Martin Dowson Transformation Design Leader - Designing Trust

You can feel it when a system is built to extract rather than to serve. The language sounds caring, the journeys feel cold, and every “customer first” promise collapses the moment incentives kick in. That tension drives our conversation with Martin Dowson, an interim design leader and adviser who’s spent decades helping executives change how their organisations make decisions, not just how their products look. 

We move from boardroom strategy to street-level research: what happens when a bank takes its purpose seriously and asks ordinary people what “prosperity” actually means. Martin explains how human-centred design, service design, systems thinking, and ethnography can reveal the real barriers that stop organisations delivering good outcomes. We also dig into why financial health connects directly to mental health and physical health, and how treating every person in arrears as the same “process” quietly creates harm. 

The conversation doesn’t dodge the hard bits. We revisit the PPI era as a cautionary tale about box-ticking compliance, then connect it to today’s AI governance debate and the risk of a new scandal built on “we didn’t know” while the warning signs were visible. Along the way we explore principles-based regulation, outcome-based regulation, consumer duty, and why “visibility is accountability” is more than a slogan. 

If you care about design leadership, customer centred transformation, trust in banking, and building ethical technology with real governance, this one will give you language, stories, and practical ways to think. Subscribe, share with a colleague who owns decisions, and leave us a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Welcome And Martin’s Work

SPEAKER_03 0:18

And here we are. Hello. Hello, Martin Thompson.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Great to be back in the tower again. Thank you for inviting me back.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Well, um I I had invited you some time ago, but as everyone who has been listening to this, you know, my my friend in Runcorn, my my avid, avid uh listener. Um he's the only one. Um yeah, weren't you supposed to have Martin on? Yeah, I know. I know, I know, I know. Anyway, finally, we got there. Yeah. Finally. So for those who may not have um heard uh our conversation um with uh the rather brilliant Jose um previously, would you like to just give us a quick intro as to who you are and what is it that you do, please?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Okay, great. Um I'm a uh so I'm currently working as a um as an interim design leader and advisor. Um I work with CPOs, VPs of design, um, and trying to help them work out what the right change and transformation to do is sometimes it's explicitly about standing up or re re-imagining a design organization. Um but mostly the work I really enjoy doing is helping those organizations solve their problems better. And I believe that there's you know design that can be uh that can help with that, but I also believe that there's a lot of things that design does that other people can um learn from. So um that's mostly what I do, and I do that because I I guess what am I, like 26 years into my career now. And um uh I started out in design accidentally. Um uh went off to be a management consultant and found found my people um after three or four months of being very frustrated by what what that job was actually like, um and found a bunch of people who are similarly frustrated. Um aging reference for anybody. I found some people who also had ologies. Um, and if you don't know the ologies reference, you need to look up Maureen Lippmann and an old BT advert. Um, but sociology, psychology, um the there was people with human factors research. We all stood out like a sore thumb at Accenture. Um, but we were the first um interactive design, um, human-centered design capability that um that um Accenture had. In parallel, there was one in New York and um one in Chicago. Um real kind of um front, you know, front edge of of things. And you know, Accenture was very excited by it, but also didn't understand it. So it all had a bit of a short shelf life for us, about five years. Um, but I really cut my teeth there, um, having not thought that's what I was going to do. Um psychology helped me be a researcher, research helped me understand patterns. So I I think I tend naturally towards patterns, information architecture, that kind of structure. Um, I learned to collaborate with those who have a visual mindset, which was necessary for us to work together. Um but my um original reason, I think, for wanting to be more in business and thinking about management consultancy, when I thought that's what I wanted to do, kind of started to meld in, especially when I encountered service design. So it started to be like, why isn't this organization able to deliver the experience? What are the barriers? So we've got good design going on, we've got some good technology. Um, why is this still not working for people? Um I think you know, hours of sitting with people in research sessions deepened me to this stuff doesn't work for people, and they just want to get things that they care about done. And actually, our ability to um do the design level work is not the barrier here. Um, also, actually, the ability to use a piece of technology is not the barrier here either. There's something else. So I I spent some time, about eight years, walking around working with people, helping them build UX capabilities at the time where that would come from anywhere, you know, at a CRM team or a tech team looking after a website that we'd round out their skills and make them more of a user-centered design team. And I'd do that by rolling my sleeves up and getting involved, but leaving them better than they were before, not dependent on me was my anti-reaction to the consultancy model of dependency creation. Um but was still frustrated by this is a bigger order conversation. 2010 people were walking around saying, I want to be customer-centred as an organization. You now know what that means, right? You just are hearing that people care about what you do a little bit more. You're hearing that there are some companies that do really good customer service and them winning. So you want to be more that because you want to win. We set up an agency in 2013 to have the board-level conversation. What does it actually mean to be customer-centered? And our first client was Kodak. While they were in bankruptcy, just about to come out of bankruptcy.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Wow.

Kodak And Board-Level Customer Strategy

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And their challenge to us was we have um we're about to be bought out of bankruptcy. Therefore, we need to find$500 million of net new revenue within the next five years. And that means that was a billion dollars of revenue over those five years that were needed to be new in order for the purchase of them to be worthwhile, right? And they shared their strategy for us with that 250-page document. I kid you not, in 2013 that strategy involved, let's look at digital picture frames, which were already in the market, right? Um so our thing was that we were bringing both the MBA style analysis of that strategy with the ethnographic um futures thinking around what where you might have an analysis of what the market propensity is for$500 million, by the way, at the time. You know, um it the the two market propensities were family travel photography and Indian wedding photography. But what rather than just doing a paper-based analysis of that, we were sending out a an ethnography team to go and understand at a roots level what it is like to be somebody in the consumer in that space. And that ethnography told us how hard it would be for them to break into Indian wedding photography, even though there's value in it, right? Um, alongside our internal innovation audit of them, like what are you sitting on already? The ideas you never took forward, the IP that you have, the knowledge that you have, the capabilities that you have. And that told us a huge amount of why family wedding, family travel photography was a much better bet for them to be getting into to leverage that propensity. So we used design and futures and the kind of oh I call the NBA McKinsey star thing in combination to have a board-level conversation about where they should be going and ripped apart their strategy and gave them a new one for them to launch with. And that's what we went in to try and do is have the exec level conversations about if you want to be customer centred, that there is heart and machine to this, and you you need to change your organization in order to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 8:15

Um this conversation has been going on for about 20 years, has it not?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

