5 coaching questions to ask yourself today to start achieving your 5-year targets

Changing your life is usually an accumulation of small steps toward a pre-defined detailed target. To achieve this change, you need to ask questions to yourself and you need to take actions according to your answers. Here are generic but very tough 5 questions to start with:

1. Who do you want to be in 5 years? Give as much details as possible.

• Where are you going to live?
• What kind of house are you living in?
• What kind of lifestyle are you going to have?
• How is your relations with your family & friends?  
• What is going to be your job?
• How many hours are you going to work a week?
• How many books are you going to read a year etc.

2. What is the gap between your 5 years ahead life and today? Again, think as detailed as possible. Think in terms of all aspects of your life as mentioned in the above question.

3. What are you going to do to close the gap?

• What do you need to learn?
• Who are the people you need to meet?
• Who is going to be your role model?
• Which books do you need to read?
• What are the places you need to visit?
• How are you going to improve & change your relationships?
• Who are the people you need to bring into your life and who are the people you need to take out? etc…
• What are the things you need to stop doing?

4. What are the small steps that you can take to close the gaps? For example if you need to learn something to close the gap, where can you start? Are you going to start the subject through a Mooc or are you going to approach an expert on the topic?

5. Among the small steps you have decided, what are you going to start doing tomorrow morning and create new habits? Moreover, to reach target life, what are the small habits you are going to stop doing as of tomorrow morning?

Most important question for Banks and Fintechs: What do the customers want?

Last week I asked a would a bank has  30.000 technologist vs 10 technologist? The idea in that article was, at the age of cloud, PSD2 and APIs the logical thing for the banks to do is collaborating with Fintechs and not investing anymore on their legacy IT systems.

It is on paper a very good idea but rather than the technical planning of this good idea I believe the strategical planning of it is more important. What is going to be the strategy behind this cooperation and what is the most important thing than Banks and Fintechs must provide?

Lets start with the question “does a Fintech/Bank cooperation makes sense?”

If we look at the picture from the Fintechs’ perspective; given that the Fintechs have the latest technology, that are mostly cloud native, practical, flexible and API capable they have some technological advantage over the Banks. Their time to market is a lot faster, they can try and learn quickly and adapt agile way of work effectively.

On the other side of the equation banks also have lots of advantages over Fintechs.

• Money means trust. And Banks won the trust of their customers over years and they have very good reputation.
• In our era where cyber crime has an impact of  more than USD 1 trillion every year on the global economy, security means everything and security is another area where Banks excel over Fintechs.
• Banks have built very extensive know how on regulatory and compliance issues over the years and they have good reputation in the eyes of regulators.
• And most important, Banks have huge customer base for which the Fintechs would die for.

So both parties advantages over the other one and it makes sense for both parties to cooperate; but the question is: "on which ground should they meet?"  There is only one answer to this question: They should meet at the customers’ expectations.

The most important thing for the Fintechs and Banks should be easing the customer pain points and making the customers happy by providing the solutions they expect.

Banks should make their investments in business strategy and customer experience rather than legacy IT systems. Don’t forget that IT stack is the tool that will take the Banks to their strategic targets and to customer satisfaction. Hence, number one priority must be the customer experience.

Banks should be thinking how they are going to provide ease of mind for the customers, how they are going to make the customers comfortable. Customers should not have any doubts or question marks that the process will be long, cumbersome, painful for them. They should know that their financial service provider will give them a smooth and easy solution whatever the service or product they ask for.

There is a food for thought for the Fintechs as well when it comes to customer experience. Their initial question should not be “what the banks cannot do at the moment?” or “what can we do with our technical capabilities?” The only question that should be asked by Fintechs and Banks is: “What does the customer want and how can we provide it better?”

How should be the cooperation? I believe the cooperation should be done through a platform business model. Banks should provide a platform for the Fintechs where they provide best services with upmost security for their customers. Fintechs should come into that platform as service providers and customers can choose the service they want from the platform. 

Whenever the customers’ need or expectations change; platform owners, banks, can remove outdated providers and plug in new providers to the platform. Customers’ needs and expectations are changing constantly, therefore the platform and the offerings of the platform should also change constantly. I see a lot of Fintech acquisitions by many Banks but this is an old way of approach to a flexible world. 

Bankers are praising Airbnb or Uber not owning a single car or a single room but they are trying to own a lot of Fintechs. Interesting approach....

Does your job title change your character? There is an antidote for that

Some people defines themselves with their job titles. They believe that, the title they “earned” is a very important quality of them and they start to live with the title and live for the title. 

The title becomes the goal of their life and they start to deviate from who they are and they transform into someone else. 

