AI or Not

E017 - AI or Not - Tony Moroney and Pamela Isom

• Season 1 • Episode 17

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Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

Discover the transformative power of digital evolution in this compelling episode of "AI or Not," featuring Tony Moroney, a leading authority on digital transformation. Throughout Tony’s storied career, from the financial sector to spearheading a digital transformation lab, he has championed the notion that true transformation hinges on human empowerment, not just technology. We'll unpack Tony’s invaluable insights on educating future leaders and navigating the often misunderstood landscape of digital transformation, sharing a wealth of knowledge on leveraging emerging technologies to overcome mission-critical challenges.

As we explore the intricate dance between AI and the workforce, you'll learn why AI should be seen as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement. We tackle the fears surrounding job displacement, emphasizing the importance of training, context, and involvement in fostering a secure and future-ready workforce. Tony and I emphasize that clear communication and engagement are key to helping employees understand the long-term benefits and opportunities AI and digital transformation can offer, turning apprehension into excitement and readiness for the future.

Leadership plays a crucial role in successful digital transformation, and this episode sheds light on the pivotal responsibilities of senior executives. We discuss bridging the gap between digital natives and middle management, removing silos, and ensuring responsible use of generative AI technologies like ChatGPT. Through strategic adoption and a focus on privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity, we provide a roadmap for creating a collaborative environment where technology serves as a true enabler of transformation. Join us for a journey filled with strategies, insights, and real-world applications to empower organizations to thrive in the digital age.



[00:14] Pamela Isom: This podcast is for informational purposes only. Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and not legal advice. Neither health, tax, nor professional, nor official statements by their organizations. Guest views may not be those of the host. Hello and welcome to AI or not the podcast, where business leaders from around the globe share wisdom and insights that are needed now to address issues and guide success in your artificial intelligence and digital transformation journey. I am Pamela Isom. I am your podcast host and we have one of those special guests with us today, Tony Moroni. Tony is a principal, a founder and manager, a co founder of a digital transformation lab. He has numerous advisory roles across the world, so he can tell us more about that. But I do think it's interesting that Tony, I see that you represent Ireland as a senator at the World Business Angels Investment Forum. I'm so impressed. Welcome to AI or not.

[01:36] Tony Moroney: Thank you. I'm delighted to be here and I look forward to our conversation.

[01:41] Pamela Isom: Thank you. Tell me more about yourself, about your career journey, and tell me more about all these things that you're involved with in doing.

[01:53] Tony Moroney: Okay, well, so look, I started my career in industry. I worked in industry for a long time, long number of years. In 2009, I switched out of financial services into consulting. I was running a retail credit firm that I couldn't fund in the middle of a crisis. So I moved on and I set up a consulting business. I very quickly got working for other consulting firms, so I worked for a US, a us global consulting firm. I then went to work for one of the big consulting firms in the UK, and then I went to work for another us consulting firm, which had me working all around the world. The work I was doing was primarily strategy and digital transformation in the context of strategy. And then about just before COVID actually, I decided I was traveling so much that I would come home to Ireland and set up a new business in Ireland for myself. That business, because of COVID went in a few different directions. So obviously we couldn't travel, we couldn't go to offices, so business went online. But I also started doing education. So I took on digital leadership and other digital programs with the Irish Management Institute and also lectured for a number of other universities as well. As you rightly said, I set up a co founded a digital transformation lab, which is a think tank out of a business school out of Cork University business school. So I'm very involved in that. But like yourself, we talk to really interesting people all around the world about what's going on in digital transformation. What are the things they are seeing or what are the things that people need to know about. And it's very much about giving back to society. So there's just so much confusion around digital transformation. And for us, it was a means of helping people to get a better understanding in a way that we weren't selling anything. All we were doing was sharing information. So we had great people, or we still have. We've great people from all around the world. And I share their insights. They tell us what worked, what didn't work, or things that people should consider as they, as they go on their journey with digital transformation. So I have been involved in a lot of things in recent years. I'm very active in terms of talk leadership. I speak at a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of podcasts, different events, etcetera. So let's say I have a lot of things going on, but they all kind of come around to digital disruption in some shape or form.

