1: The year was 2009. Piyush Gupta had just been named CEO of DBS Group.
Piyush had a bold vision for DBS: To be the best bank in Asia.
The only problem? DBS was considered “the worst bank in Singapore in terms of customer service quality,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vik Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
The vision was daring. But Piyush knew his team wouldn’t buy it.
“The confidence and capacity just weren’t there,” he recalls. “It was like taking a minor league team and saying not only that they can play in the major league, but they can win the championship.”
So, Piyush scaled back his initial vision to become “the Asian bank of choice,” a compromise he felt his leaders could embrace.
Four years later, the bank had achieved its initial vision and was recognized in many regional rankings as Asia’s best bank.
2: The time had come to dream even bigger.
At an off-site event, “250 of my leaders told me that they wanted to be the best bank in the world,” Piyush recalls. “That was just a magical moment, knowing my leaders truly believed we could play at that level.”
Five years later, in 2018, Global Finance, Euromoney, and The Banker magazines named DBS as the world’s best bank, becoming the first Asian bank to do so.
Piyush wasn’t done yet. He and his team have embarked on a quest “to redefine financial services by adopting a tech company mentality toward the ultimate goal of ‘Making Banking Joyful,'” the authors note.
3: The best CEOs understand that building a vision is best done by involving many voices. They resist the temptation of dictating their views.
“We aimed to have the most inclusive process possible,” says Majid Al Futtaim‘s Alain Bejjani. “Doing so built a broad sense of ownership, and we also found that some of the most insightful answers came from people we wouldn’t normally have approached for input, which in hindsight would have been a significant loss.”
Best Buy‘s Hubert Joly says: “Of course you have to create a plan, but you have to co-create it. It doesn’t need to be perfect—the key is to create energy and manage energy.”
And Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer reflects: “It took us five months, but people had the freedom to really speak out about what they think is right for the company. This unleashed enormous spirit, new ideas, and creativity.
“And within twelve months, our share price doubled—we had momentum like hell. This was, in my opinion, the magic moment.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How can I tap into the power and wisdom of my team to create a vision that transforms my organization?
Action: Do it.
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