There are two ways of looking at Mike Smith's now fourth significant pitch on his thinking on ANZ's strategy and outlook in the three months or so he's served as chief executive.One is that he's seeking to assuage the doubters over the scale and substance of his ambitions for ANZ as a "super regional" bank in Asia.All the talk of organic growth and the underlying tone of moderation is pitched to an audience that wants to hear these messages.On the other hand the announced growth targets, in the bank generally and in Asia, are potentially pretty challenging. The required average rate of growth in profit from Asia over the next five years to meet ANZ's aspirations is 82 per cent a year.The second way of looking at Smith's approach is that his new vision for ANZ is a serious skewering of many key themes of the John McFarlane era.Until recently ANZ's key talking points were increased retail banking profits (engineered through the takeover of National Bank of New Zealand in 2003), "de-risking", the merit of notionally independent business "specialists", and the sober trade-off ANZ had made in entering a wealth management joint venture with ING.Just getting serious about targeting growth in earnings in Asia is a reversal of a strategic stance that McFarlane took. But Smith sidelined many of the key ANZ themes from the past as well.The issue for ANZ in Asia is that few will believe the line that the growth will be largely organic and careful.ANZ could copy the handful of banks (HSBC is one) that achieved high rates of organic growth by lending more through careful growth via existing distribution networks.But in order to meet targets you'd have to think ANZ will be tempted to just buy the distribution networks and - critically, local management expertise - in attractive markets. And then presumably broaden those local franchises and improve their overall risk management and cut their cost of funds (rather like the arguments NAB is making to explain their purchase of a little known farm bank in the US mid-west).