Unlocking Patterns of Success in Digital Transformation

Jim Marous (00:12):

Hello and welcome to Banking Transformed. I'm your host, Jim Marous, owner and CEO of the Digital Banking Report and co-publisher of The Financial Brand. In today's rapidly evolving world of fintech and digital transformation, success is often painted as a glamorous journey of resilience and grit but the reality is far more complex and far less forgiving.

Jim Marous (00:34):

In this episode of Banking Transformed, I'm sitting down with the renowned fintech leader and author, Leda Glyptis to explore the hard truth behind building what lasts. Drawing from her new book, Beyond Resilience: Patterns of Success in Fintech and Digital Transformation. Leda reveals that survival in this industry is not about luck or brilliance, it's about mastering the art of doing the hard, often unglamorous work consistently and with precision.

Jim Marous (01:04):

Whether you're leading digital change within a bank or launching the next disruptive fintech, the conversation will shift your perspective on what it really takes to beat the odds. If you're ready to move beyond the hype and uncover the playbook for building the future of financial services, this is an episode you can't afford to miss.

Jim Marous (01:26):

So, welcome to show Leda. It has been a long time since we've last talked face to face, but you've been anything but not busy. It's not like you've been relaxing; you keep yourself busy. I keep up with you in a digital way, in your weekly posts that you do, your commentary on really interesting digs into what's going on, not just in banking, but in general industry.

Jim Marous (01:52):

What's working, what's not, what are we afraid of? What are we going towards that we shouldn't be? And every week it's something new and it's always a different way of looking at things than you would normally do which makes it extraordinarily exciting reading because it's sometimes not until the last paragraph that you really understand, "Oh, that's where she's hitting me over the head."

Jim Marous (02:14):

And now your book, this book is 350 pages, pretty close, 350 pages. It is 350 pages with more insights for more different perspectives than you'd ever imagine. Because it's not just your commentary, it's commentary of those who are around you, who you've relied on, who you've been friends with, who in some cases you've worked with or for.

Jim Marous (02:44):

What inspired you to write your second book Beyond Resilience, and what gap did you see in the narrative around what you had done in the past or what you've said in the past.

Leda Glyptis (02:56):

First of all, it's so good to see you, even though it's not face-to-face. I always miss you when we don't speak and thank you for that lovely introduction. It's funny, every week when I do my post people comment that whenever they're with me in a social situation or a work situation, they always wonder how long it will take before they end up in one of my posts because everything is an inspiration for a story.

Leda Glyptis (03:19):

But the inspiration for this book actually was a lot deeper than that which was while I was writing my first book, Bankers Like Us, which was a distillation of the work I've done and a reflection on all the things that we keep doing badly, effectively, all the things that we keep getting wrong when we're trying to transform our businesses.

Leda Glyptis (03:40):

As I was writing that book, I actually started thinking, "Hold on a second, we fail a lot." Failure rates are super high in digital transformation in finance. We all know that about 95% of startups and financial services fail, about 70% of digital transformations fail, we know those numbers.

Leda Glyptis (04:00):

And although they're staggeringly high, the success rate is not zero. And we've been doing it for long enough that … that's a better question. So, I called my publisher and I was like, "I've got a different question. I'm not going to write the first book anymore; this is what I want to do instead. I want to explore this because it's positive, it's constructive and I don't know the answer."

Leda Glyptis (04:21):

So, thankfully, my publisher walked me back from the edge and he was like, "Finish the first book then we do a second one." But it was the thing that you just asked that drove me. We beat the industry up a lot and most of the time for good reason, we repeat mistakes that are avoidable, we're shortsighted, we lose heart, we lose courage, we make mistakes that are well documented.

Leda Glyptis (04:45):

But actually, we don’t just do that, there's quite a lot of spectacularly interesting work and I wanted to see if the successes had any repeatability in them or whether they were heroic efforts against the odds that couldn't be repeated.

Leda Glyptis (05:07):

The other thing that was appealing for me and you'll totally see that because you know me well, I didn't know the answer. I knew what I hoped the answer would be. Well, when I set out to start researching the book, I didn't have a clear sense of what the answer would be and that really appealed to me actually putting myself in a position where I wasn't looking for proof of a preconceived notion.

Leda Glyptis (05:28):

And of course, you definitely see some things I believe are strongly in the book but quite a lot of it was like, "Oh, okay, I hadn't thought of it like that," and that to me was amazing, the opportunity to learn from some of the industry's greats.

Jim Marous (05:42):

Well, it's interesting though because I'm doing interviews twice a week of organizations and people that are doing things really well, some that have a perspective on things and maybe have never done them at all and those that have not done them so well.

Jim Marous (05:57):

And one thing that's challenging to me is there's certain themes that I continue to hear that seem to make a lot of sense but makes it difficult for any one individual to get the job done, for instance. It's not just the technology, that's easy to say but the reality is you can't buy yourself out of a problem if the leadership's not there.

Jim Marous (06:22):

But on the other hand, if I'm working for an organization that's maybe somewhat dysfunctional, maybe one that's been extraordinarily successful but has not moved off of square one or is afraid to do things differently because they have been so successful. How can I do something to make it better at my organization when I'm not going to be able to fire the top brass? And so, those kind of things are the big things.