100%. 100%. It's it's and so what are we doing wrong? As well, so the interesting thing was uh after three years of consulting to different organizations on this and still finding this a similar challenge. I had this opportunity to um redesign a design org inside Lloyd's banking group for a client. Um reposition the design team, re-orgit, um, and um to help that director achieve a different objective. And inside that, we we said there should be a design strategy type role inside the leadership team. And the the long story short is I was offered that role. So I left my agency and went into Lloyd's. Now I've been in I've worked with two companies where I felt that there was um really strong alignment and clarity of purpose. Um one of those is was Virgin Media, but virgin group ownership conveys clarity of purpose. The other was Lloyd's, where the mission was helping Britain prosper. So despite everything we say about banks, this bank had a really interesting mission, helping Britain prosper. And I I felt inside this bank a very strong connection to that. Lots of wrong turns along the way. Large organization still has responsibility to make profit and to, you know, control and understand those margins and its and um and its cost equity ratios and all of those really important mechanisms. But there was this thread that you could actually see through that people were really trying to get, and it was a clear thread. Um and I found it fascinating once inside to see how we could reconnect the organization to that thread that it had articulated as its mission. So we we we got onto that, and I and I I um I've seen that organization really change over the last 10 years since it got out of the financial crisis and got back into private hands again, um, which was a necessity. You you can now see some very different business model decisions that they're doing that aligns to um we have a role in society to play. And I I was there while we really challenged that in in some ways, because our design team went out and tried to understand what prosperity meant to the UK, to the average person, um, to the British version, in the British version of the dubber, in the greasy spoon calf, in the back of a cab. This was the research task. We went and we had non-structured, not robust research conversations with people, where we said we work for Lloyd's and we said, I'm not interested in talking to you about rates and credit cards and all that stuff. I just want to know what the word prosperity means to you. Because it's not a word we use in everyday language, and the the depth of interesting information that came back from that, that and the consistency. Here's what people said. And these are our words, but they are their words. So you have to find one way to summarize it. But everybody consistently said, I have hopes and dreams for my friends and family or the people closest to me. I want to feel some sense of um confidence that I will have an opportunity to achieve those.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

And that is what prosperity means to me.

Lloyds Purpose And Prosperity Research

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Now alongside that, we did uh collab with University of South Wales on some academic research. So we know that financial health is and financial literacy is an issue in the financial services industry for our consumers, and it's important that we help them with that. But the research was also showing us that something you and I know intuitively, but this was explicitly outlined, that financial health and mental health and physical health are inextricably linked. 100%. So my ability to prosper is influenced by all of these things. And it's it's why we have a regulatory regime that says we must look after the consumer, the customer. It's it's why we have conversations about vulnerable customers. Um but there are some really systemic things that got very interesting to look at inside Lloyd's when you look at people who were in financial difficulty. When treated as a process of they owe us money, we need to get it back, versus a conversation about are you at risk of being in financial difficulty, are two totally different processes and approaches. And it was design and research and systems thinking and an understanding of fundamental human behavior that led us to look at one process that was being rationalized because it was costly to run and there was too much, you know, not being recovered from customers that owed us money. That a systems view of it said, one customer who is in this process has just forgotten to pay their bill this month because they're busy. Another customer has done that once or twice every cut every few months, and maybe haphazard or might be in the beginning of difficulty. Then there's another customer who's six months in arrears and knows it's lots of money, they're already in the difficulty space. And we treated everybody the same. It was the same process. Now, when you totally up-ended that, understood that those were the three profiles, went and did the ethnographic research which we did to understand the real human stories that were going on there, and then talked to the agents and said, what would you like to be able to do? So I'd like to be able to just, you know, the reality commercially was the first group you could just ignore, not take, not get the money, and save money. Because it was costing you so much to try to get it back, right? And it wasn't a problem, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:33

No, no, no. Martin, sorry, I've got to interrupt. No, go, go ahead. There's two things that strike me about the question that I originally asked.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Sorry, which I'm going a long way round towards it. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

But these examples underpin the answer, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:53

We're having a conversation.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

But why I've politely I hope.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Oh my god, you should interrupt me anytime, otherwise I'll just go.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

Um The passion with which you are speaking, right? Yeah. Um the subject matter, expertise. The I mean you could you've you've got such you've had and still have such an amazing career. Um you could have started to speak about anything at all. But that was where you went. So where I'm going with this is yeah, I can see an awful lot. Well, there's two things in in in the in intersection of this Venn diagram that I'm mentally trying to construct.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Trust and empathy. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

There's probably more, but those are the two two things that are screaming at me, and I couldn't help myself, so I had to interrupt. No, and fairness, I think. Yeah. For me that that's part of the the empathetic um framework.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

Um to be fair. And I think I think that's hmm. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna suggest that that actually informs a great deal of who you are.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

It is my reflection that it's the things I really care the most about um and as driven what I'm interested in, I'm like I'm always drawn to how can we solve for that? Um and um and that it is at the root of most most challenges and issues around.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

Um but then the juxtaposition, if anyone actually said, okay, banking, UK banking, yeah. I don't think that many people would land at trust and empathy. Right? So we have at all. So we have a um But that's what that's what that particular bank has been aiming for, and I think has done more than a reasonable job of delivering.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

I really, really do. It's interesting how um it's interesting how over time the the the route exists. The root the root of that exists in the purpose of the institutions that it is a part that it is an amalgamation of. There's been lots of things lost along the way. Um and there isn't a bank in the UK that is covered in glory. There isn't a bank in the UK that can't look back and go, actually, there were things that we did wrong. It's interesting you say are you said about what's driving me. I I kind of um so the the the short version of closing the loop on that, because I'm gonna go back to 2005 and uh 2004 in a second. Um the short version of closing the loop on that is um when you turned that round to um what conversations do we want to be having and how do we want to help customers? You you you led into a the program became less about um how do we um rationalise that process and that part of the business and became a customers in financial difficulty program. So it became how do how does that unit then handle that conversation for customers? The end result commercially was better and it was the right thing to do for customers. And you're like, what a great example, okay. Um when you when you go back to that research that we were doing and you scaled that up to when we understood that connection between these things, and we talked to data scientists, and they said, in the future, our transactional data may be able to help us see patterns that indicate fine uh, yes, financial distress, but also mental health or physical health, because patterns in people's lives change and we see transactions and we see the data, right? At the time I was having a conversation with Sean Carney at Phillips, and he was telling me about the data they were collecting through their devices and what they decided to collect and not to collect, because when they collected certain data, they became responsible for it, both from a regulatory and a moral perspective. Um simple things like do we collect your walking gate? Because it's actually biometrically unique and therefore falls into a certain protected category. Do we want to know that? Could we get the outcome we want from something else instead because we don't want to hold that data? So when you heard that about the transactions, you know, and we start to surface this up, it creates this existential, like, oh. So what you're saying is if I want to push credit cards this month in my decisioning out to customers, but I've got other data that says, you know, the last thing you should be doing for Joel is give him more credit because he's in a fine, he's in a mentally vulnerable state. Um we should not push, we now have a responsibility to act in. It gave the organization like a bit of like, oh, what boundaries? Where are our boundaries? Because we can't be responsible for all of it. And I I agree they can't be responsible for all of it. So I think that's really that led me to wow, there are some much like even when you do connect with your purpose as an organization, there's some really big conversations to have. Now, you know, you said about um Lloyd's like seemed to be on the right track with that. It goes all the way back. There was a City AM um newspaper article that had a little inside track on somebody in the uh regulators back then who's who anonymously was quoted as saying, we've got a board up on the wall. Right. And on that board, it's a four board, it's a four-quadrant thing about the banks in the UK. This is from inside the regulator back in like 2003 or something.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Okay.