[04:10] Pamela Isom: Yeah, no, that's why I wanted to talk to you, because I love, I actually have been coined a digital disruptor in my career. So industry, I received numerous awards because they considered me a digital disruptor, but it was because of the fact that I didn't stick with the norm when it came to technology adoption. So I was always looking at, how do we bring about the mission and enable the mission through emerging tech or process efficiencies. And so even though I predominantly have resided in the, maybe in the technical organizations like the CIO shop or chief data officer, I would be in the technical arm. And what I would do is the business units, especially in the private sector, the business units would first respond by saying, get back, get back, get back. That belongs to the. You're in my area. But they would get used to me because you're trying to solve mission challenges, you're trying to solve the business challenges. And so once they started to understand that, which is something that technologists have to do, right, to win people overdose, you have to help them understand that you're really trying to do something for them. And so then I became coined a digital disruptor. And when I was in the government, it was the same way. So I ended up getting this industry award because I was always doing things about the mission, but I was in the technical arena, so the disruptor, I was a change agent, and a digital disruptor because of that, because a lot of times, when it comes to technologies and digital, the whole digital transformation, everybody's trying to do what they're trying to do to get things done. And so they don't really have time to deal with new and emerging tech and make sense of it. And so I was labeled a disruptive, but it was a good thing. Right? And so, yeah, so go ahead.

[06:18] Tony Moroney: So, I mean, it's really interesting because, look, the biggest problem with digital transformation is the word digital, because people hear the word digital and they think, oh, this is a technology issue and they don't hear the word transformation. Yeah, actually, it is all about transformation. So it's therefore all about people. And what amazes me is I talk to organizations and boards all over the world, and I might do a simple technique to ask them, what do they mean by digital transformation? And if there's ten people in the room, I might get 25 answers. So you could say people are doing digital transformation and they haven't actually defined what it is they are doing. The other problem is that because it ends up being a technology project, in case they never set out to transform, they set out to implement a piece of technology. And the problem is we've all been in organizations where a piece of technology has been imposed on the organization and the organization rejects it because they don't see why they should do it or they fear why they should do it. Yeah, but we need to step back and say, look, we need to transform our business to be relevant and competitive in the future. Now, how we get there is important. And in that context, we may use technology because not all transformation is technology dependent, but increasingly, technology will help us with our transformation. But back to your point, in terms of mission, where is this organization trying to get to? How will it be relevant in the future, and how will it compete in the future? In that context, what role does the technology play? Because will it help us get there? Will it accelerate how quickly we can get there? But we never transform because of technology. We transform because it's the right thing to do with the business.

[08:05] Pamela Isom: Is that one of the challenges you see today with AI? They're missing the mark.

[08:10] Tony Moroney: So I think there's a lot of challenges around AI. I think, look, every board in the world is asking questions of the exec team in terms of, well, what are we doing about this generative AI thing? Not everyone has got their arms around, well, what actually they want to do with generative AI, nor have they got their arms around the fact that for an organization to benefit from the likes of a generative AI, it must have good data, and it must have a good data infrastructure to start with, because if it doesn't have good data, well, okay, are you going to rely on data that's been hoovered up off the Internet. So you can write nice poems about your dog, or do you need to think about this in terms of actually what data would really help us solve our biggest challenges within the business. Right. So boards are asking questions, executives are looking at this, and on one level, they're quite excited because, look, if you want to be creative, so if you want to, you know, let's put on a marketing hat. You want to be super creative. No boundaries. Generative AI is wonderful because it doesn't know any. It'll come up with wonderful ideas. If there's ten people in the room, it won't be limited by what the ten people know. It'll come up with hundreds of ideas. So wonderful. But if you're in risk compliance, finance, legal, or any of these type things where actually it needs to be 100% correct, that now starts to create a problem. Or actually even, let's talk about data. If you want to say something to your customers and it's wrong, right, that is a problem. So I think what we are is that we're in a stage. There's two things going on organizations are trying to understand, how could they avail of it? But equally, I think there's another challenge. And the challenge is if all we want to do is use artificial intelligence and generative AI to reduce costs, which is what the newspapers suggest we're doing, well, everyone will do that. So there will be no competitive advantage. Competitive advantage will only come about when we figure out how can generative AI and other tools like that help us with insights to deliver better value for our customers, better products, better services, faster, more meaningful, personalized, all those type of things. So it's not just about taking out costs. Of course there will be some cost take out, but it's about how does it create real value and how does it accelerate the ambitions of the organization. Because, again, we're not going to transform or do anything with AI just because it's there. But if we can find out how it adds value and harness that, now we're into something that actually the organization can do something with. But it comes back to another challenge. Our people need to understand why it is important and what it means for them personally, because they will look at this and think our management really talk about downsizing, or right sizing, or our management talking about, actually, we can use these tools to augment what you do, to give you information that you need quicker, faster, real time, that you can actually move up the value curve in terms of the types of work you are doing the types of engagements that you have with customers and other stakeholders. We're going to train you so that you will actually be able to do wonderful things. Now, that's something employees can buy into. But if all they hear is, well, we're doing AI or there's AI coming, you know, regardless of what wonderful speech is given, when they go home that evening, they will say, I wonder, actually, do I have a job? What happens to my department?

