Diary of a banker. Blog on banking by Tony de Bree

Welcome to my new blog, ‘diary of a banker’. I am glad you are here. Just look around, read the posts, discover the links and watch the videos.

My objective is to enter posts and articles on a regular basis, sometimes in the form of a diary, sometimes by reacting on articles or shows and sometimes by including videos on certain topics like the newly started video-series on “Investment Banking 4 Dummies” (don’t miss out, they are really instructive AND fun).

All aimed at learning from the mistakes we all made in the last 15 years and using that experience to build “the next generation bank”. And especially to engage in a dialogue with anybody from outside and inside the industry using social networks and different social media. In order to transform the international financial services sector into a more social responsible sector.

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Morning, tomorrow night a new year starts. So as usual I have made a number of resolutions for 2011:

1. Lose weight.
2. Organise myself better.
3. Spend more time with my family and friends.
4. Help others more.
5. Learn something new every day.
6. Enjoy life more in 2011.
7. Watch my health better.
8. Focus my business efforts.
9. Publish two new books.
10. Earn more money in less time.

Well, these are my 10 resolutions for 2011.

What about yours?

Tony de Bree
@diaryofabanker

Morning, as a number of important events are coming up where I am speaking, facilitating workshops etc, I am giving this WordPress-blog a facelift. This will mean:

- Social media buttons to the right of the blog (color etc to be changed)
- New Twitter Widget
- New/changed pages:
- Contact
- Services
- Free Downloads
- Facebook badge added

You can follow what I am doing step-by-step by following me here on Twitter. If you have any questions, just ask, ok? Especialy if there are things that YOU MISS.

Tony

Morning.

One of the nicer things about getting older (I hope!) is that you can observe over a longer periode of time that things like methods and approaches are coming back regularly. And then often fade away again by the way. One of them is “Six Sigma in banking”.

An approach that finds it’s origins in the 1800′s. Stemming from manufacturing (like car manufacturing at Ford) and especially focusing on quality improvements in industrial processes in order to reduce waste. From a supplier-perspective.

There actually have been two previous waves of sudden increased popularity of Six Sigma in banking that I have experienced in my lifetime.

The first one was when Tracy and Wiersema wrote their book about Customer Intimacy in the Nineties. This was a time when globalisation was taking over the world not so much only in manufacturing but especially in the services industry including banking and financial services in general.

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Morning. I think that story telling is one of the best ways to get messages accross. Both to children and for adults like you and me. That is why I started to write my blogs (“diary of a banker”) both in English as in Dutch. And that is why I liked this package on Story Telling in business a lot. It’s only $25 for lifetime membership. It covers:

Essential Leadership & Business Resources Downloadable eBooks & e-WorkBooks, Story Telling Articles, Monthly Newsletters on Story Telling in Business, Audio Streams, Workshops, Interaction with Story Tellers Graham & Dorian, Self Assessment Tools & more.

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NEW: Review new WordPress Plug-in For Brand Management

Brand Control – Brand Management WP-Plugin

This powerful WordPress plugin will automatically keep an eye on what people are saying about you or your business online.
How does it work?

You choose what you want to monitor and Brand Control will automatically pull this data from many online resources and display it in a convenient one-stop location directly inside your WordPress blog.

You will be able to easily keep an eye on what others are saying about you or your business by utilizing the power of these resources.

This is something that is really adding value to your only business ventures

Check it out NOW!

Tony de Bree

www.diaryofabanker.com

@diaryofabanker

I really liked this ebook on leadership and how to become a leadership trainer. It helps you to discover the principles of leadership and it allows you to become a leadership trainer for (senior) managers. Check it out!

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Price: $55.00

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Facebook is hot for financial services companies. This tool will make life easier for marketing departments in large and small financial services companies. Fb Ads Manager is a software tool for managing ads on the Facebook ad platform. It is a Firefox extension that can be downloaded and installed on Firefox. The tool allows Facebook advertisers to quickly create and split test ads.

Morning,

Yesterday, I went to the Dialogues House (the innovation center of ABN AMRO in Amsterdam) to see a good friend of mine, Paul Iske, the director of that great center to get the Powerpoint Presentation and crazy video he presented as an introduction during my 25-years “diary of a banker” party the 27th of August 2010.

Here is the video on YouTube:

I hope that this is not really the impression I am giving……. what do YOU think?

Tony de Bree
www.diaryofabanker.com