Designing For Vulnerable Customers

SPEAKER_00 21:30

And the dimensions are competence, yeah. So they're competent or incompetent, right? And then are they good or evil? Right. And people inside the regulator were talking about the banks in this way. And they put certain banks in the competent but evil space. You know? This is the regulators. This is the regulators talking about that. And certain banks in the Or not, you know, it's it was evil or benign, basically, right? Um so you could be competent and evil, competent and benign, you could be incompetent and evil and incompetent and benign, right? But the competent and good or benign was pretty empty, like, but there were some on the edge of it. The worrying thing was like that they saw certain banks as competent and not good, right? Um, but you Lloyd's was in that benign space, right? And back then many of them were bordering between so the the scary thing was there were some incompetent and evil, and I'm I'm not gonna start name-checking them now, but um, because everybody's had a chance to try to change. Um but that I think is was super interesting, and some of the collapses that we saw were because of where those banks were and those quadrants, because it comes back to bite you on the ass. In 2004, one of the reasons I left Accenture, and I don't mind saying this now, but Accenture is a very different place now. But in 2004, because I was the customer guy, and they were struggling to know what to do with design at that time. Um, Martin, can you go run a workshop? Um, it's not just a workshop, actually, it's three or four weeks. I need to work with these people at this big bank. Um, and um it's the compliance guys, it's the regulatory guys, it's the legal guys, um, and um the um uh what they are trying to do is work out how they should respond to this new PPI legislation that's coming in, payment protection. Um uh in the I think it was all in the mortgage, mortgage and lending spectrum. Yeah, I remember it well. We remember the PPI scandal, right? Yes. So they're trying to the the new regulations coming in, they're trying to respond to look at how they should respond to it. Um can you go and so because you're the customer guy, this is about regulation and customer protection. So in I go. So I'm at one of the big name banks with all of those people, and all they are doing is asking legal how they can get around it. The conversation is there's 300 million pounds worth of annual revenue here we need to protect. So the regulation says, you know, um, you know, we need to prove that they have the need for this insurance. Um yeah, but you know, and literally the conversation was, yeah, but you know, I mean, you could say that everybody needs insurance. I'm putting my hand up. I'm putting my hand up, facilitating this, going, yeah, I think the spirit of the legislation though is, you know, how much risk do they really have? And is this commensurate with, you know, and and we need to show that, and they're like, yeah, I mean, I understand that, but legally, if we word it this way, do we not need to worry about that? And they were literally, that was the nature of the conversation. And I was there and I went, and my there were two people working with me, and they said, Martin, this doesn't feel right. Two designers working with me. This feels really like off. And I said, Yes, I agree. Um, this I'm I also don't feel this way. I was pulled up by my manager for agreeing with my juniors about how we were uncomfortable with the client, and I should just have told them to get on with the job. I mentally resigned that day. But I had a promotion coming up and I wanted to earn a bit more money and put it aside so that I could afford to leave. So I left a year later, but I mentally resigned that day. And it wasn't until the crisis broke and the um, you know, and everybody got the fines that I realized I was in the room when they made an a billion-dollar, billion-pound mistake because they were not thinking about the customer. There's there's so much. I mean, I could have been whistleblowing if I'd realized what I was looking at, right? But I didn't understand that three years into my career, you know. But you you ask about trust empathy, and when I said fairness, yeah, I think early stage career like drove me to like, no, no, this is not right.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

So we we will get back into the weeds of that, I promise you. Sorry, yeah. We're gone.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I didn't realize we'd even think about this today.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Conversations. Conversations. It's good to talk. Yeah, yeah. Um it's another BT reference um way back when. Yeah. So these clearly deeply rooted themes. What were you doing as a rug rep? Right? How how were these themes framed? What literally, I mean, I've had guests previously, I was in the dirt and I was doing this, and I had a red truck, or I was doing Lego, or I was in Plastocine, or whatever. What toys are and what kids, rug rats, what we do in those early, early years, I've found that they they they figure out a way to get into you and and reveal themselves later on and they influence so much about who you are. Right? Yeah. Um so what were you doing?

SPEAKER_01 27:22

What were you doing?

PPI, Trust, And Fairness Lessons

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Gosh, I mean, I think there was see, I mean, I grew up a time I moved around a lot with our family we moved around a lot. But we we also did have an anchor in that um since I was six, my parents have always had the same house, no matter where we went to. There was always somewhere to come back to. Um I had a um I think I had a very privileged um upbringing in a modest in a modest way, but still privileged, as in that it was secure. It was um it was moderate but financially secure. We had opportunity because my father's work got to take us to France and to Belgium um uh with his work. And when we were there, everything was sorted out for us. So we had you know, we had a more than our British experience. Um we were in expat communities, and um at one time I was sent to boarding school, which we could never have afforded, but the company paid for it. So I had these like really interesting things of like our very moderate background to these other experiences that kind of really shaped me. Um when when like hanging out with friends at the home base, I guess, um in in the south of England, despite being Scottish, um it was very much the the thing I remember the most is we were out on the street, we were we were we were playing street hockey on our on our roller skates, we were making tree houses, you know, in the fields next to the house. We were um we had make-believe games that we'd play across the street, like um I don't know, detective games or or uh um yeah, it was really make your own adventure type stuff, right? Um but I was just reflecting with um my friend Brian Hoadley, I never did Dungeons and Dragons, but I did do this, I did like to read these kind of like books where you if you decide that you want to do this, turn to page 20. I can't remember what they were called, but they were kind of make your own adventure books. Almost like turn-by-turn things like that. Um my dad worked for IBM and um when he brought home uh a PS2 from work, said, you know, here's this thing, you know. Um I'd had a ZX Spectrum before that. Um so there was this part of me that was quite interested in the in the in the tech, and I was not quite a Commodore 64 chap, I was a ZX Spectrum chap, but I you know got into basic.

