“Be Greater” is not only a brand promise but a way of working and the cultural DNA at Techcombank . This Vietnamese banking giant follows this motto passionately by creating a culture of ‘experimentation’ through the implementation and application of the Design Thinking ways of working into their daily work, no matter which role a person may have. Techcombank has a clear purpose: To turn every single member of Techcombank into a ‘designer’ to innovate and collaborate better everyday.
Our journey with Techcombank started in 2019 when Techombank sought out new ways to build up the capabilities of their different teams, and equip them with human-centric ways of innovating and collaborating in more creative ways in this fast-changing business world. As Techcombank’s ongoing “Design Thinking ” partner, Doodle creates a repeated series of training, workshoppings, Design Thinking learning content and pitstop activities centering on the bank’s main challenges and the customers’ most desirable needs, inviting in participants from across multidisciplinary teams. Recently awarded 33rd most valuable global bank in 2023, the bank’s success ties in with its strong culture of change. How does the Doodle Design Thinking program play a part in Techcombank’s success?
This signified the beginning of a strong and long-lasting partnership between Doodle and Techcombank, which has resulted in the training of over 1000 Techcombank team members, key challenge and opportunity areas identified, thousands of ideas generated, and hundreds of desirable outcomes implemented, and inspired by learning journey experiences. As this fast-changing and volatile world becomes increasingly unpredictable, organizations that are the most adaptive will, not only survive, but thrive and evolve past their competitors.
Techcombank have demonstrated an immense commitment to change, growth and innovation, exemplified in their desire to scale the Design Thinking Ways across the entire organization. Techcombank aspires to equip their entire organizational structure with enhanced powers of innovation and collaboration, from front-end sales staff, all the way up to senior management. “Design is not a one-shot vaccine; it’s an “innovation fitness program” – Heather Fraser. This is proven to be the core success factor to make the company truly embrace Design Thinking.
The Design Thinking Learning Journey is a 2-way street. The Doodle team have designed and iterated the learning program over the years, based on important feedback learners across numerous different organizations. As a result, the learning program is continuously evolving to suit the needs of its learners, ensuring they have the most immersive experience possible. On the other hand, the learning program would be ineffective without the presence of curious and open-minded individuals, which Techcombank has no shortage of.
Assimilating the Design Thinking Ways is far more challenging than learning basic soft skills. The journey involves learners going through a much deeper mindset transformation, which ultimately, leads to a behavioral change when approaching complex people-problems. All of Techcombank’s learners have been willing to challenge their old, built-in ways of working and thinking, enthusiastically welcoming the Design Thinking Ways of of Working into their daily work, which has been the largest success factor of this ongoing partnership.
Doodle designed the Design Thinking Learning Journey across 3 distinct phases: “Learn, Do, Lead”, to guide all individuals from a new learner, all the way to a facilitator that can “lead” the change and instruct others at scale.
The journey, a result of years of partnership and deep understanding of the organization’s culture and people, is customized to suit different challenges, roles.
Whether the workshop is foundational or advanced, learning-based or outcome-based, Doodle ensures that each experience delivered is tailored to the exact needs of the team, helping them achieve their desired outcomes smoothly. Following the success of the early workshops, Doodle and Techcombank have gone on to co-create on numerous learning-based and project-based workshop experiences. Techcombank is one of the first organizations to have several cohorts of learners progress from the Design Thinking Foundation course to the Advanced course, where the learners are able to interactively learn the Design Thinking Ways on a deeper level to solve and facilitate solving for the most complex of problems.
After workshop experiences, all learning cohorts are encouraged to think about when and where they can “pepper in” the Design Thinking Ways into their daily work, so that the learnings stay fresh in their mind. One of the ways this is made possible, is through the “Coaching Check-in” sessions, where learners are asked to share their personal Design Thinking stories. To drive learnings and real project outcomes, Doodle actively ensures that all learning journeys are circular and reflective, as opposed to linear and one-dimensional.
At year-end Doodle and Techcombank’s Learning & Development Department co-created the “Design Thinking Learning Pitstop”, a company-wide initiative to gather all past Design Thinking learners and the curious-minded. The previous learners were able to share their Design Thinking Evaluation Stories in relation to their personal and group projects within Techcombank. The past learners made up a cohort community of over 1000 people and resulted in a day of extremely fruitful discussion, learning-sharings and critique.
At Doodle, we believe that the learning process through workshops is only 10% of the Design Thinking journey. The remaining 90% involves individuals actively seeking opportunities to apply the Design Thinking ways to their daily work and projects. To do that successfully, the Techcombank team required a library of Design Thinking material that they could refer back to, to refresh their memories on certain methods, as well as learning new and more advanced ones in their own time. To help organizations and their learners continue to innovate outside the classroom, Doodle created an expansive Self-Learning Content, in both English and Vietnamese, which has now been integrated into Techcombank Learning Management System.
The strides that Techcombank has taken to invigorate their entire organization with a new customer-centric culture is a testament to their desire to grow faster than the surrounding volatile world. This unwavering commitment to the Design Thinking Journey will soon equip all of Techcombank with a “customer-obsessed” mindset that will translate to an organization-wide behavior of “designing the right things for the right people” at all times.