[11:43] Pamela Isom: You know what this makes me think about? When you train somebody, you remember, you don't hear about this as much today, but everybody has gone through a period of time where they have had to train someone who ultimately was going to end up doing what they were doing. Yes. Yeah, right. And so we all have gone through that, and you're like, oh, God, I wonder if this is what's going on here, but you do it anyway. What usually happens is I can't speak for Eric, can't make a blanket statement, but what usually happened in my case anyway, is I did end up better off. So the person then, so they always tell you to train your successor. I'm not saying that AI is going to be our successor, not saying that at all. But they always said, make sure that you have a successor so that you can move on. And your successor needs to be able to do some of the things that you're doing, if not all of the things. AI is not a comparison to a successor, but AI can help us. And when we're thinking, when we're starting to get concerned about, like, am I working myself out of a job? No, because it's never going to be, it's never going to be a successor to you. It can be an augmenter to help you, but I don't think it'll be a replacement to you. But I think we have to take a step back and think about those things and don't dwell on, well, I've been through this before and I know what it's like. I've trained people before and they ended up taking my job and this isn't that. So go ahead. Go ahead. I hear you. I see.

[13:21] Tony Moroney: I was doing a talk recently with graduates. So these are graduate employees who are high potential graduates, and they asked this very question, and there's a couple of answers to it. So on one level, I'm old enough to remember when calculators went that popular, but calculators didn't get rid of accountants, Excel didn't get rid of accountants. But what it did was rather than accountants adding up stuff manually. Suddenly the computer could do it all for them. And accountants then started to take the data and create insights and move up the value chain. In terms of what they did, I think its exactly the same here. The other thing is we have to recognize that wonderful and all as these tools are. They are tools and they have limitations. So it's not going to do things that you are uniquely human. It's not going to exercise judgment. It's not going to take into consideration relationships. It's not going to do a whole host of things that we can do as humans. Now, we can do more of those things if we don't have to do some of the work that actually can be automated. So I actually think if we go about this the right way, we actually enhance what our people can do exactly, giving them the tools and the information they need. They actually can do more enriching work and deliver better experiences for their customers.

[14:46] Pamela Isom: But where we fall short and where the opportunity is anyway is to help us help organizations, help me, help me understand how to help my teams understand the value proposition, the true value proposition, and in fact invite them to help us figure this out so that we have this information and so that we can convey this information to others. Do you think? What do you think?

[15:13] Tony Moroney: No, absolutely. Look, I mean, as humans we need context, so we need to understand, ultimately, we need to understand, well, what does this actually mean in terms of me? Does this mean for my department and my colleagues, what does it mean in terms of the organization going forward? I mean, I think my experience is, look, regardless what we're talking about, AI or digital transformation or emerging technology or anything, everyone needs to understand what that means in the context of the vision of the organization. And that vision should include the type of things we will be doing to be competitive and relevant, the type of experiences that we will be creating for our customers and our fellow employees and people in our ecosystem, etcetera, and the type of skills that I will have to be able to be a viable part of that now I can sort of say, wow, well, this organization has a future and I have a future in it if I so wish. Now, if I decide at some stage I don't want to stay in this organization, I still have better skills because they are going to train me, they're going to show me how to do things. They're going to show me how to harness AI or whatever it might be. So overall, I'm sort of saying, actually, this is good compared to actually, yeah, I heard the story, but actually I'm not sure that's the real story.