Jim Marous (06:49):

However, your book gets into a lot of micro but not in a bad way, but in a way that says you can make a difference. You talk a lot about the people around you, the ability to use your tribes and the people around you to get things done. But when you're talking to all these people, what were the common themes that kind of resonated strongly across every spectrum?

Leda Glyptis (07:21):

That every spectrum pieces is really important because as you saw the book looks at quite a few different shapes of digital venture. It looks at established entities, it looks at startups, it looks at wholly owned subsidiaries and as you would expect, there are some similarities and there are also some traits and behaviors that are unique to each of those.

Leda Glyptis (07:40):

I would say the two things that were universal to them is that the one was on exactly what you described, the team side. We come into a lot of this work thinking of heroics and the language we use to talk about founders in particular or leaders is very Hollywood, it's very, you are sitting on top of a hill with a sword and it's you against the world.

Leda Glyptis (08:12):

And what I found is that there is no pattern to needing a founding team to stick together. There's very many successful stories where that happened and successful stories where it didn't, but no one has gone it alone. And actually, surrounding yourself with the people that will support you is key but that support needs to be pragmatic.

Leda Glyptis (08:38):

And that's one of the things I found really fascinating is when you're talking to people who did this work, they get really practical really quickly. So, when talking about the type of team you need around you, the answers you get are, "Well, what are you good at?" You need to get people around you who are good at the things you're not.

Leda Glyptis (08:56):

So, do you have the self-awareness to realize what those gaps are? Will those people around you help avoid a couple of unforced errors a year was one of the phrases that Christian … used in the book and it really stayed with me.

Leda Glyptis (09:09):

Do you have the sort of advice and support in your team, your advisors, whoever you surround you with, that will actually make you better at the things you are not, which means that you come in with some vulnerability.

Leda Glyptis (09:20):

The second piece is that will the team understand what the assignment is essentially. So, for instance, the team that is trying to manage transformation inside a big organization, we always over index in technical capability but actually a big part of the job is managing the headspace of your senior managers.

Leda Glyptis (09:39):

Is the team that you have around you good at that? Will they help you get over the line? Similarly, the needs of different organizations, are you aware of you as a leader, your limitations in the needs of your environment and do you have a team around you who gets how they will compliment you?

Leda Glyptis (09:57):

It's not just about the wonderful team got together and formed into something magical, you need to be deliberate in how you build a team and that came through so strongly and that practical angle is something that we're often blind to.

Leda Glyptis (10:15):

Like your founder teams is usually people who were buddies at school or who work together and were frustrated and they had a joint vision. Well, are you the right pairing? Maybe you are and maybe you're not. Are you practical about assessing whether that partnership will take you all the way?

Jim Marous (10:33):

When you look at that, it does become a dynamic of people. And you talked about that, what I'll call humbleness of when you get into a meeting, are you willing to realize that you don't have all the answers, and it becomes the dynamic of people.

Jim Marous (10:48):

You've talked about this for years, is that in that it may not be that I'm the best at any one thing, but together with others, I'm really good off of people and certain people are really good at their dynamic, but they had to understand what they're not good at that they thought they were also good at.

Jim Marous (11:09):

I mean, Leda, the higher you get up in an organization, the more blind you get to your faults because you've done pretty well. Your book, Beyond Resilience, is interesting because resilience is a new word for being ready for transformation and the goal of transformation, all this and it's often misunderstood. What does resilience mean to you? But even more important, what does going beyond resilience really mean in financial services?

Leda Glyptis (11:43):

It's a great question and you can probably see from the title alone that as I was going through the research, I changed my mind a couple of times. So, when I started doing this work, one of the things that was inevitable and came up again and again in the interviews, but also, you know it from your own experience, is this work is hard.

Leda Glyptis (12:05):

Building new things is hard. Going against the grain of an organization and changing things is hard. So, there's a degree of personal resilience that is needed, that is inevitably necessary because you're trying to do things for the first time.

Leda Glyptis (12:22):

You're trying to go against the grain of an organization, there will be resistance. You are going to need resilience for it. You are going to fail a lot and need to go back to the drawing board; you need to be resilient.

Leda Glyptis (12:33):

You're going to have people trying to block you, not because it's personal, but because it's freaking them out how much you're changing their world. So, you're going to need resilience, and everything is personal because you're putting so much of yourself in it.

Leda Glyptis (12:48):

So, when I started doing this research, I was looking at what these endeavors have in common beyond the need for resilience and the book spends a lot of pages on things like, you know what, it's not just about resilience. Being resilient is not enough, you need governance, and you need to get some operational dynamics right really early on.

Leda Glyptis (13:14):

You need to think about some things that may be looking boring for a startup founder but actually your operating cost, your cost to serve, your target addressable market and price point flexes have to be put in place really early on early.

Leda Glyptis (13:28):

So, I started from playing well actually, do we have unique resilience in all these people? Then I went through a very long list of things that need to be true for success and came full circle saying, “Resilience is not enough, but actually if you don't have personal resilience, this work is not for you.” And that has to be okay and that's one of the things I do say again and again in the book, “This work is not for everyone and that has to be okay.”

