Executive Summary
In the fourth episode of Next Best Action, Jay Tkachuk joins us to unpack a title that has never been codified. Jay has spent 18 years leading digital in financial services, including 14 years at Security Service Federal Credit Union and more recently at Golden 1 Credit Union. Everyone around the executive table knows what a chief marketing officer does. Ask five institutions what their chief digital officer owns and you will get five different answers.
Jay’s argument runs through the whole conversation. Digital touches everything, so the role only works when leadership defines the mandate, the authority, and the reporting line before day one. Skip that work and turf wars with marketing, IT, and the branch are close to inevitable. The sharpest point arrives near the end: most organizations hiring a digital leader have never decided whether they want a change agent who pushes through and departs in three years, or a builder who makes digital part of the organizational DNA. Those are two different hires. Most job descriptions cannot tell you which one they describe.
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Key Takeaways
- One Role, Two Jobs: A digital leader heads the transformation and runs the daily digital operations of the institution at the same time. That demands working fluency in technology, product, strategy, and marketing, because the role touches every one of those verticals whether the org chart admits it or not.
- Setup Decides Success: Clarity of mandate, authority, and accountability before the leader starts matters more than the leader’s talent. Jay owned the website at one institution while marketing owned its content, and the friction that followed was built into the structure, not the personalities. He pushes for defining the RACI up front, before the collisions start.
- The Reporting Line Follows the Mandate: If the mandate is transforming the organization, the role belongs in the CEO suite. If the job is running the digital channel, reporting to a COO or CMO can work. Jay holds one firm line: digital should not report to IT, because the two disciplines run on different incentives and different philosophies.
- Digital Became the Front Door: Digital has moved from alternative channel to the first experience every prospective member or customer has with the institution. The pandemic pushed people to digital and most never went back, but branches and contact centers did not die. The channels converged instead, down to the same account-opening platform running in the branch and on the website.
- Transformations Fail on the Human Factor: More than half of transformations fail, and the cause is rarely the technology. Egos, turf, and unwilling lieutenants stall the work, and only the CEO can arbitrate. Without visible CEO backing, the digital leader is dead in the water.
- Architecture Shapes the Roadmap: The technical architecture already in place dictates how fast an institution can move and what it can absorb. A pragmatic leader translates that baseline into a roadmap paced to the organization, rather than chasing the AI magic pill. The same discipline applies to vendors: look under the hood, talk to their other clients, and be decisive about saying no.
- Know What You Are Hiring For: A change agent who arrives, pushes through hard change, and departs in three years is a different hire from a builder who makes digital permanent. Most organizations have never asked themselves which one they want. Jay’s parting challenge makes the stakes personal: every banking leader should build an AI agent, no matter what it does.
Full Episode Transcript
Alex Jiménez: Welcome to Next Best Action. My guest today is Jay Tkachuk. Jay is a seasoned digital banking leader with 18 years of experience, including at Security Service Federal Credit Union and more recently at Golden 1 Credit Union. Welcome, Jay, and thank you for joining me.
Jay Tkachuk: Hello, Alex. I’m glad to be here.
Alex Jiménez: Given your experience, and you and I have known each other for quite a bit, I thought the right topic to talk to you about is what makes a strong chief digital officer or head of digital. The title has never been codified. Whether it’s a head of digital, a chief digital officer, or an EVP of digital, there are all kinds of variations. That’s what I want to talk to you about.
Jay Tkachuk: That sounds right up my alley.
Alex Jiménez: The title means something different at every institution. After nearly two decades in the role, how do you define it? What is the appropriate way for us to talk about that leader?
Jay Tkachuk: To me, a chief digital officer, head of digital, whatever the title, is the leader heading the digital transformation while also running the digital operations of the company. It is a person who uses digital frameworks and capabilities to solve strategic problems and achieve strategic goals.
Alex Jiménez: And that means you have to be a technologist, a product person, a strategist, maybe a marketer. You are front office and back office all at once, right?
Jay Tkachuk: All of the above. The mandates of CDOs differ based on the organization and its needs, but yes, to be a successful digital leader you have to know the adjacent niches really well, because there is so much overlap. Pragmatically speaking, you will be impacting those verticals heavily with the transformation efforts and technologies you bring to bear to achieve the strategies defined by the CEO and the board.
Alex Jiménez: When I was a head of digital, I used to joke that I was head of digital with a big D, not a little d. That was to draw a difference from what I was seeing at other organizations, where the head of digital really managed the online banking team and the mobile app they had just rolled out, because those were the early days. Somehow I also wound up running social media. I ran the contact center. I ran parts of marketing, which I thought was strange because I had no background in marketing. The marketing team said, just take our website, you do it. And I owned a lot of the products, including cards. That was unique at the time, but I’m now seeing more chief digital officers getting involved in all of those areas. Maybe they partner with marketing, or maybe they manage digital marketing outright. What are the interesting permutations you’ve seen out there, or that you have had?
