How do you lead as AI advances?​

Hello everyone. Uh good morning. Good morning. Uh thank you

all for coming to one of the first panel sessions uh uh this morning at TED I Vienna. Give

yourself a round of applause for getting up so early after the gala last night. Um,

and uh, we're going to talk on how uh, uh, you know, how to lead as AI

advances. Um, I'm Hilka Shelman. I'm an investigative journalist. I'm a professor at NYU. Now this year at

Princeton, um, I'm here because last year I was a TEDAI speaker. Um, so I'm having the time of my life this year cuz

last year I was very nervous. Um, hold up in my hotel room. Um but uh I think

maybe more importantly I'm here because I wrote a book on uh AI and hiring and AI in the workforce. So that's exactly

what we're going to talk about today. Um and I have a group of like phenomenal leaders in this space uh here who going

to tell us how they leading through these uh uh these uh you know enticing

dramatic times that we get to live through. Um so with me is uh Bullard in

Bangal. Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm really I'm trying uh she's a founder and CEO of AI Academy in

Asia. Um and she's trying to create equal access uh to AI education and

she's also a TED AI speaker this year. So you'll see her tomorrow on the big stage. Uh and she's the former vice

president of digital de development of Mongolia. And then to my left is Joe Atkinson. He is the global chief AI

officer uh for W uh PWC, sorry. um and

he's uh a member of the global commercial leadership team and he works uh uh sort of does AI internally and

also uh brings it to um uh their vendors um outside of uh PWC um and also you

also work with upskilling and sort of thinking through working practices of more than 370,000 people worldwide

um and then we have our Hardy Mimiro So I'm

okay. Um and he's the president and group CEO of Cassava Technologies. Um he

has 20 plus years of senior leadership experience across telecoms, financial services and development banking in

Africa. Um he co-founded a financial firm in Kenya and helped raise over 500 million capital. I would like him to be

on my team. Um so uh we we are trying to have this

like very conversational. So you'll see we'll talk about leadership and ethics and the future and work and all of those

things. And sprinkled in it we'll have uh some uh personal anecdotes of how we

use AI. Um so um to get started um I

just wanted to say like I'm sure you all feel like we live through like unprecedented

uh time of change. It feels like you know yesterday we're all catching up in machine learning. Today it's like aentic

AI, agentic AI. Um so and AI is already changing how we work, how organizations

work in our personal lives. Obviously you know there's a lot of angst for a lot of people. Um they feel like will my

job be taken away or I think a lot of leaders also feel fear like you know am I going to be outlet the door because I

don't uh catch up to AI fast enough. Um and you know we do see early indications at least in the US that there's like

less entry level job hiring. So uh you know it's a um it's a a time of upheaval

and so our central question today is like how can you actively lead your organization uh through the AI area and

how to avoid AI leading uh your organization without you in leading you out the door. Um so but we wanted to

start with a fun human question uh before we get to the more serious questions about leadership. Um, so I

wanted to ask the panel like how they uh use uh AI in their private life. Like a

fun fact. Um, I'll get started. Um, so I live in New York. Um, under the Trump

administration. Pretty depressing right now. Um, so I started picking up knitting uh to get myself occupied and

not get depressed every night. Um, so it turns out I don't know how to read a knitting pattern. It is like a foreign language. I I've never heard of K1 SSK,

you know, who's really good at deciphering that. Chat GPT. Um, so I encourage you all to use it for for for

knitting. Um, uh, Hardy, tell us how you use it. I think I, you know, it's always

interesting to get outputs from one, you know, from Chad GBT and put them into

Claude. Uh, and you say, you know, you kind of game

Claude a bit and they say, look, this was my thinking. Uh, you know, could you critique it? you

know. Um, and then the most violent one is Grock because I said to Grock one

day, uh, look, this is the rubbish answer. If you keep going this way, I am

going to go to chat GPT and it it was like thinking 17 seconds,

analyzing 27 seconds and of course I got a great answer. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe, how do you use it? I love the idea of getting the models to argue with each other. So I just um so I will often

although I'm not as creative as Hardy in getting across multiple models, I like to argue with GPT. So when you when you

have a question you're working through and say, "Here's my position. I want you to tell me why I'm wrong." It really

actually enjoys that conversation a lot more than I do as it tells me why I'm wrong. And usually comes up with some really good answers that help shape a

good idea. Yeah. Bolar, any any suggestions? a lot of things but uh actually comparing

different platforms takes a lot of time to be honest which I've tried uh a lot

of times um so we at AI academia um we do a lot of AI training so and one of

our students who is I think like 36 years old woman she said every time I

have fight with my husband I turn to JP and ask if it if is it my is Is it like am I

doing the right thing or is it my husband's right and jet tutist always say it's you're right.

So I think a lot of times uh GP is replacing therapists in a way uh for

those who need it. Yeah. Um so tell us like um how is AI affected what you do

and like how do you think through like adopting AI for your organization? Um Joe, why don't you start? you lead a big

organization. Yeah, it's anybody that looks across what organizations are going to be impacted by AI. If you look at, you

know, where it is in the kind of the quadrants, the target is on the back of professional services, knowledge work,

lawyers, accountants. So, it is it is absolutely impacting everything we do

every day. And for us, the challenge is how do we get people to embrace it and understand it and use it in a responsible way, in a thoughtful way, a

secure way. And that is all about the training and inspiration and how do you get people to come along? So you don't

like like the shadow shadow use of AI in your uh in your company. So I'm sure we have plenty of shadow use

of AI all over the company. Uh but what we're really trying to do is bring controlled tools to everybody. So I

always say regardless of your role, your title or your tenure, whatever it is that you do, AI is changing your work. So our responsibility as leaders is get

you the right tools so that we don't have to worry about you doing shadow tools, we're giving you the very best tools every day. And that's what we've

been doing. We now have our chat PWC platforms available to 30 30 uh sorry 320,000 of our 375,000 people that

includes multiple models and that's really to get people engaged and using it and get them comfortable because uh

it's coming and it's here and it's not going to wait for them to think about whether they want to apply. Yeah. What does this platform do?

