Earlier writing. I wrote this during my time in financial services, and it’s left here as it was published. More earlier writing
The AI Staffing Gap You Forget to Scope (Until It’s Too Late)
Most banks and credit unions under $10 billion are buying AI they can’t staff. I’ve watched it happen from the inside, more than once, and the pattern never changes.
The pitch is always the same. This platform will transform your data. So they sign. Snowflake, maybe Databricks, a BI tool, perhaps a Copilot license. The contract is impressive. The demo was beautiful. The board is satisfied that the institution is investing in AI.
Then the implementation lands on a team of two. One of whom also runs the CRM. And the member surveys. And the board reporting.
The only question that matters never got asked: who runs this on a Tuesday afternoon in February?
The tools are genuinely good. The gap is that you can’t buy capability. Capability is people plus process plus platform. Buy the platform, skip the other two, and you’ve bought a very expensive dashboard nobody trusts.
I’ve seen the aftermath. The platform sits half-implemented. The one person who understood it leaves. The license renews automatically because canceling it would mean admitting the project failed. Meanwhile the actual decisions still get made on gut feel and a spreadsheet someone keeps on their desktop.
What I tell leaders before they sign
- Name the actual person who owns it. If you can’t name who owns this on a normal Tuesday, you aren’t ready to buy it.
- Budget the operator, not just the tool. The license is the cheap part. The human who runs it’s the expensive part, and the part that creates value.
- Scope for February, not for the demo. The demo shows the tool at its best with clean data and a vendor engineer driving. Tuesday in February is the real test.
- Start smaller than the vendor wants. A small system someone actually uses beats a large one nobody operates.
The institutions that get AI right are the ones honest enough to admit that buying the tool was the easy 10 percent, and the staffing, the process, and the trust are the other 90.
Before you sign, name the person. If you can’t, you already have your answer.