SPEAKER_03 30:02

Um you like tinkering? I was gonna ask you how how deeply did you get into basic?

Childhood Moves, Observation, Tech

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Um not very deeply. Um but um I uh you know I was amazed that my dad didn't know how to use the PS2, despite the fact he worked for IBM. You know, I was like, how do you not know how to use this? He liked I just make the stuff, right? You know, um I'm a I'm a quality manager in manufacturing, you know, but but we've got these, you know, you can use it if you want. Um I think um um there was an influence of my um we went to France when I was eight years old, just for two years, and there's something that um in therefore learning to speak French fluently at a young age, in being in a different um culture, even though it's just across to France, it's not like going somewhere to the other side of the world, um, still different. I was at a school that was 270 kids and 27 nationalities. Um, I was deeply immersed in that straight away. Um mum and I used to go and sit in cafes in Antibes and watch people. Mum was, you know, is is a great people observer, and we would make up stories about the people that were coming off the yachts in the harbour, these these other worlds for us, right? And and it was interesting, it was teaching the observation. We were like, okay, so how are they dressed? What are they doing? Are they being nice to the waiter? Are they, you know, all these things, and we'd make up these stories whether whether they're true or not. I, you know, my mum went when when she worked, she was very much a people person. She um the she did work that she just liked to do for herself. Dad was the main earner. Um but when she did that, it was very much about people and connections and and influence the work that she did. Um and I think there was some of that that rubbed off on me. Um, you know, I went to university to do computer science and artificial intelligence, right? You can see that. Oh, dad showed me all the tech and the technology. I ended up doing psychology. There's something about both of those things in me from from uh from my parents and the experience that I got. Um, and the fluidity of um go to France, come back. Um, then at 14, go to Belgium, but the schools were full, so I IBM paid for me to go to a boarding school. Totally different people, you know, but also a smoggers board as well. So you had people like you had kids like me, you had kids whose fathers were sergeants in the army, but you also had some, you know, uh New York financier who'd sent his kid to the UK to be educated, you know. Some dude that was an executive at De Beers, and his kids were there, but you know, they only lived 20 minutes down the road and they were still boarding, and it was a really weird mix of like all these different things. Um and I didn't like being at boarding school. I had a horrible first six months and was bullied and really like was on the phone to my mum the whole time going, get me home, you know. Um but I came through that and had a really interesting experience at school around this environment that wasn't the pe the the kids were fine, the teachers were lovely, but the school was a um it was a classic English boarding school, um, Christian setup. Um I was an atheist as a kid, and there was something that railed for me with that, but I was quite into getting things done. So like I wanted to learn saxophone, and the deal is you learn saxophone, you learn an instrument, you play in the orchestra. I'm like, I know saxophone goes in the orchestra, but that's not my version of saxophone that I'm interested in. So where's the jazz band? And like what jazz band? I'm like, okay. No.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

I'm not sure. Were you a Stanley Tarantine guy? I mean, who who which saxophonists did you? Stanetts.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Stangettes, my funny valentine, like the six-minute, amazing, amazing kind of um improvisation.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Um I still I was listening, I was listening to the theme to Peanuts just just the other day.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

It's my like it's my escape place, like when I get when I do put some Stangettes back on. And I um I I wasn't very good at saxophones, so I got to like grade three, and I wasn't very good at learning my scales, and so the foundations that you would need to be a fantastic jazz improviser just weren't coming through. But I loved it. I was really passionate about it. And I was like, why aren't we doing more of this? And my teacher, my saxophone teacher, was like, well, then you should just start up a jazz band. And I loved that she said that to me as somebody she could see was not gonna get very far technically, but she could see that I was really interested in it. She's like, Well, why don't you I think she just saw somebody that would get it done, right? So I I found I found Wesley and Matt. Now Wesley was like this polymath violinist, could play any instrument, and was fully classical guy. Matt was double bass in the orchestra. And I was like, guys, let's do this together. And they now they picked it up straight away. Um I had to have my saxophone teacher like help me like transcribe improvisations. I was the opposite. I could follow me, it wasn't that natural. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:39

Yeah. I was the opposite. I was I was the one who was improvising and you know, whoever I was yeah, um being annoying to and with. Um, where's a manuscript? Well, you what do you what are you doing? And I was just like, well, just play along. What why why can't you just not play along? Um I I I did not appreciate the the delta between folks who prefer to improvise and and folks who absolutely need um a manuscript. Who need that protocol.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

I needed it because I hadn't done the grindwork. Right? Okay. I en I enjoyed the idea of it. And over time, as I had more of that help and I was work and I was playing with the guys, I I actually was able to do more of the improvisation. But I wasn't that good, right? At the end of the day, I wasn't that good. But I was like super passionate about it. And I um I ended up setting up a concert, like a whole concert, just for jazz at our school. We we had a theatre, and I got everybody, I got everybody involved. So then then there was a five-piece band that wasn't me, there was my one, then there was a bigger, and there were soloists and things like that, and we did this and we did it for a charity, and um, you know, yes, I got myself a solo spot and had my teacher make sure that I had Blue Moon transcribed because it was my favorite thing. Oh man. And I did it, you know, and it was great, it was really fantastic. But that there were things, I'm gonna come back to the fairness. There were things that happened along the way, right? Of course. So this is this is 90s. You're you know, you're 16 years old, what do you care about? Um, things are going on in the world. The thing I cared about was um the AIDS AIDS crisis. I'm to this day, I'm not sure why.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

But it just Because we were bombarded with so much propaganda, I have to say, um, about it. Um and that was it. I can still recall uh talking to my children who were in a kind of um history, if you like. Uh they were going through, all right. So so let's look back. Let's look back um at how communication happened on a mass scale in the UK. That was the context. And and my youngest came home one day and says, Oh my god, Dad. How how how did you grow up at the time that you was were trying to grow up? You you had this onslaught of okay, there's going to be a nuclear war like tomorrow. Um, and then you had this AIDS thing, which was literally going to wipe everybody out, and for heaven's sake, make sure you've got 30,000 condoms locked away.