[16:38] Pamela Isom: Right, right. Yeah, no, I think that that's an excellent point. I appreciate that, because I do think that that's one of the problems. And humans are just humans. People are just people. Right. So we've got to figure out how. I believe that the digital transformation realm gave, gives leadership an opportunity to rethink how we engage and support and empower people.

[17:05] Tony Moroney: So I think it's a really important point, and it's really important on a number of fronts. And the first one, I'd say, is that, look, you know, organizations are absolutely adept at figuring out if the leadership are on the same page. So say you and I are on the leadership team, and someone goes to you and asks a question about digital transformation or AI or whatever it might be, and they get an answer from you, and then they come to me three days later and ask a question. They should be getting the same answer. If they get a different answer, they know, right. This thing could go anywhere. And now it's about hedging their bets. So I think the leadership team need to embrace digital disruption. They need to be clear on the vision, and they need to lead the way. They then need to change their role from the people at the top who know everything, to the people at the top who can actually orchestrate and remove the roadblocks so that the organization can achieve what it needs to achieve. Because if we think about it, like, you know, most executives were born free. The Internet, they were born free to smartphone. They've had to learn a relationship with technology, which is usually the smartphone. They can't be expected to know everything about generative AI. So no one was talking about generative AI up to 18 months ago. They can't expect it to know everything that's happening in terms of disruption. All the emerging technologies, the metaverse, web three, you name it, we could go on forever. So really what they need to do is they need to tap into the organization. So now their role becomes orchestrators are in the organization. And within this, there's a really important point as well, in terms of, they have digital natives who are kind of saying, well, this is obvious, but you got a big cohort of management in the middle for whom it is not obvious. So what we need to do is make sure that we don't create a digital divide in the organization where the executive bought into a vision. The young digital nature is saying, yeah, well, of course. And people in the middle are saying, what is it they're talking about? And back to do I actually have a job. So we need to invest in our people, and particularly our managers, so that they are comfortable and they understand the journey and they feel part of the journey because they're the people that you're young employees meet every day. They don't meet the executive, they don't meet the board, they meet those managers. And if those managers don't feel comfortable or if they can't answer questions about, well, what does this mean in the future for the organization, for themselves and for their employees? You're now on a tricky situation where actually maybe they're not going to embrace transformation the way the organization wants and everything kind of goes suboptimal at best.

[19:46] Pamela Isom: Well, okay, so then I think you just answered my next question, because my next question was going to be, what's a perfect way to sabotage a digital transformation program?

[19:56] Tony Moroney: Well, look, I mean, there's a couple of ways. I mean, you know, if I'm in senior leadership, the, the most simplest way is to do nothing. So I never talk about it. I don't put it any, in anyone's goals. It's never on the agenda. You know, there are no KPI's. The message that is sending to everyone in my division, department, whatever it might be, is this doesn't matter if I am in the organization and the organization is a bit unclear in terms of where it's trying to go, invariably what you find is you have the workaround cultures. I was in one organization there last year working with them. They had the spreadsheet culture, so no one used the systems. Everyone used their own spreadsheets.

[20:35] Pamela Isom: Everyone uses spreadsheets.

