Case Study · 365 Finance · Financial services · Building the management layer as the business scales
365 Finance's first leadership team defined one way of managing, the 365 way, and united behind it as the business scaled.
365 Finance's first leadership team defined one way of managing, the 365 way, and united behind it as the business scaled.One way of managing, defined together
One company, nine functions
- Sales
- Marketing
- Finance
- Product
- Underwriting
- Collections
- Merchant Processing
- Renewals
- Operations
10 leaders
the heads of department 365 developed together, drawn from nine functions that rarely overlap
Managing up
the change the cohort named most often: leaders now aligning their teams to where the business is going
9.0 / 10
how the cohort rated their Performance Partner across the programme's workshops
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Financial services provider
- Buyer
- Global Head of HR
The Brief
Develop 365 Finance's first cohort of leaders as the business scaled. The company had grown quickly on the strength of its lending business, and had recently built its first dedicated People function. Its heads of department had risen by being excellent at their work rather than through any formal management development, and 365 wanted to get ahead of that on purpose: surface how its leaders actually managed, then unite them around one shared way of leading the business could call its own, built around the real situations they face inside a growing lender, and do it across functions that rarely overlap rather than one function at a time.
The Outcome
Across the year, ten of 365's heads of department surfaced how each of them led and built one shared way of managing that is theirs. Leaders from underwriting, collections, sales, finance, product and marketing, who rarely sit in the same room, found a common language for leading a team that now crosses the company. It was the first formal management development 365 had ever run, and it gave a scaling business one defined way of managing rather than nine.
From the leadership
The session exposed a gap between our overall business goals and how some team leads understand their direct impact on achieving them. Several people continued discussions afterwards, which is a great sign of real impact.
It's already shaping how we align leadership layers to business objectives.”
Hayley Williams
Global Head of HR, 365 Finance
01 / The trigger
365 Finance grew fast as a lender. As it scaled, it chose to define how it manages on purpose, one way the whole business could share, rather than leave it to chance.
In a fast-growing financial services business, people earn their progression by being excellent at the work, by writing strong credit, by closing deals, by keeping collections clean. The best of them become heads of department, and almost overnight the job changes from doing the work to leading the people who do it. 365 Finance saw this clearly as it scaled, and rather than leave its new leaders to pick management up on their own, the company decided to develop it deliberately, as a craft in its own right.
365 Finance had grown quickly into one of the UK's well-known revenue-based lenders, funding small and medium businesses faster than a traditional bank could. Growth like that changes a company. Teams that were a handful of people become departments, and the people running them are leading at a scale they have not led at before. Around the same time, 365 built its first dedicated People function and brought in a Global Head of HR, and one of the first opportunities she wanted to seize was developing the company's leaders properly.
The ambition was specific. 365 wanted its heads of department, across every part of the business, to define and share one way of leading people that was theirs: aligning their teams to where the company is going, coaching rather than simply directing, delegating with real accountability, and handling the performance and behaviour conversations that so many managers find hard. And it wanted that built around the realities of a scaling lender, where a small-business mindset has to grow into a larger-company one, rather than borrowed from a generic course.
02 / Built for a scaling lender
Not an off-the-shelf course. A programme built around 365, and grounded in what its leaders actually faced.
10X did not arrive with a fixed programme to install. The work began with discovery: the Manager Strength Index, a diagnostic that surfaced how each of 365's leaders already managed and where they wanted to grow, alongside Team Voice interviews with the people themselves, so the development aimed at the real gaps rather than at assumptions. From there, a 10X Performance Partner shaped the programme around the company itself, anchored to 365's own priorities and the goals the business was driving toward as it scaled, so managers worked on real company objectives rather than case studies. The examples, the language and the focus were all drawn from the situations 365's heads of department meet running teams inside a growing lender, not lifted from a generic template.
How it worked
An embedded Performance Partner, and five management capabilities built around the business.
Rather than a trainer who turns up, delivers and leaves, 365 had a Performance Partner embedded across the engagement, reachable between workshops and working on the real problems already on its leaders' plates rather than adding to the pile.
