Aubyn Hill, managing director of the NCB group. – File
IN THE final part of our series looking at the turnaround of NCB after it was acquired by Canadian mutual fund company AIC, headed by Michael Lee Chin, managing director Aubyn Hill discusses NCB's goals for the future and offers some advice to managers working in corporate Jamaica today.
HOW WOULD you describe your own leadership style?
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, that he/she had discussed the matter with his/her colleague divisional head before taking it to the meeting.
PROBLEMS
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, Mr. Lee Chin could quite easily run the group by remote control. Finding solutions to problems and achieving agreed performance targets make managers necessary.
Given that the collaborative decision-making approach is what I prefer, I instituted a weekly morning meeting as soon as I arrived at NCB. It was surprising to many, but the benefits of knowing our senior management colleagues as persons and sharing their issues began to come through very quickly. In December, 2002, we were going to cut over from our old computer system to the new Finacle core-banking system, and about the same time I received a copy of Rudolph Giuliani's book Leadership, in which he disclosed that for years he ran his offices including that of the office of Mayor, arguably the most difficult city to manage in the world, New York City by meeting with his senior executives and commissioners for between 45 minutes and 1 1/2 hours each business day of the week. Only a very serious crisis or personal emergency would cause him to miss these
meetings.
"Given the complexity of the cut-over of a bank's main core computer system, I decided on the first working day in January 2003 to hold our first daily morning meeting. I detected that there was not a unanimous agreement with that decision and so I asked for comments and objections from the senior management executives that were present. Two female senior executives were quite vociferous in their objections and I opened the floor for discussion and addressed their queries. Both were less than convinced, but I asked each if either had used this management tool before and each said no. At that point, I asked them for their trust and proceeded to meet on a daily basis.
It was one of the best decisions I have made at NCB. The timing of the daily meetings was perfect, in that it coincided with the cut-over to our new core banking system. Through these meetings, all senior managers had the same information every morning at the same time, therefore, we could all go and speak to our colleagues and, especially customers, with one voice.
I was once again convinced that this managerial approach was the right one when a few weeks later, in one of our morning meetings, one of the two executives who voiced strong objections to meeting every morning publicly stated to the rest of our colleagues that it was one of the best things we did at the time. Without these regular early morning meetings, she firmly believed that the various challenges we faced would have caused great dissonance among the senior management and general staff. Similarly, some time later, privately, the other dissenting executive told me that the morning meetings were of great value because, apart from dealing with the challenges of the day, they also helped new senior executives (she was one of the new ones) to get to know, very quickly, the way the company works and each member of the senior management team involved in decision-making in the bank. We now meet about three times per week, more when necessary.
EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT TOOL
The morning meetings act as a very effective and efficient management tool, in that it forces all of us as senior executives to take responsibility for providing solutions to our customers and staff and to be held accountable for these decisions and solutions. Another important benefit of these meetings is to encourage a group of people who as individuals may have had the tendency to be less open and try to protect one's territory and space. By treating each person's set of issues with respect and by making sure personality issues are kept to the barest minimum, I set the tone so that what would normally be seen as criticism is taken as a 'consultant's advice' from a colleague who has essentially the same interest for making NCB a success as the person who has to receive the 'consulting advice' (criticism).
Through the morning meetings my senior executives get to know me better and can assess my character, managerial outlook and we share our expectations of our staff and for the organisation. I also use the first morning meeting after the monthly board meeting to convey decisions and information from the board of directors that I gather at board meetings.
My collaborative style also extends to my colleagues on the board. At my first meeting I had with the board of directors (before I formally took on the post of Group Managing Director) among the matters we discussed was this item:
"In my position I will bring many issues to the board from the management. I would hope the vast majority will be approved. However, there will be those occasions when my vote will be with the minority. I will carry out any policy of the board provided I am given a fair hearing (which includes defending my position), even if a vote goes against me as long as what I am being asked by the board is not illegal (a good law firm can decide on that issue) or immoral (in which case I will decide). And I will carry out those decisions without my colleagues in the senior management or the staff knowing on which side of the issue I voted".
I believe it was important for me to outline my commitment to collaborative decision-making at the board level as well.
COLLABORATIVE STYLE
On being decisive I do not believe one can lead a big and complex organisation without being decisive. My collaborative style ensures that each person that is affected, or could be affected, by an issue is brought into discussion as early as possible and is allowed to participate fully. But that collaborative phase must pass onto making decisions and I will move discussions speedily along to where we can make decisions on a great number of issues as we run the business on a day to day basis.
I believe in taking time to hire good people because if one hires well then the most difficult job in management is taken care of and the second most difficult (separating consistent non-performers from the organisation) is often avoided. Nonetheless, no matter how consistently well one hires good people there are times when the chief executive has to become more involved in a particular division or section of a division with the division head and his or her staff. It may be because that part of the business has to change direction, it occasionally might be because the division isn't measuring up to the standard that the organisational leadership requires or because a new division is being established or a new product or process is being implemented.
