How We Transformed DBS into the Best Bank in the World
With Andrew Sidwell, founder of BareZero
Show Notes
Andrew Sidwell is the founder of BareZero, strengthening transformation teams.
He was previously Executive Director of the Customer Experience Transformation Program at DBS Bank in Singapore, where he helped the bank transform into the World’s Best Bank, 3 years in a row.
Today, he shares how the bank made the transformation.
Andrew’s Top 3 Tips For Managing Change:
Get a very clear picture of what your role is in the transformation, to support your people. It will be different from your business-as-usual role (21:43).
Change yourself first. It’s okay to be vulnerable, and be willing to be bare and open with your team. Keep resetting in order to do your best work (22:30).
Your people are the change makers. Not you. So it’s crucial to create space for your people, so they can do the work needed to get where you want to go (23:45).
You'll Learn:
What organisations DBS looked at, to get a head start on creating world-class service (05:58).
The first of 5 pillars which Piyush Gupta (CEO of DBS Group) focused on to begin the transformation (05:14).
The steps the bank took to hone the service they wanted to deliver to customers into 3 words (07:02).
What ‘RED’ stands for, and how it forms the basis of service provided by the bank. Chances are, it will be equally applicable in your business (09:47).
How DBS got buy-in to the transformation at all levels (12:43).
Andrew’s number 1 tip for the mindset to have as a leader, so you can help your people learn and transform (16:12).
The process which senior leaders followed, to get deep insight into what was working in the transformation, what wasn’t, and the opportunities that existed (16:58).
The ‘minefield’ some of your people may feel they’re having to find their way through, when you’re in the midst of change, and how to help them (20:27).
Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsidwell8/
Get the book by Paul Cobban (Chief Transformation Officer at DBS Bank), which Andrew highly recommends, on Amazon: Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak. Our Performance Break-Thru system helps contact centres achieve their operational efficiency goals, guaranteed.
Today, I'm fortunate enough to be joined by Andrew Sidwell from BareZero Transformation in the UK. Andrew was previously Head of Transformation Enablement at the DBS bank in Singapore, and he's here today to share what he's learned about leading cultural change.
So, Andrew, welcome along. Great to have you here.
Andrew Sidwell (00:39)
Hi, I'm really happy that we've got the time zones right. I've got my breakfast. You've got a glass of something else.
Blair Stevenson (00:47)
Exactly. So just to start out with, just tell us quickly a little bit about yourself.
Andrew Sidwell (00:52)
Yeah, I had an amazing journey over the last few years. I started with a degree in sport. So that passion about teams and bringing people together, that's really what I do now; building transformation teams, making them stronger.
I actually started my career in the contact centre world. And from that, I had some great opportunities, to move to Singapore. And that's where I got into operations, be a team manager, got into HR. And after I did that, I realised I want to do some more coaching, if you like, and training with other organisations. And so I did that across Asia, did that for 20 years, before then I finally arranged with my wife to start my own business.
And it's been an amazing journey, just trying to move from training people on the ground, to moving that to team managers, then moving that outside of the contact centre world, that customer experience is not just your call centre or contact centre. It's about your whole leadership, to try and come together for that journey.
And that's where I started to work with people like OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Virgin Mobile, UOP (United Overseas Bank) to try and change that mindset and helping leaders to put that customer right at the heart of what they do.
And right now, I'm living in the UK. So I was 20 years in Singapore, I'm now back here in London, to start building my practice. And like I said, it's been a great journey.
Blair Stevenson (02:39)
Awesome. And one of the reasons I really want to talk to you is because customer experience is much, much wider than the contact centre. So, for people listening to this podcast, quite a few of them will be unfamiliar with the DBS Bank, despite the fact that it's won World's Best Bank, three years in a row.
So tell us a bit about DBS and the journey that you were on with them since from 2010, in terms of the cultural change that they put into place.
Andrew Sidwell (03:12)
It's very humbling to be part of an amazing journey. We've had so many business cases and people podcasting about it, but it really has been such a learning journey. And for me, it's really about the whole organisation. And people say, "Well, we do that" and everyone's trying to bring the whole organisation together, but this is like waves and waves and waves of change in culture.
