Story:
The power of employees to overcome the bank crisis

On the basis of the past, the different 'action fields' for culture change were quite clear. As mentioned before, we wanted to get rid of slow decision-processes, hierarchical structures and non-empowered (and therefore often demotivated) employees. As we wish to become the Reference in the market, we have to make sure our organisation is fit for that and we have to use all skills of our employees to face future challenges and realise our objective of becoming the Reference. Taking into account the voice of the employees and the new visions on leadership and motivation, it was clear that we had to move to a culture where employees can freely come up with ideas and experiment with them, that our managers/leaders should coach their team more towards self-steering, initiative, innovation, participation and dare to take decisions.

Below, you can find some major changes so far. We only mention changes that are relevant with a view to Leaders Everywhere.

1. Faster decision-processes, decisions taken at the lowest level possible (accountability) and transparency by a new corporate governance model.

This implies:

• The Management Committees merely decide upon strategic priorities. All tactical decisions are now taken in a Business Development Committee (per business/segment), headed by a member of the Management Committee. Operational decisions are taken at an even lower level.
• The project structures were reduced to less than 60%: a framework of non-negotiables helps the project leader and team to advance and decide. Per project there is only one Project Committee and the link to other domains is safeguarded through multidisciplinary teams, reporting and other formalities are reduced to a strict minimum
• Some ideas that are now under construction:

- Shadow Management Meeting: all issues raised at management meetings are submitted at the same time to a shadow management meeting. This is a rotating group of volunteering employees who prepare and discuss the same topics as management and submit their consclusions and decisions to the management meeting. This is a way of learning about the view of employees on certain issues, of getting new ideas and to involve staff members more in the strategic and policy processes. Both for employees and management it is a great initiative to learn and understand each other.

- Bootcamps: when employees have a good idea with a possibly major impact, they can set up a bootcamp. This means that they intensively work offsite on the issue/idea with a group of volunteers. These bootcamps are a kind of spin-off and participants do not have to take into account current structures and organisational matters, but they have a tight deadline to submit either a solution or a fully elaborated idea. That way, employees do no longer fully depend on the hierarchy, but get freedom to develop own ideas.

2. Culture change realized by the employees (viral change). One of the pillars of PEARL is Empowerment. Therefore, only a small group of 4 employees is fully dedicated to the implementation of the cultural transformation, but all employees were invited to support this change in one way or another. There are two main groups of employees for this:

• pEarly Adopters: this is a group of around 50 persons who were almost immediately enthusiastic for PEARL. These employees are highly involved and have a clear drive to change. They are eager to learn and in general they have a broad network. They dedicate some of their time to the implementation of PEARL within their own businesses . Initiatives are very diverse ranging from behavioural charters to employees designing and implementing the strategy for the own business domain.
• PEARL Ambassadors: Mid April we launched a campaign to assemble PEARL  Ambassadors within KBC Belgium. These employees believe in the PEARL culture, are willing to show example behavior and if they wish, they take actions within their own team. Over 600 colleagues have registered so far and this number still grows each day, which we consider a huge success. More and more these Ambassadors contact the pEarly Adopters and the Corporate PEARL team for support in initiatives they wish to take, since a couple of months we really feel a positive vibe of employees willing to contribute to PEARL.
• Due to this approach of viral change, traditional ways of working (project management, steering committees, formal meetings, SLA, …) are replaced by new and more dynamic ways of collaboration, based on enthusiasm, creativity and enterpreneurship.
• To support employees who want to take PEARL action, a set of hands-on recipes on different topics was published. These recipes are a description of a wide range of tools (e.g. Daily huddles), but described in such a way that they can be quickly understood by all employees. They are distributed in three categories (Pearl and I, Pearl and my team, Pearl and my business). The recipes were initially written by different colleagues, mainly from the Organisation Department and the Management Development Center. At this moment, we regularly add recipes on the basis of best-practices, provided by Ambassadors and/or pEarly Adopters.  An example can be found under 'Materials'.

