At the heart of Bendigo Bank's brand is a regional Victorian city of around 150,000 people.The recent economic renaissance of that city has been intimately tied to the bank's spectacular national growth since it converted from a parochial building society in 1993.While the brand has been a national phenomenon for more than two decades, the organisation's headquarters and identity have remained anchored in central Victoria.The economic value of the bank to the town is material and that's why Bendigo's civic leaders are prone to monitoring developments at the bank with fanatical vigilance.It's probably fair to assume that Bendigo mayor Margaret O'Rourke was a tad relieved yesterday after news filtered throughout her community that a local resident  - Marnie Baker -  had scored the top job at Australia's fifth largest retail bank.The bank employs more than 1200 people in the Bendigo region and most are high-paying roles that would normally be obtainable only by people living in or close to one of Australia's mainland capitals.Not only do Bendigonians have "one of their own" running the bank, they can also take comfort from the careful messaging that the new CEO issued to stakeholders on Monday.Baker invoked, unmistakably, the rhetoric of a former chief executive, Rob Hunt, when she promised to work on behalf of all stakeholders because "feeding into their prosperity has defined who we are for the past 160 years".Banking Day yesterday contacted Hunt who says he identified Baker in the 1990s as a potential future leader."She not only had a great intellect but she had the ability to communicate a complex strategy across the organisation," recalled Hunt."I always said to Marnie and our other young executives that 'your role is to feed into community prosperity - not off it'."The community banking model is about making successful customers, a successful community and a successful bank - but only in that order."It is rare in the post-modern era of ego-driven management to witness such transfer of corporate memory and internal culture through words.Somehow, Bendigo has managed to do it, while larger rivals such as ANZ and NAB seem to turn group strategy upside down almost every time a new CEO is appointed.While the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority might insist that a mortgage sold by a regional bank should carry a higher risk weight than one sold by a major bank, surely there is something less fraught about the way small institutions such as Bendigo transmit culture and commercial acumen over time?Newly installed CEOs of major banks are more likely to tear down the words and symbols of their predecessors because they might think such action demonstrates they are value-adding.The problem with this attitude is that organisations become prone to losing their identities because values and culture are less likely to be linked to shared experiences over time.Hunt admits that Bendigo Bank would sometimes have to sacrifice short or medium-term returns to preserve its organisational culture."We decided to ban all incentive payments to staff in 2002 because we quickly realised how it could