Do Your Thing: Lessons from Banking’s Biggest Digital Transformation

by Ralph Hamers

When institutions reinvent themselves, the hardest work happens behind closed doors—this book opens them.
 
In an era of relentless technological disruption accelerated by AI, corporate leaders face a daunting how to remain competitive while upholding purpose, culture, and identity. 
 
Former CEO of ING and UBS Ralph Hamers understands this challenge well. Assuming leadership of ING in 2013, Ralph focused its strategy on reinvention—a resurrection driven through purpose, customer focus, and innovation. In Do Your Thing, Ralph describes the ING journey and distills practical lessons for leaders charged with driving transformational change. Featuring firsthand experience and compelling storytelling, this road map shows how to elevate your business by aligning purpose, strategy, culture, leadership, brand, and innovation. 
 
True transformation requires CEO-level ownership and maintaining consistency. Discover how to assess long-term industry shifts, deal with AI and beyond, execute immediate priorities, and drive meaningful, lasting transformation with this exclusive inside-look at corporate evolution.

321 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 19, 2026

Reviews

[Walter S]

What I appreciated most about this book is how relevant it feels to the way companies operate today. Ralph Hamers clearly understands the challenges leaders face in a fast-changing world, especially around digital transformation and innovation. The book is full of practical ideas about empowering teams and encouraging people to think differently. I also liked that it balanced ambition with responsibility and purpose. It does not read like a dry business manual at all. If you enjoy leadership books with a more modern and optimistic tone, this one is worth picking up.

[Reed K]

This is one of those business books that feels practical instead of just theoretical. Ralph Hamers combines leadership lessons with real insights about innovation, customer needs, and organizational culture. I appreciated that the book encourages leaders to stay flexible and open-minded while still staying grounded in values. The examples help keep the book engaging and make the ideas easier to apply. It is especially relevant for people navigating change in fast-moving industries. Overall, a smart and worthwhile read that feels very current.

[Jan Kamstra]

Welke organisatie staat niet voor een transformationele opgave?

Welke organisatie/wie kan zonder transformationeel leiderschap in een tijd waarin iedereen zichzelf, zijn werk of de manier waarop dit ‘georganiseerd’ is anders zal worden als gevolg van #AI?

Mijn mening: Geen!

Super inspirerend daarom ‘Do your thing | Lessons from banking’s biggest digital transformation’ van Ralph Hamers te lezen. In 2005/2006 bij ING Nederland zijn modus operandi mogen ervaren. De beweging van AI is anders, de beschreven transformatie van ING tot de verbeelding sprekend.

Mijn tip: Lezen!

“Transformation starts with the vision of who we are today and who we need to become to succeed in the future.” “It means changing how people behave, what they value, what they’re good at. It means asking them to learn new skills, let go of old habits, and take ownership of a new future.”

Transformatie vraagt: een ‘gedaanteverandering’!

Herkenbare hindernis bij het werkbaar maken van AI: “Organizational fragmentation. The problem isn’t building digital (lees: AI) capability. The problem is getting people to build it together, on shared platforms, with shared standards.” … “We need to contribute to the shelf, ..”

Opdracht: denk ‘congruent’ / in het ‘systeem’!




https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jankam...

[Alexander S]

I really enjoyed how practical and forward-thinking this book felt from start to finish. Ralph Hamers does a great job explaining leadership, innovation, and company culture without making it overly corporate or hard to follow. What stood out most to me was how much emphasis he puts on people, not just profits or technology. The stories and examples made the ideas feel real instead of theoretical. It also gave me a better understanding of how businesses can adapt without losing their identity. Definitely a strong read for anyone interested in leadership or modern business transformation.

[Emily Rose]

This book does a great job showing that innovation is not only about technology but also about people and mindset. Ralph Hamers shares lessons from his leadership experience in a way that feels honest and practical instead of self-congratulatory. I liked how much attention he gave to customer focus, collaboration, and long-term thinking. The tone is positive without sounding unrealistic, which made the book enjoyable to read. Some of the ideas seem simple at first, but they become more powerful the more you think about them. I would definitely recommend it to managers, entrepreneurs, and anyone leading teams.

[Gabi Y]

A lot of leadership books try too hard to sound groundbreaking, but this one feels more grounded and authentic. Ralph Hamers writes with clarity and keeps the focus on real-world leadership challenges and opportunities. I especially liked the sections about empowering employees and embracing change instead of fearing it. The book has a calm confidence to it that makes the advice easier to trust. It is thoughtful, motivating, and surprisingly easy to get through. I found myself highlighting more passages than I expected.

