Barclays: Matt Baretts Jorney
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What are the key issues presented in the study?
Barclays is one of the four most dominant retail and commercial banks in U.K. but the company has faced many challenges between the time periods of 1980-2000.
Key Issues:
Underperformance: The bank had lost confidence in its abilities due to years of underperformance. It had failed to reach global market place with negligible growth in divestitures and acquisitions.
Leadership issues: The bank failed to find a good leader between 1995 and 19999. It had five different CEOs in five years failing to contribute.
Cost reduction: The bank was struggling to make significant changes which could reduce its cost base. Its cost to income ratio was higher than that of competitors.
Lack of Planning: The bank lacked strategic planning and also had a inadequate management performance system.
Media and investors: The bank had become the easy target for media because of its performance and changing CEOs. This resulted into unhappy investors and demoralized employees.
Is Barclays performing well? Justify your answer.
Considering the size and resources the bank has, I would say the bank is not performing according to its standards.
Justification:
Barclays possesses good customer relationship skills. They have built personal relationships with one out of five personal customers, and have direct relationships with 25% of the businesses in U.K. This is a great resource to have; unfortunately it is not able to use the resources effectively. The infrastructure of the company is not capable of using the resources properly. One of the most important things needed for success of any organization is to have a good leader which the bank lacks.
The bank has little indication on where they are losing money and where to cut costs. This is due to absence of a strategic plan and poor management system. The cost to income ratio was higher than its competitors which greatly affected the companys balance sheets. The bank had been unable to grow globally due to unmotivated and demoralized executives. The employees were not able to work in a team due to lack of communication and other corporate difficulties.
In all, Barclays was a brand and had a reputation which it failed to fulfill because of poor management decisions and lack of proper planning and execution.
What are the processes that Barrett used to formulate decide and implement new strategy?
Matt Barrett had a difficult task ahead to improve Barclays performance rapidly and significantly to save it from industry consolidation. He implemented several techniques to get the results for which he was hired for.
Goal- Earn, invest and grow: Barrett developed a vision for the bank and planned to double Barclays profits in four years and also reduce costs by £ 1billion.
Restructure the company: Barrett wanted to restructure the company by shifting its culture and mind-set of the employees. He started various sessions such as “Open forums” and “ExCo meetings” in order to meet and communicate with employees from various departments. He promoted younger talent