Companies are rapidly adopting agile mindsets as they pursue digital overhauls and look to cut down production time for new tech projects.

Fidelity switched to agile in 2017. And the pivot helped the $3.2 trillion financial services giant weather the upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Productivity actually increased 147% over the past few months, according to Brook Forbes, the chief information officer for Fidelity's personal investing arm.

To help employees succeed in a remote setting, Fidelity spared no expense and outfitted workers with everything they needed to create a home office — including new laptops and AirPods.

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Companies are rapidly pivoting to "agile" teams to help assist in their digital overhauls.

The method relies on cross-functional agile teams that marry technical expertise with individuals that have deep knowledge of the business and its customers — along with designers and operational leads — to quickly speed up the production timelines for new products.

Although it can take a significant culture change to make the vision of agility a reality, those that have already made the switch report significant performance gains.

It's a key reason why Fidelity saw a 147% increase in productivity over a tumultuous few months in 2020 that included an abrupt switch to remote work for many, according to Brook Forbes, the chief information officer for the personal investing arm. The $3.2 trillion financial services giant made the pivot to agile teams in 2017.

"How we have been able to respond on a dime in the last 90 days is in large part due to the fact we made that change," Forbes told Business Insider. "We changed our business routines overnight."

And Forbes said she's hoping the agile mindset will help with the next, more difficult hurdle: adjusting back to "normal" operations.

"The psychological tax on reentry into whatever the next set of norms is is way, way bigger than the psychological tax for us to all overnight leave," she said.

'You name it, you got it'

One of the tenets of agile teams is empowering members with all the resources they need to deliver on the objective at hand.

Fidelity took that to heart and provided employees that didn't have existing work-from-home setup with all the technology tools needed to replicate their desks at the office — from new laptops and computer stands to AirPods and video monitors.

"You name it, you got it," said Forbes. "We had a whole set of squads that we spun up over night to do this."

Forbes also runs a program called "Learning Tuesdays," where each week her team of 2,500 engineers and technologists around the globe can take the whole day to spend time investing in something — a skill or more general knowledge on a specific topic — that it thinks will be beneficial for the future.

That initiative has continued during the coronavirus pandemic, but some learning activities had to be postponed to address the surge in customer demand.

"The percent of time that our associates have been spending out of those eight hours on Tuesday, a greater proportion than normal went to client needs," said Forbes. "We are now in the process of leveling that out."

And Fidelity plans to increase investment in that program as it matures and adjust some of the digital courses offered to associates to focus more on leadership development.

Modules like how to lead through uncertainty "are the things we have to up our ante on given the current environment," said Forbes.

Leaning into the turns

On top of seeing productivity gains, Fidelity is also now hiring thousands of new employees during a time when many other companies are scaling back or halting recruitment efforts.

It's part of a "lean into the turns" culture that the organization promotes — or investing in the areas that will differentiate it in the long term regardless of what near-term losses that may cause.

As millions of Americans were largely relegated to their homes over the past few months, more turned to day-trading stocks as a side hustle. On top of that, the markets were extremely volatile as investors tried to parse out what the economic recovery in the US would look like post-COVID.

All that meant Fidelity had to beef up its ranks.

"What we were responding to in those agile moments during the last week was to be able to handle the volume of conversations we needed to have proactively with our customers and ourselves about all the things that were on their minds," said Forbes.

While the pivot to agile is difficult, the results from Fidelity show how much value it can create. But the company's experience also highlights that the shift has to go beyond just reorganizing teams and must include deep investments in the workforce for it to be an effective one.

Source: Business Insider

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