As a business or IT Leader, do you know when to embrace change and adjust strategies around innovations in the market vs. staying on course? How do you differentiate those nuggets of real opportunities from the noise generated by new ventures or hyped trends in order for you to announce and embrace change with confidence?

Contributor

• • Gregory R. Simpson, Chief Technology Officer, Synchrony Financial

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:57]:

Hello, and welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. And as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter, hashtag c t r alive, and look for the show as hashtag change. Today’s topic is Embracing Change With Confidence, and our guest for today’s show is Gregory Simpson, who’s the CTO at Synchrony Financial. Hi, Greg. How are you?

Gregory Simpson [00:01:23]:

Doing great. Thanks a lot.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:25]:

Thank you so much for joining us. So when we talk about change as a lot of people talk about, like, the changes or the only constant, and without change, we will perish. Now all of that has always been spoken about, and perhaps it’s so much of a motivational speech versus what happens in real life when you are at the top and when you are going at a steady pace. You see the growth, but suddenly there’s a disruption. Or someone comes and says, okay. If we don’t change ourselves, we are bound to be doomed. How much of that is truly unnerving for the people at the top?

Gregory Simpson [00:02:01]:

I think it’s something we have to think about all the time. It’s 100% true. We see entire industries being disrupted all the time because they aren’t anticipating how they can be, in many cases, digitally disrupted. It’s not just about Netflix and Blockbuster. That’s sort of the classic tale. The more recent example is, who thought Uber would digitally disrupt the taxi industry? I don’t think anybody thought the taxi industry was ripe for digital disruption, but it’s under a huge digital disruption right now. This goes back a long time, back to if you go back to typewriters and Smith Corona, they actually tried to convert to computers, doing a joint venture with a company that at the time was very little known, Asus, and they gave up after a year because they didn’t wait long enough. They missed the whole transition. So they’re a shell of what they used to be when they ran typewriters. Kodak, I mean, there’s example after example. If you think about companies that have been caught because they weren’t thinking ahead. I think Andy Grove put it well when he said, “Only the paranoid survive.” You have to really always be thinking about change. It’s something that we believe is important in our culture at Synchrony Financial to be looking ahead, thinking forward, trying to figure out how we can make our markets more successful, help our customers. And in order to do that, we have to change and adapt with the marketplace.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:34]:

Now when you do mention this, these examples that you specifically mentioned, they look more disruptive, almost like a creative destruction. You literally annihilate an industry’s current model, and then you introduce another one. However, change is not only the big bang or it’s not only transformative. You still have changes happening at the incremental level. And, yes, to some extent, you can tweak things. But is everything that comes your way something you are supposed to put in your sandbox and try to play with? Or should you also learn to embrace the art of intelligent ignorance?

Gregory Simpson [00:04:16]:

Well, I wouldn’t encourage people to embrace ignorance, but I would encourage them to make wise choices. Certainly, you can’t be jumping on every new thing that comes by because there’s a new thing coming by every hour. Right? So you’ve got to be able to make intelligent choices, and that means you’ve got to have the right team. But incremental growth is not sufficient to stay ahead of the 10x disruptor. And so the company that feels good because they’re number one in their industry and they just continue to incrementally grow without really investing or looking ahead and thinking about what that potential disruptor could be in their industry, they’re at risk of being replaced because the incremental growth that they sustain will not be sufficient to exceed that of that 10x disruptor that comes along and rethinks their industry. So, you know, it is important to incrementally grow, but it’s important to always be looking ahead to say, what’s the next big jump I can make? What’s the next big leap I can make that can really reinvent and change my organization? I think the problem with some companies is it can be very comfortable to incrementally grow. And I think sometimes you have to accept the fact that it’s not about being in your comfort zone. It’s about figuring out how to continue to make your company the very best it can be.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:42]:

Now, wherever you do mention incremental growth, I’m sure you’re not trying to downplay incremental growth. However, when we talk about anything which is disruptive, that means you’re going to be doing something which is unprecedented for the most part. You do not have a crystal ball. You do not have the people, processes, and technology aligned. And you think about that from a CEO or a top technology leader’s point of view, they really do not know where they are going. And a blind would be leading another blind. Is that truly very uncomfortable? I understand we’re not looking for being comfortable, but can I really have confidence when I really don’t have answers to all the particular things that I would like to have as part of due diligence?