[20:38] Tony Moroney: So there was no one version of the truth. There was many versions of the truth, depending on who you spoke to. So I think the problem for people is if you come along and just impose a technology on them, the old ways are tried and trusted and they're comfortable with them and they know how to use them. Now suddenly you're imposing something that they don't know what's really going on, why it is there. They don't feel comfortable using it. That's important because, look, you know, let's work on the basis that everyone wants to do their best. If suddenly they feel actually there's technology being imposed on them and they don't know how to use it, or they're going to be at sea or they're not going to be able to do their job properly, that's very off putting for people. So you can't, it's not like, it's not like flicking the lights. You know, digital transformation is a people thing. That means we need to invest in our people so that they feel confident, that they feel comfortable, that they understand not just the vision, but also what role and how they play that role in the transformation. Because without that, and look, let's be clear, over 80% of digital transformations fail according to the World Economic Forum, you name it. They don't fail because of the technology, because the technology doesn't have a say in the matter. The technology is just the technology. They fail because leaders do not have the wherewithal to lead their organizations on a transformational journey which brings all the people with them. So if you don't bring the people with you, it's not going to happen because the technology is just a tool. And if your people don't want to use the tool or the tools or whatever it might be, it's going to become unstuck.

[22:26] Pamela Isom: So we need to be more as. So first of all, we need to pay attention to the managers, those that are closest to the ones that are actually doing the work. But you also said that management needs to get the training and the right level of training, and then the top management needs to step, needs to know what's going on. But step back, let mental management interface with the troops that are delivering the outcomes. But then the troops that are delivering the outcomes need to feel empowered. They need to feel empowered. They need to feel that they will benefit from this and they need to experience the value, right?

[23:08] Tony Moroney: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's another thing in here as well. I mean, look, we need to remove the silos or at least join them up at the hip. So we cant have silos going off in different directions. And one of your typical silos, and I know you know, this well, is business. And it, and if we think about where the world is going into the future, right. Three years ago we were talking about low code, no code, were now talking about generative AI, where the spoken language will become the programming language. So what we need to do is make sure that were joining everything up, because we can't have a situation where there are silos now. We also need to understand the implications of that. If our people at the front end, who are dealing with customers, who really understand the pain points for customers and know how to solve them, if we're going to empower them to fix those, that has implications for the rest of the organization in terms of control, all those type of things, we need to make sure that everyone is on the one page in terms of how we do things. But why we do things, but how we do them as well. Yeah, and there needs to be control environment that actually supports people to do it. But also make sure that, you know, we don't do things that will cause problems for our customers or for the employees or for the firm itself. Because, look, one of the challenges with you, let's take generative AI. One of the problems that you might have is that it might hallucinate, it might make things up, or it might actually give a data that shouldn't be, you know, disclosed to the world. It might actually pick up that data because someone inadvertently puts it in. Or you might do something where you actually have compromised someone's ip, but actually the firm doesn't even know it until it's too late. So we need to make sure that we do this with our eyes open, but that everyone is on the one page in terms of why we're doing it, how we're going to do it, what that means, and then the guardrails, which are supportive guardrails, because we don't want guardrails that block everything. We want guardrails that help people to achieve things, but in the right way.

[25:13] Pamela Isom: So let's break the silos. So, and you know, we've been having this discussion forever around the issue with silos, but really, sure enough, we need to look at integrating and connecting as opposed to operating in silos. So I agree with that as well.

[25:32] Tony Moroney: One of the things that we should recognize in terms of digital transformation is that, look, digital transformation is a whole organization transformation.

[25:42] Pamela Isom: Yeah.

[25:43] Tony Moroney: And that has implications potentially for fiefdoms. So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we recognize that, look, this is all rooted in history as organizations. When they're small, when they're small, the people do everything. As they get bigger, they become functional specialists because it becomes about efficiencies. Now they're actually improving the efficiencies, but they're not sure why they're doing it. To start with. What we need to do is say, well, actually, no, we need to pull back a minute. What are we actually trying to do for our customers, and how do we do it better, and how do we create those experiences that the disruptors create, and how are we going to make sure that we are relevant and competitive? That starts to challenge the organizational structure. So it's not about my fiefdom versus your fiefdom versus another fiefdom over there. It's about actually how does all of this work? Because ultimately the customer doesn't care about the fiefdoms. The customers do something they're looking to do and have an experience that has themselves. That was great. How frustrating is it when you ring an organization and they say, well, that's a different department, we'll transfer you, then they transfer you and the line goes dead. Customers are not interested. Now, as organizations, we need to be big enough as a senior team to sort of say, well, actually, this isnt about who owns what. This is about how it all works together. And that requires a growth mindset where people are thinking about the type of organization that we need to have into the future and they're not getting wedded around. Well, this is the way we've always done it. Or actually, this is in my span of control, so I'm not seeding that. That's not what it's about. This is about making sure that our organization is the best it possibly can be and we're going to transform it to make sure that it's even better tomorrow and that our customers in the future will love us, too and they will continue to do great business with us. We're not transforming because of technology or because of power or politics or recusal structures, and we need to make sure that we pull all that away and sort of say, you know, we're clear on our purpose, we're clear on the vision. We know how we're going to achieve it, and that's how we're going to bring about the transformation. In that context, everything else becomes part of the what, right. But we need to get that clarity up front.

