Change designed with the people it affects.

The challenge

A large Irish bank wanted its senior leaders, and their peers across the sector, to understand what AI means for their organisations. Not only the technology, but the governance, the regulation and the practical decisions leaders now face. The EU AI Act also requires organisations to make sure their people have a sufficient level of AI literacy.

What we did

We designed and ran an afternoon session in March 2026, sponsored by the bank, for 37 senior leaders from across Irish financial services and other large enterprises. Speakers covered the state of AI in the sector, AI governance and ISO 42001, and how AI is already changing high-stakes decisions. An expert panel included Dr Barry Scannell (William Fry, Irish Government AI Advisory Council) and Justin Walker (Mastercard).

The session ran under Chatham House rules. Attendees put questions to the panel and worked through the issues with each other, so the learning came from peers as well as experts.

What came out of the room

Most organisations are thinking about AI. Fewer are acting on it.

The advantage lies in your own knowledge of your industry and processes, built into how you use AI.

The AI transition is mostly a people challenge. Literacy, culture and readiness for change matter as much as the technology.

Outcome

Every attendee who gave feedback rated the afternoon as valuable. The bank has committed to running further learning events on AI.

The challenge

A large Irish financial services organisation ran a management training programme for close to 800 people managers. It had grown over years, and nobody had stepped back to ask whether it was building the management capability the organisation needed. Feedback was inconsistent, engagement was low, and the format hadn't kept pace with how the organisation worked.

The bigger question was what management capability the organisation needed, and whether the programme was designed to build it.

What we did

We ran a 10-week research and co-design sprint across three groups: content owners, programme sponsors and participating managers. Sixteen interviews, stakeholder mapping with 19 participants and two co-design workshops showed us where the programme was falling short and what needed to change.

We brought managers into the redesign rather than presenting them with a solution. They helped define what good looked like, from how roles were matched to graduates to how development progress was communicated.

Outcome

Ten validated recommendations for the next version of the programme. The redesigned programme ran with 1,200 people managers and improved feedback scores across all four evaluation criteria, by at least 15%.

The organisation also kept a repeatable design process for future versions.

The challenge

A large enterprise had inefficient internal processes and fragmented communication tools that were slowing the organisation down and disengaging employees. There were plenty of ideas for improvement. But they were scattered across teams, captured inconsistently and never acted on.

The organisation needed a way to surface, prioritise and implement improvements at scale, bringing colleagues with it rather than imposing change on them.

What we did

We ran a 12-week sprint. We mapped the organisation, interviewed 20 stakeholders over ten days, and identified 18 personas whose experience of the problem varied widely. From there we ran two co-design workshops with 16 participants each, generating 142 ideas, clustering them, and working with the group to choose the two concepts most worth building.

Both concepts were designed with the people who would use them, so buy-in was built in from the start.

Outcome

Two solutions, an ideas hub and a simplification wiki, were validated by the research, scoped with the internal technical team and rolled out across the organisation using existing technology.

Colleague submission rates were higher than for any previous team-level solution.

The challenge

A large Irish financial services organisation began a major experience improvement programme spanning retail, business, corporate and group functions. It was the organisation's first use of agile at this scale, with senior internal stakeholders and several external consultancies working across different areas.

What we did

We provided fully outsourced squads covering UX design, UX writing, UX research and technical delivery. At peak, 16 contractors worked across four squads. Each squad was embedded in the organisation and directed by internal stakeholders, while we kept full responsibility for employment, performance, contracts and extensions.

The programme ran for more than 18 months, with each squad delivering improvements at the end of four to eight-week sprints, alongside senior stakeholders and other consultancies.

Outcome

The squads became a model for bringing in specialist talent that is managed externally but fully part of internal ways of working. Our UX writing team won an internal award for team excellence, a sign of how embedded they became. The client got the flexibility of contractors with the accountability of a managed service, and skills passed to internal teams as the specialists worked alongside them.

The challenge

A European online gifting business, selling in five countries, had shifted its strategy from sales volume to profit. The leadership team had set the direction, but the teams hadn't been aligned on what it meant for how they worked, what they prioritised and how they made decisions.

Eight departments were working from different assumptions about the strategy, and nobody had mapped the end-to-end picture. The ask was to draw on the expertise across the business and get the teams working on it together.

What we did

We ran an intensive four-week project. Eleven interviews across eight departments produced 324 data points and six themes. We tested internal assumptions against 58 competitor sites and retail visits in France and Spain, mapped the end-to-end journey, and ran a co-design workshop where the full group evaluated and developed ideas together.

The workshop was designed to build momentum as well as ideas. The group left with a shared understanding, prioritised ideas and a commitment from leadership to act.

Outcome

Three improvements went live on digital channels within 19 days of the project ending, in time for Christmas trading. Average order value rose from €81 to €85, ahead of target. Seven more improvements were under consideration.

The challenge

As part of a wider digital transformation, a bank's people services team needed to redesign how colleagues assessed and developed their digital skills, and connected them to career opportunities.

The approach varied across the organisation, with different teams, different tools and no shared framework. It was as much an organisation design problem as a technology one. The team needed a solution they could own and improve themselves, without relying on outside support.

What we did

We ran a six-week sprint. We interviewed 15+ colleagues across nine departments in the UK and Ireland, mapped the career experience from the colleague's point of view, and ran co-design workshops with people services and departmental representatives to develop and test solutions.

Alongside the design work, we trained the internal team to run the same research and workshops themselves, so they could keep improving without bringing us back.

Outcome

A working colleague career tool, now in use across the organisation. The people services team kept a repeatable design process they have since used on other challenges.