So chat PWC is a controlled platform. So, so think of the models, but now the models in a secure environment where our

data is protected and our clients data is protected and we have this capability for them to apply the models for their

work every day. And it's it's one of several tools that we deploy, but at the end of the day, we're just asking people

to rethink the way they work. And it's very hard to do that if you do it in the theoretical. Uh you have to bring people

to it. You've got to put their fingers on the keyboards. You have to immerse them in it. And for us, because of the businesses that we're in, we want to

control that. We want to make sure we're being responsible with our clients information and our firm's information, but we really need them in it and that's

what we've really been after. Yeah. And Hardy, how do you use it in your company or organization? I think

maybe before before talking about use the um let me talk about the challenge in trying to

get people to use it. And I think the real challenge that I find is going

beyond the superficial. Yeah. I think that probably is you know for for any

leader that that's probably the biggest challenge that people will get exposed to the tools uh and they will do the

simple things with the tools you know get it to write your email get it to critique and document but you're not

going to invest the kind of money that's needed to transform organizations uh by people just writing email with

chibbt or you know getting cht to help them research something that's you know

that that's pretty obvious. So the real challenge is in getting

the leadership especially because you know every leader has gotten to where

they are because they have become somewhat experts. They've got deep customer relationships.

Uh they have they are a leader because everybody in the organization defers to them for for knowledge for judgment.

uh and all of a sudden they have to be comfortable that somebody else has a lot

more information and insights than they have coming into the room. And so the

question becomes so what's what's my role you know uh so so that's that's on one side but within cassava I mean we

are we a global tech company out of Africa uh you know we probably face uh

more challenges than most people in in in accessibility to technology uh but

we've been able to surmount that by um you know the way that we hire people. uh

we we are we've been in the telecom space for the last 30 plus years. So a

lot of our staff you know at one point 70% of our staff were engineers and only

30% were you know were other professions. So they come naturally

curious. Uh that that's that's both good and bad. You don't want to be too curious.

You don't want them to be too curious. Uh but interestingly

the IT department is the place where AI goes to die.

Okay. How so? Uh so you know hopefully you know no

CIOS in the room to be. You'll find you'll find out how many

CIOS are in the room right when you walk out the back probably. Look I I have a flight booked straight

after this and you know I'm I'm I'm out of here. Um but but I think seriously

the you know getting the CIOS to embrace the changes that are needed and the

apparing loss of power that comes with you know the IT department was this

place where everything was concentrated all projects of the organization concentrated

uh getting teams across the organization to to start to own the business question

and the business answers. business uh is is is really the you know the challenge for us.

Yeah. Um bull heart how are you using AI in your organization? I mean we are AI company. So but uh

building on what Hardy said where AI dies in the in the tech team uh many of

our clients uh especially clients that we work with who wants to improve their

efficiency there I I found out that there is a big gap in between technical

team and overall non-technical team cuz technical team they don't know the

normal procedures or progress of different teams right but we want to use

AI for everyone's productivity and everyone's efficiency and we don't want it to be a burden that you have to adopt

and adding more time that you have to do it. So rather than that um we need to

make it more accessible and this brings me to my next point which uh that we

work extensively on AI education and AI inclusion around the world and one of

the things that's often ignored in many of these conferences is that 2.6 6

billion people are completely offline who makes up to 32% of the world's population and it's this is a big number

and the yeah I I I don't know if it's a politically correct thing to say but you

see all this um CEOs CTO's big tech companies having fancy dinner or Paris

AI summit and all this and that but nobody mentions that and uh if you see

what they're doing yes they're promising certifications and everyone seems to set

up academy online but it's only serving people who are are already in the developed communities. So I think this

is very important momentum for us um as as human as uh people living in Samur um

to have very good communications with it with each other and also help

uh making AI as an enabler to kind of narrow down this divide.

Yeah. So like what are the challenges? So you were saying like I'm glad you're all talking about it about AI but we

really need to talk about like sort of access first like we don't even have brought one technology like maybe Hardy

and you can talk a little bit like what do you want to see before we even talk about AI adoption or what does uh uh

what are we not seeing the world needs? Um look I mean AI sits at the uh at the

top of a layer of infrastructure that needs to be there

you know from from power to low latency connectivity

to cost of devices. uh so in an African setting

uh if you if you think about you know one of the challenges that we are grappling with is how do we bring the

cost of access to the internet down to less than 10 cents a gigabyte you know

it's about in some countries as high as a dollar uh now if you think about the

average earnings of people to to talk about AI certification to

that person it's almost like you're insulting them. I mean, you're talking to somebody who they only switch on

their WhatsApp um in order to get a message. If there's anything that comes with the image,

they're going to try and switch it off because that's going to consume, you know, a lot of the um you know, a lot of

the internet uh package that that they've actually bought. So, what we

have done as Cassava over the last, you know, 20 years is to systematically

deal with each of those problems, you know. So we've built almost 110,000

kilometers of fiber across Africa literally from Cape Town to Cairo uh and

bringing fiber to the building, fiber to the home. Uh and then ensuring that the

last mile because the the real economics is that it is the last one mile that's very costly for access. Uh and and so

bringing fixed wireless access for that last one mile, making sure that there is community internet. uh that's available

working with device manufacturers to make sure that we can get devices into

schools that are at a price point where most parents can afford. So anything

that's going to cost more than $50 uh is just too expensive for adoption. You

have to get the device down to sort of 20 $25. So, so the kind of challenges

that are faced in the uh you know let's say the next 1 billion users of AI are

very different from the challenges that the first 1 billion users uh of AI have

had to uh have had to grapple with. I think whilst we sit and we talk about comparing models uh and outputs

there's a real challenge which I think co showed especially on our continent

where you know the difference between a child having access to a classroom

during co literally was um you know they they could be staying 10 kilometers

apart and the and what they had access to was so different and so the digital

divide uh was was that much wider. Our job at cassava and and hence the name

casav cassava by the way is the most widely eaten carbohydrate in Africa. So you'll find it uh in the villages, you

can find it in the king's palace. Uh so we we want technology to be as available

as accessible as ubiquitous as as the cassava plant is. Yeah. Um but is is that something you

feel too like before we even uh like move into AI have to like solve the infrastructure problem um first? I mean

uh I completely agree with Hardy um because behind AI divide and uh digital

divide there's existing problems poverty hunger uh infrastructure 750 million

people do not have electricity. Um but on the other hand um just if we are want

to imagine that those 2.6 billion people had access to internet and AI it would

unlock trillions and trillions of dollars to the global GDP. Yeah. So when you see from the investment side

um you see this uh tech companies are in fierce competition to develop ever more

powerful AI models. But just one point I really want to make uh which I truly

believe is that the technology should not be measured by its advancement. Now

it's time that we measure it by its inclusiveness. Mhm. And talk about like how like that is

sort of a challenge in in in leadership because I think what what we often think of like AI adoption in companies is or

organizations is sort of like oh um you know let's make it more efficient like you said Hardy, right? Like that's where

their IT department comes in. They want to make things more efficient. But the really the question is like if we living through like a paradigm shift, shouldn't

we ask like what's now? Like what's the new thing? Like how could we actually like change things up? And maybe uh any

of you have like thoughts on that like uh let's break down the structure and redo something totally new.