Gregory Simpson [00:06:26]:

I think the thing that people have to understand is just because you change course doesn’t mean you can’t change course again. It’s often referred to as the pivot, right? So you move forward. You realize if you play basketball, you’re trying to get to the goal. You start to go forward. You run into another player. You have to pivot and maybe make adjustments along the way in order to find the optimal course to the goal. You still want to fight for the goal. And the only way you ever get to the goal is to move forward. So if you’re not trying to change, if you’re not trying to grow, if you’re not trying to do new things, you may have to pivot along the way. You may have to throw the ball back over the 3-point line and then bring it back in again. Right? So it’s okay to change course on a change. If you wait for perfect information in order to move forward, you’ll never move forward because the information changes all the time. So what was perfect today won’t be the perfect answer tomorrow, won’t be the perfect answer the next day. You’ve got to really be willing to move forward and adapt as the situation adapts. The world’s moving faster and faster every day, and so our ability to predict perfectly the future gets harder and harder. And so you have to be willing to do real-time predictive course changes, because there is no crystal ball.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:54]:

The very topic was embracing change with confidence. And here the word confidence has been, to some extent, replaced with self belief or a leap of faith. In the context of business where a lot of people’s jobs, the economy, and the company’s very existence is at stake, to what degree do you expect people at the top who are also supposed to answer to Wall Street to set confidence aside and go with a leap of faith?

Gregory Simpson [00:08:26]:

I guess I think it’s not about one particular person taking a leap of faith. I think the key is that the leader needs to surround themselves with a diverse team, a strong team. And they need to talk to a bunch of different people. They need to talk to startups. They need to talk to venture capitalists. They need to talk to new college grads that they just hired and get a diverse set of opinions. And then take the company culture forward and help move the company forward. It’s not about one person taking the leap forward and the shareholders rewarding that CEO. It’s about the company demonstrating that they’re innovative and willing to take the risks necessary to be successful in their field. Not all risks will pan out. And that’s why you have to sometimes scale the change. Sometimes you have to do a smaller proof of concept. Do something that’s a little less risky to start with. Introduce that new idea in an area that’s less risky for your business, but can still try it out so that you can say, okay, this is working well. Let’s take it to scale. How can we apply this to our core business? We tried it on the side and it works well. Let’s take it out and do it at large scale. So I think you can do change without necessarily undue risk. And you do have to have confidence in your ability to move forward. But it’s really about having confidence in your whole team. It’s not about individual leaders. It’s about a culture of innovation, a culture of driving change in the company, and a leader gets that by bringing great talent in.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:07]:

When we talk about embracing change, I could start with the if question that whether I should change, in a given con, you know, in a given context. What should I change which will get me the most value or maybe prioritize what we should change first? And then would come the how. So all three of them are to some extent to be answered and we should be confident about to some extent so that you are able to have others follow. If the leader himself or herself—and this is not again about one person—we still want the whole organization to be confident. But how would that confidence come without the person at the top first recognizing if, what, and how, and then painting the vision for the rest of the organization, rally up the troops, and actually move forward so change is not being done in just the technology side, for example, or just hiring and firing people. It is more about becoming part of the renewed DNA of an organization.

Gregory Simpson [00:11:09]:

Yes. I think the key is that the leader certainly is required to have a vision and lay out clarity of vision. But the leader doesn’t tell you how. Take our CEO, Margaret Keane at Synchrony Financial. She’s a very strong leader, but she’s very open to input from her team and she lays out a clear vision of how she wants our company to move forward and how we want to engage and how we want to be leaders in more than just financial services, but really fintech. And she lays out that vision, but she’s counting on a myriad of leaders across that company to carry that change forward. And she’s not telling them how. She’s expecting them to figure it out. So we’ve got to figure out how to make that change happen. So, typically, the leader is doing the vision, they’re not doing the here’s how you go do it.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:08]:

So the intuition and gut is what they use to start and then we somehow find our way through? Is that what you think typically happens when an organization successfully goes about embracing change? 