Leda Glyptis (13:53):

So, if somebody reads the book and goes, "Oh my God, this is not for me." That's actually a win for everyone. That you don't put yourself into a situation and a process that is not for you. And I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but you and I have seen it happen over the last 20 years where somehow the industry started creating a playground feel around startups and entrepreneurs and almost everyone has it in them and it’s great, it’s creative, it’s an ecosystem of mutual support. No, it’s a jungle.

Leda Glyptis (14:28):

It's extremely hard work where the vast majority of days are mired in difficulty and the vast majority of endeavors fail. It is absolutely okay to say, "That's not for me." In fact, it is more okay to say it's not for you than not. Statistically, this is not for everyone and that has to be okay.

Jim Marous (14:50):

So, you talked about the building new things. In your writings, readings and experience, isn't it harder to build new things or to tear down old things that have worked?

Leda Glyptis (15:06):

Oh man, it's so much harder to change existing things, so much harder.

Jim Marous (15:15):

It's counterintuitive. I mean, if it's not broken, even though you know it logically you have to, do you wait until it goes downhill before you jump?

Leda Glyptis (15:28):

That's it. Do you wait until it's broken? By which time you'll have no time. There is always resistance to changing existing things because as you rightly point out Jim, they're never fully broken. They will still be working under some conditions, under some situations and so there will be some protectiveness, some defense.

Leda Glyptis (15:48):

There's always the opportunity cost of, if we spend time and money doing this, what are we not doing? And if this is still working, should we not be spending our time on something else? There are emotive factors that I talked about in my first book a lot. Like if somebody built their career around getting a particular system or practice in the organization, you're tearing down their legacy, it's human nature to resist.

Leda Glyptis (16:11):

One of the things that Zor Gorelov talks about in my book in Beyond Resilience is that a lot of people will resist you because they believe in what they're doing, it's not even sinister. They really believe in the thing you're taking away. So, all of those dynamics are present. And then add on top of it the fact that there is an unknowable set of risk factors in doing something new.

Leda Glyptis (16:34):

So, you have something that works with its limitations that everyone can see will need to be changed at some point but is that point now and is the risk and the uncertainty worth it, and decision makers who tend to be brought in for a steady state organization tend to find that risk terrifying.

Leda Glyptis (16:54):

So, you see very human decisions of postponing the change or creating this very common thing in financial services of creating something but not scaling it and parallel running it to the something else. So, I'd say in 20 odd years of doing this work, I've launched many a new system, I've launched many a new capability, I've switched very few things off.

Jim Marous (17:24):

It's interesting because in the book you talk about patterns of success, I'm sure that even though you reached out to people that you knew and you probably knew part of their stories, otherwise you wouldn't have reached out to them. What was the most surprising or counterintuitive pattern that you saw that you go, "Oh, wow, learned something new every day."

Leda Glyptis (17:46):

There were a couple of things that were rather counterintuitive but I'll tell you the one that made me really deeply uncomfortable, and as I was writing, I could feel every bit of me going, "Oh, I wouldn't do that." I can see why it's valuable, but I wouldn't have the courage to do that. And that is the imperative to be very deliberate about how you spend time. When I put it like that, we can all agree with it.

Leda Glyptis (18:18):

But then what quite a few of the founders talked about was the fact that you need to be able to spend time on the things that are important ahead and above all else. And what does that ahead and above all else look like?

Leda Glyptis (18:31):

So, the founding team of Pismo who are one of them, incredible examples in the book talked about how before they started building, they spent a year, a year whiteboarding what kind of company they want to be.

Leda Glyptis (18:46):

Now that's a year when you're not building, you're not earning, you're spending your savings. These are people with families. It takes immense — makes me uncomfortable even saying this. But then they turned around and said that when we started building, we had our red lines, we had our north star.

Leda Glyptis (19:03):

Similarly, the co-founders of INFUSE talked about how before the two of them started their business, and particularly because Monica had had some bad experiences in the past, they sat down and wrote the most comprehensive shareholder agreement, creating parameters for how they would solve crisis, situations and tension points when they will have money and customers.

Leda Glyptis (19:28):

And they salted from a place of first principles and they spent time and money because they had to go to a lawyer to create a formal that I would've felt and most of us would've felt you don't have. And that came up again and again and again, founders and founding teams saying, "Spend the time on the things that matter first, foremost and above all else."

Leda Glyptis (19:53):

So, you have some of the founders talking about the fact that they personally interview everyone, or they allow team members six months before they become operational because they want them to be immersed in the culture.

Leda Glyptis (20:05):

And my question to them was, "Look, how do you keep the wolves from the door? How do you keep your investors from breathing down your neck?" And the answer is, "You have to be deliberate about whose money you take. You have to have a cap table that is aligned to your vision." And how do you learn that? Mostly by getting it wrong the first time round and learning the hard way.

Leda Glyptis (20:25):

But Jim, to your point, that lesson of intellectually I hear what you're saying, but emotionally, even as I was writing that section is like, "Oh, that goes against everything that I have seen done in 25 years, " but it’s such good advice.

Leda Glyptis (20:40):

If you have the courage to spend time and money at the time when you are under most pressure to show progress, to actually get the basics, the foundations right, and then actually take time out of the hustle, hustle, move, move to spend time on the things that are important to your business, your impact, your people, whatever it is that is key to you, it is counterintuitive and you will have everything and everyone, including your investors screaming at you not to do it.

Leda Glyptis (21:13):

But the most consistent advice that came through is the best thing you can do is spend time deliberately.

