May 15, 2024 - It's been just over two years since I moved to London to lead McKinsey Digital in the UK, Ireland and Israel. In that time, I've been amazed by the energy and vibrancy of the UK's tech sector, the growth of tech capabilities within large companies, and how welcoming and generous UK tech leaders have been in sharing their expertise and perspectives on their biggest priorities and challenges.
After hearing these perspectives, we felt the need to create a community of UK tech leaders, providing an open forum to learn from each other, and really unpack how we move to action on some of the stickiest problems that tech leaders are grappling with
So we did just that. In partnership with Russel Reynolds Associates, we launched a series of events gathering CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and tech leaders with similar positions in data and analytics, called BLINK Unpacked. We believe that through collaboration or community can accelerate technology adoption and help build sustainable, inclusive growth throughout the UK economy.
You can view highlights of our previous events below.
If you are interest in joining our community and attending future events, please do get in touch blink_unpacked@mckinsey.com
BLINK Unpacked: Cyber Security, Risk and Tech Resilience - April 2024
In April 2024, Jim Boehm and I gathered digital and tech leaders to discuss a topic I wish we collectively talked more about: cyber security, risk and tech resilience. The conversation was guided by the underlying principle that "Risk = Threat x Vulnerability". This north star guides risk leaders who can in-turn use it to inform, educate and share approaches to risk management across the organisations in which they operate.
A few takeaways stood out for me:
1. Create a unified leadership in risk management: It is essential for all leaders at all levels, from the board downwards, to have a coherent understanding of the risks their specific domains face - whether related to teams, products, or supply chains. This collective understanding across the leadership spectrum is critical for maintaining a consistent risk management approach throughout the organisations in which they operate.
2. Balance risk appetite and management needs: Risk leaders must navigate the delicate balance between the board's often zero-risk appetite and the practicalities of an acceptable risk profile. Educating board members on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk is key. This includes defining scenarios we are prepared to tolerate - such as specific failures that the organisation can withstand without major disruptions (e.g. "what if we face a ransomware attack? how quickly can we recover?").
3. Adopt data-driven risk discussions: To elevate risk discussions beyond subjective assessments, it is vital to anchor these conversations in data. Avoiding simplistic models like traffic light systems and one-liners in favour of data-driven insights that allow for a factual, nuanced understanding of threats and vulnerabilities. Metrics should not only identify risks but also measure the organisation's control capabilities, such as detection, response, and recover times in crisis scenarios.
For further Insights, you can view our repository of risk and resilience insights across industries here.
BLINK Unpacked: The Year of GenAl: Technology's Generation Moment - November 2023
To close out last year, we gathered digital leaders to discuss the topic of the year, Generative AI.
While it is not new, 2023 was definitely the year it launched into public consciousness. We held two panel discussions during the event. For the first, we heard from leaders who shared first-hand experience of implementing Generative AI in their companies. The second discussion focused on how the space is likely to evolve in the mid-long term.
The key takeaways for me were:
1. Start with the problem: While GenAI offers significant advantages in tasks like personalised marketing and synthesising unstructured data, it's not a one-size fits all solution. Organisations need to critically assess whether and where GenAI should be used for their specific needs (vs e.g., "analytical AI").
2. Context is everything: Generating the best ideas and executing with the right prompts for the model requires depth of understanding of the business and opportunity. The existing organisation will have those experts: include them and equip them to maintain the models.
3. Build strong foundations for the future: Organisations should think beyond the POC to ensure scalability and adaptability. Modularity will be important for future technological or regulatory changes given how early we are in the journey.
4. Change is the heaviest lift: Managing the adoption and change related to GenAI is a significant challenge. It involves educating the entire enterprise about the technology's benefits, risks, and necessary guardrails to ensure smooth integration and acceptance.
5. ... and there is cautious optimism for the future: The ongoing debates on safety, ethics, and regulation in GenAI, coupled with the exciting potential of integrating it with other technologies like APIs and AR/VR, point to a cautiously optimistic future. However, the long-term prospects of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its viability, as well as associated risks, remain areas of uncertainty and active discussion.
Watch the highlights below:
BLINK Unpacked: Building and Scaling New Digital Businesses - June 2023
In June, we convened a group of industry experts, experience entrepreneurs, and technology leaders to discuss the challenges and opportunities when it comes to establishing and growing digital ventures.
