|| Behavioral Stories for Leadership Principle

1. Teamwork / time management / ability to adapt / Invent and Simplify / Deliver Results / Dive Deep

• situations - condense 60-day financial forecast into 30-day
• task - getting 40 analysts and 10 teams to adapt to a shorter cycle with the same analytical rigor; this involves significant process redesign
• action - 
• I get sponsorship from the business line EVP to support the simplification efforts
• I put a premium communicating the context of the forecast change, motivating analysts to be on board with a win-win mindset to invest time in inventing and simplifying the forecast process
• I facilitate the first ever bank forecast powerday to listen and to solicit ideas for forecast improvement
• I cycle information quickly across the whole forecast community, leveraging slack channel, the confluence pages, office hours to do real-time info sharing as to the ideas, prioritization and executive feedbacks
• (simplify) I also contributed ideas and set the directions of analytical standards and simplification, such as a set of analysis on the common variables, such as volumes, market rates, saving analysts time as they won't have to pursue their own
• results - 
• Meet the corporate planning and business planning needs, created a shorter and more flexible forecast interaction that reflect the fast changing nature of the business
• The same high-quality product, and more consistent look and feel for some of the common variable analysis, less time on data manipulation, reviews, giving analysts more time to learn new skills or go after the other business case problem solving
• Associate engagement becomes higher as analysts get to know each other in person, and share methodologies and techniques of modeling in general

2. Difficult customers - different styles / Earn Trust / Internal Customer Obsession 

Situation - work with a customer who is conservative and cost and controls, minimizing risks management focus vs the desire to grow

• Task - influence the customer, elevate him from risk focus to big picture thinking, and sync his agenda with the overall organizational agenda
• Action - 
• Establishing trust - I personally dive into details along with the customer, be a good listener as I learn why the details matter to the customer; while he shares industry trends
• Sharing context of the growth desire - I bring back organizational objectives, context from the investor calls, board stories, general manager problem solving to highlight the value of strategic thinking and the business leverage he has
• Sharing best practice and ideas - I bring examples from the other areas as to how they proactively think about risks and costs to support growth, integrate their strategies with product
• Proposing new metrics to measure success - I advocated long term metrics of all-in economics and how the risks are impacting “how we target and how we make money”
• result - 
• The customer changed his approach of engagement in all meetings, listen more to the big picture challenges and priorities 
• Proactive take on big picture problem solving, expanded his inputs and feedbacks to the other business leaders; taking on risks to enable growth and to be compensated for it
• I like to see my client growing into a general manager, that includes myself

3. Analytical Failure / Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit / Insist on the Highest Standards / Are right, A Lot

• Situation - launching national banking agenda, many teams had done marketing, product, mobile all had tests that suggested that we will get a lift, a brand new national marketing campaign launches, market test varies a lot between 5% to 40% impact
• Challenge - need to apply national banking test results into the national scale for volume projection
• Action - 
• I did facilitate individual discussions with marketing and product; left out mobile as historically mobile agenda is just modernizing the infrastructure, is not significant in first order impact on the portfolio, that was a mistake
• I challenged many program leaders as I’m looking at many test results at the market level on lots of different dimensions, they vary a lot between 5% to 40%.  I then only realize that there is a lack of consistency in measuring test and roll out expectations
• When I see models suggest branch backbook risks, I raise awareness and bring the product and branch teams together and highlighted the P&L impact and had them prioritize on a retention offer
• have a disciplined framework, and have consistent usage of it
• Result - 
• Some deviations to the forecast, puts and takes, overall ok but I always self reflect with critical thinking 
• Marketing needs on-going testing, recency bias, availability bias, making everyone happy bias ... at times, at the spur of the moment, we choose the safe bet
• Get into tech road map, and establish the forum to prioritize based on economic value and with a disciplined framework of prioritize and measuring
• Commit, people have trust, we look out for each other and get to the best business results
• foster a personal board of director, marketing, product, cost in the ecosystem

