The Corporate Supermap and the Five-step Sequence: effective tools for improving culture to create long-term value.
This Leadership Insight with Tina Mavraki provides an in-depth analysis of why corporate culture is a hot topic for banks, and why a positive culture is vital to the net zero transition. Mavraki outlines her extensive research in this area and proposes critical tools to help banks develop and implement effective culture strategies that will ensure their own lasting financial performance and build climate resilience.
Insight highlights
- Culture needs new language and a complete reframing that serves a meaningful, business-oriented purpose. It needs as much relevance and specificity as it needs operationalisation, consequence and financial measurement.
- All banks should prioritise corporate culture and put their own house in order. One interviewee said: “Urgency and timing set a really important framework for what you need to achieve in cultural transformation.”
- By developing a ‘Corporate Supermap’, banks will examine their own strategic and financial planning practices in a more disciplined, detailed and consequential way, pricing in short- and medium-term implications for the organisation before any action takes place. This helps to quantify and address trade-offs, calculate opportunities and enhance the bank’s prospects of implementing its strategy.
Executive summary
Many banks that are lurching from crisis to crisis realise that corporate culture has something to do with it. However, they can’t seem to get the conversation past the early stages of corporate values. They also tend to get lost in symptoms, rather than identifying the route of the issues, which make them no better off in day-to-day practices. Mavraki’s research dives deeper to understand those root causes and the transmission mechanisms of culture failures that lead to financial underperformance at banks. She has synthesised her findings into a big picture that connects values with people, actions, and financial and operational consequences. In short, she has turned culture from a theoretical problem into an investable business case.
Based on extensive, in-depth interviews and industry data, Mavraki has created a corporate culture framework that provides analytical rigour and practical tools that turn what are, today, mostly expenses into lasting investments. Building on these analytical foundations, she offers practical solutions across a bank’s hierarchy and functions, from the board to executive management, finance and operations, human resources, risk and compliance, and internal audit. She uses climate change as an acute example to demonstrate my case and the potential benefits of her proposals.
Mavaraki’s target audience is directors and senior banking executives who can use these solutions to improve their bank’s lasting performance. Her solutions should also help investors sharpen their stewardship practices and hold banks to account on culture. Finally, she makes recommendations for regulators, who are increasingly engaged in this area.
The challenges that banks are experiencing with corporate culture performance today have been building over a long period. This explains why culture is such a hot topic across the banking community right now. What is different this time is that these effects have been building up for so long that banks are running out of time to contain them. Nevertheless, if they manage to get their investments in culture performance right, they will be able reset the tone and direction of their organisations, contain the damage, and turn what are current crises into new opportunities for greater resilience and lasting value creation.
About the author
Tina Mavraki is an IoD Chartered Portfolio Director and strategic adviser, and a sustainability change-maker. Her 26-year executive career spans global capital markets, physical supply chains, and investment management in C-suite positions.
Tina’s NED portfolio includes global conglomerate Metlen Energy & Metals, and private-equity-led US First Bauxite LLC. Her advisory portfolio includes Piraeus Bank SA, US$ 8.5 billion US debt fund White Oak, Neptune leasing, Sodali & Co, and formerly the EBRD and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. On climate policy advisory, Tina produced for the FCA and EBA governance recommendations for climate transition and executive remuneration.
In her executive career with Morgan Stanley and Citi, Tina managed US$ multi-billion debt portfolios and advised European Debt Management Offices. In physical supply chains, she led multiple private transactions in emerging and frontier markets. She led strategic co-financing agreements in investment management and new fund launches. She advised the State of Maharashtra, India, on renewable policy and solar tariffs.
Tina holds a BA and MA in PPE from Oxford University, and an MSc in Finance from LBS. Tina is a Fellow of Chapter Zero UK and member of the ECODA Director Circles. She is a CFA charter holder and an accredited corporate mediator with CEDR.
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