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Case Study

ABN AMRO: When culture drives transformation

By Michael R. Wade and Lisa Simone Duke

16 pages

December 2020

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Reference: IMD-7-2192

The case describes two transformation journeys for ABN AMRO bank. The first transformation is cultural and the second is digital. It explores the interplay between these two journeys from the perspective of the head of the Personal Banking. The case goes into detail regarding how to bank rebuilt its internal operating model. The hierarchy was delayered and replaced with agile ways of working, employee empowerment, and a new performance management approach. At first, there was a lot of chaos, but, after some time for adjustment, benefits started to appear, such as higher NPS scores, and better financial results. The new approach also helped the bank cope with the COVID-19 pandemic as many of the changes were linked to remote working for employees and technology-mediated service provision for customers. Yet, the case describes the appearance of some new challenges. While some teams embraced the new ways of working, others had trouble letting go of legacy approaches. There were some inconsistencies and confusion around performance measurement. Despite improving performance in some areas, multifunctional teams were not necessarily delivering the best customer experiences. Sick leave was increasing, and there were signs that employee engagement was falling. The reader is placed in the shoes of the head of Personal Banking must to come up with solutions to these challenges.

Learning Objective

Explore the impact of large cultural change on digital transformation.
Examine the scaling challenges that occur along the transformation journey.

Keywords

Strategy, Digital Transformation, Culture, Scaling, Self-organization, COVID-19, Digital

Settings

Europe, Netherlands
ABN AMRO, Finance and Insurance, Banking
2020

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English, Russian

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