Becoming an unlikely change agent for innovation in financial services (Part 4 of 4)
Welcome back to our 4-part blog series on HSBC’s journey to implementing an e-learning Design Thinking course. Steve Suarez, Global Head of Innovation, Finance & Risk at HSBC, continues his four-part series about working with d.schoolers Justin Ferrell and Jeremy Utley to create a design thinking program at HSBC.
This is the fourth and final installment. If you need to get caught up, you can find the first, second , and third posts on the Stanford d.school Medium.
After previous setbacks on the brink of launching, I was cautiously optimistic as we approached our launch date. In true design thinking style, we decided to do a soft launch to a VIP group of advocates, who were keen to support the success and adoption of the course. The advocate group provided valuable insights into what worked well and what needed to be improved; ahead of our hard launch to the bank. I was determined to ensure the content, platform, and delivery style was perfect.
Much to our excitement, the test users’ response was overwhelmingly positive — the structure and flow of the course landed extremely well. The group highlighted that the examples Justin and Jeremy brought to the course were impactful, offering a more detailed and engaging way to learn about design thinking concepts. Better yet, colleagues understood where design thinking techniques could be utilised in their day-to-day roles.
From our point of view, everything was on track. The course was ready on our online learning platform with bugs removed, and we had our launch communications prepared. We had even created a bespoke co-branded certificate with HSBC and Stanford Online. We were set…or so I thought!
Houston, we have a problem! Picture the scene. It was the Friday evening before our planned launch on Monday. The team was getting ready to log off for the weekend when suddenly we learned that we would not be able to use the selected online learning platform as it was still in pilot across some areas of the bank. Therefore it would struggle to host over 25,000 users. This new development hurt more than previous delays, which had been completely unavoidable. The team had put in a tremendous amount of resources to create the content specifically for this platform, so it was difficult to digest initially.
So, what did we do? You’ve guessed it; we pivoted once again! It’s poetic that in trying to deliver a design thinking course, we had to leverage design concepts throughout; we had gone through ‘yes ands’, empathising, ideating, prototyping, and now we needed to collaborate with cross-functional teams.
In the midst of all of the turmoil, I had accepted a new role as Global Head of Innovation, Finance and Risk, which was fortunate in that it gave me a fantastic team with great skill sets that came into play quickly as we battled to find a solution.
Our Web Developers had to SCORM wrap the content to make it accessible through an alternative Learning Management System. What would typically take months to prepare and upload was done in 3 days through the determination and collaboration of really flexible and dedicated colleagues — the day of the launch finally came!
We hit send on our launch communications and were thrilled with the response we received. Since launching in November, we have had over 5,500 people register, and 1,700 people have received their certificate from the entire Group so far! What was even more fantastic was the response on social media to the course and its presenters. Checkout #HSBC_DT on LinkedIn.
From my perspective, there were so many times in this whole journey that it could have gone wrong or tailed off while negotiating so many blockers and false starts. I really have to give kudos to the team for their perseverance and for driving me forward when I was feeling down about it. Tying back to the first blog post, I remember how energised I felt when I learned about design thinking for the first time, so it has been a privilege to make this content available to our colleagues globally. I am grateful that the response we have received to the finished product has made the entire journey worthwhile.
A special thank you to Justin, Jeremy and the rest of the team at Stanford who supported this journey, the great production crew, and a huge amount of thanks to the team within the bank who made this possible.
At the end of the day, I get to share my certificate with the design thinking community — the first time in my life that I have been able to grade my own homework!
Now that we have deployed the design thinking course, I am excited to see the next stage of how our graduates are taking design thinking and turning it into “Design Doing”.
About Steve Suarez — With a track record of over 27 years of transformation experience in consulting, telecommunications and financial services, Steve is a strong advocate of design thinking and its application for customer solutions. He is passionate about Innovation and the Growth Mind-set which drives his continuous learning. Most recently Steve took part in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme at Stanford. Please reach out to innovation@hsbc.com with any questions.
Credit to John Nolan and Catherine Coffey for supporting the blog series.
Bring design thinking to your company
Kickstart your own innovation journey by learning design thinking from Jeremy Utley, Justin Ferrell, Perry Klebahn, and other Stanford experts. Check out the d.school’s Design Thinking Bootcamp and Stanford Online’s Creativity and Design Thinking Program.
