and very urgent.

To enable front-line staff to live up to expectations, the following suggestions should be critically examined and considered by management:

1. Stable IT Platform

Now that banks have networked their branches and most of the products/services are IT-based, there is need for a robust and stable IT platform to support the entire operations of a bank. The IT Department is a support unit that serves as the ‘tap-root’ that supplies all the necessary nutrients to various departments and branches of a bank. Consequently, any negative situation or challenge that happens in the IT department brings all activities to a halt and greatly affects customer service at the front-office.

Management should therefore ensure that the IT department is:

• Well-resourced and equipped.
• Manned by the required number of staff, well-trained and motivated; and
• Issues going to that department should be treated with a sense of urgency.
• Periodic evaluation of Service Providers to ensure compliance and their capacity to support the department.
• Effective coordination between IT department, branches and other departments.

2. Staff Training in Products, Services Procedures and Policies

It should be realised that when a bank`s branches are networked, customers no longer consider their dealings with employees as branch staff but staff of the bank. This means that a customer can conduct his banking activities at any branch and not necessarily where the account is domiciled.

Under this circumstance, customers can no longer be directed to go to where the account was opened.  Therefore, every staff is seen as an ambassador of the bank and is expected to have in-depth knowledge of its products, services, procedures and policies in order to provide efficient and timely services to customers.

It would then be unacceptable for any staff to tell a customer that s/he is not working at that branch or department, and therefore cannot do anything to assist the customer. Normally, staff who are not abreast with developments in the bank – or take no interest in what goes on around them apart from their work schedules, give such responses to customers.

It is therefore prudent in an era of stiff competition among banks for management to take a second look at the contents of the bank’s training programmes to ensure that staff have adequate knowledge of the bank’s products, services, procedures and policies.

3. Effective Internal Marketing

Staff’s lack of knowledge regarding products and services introduced by a bank is one of the major factors which contribute to poor customer service at the front-office. The old adage “you cannot give what you don’t have” holds true in this case. Internal marketing is about treating your staff as your customer and communicating clearly, selling the vision of the bank to them. In other words, internal marketing is when all staff are customer-oriented and work together as a team, no matter who their ‘customers’ are. This gives everyone direction.

Internal marketing is as equally important as external marketing, because your internal staff are your business. They are a big part of your brand, and it is important that each and every employee needs to understand the bank’s direction and really believe and live the brand.

Internal marketing offers the following benefits:

• It ensures that staff effectively buy into what the bank wants to achieve and are more effective at what they do.
• Informed staff are usually ‘engaged’ staff – there is a purpose to work for.
• Happy staff equals happy customers.
• They are empowered to make decisions within certain guidelines and begin to feel more respected and valued for their contributions.
• Helps banks to deliver better customer service. Employees feel more motivated and experience higher job satisfaction.
• This feeling leads to a greater sense of belonging to the ‘team’, as well as responsibility and accountability to employers.
• Increased compliance with standards and protocol.
• Staff conflict wanes and people have better dispositions at work.

Who wouldn’t want to work for a bank with a culture like the above? And all it really requires is openness, flexibility and a desire to do things better for better results. It is a mindset.

4. Provision of Operational Manuals

One of the most useful systems to streamline a business is having a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) manual. There are specific measurable outcomes if a bank has an SOP manual in place.

Below are some of the key benefits:

• Reduced learning curve/training time for new employees (i.e. when someone is new on the job, a well-written SOP can be a lifeline to them to be able to learnhow things work).
• Ensured business continuity – When a key staff is on leave or not in the office for some reason, work does not have to stand still. By referring to the SOP, someone else can take over the urgent tasks and do them correctly the first time.
• Standardised processes – The SOP makes it easy to find out what policies and procedures are in place to handle repetitive situations/tasks.
• Delegating tasks becomes a no-brainer – A good SOP will include the organogram of the business, as well as have a short job description and contact details for each staff member. If you need to delegate a certain task, you can see at a glance who will best be able to help you or advise you.
• Ensure that your clients are getting the best possible experience with you – Because there is a standard way of dealing with clients` queries, refunds, follow-ups, etc.; you can make sure that each client is treated fairly and equally, enhancing their interactions with you.

A SOP is a living document, which should be subjected to periodic reviews. It is therefore important to have it in electronic format on a web-based collaborative system so that all staff can have access to the latest version.

5. Fair Distribution of Staff

Management should ensure that the front-office is strengthened with the required number of staff having the requisite knowledge and skills. It is observed that some branches and departments are overstaffed while others are understaffed. As a result of this situation, security personnel are sometimes seen in some banking halls performing the role of the front-line staff. Customers find this unacceptable, and see it as a sign of administrative lapse when there are many cubicles and yet only one or two Tellers are seen serving customers at a time the banking hall is choked – and some staff are seen at the back-office chatting.

