Tribe 3: The Validators ask: “Is it reliable and safe?” They are the quality engine that sustains AI adoption over time.
Function: Quality Engine
Validators establish standards, ensure compliance, and maintain trust. They’re essential for safeguarding what matters.
Strength: Sustain AI Adoption
Validators protect from risk and build stakeholder confidence. They ensure today’s AI success doesn’t become tomorrow’s scandal.
Risk When Dominant: Paralysis by Analysis
When Validators dominate, governance happens without deployment. Competitors move faster while you’re still in review cycles.
The Anthropic Research
Only 20% of AI users exhibit Validator behaviors. This is often the most under-resourced tribe, creating hidden risks.
Signs of Validator Dominance
- Safe and compliant, but strategically stuck
- Approval cycles exceeding 6 months
- Competitors launching while you’re still reviewing
- Risk mitigation prioritized over value creation
The Fix: Risk-Tiered Governance
Validators need frameworks that don’t block progress:
- Light touch for low-risk experiments, full review for high
- Maximum 6 weeks for any approval decision
- Sandbox environments for experimentation without full review
- “Safe to fail” experiments – pre-approved failure budget for learning
Goal: Unblock without adding risk. Paralysis by analysis is its own form of failure.
Target ratio: 15% Validator capacity ensuring quality gates.
This is part of a comprehensive analysis. Read the full analysis on The Business Engineer.
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