[28:10] Pamela Isom: And then you won't have anyone just not doing anything at all, which is what you started out with. Because if we are looking at making a transformation program successful, then this would be a way to ensure that everybody is participating in the process and not just standing back doing nothing at all, which you said is one of the biggest things that can happen to cause a transformation program to fail.

[28:34] Tony Moroney: Oh, absolutely. Look, I've seen it firsthand in organizations where there might be a part of the organization that wants to be very progressive and other people are sitting there sort of saying, well, we'll see how this goes, or we're not going to support it. The other thing, though, I go into organizations and I said, well, who's responsible for digital transformation? And they say, oh, that's Pamela. Great. So does Pamela have the budget and the mandate to transform the organization? And I usually get the answer, well, no, but she's working on these projects. And I said, so she's not responsible for digital transformation. She's responsible for those projects. So quite often our organizations hide behind, oh, well, we need to be seen to be doing something with digital transformation. So, well, say it's that person there. That person there is responsible, but we're not going to give them the mandate. We're not going to give them the funding. We're not going to give them the wherewithal to pull whoever they want together to bring about this transformation. So therefore, they're actually set up to fail because they're in a corner with a small mandate, with a small budget, working on projects which the organization may or may not buy into.

[29:41] Pamela Isom: So now I have something I want to talk to you about. So this is something that I read that I think you will find insightful. Okay, so the SEC, you know, because I keep track of what's, what the SEC is doing, the FTC and all these FCC and FTC, and now the SEC. So the SEC settled charges against two investment advisors, and I have their names here, because they were making false and misleading statements about their purported use of artificial intelligence. The firms agreed to settle on x amount of dollars and pay civil penalties. Okay, so this happened March 18, 2024. So this is recent. This is, I want to know, AI Washington. So the reason why I'm going here is because we talked about competitive advantage, okay? I think competitive advantage and the whole concept of competitive advantage has gotten distorted. And so I think that we've lost our way, again, what really is competitive advantage, which still goes back to the value discussion that we were talking about earlier. But this is an example with Aihdem. So you got companies that are claiming that they're using AI, that their product is using AI, and making all these false and misleading statements. And now the SEC is cracking down. And this is a financial services organization. What do you think about that? Why do you think, what am I off like? I think that we have lost, like, can you help us understand, really, what competitive advantage really means? Why would they do this?

[31:26] Tony Moroney: So, firstly, look, it's incumbent on every executive and every organization to make sure that they are using AI or any other technology in a responsible, ethical, and legal way. And that includes, you can't say that you're doing something that is false. That just doesn't count. I think we're in an interesting space where I remember when we had video recorders, some of our audience won't know what they are, but there was a big race between Betamax and VHS.

[31:58] Pamela Isom: Oh, yeah. Oh, you're going there?