3. Management innovation around core people and leadership practices

In conjunction with all other PEARL initiatives within HR we are now focused on reinventing some of the core management practices that are real barriers when it comes to an engaged, accountable, responsive culture. Some clear examples are

• Leadership Development: A new leadership model is currently being introduced. Focus of the new leadership model is on authentic leadership, coaching and empowering your employees, honest feedback, talent management, continuous improvement and role-modeling and performance management. Interactivity and cross-functional solidarity are also stressed in the new model. Whereas in the past, the leadership model was based on competences, the new model is focused on mindset and behavior (as behaviors will drive the expected culture). A first measurement of the leadership behavior will be done from October onwards. This will be done through a 360° feedback for all managers at all levels. For the first time, the view of the employees on their manager will be taken into account. Different ways of support (intervision, workshops, peer coaching, …) are planned for the managers. It is difficult to further elaborate on this here, as the information sessions for managers only take place in September. The model contains three important building blocks:
• Lead yourself: this is about vulnerability, resilience, consistency, autheticity and flexibility, passion and loyalty and self-development
• Lead your people contains behavior such as honest feedback, empowerment, valuing team, empathy, inspire and motivate, facilitate and focus on talents
• Lead your business focuses on the 'harder' aspects, such as vision, targets, continuous improvement and customers.
• With a view to future recruitment and development of all employees, our competence model will be adapted to the needs of the new culture. Whereas in the past a lot of focus was put on knowledge (diplom) and analytical competences, there will be a shift towards competences such as initiative-taking, innovation and vision.
• The performance appraisals (currently based on job levels and competences and targets) are being adapted. There is more focus on performance management and on the self-steering of employees.
• Working from home has been introduced in 2013.
• The project HR2B is a project on the future challenges of HR and possible answers. This is a project proposed and implemented by employees: after a first literature study of the market trends which lead to define the major challenges, all employees were invited to give their input. This crowd-sourcing was organised through pitstops (info sessions), walls with trends and room for input in the entrance halls and World Cafés. Main challenges will be
  • Flexibility of work (no more standard jobs, no more standard hours),
  • Use of talents and passion of the employees
  • Give Employees more freedom to choose and craft their own jobs,
  • Turn the managers into leaders by letting go of control
  • Corporate Social Responsibility,
  • More customer  focus at Head Office,
  • Hire talents that are fit for our culture (culture-gap)

5. Communication: Viral change, storytelling and appreciative inquiry are main components of PEARL. To realize this, a lot of emphasis is to be put on communication:

• KBC Connect: a new communication channel since February 2013 that keeps employees informed of results, press releases, awards and best-practices within KBC. Employees are invited to publish their success stories.
• Communities: a lot of importance is given to Community-working as a new way of collaboration and co-creation. A good example is the i-Funnel Community, which is a group of employees from all over KBC that want to make innovation sustainable within the company through a lean process, good support and coaching. The community idea makes sure that projects and ideas are enriched in a multidisciplinary way instead of working in silos.
• We also take care of Inspiration Moments:
  • We have defined eight Pearls (i.e. behavioral anchors) for the employees. These eight Pearls can be considered as concrete handles for starting with Pearl: Go for results - Put the customer central - Dare to decide - Show respect - Show passion - Keep it simple - Take initiative - Know yourself and adapt. Around these Pearls we organize theme months:   every month we set focus on one Pearl and inspire employees through a mix of channels . A fixed component are the Pearl pitstops: inspiration sessions with as topic the pearl of the month.  Some examples of other initiatives: a No-compaints Wall, a No e-Mail Day, a table in the restaurant called Silo Stop (where employees can get acquainted to each other).
  • Moodrooms: at the end of last year we inspired employees about the letters of PEARL through moodrooms located in the different buildings of Head Office. These moodrooms contained movies from management, quotes of famous people, cartoons and a place where employees could leave their impressions.
  • Parallel to the moodrooms, we organized a Moodboard competition. The aim was that teams made a moodboard together in order to start discussing about PEARL in an open way. No rules, any expression of creativity was welcome.
  • KBC2015: The community of young KBC employees took the initiative to organize several evenings on different locations on the future challenges and initiatives of KBC (e.g. HR in the future, the future customer, …). Over 1200 employees attended.