Jim Marous (21:19):

It's interesting because throughout the book, there's examples you just brought up one that I kind of believe in it, but I don't know if I'm a hundred percent in it, but even the thought of it coming up will stay in your mind and say, "You know what, I don't want to forget that.

Jim Marous (21:37):

Because I'm hearing more and more that success demands you know exactly where you're going as opposed to directionally where you're going and I buy into that. But when do you say, "Okay, I got it." And you don't want to spend any more time on that.

Jim Marous (21:56):

But on the other hand, in the book, you make it very clear that at our organizations that have spent an immense amount of time finding out exactly where you're going and they got there, or they did not accept money because money was available, but they only accepted it when there was complete agreement as to what it was going to be used for and the risk involved and those types of things you said, it makes your skin crawl because you go-

Leda Glyptis (22:25):

It really makes you uncomfortable.

Jim Marous (22:27):

I as a person could not handle that and I want to run on to the next thing, and that may be a fault, but it's not like I didn't learn from the discussion in the book about that. Another area that kind of I had to read it more than once, is you emphasize around control is more important than creativity. Kind of got it but had to read it a couple times to understand it. Can you explain-

Leda Glyptis (22:57):

It's kind of intuitive as well, isn't it?

Jim Marous (23:01):

I don't want to agree, but on the surface even it makes sense. But explain what that is and what it looks like in practice? Because it wasn't just once that that kind of comes out-

Leda Glyptis (23:13):

No, it’s again and again and again. There are three layers in which control is important. The first one is, as I said earlier, we have these received images in our industry about what digital transformation and successful startups are like and there's a language that usually go with that, including that notorious phrase of move fast and break things.

Leda Glyptis (23:37):

And the reality is, in financial services, that's not great advice. Moving fast and break things is a terrible idea when you're dealing with regulated businesses, people's money. So, actually moving fast, great, breaking things, not great. So, you need to be much more controlled in your experiments, in your exposure when you're dealing with things that are actually legally protected.

Leda Glyptis (24:04):

So, first of all, control is important as a posture because of the industry we're in. The second level is we often see startups, particularly startups as coming in and going, "Well, we'll work it out as we go. We're going to need to pivot," correct. "We'll Work it out as we go," incorrect.

Leda Glyptis (24:25):

Because the reality is, if you know what you're trying to build, there are a few variables that you need to check and take the feedback. You're absolutely convinced that there is a need for a particular product. How quickly do you go out there and validate that market need?

Leda Glyptis (24:45):

There are a couple of really humbling stories in the book about people whose first attempt at a business failed. Because they felt really strongly about something, but the people they were building it for didn't want it or didn't mind it, but they weren't going to pay for it or were willing to pay but not what it would cost to build it.

Leda Glyptis (25:03):

These are pretty boring, grownup things to be checking. And at times when we had pretty easy VC money, it was go for scale that will come out in the wash, but realistically it didn’t.

Jim Marous (25:16):

Not my money.

Leda Glyptis (25:19):

Right. So, the second element of control is not just you have to control your posture, it's that you have to control your variables. There are a set of questions that are part of your hypothesis. Go out there and find out what the answer is and then come back and show me that you've adjusted accordingly.

Leda Glyptis (25:36):

One of my favorite cases in there is Kelvin Tan's Audax which is actually a hybrid, it's a startup, but owned by Standard Chartered. So, they were both a startup and not, but one of the things he said is that he went out and tested his price point really early with a market and was prepared to flex his operating cost accordingly.

Leda Glyptis (25:59):

And that is control that, is going out there, testing your hypothesis, finding out whether you're right or not, and adjusting accordingly. So, controlling those variables is key.

Leda Glyptis (26:12):

The third layer in which control is important is that there are always things that are inside your control and things that aren't. So, when we talk about building things for the first time how the market will behave is not in your control, the assumptions you make about things you genuinely don't know and you're doing for the first time, you're going to make mistakes, that's all outside your control.

Leda Glyptis (26:32):

But actually, having feedback mechanisms acting on that feedback, having scenario planning so you can actually test your hypothesis, these things are in your control. How you spend time and money is in your control. How you manage your team, who you bring in when, that's in your control. So, the idea of we're going to throw things to the wall and see how they go couldn't be further from the truth of how people build businesses.

Leda Glyptis (27:02):

There is a very large element of trying to define as many variables in order to control them because that's how you get over the finish line with enough gas in the tank to get you to where you're going by controlling everything. So, creativity is key, but in specific areas of your business, 99% of what you need to do to get to the finish line is about taking the feedback, acting on it, and controlling all the variables that you can.

Jim Marous (27:31):

And it's interesting because even in those situations, those industries, those areas of business where you can burn it fast and move on, that even takes control. I mean, I'm in the process of writing an article around the similarities and differences between SpaceX and banking innovation where SpaceX can blow up the spaceship, I'm sorry, have the spaceship blow up, but still capture the rocket and consider a success and they're already onto the next iteration.

Jim Marous (28:06):

Well, you can't do that in banking, you've got to balance the risk and reward, plus you have government regulation around everything else, you just can't blow things up. On the other hand, there's a lot to be learned between that and Clayton Christensen and others around the innovation and transformation process.