Gregory Simpson [00:12:22]:

Well, I think gut does come into it, but also data and data points. If I think about myself, I have a gut feel for things as well, but I also surround myself with great leaders. I try to hire great people who have skills that, in some cases, are very complementary to my own. Maybe they’re a deep expert in an area. And by listening to those leaders, talking to my team, hearing what people’s ideas are, they can help formulate maybe the best path forward. I might have to pull all those ideas together and present them to the organization and say, here’s our vision. But that vision isn’t mine alone. That vision is heavily influenced by the people that work for me, the people that I hire, which is why it’s so important for leaders to be able to bring great people into the organization. 

Sanjog Aul [00:13:12]:

Now, when we do talk about data—and we will actually take a quick break when we come back—we should discuss this, but when we talk about data and nowadays there is no dearth of data and there is no dearth of knowledge, but the wisdom is missing or wisdom is not available as much as we would like in order for us to make decisions. And, yes, hindsight is 20/20 and we don’t have a crystal ball, but moving forward with wisdom is more likely to bring confidence into an organization and its people versus saying we have lots of data, we churned it in 20 different ways. So let’s explore it and let’s challenge this notion that I put out there. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:25]:

Welcome back. So, Greg, we spoke about this whole data, intuition, gut, and we do know that there is a lot of data floating around, and then also we are turning it to find different business intelligence, and then we did talk about actionable business intelligence. At some point, it comes out to be the wisdom, which is what we were looking for, which we can use as the basis of embracing any change with confidence is not found as frequently and as much as we would like to. What do you think is the reason for that and how do you turn the ship around?

Gregory Simpson [00:16:07]:

Well, I think the key for understanding change and how to bring it into an organization is sometimes you need some outside-in thinking. I’m just trying to think of an example here with Synchrony Financial. If we look at—we made a big investment in a company called LoopPay, who was later acquired by Samsung. By doing that, it was a great way for us to get engaged in the mobile payment space because LoopPay is the technology behind Samsung Pay, and it provides the ability to simulate a mag stripe so you can do sort of touchless mobile phone payments without having to change out the point of sale. And so that Samsung Pay solution was enabled by this technology LoopPay, which Synchrony Financial made a big investment in. But the point is, by investing in that company, it wasn’t just about the dollar investment; it was also the relationships and the people interactions and talking to the people that were working on this technology solution, interacting with that team, interacting with Samsung, interacting with some of these technology companies that have a different perspective than a typical financial services firm. And so bringing diverse thinking, bringing in outside thinking, talking to others that are doing more disruptive innovation in what can be considered a slightly different field, but actually very tightly coupled to what we’re doing in Payment Solutions, gives us the ability to really open our minds and say how can we think differently about change and how can we introduce change? How are we going to support the changes that are happening in our industry? So I think we have to look at change and what’s going on in our industry. And the way you do that is to work with a diverse group of people that are working in the industry today, so you can get a better understanding of everything they’re doing.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:03]:

So change is more of a journey versus a cutover in a project. Would you agree?

Gregory Simpson [00:18:08]:

That’s right. Absolutely.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:10]:

Yeah. And if you do that, then whatever upfront due diligence that you did to get the data, the wisdom, the knowledge, and any other data points that you could collect, all that is great. Now once you say that, yes, we are going to go about this change, then the embracing of change is pervasive across the organization, and it has to be for it to really be effective. What is the secret sauce to that?

Gregory Simpson [00:18:38]:

