The Imaginator, the Communicator and the Terminator – organisational trinity needed for breakthrough AI initiatives. Part 1

Success need not be serendipity

I must have met with over a hundred senior leaders in financial services firms in the last several months and have seen first hand evidence of an incredible amount of interest in AI and how to use it. Most leaders accept the transformational power of this technology even if they do not have a clear personal idea of how exactly to apply it. As a startup platform that creates AI products, I am hugely encouraged by such enthusiasm but simultaneously disappointed when I do not see the essential ingredients of success for an AI initiative. 

After much reflection, I have come to two important conclusions– one is that success of an AI initiative within a large financial services firm has nothing whatsoever to do with technology; it has everything to do with people, leadership, attitudes and mindset. My second conclusion is that one can exponentially improve chances of success by organisational actions, rather than simply hoping for the best. In other words, understanding the cause and effect relationship allows us to create the right conditions that will make any AI project resoundingly successful. 

In this 3 part article, I want to present my view on the three key roles that are needed in any organisation to create an extraordinarily successful AI project. As the founder of a business that is evangelising use of AI to create breakthrough solutions in front office functions, this is very close to my heart.

People will default to natural roles

As I meet firms, I come across the expected cast of characters – the Believers who need no convincing and are easily excited about the possibilities; the Early Adopters who provide the intellectual pollen in spreading the idea within the eco system of innovation; the Careerists ones who worry about career consequences of failure and finally, the Sceptics who question, challenge, make seemingly unreasonable demands and ultimately force you to improve the value proposition. The ground reality is that these are deep rooted mindsets and attitudes – people fall into whatever mindset is most natural for them. Recognising this is important because it explains how people react to innovative suggestions.

The organisational trinity

But what is even more important is to identify the existence (or absence) of 3 roles that truly move the needle of success of an AI project. It is very important that three roles must exist within an organisation and they must be in balance. Together, these three roles form the organisational trinity that can creates customer magic and produce extraordinary success with a technology that most people are still coming to terms with.

I call them the Imaginator, the Communicatorand the Terminator. In Part 1, I will focus on the Imaginator.

The Imaginator

The Imaginator is the individual who can not only connect the dots, but find dots that may not even exist today. He can imagine the future and see a path to it. He can see application of a technology in one area and extrapolate it into others. This is the individual who saw Infra-red imaging and wondered if we could us it to improve night vision, medical science and premises security. This is person who saw drones and thought why can we not use it to monitor agriculture and irrigation? This is the person who sees a message from Google saying “Traffic is heavy and it will take 53 minutes to get to Canary Wharf” and wonders why can’t similar intelligence be provided on investment portfolios?

A note of caution – an Imaginator is not necessarily the inspirational leader who uses a big vision to rally the troops. This is not necessarily the most senior person in the team. Nor is his the biggest paycheck in the room. 

An Imaginator is a truly hard-to-find combination of many things – business knowledge to know what is priority, understanding of the customer to know what makes a difference and most importantly, the ability to extrapolate into the unknown. In my experience, true Imaginators are thoughtful, often introverted, sometimes slow to action, knowing that not everyone will see what is pretty obvious to them. But they are also not afraid to push the case when they are convinced about the opportunity. The best Imaginators are the rarest of the rare – they are an inspiring and pragmatic blend of innovation, imagination and hard headed business experience. They can see what is possible and know what will work in real life. 

For me, it is a moment of great pleasure to realise that I am meeting an Imaginator. It is a very hard to define moment but when I do meet someone with these qualities, their firm immediately jumps to highest priority in my mind and in that moment, I am psychologically committed to making them a success.

I met one such individual a few weeks ago – it was Friday afternoon which is never a good time for a meeting; I was meeting him for the first time so had no idea what to expect; the firm itself is a very successful, near iconic wealth advisory firm and just a few minutes into the meeting I realised that I was with an Imaginator – sure enough, he heard us out, saw our demo and immediately began wondering whether we could trigger advisor action based on detection of a change in pattern with a particular customer and was deep in conversation with his colleague on areas where they could test our platform. 

This was one of those rare moments in the sales cycle which make all the effort worthwhile – put simply, he made my day.

Imaginators are key to creating a compelling vision for any AI initiative and without them, no real success is possible. But they are only one part of the trinity - they need a Communicator and a Terminator. More of this in next parts of this series.

In Part 2, I talk about The Communicator, the second part of the organisational trinity …