Building an AI Literate Team (from AI Knowhow)

0:00Hey, everybody. It's Nick, and I did promise you that there would be more exciting things happening on this feed. I stand by that. You're going to have to wait a little longer for most of what I was talking about originally. But today, we do have something very special happening. Today, we're going to play you the first episode of a brand new podcast brought to you by KnownWell. It's a show called AI Know-How. and for executives, business owners, leaders, managers like you, understanding how AI is going to impact your business, impact your bottom line, impact your clients, impact your customers, impact your employees, all of those things is so important.

0:42You have to understand what AI is going to do and how you can leverage it and how you can use it ethically. And that's what AI know-how is all about. So this is the first episode of that. For anybody who's listening to this podcast, there's definitely something there for you. Now, if that weren't enough, friend of the show, Courtney Baker, the former co-host of Focus on This, actually hosts this show. So you're definitely going to want to check it out. That's AI Know How from Known Well. Give it a listen and stay tuned because we'll be back with exciting things and enjoy. How do you prepare your company to succeed in the age of AI?

1:24What questions should you be asking as an executive? And what does this all have to do with how people woke up for work in 18th century London? Well, stay tuned because we're breaking it down for you today. Hi, I'm Courtney Baker, and this is the AI Know How podcast from Known Well, helping you reimagine your business in the AI era. Today, I'm joined by some of the smartest people I know, known well CEO David DeWolf and Chief Product Officer Mohan Rao to tackle how to build an AI literate leadership team. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Pete Bewer, will also get insights from Andrew DeBerry, who over the course of 17 years has worked with Microsoft, Meta, and the U.S.

2:11Cyber Command. But first, the news.

2:25We've distilled down the latest news in AI and how it practically applies to your business as executives. And I've got Pete Bewer here to help us make sense of it all. Hey, Pete. Hey, Courtney. How are you? Good. So I thought this would be a good place to start given that our guest on today's show used to work here, but Meta is developing a new, more powerful AI system. They're working on a new artificial intelligence system intended to be as powerful as the most advanced models offered by OpenAI. The planned system would help other companies build services that produce sophisticated text analysis and other outputs.

3:06Out of the gate, Pete, what do we make of this as executives and business leaders when we hear news like this, even if it's expected, that there is a lot of competition to get the next models out faster? How do we take this in as executives? If you're open AI, you know, the news is different. But if you're an executive and a consumer in this market, it's nothing but good news. Competition is a good thing. It provides alternatives. And so I think we'll see not just this motion today, but many more like it. And the market will grow with additional offerings, with better offerings, with models being improved faster, with better pricing, you name it, enterprise solutions.

3:52So for the executive, this is good news. That's awesome. I will say one note that I took when reading this was just to not get too aligned or too connected to some of these early players in the market because so much more is going to be coming our way. The biggest news this week in AI took place pretty close to Known Well headquarters and where you're sitting, Pete, a number of leading executives, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg met with senators behind closed doors to discuss, among other things, Regulating AI. What, if anything, should executives listening be thinking about in the context of regulation?

4:36This feels like a pretty big moment. Well, you saw the mystery of why traffic was so lousy around here this past week. Thanks for that. My sense is that executives should be working on policies on the home front, regardless of what's happening at the regulatory level. Regulation can't keep up with innovation, and these big personalities getting involved with government conversation may enrich it, may slow it down. Who knows? So on the home front, CEOs, leadership teams need to be building out their governance frameworks, figuring out what the implications are for the business, seeing AI through the values that run the business and getting their own structure in place.

5:19This battle for ethical AI is one that's going to be won at the level of the corporation far ahead of government. So what I hear you saying is we know that regulation is going to come at some point, but not to wait for that to set your governance, your policies, your regulations, get ahead of that, do what's right now and knowing that more is going to be coming in the future. Exactly. Get your plan in place yesterday and then tweak it tomorrow. So for our last headline, Pete, I almost want to ask you, do you think this is true or not? The headline is Coca-Cola used AI to create its newest flavor, the Y3000 soda from the future.

6:05Pete, honest first reaction here. I'd vote truth because if you're Coke, why wouldn't you use AI to try to make sense of where new tastes and new markets are coming from? I mean, think about their business and the unimaginable complexity and magnitude of their markets and operations. Who or what better than AI to crawl through their segmentations, their consumption models, their customer need patterns to try to come up with something that's actually going to get a Pepsi buyer to drink a Coke for a change? I think the more interesting question is what's in it, because the year 3000 is pretty far away.