unknown 38:29

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Right? That that was that was the core message.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. There was a there was a um the thing that struck me was um was was the um I think I remember the thing that struck me at the time was the um was the bias and prejudice that was surrounding it. And that was the thing that motivated me around it. And so in choosing a charity, I chose the Terrence Higgins Trust. Um and I was like, Diana is a patron, it's you know, it was an obvious thing to choose. Um they are they they help everybody no matter who they are. What's wrong with that? And I came head-to-head clash with the school. Because their principles were, you know, we actually don't agree with what the Terrence Higgins Trust believes about people. And I got a note from the chaplain saying he wouldn't be attending the concert. Because you invite, you formally invite your, you know, little card invite very posh, you know, thing to do, invite cards and everything. Got a decline from him. And um, and then I got you know called up to the headmaster's office saying, Look, we you know, you need to change charity. Like, and then that was it. I was triggered. The the fairness Martin came out going, This is not fair, this is bias, this is prejudice, this is everything I hate about you know organized religion, and and then I'm and I what do I do? And I started to rail against it, and um the chapla suggested a charity, and I I talked to my um family friend about that charity, and then they turned around and said, Well, I might stay clear of that one because they are literally going to people's deathbeds and trying to convert them as they die. Um I was like, and then that got me even more annoyed, right? So I'm I started to look into where I could hold the concert in the town, not at school. And the headmaster found out, pulled me into his office, and I said, You know what's going on? I said, Well, if we can't do it here, we'll do it outside, and because I'm certainly not supporting that charity. Um, and I'm quite happy to tell anybody that asks, including the press, what's going on with that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I got really angry, and like a sixteen, seventeen-year-old uh had a conversation where the headmaster said nobody threatens the headmaster. I was very lucky not to get expelled. Suspended, sorry. Not expelled, but suspended. Anyway, we did it. We did it in the end, we found a charity that was somewhere in between that was still trying to do the same thing that you know, but had no less of a political um you know soundings, and everybody came and the whole thing was a success. But I do think you asked me what was I doing as a rug rat, like um tinkering, playing, trying to work out and sense in the world, imagining, um, you know, um and then and then also just somewhere, somewhere in there was this sense I don't know whether it was because I was bullied in the first six months, you know. I I it it seemed to come from 14 to 18, this sense of um fairness and um and um and the and certainly the combination of like technic interested in tinkering but also really interested in how we are as human beings. So yeah, I think it was all there, right. And I think the experiences my parents gave me uh ad v explicitly or inadvertently, you know, shaped that.

SPEAKER_03 42:18

Clearly. Uh Martin, thank you sincerely for sharing all of that. Um it's joined so many dots uh from you know your history, your personal history. Uh what I can see looking at it from the outside where your career was, is, and what you are so passionate about. Um and one of the things that really, really, really kind of there was a spike, right? So so if if we were looking, you know, put this in a medical context, yeah, you know, we'll we're looking at some kind of VDU, right? Screen. Oh my god, did I say VDU? Does anyone even know what a VDU is? A visual display unit, children. Um you know, and you you're monitoring something, right? Whatever, it could be a heartbeat, could be whatever it happens to be. But there was when you and I were with Jose and talking about everything that we tried to talk about. Governance and the lack of therein.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

Silicon Valley. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

unknown 43:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

That that definitely was the metaphorical spike that I am referring to.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 43:45

Yeah. Yeah, and and what I'm getting from everything thus far in this conversation, and and again, thank you so much for being so open. Mm-hmm. Um is trust, is intelligence. Integrity is empathy, but also the creativity, but also there's gotta be some bloody rules here.

unknown 44:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Yeah.

Jazz, Activism, And Speaking Up

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Yeah. There is, I mean I so I say rules, I say principles. I mean, and this is the the the Gordian knot of this is that um um this is explicitly there isn't um um a kind of single culture in the world, and this is cultural. So, you know, a little small example. I sent I sent the the design forward, my futures team at Lloyd's, I sent them to um uh Hong Kong and China. Um classic thing, the futures here, it's all it's just unevenly distributed. Um and um at that time, WeChat was on the rise, um, you know, people were doing all things in one app over there, and um we wanted people to go and so we they went and they had conversations about life and understood where financial services fitted into it, but they were in China, in Hong Kong, um we and they and they went off and just observed society. And the team were coming back and going, Martin, I I unfortunately I didn't have enough budget to send myself. Um I wish I'd just been a bit more selfish now, but but they off they went. Um they came back and they were like, Martin, it's you go into the re the the malls there and the square footage of home surveillance tech is crazy, you know, and from what we know about China, you know, like these people are just buying into it. The states take them like and what did they tell you? You know, how are they using that? What are they but and by the way, they were telling me about their first reactions. They of course did the work, right? Um but when you are in a collective society where your fundamental roots and principles that drive you uh are um I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm doing good things and trying to get on with life. When we work together, it's better. If you're not working with us, then that's not good. You you um you have a different tolerance from our individualistic society where I have certain rights myself as an individual that usurp your rights as an individual. Um and it's a very different society. So pyramid is when we're talking about a globalized, connected society, it's very hard to have these principles. And now we're turning into like but the the the the world order, rules-based world order. You know, there you're right, there is a need in some levels for rules-based world order, um, because then you know when people are acting inside or outside of that, and you can decide what you do and don't do about it. Um but I think that when we're talking if we talk about within the UK, or if we talk about within an industry like tech, then principles, I think principles are important. Um principles um are things that people can agree on as a human being. There'll be some that we disagree on, and that's okay. But I I do believe that we can have certain principles that can be transcendent for all of us. Um and I think that we can understand that there are variances along that. Um I think that what we've let go of and and I think it is since the rise of shareholder value as being the the primary cult and um the concept of never-ending growth being something that people have bought into. Um those two things combined, which are not real, they are they are um constraints constraints actually, um, I think, but um that people have put onto the system and decided to work the system in that way. Um but since that we've disconnected from the original purpose of business. So um this is why that prosperity thing was so interesting. When we went back to the archives, the it is in the founding document of the Bank of Scotland signed by the king that this organization exists for the prosperity of our people. The Bank of Scotland was created by there being a book in a pub in Edinburgh, where they asked the great and the good of Edinburgh to sign up and pledge 10,000, 5,000, 2,000 to create the Bank of Scotland. Why? Not because they needed somewhere to put their money, but because the people that worked for them on their estates and the people that work for them in their businesses didn't have a method of banking and therefore couldn't be more prosperous. And they wanted them to be prosperous. So will you do this for our people? Right? And yes, it's a commercial transaction. Yes, there's return. But it it's in there. Scottish widows, another thing that Lloyd's owned, uh born out of the Napoleonic Wars, and therefore to protect the widows and the orphans created from the war. Um Halifax, a building society that made buildings for people, not the great and the good, but people in general to live in and therefore have a base. These are institutional structures. Yeah. That were that were necessary for the scale of the challenge and the problem, and that were created in in order for these things to be true. Even Lloyd's, which was originally um uh two fathers and sons, was because was very business-to-business focused as a bank, not to the masses, but because we actually want business and commerce to flow better. Right. And their original purposes were were that. That was why people trusted them and how they connected. And then everything, like many other businesses, got disconnected to, well, now that you make money, you should make more money, and your responsibility is to make more money to the people that um you know are your shareholders, and they lost the connection to who we created the business for in the first place. And there is nothing stopping us getting back to that.

