2252 - Embracing the Future: How to Make AI Your Business Ally with Lardi & Partner Consulting's Kamales Lardi

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1:05with us right now it's kamalish lardi kamalish you are the ceo of lardi and partner consulting you're found on the web at lardi partner.com you're also the author of a couple of books including your new book artificial intelligence for business harness ai for value growth and innovation kamalish it's great to have you wonderful to be here thank you for having me josh Absolutely. And you are based in Zurich, which is great. That's very cool. In Switzerland. Well, thank you so much. Listen, before we get going, Kamalash, outside of work, I guess, what are you into that folks may not know? What are you good at?

1:46What are you enjoying? I don't know if you're watching or listening to anything that you're really into lately. So I'm probably a person who has two extremes. I love taking nature walks, going out with my dog, relaxing, all of that. But on the other extreme, I am a huge fan of horror movies. Oh, no kidding. Anything horror, anything, the most scary, the better. I'm just an absolute fan and I have been for a decade. So I've probably seen every movie you can mention. I've probably seen them. And of course, Asian horror that really plays, you know, the kind of horror that plays in your mind. It doesn't show you the scary bits, but your own mind scares you with its own imagination.

2:28Awesome stuff. Oh, yeah. What did you think of one that we were just talking about recently, Midsommar? What did you think of that one? Midsommar's more of a psychological thriller. It is. Yes. I'm not such a huge fan of blood and go. It gets really gory at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm more into sort of supernatural horrors. So Sinners was great. That's the big one in the movie. Oh my God, Sinners was amazing. That was amazing. I mean, just what was so great about it, it was just such fantastic world building. Like you're just watching this and you're just so immersed in this world.

3:03Like, and the first two thirds of the movie is just, it's just development and world building. And so you're just so, like you're so invested in these characters at that point that, you know, when stuff starts to really heat up, you know, it's like, you feel like you know everybody and like it's just, Wonderful filmmaking. They had no shame at all about just killing characters off. It was like the more you liked them, the more they just wanted to get rid of them. So that was kind of amazing, I have to say. Wonderful. All right. So let's talk about your day job, Kamalish. And so what do you do with Lardi and Partner?

3:41So I am a technologist. I've been in this space for over 25, almost 30 years now. And my company really focuses on helping organizations across the globe in understanding technology disruption and applying technology with a very focused attention on the human side of things. So as a technologist, my background really is in coding. I started coding as a coder probably somewhere around the late 90s and then built up my capabilities around technology application for business. I went into consulting. I worked with companies like Accenture and I was the head of Deloitte Digital here in Switzerland and started Ladi and Partner Consulting in 2012.

4:26And since then, I have had an amazing journey of just going around the world, working with Fortune 500 companies, as well as mid-sized companies and even startups, working through the whole digital and technology disruption phase that happened over the last decade, helping companies understand technology, how it applies to their business and how they and apply it within their business structures, making the best or leveraging the most out of these technologies without losing that human element that companies really can use as their competitive advantage? Well, okay. So imagine we're talking to a group of CEOs, and by the way, I'm sure that you're going to pull from your new book, Artificial Intelligence for Business, but if there were three calls to action that you could give the room right now, again, speaking to a room of CEOs, What would be those three biggest, and it doesn't have to be a call to action necessarily.

5:19It could be something to pay attention to, some consideration, something having to do with our belief or our philosophy on technology. But whatever three things that you can come up with, I'm going to give you the floor. Absolutely. Probably first and foremost, what I would say to any person in business today is you cannot escape technology, particularly artificial intelligence. There's a lot of hype in the market. Everyone's talking about AI at the moment. It's true, you can't escape it. Every part of your business from, you know, setting up an organization to identifying your customers to engaging online with customers or in person with customers, developing products and services, all the way to how you operate your business.

6:04all of these elements have completely been disrupted by technology as well as AI specifically. So pay attention to these shifts that are happening. Be ready to pivot. Be ready to understand what these technologies do for your business and how you can leverage them to accelerate your business. Number two would be, and I think this is highly, highly important, anyone in business today, anyone in leadership needs to focus on the human element. We're hearing a lot of news out there about companies looking to prioritize AI, for example, companies that are taking an AI first approach, letting go of workforce, letting go of number of people just to replace them with AI.

6:45We're seeing a lot of these examples. Don't forget that at the end of the day, business is about people. Organizations are managed by people, run for people and sell to people. So we need to ensure that we're retaining this kind of human essence in every part of the business. And of course, human oversight for technology that's being implemented as well. And the third element I think that's pretty important to keep an eye on is as a leader within an organization, you are no longer just leading people. You're leading people plus machines. So these are intelligent workforces. And we're seeing probably across every industry, the workforce, the people on the ground are adopting technology fairly rapidly.

7:28So the level of sophistication of your workforce, the way they do their work, the way they engage, that's completely shifting. And so leadership styles and the way you engage with people, the way you manage people has to shift with that. These old traditional styles of leading people, they're becoming irrelevant very rapidly. So we need a new way of managing people. Yeah, and I think there have been some notable leaders who have really bungled, you know, adaption of AI. I love Duolingo, but boy, did they get some blowback for not executing or at least communicating very well, which is too bad because otherwise I love Duolingo.

