Your blog post is a fascinating blend of personal creativity and tech innovation, how do you see this approach scaling within a banking environment?
Self-expression happens in specific conditions between slack and tension. Just like a guitar string—too tight, it’s out of tune and might snap. Too loose, it won’t make a sound. Get it just right, and it will sing.
A banking environment (or any other public company of a certain size, for that matter), is a difficult environment to cultivate this condition for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s subject to the pressure of having to compete against others to become the preferred option of our clients, while delivering the expected returns to shareholders. These tensions tighten the string.
Second, the string is built of many different individuals with very different breaking points and resonance frequencies. Getting all of them to sing under the same string tension is very difficult.
Besides, the adaptive nature of these conditions makes it impossible to articulate recipes that one can apply and expect the same results. Fostering innovation and personal creativity becomes, for all we know right now, the art of surfing waves that are not fully in our control but we can aim to perceive, interpret and respond to.
Perhaps one day our understanding of the human condition will allow us to read the patterns of the water and apply well known formulas.
I dread that day.