The above title serves as the sub-heading of a recent Economist article titled, “A retiring consultant’s advice on consultants.” The concept of the column is simple: a soon-to-retire consultant offers advice to…
Last Thursday the FDIC released its Quarterly Banking Profile, highlighting Q2 performance. Let’s look at some of the messages concerning past performance. More important let’s consider some future actions that banks…
We all tend to focus on the “shiny new thing.” In banking that could be a new product, an emerging technology (e.g, AI), or a new market segment / geography. But the first priority of every bank…
Few oppose the concept of a diverse workforce that brings with it a different set of life experiences and perspectives. Equality for all should be a concept that we all support and is fundamental to American life.
Bad management. I was surprised to hear the technician ask me the question above (Why are you flatlining?) several times as he conducted the exam. He may have been talking to himself or maybe I had passed over…
This past weekend I made a pilgrimage to Gulf Stream park, the local thoroughbred horse track in Miami. As you enter the track, a vendor of The Daily Racing Form (DRF) offers that day’s paper for $5. In effect, it is the Bible of the sport.
Gentlemanly is a word that has been consigned to the dust-heap by those who view the word as, at a minimum, old-fashioned or, perhaps, offensive. But banks, particularly community banks continue to…
Fail to focus on segmentation as a distinguishing strategy. Among those potential benefits: Enhanced knowledge of specific lending risks, lower costs of business origination, and higher per client returns from relationship-based selling
Banks continue to need to distinguish themselves from competitors. For many customers it’s no longer enough to position yourself as a local bank or to proclaim that you are more customer service oriented than the bank next door.
As a consultant, one of my major goals involves promoting some type of change, that is, my goal is to have the managers and the institutions they work for, operate differently in the future than they have in the past.