Banking

Business and economics are at an inflection point. Hard trends like technology, globalization, and access to information have continued to evolve at such an accelerating rate that decisions about increasingly complex scenarios are being made faster than ever.

My HORNE Cyber Solutions colleagues and I just spent two wonderful days at the annual Alabama Banker’s Association (ABA) Bank Operations and Management Summit. Talks and discussions during the event centered on three overlying themes. We have discussed some of them previously in this blog, and all are pertinent to your banking organization.  

On the front page of American Banker, there’s a July 14 article titled “Is It Almost Time to Put Core Processing in the Cloud?” If there was any doubt about the fact that technology is a one-directional, hard trend banks absolutely must be integrating into strategy, articles like this are putting it to rest. 

In Part One of our look at bank board leadership, we examined the merits and criticisms of the “Jeopardy Jerk,” Arthur Chu. He bucked the traditional game show system by board hopping with no apparent process logic. Chu deployed a perfectly allowable and extremely effective technique, yet it was criticized as a system hack because it was different, and (more to the point) other players were nearly defenseless against the strategy. 

As we think about the banking industry, “hacking the system” is a very relevant leadership strategy. 

Have you heard of Arthur Chu? Perhaps you know him better by his nickname, The Jeopardy Jerk. Debating Chu as hero or villain is currently trending on news outlets and social media. He “hacked” the Jeopardy! game show with a unique strategy of bouncing from category to category, using no apparent process logic. It keeps his opponents a step behind and uncovers coveted Daily Doubles.