It required us to roll out video conferencing globally to our employees over a one-day weekend, which is not for the faint of heart. When you think about the 200,000 employees we have, we were able to roll this out at that rate, which speaks not only to the technical strength we have within the company, but also to our ability to adapt. us when these things happen. . It’s all because we want to make sure that our staff can serve our customers in the best way possible. Remember, we have people working in our call centers and they were affected, and we have people working in branches and they were affected etc.
One of the things that was really clear when the pandemic hit was how quickly our teams were able to deploy new software. Many people talk about the ability to build quickly and quickly. There is a Paycheck Protection Program and this is the possibility of providing small businesses that don’t have a lot of traffic, etc., loans through the government. We had about a week to do this and we were able to build that portal in about a week. We had it fully automated within two weeks and we were able to provide more funds than any other lender in both 2020 and 2021 which is amazing. The fact that we’ve been able to build on that is thanks to the technology we’ve invested in over the years, building that technology quickly, and scaling to such a large scale for our customers. is very large.
But we can also make some fundamental changes on mobile. We were able to improve things that seemed simple. We have a product inside our mobile app called QuickDeposit and this is where you can deposit checks. But as many people know, checks are sometimes big numbers. We traditionally ask people to go into branches to help prevent fraud. Due to the technology we have, we are able to raise the limit in a way that ensures we can appropriately manage fraud and allows customers who previously had to visit a branch or ATM, now send e-money. Those are the things that we’ve seen change, but the speed at which we’ve moved, isn’t limited to the Chase portion of the business, we’ve seen this across JP Morgan as a whole.
There is a section that I think is important on this Laurel. I attended a meeting and here I am a newbie in the organization working on the Paycheck Protection Program. I recall having someone on Zoom. We were talking, and I assumed that because I was new and they were in the meeting, they were on my team, and the person said, “Oh no, I’m not on your team, but I know you’re on your team.” I’m new and you need support. So I’m here to help, and I just thought I’d navigate.” And that got me thinking about the culture of this organization and how we’re focused on that. customers both externally and internally to really ensure that we are providing the best service possible.
Laurel: That certainly requires an agile mindset. So, how is JPMorgan Chase transforming into a resilient institution? You have given a few examples. Obviously you won’t be able to respond to the US government’s Payroll Protection Act quickly if you haven’t exercised some of these opportunities and capabilities to be more agile. So, what lessons have you learned along the way, and how have your teams and customers benefited from this change?
Carry: Oh, yes. An agile transformation is a really hard thing to do. Many people are doing agile transitions, so it looks like it should be easy. You have your summaries, and you have different ceremonies and flashbacks, and you use one tool to manage your backlog, and you’re golden. One of the big challenges we as a company have faced at JPMorgan is that we are organized around our software and our platform more than around our customers and experience. come back. That makes teams really uncomfortable because it means you might need 10, maybe 12 different organizations to agree to build something. It is not clear who the owner is. Architectures will sometimes be a bit weaker because you’ve been working through multiple teams. If you want to move quickly or you want to innovate, it’s not a model you can actually operate. You can force it, but it requires more meetings. It is difficult to know who the decision maker is. You can move more slowly, and sometimes an application or a solution looks like multiple teams built it. There’s Conway’s Law, and you may have mentioned this before on other podcasts, but Dr. Conway says your software should reflect how you organize. That’s really what we saw. So as opposed to us just trying to figure out how to navigate around it, we said as an organization, “We’re really going to be nimble and we’re going to accept the Law of Conway.” , and we will organize around our products back.”
In the community and consumer banking, we’ve curated about 100 products, so we have thousands of affiliated groups around these products. For example, a product is something like opening an account. So I want to open an account on mobile or web. There is a product for this. There is a product leader, a design leader, a data leader, and a technology leader responsible for that product. We now know who can manage the backlog. We now know who can work through any kind of architectural decision. We now understand who is responsible for ensuring that we innovate and understand the needs of our customers. That has allowed us to pivot quickly, because if I need to move, I can work with the account opening team, they can make decisions, they can manage the backlog, and they can adapt when we have things like Protection Program Payslips or other types of efforts available. But it also gives more purpose to individual teams because they set their own destiny, they have more autonomy, and they’re working together between design and data and technology, products, so we can build the right solutions that we need. This creates a great experience for everyone in the organization.
By the way, the whole JPMC is moving to operate this way. This allows us to not only move faster, but also offers a better work-life balance for our employees and less frustration, because it’s easier to know where you are. . You have that purpose and you accept to be part of a particular team. I mentioned that we can react faster to challenges, but it’s not just challenges like PPPs or pandemics that we have to deal with, Laurel. There are places where the needs of our customers are changing day by day. And by organizing the products in this way, we can understand the data from the customer and we can experiment, and we can adapt in a really agile way to what the customer really is. need, versus what we think they might need and building something doesn’t really resonate with them. It allows us to operate in a really agile fashion, which we couldn’t before, and it’s amazing to be able to make a change like this at such a scale.
