Three Steps to Boost a Bank’s Image

Ed Walsh

With the holiday party season in full swing, bankers across America are faced with a dilemma: Do I tell people what I do for a living?

Bankers today fall just below lawyers and persnickety salespeople in the public’s esteem. Even President Obama pulled out the old pejorative “fat cats” to describe Wall Street types – and remind the public that these portly felines were at the root of the financial crisis we’ve endured.

Bankers aren’t used to this kind of scrutiny. No longer answerable only to shareholders or directors, bank leaders now have to consider how their institutions are being viewed in Washington and in communities across America.

So how can bankers burnish their image at a time like this? Here are three ideas: Read

McKinsey Gets CSR Right

Joshua Gilder

A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly gets it right: authors Tracey Keys et al talk about CSR as a “creative opportunity to fundamentally strengthen [one’s] businesses while contributing to society at the same time.” The usual approaches – i.e. “pet projects” that reflect “the personal interests of individual senior executives or “propaganda” designed to build a company’s reputation – both fail the test of sound CSR, which they define as “the opportunity for significant shared value creation.”  Definitely worth a read.

In a Globalized Economy, It’s Important to Know Your Audience

Allan Golombek

When communicating with people in The Netherlands, one of the easiest ways to get in dutch is to refer to their country as Holland. North and South Holland are just two of the 12 provinces in The Netherlands. Calling the whole country Holland is like referring to the United Kingdom (or Great Britain) as England. (For that matter, it’s like referring to the United States as America when you are speaking to Canadians.)

These are just a couple of small examples of the kind of idiomatic and cultural knowledge it is increasingly important to have, whether writing a speech, an article, a report or any other communications tool aimed at reaching a foreign audience. Read

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