Part 2: Louise McCarthy on 35+ years of staggering digital transformation success at HSBC and beyond

Watch the video episode: https://bit.ly/3M24aCO. Additional invaluable insights with Louise McCarthy, Managing Director of Female Entrepreneurship at Evrensel Capital Partners. Louise shares a wealth of advice from her time directing digital transformations largely in the finance sector, and gives heartfelt advice for women aspiring to leadership roles.  

Transcript

Emma: In the DevOps Unbound session you participated in on how to lead a DevOps transformation, and you mentioned addressing the pain points, and that if process owners run through their pain points and you find a solution, then you get somewhere; if you just focus on that higher tier level and that C-level suite or director level buy in, you're not going to get that complete landscape overview.  

You once shared a story with our Tricentis founder Wolfgang Platz, during your time at the HMRC in the UK when you met with the prime minister from England. Can you share that?  

Louise: Yes, I was really lucky. It was a few years ago when online self-assessment was coming into the UK but the uptake wasn't grand. I was brought in to lead the charge into improving the digital transformation, but it was the same time as austerity measures were hitting so we had to cut the cost by 25% at the same time. So, trying to weigh up how to digitalize a big government department which had been running for a long time when costs were quite high—and they needed to be brought down at the same time—I came up with a strategy where most of the IT services were outsourced.  

It was about being able to find a way to change the landscape from the way things had operated in HMRC for such a long time, and it was very much the common agenda on: how can we automate the processes? What technology can we bring in, and how can we reduce the costs?Key to all of that was: how can we innovate and continuously improve at the same time? 

The blocker was an outsourcing contract that the government had, which was publicly announced afterwards. I came up with a strategy on how we could reduce cost and digitalize more, but it meant removing or changing the outsourcing supplier that we had, and I was quite a young; 15 years younger than I am now, and I was shaking with my papers going into the prime minister's office sharing my strategy thinking ‘is he going to believe in me or not?’. 

It was because I had piles of data and facts to support my argument, and he loved my idea and my proposal so agreed to it. It was a huge success and it was in the public domain; it was announced that we'd actually managed to reduce the cost significantly and digitalize more and created a continuous improvement innovation function. 

On thing to have in your kit bag: clean up what you have. Come up with a new automated look and feel, but avoid getting to that stagnant state that you had been for many years, because you need to always build in innovation, and that’s not just a word that's used. It's part of the DNA and culture of any organization, and I think that's where we ended with HMRC and many of the digital transformations I've undertaken: having employees, partners, customers, suppliers, everybody involved in the innovation of generating new ideas. Then bringing those ideas forward continuously, improving the organization but making sure you've got no restrictions on enabling the organization to actually implement those innovations. 

Unfortunately HMRC was rigid and fixed with its outsourcer supplier, but now what I'm doing with Athena Ventures is having the ideation from the founders. The great thing for me is that I've built up an incredible network with large corporates where we actually become the innovation and ideation. I can bring in the female founders that've got this great innovative technology, and take them into these organizations and let them see the exciting stuff that's being developed outside of their organization.  

It's about staying alive, continuously innovating all the time, and making sure it's a part of the company's DNA. And then even better: doing so with females so that you score against your ESG agenda or corporate alignment. 

Emma: There we go, winning on all accounts! With the HMRC project you were pitching that right way back when digital transformation was still in its infancy. For many years you were dealing with the legacy architecture of a lot of these companies. I like the analogy that it's like trying to move deck chairs around the Titanic, and by removing some of the obstacles you get—whether that's an iceberg or you're up against a lot of challenges—you can inject innovation that has sustainable impact and longevity.  

That innovation would feed to delivering on quality, and we always talk about the role that quality plays in these transformations. It's important for the end user, the customer, that they're interacting with a quality product. We've definitely reached this tipping point where executives are now recognizing that a sound testing strategy is critical for delivering that innovation but also at speed. 

What role have you seen quality play in the transformations you've led? 

