The AI Imperative with Lisa Thee and Russ Whitman

On this episode of Navigating Forward, Lisa Thee, Managing Director of Data & AI at Launch Consulting, sits down with Russ Whitman, Chief Strategy Officer for The Planet Group to discuss the AI imperative. They discuss  what makes this AI moment different from other technological advancements that have come before and why it just might be the largest change management challenge in our lifetimes. 

The pair cover some key topics and trends that executives and leaders should consider as they think about their strategies for 2024 and beyond. Listen in for Russ's three main takeaways, including why he thinks NOW is the time to be bold and what could happen if you're not.


Find Lisa at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisathee/
Find Russ at https://www.linkedin.com/in/russwhitman/

Take the Launch Consulting AI Readiness self-assessment at https://www.launchconsulting.com/aiready

Transcript

00:00:03:09 - 00:00:44:26
Narrator
Welcome to Navigating Forward, brought to you by Launch Consulting, where we explore the ever-evolving world of technology, data, and the incredible potential for artificial intelligence. Our experts come together with the brightest minds in AI and technology, discovering the stories behind the latest advancements across industries. Our mission: to guide you through the rapidly changing landscape of tech, demystifying complex concepts and showcasing the opportunities that lie ahead. Join us as we uncover what your business needs to do now to prepare for what's coming next. This is Navigating Forward.

00:00:44:28 - 00:01:09:14
Lisa Thee
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Navigating Forward podcast. My name is Lisa Thee and I'll be your host today. We love to collect the most innovative thought leaders, movers and shakers to help us all navigate through the extensive amount of change happening in the world. Today, I have the honor of bringing the Chief Strategy Officer for The Planet Group, Russ Whitman, to talk about the AI imperative.

00:01:09:17 - 00:01:22:29
Lisa Thee
Russ has had a successful career as an entrepreneur with multiple exits into larger companies, and he helps bring innovation to the forefront with a strategic lens in mind. So, thank you so much for being on our show today, Russ.

00:01:23:01 - 00:01:24:18
Russ Whitman
Thanks, Lisa. Great to be here.

00:01:24:21 - 00:01:37:27
Lisa Thee
So, I would love to hear a little bit about your journey into the technology industry that led you to leading strategy in these interesting times of rapid change. Can you share a little bit about your journey with us?

00:01:38:00 - 00:02:06:11
Russ Whitman
Well, it started a long time ago. I don't know if you want to go through all of it, but back in ‘95, I was introduced to the internet, and I immediately saw that it was going to transform everything. And while it reminds me a lot of times like today, when and throughout my career, where I would tell people about a new thing, and at the time it was the internet, and now it's, you know, AI of course, and I was told back then that the internet was a glorified fax machine.

00:02:06:11 - 00:02:30:24
Russ Whitman
It was going to break and all those other wonderful euphemisms. And I guess I've always been too stubborn to listen to the status quo in the ways of those negative thinkers. And I've always looked to see what was possible. And through that web experience and through the dotcom rise and crash into the age of mobile in the age of cloud.

00:02:30:26 - 00:02:47:12
Russ Whitman
And as we move now into this, you know, massive stage with the age of AI, I've always been maybe probably too curious for my own good and willing to throw everything I had into something I believed in. And so that's served me pretty well.

00:02:47:14 - 00:03:14:07
Lisa Thee
It sounds like that's the case. And I think that that's a pure passion of ours, right? Being living, anticipating where the what the future can be and how to bring forward the future we all want to live in together. So, as you're thinking about what this age of AI is, what do you think that means for businesses, especially Those Fortune 500 type companies? How do you think this AI imperative will help the strongest companies to lead?

00:03:14:10 - 00:03:41:25
Russ Whitman
Well, so it starts with just the core foundation that everything is going to change. And what I think I've seen consistently happening with these movements is the speed of change is much more rapid than the first. And AI has basically, while it's been around a while, no different many of the other technologies, it's not like Apple was the first to create a phone that did more than just place calls.

