430. The Impact Banker - For Good with Alexander S Hoare

Speaker A: Welcome to Inspiring Leadership. This is the quiet room, the talk a CEO only has with their trusted advisor. Now open for you to hear. I'm Jonathan Bowman. Perks. I advise CEOs, chairs and founders for a living. I was an army officer, so I know what it costs to lead under pressure. Every guest here has run the place. Everyone has carried the weight. They share what they got right, they share what they got wrong and what kept them on course when the storm hit. No noise, no flattery, just honest lessons from leaders worth learning from. Let's begin. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's Inspiring Leadership podcast. And I'm delighted to have someone who I've known, we've decided for over 12 years, probably, uh, Alexander Hoare. And Alexander, um, has a wealth of experience and his link is with his family bank, seahor and Company. And his latest book is titled Impact Banker. And it was released earlier this year, 2026. And it's a personal memoir drawn from nearly four decades at Seahor Co. Exploring how a 354-year-old family bank can prepare for the 21st century by doubling down on relationship banking, long term stewardship, and optimizing finance for the greater good rather than the short term gain. And having worked with so many greedy financial organizations, it's lovely to come across one who has these values which fit very nicely into the Inspiring Leadership approaches. And my recent book, the CEOs Compass, how to navigate your team through turbulent times. And Alexander's been navigating through turbulent times. Alexander, welcome. Great to have you here.

Speaker B: Thank you, Jonathan, for having me. And, uh, I look forward to this discussion and how my experience might fit with your CEO compass.

Speaker A: I think it fits very neatly and, um, in a moment I'll ask you about why you wrote the book. But as I was looking back through it, I think four themes which came out very strong, which we'll talk about in a moment. Stewardship and legacy leadership. What we call lq, Legacy quotient, Purpose led government, PQ purpose and meaning, um, relationship centered leadership, which is the emotional and social intelligence and the collaboration with people and values under pressure, which is back to MQ or moral quotient. So really resonated with what you wrote. I think it's a cracking book. So firstly, why did you get round to writing the book? Alexander,

Speaker B: the previous history of the bank, which covers up until it was written, is now 20 years old. And it struck me that if I retire and don't set down my story as lived by me, it will die with me. And I wanted to Put it out there for the future. Partners of Horsebank was writing for an audience of 6 to 10 people and only after I'd written it, and it was a bit of a side thought, I thought, well, actually it might be interesting to management, it might be interesting to customers, maybe interesting to other family businesses, maybe business schools could learn from it, maybe anybody could learn from it. And I rather tentatively and nervously published it.

Speaker A: Um, well done because, um, it's as I know, having published three books, it's. It's always a bit dice when you do that, that someone might just say your baby is very ugly and, and you have to be above that. And it's just like I'm putting it out there and. And mine was particularly not to die, as my father said before, long before he was unfortunately killed when I was only two and a half. That don't die with the music still in you. And I think that's very much the theme, isn't it, with you?

Speaker B: And actually I got some ridicule at home for publishing a memoir before I've actually finished or retired. But actually, I strongly think it is the right thing to say I've got more time here. But what the book has done has opened doors to have conversations like this, which only really makes sense if I'm still in. In harness.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think it does. And I also think, um, my wife very kindly organized, uh, my 60th birthday four years ago and uh, she surprised me by organizing the renewal of our marriage vows in the little village church that we're in here in Lincolnshire, which was beaut. Very special. That was a complete, uh, surprise, including this fabulous vicar that we had. I thought it was a complete spoof when I came to the church door and opened it because I thought I was going to a party. But the reason I say that was it was so lovely to have all the people of family, the friends, clients I'd known there at both the renewal of the marriage, but also celebrating while I'm still alive.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: I don't have a party after I die. Well, parts of home and so you enjoy. But I'd like to be with these people now before I've gone. And I do really resonate with what you've done, that this is the time now that people can ask you questions about the book and the impact banker. And what you've written is so refreshingly high integrity, high value stewardship, leaving things better than you found it that you just don't get from Trump and his cronies and Netanyahu and, you know, Xi Jinping and, and, um, all that happened with Orban in Hungary. You know, it was, how can I rape and pillage this organization to feed my family and their mates, uh, and make the most from this position I'm in to, to my own ends. And that's not where you come from, is it?

