Providian Trust (P.T.) was a financial services company built on tradition. However, P.T.’s services were only marginally profitable as trust officers (T.O.) were responsible for cultivating client relationships while also handling account admin work. Their inefficiencies in handling administrative tasks led to customer complaints and $2-$5M in waived fees annually. Michael Leblanc, the SVP of Trust, Investment & Treasury saw the urgent need for change in order to keep up with competition and produce a high profit margin. With those goals in mind, Leblanc received approval from the P.T. board to install Access Plus (A.P.), new trust and custody management software. During this change process, failure to establish strong collaborative leadership to endure critical stages of the project implementation as well as misalignments between company values and processes complicated this change.
Without the leadership of new CEO Stephen Walsh, who chose to maintain a ‘neutral’ status during project initiation, responsibility for implementing the A.P. system fell on Leblanc, who had no prior project management experience. Leblanc established a sense of urgency for the new project, but multiple attempts to create a strong guiding coalition failed because there was not a diverse enough set of representatives in the Steering Committee or the Implementation Committee. Without a strong committee, a cohesive vision cannot be achieved or communicated throughout the division.
The committees failed to address a major factor of change: their company culture was bound by deep-seated norms, values and attitudes “not easily [altered despite P.T.’s strategies for change].” As many trust officers were company veterans of 20-30 years, their understanding of doing business had evolved into the culture that was P.T.’s, which did not include use of technology (tech.) to interact with clients. Leblanc’s insistence that the computer-illiterate T.O. now conduct the majority of their business with A.P. was a culture shock that led to low morale.
Recognizing that the implementation of a new computerized trust system would be a disruptive change to the current values and process which composed the company culture, P.T. should create a spin out independent organization (org.) . This new org would ensure that the new values and processes of using A.P. would not have to compete with P.T. existing values and outdated processes of tradition. While installation of A.P. would remove the majority of account control that T.O. are accustomed to, they would still maintain and manage current relationships with clients. As a consequence, the T.O. would feel essential to company progress even during a time of change.
Employees in this new, spin-out org. would have strong tech. and trust backgrounds. The CEO would hold the primary leadership role and establish a powerful guiding coalition of reps. from various areas and levels of hierarchy within the org. Off-site retreats for this coalition are recommended, allowing members to communicate their thoughts, negative or positive, on the new processes for creating value for clients in a less-threatening environment than the company boardroom. The result of open communication is a unified coalition capable of communicating the new vision and processes which will guide transformation efforts to success. CEO Walsh would be best served to use the ‘new’ org. to instill values reflecting the desire for a profitable trust division through adopting processes used to operate new account control software.