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The Instinct When an issue surfaces inside a financial institution, the response follows a familiar pattern. Classify it. Rate its severity. Assign a remediation timeline. Escalate if required. Document everything. The framework exists to demonstrate that the organization took the problem seriously. Seriousness, in this context, is measured in effort and process completion, not in whether the problem actually got fixed. Severity ratings are anchored to past damage. How many c

The Instinct When an organization needs a capability it does not have, the most logical path is to find someone who does. A vendor is engaged. A contract is signed. A box is checked. The need, at least on paper, is met. Vendors serve a legitimate purpose. The problem is what tends not to happen before any of that occurs. There is rarely a serious conversation about whether the organization should build the capability itself, what it would mean to retain that knowledge interna

The Instinct Every major technology cycle produces its own version of the same conversation. The details change. The structure does not. A capability emerges, leadership asks where it can be applied, and the organization mobilizes to find answers. The questions that tend not to get asked are whether the benefit justifies the effort, whether the problem being solved is actually the right one, and whether there were simpler paths to the same outcome that were never seriously co

The Instinct Every organization has a theory of what good performance looks like. It lives in job descriptions, performance review criteria, and compensation frameworks. It gets discussed in calibration sessions and communicated in annual reviews. It is documented, approved, and periodically revisited. It is also, in most institutions, designed by people who are not the same people living inside it. Compensation, incentive, and performance frameworks (collectively, "rewards f