Allowing Security personnel to perform the duties of front-desk staff is very unprofessional and risky, because in the first place they don’t have the requisite banking knowledge or training to do so. They also abandon their core duty as security men when performing duties that they have not been mandated to perform. Consequently, any negative results from their activities can cause vicarious liability to the bank (this refers to a situation wherein an employer is held responsible or liable for the actions or omissions of its employee).

6. Provision of Adequate Resources

If there is one certainty in today’s business world, it is that the lack of resources in a job leads to inefficiencies and diminished results. Every job has its own necessary tools, from computers to task-specific items. No matter how skillful an employee may be, s/he will never be able to function at full capacity if a lack of resources is holding him/her back.

Availability of resources encourages employees to work in an effective and disciplined manner, utilising their skills to the best of their ability and employing the techniques that they feel will make the greatest impact. The same problem exists when there is a lack of resources compared to the number of employees who need to use them. Just as traffic slows down where there is a lane closed on the highway, production slows down when there are not enough resources for the number of people who require them.

For this reason, it is clear that any issue regarding lack of resources should be quickly resolved by replacing the item or purchasing it for the first time. A procedure should be implemented in order to keep the Procurement Department on top of any items that need adding to or replacing, to address the issue of lacking resources.

7. Holding Frequent Review Meetings

Business meetings are a necessary part of operating in a professional environment. They allow for time to network among staff, share ideas to emphasise teamwork and inform employees and management alike of new developments within the bank or among clients.

Conclusion

It might seem unfair that people form such a firm assessment of you in such a short time and think that these snap impressions are bound to be faulty. Yet, dozens of studies have shown that first impressions are actually highly accurate in gauging a person’s true personality and abilities. It turns out you can actually judge a book by its cover after all.

Our moods and personalities are also invariably translated into our body language – how we stand, walk, gesticulate and generally hold ourselves say a lot about whom we are and what we are like.

This means that first impressions are not superficial after all, and that changing yours begins not without words, behaviours, but with inner values.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROBERT OWUSU is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Banker (Ghana). A seasoned banker with wide experience in Retail Banking, Internal Auditing, Project Management, Electronic Banking with high specialty in Internet Banking. He is also a Consultant and a Supervisor/Invigilator of CIB examinations.

CONTACT

E-mail address:  [email protected]

Telephones: 0240 821597, 0546 907904

The maxim “the unexamined life is not worth living” in its literary understanding can be considered as one of the wise-sayings which guide the life of man. We can also relate this expression of wisdom to the lives of businesses. As we are in a new year, every business owner would have reviewed their performance for the previous year and made new plans. Banks and other financial institutions are no exception; each of them has their plans and strategies in place, with a budget to support them.

Indeed, the outcomes of their plans will reflect in the financial statements at the end of the year. It also an established practice for banks to publish their financials in each quarter of the year as required by the regulator. As a result, the Board, management and staff of various banks play their defined roles to produce the expected results which have been set out in the strategic plans.

One of the major issues in the scheme of the plans that keeps every employee in check is the expected targets. These targets relate to the total sum of all that a bank expects its employees to achieve at the end of the year in terms of financial figures. To help set a new target, the board and the management review their performance (results of the previous year(s) and that informs them of the plans and strategies for the new year.

It is very important to note that target-setting does not take place in a vacuum; the business environment’s outlook within the framework of economic indicators and the trends of performance for other players in the industry also serve as a benchmark. On the other side of the plans to help navigate the path to the targets is the required amount of resources to be deployed. In that respect, banks invest in systems to improve their processes which help them to realise these goals. Similarly, regular training and development of staff has always been in the plans because they (staff) are the main drivers of the processes toward achieving the financial results. These results, as a matter of fact, have always centred around the core activity of banking. I would name such principal activity as movement of the two hands.

Movement of the two hands

In this movement, one of the hands takes deposits from the public ((individuals, the private sector and government institutions) through liability products which include current accounts, savings accounts, fixed and term deposits. The other hand turns these deposits into loan (assets) products and sells them to other people – including business entities who need them for different purposes – to make its income. Unlike those days when customers themselves largely went to the banks to make deposits, competition in the sector due to the increasing number of banks and non-bank financial institutions has changed the dynamics.

Today’s banker is required to be at the beck and call of the customer. In this regard, the militant word ‘aggression’ – better said ‘aggressive’ – has found its way into the deposit mobilisation strategies which use channels within the promotional mix (personal selling, sales promotion, advertising and public relations).

