Any jazz musician will tell you magic is made through a mix of structure and improvisation. For Mike McGovern, Principal and Global Head of Technology Client Engagement, client work follows the same logic, as business strategy and technology have never been more intertwined in financial services. “In jazz, you learn the basics like scales, chords, and arpeggios and then you develop the skills to improvise,” he says. “It’s the same with clients - you bring the tools and experience you’ve built over the years and find ways to create solutions.”
It’s a fitting philosophy for someone who has spent decades playing jazz, and in their workdays turning complex technological conversations into outcomes. Before joining the firm as Enterprise Chief Information Officer (CIO) 14 years ago, McGovern served as divisional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at two custody banks. It’s experience that gives him an intuitive feel for a client’s rhythm.
“I’ve sat in their seat,” he says. “That lets us have peer-level conversations about what’s really going on.”
Today, he splits his time between business and strategy development, client meetings, and industry events. The through-line is always the same: listen, adapt, and solve client problems.
Reading client signals
In jazz, the best soloists don’t overpower the band, they respond to it. McGovern takes the same approach to managing change. For many financial institutions, the biggest hurdle isn’t finding the right solution - it’s absorbing change without grinding operations to a halt. “Most clients struggle with how to embrace change without shutting down the institution for months or years,” he says, "We help them get all the benefits of evolving their technology with reduced change impact.”
It’s no surprise that managing and leveraging third-party data has emerged as the most common unsolved challenge in McGovern’s conversations with financial institutions. Trust, he says, is what partnerships in this space come down to. “When an institution writes its own software, they trust the data coming out of it because they control it. But now you have so many other organizations in your ecosystem throwing data at you and it’s no longer controlled. While new data startups are constantly coming to market, clients come to us because we’re a bank ourselves and they trust us to handle their data well.”
Riffing on AI, digital assets, and data
BBH’s combination of subject matter expertise, data, technology, and operating model capabilities, has become even more critical to clients as AI and digital assets dominate change agendas. McGovern stresses the importance of raising the level of dialogue with clients to help them shape their own strategy.
“Data underpins nearly every area of innovation. Few firms are AI-ready with their data strategy,” says McGovern.