And I think the big thing is they started to be a best bank - world-class bank - to keep that ambition right up until finally they changed it to frame it into "Making Banking Joyful". So that's a big shift.
And I think it's really about shrugging off that corporate mindset. It's about the leaders. Really, the story is not the digital tech - it's part, it's very important - but it was the leaders who changed themselves on that journey. And many of those leaders that I met in 2010, when I joined, when Piyush joined - Piyush is the CEO, he started in 2009 - those same leaders have gone through that journey as well, together. And I think that's been very powerful.
Blair Stevenson (04:27)
Yeah. Cool. So I'd like to explore that shortly. Before I do, what was the primary driver for that change that was undertaken within the bank?
Andrew Sidwell (04:37)
Well, DBS at the time in 2009, 2010, they were at the lowest for customer satisfaction in Singapore. We had lots of difficulty with branches. You had people queuing around the corner, just waiting to get into your branch.
I think there's another thing, which is I went down on the ground and I said, "What does customer experience mean for you, or service?" And they had a little book, they had hundreds of different examples. In other words, there wasn't a focus for it. There were lots of examples, but how do you bring that together in a DNA?
And I think that's when Piyush said, "We need to, firstly, start with one pillar." He had five pillars. One of those he put right in the middle, and he said, "Asian service." I looked at it, I joined in 2010, and I was brought in from the outside in to try and say, "Well, what does Asian service really mean?" And so I led a pillar, I was on the heartware, and I was to try and bring the bank together to think, "What does that really mean?"
For me, I'm Western, I'm in Asia. What do I know about customer experience? So what do I do? I asked other leaders, I said, "What's the difference?" And I think that's quite also important about the urgency.
Singapore Airlines and Changi airport, they've already got recognition. And we were saying, "Well, what does that really mean for them?" How can we codify Asian service by taking some of the best stories at the time in Singapore, and bring that into a very differentiated experience for us.
And I think most importantly is Piyush always said it from day one. He goes, "We've got to shift the mindset first, but we've got to be relentlessly worried about our customer, and we're not." And I think that's where it started.
Blair Stevenson (06:37)
Nice. And I think codifying Asian service in hindsight is a pretty smart first step, understanding what you want to deliver on. I think there's some lessons here, we're talking bank-wide here, but I think there's lessons for any business unit and any organisation.
Once you had that identification of what Asian service was, what process did you put in place to change the culture?
Andrew Sidwell (07:02)
The first question is to try and codify, "What does Asian service mean?" And as I said, we're talking about trying to get the organisation together. They don't really want to come together. Because I could say, "Andrew, you're just the central program. Piyush has got Asian service, we've got our own version of doing it anyway."
So the first question really is, we've got to try and co-create first. In other words, we've got to get some of our leaders together and say, "What does Asian service really mean?" Piyush said, "I want to get the top 50 leaders in a room, and let's have a conversation, but we've got some great examples with Singapore Airlines."
So we brought in what's called the Singapore Airlines quality company. They're there to bring in. They did some inspiration. They helped us to really unpack what does really Asian service mean for us? And by the end of that big day, tough conversation, lots of conversation, they said, "Okay, we've got 96 versions. A hundred ideas." So you look at the room and go, "Yeah, that was fun, but we're still back where we began." But that's okay.
It's now 2021. That's a 12 year program. The reason why it's been such a powerful program, as a brand if you like, is because they started together. Then we went out to customers, learnt about what Asian service really means. Brought the customer into that conversation. Then we went into the business, different diverse teams coming together.
And Piyush said, "Take your time. Don't rush this." It took about three, four months to go from 96, to the final six until we agreed, "Well, we've got three." We co-created, we've got three simple words and that's what became RED.
I think the other thing for me is to do a big program requires a change in mindset. Once you've done your co-creation, then it's about the leadership, the role modeling. And then after that, you've got to create some structure for the change. And that's when we started to build a bit more of a program around that.
