Proactive vs Reactive: Rethinking Transformation with Zahraa Murtaza

Welcome to DTX Unplugged, the podcast that gets to the heart of Business Evolution. I'm Sabrina Burkho, Head of Content at Clarion Events, to organisers behind DTX. And I'm Oli Picker, an award-winning technology and business storyteller. Each episode we sit down with leaders, innovators and change makers who are reshaping how organisations think about transformation. Whether you're leading, implementing or building transformation strategy, this is your monthly dose of insights on the people making it happen. This is all about the critical intersection of people, process and technology and the real stories behind successful evolution. What are we waiting for? Let's dive in! Welcome to episode 8 of DTX Unplugged. Today's guest has built a career on a principle that most transformation programmes ignore, that the most powerful thing you can do before you disrupt something is to optimise what you already have. Zara Muttazar is Senior Vice President and Agile Coach at BNY, one of the world's largest financial firms. She's also an ambassador and advisor to AI Tech UK and was named one of the North West's top 30 tech leaders at Manchester Tech Week 2025. Zara's transformation career spans Barclays, GFT, a global digital transformation consultancy specialising in financial services and now BNY. She's a vocal advocate for women in technology and for diversity in AI and one of the more honest voices on what it actually takes to build a career in tech when you're starting without the advantage of visibility. Her concept of strategic invisibility, turning being overlooked into a deliberate tool for growth, has become a signature theme in her speaking and writing. Zara is great to have you with us. Thanks so much. Thank you, Oliver. I'm blushing at you. I'll have to have to hear another thank you. It's great to have you with us, Zara. For all of our guests, we start with three core questions and then we have one final one at the end. So first up, what's the most significant transformation challenge hitting business leaders right now, particularly in highly regulated environments like financial services where you can't afford to move fast and break things? That's actually a really good question. And I know everyone's going to talk about AI like that's the biggest transformation that we have. Let's take a step back. The biggest transformation that people like she working on is how do we utilise the tools that we currently have? Everyone is going on about AI AI processes, taking away the manual, switch points that we have, but they don't think how can we utilise what we currently have and the people that we currently have to actually make it quicker, especially in a regulated environment. You know that the procurement would have gone through those tools before, so you don't have to worry about having to re-procure them. And it's that utilisation. Are we utilising the current tools that we have in order for us to move faster? It doesn't need to be a full transformation in terms of using a new tool. You can still transform with what you currently have. Very interesting. I think a lot of people do get caught up in what's new or can we use. So it's interesting you say that. Can you share a transformation example that's genuinely impressed you and why? My biggest one was probably when we were migrating from on-prem to off-prem onto the cloud. So we were going with different transformations and I was just seeing how other banks were doing it. It's actually coming to events like this, like DTX and going to conferences that you actually learn all the people are doing the same thing. And I was actually quite surprised with one of the major banks, this is when I was back at Berkeley. It's one of the other major banks were actually moving on to AWS, but they were moving on the cloud as well because they had a couple of vendors that were using Azure. And what really interested me was the fact that they weren't doing a lifting shift. They were actually transforming what they currently had in order to make it better for the client. And I think what people usually do is they don't utilize the new tool that they have. What they do is they do a full lifting shift and then they add the features and they think that's being iterative and that's being agile. But it's not the way that you need to be agile is what is it and why is it that we're moving from here? Because every other topic and how are you using AWS and they go down to the cloud and it's a little bit safer for us to do so when we've got some guard real there. Or is it we're using this so we can use the new features that we have on. And so my biggest one was just the small things that we it's not just the customer but for who was using it. You can spin up a node to start testing those environments using the cloud rather than having specific on-prem testing environments. You can create a sandbox itself. So rather than waste money on creating brand new environments you can just spin up a node specifically for that anomaly or reduce regression that you might be doing but you might not need it for another year. We're moving forward but utilizing that new tools which is you can because if you're doing a lifting shift you might as well just stay where you are. Because if you're moving into a house that's exactly the same in the same location as the same size of what's the point. But if you're moving somewhere because it's specific for like the school environment it's got another two bedrooms to it. There's a reason you're moving. Not just I'm just lifting a shift in the same environment again. And where do you think most leaders get the balance between people process and technology room? Everything needs to be collaborative. Everyone needs to start working with their people on their tools that they have in place. I think leadership always get it wrong where they need to get into