Transformational leadership: The key to ensuring a smooth transition while changing operation models

At the Singapore FinTech Festival 2022, DBS spoke about the challenges impacting our global economy, showcased our cloud solutions, hosted a series of activities at our Innovation Lab Crawl, and participated in fireside chats organised by other tech firms.

One such chat took place between Syed Shahid Hussain, managing partner, Financial Services Sector of IBM Consulting, and Shamim Basheer, COO of DBS Consumer Banking Technology, where the duo spoke about DBS’ transformation journey.

Shahid: DBS embarked on digital, data, and cloud transformation eight years ago. It delivered transformation in an accelerated manner, and as a result, DBS has been awarded Best Bank in the World multiple times. If I understand correctly, DBS adopted two approaches that drove the transformation. On one hand, you built an ecosystem and platform-based business model to engage customers and acquire customers at scale. On the other hand, you also internally reorganised yourselves to have a product-led operating and delivery model.

What are some of the key differences between the two?

Shamim: We started this transformation journey in 2014. We began with digitising our product, modernising our legacy stack, and technology insourcing. 2018 was when we started platform transformation, called two-in-a-box, where we got the business and technology units together. We wanted to bring both units together, have them share a common vision, joint KPIs and execute customer outcomes together.

In recent years, this has seen us maturing to a horizontal organisation. This means we are moving away from two-in-a-box, to N-in-a-box. It’s no longer just business and technology working together; it includes operations and other supporting functions to have a common goal or business outcome.

Today, everything in DBS is managed through customer journeys. It’s different from what we had in the past, which was more focused on projects or new initiatives.

Figure 1: Shahid (left) and Shamim (right) at the Singapore Fintech Festival 2022

Shahid: What are some benefits you’ve gained from the platform-led model that helped DBS to accelerate innovation and transformation?

Shamim: From a traditional set-up to the platform operating model, we brought business and technology close together. We removed a lot of silos, and with a common vision, saw a lot more collaboration.

As we move towards becoming a horizontal organisation, we also developed new ways of working, where we manage through journeys. Some of the benefits we’re seeing include better collaboration, we have One Agenda, One Organisation, there is also better customer centricity and we are very much a data-driven organisation.

Shahid: What changes did you have to make to move from a vertical to a horizontal organisation? Did you have to create any new roles to ensure the success of this model?

Shamim: I would answer this in a different way. It’s not about roles. You have to get the principles and the culture right. Framework and roles are secondary.

When we started the platform transformation, we followed the principles of Agile, and slowly changed the culture within the organisation.

The second part was about data. Unless you have the right and relevant data, you cannot make the right decisions.

The third part was making organisational changes based on the needs of the initiatives we were running. It isn’t about blindly following Kanban, Scrum or Lean. We followed what was required according to initiatives.

Finally, we came up with a proper control tower to monitor and measure these changes. This provided transparency to our senior management.

Shahid: How did you go about monitoring? Did you have daily, weekly, or monthly operating approaches, or cadences to monitor, measure and report the stats, and make sure that this operating model is working?

Shamim: We have a proper governance framework for the platform organisation model. We have a monthly Platform Connect with senior leadership, based on what is defined in the value map, and the progress made in each platform. We had rituals at every level, be it at a platform, project, initiative or squad level.

As we move towards being a horizontal organisation, the way we approach the rituals is to look at the customer outcomes, through the value map. The KPIs in the value map are not only for business, but also for technology, operations and marketing. Our teams had to agree on the KPIs from the beginning. These KPIs aren’t just about revenue. We then put drivers in place to achieve them.

The data collected, and the automated control tower, provide transparent output to the management. This helps the management to make the right decisions when it comes to which product and journey to invest in, which brings about change.

Shahid: Could you share your learnings and key factors to making the models successful, based on your experience?

Shamim: First of all, without the support of our senior management, this would not have been possible.

We are grateful to have our CEO, Piyush Gupta, and our CIO, Jimmy Ng, who’ve driven it from the front. We’ve also had the support of Consumer Banking Technology Group Head, Lim Boon Khee, which allowed us to achieve this.

The second most important factor, and I’d like to go back to my earlier point, was to take a data-driven approach.

We also made organisational changes for most of the platforms. For example, in consumer banking, we had around 3,000+ resources. We organised them into 10 to 12 PCFTs (Persistent, Coss-functional Teams), where each team focuses on a specific outcome. We had a clear way to measure the outcomes, and the data was captured properly.

Shahid: Do you have a word of advice for CEOs, CXOs, and fintech startups who are building their capabilities and are undergoing their own transformation journeys?

Shamim: My background is from delivery, and I’ve been in transformation for last five to six years. I’d say that transformation is the hardest thing to achieve.

To all the leaders, you need a lot of time, focus and effort. You need to get the culture right. Get the principles in place before rolling out frameworks, tools, and implementation. If we don’t get the culture and the principle right, we will fail.

Featured image by Freepik