Radical change at the Bank of England

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yesterday appointed Mark Carey as the new governor of the Bank of England. He was previously the governor the Canadian central bank, but also worked in the private sector for Goldman Sachs.  So he is a man with a serious background in the banking but also an outsider.  He studied economics at Oxford and spent a decade in London, so he has some insight into our ways.  He comes with a relatively unbesmirched record as Canada was least affected by the world banking crisis.  So he represents a new broom, and a fresh set of eyes.  He is someone with no vested interest in the past and only interested in setting Britain’s financial house in order.

Sometimes it is necessary to just cleanse the Augean stable, and whilst one can never truly start over, having no past mistakes to defend can make it much easier to do the right thing.  In my experience, the wisdom often exists in a company to know what needs doing, what is more often lacking is the political will to take that path.

So if you are not in a position to bring a world class outsider to run your business perhaps you should start with a blank sheet of paper, forget all the reasons why you can’t do things and ask some fundamental questions:-

1. What is it we are trying to achieve?
2. What are key drivers?
3. How do we measure success?
4. What is required to make this equation balance?
5.      … Then ask “Are we willing to do what it takes?”

Tags: bank of england, banking, Change, economics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2012 at 13:09 and is filed under Business Change, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.