Coffee Sessions #44 with Grant Wright of SEEK Ltd., Autonomy vs. Alignment: Scaling AI Teams to Deliver Value.

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// Abstract
Setting AI teams up for success can be difficult, especially when you’re trying to balance the need to provide teams with autonomy to innovate and solve interesting problems while ensuring they are aligned with the organization's strategy. Operating models, rituals, and processes can really help to set teams up for success, but there is no right answer, and as you scale and priorities change, your approach needs to change too.
Grant shares some of his learnings in establishing a cross-functional team of data scientists, engineers, analysts, product managers, and otologists to solve employment information problems at SEEK, and how the team has evolved as they’ve scaled from a team of 30 in Melbourne, Australia, to over 100 team members across 5 countries in the past three years.

// Bio
Grant heads the Artificial Intelligence & Product Analytics teams at SEEK, where he leads a global team of over 120 Data Scientists, Software Engineers, Ontologists, and AI Product Managers who deliver AI Services to online employment and education platforms across the Asia Pacific and the Americas.
Grant has held various strategy and product, and tech leadership roles over the past 15 years, with experience in scaling AI teams to deliver outcomes across multiple geographies.
Grant holds a Bachelor of Computer and Information Science (Software Development) and a Bachelor of Business (Economics) from the Auckland University of Technology.

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Connect with Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wrightgrant/

[00:00] Introduction to Grant Wright
[01:49] Grant’s Journey into Tech
[03:57] Managing Many Data Scientists
[04:50] Challenges Managing Top Talent
[05:00] Collaborating with Data Scientists
[06:00] Driving Cross-Functional Collaboration Effectively
[06:19] Journey to Growing the Team
[10:13] Handling Model Drift Autonomously
[11:20] Core Use Cases at Seek
[14:41] Transition Period at Seek
[16:12] Organizational Models Have Trade-Offs
[16:58] Motivation Through Delivered Value
[17:08] No Clear Blueprint
[19:50] Seek’s War Story
[20:26] Lessons Learned and Reflections
[22:52] Interfaces and Accountability
[24:32] Partners, Not Customers Philosophy
[26:22] Building Team Self-Sufficiency
[27:34] Cross-Team Collaboration Encouragement
[28:28] Avoiding Duplicate Team Efforts
[29:24] Balancing Speed and Oversight
[30:18] Seek’s Priorities This Year
[31:05] Balancing Commonality and Flexibility
[32:04] Investing in Platforms
[33:07] Avoiding Half-Used Solutions
[33:35] Unified Systems vs. Team Autonomy
[34:27] Focus on Organization Structure
[37:16] Streamlining to One Approach
[38:17] Successful Business Strategies
[40:23] Gaining Executive Understanding
[41:45] Estimating Machine Learning Projects
[43:30] Challenging False Assumptions
[44:00] Balancing Speed and Quality
[45:55] Thin Slice Approach
[47:30] Defining Tight Success Boundaries