A key point of discussion was that digital building is not just a trend, but an accelerating movement. Today, we see a 50% increase in new businesses built compared to just two years ago. This focus is justified, as nearly 70% of companies prioritising digital business building to outgrow their markets, almost doubling their revenue.
Key takeaways from some of the discussions around the room include:
1. Accelerate growth through rapid learning cycles: Encourage quick learning, promptly launch experiments, test concepts and prototypes with real customers, and pivot based on the insights gained.
2. Focus on building culture: Culture doesn't happen overnight but one needs to actively work on implementing a series of changes within the organisations unit it "feels different".
3. Obsess about customer experience: Successful new ventures are fixated about creating delightful experiences by being constantly and deeply connected to their customers and solving specific pain-points.
4. Design for scale from the outset: To scale efficiently, a business must establish robust technological foundations, the right operating model and ability to attract talent at pace.
Watch some of the highlights below:
BLINK Unpacked: Attracting, Retaining and Developing Talent - April 2023
For our spring event in April, our event partners, Russell Reynolds, convened our group of technology leaders to discuss the challenges facing businesses who are looking to buy and build tech capability at pace.
The shocks of the last few years has led to an unprecedented demand for tech talent and our expert panel shared their view on the challenges of recruiting, retaining, and reskilling tech talent.
Here are a few of the thoughts shared during their panel discussion that particularly stood out to me:
1. Many businesses are spending a disproportionate amount of time on the recruitment engine, and not enough time architecting an environment that allows for skills development and success once talent is through the door. Looking forwards, an important consideration for companies, should be how they might equally weight bringing people in and making them successful whilst they are in the role.
2. Solving for person-by-person gaps is one of the key issues when hiring tech talent. A pivot is now needed to focus more strongly than ever on hiring through a team lens: building and recruiting the right teams of people, with the right mix of skills and chemistry.
3. As we hire for tech talent, it's also worth considering whether the expertise we look at is correct. We are seeing shift from hiring for pedigree to hiring for protentional. Because the pace of change in digital is so quick, a set of specific skills or experiences that are useful today might not be useful in five years' time in the tech space.
Companies looking to build talented teams should consider a shift to hiring on the basis of potential and the capacity to learn.
Watch some of the highlights:
BLINK Unpacked: How UK businesses are generating value from Data & Analytics - February 2023
In February, we welcomed business leaders to our McKinsey London office. On this occasion, we took a deep dive on data and analytics, hearing from both our colleagues in Quantum Black, AI by McKinsey and from a group of UK tech executives assembled from our growing community. We explored how companies can generate business value from data and analytics by making better decisions, improving their operations, and enhancing customer experiences.
A few thoughts that resonated with me:
1. When we talk about data, we're talking about one of an organisation's most valuable business assets. Our annual McKinsey survey on AI backs this up: AI adoption has more than doubled in the past five years and the companies who are pulling ahead now attribute 20 percent or more of their EBIT to AI use.
2. Recent innovations, including ChatGPT, increase expectations and put data and analytics leaders under renewed pressure to act immediately. What's important is to first find the real value and to think long term. Instead of adopting a technology first mindset, start with the problem or metric and make it transparent, define the use case and then design the technology to address the issue.
3. And my personal favourite: "Be a chameleon". This means adapting and tailoring your actions and communications to different teams. As a digital leader, you are responsible for translating strategy from your CEO into concrete actions for your technical teams.
If you can get these things right you can start moving up the scale curve, create production-ready models and ultimately improve customer and business outcomes.
Watch some of the highlights:
BLINK Unpacked: The role of digital transformations in accelerating tech in the UK - November 2022
In November, we held a launch event and it was great to hear the ideas and experiences of colleagues working on a range of technology questions, including how to build a digital culture and attract and retain the top tech talent, how tech can help build resilience in challenging times, how to improve the clock speed of large organisations, and what are the core tech capabilities worth investing in.
Some points that stood out for me included:
1. Tech and digital are now a core component of every large business, all C-level executives need to integrate, implement, and think of tech as business as usual.
2. Speed is essential to digital transformation. The businesses that can move quickly and make fast decisions will see improved financial results and outcomes for customers.
3. Why the human/user first approach is so important. And why leaders have a responsibility to create an environment of continuous learning, where people get excited by change and have the flexibility to build new skillsets.
Watch some of the highlights:
If you are interested in joining our community and attending future BLINK Unpacked events, please do get in touch blink_unpacked@mckinsey.com