Fintech Scale-up Success Story
Implementing a sustainable scaling
start-up business
When Agility in Mind was approached by a fintech who needed to scale to help them break through a growth glass ceiling we were delighted to help.
The Challenge
The leadership team knew that whilst finance is a sector that is well used to disruption, new challenger banks and other financial services like themselves were still struggling against the old guard, who had the time, money, and reserves to outlast the challenger financing model.
Quickly, the Agility in Mind team saw that there were two problems:
Firstly, the company had been so successful and had been taking on staff at such a rate the internal can-do attitude and start-up culture was being lost to mechanical processes and a lack of clarity on objectives.
Secondly, instead of being a technology-centred, automation-driven business with a small customer service team, the balance was shifting to being a large customer service team with some tech services supporting it.
The CEO knew without help, the company could never scale like this to beat the competition.
Our Approach
There were a few actions that Agility in Mind took to overcome these challenges:
Identified and established one common company vision. This ensured the whole organisation understood why they were there and where they were going.
Delivered focussed high-impact training and coaching. This created both the awareness for the need to change across the company and the desire to change – both critical to sustain new practices and culture.
Created a new operating system, with a practical rhythm, tailor-made to the business. This helped the product teams not only prioritise their work, but also align with the CEO’s company goals, providing measurable outcomes, better delivery and increased trust through greater transparency.
Improved simple reporting processes between teams; this enabled open communication between the product teams and senior leadership creating a community of trust and empowerment throughout the company.
Work with the leadership team to develop version 2.0 of the company, helping shed the skin of the start up to allow growth in to a true, fit for the future, challenger fintech.
The Outcomes
The tangible success here lies is that the senior leadership team and CEO spend significantly less time worrying about issues with growth and scaling. Their focus has shifted to address the type of threat that a successful, growth company has, instead of internal politics and philosophical squabbles.
A few of the notable outcomes were:
Sustainable and growing workforce
New operating system with a sustainable plan, do, check, adapt rhythm
Streamlined ops, product, and delivery processes
Better forecasting and stability in product delivery
Embedded, embraced, philosophy of continuous improvement
Improved team ownership over products
Significant and sustained cultural shift within the workforce
Always working closely with our customers, Agility in Mind has again been able to successfully implement a business transformation that is sustainable in both culture and results. This was reinforced by our fintech customer being listed at number 14 in The Times Top 100 Companies to Work For, 2020.