RBC's Kelly Bradley on Disclosure, Disruption, and Developing Talent

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Kelly Bradley: I always say that AI can draft the memo, but it can't, uh, read the room. It can't feel the weight of a decision that a customer is making or that we're making across the bank. That's what people do. And so what we've tried to do is say to our people, look, we think that there's value in thinking about investing genuinely in what makes us human. Judgment, empathy, the courage to sit with a hard conversation. Because the orgs that are, in my opinion, that are pulling ahead are not the ones necessarily that have the flashiest tech stacks. They're the ones that find this balance between what can humans do and what can machines do and how do you do them both?

Bill Kerr: Many traditional banks are wagering that artificial intelligence can increase capacity while employees in both back office and customer facing roles. Adaptation. Whether institutions can redeploy their heavily AI exposed talent as rapidly as the technology reshapes work remains an open question. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I'm your host, Bill Kerr. My guest today is Kelly Bradley, Chief Human Resources Officer of Royal bank of Canada. We'll talk about how RBC approaches talent and leadership across its global operations. We'll discuss what the bank is learning as AI begins to reshape work. And we'll look at the implications for workforce demand, organizational structure, internal mobility and reskilling. We'll also Explore lessons from RBC's integration of HSBC Canada and consider how Leaders can build trust and, and adaptability during periods of significant change. Kelly, welcome to the podcast.

Kelly Bradley: Great, thank you.

Bill Kerr: Kelly, tell us a little bit about your career path to being the head of HR and also in the C suite at rbc.

Kelly Bradley: I started, uh, in a very small town called, uh, Bowmanville, Ontario, um, as a teller, ah, part time, uh, in between school, uh, and uh, I met a lot of people during that time and I applied for different roles so I could learn different things. And over the course of a decade or so found my way in different positions in head office, in operations, in marketing, uh, in strategy, and uh, eventually made a transition to human resources. I have a master's degree in HR and leadership and org effectiveness, and I've really had a lot of different experiences in HR and then in 2022 took on the chief, uh, Human Resources Officer role.

Bill Kerr: That's amazing. And I think we'll be talking a lot about technology and occupations and roles, but going all the way back to the Teller experience. You've been in positions that have had new forms of technology enter and how the role adapts and how people kind of move to new opportunities. Building from there. Building from there.

Kelly Bradley: Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Kerr: You know, uh, you have operations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. and those are similar markets, but they're also different. So tell us a little bit about, you know, the workforce leadership strategies, kind of talent models that you bring into those markets. Where are they similar, where are they different? And how much do you kind of like build an umbrella across all of them?

Kelly Bradley: I think organizations today are facing, no matter how big you are, you're facing a really complicated environment. You've got rapid technological transformation, you've got some fairly wide deepening societal polarization, as you all know. You've got this increasing tension between globalization and this need for localization. And so we're feeling all of that. But RBC is in a slightly unique vantage point in the sense that we are simultaneously trying to expand a number one position in Canada, which is consistent across all of our client segments, while playing what I will call a bit of a challenger role outside of Canada, in the US in, um, in Europe, in the UK and other key markets. We, uh, have a strong capital markets bank, uh, but haven't done as much outside of capital markets. So we're growing there. And we're doing this while technology is really fundamentally reshaping, um, all of financial services and all industries and client expectations and how work gets done is being impacted by that. So we have to kind of straddle a culture that allows us to both defend and disrupt, I would say, at the same time, um, and what's required, just practically speaking, of leaders that are in a more disruptive and competitive environment, where we are in more of a challenger role, like in the US for example. It's just quite different than what you need from leaders in Canada. I think sort of culture is really the sum of the decisions that we make every day. And so we've introduced a framework to really help guide those decisions. We have these overarching outcomes that uh, dictate our strategy and then we line up really clear leadership expectations. If leaders behaved like this consistently, regardless of the context, and maybe dialed up some things like boldness and ambition in areas where we need it and conservatism in areas where we need that, um, that that will guide how we operate day to day. And so we've then um, really, in a quite regimented way, introduce those behaviors across all our talent practices, how we hire, how we um, develop how we plan for succession, and at the same time we're trying to build that range. I talked about at the beginning by being deliberate about, uh, kind of slowing down the operational skills that we know are going to be impacted by AI and increasing our ability to hire more for the underlying attributes that we think are going to matter most for the future. So things like curiosity and complex thinking and the ability to see around corners really indexing on that so that we're kind of fueling the pipeline with people that have the raw goods to build any skills, regardless of where um, the world might take us.

