The Key To Your Automation Culture (Guest: Asheesh Biyala)

Andreas Welsch: 0:21

Today we'll talk about creating an automation culture and you know who better to talk to about it than someone who's done just that. Asheesh Biyala. Hey, Asheesh, so great to have you on. Thanks for joining.

Asheesh Biyala: 0:36

Hey, good morning, Andreas. Thanks for having me. It's always good to see you. Looking forward to it.

Andreas Welsch: 0:41

Awesome. Hey, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Asheesh Biyala: 0:47

Yeah. So you mentioned Ashish Biyala. I'm based out of Kansas City working for one of the largest FinTech firms, Acrisure, leading their intelligent automation program, creating the culture that we are gonna talk about. That has been a good part of my professional journey since prior to this I worked for organizations in the emerging tech space, trying to help them understand what does emerging tech mean and how to drive strategies around emerging tech. How to help shape the culture create the team. That's my passion, is that's what I like to do. And conversations like this honestly helps me learn and take these learnings back to the organization and help them grow. Again, thanks for having me.

Andreas Welsch: 1:37

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, and I really love that mindset of sharing and learning together. So I hope that many of you in the audience also find something that you can take away from today's session and apply in your own world and in your own businesses. So I really can't wait to get started. I've been really looking forward to having you on. So to those of you in the audience who are just joining the stream, please drop a comment in the chat where you are on your journey and how you are maybe building that culture. So Ashish, should we play a little game to kick things off? What do you think?

Asheesh Biyala: 2:14

Absolutely. Love games.

Andreas Welsch: 2:16

This game is called Fill in the Blank. When I hit the buzzer, the wheels will start spinning and when they stop, you see a sentence and I'd like you to complete that sentence with the first thing that comes to mind and why. So fill in the blank. And, to make a little more interesting, you'll only have 60 seconds for your answer. We keep it a little short and put just a tiny bit of pressure there. And for those of you watching us live, again, please drop your answer in the chat and why. So Asheesh, are you ready for, What's the BUZZ?

Asheesh Biyala: 2:54

I think I'm ready. Let's do it.

Andreas Welsch: 2:55

Okay, great. Then let's get started. Perfect. The best way to learn about AI is? 60 seconds. Go.

Asheesh Biyala: 3:14

Yeah. I think the best way to learn about AI is to, again give yourself time and space to participate in the discussions like this and reach out to people in your network who may be working in that space. And then start small, right? Understand, basically attend webinars, attend conferences if you can. Understand the very basic, try to understand the basic fundamentals and try to apply in whatever way you can the organization without just going full steam ahead. And that's, I think that's the way you can really. Shape up your learning and figure out what's the best way to apply this in your own organization. So again, the building, the community of AI practitioners around you is very helpful.

Andreas Welsch: 4:08

Fantastic. Thank you so much. And well within time. Also it seems to match with what folks in the audience are saying. So try, do learn from the network and from resources, talk to people and understand where the use cases are. That's really awesome. Like I said to today's theme is around culture. And you mentioned that this isn't your first rodeo. So when you introduce automation in an organization, people, at least from my experience, are usually a bit cautious and especially if you want to automate parts of their job. But you need to build that culture around automation. Like you said, if you want your program to succeed. In a certain extent, the organization needs to embrace that culture. So I'm curious what have you seen being the most important thing to create this automation culture?

Asheesh Biyala: 5:01

Culture is a it's a very important word in the sense that when people talk about culture and it's a set of beliefs, right? Customs, traditions that bring people together to drive change. Everybody loves to talk about culture, but then when it terms comes to how do you shape culture, how do you change culture, that's where things get really, when, so you start going to the gray areas where there's no really one answer or there's no right or wrong answer. When I look at corporate organizations, any organization's, culture is driven by its vision, mission, and guiding principles, right? And this is, this culture is what drives an organization's appetite to adopt transformation, adapt themselves to emerging tech like automation and ai. So first of all, you really need to make sure that your automation, mission and vision are aligned to your organization's mission and vision. That's the first thing I did when I took any new opportunity where I had to create the culture program, right? What is my mission and vision and how does it align to my organizations? Then another important thing to do is to, for, to create the culture, is to create a community, in this case around automat. Create a community around automation, a community of champions who can really help you promote automation within your organization. But without this alignment to organization's mission and vision, it becomes really hard to set up this community to either change, embrace, or influence the culture. So having that alignment with your organization vision and mission helps you really sell it to these potential champions and help you create the community. Those are the very important things, foundational things that you should be doing. I would say as you move forward in the journey. The other important thing to do is to then treat automation itself as a product, not just a tool or a project, but it should be approached in the same way as any other flagship product that's critical to the success of your organization. Once launched, put into practice, review them with your key stakeholders. Review these champions I create upon them, update and improve them, and that again. Helps you gather adoption and build a culture.