Speaker B: So we don't sort of talk politics here. We're consciously apolitical, uh, and we don't on the whole talk God, although I might on this podcast. But we do talk business practices, business ethics, values, and, um, processes. Uh, and these things really do matter,

Speaker A: I think. They really do. And this takes us on to the first of those four themes I mentioned that I loved from your book, Stewardship and Legacy Leadership. Um, tell us what's so important about that on stewardship.

Speaker B: Uh, after I'd been here a couple of years, I articulated a mission statement for the partners. And I said that it looked to me like the mission was to perpetuate a profitable family business. My crusty old partners at that time laughed at, ah, this management consultant fad to have a mission statement, ridiculed it, um, but actually I think I called it right because it has stood the test of time for over 30 years now. And the important point about this mission statement to perpetuate a profitable family business is notice it doesn't say anything about banking. It's a family business. But notice the verb is to perpetuate. And if you take decisions in the context of perpetuity, you get rather different decisions to, uh, to decisions taken in the context of maximizing quarterly earnings, you get completely opposite decisions.

Speaker A: Actually, um, one of my great honors was to be, um, coach to you and some of your cousins of the 11th generation. And thank you for including me. And as you let me in to share about that, what I loved seeing was perpetuating a profitable family business was the litmus test you held against each issue that you had. And at first I was really quite surprised. I thought I went seehor and co. Well, you're banking. Yes, but we do this, but we don't do that. We do this, but we don't do that. Bit like Oscar Wilde who said, a lady or a gentleman is someone who knows what they will do and what they won't do. And I think that has really stood the test of time, particularly we'll come on to a bit later on with the challenges that get thrown your way with whatever happens in the world and life. But I do love that. Which takes me nicely from LQ onto what I would Call PQ around the campus Purpose led governance, um, the greater good and things like that and the purpose behind it. Tell us why that's so important and why you wrote about that.

Speaker B: So, um, I recruited our first millennial cousin who's called Rennie. And we set Rennie on the job of articulating, uh, our purpose. And he hosted a whole lot of focus, uh, groups and landed on. The bank's purpose is to be good bankers and good citizens. Uh, now at any time there are good banks and there are good citizens, but there are very seldom good banks trying to be good citizens. And this also has sort of stood the test of over a decade and is also an excellent, excellent litmus test. If we do this, are we being good citizens? If we do that, is it being, is it good banking? And it also reflects, uh, over 300 years of history when we've been building churches, hospitals, schools, hospice, uh, and loads of other things actually, all of which are good citizenship, which must have been, can only have been paid for by good banking.

Speaker A: Yeah, And I'm also very grateful to you because Lee and I set up 11 years ago as her. She's the CEO, uh, now the chairman of the Inspiring Leadership foundation, um, helping the victims of violence against women and girls and helping the least advantaged in society by sending the elevator back down and helping them up with mentoring and coaching like that. And you and your organization have very kindly supported that because it's part of what you believe in. Tell us a bit more. You've been involved a lot of philanthropy. It runs through your veins. But tell us sort of why it's so important to you.

Speaker B: I didn't expect when I wrote a book about it and marketing and strategy and stuff, that the longest chapter would actually be on philanthropy. And that does perhaps reflect what you just said, that it is important to me and important to the organization organizationally. We give and have for a long time have given 10% of our profits to our charitable trust. And, um, that is of course a sort of Christian notion tithing. Um, and once you've done that, uh, all sorts of opportunities, uh, arise. So we double match whatever our staff wish to give on. Give as you earn. And we've got 70% of our staff giving on givers you earn using CAP accounts. It enables us to engage our, uh, wider family. We've got about 3,000 cousins. We can help them do good works wherever they may be doing them. And we can corporately and individually pursue causes which are close to us. And it's quite motivational, actually. There came a time when I didn't particularly need to make more money, but it's quite nice to make more money to pursue my philanthropic passions.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I found it fascinating that, you know, 3,000 cousins and sort of 300, um, sort of at the working age of which potential candidates to help the family business could be about 20, 30 people there that you can call upon. But it really struck me as I got to know you and spent time in your, uh. It almost feels like a country house, but your. Your, uh, business headquarters.

Speaker B: It's our townhouse.

