Can legislation change the culture of banking, or any organisation?

The Banking Reform bill could be passed before Christmas.This will give the Regulator, the FCA, powers to hold the most senior bankers personally responsible for failure of the banks. A key question has to be will this be a sufficient incentive to change behaviours/conduct ( the core of any culture) for the better?

 A  key part of culture is the taken-for-granted beliefs of people both inside and outside the organisation. Do senior managers really believe that the FCA has the clout and the motivation to call individuals to account? Are there "stories" of people being taken to account so that the threat seems real and meaningful?

 If we look at Gerry Johnson's and Kevan Scholes cultural model, the cultural web, as a way of understanding culture, then the task ahead is not easy. The model looks at 6 key factors of culture. The so-called "hard" (but easier to implement) factors of organisational structures, control systems and power structures and the "soft" factors of stories, routines and rituals, and symbols which underpin the culture. These latter factors are much harder to change and take a lot of time.

2013 has been another horrendous year for banking's reputation. In 2014 it would be good to hear positive stories of how change is genuinely being implemented so that customers are no longer taken for granted and do actually deserve better outcomes simply because it is the right thing to do, generates a more sustainable future and provides competitive advantage rather than being a way of preserving bankers' personal wealth and status.

How to avoid being "hodged", develop your own hodges.

Margaret Hodge chairs the Public Accounts Select Committee and she does a pretty fine job in holding leaders to account.

Apparently the leaders who have to face the Select Committee are now employing expensive media training consultants to help them to prepare answers to the searching questions members of the PAC may ask them. It looks like it is becoming a burgeoning industry.

When Margaret Hodge was asked about this in a BBC Radio 4 interview she simply stated that all that was required was "honesty, openness and directness" in the answers provided to the questions. The going only got tough when there was "obfuscation, waffling and dishonesty" i.e. evading being accountability.

The key to avoiding this kind of grilling or of being "hodged" is to promote transparency, honesty and integrity in both personal and organisational behaviours. Organisations could start to engender and encourage a challenging internal culture, developing their own "hodge" skills where asking and answering difficult questions and airing differences of opinion are encouraged before the impact of key decisions hit the market place. Margaret Hodge might then eventually be out of a job, saving even more public money, and we might have a band more confident business sector.