the nitty gritty and understand what their teams do and their capabilities but then that stifles the progress of those individuals. Because if you're like someone's watching them and they have no autonomy that they're just those one trick pony. So if you've done a migration before you carry on doing a migration. What's just popped in it's like typecast and basically that's what leaders end up doing. The typecast their own resources that they have in place rather than think actually you have some soft skills here that we can utilize and maybe we can actually change your role. And that's why it helps if you're in a potter of structure that you can actually understand how different people in those teams work. So it's underutilising their resources but underutilising their tools as well. So leadership need to actually think we are lead. This does not mean we're micromanaged. We're not managing these people or actually leading them. So the biggest issue is they never tell you the upfront value first. So if you say to your team the value I want to bring to this is XYZ. So say for example it's something simple like a theme park. I need footfall in there. So people in the ground will be like well if you need more footfall why don't we instead put in a new theme park in there why don't we have a children's area like a crash. But then if you were there to say you did tell them that the end result was footfall you just said I need another ride. It might not hit the objective that you needed because it doesn't have that collaboration and leadership forget how far removed they actually are from there. So if you think about it from like a big bank perspective forget being a Y because obviously we're a custodian bank and we're a B2B. But in terms of just an average day customer that getting a mortgage out is going to be very different to an executive who's on a considerably more about they probably may not need that mortgage. Whereas day to day me as an average person I probably will go through that process itself. So if you're part of the consuming kind of party and you're thinking like a consumer you can actually add more value rather than someone telling you what to do. It's a utilised resources telling what the up for value add is and then as a team you can figure out how to get there. I love that that's great. Already interesting stuff. So there's so much I want to ask you and talk about but maybe first up we should find out what you're going to be talking about at DTX Manchester which is the 29th and 30th of April. You're from Manchester as well you live in Manchester so happy to represent. Oh more than happy to represent and it actually helps with not having to travel down and knowing about your environment as well I'm really excited and I'm glad that it's in Manchester as well figuring out who my peers are within Manchester. My talk is actually on leadership and how we use cross functional collaboration within that leadership. What I want to talk about is the difference between a proactive transformation and a reactive transformation. So I'll be using a couple of analyses in there to say what's the difference being proactive or what's the difference between being reactive. So what one of the examples is. Everyone's building a media wall at home so now I need to transform my house and build a media wall but then I don't watch TV so what was the point. Just like that where everyone's using AI, everyone's automating everything but if you don't have those processes in the first place anyway what is the need to transform in there. Why don't we better utilize and use what we have with the resources that we have as a leadership team but then the tools that we have at the same time. So it's that collaboration between the two and understanding how we just doing this because it's reactive to the market because so and else is doing it. Or because the SAA has come on to us from a regulation standpoint that we need to change that transformation. And when there's a last time a company's actually done a true transformation that's been proactive so they've been ahead of the game rather than it's just something that popped up. Yeah I think that's really interesting this idea of proactive versus reactive and that you look forward to hearing a bit more about that in Manchester. You've been involved in agile methodology for about a decade now as far as I can work out. What is it that's so appealing and why is it particularly relevant as you say everyone's talking about AI there is this pressure to I suppose keep up with the Joneses to an extent but there seems to be so much pressure to reach for these big shiny tools. Has that agile methodology become even more important now and also there's something else related to this. You'd argue that agile and waterfall assisters not strangers. just talk me through that one as well please. Yeah so if you think about methodology It's then, it's come from the same family. They're not too complete strangers that have never worked together. They're just two sisters that have gone on to different paths, but they're doing the same thing from the same family. And they both work hand in hand as well. So there might be times where you completely disliked your sister 'cause it's Christmas, it's Easter, everyone's getting together, they fight and will they still be that person that you're gonna call up on a weekend if you're feeling down. And that's where the waterfall comes into it. Because if you're in agile, you still need to have your red logs in there, depending on what you're working on. You try to decrease the amount of dependencies you have, but you'll always have those dependencies. What I really like about agile is, it's fail fast. I've never been the most academically gifted at all. If I had that mentality at school, it would have made me feel better. 