'The hardest decision is do certain things...' talking heads For a number of years not too long ago, F&A's global business manager Peter Greenberg occupied an almost unique position - he was one of the first non- Dutch senior managers in the international network. Times have changed since the mid-1990s as the organization has grown global in more ways than one. The cultural anthropologist turned commercial banker looks back on more than a decade of change. What sNewS Issue 11 'November 1998 Peter Greenberg laughs to himself as he comes up with a metaphor for the way the bank in New York used to be ten years ago. 'You have to understand that for a commercial banker specialized in F&A, specifically commodity trade finance, Rabobank was a bit like Utopia. Here was an organization with a single- minded focus matching mine. Early on, I decided I didn't want to be a jack of all trades and master of none. So I specialized, bringing me to Rabobank.' The reason Greenberg was laughing becomes clear. 'The bank reminds me sometimes of a sandbox,' he says. 'In one corner kids are fighting, in another they are working individually on creative things, and in another they are busy building structures together. And the composition of each group changes continually.' This has to be the cultural anthropologist in him. 'Maybe my early training means I can be non-Dutch and still operate in a Dutch environment.' Greenberg is not criticizing. However rapid the internationalization process, RI originated as a Dutch bank. 'I think the way we position ourselves is a result of our history. There is a lot of talk today about customer focus in the outside business environment. But in our case, 1 think it is more than a cliché. We arrived at this stage unable to fight against the so- called universal banks, like Deutsche or Citigroup. If we try - as they do - to be all things to all people, we won't win. As a matter of strategie choice, and even necessity, we have to focus. But sometimes in the life of organizations, the hardest decision is not to do certain things.' Focus is a term Greenberg feels very comfortable with. Throughout his career, he has focused on training mechanisms Peter Greenberg, focused on F&A that would facilitate development into what he sees as essentials for commercial bankers - a thorough grounding in both credit and marketing. 'If you don't have both,' he says, 'you'll never be a truly effective banker.' Although he has lived outside of the US by choice - he pursued part of his studies in Colombia and worked in Latin America for lengthy periods - he continues to admire the generalist approach to higher education there. 'In today's working environment,' he says, 'young people don't always get the chance to be generalists. Big mistake. In terms of professional development, I think it is crucial to get early exposure to the major facets that, combined, ntake up the profession. I don't buy in to the notion of young bankers focusing exclusively on one area. Too much is missed. You can easily beconte focused too early on too narrow an area with respect to professional (and the rest) of life.' Given Greenberg's own career path, he does not appear to be speaking from personal experience. His cultural anthropology degree from New York University, followed by a master's at Columbia University, should have taken him into academe. 'I understood quickly that unless you're a genius, you'd end up marooned on some academie island. We wanted to travel.' He had met his economist wife, Consuelo, at the Bogota university and had persuaded her to relocate to the US. 'She agreed to marry me if 1 stopped smoking and ensured she could return to school. 1 was offered a job in banking during my last year of university - for more money than a couple of poor students had seen in ages. I took it and she went to school. At least I kept one part of my promise,' he says, exhaling smoke ruefully. V Education and training were and still are exceptionally important to both Greenbergs, a focus Peter has also brought to his task as global F&A business manager. 'When I joined Rabobank,' he recalls, 'I had to manage my own career. I don't think that is the ideal solution for people coming up in the organization. They should be surrounded by mechanisms they can tap into for the broad benefit of their career path management. Specifically from the F&A perspective, I would like to see that in place for young people - not least because it loops back to my own experience.' But there is another reason why he has pushed hard for the international relationship managers' course now into its second étk class. 'The more we bring together peopk^ from various disciplines, and by that I mean product specialists, the more we integrate the bank into a seamless whole. That's basically what I'm after with the course. It is nascent, and we're aware there is room for improvement. We're working on it because we believe this can be one mechanism for that integration. Without such integration, initiatives such as our recently launched European F&A marketing program are doorned to fail.' It may seem Utopian, but Greenberg has experienced Rabobank Utopia in the past, so he's optimistic. 'I would like to think that through customer focus, we have been strong enough to rise to the chal- lenge of realizing there are things we shouldn't do and a few things we should do with fixed focus. And to the extent that this is not universally understood within the bank, we still have a way to go in advancing the customer focus strategy.'

Rabobank Bronnenarchief

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