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We also spoke with partner Rahoul Chowdry, who leads MinterEllison's risk, regulatory & governance consulting services.

Their observations and advice on organisational culture extend well beyond the financial services industry, and can apply to any team or organisation.

Looking at culture as a regular risk to manage

Under certain conditions, it’s almost inevitable that there will be cultural challenges and pressures on behaviour.

“It would be great if we could get to a place where instead of culture being a reactive topic, we viewed cultural risk as something that all businesses face. Then we can be more proactive about assessing the various factors that might be placing pressure on behaviour.”

Elizabeth Arzadon

How to measure culture

There are various ways an organisation may approach measuring culture.

For example, instead of trying to figure out what are the one or two best sources of information, it's helpful to triangulate a number of them. This helps address the inevitable bias that creeps into different perspectives, noting that every individual has bias based on the perspective from which they are coming.

Social media's impact on organisational culture

Social media has played an important role in shaping organisations' approaches to cultural issues.

“On one hand, social media amplifies issues because of the speed with which it can reach a wide readership. On the other hand, there could be a risk of paying excessive attention to a smaller group of loud complainants whose grievances are on the margin.”

Rahoul Chowdry

One positive function of social media is to use it to respond to complaints in a timely manner, resolve them rapidly, and move forward quickly.

Clarifying roles and responsibilities for managing culture

Boards are ultimately responsible for providing leadership and strategic guidance to their organisations. They are also typically responsible for monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of risk management in an organisation. Regulators do not aim to ensure that financial institutions never fail. Instead, their remit is to promote effective governance of risk, help ensure that markets are well informed and help minimise the adverse impact or contamination effects of a distressed organisation.

It helps to think about the relationship between institutions and regulators, and the degree to which there is aligned purpose, trust and respect between these two very important components of the system.

Hear the full discussion in our podcast.

Search for the podcast in your favourite podcast app or listen below.