[32:00] Tony Moroney: Yeah. Well, we're seeing the same today with OpenAI as Gemini, you name it, they're all competing to get to share of customers, share of organizations, share of people, etcetera. Now, is that going to give anyone competitive advantage? No, it's just going to mean that, you know, some people will end up with OpenAI and someone end up with Gemini, someone end up in anthropic etcetera. But whoever's using any one of them will have the same information that anyone else has. There's no competitive advantage in that, per se. The competitive advantage comes about when you're sort of able to look at the infrastructure tools and sort of say, if I had a way of harnessing all the insights I have on my business, all the interactions that I have with my customers, all the organization knowledge that we have built up over the decades, centuries, maybe if I had a way to harness all of that and equip my people so that they were able to engage with confidence, with real insights, with real information, with stuff that they could send out in the press of a button, and now I can start thinking about competitive advantage. But if I'm just thinking about, well, actually, yeah, there's generative AI. Well, let's get one of those. Well, yeah, so what? Everyone will have one of those. It's how we're going to use the tools. So remember, we're not going to transform because of generative AI, but every organization, or many organizations, at least with claiming their purpose, that they are customer centric. And that's been quite elusive for most organizations because they have no idea what their customers really do with them. When their customers talk to them, what they talk to them about, how they feel about the conversation. Now, if I'm saying to myself, actually, I can start to look at how I might use some of these generative AI tools or other technologies to really understand my customers, to understand why my customers ring my call center, to understand what's important to them, to understand how they feel about the organization in that conversation or when they're leaving the call, are they feeling happy? Right? To understand that when a customer picks up the phone to us or comes in via an email channel or whatever it might be, that actually we have all of the information there, we know everything that the customer is doing with us has ever done with us, and we can, in context, give them the answer that they are looking for. So now we're talking about competitive advantage. And so I ring my organization, they know me, they understand me, they know my history, they know what's important to me. They can have conversations that are in context and personalized to me. Now, that's an organization I might say I want to deal with because I trust them as well, because they're not trying to sell me loads of things that I have no interest in. They're actually able to talk to me as a one to one relationship basis. Right.

[35:07] Pamela Isom: When I see the race to deliver AI products and some of them are released too soon, too prematurely, and then some of them are not. When I see race, it's not just about AI, but when I see what I see today with some of these tools, because some of these aren't AI, but some of these are happening and being released prematurely in order to help fuel AI. Right.

[35:37] Tony Moroney: Yeah, I was going to say, look, AI has been around in this world for longer than I have, and I wasn't born yesterday. I know organizations have had AI and have been using AI and have been using machine learning. They've been using all sorts of technologies. What's happened is generative AI landed on the scene whenever it was October 2023, and suddenly it's if AI has been discovered, right? And everyone is talking about AI, but actually, you know, generative AI is just one form of AI. And really, you know, to me, you know, everything comes back to, and you said at the start, everything goes back to, you know, as an organization, what are we actually trying to do and how do we, how do we need to transform to get there? And in that context, Genai or other AI, whatever it might be, may have a role, but unless we're clear on what it is we're actually trying to do, well, now we're just adopting it for the sake of it. So we should, what we're trying to do, we should know where we're going, and then we should be able to say, you know what? That technology could help get us there quickly, or it could help get us there in a way that actually improves what we're trying to do. But it's still about what we're trying to do, not about what the technology is.

[36:57] Pamela Isom: What you've done is you've helped to convey the message. These are the things you should be looking for to determine if these products are going to be helpful for you in your transformation or not. Right. And so you've given us some things to look for, but then given us a framework, and more than a framework, actually, but guidance on how to go about assuring that this is going to be effective and that your transformation programs are successful.

[37:23] Tony Moroney: So one really important point, though, that we need to get across is that look, there was a report there recently that said that chat GDP was the world's number one unofficial technology being used by employees worldwide. Right. There was equally a report out there by, I think it was Microsoft and others. And they basically said Microsoft and LinkedIn, and they said employees at every level of the organization are using generative AI, whether they're supposed to be or not.

[37:55] Pamela Isom: Yeah. Right.

[37:56] Tony Moroney: Right. Now, the thing is, look, you know, if we roll back to clock, you know, two years ago, everyone was thrown by the metaverse. The big challenge with the metaverse is, you know, my view, the metaverse is actually about experience. It's not about technology. But. Well, for the metaverse at this point in time, you need some sort of hardware to interact with it. With generative AI, it's available on every smartphone in the world.

[38:18] Pamela Isom: Yeah, it's convenient.

[38:20] Tony Moroney: Right. So even if you don't give it to your employees, they have it on their phone. Now, let's assume that people who are, instead of starting with the blank page, they might put something, answered their phone to deal with it. How would I go about dealing with a problem? How would I approach such and such? And what amazes me is the lack of guidelines in place. And I talk to organizations and I say, okay, but what guidelines have you in place for the use of generative AI or any other technology? And they're looking at me and they don't have guidelines in place. And we're aware of, you know, the case where one of the, one of the white goods companies, someone put in a. A code to see could they get it fixed. They got it fixed, I believe. But it's no longer proprietary.

