Why it’s time to connect with people

In April this year, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, the watchdog charged with protecting consumers of financial services, launched a probe into business practices at major Canadian banks. TD Bank found itself uncomfortably forced into the spotlight when hundreds of staff came forward to the media and spoke openly about living in fear of losing their jobs if they didn’t hit their targets. To meet their quotas, sales employees were selling products that weren’t always right for the consumer. They knew that what they were doing was unethical, but the process forced them to do it. How did things get this way? To answer that, let’s see what happened in the past to lead us to where we are now. Before mass production, individual artisans created goods from start to finish; there was a network of relationships, and in business and society the mindset was collaborative. Mass production changed all that. Companies structured themselves as machines with many parts (departments), each with a specific role to perform. And so, the industrial mindset was created: as long as every part of the machine does its job, we can drive the machine to be productive. Questioning procedures and innovation was not encouraged or tolerated. Deviation from the plan would lead to failure. Information was tightly controlled by a strict hierarchy on a need-to-know basis which created a culture of secrecy. The high-ups would filter information and pass it down to their staff when—and only when—necessary. At that point in history, it is safe to say that the word transparency was only ever…