January-March 2022
(6 weeks duration)
(6 weeks duration)
My roles:
Strategic Learning Design Principal, Design Ops Manager
My tasks & responsibilities:
// Learning Strategy development;
// Learning approach and program development;
// Facilitation and instruction;
// Course material development (visual design layout of distributed Learning materials, assessments & Miro facilitation boards)
The opportunity
DFC was invited to introduce a digital training program that could provide evidence of capability uplift of VietcomBank employee to senior bank stakeholders and board members. The intention was to focus on what VietcomBank (VCB) people needed to:
// move themselves forward by augmenting their skillset & mindset (capability uplift)
// move VCB teams toward effective delivery of service value for customers
// shift the banks culture toward a more efficient digital-service-led mindset
// incrementally establish a digital capability that spans the entire organisation
How could the bank embed design thinking & doing into their way of working?
The ability for teams to successfully collaborate, is key to optimising inputs/outcomes from individuals. Design Thinking provides some ‘principles’ to how we approach uplifting individuals skills and capabilities. These principles also align to the stages of Design Thinking:
// User-centricity and empathy
// Collaboration
// Ideation
// Experimentation and iteration
// A bias towards action
When developing a learning methodology to help uplift individuals & team mindset + skillsets AS WELL AS improving the effectiveness of teams to deliver value to customers, the identified primary OUTCOME of the digital training program had to be ‘demonstrable progress’ from participatory activities.
Digital Future Readiness Skills matrix - adopted from Digital Quotient Institute
The challenges
| ”(Finding a) Breakthrough with crazy ideas” ~ Quynh Le
Every engagement has lumps & bumps that need smoothing out as time progresses and as the team collectively work together to achieve the ‘expected’ outcomes. Some of the identified challenges from VCB and DFC included:
// Delivering the digital training program via remote methods
// Empowering the participants/learners the permission to be 100% focused on ‘doing’ the training without other project or BAU distractions
// Ensuring the participant learners were confident that the new skills being taught would enhance their capability and improve the way they function as individuals and as collaborative team members, when solving problems or investigating opportunities
// Aligning the Digital Training Program outcomes to meet / exceed the VCB Board expectations, that this approach will enable and empower new ways of working
Intended Outcomes
This Digital Operations Training program has been created for the digital team members of the Vietcombank (VCB) organisation. The complete program assists team members learn new & update existing skills for digital 'future-readiness'.
The engagement set out to address the following objectives:
// augment and uplift the knowledge & skills for VCB team members
// enable teams to work more efficiently at identifying and framing opportunities for business improvement
// train & coach VCB team members targeted human centred, design thinking activities that can be embedded in daily practice
// alignment of training to an agreed Digital Skills Standards framework
// enable participants with an understanding of how to apply design thinking to daily work
Approach
Planning:
A mobilisation plan (for the learning pilot) was created in order to specifically shepherd stakeholders through how the activities were organised and structured to achieve the learning outcomes.
Learning Asset Management & Learning Delivery:
The 'delivery of learning' requirement was to enable 'distributed' methods, in order to support a pandemic affected business and it's employees who were located in many locations throughout their working week.
// Remote facilitation via collaborative platforms (MS Teams and Miro) was the elected approach for mobilising the first pilot
// Learner self-assessments and reflection surveys constructed & delivered via Typeform
// Learners were guided & supported in creating their collective pilot program report and collectively presented to bank stakeholders
Achieved outcomes & produced outputs
A key demonstrable outcome (other than learner participation in distributed workshops), was the intended production of validated concepts that had the potential of solving the on-boarding issues experienced by Vietcombank customers in-branch.
Thus, via 'participatory learning sessions', VCB team members were experiencing 'learning-in-the-flow-of-work'.
*(For references & benefits of this method, refer to Josh Bersins research)
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – cover
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – page 1
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – page 2
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – page 3
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – page 4
Final report to VCB stakeholders (compile by VCB Learner team) – page 5
EVERYTHING IS SIMPLE - CONCEPT 3 * note: all concepts were developed and tested in dual languages – English and Vietnamese
Lo-fi participant wireframes (produced in Miro) for Customer Onboarding iPad application
EASILY ONBOARD - CONCEPT * note: all concepts were developed and tested in dual languages – English and Vietnamese
Future state onboarding – service process map
A snapshot of concept test results and analysis – collated in Miro for sharing, storytelling & feedback
Key Learnings
The identified takeaways (insights) from the engagement, form important moments for reflection and decision making...not just at the end of the allocated timeframe of the engagement.
How are ‘learnings’ surfaced?
At the end of each weeks learning development activities, a team ‘retrospective’ session was facilitated where each participant was invited to contribute to reflect on what was worked on, what we learned, what we found most challenging, what we are grateful for and what we achieved.
Learning #1
| “Coming up with ideas is a tricky part” ~ Quynh Le
| ”How to tell the new story in a impressive way” ~ Quynh Le
Learners in this team have displayed an ‘openness for discovering’ something new about themselves in this 2 weeks digital training.
Learning #2
| “Teamwork in building up the survey” ~ Yen
| ”Teamwork to come up with the ideas” ~ Quynh Le
|“How we test the service concepts with customers and users”
As a learning team, the participants experienced a number of interactions where teamwork was mandatory to achieve the better outcome. The collective ‘mindset’ of the team allowed the participants to enjoy their collaborative time to work on problems / opportunities.
Learning #3
| “Do the team's ideas and goals need to be unified?” ~ Phan Vu
| “Any framework, tool can help us measure our achievements when apply what | we learned?” ~ Duong
Some of the participants questions at the final reflection, were evidence for an increased level of curiosity as to what ‘future’ activities were coming to them/for them as part of their working way.
What made this engagement unique or special?
Each project, program or the transition of an organisation that progresses through a transformation process, contains highlights of events or moments that are standout and special.
The Digital Training Program for VCB has only scratched the surface in terms of how much team members can ‘shift the dial’ on the application of a ‘customer-based’ mindset in order to drive ideas and concepts in service reality.
| “I was very impressed and I want to get them to present to the wider management | team now.” ~ Colin Richard Dinn (Program Sponsor VCB)
The VCB Program Sponsor whole-heartedly believes that the skills augmentation for ALL team members, can enable a competitive shift for Vietcombank for improved customer service.
(The Digital Training Program is currently under review by the VCB Board. It is the intention to structure and mobilise small design & development squads to quickly realise the outcomes of the Digital Training Program and scale across 450+ Digital Banking Centre team members as a 'Learning-in-the-flow-of-work' service).
Capabilities utilised and enabled
Common capabilities (existing) included –
// active listening
// peer support
// collaborative and curious mindset
Unique capabilities (new / required) –
// support from senior stakeholders to enable participants to ‘personally shift’ their beliefs in how learning to problem solve and use design thinking can benefit them
// Digital Learning program activities
/// facilitated learning sessions for VCB team member participants
/// the initial 2 week sprint of the Digital Training program contained a sequence of activities that enabled the team beginning to ‘learn by doing’.
/// each session has a small, relevant amount of theory / process information for reference, where the majority of the time in session is ‘working on tasks’.
// Relevant skills (capabilities) focused in this 2 weeks are 8/12 of the identified future-readiness skills:
