"Shift Happens"

I just got an email that had a link to this video on You-Tube, which was created by a group of educators to emphasize the need for a new way of looking at education. It's worth the time to watch it, as it clearly shows how much, and how quickly our world is changing. Too often we get trapped in our own linear view of the Universe, which is logical, since that's the only view that we can really have. But look what's going on, available information is exploding, knowledge transfer is global, and immediate and the world is very, very quickly becoming a different place.

I bring this up in the context of customers and banks as a follow on to the discussion of "Always on". Linear, "what worked before" strategies don't appear to make sense in a world that's changing as rapidly as ours is. Social networking isn't an interesting plaything of the millenials, it's the way that a large percentage of the population interacts. The internet isn't made up of web pages and people who read them, it's a virtual organism that nearly all of us depend upon for a large part of our knowledge access and social interaction.

It seems to me that we need to re-think the way that customers interact with our institutions in ways well beyond re-designing branch interiors (although that's a start). Here's a question to get you going. If you had unlimited capital, no mortgage hangover, traditions or history to deal with, and your only goal was to deliver a superior financial services experience to a selected target audience, what would you build?

Bet it wouldn't have teller windows.