The future of banking will put a premium on data analysis and cognitive technologies – areas in which the tech titans are making ever-deeper inroads. Can banks and credit unions see the bigger picture, or will they continue to "add a few bots" on top of traditional technology? Cognitive Banking requires culture of imagination, not incremental steps. “Establishing a culture of imagination to deliver a vision of the future is one of the biggest challenges banks face today. Risk-averse practices, compliance requirements, and sensitivity around data are often cited as the barriers to why it doesn’t occur. But those are merely handy excuses for maintaining the status quo — a mindset for using bots to refine flawed processes rather than examine if the process even needs to exist in the first place.” Financial Services lack the culture to innovate fast. “The study also found that a lack of technical skills was not considered a major barrier to innovation. “Skills can be acquired, but the main barriers to innovation are the things that money can’t buy: time and energy, on the one hand, and an agile organizational structure, on the other,” said Contino.” Accenture releases the Cyber Threatscape Report 2018. It examines trends in cyber threats observed and analyzed during the first half of the year and explores how cyber incidents might evolve over the next six months. The report notes the increased prevalence of destructive attacks; the aggressive use of information operations by nation-states; the growth in the numbers and diversity of threat actors; as well as the greater availability of exploits, tools, encryption and anonymous payment systems available to malicious actors. It’s not Digital Transformation; It’s “Intelligence Transformation” we seek. “Intelligence Transformation is about how effective the organization is at leveraging big data and advanced analytics to create intelligent value creation processes. Intelligence Transformation is about how the economics of big data and advanced analytics can re-engineer your business models.” Strategy vs. Tactics: What’s the difference and why does it matter? “Although often regarded as interchangeable, strategy and tactics are somewhat different, though complementary concepts. According to the skilled strategist Sun Tzu, strategy is about winning before the battle begins, while tactics are about striking at weakness. Both are ancient concepts that have come to be an essential part of numerous disciplines and offer endless new ways of thinking.” The art of great leadership. “The leadership shortages that CEOs bemoan boil down to an excess of middle managers with skill imbalances. Companies still invest most time, attention and funds on managers at or near the top – those who seem to have a shot at corporate summits. These are often people who have risen because of technical ability, but risk harming themselves and others in their push for the top. And they need plenty of leadership investment then because they received too little earlier on.“