[39:10] Pamela Isom: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[39:13] Tony Moroney: Simple things. We don't put any customer information into any large language model. We don't put proprietary information of any shape or form into large language models. There's two simple rules. And everyone can buy into those rules, and everyone can understand why it's important because we explained that, look, if we put our customer information in there, we've actually breached our obligations in terms of data protection. But also the customer's information is now potentially available to others to see so simple things that we can do. Because I think, look, as I say, look, you can't hold back to tide, but you can learn to surf. We know this is coming, so let's give people surfboards and say, look, this is how you use it. And give them some guidelines and don't have a free for all. And don't assume that just because we said people are not to use generative AI, they won't.

[40:07] Pamela Isom: Yeah.

[40:08] Tony Moroney: Human nature is human nature. And people will sort of say, how do I crack that problem? Maybe I'll ask, right. Look, in the universities, they all know they up and coming graduates are using tools such as generative AI, etcetera. And what they're doing is they're shifting the ballgame to sort of say, well, look, use the tools to critique something and then critique it yourself for its shortcomings. So to get them to do critical thinking about what the technology has produced, and we need to do the same with our employees, find a way that actually, let's acknowledge that, look, there will be usage in some shape or form. Let's make sure they know how to use it, under what conditions they can use it. But then let's make sure that we're teaching them, well, how to exercise judgment, how to make sure that they're doing it in an ethical way, that they are taking responsibility for the outcomes. Because, look, one of these issues with technologies can be this black box syndrome. Well, it's given us an answer, but we've no idea how we got the answer right.

[41:10] Pamela Isom: Yeah.

[41:11] Tony Moroney: Human oversight is really important. So if I'm an experienced person in the business, I should be able to look at the outcome and say, there's something not right about that. Or I should be able to say, look, I'm not sure how we got there. We need to investigate that a little bit more, because I'm not happy to release that and have outcomes for customers that I don't understand the basis for those outcomes. So I don't need to be the technologist. And this is the important point for business leaders and boards. They're not expected to be able to write algorithms, but they are expected to take accountability for the outcomes being driven by algorithms and technology. So they should be looking at everything, sort of saying, are we happy, hand on heart, that they are good outcomes for our customers? And do we know, can we explain how we got those outcomes? Because if they can't, they're now playing russian roulette. They're just rolling the dice and hoping for the best, and that's not acceptable.

[42:05] Pamela Isom: Or allowing a product to get released, allowing products to get released that have not been vetted properly within the organization, and then when they roll out, they're not beneficial to customers and consumers. So, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I have one last question for you. I agree with everything that you said. I believe that this is good insights for really. For digital transformation. This was really good. What are your words, wisdom or experiences that you probably weren't able to cover. What are those for the listeners?

[42:46] Tony Moroney: Oh, look, I think for me, transformation is all about people. It's not about technology. Technology is just an enabler. So this is really about people. I don't think business leaders are expected to have all the answers, but they are expected to create the environment where the answers can come through the organization. So I'd say, look, you know, talk to your people, make sure we're focused on the customer, make sure we're clear on the purpose of the organization. The answers will find themselves. Right. But if we just impose a technology on someone, you know, it's not going to do anything except, you know, it take amount of time, take a huge amount of costs, and, you know, ultimately do very little. This is about bringing our people on a journey, and actually you're creating the environment where they can create that journey with us.

[43:35] Pamela Isom: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Okay, so I didn't get to talk to you about privacy concerns, but I'm going to include the privacy as a part of the people. So when you're taking care of the people, you also are considering the privacy of our people?

[43:50] Tony Moroney: Well, it goes back to educating your people in terms of not just the use cases, but also in terms of the things they need to be aware of. So they need to be aware of privacy, they need to be aware of data protection, they need to be aware of cybersecurity, they need to be aware of a whole range of things.

[44:06] Pamela Isom: Thank you very much. This is very good.