The Barclays Jam

Barclays Bank used workgroups and 'jamming' to involve all its employees in its new strategy.

In October 2011, Ashok Vaswani became CEO of Barclays' UK Retail and Business Bank. With 35,000 employees and 1,600 branches, Barclays is one of the leading retail banks in the country. Like other UK banks, it had been hit both by recession and by accusations of mis-selling of financial products to consumers. However, the global head of retail banking had declared an ambition to make Barclays the 'Go To' bank for consumers, and Ashok set out at once to make this happen.

Ashok launched two initiatives to involve employees in the strategy. He immediately convened six workgroups of graduate trainees and young man- agers from around the country to address key issues for the implementation of the strategy. With about eight to ten members each, these workgroups were tasked to work on strategic issues such as customers, communications, colleagues and community. Working in their spare time, and mostly communicating virtually, these workgroups produced a flood of ideas, some of them taken up even before the final report- out. The formal reporting took place at a senior management retreat in December, from which a new strategic concept emerged: STAIRS, in other words Speed, Transparency, Access, Information and Results.

Ashok's second initiative was the 'Great Barclays Jam', launched in March 2012 in order to involve all employees in the new STAIRS concept. Barclays called on IBM's jamming technology, an online collaboration platform designed to facilitate communications and debate among large groups of people. The launch of the Jam was preceded by an intensive communica- tions campaign. Ashok first ran a series of leadership days for 400 of the company's senior managers. A 'teaser film', voiced by a well-known British TV per- sonality, was produced, promising employees the chance to discuss the company's future. Over 8,000 employees were invited to more than 70 information events held at 16 cinemas across the country,  where they saw another specially produced film.

Further presentations were held in branches and call centres to reach remaining employees.

With this build-up, the Great Barclays Jam finally took place in March over three days. The Jam gave every employee the chance to debate the practical meaning of the STAIRS strategic concept and to contribute ideas on how to deliver it. During the Jam, there were live Question and Answer sessions with key executives, including Ashok Vaswani and Bob Diamond, the Barclays Group CEO at the time. Volunteers from across all areas of the business facilitated the discussion, based on the 30th floor of the Barclays head office, easily accessible by the Group's top managers one floor above. The volunteers signposted the most popular threads, highlighted top jammers and alerted participants to senior manager contributions. The Great Barclays Jam attracted 19,000 registered participants, producing 20,000 comments over the three days. Participants were equally divided between managerial and non-managerial employees and reflected the bank's age distribution. Participation remained high throughout all three days. In all, the Jam pro- duced 650 distinct ideas for business improvement. Ashok Vaswani instituted six new ‘Business Councils' focused on various parts of the business with the specific task to implement STAIRS and take forward the most promising ideas from the Jam. 

Sources: Interviews with Ashok Vaswani, Julian Davis and Tim Kiy at Barclays, and Richard Mound at IBM.

Questions

1. What do you think were the direct and indirect benefits of Ashok Vaswani's initia- tives to involve Barclays' employees in the strategy?

2. If you were a smaller company, without the information technology resources of Barclays and IBM, how might you be able to get employee input into strategy development?