[Cathy S]

I expected this book to be heavy on business jargon, but it was actually very approachable and engaging. Ralph Hamers explains his ideas in a clear way that makes them easy to connect with, even if you are not in the corporate world. I liked the focus on adaptability, customer experience, and creating a culture where people feel trusted to contribute. The book also does a good job showing how innovation starts with mindset, not just technology. It gave me several ideas I could apply in my own work environment. Overall, a smart and inspiring read.

[Megan]

Really interesting read

[Book Reviewer]

Do Your Thing: Lessons from Banking’s Biggest Digital Transformation, by Ralph Hamers, is a book on business leadership, digital transformation, and banking management built around the reinvention of ING after the global financial crisis. Hamers takes readers from the bank’s years of government support, forced restructuring, layoffs, and battered employee confidence into the much more ambitious project of turning ING into a digital-first, customer-centered organization. What gives the story its energy is the scale of the undertaking as Hamers aspired to get tens of thousands of people across multiple countries to agree on what ING existed to do, how it would compete, how its leaders should behave, and what customers should actually experience.

The book’s central argument is that transformation comes from connecting all of those pieces and then staying remarkably consistent about them. That makes the ING story useful well beyond banking. Anyone interested in organizational change, business strategy, corporate culture, or transformation leadership will recognize the problem Hamers keeps returning to: having a vision is much easier than getting an enormous organization to live it every day.

The strongest parts of the book are where that big idea gets concrete. Hamers walks through the creation of the Think Forward strategy, ING’s purpose of “empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business,” the Orange Code that defined expected behaviors, and the shift from a product-centered bank to a customer-centered one. He is adept at showing how seemingly separate choices reinforced each other. Customer centricity led to simpler products and better digital experiences. The “Do Your Thing” brand gives an outward expression to ideas the organization had already spent years putting into practice. The progression Hamers presents makes this digital banking transformation story unusually satisfying because readers can watch strategy travel all the way from a CEO’s thinking to technology, organizational structure, office design, employee behavior, and finally the public-facing brand.

Hamers also makes the book feel personal enough to keep the management material from turning into a stack of frameworks. His recurring emphasis on consistency is persuasive because the later chapters show what consistency looks like when the decisions become harder. The discussion of sustainability and ING’s Terra Approach, for example, extends the book’s purpose-driven leadership argument into lending decisions, climate commitments, stakeholder expectations, and the messy reality of societal change. Hamers is willing to discuss adjustments, resistance, imperfect execution, and the tension between empowerment and control, which gives the change management and executive leadership lessons some welcome texture. His voice is confident and occasionally repetitive, especially when returning to purpose, customers, and consistency, but that repetition also mirrors his leadership philosophy: if an idea matters enough to organize a company around, people are going to need to hear it more than once.

The final section brings the ING experience into the age of artificial intelligence, and that turns out to be a natural destination for the book rather than an add-on. Hamers’ most useful contribution is the idea that leaders don’t need perfect foresight so much as a clear direction and an organization capable of moving, learning, and adjusting without losing its purpose. By the end, ING’s transformation feels less like a banking case study than a working example of how strategy becomes real through thousands of linked choices. For executives, transformation leaders, and readers interested in digital strategy, customer experience, agile organizations, corporate purpose, and the future of leadership, there’s a lot here worth carrying into the next big change.

[Nina Van Rijn]

Great account of how Ralph helped a bank in crisis not only heal, but turn out even better than before. The lessons in this book - about purpose, resilience, building a common lived experienced of employees, digital transformation, brand and more - are definitely applicable to other sectors besides banking.

I think this book can be of benefit to many leaders facing challenges such as disruption (AI), crisis management, defining purpose, et cetera. Hopefully the book will reach many more, so they can learn from it.

We would help the right people find the book greatly, if we'd leave a review via this link: https://bit.ly/4fRfrXi

[Synthia Salomon]

Leadership rebuilt the bank around a single purpose – helping people advance in their lives – reshaping who led, how success was measured, and how decisions got made.

Behind the scenes, teams tore down fragmented systems, consolidated platforms, and simplified products, trading polish for speed and iteration.

Change spread through visibility: physical evidence of inconsistency, unplanned tests of new spaces, and public launches that created accountability.

That same boldness carried into climate strategy, where ING chose to measure emissions and stay engaged with high-carbon clients rather than walk away.

[AMAO]

💯💯💯💯💯