My 3 Takeaways from TD's Inaugural TechCon

On January 17-20, I participated in the first-ever #TDTechCon2023 event?featuring some amazing guest speakers and top TD and TD Securities tech leaders, together with 8,000 technology colleagues across the Bank.

The conference reinforced our commitment to invest in deepening our capabilities and creating career opportunities through focused learning, while also providing a forum?for colleagues to connect and discuss technology trends and innovations. Keynotes, panel discussions and breakout sessions touched on everything from insights on the latest tech trends and innovations, to getting into a winning mindset with Andre De Grasse, OLY , to best practices creating high-performance teams and navigating transformational journeys with Gene Kim .

Now that we've settled back into our day-to-day lives, I wanted to share the key takeaways that have remained on my mind since we wrapped our inaugural TechCon.

Don't be complacent… strive to be legendary

We have exceptional talent across TD, and there's nothing that we can't accomplish together. As we collectively focus on creating legendary experiences for our clients, colleagues, and partners, we should also reflect on what we as individuals and teams can do to move from good to great to legendary in our contributions.?It doesn't take much but small individual changes can really add up over time.

Andre De Grasse, OLY shared with us what helped drive him to be a world-class, multi-medal-winning athlete. While overcoming challenges along the way, he pauses to remember why he started on his journey and what goals he is chasing, and he leans on people who support him to achieve those goals.?

As we focus on our own objectives, we should think big and shoot for the stars. Let's be curious, ambitious and challenge ourselves to deliver even more innovative, robust and value-based tech solutions, knowing that we are in a supportive and inclusive environment. No matter where we sit in an organization, there's an opportunity to learn and grow.

Leverage the power of community and collaboration

Across TD Bank Group, we pride ourselves on having an enviable, values-based culture of trust, ownership, transparency and respect. We have also been successful in building a strong community of tech colleagues.

TechCon 2023 was another step in connecting our tech teams while providing outstanding content to inspire and educate our colleagues. The many panel discussions and Q&As held throughout the conference — as well as personal conversations during the networking sessions — reminded me just how important it is to facilitate these connections.

As we move forward on our transformational journey to create a leading-edge, competitive engineering practice, increased collaboration is critical to generate brilliant ideas, share best practices, learn from each other, and effectively execute strategies – bringing me to my third key takeaway.

Enable creativity and efficiency

Gene Kim shared a host of insights from his 20+ years studying high-performing IT organizations. A key focus was examining the cost of coordination and fully empowering teams.?

Whether looking at agile DevOps, production systems, resilience engineering, etc., too much coordination stifles creativity and problem-solving potential. By proactively gaining buy-in from key stakeholders (creating believers) and reducing the coordination effort across different areas of the business, we can more efficiently advance projects. We can also enhance implementation by empowering teams, including creating self-service platforms to allow developers and teams to work independently and experiment.

I'm extremely excited to watch how learnings from TechCon 2023 will accelerate our technology capabilities as we focus on being Faster, Simpler and Better, delivering increasingly innovative and outcomes-based solutions to our clients.

If you are interested in joining an organization that is committed to tech career advancement and growth,

check out our #JobOpportunities @TD Careers

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