Andreas Welsch: 7:24

Fantastic. So I hear it's a set of beliefs. Create that vision and mission, make sure it's aligned with the organization and build champions and see that it stays aligned, right?

Asheesh Biyala: 7:38

No, I'm saying that you got it right, and the product side of things is very, is having a product strategy around it. How are you gonna grow that across the organization? How are you gonna leverage those champions? To scale that across the organization is another important to, expend that culture to enforce that culture.

Andreas Welsch: 7:56

Fantastic. Yeah. And looking at the comments in the chat, I see things around change management. Culture is shaped by early wins in finding those early wins. Something that Tyler said. I think Aamir said culture should start top down, and again, to your point as well, defining the vision and really starting there. So great to see also the feedback from you in the audience and how that matches with what you're sharing independently as well. Now I'm curious. It's one thing talking about culture and say this is how you can do it or how you should do it. And you mentioned you've worked at different companies in the past where you've created this culture. So how have you seen this beat different between companies if it has been different at all? What's something that you've seen be different at different companies?

Asheesh Biyala: 8:50

Yeah, no, absolutely. So as I mentioned organizations' culture is driven by its vision, mission guiding principles. So I'll give an example of my current company, accure. This. Our culture is driven by the vision of providing best of human and artificial intelligence in the FinTech space, right? Insurance is one of our biggest verticals we lead in, but we are also in other verticals. Cybersecurity real estate. So providing the best of human and artificial intelligence, trusted relationships, powerful technology. We offer the best of both to deliver that extraordinary outcomes for millions of our clients. So now in most of the people in my organization they have embraced this vision, organization vision, and they're looking for opportunities to transform their part of the organization. In fact, I would say this ability to transform how we operate our business. and serve our customers is what drives our value proposition to our investors and to our customers. So from that sense, I would say compared to some of the other organizations, it's been relatively smooth ride to be able to set up that automation center of excellence, sell the benefits of automation to the organization because, we had a good support from the top leadership. Who is key to influence the culture right now? I would say most of the challenges have not been so much culture, but mostly foundational, but having the top leadership support and having that knowledge of organization, vision, mission, the people in the employees the manager level or the process owners level. The alignment with organizational vision mission that really help in terms of driving the culture. Now, in some of the previous organizations that I worked for, transformation via emerging tech, artificial intelligence was not a core part of the vision/ mission. They cause whatever industry they were in. So that's where I saw a lot of apprehension about the impact of emerging tech on jobs and things like that. There was a lot of fear as you probably have seen in some of your experience as well. But having said that, creating community early events, as somebody talked about, again, giving them an opportunity to participate in creating those wins. That went a long way. In fact, mi I would say that it was more important in those organizations to really kind of embrace that, be participated, the early events, show them the early events, then the organization where it's aligned to vision and mission, because there they understand that at the end of the day, That's how the organization is growing here, showing them that how these wins can really help them transform impact the bottom line was key to them. So again, depends on where you're coming from and how you have grown into the organization, right?

Andreas Welsch: 11:53

Yes. I think those are some excellent points and I could imagine that in maybe a lot of organizations, the vision and mission are not yet aligned with the AI strategy, or AI is not yet a core part, right? So to what you're alluding to previous organizations you've been at. How do you create this awareness and how can you help shape this mindset such that people are more open to embracing automation? What have you found to be successful?

