Talk to me

The first suggestion for improvement in my poll on Swiss Banks was poll on Customer Delight was quite simple: “I wish they would talk to me.” This from a fairly well to do customer who was hit pretty hard while following the bank’s investment advice.

A colleague of mine is an agile coach at one of the two largest banks. We were talking about the challenges faced by their CIO. In particular, he is rather constrained by the expectations of managers next to and below him in the hierarchy. I suggested the CIO should organize a collaborative work thru to break the ice and get things moving in the company. My colleague’s response: “No can do! I can’t reach him. I can’t even send him an email.”

It seems the CIO of this bank has a spam filter which prevents staff below a certain level from contacting him directly.   

Without communication, there is no movement, no change. Companies are frozen.

Are you managers available to talk to you? Or do they have spam filters preventing contact between themselves and those deemed worthy. If you could say one thing to your top management, what would it be?