1st Edition
Beyond Resilience Patterns of Success in Fintech and Digital Transformation
Is success pattern-based? Is the journey of successfully building new banks or services (either from scratch or in the context of a going concern) predictable enough to be repeatable? And if there are patterns, are they within our gift to replicate?
Beyond Resilience: Patterns of Success in Fintech and Digital Transformation asks these questions and seeks answers among the people who have first-hand experience of building new things and who live to tell the tale.
This book is not a hagiographic founder story that elevates the founder’s own narrative to a montage of challenge and resilience, grit, perseverance and a soaring successful crowning at the end: a narrative that, figuratively speaking, can play out while ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is blaring in the background. Nor is the book a series of vendor testimonials that cover in a few thousand words each their own triumphant digital projects. These stories are not untrue but can be too generic to be illuminating, too vague to be helpful and too hollow to be the whole truth.
Filled with interviews from leading fintech entrepreneurs, this book strives to tell the whole truth about building new things. It shares the stories of leaders who admit that as they built their businesses, they learned a lot, changed a lot, and made mistakes and had to course-correct. The book attests that leading new fintech ventures or digital transformations, whether they are started with a blank sheet of paper or within an established entity, is hard and unpredictable. It requires control. It requires consistency and integrity. It requires standing strong either alone or with a team. It requires going beyond resilience.
1. Unlocking Greatness: Seeking Everyday Patterns in Extraordinary Journeys
2. Sometimes You Choose Your Moment, Sometimes the Moment Chooses You
3. Getting the Basics Right or ‘You Just Pointed at All of Me’
4. Unit Economics for the Home or Why You Should Be Ashamed to Admit You Don’t Actually Know Your Cost to Serve
5. People Are (Not All That) Strange
6. Negotiating Trade-Offs and Other Superpowers
7. Gods and Masters
8. Shapes, Sizes and Colours
9. Between Steadfastness and Adaptability
Biography
Leda Glyptis is a seasoned fintech executive and former banker, with a career spanning two decades. She has worked in transformation and technology functions across a variety of financial services verticals and companies including BNY Mellon, QNB, 11:FS and 10x. She is the author of Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition and of the highly acclaimed #LedaWrites column on Fintech Futures. She is a frequent keynote speaker and contributor to industry publications and works as an external advisor to boards and executive teams for banks and technology companies of various sizes in several geographies.
Leda is Visiting Professor of Practice for the University of Loughborough, London, focusing on fintech and the digital economy. Leda holds a BA and MA from King’s College, Cambridge, and an MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Becoming great at what you do sounds like a good idea, but it turns out to be really hard. You have to face into yourself, and the ugly reality of the world to build new skills and new muscles.
This is absolutely true in crafting a career in financial services.
This industry is dominated by people, relationships, and a dense jargon that's a sort of secret code where knowledge really is power.
Leda has been in every room.
Spoken truth to every power.
And succeeded.
Multiple times.
This is your cheat sheet for becoming great in this industry. As a professional, as an organisation. As a leader.
Follow the Leda.”
—Simon Taylor, Author of Fintech Brainfood and Head of Strategy and Content at Sardine“In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, successful ventures in financial services are not anomalies, but pioneers. They reveal a blueprint that, when understood, can transform the way we approach innovation in Fintech. Leda's deep understanding of Fintech, traditional financial services, and startups positions her perfectly to distill the common threads that these rare successes share. Her work is essential in shedding light on the patterns that can guide future ventures to navigate the complexities of digital transformation in financial services.
The lessons embedded in these success stories are not just relevant, they are critical to shaping the future of finance, where digital transformation is no longer a choice but a necessity.”—Arunkumar Krishnakumar, Author and Digital Asset Executive“This book will make you think and rethink, it might even change your life. Delivered by an industry practitioner who has shaped and delivered change for decades across financial services, with a focus on people and culture. With wonderful storytelling and no nonsense reflections, it’s a straight talking ‘guide’ for anyone who is starting out or has been here for years.”—Lou Smith, Chair of Innovate Finance and Stripe UK
“Success in entrepreneurship demands resilience, relentless effort, and a willingness to embrace and enjoy every day of the journey. This path isn't for the faint of heart, but for those bold enough to tread it, the stories within these pages offer invaluable lessons from those who have walked before you.”—Zor Gorelov, Founder of Kasisto