8:11I'm about 180 days into Espanol. Anyway, I guess I want to turn that into maybe some warnings about how we adapt, how we lead, and how we introduce this new virtual workforce within a workforce of humans and how that fits well and how to do that well. um it's really important to keep in mind that at the end of the day you know we've seen this for for decades right as various technologies are introduced into the workspace you see the roles of people shift um from redundant repetitive work going towards more intelligent work so we've seen these sort of uh industrial revolution based uh transformations that have happened in the workforce This is natural, but I think what's happening with the AI age is we're seeing a high dependence on the technology because it does simulate a certain level of intelligence.

9:14I think leadership teams in some of these companies are starting to think, okay, efficiency, productivity, and they're going down this automation or over-automation path and forgetting that at the end of the day, what you still need is oversight, right? You need to have that human oversight in the technology that you're implementing. You need to have critical thinking. You need to have creativity. And all of these elements come uniquely from human beings. So keeping in mind, as you think about implementing technology for any part of your business, how is this tech going to be used side by side with people and people in the lead?

9:48So these are, at the end of the day, I always try to say to the leadership teams that I work with, technology is an enabler. It doesn't replace that human element, but it enables and augments the human element. So when you think about a certain workflow or a certain process or operations in your business, how do you integrate these technologies into the way people work, optimize the way they work, help them do things better the way they do things, but making sure that you keep the human element at the center of what you're doing. Yeah. With that comes a certain element, if I can just add to this.

10:23The whole AI hype has created a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and uncertainty for the workforce as well. So as a leader in an organization, you have to be very aware that people come with their own preconceived notions about being potentially replaced or losing their jobs. And so there may be a certain resistance towards new technologies being applied. And so being very cognizant and aware of this and having open, transparent communication towards how these technologies are going to be integrated in the company, that's very critical as well. Kamal, your book, The Human Side of Digital Business Transformation, I assume a lot of what you've been sharing is in that book.

11:01But I want to make sure that, you know, among our friends that are listening, what is the transformation that you would hope that would take place when somebody snags the book? By the way, I should point out, it is available hardcover. You've got it out even on audio CD. Wow. You can obviously get it on Kindle and audiobook slash audible wherever books are sold. But again, what is that transformation that you hope that a leader would have? By the time they get done with your book, they finish that final page, they turn it over, and they go, what's going through their mind? The one thing that I hope is going through their mind is a mindset shift and the ability to embrace what I like to call abundance thinking.

11:48thinking beyond the current business environment the traditional way of doing things the traditional boundaries of business and being open towards this new business landscape that integrates humans and technologies and allows us to do a lot more than what traditional businesses could do so when I say if I give you a quick example what technology allows us to do today is you can have a complete virtual business that can grow and scale to the size of a billion dollar business. It doesn't have to have limitations like physical space and geographic boundaries. So we really truly live in an environment where anything's possible with the tech, it enables us to do a lot.

12:31But keeping in mind at the end of the day, we need to have, and this is on the cover of my book, you need to have the heart of your business, right? So this is the second element I hope readers walk away with, which is you need to have a clear purpose for your business. Why do you exist? And hopefully it goes beyond then just, you know, commercial financial gain, that you're creating value in the market and you're creating, you know, a return for the customers that you work with and building values around this purpose, right? Having a purpose-driven, value-driven organization that leverages technology to really grow and scale.

13:09This is one thing I hope readers walk away with. Yeah. All right. So, and also Lardy and partner, obviously, you know, you're an author, keynote speaker. Can you talk a little bit more specifically about your services and specifically, like if somebody wants to hire you, what that might look like? so for a typical engagement uh we work with organizations to help them and we've got a set of proven frameworks that we've implemented uh with over 50 transformation projects across the world and i'm quite proud to say these frameworks have stood the test of you know regional cultural as well as industry capabilities or nuances so we bring these frameworks into an organization and we help the company understand where you are today, what you're doing today, what you need to be doing in order to survive and thrive in the next phase of this sort of industrial revolution or the digital age that we live in.

14:10What's the gap that exists and how do you create a roadmap of things that you need to do in order to bridge that gap? And so this can involve technology implementation, it can involve people upskilling, new ways to engage with your customers, new products and services, as well as business models and revenue. So we do quite a range of different, we have quite a range of different capabilities that allow us to help companies bridge that gap. And one thing that we are quite particular about is we're not the typical consultancy that likes to go into an organization and, you know, bring large teams in and kind of stay in there, you know, create roots in the company.

14:49But we're the kind of organization that wants to knowledge transfer internally towards the organization. So they need to be able to survive and thrive on an ongoing basis on their own. So we work very closely with internal teams, with leadership teams, making sure that they can build capabilities on their own and continue to evolve. I love it. Your website, lardypartner.com. And then from there, you can just click on books and you'll find a link to your book, AI for Businesses. Next steps for someone that's listening to our conversation. um go follow me on uh linkedin i'm very active on it would be great to continue this conversation and i love answering questions i'm quite active in in sharing knowledge and insights on there as well uh and people can reach out to me on um via email as well i'm sure you'll share that after the recording that's all in the show notes uh kamalish lardi again ceo of lardi and partner uh your website, lardypartner.com.

15:52Kamalish, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

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