In this article we discuss 2020, digitization, the future of AI and embracing change, together with interviewing Kees Klein, a leader in Change Management for Data and Analytics at ING Bank.
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This is about Cultural Change.
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– Kees Klein, ING
With forward by Rob Lambert – Founder Leap Beyond
2020 was certainly a year of change. Global disruptions reaching almost every corner of the world. For our contacts across multiple industries, the internal reactions to the new situation have been surprising. Surprising in two opposite ways.
In our observations, several organizations with large innovation programs and development initiatives reacted by effectively postponing, reducing, delaying, or cancelling ongoing innovation programs, in favor of consolidating down to “core business”. Whereas other organizations within the same industry, often sister-companies within the same markets, reacted by accelerating innovation, doubling-down on digitization at an unprecedented level, and pivoting to digital service models.
Why?
These organizations are different more fundamentally, in how, where, and how far they embrace change.
Over the same period, Harvard Business Review (HBR) has researched and published their latest review of data-driven programs, advanced analytics and AI-centric innovation. Entitled, ominously, “Why is it so hard to become a data driven company?”
The words of HBR echo the findings of McKinsey, Gartner, and others, that becoming data driven, and experiencing business success from data initiatives, present a major challenge for most organizations. Today some very notable, well known, organizations are fundamentally data driven, and derive exceptional value from data. Whereas some other organizations even in the same industry and market, with similar customer base and access to data, simply do not.
Why?
These organizations are different more fundamentally, in how, where, and how far they embrace change.
Machine Learning, AI, is a fast developing field. As a collective we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. We are firmly in the rapid growth stage of development and understanding of AI. As the possibilities of new technologies increase, they compound upon each other to realize new previously impossible tools, which combine several new technologies. Thus the pace of change is faster than expected due to this compounding effect. This is the cusp of a phase change in our approach to computing, to customer journey and customer experience, to our way of working. Adopting AI for previously human-centric tasks absolutely requires embracing change.
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92.2% of mainstream companies report that they continue to struggle with cultural challenges … and resistance or lack of understanding to enable change.
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– Harvard Business Review
This echoes previous findings of Gartner and McKinsey which we also wrote about in our previous blog “Changing the Statistics on Success”.
Although the technology challenge keeps getting easier; the people challenge, if anything, gets harder. Embedding – considering the who, how, where, when and why, of running a newly automated service – is of growing importance. Especially compared to the question “Can it be done with AI?” – for which the answer is fastly becoming a simple “Yes”.
With such a pace of change, doing something quickly, with a modular approach, will be much more effective than grand designs and monolithic artefacts. Otherwise, in a long and cumbersome project, what was possible when you started the project may be inconsequential compared to what is possible by the time you end a project – rendering your dream application instantly obsolete.
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Making sure we open up this technology … to all the staff in our organization … is something for the whole organization … not left to the CDO.
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– Kees Klein, ING
As an organization we believe in taking a holistic approach to data, to take the development and embedding of technological components together with the human elements. Building for business value, building it quickly, and building it in partnership.
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Ultimately being data driven should deliver value to ourselves and to our customers.
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– Kees Klein, ING
The question to ask yourself and your organization, as you embark on your data driven and AI journey:
- how willing is my organization to embrace change?
And as Kees Klein puts it:
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Any question that you could ask in a data-driven organization, should have a data-driven answer.
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– Kees Klein, ING
If you are a innovation leader and need help on your data driven journey, or digital transformation, we look forward to hearing from you. Connect.