In recent times, tapping into floats generated by Telcos from mobile money has become a touchpoint for more deposits. I submit that the main reason for all these efforts is to generate enough liquidity to stimulate the lending cycle, which by itself requires efficient management of the relationship between the two hands. In brief, the overall strategy of a bank and others alike is geared toward maintaining a healthy financial performance at the end of each business year, hence giving value to shareholders.

Interestingly, it is the performance of employees which helps to achieve this expectation within the framework of assets and liabilities. Owing to the singular importance that is attached to it, every bank is required to have an ALCO (Assets & Liabilities Committee) for strategic directions. That is all well and good, but nonetheless the catch-phrase in banking circles today is ‘stretch’ targets. This is being used to describe goals in terms of the number of deposits (liabilities) and loans (assets) products among other variables which employees are tasked to sell within a period.

These targets are supposed to be realistic and achievable, and therefore require significant effort to reach them. But how much of a ‘stretch’ will motivate employees to give their best without causing them to become overwhelmed or demoralised has always been the challenge. In truth, the expected figures become a push factor which leads employees into a trap. The trap is in their conscious minds, which pushes them to adopt any means to achieve the ‘stretched’ and unrealistic targets.

Let us consider credit administration as a case in point. In the past, gathering information on loan applicants to decide whether to approve their loans or otherwise was difficult. In fact, inability to establish comprehensive credit history reports on them accounted for multiple loans in their names leading to high non-performing loans in the banking system. Fortunately, in today’s credit administration process, the use of credit reference bureaux has become handy to complement the efforts. One would expect that credit referencing in addition to other analytical tools should help make sound credit decisions aimed at controlling non-performing loans.

Surprisingly, non-performing loans are still increasing and were 21.6% in the last quarter of 2017 as compared to 17.3% at the same period in 2016. The crux of the matter is that the human person who is under pressure to meet such ‘stretched’ targets to secure his job deliberately overlooks the warning signs in the credit propositions and approves those loans for short-term personal benefits.

When you have high non-performing loans in your books, these may not necessarily be due to a difficult business environments or weak monitoring strategies, the inherent trigger in my point of view is that animal called ‘targets’ in the trap, with stretched and unrealistic marks on its neck, which you must feed. The eventual loss of focus in pursuit of targets is that there is gradual shift from healthy credit quality considerations to weak credit quantities which lead to toxic loan books.

At the liability side, this is not the time to open a can of worms when it comes to money laundering. The stark reality is that in a saturated competitive space, every pesewa counts on its way into the vaults – with little or no attention to where it is coming from. In that vein, the inability of some employees to uphold high ethical values in their mobilisation drive to achieve their targets tends to open them up to the vulnerabilities of money laundering.

What is more, we cannot doubt the existence of bank accounts with comprised Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. Really, there are instances when sales personnel and other staff resort to opening phoney accounts in a bid to achieve their targets. Even though we may have been aware of such occurrences in the Ghanaian banking scene but not heard them being reported from officialdom, the case of Wells Fargo Bank in the US is worth citing.

This bank had an internal goal of selling at least eight financial products per a customer in what it dubbed the ‘Gr-eight initiative’. In what turned out to be an albatross scandal around its neck, the bank then admitted that the unrealistic sales targets set its employees was the presser which encouraged them to open fake bank accounts – in addition to cross-selling electronic banking products to customers without their consent. It was revealed that some employees succeeded in using wrong means to hit their sales targets and received bonuses. Consequently, the bank – which has been in existence since 1852 – saw its reputation severely damaged. It paid a heavy fine of US$185million to the federal regulators in 2016.

While I strongly acknowledge the fact that performance targets help employees to keep their eyes on the ball and inspires them to work harder for promotion and other rewards, there are instances when it is misapplied. It turned out to be an irrational and inhumane mechanism for some of the companies to control high wage bills. This trap – I would like to state without any ifs and buts – is that those financial institutions in their desire to increase their profitability within cost limits, resort to unrealistic targets for their employees; so that when they are unable to achieve them, they find their exit routes without any compensation.

Would you be surprised to hear that a young banker was frolicking on his own, when in fact he was driving from Accra to the far end of the countryside to close a deal for the targets? One of the pointers that establishes the unhealthy culture of performance targets is the persistent year-on-year high staff turnover ratios in those companies.

