You Can’t Outrun Debt by Spending More!
Very early in my career I was working in credit and lending. I went to meet with the regional VP to share some disturbing news: our delinquency rate was going up. This was not a surprise. We lacked standards and were trying to gain market share by making questionable decisions. What was surprising was my boss’s solution. He told me not to worry, that he had a plan. We were going to get more aggressive and add more loans to our book, which would drive down the delinquency rate. While mathematically accurate, this approach was obviously problematic. We were losing real dollars today in the hope that future income would offset it, and we were doubling down on bad processes, expecting a different outcome. As I look at AI implementations today, and the broader view of IT management, I’m seeing a similar strategy. Many teams are throwing whatever they can at the wall, hoping something sticks. This is problematic for many reasons. If we consider IT organizations’ capabilities and maturity lev...