Sometimes, one is overtaken by events. This is what happened to me, producing this long embarrassed silence on my part. Many of you have asked me: did you go and talk to the branch manager at Bank of America (see previous blog entry). The answer is: I did. So what came out of that, you may ask? The answer is: great puzzlement on my part, hence this embarrassed silence for close to a month.
Let me explain. The meeting was confusing to me. The Concord, MA branch manager is a nice lady, but she never understood what I wanted from her. In the first twenty minutes of our conversation, she thought I was a customer who was mad at her for not having been in touch. She thought I was there to complain about poor service and about the fact that nobody had reached out to me in spite of the fact that I had both a personal and a business account at her branch. Yes, there was a bit of truth to that, but this wasn’t my focus. I meant to convey I’m a business activist who wanted her to make more money for the branch by connecting more deeply with the Concord community, and I wanted to offer to help her build that community of people. Blank stares and nervous hands told me she had no idea what I was talking about (admittedly my story could have been better articulated!).
The next twenty minutes, she decided I wanted some money for my favorite cause. She talked about some of the things the bank already does, explained to me they can only support a limited number of local charities. Her quizzical look showed she wanted me to blurt out what my pet nonprofit was, so that she could explain why it fitted or did not fit with the program. Since I was interested in defining a broader community agenda with her, I had no specific request for her, except to engage a broad community of people who would construct that community agenda with her and her staff. I could see she was getting increasingly nervous.
The last twenty minutes, she decided I was a potential customer looking to move some money to her branch and I was asking these awkward questions about how the bank works from the inside. I was just curious to know what sort of people worked at the branch, knowing how connected the experience of employees is with the experience of the people they serve. As an example, I did make some noise that I was disgruntled with the private banking service I am currently using, and she thought my attempt at understanding what made her and her branch people tick was an underhanded way of finding out the service Bank of America could provide me. When your focus is on transactions, it’s not easy to understand how human experiences of employees and customers can be connected differently.
There was no visible warmth in the conversation, except at two moments. The lady I met is clearly a people manager, and she did get a twinkle in her eye when she started describing the team in the branch. For a brief moment there, we were connecting on a personal level. She clearly cares about the people she manages, and my guess is that she must be good at it. The other more personal moment was when she realized I travel all over the world talking about this co-creation stuff (I gave her a copy of a book and an article I had written), and discovered that she would like to travel internationally. I told her that if we role-modeled this community bank co-creation stuff in Concord, MA, I would take her with me on the lecture circuit and we would show the world how it’s done. She smiled …
Of course, one of the main sources of my hesitation on what to do next is that my attempt at enlisting the Concord branch manager in co-creation is totally upstaged by the recent Occupy Wall Street movement over the last month. My ambition to weave new connections between a financial services provider and a local community looks quite lame compared to angry demonstrators targeting banks downtown Boston, New York and lots of big cities around the world. In other words, I may be trying to rearrange the proverbial chairs on the Titanic when huge cracks in the hull are already visible and the water has started gushing inside. I heard Michael Moore say on the Piers Morgan show on CNN that people should go occupy their local Bank of America branch, and his bully pulpit is a lot bigger than mine. Bank of America has also reacted badly to customers wanting to shut down their accounts in protest (link). It may simply be too late to do anything for the Concord branch manager and the CEO of Bank of America…
