How Managing Change Can Guide Accelerate Financial Ecosystem Transformation
On February 5–6, 2022, I attended the first workshop of batch 10 organized by XL Future Leaders with my friends from Jakarta 1 and 2 Cohort. It was one of those great moments and I learned so many lessons.
One of the points that made me focus and note is the Change Management theory from Dr. Kotter (which I will describe in this article) can help innovators (including myself who are still learning to be a part of them), especially in the economic field in transforming the financial ecosystem which is currently very popular, turning into a better version, transparent, efficient and flexible, programmable, fast, secure, and decentralized.
In general, the step in managing change is to start creating the climate for change, engaging and enabling the organization, and implementing and sustaining the change. The specific steps can be seen directly from Dr. John Kotter's pattern above.
So, here I describe the correlation of the benefits of Change Management if it is implemented to help accelerate the transformation of changes in our current financial ecosystem. Let’s peel them off one by one!
Start from Creating the Climate for (Financial Ecosystem) Change
Creating a positive climate that is able to encourage sustainable change in the long term is the most basic thing that must be implemented as soon as possible.
For example, we know that the current state of the financial ecosystem is highly dependent on financial institutions and multinational companies that control it. So that leaves it untransparent, inefficient, and flexible because it has to go through a lot of administration, is slow, and is very centralized.
So, to balance, the innovators create urgency that they are in opposition to creating a new financial ecosystem climate that is highly privacy-respecting yet transparent, efficient and flexible, more secure and programmable, fast, and decentralized.
Just creating urgency is not enough. So the cryptocurrency and blockchain communities emerged, starting with Bitcoin, then followed by Etherium and Polygon, Solana, Terra, Cardano, Ripple, even Tether, and other stablecoin communities that are also still on the blockchain horizon.
Not to mention new ideas emerging such as Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Decentralized Exchange (DEX), Decentralized Apps (dApps), Web 3.0, to NFT which will gradually be connected into a single system, develop, and form a powerful coalition.
In the end, a vision was made for changes in the current financial ecosystem, that is creating a digital financial system that can fight inflation.
In other words, it is to make the space more accessible to all and to grow an ecosystem of decentralized projects around it. Thus, the step of creating a climate for change can be said to be complete!
Next, Engaging and Enabling the (New) Ecosystem
Because from the beginning we discussed directly the scope of the ecosystem, then this second stage we will change a little to engaging and enabling the new ecosystem rather than the organization.
So, when the climate change in the financial ecosystem was present and ready to spread for mass adoption. So the first thing to do is to be ready to communicate the vision to the general public too so that they understand what changes they want to bring and can participate.
Furthermore, apart from only promoting the changes that have been proclaimed, of course, it must be accompanied by action that continues to be empowered. Many now, cryptocurrencies are also making their own ecosystem to be fundamentally strong. So that it is fast or profitable when the opportunity arises, they can make corners, quick wins, and replace dependency habits with fiat money.
Implementing and Sustaining for Change
Lastly, the most important thing is to build on change on an ongoing basis so that it sticks. Like the cryptocurrency ecosystem below, which continues to grow and be sustainable in the future.
Lastly, the most important thing is to build on the change on an ongoing basis so that makes it stick. Like the cryptocurrency ecosystem below, which continues to grow and predict to be sustainable in the future.
For example, I take the example of Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, and Cardano who continue to develop their ecosystem, build new infrastructure on their blockchain, until finally, they can survive in a sustainable manner.
In the end, cryptocurrencies and their infrastructure are becoming a new part of today’s financial ecosystem, especially in the digital world.
Thus, financial institutions now must have a clear vision of the future financial landscape because it will be very important to have strategic decisions and good governance in the face of increasing competitive pressure to make large strategic investments.
The technology is likely to have a significant impact on every sub-sector of the industry — Deloitte