Speaker A: It's your townhouse. Yeah. It really felt like a townhouse. It is wonderful. Lovely setting and just how important that family element to it. And then you also shared, and we talked about how interesting it is that running through the cousins is a sort of theme of this ability to focus on things, but perhaps not necessarily read other people's emotions and relationships as well. So we might all be somewhere on some kind of spectrum. And you felt it was somewhere in the family genes that there was this ability to be very focused, as you see, on some of the, um, skilled, uh, financial services guys who are somewhere on the autism spectrum. But they spotted the financial crash in 2007 before anybody else did, and they could see certain patterns. Is there anything more since we talked about that all those years ago?

Speaker B: Well, uh, there's an expression, retail is detail. Now we're a retail bank, and you need to have partners who are willing to get stuck into the detail. And, uh, yeah, I guess you're right. We've had a few good, detailed cousins.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And of course, it's great. And I meet leaders a lot of the time that they themselves have this great skill to be into retailers. Detail, into the detail. But it's the skill as well, which I saw you and your cousins really working on hard, which was about relationships. And it's a bit like someone described it to me, with emotional social intelligence. It's like you're sitting in an air traffic control center and you've got one screen which is your own emotions, and you can see all these blips moving around. And if you move your cursor crosshair over it, the strobe ball, you move it over, it'll tell you the altitude and speed and what it is and what that aircraft is, if it was an aircraft, or in our case, what your emotions are. And then another one over here, another screen which is other people's emotions, and a third screen which is what's going on in the environment of your business. Of the wider political, uh, environment, the world, globally, what's happening, what are moving around and reading these things. So reading your own emotions and managing them, because you can't control them, you can manage them. Managing other people's emotions and what's going for them and then being able to react to what's going on in the world because you can't control that. Controlling the controllables. As you and I have talked about stoicism, does that have any resonance for you? And as you think about relationship centered leadership, which is what was an important theme in your book?

Speaker B: Well, one of the things in your book is how does a leader build and maintain teams under different circumstances? And uh, in, in my younger customers, I have one who's got fabulous IQ and another who's got fabulous eq. Between the team, you know, we've got a lot of things covered.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think that is really skilled. And I, I do an awful lot of CEO, uh, advisory and executive off sites and when I'm, I've got three coming in the, in the next month and in all of them I do the interviews beforehand. And it's the skill of bringing a team together which have these different component parts and not making anybody wrong, that they have particular strength in certain areas but a deficit in other areas. How are you going to team up with someone who can see through the other eye if you can only see through one eye?

Speaker B: Yeah, it could be very destructive. And I think it does place some onus on the leader to play to people's strengths and get good outcomes.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think a bit I took from your book, you argued that competitive advantage for small institutions lies in the depth of relationships, not in economies of scale. Do you want to say a little bit more about that?

Speaker B: I could say a lot about that. So, um, for the benefit of your readers, we're a comparatively small bank. We've got a balance sheet of £7 billion and we've got £600, just under 600 staff. And we're competing with banks a thousand times our size. And how do you do that? If we were to try and compete with these banks on, um, transaction capability, on global reach, on execution, we'd get mullet. But we don't. We compete with these banks on depth of relationship with our customers. They've all got many millions of customers. They can't begin to get the sorts of depth of relationship that we can with 12,000 customs.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's a bit of a case of, um, David and Goliath, really. David just chose A different weapon.

Speaker A: Yes. And I was also going to come on to that. You've touched it beautifully, that metaphor illustrating leadership through asymmetric strategy, changing the terms of the competition rather than imitating dominant players. I love that. Just say more on that because I think it's such an important one. Playing to your strengths.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, playing to your strengths in any team makes sense. But you see it, uh, everywhere. You've seen Ukrainians fighting back with drones. You've seen the Iranians fighting back by attacking other targets. Uh, it's a thing in our world now is choosing how to compete. And it's not going to go away.

Speaker A: No, no. And asymmetry is something that people almost had someone say to me, this isn't fair.

Speaker B: Not cricket.

