Carol Juel has been the chief information officer at Synchrony Financial since the company’s creation, after it spun out from General Electric just over seven and a half years ago. She had worked at GE for the decade prior to that. In the early stages of Synchrony Financial’s existence, Juel had the opportunity to think about new beginnings as to how a modern technology organization should function to best support a new, already scaled and growing business.
Like many CIOs, Juel introduced agile methods as a primary process to develop new initiatives within the technology realm. Like many peers of hers across industries, the iterative approach, engaging the intended audience and users in the process from ideation through to completion ensured a better end product, and it reduced the risk that time and money would be invested only to conclude with a collective yawn from customers, for example. Every project has degrees of uncertainty and risk associated with them, especially if they are truly innovative. If you are batting 1.000, you are not innovating, after all. Therefore, when contemplating scenarios where uncertainty reins, greater degrees of cross-functional collaboration are essential, and they can get the collective batting average higher for the technology and digital teams as a result.
Come March of 2020, we all entered perhaps the greatest period of uncertainty as the consequences of the pandemic on our personal and professional lives began to be reconciled. The progress Synchrony Financial IT had made in instituting agile gave Juel an idea. Why not make the executive team (the chief executive officer and his reports) an agile team of sorts? One of the key aspects that Juel thought would facilitate setting a path during unprecedented times was the concept of the daily stand-up meeting. “Agile stand-up meetings, for those who have never been to one, are a very specific meeting,” said Juel.
“Once or twice a day, the team gets together to communicate information. You’re talking about what you need, you’re making decisions and you’re talking about blockers. [By the conclusion of each meeting], everyone is clear about the actions that need to be taken, who is accountable and what’s going to get done by the next agile standup meeting.”
This was the new way of working for the Synchrony executive team, but those executives already had seen the great strides the technology team had made in leveraging the same methods, and this made the case very easy for Juel to implement this among her peers and with her boss, the CEO. “It was a conversation on an afternoon, and by the next morning we had our first executive-level stand up meeting.” Juel served as the scrum master for the team, helping the team streamline the methods used to achieve their goals.
The advantages were legion. Issues were discussed as soon as they were identified, common approaches to rectify those issues were developed almost immediately and with broad buy-in from across the team, the consequences of those decisions were monitored real-time and any course correction could be made quickly. The speed of decision making hastened and the pathway to value shortened just as fast.
“There was so much uncertainty at the outset of the pandemic. What consumer spending was going to look like? How would the job market evolve? Having tools as a leadership team that allowed us to work differently to respond to this unprecedented set of challenges was exciting.” This fostered a broader agile cultural change across the company. As the executives learned more about these methods, they began to deploy them with their own teams. Thus, the speed of all teams began to hasten in ways akin to the change that the technology team had experienced in the early stages of its agile journey. Juel credits these changes as critical factors in allowing Synchrony Financial to launch both Verizon’s and Venmo’s first ever credit card programs. Both happened in record times remotely.
The agile approach led to creative thoughts on how best to enhance the experiences of employees during trying times. As it became clear that normalcy would not return by the time schools let out for the summer, it also became clear how disruptive it would be for many to have kids at home all day without typical summer outlets like camps. This is where the immersion of the executive team in the agile principles shined. The leaders of Technology, Marketing and Human Resources worked together to design the camp. “The goal was to help school age children to have engaging activities that would be inspiring,” Juel said. “Older kids could help design programs for younger kids. Employees served as mentors for all, and different employees took responsibility for developing different modules.” These would include everything from learning how to do a cartwheel to STEM classes.
Not only did this fill a need that was a source of anxiety for employees, but it strengthened the community across Synchrony Financial, as employees helped other employees’ children.
A little more than a year into the pandemic, in April 2021, Brian Doubles was named chief executive officer of the company. As with any leadership change of this magnitude, it provided a reason to rethink Synchrony Financial’s operating model. One of those would bring technology and operations together under Juel’s leadership, as she took on the role of chief technology and operating officer. As technology became more pervasive across the operations, the tie between the two became clearer, and in a period of dramatic change the value to be derived by linking these functions in a new way was profound.
As her influence inside of Synchrony Financial grew, so too did her reputation outside of the company, as well. She would be asked to join the board of Brighthouse Financial in the fourth quarter of 2021, joining a select but growing group of enterprise technology leaders who have been asked to join boards.
By thinking more expansively about her role as a technologist, Juel fostered resilience in the business operations (eventually taking over responsibility for business operations), resilience in the families of employees, and became a board-level tech executive in the process. This is a great example of the great work done in IT finding broader applications and increased value through the creative thought process of a strong leader.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
638: In this interview, Santhosh Keshavan, EVP and Chief Information Officer of Voya Financial, focuses on growth through innovation and simplification to create efficiencies to deliver a better experience for Voya’s customers. Santhosh discusses the role digital plays in interactions with customers and how it has evolved over the last few years. He also talks about efforts at the company to simplify tech and digital as a source of growth and shifting the mindset at Voya to focus on both simplification and innovation. Santhosh goes over the role of data at Voya, other areas of innovation that his team is looking at, and creative ways he has identified and recruited talent during a time of high attrition. Finally, Santhosh gives a couple of tech trends that have been on his radar as he continues to grow the company.
