Case Analysis

THE STRATEGISTS 509

ILLUSTRATION 15.2

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?

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