I it's a really it's a great question Hook. I think and it's a great challenge to all of us, right? We're lay we're

laying out um what may be the leadership challenge of our lifetime, which is how do we how do we actually if

we all agree and we're here in Vienna together, so I'm going to assume we all agree that there's a reason that we're

all assembling in Vienna. There's a reason that we're going to listen to the TED talks. There's a reason we're in the discovery sessions is because we're

watching and seeing from potentially one of the best informed perspectives in the

world. this life-changing generational technology, multigenerational technology, and way too many people

don't have access to it. And way too many people, as we sit and talk in leadership organizations with with

investment and capability and educated workforce, certainly the PWC world that

these individuals, we're trying to bring them from a place of education and access to more education and access. We

cannot forget the leadership obligation we have to help open up that access and that that connectivity to to more. And I

do think that that is a leadership challenge. That's a question of what what obligation do we all feel and are

we communicating that obligation? Are we advocating for that obligation in our organizations particularly those

organizations with investment capacity. Brilliant. I mean adding to that uh okay

let's forget about the 2.6 6 billion people who are offline. But even in the most developed countries there is a big

divide too whether between poor and wealthy between rural and urban. So for

leadership uh when we say you have to see from more inclusive side it's not

only talking about people in developing countries but even in the most developed countries there is a huge gap uh when

you see uh how AI skills are being delivered or how it's being accessible

to to the poorest communities or even elder communities. So we are from early

on of the uh design of ecosystem AI ecosystem we are designing it

unknowingly um not intentionally designing it to be very divisive

uh even in the developed countries it's same so again uh building on what Joe

said we really have to look from the perspective that how do we ensure that

uh the security guard of PWC or a cleaning lady uh or someone who works in

in that kind of job would have access to AI skills

and then maybe try to improve their lives or improve their efficiency or whatever.

Yeah. So you're saying like break down the barriers, not only like get it in the hands of like already like your most

educated workforce. Exactly. But like actually like break down these like silos and like make the upskilling

and all of that accessible uh to anyone and break sort of out of the traditional

uh like different sections of of of an organization. Um like Hardy, what do you

think in that kind of leadership this new leadership that we are opening up that we envisioning?

I I don't know whether I would call it new leadership.

I think the requirements of leadership haven't really changed for 6,000 years.

We are trying to change them because a new set of tools have come

and I think that's where the problem lies. Leaders have always been about trust.

Leaders have always been about going for the greatest good. Leadership has always

been about taking people into a brighter future. Uh it hasn't been about

exclusion. It hasn't been about beating your neighbor to death so that you win.

I think what we're faced with is in fact uh this distancing from the ethos of

leadership that humanity has known for a long time because we believe that we are

in the AI age and therefore in the AI age there's a new way to lead um you

know and and so we start to confuse speed with direction so that you know I I think if we could

go back to the basics of leadership you know what does it actually mean to be a

leader? You know, it it it it has to mean for me as an African leader, Africa

Africa's population is young. You know, median age is 19. You know, I can't

possibly walk into my office every morning and think the profitability of

our company is going to be divorced from youth employment. you know that that's

the most important sustainability question of leadership that I must be faced with every morning when I get into

the office. But if I divorce that uh you know I start operating you know because

I say well you know we're operating in the AI age you know I've just been listening to Bloomberg you know there's a new chip that has been you know

announced and and PWC is doing this great thing and there's this stuff happening in Mongolia you know that that

now becomes I I think then that becomes a leadership threat rather than

leadership uh at least that's that's my view. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about sort of like the problem is like

we're living through like a time of uncertainty. Leadership is like usually to project confidence and like lead the

organization in the future. But we building the plane while we're flying it. Um so how do you like and you know I

don't know if your uh folks could going to be very excited if you say like oh I don't know any of the answers. I'll like

you know wait with you. That's probably not a good way. Like uh so how do you how do you deal with that?

I thought we agreed Hardy was getting all the hard questions. I thought we could establish that early on, but I

will take my I'll take my best shot at it. I do think um there there is a and

and I love Hardy what you said like the leadership the fundamentals of leadership have not have not really

changed. Um I do think that there is this moment right now where the

uncertainty feels overwhelming to our people um and to organization to people in organizations all over the place. And

the the dual challenge is while that uncertainty takes over the way that they feel, if you do not create a degree of

confidence in the pathway, then all the things we're talking about adoption and engagement and learning are even harder

to do. At the same time, we owe our people the truth and and we recognize that tasks and parts of jobs that exist

today and whole jobs that exist today are not going to exist in the form that they're in today. And so this leadership

trust question is is it only about efficiency and moving the jobs or is it

about bringing your people with you and can you can you actually demonstrate that those aren't just words it's a

commitment to your organization and that that to me is the leadership test that's being applied to leaders. Certainly I

feel it at PWC and I know our the rest of our leadership team does that we're going to make changes in the business

model. I don't know whether we will be 375,000 people 5 years from now or 10 years from now. Um I do know that we

have an obligation to the 375,000 people we have today to help prepare them and

equip them for the not only the world today but the future that we're leading into. Yeah. So how how are you doing this?

Like talk about like um prospecting but also like maybe a tool that you applied

and Yeah. So I'll give a couple of examples. I mean and and I love the example of you

know whether it's whether it's u you know the leaders in the organization or whether it's the staff in the organization that are just starting

their career we we we feel very strongly that that people need to have AI skills and not just the superficial right they

need to understand how to construct work so last week we had a lot of our partners together for a global meeting

we did vibe coding sessions right so people that do vibe coding I'm not sure you would have walked into the room and

called this vibe coding but just go with me here for a second what we did was we immersed a whole bunch of people who are

not used to using tools like this and we asked them to use the tools to create applications that would fulfill a client

need and we did it in an hour. We had them all sitting in the room working with the tools. We had developed some

assistant capabilities to give them a framework around it. And what was so cool about it is you had people that have been in the careers for 2530 years.