'Cause I feel like school is like waterfall, where you have to be perfect. You've got that one chance to get that one good grade. Whereas agile is about, how do we slowly improve ourselves? Why do we do one exam each term or each month for us to get better and understand where are those weaknesses and what am I good at? And that's what agile is, because it's not one big bang at the end. It's a constant improvement, that moves, and you actually start listening to people to understand, how can we move better? And it's a lot more collaborative. I'm a very collaborative person. I'm a very flat structure person as well. I feel like hierarchy sometimes creates bureaucracy. Whereas if you have a flat structure, never open talk to each other, then they could have that collaboration together. That's why agile is quick, because you've got the right people in the right room at the right time, that you can get together and think, how do we at least get to 0.1% and move that needle, rather it needs to be perfect, 100% sort of right away? We slowly move and we slowly gain that information. Whereas waterfall is very much, this is of one and done, so you complete that, but you don't learn anything of it. And I think that's just the way I am. I love to constantly learn and I get bored very easily. Whereas in agile, never get bored, because you'll be having a new funky feature each time, each month. It's really interesting that you say that you've learned initiatives that have delivered a 30% improvement when you were at GFT, and you were able to build new ways of working at bark these across multiple teams. And those are big numbers, especially in resistant environments like banking. What do large financial institutions usually and consistently get wrong about agile? And what have you been able to implement to actually make it stick in what's your method? If you think about agile, the best companies were when it was quite shielded away from leadership. I feel like it should allow the autonomy for a team to move forward. Whereas what I think big firms now get a little bit wrong is where everyone's involved, because it creates up bureaucracy again. Whereas it should be trial and tested. So it's say we test it out in pilot two weeks and see if it goes. Rather than we're going to try and test this, we need another five approvals before it goes forward. So I think that's where the big firms are getting it wrong, where it's like it works before new companies, new startups, because you didn't have that red tape. So you need to start thinking, what is the red tape that we're adding on as a firm internally? And what's the red tape that we need to actually think of in terms of, like say, the FCA or any other financial authority that we're accountable for? So that's where they get wrong, where they add extra layers and they complete the over-engineer what Agile truly is. Because Agile is here to make it quicker for us to continuously learn and continuously improve. But if you're adding bureaucracy on there and you're using metrics for the sake of metrics, so metrics are there for the team as individuals to do better the next sprint. It's not there to tell you off. It's just a, right, okay, we can do a little bit about here guys. We've got broken sprint, why is that? Is that because we keep getting incidents in the background that we need to fix? Or is it because our requirements haven't been written right? And that's it. It's for the pod to do better as a team to improve leadership. Think, oh, well, you've got the broken sprint there. That's your awful. It's like, not really. It's no one's fault. How do we get better? Because we're not going to be perfect straight away. And I feel people always assume that they'll see the results automatically. But sometimes you actually have to take a step back for it to move forward by another 20 purely because you need to get used to that rhythm. And it might get to a point where actually, you know, what my pods weren't in the right structure. And my teams aren't in the right structure. Those are the kind of little experiments that you need to constantly do. In introduction, I mentioned that you are an ambassador and advisor to AI Tech UK. Could you talk to us a little bit about that and your responsibilities there? And also this concept of strategic invisibility, being overlooked and using that as a deliberate tool for growth, that being a superpower. AI Tech UK, I'll start with first. I'll say AI Tech UK, it was Sharon Matthews who I met at a conference. And he came up to me and we started talking, started talking about what he believes in in terms of AI. So this was around 20, 21 maybe, 22. So it was before AI the massive thing this past couple of years. It was like, when it was slowly coming on there. And it was around the ethical stance on AI. So the way that Sharon and I were discussing it, he was saying that we need to ensure that the data sets that we have are ethical. Because otherwise we're going to, it's like cookies. Otherwise you're going to go down one route. If you think about something simple, you get food online and the algorithm thinks that all you have for breakfast is wheat fix or cereal. But that's just because you have it, you have it, it needs to be quick in the morning. It completely forgets that you can have eggs, you can have bread, you can have beans, you can have so much stuff for breakfast, but because that algorithm's gone down that one avenue, it assumes that's all you have. And then that's all that's going to be happening because everything to do with AI is on the phone and it's data related. Every time you scroll or you're ever going to see cereal. So the ethical stance on it is as a female as well. Most of the research and the data that we have is on males. So how do we ensure that we're actually helping every gender, every person, every ethnicity out there to help with this? Because otherwise the algorithms are going to just show you based on what the 90% do. This is where Sharon and I got together and we were like, how do