Excited about this for any for all of you who are all over the world. Some of us have morning. Some of us have have afternoon. Others have evening.For those of you who are coming from Poland, I'm Polish myself. So I have a wonderful, executive, with me, Jane Connell. She's from Verizon, and she's a, transformation and global strategist leader. And, we wanted to discuss on a topic that is so important right now. We are a living, Emmett. It's the transformation in the era of AI. I was looking a little bit doing a little bit of a research and and and wanted to bring that context in. As many of you know, we all talk AI. It seems like every day there's something new. So whatever we knew yesterday is no longer relevant. We are in a, continuously moving space. Overall, 88% of companies have either chosen or have already implemented AI strategies.

So that's the movement that is here to stay, and we are all living living in it. Unfortunately, only 7% of those organizations were able to scale AI and really realize those gains. So during our discussion, Jane and I, we're gonna talk about some of the concepts and topics related to how organizations need to transform our themselves and how they have to prepare their leaders, their employees, and the organizational structure to make sure that that transformation is successful.

So without further ado, I let's dive in. Jane, thank you so much for being here. I am so impressed by everything that you are doing. Your career, starting with operations and technology at J and J and BMS and other places all the way now to to Verizon has really presented to us how women are making a difference and how their way for, engaging and creating strategies for organizations can be highly, relevant and profitable for them.

So your in your experience in in transformation, why do you think AI right now is causing so much discussion in the boardroom and so much potential concern from employees, and it's a topic for everyone to be talking at this time?

It's so relevant right now. The topic that we have, I'm so excited. And good morning, everybody, around the world, especially our women leaders on this call. It's such an honor and pleasure to be talking to you this morning. I think there's three big areas in which we have to have the conversation this morning. One is around the technology advancement. Let's face it. AI is moving at such a speed. It's teaching us things and creating the BI that we never saw before, the patterns we never saw before, the kinks in our armor, in our end to end delivery of process and data that we knew we had, and we always thought we had time to work, against and fix. But it's it's like the perfect storm. And it's also impacting the knowledge worker in our organizations. This is far beyond, the the work that is repetitive and automated. We've all done that. I mean, let's face it, transformation. We've changed supply chains. We've draw driven automation. We have streamlined and process reengineered. This is not new concepts.

The perfect storm is all of it together, and it's really, making sure that we're constantly learning, challenging logic and understanding of our organization we thought we had that it might uncover, is not as mature when you think about end to end delivery, end to end process, and and the quality of the data.

AI gets to scale when all three of those things line up perfectly. So as we peel back this conversation this morning, I would tell you, it is those three areas of the speed of the technology and creating the BI that are we right about what we knew? How how much human intervention is masking the seamless automation that AI can uncover and really help us deliver for our customers and our constituents? And are we willing to lean in and fix that while we're trying to also learn, while we're also trying to beat our competition and harness the step change that AI and and the speed of technology give us. That is why it's such a conversation in every boardroom with every senior executive because it is challenging all three of, you know, people, process, and tech, in a very different different way and creating that conversation to challenge the norm and recreate, and and think about what's possible.

I will I couldn't agree more. As we are thinking about the change, it does highlight a lot of the inefficiencies that we have, but it also presents it a lot of opportunities and, really create an opportunity for us employees to participate in it and also realize those benefits. Some of the statistics are saying that 80% of, workforce will see minimum of 10% of their tasks being automated. And I think that's a quite a release, of tasks that we do manually every day allowing to take on some more responsibility or more interesting tasks on. On the other hand, there is always that, part of individuals worrying about their jobs. In October, when I spoke about, AI to some women leaders, statistics came out that the one in in, one in every three employees might, by 2030, see, elimination either of their jobs of changing the task they are doing.

Now the numbers are saying 40% in the next two to five years. So that that number is increasing as adoption is also increasing. There's also a good thing about it because we are seeing that those, organizations where leaders are really motivating the change and individuals are buying in. They're becoming two and a half to three times more, more successful in their careers and ultimately realizing gains and creating a lot of opportunities for ultimately joining leadership positions. So with that, I wanted to get your perspective of we have that bipolar situation almost between some organizations or some employees loving the the the adoptions and taking this on and really incorporating, realize the potential for them. On the other hand, there is a lot of talk about elimination of jobs and and that cliff that supposedly is coming in 2027. So what is your perspective on it, and what is the human component, and why there is so much angst coming in, and what can we as leaders do to help this?

