Organisational Leadership

Background

In this essay, I will introduce a real life case of a leader in the organization and about how a he leads a series of internal campaigns to transform the corporate culture. His leadership philosophy will be discussed. The bank is a regional bank incorporated in Singapore, in recent years, it expended its network through merging and acquiring several banks from different locations from Hong Kong, India, Indonesia and Taiwan. Since staffs came from different background with different culture, the challenge of the CEO of the bank is to direct the bank to align with the vision and mission of the head quarter in Singapore. He also needs to lead the change to fit the current culture in the dynamic market.

The market position of this bank is to provide a best in class financial services for affluent market. Unlike other banks, whether they are going for local (provide services in single country or cities) or going global (providing services around the world), this bank targets to the emerging markets in Southeast Asia. With advance in communication technology, they provided more services by electronic channels, at the same time they expend by leverage on branches network acquired from different Asian countries.

In Hong Kong, banking is an industry with fierce competition , banks look for best employees, while employees strive to get better return. Majority of staffs of the bank are either new staff or acquired from the merged banks. Most of the employees have been working in same company or same industry for long period of time, especially for operational staffers, they are reluctant to changes. They have been working in the same position for too long and not willing to change, even if the changes are good for them. In this essay, we’ll discuss the corporate culture in that bank, and how the CEO tried to change it through implementing the corporate value and organizational management policies. I’ll also highlight some programs introduced by the CEO to improve the communication and engagement within the bank.

The problems

Employees are reluctant to change. In the dynamic market, changes of internal and external are always happening. Employees are facing changes from external, such as economic condition, change of government regulations and market trends. Internal changes such as organizational structure, operating model and policies and procedures. Since requirement from regulatory bodies are getting tighter, while employees are get used the way of their work, there are many clumsy policies and procedure to deter change.

Another big issue is the culture differences between the Singapore headquarter and satellite offices. The elitist management style of Singapore headquarter, they always tried to impose stricter control. Middle management in Hong Kong needs to report to regional office for regular tasks. They also need