Jim Marous (28:26):

And one of the things that a major theme is that you have to do a lot of hard things simultaneously. The things that aren't fun. I mean, even if you're at an established organization, you're trying to build new things, you're trying to tear down old legacy cores.

Jim Marous (28:45):

Maybe it's old legacy thought patterns, whatever it is but you got to do a lot of these things simultaneously. What are some of the hard things that you find that leaders with great intentions often underestimate?

Leda Glyptis (29:00):

Such a good question. I think the first thing to say is that that word simultaneously is the kicker. There's a whole host of things that are important and I say it again and again in the book, and they're all important at the same time.

Leda Glyptis (29:14):

And we see a lot like the cemetery of dead ideas is full of things that were great, but the team decided that we'll finish the product and then work on pricing later. We'll manage our stakeholders, sell them on the idea, and we'll stop developing things like spinning the plates at the same time is what makes this hard, you have to do a lot of thing-

Jim Marous (29:39):

Spinning the plates, I'm sorry, I talk about that and I get dumbfounded looks a lot of times and people don't realize that there used to be people that took these plates and put them on sticks and it was so much fun to watch because the whole deal was make them almost fall but then save them.

Leda Glyptis (29:56):

And then get them back up. Exactly. So, you need to spin the plates. So, I think there are things that leaders often leave for later and I'll give you three examples. The first one that we've seen happen in the startup world a lot is people will build product and worry about product market fit and leave product pricing fit for later and that ends badly for everybody.

Leda Glyptis (30:21):

A second example that we've seen particularly in banks that are fully owned subsidiaries by bigger entities is that they focus on innovation and customer adoption and not on monetization. And then you realize, and we have a fantastic case study there with then just talking about mocks, like your bank start lending, you want to make money, you need to think about how you're going to stand on your own two feet.

Leda Glyptis (30:46):

So, you're seeing leaders leave some of the financial levers to later and you're like, "What are you doing?" But the other, the third example and the biggest victim of this is quite a few leaders leave culture for later. Quite a few leaders go, "I have a people problem, but let me get over the next deliverable, over the next milestone, will deal with that later." You cannot deal with that later.

Leda Glyptis (31:07):

My favorite quote in the book, it's from the CMO pension B who goes, "You can't put a culture on later on like a hat. It's not something that comes on top." So, one of the most consistent themes across everyone I interviewed-

Jim Marous (31:21):

It's a great visual.

Leda Glyptis (31:23):

Isn't it brilliant? One of the most consistent themes is you always assume that when you have a problematic employee, particularly when it's conduct rather than performance, you have someone who is a high performer but doesn't fit the culture and you don't fire them right now because you feel that it would actually delay you more than it would give you an advantage.

Leda Glyptis (31:44):

The consistent feedback from everyone I interviewed is do it far fast. Do not carry the people who are bad for your culture because you will be paying the price for that for years to come. You will lose credibility, you will lose all the good people, your culture will feel like a sham.

Leda Glyptis (32:00):

And it's very consistently it goes back to what we were saying earlier about time, looking after your culture as a primary driver often feels like it's the thing you can park, it's the thing you can leave for later and the feedback from everyone's don't. And there’s some interesting stories about people who did that and actually how it impacted performance, talent retention.

Leda Glyptis (32:25):

But interestingly, you were talking about SpaceX earlier, one of the cases I look at is the founder of a company called Geofi, who I was on the board for really fantastic company, great industry sale and the founder pumped all of his exit money, which was not a small amount into space exploration.

Leda Glyptis (32:47):

And it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, part of me was like, "Why? Go buy a yacht. Why would you do that?" But he went into space exploration. He's taken on a huge problem, in fact because it's big, was his feedback.

Leda Glyptis (33:05):

And when I asked him about the transition from financial services to space exploration, he said, "All problems are people problems." At the end of the day, he's not the engineer who's going to be looking at fuel efficiency, all problems are people problems.

Leda Glyptis (33:21):

So, I would argue that fundamentally the things that some companies are doing better than others are probably in how they spend time early on to configure their people, to empower their people, and then to manage their people and now they've solved a lot of the people problems that gives them better outcomes.

Jim Marous (33:39):

Interesting. So, go the opposite direction of better outcomes. What are the biggest challenges or roadblocks you saw in your writing of your book that really stand in the way of success of transformation?

Leda Glyptis (33:55):

So, I would say there are two buckets of problems that you are almost guaranteed to come across. The first one I'm going to call it running out of runway, but that runway may not necessarily be money.

Leda Glyptis (34:21):

So, in a big organization you might actually find that you started a five-year transformation and you're two years in, it's going great, but other things have come up, people are losing interest, some of the leadership is moving around and all of a sudden, even though it's going great, it's not, you've lost the single most important currency in a big organization which is leadership headspace.

Leda Glyptis (34:45):

So, whatever your runway is made of running out of runway can happen unexpectedly and it could be cash, but it isn't just that. So, one of the biggest things that you need to be managing is your proof point versus your runway, which may not necessarily be money.

Leda Glyptis (35:06):

So, whatever that thing is because the thing about money is that everyone shrugs, particularly in the world of free money, we've lived in so far and go, "I can raise more." And so, maybe you can, maybe you can't and maybe you can, but money isn't the only thing. And because it's not linear, you may run out of the currency you were using to get to the next phase without realizing it and I think Headspace is a good example of that.

