Allowing AI to thrive: Why the correct culture is critical

by Lydia Coyle

Success happens in organisations whose culture embraces innovation, promotes an experimental, fail-fast mindset and harnesses the creative flair of its people. But it’s not easy to foster this environment. Financial targets don’t lend themselves to technology investments that might not see an immediate return; performance targets don’t tend to reward “failures”; and governance processes don’t make it easy to liberate projects from the bounds of bureaucracy or allow them to proceed at pace.

Without a strong culture the notion of incremental, iterative development is unworkable. The entire organisation must be enabled to trial new technology in a controlled manner by defining the phases of innovative change, pegging specific outputs to each phase and introducing regular goal-oriented checkpoints to control progression through the project.

The right culture ensures that:

People are not fearful of spending time, money and energy on projects that might not work, but people are also not frivolous and careless with innovation budgets

Those making financial and personal targets appreciate that real, impactful change requires investment over time

The stigma around failure is removed and replaced with a celebration of learning in a safe environment

These ideas and policies can be formalised within an overarching innovation framework, set at the top of the organisation. By defining the bounds of each development phase, streamlining governance steps and building the right capabilities internally, organisational expectations will be set appropriately and everyone will be empowered to effect change.

This, coupled with an investment to train the entire organisation in data science, cloud technologies and customer-driven value propositions will give people the knowledge, tools and environment that allow AI projects to thrive, but also the rigour required to take a service, product or process live within a bank.