Louise: First of all, you’ve got to measure it, and then you can improve it, but quality has got to be measured. If you can take away the manual transactional side of things you're removing  bad quality. 

My number one topic is data. It's about having good quality data. Remove the transactional element where mistakes can happen and automate as much as possible, then use data and facts to actually measure the success. That's where I love Tricentis so much; I came across Tricentis many years ago in their very early days when I was a user of their product many years ago in one of my transformations, and if you don't test things then you can end up going around the houses before you get it right. 

It's about a transformation, and getting things right as quickly as possible: implementing change and low cost as quickly and low cost as possible, and making sure it's reliable. The only way you're going to do that is by including automated testing and taking away the manual testing, because the amount of time used in manual testing is just such a waste. 

You want your users value-adding, so you want your applications and systems doing all the automated testing. Then only on exception do you need to have human intervention. Then that's the only way you get the quality in a transformation. 

I’ve seen transformations fail a number of times because companies struggle at the testing stage or even forget the testing stage. It goes straight into live and the end users are saying that the whole program was a complete disaster because somebody forgot to do the testing. If you’ve got the Tricentis product in there from the early days you won't ever miss that step. If you're a CIO or a transformation lead, your own reputation is on the line if you put something key in live without doing proper testing or manual testing that’s not done properly. So quality is as key as data as well. 

Emma: Great! Thank you for the kind of words on Tricentis, it is a really cool company to be a part of in terms of its automation. As you say, moving away from manual testing which is such labor-intensive stuff opens up more time and head space for innovation. With automation we're in this continually evolving space with no code/low code. AI also continues to exciting for our industry.  

In 10 words or less I'd love to hear what your best piece for advice is for women aspiring to technology leadership roles? 

Louise: It's about building yourself a really great network, whether that's a network of females or people in various functions, or people in C-suite and different industry sectors. I've been lucky in my journey to have built up a really good network. I've got 33,000 people on LinkedIn now, and with every single one of them I'm sure if I reached out, I’d get a really positive response.  

That leads me to number two: don't be afraid to ask. So many people think ‘oh no I couldn't possibly ask that person that question’. Why not? People love helping each other and if you're in a similar sector, or you're a female —gentlemen also love helping people—don't ever be afraid to ask. Whatever it is, I'm sure there's somebody out there that would love to be able to answer and help. People generally are kind and they love helping. Also: have confidence. If you've got a great idea, have confidence and take it forward.  

Never give up. Unfortunately my Dad passed away a couple of years ago, and he was my absolute God; he was wonderful. He used to say to me ‘don't ever give up’. Even if you haven't got money or what have you, just don't give up if you're passionate enough about something and you've got a dream. Never give up and keep going. I've heard people say ‘I wish I hadn’t given up’ many times.  

Another thing: if you've got an idea, try it. I've seen so many people in my career say you can’t do it. I call them mood hoovers or doubters, as they have all the reasons why you can't do it. But if you passionately believe in something enough, just go for it.   

Emma: Great!  

if you could change one thing about how the application development world  operates, what would that be?  

Louise: Do things faster. I've been told by people ‘you've got to own the IP of something because it enhances value.’ But I think the world has changed dramatically, and I don't think you have to own the IP for your whole end-to-end platform.  

There are so many really great smart technologies out there. It's about a Lego block design; it’s microservices in a word. If you've got a microservice build of applications that join together with APIs, it takes you away from big legacy-built applications, which is where I've come from historically in financial services. You can never change these because they're the Titanic scenario. 

If you build your platforms with applications that are glued together with API, if technology changes or you want to enhance a new product, it's just a Lego block: plug it in, plug it out. That's one thing I can change. You change people's mindset now so that you don't have to build the whole thing like a legacy application. Then overlaying it with the automation and the automation testing, and different things that can be put in there. 

So, I'd say: think microservices, don't think big legacy applications. That's where innovation and continuous improvement continually happens faster, cheaper, and change happens quicker.