Responsible Innovation: How effective is your Communication?

Responsible Innovation:??How effective is your Communication??

As more organisations are embarking on their digital transformation journey to grow their business digitally, we are seeing innovation unfold before us across all industries, at an increasingly fast pace.

Encouraged by the mantra of ‘build fast, break fast,’ organisations are?‘blindly’?transforming into technology companies, as they aspire to replicate the?financial?successes of the big-tech firms. Implicitly, the movement of digitalising businesses and organisations, on the basis of leveraging technology,?promises?to improve productivity and operating efficiencies to reduce costs.

However, this is difficult to achieve if the human dimension is neglected as part of the process of change; and the return on investment in technology alone will continue to prove elusive, which begs the question of wasted resources.?

One underlying outcome of digitisation is the?perceived?ability of organisations to understand their customers and consumers as they engage through digital services. Before the advent of digital, we built relationships and took the time to understand each other. Whilst we can argue that the depth of understanding might differ depending on the context, business relationships were strengthened over time and took effort to build.

Product owners and marketers were early adopters of digital technologies and consequently charted paths to adopting them. They showed us how to market and sell products and services digitally. In that process, an entire ecosystem was created to enable the capture, trading, sharing and consumption of personal data to realise the digital world for this industry.?Digital profiles?of every citizen with a digital footprint become their target customers.?

On the flip side, we have seen?civil class actions?from privacy campaign groups and regulatory?findings?and enforcement from Data Protection Regulation breaches. Citizens, in general, have become more aware of the trade-offs, they?inadvertently?madewhen they adopted digital services and are now?less?trusting of the organisations that engage them digitally, in the private as well as the?public?sector.

Proponents of digital technologies would argue that regulations stifle innovation. They are at present self-regulating and are seeking to continue shaping the digital future they would like us all to be in.?

This begs the question, do citizens agree with the dominance of a select few companies??

Existing regulations do not specifically look at the?full?impact of the outcomes from the use of digital technologies on citizens. Therefore, many governments around the world are also in the process of introducing more regulations to install the necessary guardrails to protect the dignity, moral agency, rights, autonomy and integrity of their citizens. If you are a leader in an organisation driving digital transformation, brace yourself for strong headwinds.?

There is a general acceptance that our digital world will continue to expand and at the same time evolve as an extension of the existing societal systems, as they continue to adjust to the?necessary?changes that are intended to make the digital world sustainable for humankind.

The question at this juncture is,?how can we – as stakeholders and citizens in this digital world, play our part in shaping it, so that, it is one that?meets our needs and we can trust?

Our Responsible Innovation Framework

We refer to the digital services in these settings as Socio-Technical Systems (STS) as they are not only designed to interact autonomously with employees, customers and consumers but also impact people directly and instantly through automated decision-making and profiling. STS are complex adaptive systems with an interdependent, interconnected and intricate set of components that transcend disciplines.

We recently launched our?Responsible Innovation Framework?and explained it through a 3-part article, covering?Technology and Data, the?Socio-layers?and?Growth Catalysts.

We intimated that Communication is key to achieving purpose-led, ethics-based outcomes, incorporating human values to deliver desirable outcomes for the enterprise, customers, the wider society and the environment.

Within our Responsible Innovation Framework, Communication is key to delivering change and transforming any organisation into one that can innovate responsibly. The effectiveness of communication relies on the orchestrator’s understanding of the?systemic?nature of responsible innovation and the interdisciplinary intricacies, interconnectivity and interdependencies of the elements that make up the STS.

We will in this article expand on what we mean by Communication and outline the characteristics and conditions, which need to be created, since STS comprise an interdependent, interconnected and intricate set of components that transcend disciplines.

The Stakeholders of your STS

If you ask the leader of your digital transformation that deploys STS,?who?the stakeholders of their initiatives might be, their response can provide you with an initial indication of the likelihood of success.

To fully appreciate?the?systemic?nature of responsible innovation, you need to understand the interdisciplinary intricacies, interconnectivity and interdependencies of all the elements that make up the STS.?It is only then will you understand who the stakeholders of your STS truly are.

You will have internal and external stakeholders.?

Depending on your organisational structure, you will uncover your internal stakeholders, as we work through each layer of our Responsible Innovation Framework. Depending on your industry, your external stakeholders will typically be your customers, consumers of your digital services, suppliers, regulators (if regulated), industry bodies, communities, and society as a whole.?We would also add the environment to the list of external stakeholders!

You will also have direct as well as indirect stakeholders.