Bill Kerr: Let's just stay a little bit longer on this cultural element. So if I understood correctly, is the one pager the same in the markets where you are the challenger, the disruptor, like the US as it is in Toronto or the places where you're the incumbent?

Kelly Bradley: It is, although we try to dial it up so it's the same eight behaviors. And they are things like, you know, shaping what's next and being bold and clear and growing great people. So there's some things that transcend regardless of the commercial, uh, context. But we try to um, hire, uh, indexed more on the areas that we think matter most in that market.

Bill Kerr: Yeah, and I'm curious also, because you hear with financial services banks, uh, a number of times this sort of simultaneous localization. And what matters still is the branch and the presence there, with also obviously the efficiency gains and the global structure. Do you find that, that localization matters more in a market where you're attempting to disrupt versus in the market where you're the leader or is it kind of in both dimension?

Kelly Bradley: The way I would think about it is that it's a relationship business banking, right? Uh, ultimately it's a bit, it's a, it's a brand built on trust. You're trusting your money. Your advice on your money is kind of a high trust kind of transaction, right? So you need to have enough knowledge of the local environment in order to be trusted in some cases. Um, but then by the, the same token, um, customers want a brand that understands the world and has experience outside of that local environment. So our brand helps us compete in less familiar environments because people can Google RBC or they can look at what RBC has done for the community or what our brand position is across the world. But the localization is what gets the deal done on the ground. Our belief is that particularly in areas that we have less familiarity in the market, the localization matters more because we need people that have um, centers of expertise there and have client bases there and can bring in um, connections and understand the market. So hiring a banker that's had a decade of experience there, uh, can kind of just move that growth period faster.

Bill Kerr: That makes a lot of sense. What were the early effects of AI on the work that's being done at rbc? Like what's the main use cases or what's the places that the companies really sort of circled and said this is where we are seeking to uh, build a strong technology presence.

Kelly Bradley: I think what's a little bit different about RBC's story on AI is that we didn't start preparing for AI recently. 10 years ago. We were really early adopters in the AI space. We launched at that time a Borealis Research Institute, which was kind of a startup in a global matrix bank which um, was unique at the time. And it gave us a bit of leeway to explore the possibilities of AI and financial services at a time where there wasn't a lot of people talking about AI. But we recruited teams of PhDs in machine learning, uh, from big North American universities. We started competing directly against big tech organizations for that talent. And so we spent the last um, several years since then doing this pretty cutting edge research, developing platform, exploring use cases. We've implemented world class security standards and look, we spent that time to do that and we saw, I'll say modest financial success initially. Like there you have to find use cases that are actually commercially viable. But the real win was the data. That that foundational work helped us get our data clean and structured so that the Models could be trained effectively. And so today we have over 100 PhDs, we've got 2,200 AI developers. So we have this talent and the infrastructure to actually put it to work at scale. Um, and at the same time we have a lot of our global workforce already using AI, uh, as part of their day to day workflows. And so that transformation was well underway and then just got sort of catapulted by the advancement of generative AI, um, and it has started to really redefine RBC's competitive moat, um, from physical scale which really as you said, branches 150 years of presence to a strategy more focused on data scale and brand scale and offering scale. And so we used our investor day a couple of years ago as a real catalyst. We put out uh, some fairly bold ideas at that, at that time. And we asked every part of the organization to surface their boldest use cases, uh, and put real numbers on them and declare them publicly, which we think is really important. Uh, when you're trying to do something hard, commit in public, accountable to saying it. Yeah, say it out loud. And so we had developer productivity was a use case at the time. Ah, commercial credit transformation, mortgage reimagination, um, and then, and then when we did that, um, we put a billion dollar target out into the street and said we think we can get to this pretty ambitious view on uh, the return on AI. And we were one of the first organizations to really do that. At the same time then we put the AI tools in the hands of our employees. And as is always the case with these things, then the really good ideas started bubbling up. Right. Because once people can play around with it, um, thousands of ideas came up. We've had 1200 patents filed, we've got models that are being developed all across the bank from capital markets to wealth management, consumer and commercial banking. Uh, and then earlier this year to really drive that transformation, we appointed um, a dedicated group head solely to AI reports direct to the CEO. And so that group is leveraging our core strength and data scale and then partnering across all the businesses to turn that potential into, um, into real value for, for our clients. AI isn't just changing how work gets done. It's really changing how we prepare the people to do work. And we're trying to approach it by rethinking how we train and develop our, our teams. Because the skills that you need to thrive alongside AI are quite different and we want to make sure our uh, people have them. So what excites me most is not any One use case or tool or project. It's really that mindset shift because we're seeing now it's a little less scary to people because they've had an opportunity to work with it.