All of a sudden, for the very first time, they put hands to keyboard and created an application and the

application was a dashboard or whatever it was. The application didn't matter as much. What mattered as much was the light bulbs that went off over people's

heads that things were changing. And that wasn't about making all of these leaders in the organization coders. That

was about making these leaders in the organization understand the challenge of the teams and the staff that they were living with every day and to get them

engaged in the problem and get them engaged in the opportunity so that their people looking up at them have confidence that they actually understand

the problem. And I think that is a that is a very very significant challenge of leadership right now is that this the

the teams and we talked about the the tenure and and age there is a tenure and age issue at play here. Um, our

entry-level folks have been using these tools for 5 years. They or three years, four years, but they are not coming in

dry. They're coming in with skills. If they're looking up at leaders who don't understand what they're talking about,

that's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So, you're trying to actually bring the leadersh into the their here and now. And and the good

news is I think the leaders are willing but the in some ways the leaders those people that have been in their careers for a longer period of time in some ways

they they they are more secure obviously in where they are in their career but they feel more at risk in the

application of these technologies. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do you like think about like how do I want to educate

people um uh uh about AI in the global south like how like what does your leadership look like? Mhm. Um, adding on

what Joe said, I think working with different companies, one of the very basic but very important thing is to

have same to be on the same page on AI. So if you ask from your data analyst to

your CIO to different teams, they all have different take on on AI personally

but also professionally when it comes to your organization. So uh I see a lot of

companies are announcing AI strategy, AI vision but when you really dive into it

a lot of people it's there is a lot of misunderstanding. So one of the best approach that we we

uh work on is to have uh different sessions like you had um but bring the

CEO to the most junior level people and make them put them on the same page and

I think for organization wise I think that's very important as an organization to understand this this is how we're

going to use AI and this part this is our vision this part we don't know so

it's very important to be transparent um and on the global south um especially

Southeast Asia and Central Asia connectivity wise it's uh it's going very well it's going very well um in

Mongol you will be shocked to know that we don't pay in cash anymore it's almost

99% online payment uh one of the projects I did when I was in government

was called EU Mongolia And uh we've digitalized over,200 government services

and it was adopted very well because we have nomadic communities living in the

countryside. So imagine you you're someone living in the city for you to go to the government

facility and get your service it would take 20 minutes. But for someone who's literally living in middle of nowhere,

for them to go to the government facility, it will take hours to drive a

lot of money. Um so within such short amount of time, we um we delivered 1,200

services and today 93% of Mongol's population actively using that. And by

this what I'm trying to say is that it has to meet people's needs. So AI has to

be very practical. Um and now because of all this uncertainties, there are a lot

of fake news, a lot of superstitious things, a lot of crazy things on online,

right? And the best way is to to be very practical um and give them efficiency

tools that they can use easily and adapt easily and I think that's the best way to start.

Yeah. So you have to listen to their needs and actually adapt to that as a leader. Um, Hardy, um, how does that

work in your organization? Um, look, I think AI is is going to I think you have to probably hold a

little closer. So, I must have said something controversial because they did me this.

So, they they killed the other one. Very good. Um

I I think one of the things that AI is bringing back to leadership

is is this is something that had started to disappear something called humility.

I think all of us as leaders have been trained to be confident and we forgot

that there's this tension between confidence and humility and for the first time to to your point Joe when you

and and and to your point when you put you know you put me in the same room on a on a lovable platform with uh you know

a an an entry-level uh you know analysts and we're trying to create something on

that platform. um you know of course you know he or she is going to create something quicker better than than I

could ever do. uh and and there in lies the humility and and with humility comes

the ability to learn in in the context of Africa that's very important because we are we are a high context very

hierarchical society uh you know which may be the same as Southeast Asia where you know there's

you know it's very much top down you know leadership it's not egalitarian so

in in that you know the the leader behavior uh if the leader starts to

learn uh then then people will take learning as something that they need to

um you know that they need to take on. I think you know one one of the things

that we are trying to do uh is how do we bring

digital transformation to government because one of the things that has been

a limiting factor in our growth over the last 30 years uh has been

you know, regulators that are so far behind where technology is. Uh, and and

you know, when you ask a regulator something they don't understand, they've got a very good answer. And that good answer is just no

rubbish. Okay. Okay. Don't do that. Okay. And and so

we're trying to uh to get our reg to to pay this this subsidy to regulators and

and governments. Uh I think in the global south you know perhaps the biggest challenge that we have is how do

we get governments to embrace technology as a key transformation agent. uh

because if you look at what needs to happen, you know, the the difference between where population growth is and

where GDP growth is, you know, to bridge that divide for a young population

requires such a transformation in the thinking of policy leaders uh that it's

it's really for companies like us in the tech world that you know understand what's happening that should be paying

the cost of educating policy makers, educating leaders to say, you know,

let's embrace AI. Uh let's bring AI to, you know, you've got classrooms in

Africa of 120 kids. Wow. With one barely trained teacher.

Wow. Uh now imagine what AI could do. uh

you've got, you know, a clinic that doesn't have a pharmacist, a

radiologist, uh and has a chief nurse as the one that's running, you know, the clinic. Uh

imagine what AI does in that environment. You've got a whole district

maybe of, I don't know, 500,000 people

that maybe has got five, six trained aronomists. Uh I mean this is an area the size of Belgium in some cases. Uh

you know and you've got five six trained aronomists. If we could amplify what they can do because you know Africa now

has a billion mobile phones 350 million smartphones. Uh this is this

is more smartphones than the US. Uh so so we could you know we we

absolutely have an opportunity to to transform using this yeah um you brought up humility. Um how

do you take that into a large corporation like PWC and sort of think through like I have an obligation uh to

folks who are already in their organization. I want them uh to trust me but at the same time I want people to be

adaptive and learning. I want to learn like how how do you make sense of all of that? I I do think it comes down to the

culture you create in the organization. And I think the we're we're coming back to the principles that have endured in

leadership for a long time. We're talking about humility. We're talking about learning and constant learning. We're talking about trust. And I think

that's exactly the right conversation, by the way. It is exactly the right conversation. So if an organization is

looking up at leadership who tells you that they know exactly what the organization is going to look like in 3 to 5 years, and they know exactly what

the AI is going to do, there's not a soul in that organization that believes them. So, so it's not credible. it's not

trustworthy and you can start to deteriorate that trust very rapidly. If you're going to ask people to take a

leap, which is what we're going to do, we're going to ask people, we're already doing it. We're asking people to rethink the way they work. We're asking people

to take time that they spend doing tasks today for which we we communicate their value to them. Oh, this is great. Thanks

for doing that thing that took you 4 hours. And then we tell them, but we want you to do it in 8 minutes. The human mind immediately goes to, well,

what am I going to do with the other 3 hours and 52 minutes? and are you going to keep me around? And that that

requires this this transparent discussion with your people about what you're really asking them to do. And I I

talk a lot about with clients. Clients are asking all the the the business side of this conversation very quickly goes

to ROI. What's the ROI on all these investments we're making? We're making all these investments. We've got all these tools today. I would tell you that

I think much of the ROI is acrewing to the individuals in organizations and not to the enterprises. I think that's okay.