00:03:41:27 - 00:04:18:13
Russ Whitman
The foundations in the landscape that we live under have made it possible for AI to be consumed much more quickly. You know, the infrastructure was there, the business models were there, the demand, the need, the ability to be creative with it quickly allowed for market adoption rather than waiting for sort of the traditional corporate adoption downstream to the individual. And so, with the markets flipping like that, we just, the acceleration is real. So, companies yeah, I always talk about you remember when companies were worried about the bring your own device into the work environment?

00:04:18:13 - 00:04:21:07
Lisa Thee
I do remember those days.

00:04:21:10 - 00:04:53:04
Russ Whitman
Crazy. They spent six, 12, 18 months trying to figure out their corporate policy for BYOD. And yet I've seen boards and CHROs and legal teams having to put together AI responsibility policies in overnight. You can't wait. And in fact, for many, it's already too late. They've already missed out on the ability to take advantage early and many of us are already feeling, even those of us who were early to the game are feeling like we're a step or two behind because keeping up is significant.

00:04:53:06 - 00:05:15:10
Lisa Thee
I think your example of the bring your own device is a great analogy to what we're living through today because really a lot of these technologies, as you've mentioned before, have been available for a select few, but they really became democratized to a much larger audience on the consumer side in a lot of case first. So, I really love that perspective that you're bringing. Can you share a success story of a company that you've worked with that has effectively incorporated this new wave of generative AI for some business outcomes?

00:05:26:08 - 00:05:45:16
Russ Whitman
Companies are doing sort of two things right now really successfully with Generative AI, I think. One is they're trying things. My new favorite quote I was reading last night, and I and I should probably try to find that the exact author, but it was literally on a stream on LinkedIn. And so, I didn't see who the original person was.

00:05:45:16 - 00:06:24:12
Russ Whitman
But the basic statement here is, is that I'm not interested about when AI works. I want people to say, show me where it doesn't. I want to find the spots where we find breakage rather than trying to, because the assumption is it works everywhere first, and then we start finding where we run into roadblocks or we're not quite there yet. That tells us it's more like walking in the dark in a big room. I assume I'm going to be able to do all of the things. I just don't know where that where the walls are yet or where I'm going to trip yet versus taking a very cautious approach. I think the companies that are approaching it that way and piloting things.

00:06:24:14 - 00:06:45:11
Russ Whitman
So, we've got a number of companies that are, you know, the quick, easy spot, apply it to a chat bot, bring it to my employees’ internal systems so they can find information about the corporate policy. Literally just being able to have somebody ask a question to a Generative AI model that says, what's my PTO policy exactly?

00:06:45:14 - 00:07:24:21
Russ Whitman
Or what's our maternity policy versus having to read through or go through or what they usually do, which is email somebody in HR or send a Teams message somebody in HR. Which breaks their flow. So, we actually can think differently about that when we start applying it to things. But we're also watching companies add it to their core product lines. So, imagine now if you're a product that has, is a complex product. Traditionally you'd have to go to a FAQ or a support page if I'm trying to learn something, maybe watch a long video. I can quickly simply type in a question about something now and I can get a real answer in a way that makes sense to me.

00:07:24:24 - 00:08:03:10
Russ Whitman
And maybe more importantly, the follow-on questions are still connected to my initial one using Generative AI. So, there's a lot of interesting business cases there. But think about sales organizations being able to connect the dots to understanding what their customer needs are, using Generative AI. Think about the content that's being developed inside organizations to connect to their customers. The problem isn't finding enough of the items where it can work. It's changing your mindset to say, I assume everything could be done better augmented through Generative AI and then find out where the human needs to be in the mix to make it better.