Bill Kerr: Yeah, it's fascinating. And just to go back in the history that many of the very early artificial intelligence advances came out of Canada, particularly the Toronto area and building there. So it's, you know, um, you're at the frontier and also at a place where there was a lot of drive and talent that was around this. And I'm sure we have a couple of CFOs that are listening to this podcast that will be thankful to hear that you have seen financial returns on the other side of the investments. Because that along with data preparation, the biggest question I think many organizations face right now is will there be a financial return as we continue to put money into some of these operations opportunities? And it sounds in your case that not only have you achieved that, but you've got enough confidence now that you can make public commitments as to what comes next. What I'm really fascinated though was the last part that you were suggesting, which is maybe prior to three years ago or two years, whenever the generative AI part really took shape within rbc, because banking is a, uh, very digital activity, you could do a whole bunch of AI in the back end and the employees would not have played a role in that. Like that's why banking was at the frontier of many of these advances. But now there's something that requires that mindset shift. So tell us a little bit more about how you cultivated that mindset. How did you bring that about with the employees?

Kelly Bradley: Look, I think that there's a natural tension here, right? I think that first and foremost, as I said, banking is a relationship business. It is about building trusted long term relationships and giving them strategic, thoughtful advice. And that's something that really only humans can do. I think there is a natural tendency for organizations to want to approach AI transformation as an efficiency project. Right? Because that's where the easy use cases emerge. Our belief in the way we've come at it is that it has to be about strategic business outcomes. That's what's really going to sustain competitive advantage. That efficiency alone doesn't really create differentiation when everyone has access to the same technology. Uh, it's short term gain. Right. Um, and so organizations have to go into it in a way that sustains us over the long term and stays true to our purpose. So that's a helpful story, both commercially actually, because it allows us to to push leaders to think about the commercial application. How does this help customers? How does it help us deliver better advice, but also helps with the people side of it because it allows us to authentically say to our people, um, hey, this is about making you better. The way we think about it is more, what will our people do that I can't? I always say that I can draft the memo, but it can't, uh, read the room. It can't feel the weight of a decision that a customer is making or that we're making across the bank. That's what people do. And so what we've tried to do is say to our people, look, we think that there's a value in thinking about, investing genuinely in what makes us human. Judgment, empathy, the courage to sit with a hard conversation. Because the orgs that are, in my opinion, that are pulling ahead are not the ones necessarily, necessarily that have the flashiest tech stacks. They're the ones that find this balance between what could humans do and what can machines do and how do you do them both? Um, and it's the depth of relationships that will truly set organizations apart. And I think that has made employees come at it with a more positive mindset because they can see the value of that for the customers that they serve or for their careers.