There have been a lot of studies on how you make change occur across the organization. You typically talk about the early adopters. There are people who are very good champions of change. There’s the resistors who sort of like things the way they were. And then the majority of the people are somewhere in the middle saying, okay, is this change really going to stick or not? And if it does, I’ll go along with it, but I’m not going to rush in. I’m not an early adopter. There’s that middle group that’s waiting to see what’s going on. They’re not resistant, but they’re not pushing or driving change. A lot of change has to do with communication. Once the vision is established, you have to really help bring people along and help them understand it personally. One of the things we’ve done in Synchrony Financial is lay out some very high-level traits that we expect to see in our people. But it’s not enough to lay out the traits for the company. You have to work with the individuals in the company to help them personalize that, because that might be different for different people based on their role in the organization. So I think change comes about because of the culture of the organization. And that’s not an instantaneous thing. A CEO can’t dictate tomorrow, “Hey, we’re going to innovate.” It takes time to really address the cultural things that hold innovation back. Innovation requires some risk taking. Sometimes organizations aren’t very good at risk taking. So you have to understand why. Sometimes it’s because there’s penalties in place for people that fail. You have to figure out how to make it okay to fail in certain circumstances. What are the guardrails around failure that make it acceptable? When is it not acceptable? There are certain things you’re not allowed to fail at. You need to make it very clear that, for example, compliance and integrity, there’s no failures allowed. It’s got to be 100%. But there are other things when you’re doing a new technology implementation, certain risks are tolerated and certain failures are tolerated. So I think really helping people understand what their role is in the change, how they can get engaged in the change, removing the fear of the obstacles that come with the old processes that were put in place that maybe stifled innovation or change, helping remove those obstacles is part of the role of the leader, because change is hard for a lot of people. And so it takes concentrated effort to prepare the organization to move forward in a new way. 

Sanjog Aul [00:21:14]:

When we start out, of course, we do the due diligence. We collect the data. We use our gut intuition, talk to people, everything else that we could potentially do. And maybe at that point, we feel reasonably assured that if we go this path, it’s going to serve us well. Now when we start the process at that time, as we mentioned that it’s a journey, we see the confidence ebbs and flows between the leadership as well as the middle management and operational staff. At what level would you put a threshold to say, okay, this change was started and, yes, we have the confidence, but we did not have the crystal ball, and this change is really not working out the way we are going about it or the change is not even worth it. So if it’s a sinking ship, how do you know? Or do you basically let your ego write a check?

Gregory Simpson [00:22:09]:

It’s hard because you don’t always know. Sometimes the change was right, but the time was wrong. And so you have to decide, do I let it bake a little longer and continue to drive this way and maybe the market’s going to come along this way at some point in time? Or do you cut your losses? One of the hardest things for people to do often is to stop a project that they’ve invested heavily in. But great leaders have to make those tough choices. Those are the tough choices that need to be made. And you’ve got to be able to decide, is this not working and I want to stop? The preferred route in innovation is, you learn something from that change, and you need to take that learning and that’s where the concept of pivot comes along and say, okay, this didn’t quite work the way I expected. I need to make some adjustments, but I don’t necessarily need to stop it and go back to square zero. Right? So maybe I move forward two steps a little bit to the right, but I need to adjust course a little bit to the left. I don’t need to go back to the beginning in order to go to the left. I can just step left and pivot my approach a little bit based on the learnings of my change. So we’ve got to stop thinking people tend to think of changes as binary. And the reality is the world is not black and white. There’s a lot of gray and we’ve got to figure out the path forward that is optimal for our changing marketplace. And the reality is the marketplace is changing, the path forward changes as well. And so you’ve got to be continually adapting. And so you’ve got to hire leaders that are comfortable working in a changing environment. If they’re looking for one answer that they can go hang their hat on, even, you know, “I’m gonna change to answer B.” Well, as soon as you change to answer B, now that’s the old answer. So it won’t just be one answer. You’ve got to continue to adapt and evolve your company or you will become obsolete at some point in time.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:16]:

It’s interesting you bring up adaptability as one of the core strengths of leaders who can help embrace change confidently. What does that do though to the very accountability of what we started out with because that is where the due diligence was performed in detail. And then we had laid out a plan and put a stake in the ground. Now we, of course, know that things are gonna change. We maneuver through and we reach a destination which we did not even think of starting with. So it was never a project or a true so-called disruptive innovation related change at all. It turned out to be another incremental tweaked journey.

Gregory Simpson [00:25:00]:

Yes. And I think one of the things that you talk a lot about in IT is agile software development methodologies, right? And agile, it’s not about the due diligence, laying out the requirements and making a decision. It’s not about having very detailed requirements that lays out the full path to that end solution. It’s about really having the ability to iterate towards that solution over time. The Agile Manifesto talks about working software over comprehensive documentation. You’ve got to build something, iterate, get feedback, continue to iterate. It talks about responding to change over following a plan. So if you lay out your plan, well, if things change, you may need to not follow that plan and instead respond to that change. It’s about individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Those are the tenets of agile software development. That’s true for how you change as well. You’ve got to talk to the individuals, you’ve got to interact, and you’ve got to respond to change and develop the software, or in the case of business, develop the business process, develop the business plan. And that business plan has got to be able to evolve based on the changes that are coming in and based on customer collaboration over specific contract negotiations. So that manifesto for agile software development applies to a lot more than just software development. It applies to how you need to work in an agile world.