4. Goal setting / Ownership / Think Big / Hiring and Developing

• Situation - 1) Team enablement score is 40% low, having the tools to get things done, it's difficult to do work, consistent with enterprise read-out 2) ODF goal, taking out excel in production
• Challenge - There has been no top-down determination of an enterprise financial eco-system, it’s test and learn, it’s change curve, it’s adaptive performance and I need to get my team on board with learning new skills
• Action - smart goals
• I provide context for how the society has been advancing with technology and that includes the high skilled professionals
• I sponsored analysts to attend google finance forums to learn big tech company, financial institutions, and bring back insights
• I advocated 20/20, to create time and space to learn new skills, and initially, there is no stipulation as to what they learn
• I prioritize our team development with tech learning study group, using some of the more advanced technical analyst as seeders, as a group, we download software and do coding, everyone learns at the same pace … that really proves that everyone needs to learn new skills
• I develop practical use case as to having SQL and Snowflake skills would help analysts get deeper business insights on the product economics by market, by age group, by channel … real example how we use data to influence business decisions
• I also measure and report on progress and accomplishment, the number of hours spent, create github to share codes, and eventually, we will measure how many of the team analysts are capable with SQL, Python, etc; use spot award and small competition to showcase how the skills improve 
• result - a big turnaround, 70%; commit to the team of learning for everyone, learning all the time, culture of learning and changing … everything starts from “I”

5. Learning new jobs / Learn and Be Curious

• Situation - having 10 years of credit product experiences, change to the other side of the balance sheet to bank
• Task - learn product economics (reverse of the cost and revenue in some cases), learn new people, styles, leadership
• Act - people, process, product
• I spent a lot of time interview my predecessors from the past two or three generations, to learn the history, regulatory environment, financial challenges and successes, client engagement models
• I spent time to learn from people, one by one, forming my allies and network, personal board of directors
• I spent time with my team, knowing their professional desires, inputs on where things have gone well, continue doing, stop doing etc
• I dive into the process - workshop to document workflows, hands on to see data lineage, level of effort, forecast methodologies, cycle information very quickly with best practices for my prior life before
• I analyze with my business customers where are we now, two by two charts, reporting, influencing, advising, where are we spending time
• Result - 1) completely navigating through the people connections 2) immediately producing budget stories and analysis 3) economics thinking carries into the new field, impress the business for the depth of knowledge

6. Hire and Develop the Best, Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice

• Situation - the organization started explicit goals of people leaders include, empower, inspire standards … roll out to the enterprise
• Task - get 400 global finance people manager on board with the new standard, best practice, measurement
• Act - 
• I served as the chairman of the bank finance people manager council for a couple years, “Share”, “Build”, “Measure” pillars
• I signed up to serve as the overall Finance council to influence the enterprise / big stage
• Participated in multiple virtual learning sessions, be the seeder prompting questions and answers, sharing my learning experiences in people leadership fields
• Become a bias ambassador, participated in many cross calibrations, get the unconscious bias out of our mind, ensure consistency in measuring talents
• I am also in multiple BRGs, mentoring, and started fulfilling my broad social responsibilities of helping DC start up women community with VC negotiation skills
• Results - 1) launched and adopted by the org … sharing best practice all the time, 2) my own personal brand 3) the ability to reach out to more people, awareness, inspiration, the journey is long, but we have passions to take on the challenges to come

7. Deliver Results / Frugality

• Situation - ODF goal, taking out excel in production, moving forecast modules into cloud based microservices
• Challenge - Resource constraints, straddling between the work at hand and the energy / efforts going into creating the new future of finance
• Action - 
• I advocated 20/20, to create time and space to learn new skills
• I prioritize our team development time with tech learning study group, using some of the more advanced technical analyst as seeders, as a group, we download software and do coding, everyone learns at the same pace … that really proves that everyone needs to learn new skills
• I invited agile coaches and design thinkers to introduce the fast development concepts.  Influenced my peers to experiment pod structure, enlist new people to put the technical and sme skills together to crack the code of micro-services
• I helped team identify one area and we will no longer use excel to report on the monthly results, all tableau based using python sourcing data from the finance data warehouse
• result - 1) not adding new people, leverage enterprise existing resources, 2) analysts and customers feel motivated with the new skills, new tools, new access 3) inspire the teams to find opportunities to reinvent and simplify the old, create room to learn new things, and being open minded as to how we’d change the way we work; 4) accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention

8. Bias for Action, Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. / Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

• Situation - National campaigns are launching, we could be getting a lot checking volumes that require fraud defenses and operational resources to authenticate etc
• Challenge - Operational readiness is not quite there; financial management perspective, if we ramp up but don’t see the volumes, we will be stuck with costs but no revenue
• Action - 
• I have models that can produce results in 60 days, 1 week, or just napkin math based on general economics of volumes, usage, options and etc
• I know KPIs from financials to operations, knowing the vulnerability and the business leverage
• I advise the business of the ranges of outcome if with the degree of volume lifts … also the context of the big picture of financials, do we have room to be off
• I inform the corporate planning team to prepare for the potential volatility of business and financial metrics
• I allocated time in the finance review to have both tech, risk, ops, product, marketing leaders together … to discuss outcome
• result - 1) open dialogue, as customer acquisition and servicing leaders debate on the pros and cons, from 360 perspectives, and certainly the financials is one of the consideration factors 2) customer focus, obsession, we collectively made the decision to prioritize customer experience, we make a commitment, and well informed of the potential risks

9. Talent coaching and development, Hire and Develop the Best, 

• situation - one person was not responsive; quantitative background but soft skills are not the strongest suit, and have not realized how communication adds value to the work effectiveness; answering many emails, fulfilling requests, but no control of his time and commitment
• challenge - this person is in the upstream of creating the common variables of the forecast, his silence is making people feel being left out in the dark, frustration
• act - 
• I bring people together, invited the analyst community to do a powerday, flow chart mapping, challenging each other why things need to happen the way this is
• I gathered inputs and calibrated, identifying that this person is the single person dependency because he takes on too much of the work and they all happen at about the same time
• I highlighted the constraint with accountable executives and proposed making the adjustment to the workflows
• I also coached this person to have dedicated communication work block, talking in the slack channel, have the base to support him as he breaks the news of many important things around account origination
• result - establishing trust across human beings, getting to the deeper iceberg and explore human traits

Communication, influence, difficult

• situation - during financial and business planning, the strategy calls for branch reduction
• challenge - there is a lot of myth, for instance, fear of sales loss, book of business ... made it really difficult to engage with good inputs
• act - 
• I am obsessed with context and transparent for what we know, where we put our bets, what risk mitigation actions exit
• I use data driven insights, for low to mid income people, de-mystifies the story from CRA analysis to confirm that we are not abandoning the mission
• I pay lots of visit to leadership offsite, panel discussions to share what I had learned during the financial planning work
• result - happiness to be part of the destination, learning new skills, creating new opportunities, give us good inputs

Successful presentation

• situation - military
• challenge - different background
• act - 
• get insider to tell me
• ask what they are interested in hearing
• simplify, simplify, more visual
• story as opposed to sharing fact
• highly recommended, so good, favorite ... at the same time, wall street talk

Change management

• be obsessed with context
• always learning, curiosity
• bring everyone along, workgroups, sessions, measurements, enablements

Time management / major project

• forecast improvements
• I organize the powerday, 200 ideas
• I invented the weight system 
• I do exec share out, analyst share out, 1x1 counseling
• invite design thinking, product managers, different perspectives
• ownership
• pod style self-management