Bill Kerr: Yeah. And you many times hear some kind of ratio like it's 25% technology, 75% the people that are using the technology, both their mindset towards putting it to work. The innovation that you described earlier in terms of coming up with the better ideas of how to put it into the workplace. And so you're circling here a set of skills that your training programs and your hiring processes and your promotion processes probably will want to emphasize ever more as that human element becomes more. More front and center, more elaborate.

Kelly Bradley: Yeah, exactly. Like, I think just fundamentally it requires a different approach to how you think about, uh, talent development, how you think about recruitment, how you think about leadership development. First, because we can't really predict what skills are going to matter most in the future from a technical perspective. Right?

Bill Kerr: Yeah, we're guessing the last few years have shown that.

Kelly Bradley: So then it. Right, Exactly. And so indexing on those isn't all that helpful. Ah, at this moment, I think, really being clear that if we know that there are going to be skills that transcend all of this, and that's our human skills. And so if you hire for that and you, um, reward for that, and you help people build those skills and you put them in, um, conditions and environments that allow them to get better at them, then you've got a really adaptable workflow that can move between any number of, uh, learned technical skills as

Bill Kerr: you do think about the organization as a whole. A, um, lot of people are trying to think about what will be the aggregate size of their workforce in the future because these things will make us as individuals, ideally, uh, far more productive. Uh, and this can differ at the firm level because if you're a successful firm, you grow. Therefore you need more people kind of coming on board and from what happens at the industry level. Or maybe the winning firm is taking away some of the business from a firm that's not keeping up. And so you find that the firm level effects can differ from the industry level effects. But just how are you thinking about, um, just the future talent needs that RBC will have?

Kelly Bradley: I think strategically we're indexing on more attributes over experience. So we're looking for people that we know can build the future, not just execute the presence from a leadership perspective, but also employees that will have the adaptability to learn and grow in different environments, Curiosity and complex thinking and the ability to see around corners. And we're kind of recognizing that the experiences that have made leaders successful might be kind of limiting them at this moment because the operating models, mentally that we've all built have been built for a very different operating environment. And that doesn't necessarily work when you're navigating new terrain. And then more operationally speaking, look, we're fortunate because we have such a large number of employees. We can use our attrition to balance out um, across without having to make necessarily really small significant shifts and changes in our workplace. So we can slow the rate of growth, um, in areas where we know we have an excess of skills and we can look for employees that have those skills where we need them. And we can kind of manage our recruitment pipeline in such a way that there are not dramatic changes to the workforce composition, but that we are slowly increasing the number of uh, skills and attributes that we think are going to be more beneficial for the future. Look, the other thing I will say is I think there is this kind of fallacy that you can recruit this ready made group of people or leaders that have all of these capabilities. But the fact is everybody's in the same position, right? Um, it's uh, you know, you have to build them and it requires changing your approach to development and coaching and having faith and confidence as long as you're building and growing the right attributes of the future. And I think organizations that commit to that work and really invest in their people's ability to grow, have a real advantage. You just have to approach the talent differently and be more open minded about where the transferable skills exist. Um, and then plan for it across your workforce.

Bill Kerr: And going back to your earlier comments, find ways to motivate people to make the investments. I mean, they're classic cases where someone says, no, I'm pretty happy with the way things are. You know, I don't want to make those extra educational investments or take on this new role or move to a new, uh, department. And those are, I think, going to be increasingly difficult cases because I'm 100% aligned with the speed at which you move the workforce is the speed at which your business will be able to change. Because you know you have 100,000 employees, you're not going to go get another 50,000 employees tomorrow. But it's still like there's going to be so much friction on those settings where somebody's just not motivated to do it and trying to spark that energy.