This discussion would be incomplete without considering other aspects of our banking activities which aim at improving workflow towards the targets. Gone are the days where every transaction in the banking hall was manual. Even so, I saw banking officers close early enough and go back home. It was envisaged that the advent of computers and other digital applications would help reduce the number of man-hours spent on laborious tasks to make the banking profession more exciting. This is far from the reality in present times. Bankers spend more hours at the office to meet deadlines clouded in targets. The rising medical bills and cautions from doctors to bankers about stress-related ailments explains it all. Are we expecting to bite off more than we can chew without feeling it? You can answer this better.

Thank You! Thank You for the time. God Bless!

The writer is a Chartered Banker

Email: [email protected]

FIN

The law of nature requires that at the start of every new season, we sow and nurse our efforts so that we can expect a good harvest.

Given that you adequately plan your beginnings, are you in control of the outcomes of the processes that will occur in the middle of your journey? Is it possible to begin well and not realize the beautiful outcome you foresee? A good number of us take the time and pain to select our seeds of dreams and plant them with wisdom.

However, what we fail to do in the middle of the journey is to consistently water our efforts, prune negativity and hope for better days when all is lost. Majority of our focus is cast on how to leap and not how to live. Yet, we forget that it is in living that we are able to see all sides to life and learn from our losses.

It is a given that on any new or old journey, you will encounter challenges, you will fall off the wagon and you will derail. How do you maintain your focus, hold on to the reins while keeping your eyes on the prize?

Experience and expand through your fears

More often than not, the concept of transitioning into new seasons makes us uncomfortable, simply because we are afraid of the unknown.

Fear has the ability to cripple our humanness, our relationship and the work that we do.  The evidence of our fears could be displayed primarily in three forms: loss, powerlessness and disappointment. It is not our inability or incapability that paralyzes our plans, but our fear of veering off the road because of one mistake we are likely to make or simply the fear of change.

At some point in the new season, we would be confronted with fear. When the fears come, we must embrace them by experiencing and accepting them. We have to keep in mind that whatever we have lost that has been translated into disappointment and powerlessness cannot be recovered – the things that exist can move us forward.

At every point in our new season, we must make certain decisions and execute plans. What we must start to do is to be Decisive and Focused. These two angles concentrate on what exists in the present. Focusing on what is in the present makes you see what you have and not what is gone, misplaced or dead.

When you are faced with your fears, channel your energy to create an expansion mode and brace yourself with faith and courage. What is past is gone and what is yet to be is the only thing we have control over. So, take life by its horns and kick off with your best shot.

Power your people

When you are fortunate enough to have people around you, it makes it easier to develop your Tribe. Your Tribe does not focus on your extrinsic value, that is, all the things you have materially and physically. Your Tribe focuses on your intrinsic value and what they can bring to improve what you already have at your table. Your Tribe understands your culture and your ethos. They see and feel your future with you. The numbers in your Tribe are not relevant. So, the key thing to know is they are your Tribe.

Your Tribe may not necessarily have your blood or your DNA, but they are the people around you that can translate what you have into something of value. Remember that a good solution will not always necessarily come from you but your Tribe.

In this new season, begin to look further into building your Tribe. Apart from your Tribe, there are other people you can power around you who are not necessarily your Tribe. With the right influence, they can help you engage your passion for value.

The lessons are learnings

At the beginning of this pivotal stage, repetition may come in handy. The beauty of being actively involved in your own transformational journey is that you will make discoveries.

These discoveries may either come as a surprise or an expectation depending on the little we can tell about our situation. I would like to share some key lessons and learnings as reminders of how we need to channel our mindset for the best output in this season:

1.      Know what your truth is and stick to it.

2.      Give before you think of receiving.

3.      Every man has a price.

4.      Understand everything that makes you, YOU.

5.      Your relevance comes from your skills, your knowledge and how you practically apply it.

6.      Use the experience of your failures as an escape into a dimension of higher learning

7.      Always be humble.

8.      Do not create a culture around you that encourages flattery.

Don’t give up

There is no point in starting a journey you do not intend to complete. It is in completing your race that you will enjoy the fruit thereof. We find ourselves in a place beyond exhaustion and our mind tells us that we will find peace in ending the race abruptly but determination and persistence have never failed a man. It is a battle of the mind to remain strong when your physical strength is at zero. It is okay to pause however it is not okay to Stop!

You are not the only one growing from a pupa into an adult. Allow the pressure and heat to metamorphose you into a rock that will stand the test of time. People will wonder how you learnt how to fly.

You will only be asked this question if you do not give up! Michael Jordan, basketball legend said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Michael Jordan like Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone, the Wright Brothers who invented the airplane and many other legends of our time failed several times. They simply made it because when they failed, they tried again!

Are you ready for TRANSITIONS and TRANSFORMATION?