Leda Glyptis (35:32):

So, every organization that I spoke to had that. Some talked about the fact that certain things were harder than they expected or the original hypothesis didn't work out, or their funders or owners lost interest. So, managing that-

Jim Marous (35:49):

I was going to say, well, the runways is enthusiasm.

Leda Glyptis (35:51):

A hundred percent or someone beating you to it in another market, so keeping an eye on the dollars isn't enough. The second thing that is a huge roadblock to success is that the vast majority of people who have the personality makeup and their resilience to be drawn to this work want to have an impact.

Leda Glyptis (36:14):

That impact could be societal, it could be intellectual, it could be egotistical, it could be all of the above. The impact might be, I want to be the one who fixed it. It might be, I want to change the world. It might be, I believe in this, it could be from the most altruistic to the most personal and everything in between.

Leda Glyptis (36:35):

When there is such a big driver of having an impact, taking feedback can become very personal because you are prepared for some resistance. So, it starts becoming an art rather than a science. Is Jim giving me this feedback because he wants me to succeed and I've got a blind spot, or because he's a naysayer and I should just push on.

Leda Glyptis (36:57):

Having that ability to pivot, to listen to feedback and take it on board and not lose that vision of where you're going and what impact you're trying to have is extremely hard. It's going to happen to everyone. It's deeply uncomfortable and it's not a science.

Leda Glyptis (37:15):

Even in all of the stories I quote in the book, I'm deeply conscious of the fact that your moment to take the feedback might appear and you might miss it. You might, with the best intentions in the world, take it as the world being a little bit negative. And that ability to see your vision through without being incapable of taking the feedback or pivoting or changing a bit is one of the biggest areas of failure.

Leda Glyptis (37:42):

Because the chances of the idea as it formulated in your head being exactly how you're going to build it as zero and that the chance of that happening is absolutely not there. So, how do you navigate still going to where you're going, taking the feedback without being derailed.

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Jim Marous (38:02):

So, let's take a short break here and recognize this sponsors of this podcast and we'll get back to this very quickly.

Jim Marous (38:10):

Welcome back, I'm joined today by Leda Glyptis, industry thought leader, fintech veteran and author of the new book, Beyond Resilience: Patterns of Success in Fintech and Digital Transformation. We've been discussing some of the major lessons in her book and how they can be applied at firms of any size.

Jim Marous (38:31):

So, you talk quite a bit in the book about how leaders can think differently about failure, the book's about success but obviously it doesn't always go as a straight line. How should leaders think about success or failure differently, both within themselves, but also for their organizations?

Leda Glyptis (38:53):

It's such a good question and funnily enough, it was one of the topics I ended up discussing with everyone that I approached for an interview. Because the first thing I noticed when I said to people, "I want to talk about patterns of success is they recoiled."

Leda Glyptis (39:08):

And some of the people I spoke to, I mean you'll pick up my book, there's no debate that they've succeeded. They have personal success, they have organizational success, some of them have done it more than once, and yet the word success made them uncomfortable, which I liked, I saw humility in that.

Leda Glyptis (39:26):

But I think part of the reason success made them uncomfortable is that we have often thought about success and failure as final states of being and neither is a final state of being. So, to turn back to your question and turn that thing on its head, one of the most interesting things I found is that nobody was satisfied even after they had succeeded. They felt that they had learned enough to do it better.

Leda Glyptis (39:56):

And every single one of the people I interviewed was doing something for the second, third, fourth time because even if they had success in the previous time, they learned something about themselves, about the area.

Leda Glyptis (40:09):

So, what does that mean? It means that actually the vast majority of human endeavors are neither unqualified successes nor unqualified failures and there's always a learning opportunity. Are you taking the learning?

Leda Glyptis (40:22):

Because the other thing that is implicit in what I just said is people always do better in their second rodeo. They know what pitfalls to avoid. It's like, I don't know if we have any gamers around, but you always play the first few levels of the game faster if you've played it before. You know where the treasure is hidden and where the pitfalls are. That doesn't mean you know all the answers, but you can get to some outcomes faster.

Leda Glyptis (40:48):

So, success and failure becomes a very redundant set of words actually as you go through this because the vast majority of things is actually neither. It's a set of iterations and if you have your ears and eyes open, you're learning and doing better next time.

Jim Marous (41:08):

It's funny because we've talked about that before. You and I have that we benefit from the massive amounts of failures we've had in our past, but also you get the perspective of time, which is something that you miss when you're younger.

Jim Marous (41:24):

It's something when you miss earlier in your career that as you said, it's not final. And the thing that you have to learn is it's not just that your failure is not final but your success does not breed by itself success.

Leda Glyptis (41:42):

That is absolutely right. And I think part of what I was going to say is that part of the reason why these things feel so final is because the individuals involved in the work put so much of themselves in it. So, actually one of the interviewees was saying that after the venture she had been a part of went out of business after being successful for a while and then not, was that she had genuine PTSD.

Leda Glyptis (42:08):

And she says, founder PTSD is real because you put so much of yourself in this that there is a whole host of emotions that you need to deal with. Some of it is about, "Did we succeed, did I do right by the people who believed in me?" But also, some of it is the immense amount of pressure you work under, they catch up with you.