But I think the next thing that we need to figure out is how to open that up so that the individuals who are acrewing

that benefit trust the organization enough to share that story because a lot of them are so how do you get them to like uh you

know people use it individually and they make you know they change their workflow and are more efficient like to get it um

uh up the leadership chain to actually see that um there's a couple things I

think one is and and uh both bowler and and Hardy hit it. One is you have to

celebrate what works and you have to celebrate when people make those contributions and it isn't just celebrated in the seauite you have to

celebrate the individuals that are doing it across your organization. So we have for example a champions program so all

of our leaders have a reverse mentor somebody that's less tenured in the organization that's helping them understand and train the tools. That's a

huge opportunity for those individuals, right? So, they get they get time and facetime with leadership. They get to understand the strategy or the of the

organization. They get a view that they would not likely get at that stage of their career. And then you celebrate that. You make sure people know that

those are the investments you're making. Um, you recognize those individuals that are leading and taking that faith leap

with you to to make the changes. And I think you have to be credible and trustworthy in your communications as to

what the business is doing and what the organization is doing. There's a it's not my line, it's a great line. Nobody ever did anything because of a number.

They have to know the story. So you can't tell people that this is great because we're getting more efficient.

I've never met an employee who gives a nickel care about whether or not the enterprise is efficient. They just

don't. They care about their job and their growth and their mortgage and their family and the things that are there. If you can't connect that, then

you're going to lose them. Um we have a wonderful cultural benefit of PWC. A lot of our people are are early career. A

lot of our people are looking to grow their careers. So it is a it is a wonderful laboratory for this and not every organization benefits from that.

Yeah. And and can you talk about like sort of we always thought like leadership is like sort of top down. You

like evaluate new technologies and you roll it out in the enterprise and because you know it it costs so much

money to do this but now I mean does it really cost that much money anymore? Can you do a can you do it differently?

Yeah you I think you absolutely not only can you do do it differently I think you have to do it differently. And I won't offend all the CIOS in the room the same

way that Hardy did a few except to say and I say I say this with with our CIOS

all the time like the old model doesn't work anymore. The the rapid development has to be part of the culture and the

recognition that sometimes you're going to develop something that doesn't work and you're going to throw it overboard and move on is okay. That that runs so

counter to the way most of us have thought through the last 2530 years. We make investments. We're going to keep working at it. It's large scale. it's

going to take 5 years and then once we're done we're going to train everybody in how to do it. That's nonsense. It does not work in the

environment today. Many many more of the opportunities are created with small agents and small assistants and making

the the what I'll characterize respectfully as the small work we all do every day. Making that small work work a

lot better. Wow. Do you have any uh like examples of that like how like um you know you let

people in all these I mean also like PWC has all these different like compliance places around the world there's also

another challenge like how how does it bubble up and how do you let give people time to do these uh super important uh

uh you know like just experimenting it's all running smooth as glass and perfect to say that so it's all seamless

and integrated and wonderful um I'll give a very simple example so most of us who've worked in in consulting type

firms or have been purchases of consulting firms. We have a wonderful process called RFPs. Governments have

these too. Um just a show of hands who has decided in their career that they really want to spend a lot of time on

RFPs. So I've been doing it for decades and I've never really enjoyed the process of

I love the process of working with a client in the room ideulating. I hate the process of responding to an RFP. And

by the way, I think most of our clients would probably admit they hate the process of reading the responses we send to the RFP. So, we have what we call our

uh BD.AI. It's a set of assets we've deployed that allows our people to take a lot of that time off of their plate,

focus instead on developing the relationships, making sure the solutions right, think about the pricing and value exchange for clients. And that that that

one is a great example because you don't have to convince people to use that. The moment they know it's available, they're all in and they're they're going after

it. Yeah. And and um I want to look like a little bit into ethics and into the future and then we want to open it up to

all of your questions. Um, but I wanted to uh uh to see like what have you learned on like what are the future of

jobs going to look like? What are the future like what are you looking at new employees? Like has that changed what

you're looking for in this in in in this new age? Hardy

that we what it's uh what are we looking for? It's

I I I think that we I keep going back to this thing of confusing tools with with sort of the

baseline requirements. I think every organization that I know is still

looking for the same type of employee that organizations have always looked

for. Um hardworking, happy to be paid as little as possible.

Have you felt them yet? I think the only problem is that that's what the organization wants. That's not

what the employees want. So that hence the tension. Uh but but look, I I think it's the it's

it's the lifelong learning. It's the um

comfort with experimentation. And I I find I think the biggest

challenge that we as leaders are faced with is that we are now in an age of

experimentation and experimentation goes counter to the

fact that you know I have 30 years of experience. Yeah, it makes so

me obsolete by all these experiments that you know that you're running. Uh so so I

think um you know people that are comfortable with new things, people that are comfortable with failure,

um people that are comfortable with a with a startup culture, uh which is, you know, counterintuitive

because we all, you know, we all get into business to build big companies. Uh

you know, that's kind of, you know, it's almost like, you know, sitting at the chessboard and not wanting to win. You

sit at the chessboard because you want to win, you know. So you you start a company, you want to build it, you want it to become successful, more

profitable, hire a lot more people, and and yet you still want to have people

within the organization uh that are willing to experiment, that are willing to to look at new ways of doing things,

people that have got a good dose of humility. um you know whether or not we can find

those people uh you know I I think that

initially people are very happy to learn until they get into a position of authority.

Aha. So it's the leaders that are having a hardest time you know. So maybe I mean when we open

it up I will be I'm very curious to hear from people uh you know what happens when you know the the you know the

people that have been eager to learn and you know because I think learning has been used as a tool and maybe that's a

fault of leadership as a tool to differentiate people you know the the first learners are the ones that then

rise up uh you know the organization. So it would be interesting to hear from others.

