Using humor to talk about culture change

DBS Bank is Southeast Asia’s biggest bank.  They have been on digital transformation journey to act more, as they put it, like “a 27,000-employee startup.”  Yet, they identified cultural innovation blockers that were getting in the way.

DBS engaged consulting company Innosight to help, and Innosight approached us to develop cartoons.  Innosight had developed an organizational behavior change hack they call BEANs, short-hand for “Behavior Enablers, Artifacts, and Nudges.”  We collaborated on a series of cartoons as BEANs to poke fun at these cultural blockers.  We found that humor made it easier to talk about culture change.

We incorporated inside jokes and internal references to make the cartoons very specific to DBS.  The cartoons were used throughout the organization as conversation starters with employees.