Blair Stevenson (09:45)
And what does RED mean?
Andrew Sidwell (09:47)
It's 'Respectful', 'Easy to deal with', and 'Dependable'. When you're starting your own brand for customer experience, really take the time and think around what RED means. Now, when you create standards, or values, or whatever you're trying to do, re-change to re-flip it. It's not RED from an inward perspective, we took it from a customer perspective.
And so when you look at RED, or 'respectful', and what it really means, respectful is really about the emotional part, it's the human part. And I think then it's about the relationships we're trying to build with the bank.
Now, if you think of a call centre, maybe in the nineties to 2010, 2012, you were still doing customer service. Now it's all online, isn't it? It's all about your ratings and stuff like that. Respectful still works. And I think the best thing with RED is it's not just manual in the old days, it still works for digital. So you're changing the mindset, respectful.
'Easy to deal with' is trying to get people to reduce the friction in your relationship. It's trying to take the effort for your customer away. And it's getting people to really focus. "We're taking too long. How do we redesign an experience for our customer, rather than building our own products and pushing them out?" That changes the mindset when you look at the customer.
And then lastly, 'dependable'. It's about keeping those promises. And the customer saying, "Look, just always be there for me. Put me first. Not you, the bank. Put me first." And I think that changes that mindset, which gave a magnet for our people.
So, like I say, I see lots of values, but they are inward. Most values are inward for our company. We had another way of creating our own Asian service, which is outward in. So you've got the external world, and you've got our capabilities and values. RED is bringing that together.
Blair Stevenson (12:10)
I hear those words, 'respectful', 'easy to deal' with 'dependable'. Although that's the definition of Asian service, realistically, you could argue that is a much wider thing. I mean, here in New Zealand, for example, that would be appreciated.
What I notice in a lot of organisations is that change is often top down. But what you have mentioned is, A, yes it is top down, from the Chief Executive down, but also you've talked a lot about going out to customers and involving customers in that change as well. So, why did you decide to take that approach?
Andrew Sidwell (12:43)
With Piyush I was asked, "Don't focus on Singapore headquarters, go out into the countries, and find and help and support and bring that into Singapore."
So the diversity, that was really important from the beginning. And so that's why I thought, "You have to be on the ground." You can't just sit in my office in Singapore, creating a nice RED thing and saying, 'Right off you go.' It's the reality on the ground, and aspiration up top, if you like, the fantasy that leaders want to achieve, with the reality on the ground, we've got to try and reduce that gap.
So what I mean by that is, we tried to get RED into multiple levels. We've got to try and cascade RED into the organisation. So how do you do that? So one way we did this was to create a program called InspiRED. Inspired with RED at the end.
And the aim really was to try and help those teams, like the contact centre and for operations, to have a chance for people to say, "What does RED mean for them?" Not from leaders telling you what it really means. It's like, "What do you think?"
And the second thing is, most of the time, project management and project improvements are normally top down. And so we have lots of things like process improvements, big events, five days, journeys to change the mindset, which are very top down.
We wanted to build something more in the middle where you actually bring in people's ideas. So in other words, they can imagine, create and celebrate yourself. You can do it. And we created a little canvas. It's an approach, it's got some activities, but it's about having really courageous conversations in their own team.
And by the way, Blair, you know, in call centres or contact centres, it's very hard with time. You're just busy, busy, busy. Work, work, work. So we had a bit of a mindset there to say, "Look, sometimes you've got to stop and learn together as a team, you've got to adapt as well. It's not just your coach and your leader telling you what to do. You've got to adapt."
And that's where InspiRED tried to build that momentum. And I think the best reason why is because it was a very amazing way of trying to make it easy for teams to give their ideas up to senior leaders. It was a very early way of doing that, without feedback and digital. So a very passionate way of saying, "Well, we've made some contribution, we've made a difference for our customer. We have three different steps, and we're able to adapt ourselves. We can do it."
And to me, you're building that confidence to build the change, and embrace part of that culture rather than someone from top down, pushing that down on people.