Sanjog Aul [00:26:48]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back. And let’s talk about the fail fast, fail quick, which to some extent has manifested using the agile approach that Greg you just mentioned. Now person at the top, who is the leader, who is supposed to help the organization embrace change with confidence, what are they supposed to do while they initially painted the vision and now the world has fundamentally started changing, and they gave a specific statement that this is what we will be doing. Is this person supposed to just keep the Wall Street analysts happy by the talks? Or is there something which they can say to justify that, hey, we started with this, but something else changed, so we changed our course, and it’s gonna go on and on. So the very, very message, the power of that initial message that this is what we’re gonna be doing, which is what brought their shareholders value up and also the ones which actually motivated the people within the organization. And now we are saying we are gonna continue to change it. And I’m not saying it’s not gonna happen, but it does impact the confidence level outside and inside the organization. How do we maintain those levels? Because that’s also a key to continue in that journey to have the persistence and to have the confidence. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:40]:

Welcome back. So, the top person, the top leadership including the business and technology leaders are answerable to the outside world and as well as the people within. Because when they started with big fanfare, they said, this is the direction we are going. We are putting a stake in the ground, and we will see a changed world for ourselves. It’s gonna get us x y z benefits. Now when we started working towards it, as we start maneuvering through to get something to happen yes. It is happening as a change, but it changes the shape from what it started with to something totally different in many cases, where you are at a given time. How does that impact positively or negatively on the psyche, confidence, and enthusiasm of the people who are working actually on the ground to make this change happen?

Gregory Simpson [00:30:28]:

People can get discouraged if they hear one thing and see something else. Certainly, if the leader lays out one vision and ends up going down a completely different path without properly communicating, that’s going to be very disconcerting to the employees. I think, first of all, the vision that the leader lays out needs to be broad enough that there is some room to adjust. If they’re dictating very strict terms, chances are they will very quickly go outside of those strict terms. So they’d have to make sure that the vision is broad enough that it’s not going to get overridden very quickly. Now there are certainly times when that vision—even when broadly written—can change, and there is a need for change. At times, the best thing to do is admit that there’s a need for change, that the market conditions are dictating a different course. And I think the easiest thing to do is tell the truth. It’s really important to understand when you’re in a quickly evolving marketplace, and when you talk to analysts, you’ve got to be able to articulate where you’re at in that marketplace, where you’re headed, and how you’re adapting to the changes that are there. One of the best things you can do is demonstrate that you’re a little bit ahead of those changes. And so rather than being a follower of the changes of the marketplace, you can help set the direction of the marketplace. So by being a leader in where the market’s going in mobile payments or analytics, you can be perceived by the analyst as, “Hey, you’re helping drive the market.” So you’re driving the market to follow you versus being driven or being pulled around and having to change directions as the market shifts. Rather, you’re helping drive it forward. I think we’re blessed in our company, Synchrony Financial, with a great visionary in Margaret Keane. She understands that we’re in a quickly evolving marketplace. She spends a lot of time communicating to our employees. And very frankly, she’s not afraid to say, “Hey, this is something we’re struggling with.” She’s not afraid to tell us that here’s an area that we need to figure out. Once we figure it out, then she’ll lay out a clear vision, a clear path. A good example is mobile payments. It was very clear for Margaret: we are going to be a leader in this space. And as a result, the company got behind it. We’re the first to offer private label credit cards for mobile payments. And it’s been a very successful move because the vision was there from Margaret and the team responded and delivered for that. And it was in conjunction with the market shift versus following the market. So I think one of the dangers is if you get too far behind, it’s like you’re at the back end of that roller coaster, you get whipped around a lot. You’re sort of on the tail. You need to be upfront so when things shift, you’re helping drive the shift. You’re helping turn the train versus getting whipped around on the back end. Because when you’re getting whipped around, your employees feel like, “Okay, we’re just getting whipped around” versus “we’re leading in this changing marketplace, and we’re setting the direction.” Even though that direction is changing, we’re in charge because we’re following the road where it goes.