Depending on the use case, your direct stakeholders are typically individuals or groups of individuals that directly access and/or use the digital services provided by your STS. Indirect stakeholders are individuals or groups of individuals likely to be impacted by adverse outcomes from your STS, through a relationship with your direct stakeholders.

When the impact of your STS is societal, there is a legitimate public interest in the associated risks.

It is critical to ensure that?all?relevant stakeholders are engaged through effective communication.?

Communication is a 2-way street?

Our Responsible Innovation Framework articulates the need for communication, when the?Purpose?of the organisation and its STS is realised by achieving desirable?Outcomes?through the selected Innovation Pathway. It also articulates the need for feedback to be captured throughout this journey from the multiple and diverse set of stakeholders engaged.

We cannot stress highly enough the importance for?all?communication involving internal and external stakeholders to incorporate the diversity of thought, diversity of lived experiences and diversity in terms of culture.

Much like the question we asked earlier about who your stakeholders might be, the composition of your participant groups, during the various stages of communication can indicate the likelihood of your success as well.?

Qualitative and quantitative feedback are critical factors in Communication, but the value embedded within can only be realised if feedback is embraced, considered, acted upon and used to positively engage with those who provided them.

Feedback from the respective stakeholders, as innovation is progressing through the layers within our Responsible Innovation Framework, helps ensure that the Outcomes are aligned with the Purpose.?

Stakeholders are also implicitly onboarded and involved in the process of change when they are engaged through regular feedback.?

Are you including the right stakeholder groups when you communicate??

Are the participants proportionally representative of the stakeholders of your STS??

Have you been fair and inclusive in your communication?

The?Characteristics of Communication

How does your organisation communicate??

How does your digital transformation team deploying STS communicate?

We believe that the efficacy of communication is critical to attaining successful outcomes in any initiative. This?Forbes articlehighlights the importance of soft skills in delivering successful digital transformation initiatives. When the digital transformation involves STS, getting communication right becomes paramount!?

Let’s consider the characteristics of communication illustrated in the diagram below, in conjunction with the layers outlined in our?Responsible Innovation Framework diagram:

Traversing the Innovation Pathway from Purpose to Outcome:?

How many times have we heard Digital leaders of established organisations announce their aspirations of becoming perhaps the next Amazon or Google, a burning desire to be data-driven and leverage the power of AI to harness the insights from customer data and deliver customer-centric personalised digital services? Except that there is a risk that they will become data-rich and insight-poor, their products and services more standardised based on?flawed?statistical inferences, quite often falling short of the mark.?

Meanwhile, a?meaningful?socially aligned mission statement often accompanies these announcements.?

The leaders of these organisations appear to have?thought?about their intentions and then publicly?stated?them.?

As they build up their?technical?capabilities and capacity to execute, we can see that they are starting to do what they said they would do - transforming their established organisation into a technology company.?

But is that enough??

What else is being done to enable responsible innovation that produces and deploys engaging, reliable, inclusive, safe and trustworthy Socio-Technical Systems?

Embarking on a digital transformation is not dissimilar to going on a journey, except this is a journey that is far from straightforward and predictable, hence the high failure rates.?

When we then look at the performance and quality of STS deployed in the real world, as well as the adverse outcomes from many of them, a different approach is clearly needed to address the shortfalls and risks; so that deploying organisations can realise the desired results and returns on investment, through the deployment of engaging, reliable, inclusive, safe and trustworthy?STS.??

Being able to?demonstrate?that diverse inputs from multi-disciplinary teams proportionally representing the various stakeholder groups were taken into consideration?prior?to and during the lifecycle of these STS, as well as their feedback at each layer of the Responsible Innovation Framework reflects communication at work.

You need to be able to?interpret?and?explain?how your STS produced its automated decisions and profiling.

As your STS is deployed to the public, having the maturity to?disclose?the associated residual risks further demonstrates communication in play, between the internal and external stakeholder groups.?

Furthermore, it elevates your standing with citizens that consume digital services from your STS, as you are prepared to take accountability, through the disclosure of residual risks, when seeking informed consent.

Traversing the Feedback Loop from Outcome to Purpose:?

Multi-disciplinary feedback from multiple stakeholder groups, both?prior?to and throughout the lifecycle of your STS allows you to continually validate that Outcomes align back to the Purpose of your STS throughout its lifecycle.

Being able to?listen?and?accept?constructive feedback is a valuable part of effective communication. You need to?consider?all the feedback captured with your diverse teams that proportionally represent your various stakeholder groups, to mitigate sunk cost and confirmation biases, and then?act?on the insights you derive.?Negative feedback is not noise!

