Popular

Popular is a heritage US bank with a 130-year history, 10,000 employees and a deep-rooted history in Puerto Rico. Despite its strong market position, emerging competition, shifting customer expectations and digital innovation created a critical inflection point. The bank needed to shift from a traditional, process-heavy culture with a lack of accountability and slow decision-making to one characterized by agility, pace, and customer centricity to ensure sustainable growth. The cost of inaction was a potential decline in relevance in an increasingly fast-paced global landscape. The goal was to ignite transformation from a position of strength before any market decline could take hold.

We adopted a human-centered, inclusive design approach where “everyone is an active ingredient,” engaging 35% of the organization across all levels and regions to co-create the future. Central to this was aligning leadership and the Board through a "Leadership Culture Experience" and "Culture Labs," ensuring the SMT was ready to lead with impact and model the new purpose: “We put people at the center of progress”. To activate with impact, we mobilized a movement of 225 Culture Champions and delivered experiential development sessions to over 1,500 leaders, building the capability and confidence to create environments where the culture could thrive. 

We further embedded the culture into the employee experience (EX) by refreshing over 70 people tools and processes, most notably moving away from static competencies to a simplified performance management approach that measures behaviors linked directly to values. By integrating values-based recognition and a new "People Promise" centered on belonging and opportunity, we ensured the culture was enacted in every "moment that matters". In the 2025/6 "Accelerate" phase, we partnered with the Executive Team to prioritize target behaviors aligned to Strategic Objectives, using micro-actions and high-impact comms and culture influencers to drive the strategic transformation forward.

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