Principles, Culture, And Business Purpose

SPEAKER_03 50:43

There's nothing stopping us getting back to that. If if if I mean I've done a little bit of work, right, um with a few banks uh across the board in my time. Yeah. So personal banking, Barclays loved it, love my time at Barclays, Charlie Francis, again, yes, I'm calling you out because you are awesome. Um personal banking, business banking, um, commercial, fantastic. But then these institutions also, aside from the good work and the much needed work of looking after people, which I think is is is a huge responsibility. And I don't think enough banks make that as evident as they could. Yeah, I agree. Right? And but the same institutions, they've got massive funds, liquidity and everything else that goes with that. Um which everyone hears less about, fair enough, right? Because, you know, context is king. Is there, do you think, an uneven balance with how these financial institutions marry the two? I totally accept that both have to coexist. Because without, you know, managing your liquidity appropriately and everything else in that space, which is the bedrock, like it or not, that's the big piece that's going to keep the shareholders happy because without that the bank isn't going to be able to invest and do all of the other lovely things across all of its sectors. So I guess the question then is why isn't there more visibility around we are actually here to help you? Um Lloyd's are doing a lovely job. I think some other places also are and I know when I was at Barclays and that was amazing. That was awesome as well. I think I think I think there's so much more that could be done. There's so much more that could be more focused towards society, towards we are here to help you. We want to help you, because by helping you everything becomes better.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

Absolutely. And and um so this comes this comes to um a a core question about I think it goes to the core question about why are why are people investing their money in the shareholdings and um what is their motivation around that? So um we've got a lot of um you know, layers upon layers and like hidden loops around that as well, um, where it's actually really hard to get to the humans who are deciding where money goes and how and how and why to invest. So it's actually the the goal now has just been create more money um as opposed to create other types of outcomes. So you need to then actually be looking differently at how you measure the um success of society. Um so um when you start to look at things like a well-being economy, which actually Scotland's um been um, you know, I I will I will let's let's take party political things aside um because it's quite sensitive in Scotland about uh things. But one of the things that the um uh uh the incumbents uh had been doing for a long time was looking at well-being economies. So how do you measure the output of an of a society in a country and and what is good for it? And it looked at a much wider number of measures, and and so fundamentally GDP is not the right as you know, when you start with that, then you need to align your economic system to that as well. It's quite skewed. It's quite skewed. We have got a lot of institutions that have the capital that they invest that are not considering long-term. I mean, they're few and far between, and obviously, you know um Warren and Charlie uh uh Barkshire Hathaway have a very different view on on how they invest their money, and that they've made very few mistakes over the years with that, um, and due to their their their perspective there. Um but if you look at venture capital and private equity, um you know the they are they are driving certain behaviours uh uh in the marketplace. Um now um the other thing is well, you mentioned Barclays, um, how an organization decides to differentiate and orient itself, um, the need for differentiation actually sometimes harms things because um because you're driving for I can get I can be more certain that I will win in the marketplace or win a certain amount of the marketplace, I will differentiate. So Barclays, you I don't know where they're at right now, but they used to always be the the thing was you knew that Barclays were doing innovative edge things. So if there was a new way to do online banking, that's what they would try to do. Their messaging was all about we're we're on that edge and we're innovative in a way that trying to make that in a way that customers understood, not necessarily not like in a tech sense, right? But it meant that a lot of things joined up. The Eagles Labs and the things that they did around that, all of that joined up. So you would see as a personal banker, oh, they do all that Eagle Lab innovation stuff. That's the people I bank with. So I'm always on that edge, right? And and I I did some consulting work with them around online banking, and actually in 2001 did the first version of online banking for Barclays Bank. Um but that's very different from helping Briston prosper. Now, both CEOs would talk to the economy and to the market and to the government about first-time borrowers and things that the society cares about, and we do this things. But honestly, at the end of the day, in that marketplace, people are chasing rates. You know, they're they're they're chasing rates, and they will change for 0.1 of a percent, not because I like the brand here or I like the brand there. So I think it's much more interesting, you know, oh, we're it with innovation, or we're looking after prosperity, and and then you HSBC was your global your global partner, and that's that was the identity that you had there. Um and then uh RBS and Nat West were um, you know, they they they had less clarity around that, you know, um at the time. We're going back ten years ago. Um but these things influence what they then do and how they they turn up and show up in the marketplace. But I think the conversation really about how we make changes is at the shareholder uh VC, private equity, and and how you measure your economy, because that will shift the way that companies behave. That's where it's at.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

That is the intersection that I was trying to articulate, but you have. So thank you very much. I mean Incredible, incredible. I see a parallel, and it'll be interesting if if if you agree with how these massive financial institutions are looking to um progress, let's let's put it that way, um within very, very constrained regulatory frameworks.

SPEAKER_01 58:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

Yeah. But still the eye is on the financial prize. Whatever that equation looks like.

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:58

And now we've got this wonderful toy called artificial intelligence where the outcome is definitely financial, but there is almost an inversely proportional equation that is trying to get to that outcome. So what I mean by that is, okay, where's the people first philosophy? Where is the I need to look after society? Where is the um the governance?

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

It's starting to appear, which is great, but I'm of the view that yeah, it's so late in the game, and there aren't, again, my perspective, sufficient voices with the appropriate level of amplitude. So they're not very loud, or not as loud as I think they need to be, um, to say, yeah, hang on. You you we love where you're telling us we might be going. How are you getting there? Hmm, hmm. That's yeah, that's making me a bit nervous.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

Is that a reasonable set of observations?