00:08:03:13 - 00:08:29:11
Lisa Thee
Awesome. So, I did find the reference for that quote that you just shared. And that is from Jaime Teevan, who is the Chief Scientist at Microsoft. And I was inspired by that same quote, which is I'm not interested in when AI works, show me when it doesn't work. And that's how they're approaching this so that they can continue to innovate and improve. And I think we can all adopt that mindset.

00:08:29:13 - 00:08:31:13
Russ Whitman
I love it. Thank you.

00:08:31:15 - 00:08:41:25
Lisa Thee
Absolutely. So how critical is data quality and accessibility for a successful pilot implementation of AI?

00:08:41:27 - 00:09:08:12
Russ Whitman
So maybe the first truth that we have to start with is that Generative AI is a great example. Why it's so special is it's on the foundation of really amazing data, human-trained data, billions of parameters of data sets that come into it. Without that quality, you don't have something that you can ask a question to or a prompt and get the responses that you're looking for.

00:09:08:14 - 00:09:43:25
Russ Whitman
So, data is critical because without it, we wouldn't have OpenAI and these other solutions. However, in piloting, sometimes we're finding that the perfect data or the volume of data is not required to pilot. We can actually take a relatively small subset of data, and we've been working on data cleaning and data hygiene. I mean, there's tons of data scientists that have gotten really good at that over the years. And so, but instead of trying to have the perfect size of data to help solve all of the things, you can test and validate things really quickly, leveraging AI today.

00:09:44:00 - 00:10:08:28
Lisa Thee
Absolutely. It's that combination of using some of those large language models that have been trained on those billions of data sets and then curating your own custom data for your industry and perhaps having to purchase some additional labeled data or even creating synthetic data to be able to tune those models together to get the outcome that you're looking for.

00:10:09:00 - 00:11:03:03
Lisa Thee
So, nobody should be starting from scratch on model building these days, right? Because you can see some of the benefits of the investment that's happened with some cases, billions of dollars of training, some of these large implementations for large language models. But we have been working with some partners that are looking at some new spaces, right. So, it really is interesting to see how we can take what is now universally applicable and bring some of those capabilities into those Fortune 500 companies to have their own custom models for the business use cases that maybe have been previously unsolvable, or they're such investment with the number of hours and people in labor that it's preventing them from innovating and moving to the next level of product development and being able to be responsive to their customers. So, it's a really exciting time for business leaders, isn't it, Russ?

00:11:03:05 - 00:11:30:02
Russ Whitman
Well, and the other thing is, as we talked earlier about the pace of it, things are coming to market every day. So literally in the last couple of days, OpenAI launched a new sort of, if you will, lighter version for fine tuning for speed. And so right now, if I want to train a model using OpenAI, it can be quite expensive based upon the number of tokens that I'm connecting to and so OpenAI’s recognized this.

00:11:30:02 - 00:11:58:21
Russ Whitman
And so, they created a more of a of a workbench version that allows us to fine tune with GPT 3.5 and still be able to get amazing results. But the costs, like as an example for about a thousand tokens, it's about a $2.40 cost for training versus, you know, $24,000. So, it's it doesn't solve the bigger, broader solutions, but it's a way for us to get in.

00:11:58:21 - 00:12:33:10
Russ Whitman
So, these innovations, security, what we're seeing come around the bend with open-source models like Falcon as an open source LLM, being brought into the organization, an open source mindset as well as other things that we know that's coming out from Microsoft's Copilot and other toolsets that are bringing that enterprise technology bent to also give us trust. Like that's probably the, you know, the next wave is really going to be built on trust. Do I trust the model? Do I trust the output, and do I trust where my data lives and breathes?

00:12:33:12 - 00:13:19:27
Lisa Thee
It's a really good point because a lot of the challenges with Generative AI is sometimes you can have those hallucinations, right, where the statement coming back is stated as though it is truthful. But there are some, it's not quite truthful if you pass it through subject matter experts. So, it's really great as a first draft generator. It's really great as something that you can use to accelerate the building of your subject matter experts. But it also requires a culture of learning and innovation to apply properly. So as an executive that's leading in strategy, how can you guide other executives to foster that culture of learning and innovation to prepare their teams for this AI integration? How’ve you been thinking about it?