Sanjog Aul [00:34:08]:

In your world where you mentioned that your CEO is very frank and clear, how many times do you think you have to keep going back and validate against the vision versus saying, okay, you told us to get something done. We are going to continue to move that path. We are going to adapt as long as we stay within that umbrella. Hopefully, you don’t have a problem, and you’re given the immunity that you will produce something which will look somewhat similar to what was painted as an earlier vision and you are able to still charge ahead and instill confidence in everybody around. 

Gregory Simpson [00:34:49]:

And I think the difference is we want to move forward as a team of one. When that vision is laid out, we’re all about helping carry Synchrony Financial and its customers forward as a team of one. So it’s something that is not about somebody going off and doing it on their own and delivering something that aligns with the vision and going back and validating that. It’s about our organization and our customers together moving forward in this world because our merchants, as an example, one of our customer base, are looking at a rapidly changing world as well. We’re a partner with them to help them deal with the changing landscape in our marketplace. So we’ve got to partner with our merchants and help them navigate that changing marketplace of mobile payments and different technologies and things that are coming through and cybersecurity and all the threats that are out there in the retail world when it comes to credit card processing. How can we help our customers navigate that ever changing landscape?

Sanjog Aul [00:36:00]:

If I were to ask you to inventory the top reasons why the confidence will dwindle within or outside the organization with respect to a change which was announced earlier, and now you are riding the journey, what would those be?

Gregory Simpson [00:36:19]:

Which ones would those be? Say that again. So the type of issues or reasons why the confidence will dwindle in the very change that was initiated—which ones would those be? What are the places where you see that if those things happen or those things are said or those things get done the way they were done, it actually is gonna dwindle confidence so that you know what to avoid.

Gregory Simpson [00:36:45]:

Well, I think the first thing that drives lack of confidence is lack of communication. So if your organization is changing—even if it’s changing properly to adjust to the marketplace—if you’re not communicating to your company, to your employees, to your teams, they start to lose confidence because they don’t know what’s going on. Why are we changing? What’s this new product we’re introducing? How is that different than the way I work today? Why am I not doing things the way I do them today? Why am I not working on my current project? Why is there a new project? What does that mean? Who are these new people we hired? What’s going on there? So I think one of the biggest pitfalls of companies that are changing is not communicating that change effectively, because then that starts to scare a lot of your resources that have a lot of historical knowledge instead of bringing them along on that journey. So the first thing is lack of communication. The second thing is non-genuine communication. People can sense when somebody’s telling them the truth or not. And so it’s important that your leader be genuine and really communicate clearly and openly about the change that occurs. Sometimes the changes are difficult, but the leader needs to be open and communicate those so that they can gain the trust of all the employees. So I think one of the most important things of change is good communication.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:12]:

When we talk about alignment all along to say that, okay, we need to have some alignment and the leader would have painted a broad enough vision so that you have some wiggle room to kind of change things as they are needed in order for you to make progress. When we get into this juggling of alignment versus doing the right thing, what do you think is required for the leader to do, and what is the type of culture we ought to have so that we do the right thing versus get in that trap of, “Oh, I built this vision and we are kind of going a little out of it, but still this seems to be the right thing to do. But we cannot do it because somebody will say, why did you even do it because this is not what you said you’re gonna do?”

Gregory Simpson [00:39:03]:

I think if people are so hung up on one statement, that’s a bad sign. The key is to earn a level of trust with your employees, that when you talk to them about the changes you’re making or the vision you’re establishing, they’re comfortable when you come back and say, “We’re doing this, and if it’s slightly different than the vision, there’s probably a reason for it.” They should feel comfortable asking that question because they should have a good enough relationship to be able to say, how does this tie with the vision? It’s really about genuine truth telling and not trying to lock people into a message that’s so sterile or so tight that they don’t have a connection. We want a collaborative team-building environment. Because we’re a collaborative team-building environment, we’re able to challenge each other. We’re able to ask questions. We’re able to talk about how does that fit with our vision. So it’s not about people going back and saying, “Gee, why are they doing that?” It’s about us working together, day in, day out in a collaborative team of one to deliver the future of finance.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:24]:

Do you think you can guarantee that people will always be doing just the right thing and coming out and asking questions no matter how congenial and immunity-driven an environment you create? How do you—because these things still happen—you mentioned it.

