RISK VISION, STRATEGY & APPROACH
CATEGORY
Organizational Design
CLIENT
Capital One Enterprise
MY ROLE & SCOPE
Design Portfolio Leader
Oversaw design team
Impact across entire enterprise
No prior aligned vision or strategy
ACTIVITY SNAPSHOT
– Vision Co-Creation
– Current Product Audit
– Executive Sell & Buy In
– Empathy Interviews
– Workstream Definition
– Design Organizational Chart
– “How We Work” Redefinition
– New Approach Socialization
– Team Re-Organization
– Ceremony & Routine Revamp
– Continuous Monitoring
OPPORTUNITY
Risk mitigation and management is core to the success of a financial institution. Within Capital One there are there risk offices dedicated to each line of business, and there are a handful of horizontal groups dedicated to risk–in this example the Enterprise Services Risk team, or innovation arm, was looking to reassess and scale their efforts to better impact change within the organization.
APPROACH
A design and research leader, myself, drive this work alongside product and tech partners within the space. I kicked off the engagement by having the cross-disciplinary team identify what they believed was the vision of the team–since the team was still only 2 years old this had not been done. From there I drove research, and a variety of alignment activities to refocus our work.
OUTCOME
Alongside my product and tech leaders and partners I helped to re-align and re-organize the Enterprise Risk Services team to more effectively work together in the vision of “Risk Intelligence. Made Simple”–meaning their efforts to democratize risk and drive innovation within the space to help Capital One strive to remove risk from the system, or at least proactively manage it more seamlessly.
Scroll down for a detailed look at the process and assets created throughout the project including
VISION ALIGNMENT
CURRENT STATE AUDIT
TEAM SOCIALIZATION
CHANGE IMPLEMENTATION
TESTING & LEARNING
ALIGNING TO A SINGLE VISION
As I joined the team, I realized right away how disjoined the team had been working due to where they were within their evolution.
I brought my product and tech leadership partners together in a full day session I coordinated and facilitated to help us align to a single vision across Enterprise Risk Services. At the end of the day we had a vision statement, mission, and high level workstreams that we planned to flesh out in the coming weeks.
I setup a weekly meeting in order to continue our partnership.
CURRENT ENGAGEMENT MODEL
It was clear that as a team we needed to more deeply assess where we were in order to come together around a roadmap toward our vision.
Due to extreme growth as a team, we were experiencing evolutionary pains–I pushed for further reflection on our “how we work” or general engagement model because it seemed we needed to iron out organizational structure and process prior to continuing to attempt to automate and digitize services.
Current State of ES Risk
CURRENT PRODUCTS AUDIT
I collaborated with my product leadership partners to clearly visualize and articulate where were versus where we wanted to go for executive buy-in on resources. Through that process I helped refine a matrix to assess existing products in order to more clearly understand what we had today and what we didn’t. From there we could decide what to combine, pause on, and start from a product perspective.
ES Risk Product Audit Matrix – Tech Side
ES Risk Product Audit Matrix – Product/Design Side
FUTURE STATE DEFINITION
From an organizational perspective I worked closely with my product and tech leadership partners to identify an ideal state working model across risk.
There was still more refinement needed around out target audiences and specificity around each workstream but we were making headway around re-aligning ourselves to a more effective and sustainable approach.
We also reflected on our opportunity to influence and impact across risk at large looking at all of the different groups and customers we support.
Future State of ES Risk: Process, Data Governance
Future State of ES Risk: Opportunity to Influence
EMPATHY INTERVIEWS
I drove the research effort that would run in parallel to our product and tech realignment around products we would combine or pause on. The research was to more deeply understand each of our internal customer groups–from business risk officers, to chiefs of staff, to a listing of other subject matter experts who desperately needed better tools to do their jobs.
Ultimately the research across 23 associates working within a smattering of risk roles would help us: get crisp on our audience and their overlapping vs. unique needs, more deeply understand our highest leverage opportunities, prioritize initiatives around clear near and long-term objectives and key results, as well as continue to help us hone in on strategic levers that help us truly innovate within Risk. I lead strategy, coordination of stakeholders, synthesis, and socialization efforts–guiding 4 other designers and researchers through supporting this effort.
Research Approach – Teaching Moment for Team
Research Synthesis – Teaching Moment for Team
Research Insights Socialized Across the Risk Organization
SINGLE ROADMAP CO-CREATION
Alongside my product and tech partners we continue to come together around more detailed bodies of work and a single roadmap in order to move toward out vision together as a cross-functional team.
Aligning to Priorities Across Portfolios
“HOW WE WORK” REALINMENT
Prior to joining this team the two product organizations and three tech pods worked in a very disjointed way–ultimately as two separate organizations sharing technology resources. It was less effective than it could be and there was an opportunity to reconfigure how we approached our work.
I drove conversation and activities around aligning the product and tech teams given my past experience with re-organizations. I also outlined how the design team should look in partnership with product and tech as well as alongside refined priorities.
Design Organization Mapping
Ongoing Design Health Assessment through Shifts
SOCIALIZATION WITH TEAMS
As a leadership team, we created a deck to socialize how ES Risk would be working from here on out. I drove the creation of a straw man and facilitated conversation across my partners in order to fill in the messaging to inform teams.
RE-ORGANIZATION
In close partnership with my tech and product leadership team we are still coaching teams through a re-alignment and re-shuffling.
I drove work around a revamp of all Agile ceremonies and team routines in order to better suite our new approach to working given my prior experience in this space.
FIRST PRODUCT INTEGRATIONS
I worked alongside product and tech leadership to coordinate an innovation sprint, essentially a week long hackathon, to bring together three of our risk controls-based products: one for search, one for creation/editing, and one for monitoring.
Coming out of the hackathon we had a proof of concept and starter roadmap to take the work further.
This was an incredible first start at showing the value of aligning our strategy not only across product teams within ES Risk but in partnering with strategists from Enterprise Risk Management, our partner portfolio.
CONTINUED REFINEMENT
I have driven the work to identify where we can put in place feedback loops–surveys, people manager prompts, team check-ins–in order to continuously measure the effectiveness of our decisions to merge our roadmaps, strategy, and highlight progress across.
This will help us keep refining how we are working and make sure our teammates all have what they need to be successful.
