Big Financial Institutions Can Foster An Innovation Mindset

Innovation is driven by people for people.

Technology has been at the forefront of innovative change and a big enabler in the transformation of financial services. However, all innovative products and solutions deployed in financial services have in common an innovative team.

FinTechs and start-ups are primarily associated with championing that innovative mindset, characterised by distinctive founders, small teams and creative office spaces.

Big financial institutions on the other hand, are sometimes perceived on the more cautious side.

Now, I truly believe that big financial institutions do have innovative teams and individuals. And the pandemic has given perfect examples of that.

“BBVA is offering customers zero-touch contactless cash withdrawals from ATMS as a means to promote safety and hygiene protocols during the pandemic.” Source: Finextra

The issue in big financial institutions is the size of the teams and the organisation. The scale added to the pressure of tight regulatory deadlines, and prioritisation of BAU activities increases the gap between individuals and participation in innovative experiences/projects. This can hide away the innovative spirit and mindset.

There is no magic potion for this problem. Instead, leaders need to ensure that they continuously create experiences and activities that revive the innovation mindset of the group. This is especially important in the current times in which teams are not physically located together.

Below are some activities that can be used to inject an innovation mindset. The main principle is that activities and experiences change over time and that different delivery tools are used throughout.

• Bring / Make them a spark

GE defines Spark as “an outsider that challenges the team to think differently”.

This can be achieved by bringing an external party to run a workshop or by arranging internal sparks days. For example arrange a job swap in which individuals are free to challenge and question the new team, once they return to their team they can share lessons learned. This activity will not only stimulate the individual that has performed the spark role but also the team that has been challenged.

• Keep their mind fit

Provide training in new tools and solutions available internally (from other teams) and in the market. Training should be available on-demand and short and sweet so individuals can review it on their time. Use different delivery options from traditional training to podcasts and YouTube talks.

Additionally, provide them with a challenge that differs from their day to day activity, via hackathons, quiz or team building activities.

• Offer self-learn time

Google, one of the most innovative companies, encourages their own employees to spend 20% of their time working on their own projects.

Now, big financial organisations will not be able to provide such a scheme but individual business cases should be supported. Line managers should incentivize individuals who are keen on learning a new skill/technology by providing them a day of the week or a defined time slot of the week which they can use for learning.

• Reward individuals that Innovate (especially if they failed)

Promote and reward individuals that bring ideas to the table and run with them, through vouchers, points or simple feature in internal newsletters and townhalls.

Promoting those individuals will send the message to both the individual and the rest of the team that this is the expected behaviour and push them to be creative and bring new ideas. 

•  Leverage Champions

So-called Innovation Champions, are business SMEs who like to try new technologies and solutions.

Involve Champions in new experiments and ask them to share their experience with their colleagues on an ongoing basis. This way other business SMEs will see a role model that they can relate to and feel inspired to get involved.

Due to the longevity of some of the big financial organisations, some individuals will have been in the organisation for many years and will have a breath of experience of the customer, regulation and available solutions. It is essential that a continuous innovation mindset is fostered in those individuals to be able to leverage their expertise and create innovative and better customer experiences.

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