Driving Digital Transformation From The Inside Out

As CIO, Carol Juel helped “birth” Synchrony, a GE Capital spinoff, seven years ago. We spoke about that journey and her vision for her new role as CTO, COO and EVP for the consumer financial services company.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Synchrony has an interesting backstory. You were part of the team that led it. Can you elaborate?

Synchrony is the consumer finance IPO out of GE Capital, and as the CIO at GE Capital Retail Finance, I was part of the team that led the spinoff. We work directly with retail partners on programs that are retail or digitally based. We also have a direct bank, and we have a CareCredit platform direct to consumers, and in healthcare. But the IPO was an opportunity to take that business out of GE. We birthed a Fortune 200 company on July 31st, 2014. We’re now coming up on our seventh anniversary.

As we were creating the company, we rebuilt the technology foundation, which was an unbelievable experience for a Fortune 200 sized company! It was an incredible level of investment. I still remember the meeting where I went in with the ask, “If this is what we think we want to be, this is what I think we need to do.” At that meeting, which was scheduled for an hour, just 20 minutes into it, the CFO said, “Go make it happen.” Those are the moments from your career that you remember.

So that’s one of the biggest lessons from that time before you got to your current role. How did being a CIO prepare you for your current position?

If you worked in technology in the last decade, you had to be adaptable, resilient and a lifelong learner. Those are the keys to a successful journey. Although it’s been seven years since the IPO, we still need to move quickly to respond to what’s happening and to do that, we need a strong team. One of the beautiful things when we became Synchrony, other than our size and skill, is that we could attract a lot of outstanding talent. Then you want to make sure that talent can continue to grow, and that’s where the hard work starts around the culture.

How did you build the culture?

It’s best if you build the expectations. Everyone comes for the adrenaline, but then how do we convert that to long-term team strategy? In the early days, there was transformation. And I think that’s a very overused word, but true, and it became, “What is the journey you’re on? The one, three, or five-year plans, how are you adapting?”

When you talk about technology and how quickly it’s changing, it can also be scary to people.  So we also focused on leadership communication and engaging people around career development. If two years from now my skills aren’t going to be relevant, how am I continuing to stay current as my job evolves?

Everybody needs to come in with tech skills, of course, but you also need  adaptability and resiliency and what I call curiosity. So how did you hire for those particular skills?

Natural curiosity is the most important thing. You have to want to be able to do something different a year from now. I ask people, “What do you do on your own time?” The answer tells me a lot.  I also consider it essential to understand how you got to where you are. If someone can tell me their story, then I can recognize if they know how to  adapt and respond.

I think a diverse team is critical.