00:13:19:29 - 00:13:36:21
Russ Whitman
Well, I think the first thing that I always do is I say you have to start, and you have to understand it. I think there's, if we look at some of those other movements that I mentioned earlier, you know, you didn't really have to understand, or the ability to understand, why the iPhone was going to have a big impact was because it was in your hand.

00:13:36:21 - 00:13:54:11
Russ Whitman
You had to have that device. You saw it, you used it. You're like, okay, this is really cool. You didn't have to fully understand and grok all the manipulation aspects in that you didn't have to think through, someone else could handle most of the technical aspects. Okay, someone's going to write an app, there's an app store.

00:13:54:14 - 00:14:25:15
Russ Whitman
I can understand sort of the high-level pieces. I think with Generative AI especially, executives need to immerse themselves into the space. There's not a direct correlated aspect in cloud. It was basically removing, you know, physical servers in data centers to actually physical servers, data centers. But it was into a system. It was called a cloud. There was a nice translation component with Generative AI that doesn't exist.

00:14:25:21 - 00:14:48:22
Russ Whitman
There is, you know, it's just like this, but different. It's a whole new paradigm. And so, I believe that that the first step is, is we is we have to become immersed in the process or we're going to suffer by the fatigue and the whiplash of all the different feedback points and we're not going to be able to establish our position.

00:14:48:24 - 00:15:39:16
Russ Whitman
The other one is that I spend time with is the people that helped you think through your previous technical transformations, maybe they're engineers or architects, they're really process and operationally driven, especially. There’s typically, that’s not everybody, not about a blanket statement. But you're looking for more creative people that can think through how to assess a problem so that, let's take a ChatGPT example. If I were to ask it a question and stop there, you know, web search is a great example. You know, Google gave me many results based upon one query, and I, as a human, had to decide which results might make the most sense with Google's help and ad dollars. And in this case, I actually can have a conversation in which I can adjust what I'm looking for.

00:15:39:16 - 00:16:07:18
Russ Whitman
I can tune on the fly, and that takes a different level of creativity versus I type in a couple of words, and I see a bunch of results and I guess what the best one might be. So, it's a very different capability set. That's why we're seeing prompt engineer, you know, job salaries fly to the moon today, but we're really talking about a differentiation in how we approach AI.

00:16:07:20 - 00:16:36:11
Russ Whitman
The thing that I also say is, is that it changes the process. Before I might plan, I might think of an idea, I might plan on it, I'll design it and then I might build it, and then I'll test and iterate and validate. Today I can go from idea to creation so quickly that the iteration process, I just shoved it all together and you actually plan how you might apply that after you've done the creation versus in advance.

00:16:36:13 - 00:16:46:29
Russ Whitman
And so, to me, it's just that you're sort of shifting our standard ways of thinking about going from A to Z. It's not a straight line. It's a very dynamic line now.

00:16:47:01 - 00:17:51:25
Lisa Thee
And it's an exciting time because for some people that have an ability to access a vision, but maybe not the technical skills to get it down, to be able to explain it and demonstrate it to others, it really accelerates that at least good first draft where you can start to really tune and hone. I know for myself, I don't know if I like it till I see it, and so seeing it, you can go, you know, you go from being maybe overwhelmed with the creation to being able to take a step back and look at it more as an editor, a tuner, and being able to really bring your vision forward with your own unique voice by taking something that's part of the way there and really starting to fill in all those creative gaps that may be missing. So, for folks that are looking to make sure that their workforce stays up with the skills and the competencies that are required for this new era of AI at the workplace, what do you recommend that they focus on for helping their employees to focus on things like upskilling?