Kelly Bradley: So when I talk to employees in broad roof settings or even one to one, I always say, look, the option of not changing or adapting isn't going to be there for any of us, you know, me included. Right. Organizations have to show up and say, here's how we're going to help you, um, get through this. Here's the kinds of things that we can help teach you. Here's what we believe you can do. And that does require a belief system, um, across organizations that people can grow these skills. You have to believe that the talent can adapt. And to your point, the talent has to believe that too. And they have to feel some sense of incentive to do that. I just, there is no productive strategy in just resetting your talent because everybody has the same core skill gap right now. It's not like there's some ready made group that you could recruit from. So I, that is effort. That is work effort we have to do. And, and I believe if you do it with transparency and you're clear about what that looks like and you show up with the right development, uh, opportunities. For the most part. My experience has been that people show up for it, that employees are happy to see that path. It's when you do it behind the scenes and it's, it's sort of hidden that people aren't sure what the path to success is. That's where you start damaging your culture and that's where employees start to make alternative choices.

Bill Kerr: Yeah. So, uh, clarity needs to be there from the beginning you could say the business world is moving faster than ever and when change hits, we need to

Kelly Bradley: learn in real time on rapid response.

Bill Kerr: You'll hear candid conversations with CEOs and

Kelly Bradley: leaders making tough calls about AI, human

Bill Kerr: talent, responsibility and the bottom line.

Kelly Bradley: How they navigate uncertainty, pressure and high stakes moments. I'm Bob Safian, former editor in chief of Fast Company, and I'll be your host as each episode breaks down what

Bill Kerr: you need to know right now. You can find random rapid response wherever you get your podcasts.

Kelly Bradley: Mhm.

Bill Kerr: The Wired newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On WIRED's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people. Building challenging and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. That the amount of time that our typical employee is going to spend in training programs is going to stay the same, but the mix of activities is going to shift significantly as a consequence of this or that. Not only is the shift going to happen, but there's also going to need to be more time, twice as much time, because the technology is moving faster. Do you have uh, a perspective on what you're kind of budgeting for at rbc?

Kelly Bradley: So in parts of the bank where we expect that the change is going to move really rapidly, more operational areas, for example, more areas, um, where there's, where we can see that the technology already is moving at a very fast pace. We know that we are going to have to, in some cases, um, 20, 30, 40% increases in development are not unheard of. Where we know that we're going to expect, um, employees and the bank is going to have to invest in developing those skills, uh, much more aggressively. If you've got a group of 1,000 people and you know 1,000 roles are going to change, uh, unless you happen to have a thousand people that have those skills today somewhere else, which I think is not true in any organization, you're going to have to teach those thousand people something else to do that's going to require at least a period of spiked time on development and we're investing in that in those areas, which means you have this kind of dip in productivity while your development goes up and you're not getting the cost out or efficiency fast enough. Um, but you have to do that to win over the long term. And so we're accepting of that. It's still the more sustainable strategy, the investment. Now when you have the talent, when you know that they already are to your point, they know the institution in many cases, they understand the culture. They chose to work here, we've already trained them, they know each other. There's some history. To try to reset that at scale without investing in the people is a, uh, losing strategy, both for your purpose and your culture. But also commercially.

Bill Kerr: There's a sub variant of that that you hear increasing concern around, which is the technologies. Not universally, but let's call it um, six out of seven times have been better at taking on entry level tasks. That's where a lot of the productivity has come through. And it's been shown in consulting, it's been shown in call centers, been shown in a variety of things, but there are some exceptions. I don't want to say it's universal and that um, consequently organizations will have a, they'll be able to do the entry level work with fewer people, um, which could be fine. But at some point in time when they're looking for that next middle manager, they're going to have a smaller pool of talent that they're drawing from and that there's, people are going to have missed these years where they sort of learn the ropes, so to speak, before they're asked to put into settings where that judgment that you described earlier becomes uh, becomes really important. Is that something that weighs heavily on you at RBC and how are you thinking about those kinds of longer term dynamics?

