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BANKING/FINANCE
What's the Game, Anyway?

Until just a few years ago, paths to power in banking were virtual freeways. You had only to please superiors, enjoy an upper middle-class lifestyle, and wait for the bosses to move up or out. 
In the late 1970s, banks heavily recruited MBAs from the nation's top graduate business schools. Theirs was a love match, but the honeymoon is over. The economy has made old rules obsolete. Commercial lending isn't as profitable as it once was, and being "well connected" doesn't help much anymore. Power-building is. new ball game.
To survive, banking needs brainstormers with new ideas for financial instruments to mass market. Therefore, bankers are expected to have both technical competence and creative ability. Those who had looked upon banking as a lush preserve in which to make friends over long lunches in the executive dining room had better look again. 
People in operations are rising into positions of power because there is money to be made in operations; it's no longer exclusively a cost center. Small banks peddle the software developed by their systems people. As they solve customers' problems, small internal consulting groups can lure business from accounting-firm management-consulting groups.

Not every bank has felt the tremors. Many will continue to recruit MBAs in finance and marketing. But the smarter ones will look for engineers and latent entrepreneurs who can rise spectacularly as they move into the highest profit-making areas of banking. People whose chief skills are relationships and financial analysis will be handmaidens to the new risk takers. 

If you have no technical expertise, your next best skills should be analytical. COmputer illiterates will have a hard time finding any facet of banking in which to shine. The boss who can't program in BASIC, access computer data, or use the electronic mail machine will be at the mercy of those who can. 

Stock brokerage firms are also playing a different game. Well-connected brokers used to make large commissions, and those with the most transactions were powerful within those firms. Some still are. But many firms have developed new financial instruments, such as money-market accounts, which haven't necessarily helped brokers boost revenue or income. 

The winners in brokerage houses will be those who invent or modify financial instruments that can be marketed to the public at large. Again, relationships will be important, but not nearly so much as they were in the past. How do you go about establishing relationships with 10 or 20 million people? 

Power levers at insurance companies will be operated by the innovators who figure out new approaches to growth segments of the market or new instruments for them to buy. Right now, the salesperson with the biggest numbers still reigns. 

POWER BASE 
Profitable ideas; technical analysis, building and holding relationships. 

NEED FOR SPONSOR
Helpful but not essential. If your ideas make money, it's obvious. Self-motivation is more important. However, in smaller communities, connections still equal money. 

TOLERANCE FOR INDIVIDUALITY
Growing. AS fewer baby-boomers join the country club or the Junior League, methods of getting business must change. New meeting places such as health clubs are changing the circumstances under which people mix and do business. 

STYLE
Low-key, heavy on facts and numbers. Industry favors those who are serious, moderately trendy, and not overly ambitious. 

FUTURE 
This is a sober period filled with questions about which services to provide, at what cost, and to whom. The industry is rethinking the whole concept of commercial lending, is concerned about the impact of technology, and in some sectors, about interstate banking. 

Insurance and brokerage companies continue to find weaknesses in their marketing strategies. Whole life insurance is in trouble. 

About 10 percent of the Gross National Product is consumed by health care, and nearly 7.5 percent of the national work force is employed by it. THere is less power-building in public facilities, which are often a training ground for those who move into private institutions, Private health care facilities, however, are fascinating and full of power niches. IN political structure, they differ from almost every other kind of organization. 

In theory, most hospitals are organized as nonprofits to fulfill a "mission." Hospitals spend long hours and large sums of money dealing with an idealistic philosophy of health care. They don't actually attempt to institute this philosophy, however, especially if the hospital is located in a large metropolitan area. In reality, private hospitals want to serve those who can pay.

Paired with that paradox is a major style quirk. Where is is perfectly permissible, if not exactly kind, for IBM executives to say,"I hope we put AT&T out of business," and for AT&T people to say,"I'd like to see IBM take a dive," it's not possible for people at Good Samaritan to say,"I'd like to see DIvine Mercy go down the tubes."

The private hospital-- in fact, the entire private health care system-is a highly competitive industry burdened with the facade of working for the public good. The resulting climate forced everyone to go "package" every statement with this facade in mind. Unless power-builders can learn to consistently say one thing and mean another, they'll have a problem. The only power style is one that does not acknowledge how competitive health care really is.  

Physicians have tremendous power in hospitals. They will always influence, and in some communities, control the administrators indirectly, because it is the doctors who fill a hospital's beds with paying customers. 

According to focus group research, most physicians shun any attachments to the hospital or to its administrators. They usually don't want policymaking power either. What they want is negative, or veto power. As one doctor put it"I don't care what they do in this hospitals as long as they don't do anything I don't agree with." "They" is the administration. 

Many physicians feel political relationships are pointless. When push comes to shove, they shove rather than negotiate. This style makes it difficult for nonphysician power-builders to move from starting a relationship to maintaining it. They can be caught on an endless ladder, forever building. 

Getting to the top rung takes day-to-day work and constant political updating. Physicians want to know who's important and who's not. They respect people who get to the point instantly. 

Health care power-builders can't afford to overlook even the most tenuous of the health care facility's religious affiliations, either. To ignore them is to place oneself in political jeopardy, at the least. 

Power Base
Of there are M.D's, power comes from influence with them. If doctors play a minor role, power comes from influence with the administrators.

Need For Sponsor 
Not great if one is a skilled politician. Doctors usually sponsor only doctors, and administration don't openly sponsor anyone.

Tolerance For Individuality 
Medium to high within job and philosophical limits. You must take your cue from the hospital's mission statement. 

Style
An analytical style helps move group decisions along as does relentless sticking to the point. A respectful attitude toward doctors is essential for power-building, and your references to them must sound sincere.  

Future
The government continues to bedevil health care but other than that, it's booming. Americans still want state-of-the-art health care.  

52 Savvy/February 1984
February 1984/Savvy 53