A single view of change: How a bank protected customers and unlocked new value
Managing change in the financial sector is always a complex task, but the lessons from one leading bank stand as a powerful example of how clarity, collaboration, and customer-centric thinking can turn potential problems into value creation. In this case, one proactive step—leveraging an integrated view of change—became the catalyst for protecting both customer relationships and business performance.
The hidden challenge: Overlapping changes with a high-value customer segment
Every large bank is engaged in a continual cycle of transformation. New products launch. Systems are upgraded. Regulatory and compliance requirements evolve. Yet, as the pace of change accelerates, the risks of unintended consequences also grow. That risk isn’t always technological. Sometimes, it’s about the customer.
The story began when the bank reviewed its change data using The Change Compass, a platform designed to give leaders a holistic, quantitative view across all active and upcoming initiatives. It quickly became apparent that one valuable customer segment would be impacted not once, but three times in the space of a single month. Each encounter was driven by a different project team. Each project was planning separate communications and customer asks, with little alignment or coordination.
At first glance, these projects appeared to be unrelated. Yet, all three were targeting customers with the highest share-of-wallet, meaning they owned multiple products and had longstanding loyalty to the company. These were not just any customers—these were the “crown jewel” group whose satisfaction and retention were critical to the bank’s revenue and brand.
Why customer experience is so easily overlooked in transformation
When large organisations manage dozens or even hundreds of projects, it is common for teams to operate in functional silos. Each project has its own objectives, stakeholders, and deadlines. While project teams may conduct their own customer research, they might not have real-time awareness of what other groups are doing at the same time.
In this case, the data revealed a classic example of accidental customer overload:
Three projects, each reaching out separately to the same customer group
Different communication styles, messaging, and even visual branding
Conflicting asks of the customer within a short window
High risk that customers would receive mixed messages through multiple channels
The cumulative risk was clear. When customers are bombarded with uncoordinated service changes, requests, or notifications, confusion and frustration grow. Worse still is the potential for customers to feel undervalued, as though their loyalty is being taken for granted. For a segment with high share-of-wallet, this can lead to disengagement, product attrition, and ultimately significant loss in revenue.
Using change data to drive immediate management focus
Recognizing the risk, project and business representatives did not keep the issue at a working team level. Armed with hard data from The Change Compass, they were able to socialise and escalate the issue quickly to senior leaders. The evidence showed not just that there would be customer overlap, but exactly who would be affected and when. Visualizations made the potential for negative experience tangible and urgent.
The result was swift. Senior managers prioritised this risk and asked the three project teams to connect, align, and rethink their plans with the customer at the centre.
Turning competing projects into a single customer journey
The solution the teams developed together was both pragmatic and creative. Instead of three siloed interventions, the projects worked collaboratively to:
Sequence the timing of their customer impacts so that communications and asks happen in a coordinated, logical order
Integrate and harmonise their messaging so that customers would see one brand, one bank, regardless of which internal team was driving the change
Create unified communication which was consistent across all channels, ensuring readiness among staff as well as consistency in digital and direct outreach
All relevant customer channels were engaged. Contact centers were readied to provide clear and timely information for the anticipated queries. Branch staff received integrated briefing materials. Online resources were updated so that customer queries could be addressed seamlessly, regardless of which change had prompted the interaction.
Managing the customer experience for maximum value
The most important shift, however, was psychological. The three separate project teams stopped thinking only about their project outcomes and focused instead on the holistic customer experience. Their collaboration ensured that every customer’s journey through these parallel changes felt seamless and considered, not piecemeal or haphazard.
The data-driven approach did more than avoid complaints. It delivered quantifiable business value. The potential cost of poor experience was significant: for this high-value customer segment, confusion could have led to attrition and a loss of cross-sell opportunities. Through better management, the estimated value preserved for the business exceeded one million dollars, mainly by protecting loyalty, retention, and associated revenue.
Keys to success: Visibility, collaboration, and leadership engagement
There are several important lessons from this case that any change leader can apply:
An integrated view of change is essential. Only by adopting a platform that provides a holistic perspective can you spot issues that cut across project and functional boundaries.