>>>Dzigbordi K. Dosoo: The H.E.L.P. Coach

Dzigbordi K. Dosoo is a Certified High Performance Coach, Global Speaker, Media Personality and award-winning Entrepreneur.

She is the Founder of Dzigbordi K. Dosoo (DKD) Holdings; the mother company that holds Dzigbordi Inc. & Allure Spa in The City. These brands provide services in Personal Impact & Development, Corporate Consulting, Wellness & Grooming.

Her coaching, seminars and training has helped many organizations and individuals to transform their image and impact, elevate their engagement and establish networks leading to improved and inspired teams, growth and productivity.

Her area of focus is Humanness, Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Power (H.E.L.P).

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  Winston Churchill

When one hears the word ‘risk’, the immediate reaction is “Aw…problems”. This word seems to have a negative perception and is mostly avoided. Seasoned professionals however know that risk does not always have to be negative. Risk can also create opportunities for progress and improvement as well as a competitive edge. In today’s business world, risk poses threats but also provides opportunities to create new competitive advantage and ways to satisfy customers.

The example of Mr. Evans Aidoo, former GM of Fiaseman Rural Bank

Last week, we witnessed the glowing citation and appreciation showed by the Board Chairman of Fiaseman Rural Bank to the outgone General Manager, Mr. Evans Aidoo. I was very excited as I gazed at the beautiful pictures on the back page of the 15^th January edition of BFT, as he received a Rav4 Toyota. I was not surprised at what he had achieved for his bank. It shows proof that the 17^th January 2000 collapse of Ghana Cooperative Bank, which made us part ways as colleagues, was actually a blessing in disguise.

The shock and disappointment which left us in tears was actually not fatal. With time and God’s grace, we bounced back again. The bank risks that we faced and encountered created an opportunity for some of us to have foresight into many projects and advise accordingly.  We did not regard the failure as a fatality since it eventually enabled us try our fate in other places. We met again last year, after 17 years, when I was invited to conduct training for his staff. I say kudos to Evans, as he has left a good legacy and respect in the rural banking arena. A good name is always better than riches.

“Why Conflict Can Actually be a Good Thing” – 4^th Dec 2017 article by Imeyen Ebong, Forbes Contributor

This article is a must-read:

 “A large European bank’s executive committee gathered for a two-day meeting to work on a plan to turn the company around. The stakes were high. The bank was not performing well and was nearing the limits of its permitted capital ratios. A full turnaround would be required, and everything from redefining the business strategy to restructuring the company – and even exiting whole lines of business – was on the table.

Yet instead of quickly jumping into financing options or other operational decisions, the meeting began with an unfamiliar series of exercises with an unusual goal: to help the leaders in the room get to know one another personally.

Many had worked together for years, but prior to this meeting something about the executive team had felt wrong, the CEO said. These people would have to lead the bank’s transformation – and while they seemed to get along, executives complained about a lack of trust and collaboration. Decisions jointly made rarely seemed to be implemented.

In the workshop, the group spent a full day learning basic details about one another for the first time: like the names of their children, where they had gone to school and their family histories. They also engaged in a discussion of personality types and gave open feedback about what they appreciated about each other, and which behaviours they found problematic.

Given the company’s dire outlook, this kind of work might seem beside the point; but after the meeting, members of the group reported a different level of trust. Rather than making assumptions about what team members were thinking, as they once had, they said they were now willing to open up and disagree about some things.

The payoff was a much healthier debate – essential as they mapped out the bank’s transformation.

The turnaround is still in its early days, but already the leadership team members credit a more open environment and willingness to share conflicting ideas with improved results. The worst-case scenarios for the bank are no longer on the table.”

Obstacles – A Part of life

Opportunities hide behind obstacles. Not all obstacles are bad. According to John Mason, an opportunity’s favourite disguise is an obstacle. You will always meet obstacles in the road of your answer because no one is immune to problems. Being a diligent person does not remove you from the world and its problems, rather it positions you to live in it productively and victoriously.

I remember the case of a very diligent banker who overlooked a wrong transaction which nearly caused a heavy financial loss to the bank. What did people say? What! How come? We thought she was a very diligent banker. Was she not the one always hammering the due processes into our heads?” What a world! What a world indeed. That event was taken very seriously by the bank’s management and serious efforts and procedures were implemented to reduce errors in those transactions. Yes, everybody is vulnerable to risk. Your life will be much more productive if you understand that obstacles are a part of life.

Opportunities roll on the wheels of adversity

The door to opportunity rolls on the wheels of adversity. Problems are the price of progress. The obstacles of life are intended to make us better, not bitter. Obstacles are merely a call to strengthen, not quit. Successful people are those who solve the biggest problems. When you encounter obstacles, you will discover things about yourself that you would never have known.