Leda Glyptis (42:28):

But the reality in life to quote Dani Binatti who says it in the book, she’s like, "I don't think of as failure. I either succeed or I learn," which is a hundred percent the right way for organizations to think. And in fact, I do talk about the ING innovation program and one of the things they've done is they've created discipline. Does it always work? No.

Leda Glyptis (42:51):

But do they have the discipline of saying we either succeed or we learn and they have created a very reliable engine around that so that they can protect the organization from recoiling, from experimentation because things didn't work. They've also learned other things along the way. You ask what organizations can learn, you can learn whether some shapes are not right for you.

Leda Glyptis (43:14):

So, one of the things that ING point out is that they don't do really early anymore. They don't do really early-stage startup partnerships anymore and they don't do really early in the adoption cycle anymore. They tried both and it just doesn't fit in well with the other things they tried to do.

Leda Glyptis (43:31):

So, they've adjusted, they've learned, so they are avoiding situations that aren't right for them, and they focus on things that are, and that learning is absolutely key, going, "I'm not going to do that again, it didn't work for me." And it didn't work, not because I executed poorly, but because it's not a good faith. That's an incredibly valuable learning.

Jim Marous (43:53):

You talk in the book about finding your tribe, and we've talked about it already in the context of culture, building good teams, things of that nature. But let's go beyond that. How important in the people that you interviewed is finding your tribe around people like you outside your organization?

Jim Marous (44:14):

And we've talked about this, you and I directly, and in fact I consider ourselves both part of each other's tribes in a sense where you thrive off other people that are in completely different places, but you find those people maybe that just have a perspective on life that's different. How important is that? How important was it for you in your book, but beyond that, just in life?

Leda Glyptis (44:39):

I mean, it was hugely important for me in my book because the first round of interviews was also like, "Am I onto something or have I bumped my head here?" And you trust your tribe to save you from yourself to actually say, "You've got this one wrong or you're going to embarrass yourself, don't do that, do this instead." And that is a combination of you coming in with humility and your tribe coming to you with honesty. And as you know, you and I are alike in this, you live your life by that.

Leda Glyptis (45:15):

But when it comes to the work in this book, and one of the things I was interested in was exploring that trope, that image of the singular founder, heroic standing alone, cape flapping in the wind a little bit like Braveheart meets Superman and instinctively I don't like that image. I don't believe that any man's an island. I don't believe anyone achieves anything entirely on their own.

Leda Glyptis (45:43):

Interestingly I found, as I think I mentioned earlier, a lot of teams that had reconfigured themselves, I found a lot of companies that the founding team had stayed together and that's a power, that's actually a superpower but you can't succeed without that.

Leda Glyptis (45:58):

It's not about the staying power of the original team, but it is about the power of a team that looks beyond one person. Because you need to do a lot of complicated things at once and you need people who have each other's back and doing it. But what does it actually look like that is unique in this type of work?

Leda Glyptis (46:19):

I have this phrase that came up a couple of times, which is, “Who tells you when you're being an idiot?” When you're doing work that starts succeeding, you start getting seniority, you get traction in the market, you get a few million in the bank from an investor, how do you create a situation where the person fronting and leading that work doesn't become protected from feedback, be it on their conduct or their ideas? How do you create an environment where the humility is there across the board?

Leda Glyptis (46:51):

Because you want the blind spots of the individual to be challenged, but you also want the blind spots of the team. So, you're building something you're all excited about. You go out into the market, nobody wants it. What do you do with that information? Do you come back and say, “Nobody wanted Spotify until it was created.” Or do you go, “What does this data actually tell us about our product?”

Leda Glyptis (47:18):

Because the reality is maybe no one could have imagined Spotify, but everyone wanted to be able to buy one song, another whole album. So, the feedback from the market will always point you in the right direction. Are you surrounding yourself with people and advisors?

Leda Glyptis (47:35):

So, it could be your team, it could be your advisors, it could be your mentors, it could be your friends, it could be your board, it could be your boss who challenge your blind spots, ensure that you get the feedback, protect you from, again, to quote Christian, a couple of unforced errors or help you think through things faster.

Leda Glyptis (47:55):

Another thing that Christian said and that really stayed with me, was that sometimes the advice that you get from your teams or your mentors or your board isn't necessarily to change your mind, but to get you to where you need it to get six months faster than you would yourself. That's invaluable.

Jim Marous (48:12):

It's interesting because it's a maturity level. When you had people looking at your book as you were developing it, you really wanted the real advice, you didn't want the pat in the back, you're fine with that. You're mature enough to say, "You know what, I'm not asking you this so you'll say, I'm doing good, even though I don't mind you telling me that."

Leda Glyptis (48:35):

Tell me what you don't like, yeah.

Jim Marous (48:37):

But you really are saying, "Please find my blind spot." It's funny because every time I've moved on to a new organization from probably the second one on, I went out of my way because I was feeling pretty heady.

Jim Marous (48:50):

There was things that were going pretty right but I kept on telling people, "Please, I am not a person that's very passive in my passion. Please stop me in my tracks if you think I may be missing something."

Jim Marous (49:03):

It's hard, but you got to do it over and over again because if you don't tell people you have a voice and my team knows it, Leah knows it, especially I'll say nine times out of 10 when you come up with something, I'm going to probably do it your way because I probably miss something and that also encourages people to say, "Oh, he actually meant it as opposed to just saying it." And there'll be times I disagree, but usually I'm better for it as you mentioned.