6:50Have we run out of water by then? Are we drinking some synthetic oil? Have drugs been decriminalized? And so it's a homestogenic football drink. I don't know. We'll see what the future brings. But I think Coke would be crazy not to be using AI. Pete, thanks for joining me today to break down this week's news. You got it, Courtney, anytime.

7:23Every day, we are hearing more and more projections on what the implications of AI will be on the workforce. If you're a CEO or an executive wondering how you're going to build and restructure your company to compete in this new era, Listen, you're not alone. The first step is building an AI literate leadership team. But before we can tackle the steps of building an AI literate leadership team, we have to determine whether or not our organization is even ready to take on an AI transformation. I talked to KnownWell CEO David DeWolf and Chief Product Officer Mohan Rao about this and the practical steps you can take as executives.

8:07David Mohan, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk to you two about this. I think you both have so much valuable insight on this specific topic, how to build an AI literate leadership team. So you two, where do we start for the CEOs, the executives listening? How do we get started with this? Mohan, you may disagree with me here, but I'm going to throw this out here. I think we have so much focus right now on data and technology that that's actually not where I would start. I'm going to start at the other extreme and say that there's a lot of focus on getting your data right and prepared.

8:42There's a lot of focus on the technology of it. But where I don't see the focus is on the leadership itself. I think the culture of an organization, having a leader out front, helping us to grapple with how will AI impact our business and leading the change management, thinking through the ethics, the responsibility, and all of that is so essential. And so asking the fundamental question, do I have a healthy culture in my organization and do I have leadership ready to take charge of this initiative and help shepherd it through? Yeah, David, this is going to surprise you because I don't disagree with you on this point at all, right?

9:21So leadership is obviously super important. And I would say I'd follow that up with strategy. Got to figure out how AI is going to impact your strategy. All the basics are still there. What is your differentiation? How do you compete? And now the question is, how can you use AI to augment it and make it even sharper? That's the key question with strategy. Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on that real quick and say the thing I have seen in leadership teams that they're struggling with there, Mohan, is that they don't understand AI in depth enough to actually be able to apply it to their strategy. And so I think a part of strategy is actually getting into the weeds and understanding how can it really influence strategy.

10:06Would you agree that you've seen that too? Absolutely. I've seen it everywhere. I see it all the time. I think the key is going to be, do you have an organization with the right people? And are you collecting that talent that you need to have this type of an AI impact on the company? There's a shift of towards kind of data analysis and understanding and making decisions off of data and trusting the data versus your gut and peer relationship that I think has been going on in our culture with the advent of kind of digital and technology and more information that I think is really now we have an exclamation point on it now.

10:43Right. Right. Mahan. Like it's like you really have to be data oriented in order to thrive in this world as a leader. I feel like really what you two are laying out here, maybe even unintentionally, is really the areas that your organization has to be ready, like the framework for readiness in their organization before they even start to build an AI literate leadership team. It sounds to me like you've kind of laid out these building blocks that for everybody listening, you've really got to have in place. I think this is such a really important conversation. I think that's true, Courtney. And I would add to that when you say building blocks, what comes to my mind is that there are other components that we need to start to weave in.

11:28So for example, one of the big questions out there right now is about responsibility, right? The ethics of applying AI. Well, an organization that has well-defined values, an organization that is already driven by guiding principles versus rules that allows people to make judgment calls is going to thrive in the areas of responsibility and governance. And so those are the types of building blocks I think you want to have in place in order to be able to thrive in this now what I'm calling the intelligence economy, right? Yeah, no question about it. I think those frameworks are super important. But let's not forget about data and technology either, right?

12:11Because AI, at the end of the day, is a technology, right? You cannot have siloed data. You've got to have data that's an AI factory, which means that you're collecting information about customer behavior. You're coming up with the right use cases for the data pipelines that you have, making sure that you have a fairly modern data stack. that's going to allow you to scale your operations. The other thing that struck me, Courtney, is as you reframed that around these building blocks, let's get back to your original question, right? Because your original question wasn't, when is an organization ready?

12:45It was the AI literate leadership team. What do they need to be thinking about? And I'd pull this all the way back and say, I think teams that are going to be at the forefront are those leadership teams that are preparing their organization. Okay. Nobody except for the 72 people that actually have been doing AI really get and understand AI to the degree they need to tomorrow. But what you can do to have an AI literate leadership team is number one, begin to get to know it, study, do your homework, be intentional, bring the people on board, like Mohan said, but then start to put these building blocks in place so that you're greasing the skids.