Speaker A: Yeah, cricket. And it's, you know, whether you choose Iran attacking other targets, which then put pressure on America, uh, or closing the straits, which causes an economic crisis, uh, for us all. Uh, very smart of them. And not that I at all like their regime and all that they're doing, but, uh, you see this time and again, and obviously I've studied warfare with my military service, that you don't want to take them on where they're strong. It's you pitting your strength against their weakness. Not, uh, like the British at Gallipoli, where the German general in charge of the Turks on the heights said, wonderful fellows, these British. They always go through the thickest part of the barbed wire and the hedge. And that wasn't the way to do it. And not surprisingly, we lost. And this. This whole idea of maneuver warfare, or Schwerpunkt, as the. As the German General Rommel would talk about it, this. This finding that weak point and putting all your resources and all your best things through there. And I do find that in the days that I would come and meet you at the bank on various occasions, and it was a lovely group of people we had, where we all met at Windsor, leadership. And, uh, you're talking about John Cresswell and Dame Allison Nimmo and, uh, Bob the submarine commander. And it was just a wonderful collection of people, and we always enjoyed coming together. But in meeting people, as I was coming into the bank, it was very clear and even just in my own experience, how well we were treated. And it was not patronizing, it was not smarmy. It was. The people were genuinely interested in meeting us and making sure we were okay and that we felt welcomed as if it was to someone's private house. Uh, and that was very different from any other experience in any financial institution I've ever been in.

Speaker B: Just going back to the sort of military side of asymmetric conflict. And bear in mind our stewardship, which is to perpetuate a profitable family business. There is no winning and losing, okay, in perpetuity. It's a nonsensical idea to try and win. I'm not going to try and beat another bang. All I got to do is stay in the game, actually. And then, uh, coming on to what you said about how we treat people, one of the first value we give all new staff is to treat others as you'd wish to be treated, which is as close as you can get to the second commandment of your neighbor as yourself. And when I introduce that, uh, explicitly, I expected it to be, uh, rejected or resisted. Everyone took to it, and everyone does it, actually. And it becomes a nice place to work, uh, internally, a nice place for customers to come and bank, a nice place for owners to come and work. It's a win, win, win.

Speaker A: Yes. And I had someone the other day, um, on a podcast who slightly, slightly adapted that second commandment in a way that I quite like it. And I don't know whether it would appeal to you, so here it is. It's to treat others as they would like to be treated rather than as you would like to be treated, because let's say you have someone who is Muslim or someone who is Jewish or someone who's Christian or atheist, whatever it might be, or a vegan, that they wouldn't want to be given your meat, they'd want to be given, you know, what, what works for them. So, I don't know, does that resonate for you or does that clash a bit with what your thoughts are?

Speaker B: It's a subtle embellishment. Uh, and I suppose it depends who they are. If they are psychopaths, I might not want to treat them like they wish to be treated.

Speaker A: We have a few of those. I can introduce you to many of those who are in certain age of the strong man regimes. And I know you're apolitical, so I won't go into a specific politician, uh, who I have a rant about or a particular country, but have you noticed the tendency that I've been spotting? Not that I'm seeing anything unusual that no one else has commented on, but I'm seeing in a lot of organizations, professional services, that the age of the strongman among politicians is being copied out among the age of the strongman among CEOs, and that sort of fear, intimidation, and hit the numbers or Else, um, and, and steamrolling over others. There's even this ghastly book, the Seven Laws of Power, um, by a man by the name of Pfeffer, which you need to read to understand what the dark arts are of these age of the strongman and politicians and people misusing power for its ends to get what they want to help themselves in their health, their families, uh, at the cost of others. I don't know if you have a view on what I've just been, uh, rambling on.

Speaker B: So yes, you can see some of that. But also, uh, there's a book called the Power of Quiet. It's about how introverted chief executives get good results. Now I like that book because I'm an introvert. But a lot of our, most of our customers have done well in their, uh, walks of life and they're all very nice people. So there are bad people who get to the top with bad practices, but I think most people get to the top are actually good people.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. And I've seen a lot of them, so. And what is lovely is I've had a number of them on this podcast of the. This is the 430th episode, but an awful lot of them are on there. And there are more, many more to come, particularly in the second season, which is focusing specifically on CEOs and CEO advisory, which is a fascinating area that you and I spoke almost 12 years ago about how influenced I'd been by Nancy Klein and her work. And that resonated with you, this idea of she was an introvert herself and so not assaulting another person's thinking and having time to think that you're paid to think in your job as CEO or senior partner, whatever it is, not to be busy. And time and again, if I got paid a large sum of money every time I persuaded a CEO to thin out their diary and not to be busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, dead, but actually to have that space and capacity to think about, where can I add the most value? Where is this making a difference to citizens, to society, to the future of the organization, and is this doing good, uh, rather than enriching me? What's your thoughts?

