Bankers learning to communicate

The first rule of communications is to gain understanding. If your audience does not understand what you are saying, no amount of effort will convince them that your way is the right way or your product is the right product. Thus emerged the simple dictum of “Keep it simple, stupid,” the KISS theory. Based on this, the banking sector has a real communications problem.

Most people don’t really understand how the banking system works or what the people who are its cogs and gears actually do. Americans, and others, only know that it is broken, and the jerks who broke it are getting paid a fortune from taxpayer funds. 

Thus, the appearance of the latest let-me-tell-you-what-I-think t-shirt: “I Hate Investment Banking.” Not surprisingly The Times reports that with its “catastrophic loss of cultural cache,” the financial industry’s new role is that of “national pariah.” And justifiably so.

After all, the folks who were paid those huge sums of money, were supposed to be the guards at the gate; they were supposed to be keeping away the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Instead, they were among the wolves and were, indeed, themselves wolves. Consequently, no one was at the gate and the wolves ravaged the system.

The enabler for Rule One is candor. And candor is essential in gaining understanding in any situation, crisis or otherwise. You have to deal with the true situation, not the situation the way you’d like it to be. 

However, at this point, it appears to us that the failed financial industry has yet to admit they were, and remain, the failed gate-keepers. They lack candor. Until this level of realization develops, no amount of effort at communications can achieve the goal of Rule One, understanding, among the bankers’ constituencies.