112 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY - - - - more-than-100-year-old organization of this size to move with greater speed? AK: There are two reasons why speed is a chal lenge. One, as a large company, we operate in 190 countries across multiple lines of business. At 250,000 people, there is an element of just sheer scale that makes it slow. But I think there’s a big ger challenge that causes slowness, and it comes back to the risk point. If people are risk averse, they’d rather get a check-in with somebody. If that somebody is risk averse, they would rather say no than yes, and you end up fighting through ten nos. To get people moving faster, you’ve got to say, “Hey, they’re going to fail a third of the time. They may not succeed.” You’ve got to begin to get to a culture where you say, “It’s OK to be mostly, but not always, right.” How do you get people used to the fact that not everything they do will work? Or that if you are going a lot faster, then you actually more than make up for the total success in the speed? A team came to me about two years ago and said, “Hey, we can build this great tool, leveraging gen AI to help modernize the mainframe. We need 21 months.” I said, “OK, great, but can you do it in six?” Their response was no way, so I asked them to go away and think about what they would need to do it in six. They came back about two weeks later and said, “One of the reasons we are going slower is that we know some gen AI, but if we had a couple more people who knew it well, it could help. And we need more resources. But it’s still probably nine to 12 months away.” I got them what they needed, and they did it in six. Now, that story gets around, and people start to see that’s how they can and should do it. I really do think that this is where senior lead ership often falls down. We put people in a box and simply tell them to go and do it. You’ve got to help them; it is a huge unlock to say, “What do you need?” as opposed to “Just do it.” ‘You’ve got to begin to get to a culture where you say, “It’s OK to be mostly, but not always, right.”’ EK: Given everything you know today, what do you wish you had known before you took on this role? AK: When I came into this role, my order of prior ities was strategy, talent, and then culture. Now that I have five and a half years under my belt,