Launching a digital solutions future
Project Scope
Leadershift
Culture
Digital
Remain relevant by observing, adapting, innovating. Stay still and be eaten. For years, African Bank was strictly a loans bank. To transition to a transactional retail bank required an incredible shift of perspective; diversification of product offering, a reinvention of service and the honest buy-in of an entire team of staff, salespeople and consultants. How do you gear almost 4000 humans, who have only ever known loan consulting, with the needed knowledge, skill, ability and passion to make the digital dream a reality? And how do you do it within twelve months?
Hello AB. Let’s do this shift. TPA launched and facilitated an integrated change management process that took 3920 African Bankers on an intellectual and emotional change journey. We enabled leaders to lead (!), connected people to strategy and instilled a dream of a digital future. We positioned African Bankers to confidently and joyfully participate in the expansion of their own organisation and deliver on incredible ambition. In 365 days, we worked with African Bank to shift from a loan-based culture to a day-to-day banking culture.
African Bank was launching new systems, products and technologies. Furthermore, they committed to an Omni-channel user experience within a year. Risky business with great potential for cultural tension. Question: What would happen if people didn’t buy into the change? Performance crisis. Would online tutorials and an office party cut it? No. We needed to drive deep understanding, adoption and ambassadorship of a new African Bank reality.
Great shift demands involvement, as strategy only takes root when people see themselves in its future. African Bankers were inspired to become the first users of their own product, and played an integral role in shaping MyWORLD — a revolutionary transactional account — before it hit mainstream South Africa. By opening MyWORLD accounts, African Bankers experienced the product first-hand and offered critical, honest feedback. Bankers were encouraged to contact their own centres for support, so that interactions could be guided and supervised by learning partners. Daily wash-ups enabled responsive development of tools for learning support.
We created a Leadershift, built leadership capability and cascaded awareness, desire, engagement and action throughout the organisation, via ongoing, face-to-face Snac-chat sessions. An immersive communications campaign thread through the project. Films, posters and activations encouraged African Bankers to interact, share, #TipTheTarget and … dance!
The rich and expressive team at African Bank took it all on. In ten months we had enabled an army of optimistic champions at a critical point in AB’s organisational history. To celebrate MyWORLD and the team, we held Rocktober Day, an explosion of culture that saw CEO Basani Maluleke jika on stage.
Danceable. Of a 3920 strong group, 3430 individuals opened accounts and 3342 continue to transact. Of the 82% reached, 92% became ambassadors for the product, declaring they would recommend it to friends and family. The engagement is an example of a organisation showing exceptional dedication to the realisation of a purpose: of putting people first. It reveals the enormous potential of prioritising the context and culture in which your people —
and your business — thrive.
Active MyWORLD accounts
Debit cards ordered
Pockets created
Payments made
Percentage of African Bankers recommend MyWORLD
“Advancing lives is our point of reference for every decision we make in our business, whether it involves the customers we serve or for our people internally. It was vital for us to choose the right partner, with notable experience, who we could entrust in transforming African Bank into a digital business, without losing our core strengths and culture. This led us on an 18-month journey with The Performance Agency. Technically and creatively, their quality of work is exceptional, their focus on customer centricity, constant feedback and ability to adapt was evident in their well-structured step-by-step approach. Our experience with The Performance Agency was outstanding, their professionalism and efficiency is remarkable and they have the ability to really connect with their clients and achieve high levels of engagement from their participants.”
CEO: African Bank
“Everyone plays a part in building the culture of a business. I believe that culture is the culmination of thousands of people working with passion towards a common purpose. Culture, engagement and a common purpose is my passion. From the first day we started working together, the team at The Performance Agency brought our digital transformation to life, bringing fresh perspective, as well as a discipline and work ethic I admire. We were like kindred spirits, feeding off each other’s ideas, together creating something very special and highly effective. As part of our digital transformation, we encouraged African Bankers to open and experience our new digital day-to-day banking product, MyWORLD. The intention was for African Bankers to test the product and share as much constructive feedback as possible, giving us the opportunity to perfect and refine the product before we launched to South Africans. We set ourselves an eye-watering target of 80%; at the time that meant we needed 3 600 African Bankers to open MyWORLD accounts. Through meaningful engagement and clever messaging which excited the whole business, we achieved this within just six months. No-one wanted to be left out, everyone wanted to be involved! This on its own, is an incredible feat. Our journey with Natalie, Amanda and Amy continues to be an inspiring one, the results of which have been nothing short of spectacular.”
Head of Communications, African Bank