Data is the great enabler for smart escalation and storytelling. When you can visualise and quantify the risk, you arm frontline teams with what they need to secure executive focus and intervention.
Silos are broken down when the customer is placed at the centre. Teams that are used to working independently quickly find common purpose when they are guided by a shared commitment to customer experience.
Solutions are not always complex. Sometimes coordinating timing and messaging, and making sure every channel is informed and ready, produces remarkable value with existing resources.
Key benefits achieved through using Change Compass
Protection of NPS (net promoter score) and CSAT (customer satisfaction) by 10-20+ points for affected segments
Improved customer experience that reduces churn by 2-5% in the months following a change-heavy period (equating to $1Mil+ annually)
Protection of revenue leakage of 5-10% from lost cross sell/upsell opportunities (from fragmented project delivery impacts) equating to $1-2Mil per annum
Through unified and sequenced activities change adoption is shown to increase by 60-80% (according to Deloitte study)
Creating a culture of proactive change management
Importantly, this was not a one-off intervention. By practicing this cross-project alignment, the bank reinforced a culture of proactive, customer-driven change management. Teams learned to ask new questions. Who else is communicating with this customer segment? What is the experience like from their perspective, not just ours? Where could joint planning enhance value for both customer and company?
The executive team also gained confidence that they were not missing hidden risks by focusing only on vertical project updates. Instead, they built strength in horizontal oversight, preventing accidental overload or misalignment for their most important clients.
Looking forward: Embedding these practices for lasting advantage
The value of these lessons goes well beyond any one episode. As the pace and scale of transformation accelerate in the banking sector and beyond, organisations must move from reactive to proactive change management. A single, data-driven view across all initiatives is no longer “nice to have”—it is a competitive necessity.
With The Change Compass, this bank gained the ability not just to detect emerging risks, but to act on them collaboratively, protect revenue, and continually strengthen the trust of its best customers.
Protecting what matters most in a changing world
Change is inevitable, but negative consequences do not have to be. The experience of this bank highlights how the right tools and mindset can help any company deliver more value through transformation. By seeing the whole picture, collaborating across boundaries, and acting in the interests of their customers, leaders set themselves up not just for project success, but for enduring business growth.
If your organisation is ready to manage the complexities of change with confidence, while ensuring the customer always comes first, discover what The Change Compass makes possible. With data-powered insight, alignment, and a relentless commitment to experience, your next change story could be your most successful yet.
How the sea inspires a different way of managing change
In taking my vacations in Hawaii I thought I would start a series of Change Management articles inspired by my trip to Hawaii. For those who have not been to Hawaii or have only stayed around Waikiki, the Islands of Hawaii is quite astoundingly beautiful. There is something magical about Hawaii that inspires the mind and soothes the soul. It’s welcoming people, amazingly jagged mountains, fantastic beaches, and sensational food is enough to bewitch any visitor.
As change or project managers we usually plan our approach in managing change from a top down perspective. We look at what senior executives would like employees to change, how much change is required, what benefits would be achieved through change, and which parts of the organization would need to change.
There is the usual focus that change leadership is critical and that without strong senior sponsorship that the initiative will fail. The senior leader is expected to have all the answers, to know exactly how to steer the employees towards an end state and be able to convince them the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the change. On top of this, if there is any resistance, the leader needs to identify these and overcome them in order to successfully drive the change successfully.
This all sounds like the standard recipe for change success does it not? So what is wrong with this?
Hawaii and leading change
When I was snorkelling in the North Shore of Oahu Island I was amazed at how much tropical fish I could see literally just metres from the beach. In fact, as soon as I had put my head down I could see the various sizes of amazing tropical fish. And the farther I go the more I notice at the abundance and variety of fish and coral around me.
When we surround ourselves purely with the top down approach of change, we start to develop a fixed mindset of how change should be done. Most of change literature resolves around adopting a top down approach. However, when we start to adopt a user mindset, an employee lense of change, we start to see things very differently.