Conclusion: we organize a lot of different actions to reach an as wide as possible audience.

6. Innovation: A lot of focus is being put on innovation, preferably in co-creation with the customer. Crowdsourcing is also often used as a way to collect and improve ideas. To stimulate this, various initiatives were taken:

• An innovation competition which took place in Belgium in 2012. A new competition for the whole KBC Group will be launched in October 2013.
• PitchStops: quarterly we organize PitchStops where employees with innovative ideas can pitch these to a board of managers. If the idea is considered as supportive to our strategy and feasible, the idea can be implemented.
• Innovation Community: a community of employees volunteering to embed idea-generation and innovation in our company.

  When The Pitch, an innovation competition in 2012, ended, we saw an energized company and colleagues that, as out of nowhere, suddenly surfaced. Quite a few of the these colleagues got a new role : innovation and entrepreneurship became key assets in our organization and the new culture. They however lacked three things : a common language, a common goal and common ground. Our team of in-house consultants offered a solution… based on stewardship. They took the lead in an enticing new story for KBC : how do we, in our company, keep ideas flowing to feed the hungry wolves of innovation? After a thorough study and survey, all identified stakeholders/promotors of innovation gathered in a first of its kind meeting. Never before did we gather all identified innovative minds in the company with but one question : “how do you work?”. During this workshop, a process (the funnel) was defined and the different requirements to narrow down the number of ideas were summarized. This group of colleagues (employees) prepared a second meeting to connect the innovation funnel with the renewed “idea”-process in the Business oriented departments. After linking the innovation funnel with the agile driven and profit (rather than cost) oriented project process, six key showstoppers were identified. Again, the innovation community united, divided tasks and makes progress in solving these issues.

  Conclusion : Bringing together the people that are actively involved in a process, immature as it is, creates an amazing drive to improve and finalise it. No one needs management to do better what they love to do.

   

• Chasing rainbows: a group of employees volunteering to bring a vision on the future and a fit role for KBC in that future.

  Where do good ideas come from? In our modern age, this is probably the one million dollar question. We don’t know where they come from… but we do know how we can increase the change to get better ideas.

  Commissioned by top management and with a clear assignment to bring a vision on the future and a fit role for KBC in that future, an inspiring and rather rogue like employee gathered free-thinkers from all over the company.

  The usual suspects? No… most of them never met before. They were brought in the projectgroup as friends of friends of friends. In a truly democratic style, they set sail on a journey to the end of the rainbow.

  We set up our own approach, contacted external speakers, organized our offsites and everything else we deemed fit for our task. From the beginning, we relied on our network and creativity rather than on a large budget (we used it to celebrate the end with a copious meal… hey, we’re from Belgium!). After a few months, still before the deadline, our ideas crystallized in socio-economic trends on which we based new ideas. New approaches, new products, banking with an eye on 2020. We gathered it all in a roadshow, wrote a small accompanying magazine and started with a physical presentation from our conclusions for our sponsor. Weeks after that, we were still touring the company explaining which underlying streams were creating a new social fabric in which our company had to reconquer a proper position… and with which approached and ideas we saw that happening.

  Conclusion : good ideas are all over the company. Limiting out-of-the-box sessions and invention of new products to designated teams or management, is a waste of talent and ingenuity. Henry Ford once said “why is it that every pair of hands I need, comes with a brain attached to it”. Every new effort to bring our colleagues into an entrepreneurial spirit adds counterweight to Ford’s ideas about how a company should be run. By giving a clear assignment and a target date, management invited us to live our own dream yet deliver results.

   

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