Asheesh Biyala: 12:28

Yeah, for sure. As they say Rome wasn't built in one day, right? So you have to invest the time in understanding your organization's appetite for a change. And if the appetite is not there, you have to come up with ways to create that appetite. And once you have that understanding, you need to come up with a strategy to create, again, a community of champions that can rally around you. So for example, to answer your question, something that has worked well for me in the previous organizations and even current organization, especially at the beginning of the journey as you're trying to create any kind of AI automation program ground up, is to use your network of leaders like you. Other, my peers in other companies who are much ahead in their journey to show and tell their wins to come and participate in some internal discussions. So I've been lucky enough for that. My peers have really accepted my invitation to participate in discussions, sh share their show and tell with some of the folks in the organization and that actually really goes a long way in terms of people understanding that it is happening in the real world and it's start of possible, right? It's a win-win situation because not only it accept it, it helps my peers who are coming and participating in the discussions expend their network. But again it also builds excitement around art, if possible. Now, the other approach could be like, again, it depends. The resources available in the company, the skillset, and some of my previous organizations, a federated approach to automation was a viable option because of the kind of skillset set, leadership support, resource capacity. And that kind of goes into how can they participate in those early events, right? So having created those champions, let them get their hands dirty. Using the federated model was a good way. Now it may not work in all the organizations, but that's another way that really helped me build that community that helped me showcase those wins across the organizations. And you need to have right governance in place for sure. And that's why you have to understand your organizations like where that is. I would say the other approach that worked is again, and work with your vendors, work with your community to even see your the good work that you're doing in the organization. Those early events, if you could even potentially get nominated right in a conference for maybe an award or get your name out there in that community that, Hey, this company and this group is doing some good work, right? Could be publishing a white paper doing webinars, right? Some people might find it uncomfortable, but there's nothing wrong. And about sharing learning, it's actually very critical to let everyone know about the great work you are doing. So there are these different approaches, right? And I've tried all of them and it's not. One size fits all. You have to understand your organization's culture around it.

Andreas Welsch: 15:41

And then so it sounds it sounds like there's a different toolbox if you will, that you can pull from and different different things you can do. How you elevate that, the visibility of what you're doing, how you find those win-wins and how you talk about them. Yeah, that's right. I know we're already a little bit over, but I think it's okay if we take one more question. I saw one from Jesse in the chat that I think is a really good one that I would love to get your take on. Jesse says, what are the best qualities for an automation champion to have, and maybe if I can add one additional perspective, what roles are these champions in? So what qualities should they have and what roles are they in that community that you're building?

Asheesh Biyala: 16:26

Absolutely. So if I have to answer in very short and sweet, I say right aptitude and right aptitude, I use that quite a bit. Not only just building champions outside, but even just hiring in my own team. And in terms of the qualities, right? Just to elaborate on that, right? Aptitude is yes, you need to have certain level of aptitude to make sure that you understand your organization's business processes, understand the technology or better, and how do you bring them together. Attitude is that willingness to embrace change, right? And willingness to break silos and build a community and make sure that you are thinking through how can you really bring in more efficiencies in the organization and be willing to change, right? And learn new things. In terms of hard skill sets, I would say personally in my team, if I look at all the companies where I built team, there are people who came from. Fraud. There are people who came from hr, like fraud management HR, finance. There are people who came from customer service centers who were just picking up the phones, but again, because they had the right and answer answering customer calls. But again, they brought in right attitude and aptitude. They brought them willingness to learn. Today, one of my senior architects he, if you talk to him he lives in breathes automation. Five years ago, he was picking up the call from the customer to address their, to help them with their fraud issues. So I think, yeah, it's the art of possible there and you have to just willing to do it.

Andreas Welsch: 18:01

That's awesome. I love how you phrased it, that's really about attitude and aptitude and people's eagerness and willingness and motivation to grow into this roles and learn more about it. Fantastic. Hey that's really awesome. Maybe let me summarize real, real quick what I heard you share. Number one thing for culture. First of all, culture is a set of beliefs, but you need to align your AI and automation culture to your company's vision and mission and make sure that it stays aligned. It obviously goes a lot easier if you have support from the top and there's said realization. That these two things are actually connected. It might not be like that in every company, but you're able to get some wins and especially win-wins when you can pull from a different toolbox when you can create a network of champions that have the right attitude and aptitude, like you said, really about that mindset of doing something. Did I miss anything? And anything you feel is critical?

Asheesh Biyala: 19:07

Oh, I think you did a great job summarizing

Andreas Welsch: 19:09

All right. Folks, we're getting close to the end of the show today. Asheesh, thank you so much for joining. Like I said, I've been really excited to have you on and just looking at all, all the comments in engagement here in, in the chat seems like our audience is just as appreciative as well. So thanks for joining your expertise and for learning with.

Asheesh Biyala: 19:31

Hey, thank you for the opportunity, Andreas. Anytime. Love these kind of discussions. It helps me learn as well.

Andreas Welsch: 19:37

Awesome.