To financial hell in a hand-cart

Like many, I have been viewing the virtual meltdown of much of the world's banking system with a strange sense, almost of awe, at the complete mess, the 'perfect storm' of apparent ineptitude and venality, that so many have displayed at all levels of the governmental, regulatory and operational elements of the international banking system.

As I watch in horror as the almost unmanaged, or at least unmitigated, risks occur with frightening pace and certainty, I ask myself did any of these institutions have even the most rudimentary of risk registers?

Now, I am agnostic at best when having to deal with the burgeoning risk universe that so many of our change efforts collide with at times. Yet, I do have a very strong sense that the pro-active identification and management of risk in so many of our previously trusted financial institutions was almost completely lacking or, even worse, ignored in the headlong pursuit of 'easy' profit. What other explanation can there be for part of what we are experiencing? And indeed we are experiencing this - not observing it, and will do for years to come.

Setting aside the admittedly at times arcane issue of risk, and whilst people's pensions and investments dissolve by the minute (mine included), I find I am drawn to the writings of those who see the world through different eyes. Those with appreciative insights to offer in these worrying and uncertain times, as new financial paradigms have to be fashioned in days rather than months or years.

Dan Saint and Jackie Stavros wrote several years ago in their short paper, Strategic Planning and Sustainability: Socially Constructing a New Corporate Purpose, the following:

"Imagine a sustainable world where humanity meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Business provides the goods and services needed by consumers in a way beneficial to all stakeholders. The world's vast wealth is equitably distributed to all people. We on Earth are working towards that future today."

Indeed we are, or some of us at least. For change to happen, David Cooperrider talks of "change at the scale of the whole". Well, perhaps as the 'experts' refashion our financial systems they might consider getting the 'whole system in the room' and engage in some powerful, face-to-face conversations with those who have been let down and who would share a very different guiding image of a future. For the future we need people who, as Peter Drucker put it, "transform not perform."