00:17:51:27 - 00:18:18:17
Russ Whitman
Well, we take a look at Launch specifically. You know, Launch has adopted an AI first mindset and the strategy. It recognizes that everything is going to change with AI. And so that's the belief structure. But Launch, like every other organization, didn't have an entire organization that was already in with deep understanding and comfort around AI, especially Generative AI, because it burst onto the scene so quickly.

00:18:18:19 - 00:18:41:28
Russ Whitman
And so, it's actually gone ahead and developed its own courseware to help establish a common understanding, a common way to think about it. And so, I think educating your organization broadly is a really critical first step and it has, you have to do it quickly. And so, I really applaud launch for its approach in thinking about that.

00:18:42:01 - 00:19:07:25
Russ Whitman
And yet there's also an amazing amount of resources that exist out there, things from deep, the Deep Learning Institute, there's things from just the Generative AI. And if you go there and follow them on LinkedIn, you'll find tons of interesting content. Google has put out some really good content courseware that's good for both a general purpose learner as well as an industry technologist.

00:19:07:27 - 00:19:53:06
Russ Whitman
So, I think what I'm recommending that leaders do is they establish their standard curriculum, their courseware, and they literally ask everybody in the organization to dive into a certain level so that you can start having a common conversation because it's such a new paradigm, nobody knows how to talk about it. And so, when we make these predictions of it's going to remove a bunch of jobs or it's going to add a bunch of jobs or it's going to do this or it's going to do that, there's no common thread, and so what happens is you just get lots of conflict and thrash and what I think a common curriculum does and a common courseware does is it gives everybody a sample, a playing field that is even to have a fair conversation about what to do. That's the first step.

00:19:53:08 - 00:19:59:14
Lisa Thee
And it also gives them the ability to be thinking creatively about how they can apply it to what they're working on as well, right?

00:19:59:21 - 00:20:00:11
Russ Whitman
Yes.

00:20:00:13 - 00:20:06:24
Lisa Thee
Makes them more accessible, coming to them where they are versus maybe speaking too high or too low.

00:20:06:26 - 00:20:44:16
Russ Whitman
Well, and leaders can utilize these tools to do their work. I mean, the work of a leader, and that's true I'm not just talking about an executive leader, but at every level of the organization, they're responsible for the humans in their care. They're responsible for the business that they're actively trying to pursue. And they're constantly doing things like taking notes, reviewing information, preparing for one-on-ones, presentations, connecting to their board, connecting to their broader groups, and Generative AI gives them toolsets to accelerate all those aspects.

00:20:44:16 - 00:21:14:26
Russ Whitman
So, one of their first tricks we take them through is we look at what's a goal setting process and let's go use some Generative AI to help you develop your approach to goals for your next fiscal year. And they sort of, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe AI was good for the marketing folks that to create a really cool ad campaign, I didn't realize I could use it in this other way, but it also shows them the responsibility to not just take something that's generated by GPT and deliver it as a here's your performance review.

00:21:14:28 - 00:21:52:03
Russ Whitman
Like, that's also crazy, you know, because we're missing the opportunity to actually have that human-to-human contact and say, here's some interesting information that we should maybe look at to work together on. And my favorite one is having them, when they take the recordings and transcripts from a meeting that they're working on and be able to then process that into a short report and their note taking, their ability to actually understand what they did in those meetings, that they're taking one right after the other. It's a fantastic way for them to feel like they're not only learning how to use AI, but they're actually getting value from it.

00:21:52:05 - 00:22:18:13
Lisa Thee
Absolutely. So, one of the challenges that I think a lot of executive and boards face and the leaders in those organizations as a result is being able to measure the return on investment of AI initiatives. In this new model, what metrics do you think that organizations should be focusing on? Because we need to keep some room for all of this learning and evolution, right? What are the right places to measure today?