The diversity of the ocean and the diversity of employees
Similar to the fish in the sea, there isn’t one type of employee. There are many types of employees with varying interests, backgrounds and preferences. It is easy for us to interview employees through conducting surveys and declare that we are intimate with employee concerns. However, in most situations there isn’t just one set of employee beliefs and concerns. Different employees have different concerns, just like in the ocean there is star fish, tetra, gold fish, carp, etc.
Whilst we cannot cater for every type of individual employee concerns and interests, it is also important to be able to see through impacted employees and what they are seeing. I became amazed at the wonderful world under the sea and how colourful and stunning it really is. If we really start to see through the different groups of employees, sense what they are sensing, we can really harness their power to drive change.
How do we leverage different employee groups in driving change
For example:
For employees who are change champions and early adopters – How do we harness their influence and positivity to quickly spread the word, and advocate for the change?
For those who have had bad change experiences in the past and are cynical and critical – How do we involve them closely to design the change process, so as to avoid any past mistakes and leverage to enhance success?
For those who were agnostic and did not either support or resist the change – How do we give them accountabilities to progress and promote the change
For those who strongly resist the change and actively counter against the change – How do we listen to them and address this head on. And leverage the influence of other employee groups such as the change champions?
For those who tend to be overly cautious and do not feel confident when there is change – How do we actively identify them and spend more time to nurture their confidence, or leverage change champions to hand-hold them?
Dipping below the surface of what various senior stakeholder groups are looking for in change, we start to see a different picture of what employees see. Let’s open our eyes to the various colours, shapes, and sizes of the attitudes, preferences and feedback of employees. When we start to see the diversity of different types of employees and where they are at, we can then leverage them to better drive and position the change for success.
I recently went to a concert to see some of the super soul bands of the 70s and 80s including The Jacksons, Sister Sledge, The Village People, and Pointer Sisters. In addition to funk and soul, there was a big component of disco music as well. I started becoming more interested in the history of disco music and how it came about. According to Wikipedia, disco music emerged in the late 60s and 70s and started as a mixture of music from venues popular with African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Italian Americans, and the LGBT. “Disco can be seen as a reaction to both the dominance of rock music and the stigmatisation of dance music by the counterculture during this period”.
This led me to think more about the dominance of one idealism or concept over others and how limiting it is to only be able to operate with one concept, whether it be dancing or a way of working. I often hear in organizations that we should aim for ‘one-way, same-way to simplify things for people. Do we really think that one way of approaching something is the best for developing that particular capability? And do we really believe that people can only ever handle one way of doing something? Yes, in the beginning, taking a step-by-step process and not introducing multiple concepts may make sense. But in the longer term would we not benefit from different concepts, different methodologies, and different ways of working? (I.e. more diversity vs. no diversity).
Most large organizations are focused on ‘diversity’ within the organization. Diversity can be in the form of gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, age, etc. Having diversity in the organization is premised to provide a richer set of perspectives and points of view and therefore an important part of building talent. Diversity is also critical from a PR and public perception perspective as it paints an image of the type of organization and the types of people in it. For example, a company with a low percentage of women in senior leadership roles or management roles could be seen as one where women may have equal opportunities. The same can also be said for other diverse areas such as age, sexual orientation, and ethnic background.
Why do we need diversity in change management?
Change management, like other disciplines, such as IT management, HR, or Project Management is an area that cannot be fully covered with one singular framework or perspective. Just as there are countless frameworks, concepts, and methodologies in HR so is the case in change management. Models include Kubler-Ross, Lewin, ADKAR, Bridges, Kotter, etc. Different models may suit different types of changes. Please read our article ‘Diagnosing for change‘ on how different change management models may be better for certain types of changes.
By using just one singular model we could be restricting our organization’s change management capability. At university, we study different theories and concepts with the goal that by understanding different approaches, we start to build our understanding of the whole discipline. This allows us to pick and chose one or a combination of different approaches based on the situation. The same applies to change management. It is by understanding different change management approaches that we start to be able to tailor our approaches given any change situation.
For leaders across an organization, many would argue that it is best to provide only one framework or concept for all of change management. If it is really the case that all leaders have never been exposed to any change management frameworks at all (which is unlikely to be the case for large organizations) then starting with one framework may be a good idea.
