The new bank focuses on a small number of products, cutting down potential for customer confusion and red tape, placing a high value on customer service The bank’s strategy appears clear and simple. Ellwood has managed to simplify a mature organisation effectively.Ian HarleyChief Executive, Abbey NationalOBVIOUSLY, I am enormously impressed with my own team. But if I had to pick one person who stands out in retail banking, it would be Bill Doulton from Midland. He’s something of an outsider in our industry really – he’s a Canadian He’s fairly new and has very refreshing ideas He is willing to challenge established views in banking. He has tried to inject our banking establishment with something of the interesting things that they are doing over in Canada He is full of energy and enthusiasm and resilience.

He is a tough chap but has humility.John CliffordChief Executive, Allied Irish BankTHERE ARE two banks which we find it difficult to win business from – the Bank of Scotland and Lloyds; for this reason, I have great respect and admiration for both. In the Bank of Scotland’s case, Sir Bruce Patullo overcame the disadvantage of having little or no presence in England in the early 1980s by successfully developing alternative channels – electronic and partnerships – which have allowed it to reach large numbers of customers without the need for branches.However, my vote for the most influential leader in our industry must go to Sir Brian Pitman who has transformed Lloyds bank from “one of the pack” in UK banking to a high-performing business that is admired internationally. He has been the UK’s leading proponent of shareholder value even before it was popular or well understood, and his relentless pursuit of value, and the clarity and simplicity with which he communicates it sets him apart. He has shown great courage and self-belief in resisting the temptation to follow the herd in expanding internationally or into investment banking – both directions have proved very costly for his erstwhile larger competitors. He has equally demonstrated vision and consistency in pursuing his value- based strategy through astute acquisitions and through divestment of non- core businesses at home and abroad. The measure of his success in translating philosophy into reality is best illustrated by his outstanding record of doubling shareholder value every three years for the past 15 years.Ray EntwhistleChief Executive, Adam and Co plcI AM a great admirer of Sir Brian Pitman and the dynamic force he has shown as a banker along with Jeremy Morse, former Chairman of Barclays, and Sir George Mathewson, of the Bank of Scotland. In the 1970s and 1980s Sir Brian was probably one of the most powerful men in banking, and going back 20 years I remember meeting him at a dinner party.

I found it intriguing that a man of his status was prepared to listen to someone of my somewhat lower status. Without a doubt he was the forerunner of the transformation of the banking industry He was totally focused on shareholder value. Interestingly he was ruthless in getting rid of the over-50s from the business because they were too highly paid, in his opinion, and he was the first to recognise this. I find what he’s done slightly heart-rending; he has removed the traditional professional banker and has replaced him or her with a highly trained sales force – but he has been enormously successful He has done what he was paid to do..

The Next Common Sense

By Michael Lissack and Johan Roos (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, pounds 18)
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES, the US regional carrier run by Herb Kelleher, has in recent years become a darling of management writers. It has been praised for its enlightened attitudes towards its staff and, most famously, for thinking “outside the box” – it measures turn-around times against Formula One pit-stop crews, not other airlines.Now, we are told, it is practising “the next common sense”. According to Michael Lissack, an investment banker-turned-strategic adviser, and Johan Roos, professor of strategy and general management at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, this involves stepping back from the details to gain a vantage point on what is really happening.Their starting point is Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. “Many before Alexander had tried and failed, thinking that the knot was complicated and needed to be untied,” they write. Only Alexander saw that a simple action, cutting through the knot with a single stroke of his sword, would move through the complexity to a higher plane, namely ruling Asia. The authors claim that we all face our own Gordian knots, and untying them simply requires “common sense”.The only problem is that the old common sense will not do. That, they say, was about how to deal with the separate and free-standing units of a complicated world.

Now, that complication has been replaced by complexity, where various relationships, alliances and networks create a swirl of interweaving events and situations. The new common sense is about creating coherence.Which is where Southwest Airlines comes in. According to Lissack and Roos, the company embodies coherence by having each employee “think and act like an owner”. They point out how Southwest’s elimination of inflexible work rules and rigid job descriptions allows its people to assume ownership for getting the job done, regardless of whose official responsibility it is.Accordingly, the authors report: “When a flight is running late because of bad weather, it’s not uncommon to see pilots helping customers in wheelchairs board the plane, helping the operations agents take boarding passes or the flight attendants clean up the cabin between flights.”But how do other organisations emulate such attitudes? Lissack and Roos offer “10 guiding principles to provide you with the sense of coherence you need, as well as five practical steps for putting the principles into action”.Some of the principles appear a little vague But many of the others provide powerful insights.