2017 – Embracing Change: How AI is Shaping the Future of Leadership with Djuradj Caranovic

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1:05With us right now is Jaraj Karanovic. Jaraj, you are a leadership and AI advisor. You work with Fortune 500 CEOs. You are also the author of the book, which is a journey. It's called The Book That Changed Me, which is available on Amazon right now. And it's on Kindle Unlimited. Wink, wink to my friends out there if you'd like to grab this. Jaraj, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's an honor to share my journey and my knowledge in this way. You are also, I'd say, a LinkedIn power user. And so we have a direct link, not to your website, but to your LinkedIn profile, which you'd said is just probably the best place to engage with you.

1:53Well, give us an overview of the work that you do and kind of what your superpowers are today. So I'm about now 10 years in advising the Fortune 500 CEOs and board members about how to influence the decision making. And now in the last couple of years is to utilize AI in those senses and how those implementation reflects to the culture, to the profit and the leadership styles. and most of them are either scared or they think they need to have a huge technical knowledge how to do that and then their approach is technical wise and I'm taking back the human side and trying to humanize a little bit and actually not to have it as a technical project or transformation, but to be part of the journey and part of the value that represents that company and that leadership.

2:55Yeah. Well, I couldn't agree more in terms of like, you know, even at our level, you know, within an SMB, there's a lot of things that we use AI-enabled tools with. And, you know, for us specifically, we use a lot at GPT. Now, I think there were some initial things when ChatGPT was coming out. I think people were instantly drawn to it, to have it do things like write your social media posts. And, you know, I guess that's one application of it. It's kind of easy to read AI language right now. But here's, I would say, the most valuable place that we use AI tools, and that is for decision making.

3:44It's for mind mapping. It's for creating a pro and con list, SWOT analysis. We really use it to think things out and to give clarity to considerations that I wouldn't have come up with on my own because I'm too in it. right? Can you maybe talk a little bit about the limitations of our brains when it comes to decision-making versus, you know, what we would maybe typically hire a consultant for, or in this case, you know, if it's just something simple like, you know, decision-making or kind of mapping out a plan, you know, why AI can give us more of a 360 or holistic view so we can make better decisions?

4:34Yeah, actually, I will go a step back. First of all, the need for AI is actually that most of us in many of the things or fields we are focusing on, the good enough is enough. So we don't need the perfect service, the perfect product. We don't need any perfection wise. We just need to be good enough. And the most challenging thing in corporate world and entrepreneurship world is communication. so maybe I am not so talented to make or write something so I will hire someone but that someone cannot catch the insights or the heart of it then I'm maybe not so good in one-to-one communication or giving presentation then I need to hire someone to practice that but this is too much time involving just for one presentation or just to present something on the journey.

5:30And AI can help in that because it can jump in the moment, give us good enough approach regarding perspectives, regarding content, how to say it, regarding to be more concise and maybe to pick words, how to be more clear in conversation and how what we want to present. and then we can repeat it and be good enough for that occasion. And this is the first thing. Now the second thing is time again. With AI, we have much less time involved in such of the thing, which means we can do it faster with some sort of control of the output quality. And then third thing is we are, after that, having some acknowledging and ego boost about ourselves that we succeeded without some great effort and now what is happening and what is the first impact of that is many companies small or corporate ones enterprise ones do not know what to do with that extent of the time which now means if I did something one month or a couple of weeks, I'm doing it now in a couple of days, and what to do with the rest of the time.

6:48And in big workflows, you cannot just change a thing and then say, you now do this, this, and this, because now it's shifting the culture. And this is the first impact about AI, is the impact of the culture of the workflows. And what is happening actually is that officially, you cannot use AI, but employees use it unofficially. And then you have this now gap in communication. Is it okay? Is it not okay? Because now everybody is feeling that if I'm doing that faster, I need now to simulate that I'm working something, which is, again, the bad contra effect regarding AI. And the third thing is to acknowledge that it will not replace us In the next five years, the forecast is that in some industries will be 60%, but no one will be replacing 100%.

7:48And it can replace just the skill sets. But again, it will replace the skill sets with the skill set how to use AI. So it's not like I'm losing something or I'm losing part of my job. No, I will just do it in a different way. Absolutely. How to utilize AI to do that in a different way. And this shift of the thinking or the perspective is actually the impact which is now everybody's talking about. And the AI can help us in that as well because AI is capable to ask really relevant questions in our field and industry. And currently what I'm doing, because in past 10 years, I gained insight and experience in very expensive projects regarding AI and automatization and implementing in corporate structure.

8:43I am now once a week sharing full insights of the project to especially these SMB people and let's say entrepreneurship on the start to gain the knowledge that it's not like something out of ordinary and it's run with tech or money. it's run with perception. With perception they can utilize now and don't need to wait or they think that it's not for them. And basically, the summary, the insights can help us now with a flood of big data and flood of information. The AI can help us to cut through it and to gain the insights what is relevant for us directly. Not for the industry, not for the title, but for us directly.

