Uniting design, business, and engineering to improve lives
A financial services organization serving military families faced a critical challenge: ensuring survivors of deceased members received compassionate support while streamlining a complex, time-consuming process. Despite the organization's deep commitment to empathy and dignity, their analog-only process for filing death notifications was arduous, requiring survivors to spend up to 30 minutes per call, sometimes longer.
For years, a Survivorship team within the company proposed a digital solution to complement the phone process, arguing that time savings could reduce survivor stress and improve retention of billions of dollars in assets under management. Yet, leadership resisted, fearing that a digital tool could not match the personal empathy provided by human interaction.
This is where Same Team principles came into play: aligning cross-functional teams, amplifying the voice of the user, and empowering collaboration to break through cultural resistance.
The challenge: overcoming resistance and aligning teams
The Survivorship team faced several barriers:
- Cultural resistance: Leadership believed survivors preferred human interaction, dismissing digital transformation as impersonal and unsuitable.
- Resource allocation: Designers and engineers were distributed unevenly across lines of business, leaving the Survivorship team unsupported.
- Misalignment: Design, engineering, and business teams were siloed, making collaboration and rapid decision-making difficult.
The emotional weight of this process added urgency, but without alignment, progress was impossible.
The solution: fostering empathy and collaboration
Through strategic leadership, the design team found a way to support the Survivorship initiative without disrupting other priorities. This involved reallocating design resources creatively, allowing the team to support smaller, high-impact projects like Survivorship alongside their mainline work.
Key steps in the process included:
- Workshops with survivors: The team facilitated highly sensitive workshops, inviting survivors to share their experiences. These sessions included business and engineering leaders to ensure all stakeholders understood the survivor’s journey.
- Fostering empathy: Witnessing the emotional and logistical challenges survivors faced firsthand shifted leadership’s perspective. Survivors described the overwhelming "blur" of tasks after losing a loved one, emphasizing the need for speed and simplicity.
- Co-creating solutions: Design, business, and engineering teams worked collaboratively to develop a digital prototype that complemented the existing phone process while maintaining dignity and empathy.
- Rapid iteration: With all stakeholders aligned, the team moved quickly, producing a working prototype in weeks.
The results: transformational impact and cultural change
The solution launched quietly, with no fanfare or marketing, as a simple addition to the website. The impact was immediate and profound:
- Faster processing: Survivors could now file a death notification in under 90 seconds, compared to 15-30 minutes via phone.
- Improved outcomes: The time to process claims was reduced by two-thirds, and proceeds paid out improved by 50%.
- Higher adoption: Leadership’s goal was a 2% adoption rate for the digital tool; it quickly achieved 30% utilization.
- Retained assets: In its first year, the digital tool helped retain $220M in assets under management.
The CEO highlighted this work as a transformational success, showcasing the organization’s ability to align teams, embrace change, and deliver solutions that honored their values.
Unlocking team potential to drive transformation
This story demonstrates the power of aligned teams working toward a shared goal. At Same Team, we help organizations bridge silos, foster empathy, and co-create solutions that drive impact. Whether you're tackling sensitive challenges or aiming to transform how your team works, we’re here to guide the way.
- Workshops: To involve stakeholders and foster empathy-driven innovation.
- Conversation Cards: To address sensitive topics and align cross-functional teams.
- Teamangle Diagnostic: To identify cultural or operational resistance to change and address it systematically.