Speaker B: Um, many thoughts, actually. Um, when we first met, one of the analogies I think you used was getting out of the engine room and onto the bridge, getting out of the brass tax of management and getting onto the platform of leadership. Uh, and for us, that's been a, uh, decade long journey and it's still ongoing. But, uh, we, the partners have pretty much Delegated everything now, bar two functions. Um, and I've forgotten the second half of what you said, but the time to think is obviously you asked about, uh, the reach. So you need to think about what impacts you're having not just on your quarterly earnings. We're looking at what it'll have in two generations time earnings. And we're looking at, uh, what impact will it have on our relationships with our customers and our staff and our community. So all decisions are a little bit more multifaceted than what you might read about in the press.

Speaker A: Yes. And that was the fourth theme that I drew from your book, which I absolutely loved this Values under pressure. And you talked about leading through financial crises and having this calm judgment and coming back to a clarity about ethics and consistency of values during this stress. And, and I love. In a number of my guests have been Special Forces, SEALs, SAS, SBS, and the like. And their motto is calm is contagious and so is panic, but the calm is contagious. And, um, what's that one that, uh, I think sound like? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. But this idea of calming it all down and doing it smoothly to get things done. What resonates for you around the values under pressure and the crises you've led through?

Speaker B: So happily, I've not had military crises to go through. Um, I have two mantras which have really, really helped me all my time in the bank, and they are, uh, small is beautiful and keep it simple, stupid.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If you can take a nasty problem and make it simpler and then make it smaller, you're well on the way to managing it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And incident. They work very well together. They were individually, but they work, uh, very well together. I could expand on that if you'd like me to.

Speaker A: Well, I would in a moment and just add to it because it really resonates strongly for me. Uh, since we worked together all those years ago, I've listened and read a lot around the philosophy of stoicism and Buddhism. Not become religious in that way, but just. And a lot of it links back to Christianity as well. But this idea of it's about removing. It's not adding more stuff and grasping for more things. It's actually taking away. Bit like Michelangelo with his, his, his carving. He said it was, it was in the marble. I just chipped away at, uh, the bits and it revealed itself. And there was David, this incredible statue. And I think you've taken that, as I know with you, and kept everything so brief. And I always say to anybody at the end of A call that I'm with them. Let's end with appreciation or equality about each other and the three S's. Be specific, sincere and succinct. And you have always been for me, the man who is specific, sincere and succinct. And I've enjoyed that about you. So I just want to acknowledge that about you.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: But please say more if I haven't thrown you off track.

Speaker B: Um, so Saul is beautiful. It works in a sort of family bank. But as a society we're obsessed with scale and size and, um, from where I sit, it seems a bit odd, you know. So Michael Kane, he did the Italian job. He didn't take Volvo estates, he took Minis and, um, small airplanes. And small airports are much more agreeable than big ones. And look at little Singapore. It's got a very high income per capita. It appears to be sustainable and it works very well. Why is bigger always better? Yeah, and then they're obsessed with short term. Um, so, yes, a company has got to report to its owners on what it's made or not made with its money. But who said quarterly was a good period? Or even annually? I mean, as I say, we're thinking generations ahead and any two or three years earnings are completely noise.

Speaker A: Yeah, and you've triggered me on for another thought that one of my guests, uh, Professor Roger Steer, uh, he was saying that particular financial services organizations are always going for exponential growth. But exponential growth within a closed system is nothing is madness and the only thing like it is cancer. And it's actually, it's not sustainable. But yet that is the mantra they pray to. And it's always about exponential growth rather than enhancing things. Um, thank you. Just a few other questions. We're almost finished, but just a couple of questions. Uh, I'm always interested about the choices that people make. And decision making is something that you talk about a lot in the book Impact Banker. Uh, who do you and who don't you take on as clients and why?