you ensure that that has been set out there and that teams can use his systems in order to say when you have a solution, have you thought about all the data that you need? So if you think about a globalised approach, it won't work. Something as simple as saying you're a cosmetic company who does foundation, depending on which country you are in, your shade's going to be completely different. So you can't have that same shade sold in a different country because it won't sell. But if your data says from one area, how are you going to make sure that you're breaking to that new one? So he talks about the data sets where people can get it from. But then also my area is on, is it ethical? We actually started thinking because if you think about social media now, it's all based on algorithms. So we don't really know what each person's looking at because if you might look at one thing twice a day and then that same thing comes up over and over again and you think that is the only view of the world when there's completely other views as well. And then the invisibility one, this is my favourite. In terms of school, I was just the average person, like not visible, not invisible. But you know, just that of repose that, not really bothers you, just get on with life, just in the background. And then rather than me see that as a bad thing, when I got into my first job, I started working very young, actually started working 60, 70s, but when I got one from university, I stood back and I thought, you know what? It's actually more of a superpower, maybe, in invisible because what I'm doing is I'm not the top performer that everyone keeps looking at and thinks, if you go out alone, wants people to remember that. If you're that person that's completely in the middle, completely invisible, you learn, if you're on mistakes. And also you don't have that pressure of anyone else, because you can basically, and it's the adjal in me as well, you can basically improve yourself constantly in the background, why are everyone else has that visibility on them? And I think for an early career, you need to make sure that you're invisible, because if you're seen as a top performer quite young, you will have a lot more pressure on you than if you are just an average person who's learning from everyone else's mistakes and learning from everyone else and your own mistakes as well. It's not being invisible all the time, it's a, I will learn in the background, you might think that I'm in the back, but I've actually gone 20 steps ahead, because you, because someone else is constantly looking at you. - I love that, and we should say that Sharon Matthew is chief AI officer at AI Tech UK. I was actually moderating a session with him last year, and he was, he was brilliant, a good man. We should get him on the podcast, Sabrina, I think. - Definitely. - I can see what I can do. What's a piece of advice you would give to someone who's starting their career then? And I think sometimes there is that pressure to feel that you should be that top performer as well, that people want to be the best, is, you know, is what they think they should be doing. - I think when it comes to a career, it's the long game. Am I gonna get burnt out if I'm constantly the top performer at a young age? Can I do this for them for another 40 years? So anyone that's coming into the industry is you need to constantly learn and learn how people have mentors, have mentors externally as well. Have a mentor that's nothing like it. And you will learn of them. You don't have the answers, and that's the beauty of every industry. No one has the top answers. They still have an advisory board that they go to. They still have people that they go to and they still have peers. Learn of others. Don't think you know everything straight away 'cause no one does. And it's that, don't include your effect. You need to start thinking like the more you think you know something, it's actually the less you know. And remember that, like if you feel like You know everything, then you know for a few minutes. fact you don't know anything. There's so much more to learn. And if you're coming into the industry, don't be scared if you feel that you need to know everything because you don't just ask the right questions, ask the right people. By taking a step back, you're paying the long game. If you're visible all the time, you will be typecast to do those same things over and over again. If you're in the background and you're in the middle, you can learn what it is that you actually enjoy rather than being forced. Oh, you're really good at that. So make sure you just just do that and experiment with where you work. And it doesn't matter where you start off, just put all your effort into it. But as much effort as you can because later down the line, you're at least you're going to say, "Apple 100% into that." And there's nothing more I could have done. I love the Dunning Cruder effect. Essentially, people think that they are smarter than they are, that they're doing better than they are. But actually the average is much lower. