Hill...Changing the mindset of two or three people is difficult at the best of times.
In last week's Sunday Business, NCB Group Managing Director, Aubyn Hill addressed the improved performance of NCB since it was acquired by Canadian mutual fund company, AIC. This week he turns his attention to NCB's corporate culture and his leadership style.
IT IS important to recognise that changing an organisation involves a change in people's mindsets. The senior management mix at NCB has changed significantly in the past two years and that change is an important factor in the improved performance of the organisation.
Both the board and management recognise that the culture of NCB has had to change in order to bring us the improved performance that all our stakeholders require. It has always been clear in my mind that culture is not driven by inanimate objects such as desks, computers and buildings but by people as individuals and collectively. We in management had to recognise quickly that if we were going to change the organisational culture at NCB we had to set about changing two things about our people. First, the mindset of our existing staff had to be reoriented if for no other reason than the fact that for approximately five years under the FINSAC regime the bank of necessity had to operate more like a Government entity than a private sector financial services organisation.
The financial condition of the organisation and the prevailing guidelines that FINSAC had used to manage the organisation through the period of the bank's financial difficulties ensured that normal business transactions were curtailed. Given the uncertainty that existed, the service and selling culture took a back seat to more pressing and urgent personal issues.
MINDSET
Changing the mindset of two or three people is difficult at the best of times; changing the mindset of a staff of approximately 2,700 people is difficult, certainly challenging, expensive in terms of training and definitely a longer term exercise. Constant and extensive training and retraining and close management contact with our staff to provide guidance, mentoring and monitoring were two of the methods we adopted to help effect the mindset change.
QUALITY OF SERVICE
The second aspect we had to change about our people was the deployment of a greater number of our staff in selling and service front end jobs where more employees will interact with customers than staying in the back office pushing paper with little direct effect on the improvement of the quality of service our customers receive. In order to give ourselves a decent chance of achieving these selling and service results, management also had to make the decision to change the mix of people (in senior management and among our staff) in order to bring into the group of companies new eyes, new ideas and different knowledge as well as new approaches to achieve higher, often different and more challenging objectives.
An equally important reason why NCB has recorded such significant improvement in its performance is the clear buy-in of a vast majority of our staff members into our higher purpose and clear objectives of the Group. In a sense I am where I started answering this question back to Mike's leadership and the higher purpose and clear policy objectives of the NCB Group board of directors. NCB staff members (as well as the vast majority of Jamaicans) have bought into our higher purpose of "Building a Better Jamaica". Leading from the front, Mike has ensured that these are not mere words by taking practical steps to launch programmes such as the $150 million Jamaican Education Initiative (JEI) fund that commits one per cent of all the sales of the NCB Keycard to funding examination fees for CXC examinations, early childhood education programmes and scholarships to Jamaican tertiary education institutions. For example, last year NCB provided over $14 million to pay for the CXC for all high school students in Jamaica who choose to sit Principles of Accounts and Principles of Business at the CXC level. Earlier this year we announced 200 scholarships that will be extended to students who would have completed their second year at the University of the West Indies, the University of Technology and the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.
EDUCATION
We all know of Mike's commitment to education, his gratitude to former Prime Minister Hugh Lawson Shearer, and to Jamaica for granting him a scholarship to finish his first degree in engineering at McMaster University in Canada. I share that same commitment in that my university education was financed by a scholarship from Times Store which is owned by Alec Durie (and managed then by him). And so I led the staff in championing the JEI when Mike himself was not upfront. Most recently, to commemorate the Most Honourable Hugh Lawson Shearer, I was pleased to respond to a request from Hopeton Dias for a scholarship and when I shared the request with Mike he immediately agreed to grant this exceptional 'one-off' scholarship to this outstanding achiever but needy student to commemorate the passing of Mr. Shearer which occurred just at the time I received Mr. Dias's request.
NCB staff members are completely committed to initiatives such as these and their commitment has served to improve their performance within the organisation. The fact that Mike has committed AIC to re-invest in Jamaica all the dividends earned from NCB shares is another reason why the NCB staff is proud to work with the organisation.
Along with our $50 million commitment to building a community centre and police station at Grants Pen, NCB's investment (the first after the Prime Minister's call) in the Kingston City Centre Improvement Company (KCCIC) which was established by the Prime Minister to restore downtown Kingston, and our $15 million commitment to build a convalescent home for our injured security forces personnel in Black River, St. Elizabeth, have served to strengthened the focus of our staff on the higher purpose to which we are committed that of "Building a Better Jamaica". These practical outworking of our higher corporate policy to "Build a better Jamaica" have become motivating forces for 'buy-in' by our staff which in turn has led to the improved performance of the NCB Group of Companies.
Q. How would you describe your own leadership style?
A. The simple answer is collaborative, decisive and very hands-on when necessary. I think the best evidence of my collaborative style is the morning meetings that I hold with senior management executives of the organisation. For well over a decade I used this approach when I managed institutions overseas. The format I developed was very basic. When I first came up on the idea, we met the 10 to 14 senior executives who ran the organisation or companies that I led with no agenda. I would go around the room and give each person a chance to speak and each could choose any subject from his or her division or from any other division providing the speaker was accurate and if possible, he/she should have discussed the matter with his/her colleague divisional head before taking it to the meeting.
We concentrated on problems because very early I came to realise that managers are hired to solve problems and without problems, uncertainty and challenges there would be no pressing need for managers. In fact, in my management meetings at NCB I often make it clear that without problems for us managers to solve, Mike Lee Chin could quite easily run the Group by remote control. Finding solutions to problems and achieving agreed performance targets make managers necessary.