Yeah. Buller, what what what have you found out like how are jobs changing like how how does leadership need to

adapt to that? I mean uh a lot of things that Hardy said I could relate uh when I was

working in the government. Um when we were introducing the digitalization

there was a big um protest from within the government cuz a lot of people think

like you're uh making they thought I was making them unemployable or replacing

them with technology and this fear has always existed and for future of jobs uh

the world bank study shows that by 20 30 50% of the jobs will require their AI

skills and I think that's uh quite a relatable number but again uh most of

the companies and organizations are willing to train uh willing to train um

and one of the things uh I want to talk about this uh one of our

uh students who 65 years old and he trust me when I say this he is the most

successful AI learner I've seen so are and he built his own AI model of and he

created this family tree uh for himself and he comes from very rural Mongolia

and he thought in his village it's too small population and people are not knowing their um you know second

cousins, third cousins so they need to know who's your family member and stuff like that. So he created this platform

um as his side hustle, as his hobby and he registered 9,000 families.

Wow. And now it's applicable nationwide. You can just use it for free and he just did

it. And he did it after 2 months of training. So this is such a And trust

me, also on the other side, we have a bunch of young people that we've been trying so hard to train them and they

don't seem to learn. Um so again it's the perspective it's the attitude it's

the uh level of adaptability right u and I think the the best way to go for it is

to have a very smooth transition uh in the times of uncertainty. Yeah. Well you all getting all your

questions ready. Uh I I have uh one more. We talk a lot about you need to have is he looking for a job?

Are you hiring? Well, I can send him to Africa. He sounds very expensive though.

We talk a lot about AI skills. What does that actually mean when we say that you need to have AI skills? What does that

mean? You need to like prompt chat GPT. Like what are you what are you saying? So So two two things. One um we do a

study on jobs every year. We call it the AI jobs barometer. Uh it'll it'll be updated here shortly. When we looked at

AI skills broadly, which we defined as the ability to apply, we defined it very, very broadly because I think

that's changing every minute what we really mean by AI skills. But when we looked at AI skills and we asked the question whether or not individuals had

them, regardless of what industry and operating role they were in, shocker, you'll all be surprised to learn that

what the data tells us is that those individuals are valued more highly and they're paid more highly. And sometimes the premiums were up to 56%. It was a

massive premium for AI skills. I think the reality is lots of organizations don't know what they mean when they say AI skills. And when you go through the

stack of like, do I need engineering capability? Do I need people that understand how to train models? Do I need people that understand how to use

tools? Do I need people to need build agents? I think it's all of those things. And you can be in a lot of

different places on the continuum. Uh but I do think that um and I and I loved Buller your comment about AI needs to be

practical. I do think when we're starting to talk about skills and jobs, we have to get really practical about

what that intersection looks like in our organizations. And that requires planning and thought and specific

documentation, if you will, like the just work through the details of it to make sure that you're understanding what it is you're really expecting people to

apply from a skills perspective. Yeah. And and how do how do you make sure you have like uh the trust, the

ethics, like the values of of the organization uh still there, right? like

you ask people to like experiment but you also want to make sure they don't use like client data or like personal

information and throw that in there because they want to make workflow more efficient. Can you talk about that? How do you keep like those uh you know

ethical things that we have strived for decades to sort of implement and keep that um still there?

Yeah, I I think if you go for the enforcement approach and and

uh you know my my chief AI officer is here and remember uh when chat GBT first came out you know

first email out don't touch it I and I own I I send out this email you

are not allowed to use this thing you know this is going to expose our data this is and and And then one day I

thought to myself, how many people really ignored this email? I think 99%

99% just said, "Wow, you know, how is he ever going to know, right?"

And and the truth is, how are you ever going to know? You know, uh I think the cost of monitoring what people are doing

is very high. People don't like to be monitored. Uh I I think it's it's going

back to the values of the organization. It's it's really getting people to

understand the why that this is about the way that we do things. This is about

the way that we win. This is about the way that we respect our clients. I mean, one of our overarching principles at

Cassava is stewardship. Uh you know, we are the stewards of the trust of our

customers and we should never abuse that. So we use that as the basis uh for

getting people to behave responsibly with AI. But I think if you you know you can print as many posters as you like

put them in the escalator on the walls you know AI ethics you don't I think you

have to we are trying to link it back to our values to the values of the organization uh and getting people to

understand this is why this is right and this is why this is wrong.

Um any question? Yes. Go ahead. I I think somebody is running to get your

microphone. Uh thank you very much. This was quite

exciting. I have been working also in technology and applying technology a lot of times in Telos.

The one thing where I think this this discussion feels new but it's actually an old discussion with just like two

added elements is 90% of digital transformations fail. All the reasons

why digital transformations fails are the same reasons why AI transformations fail. There's just two additional

things. There is this high there's more fear

now three things higher speed of change and some ethical and legal guys have uh

more opinions. What is your point of view of that? just

to go back to really the basics because I think those companies who fail in digital transformation should first

understand why they failed there before starting to reinvent the wheel for Yeah. Yeah.

So talk about failure. Sure. I've got a lot of stories on failure if you how much time do we have?

Um I think I I love your three points about why these things are failing. Um, and I I say to clients all the time, if

you're looking at AI and you're thinking about this and saying, I've got to apply AI, and that is somehow different than what you did 5 years ago when you said,

"What is this technology going to deliver for my organization?" Then you're missing a really, really important fundamental question.

If you're in a for-profit organization, you're applying technology to get you a better outcome for the business. If you

don't know what the outcome you're after, you're going to fail. So, that's that's the first. The second, I love your point on speed. Um, and and Hardy,

you hit this point, too. this this idea that speed is an objective in its own right is dangerous. Um and the

technology is moving at an incredible pace. We all recognize that. We all feel it. But sometimes we have this tendency

to want to match the pace of the technology innovation and what we need to be doing is pacing the change for how

our organization can actually digest it. And by the way, that might include our clients, that may include our customers

because they're not ready for the change at the pace that we need to drive. So I think pacing is really important. Having

said that, uh there's a great um Harvard article, sorry it's not a Princeton article, uh but there's a Harvard

article uh that Andy Jasse did an interview and he talks about speed is a management decision and it's a really

really good read. It's a really good read. I think you have to be deliberate about what speed you're you're taking

and make sure you don't live in a place where you're just letting things percolate because it feels more

comfortable. So I just a couple reactions to two of your three. Yeah. Um any other questions? Um there's

a hand in the back. Um

yeah, thank you. Uh you were talking about speed now and you were also talking about trust. Uh but the reality

is uh as a CEO we are more or less used to make decisions based on

uncertainties. Yeah. But uh now it feels different. So today

it feels totally different. So how do you make decisions because all the experiments that you do fail? You have

no idea which direction you're going and everybody can hit you from any side. So

it's uh it's like you are in a chaotic situation and you have to make decisions and feel like comfortable but actually

you're not. So how do you solve this problem?