Kelly Bradley: I think it is a short term uh, gain if you are just using your entry level talent in order to fuel the near term efficiency. But if AI reduces those traditional learning pathways, we have to then reinvent how we develop early talent or else inevitably organizations are going to run into this gap you just described. So you can't, I say, sort of automate the learning ladder away, um, because then nobody's learning. And I think a lot of that concern is warranted because if, if the work that used to build early career judgment is automated, then you don't just lose efficiency, you lose your pipeline. So despite all that, this year at rbc, just to give you some context, we're actually projected to hire 3,600 students, which is 12% or so up from 24. But we have to think about how we use that pipeline differently. You know, if I take ah, two, two interesting examples in capital markets for example, where traditionally the role of an Ah, entry level associate has been pitchbook creation and a lot of operational tasks so that goes away. So maybe you bring those um, that more junior talent with you on more customer conversations. Maybe you have them doing some preliminary uh, work that would have been seen as second year, third year work. Most of the time they're thrilled to get it and it's accelerating their performance and accelerating their productivity and getting them to the place they need to be faster. Another even more interesting example that I'm really passionate about since Even I think 2016 we started doing this, we have a program called RBC Amplify to recruit new tech talent. So every year we hire this group of uh, students. They work cross functionally for 16 weeks to build and prototype solutions um, that address real RBC challenges. But the amazing thing, none of these students have any experience whatsoever in financial services. So we hire them, we bring them in, we give them a bunch of support. The results have been tremendous. We have filed 200 plus patents since these students started to do this. We've had 670 students participate in the program. Making a point about experience versus attributes. When you hire people that are just passionate about the customer and excited about the work they're doing, they don't get as hung up on the way we've always done things. We've got this really vibrant community that has formed, uh, it drives innovation and Progress. We have 350 so RBCRs who volunteer as team leads and they sponsor and coach these students. That's an example of something I think creative that organizations need to do, including us and really challenge ourselves so that we're building more unique entry level roles rather than just assuming that because you're replacing the work, you don't need the people.

Bill Kerr: Certainly raises the responsibility for someone in the CHR role like you as well as also many, many line managers to say it's not as simple as just the work that needs to be done, put somebody on it, but instead thinking about a multi year horizon to build the talent that you want there you have um, what I believe is called an outcome oriented model, uh, which is different from an agile methods that we often hear. And so I'd love to have you reflect a bit on how work is being organized at rbc.

Kelly Bradley: So about eight to ten years ago there was this push in most organizations including rbc to really pursue this more structured agile approach. You're taking this learning from a tech environment, squads, scrum masters, really specific tech kind of based agile roles and we tried to do that a broader scale and it Kind of worked. There were parts of the organization that embraced it, but for the most part we found that we were trying to come at it as a tech company. And a bank is not always a tech company in all parts of the bank. It didn't always fit alongside the customer value proposition or the governance structure at a bank. And so we shifted to this more of an outcome oriented approach where we said, look, start with the client, where are they going, what do they need? Define the outcome and then put whoever needs to be in the room together to work towards that outcome rather than trying to back people into these kind of prescribed agile roles that don't necessarily fit a banking environment. And once we went to that level of simplicity, it just got a lot easier for us to um, to drive large scale change. You mentioned earlier on the uh, HSBC Canada integration, that integration was the largest acquisition in our history. It was a monumental effort across every corner of the organization. This was touching virtually every part of the consumer and commercial bank. Uh, so it was a really complicated piece of work. And so we took that more outcome based approach. Our culture really served as both the benchmark and I would say the litmus test for those decisions. We knocked down silos, we flattened hierarchies, we brought employees at all levels into the conversation. And it didn't matter, um, how senior you were, you kind of came together to get to those outcomes. And it was a little bumpy at the start because all companies, especially large ones, like to have hierarchy and structure and we didn't have a lot of it. But that experience really reinforced something that I believe quite deeply. One is that you have to be clear on what it is you're trying to get to and people will usually rise to that occasion. And two is that if you don't have the culture and the leadership behaviors, you won't get the outcome you're looking for. If leaders come into experiences like that and expect people to package things up for them and present them to them for approval, and you have to work through the governance structures and the hierarchies, you're never going to get there at pace. That was a real catalyst for us on taking on harder and bigger and more ambitious pieces of work organized in a more progressive way.