13:29And as you begin to identify those opportunities or those risks, you can actually act on them. Absolutely. But I don't think there's any denying that this is an exceptional moment, right? You can amp up your strategy. You can get 10x more productive in key areas. This is an exceptional moment for the C-suite leaders that you have to embrace. David, you kind of already hit on educating yourself as being a big part of building an AI literate leadership team. I'm curious, what are the rest of those three steps? How can everybody listening really make sure that they're being strategic about building that capacity?

14:13Yeah. So if I'm running a business that is looking to really help its leadership team get to the next level, I'd say, number one, deliberate about education. Let's make sure we come up to speed on what is this that is happening in society right now? What really is AI and understanding it? Number two, I'm driving them to prepare the organization. Look across these different areas that we've discussed and start just putting the fundamentals in place to make sure we can navigate the change. Number three, I'm going out and I'm looking for specific opportunities and threats that are hitting me in the face.

14:49And I'm looking for them on two different dimensions, right? Number one is what's immediate right now? What experiments can I run? And then number two is the long term. Where's the impact going to come? Right. What is the threat that's going to take me off my game? What is the opportunity that's going to help us become a rocket ship? Right. And I'm looking at it there. And then finally, don't forget, after all that, just act. Right. I think too often we're just thinking about things we're not acting and moving forward. So I'd say those would be my four steps as a CEO, getting my team up to speed and ready to approach this new emerging economy.

15:26I totally agree with that. The key point here is that learning is going to come from doing, not just individually, but more organizationally. I think the other really interesting thing for me, and the thing that I keep coming back to, is it seems like different teams or individuals are really testing out some of these tools, but there seems to be very little concerted effort from an enterprise view of building the right teams, looking at this more holistically. Is that just me or do you two find that true as well? I think it's a grab bag right now. There are individuals in the organization that are playing with Copilot or one of ChatGPT.

16:11It is not a concerted effort to drive strategy of a company yet. That's what we find across the board. Yeah. And Mohan, I would say I would see it in two places. The grab bag is happening with the innovators and early adopters, right? Those that are on the cutting edge and just want to play with chat GPT because they want to play with it. And then the other place is in IT organizations and data organizations that have been focused on this as an emerging technology, quite frankly, for 30 years, right? AI has been around for a long time, but is now reaching its crescendo and they're seeing the opportunity for impact.

16:47And that's why I think the functional business leaders in an organization need to really start coming up to speed because otherwise it's going to happen to them instead of them driving and leading that change. Well, I think for everybody, listen, there's a real, you know, if you're not a tech company, if you're not an early adapter, there's so much potential here to get ahead of just looking at your leadership team and what are the things that you can do to start moving the ball forward as you think about it in your organization.

17:21David Mohan, this is really great. Thank you for engaging in this and helping us through this conversation. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us. This was wonderful. Thanks. You're an executive in the pursuit of excellence, and you know leveraging AI is pivotal in your company's future. We've created an exclusive AI readiness assessment that's available right now at knownwell.com. Now, you may be asking yourself, why take this assessment? Two reasons. The first is strategic insight. You're going to be able to discover the pivotal steps to catapult AI-driven growth in your business. The second is some customized analysis to help you uncover specific areas that need enhancement for optimal AI implementation.

18:09The assessment is quick and insightful. In just 10 minutes, you're going to be able to redefine your business trajectory when it comes to AI. You can access it now at knownwell.com.

18:27You know, we've chatted about those four steps to shaping an AI literate leadership team. We also need to make sure as our teams get sharper with AI, they're using it in ways that make sense and stay on the right side of the ethical line. To help us with that, Known Well's Chief Strategy Officer, Pete Buehr, chatted with Andrew DeBerry about how executives should prepare their organizations to evolve with AI. Andrew's done some really cool stuff. He's been a cross-functional leader for early-stage AI, data, and trust and safety product initiatives. He's worked for some of the companies who are paving the way in AI, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon.

19:10Andrew, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. What are the business applications of AI that are headed toward the C-suite that executives are going to need to be ready for in the next, I don't know, one to two years? I think there's a few levels, especially for senior leaders. And there are some analogies with how you adopt any significant change in technology. That could be cloud computing. That can be having a virtual workforce. And many of those principles apply to how do you evolve your organization with AI? So number one, what is the leadership vision that you are providing to your stakeholders, internal and external?

19:50Number two, how are you structuring your organization to steadily reach those objectives? And there is, again, some change management that would be involved with how do you have step functions that help you get there? Number three is how do you sponsor some kind of project that shows the art of the possible and the ways that help people believe? So if you actually can do a trial that works out successfully, it helps many people digest it at their different levels, helps evolve the kinds of relationships and interactions that groups will have internally and externally. And then that approach will build the core foundation that a company needs to be AI conscious.

