The essence of leadership is to be customer-centric

June 10, 2024
by Noriyuki Morimoto

The FSA is driving an unprecedented self-reform initiative as a government agency to position the public as its customers. The FSA is supervising financial institutions from the perspective of the public’s interests, prioritizing the financial functions in public demand, and ensuring that they are provided in a stable and appropriate manner.

It is a function of politics, not of government, to represent the interests of the people. The FSA stipulates sustainable economic growth and stable asset formation of the public as its administrative objectives, but this is merely the embodiment in financial administration of the political objective of increasing the economic welfare of the people, i.e., the people’s interest.

The basis of politics is to demonstrate the interests of the people and to position the people as customers. The fundamentals of politics must, at the same time, be the fundamentals of government. The FSA was the first administrative agency to articulate this principle. And, needless to say, in financial administration, the public are the customers of financial institutions. Although demonstrating the interests of customers should be the basis of financial institution management, in reality, many financial institutions lack the customers’ perspective: therein lies the real challenge for financial administration.

Not only in finance, but in general, politics reaches the public as customers through the government, and the government through the private sector. Then, in this chain, the government is the customer for politics and the private sector is the customer for the government.

Also, in administrative and business organizations, management reaches the public (i.e. customers) through executives, who reach the public through frontline staff. Thus, in this chain, the executives are the customers for management and the staff are the customers for the executives.

In fact, the essence of leadership is a chain relationship that starts with the public as customers. In other words, a good political leader delivers the same message to the people, the business community, and the government; a good head of the bureaucracy delivers the same message to the people, the business community, and their bureaucrats; a good business leader delivers the same message to their customers and employees.

In short, strong leadership cannot occur without the support of the people as customers. Therefore, the essence of leadership is customer-oriented.

 

[Category /Financial Regulations]