Gregory Simpson [00:40:41]:

Absolutely. They will happen. But the good news is at least at Synchrony Financial, we’ve got an entrepreneurial spirit because we’re 1 year old from an IPO perspective. And we’re lucky enough to have an 80-year-old heritage with GE. So we’ve got this unique combination of this 80-year-old startup essentially. And the people that joined Synchrony joined to embrace this vision of pioneering the future of finance and thinking outside the box. That’s something we value. If you’re going to value innovation, you’ve got to value people that say, “Hey, here’s an idea that’s outside of our vision.” That’s called thinking outside of the box. If we can establish that culture, and I think we’re on a good track to do exactly that, it positions us to be a leading innovative financial technology services firm. And that’s one of our goals.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:40]:

Now if you think about change as a type of project and as with any other technology project that you pick up—one is for infrastructure, another for application development—you’ll pick up different teams because they have the right experience. They have the right credentials. They have the right mindset to be able to run one project versus another. When you talk about things which are top-level changes, yes, there is an executive cabinet, if you will, for the CEO, who no matter which change we talk about, they are the only ones who are initially discussing it and perhaps even talking with other people, but they are made accountable, responsible, and they are the ones who are leading it. Is that the best way to evaluate which change-related opportunities are which and also making them responsible and accountable even though they may not be the best suited for it, but because that’s the choice you had because those are the five people you hired at the top?

Gregory Simpson [00:42:38]:

Yeah. I think you often have to run with the horses you’ve got in the stable, right? So you’ve got to figure out how to leverage the unique skills of your team. If you’ve got multiple projects with diverse skill sets, you’re going to have to bring them out as they best fit. Or you may have to adapt and bring in new team members to help if there’s a big area that you’re not covering with your existing staff.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:07]:

So you are in a way saying that there will have to be a compromise with the way since we have only a few horses as you mentioned, and changes come in all different flavors. Not everyone in the team may have that right background. Are we taking risks by being complacent, by using the same people?

Gregory Simpson [00:43:30]:

If you’re complacent, you are always taking a risk. A complacent team is always in danger of failing. I would never suggest anyone be complacent. I think one of the big things that helps is having cross-functional teams. So you bring in a lot of diverse skill sets. It’s not just an IT team often doing something by themselves; it’s a business team. We bring in leaders from across various functions to deliver solutions. So I don’t think that’s about complacency. I think that’s about harnessing the powers within your company to do great things. We have something we call Innovation Station. Innovation Station is a collaborative space with a cross-functional team of people that are going after a big area for us, for example, analytics or mobility. They are funded to go get things done in those spaces to figure out what’s the next big change or what’s the next big thing we can deliver that will have a great impact for our customers, and something we can deliver quickly in an agile way. We get a lot of solutions delivered from that team. Those teams may need to pull in different resources because they might not have the right skill set, so they might have to go tap somebody in another area. I was talking to a group of employees yesterday, and someone from the call center came up with some great ideas. They weren’t in IT. They weren’t involved, but they’d done some mobile development on the side and they had some neat ideas; they brought them to me. So innovation is within all the people in the organization. The more you can tap into your entire organization, the more successful you’ll be.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:14]:

Now let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, let’s talk about the type of cabinet a CEO may want to develop in order for this organization or any organization to become excellent or an expert in identifying the opportunities to change and then embracing them with confidence. What would be the type of competencies and expertise and the mindsets that that leadership cabinet should have in order to have the top-level person embrace this with confidence. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:20]:

Welcome back. So let’s talk about, Greg, the executive cabinet, if you will, the type of leadership that we should put in place if suppose you were the CEO and you had to have a high-change type of organization or an organization which is conducive to a high frequency of change and a lot of change? What would you develop?