Some behaviors these people show are as following 

• They are identifying themselves with their job title
• They think talking a lot about their job is an important thing
• They stop listening to their team members
• In the team meetings they are the ones who always says the final word
• They believe that they know the best when it comes to their work
• They think that they deserve more respect because they have the “title”
• They believe that they have to mention their job title anytime and anywhere. Even their  jokes become about their job?
• They stop socializing with people who are at a “lower” position? (according to their “title standards”)
• They think that without them the organization will collapse and the are the ones who keep it running?  

If you are showing at least to 2 of the behavior above I have some bad news for you. Your job is capturing your character and your life.

If you are defining yourself with your job and with your title, who will you become after you lose that job or that title?

The antidote to this problem and the way to keep your identity is to be humble. Unfortunately, humility is seen as a weakness but on the contrary, it is a very string trait. In the article that was published in Forbes Jeff Hymen talks about the importance of humble leaders. He mentions that: “A number of research studies have concluded that humble leaders listen more effectively, inspire great teamwork and focus everyone (including themselves) on organizational goals better than leaders who don’t score high on humility.”

“Humble leaders understand that they are not the smartest person in every room. Nor do they need to be. They encourage people to speak up, respect differences of opinion and champion the best ideas, regardless of whether they originate from a top executive or a production-line employee.”

“When a leader works to harness input from everyone, it carries through the organization. As other executives and line managers emulate the leader’s approach, a culture of getting the best from every team and every individual takes root.”

In short, don’t let your job or job title define who you are, do listen your team members, build good relations with your colleagues and friends, do not brag about your job or title and most importantly; be humble, be down to earth. This is the way not only for having successful business results but also for having much better interpersonal relations. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffhyman/2018/10/31/humility/?sh=407df82c1c80

Do banks really need thousands of IT people?

 

On his article, “Should banks have more technologists than Microsoft?”, Chris Skinner talks about a bank having 40.000 technologist and he suggest at his article that: “… any bank that boasts tens of thousands of developers, technologists and engineers should first be asked the question: WHY? I don’t know why any bank today needs tens of thousands of developers, technologists and engineers. With APIs, Open Banking, cloud computing and more, a bank could probably run with just ten.”

https://thefinanser.com/2021/06/should-banks-have-more-technologists-than-microsoft.html/

The most important thing for the banks is to deliver best customer experience and for this, the banks need to invest a lot of effort and time to understand customers’ pain points and expectations.

After understanding the pain points and expectations the question comes: “How are we going to deliver the expected level of service and products?”

To answer this question many banks, turn back to their internal IT capabilities and start planning and implementing process accordingly. At the end of the day, often times, whatever is available through the legacy IT capabilities is delivered rather than the customer expectations. Therefore, best customer experience is not delivered.

The banks should look at the ever-improving fintech world and try to find a good solution provider for the delivery of the best customer experience. Rather than trying to develop the solution themselves banks should focus on cooperation with the fintechs. They should play the role of orchestrator instead of developer role.

With the APIs and cloud solutions, banks should be thinking about how they are going to provide seamless service and products for their customers by orchestrating different available services. The banks should worry about creating the API and security standards not developing the products and services on their legacy systems.

The “why do banks need thousands of technologists?” is a very valid question. For purposes of orchestration and deciding about the API and security standards, I am not sure whether 10 technologists would be enough but I know that banks definitely do not need 40.000 technologists.

Pygmalion Effect and Toxic Bosses

The way the managers behave and treat their teams / subordinates is one of the most important determinants on the performance of teams and the companies in general. Those managers who manage their teams properly by giving them the right support, right targets that stretch their abilities and right confidence, lead their teams to success. On the other hand those managers who does not support their teams properly and create a toxic environment face the failure and lose their team members.

2 articles that I read recently support this idea very much.

I don’t know whether you have heard about Pygmalion effect. It simply refers to self-fulfilling prophecy. If a teacher believes a child is a slow learner the child will believe too and will become a slow learner. The opposite is also true. If a teacher thinks that the students have potential and communicates them accordingly, the students try to show that potential and learns more and faster. 

J. Sterling Livingston talks about Pygmalion effect in his article that was published in January 2003 in Harvard Business Review. He claims that Pygmalion effect is also applicable in the work environment. According to Livingston: “If Managers’ expectations are high, productivity is likely to be excellent. If their expectations are low (towards a group of employees) productivity is likely to be poor. It is as though there were a law that caused subordinates’ performance to rice or fall to meet managers` expectations”

Livingston continues:

• “What managers expect of subordinates and the way they treat them largely determine their performance and career progress”
• “A unique characteristic of superior managers is the ability to create high performance expectations that subordinates fulfil.”
• “Less effective managers fail to develop similar expectations and as a consequence the productivity of their subordinates suffer”
• “Subordinates more often than not appear to do what they believe they are expected to do.” 