Blair Stevenson (15:21)
Yeah. I think when you're talking about the people in the middle, managers are pivotal in the success or otherwise of any change or improvement process. And in fact, you could probably argue that their behaviour is the single most critical variable in success.
What challenges did you face, particularly with your frontline and middle managers, and how did you include them in the change process?
Andrew Sidwell (15:50)
The big gap, really, for me, is not trying to train leaders to solve problems. It's about trying to help them recognise, “Leaders, that you are teaching others, you're teaching people to learn and transform.” And that's a very different mindset from a central team training, it's about them learning to transform others, themselves.
For me, the takeaway from leadership, at the end of the day, is to assume that we don't know. It's a very powerful way of thinking. Because as leaders, we're smart people. But sometimes we've just got to be okay to be vulnerable to say, "Actually, we don't know the answer."
So when I go back to the question about the change process, everyone wants the transformation, but how do you get that change mindset to get leaders to change themselves and say, "Actually, I don't know the answer." So that's when we started to build some questions, coaching questions, to build a little bit more curiosity.
And I'll give an example about being vulnerable. We asked leaders to do a little bit of a walkabout. “Be in the change process. Don't wait in your office, don't get your team to go to a team somewhere else, and then when they come back ask, ‘How did it go?’” Very often, those decisions are U-turning. So get the leader to be the problem, get the leaders to be part of the conversation, not be away.
And so we did something called 'walkabouts'. And that was a way of trying to help leaders to feel comfortable, because it's pretty scary to be up the front. Don't be smart. Don't try to keep telling. Try and reframe that mindset.
And I think that's when we're trying to reduce that massive anxiousness in the change process, to give them some useful questions, reframe that. And then by the end of it, we're able to build a little bit more empathy with people on the ground.
Blair Stevenson (17:49)
You mentioned 'walkabouts'. Just quickly, can you just talk us through that process?
Andrew Sidwell (17:55)
Yeah. The process. Have a question first, have a problem that you really want to have a radar around. You can't just go for a walk, because if you have a very senior leader coming into one of our operations areas, or come visit the call centre, everyone will put out the red carpet. Everyone's going to behave.
So you have to reframe it and say, "I'm trying to observe a little bit more." It's a time to listen. Don't go in with a really big thing that you want to push on others. It's like, “Let's get an idea of what's really happening on the ground.” Things that are really important, and start that conversation.
And so what would happen is we'd have very big visual canvases everywhere. So most companies now, and DBS, it's a very visual management system. So instead of bringing Excel and PowerPoints, we used to bring those back to the meeting for the leader. We got the leader to come to that visual management. Then the leader has got something to focus on.
And then that walkabout extended. Once you get more confident, then you can start to look around, "Hey, how are you doing? What's working here? How do we do this?" And the leaders are really trying to look at the strategic stuff, and trying to unblock the decisions and the relationships that are preventing the system working.
Not the day-to-day, how to do their job better - which leaders like to do - it's a case of really setting it back and saying, "No, it's just the strategic things that I can do to make your life easier for you", unblock those relationships and broken decisions. So I think that's when the process was to slowly build trust.
Blair Stevenson (19:56)
Yup. I can see that happening. And as people get more confident around that, they tend to be out there more often doing those walkabouts.
Andrew Sidwell (20:04)
You've got to have something to focus on. Something visual to see.
Blair Stevenson (20:09)
Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Just thinking more widely, in terms of people who might be running a contact centre business unit, or organisation, what would be your top three tips for them, in terms of managing change, based out of everything that you've learned?
Andrew Sidwell (20:27)
I think there's a lot of anxiousness when you go through change; a massive one. I'm not talking about the anxiousness where you just have to do your PowerPoint with your boss. It's the stuff where you really feel the pain, difficulty, urgency.
And I'll give an example. I did some work on psychological safety. We did some work with some teams, middle managers, and I said, "What does it really mean for you?" And the best way of trying to describe what psychological safety means for them, they did pictures.
And one guy, he said, "This is how it is. My job is, I've got to try and build relationships across teams." And you've got to go from your team. You're going to have a relationship - same with a contact centre - you're always going to meet with the business, or you're going to meet with other departments, and you've got to move over your boundary of your comfort zone into the other.
