The Bank data org tour struck a chord with plenty of readers, myself included — enough that I felt compelled to write Bank App Dev sequel, welcome back — same building, different floor. Where data org dysfunction looks like chaos, App Dev dysfunction looks like stability. Nothing moves. Nothing breaks. Nothing improves. It's dysfunction with better posture, and it's been running long enough to have its own gift shop.
Pull up another chair. Try not to trip over the shelfware.
Let's tour the exhibits.
The De Facto CIO
Every org needs a figurehead, and ours has “P” who has held the title without ever quite earning the function. Brought in by the previous executive regime, he has spent years occupying the seat without visibly shaping what happens in it.
The clearest tell: a Bank-level huddle was scheduled with the new company CIO joining. A last-minute schedule change meant the session needed an agenda on short notice — and neither he nor his immediate leadership team could produce one. A full hour, and nobody in the room had a topic worth raising. That's not a scheduling failure. That's a preview of what three-plus years of "leadership" actually produces when you ask it to show its work.
The Nepo Four
Beneath him sits a cluster of leaders, “C”, “S”, “H” and “B”, who have occupied the same corner of the org for the better part of two decades. Call them what you want, but I call them The Golden Escalator Club of Bank IT — the point isn't the nickname, it's the tenure. Twenty years on average between them in the same space, doing the same kind of work, is either deep expertise or a very long nap, and the org's output over that period suggests it's mostly the latter.
Their playbook, refined over two decades: buy a vendor product, bolt on a few customizations, call it modernization, repeat.
This is the deeper problem: an org can't innovate when the people setting technical direction have had the same direction for so many years. Institutional knowledge is valuable. Institutional stagnation dressed up as institutional knowledge is a liability nobody's pricing in.
The Culture Crusader
Every leadership team has one person and here they have “A”, whose actual job title is a mystery but whose calendar is fully booked with potlucks, culture-committee meetings, and "fun" planning. Somewhere in the org chart this counts as leadership.
The New Hire Nobody Can Explain
Then there's the recent VP hire, “R” brought on shortly after previous executive departure. What's notable is that colleagues looking at his public profile came away with more questions than answers about the background and education that got him there. When a hiring decision generates confusion rather than confidence among the people who'll actually work with the person, that's worth asking about — not because of who they are, but because of what the process was that got them the seat. Of course, working with the CIO at a previous company seems to be one heck of a resume booster. Networking is important, but this might deserve its own leadership competency. And the story apparently doesn't stop there. Another familiar face “D”, from the same circle lands an Executive Director title. Coincidence? Maybe. But from the outside, it certainly makes people wonder whether referrals have become the organization's fastest promotion path.
The Members, Again
Same ending as always, because it's the same org, just a different floor. Every vendor contract signed instead of a capability built, every leadership seat filled by tenure or past history instead of vision, every all-hands where enthusiasm substitutes for a plan — it all lands somewhere. Not on the CIO. Not on the EMGs. On the members, who are paying — through fees, through slower service, through features that never arrive — for two decades of nobody asking a harder question than "which vendor pitched us this quarter?"
What It Could Look Like Instead
- A Bank CIO who can fill an hour with actual priorities, not just occupy the seat between meetings
- Leadership that's been in the org long enough to have built something, not just renewed enough licenses
- Hiring decisions that hold up to scrutiny instead of generating hallway questions
- A build-vs-buy conversation that happens before the vendor contract, not never
- A single meeting where someone asks: does this actually make things better for the members?
None of it's radical. It just requires leadership that treats being in the seat as a responsibility to have built something, not a reason to stop trying.