Friday's Growth
Inspiration

As part of our podcast series, Hidden Growth Champions, we’ve always been on the lookout for leadership teams who know how to partner, who recognise the opportunity in their business ecosystem and are willing to consider a bigger play, which they may not necessarily control, but bring to life. This week, I had that opportunity emerge once again, as I was speaking with Krishna Nadella, Global Head of Solutions at Symphony.

Symphony began as a chat platform for the financial services industry and quickly evolved into a full-scale workflow collaboration tool. Now, it would be easy to view Symphony as a stand-alone platform, which clients go to, but when you think about it – why would you leave your own process, refined over years of work, perhaps even transformed as your organisation experienced digital transformation, to continue work on someone else’ platform? This is when the team at Symphony, led by Brad Levy, who became CEO in 2021, realised that real collaboration takes place not in a ‘chat silo’ but where the customer is.

Looking at the ecosystem, steering customers from one platform to another, might seem attractive at the outset. However, it is in fact detracting from customers’ jobs-to-be-done. It distracts us from where value is created and where partners come together, to deliver what no single entity can deliver on their own, in the best interests of the customer. And in partnering, in embedding collaboration in the client’s environment, in their process, organisations are adopting new capabilities. From sometimes accidental partners, they build the ecosystem by design and become…well the ideal partner themselves.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Saar Ben-Attar