Jay Tkachuk: I’ve seen all kinds and I’ve had all kinds, but the major pattern has been that the CDO manages the digital channel. Depending on the mandate, if there is an actual transformation mandate from the inside out, then process architecture, knowledge management, and change management get attached to it as well.
Also, in my experience, it became very apparent that the way C-level leadership sets this role up front will define how successful it will be. Otherwise, the turf wars with marketing, with IT, with other lines of business are frankly almost inevitable. I have had situations where I owned the digital channel, including the website, but the content on the website was owned by marketing. If there is a disparity in skill sets between the digital team and the marketing team in how well they understand digital, that creates real friction.
So it is very important how you set it up, what the mandate is, the clarity of the role, and the level of authority, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Everybody understands what the CMO is. Chief marketing officer, everybody gets that, or chief information officer, or chief technology officer. Chief digital officer, because digital touches literally everything, has to be defined based on what the organization is trying to solve. Otherwise things will inevitably collide, and friction will be generated where there really shouldn’t be any.
Alex Jiménez: Absolutely. I had friction with the branch. I had friction with HR. That came about when social media became part of digital, but HR managed LinkedIn. That’s where the friction came from. You never know.
Jay Tkachuk: Exactly. The moment there is turf overlap that is not defined, friction is going to happen. I’m a big proponent of RACI. I like doing that work right up front. If something is undefined, let’s define it and figure it out going forward. Not to say it’s always successful, because people are people, things change, and people have agendas. You also have to be a pretty good politician to be successful in this role.
Alex Jiménez: I’d agree with that. The other part of this is who the CDO reports to, whether directly to the CEO or to the CIO or CTO. I’ve seen organizations where they report to the CMO. I reported to the head of retail banking, even though I supported the other business units. Does placement matter?
Jay Tkachuk: It matters based on the objective of the role. If the objective is true transformation of the organization from the inside out, then yes, this role has to report to the CEO. It is a role of paramount importance. If it’s something more tactical, really just managing the digital channel, then it makes sense to report to another chief executive, whether that’s the chief marketing officer, chief strategy officer, or chief operating officer.
I do have a pretty firm stance on digital not reporting to IT. Even though the two are deeply integrated, probably the closest partners, with a lot of overlap, the incentives and philosophies of these two technologist fields are very different. That causes problems. There are CIOs and CTOs who are very progressive and very digitally savvy, and in those organizations you frankly don’t need a chief digital officer, because that need is served. But on average, from what I’ve seen and experienced, there is a very strong case for digital not reporting to the CIO or CTO and instead being another business vertical.
Alex Jiménez: I agree with you. It makes me think of a chief data officer I worked with, another CDO, who did not report to the CIO for the very same reason. Some roles are transformative as such, and both of those roles really need to be raised up to the CEO.
Jay Tkachuk: It also matters whether you’re a first-generation CDO or a second. Are you following in the footsteps of somebody who already set it up, so you have to evolve and manage it, or are you starting from scratch? It depends on the situation. But typically, I would say it belongs in the CEO suite.
Alex Jiménez: Let’s switch gears toward your experience. You were at Security Service Federal Credit Union for quite a long time, I think 14 years. Like me, you were there when we started this thing called digital. We used to be the alternative channel, the place where some people went, where the young people were. Now the digital channel is the main channel. What has changed the most in that time?
Jay Tkachuk: Great question. The attitude has definitely shifted. The pandemic played a huge role, when everybody had to go digital, and the majority of people who did never went back. There were also a lot of misconceptions in the early days. We’ll just close branches, branches will become irrelevant, everyone will bank on their phones. That turned out not to be the case, and I knew it wouldn’t be, but you have to see it play out. People are very social creatures. We need social validation when we make important decisions, and money is second only to health. Branches are not going away anytime soon, and neither is the call center.
Digital truly evolved from a very narrow mindset in the executive suite, on device, in a browser, in an app, to omnichannel. Now everything is digital. Digital is the first experience your potential members or clients have, and it sets the tone for everything that comes afterward. Continuity of message, experience, and service across all channels has become a must. And surprisingly, we are not as far along as I would have thought. There is still a lot of interruption between channels.
All of that is rapidly evolving into a single cohesive suite. I won’t say uniform, but it maintains continuity, because that is a necessity in this day and age. Concepts like the digital branch have evolved, where you can do everything or almost everything, short of handling cash, on your device, but there is a human element embedded in it. When you need it, you press a button and talk to somebody who gives you validation, advice, or assistance. Otherwise you would have to drive to a branch or pick up the phone. The convergence is happening. That is the major change.
