What's wrong with big organisations?

A quick glimpse of recent news and you'll see the following:

"Australian workers' retirement savings eroded by high super fund fees"

"ANZ bank to face criminal cartel charges"

"Former client says Macquarie Bank took advantage of his ignorance and financial vulnerability"

Reading such titles we begin to think 'oh those banks' or 'those super companies' are terrible. Our anger is directed towards the 'other' and the 'big banks'. To what degree are the very people who work in such organisations and their customers responsible?

Recently I was reminded while reading Jacqueline Novogratz' book The Blue Sweater that the world and our communities are very often shaped by those who don't act when something is not right, it is in that inaction that they have made a decision.

In all of the claims being revealed by the Royal Commission, one ponders what were people thinking? Were they even thinking? The thousands of employees knew what was going on, what made it okay? A culture of ignorance and fear? Misaligned incentive? A lack of governance? Having served on a governance committee of a public listed company for 3 years now, I deeply appreciate the importance of good governance. Yet banks have ample policies and procedures and governance frameworks in place, so what happened?

What about the demand side? What were customers thinking? In particular what were well educated customers who knew what was going thinking by continuing to bank with such organisations? Perhaps 'Oh there's no other option' or 'they're all the same'. That's not true.

There is so much to be learned from history of organisations unethical behaviour - from Nestle encouraging poor women in Africa that baby milk formula is just as good as breastmilk to the Tobacco industry's advertising of cigarettes to young people and the heads of companies blatantly denying the addictiveness of nicotine despite clear evidence. Yet time an time again we see the same thing happen. What can we learn?

It's a complex problem, but not so complex that nothing can be done about it. There are many things to fix but the main thing I want to talk about is complacency and doing nothing.

We all at some stage in our career have personally heard someone complain about unethical behaviour, and have not acted on that complaint. We too are to some degree responsible for letting behaviour perpetuate where we choose to do nothing. Organisations are simply a group of people, they need help to stay accountable not just by shareholders in regards to profit but also with regards to making our world a place where there is dignity and respect. And as individuals and members of our communities it is our responsibility to do something about the things that matter most.