20:28And in there, I think it is important to highlight what makes a company very unique. So each company ideally has their own kind of data that is special to what they are best at. And that really will be the secret for who succeeds in this future world, because the reality is many of the models will become commoditized. And so in that way, that kind of uplifts the humanity of your organization and your teams because you have something unique and special that some algorithm just can't replicate in many cases. So those are some areas that would be viable. Some areas that are coming up in the future more technically would involve things like automation of tasks, things like multimodal experiences.

21:11So if you think of AI starting to replicate human senses, there is a vision component, there is a listening component, there's a speech component. And eventually, you'll start to see these different kind of modalities integrate so that you have a more complete experience. If I could pick up on one of the points, gaining some change management momentum through picking the right kind of projects early. AI will touch every corner of the organization one way or the other, whether you're making it and selling it or buying it and using it. And so we need to get our companies to a place where we're in stride with it.

21:50But of course, not a lot of companies are there yet. and this notion of picking projects that provide fast and early benefit to maybe internally to your employee base oftentimes is a way to gain momentum. Have you seen good examples of that in the world? Like if I'm a CEO listening and I want to try to put my foot on the accelerator, what are a couple of good case studies to think about or a couple of good use cases? This is a great question because the early stage adoption will rely a lot on low hanging fruit and understanding the psychology that the AI parts might have with your organization and helping them to understand, embrace and believe and evolve their relationships.

22:32And so a couple of areas that are good for the first stage could be how do you automate manual tasks? And that can involve solutions that Robocord processes and can replicate many of them for you. And that is one easy to adopt low code approach that has immediate cost savings in many cases and an immediate reduction of labor hours. Another area is using some of these apps that do use generative AI for providing options of content. So the senior leader of a business could recommend that their marketers or sellers use these different tools. And when they're doing their customer communications or they're writing their blog posts, they could be actively encouraged to make the best of these different options.

23:20And then that gives them a running start to curate and to have their distinct voice as opposed to creating from scratch. So those are two use cases I think will help people adopt. Beautiful. At the end of the commute, we can hop out of the car and go get started on that work. Andrew, I understand you spend a fair amount of your time looking at data and privacy. How is AI changing the way companies should think about their approach to governance and risk management? I love this question. This is a question that many people run away from. But there is, as I've said to people I've worked with, it's a calling for people who are drawn to this area.

23:57So the reality is that the expectations rightfully will keep increasing. And reflecting those values will come through in certainly a growth of regulations for the space. different guidelines from multiple states in the U.S. and from different countries and regions that will be looking into this area. And that will force some transparency about the quick evolution of AI and the data that it relies on, while also empowering the humans to select what they feel comfortable with providing or not providing. So as one example that will be challenging for the industry to address is these transformer models that these generative AIs are based off of use really large corpuses of data and identifies the relationships between them.

24:46And when you were trying to have a transparent, explainable solution for how it reached certain outcomes, that becomes a lot harder. But in fact, that is what future regulations are going to require. And so that will be key in ensuring that the data that is being used is rightfully gained and rightfully being used. So the privacy components of this are crucial. You can just feel that this will be a future wave of lawsuits and fines that, say, the EU and other regulatory bodies will push onto tech companies that are so excited about what's possible that they don't necessarily de-risk it. Are there specific governance steps early, just do-its that CEOs and leadership teams should be thinking about to get the right kind of a framework in place?

25:34This is a great org design kind of question. And so what is key is that as you're building out your plan for your services and say your product roadmap that you factor in these from the start, it's very difficult to back end some ethics into your existing services. So that reverse engineering is tough. But if you can start with values from the start, that really makes a significant difference. So I would say be alert to not just the current regulations, but also what is coming up on the horizon and get a sense for the overall direction and stitch that into the core fabric of your company. Before we go, let's talk about job displacement and why we don't necessarily need to be panicked about AI taking over everyone's jobs.

26:21I love a recent article from the World Economic Forum that starts off like this. How would you feel about working as a human alarm clock? It's a job people used to do before the industrial revolution of the 18th century. They would go around the dark, cold streets and tap on people's windows with long sticks to wake them up for work. Of course, the invention of the mechanical alarm clock changed all that. And many people are now asking which 21st century jobs, artificial intelligence, and the fourth industrial revolution could consign to the history books. Fun fact, these people were called knocker uppers.