The Big Shift

PODCAST

The Big Shift

A fast, unfiltered download of how companies in Singapore, Vietnam and Southeast Asia are making a big shift in their approach to market, operating models, team composition, leadership style - leveraging new technologies and skills.Real cases, real impact, why it works and what leaders can learn from it.

The Big Shift

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Host

Moritz Kaffsack

20 years leading organizations through commercial growth and organisational change.Founder of Flexer - transformation and capability building.Organizer of the PCA Catalyst Fractional Business Accelerator.Founder of Portfolio Careers in Asia - the region's leading community of senior independent professionals.Connect on Linkedin:

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Trailer

The Trailer to The Big Shift Podcast - with Moritz Kaffsack. A fast, unfiltered download of how companies in Singapore, Vietnam and Southeast Asia are making a big shift in their approach to market, operating models, team composition, leadership style - leveraging new technologies and skills.Real cases, real impact, why it works and what leaders can learn from it.

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Intro

The introduction to The Big Shift Podcast - with Moritz Kaffsack. A fast, unfiltered download of how companies in Singapore, Vietnam and Southeast Asia are making a big shift in their approach to market, operating models, team composition, leadership style - leveraging new technologies and skills.Real cases, real impact, why it works and what leaders can learn from it.

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Episode 1 - Angeline Yeap

The Inside Job — How Transformation Really Happens in a Global Bank

"You can't just pivot a global bank by telling a bunch of developers: 'Hey, build me a new app."Angeline Yeap has spent 25 years driving transformation across DBS, Citi, HSBC, and UOB — in Singapore, London, Miami, and across Asia. The thread running through all of it isn't a product or a market. It's change. And after leading some of the most significant digital shifts in Asian banking, her conclusion is clear: the technology is rarely the hard part.In conversation with Moritz Kaffsack, Angeline walks us through what it actually took — from building the strategic case for mobile-first banking in 2016 before most banks saw it coming, to getting rid of the 50-page steering committee deck and replacing it with a one-hour weekly cadence where data outranked title. She talks about the moment she realised the HiPPO in the room — the Highest Paid Person's Opinion — was the single biggest obstacle to moving fast, and what she did about it.The conversation gets into the operational realities that management books don't cover: how to assemble a transformation team that actually has the backing of the organisation behind it, why change management is as important as the build itself, and what it looks like to bring 90 team heads onto a weekly call so no one hears about a new system for the first time at launch.Angeline also shares where she's seen transformations fail — and she offers a clear framework for what genuine transformation leadership looks like.Tune in to hear:Why the HiPPO kills transformation — and the specific moves that neutralise itHow to build a change team that moves fast without leaving the organisation behindWhy the most sustainable change always comes from within the organisationThe difference between transformation that sticks and innovation theatre — and the signals that tell you which one you're in

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Episode 2 - April Ann Fadallan

Pilot Purgatory — Why Most AI Transformations Stall and What Actually Moves Them

Pilot Purgatory — Why Most AI Transformations Stall and What Actually Moves Them"You end up with many pilots, but you're not able to scale. Because you're not solving the right problem."April Fadallan has spent 20 years as a translator between data, analytics, AI, and business — most significantly as part of the team that built what turned into a Harvard Business Review case study for AI-led transformation in banking. When she joined DBS's Analytics Centre of Excellence in 2018, there were no blueprints, no playbooks, and no roadmap to copy. What the team built over the next five years generated SGD 370 million in incremental value from AI in 2023 alone.In conversation with Moritz Kaffsack, April walks us through what it actually took to build the DBS analytics capability. She introduces the concept of the analytics translator — the role she herself played — whose job is to bridge the gap between technical teams building in the dark and business units who will only support what solves a problem they actually have. Without that bridge, she argues, pilots stay pilots - what McKinsey calls ‘pilot purgatory’.We talk about the specific mechanics of how to choose where to start — an impact versus effort matrix applied not to use cases but to the data infrastructure beneath them. She shares how her team cracked open the FX business by abandoning assumptions entirely, running a systematic experimentation framework, and letting customer behaviour — not opinion — drive the strategy. The result was significant growth in one of banking's most saturated, competitive categories.Looking ahead, she sees the next frontier clearly: autonomous agents handling payments, underwriting, and transactions on behalf of consumers — agent-to-agent commerce that reframes KYC as KYA, knowing your agents. The banks moving fastest are already past co-pilots and into governance design for what comes next. For everyone else, her advice is unambiguous: build your data infrastructure, build your AI governance, and don't treat change management as something you get to once the technology is ready.What you'll take away from this episode:Why 70% of AI transformation is a people and organisation problem — and what that means practically for how you structure the workThe analytics translator role: what it is, why it's the most important hire in any AI initiative, and what happens without itHow to escape pilot purgatory — the specific discipline of choosing use cases that align with what the business will actually fund and supportWhy homegrown change makers outperform external teams in driving sustainable transformation — and when to bring outsiders in anywayWhat the most advanced banks are building right now, and why AI governance is the capability that will separate leaders from laggards in the next 12 months

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