Joe The Banker

Yesterday in London and this morning in Davos, we (Edelman, that is) launched the tenth edition of the annual Trust Barometer – an interrogation of the state of Trust in our increasingly worried world.

I do not want to repeat verbatim the findings of the research – these are well catalogued on our Trust site – and equally well summarised by Richard Edelman’s 6AM Blog and David Brain’s Sixty Second View. Bloggers and Twitterers have been at it, too – see Robert Peston, Neville Hobson and Roy Greenslade, among many others.

From a Citizen perspective, many of this year’s findings chime with the central tenets of our Wiki Book. Nowhere is this more evident than in the call for greater regulation and the need for a real partnership between Business and Government to dig us out of the mess in which we find ourselves. In Britain, for example, 71% (65% globally) want Government to impose stricter regulations and control, while 70% (67% globally) believe business must partner with Government to solve the big issues of our time. The fact that 91% of those surveyed believe that this must happen within a framework of continuous, open and honest conversation speaks directly to the Citizen Renaissance call for wider Digital Democracy – while the underlying metaphoric coupling of ‘economy’ and ‘environment’ stalked both the room and the research.

What may have been implicit became very much explicit through many of the questions (especially from Tomorrow’s Company’s Tony Manwaring) and, quite wonderfully, through the contribution of Joe Garner, Head of Retail Banking for HSBC (and also a Non Exec of the Financial Ombudsman Service). Joe The Banker was listened to with almost revered silence as he called for a new sense of collective responsibility.  Just as Richard Edelman had spoken of minutes earlier, Joe brilliantly balanced contrition with vision.

Trust, Joe argued, rests on three pillars: a consistency of purpose & action; real dialogue; and time. Moreover, today’s is “a crisis of character and ethics” – a sentiment that the Renaissance would certainly share. Joe called for an end to the finger-pointing and also to on-going rumour, cynicism, suspicion and speculation – all of which fundamentally undermine both confidence and trust. Finally, he called for a Stop & Think from the key stakeholders – Government and Business specifically. What we need, he pointed out, is not more Regulation, just better Regulation. He received warm applause.

The full text of Joe Garner’s speech can be downloaded from the Edelman Trust Microsite.

Tomorrow, I have an unique opportunity to address the Ministry of Defence about some of these issues. I will talk about the coupling of economic and environmental meltdown – as articulated so brilliantly by George Monbiot in the Guardian recently, and also by Rowan Williams, whom we quote in the book. I will also be challenging the MoD to discover its own Citizen Voice – these are a group of real professionals who absolutely understand both the environmental, economic and political imperative of the Citizen Renaissance. We need many more like them – and many more like Joe the Banker -  in our everyday lives.