00:22:18:16 - 00:22:39:20
Russ Whitman
Well, so the first thing is to measure all the stuff that you've been measuring. There's not some new set of metrics that change within an organization. We have growth. We might have, you know, bottom line margin, we might have quality, product quality. All the standard measurements are, those are the outputs and the outcomes from doing the work that we're supposed to be doing.

00:22:39:25 - 00:23:20:14
Russ Whitman
The new thing is that we can start thinking about is what am I getting through faster? How is speed getting placed in there, how is innovation getting placed in there? Which are hard to judge, but you can start actually applying some new ways of thinking about how you did something before or after. Now we don't show up at any meeting anymore with a typewriter, right, where we’re clickety clacking away and waiting for the thing to go to the end. And yes, I learned how to type on an old-fashioned typewriter. It's true. And we don't bring that to a meeting anymore and take meeting notes or write up a report. Today, we use a computer, or we might even, or speech to text to create the report.

00:23:20:14 - 00:23:53:07
Russ Whitman
But we've had decades to transition from one to the next. So, speed is relative. That's the other thing to remember is that not all everything's going to move at the same pace. But if you can start actually just tracking how long you might normally have taken to create that PowerPoint slide or that presentation or prepare for that company meeting and actually thoughtfully look at how much time you saved off of that. I think speed is going to be one of the new measures of success as we enter the AI space.

00:23:53:10 - 00:24:26:24
Lisa Thee
So, I'm hearing that the classic metrics of business will still be applicable, but we can start to add that next layer of speed and efficiency of how those things get accomplished in order to understand how having a human-in-the-loop AI system, for example, could benefit people in the roles that they're existing in. So, I know that we had the chance earlier this year to attend a conference together where it got really obvious that this is the wave that's coming and it's coming really quickly.

00:24:26:26 - 00:24:47:27
Lisa Thee
What were some of the key takeaways for you at the beginning of 2023 that made you start to feel like this was different because AI has been here for a while, people have been applying it in the business case. What were some of those -aha moments that you had, Russ, that you just said, this is an imperative now we got to go all in. What did you hear and what did you see?

00:24:48:00 - 00:25:15:23
Russ Whitman
Well, first of all, remember that when we were in Cannes together, it was just a few weeks after 3.5 GPT was released. And maybe the most interesting thing was, was the number of talks that the subject matter change from what was originally published to what they were doing. And there was an energy around the event that wasn't just like excitement, it was, it was all of it.

00:25:15:23 - 00:25:53:16
Russ Whitman
It was a little bit of fear, a little bit, a not sure, anxiety and is like we had to move fast, like it was all of it at once. And it was just a rare place. Like the fact that we had the time with Sophia, that iRobot, and their team and how they think about these things. So, the ability to bring people like that together while at the same time you have some of these folks like Fred Werner leading the ITU at the UN, thinking about, you know, AI for good and data for good, and thinking about it from that perspective all the way to some of these academics that were really

00:25:53:16 - 00:26:28:25
Russ Whitman
talking about the difference between Generative AI and general purpose AI in very new, clear ways. I think probably the other thing was, is there was a new lexicon that everybody started to understand and we were able to have different conversations at that event than I'd seen happen ever before, because we've been through the AI winter and people hoping something’s an AI spring and then all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, it's here, it's Christmas morning, we're unwrapping it. We're still don't know how deep the pool is and where the sides are. It was it was that kind of a real, you know, mind opening event for me personally.

00:26:28:29 - 00:27:00:14
Lisa Thee
Yeah, for myself as well. Being in the presence of the people that wrote the original papers at Google, that Attention is All You Need. And, you know, the founders of companies like Hugging Face and the directors of the organizations that are producing these amazing LLMs like Falcon out of the UAE. It just felt like we were drenched in talent of the biggest innovators in the field, and they were all sitting in that same level of you could view it as anxiety, you could view it as excitement, because they're typically pretty similar feelings.

