Financial service sector

Before you can understand the industry, you must first separate myth from reality.

Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few can agree on how to do it. Most experts are obsessed with "soft" issues, such as culture and motivation,...

The case for building “intelligent experience engines”

During economic slowdowns, consulting, law, and accounting firms often start offering services and taking on clients they really shouldn't, just to keep...

Before they have received even a day of training, the best salespeople already have two seemingly incompatible qualities in abundance: empathy with customers and a need to overcome their hesitation to buy.

Sales departments tend to believe that marketers are out of touch with what's really going on in the marketplace. Marketing people, in turn, believe the...

Companies profess devotion to shareholder value but rarely follow the practices that maximize it. What will it take to make your company a level 10 value creator?

A look inside the ongoing barriers women face in law, health care, faith-based nonprofits, and higher education.

The top team’s annual strategic off-site differs from all other meetings in its potential impact on the company. That’s why it should be designed and managed differently.

America’s banking crisis presents choices both perilous and promising. Perilous, because the failure to act intelligently will lead to the most serious economic collapse since the Great Depression. As much as 25% of the U.S. banking system—representing assets of more than $750 billion—has begun to post such massive loan losses that it must focus on […]

Companies aggressively research what customers want. Yet most vendors just don't understand what customers expect of their salespeople.

There's a lot that school districts can do.

Through an innovative insurance policy, Honeywell has taken a first step toward making integrated risk management a reality.

As the chairman of a publicly traded multinational corporation, it's difficult to contemplate replacing a charismatic, visionary CEO who tripled your...

They have the clout and the long-term view.

Fifteen minutes south of Chicago’s Loop, the inner-city neighborhood of South Shore has an old-fashioned bank with a radical twist. For those of us at South Shore Bank, banking means knowing the borrower, the neighborhood, property values, and the economic environment. It means tough credit standards, cautious qualification of borrowers, and close monitoring of the […]

When researchers from Cass Business School compared data on board diversity with fines levied for misconduct, they found that banks with more female directors...

Japan today sits on the largest cache of wealth ever assembled. It has the power to move markets anywhere in the world. Consider that. The Tokyo Stock Exchange has now surpassed New York to become the world’s largest on the basis of market capitalization. Osaka has bumped London to fourth place. Of the world’s ten […]

It’s a tough time to be a middleman.

The power of lean operations has transformed manufacturing. Jefferson Pilot Financial proves that service companies can use the same principles to push their performance to new heights.