Originally posted in https://www.intelligentcio.com/apac/2024/08/15/get-to-know-chris-shayan-head-of-artificial-intelligence-backbase/
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?
During the COVID-19 period, I was working for Techcombank here in Vietnam. As its Chief Technology Officer, I was charged with overseeing a program of work to elevate customer experience in the retail and business banking divisions. Over the course of just nine months, we implemented a Backbase Engagement Banking Platform that was the catalyst for extraordinary growth.
What first made you think of a career in technology?
I’m the youngest of five brothers, all of whom helped my father run his family businesses. Programming became quite topical around 1990 and one of my brothers bought a bunch of computers to try to learn something about it. I was only six or seven at the time and I became quite interested. My brother was teaching himself, so he started teaching me too and, before too long, I was helping out with tech at our businesses. I remember everyone being shocked when I wrote my first application a couple of years around 12 years of age. That’s how I got sucked into this!
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?
I’m a big believer in the concept of holacracy – a model which decentralizes and distributes authority and decision-making capability throughout the organisation. When you’re managing knowledge professionals, they really need to understand why they’re doing whatever it is they’re doing and you need to be able to trust them to make decisions. At Backbase, where I recently started as Head of AI, my team in our newly founded Center of Excellence for AI in Vietnam is small and all the people I’ve hired are high tech ‘navy seals’; top talents who can do everything. As we scale up, they’ll become ‘circle leaders’ who can guide and mentor the next round of recruits.
What do you think is the current hot technology talking point?
Right now, AI is of great interest, particularly Gen AI and LLMs.
At Backbase, we’re utilising LLMs to summarise and simplify financial statements from across a multi-year period. Letting AI do the boring parts and freeing human beings up to make the right decisions based on the insights it generates should be the goal.
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office?
Outside of work, I devote almost all my free time to my three-year-old son and I get through a lot of books – 50 to 70 a year, on average. Recent reads include The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind. It was an incredible, eye-opening look at the future of AI. So, in a way, was Charan Ranganath’s Why We Remember looking at how and why the brain retains certain things and how you can help it do so.
I also do a lot of short courses on everything from gut health to data analytics and I try to spend time on my spin bike every day.
If you could go back and change one career decision, what would it be?
Not spending more time studying mathematics is another regret. I was doing a two-year, online course on it a few years ago but gave it away because I couldn’t see a use case for it. I’m now trying to pick that back up again. Some of the hiring decisions I made in the past didn’t serve me well either. I promoted people into leadership roles who didn’t truly believe in what we were trying to accomplish and dealing with the fallout from that was painful.
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?
The desire to improve productivity and reduce costs continue to drive cloud and digital transformation initiatives from front-to-back at banks.
Banks, like most businesses, have also become very focused on making sense of the large volumes of data they’ve amassed. It’s a huge challenge and one a growing number of leaders are determined to resolve. Re-architecting around the customer has also become a very big topic, all around the world. It seems like everyone is struggling to re-create or re-engineer their ICT landscapes to drive better customer journeys and experiences.
What are the region-specific challenges when implementing new technologies in APAC?
Being based in Vietnam, I feel very lucky. The country is full of people who are talented and good at picking up new things. The government here has invested heavily in STEM and that’s created a generation of workers who are very practical and very open to technology. Having said, the talent war remains challenging. Organisations in this part of the world need to work really hard to retain talented professionals.
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months?
The pattern of my working life has always been to use technology to solve a business problem and deliver an experience. I’ve done that with various different banks and now that I’ve joined Backbase I’ll be doing it again in a different way. I came on board in June 2024 to drive the development and deployment of AI-powered applications that address practical challenges for banks and that’s what my team and I are working on right now.
What advice would you offer to someone aspiring to obtain a C level position in your industry?
Don’t aspire to the C-level for power or status or ego. That doesn’t work for me and it’s not why I strived to reach the leadership ranks. I went after senior roles because I felt frustrated working for people who weren’t committed to delivering better customer experiences and I wanted to be in the position to drive that change. And don’t let yourself devolve into a dinosaur as you advance. A lot of C-level people become ‘excel people’ and I think that’s a mistake. Stay close to technology and keep the customers at the forefront – get out and talk to them and you’ll always know what’s happening.
