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When the war is over
On McChrystal

In the first week of June he was in Australia on his second visit, and addressed AMP’s annual innovation and ideas festival, known as Amplify, an event for clients, advisers, investors and staff. It featured more than 30 global speakers, who explored themes such as innovation and disruption, artificial intelligence, leadership, automation, the future of customer experience, trust, creativity and the future of work.

The theme of the forum was “Limitless”. But after a disastrous 18 months for AMP, which included public castigation by the banking royal commission and the departure of its chairman and CEO, McChrystal had a message for AMP’s embattled staff and its new management, led by former Credit Suisse banker Francesco De Ferrari.

“In an organisation the size of AMP, 6900 people are doing their job properly,” he says. “It is dispiriting to see something on television or in the newspapers about your organisation. The average person feels they are getting painted with a brush that isn’t entirely fair.

“Leaders need to say, ‘We are responsible as an organisation for what we have to do to change’ and we have to own that. But on the other hand they need to be clear that the vast majority of the organisation is doing the right thing and needs to be supported in doing that.”

McChrystal, who is a director of Deutsche Bank USA, says that since the global financial crisis in America there has been a view in the community that everyone in the financial services sector is “greedy or duplicitous”. A similar perception has taken hold in Australia in the wake of the royal commission.“That perception is laughable, of course, but the industry can’t pretend it doesn’t exist,” McChrystal says.“The leadership of an organisation like AMP needs to say: ‘There are things we need to fix, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have good things in our culture and the right people to take the place in a better direction.’ ”