9:35And one of the examples for that, we are utilizing, let's say, 60 seconds of your presentation. And based on it, AI can pinpoint first the content, what you are saying and how you're pronouncing, and how you're pinpointing everything, just a little bit of tweaks. And then the second thing is your behavioral subconscious language, exactly what are you presenting and how the audience are feeling. And then third, we can simulate the questions from the audience so you can be prepared. And the most utilized thing for that is in startups to pitch to investor. And the second thing is the leadership who are pitching to board of the directors, because everybody's scared about the annoying questions and maybe the provocative questions.

10:25And you can be prepared for that. It's like you already, it's like already happened. It's already, you know, the answer. Yeah, there are obviously, I think, some concerns from a privacy standpoint. I think there's some concerns from a, you know, is this truly going to be helpful? But there are things that, and I think that, you know, what we're looking at is potentially areas where AI can be of service immediately that we might otherwise. And again, I'm just kind of talking about my own use case. I'm not a Fortune 500 executive. But I would say it's so much more immediate for me rather than waiting for time with my consultant.

11:15It's not that I still use the consultants. I still hire the consultants. They're exceptionally valuable. But I feel like I am a far better client for them because I'm able to do so much work on my own. To me, it's not much different than, let's say that my wife is a family therapist. And, you know, a lot of times her clients will ask for homework. And, you know, I think we know this in consultancies. If you have a client that's engaged and is doing their part and is showing up and they are going to have the most transformative results. So I love kind of this relationship here that I think that we can progress just so much faster now because we're able to be so much more productive in some of these bigger executive level leadership responsibilities that we have.

12:18Yes, actually what we are feeling, we can feel the feel of control because we can now control the steps or the paces how we are utilizing the information we are receiving. Because currently we are receiving so much information and it's not all relevant in present moment. So we can utilize AI how to prioritize those information in current moment. And what is great for that, we can do it from our mobile phone and we can do it now. There is open source solutions as well. So it doesn't need to be a chat GPT or some cloud service. There is now a lot of great open source solutions, which you can install on your infrastructure or even the desktop or laptop, and then utilize it.

13:09And actually, the AI is better if you are controlling the content, which means you specialize those AI or those machine learning languages, only for relevance that you want to have on the content you provided. And this way you are really getting real experience and real perspectives about the topics you're interested in. So you are fully controlling the pace, how the output or results are coming. And the outcome will be more readiness of you and not of the job. So AI is actually creating a leadership style, which is not like to-do list, is to-be list. So AI is helping you to be what you needed to be in those situations.

14:05And it's like a tweak. It's like a cheat sheet a little bit. And this fast-paced, this impact on how much time you need to invest to create that, only relevant for that moment, is shortening. And it's one way it's great and one way it's scary. Yeah. Share just a bit about, we have just a couple minutes left, Jaraj. How do you work with leaders? What does that typically look like? So basically, currently they are hiring me to influence their way of thinking against AI because most of them are hating AI and not so having clear opinion about AI. And they are a little bit afraid how it influences the company culture and how they influence the profit level.

15:04Because many of the competition now are asked, telling about AI, AI, AI. But in practical sense, only a small number of companies are utilizing fully the AI. because of the ethics, because of the privacy data, because of changing and investing in different workflow when you're utilizing AI. And actually my way is to first present them practically, which means we are creating one digital twin of the executive and then creating a simulation how AI can influence their work and their way of decision-making, and then comparing with the real data, which means in six months, we are saying this is the simulate digital twin is deciding, this is you.

15:54And usually from our experience, it's 87 % the similarity. And then based on it, we are showing how it can be relevant for this department, for this person, or for this company. And then we are going on ROI level, investment level, profit level, and everything else, which is very beneficiary now in terms of AI. What is actually the most needed way is this way of having dynamics, which means to change the perspectives very rapidly because AI is needing for this agility. And this is the number one issue currently or challenge in the big companies. Yeah. Yeah. How does someone connect with you? We have a link to your LinkedIn profile.

16:51Would you mind maybe sharing our next steps? Yeah. Yeah. The best way is through LinkedIn because I really believe in two-way communication. I don't like just to present. I like questions. I like someone who I can be relevant to the current cause and not just to present, look, this look nice, or this is now a buzzword which everybody wants. And I'm really pursuing practicality, which means I'm not helpful for every industry. I'm not helpful for everyone. So I'm really choosing that if I can be helpful for you, yes, I'm more than welcome to go with you on this journey. If not, I will pass through to someone else who is better expert in that industry or in that particular way of your agenda.

17:42Yeah. Well, we have a direct link. Yeah, Jiraj, we have a direct link to our friend that's listening to podcast episode right now. Just click around your podcast app. We've got a direct link to engage with you. It's been a great conversation. What an exciting time we're in right now. And I think, again, we're still in its infancy, infancy. I mean, not even infancy of where we're going to be three, five, 10 years from now. So to our friend that's listening to us right now, consider that for a moment. What kind of leader are you becoming today so that five to 10 years from now, you're going to be able to show up ready to go at that level?

18:24So it's just all very exciting. Jaraj, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. And again, we've got a direct link to your LinkedIn profile. Thanks, Jaraj. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

18:46on.

19:06one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

19:47Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.