And one guy said to me, he goes, "My picture is this. I'm standing there, behind me is my leader. And in front of me is like a minefield. And on the other side of that, is the other team we've got to connect with because obviously they want something from us, or we want something from them."
But most importantly, it's the leader behind them pushing them, "You go first." And I think it's that feeling of psychological safety, and the anxiety, is really hard.
Tip #1 (21:43)
So my tip number one is for a leader, you've got to really get a very clear picture of what your role is in the transformation. If you're behind people, that's not a transformation role. So you've got to really change that mindset. Your role as a leader is really to unlock the energy, and that motivation, and that ability to embrace that change.
So, number one is, "What is your role?" Have your top teams actually ask that question, "What does it mean?" Because I think most people, they don't know what their transformation role is. "It's just my job." It's something very different. With psychological safety, trust, relationships. That's a different role.
Tip #2 (22:30)
The second one, is "change yourself first." You've got to change yourself first. And that's why I started my company called BareZero, because it's a personal journey.
Being bare, for me, is when you get a little bit more comfortable with your ability to have more authentic, maybe humble, conversations with your team. And be a bit bare for yourself, be open. When you go to a meeting, be a bit more open. Ask your team what they want to hear rather than what you want to push. So being bare means being a little bit more aware, open.
Zero, for me, means you've got to reset to do your best work. Be ready. If you're going to through change, you've got to reset all of the time. I think many people will go back to their old BAU mindset. Their own typical way of being, business as usual. You've got to reset, and I think that's something I've learned a lot about with DBS. They are constantly resetting, and that came from the top down. You've got to keep resetting to do your best work.
Tip #3 (23:45)
And the third one is, your team does the work. Your change workers are them. It's not you. It's not about putting your feathers on your own little change nest and making it comfortable. I know we don't do that. Leaders don't do that, I'm sure. But it feels like that on the ground, "Why are we doing this?" And I think, therefore, we've got to get out of the way of our teams.
Leaders have got to get away. You've got to create some space, and some bandwidth, to create the real climate for change. That's very different. That is the role of transformation, creating that space, and getting out of the way. It's not your work. It's their work. Yeah.
Blair Stevenson (24:26)
Good tips. Thank you. I'm just curious, are there any particular resources or information sources that you could point people to?
Andrew Sidwell (24:36)
If you look on online, and you see about DBS, there are lots of business cases.
I've got my ex-boss, Paul Cobban. He's in the Transformation Group as the Chief Data Officer. I'm going to sell for him - he's created a book. And if I can actually show, I'll just write it on my digital thing here, it's; 'Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization'.
The essence for me, is that in the journey with DBS, he worked on how to start driving and changing the habits. And so they've created a way of actually building your own rituals, to change that culture. And so they've got maybe a hundred or, as you said, 101 different kinds of rituals you can learn from.
But don't just copy them, they've given you a framework on how to actually create your own BEAN. B stands for a Behavior, Enabler, an Artifact and a Nudge. So that forms BEAN. And that's really about trying to do an experimentation. You create a little ritual, you try and experiment, test it, did it work great? Great, you can start to scale that across the organisation.
So for example, when we did InspiRED, for example, we created a BEAN. We had another program called Mojo, which is to do with meetings, and a ritual to help people. So in other words, there are different rituals, and I think that would be great for people to read.
Blair Stevenson (26:21)
All right. Andrew, thanks very much. Really appreciate it. It's been a really interesting discussion.
Okay. For listeners, you'll find a link to the show notes in the episode description below, along with a link to Paul's book that Andrew just mentioned (https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Sleep-Innovate-Creativity-Organization/dp/1633698378/).
And if you'd like to connect with Andrew on LinkedIn, you'll find a link to his LinkedIn profile in those show notes too (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsidwell8/).
And if you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensonblair/), or connect with me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/blair.stevenson.980), you can find the links to my profile there too.
Well, that's it from us today. Have a productive week.