TURNING RISKS INTO OPPORTUNITIES – Improving business Performance

Let us look at a few examples of how we can turn risks into opportunities:

Account Opening Errors: The Window to Fraud

Have you been searching for a customer who has perpetuated some kind of fraud? Whether there was loss to the bank or not, reputational damage can cause customers to shy away from doing business with you. Go back and examine the account-opening documents. Shoddy work, wasn’t it? It is now time to tighten the screws. Find time to check on what kind of customers are coming on board. Your obstacles? The untrained sales and customer service staff. Seize the opportunity to coach and mentor these staff on best practices.

The Computer Frauds Obstacle and Skills Gap

With the advent of e-banking, e-transactions are sometimes perceived to come with zero-errors. We sometimes forget that garbage in, garbage out. The big obstacle here is Fraud, both internal and external. To clear this obstacle, why don’t you design short courses/seminars/focused-group discussions with SMEs and customers who are not very computer-savvy?

Be honest and transparent with them, and educate them in computer skills and fraud prevention. This can be done with minimum cost. The result? Customer Loyalty! Don’t worry about the frauds that you have experienced in the bank. It is a sign that the door to accuracy opens to transactions by your systems, guided by improvement and efficiency in supervision. The risk of losing customers creates opportunities to increase profits.

Risks of Loss of Knowledge

Knowledge is power. How do you feel when some valuable and experienced staff leave the bank? Some of them leave a big vacuum that’s difficult to fill. Institutional knowledge loss leads to loss of productivity and an increase in the risk of adverse events. Without an established and well-documented credit history, the exit of loans and recovery officers creates a challenge; and some loan customers can be difficult to trace.

Institutions need to establish a repository of valuable knowledge for future guidance. This includes documented processes, history of events, causes and lessons learnt. History and archiving should not be looked down on. An institution that forgets history creates opportunities for history to repeat itself!

Words from the grapevine: Social Media Risks also create opportunities

“They say the chief Teller at ABC bank has vanished with GH¢590,000. Don’t mind them, the Manager is always out and hardly checks up on what’s going on in the branch.”

“I heard that they hardly evacuate excess cash to their head office….After all, they were trading with the cash.”

I hear they don’t have any checks and balances in the branches…..They think they can use logic to work. As for me I am closing my account tomorrow.”

How would you feel if you read such messages about your bank? Don’t worry. It is an opportunity to defuse the situation using this same medium of communication to correct and clear your bank’s name. The speed with which complaints travel across the Internet is enough to make service providers sit up and devise error-free services and ways to provide less or near-zero tolerance for errors.

Social media increases reputational risks when service delivery fails. Banks are now becoming more social media-friendly, since a scandal can affect customer loyalty and retention within a short time. In such circumstances, banks can use the same social media platform as an opportunity to appreciate what stakeholders are saying, respond immediately and clarify the impressions created and reduce loss of business and reputational damage.

Seize the Moment!

Doing your best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today. Seize the moment, opportunities are constantly either coming to you or by you. In every day of your life, write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year to unlock every opportunity hidden behind the obstacles you are facing.

Dear bankers, we hope you take risk management to a different level this year and see how obstacles can be turned into opportunities and gold mines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alberta Quarcoopome is a Fellow of the Institute of Bankers, and CEO of ALKAN Business Consult Ltd. She uses her experience and practical case studies, training young bankers in operational risk management, sales, customer service, banking operations and fraud.

CONTACT

Website www.alkanbiz.com

Email: alberta@alkanbiz.com  or [email protected]

Tel: +233-0244333051/+233-0244611343

FIN

Time and time again we hear of, or witness, start-up businesses’ failures; or even worse, huge companies or projects crashing after cruising in ‘business paradise’. Like first-time walking toddlers, it is natural that all entities or initiatives have their fair share of ground-tasting. Just as some valley-of-death scenarios can be overpowering, numerous others can be avoided or at least controlled.

The solution? ‘Strategising’ – knowing and working on where you are now (your current situation), where you want to be, and how you will get there. By simply but painstakingly going through the right processes to decide on the appropriate questions to ask, asking them and implementing the answers to the Whats, Whos, Whys and Whens, companies can when ready move from growing ‘organically’, to being vertically catapulted up and above their peers. If you know where you are going your chances of getting there are higher. Will implementing these move you toward your core goals, and will it be easier said than done? Your guess is as good as mine.