Gregory Simpson [00:47:42]:

One of the first things you got to look for is, A, your leaders need to be able to communicate, so you’ve got to have good communication skills. But B, you’ve got to have a combination of depth of understanding of whatever your technical secret sauce is as well as a broad understanding of your industry. So you’ve got to be able to take your functional expertise and your deep functional expertise and apply that to a broad market understanding. Then you’ve got to be able to communicate to your teams and hire great people. So you’ve got to look for leaders that are able to get out in the market and understand from the customers, from other technology firms, from venture capitalists, from college students, to get out and learn about what’s changing in your market and what’s changing in the world that affects your marketplace. And then you’ve got to be able to go back and apply your functional expertise across your marketplace and across your business in a collaborative way to be successful. So for leaders that’s about communications, it’s about collaborative skills, it’s about depth in a functional expertise area, and it’s about a good understanding of the business marketplace. If you’ve got those four things, you can be a strong change agent and leader in today’s changing marketplace.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:15]:

And most organizations which look at building it into a true leadership training machinery or an institute, if you will, try to develop people from within because there’s a lot of institutional knowledge they can enjoy and leverage as part of developing strategies and also embracing change. So you basically shared a number of things that you would expect. How do you develop that within the organization while remaining with the people you have? Or should

Gregory Simpson [00:49:47]:

One of the best ways to develop is to have great leaders because the leaders will mentor their teams and help grow their teams on the job in real-life situations. I know myself in my own career, one of the reasons I was successful is because I had some great managers along the way, some great leaders along the way that helped me learn how to be more effective and helped me develop and grow. So if you hire leaders that are good mentors, they’re going to help grow that next generation of leaders. If you hire leaders that are just more interested in their own personal success, they won’t be thinking about developing that next layer. And when they leave, you’re going to be in worse shape than you were when they started. So you’ve got to make sure your leaders are a big part of your solution. Certainly there are trainings out there; there’s some great training experiences, but there’s also the day-to-day interaction of your teams and how they work together and how they collaborate together that helps really form that team. Synchrony Financial, going through the separation from GE, it’s been a very intense experience, and that’s great for us as a team, because when you work through very hard situations where you’ve got a lot of work to do in a very short period of time and a lot of change to take on at one time, it tempers the steel of the employees. It helps them grow through that experience both closer in relationships but also helps them learn a lot and become stronger players.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:27]:

If you are to take the skill requirements for the people who are actually making the change happen, which is executing below the leadership level, what kind of skills and competencies would you like to see developed in them?

Gregory Simpson [00:51:42]:

In IT, I think there’s some very hot skills coming in place. Right now, one of the big ones is data sciences. We have a need for data science because we are doing a lot of analytics. It depends on your marketplace, it depends on your particular firm and what core competencies they’ll need. One of the competencies I think people need though is agile development methodologies, knowledge of agile, because in IT one of the ways we’ll be successful is to go faster. IT at times in our industry has a reputation for being too slow, long projects that take years to implement and cost millions and millions of dollars. We’ve got to be able to show results in short periods of time for much lower dollar amounts. And that’s what the whole agile methodology is about: better results, more customer focus, the ability to change and adapt with the solutions in real time. Those skill sets—the agile software development skill sets—are a great skill that apply not just to development, but apply to how you lead in an ever-changing world.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:56]:

One last question, 30 seconds. What’s your message for the leaders out there who are trying to align their organizations in order to embrace change with confidence?

Gregory Simpson [00:53:07]:

Talk to them. Gain their trust. Go out as a team and have dinner and talk to each other. And don’t just talk to them about your vision. Actually listen to them because the vision should be something that they have ownership in. So it’s not an individual’s vision. It’s a company’s vision. That vision comes as a result of the relationships with the employees and understanding their views as well. So I’d encourage the leaders to really foster the relationships with the entire organization, so that they can be facing the vision that they clarify for the team on inputs from the entire organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:46]:

On behalf of our show and our listeners, thank you so much, Greg, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations and their leadership can work in a particular direction and paint a vision and then have everybody else align in order to embrace the change with confidence.

Gregory Simpson [00:54:03]:

You’re welcome. My pleasure. Thanks a lot.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:06]:

Thank you so much again, listeners. Hope you enjoyed the conversation, learned about embracing change with confidence, and use some of these techniques and tips shared by Greg today. Please like us on Facebook, search for CIO Talk Radio, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.