complexity – FINthinkers

I had the great pleasure to join the “Impulse Apero” on Feb 6th organized by Kellerhals Carrard and Implement Consulting Group featuring the head of the SBB’s board of directors Monika Ribar. Monika walked the audience in her inspiring presentation through the challenges and opportunities of mobility of the future.

Transparency is the new currency – people estimate transparency. Its about enabling people to reach their goals independent of the provider and about being informed in good and in bad times.
Openness is the new norm – we are living in a network economy. Openness is the key to unleash the combined potential of all services in the network. Closed and monolithic systems are relicts of the past.
Holistic services – users want to have an end to end service and an broad overview. There is just the choice of providing it or let somebody else do it.
Simplicity – the different pricing schemes used by the various service providers are hard to understand for the consumer. But all this complexity can be hidden using smart technology – either by offering a flat rate scheme which enables general usage or by simply billing the actual consumption with the optimal price for the consumer.

These points are very true for a mobility provider and also for financial services and other industries as the relate to big shifts in society. There is one huge difference – the SBB has a huge logistic challenge with a lot of infrastructure which is required to realize the desired degree of mobility. Financial services companies in essence just deal with information and have a simpler problem to solve.

I also would like to highlight a few other aspects which I found very interesting:

Empowerment – the people who are in contact with the users must be empowered to solve problems in creative ways. They see the problem and they can directly engage and solve them with their creativity. The SBB has allocated a budget at discretion for the ‘railway companions’ – this are the people in the train who make sure that the travelers have a smooth journey. This empowerment of employees at the point where the company engages with the clients is just cool.
Team – the rail clean organization is now a part of SBB again and wears he SBB logo. In more an more automated railway stations they are often the only people. Now the wear an SBB logo again and can help support travelers in case of problems. This is a win-win situation as the job has become more interesting and as clients have a further human touchpoint with the brannd.
Development – all roles are changing due to the evolution of the environment and the technology. It is of strategic importance to think about the roles and their evolution paths. SBB grows and moves together with its employees into the future of mobility.
Data – SBB as a provider collects a lot of data about its users. Monika stressed that the data belongs to the client and not SBB. So the client decides when and how this information is used.

Again four aspects which can be translated very well into financial services. The empowerment of the staff is key, every employee is a part of the brand management and client data belongs to the client and not the service providers.

data-2899901_1280

In all of our sophistication(s), humans react to the world in simple ways as our ability to cope with its complexity is limited. Do we seek simple solutions that hide or ignore the complexity?

Human senses are constantly producing far more data than their brains can process. Our brains cope with complexity by identifying important features and filtering out unnecessary detail(s). An example such as on seeing that the space you enter has four walls, a floor and a ceiling, you know you have entered a room and usually ignore the details. As individuals we deal with complexity by removing or hiding it. Our mental schemes are one way of doing that. Habits are another.

We also simplify complex decision-making by using received wisdom (e.g. advice of others, conforming to the beliefs and attitudes of what we may be associated to).

Society has many ways of managing complexity, one common approach is “divide and rule” approach to management which leads to hierarchical division of large organisations. Hierarchical breakdown introduces its own issues as the need to define early what are the decisive factors. Although structural changes can take place but only of rather limited value. Such systems have a tendency to go for the local optimum in each branch (see “The first step is key…”). Another approach is to define laws, rules, commercial standards which creates limits and restrictions.

New technologies are usually introduced to simplify our lives, but inevitably they have unexpected side effects on society. An example is the introduction of robotics/ labour-saving systems set off cascades of social change, such as the decline of the nuclear family. In addition instead of addressing and replacing the complex systems with more efficient adaptable ones, we add additional layers of complexity by keeping legacy systems and integrating them with the so-called new and simpler ones. On top of that there is a continuous addition of business process which makes consolidation almost impossible. It makes life simpler to rely on others to provide solutions to complex problems.

This inability to fathom complexity leads to a belief that any worthwhile solution to a situation must be simple. Any change introduces complexity into people’s lives. Rather than face issues that are complex, some retreat into denial, preferring to believe in a simpler future in which there is no change and continue with their paradigms.

In an era of post-truth and pseudoscience, avoid dismissing uncomfortable facts out of hand. Complexity arises from the richness of interconnections between things. Can we continue to ignore the wider context and the side effects of actions and ideas? The continuous adoption and extension of programs are vital to humans over time.

“Our brain is not to think – it is to keep us alive”