Engaging?with those teams that proportionally represent your various stakeholder groups is also an essential part of communication.

Often feedback from individuals or groups with a diversity of thought, diversity of lived experiences and diversity of culture will help uncover risks and expected foreseeable misuses?of your STS. Consequently, these will help you ensure that your?Operational Safeguards?can successfully?manage?and mitigate?potential risks and unintended consequences.

Finally, our Responsible Innovation Framework addressed?Trustworthiness?in its outermost layer. This allows for the deploying organisation to attain an independent external audit for their STS against relevant legal frameworks.?Verifiable?certification for compliance, such as those provided by?ForHumanity?can be publicly communicated to citizens who are considering engaging with your STS.

Your Organisation’s Shared Moral Framework

A shared moral framework is one within which the organisation makes?considered?ethical choices. It also takes into consideration:

·???????protection of personal data and preservation of citizen’s privacy;

·???????compliance with the relevant legal frameworks applicable to that organisation;

·???????the organisation’s Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics; and,

·???????human dignity, human moral agency, human rights, human autonomy, human integrity and human centricity are preserved in the outcomes of automated decision-making and profiling.

Throughout your digital transformation journey?and?the lifecycle of your STS, your organisation will encounter ethical choices.?These ethical choices matter?since the outcomes from your STS impact your customers and the consumers of your digital services.

Just because you can, does not mean you should!

How your organisation interacts with those ethical choices needs to be effectively communicated and enacted across the organisation – internally modelled by the CEO and your Board of Directors, as well as externally demonstrated to society.

Does your CEO and the Board of Directors have an empowered Ethics Committee that comprises a diversity of thought, diversity of lived experiences and diversity of culture to effectively consider, evaluate and examine?instances of ethical choices??

The impact of Leadership?

STS, by their nature, have the potential to adversely impact citizens directly and instantly through automated decision-making and profiling:

·???????Adverse impacts can amount to putting citizens at a disadvantage, where rights and freedoms, or access to goods and services could be restricted or denied.

·???????Furthermore, citizens could be discriminated against or experience unfair outcomes from automated decisions and profiling.?

·???????In some cases, citizens could be unintentionally harmed.??Examples of harm include mental harm, reputation damage through misinformation and disinformation and financial exclusion.

We would not have expected the CEOs and Board of Directors to sanction the deployment of STS that can adversely impact citizens, yet it has been evident from the reported outcomes that such risks were not mitigated successfully through the implementation of necessary operational safeguards.?

Bearing in mind that STS impacts citizens directly and instantly and therefore has societal implications, the CEO and the Board of Directors of deploying organisations can play a pivotal role in ensuring that their organisation innovates responsibly, by exercising their duty of care, beyond compliance with the growing list of regulations.

Ensuring that an adequate and robust governance structure exists is crucial for effective oversight, as CEOs and the Board of Directors are ultimately accountable for all outcomes from their STS.

It would be reasonable to expect your technology and data teams, charged with the responsibility to deliver digital capabilities for your business, to be fully focused on delivering those capabilities.?

Our Responsible Innovation Framework outlines the Socio-layers that envelop the Technology and Data layers. Processes and procedures that allow for ethical analysis, scenario analysis, impact assessments, necessity assessments and proportionality assessments that consider tensions and trade-offs, leveraging multi-disciplinary, diverse inputs and multi-stakeholder feedback are baked into this layer.?

We then wrap the risk management layer over the Socio-layer to allow for multi-disciplinary teams to provide different perspectives and consider the severity and likelihood of risks, balanced with controls and appropriate mitigations and required adjustments in the process.?

Silos in the organisational structures within large established organisations add to the complexity of the challenges when incorporating multi-disciplinary and diverse inputs from multi-stakeholders prior to and during the lifecycle of STS.?

The efficacy of communication between the internal and external multi-stakeholder groups, including both the business and technology transformation teams contributes to the likelihood of success.?

It is never just about the technology.?

CEOs and their Boards of Directors need to ensure that these Socio-layers are implemented successfully if they aspire to deploy?engaging, reliable, inclusive, safe and trustworthy?STS.

The role of the empowered Ethics Committee (reporting to the Board of Directors) is critical to set the organisation’s ethical thresholds, to ensure the right ethical choices are made, independently of those who are developing and deploying your STS as part of the digital transformation initiatives.?

The Ethics Committee must be able to provide an effective challenge when necessary to uphold the organisation’s shared moral framework.