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, that's the one. It's a family, I'm highly actually told me about this because we were just, she's lovely, she thinks she's doing a master's or a PhD in psychology. She's also an adiacote as well and it's very, very similar and we're running through that in terms of, at what point can you say you're an actual expert because I don't see myself as an expert in anything because how can you be? Yeah, that's great. Just thinking about this idea of being thought fall over fast and perhaps trying to optimize before you reach for the big shiny tools. Are there any tips that you can provide there? Any kind of checks and balances that you would recommend? Perhaps in the financial services industry and industry agnostic as well? The people that procure these tools aren't the ones that are actually using the tools that usually come from a specific area or a procurement area that they've had to go through and jump through hoops. You need to start talking to the people, right? You're going to start using those tools straight away. So why is it that we need this? What is it that we're using it for? And is there anything that we could probably create in-house instead? Especially now that we have like windsurf and bike, basically where everyone calls vibe cold in now in terms of front-led engineering. Can we create that internally now? Rather than having to go out and procure something and can we pilot it? Because you've ended up paying a license for something that you could have just create yourself internally or you've used it once and you don't need it again. So say if you create like a DevSecOps pipeline, it's quite important that you have your security elements and wrappers in there but it's just something that we can do ourselves to create those and it's very difficult for a large firm to do this because you don't know how many different departments you have and how many different tool sets you have but you do need to start understanding what tool sets do we have? Are we utilising the ones that we have 100% and you have to remember when people are even with contractors and consultants and tools, people will try and sell you as much as they can. So they might be free add on that they have on there but they'll still try and sell you something new so make sure you understand the tool you get in a why you get in that tool and see the market if it's on there and you know what? If I do think AI is a bit of a save you sometimes with these kind of things because you can ask chat GPT or any other AI tool, what's out there in the market that can do XYZ for me? and then you can have a full list in there and then you can basically short list the ones that you could probably currently already have in your company and reuse that. How do you then deal with maybe pushback off your dealing with a leadership team or board who are as we were talking about you know intrinsically reactive or they're getting caught up with the AI hype and you're trying to be like well slow down like let's look at what we actually need and what we're using. How do you kind of communicate that or make that case and just try to get them to understand that what you're doing is in the best case for the business and we don't need to be chasing these these tools. I think it's the piloting of it as well so I don't have the solid answer for that because I think everyone has this issue because it's based you job on the land and it's them because you've got all these execs that you're trying to persuade but they're there for a reason and they're there at that level for a reason but you have at least a couple of times that you can first one fight the battles that you can that you that you know you could probably have a little bit of a saying so make sure you're not pushing back on everything so there's some things that you just have to go with but some of them are at least pilot what the solution you want to give rather than say hypothetically I think this solution would work pilot the actual solution and let them see it. Choose your battles choose your battles definitely. Amazing well that ties kind of nicely to my last question which is what's a piece of advice you would give to a business leader starting their transformation journey tomorrow. So if you're starting it tomorrow you need to make sure you understand the why why are we doing this and how can I track later down the line that this transformation is going to work and there's a couple of other ones as well know your as is process that currently like what is my current as is process and what is the value of the new transformation what is the new to be process that I want it to be but what I'm going to do in the interim as well so you should have three you should have three you should have your current as is process with where it is and these are the issues to why we're doing the transformation my current to be state where I want it to be and that's the value that we're going to have but what I'm going to do in the interim because it's going to take a while for us to go through that transformation and get to the solid stage but that to be state is constantly going to change so you need to make sure your interim allows you to be agile so your tool sets need to be agile not just yourself but the tools that you're using so if you're if you're a massive monolith you need to make sure you've got your microservices in there because you should only be changing a couple of things get some API calls in there as well but make sure your architectures on there but the transformation could also be a cultural transformation as well so what is the two be state you want to get to and what's the interim stage that you have but always know where you start brilliant that's fantastic is our you're going to be speaking at Detect Manchester as we've said how else could and should people get in touch with you? Oh please do reach out LinkedIn I'm very active on there I like putting articles on there but I just love learning of people so please do connect with me on LinkedIn I'm also managed to base so if there's any other meetups that we have just gives a shout and I'm more than happy to learn of each other fantastic thank you so much thanks for joining us all right thank you both absolutely pleasure being on here take care you can find all the links and resources from today's conversation in our show notes detects on flood is brought to you by carrying events the team behind the detect shows where business transformation leaders gather to share ideas and drive change if you're leading transformation in your organisation visit detects event.io to join the community and don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts thanks for listening and until next time keep transforming