Co-operative Financial Services - leading the way

The economic turmoil of 2009 made a dramatic backdrop to the commitment The Co-operative Financial Services has made to become the UK’s most admired financial services business.

Opportunity
Through the merger of The Co-operative Financial Services and Britannia Building Society – two values-driven, customer-owned businesses – the UK gained a diversified ‘super’ mutual, uniquely positioned to offer a member-owned, customer-led and ethically guided alternative to the shareholder or government-owned financial services model.

With a joint holding of £70 billion of assets, nine million customers, 12,000 employees, 300 branches and 20 corporate banking centres, Co-operative Financial Services is a major player, and the Board and the new leadership team have wasted no time in creating a shared corporate vision and set of values, putting an integrated senior management structure in place to reflect this.

Mergers cause enormous organisational change, and that means projects, lots of them. With the organisation embarking on a 3-year transformational change journey the Co-operative Financial Services Functional Leader, Delivery and Portfolio Management, Steve Hall knew that successful project delivery depended on highly capable project managers working in a close and constructive partnership with knowledgeable project sponsors. He called upon the expertise of CITI to help make this happen.

Approach
“With a large portfolio of projects ahead of us”, commented Steve, “we wanted to ensure our leadership team were supported and enabled to take on their change leadership role and deliver benefits on behalf of our customers.” “What I wanted, said Steve, “ was a series of short but engaging briefing sessions, delivered by recognised experts, to allow sponsors to understand their roles, responsibilities and successful behaviours, to effectively challenge and diagnose project performance, support risk management and manage issues and understand how to get the best from their project managers.”

Perhaps more than in any other senior management role, the skills, behaviours and attitudes required to successfully sponsor projects, knowing when and how to challenge, when to be supportive, when to become directive, is essential. Basing decisions on benefit-risk analyses that themselves are derived from project monitoring reports is not a skill many business managers have to acquire – unless they are sponsors of projects. Through introducing best practice approaches to sponsorship, and by providing evidence and insights as to what works and what doesn’t, CITI has, in the words of Steve, “given our sponsors immediate confidence and control in their role.” Throughout Q1&2 of 2010 CITI delivered a series of sponsor briefings to the executive board, business leaders and functional leaders who are directing the transformational change programme.

Outcome
The Co-operative Financial Services has continued to flourish, delivering impressive financial results for 2009 despite the recession, creating both an ethically distinctive, but highly competitive force in the financial services sector.

Jon Marchant, Business Leader, Change Management remarks, “Without the right leaders, managers and staff to drive change, and to deliver the business benefits, the expected synergies from the merged businesses will be lost. The open-mindedness and enthusiasm shown by all is undoubtedly a core strength of our culture, invaluable in the development of our change management capability.”

Steve Hall concludes, “We have seen substantial changes to the behaviour and approaches of our senior change leaders within days of attending the briefings. There is business ownership of benefits and business cases and clarity on roles and responsibilities. We already see a renewed focus on benefits delivery and partnership working which is essential to achieving our ambitious delivery goals”.

“The discussions around effective sponsorship have led us to review the allocation of the right sponsor for the right project and thus enhanced the effectiveness of our project governance. We are also beginning to see sponsors challenging current approaches and making valuable contributions to the ongoing revision of methods and practices” adds Jon Marchant, Business Leader, Change Management.