The Intersection of Innovation and People Strategy to Achieve Business Goals

Banks are not just competing with other banks anymore. It is hard to even know who our competitors are when the landscape is rapidly changing, and customer expectations are being based on experiences from other industries – Amazon, Spotify, Walmart, and Chick-fil-A to name a few.

As innovation occurs and things continue to change in the banking and fintech industries, organizations who want to remain competitive must be mindful of their business strategy and how it intersects with innovation and people strategy.

Transforming Business Strategy from the Inside Out

This intersection of business strategy and people strategy must be strong because we do not have one without the other. We cannot maintain business without our people, from employees to customers. How financial institutions leverage their people, software, and technology into their overarching business will make all the difference as the industry moves forward.

As part of Teslar’s strategy, we are going back to basics. We put an intentional focus on our people to ensure we deliver valuable experiences through technology, innovation, and digitization for our staff. Achieving an omni-connected experience will be pivotal in continuing to build organizational resilience while maintaining meaningful connections aligned to business purpose, value, and strategy-- all while ensuring our secret sauce, our culture, is embedded in everything we do.

It is important to remain nimble and adaptable as we scale the team. Scaling, like digital transformation, requires a multifaceted approach that is not solely focused on the technology, but on the people.

If we streamline and automate for our employees like we do for our customers, then it becomes an emerging common theme-- spoken and unspoken-- transforming from the inside out.

Equip and Empower Staff to Lead Innovation

Change will not stop if we are to remain competitive. Often when an organization notices the need for change, leadership will make decisions behind-the-scenes and implement projects before rolling them out to employees, which can be met with resistance and difficult adoption.

Instead, be an institution that maintains a steady, constant evolvement— challenging the status quo, collaborating cross-functionally to keep silos broken, and experimentation. To successfully do this, we must equip and empower our people to own and lead innovation and change within our organization.

We need curious pathfinders to solve problems, creative explorers/continuous learners to upskill, reskill, ideate, innovate and experiment, and influencers rallying around change to take us to the next level. Transparency and candor go a long way when finding the right balance for your business.

Be Competitive with Your Talent, Not Just Your Products and Services

Much like finding the right fintech partner or products to help you operate more efficiently and effectively in meeting your strategy, having the right employees on your team to live out the company culture is essential to actually achieving your business and innovation strategies. It is equally important we are being competitive with our talent and not just products and services.

At the end of the day, we all want something similar – purpose, value, connection, personalized and shared experience that is convenient anytime anywhere and at our own pace.

These factors do not just apply to your technology offerings and how you meet customer’s needs— they also need to be present in your people strategy and how you meet your employees’ needs. Our talent is the driver of change and thus shapes our future.

I know I would not want to tackle this changing economic environment with any other team, so we are constantly working hard to find ways to better serve them.