However, a business leader may need to understand:
leading people from an engagement and emotional connection perspective
How initiatives are implemented and their role in it to make it a success
How to coach others through the change process
How to track, measure, analyse and report on change and embedment progress
The art of how to communicate in a verbal and written way using the right words and tone
All of these could have different concepts and frameworks to provide the richness of building understanding and skills. Yes, it is possible to simplify different frameworks and connect them. However, as leaders continue to grow, they will need to be exposed to different concepts and approaches. In the past, projects used a waterfall methodology where tasks were planned in detail and there was little room for plan changes. Now, most organizations utilise some form of agile methodology for many of their projects. For some projects, waterfall methodology may be more appropriate and for others agile. Having diversity helps organizations achieve more successful initiative outcomes.
How do we achieve diversity in change management?
Here are some areas in which to build diversity of thinking and approaches to enrich your organization’s change management capability.
1.Change management frameworks
As mentioned before, having several change management frameworks build a richness of understanding of different approaches
2.Change analytics
Collecting a range of change management data is incredibly valuable. Data on the impact of change across the organization enables leaders to make effective planning, sequencing, and prioritisation decisions on how initiatives should be rolled out. This includes impacts on stakeholder groups such as employees, third parties, partners, and customers. Other data such as change readiness levels for initiatives, initiative benefits, and business performance indicators are critical to ensure initiatives will land effectively.
3.Change leadership
Managing change is a part of leadership. Therefore, just as there is a big range of leadership frameworks so is the case in change leadership. For example, Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence, Situational Leadership, Kotter, etc.
4.Change service offering
Providing a rich set of change services can also help build change capability. Change services may include such as:
Initiative change management
Portfolio change management
Change leadership capability development
Change analytics and decision-making support
Change coaching for leaders
Business-as-usual initiative coaching/support
Change communications support
5.Project delivery methodology
Change management should also be geared to support a range of project methodologies that the organization is using to implement its projects. The richness of being able to flex between different project methodologies means greater value and overall Organizational capability in managing change. Different project methodologies could include:
Most of us work in organizations where change is the constant, and where at any one time there is a myriad of changes. What happens when there is a lot of changes being worked on? How do effective organizations manage change within this common environment? And what plays out when an organization adopts agile within this environment? Here we will illustrate how one organization effectively manages lots of changes within an agile environment.
Meet company A which is a typical financial services organization. They, like most other financial services organizations, are undergoing multiple changes. In change management theory land most are concerned with managing one change at a time. The reality for a lot of organizations is that there are lots of changes, some times up to hundreds of changes at a given point in time within an organization. This is not taking the lens of formal ’projects’ that would have formalized governance and resources in place to plan and deliver the initiative. From a user-centric lense, change is any initiative that involves changing a current way of working. These includes product changes, marketing campaigns, process changes, and role changes.
Like other organizations, company A has several business units, each of which has a range of initiatives that mainly impact their own business unit. However, some of these also impact other business units. At the same time, there is a company-wide body or governance group that determines which intiatives are to be funded centrally and are of higher priority, depending on the initiative benefit case, strategic importance and overall business value.
Towards the end of the year every year, there seems to be a phenomenon emerging in this company. Within an agile environment there are many agile teams are working in self-driven teams iterating on various changes. Many of the initaitives are also focused on delivering changes that impact frontline staff that work directly with customers. Most of these initiatives are aiming to implement the change prior to the end of the calendar year as the peak customer volume for this financial services firm tends to be between December and February. The idea is that if the changes were rolled out prior to December, then the change would take place in time to capture the peak volumes and therefore provide a quick realisation of benefits.
However, the scenario is that in true agile form, there is bound to be delays in each iteration. As each agile team starts to work through and iterate on the change, often there are technical delays or that the team realizes that the scope of the project requires a longer period of time to deliver. As a result, it is common to delay the eventual initiative go-live. When there are several initiatives aiming to go-live prior to the December period, this becomes a peak change impact period for the business. This means that there are simply too many initiatives trying to launch at the same time, causing operational performance challenges and business risks.
So how has Company A managed this situation?
Data
Armed with the quantitative data of the impacts of every initiative, programs, projects and initiatives, the picture was clear in terms of what this meant to the business. The frontline staff, as well as team leaders of the frontline, will require significant time away from their normal duties to understand, digest and embed the various changes. This presents real challenges in terms of ensuring the right resourcing given the number of hours required to undergo changes. The business also has historical data of what happened last time this level of change had impacted the business and what this meant to business performance. The data also included the overall operational environment and any challenges including customer volumes, performance trends, etc.
Governance
A series of governance session was organized to zoom in on this specific scenario consisting of project delivery managers, change management, business leaders and other support professionals (e.g.initiatives risk). The session focused on discussing the various business risks and how to mitigate these risks, including prioritizing agreed critical initiatives, understanding sequencing implications, and de-prioritizing non-critical initiatives. With each meeting, there was also continuing delays for some initiatives (again, in true agile form). As these potential or actual delays were socialized and shared, stakeholders kept updating their plan of attack to ensure the was an effective way of managing the situation.
The role of the change practitioner
The change management professional’s role in this context is to lead and facilitate the discussion of the governance and stakeholders so that there is clarity of what the data is telling us, what options we have to deal with it, and agreed actions forward. Program managers play a role in sharing ongoing progress in initiatives. Business stakeholders also play a critical role in understanding, accepting and agreeing to any actions, as well as sharing any shifting business performance priorities. However, the change professional plays a key role as the core of the problem as about managing and coordinating the amount and pace of change at a given point in time.
The solution
There was a series of solutions proposed to manage this overall peak change period:
1) Less critical initaitives were either pushed out or stopped. This lead to various re-planning exercises
2) Higher priority initaitives were clarified and agreed
3) A set of communication and engagement actions were proposed to better engage the impacted teams to help them joint-the-dots around the myriad of changes and what these meant
4) Careful and continual monitoring and reporting of business performance was emphasized to track the outcome of the changes
The illustrated case for Company A is a very common scenario for a lot of organizations within an agile environment. Initiatives cannot operate in silos if we adopt a user-lens in managing change and the impacts of change. This case illustrates how critical it is to have strong data that tells a clear story of what is going to happen to the business and what it means. Data enables effective and strategic conversations. Data also provides significant power and value in putting change management at the driving seat of business management.
Recently, with the relentless pace of work, the changing weather conditions, and inadequate sleep, I had caught a cold. In recovering from the cold I started wondering more about the whole life cycle of sickness and wellness. Could it be that we can leverage from medicine how we improve the health of the organization as we design the change management process? In many ways, organizational health and well-being can be an analogy to how healthy a human being is. If the health of the organization is not great due to various imbalances in the system, it can fall ill and become less effective, thereby not meeting its goals, which is a topic often discussed in various organizational health blogs.
So how may we leverage the clinical approach that medicine adopts to disease treatment and maintenance of health to how we approach change management for positive change? In Medicine, the approach is based on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. Let’s use these three phases to further understand what this approach means when applied in a change management context.
Diagnosis
One of the most important parts of being a medical practitioner is the ability to establish rapport with a patient. We have all been to doctors who spend barely 5 minutes with us and quickly subscribe pills before moving on to the next patient. Whilst the ramifications of limited rapport may not be great with a minor ailment, with complex diseases lack of rapport may result in the wrong diagnosis as important detail may have been missed or not prompted.
To effectively diagnose a patient the medical practitioner begins by taking the medical history before commencing on a physical examination. In a similar way, to really understand what is going on in the organization and why it needs to change we need to understand where it has been. Can an organization’s history can tell us why it is in the position that it is in currently? What are external factors? What has worked or has not worked in the past in undergoing change? What best practices have been used? Have there been incidents where change outcome was disastrous? What were the lessons learnt? What leadership style or ways of engagement has worked?
Similar to undertaking a physical examination, it is also important to analyze what conditions the organization is in currently prior to implementing a change. How effective are different levels of leaders is driving and engaging their teams on change initiatives? Is there any ‘signal loss’ in cascading information up and down or across the organization? What have been some of the common stories told about change? What systems are in place to support change initiatives? For example, change champions, communication channels or learning processes.