00:27:00:14 - 00:27:27:15
Lisa Thee
But knowing that the things that were in the labs and the things that were in closed doors were about to be really widely democratized, and the excitement and the energy that comes around this seismic change in the landscape we're all living in. So, I would love to hear your thoughts. Looking forward as a futurist, what trends do you anticipate the AI landscape will take for Fortune 500 companies in the next few years?

00:27:27:17 - 00:28:01:13
Russ Whitman
So, Fortune 500 companies are really tied to quarterly results and annual planning. And so, I'm a big believer of connecting the dots between those really core, how those businesses operate, to responding to technical change. So, what we're seeing happening right now as companies start to look ahead and think about their annual goals for 2024, AI has moved to right in the top list, whether it's one, two, or three.

00:28:01:15 - 00:28:21:12
Russ Whitman
And so, when that happens, you start tying those aspirations and those interests to dollars. You start seeing a real interesting cascading effect. Companies like Microsoft, that set their fiscal year starting midyear are ahead of the game. We started seeing that early this year with their big investments and how they were looking at it.

00:28:21:14 - 00:28:52:22
Russ Whitman
They're maturing really fast. They set the standard and the pace for the industry for the rest of these Fortune companies that need to play catch up a bit. And so, while none of them really have a really strong, clear plan about what they're going to do in 2024, they recognize that they have to do something. So, because of that, what we're going to see in terms of trending is companies typically look in three areas when they look at technology investment, they look at cost savings and they look at impact to their products and services.

00:28:52:24 - 00:29:20:14
Russ Whitman
And ultimately they look at productivity as sort of an ultimate driver, which productivity can be looked at either in value gain or in cost reduction. Right. So that that that's the counterpoint piece. So, we take those three off, put on the table, put them on the wall, maybe, we start thinking about those. We think about the last of that productivity space, understanding how AI tools or could be applied or into the productivity aspect.

00:29:20:16 - 00:29:45:25
Russ Whitman
They're definitely going to be looking at how their organizations are built. So, the organizational structures, if we look further on, are going to look, I think, very different, not unlike when so many companies have moved to a matrix organization that created these networks. Those networks are also, you know, when we look at how ChatGPT was so accessible was because there was networks built and models and infrastructure for ChatGPT to be available, anybody could sign up.

00:29:45:27 - 00:30:07:08
Russ Whitman
They get on the waiting list, they get notified, they put in their $20, they move up to the next tier. It was already set and set there. So matrixed organizations are going to have the ability to adopt these new types of capabilities, much more effectively because of their matrix models. And so, but they're going to transform, now you're going to have a fundamentally different way to think about the organization.

00:30:07:08 - 00:30:36:28
Russ Whitman
So, I think we're going to look at organizational change farther out, but it's going to be pretty massive from an impact perspective. When we think about the products and services the next wave is this is integration piece. Everybody's looking about how they can add an AI component to their thing. But actually, that's only that's an additive. I think that we need to think about it less like adding a spoiler or a really cool exhaust system to a nice to a car and think about it more like, what's the new car?

00:30:37:01 - 00:30:57:21
Russ Whitman
So, if I really think about AI first, I might reimagine my entire product line for my customers, and it might actually shed a whole bunch of stuff that I'd already previously built. And so, we're going to see that shift from how do I add in the components and bolt on AI to what happens if I think of AI as the central component.

00:30:57:21 - 00:31:08:03
Russ Whitman
And so, it's going to change everything to how we interface with the website to an organization, how we buy everything it's going to be, that's the big moves as we look down the road.

00:31:08:05 - 00:31:18:16
Lisa Thee
Could you provide us your three key takeaways that executives should consider when approaching this AI imperative into their strategies?

00:31:18:18 - 00:31:43:18
Russ Whitman
That’s a really good question. Well, first of all, you have to build an organization that can think AI first. This isn't something that you could hand down. So, you've got to think about, number one, how am I going to build an organization of AI champions that can carry this on, carry this forward? How can you build it in as a part of your core organizational belief system?