How do you do that Hardy? But look at you as a CEO. Wow. uh

I've been offered up as an offering here. Um so I mean what what here's what

comes to my mind. Um if if you go back to

the the time when shipping containers showed up, you know, we forget that

um you know, somebody had to think about coming up with a shipping container. Up to that time, everything that was being

shipped was being shipped as as bread bulk and in pallets and uh you know you

couldn't c it properly. you know, the shipping container, you know, kind of

standardized things and uh and and changed the way that

leaders had to make decisions in that industry in in the supply chain management because all of a sudden

uh the guy who is operating a truck or a railroad or a ship

knows exactly what a shipping container looks like and it has got these dimensions and therefore I And um and

and I think today as a CEO

I have to really spend the time differentiating between the tools and the solutions

and and spending the time to really think what is the solution that I need

to come up with. you know the shipping container was you know it's a tool that was introduced in the supply chain

Singapore came came up with the solution you know of of having you know the port

with the deep uh you know the the deep births and and you know it's not about

the location of Singapore uh so so I think it's it's the premium on judgment

uh that we all now have to focus on as leaders

uh and The judgment is about can I really differentiate between the tools

which are proliferating everywhere and the solutions that really impact the

way that my customers are going to succeed. uh you know so hopefully I didn't um you know confuse you further

with that but but Bola how do you judge new technology that slice uh you know I'm

sure you get a thousand pitches a day like of AI tools like this is cool stuff cool stuff like how do you how do you

judge that um I would say two points uh the first one is we have to see what problem that

AI is trying to solve and really prioritize in that because you know

there's 1,000 models, new things launching every day on AI and it's very

hard to prioritize but I think it's very important that we see it from the problem side and what is the urgency and

what is what is this problem uh that you would prioritize and invest and put your

effort into it and I think and even if it fails it's worth the shot because you

wanted to solve the biggest problem or the right problem or the most urgent

problem. So I think in the midst of all this AI chaos uh we need to sit down and

take a breath and really see what kind of problem it's trying to solve and even within the organization to the national

level to the global level. Um second to be honest uh now a lot of companies are

rushing into AI when they don't have the readiness um data readiness team

readiness capacity and and you know from outside perspective I can see some of my

clients already failing even before they start because the data is not qualified

they don't have the good quality data and you'll have a CEO reading all this

financial times and fancy news and he wants to we talk about AI on the on the

stage and yeah so so you really we have to be

very realistic in that and you need to evaluate your readiness

hit us with your questions yes there's one I think right next to you perfect thank you um I was interested to hear

the comment about potential shift in business model Joe uh because I think consultancy is going to be a really interesting area.

Yeah. Um as AI progresses. So could you just give me some thoughts on um what kinds

of business models it might shift to because obviously a FIFA time is an obvious one but that is fundamentally going to be under threat I suspect in

certain areas. Have you got any views on that? I absolutely do. Um so I say this

sometimes publicly and then I then I get notes from my partners that I have to stop saying this out loud but I think uh

rates for hours is the worst economic business model exchange that we've created in history. It is just I if you

ask me to rank the 24 hours I spent the last 24 and tell you which ones are worth whatever my bill rate is and which

ones are not I'd have a hard time doing that. It is it is just very very difficult. It has to be outcomes based

and that that is already happening by the way. Uh in some of our businesses around the world 60 to 70% of our

revenue today is outcomes oriented with our clients. So here's what we're promising to deliver. Here's the value

of that client. You're going to get the bulk of the value. we're going to share a little of the value and and we move from there. So, I think that will be the

the the large construct. The other really interesting question is about is about jobs. I mean, we we um I've been

with the firm for 32 years. I love the place. I've lost all objectivity about it, but one of the things I love most

about it, it is an engine for people's growth. It is the reason I've been there. You you take people that are at

the very beginning of their career and you give them a practical education and delivery across businesses and you grow

them through their career. We are under challenge as to what that's going to look like because a lot of those entry-

level staff were coming in. They're coming in to do work that is now going to be delivered by AI. What I think will

happen, all the predictions worth exactly what predictions are usually worth on a stage of a panel, but what I

think will happen is the triangle will move up, right? So, it will look a little bit different, but we'll ask something very different of those

entry-level employees. We'll still have plenty of entry- level employees. We're just going to ask something very, very different of them. So, just a couple

reactions on the on the consulting front. So you still will have entry- level employees because I always wonder like if we get rid of them like what is

going to be like who's going to be like the middle leadership like sort of just show how many people in the room

who have employment today were not entry- level employees at one point in their life. So I think we've got to

we've got to confront that reality right we have to develop talent for the future. I do think it's going to look very different. I think it's going to

look very different. By the way, for those of you that have have children, nephews, nieces, neighbors that are in that demographic coming in, they are so

much smarter than we were first and their expectations of the trade between their career and the business are are so

much more rational than ours were. Like we we so this is a terrible another terrible story. So we had this rule

called the partner 15. And the partner 15 was a rule that the staff all talked about which was you did not leave the

client site until 15 minutes after the partner went to the parking lot. whether you had any work to do or not. That is

the stupidest thing ever. This is 30 years ago to be fair, but it's the stupidest thing ever, but it was because we knew the partner was going to stop

and talk to the client 12 times and nobody wanted to be leaving before the partner. I can tell you our staff today say good night to me on their way out

the door if they're ready to call their day. And that's a good thing. That is a good cultural change in our business.

So, I absolutely think we not only need uh entry- level talent, we need to now start to invest in entry-level talent.

That investment will pay off in organizations over time. Any other Oh, one in the front.

Thank you. Thanks for the interesting discussion. Just a quick question. You talk about changing business model. Talk

about change early employee. What about school education? How we can prepare kids in education with school? Not just

become dummy just using AI but being interesting critic and challenging a new

worker tomorrow. Thank you.

