Resilience in Banking: The Art of Failing Forward

Stumbles set the scene for amazing banking

You can’t win if you don’t try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And as Canada’s favorite son (Wayne Gretzky, of course) once said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Those are sentiments every parent and coach tries to convey. Yet, in the risk-averse banking industry, it’s easy to forget that triumphs are often born of initial failure. At Money 20/20 in Las Vegas this year, banking leaders shared personal stories of failing forward – a concept that means turning initial misses into notable success.  

Money 20/20 USA is North America’s premier gathering of finance leaders, where banking giants rub elbows with FinTech upstarts. The event focuses on trends at the intersection of money, technology, and innovation. Amdocs hosted an invite-only breakfast event where a select group of banking leaders shared a game-changing lesson that emerged from a failure. Participants recounted how they turned missteps into banking wins.  

Attendees heard engaging stories that included lessons relevant to leaders across the industry. While adhering to the event’s Chatham House Rules (attendees can discuss takeaways without revealing the details), we wanted to share those valuable lessons with a broader audience.  

Unite innovators and skeptics  

Can you succeed with the wrong team? How about with just part of the right team? Many banks focused on redefining banking can probably identify with this lesson. Let’s say you want to encourage creative thinking. Building innovation teams stocked with IT and product dynamos might be a good place to start. The next obvious step: Let those teams design and develop visionary features and offers.  

If you’ve tried those exact steps, you may know where this lesson is going. Often, teams of innovators deliver mixed outputs – promising but impractical for a risk-averse financial services brand. Re-thinking team composition can help. Be sure teams include people with deep insight into the mundane aspects of banking along with compliance know-how. A dash of practicality along with a pinch of skepticism can be the missing ingredients that turn big ideas into customer-facing innovations.  

Try again with a new team

You’ve likely heard that “if at first you don’t succeed, try again.” That’s good advice – and there’s an element of trying again in just about every failing forward story. Here’s a twist: Everyone on the team shouldn’t try again. Shake up the team, and bring in a new perspective. That can help even if you went out of your way to assemble an expert team or hire a big-name vendor.  

When delays and flawed outputs plague a project, review progress thus far. You may find that many of the pieces are there, but that incompatible ways of working, personality clashes, or other issues have spoiled the team’s dynamics or morale. Assemble a new team, and give them the most promising portions of the flawed outputs. Success could come from the new team finding fixes for the flaws. Or the team might use the outputs as a guide for what to avoid.  

Anticipate regulatory obstacles  

Everyone in the financial services industry knows compliance and regulatory considerations can derail projects. Concerns about compliance may be the number one reason that interesting ideas never get beyond the discussion stage. Just about every banking leader likely has a story of a failure with roots in compliance. How do you get past predictable and unpredictable regulatory roadblocks?  

Attendees at the fail-forward breakfast heard that seemingly intractable obstacles need not be viewed as dead ends. Thick skin and persistence help teams keep engaging with regulators to fine-tune innovative approaches. When you anticipate unexpected objections by making them part of your project schedule and budget, you’re ready to keep going until you satisfy regulators.  

Build success from defeat

Your first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) probably wasn’t an Apple Lisa, but it might have been a Macintosh. Apple called its first PC with a GUI Lisa, and it was a complete flop. Technologically, Lisa represented a huge step forward in usability and capabilities. However, it was pricy (more than $30,000 in today’s dollars) and carried by only a few retailers. Most interested consumers couldn’t find, try, or afford a Lisa. Steve Jobs and Apple famously failed forward by doing more than simply trying again. They also made the Macintosh affordable, available, and easy to sample, with retailers letting people try them at home for 24 hours.  

In the interest of keeping lessons from breakfast anonymous, the Apple example stands in for a story shared at Money 20/20 that’s quite similar. When great ideas crash and burn, there are usually specific reasons. Visionaries who stumble are ideally suited to spot and eliminate flaws from their next attempt. Our final lesson learned: Give people and teams who’ve failed before a chance to deliver something spectacular.  

Fail forward to amazing 

My takeaway from the event: Success comes when you try more ideas as you sidestep risks. You uncover spectacular winners and move on quickly from less-than-stellar outcomes. At Amdocs, we help banks and other financial service providers bridge divides between legacy systems and business goals. Technology plays the role of enabler – not obstacle – so more projects succeed.  

Do you have a mess-to-success story? The failing forward event proved so successful that we’re planning another. Share your example of failing forward with your financial services peers. Reach out to me to learn more via email ian.zeifman@amdocs.com.