Oh my god. This is the crux of the conversation, that we're having this morning. Look, it it is it pushes boundaries, and it pushes culture. Those are the two topics here why this is exciting, scary at the same time. And it's gonna be those organizations that know how to balance that conversation because there's no one way. There's going to be different maturity, and there's gonna be different aptitude across the organization. And it's really allowing people to be honest about it and be inside of it to learn, take some risk, calculated risks, but also work together in a different way. We've talked about collaboration in a lot in a lot a lot of, you know, years.

And and we know that culture and change is the crux of what makes success of transformation and what also impedes transformation. What's different here is with AI, it is streaming horizontally across the company, and we artificially

and

and we know this, we create boundaries by the structures that we have. And we have to break a paradigm that, yeah, there's a management structure to get work done, manage the workforce, you know, quickly address barriers and and all those types of situations, and that works. We're always gonna have some kind of structure. However, when you really want to unleash and transform AI, it means there are no boundaries of process. There are no boundaries of organizations. There are no boundaries of who's the decision maker. It really is uncovering, and we always know this. Right? We we have our classic foundational knowledge that, you know, our problems usually start upfront in the process, and it's you know, it just it gets exacerbated, as it goes to the end of the process where, you know, that becomes more transactional. So whether it's from inception of selling to paying to the inception of, you know, manufacturing to the end supply chain, it doesn't matter. It always starts upstream.

There can't be boundaries. You have to have cross functional teams looking right, looking left, really digesting what are we learning, where's the step change, where's the innovation, and where are some foundational changes we need to make. And that means incentives have to make people not fear AI, but lean into AI because now they see the value, the higher value they can bring in the organization AI is not gonna solve. AI is gonna show you the way. It's gonna give you the blueprint, but you need that higher institutional knowledge to know how do I make some quick decisions, how do I trial error, and have success in them scale and scale quickly, and not worry about management structures, not worry about boundaries of you stay in your lane, why are you playing in my lane.

That is so culturally different, and we have to create that space for people to have that conversation and not feel threatened by it. And we also have to you know, I I was just at a a conference last week of leaders, and I loved the dialogue we were in where it said, just imagine now this is a hypothetical where this wouldn't happen, but I loved the concept that imagine that you get more time off in your day, and your incentive is to train your digital twin or AI in the job that you do.

So no more are you the firefighter. No longer are you the, you know, the the expert that everybody goes to, and we've incented you and reinforced that gene by giving you great performance reviews and promotions for it. Now you want a digital company, digital experiences to differentiate your company and serve our customers better. And imagine incentivizing someone to actually work themselves out of a role and create the new possibility. That that I love the idea of, hey. You can have more time off if you get this AI working at the highest human capacity capacity of thinking and behavior. That's the kind of incentives we have to think about.

And that's what makes it scary for people is we have to change culture, incentives, and what we value versus the way it's always been.

I great, great points, and I and it's very interesting point of having the digital twin, and pretty much having everything that you know and making those those decisions. I I know that probably some some people, or some leaders are thinking, well, human in a loop still needs to be there, and I and and we all needs to do this, and I think you talked a little bit about this on how we, incentivize individuals. In my recent discussions with some AI tech leaders, they were saying how we need to ensure, give the right incentives and the right opportunities whether it's gonna be digital twin or or others where we are ensuring that people that that employees don't just check the box. Because the outcome at the end is much more, scary if it's not properly managed. And I think you also raised another very important piece. It's all about the cross functional because we all know parts of the of the model of what is underneath the data and what's driving it ultimately the outcomes that are being driven. So thinking about that piece, clearly, incentives, clearly thinking about good data and, and cross cross collaboration.

Who are the organizations and what are the traits of the of the organizations who will be winning, and who are those that will be left behind? Because as with every transformation, there are winners and losers, and those who really take this as an opportunity and those who will stay behind and, unfortunately, won't be won't be surviving in the next five day five years?

No. I that's a great question. And, honestly, this is such a rapidly evolving area that I think the ones that will win are the ones that realize they can't do it alone. So I think we're gonna see and we're already seeing this, so it's not even a think. I think it's an educated opinion right now. We're gonna have different partners. I think AI solves a lot of our monolithic. This is where I was saying the technology has advanced so fast that we don't have to take years to implement things. We don't have to take years to get the world and the foundation solid, in our companies and process and data.