In the early days, as you remember, digital was the stepchild. It was just for the young folks, and the call center and branches were the main channels. Over time they all became equal. I won’t elevate one over the other, but they have become equal, and the majority of executives I’ve dealt with see them that way. It is now one cohesive layer of experience that must be congruent across the board.
Alex Jiménez: I also think it’s interesting that a lot of digital technologies can now be applied to the branch. It used to be that the process to open an account at a branch was significantly different from what you did on the website. In many cases we are now using the very same platform. Not always, but often.
Jay Tkachuk: It is exactly the same platform. And all these new technologies like AI have evolved to be embedded in the process. They are transparent to the member or customer, but they are there assisting the branch personnel, and especially the call center personnel. All of that is digital, and all of that is typically the purview of the chief digital officer, working with technology and with the other channels to evaluate, embed, and develop those experiences so they are frictionless across the board.
Alex Jiménez: It used to be that the head of digital was also kind of the head of innovation, and in many organizations that continues to be the case. You’re busy running the digital channel and all the activity that goes through it, but you’re also servicing technology that can be applied to other channels. That requires working with marketing, operations, the branch. How did you work with partners in those areas who might say, buzz off, you have your own channel?
Jay Tkachuk: That’s where the politician part comes in handy. Not to say I’m great at it. I’m not, and it’s something I’m still learning. You have to bring people along. You have to have conversations and build relationships. Cultivate trust, so that when they run into a problem, they trust you enough to come and ask, hey, I have this problem, I don’t know how to solve it, can you help me? And then you partner and do it together.
Early in my career I made the mistake of hearing that and thinking, great, I’ll run with it. No. You cannot do this in a silo. You have to bring people together, because it is their problem and it is their channel. Communication is key. And you especially have to bring the CEO along. That is paramount, because transformations are very difficult, risky endeavors. More than half end in failure, and most of that is because of the human factor, not because of technology or organizational capabilities.
A capable CDO works very hard to bring the peers and the bosses along, to make sure they understand what is happening. Let’s define the what, and once we define the what, let’s figure out the how together. Does it always work? No. People are people. Egos get involved. Defending the turf gets involved. In those difficult situations, the CEO has to step in. They are the ultimate arbiter. And if the transformation of the organization is that important to them, they will have to deal with any residual resistance. Because transformation is exactly that. It is changing how companies operate. That requires acceptance of change, adoption of change, and expanding your thinking in a way that now involves digital.
Back in the day, digital marketing was Google AdWords, SEO, and social media. That was it. Now there is GEO, there are CDPs, all kinds of new systems merging with the CRM field. All of that is digital, and all of that is marketing, and all of that is technology and operations. Building those relationships with your peers is absolutely important.
Alex Jiménez: Absolutely. And getting the backing of the CEO is, to me, so important. A couple of years ago I worked with a credit union where the CEO was very much about transforming, very much about where he saw the credit union going. But his attitude was, let my lieutenants get there. Half of them were getting there and the other half were not. We raised the issue and he said, well, if they don’t get there, then we’re not going to do it. Wow. Okay. So what value do you bring to this discussion? Because you’re the CEO, right?
Jay Tkachuk: That right there sounds like a failed transformation, because the human factor interfered.
Alex Jiménez: Absolutely. And sometimes it’s not that they got in the way. They just were not willing to push it.
Jay Tkachuk: Exactly. And that is one of the major misconceptions about digital, that it is easy. It is not. It is very complex. Change is difficult and expensive. I have seen cases where leadership expects that you just come in, and over the next 12 to 24 months there will be all kinds of digital whiz-bang, and it will all be great and we’re done. That is not the case.
Alex Jiménez: Yeah, I had that situation once. Which brings me to another subject. You have to constantly look at the new technologies coming up, which also means you get pitched crazy amounts. Even now, where I sit, not at a bank, I still get pitched things where I think, you realize I don’t work at a bank anymore. But it is a significant part of the job to understand the vendors and the technology. How do you go about building a partner ecosystem? I would say all banks and credit unions, even the big boys, have to partner.
Jay Tkachuk: They do. And there are two keys here. Number one, a very tight relationship with the chief technology officer or chief information officer. And two, a true understanding of the technical architecture that is already there, that you have to work with. All CDOs coming into an organization will be faced with whatever is already there. In my experience, the technical architecture shapes and dictates how the organization functions. If everything is wired to the core, any new implementation is very difficult. It takes forever and it is very expensive.
Technology expertise, data expertise, marketing and product, just like you said, every CDO has to cultivate those. But you also need the mind of a strategist. Understand the strategic goals, the strategic plan of the company, the vision of the CEO and the board, and how to translate that into an actionable, practical roadmap. Anybody can chase new shiny. That typically leads to disaster. You have to be pragmatic about the architecture you have, translate that baseline into the future roadmap, and use that prism to identify the technologies and capabilities you need at a pace the organization can sustain.
