How an incumbent can build a culture that embraces data and AI

The Harvard Business Review has a piece about how TD Wealth sought to build a culture that embraces data and AI by creating a program called “WealthACT (“Accelerate Change through Technology”) to try to get executives in the business unit excited about what technology can do for their business.

Key points:

• There was clear executive focus.  The unit’s business head with the executive sponsor while the program leader, Atanaska Novakova, was a unit executive.
• Laying the groundwork so that the heightened expectations post-program would be satisfied.  “Senior leaders of the unit felt that its data assets were finally ready to be used, and the most important factor in using them effectively was demand from executives.”
• The first group of 100 wealth specialists joined in a five-month program, visited Silicon Valley, UK, Boston to learn about new tech, open banking, participated in a hackathon, “but the bulk of the program involved expert-led instruction and hands-on and immersive workshops to build customer empathy, understanding emerging tech, and practice pattern recognition to spot trends and opportunities ahead.”
• The goal of the program was to develop six core skills:

1. Human-centered design
2. Business case development/storytelling
3. Business agility
4. Data-driven decisions
5. Emerging technologies literacy
6. Growth/innovative mindset.

Unrefined snippets...

• “he wanted participants to recognize that mindlessly throwing technology at customers is not the answer. He hoped the program would foster not only much deeper awareness of technology, but also greater sophistication about it, and a deep understanding of the customers TD Wealth serves today and how they are changing.” (Alex Morris, Deloitte Canada partner, head of innovation & design)
• Initial iteration “involved a lot of classroom learning”...  subsequent versions “have become more experiential and immersive.”
• “I hear participants say that this program has shifted them from fearing change to embracing change with joy.” (Alex Morris)
• “Entry into the ACT programs is competitive, and the application process thorough.”
• “We have turned anxiety into excitement, and now everyone who’s been through the program is a change agent.” (Atanaska Novakova)
• “It used to be that the push for those came from our IT people, and IT would get the blame if they didn’t work out. Now the business sees these projects as a joint responsibility.” (Atanaska Novakova)
• Novakova is now “designing a WealthACE program (“Accelerate Change through Execution”) to expand from 400 managers to 4,000 individual contributors.”

Author: Thomas Davenport.  Professor, Babson College; Research fellow, MIT initiative on the Digital Economy; senior advisor, Deloitte Analytics