SSON Podcast with Irena Stropnik, Scotia Bank – on Lean Tricks

"We have to make sure that we evolve and really do what our customers need." 

Irena Stropnik is the Director and Team Lead for Optimization at Scotia Bank. She joins Seth Adler to share that her primary focus is today around Lean, and how it applies to Shared Services. Her initial take, when given the Lean brief, was "We're not in manufacturing" – but the empowerment aspect quickly won her over, though it was challenging: "In hierarchical organizations like a bank, Lean turns things upside down a bit!"

When Irena thinks about optimization, she says it’s focusing on sizing the organization correctly, ensuring that the enterprise is working efficiently, delivering value to customers and, of course, constantly thinking about continuous improvement. While Irena says Lean isn’t about technology per se, she and the team work closely with internal and external technology partners as digitalization and robotics are big parts of the efficiency solution.

She did initially need to turn things upside down, a role for which she was well suited as she was coming from Shared Services. And she was perfectly suited for Shared Services, as it turns out, as she was displaced from her very first position shortly after her start.

Listen in...