Bill Kerr: Amazing. I want to tie the longer arc back into this conversation and you highlighted your experience was that we didn't need all of the apparatus of uh, being a tech firm. But at several points of the conversation we've talked about how important, important tech is continuing to be coming inside RBC. If you look out 10 years from now with all of the AI infusion in the organization that will be at RBC will be at many, many, many, many companies around, uh, the world. Um, would you anticipate maybe even going back closer to some of the more formal tech oriented landscapes or have you got everything you need with the outcome based model?

Kelly Bradley: I think that we have to. Every organization has got to be willing to look at the context in front of them and decide how to organize for that context. And if right now it's working well for us, if that context were to change and we felt that we were for example having to push out code way faster or get to uh, solutions that were more real time and we were competing against companies doing that. Do you wonder whether or not you might need more of your organization, particularly in uh, parts of consumer banking that are working more like a tech company? Sure, I think there's a world where that could be true. I uh, just find it hard to predict right now because it's changing at such a rapid pace. We're never going to design an org model that's going to work for longer than a few years. So let's try to get the right talent with the right culture, working with the right behaviors and teach people that we're all going to adapt as we go.

Bill Kerr: Regulation plays an important role in all financial services. Is that something that really shapes what you're doing or is it one that's a little bit more. It's in the background.

Kelly Bradley: I think that any bank uh, has a requirement to the regulator that is pervasive. There are real um, regulatory constraints and there should be, you're dealing with customers, enormous sums of money and there's a lot of trust that is inherent in that. And the regulator is there to make sure the banks work within those regulations. I can't think of a situation where we have the luxury of putting the regulation aside. Uh, we're always designing with both in mind. But I think regulators understand that um, we need to be competitive as well. Um, you know that there is a, ah, real desire to have the best products uh, for consumers and that they understand that. I think the bigger challenge for us is when we hire people that have come from an unregulated industry that may have some of the tech skills that we need or have some of the bold ambition we're looking for. They feel more constrained than they would be in different environments and we have to help them figure out how to continue to do the things that um, really move the organization forward without um, bumping up against uh, regulatory constraints. And I do worry about that making people not choose banking. Like if you're looking for a really fast paced environment, are you sort of choosing outside of a regulated environment? We have to make sure we keep our balance on that and that you can have meaningful work here. You can do it in a way that is appropriately managed by and constrained by the right regulations, but that you're still able to be competitive for the customer.

Bill Kerr: Maybe as a final question here, and it goes back to, you know, it's hard to see two to three years uh, into the future on the org model, but with so much uncertainty out there, uh, technology, geopolitical, what the customer is going to want and so forth. Um, any personal uh, advice you give to leaders about, you know, building trust, helping their employees to reskill, adapting to, to changing conditions. Like what's kind of a sort uh, of final word as to the best way to be a top notch, world class kind of leader in this environment.

Kelly Bradley: My belief is that the leaders that stand out most in today's era are not the ones that kind of sound flawless and say the perfect thing. They're the ones that are grounded, accountable, real, um, I think employees respond best when they're empowered through change, not displaced by it. And the message that lands is not we're going to do X anymore, but rather we're going to do Y and we're going to teach you how. And I think leaders that can explain to people, look, um, this is what we expect of the organization, this is what we understand right now. But here's what we don't know. Here's what I can offer you today. Here's what I wish I could offer you, but I can't. I think leaders that are willing to be real with employees about it, ah, are differentiating. And I think that part of being real is accepting that not everyone will agree with you, um, and that this moment just calls for leaders that can be transparent, that can hold complexity, that can take responsibility for their words, that can still then, with all of that in mind, make decisions and chart a path through what is inevitably going to continue to be a very complex environment.

Bill Kerr: Great. Thanks Kelly. That's a wonderful way for us to end today. Thanks for coming on the show.

Kelly Bradley: Yeah, thanks very much.

Bill Kerr: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work project at our website hbs. Edumanagingthefutureofwork While you're there, sign up for our newsletter.