Every organization is different. Some can move faster than others, but even they have limits. You also have to know what else is going on. If you are trying to implement an AI-driven centralized knowledge management platform at the same time your IT counterparts are trying to replace the call center stack, it is probably a bad time to do something like that. The organization has only so many resources. Don’t create yet another silo. Digital is all-pervasive, and as a digital leader you have to think that way. Understand what your peers are doing and what their roadmaps look like. How do you assist and augment them, help them achieve their goals, while at the same time moving digital forward across the organization with your own roadmap?
That holistic mindset is paramount. Through that prism you can look at technologies and understand, I need this type of capability to solve this type of problem for these reasons. Some organizations have great in-house development capabilities. You can argue that if something is their competitive advantage, they should build it in-house, and the other stuff they can buy or rent. Others don’t have that muscle. Then what is the vision? Are they always going to be vendor dependent, and are they comfortable with that? Or do they want to take at least some of that destiny back under their control?
Then you start discussing it with potential vendors, and very quickly in those conversations it becomes apparent whether they can do it or not. Having been in this seat a long time, I know salespeople can be great at smoke and mirrors and telling you what you want to hear. You have to apply critical thinking, look under the hood, talk to their other clients, and do your research to truly understand whether this is what you are looking for. And if it isn’t, you have to be very decisive, say no thank you, and move on to find something else.
Alex Jiménez: So what do you wish the executives who hire for this role understood before they started the search? I see some really interesting job descriptions.
Jay Tkachuk: Every organization is different, so it is difficult to give a uniform answer. But primarily, I think they need to be honest with themselves about what they are looking for. Are they looking for a change agent who will come in for two or three years, push all kinds of change through, step on toes, break eggs, make everybody mad, and then depart? Or are they looking for somebody who will build a sustainable capability and make digital part of their DNA? Those are two very different things.
In my experience, most organizations have not even thought about that. They don’t know what they want. They know they want digital, they know they want transformation, they know they want to be competitive. But how to get there, they haven’t decided, or they defer the decision until they have a person in front of them.
I have been both. My preference is obviously the latter, to be that organic, long-term part of the organization that makes digital part of the mindset, part of the organizational DNA. But if you have to be a change engine, at least you should know that in advance. That level of reflection is what I wish most companies would do before they go looking for a digital officer or head of digital. They need to understand what they want to get out of this.
Alex Jiménez: That’s great. And that probably applies to just about every role out there.
Jay Tkachuk: Yes, it does.
Alex Jiménez: So let’s switch gears a little bit and do a bunch of lightning round questions. Just tell me what comes up quickly. We are not going to discuss these at length, and you can pass if you want. What’s one book every banking leader should read?
Jay Tkachuk: Wow. One book every banking leader should read. I think it is How Big Things Get Done, written by a Danish researcher who studied huge projects and why they succeed or fail. The main gist is that you have to truly do your discovery and plan. When you take on major digital efforts, or any major effort, most companies are not doing enough discovery, and they end up in a quagmire of over budget, over time, stretched resources, and projects colliding with each other, because they did not plan properly. Really good book to read.
Alex Jiménez: All right, we’ll check it out. Coffee or tea?
Jay Tkachuk: Tea. Green tea in particular.
Alex Jiménez: What’s one thing banking leaders need to stop doing right now?
Jay Tkachuk: Chasing new shiny. Everyone is running around looking for some AI magic pill that will solve all the problems, and that is not reality. AI is a set of very awesome capabilities if used properly, especially this iteration, generative AI and agentic AI. You can do a lot of great things and boost your productivity dramatically. But you also have to understand its limitations, and that understanding is not there for the majority of people who have not taken the time to really study and explore what this thing can properly do.
Alex Jiménez: What’s the most unusual thing you’ve done to improve team culture? You worked at credit unions. There’s always something.
Jay Tkachuk: You should have warned me about this. I have taken people to do laser tag. Sometimes, especially when there is friction among teams, a good friendly game of shooting laser beams at each other goes a long way to relieve that pressure and build camaraderie. We are all just people trying to do the right thing.
Alex Jiménez: All right, one last question. What is the one step forward you would challenge every banking leader listening to this to take after this episode?
Jay Tkachuk: Learn how to build an AI agent.
Alex Jiménez: Oh, I love that. That’s a good one.
Jay Tkachuk: Just build one. It doesn’t matter what it does.
Alex Jiménez: Well, thank you, Jay, for joining us. Slava Ukraini.
Jay Tkachuk: Slava Ukraini. Thank you.
Alex Jiménez: We’ll have you back another time.
Jay Tkachuk: Absolutely. Thank you, Alex. This was a pleasure. Anytime.