When your STS are deployed and are in operation, what operational safeguards do you have in place to ensure that their accuracy and validity can be regularly verified against the ground truth??

How can you ensure that the performance of your STS remains relevant and aligned with your Purpose?

How do you cater for citizens in the outlier groups encompassed in your STS?

What feedback mechanisms, other than providing a rating score, has your organisation afforded to citizens consuming digital services from your STS?

Inferences are probabilities; they are most certainly not facts!

CEOs and their Boards of Directors need to be cognisant that outcomes from their STS need to reflect what they say in their public statements. Trust can be easily eroded. Citizens can quickly check if the?Digital Ethics (ESG) Rating?of an organisation shows a different picture compared to their PR-curated public statements, about their mission-driven Strategy or ESG agenda. Perhaps the differences indicate internal communication issues or else there is a misalignment between what they are saying and what they are actually doing.

Ethics matter in the ongoing design, deployment and functioning of STS. The Board of Directors need to guard against?Ethics Washing?as well as?Ethics Shopping, which?Luciano Floridi?defines as ‘the malpractice of choosing, adapting, or revising (“mixing and matching”) ethical principles, guidelines, codes, frameworks, or other similar standards (especially but not only in the ethics of AI), from a variety of available offers, in order to retrofit some pre-existing behaviours (choices, processes, strategies, etc.), and hence justify them a posteriori, instead of implementing or improving new behaviours by benchmarking them against public ethical standards.’?

How does your organisation govern the decision on ethical choices throughout the lifecycle of your STS, and your digital transformation journey??

How effective is Your Communication?

The way an organisation and its people communicate reflects its culture.?

Your STS embodies your organisation’s culture. The way your STS behaves reflects the behaviours within your organisation. The way your STS communicates reflects the way your organisation communicates.

Therefore, what your customers and the consumers?experience?when interacting with the digital services provided by your STS,?will determine the level of trust?they have in your organisation.

Can your organisation?demonstrate?that it has done everything?it says it does?

STS are typically designed with a predetermined Purpose, Nature, Scope and Context. Since they adopt non-deterministic technologies and their behaviour is likely to change with varying datasets,?have you determined and disclosed the residual risks in your STS?

What operational safeguards have you communicated to your customers and consumers of digital services from your STS?

How do CEOs and Boards decide to submit their organisations to external and independent scrutiny to reinforce their communication?

The efficacy of communication cannot be underestimated, particularly where impacts are systemic. This?news item?summarises the consequences and adverse impact of limited communication with direct and indirect stakeholders.?

What is the end goal?

Your Board of Directors has decided on a significant investment in digitally transforming your organisation to enable your business to grow in the digital space.

You will need?engagement?from your current and future customers and consumers of your digital services. You will need to?earnthe trust from citizens so that you get engagement for your STS. Without trust, there will be no engagement, without engagement there will be no first-party data. We all know how valuable first-party data and engagement is for digital growth.

Trustworthiness is when the attributes of citizens – human dignity, human moral agency, human rights, human autonomy, human integrity and human centricity – are aligned with the outcomes and the purpose of STS, as well as the organisations that deploy them.

We believe some of the following might be what citizens look for when deciding whether the organisation deploying the STS is trustworthy:

·???????Their concerns, fears and doubts are independently verified to have been addressed, reduced and mitigated with?operational safeguards;

·???????There are feedback loops provisioned and seamlessly accessible;

·???????The organisation’s ability to protect their data, preserve their privacy, preserve human dignity, human moral agency, human rights, human autonomy and human integrity through human-centric STS has been independently verified, increasing confidence.

So, how can Communication and Leadership help you attain your end goals?

We help our clients improve performance, productivity and profitability levels within the enterprise, by implementing our Responsible Innovation Framework. We take a strategic approach to the process of change and work closely with our clients to deliver the best possible results and outcomes.?

If you would like to grow your business using ethics-based principles of STS, combining the needs of people and technology to achieve better outcomes for your stakeholders, please get in touch with Maria and Chris.

Chris Leong?is a Fellow and Certified Auditor (FHCA) at ForHumanity and the Director of Leong Solutions Limited, a UK-based Management Consultancy and Licensee of ForHumanity’s Independent Audit of AI Systems.

Maria Santacaterina?is a Fellow and Certified Auditor (FHCA) at ForHumanity, CEO and Founder of SANTACATERINA, a UK-based Global Strategic Leadership & Board Executive Advisory, helping you build a sustainable digital future.