Crosstide (formerly 101 Ways)

From modelling the economy in C++ in 1996 to leading engineering for a major UK credit business: Liv Wild, Head of Engineering at NewDay, has navigated a constantly shifting technological landscape with a focus on value and people. She joins our CCO, Francesca J., on the latest episode of Change the Narrative, our series redefining perceptions of senior IT leaders and spotlighting the journeys of technology executives shaping the future, to share her playbook for leading in a regulated industry and quantifying engineering success. Together, they discuss Liv's unconventional career, her lessons on balancing compliance with innovation, and how to drive tangible value through engineering excellence. They dive into: ✅ Regulation and Innovation: Why compliance is not in conflict with the speed of delivery or innovation, and how clear guardrails can actually make a platform stronger and more innovative. ✅ Measuring ROI: Quantifying the value of engineering initiatives using proxy measurements like cost, availability, and system uptime to articulate business value to the executive team. ✅ Tackling Change Fatigue: Overcoming burnout by fostering a culture of experimentation where change feels safe and non-terminal. ✅ The Best Boss?: Her time leading technology in government, including the surprising revelation that former Secretary of State, Matt Hancock, was "embarrassingly... the best boss I've ever had." Watch the conversation: https://lnkd.in/ey6T2z5u The podcast is also available on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eqCFhk5k

The names of our meeting rooms in our office reflect the work of changemakers who led the way in changing the world for good through technology. Along the way, they overturned stereotypes and societal barriers to achieve things that shape how we live today. As we head towards 115 years of International Women’s Day, we want to reflect on two of those names - Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson. In the words of Katherine Johnson: "I don't have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I'm as good as anybody, but no better." We celebrate their achievements while recognising that there is more to be done to achieve a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination. In the spirit of inclusion, this IWD, we’re supporting our teams with a charitable donation to City Harvest London food charity. They deliver food to over 130,000 people per week, helping overcome food poverty.

You've invested heavily in AI to improve engineering productivity and accelerate your teams. So why hasn't this translated into a faster end-to-end delivery cycle? The problem isn't your developers; it's the systemic 'coordination drag' that cancels out the local acceleration from code generation. What causes this slowdown is time lost to friction: impact analysis, compliance reviews, and stakeholder alignment. The strategic shift for technology leaders is to move intelligence from development assistance to delivery orchestration. By embedding agentic capability directly into your workflow, you can: ☑️ Analyse impact ☑️ Surface dependencies ☑️ Generate compliance artefacts ☑️ Orchestrate cross-team visibility. This is how you turn weeks of manual coordination into days of automated reporting. Read the full analysis from our BFSI Technical Director, Steven Thompson, to understand how you can do this. https://lnkd.in/eSNbvt96

In the beginning, Agile was seen as a threat to the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Agile is and always has been about shortening the feedback loops in the SDLC. It is now the default. AI is not a threat to the SDLC, it just accelerates those feedback loops. The sooner this is understood - the less painful the transition will be.

Financial services organisations have invested heavily in Agentic AI, but why hasn't this investment accelerated their end-to-end delivery cycle? Our BFSI Technical Director, Steven Thompson, explains that delivery speed is constrained by coordination drag, not by code generation. In effect, local AI acceleration within the integrated development environment is being cancelled out by systemic workflow constraints. The solution for tech leadership is a strategic shift: move intelligence out of development assistance and into delivery orchestration. For example, applying agentic capability to impact analysis can transform assessment time from weeks of manual effort into days of automated reporting. This allows you to stop losing time on compliance review cycles, stakeholder alignment, and other systemic congestion points. Read our blog for more advice: https://lnkd.in/eSNbvt96

Is transformation fatigue burning us out? The latest issue of Director magazine from the Institute of Directors (IoD) discusses this topic. It’s one that many of us can relate to and something that we often discuss with clients. Our Chief Commercial Officer, Francesca J., features in the article, advocating a different approach: “Move away from treating transformation as a ‘big bang’ event that merely fizzles out. Start small and scale up. “Break everything down into small parts, and as you start to bite away at those, you can celebrate the success and continue to grow from there. People don’t run out of steam when they feel like they are working towards something and achieving their goals.” In the words of the article, we should all be “eating an elephant in bite-sized chunks”. How are you approaching the “elephant”? Read the article (the transformation one starts on page 40): https://lnkd.in/eMSF8-pK

Parts of the business want AI, and they want it fast. But how do you deliver this in a regulated industry where there’s a fine line between giving employees what they want and implementing measures that stifle usage and productivity? We look at the nine guardrails that will help you understand: ☑️ Where people want to use AI and why. ☑️ The risks this could pose. ☑️ The platforms and policies that are needed to retain control and educate users. ☑️ How a centralised team can help maintain awareness and act as advisors. Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/ey8V2vEU

Do engineers need to stop coding to become better engineers? Liv Wild, Head of Engineering at leading credit business, NewDay, shared her candid thoughts on tech leadership, the challenge of change fatigue and why she's breaking up with Scrum in our upcoming episode of Change the Narrative with Francesca J.. Liv shared many compelling insights, some highlights including: ☑️ The AI shift: Why the core engineer skill must shift from coding to specification and verification as generative AI takes on throughput. ☑️ Women in tech: Why, in her 30-year career, she feels representation has gotten worse and the constant pressure to "credentialise." ☑️ Lessons from government: Liv reflects on her time working under Matt Hancock and the surprising lessons she learned about scale and scrutiny in the public sector. ☑️ Scrum's "blanket": Why she hates Scrum and is experimenting with Kanban to encourage continuous improvement. ☑️ Fighting change fatigue: Her strategy using the change curve and continuous experimentation to keep teams engaged. Episode 5 of Change the Narrative is coming soon. To catch up on previous episodes, visit our Spotify page here: https://lnkd.in/e_MJRuVa

How do you put people at the centre of your AI projects to deliver value and reduce risk? Ian Thomas shares his advice to achieve this and get user buy-in: ☑️ Understand the processes people are using - where are they spending time on tasks that could be automated or semi-automated? ☑️ Engage users in scoping out the solution. ☑️ Focus on enabling people to safely integrate general-purpose AI into their work. ☑️ Design AI systems so that people can always review and challenge the outputs and recommendations (if needed). ☑️ Keep testing and refining - with your users. ☑️ Don’t set arbitrary goals or incentives for AI use (they're unlikely to help!). Read Ian’s blog for more advice 👉 https://lnkd.in/ey9fdRBd

The one question that reveals whether it’s time to rebuild your legacy platforms: Are we maintaining this platform because it serves our future, or because we’re too invested to let go? Our Technical Director, Steven Thompson, explores why cost or complexity is rarely the main blocker to rebuilding. Instead, it’s Platform Attachment Syndrome. Platform Attachment Syndrome is like the shiny new car you bought. You took care of it and fixed it. Then you kept fixing it, even when it became unreliable. Why? Because it used to work, and you’ve already poured so much time and money into keeping it going. This is exactly how organisations treat their legacy platforms, a familiar scenario that Steven has found himself in. Find out how to overcome this, and Steven’s advice to the teams facing the natural worries that come with such a decision. Read the blog 👉 https://lnkd.in/eNYh-fnN