Based in Singapore, Brian O’Neill joined Standard Chartered as the bank’s global head of group transformation in 2022, after tenures at Lloyds Banking Group and National Australia Bank. His areas of focus include building a culture of operational resilience and harnessing technological advancements to drive value.
O’Neill sat down with McKinsey Senior Partner Brant Carson to discuss what makes for successful bank transformations, how to use compliance as a catalyst to accomplish something great, and what banking might look like in the future, among other topics.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
McKinsey: Tell us about your career. How did you get into transformation-oriented roles?
Brian O’Neill: I grew up through the technology side of things, but quite quickly spent time with the business and support functions, particularly finance and risk. I was running change programs and thinking about how best to introduce new technologies as well as reengineer and restructure businesses to make them more efficient and effective. It was good training for leading transformation across an organization.
McKinsey: What are some things you’ve noticed that make transformations successful? What are things that make them fail?
Brian O’Neill: Most organizations have, at best, a mixed bag of results in terms of being able to drive effective transformation. There are a few things that organizations should consider to successfully transform and avoid common pitfalls.
First, clarify the objective and make sure everybody is aligned on that mission. A transformation won’t be successful if people don’t understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how they are achieving it. A lack of alignment means that people will go in different directions, and inevitably, it will fail. Similarly, a transformation won’t be successful if people work in silos and only think about their own piece of the puzzle, rather than looking holistically at the change being driven and the common objective.
Second, set clear accountabilities to know who is responsible for what, not just so that people know whom to consult with to get things done, but, more important, so that any gaps can be identified early on to avoid any finger-pointing.
Third, recognize that not everything will go smoothly. I’m fond of saying, “Red is a great color,” because when we discover a problem, we can address it. The worst thing is not knowing when there is a problem. Encouraging your team to adopt this mindset is super important.
McKinsey: Picking up on those last two items, I imagine you have experienced complex programs that involved issues with silos as well as a bit of finger-pointing. What did you do to help reset things?
Brian O’Neill: I follow a very basic approach. If I take over a troubled program, I get everybody into a room for around three hours and start from the very beginning with some very basic questions. I want to accomplish two things: to make sure that everyone is on the same page and to flush out any inaccuracies or inadequacies in the plan. Normally, it only takes about ten minutes before these start to reveal themselves.
It often becomes very apparent, very quickly, that there is a completely different understanding of scope, which, left unaddressed, could lead to disaster. Many people would be embarrassed to ask those questions because they feel so basic, but it’s crucial to make sure you fully understand what’s going on.
McKinsey: What other organizational conditions allow a transformation to succeed, beyond the ingredients you just talked about?
Brian O’Neill: First, credibility is very important in terms of proven delivery capability and proven ability to execute. Second, having a clear mandate and clear accountability to deliver it, attached to the objectives. If people don’t agree with the objectives, you’re likely to fail. Third, people have to see the value. I like to talk about value in terms of clients, employees, and stakeholders. It has to be value that you can see and touch. Sometimes when you’re transforming a back-office function, for example, it’s not that obvious. Part of the role of the transformation leader is to bring that to life and articulate why it’s so important. At the end of the day, everything should absolutely hit the bottom line. If you’re doing a transformation in the back office, you need to be able to articulate why, and if you can’t, you should really question why you’re doing it in the first place.
McKinsey: I love that. I’ve also heard you talk about the importance of creating scarcity.
Brian O’Neill: Yes, it’s a favorite of mine, probably because I’ve worked in the finance function for many years. There are many, many examples of where people will come and ask for exorbitant amounts of money for what are quite simple changes. They want to cushion themselves in case something goes wrong. But if you give them all of that, they will, inevitably, in my experience, take longer, spend more, and often actually have a poorer output and product.
Frugality or scarcity is very important because it drives innovation. If I think about some of Standard Chartered’s businesses in Africa, they don’t necessarily have the same physical infrastructure as other markets, but clients still need to be able to transfer money without going to a branch. That means the businesses are far more innovative in how they do that. They make payments through mobile technology and have been doing this for almost 20 years. They use a mobile payment service called M-PESA, which is integrated into online banking. You can use it anywhere you get a mobile signal, and it’s cost-effective.
McKinsey: Transformations include a considerable amount of risk and compliance. How do you deal with that?
Brian O’Neill: Banking is a heavily regulated industry and will continue to be so. I like to think of compliance as a catalyst. For instance, we are modernizing our data centers to make them more resilient. Rather than create a slightly better version of what we have today, we are completely reconfiguring the infrastructure of the data centers to give us cloud-like capabilities while also automating deployment. We are making a significant investment not only to uplift the data centers but also to really change the way we do things and drive that transformation throughout the group.
McKinsey: What’s the secret sauce to having a really effective team for a transformation?
Brian O’Neill: You learn fairly early on in your career, after your first or second management role, that your success is no longer dictated by how good you are; it’s now about how good your team is. That means the most important task is to hire the right team and have the best people around you. That involves a few things. Hire people who are better than you, and frankly, people who make you feel a bit uncomfortable, who challenge you. It’s counterintuitive to some people, but I think as long as you have confidence in your own abilities, it’s a great thing to do. Recognize where your strengths and weaknesses are and hire people who complement your weaknesses.
We can’t all be great at everything we do. I remember a lesson from a training course when I was a junior manager. The coach said, “Talk to me about your development areas.” I told her everything that I felt I wasn’t good at. She encouraged me to focus on one area that I could improve, but to focus more on developing my strengths and hiring people who counterbalance my development areas. That stuck with me.
Leading effectively is equally important. You’ve got to set a vision that your team understands, ensuring they understand the value of what they’re creating.
McKinsey: What do you see as the role of digital and AI, particularly agentic AI, at a bank like Standard Chartered?
Brian O’Neill: All banks have been on a digital journey for quite some time now. I think AI has the potential to take that to the next level. People have realized that it’s not there to replace human beings, but to augment what humans can do, and that goes for agentic AI as well. Agents still need supervision by humans and to be led by humans. I think the biggest challenge we have is working out where those opportunities are. Part of the beauty of AI, especially some of the large language models and gen AI, is that people can play with them and discover new opportunities and ways of working.
McKinsey: What’s your view on the value that banks are getting from gen AI versus the potential?
Brian O’Neill: I think we’re very much at the start of the hype cycle. We’re probably where we were with cloud ten years ago. There’s definitely huge value to be had, but I think it requires a kind of judicious selection of the areas to pursue. There is a lot of experimentation, which is great. But only some of that will come to fruition and drive real value.
McKinsey: What do you think the job of a banker will look like in the future?
Brian O’Neill: Technology should help. If you’re a relationship manager on the front line, especially in a corporate bank, and you’re meeting with a big client, it’s almost impossible to know everything about that client and understand how it all fits together and where you can help most. Having an AI agent or two alongside relationship managers, supporting them, is a fantastic opportunity. Agents can do analysis that can provide them with the right information at the right time to identify how to best address the client’s needs. I think that’s what the future will look like.
