Last night at my initial cocktail party of the pre-Christmas season, I ran into a former colleague who was bemoaning that after 24 years at a highly prominent Pharma company, he had been fired. While never a good thing to happen, his misfortune has been cushioned by a multi-year salary payment, continued health care, and full vesting of stock and options. Not bad.

But he volunteered a comment that was very telling. He said that his job had stopped being fun…in 2005, almost ten years ago. His boss at that time left and was replaced by someone whom he said “never got what we did, never really supported us with top management.” His comments apply to what many bankers are experiencing today.

Many bankers are simply hanging on, not enjoying their jobs but sticking with them because of economic necessity and lack of choice. In some cases but for the economic downturn at the end of the last decade they would already be retired. However, with their investments not as certain or as large as they once were, these bankers stay in their positions, hoping to add another five years or so to their tenure.

Those bankers are unlikely to be risk takers or innovators since they are operating in a survival mode. Given the regulatory climate, the rise of the compliance officer as decision making king, and the willingness of some senior bankers to abdicate responsibility to regulatory and compliance types, risk taking has ground to a halt at many banks. There is little upside for a banker to take a risk, particularly for one hoping to hold into his job for a while longer. Unfortunately, many bankers feel it is better to delay or make no decision about an opportunity versus making the wrong decision. The downside of a bad decision is just too great, often causing internal paralysis.

The decision making process within banks appears to have reached a new stage of complexity and cumbersomeness. More voices need to be heard than ever before, and some of those voices seem only to be able to say “no” or raise somewhat arcane objections. I am not dismissing the need to follow regulations and be viewed as spotless during a bank examination. However, I sometimes observe a “gotya” mentality within banks, whereby, certain functional groups achieve excellence at raising objections without feeling the obligation to offer solutions. That is a mistake and can create a debilitating environment.

I grew up in a very different banking world. Information was relatively scarce when I began my career. Citi, my first employer, prided itself on pushing the rules (OK, in retrospect not a great example). Commercial bankers, being revenue producers and client oriented were mini-gods with support staff very much subservient to them. (Of course having credit and risk staff as subservient can ultimately result in BIG problems.) But, it was fun to be an RM back then.

How times have changed! At many banks risk managers and other staff have ascended in importance as bankers have diminished to become mouse-like, following the trail set for them by detailed sales management processes and highly specific metrics; their degrees of freedom have become very limited. My bet is that for many RMs the fun stopped about five years ago.

What’s the solution? This is where my friend’s comment cited above about senior management support kicks in. I can think of a bank in which one senior leader has been very effective at managing up. In meeting with the top dog he makes sure to touch on the issues that his boss is most interested in even though they may not have much economic impact on the bank. However, his reputation with his own people involves shouting and treating them with disrespect. Contrast him with another banker who suffers fools badly and refuses to sugar coat his view of reality for senior management. He supports his people and they respect him, but he occasionally drives top management crazy. I know which of these two I would have liked to work for. I also know which one senior management is likely to prefer.

In recent years I have been working more with private equity investors and alternative payment and financing players. Their newness seems to protect them from the bureaucratic shackles that envelop banks. And, while more regulations are certain to impact them as the CFPB and other regulators discover them, their mindset is such that few if any will ever give up innovating due to the weight of regulations and compliance as some banks appear to have done.

Commercial banks should be “fun” places to work. They provide a critical service, most banks really do have the best interests of their clients in mind, and most bankers themselves operate with sincerity, honesty, and commitment. In some ways I was a banker during that profession’s heyday. While we will never return to those old times, true innovation and appropriate risk taking can make a comeback. Doing so requires senior management to assert itself to question current requirements, provide necessary support, and refocus bankers upon clients and their emerging needs versus seemingly ever increasing internal hurdles.