¹ “Know your enemies and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

Apart from the fact that every single business or project has its own space (internal and external), there exists an encapsulating box which contains all that is needed by each and every other business. Each business, each project, each programme, each industry, and even the environment has the right, at different scales, to converge toward every single element available within this capsule.

And mind you, even your internal space is not spared from this web I call the ‘Business War’. Each idea could be another’s thought; employees could be poached; services delivered exclusively well by the next firm; and products made with the same specifications – anyone could discover the blueprint of the next big thing!

Grasping Corporate & Business Strategy

As leaders and team players, having a clear perspective of what strategising is in itself very difficult, multi-part and complex; and we first find an answer in the mere listing of its characteristics here. Secondly, we have evidently never been able to holistically capture the main blueprint for guidance: its definition.

Another point to be raised is why companies in Africa – West Africa or Ghana for that matter – should be operating strictly based on theories that were formulated far away across the world without going through the vital process of tailoring to fit. Does distance and the hidden factors that crop up with it not matter? Finally, but not lastly, is seeing some managers simply and solely relying on outdated processes.

Having past traditional and contemporary scholars in the business world taking steps backward to study historical strategic lessons – of Sun Tsu’s ‘The Art of War’, mechanisms of Alexander the Great and Napoleon – over time only reveals among all the theories that the corporate world is a battlefield; and deciding to be in it means taking a stand and having opposing forces come at you no matter your purpose, point of entry, age, armour or determination.

Great theorists like Michael Porter and Igor Ansoff have been viewed taking strategy from different angles. To each, corporate or business strategy comprises planning for and having well-structured intra- and inter-functional cooperation, competitive advantage, cost-leadership, relevant categorical analysis and assessments, etc.

Others have come up with main issues of strategy being having the ability to provide the best product or service among your ‘real’ competitors, or discover and deliver the exclusive customer needs or desirable products and services, or fight to the ‘death’ for the market share of already existing products/services. But, really, does doing just one or even a multiplicity of any of these get you to your final business-targetted destination?

Evolution of Strategy

The whole story of strategy has been and continues to be that of an evolving style. The world is moving at a very fast pace, and huge deals are now made by a mere click of a button. Almost all constant factors are in this paradigm shift toward being variables. Any firm today – no matter its size, however measurable – that is not constantly reassessing and strengthening its winning strategy or redeveloping and reconstructing its ailing one is in line for relegation or incineration.

Every corporate/business strategy should be a live document; it should be fed when hungry, cleaned when dirty, and be allowed to walk (implemented). But businesses are too fixated, and honestly don’t have that much time to deal with their operational ballyhoo let alone something far-sighted. A point of reflection: “The notion that businesses have to annually rejuvenate plans to remain in business in an ascending manner is just too distracting and expensive”.

Taking a good and hard look into your current situation, and the future – and of course with the right analytical ingredients – gives a good shot of anticipation with little margins of error. It is the pursuit of undertaking these steps that presents the complexity and difficulties of strategising to businesses and institutions.

Strategic Thinking, Decisions and Plans

As organisations typically struggle with issues on whether they ought to be Planning on decisions made or deciding based on plans made, let’s face it: in business, firms and institutions never really completely win, but there are definitely always winners.

Many initiatives and their strategies are ignited by a vision; and while it is the prime factor, businesses have to be sure not to be put in the blind-spot of necessary market realism. Your vision must be a solid foundation on which to build, but must not restrict the flow-level of your business so that it would eventually be prevented from growing. It has to be well-accommodating for the biggest possible breakthrough in future.

For example, remember the all incredible times of Blockbuster movies with your family and loved ones, or the times you just had to have or rely on yahoo? Or perchance the period within which the main means of corporate and private communiqué was by BBM, and all and sundry wanted to know everyone’s PIN.

It was the phone to have in the mid- to late-2000s, and the super ‘BlackBerry’ had in 2007 more than half the market share of phones in the US. Well, on August 29, 1997, Netflix was founded; Google was born on September 4^th 1998; and on the 29^th of June 2007, the iPhone was released. Blockbuster movies, Blackberry, yahoo become prisoners and casualties of the business war, because ¹“the art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; and not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable”.

The Dynamism of Strategy: Changes in its Form and Style

Now, one major factor that keeps entrepreneurs and businesses on their toes at all times is competition. That competitor who exists within your space and is at all times thinking about what to do better and best (with you in mind), just as you do about them, and is probably – apart from thinking how you think and doing what you do – does better on some factor to factor basis like product or service delivery.