Speaker B: There are two hurdles a prospective customer, uh, go over, huh. The first is quantitative. Is their wealth such that they will deposit or borrow or deposit and borrow enough for it to be, uh, relationally worthwhile for us and them. Uh, and that's quite a simple test in most cases. The second hurdle is a harder test is do we share values? Do we want to work together? There are plenty of people out there who are rich who, uh, I might say, well, actually, I think you'd be better served by Goldman Sachs. And, um, like 30 years ago or so we got Called up by some friendly lawyers who said, look, what you're doing is, uh, racial, uh, discrimination. You're not allowed to discriminate against people on the grounds of race. And we had been slightly guilty of this. We put our heads together and we discovered that you are allowed to discriminate against potentates. So we had a rule which was, no potentates. The glorious thing about this is that you can define a potentate exactly how you see it. But it did kind of eliminate nearly all sultan, sheikhs, oligarchs, and princes and princesses from everywhere in the world. Made our lives much simpler. My kiss principle.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I thought it was beautiful. And then leading up from that, really, private banking has a reputation for discretion, and you certainly are very good at that and frankly, for preserving the status quo. But for you, what's the most uncomfortable truth about wealth and families that you think your whole industry still avoids?

Speaker B: Uh, well, can I give two different examples? Internal one, external one. Internal one was we completely surprised the market 10 years ago exactly when we decided that a private bank shouldn't actually be running wealth or investments. And we sold our investment business. I remember everyone was completely astonished because it's accepted dogma that that's what private banks do. And they were scratching their heads, and some of them still scratch their heads. Uh, but it's worked extremely well for us to shed an awful lot of noise and concentrate on what has been our core business for 300 years. Yeah, it reduced a lot of conflicts of interest. So we had a lot of customers who are running money, and we didn't want to compete with our own customer. Uh, the external one, which everyone knows, but it needs to be repeated over and over again, is that you can have a lot of money, but money does not make you happy. You know, it enables you to do lots of things. But I see customers who choose to do brilliant things with their money, and they're very fulfilled, they're often very hard working. And I see other customers who have a lot of money and they whine the whole time. Yeah, that's wine of an H in it.

Speaker A: Yeah, but. But again, I think this comes back to some of the Buddhist teaching that happiness is found from within, it's not found from without. And time and again you get some Hollywood rock star or film star who goes, yeah, I've got all this billions and I'm really not happy. And you need to look at Elon Musk, the first trillionaire. I mean, very complex character with lots of issues to resolve. Um, and sometimes People are always searching for I'll be happy when and when never comes. And they get to when or they get the extra Rolex watch or the Ferrari. And it's a temporary fix. It's not solving the problem in Christian

Speaker B: terms, it's a false God. It's idolatry. And, uh, I see it a lot. People get hooked on making more and more money and it's a game and they're good at this game and they want to keep scoring well in this game. Uh, and I'm very mindful not to get addicted to wealth for wealth's sake. What's the point?

Speaker A: Yes, and it's, again, it's another human aberration, which is. We're constantly comparing ourselves. Yeah, comparison and competition. And, um, it just leads to huge unhappiness because I remember there was somebody, uh, in one of the big famous banks, we were doing some work together and, um, I was taking her through a series of exercises and I said, um, and so who are you? And her first words out of her mouth was, I'm poor. And I laughed, I said, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but you were paid a million and your bonus was 400,000. Said, yes, but my boss, he was paid 1.5 million, his bonus was 600,000. I said, you are never going to be happy because you're always going to find somebody who has more than you. And this is at the root of many of the problems we see with our political elite and, uh, particularly in certain countries as they grasp, you know, the story, the lovely story of the, um, the monkey and the coconut. I'll share it. For people listening to the podcast, um, it's this problem that the humans have in grasping and hunters in the forests and those who are, ah, squeamish, please stop listening. But when they wanted to hunt and catch monkeys, they didn't go through the trees or climb up there. They just found a coconut, bored a hole in one end, poured out the milk, drank it and made a slot in the other end. And they passed through the slot, a rope with a knot in and pulled it tight, lashed it round a tree, left the coconut there with some, either some lovely sweet rice or juicy fruit, and they just left it there. And within a couple of hours the monkeys would come down from the trees, they'd smell it out and they would want it. And so they'd put their hand, their flat hand in to the coconut and they would grasp the fruit or the sweet rice. And then the hunters a couple of hours later would come over and the monkey was still holding on to that thing it wanted and it wouldn't let go. All it had to do was let go, take the hand and it was free. But it wouldn't. And I see this metaphor in life today. People are grasping, they are not letting go of things and they're being caught.

Speaker B: It's a nice metaphor. And the lady comparing herself to her boss is likely to get much poorer because she's likely to get divorced.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. They find that they climb the ladder of success and it's leading against the wrong wall.