Investors, Wellbeing Economy, Incentives

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

Um Yeah, I think so. There's um oh gosh, there's so many things in that. There's um um we're storing up um we're storing up right now a whole bunch of wrongs that are gonna need to be righted um and probably won't be righted for 10, 20 years. Um there's a there's a PPI moment going on right now because of the appropriation of people's content and absorbing it into a technology. Um there's a did you know the harms? But carried on in any case. Um now we're only seeing we're only starting to see the social media side of that um come now, even though we were crying it out at the time, right? We so a A-Tech evolves, um, is is unbridled, um, turns in all sorts of different ways that we hadn't anticipated. We start to get a bit icky about it, but we carry on in any case. Um, right. Um and by we, I mean the companies and consumers. Oh, oh yes. You know, by the way, right? Um hundred percent, because we are conflicted in our behaviors as individuals. Um so that even that's not fully resolved yet, right? We're we're starting to talk about limiting teenagers' access to it. You know, I I don't think anybody's fully successfully sued a meta for um for the for the um gross negligence, um, I think, um, when they're aware of the psychological harms that um are possible through their platforms. I I don't think we've um I um i there there are metaphors that are used here, right? So um I have a very, very good friend of mine who um uh created a dark net um and and uh and he believes fundamentally in freedom of speech. Um and and his argument to me would be um when I say, but what about all the harmful people that hang out on dark nets? He said, if I'm the council and I run the roads and your house is burgled, you do not come to me and say your road enabled the burglar to come to my house. It's not a perfect metaphor, but the point was um, you know, you people have to be responsible for the actions that they do. Because it's hard for you to catch them, is not the technology's fault, right? It's a really interesting line there. Um I get into like, well, what is the purpose of you setting up your commercial organization? Because the this if we move away from the darknet thing and just talk about social media or um an AI technology stack, what is the purpose? What are you trying to achieve here? Because if you say, you know, uh, you know, Facebook's a hard one because it evolved. Like, let's do this thing, let's try this thing out, and oh, look what it turned into, right? But at some point in time you make a conscious decision, we are continuing to be that thing that we are now. Um, you start out with open AI saying we're here for higher purpose, and then it actively turns into a commercial uh not an a for-profit organization and says we're still on the other things. And at some point in time, you have to take accountability for the the harms and potential harms unknown, right? And um, I think this is where I find the futures work really interesting because futures allows you to acknowledge um potential unintended consequences, and this is where ethics come. I mean, Kenneth Bowles' fantastic work on um future ethics um um says this far better than I do. Um but as soon as you identify and are able to name and label potential unintended consequences, you are able to start to talk about risk and governance. Right? And if you don't, it's a decision. But you're not gonna be able to do that. And I think that's an accountable decision.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

Definitely, but you need to enable those conversations in the first place. There has to be a framework that says, have you considered XYZ?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

Now, principles and outcome-based regulation does a really good job of um trying to force towards this. Um so it sets an outcome that we expect for a person or a body or an industry or a society, and let's keep it to individuals at the moment for a consumer. Um and then it articulates some principles um that that should be in play. Now I was part of a um a board, a review board for off-gen about 10, 12 years ago. I can't even remember the dates now, but um, they had just started to do their version of treating customers fairly. The financial services one, but they I can't remember what they called the off-gen one, but I was invited to be on a panel with the CEO, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, um, and some other representatives, and the industry players came and presented to us, this is why the regulation was in consultation, how they were responding to it, to get feedback, which is a really mature thing to do, consultation. You come and show us how you've what you've done and changed in your organization that you think means you're compliant with the new regulation. Because what happened is British Gas had put their hands up and said, What do you want us to do? Well, it's principal. Principles-based. You do what's right and fair for the average person on the street. Yeah, but what do you mean by fair? Well, you have to determine. No, but if you just tap no, this is not a tick box exercise. Um so the these panels were set up so that they could test out their responses and get the feedback. So this is at a time when people like Ovo were like tiny, tiny little new things, right? So we had about four different companies in front of us, one of which was British Gas, and then there was some uh a slightly larger one, I can't remember which one it was, um, and then two really small ones. Um the two small upstart new newbies um came in and said we went out and we did this research, we talked to people on the street, we um, you know, blah blah blah, we brought all that back, we played it back, and uh as a group, we worked out and synthesized what fair meant to all of these people that we talked to, and then we put that down, and that's what we um Um British Gas turned around and said, we had we essentially said um we we had a think about it. Um we we thought about what fair might mean and we defined that and then we sent out a bunch of comms about this is the definition of fair, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

And we're like, no. No, you fail. And it was a like a stand-up argument about it with the CEO of OffGem because British Gas were doing some other things at the time that OffGen were investigating them for. So it wasn't a great environment for British Gas at the time. But it was a really you don't get it, do you? It's a principles based. And going back to that thing in 2003, 2004 with the PPI, like you've the point of the regulation is a principle. Um uh and if you don't what what the regulators weren't very good at doing was picking people up on the principles. Because, like, how do you prove and evidence it, right? Um, but um there were definitely ways through. And I I've since um just about a few weeks ago I talked to um um um uh piece. Um he sits on the um the government's um body that looks at the future of regulation in general.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:10

Right wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:11

So um uh he's written books on outcome-based and collaborative regulation. Um and um he's he said a really interesting thing is like when people are aligned on the outcomes and have a shared view of things, it's quite easy to pull towards a good set of regulations. He said the um and there's another factor that I'm gonna show in this example that comes into it as well. He said, in the airline industry, it's it's super clear the outcome that we do not want is death. People are really aligned and motivated for that not to happen. And so we have very good and increasingly good safety standards in the airline industry from the moment that people started to get together to try and solve that together. So the other thing is that in that industry, the people doing that are experts and in the work. And he said the final thing he said was that it was it's very hard to to it's very hard to hide criminality inside that and bad faith acting inside that. Now, he said in the financial services industry, those things are not, the outcomes are not as aligned. Like, does everybody agree on what the outcome is and the thing we're trying to avoid? Not necessarily. Is everybody deeply expert at the things that they need to be who are sitting around and doing this? And is it is it actually quite easy to inculcate bad faith acting into that? And he's like, so that is the last industry, you know, that that might potentially get to collaborative, outcome-based, principles-based regulation that really works at scale. Um, unless you can constrain that conversation around, and this is what we were talking about, perhaps perhaps an area like Scotland, where they're thinking about a well-being economy and thinking, and actually you've got, you know, as opposed to like the world. So there's a lot to try and unpick in how you can bring this together. But I I I'm trying to get some work together with the Futures Institute of Edinburgh about um about how do we start this conversation between leaders of these institutions who are human beings and have a civic self that has a sense of what the right thing to do is, a leadership persona, if you like, where they work for this company to try and get this outcome, um, a society that they operate in that's going, hey, I'm not sure you're acting quite the right way, and a regulator that's trying to get them to despite all of this, why do you still end up doing not good things? Because if I called you on it as an individual human being and you were honest, really honest, and there was no comeback, nobody recording, no written, I know what you'd tell me, right? So, how do we get you to be able to behave as the human being you want to be, for the human beings you want to behave for and the society that wants it? Everybody wants this. Why are we not getting it?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

That is an awesome way of looking at it. Um, and I love how you lent into the airline industry because okay, if you start from a position of, okay, folks, this is our space. Yeah, right. Not a British Airways, not an American, not a Lufthansa, but collectively, this is our space. We're all airlines.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:55

What's the one thing that none of us wants to happen?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:02

Right? Okay, nobody wants planes falling out of skies or anything else, death, no, right, okay. Good.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:10

But which other sectors have that level of governance?