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636: In this interview, Brett covers the importance of creating digital competencies and weaving them into the fabric of the organization. He gives an overview of Thrivent’s business and the two sides of his purview in digital and technology as well as why he feels his role as Chief Digital Officer is temporary as he shifts digital competencies to be incorporated into the overall company. He then provides the necessary components of transforming Thrivent into a digital-first organization and how the role of IT has transformed into a driver of the true customer experience. Finally, Brett shares the commonalities finance shares with retail when it comes to digital adoption, his view of the tech talent coming out of the Twin Cities, and the trends in digital and technology that he is particularly interested in.
631: In this interview, Amir and Dean discuss scaling artificial intelligence as a method of delivering innovative customer experiences. Amir begins by talking about how AI/ML creates value at the highest level at Discover and what the team structure looks like when bringing these innovations to market. Dean talks about how AI is used along the customer journey at Guardian Life and provides a few use cases of how automation is improving business results. Both executives then share insight into how they are integrating cross-functional product teams with the operations of the company.
626: Ather discusses the strategic changes at the company and how the three verticals he leads work together. Ather describes his purview in each of the verticals he leads; Strategy, Digital Platforms, and Innovation; and reflects on how the digital- and mobile-first strategy has evolved in the financial services industry. He talks about the ecosystems he’s built at the company, how they help knit together the three verticals, and what degree of coopetition exists in the space. Ather shares how good corporate strategy has changed in a time of digital disruption and what he believes successful innovation looks like. He shares how Wells Fargo’s Innovation Team operates and how it evaluates the true value-add innovations that will change the needle at the company. Finally, Ather looks ahead at increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion at the company, what the future of work looks like, and trends in technology.
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This episode is sponsored by Transmit Security.
621: Michael discusses the development and implementation of Next Generation Technology at Citizens Financial. Michael begins with his purview as Chief Information Officer and describes the Next Gen Tech Transformation Program at the company. He talks briefly about the broader impact of IT, enhancing engineering talent through leveraging partners and in-house academy programs, and building up the momentum for using APIs at the company. Finally, Michael provides an example of the Next Gen Tech in action at the company, what the process of modernizing a 200-year-old company looks like, and trends in technology that he sees as being important in the years ahead.
616: Kai-Fu Lee discusses the evolution of artificial intelligence and the 20-year horizon for its implementation. Kai-Fu shares why 20 years was an appropriate time horizon for his book on the future of AI, why Chen Qiufan, a science-fiction novelist, was the perfect person to partner with, and how the two of them originated the idea for ten visions of AI. He also discusses the impact of artificial intelligence on society including the future of work, changes in society, and shaping of opinions. Finally, Kai-Fu gives his perspective on the factors necessary to lead to greater adoption of artificial intelligence and how the global leadership of certain areas of its development and implementation has evolved.
612: Toyota Financial Services CIO Vipin Gupta discusses his journey at TFS and the radical business and operating model transformation he has led, which includes transforming TFS into a private-label platform that other mobility brands can leverage. We also discuss the cultural change that was necessary to enable this shift, including how he is upskilling talent at the company through the company’s TFS Digital Academy and bringing higher orders of work to employees. Finally, Vipin explores the trends in technology that he and his team are keeping an eye on.
602: In this interview, Greg Carmichael, CEO of Fifth Third Bancorp, describes his journey from CIO to CEO at the company and why now is the best time for other CIOs to begin their journey. He also gives his perspective on how the CIO role presents a solid foundation for advancement to the CEO post. Jude Schramm, CIO of Fifth Third, then shares how technology is becoming a fabric of how the company operates and how the pandemic helped accelerate the company’s digital capabilities, changing the way the company looks at cybersecurity. Finally, Jude talks about the benefits of having a CEO cognizant of the CIO role, and Greg shares some of the trends in technology that he is excited about in the future.
This interview was recorded live during the Metis Strategy Digital Symposium in September of 2021.
This episode is sponsored by Quickbase.
586: In this interview, Jennifer Charters, CIO of Flagstar Bank, focuses on how Flagstar is expanding its digital capabilities and how it remained resilient during the pandemic. Jennifer speaks on the coopetition between traditional brick-and-mortar banks and FinTech firms and how smaller banks can benefit greatly from developing ecosystems to leverage FinTech’s digital capabilities. Additionally, Jen describes the investments Flagstar has made in its own digital capabilities including cloud infrastructure and various platforms. She gives her perspective on the culture of IT, growing the opportunities for women in technology, the advantages of Flagstar’s announced merger with New York Community Bancorp, and trends she foresees.