I think AI solves a lot of those and mitigates a lot of the issues we've had. However, if we are not open to constantly scanning the marketplace for the most creative innovators, which is where all the money is being invested, we see I mean, just look at any PE portfolio. They are changing dramatically, and we also need to make sure how do we institutionalize them in our company. One, don't vary their innovation. So how do you work with them and help innovate and co innovate with them without bearing them? Two, how do we have an ecosystem that as some excel and some will fail? We know that of every new tech company that comes out, that we're nimble enough to switch out and change partners.

So don't get so reliant and make sure that we are using them to the best capacity in our companies, but don't create such an, an IP reliance that we can't switch them out. And I honestly think AI makes this a lot easier, but that means we're nimble and we're acting like start ups. So I think those are the companies that are gonna win as well. Here's the other thing. I think we also have to work with academia very, very differently, and our workforce changes very dynamically. It's not gonna be our traditional workforce. And I also think we and I can tell you because I'm on the board of, Rutgers and a few other universities. One of the things we're all struggling with is AI doesn't have those entry level roles anymore. Mhmm.

But yet you need that foundational knowledge of doing the job and, you know, fighting the fight and finding out, like, you know, for me, a technologist should write code. You know when you miss a period, a colon, a semicolon, like, you that's how you've learned what good code is. And then to critique it later, you know, that's foundational knowledge. You could put that in any cross functional discipline. How are we teaching the foundational without having to do it? I think AI can solve that as well. But it's gonna be those companies that are changing the way we recruit, change the way we teach our folks, shift in those incentives, and create this very rich dynamic third party network that we can switch in and out and compete like no other company regardless of industry.

I I think this is a very insightful comment, and I wanna mention something. I see there is a few questions about what what women what are the the advice, for women right now versus what was not before, And I wanna talk about it. I think it is the the ability to be always agile and I think and learning and continuously pivoting because the, technology moves very fast. And in my recent discussions with, some of the, upcoming students who are starting to do PhD, that was one of the things that I told them. You have to think exactly what you were saying. Workforce is changing. By the time you're gonna come out out of school, the work is gonna be very, very different. So you have to think about it, the skill sets and the ability, how we're gonna be working, what is gonna be important.

We still need experts because we need individuals who understand that. And I do agree with your point on young people are needed because when some of us won't be here, these models will be still alive. We need to be able to transition that knowledge to those who can then maneuver and monitor these models and ensure that they can that they still perform to their most optimal and accurate way. I know we are coming up I think it was twenty minutes. We are coming up on our thirty seconds here. Jane, is there anything that you would like to, say to young women right now that are thinking about what are they gonna do? They are just turning out. They are in their twenties, and they're a little bit afraid maybe of what's happening.

Well, you know, and I'd say this to young people, and I would say it to to folks of our our generation. I think AI is the ultimate neutralizer. You no longer have to be in the company that long or in a field that long. AI teaches you naturally. And, actually, identifying the patterns and seeing things is BI that we're all going you know, we're all evolving from. So I think it's an equalizer. I don't think I think it what you're learning from it transcends, you know, the traditional way we've learned and come up the ladder. So having said that, put your blinders on. Don't care about that. Don't care about who's sitting left, sitting right. Guess what? That's your network of people. And as I mentioned even previously, look outside, look inside, constantly be learning and scanning. Just even taking these kind of calls, we get all busy.

We keep our heads down. I think women are the greatest multitaskers. I think we are the most critical thinkers of obviously checking every box. Well, guess what? Now is your time. And get out there and learn, and your hands need to be in it. I will tell you, every pilot that my teams are doing or and and have been doing, You know, I'm in there. What are the metrics? What are we learning? What are we seeing? Touch it. Feel it. Don't talk in concept, because this is gonna constantly evolve. And if your hands aren't in it, you're already gonna be outdated. So I think this is your time. I think there are no boundaries. I don't think longevity and experience are what are gonna propel people. I think it's gonna be that dynamic environment and those that are just excited about it and passionate about it and go for it and and just lift your head up and work with every possible, you know, inside, outside, and bring those ideas, and bring them to your company and bring them to your day to day.

I guarantee one thing a day, imagine that, 365 ideas you can generate every day, and that's just one and guarantee you have more than that. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited about you, and I just think it's a very motivating time for our careers.

Well, with that, thank you so much for everyone on the call. Be excited, be curious, and lift the new world that we are in because there's a lot of opportunities for us. With that, thank you. My name is doctor Eva Klede.