According to Livingston: “Managers are more effective in communicating low expectations to their subordinates… it usually is astonishingly difficult for them to recognize the clarity with which they transmit negative feelings… Positive feelings, on the other hand, often are not communicated clearly enough…” But on the other hand when communicating the expectations and positive results, the managers should be realistic and make the subordinates believe the results that they are expected to deliver. The unattainable goals will cause the employees to give up.

Marcel Schwantes in an article published in Inc talks about the toxic bosses. Schwantes tells 5 things toxic bosses do in the organizations to make their employees uncomfortable and leave the "job":  

1. “Narcissism:  Narcissists … are likely to engage in manipulation to advance themselves at the cost of others and are socially skillful with aggressive underpinning motives..”
2. “Micromanagement: … They have a hard time letting go and trusting their team members to perform their work…”
3. “Setting unrealistic expectations: … can sabotage the workplace by setting goals so high and expectations so unrealistic, it may often be impossible to complete the task, leaving employees disengaged and hopeless…”
4. “Rudeness: In meetings toxic bosses may cut off their employees as they present a view or and idea that does not align to their own….”
5. “Incompetence: Many toxic bosses were recent individual contributors promoted to management without having the competencies to lead human beings…”

As a summary, for a boss, being successful is not about applying the latest technology or knowing all about the smallest technical details of the job done but it is all about managing the people properly with respect and trusting them to do their works.

For those who want to read the full articles, I am adding the web addresses of the articles I mentioned.

https://hbr.org/2003/01/pygmalion-in-management

https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/toxic-boss-signs.html

 

 

Which will expire sooner? Cash or plastic?

Deutsche Bank published series of reports on January 2020 about the future of payments. The series of reports is built on the findings of a research with 3600 respondents, which was done by Deutsche Bank.

The series starts with answering the question: “Is cash dead?” and according to writers of the report; Marion Laboure and Jim Reid, the answer is not yet.

The report starts with a quote from 1968: “As a result of the proliferation of credit cards, there has been widespread speculation about the possibilities of a checkless, cashless society in the future Jack Lefler, in the July 24, 1968 edition of the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, NM)” So this discussion of cashless society and end of cash is not something new. But cash somehow survives and according to a research done by Deutsche Bank, on average 60% of the respondents believe that cash will always be around. But on the other hand, the writers believe that next decade will be the end of plastic card with the increasing dominance of digital payments. Digital wallets and mobile payments will take the place of plastics.

Currently there are three types of digital wallets:

• The wallets like Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay in which you record your credit card info and make the purchases through your phone and with Android Phones you can even use NFC technology of your phone to make the contactless payment.
• Second type is store cards like Starbucks rewards cards with which you can make your payments and collect Starbucks rewards.
• Examples for the third type is the Chinese digital wallets like Alipay or Wechat with which you not only make payments but send money, buy tickets, order food online, call taxi etc. So they are rather like ecosystems than payment tools. And according to a research done in 2017, 92% of the Chinese who were living in big cities were using either Alipay or Wechat.

According to the research, people will prefer contactless cards and mobile wallets more, which shows a trend away from chip and pin technology.

When it comes to the cryptocurrencies the writers believe that the cryptocurrencies might be a mainstream payment method but they need to “… become legitimate in the eyes of governments and regulators. To win that legitimacy, cryptocurrencies must achieve price stability and offer advantages to merchants and consumers. They must also allow for global reach in the payments market. To do this, alliances must be forged with key stakeholders: mobile apps, card providers, and retailers. If these challenges—and others, such as energy consumption—can be overcome, the future of cash is at risk.”

I totally agree with the findings of the writers about cash. Cash is not dead yet. Especially for SMEs B2C transaction cash is still important. First, payment acceptance commissions are still high and it affects the profitability levels of SMEs, second in the developing world, cash means, you can evade tax to a certain extend. Third, they receive their money instantly rather than waiting the payment to be cleared to their account. Also for their B2B transactions, cash and cheque will still be important (especially in the developing countries where post-dated cheques are available. It is the traditional method of buy-now-pay-later which works for SMEs B2B transactions.)

I also agree with the writers about the extinction of plastic in the next decade. Mobile payment methods and wallets are on the rise and they are more practical. Especially in the countries where the population is younger, it seems like it is going to be main payment method instead of plastics.

For cryptocurrencies I am still indecisive. On the one hand I agree with the writers about the need of legitimization in the eyes of governments and regulators to be widely used but on the other hand I think this is totally the opposite to the “free spirit” of the cryptocurrencies. I need to think and need more to make comments.