COMMUNITY: AGILE WORKING
Implementing agility at Deutsche Bank Within non-tech corporate structures, agility initiatives can get stuck in IT departments, explains Julia Rutsch, Global Lead Agile Accelerator, Deutsche Bank Corporate Bank. This, she says, “is a missed opportunity” and “you need the business in the driving seat”. When she pitched a change in delivery methodology to the senior leadership of the Corporate Bank in 2021, it was grasped with alacrity, even though it turned traditional command-and- control organisational culture upside down. It allowed people to experiment with ideas and learn without fear of failure, showing that the whole point is the open exchange of information and ideas across the business, operations and technology. The next step was for the Deutsche Bank HR team to develop an ‘Agile leadership manifesto’. This formed the basis for an in-house ‘Agile leader’ report and is now part of the bank’s selection process for key agile roles, and part of the performance and rewards process, as it supports the ‘how’ and not the ‘what’. Executive coaching was put in place in groups and on a one-to-one basis, followed by roundtable ‘lighthouses’, where agile leaders and coaches worked with groups on the agility agenda. “Managing agile actually is demanding and rewarding at this same time – you benefit from smarter subject-matter experts to find ways to reach goals without a top– down directive,” reflects Ole Matthiessen, Deutsche Bank’s Global Head of Cash Management. Nevertheless, he admits that “stepping back and giving up control still feels tough at times”. How did the Corporate Bank make agile happen throughout the enterprise? Four development phases were agreed for building agile leadership and behaviours:
• Ignite and inspire senior leaders to create a base for culture change – starting with the leaders themselves
• Articulate the top agile success behaviours and areas for improvement
• Activate by building new and visible behaviours embedded into daily leader routines and ‘drumbeats’
•Embed new ways of working in the organisational context to monitor and sustain the change
Quarterly ‘pulse’ surveys were set up to keep track of how the roll-out was going and a ‘tribe’ structure with non-hierarchical leaders was set up, using the surveys as well as an agile learning journal as assessment tools.
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Agility needs the business in the driving seat
Julia Rutsch, Global Lead Agile Accelerator, Deutsche Bank Corporate Bank
Figure 1: Many companies embark on an agile transformation but most struggle to ‘do Agile right’ and leave money on the table
95% of companies have started their agile journey
Percentage of teams using agile 95%
44%
Less than 50% of the teams
Common pitfalls l1 Lack of alignment around goals/business outcomes
leadership style and behaviour
'output' rather than business outcomes
stack-ranked priorities at the senior leadership level
l2 Incentives not aligned with l3 Insufficient change in
l4 Measure and reward 33% 18% Not started Source: Annual state of Agile reports 2020 (14th edition) Started
More than 50% of the teams
All the teams l5 Launching agile projects
without changing the operating model and context
l6 Focusing on the
mechanics, such as scrum process or new tools
By the time Deutsche Bank CEO Christian
Sewing told shareholders in March 2022 that “we want to increase speed, with less complex structures, leaner hierarchies and agile teams across the bank”, the Corporate Bank’s ‘Agile Organisation’ programme was well under way. Some 3,500 colleagues had been trained in the fundamentals of agile. There was good engagement with the German Workers Councils, and the routine of a quarterly pulse check to highlight areas of improvement was firmly in place.
Corporate perspective Agile ways of working also seem to be welcomed by the bank’s clients. As Steffen Diel, Head of Global Treasury at software provider SAP, said in the flow InCorporateTreasury Podcast, “It is not
a must that banks and other third-party providers embark on the same agile journey as SAP treasury, but what we wish for is an open mindset on the side of our partners… to jointly discuss non-traditional solutions to problems in terms of digitalisation, for example when it comes to electronic signatures.” For Diel, it is not important which working methods banks apply to achieve these goals, but he believes that reacting quickly to new market conditions is key, and that agile working allows for this. At SAP, several members of Diel’s team already engage in agile ways of working by supporting the company’s IT department in co-developing SAP’s own cash management and treasury solution portfolio. But the wider agile transformation programme has only just started. Diel explains that to address the concerns of employees, SAP treasury started out with a few earlier adopters “who were really keen to engage in new ways of working”. Then, over time, more team members were pulled in by showing the success of agile projects. “It takes time to develop an agile mindset and leadership around it,” he reflects. Deutsche Bank’s Rutsch agrees. “To thrive in a competitive environment, the Corporate Bank must adapt to changing market trends and customer needs,” he concludes. “This lies at the heart of our identity.”
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