I believe in giving experienced, well-trained and accomplished executives a great deal of autonomy and room to achieve their divisional and business results. However, there are times when I'll become very hands-on in any given division based on some of the reasons I've just mentioned. Sometimes it's for no better reason than to bring urgency to an area where I would expect to see more urgency and better and faster results. Always, however, I will work with the division head and not seek to undermine his or her leadership role and position in a particular division.
What would you like to see NCB accomplish in the short to medium term (five to ten years)?
In the short and long term I hope to see NCB possess a very robust loan portfolio that is consistently clean of bad debts and is profitable for the shareholders. Equally important, I would also like to see a larger share of our revenues and profits coming from non-lending off-balance sheet activities and that our main subsidiaries will find new ways to use non-balance sheet growth to increase their revenues and profits. I would like to see NCB in the short term continue to become the kind of leader in the financial services industry where new products and services are created on such a timely basis that most every Jamaican will conduct most or all of his or her financial transactions and business through the NCB Group because of the high level of service and appropriate range of innovative products that we offer.
In the short and medium term we at NCB will be building the NCB Institute for Leadership and Organisation Development (ILOD) to have a continuous class of about 300 or more of our best people being trained to lead the companies within the group. The NCB ILOD will get an annual selection of individuals but unless they perform to clearly identified high standards they will lose their place in the institute and others will be given a chance. Our regular training centre is also being revamped to cater to the everyday training needs of the rest of our staff who constantly will be trained on new products, procedures and selling skills. In time, the NCB ILOD will become the standard by which corporate training is judged in the Caribbean and farther a field. Just as today we look to General Electric and Microsoft's Leadership Institutes. I would hope to help prepare a bench of senior executives from whom the Board can choose my successor if and when it so decides.
In the next three or four years I would hope to see the NCB cost to income ratio at about 45 per cent which would put us in the world class category. I trust NCB will continue to "do well" (continue to be very profitable) so that we can continue to "do good" and in the process "Build a Better Jamaica".
As NCB grows and gets stronger in its home market I would want to see us expand, first, across the Caribbean and fulfil the NCB Vision which states:
"To make NCB, financially and operationally, the strongest and most dominant financial institution in the Caribbean and one that follows international best in class governance practices", and then expand and grow in markets even further afield.
.What Advice Would you Give to Managers of Companies. Large and Small Operating in Jamaica? The first three answers are: train your people, train your people, train your people!
And this answer applies to large and small companies. There is no real alternative.
Once people are trained and guided then managers and supervisors must clearly outline their expectations and performance targets that their staff must meet. Managers need to employ objective criteria and these criteria should be as quantitative as possible so that measurement is relatively easy and subjectivity is reduced to the barest minimum.
Managers and supervisors must constantly monitor and measure the performance and growth, or otherwise, of their employees. All this monitoring and measuring must lead to objective evaluation and then eventually to recognition and reward. Managers and supervisors must make it their duty to openly recognise and reward people who perform in the very good and excellent category. When approving annual bonuses in many of the overseas organisations in which I have worked I have always tried to follow the principle that each executive recommending a bonus for someone must clearly justify how the prospective receiver of that bonus has performed excellently well, beyond the call of duty and better than the vast majority of his or her peers, and should therefore receive the extra payment. Managers and supervisors must always remember that all of us get regular salaries for our daily work; a bonus is really for exceptional performance. Also, every time a person who has not earned a bonus receives one, that undeserved bonus devalues the one that is truly earned by someone else. Like most every other compensation reward, a bonus must be merit driven or it loses most of its meaning.
Another recommendation I make to my fellow managers of companies (and in government service) is to be very involved with the business or activities for which they are responsible. They should know the people involved in the processes of their companies and must be available to give guidance, counsel, exhortation and correction when needed.
Also, managers must lead from the front in building strong service cultures in their businesses. Show and teach their employees to go the extra mile in pleasing customers, strive hard to use service excellence as a differentiating factor and get more Jamaicans to equate service with excellence - rather than with servitude or being servile. Lastly, I would encourage every Jamaican manager (and many are owners) to re-invest whole-heartedly in their businesses. Some week ago I was discussing with the head of the Jamaica Manufacturer Association, Ms. Doreen Frankson - who is also a very successful business woman - the reasons she would list for her success. One of the reasons at the top of the list was here reinvestment strategy over the years. She has re-invested heavily in her business and has watched it grow to greater and greater success. Big Companies like Grace, Kennedy & Company Limited and Lascelles deMercardo and others - will list as a part of their success the heavy reinvestment of profits in their businesses.
Owners and managers of small and large companies must come to appreciate the role of re-investing in their business - and the substantial benefit of this wise approach in forging the sustainable success of their companies. In the end, and in spite of different managerial styles, managers must manage their businesses consistently well and keep them profitable.
