Guest Q&A - Inga Beale

Guest Q&A - Dame Inga Beale‍

 Dame Inga Beale, joins us to discuss how successful digital transformation demands simplicity, inclusive leadership and cultural change, preserving human trust, judgement and connection.

Dame Inga worked four decades in the world of financial services, culminating in the role of CEO of the centuries-old insurance market Lloyd’s of London. ‍During her 5 year tenure, Inga took on many of the traditions that had held the organisation back. ‍She modernised the market with the introduction of technology and innovation, and, understanding the vital importance of inclusion in the workplace, she challenged the traditional “boys club” culture to make it a much more inclusive environment for all. ‍She now has a portfolio of non-executive director roles in financial services.‍

You spent five years modernising a market that had operated much the same way for over 300 years. What did you underestimate about the people side of that change, and what would you do differently now?

What I underestimated was how many people would be so resistant to change. I wasn’t just introducing technology – to some I was challenging their professional identity.

Most people who work in the Lloyd’s market are extremely proud of its history and its sense of innovation. Even though the practices were centuries old, many were very attached to the traditional, paper-based way of doing business. To many, carrying that physical leather folder (slipcase) of papers (slips, as they are known) down Lime Street and having face-to-face negotiations in the trading “room” at Lloyd’s wasn’t just a process; it was a badge of honour, a tradition spanning more than three centuries.

When we introduced the new TOM (Target Operating Model) that was replacing the paper with digital platforms, some people didn't just see a new tool; they felt we were erasing the value of their expertise and their craft.

And it wasn’t just technology that was being introduced, it was also cultural change. I wanted to have a culture that would appeal to tech-savvy people and attract different types of skills to ensure that Lloyd’s would be around for at least another 300 years.

I made some mistakes but the fundamentals of including people in the market in designing the future was absolutely essential to the success. There isn’t much I would change if I could go back. However, one lesson learned was not to become complacent after some early successes. I made some shortcuts by not including enough people in some key decisions, and it backfired.

Trust is so difficult to build and so easily lost.

Organisations are moving fast on AI and automation. Having sat on both sides, as a CEO driving change and now as a board chair overseeing it, what are boards and executives most likely to be missing when they focus on the upside?

When you are sitting in a management role in a legacy business, it is incredibly easy to look at AI through the lens of productivity gains, speed, and cost efficiency. The upside is incredibly seductive. But most of us still operate in businesses that are based on people – and people that helped build the success in the past.

It is easy to overlook the human side of major transformation and culture. However difficult to define, it still matters.

Algorithms cannot build corporate culture, engagement or loyalty. We still need people to make judgement calls and when you automate workflows aggressively, what happens to the 'social glue' that was so critical to previous success?

Boards need to be asking tough questions not just about what the transformation numbers are saying but what is this doing to our talent pipeline? What leadership skills do we need for the future? How do we ensure a sustainable future?

At Lloyd's, resistance to technology and problems with culture turned out to be closely linked. Do you think that technology changes culture, or does it just expose what's already there?

Perhaps the expression “culture eats strategy for breakfast” coined many years ago holds true for technology as well.

I haven’t heard people say “culture eats technology for breakfast” but I think that is how I felt when I was at Lloyd’s. Unless the culture is one of experimentation, constant change and putting technology first, it is likely that there will be cultural resistance.

For many of the formative years during my career, I worked in a culture that was all about continuous improvement, never being satisfied with the status quo, and looking for new ways of doing things.

I was at GE – an organisation at that time that was always pushing the boundaries and seeming to make what felt like the impossible, possible. Before I joined, I remember getting bored at work if there wasn’t enough change going on so that environment suited me well.

After I moved on to another company, it was as though I had gone back in time and joined the “real world”. I was working for corporations with systems and cultures built up over many many years that had not been modernised or integrated properly. It was almost as though there was a power up above looking down on the organisation that employees feared and yet couldn’t describe. Something that kept saying to them “but we have always done things like this – why change?”

If you’re facing this situation ask the “why” question. Ask it five times and you should get to the real reason why things have stayed the way they are. And then you can go about changing it!

As people interact more with systems and less with each other, what happens to the informal things that most organisations rely on but never measure, such as trust, judgement and the ability to speak up?

I fear for the modern corporate world. We see in social media how easy it is to put a critical, sometimes abusive, comment out there. Trust is being eroded. In business, we rely on trust, experience and instinct to make the right decisions. We need people to have the courage to speak up and challenge us to keep us moving forward.

When you replace all those human interactions with machines, what will happen?

Many of us remember learning good judgement by watching more senior people navigate nuanced, real-world situations. We didn’t always respect the decision they made but the more experience we had, the more we understood why they had made them and how difficult it can be.

Successful leaders in the future will have to be incredibly intentional about designing physical and social spaces that keep the human connection alive, because once trust and openness evaporate, installing a software patch doesn’t repair the damage.

You've said before that CEOs don't know everything. Most leaders signing off AI programmes right now don't fully understand the technology. How should they lead something they can't personally evaluate, and where does that go wrong?

You’re right, I have always said a leader who says they know all the answers is not telling the truth.

All of us, at some time, have gone into new roles or situations. We enter them not knowing if we will be successful. Some are arrogant enough to think they know all the answers before they arrive, but this often backfires. You don't need a degree in computer science to lead an AI transformation. What you do need is the humility to admit what you don’t know, and the curiosity to ask the right questions.

Leading is all about the people you have around you (although don’t ask me about how to lead a team of AI agents who don’t understand empathy, as that is something I don’t know about!) and you make the right decisions if you appropriately empower them. Use their knowledge and skills, combined with the other team members and yourself to challenge each other. You will end up with the right decision.

As a leader, make sure the team members are not clones of you! You need the challenge from different thinkers to be successful. Warning – have a few sceptical voices around you to keep you balanced.

I also encourage you to bring in reverse mentors. Tap into the less-experienced, tech-savvy individuals in your business who actually live and breathe this stuff. It is easy to lose touch with a generation or a group of people that aren’t in your daily ecosystem as you climb the corporate ladder. Keep grounded and keep in touch with them.

What's the one thing you'd tell a leader about to commit to a major technology programme this year, and what's the mistake you'd most expect them to make?

My most important piece of advice: “KEEP IT SIMPLE”.

Professionals are proud of what they have learnt, what they have achieved, who they have influenced and how their knowledge is sought. Therefore, many things in business become way too complicated so that we don’t offend the “experts”. This happens often in business situations.

One of the key reasons we succeeded in starting the digitalisation journey for Lloyd's was that we prioritised what we did. From an initial list of 15 priorities, we brought it down to just 4. And it worked! It is not about dumbing things down, but simplicity succeeds.

Employees are usually one step ahead of management so they should all be treated like experts. Respect and value them all, communicate why you have made the decisions, and then you will begin to be trusted and followed.

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