Diagnostic tools
Physicians leverage diagnostic tools in diagnosing a patient’s illness. This is based on what is presented by the patient and the physician’s overall assessment based on visible or inferred observations. For example, the DSM-5 is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that is used to diagnose psychological and psychiatric disorders. The physician does not blindly follow the diagnostic tools to formulate an assessment. In the same way in diagnosing the organization we should also seek to understand first and then make the diagnosis based on evidence (inferred or observable). In this way, we should not blindly follow a particular change framework in ‘diagnosing’ the organization as this depends on the organization as well as the chosen change framework.
In change management we do not have just one diagnostic tool, we have several frameworks in which to help our diagnosis. There is no one framework that is applicable in all situations. Different models may be useful in certain situation. The trick is to know which ones to leverage in the right type of situations. There are various models such as the Mckinsey STAR model, systems theory, SWOT analysis, nudge theory, or force field analysis to identify key issues across the organisations. Here, we focus on some of the more ‘change-specific models’.
John Kotter’s theory (8-step model) is great when applied to a significant strategy execution, restructuring or organization-wide change. In these situations, the strategy vision clarity has to be clear, a clear sense of urgency created and understood, and strong leadership coalition to drive through any employee resistance to the change. With this type of significant change leaders need to continuously drive and reinforce the change, and integrate this within the ways of working within the organization.
However, when the organizational change is more of a project such as a technology or process change, then the Prosci ADKAR change management model (Awareness Desire Knowledge Ability Reinforcement) model may be more relevant. This is a process focused model that aims to transition an individual from the current situation to the new state. Key enablers or activities may be executed on to help drive this transition. These include providing the right communications, addressing any employee inputs, training sessions, coaching and recognition for the right behaviors adopted.
When the change involves significant restructuring where there could be redundancies including role changes and people transitions then the Kubler-Ross model may be leveraged. The model outlines an individual’s emotional journey through loss and stages of grief during the change process. The journey starts with shock, denial, then frustration, depression, experimentation and finally decision and integration. As often with significant people transitions and job redundancies emotions are high and these need to be carefully addressed and managed. However, if the change is more focused on a simple process change where there is not a lot of heightened emotional reactions, this model may not be as useful.
The change practitioner is not always engaged or consulted at the beginning of a change initiative. Sometimes it is only when things are not going well and according to plan that the change consultant is engaged to turn things around. Irrespective of whether the change initiative is in the commencement or in the middle of the journey, effective organizational diagnosis is important to understand exactly what change intervention is required to address the situation. You may need to conduct focus groups as a part of employee engagement to get this data, and depending on the measurement model you take a Likert system analysis may be used.
Just as a good medical practitioner will utilize a combination of evidence/data and judgment according to diagnostic frameworks to determine the best course of treatment, the change practitioner should also follow suit. What types of data should be used to not only diagnose but also to subscribe treatment? The following is a summary of key types of data to look for and collect.
What is the change
– Why is the organisational change necessary?
– What does the change benefit? Its customers or its employees?
– What does the end state look like?
What is the impact
– Who is impacted by the change projects?
– What is the extent of the impact?
– What are the impacts on the role/person/organization? How does it affect organizational culture, organisational structures or organizational performance?
– What time period is the impact? In what ways?
– What are the change transition activities proposed?
Readiness for the change
– How ready are the impacted people for the change? What is the organisational diagnosis?
A good physician looks at the patient as a whole and not just the particular symptoms he or she is presenting. Based on the the symptoms presented, it could be that there are several disorders and not just one. In a similar way, a change leader needs to understand what the total picture of change in doing an organisational diagnosis is and not just isolate change to one project. Understanding what the totality of changes mean to the impacted stakeholder will go a long way in deriving what change approach or support is required.
To effectively diagnose a change situation the practitioner needs to use a data and evidence-based approach to understand where the organization has been, where it is and where it is going. Again using data, the practitioner needs to effectively frame the problem and diagnose the situation using the appropriate change model/framework(s). The right diagnose is critical to ensure the right change intervention is subscribed. For the same reason that wrongly diagnosing a patient could lead to further illness the same can be said for the wrong diagnosis of the change situation for an organization.
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