AI Harms, Regulation, Design As Decisions

SPEAKER_00 1:12:23

So health and pharma, right? But I think that the harms of technology and the harms in financial services are not explicitly explained, understood enough. They are there, right? Um, our research into financial health, physical health, and mental health that we did at Lloyd's, you know, um, well, not our research, the research we leaned on from um these universities in South Wales, uh University of South Wales and Australia, um, that that showed the connection. What I'm concerned about is the blindness of institutions and attempts to this reality.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:58

Sorry, do you think there's an aspect of immediacy about it? If something bad happens to a plane, you can't hide that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

And also, let's, you know, okay, so it's much more amorphous financial, physical, mental health. There are many other factors. Um, I can't be isolatedly um, I can't be isolated as a financial institution to say I'm solely responsible for that. Um whereas if your plane falls out of the sky, um, you know, uh, you know, that is your plane and your engineers and you know, um we'll take weather out of it and freak things, you know, um, you know, other than the acts of nature, right? Um it is more complicated, but I still think you have a role and a position in society as a business. And you define what that is and you say this is where we go to. Now, um, if I can't, if this is beyond what I can help you, the the best thing I can do is signpost where else you can go. All I need you to do from an outcomes-based um and a principles-based regulatory perspective is show that you've cared to think about it. Right? Show that you've cared to try. And um, when I look at consumer duty as a regulation now, it says that. It says, it's it absolutely says we understand you need to have margin and profit. But if that is the only thing you consider, then you're not imbalanced. But I'm not saying you need to do everything you can to the detriment of your viability as a business, because then you don't serve anybody, right? So profit and purpose can come together, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:47

Um, so the the the simple example is if you've got a pegger decisioning engine and you can get seats for that license is in your sales organization or your service organization, and you decide only to buy seats in the sales organization, then I know what you're prioritizing. If I as a regulator, I'd literally, if I as a regulator in consumer duty, I'd go audit procurement and find out who's bought sales licenses for Pega only. Simple. You've made a decision there. You've made a decision that that is more important than this. Let's look at that. So the framework is a blunt example.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

It's perfect, right? Auditors will come in, they're gonna, you know, have a look at your you know, dirty sock drawer and all the rest of it and la la la. As they should do. But having that um process in place, and this is going beyond business contingency, yeah, right? Um, this isn't about security and safeguards around your data centers. This this is about what are you as a sector really, really explicit about the thing or things that you are going to protect against?

unknown 1:16:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:13

This is decisions, right? Decisions. And this is where I get full circle. What is design? Yes. It is the act of of making decisions with intent towards an outcome. You know, there's lots of different definitions, but you know, th that is one way of looking at it. So people are designing their organizations every single day, whether they are a designer or not. Correct. Because they make decisions. And what I like to do with futures is de-risk those decisions. What I like to do with organizational design is enable those decisions. What I like to do with design capability is share that mindset of designing.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

Visibility is accountability. Visibility is accountability.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

I have to throw that in. No, no, you are absolutely right. Absolutely. And visibility is it and we work out in the open, we work, we we visualize things for people to make it easier to understand what we are actually trying to do. Um, and I haven't mentioned Figma at all in that because that's not design.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:20

That's an artifact, it's a consequence um that will enable the broader argument. Yeah, it is uh one tiny tiny element which will contribute to a more holistic outcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:47

If I want to paint a house, great, brilliant. Where's your house? Is it structurally sound? Is the land okay? Um how's a survey being conducted? Why is a house there even? All of those things are all part of the gamut of what we call design, but unfortunately, yeah, lots and lots and lots of people just think it's that which is making something look pretty. But anyway, I think that's that's another conversation, potentially for another time. Um, but Martin, um this has been amazing. This has really enjoyed this. It's utterly been so, so amazing. Um, thank you. Thank you for making the time and thanks for being so so open.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

Um thanks for holding the space. That's really it's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:37

Thank you. Pleasure, total pleasure. Pass well passing. End the end section is is to you. How can folks um get in touch with you? What do they need to get in touch with you about?

Closing And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:18:51

Um the floor is yours. So um the easiest way to reach me is through LinkedIn. Um my profile, Martin Dowson. Um I I have Liminal Design Office. Um uh is uh is a company that I work through, and there's a there's a website for that. Finally, I put something up to just try to explain these things. Um and um in my in my absolute day-to-day, um, it is about helping orgs go through change and transformation, specifically, mostly um digital product orgs, and I help the execs uh and the leaders understand where design plays a part in that. Um I used to do that directly for design leaders, and now I actually find myself doing that for CPOs and CTOs. Um But the interesting things that have been happening over the last year or two that I also am really fascinated by and have been actively working on is you know how we work. So that involves AI automation and tooling and things. Um I've been actively working with organizations on on how they do that. Um and then the um but then the really the really super interesting thing I think is the work that we've been doing on trying to link that future view that's a little bit further out, that helps you de-risk decisions today, um, that we can do by using some of the design tools and mindsets, but we can do with people across the organization. Um and how you use some of these things to help you actually not comply, but live the principles of your industry's purpose, which is often articulated or governed by your regulator. Um, and how being in line with those principles is more than compliance and is actually good business. And that is something I've been working on over the last couple of years, alongside my interim work with some um financial services organizations, specifically looking at consumer duty. Um, but I also it applies to the other regulatory areas as well. And so we've got a framework for helping organizations navigate that and understanding what capabilities they need to be able to do that. But it I it's a challenging piece. This isn't tick-box compliance thing. This is we're gonna change how you work, and it is going to um move the organization forward beyond compliance and and into you know principles-based growth.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:29

That's an incredibly appealing and interesting space. Um fantastic. Mon, once again, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:40

Thank you much. Thank you so much. It's been um thank you for having this space, dub as uh you know a great place to drop in, share a coffee, have a conversation. Love it. Thank you.