The work was built around five capabilities that matter most to a head of department in a scaling financial services business, worked through with the company's own examples across a year of workshops, two of them in person and the rest virtual, so a sales leader and a financial controller could take the same idea straight back to their teams.
The 365 way, in five capabilities
Managing up
aligning their teams to where the business is going
Building professional relationships
trust built deliberately, across functions
Delegating and driving accountability
ownership handed over without losing the thread
Coaching and developing talent
the question before the answer
Managing performance and behaviour
the conversations that count, handled early
03 / In one room
Underwriting next to marketing, collections next to sales, working the same problem.
This was not nine separate conversations. It brought ten of 365's heads of department together in one cohort, and the rooms were mixed on purpose, so a head of underwriting worked a real management problem next to a sales manager, a financial controller and a product manager. People saw how teams quite unlike their own handle the same challenges, and the breakout rooms, where the cohort traded real scenarios from their own week, became the part they valued most.
A picture of the work: the many different ways of managing across the business, converging into one, the 365 way.
The cohort
10
heads of department
9
functions
5
capabilities
1
cohort, the first ever
Who was in the room
Revenue & growth
Sales Director, Sales Manager and Head of Marketing, leading the front line of a growing lender
Risk & lending
Head of Underwriting, Head of Collections and Head of Merchant Processing, running the engine of the business
Finance & operations
Group Financial Controller and Operations Manager, holding the scaling company together
Product & renewals
Product Manager and Head of Renewals, building and keeping the relationships that compound
A moment from the room
Asked to pick a priority to work on together, two breakout groups landed independently on the very same company goal, then realised they each saw it completely differently: the sales leaders through the top line, the finance leaders through what would make it scalable. Same goal, different lenses. The room left understanding how the whole business connects, and what one shared way of leading it would need to hold.
It really made me a lot more intentional with my management style. Thoroughly engaging, with a good pace and lots of anecdotes from colleagues in the breakout rooms. Encouraging and inspiring throughout.
Chris Hayward, Head of Marketing, 365 Finance
Two things came out of that at once. 365 began to define one way of managing that is its own, with a sales leader and a financial controller now describing good leadership in the same words. And the cohort gained connection, heads of department who rarely overlap now comparing notes on the same problems rather than solving them alone.
04 / What changed
The change shows up in how 365's leaders now lead their teams.
The clearest evidence at 365 is not a single number. It is the shift in how its heads of department lead day to day, and the one that came up most was the move from fixing to coaching. The instinct to jump in with the answer started giving way to asking the question and giving people the room to find it themselves, with managers describing catching themselves mid-instruction and changing tack.
Alongside it, the cohort returned again and again to managing up: thinking harder about where the business is heading and making the work their teams do visible to the people above them. Managers who had recently been promoted over former colleagues talked about handling that step up with more confidence, and one described the realisation that leadership was not a fixed trait but a muscle they could train.
Underneath the individual shifts, the cohort now reaches for the same playbook: the way 365 has decided it wants to lead, described in the same language whichever part of the business a manager runs.
What changed in practice
A head of department caught themselves about to hand a team member the answer, stopped, and asked how they would tackle it instead.
Another began sending their people straight to senior decision-makers rather than fielding everything themselves; the work moved faster, and the team came back proud of what they had handled.
A manager newly promoted over former colleagues learned to steady themselves first, choosing their words with more care before a hard conversation.
Leading differently
In their own words.
“It's really affected how I interact with my direct report. I've been beating back the advice monster, asking far more open-ended questions and giving them the room to think for themselves.”
“Great level of discussion involving real-life scenarios that the team has encountered. We shared feedback and ideas that everyone can use day to day when delegating tasks to help drive accountability.”
Across the programme's workshops, the cohort rated their Performance Partner 9.0 out of 10, with six of the eight rated sessions scoring 9 or higher, a high and steady mark across a full year.
05 / Start here
If you run a financial services business that has scaled fast, and your heads of department have risen on the strength of the work rather than through any formal management development, that is the work we do: surfacing how your managers already lead, and uniting them around one way of managing that is yours. The same is true if you are building a People function and want one shared standard of management across the business from the start, rather than one function at a time.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.