Amazon questions - 

• What is an example of a time you had to make a high-impact business decision with little data or time
• Facilitated the discussion of checking eligibility scenarios that run across multiple dimensions of decision making, tech, data, financials, fraud risk, CRA requirement
• Directed the test minus control measurement
• Decision, not to go back
• What was the biggest mistake you ever made in your professional career and what did you learn from it
• mobile becomes a forceful factor on the portfolio performances and on profitability … longer term infrastructure / platform viability impacts investment; personally reading a lot more of the tech contents, being a part of the strategic thinker on tech contributions)
• Building models, acquisition model 50 products, monthly vintages, P&L sensitivity, interest expense
• Job bigger than you
• Vinetta project, offering workshop
• Challenge - event planner, motivator, operational director
• I get to know the customer, by personally attending event, sampling the crowd; interview with program director
• I motivated speakers to help the cause by highlighting the social responsibilities
• I leveraged multiple BRG and women’s network to recruit volunteers
• I am weak on hospitality, making sure
• I learned a lot, actions are louder than talking
• Result - First ever workshop; amazing learning and networking opportunity, gender bias talking vs doing something
• What do you bring to the table -
• Passion on consumer and small business financial literacy, personal financial health, frictionless transactions and experiences
• Deep expertise on both sides of the balance sheet, consumer financial product economics, through the cycle of credit and interest rate volatility, regulatory uncertainty, digital agenda and integration
• Team and leadership, Include, Empower, Inspire; operating principle, people, process and product
• 3 years leading the small business banking finance team, with a vision of building up the small business owner financial ecosystem to streamline business activities, financial reporting, business analysis, payment, working capital management
• 2 years supporting the fraud strategy and operations organization, working knowledge of financial and operational metrics, the challenges and the trade-offs
• Overall 4 years in consumer, payment again front and center in the battle on earning consumer trust and love, “financial literacy”
• Core financial skills - managing balance sheet and full P&L for many years, both short term and long term, also potential acquisitions; dual responsibilities of business and corporate priorities; love story telling
• Knowing the blindspots but enhanced through strong partnerships, controllership, regulatory reporting requirements, tech
• If you were going to acquire a company, but could only look at their income statement, balance sheet, or cash flows, which would you pick and why?
• Late stage C and D series, probably income statement for business economics, viability, national scale
• Early stage A and B, probably the cashflow statements, funding situation, national scale; operational and growth metrics, how did they scale, simplicity
• Disagree with your teammates
• New line of business recommendation, ethically made for a better environment, reduce plastics, poverty, inequality … the corporate citizenship, governance, ESG orientation; social responsibility, creating the healthy lifestyle movement
• A time when you faced a negative feedback from your boss concerning an idea you had, and how you reacted
• Tell me about a time you were not able to meet a commitment? 
• How we approach the approach to transform the financial systems and forecast process, requires building micro services of building funds transfer pricing … 1) SME ownership approach, SME 2) pod approach; 1) invited agile and design and engineers to introduce interactions for rapid development 2) peers to have lesson learned 3) create a template to analyze the features of our enhancement requirements 4) ratings 5) open forum to debate … results, more committed, as we debated pros and cons, risks
• How (from a finance perspective) would you go about integrating Alexa into home appliances?
• Tech agenda, compatibility, cost of integration / development
• Value creation
• Front book, back book, New product or existing customer adoption (small device plug in, offer for free, incentives)
• Customer data, can be leveraged to market additional product recommendations
•  Indirect, longer term, transaction data have insights on the usage of the home appliance, make better appliance recommendations
• Big data usage
• Situation - the deposit / payment business has been missing a platform on account level profitability; with checking growth and operational complexity, there is a growing need to build up the analytical foundation 
• Challenge - multiple teams own different parts of the financial systems, operational systems
• Action - 1) tell the story of checking growth and the growing pain, garner support from business and corporate executives on building on the infrastructure with resources 2) identify the critical items and MVP approach vs all in and prolonged development 3) crack the code on the most difficult data integration session, document pros and cons 4) I went on many roadshows to get excitement 5) physically pulling data to demonstrate the power of account level data, enlightening the business leaders to dig in 
• Results - 5) prioritize digital agenda 6) operational readiness, checking account to find call and fraud usage year over year trend, who are calling and over time .. channel, targeting
• Design thinking - Circular covers don't need to be rotated or precisely aligned when placing them on the opening. A round manhole cover is easily moved and rolled
• Given me a professional example when there was a disagreement between you and your colleagues and what did you do?
• Pod style rapid development
• Vertical ownership development
• Experiment two pod style / intern
• Describe a time when you disagreed with something your employer mandated
• What was one thing that you did outside of your responsibility? 
• Tell us about a time you handled conflict
• What is success, the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.  (“live with purpose”), for the organization, for society, for personal
• Connecting people towards the strategy, goals, objectives, context makes better commitment, purpose
• Bringing finance to all general managers for professional development
• Personally, learning new knowledge, problem solving for the customers, inspire others and find inspirations, inclusive listening and thinking