That's a really hard question that problem. Super hard question to go to. Well, I I'd love to be uh talking about

uh answering that in past tense. I would love that. But um you know from this

year actually there are quite a few countries uh who embedded AI officially to their education curriculum and one of

the countries is China from the elementary school and then there is Estonia and Singapore and a few other

countries starting from middle middle school and high school. But when we um

talk about AI in education again it's the chicken and egg problem. Um, we

don't have AI trainers. We don't have AI trainers. And that's where we have to

start. And um, and actually this summer, we've trained Mongolia's first 500

trainers. And in 2026, we're going to train 1,000 AI trainers across Africa

and Central Asia and Southeast Asia. But I see these teachers after they, you

know, after they're trained, they they built their own models. They created their AI assistant. Uh they created

their um chatbot with parents, chatbot with students, um and with uh we've

actually examined a few of those and it's very very practical. It doesn't look very good interior um you know UIUX

wise but but it's very practical and it's really helping them save time and

especially countries where there are so many kids um and maybe one teacher

really I think to be to be frank where we have to start in education is we have

to start by training the trainers uh before anyone else before anyone else

and and that's very important and I to that I just want to uh bring out the

story. Uh and I've been running girls code program for 5 years. I come from

nomadic family. I own 300 ships. Uh if you are ever in Mongolia, I will make your barbecue for that with that. Um,

and you know, I'm very proud to to come from where I came from and but I I've

always wanted to give access to girls who are living in the nomatic community and we started this boot camp. Uh, we've

trained 150 girls so far and at this very moment we're training 200 more. But

these girls who has never been to the city, they come for this boot camp. When they go back, they start their own AI

club. They teach AI to other students. And one of our girls is studying at NYU

as a as a data scientist with 100% scholarship. Uh I have a lot of girls

who are working part-time paying off their family debts. Um I have some girl

who spoke at AI for good summit in Geneva in front of thousands of people after Joffrey Hinton spoke. So this is

what happens when you give access to those who do not have access. And this is why you know and every time I I talk

about this you'll see this is a nice story and you go out and forget but why

do you have to why does it matter to you? It matters because world is small

and somehow you connect and somehow you find mutual friends and unexpectedly it

works like that. And when we give access to these kids in Africa, Asia, anywhere

in the world, it really embraces and and the multiplier effect is just crazy.

I've never really imagined and I never imagined I would be doing this for so long and really getting into that, but

just looking at the girls and how they're doing after the program is just life-changing.

So yeah, I think you know we have to uh invest into our kids uh and we have to

train the teachers first. Uh so we have to train the kids for like AI skills but also like maybe thinking through like

like maybe that not AI will solve everything like every pitch is a good pitch of AI tools. How do you like

retain that critical thinking, right? Like when you can like so easily outsource your homework uh to a chatbot.

Well, it's it's um it's interesting. Hardy, you were talking about the first memo that you sent on on um chat GPT. If

you go to the the US university system as an example, that was the first memo every president of every university sent

and it was what every every uh professor started with is you cannot use these tools in my classroom. And the good

news, cuz I'm optimist, the good news is that conversation has changed pretty rapidly. It's how do you use them responsibly? How do I know when you're

using them? How do I make sure that you're learning in that process? And I think I think that's good news. Not only

because the conversation is a much more intelligent conversation, frankly, because they were using them anyway, but I think the other part of that

conversation is as soon as they get to us or to you as employers, we need them to use it. We need them to use it in

responsible, thoughtful ways. So I think particularly in the university systems and the higher education systems, you're seeing the shift. But that is a that is

a slow boat to change. If that was a container ship, it would be really really really really large and slow. Um

so so that's going to take a while. But I do think you're seeing a a recognition um in the university systems.

I think there's a question way in the back. Yeah. Last row. Hey. Hi. Um this question is going to simplify a

very complex question. Um as AI advances, we are looking at a cultural

change within the companies. My question is which the more uh which better

approach would be one that recognizes a paradigms uh change one that goes from

the bottom up of whole scale change within the organization or is it more

advisable to go use case by use case and let the chain creep into the culture as

it happens. So anyone want to take that?

Yeah, I think all of us need to to pitch in here. Um I I think there is um

I'm not sure that there's a one sizefits all. Uh I think AI I I have to we have

to think about AI in culture in societal culture. I I think that the way that

a German management system works and the way that an American management system works and the way that you know we

manage companies in in in Africa or companies are managed in Southeast Asia. Um there's there's there's a cultural

overlay that exists within that society that we have to recognize. Uh and that already is generally within the

organization. Uh so you know to to uh to

use the example of I think some of you have read about you know the time when Korea Airlines was changing uh when they

had a you know a lot of accidents because the first officer would be

deferring to the captain who is a lot more experienced. Uh but the first

officer would see that the plane is going to crush but because they thought the captain is very experienced.

They kept quiet. They were not allowed to speak and and unfortunately you know Korea airlines went through this uh

period but but it was very cultural. It was because you know at that time in Korea people you know you defer to your

elders and you didn't question authority. So, so I I think yes AI is going to

change the way that we need to run companies as leaders. Uh but it cannot

exist in a vacuum. It has to take into account the cultural nuances and in my

specific case you know uh in Africa where as I said before you know very

hierarchical society people defer to their elders. If I can change the way

that my leadership team is behaving, if they're embracing learning, if they're

embracing experimentation, it becomes much easier for the rest of the organization uh to pick up that culture.

Yeah, I for what it's worth, I agree with that completely and I think there is a there is a um element of the

culture that exists in the organization already and how to embrace it to make the change work in the organization. So,

you have to be reflective of what's going to work, what's not going to work. But I do think um we have a tendency to

think about this as an either or. It's a top down or it's a bottoms up. And it's got to be a both. Um and and uh I'll

pick on the CIOS again because that's always fun. The the the organizational structures around it are often about

control for lots of really good reasons, by the way, control and process and etc.

And what what happens is when you centralize that control too too tightly, you you risk a disconnect to the people

that are actually on the front line of the business talking to your customers and your clients, you risk a disconnect to the people that are all at different

levels in the organization. And no amount of inspirational leadership is going to break that frozen middle

problem. It just won't. It does not matter what speeches the leadership team can give. You need you need that

innovation at the edge percolating through the organization because that's really what inspires people. They get

excited not because Atkinson and his CIO job said it, but they get excited because somebody they've known for a

couple years is now being celebrated for a great innovation that they've done. So I think you need them. You need them both.

Great last words. Uh like I hope we all inspire you with the new playbook on leadership. You can go out and and uh uh

lead as you know uh we live through unprecedented times. But I also wanted to say we'll be around like we're

closing uh this panel but we are we are around here if you have any more questions. Uh but like go out and lead

and thank you so much for being here.