Jim Marous (49:28):

Finally, from everything you learned in the development of your book, what advice would you have for founders, banking executives or anybody embarking on a new initiative in today's climate where actually the target for digital transfer, it used to be, "Oh, this is the target." No, the target keeps on moving. So, it's a directional thing more than anything else, but what advice would you give?

Leda Glyptis (49:57):

I mean by the book, I would say there are two pieces of advice no matter what type of transformational business you're in. And the first one is be brutally honest with yourself and your team about what it is your currency that you're managing against. We talked about a couple of examples, it's enthusiasm, it's support, it's political backing, it's headspace and it's money.

Leda Glyptis (50:25):

Have that honesty early on and have it with your team so that you're managing to the same hourglass so that the sand that you're seeing run down, it means the same thing to everyone. We all have finite time windows to prove things.

Leda Glyptis (50:45):

What are you measuring against? Do you understand and does your team understand? Money will invariably beep a factor, but it might not be the dollars, it might be the cycles for the next investment committee or the next review side, be honest and don't dismiss it.

Leda Glyptis (51:02):

I have seen so many founders and digital transformation leaders who go the organization or the investor has backed what we're doing, these things are just markings in the calendar. No, they're not.

Leda Glyptis (51:17):

Be absolutely honest about what currency you're managing and manage it, don't just manage the dollars. Manage your proof points, manage your every flex you have to increase how much of that currency you have, you're going to need it.

Leda Glyptis (51:30):

The second thing is what we've said time and time again here it is hard work. There is no working around that and it needs a lot of personal resilience from the leaders. So, actually being able to bounce back and keep going, that is not a choice, but doing it alone is. So, find your tribe, find your people, find the people that you have that trust relationship with and you know that they'll call out your blind spots and take them with you on the journey.

Leda Glyptis (51:59):

They're not going to make it easier, but they will make it feel easier because you will not be alone where it matters. It's not just about bodies there, it's about what they do for you, how they protect you and accelerate you and make you better by calling out your blind spots.

Jim Marous (52:14):

That's great. It's interesting because we've talked about it many times. I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that your mission really has been and as long as I've known you to make banking better and you never stopped learning, which is something I think we agree on that that keeps us alive.

Jim Marous (52:32):

But this is a guidebook. If you're looking for … give me not the answer book, give me the guidebook that will guide me as to how others have found success. You will not read this from page one to page 350 in its entirety, in its context.

Jim Marous (52:49):

You're going to read page one to page 10 then page 3 to page 11, you're going to keep going over because some of the stuff is going to go counter to what you may have thought or it may totally agree or be agreeable to what you've thought.

Jim Marous (53:05):

But either way, it really is a recipe book and I'll guarantee you it will not be Leda's last book. So, read it before she writes her next one that's going to build upon that because it's a never-ending journey, but it is extraordinarily valuable from the number of people that she talked to.

Jim Marous (53:26):

The number of scenarios that these people are in, organizations of all types, all sizes, all ages, from the oldest of banks to the newest of fintechs involved in that are also some failures and things to avoid doing, which brings you to success. So, I highly recommend the book, the book's available right now. Also, Leda, you're going to be in California and in New York City in the next few weeks, can you give us a little preview there?

Leda Glyptis (53:54):

That's right. There will be two-breakfast round tables discussing the book, it will be March 18th in San Francisco, California and March 20th in New York City. Both events are kindly hosted by the wonderful people at FinScan. We have some amazing folks coming.

Leda Glyptis (54:12):

Actually quite a few of the people interviewed in the book will be joining the discussion. So, for any of the listeners that you are in town and would like to join us we'll include a link and you can see if we can still get you to join the group. I'm hoping Jim might be with us for one of those.

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Jim Marous (54:30):

I'm trying to make it to New York, I know.

Leda Glyptis (54:32):

And I'm really excited because I have tried to get the stories of these people to speak loudly and actually the fact that some of them will be in the room to share their experiences I think will be in valuable. So, a huge thank you to FinScan for hosting these two events and hopefully some of the listeners will find their way to the room and join us.

Jim Marous (54:51):

Leda, thank you again. As always, it's always a joy to be around you, to soak up your energy and to share some of the stories. It's amazing how fast time flies. I mean, it's scary. I think it's two years since we actually gave each other hugs in Amsterdam.

Leda Glyptis (55:08):

No, has it been that long? I doubt.

Jim Marous (55:10):

It might be that long. It is scary, so-

Leda Glyptis (55:12):

Well, you have to come to New York now.

Jim Marous (55:13):

Yeah. I agree. Thank you so much.

Leda Glyptis (55:16):

Thank you for having me, my friend. Thank you so much.

Jim Marous (55:20):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, rated as the top five banking podcast and winner of three international awards for podcast excellence. If you enjoy what we're doing, please show some love in the form of a review. Finally, be sure to catch my recent articles on The Financial Brand and check out the research we're doing for the Digital Banking Report.

Jim Marous (55:40):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. With special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage, audio engineer, Chris Fafalios and video producer Will Pritts. I'm your host, Jim Marous. Until next time, remember, success is a journey in learning from those who traveled before us is one of the recipes for success.