00:31:43:21 - 00:32:13:09
Russ Whitman
And that's a hard, that's a change management challenge that every organization is going have. I believe that that AI has presented the largest change management challenge in our lifetimes by far. And so, I think that's, I would start by leaders, think about your organization and what this impact is going to be. So that's one. Two is that this is a time to be bold because you won't have, you won't be able to catch up as easily as you have in some other areas.

00:32:13:09 - 00:32:56:24
Russ Whitman
Those that lead are going to have dramatic success. And if you're not bold in that, you're going to take your risk averse approach and you'll probably be left behind. And so, if you really want to be a leader and a winner in the AI race, you've got to be bold and go after it. And then the last one is, is recognize the importance of your own data and in how you're going to think about your data is your organization. The fastest way you can become AI ready and be maybe AI healthy is to get your data figured out and set in order in a way that you can actually leverage AI effectively. Invest in that now so that you have the ability to take advantage of it down the road.

00:32:56:26 - 00:33:59:19
Lisa Thee
I love those recommendations for us, and I think the thing that I would like to add is, you know, it became clear to me in Cannes that things were going to change, but it became even more in focus and sharper when I'm sitting on the sideline at my kid’s soccer game, listening to two teachers sitting next to me talking about how they're applying Generative AI solutions in their classroom to help with peer reviews and recommendations on paper writing for their students, and how it's removing obstacles for them of having to put the burden on some of the kids that were really good in English to be peer reviewing multiple papers. And they can really get more feedback to the kids that are struggling faster this way. Never did I ever envision that that was going to be the case. So, for our listeners that maybe are working at companies where it's not encouraged should be bold or experiment in the office, and I heard that side of the argument as well. Remember, you can always apply this to your home life.

00:33:59:23 - 00:34:20:04
Lisa Thee
You know, I use it for my picky eaters and making meal plans for the week at home. My husband likes to eat paleo, my son likes to eat keto, and my daughter likes every carb you can throw at her. And it's amazing what a large language model can do to come up with some kind of meal configuration that we can all agree on.

00:34:20:06 - 00:34:41:17
Lisa Thee
So if you have any of those pressing ideas in the back of your head of things that just seem like unsolvable problems, I encourage you to just have fun experimenting because whatever you do on your own time will benefit you in the workplace as these tools start rolling out faster and faster. Because I think the hardest part about this is adapting to the rate of change.

00:34:41:17 - 00:35:06:08
Lisa Thee
And so, the more you can do to be hands-on and start to reduce that discomfort of doing things in a new way, I think the better prepared you'll be to step into this future world. So, thank you so much today, Russ, for speaking with us about this AI imperative. For people that want to learn more or connect with you, can you talk about a few ways that they would be able to reach you, Russ, with any ideas or thoughts?

00:35:06:13 - 00:35:25:11
Russ Whitman
Well, I'd love to talk to anybody that wants to reach out and throw stuff at me through LinkedIn. Just look me up there. LinkedIn slash Russ Whitman, Super easy to get to. I was early to that, that game, I guess. But also, I would suggest, you know, that the Launch team has a really established an incredible richness of leaders in this space.

00:35:25:13 - 00:35:34:17
Russ Whitman
And so, if you reach out to, to the Launch team and you're looking for some direction on where to go, it's a great group to really help you out. So that'd be a way, too.

00:35:34:19 - 00:36:00:15
Lisa Thee
I also encourage people to look on Launch’s website. There's an AI readiness assessment that is free of charge that can really help you to identify where you might want to start and your level of maturity in this space so that you can bring along your internal stakeholders on an organized journey of making these transformations. So, thank you so much for everyone that joined us today and we appreciate your time today Russ, thank you so much.

00:36:00:18 - 00:36:02:24
Russ Whitman
Thanks, Lisa.