The old form of generic strategy might not quite go beyond where there is business ‘self-actualisation’ levels of core competence.  Strategy has over recent years taken on a new meaning in response to the ever-changing business ecosystem. The era when businesses saw their competitors and other businesses as ‘die-hard’ enemies and threats are long gone. Why? Well, because your competitors are external factors – and its within that setting that opportunities also thrive. Why carve out a threat at your disadvantage where there lies a chance to craft an opportunity?

A new form of strategy has evolved, referred to as the “Remix Strategy” by Gomes-Casseres; and even though the remixing of businesses is not a new phenomenon, with early sightings made of Joseph Schumpeter’s works, business strategy is creating tremendous value by being turned outside-in. This approach widens the unit of analysis previously restricted to competitive advantage that came from internal resources and activities of the business or corporation in the case of the traditional approach, to simply the combination of resources which yield value.

That combination competes with other combinations – and while some will gain advantage over others because they incorporate just the right resources, others will gain advantage because they manage their collective resources better than others do. The right combination of resources yields competitive advantage; hence, we see firms partnering with their competitors to gain competitive advantage in specific products and services.

Would the word ‘frenemies’ better describe the current evolving stage of strategy wherein businesses make friends from their ‘enemies’ (competitors)? This might have seemed too farfetched to early strategic thinkers. Consumers are in a constant search for ingenuity, for whatever it is that will make their lives easier to match-up with the growing pace of life and living it. And it is from what this external opportunity presents that brilliant initiatives are recently observed – like the new big kid, the Fintech industry; or the recently observed ‘collabos’ of Insurance Companies and Telcos with the Banks; as well as Restaurants, Manufacturers, shops/retailers with courier services and so on.

And why not, the almighty Mercedes is trying coffee delivery by drone to beat traffic; there are ‘coffee-copters’; Uber is joining forces with NASA for ‘UBERAIR’ – flying taxis that take off vertically by just 2020; and Google, in its quest to avoid the fate of businesses it replaced, is sticking its neck out and doing Moonshots.

Recognise the one common conspicuous factor in all these? Technology! Be sure not to brush technology under the carpet. Your ability to identify the resources of your competitor and that business around the corner which best complements yours to deliver value for the customers in a specific market space may be what will win you the game. With all these, I guess the question that sums it all up is “would you rather hold a full bowl of 100 units or enjoy a half-bowl with millions of units?”

Having an Implementation Plan:

¹ “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.” Strategy without tactics is the unhurried course to success. But tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Going back to the time you called the front desk of that organisation that humid afternoon, when the phone kept ringing with no reply; or the time when the waiter or waitress had no clue of the menu he/she was handing to you; the rude sales girl, or the product that made you feel like you had been duped after using it; or perhaps asking the questions “Why that  failed merger? Why we are not hearing of that company anymore?” Or “Why don’t I see that product on the market anymore?” These could all be outcomes of lacking comprehensive business strategies, or the inability of firms to properly execute their business strategies.

There is a need to ensure that strategy implementation processes are properly developed outward in the ‘SMARTest’ possible ways, and with no allowance for trial and errors, to ease actual implementation. Strategy has traditionally been a higher-level management affair, but its evolution has taught even the think-tanks to be extra mindful of developments that hover around the lower sections.

When Infosys Limited had a vision of getting its staff up to speed with the fast-changing trends of the IT industry in which they operate, it considered innovative measures to establish their internal training programme (of course, constant training is a norm for an IT firm).

However, the firm got its team to visit flight schools and see how professional pilots are taught to deal with split-second, first-hand, fast-changing situations. They stated that “problems have to be solved on the fly”, and of course you can’t drag your feet when you are the 3^rd-largest IT firm in an IT knowledge-hub like India. And when you have huge companies like the Goldman Sachs Group and Philips N.V. hire you for fast executions, “Take-offs are optional but landing is mandatory”.

Finally

Introducing change for good will in itself attract some resistance, even internally. Implementing new or revised strategies starts from the development of that strategy and having to predict the reactions to your actions by all that will be affected in any way. For reasons of culture and the presumed norms of the organisation, those who would benefit while still on the blind-side might even be at the high table championing resistance – and therefore creating another avenue to be considered.

If you don’t know where you are going and don’t have any means of transport that can get you there, you might end up taking the seemingly comfortable walk trail to smell the roses and throw stones at chained dogs that bark at you. Strategy is about being prepared for the moment that need not be missed for an action to be taken without vital time being lost through hesitation. ¹“…defeated warriors go to war and then seek to win”

 ¹Sun-tzu, & Griffith, S. B. (1964). The art of war. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Bennymaud Joeche is a Senior Consultant at Sync Consult a boutique professional services firm operating from Accra, Ghana. Tel: +233 302 783523. Email: [email protected]>