Tectonic changes in regulation and society have transformed the UK’s once stodgy pension and savings industry, creating vast new numbers of customers, giving current ones new expectations and responsibilities, and daring providers like Standard Life to change along with them.
“We’d traditionally focused on B2B, just like other companies in our sector,” said Stephen Ingledew, Managing Director, Customer & Marketing at Standard Life (UK and Europe), noting that the company had a 190-year history innovating its relationships with employers and intermediaries.
“We needed to change our culture to understand our end customer far more than we ever did before.”
The transformation started three years ago, with the board blessing a set of core principles focused on addressing consumer needs.
“We formed a prototype, cross-functional team, and gave it regular access to customers to inform and test their ideas,” Ingledew said, adding that they are none too happy when he named the group Team Funky.
The self-renamed Team K went on to help devise a strategy to set teams loose across the entire organization, with management identifying broad areas of work and then encouraging employees to volunteer to help address them (all outside of their ‘day jobs’)…
Read the entire essay at Forbes