Speaker B: And I.

Speaker A: Anything in life is possible if you're prepared to pay the price and live with the consequences. But if you follow that route, the price is too high and the consequences are severe. Um, one other quick question. Seehorn Co survived wars, crashes and revolutions. When you look at today's world politics, AI wars in Iran and, uh, Ukraine, what generally worries you about the next 50 years for a 354-year-old business?

Speaker B: The people say to me, aren't we living in unprecedented time? And I sort of look back and think, no, I don't think we are. I think the last 50 years might have been quite a peaceful aberration, but the times we're living in are really quite normal in the broader sweep of English history. Uh, in answer your question, what worries a bank? Well, what should worry bank, I think, is cyber fraud and AI. Enhanced cyber fraud particularly is concerning.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I think that is, I'm fascinated by AI. I use it a lot. I find it very helpful to my job and the work I do. But you have to manage it very carefully and people think they're controlling it, but soon it'll be running them.

Speaker B: I don't know, I don't know about that because, uh, we're a comparatively small bank, comparatively simple bank, and we've put in years of work now to get our data fit for AI purpose. Uh, and it's still not perfect out in the wider world. It'll be years before data is good enough to let agents loose without human intervention. I mean, it'll be a madness if they do.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I even had that the other day. I was planning one of my trips to Germany to do an off site and I ran it through. Here's my itinerary and this is the dates and things. Oh, yes, we'll take this flight and this flight. So I passed the details on to my taxi company who takes me down to Heathrow. And they went, no, it's not, it's not going from that Airport to that. This completely made it up.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Not at all true.

Speaker B: Oh.

Speaker A: So had I relied on that illusion, I would have been stuck, uh, on the Runway without the right plane.

Speaker B: Tim Harford in the FT wrote about going to the London Marathon. And there's this guy who was determined to believe his AI, which was sending him on underground routes which did not exist. And the interesting thing about the article was the guy wouldn't believe a human. He was determined to believe his hallucinating AI.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And that's true in life. Who do you believe? And, uh, the quality of the five people that you surround yourself with is very important to you and particularly with their values and the things that you've spoken about. Well, Alexander, this has been fascinating. Now is the, uh, the time for a piece in its own right. Would you kindly say who you are, uh, what you've done, what you do now, and talk about the book and then give us a two minute top leadership tip, something that we can take away that will serve us well.

Speaker B: I'm Alexander Hoare. I've completed this week, actually 39 years of Family bank as the first of the 11th generation. I wrote this book, as I said, for future, just to set down the record for future partners in case they were interested. I then discovered that this generation don't read books. But that's neither here nor there. Uh, but in the forward also, I included in the possible readers people who wish to thrive in capitalism without selling their souls. And it has touched a nerve of a lot of people a bit concerned about the short term, greedy, extractive nature of contemporary capitalism. Um, and my sort of overall learning from this is about people m forming and managing teams who can nurture an appropriate culture which will support relationships which will endure over generations. And we have customers who bank with us for 10 generations. You know, that's a sort of litmus test of, I think, a healthy culture.

Speaker A: Yeah, very much so. Well, look, Alexander, thank you for, um, I think what I call the three hums, humility, humanity, and a lovely, wicked sense of humor. And I have enjoyed working with you, uh, and I see you as a business friend of mine and I'm very honored to have you on the podcast. Thank you for what you've done and the book you've written. I recommend people who are just listening. Do listen to Alexander Hoare's book, Impact Banker for Good. And, um, Alexander, thank you and good luck, Doctor.

Speaker B: Thank you. I've always enjoyed working with you too, and I hope your book goes well. Thank you, accomplice.

Speaker A: Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for joining me in the quiet room. Did something here make you think? You're paid to think, not to be busy. Then don't let it fade. Act on it this week. Share this episode with one leader who needs Want the full map? My book is the CEOs how to Navigate your team through turbulent times. It's out now on um, Jonathan perks uh dot com. It carries the battle tested lessons of more than 400 leaders. Leaders who faced real hardship and came through it. If this show helped you to lead, please subscribe and please leave a review. It helps other leaders find their way too. Find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram and at Jonathan perks.com Remember this leadership is a choice, it's not a position. Choose well.

Speaker B: Mhm. Sam.