You're Doing AI Wrong w/ Charlene Li
- Chad Sowash
- 1 minute ago
- 30 min read
Strap in, kids — this week The Chad & Cheese Podcast welcomes six-time New York Times bestselling author and strategic-transformation badass Charlene Li, here to talk about her new book Winning with AI and why almost every company on the planet is royally screwing up AI adoption.
Charlene drops bombs like:
95% of AI pilots never scale — mostly because leadership treats AI like a shiny toy for IT instead of the business-changing force it actually is.
CEOs shout “AI! AI! AI!” but then hide under their desks when someone hands them an actual AI roadmap.
HR should be at the table… not outside the room holding donuts.
And yes, speed is the new moat — so if your company still needs six months and two committees just to approve a chatbot, Charlene has some bad news for you.
What about?
The “messy middle” of transformation?
“Shadow AI”?
Becoming AI-fluent?
Advice for the next generation?
If you want straight talk on AI strategy, leadership BS, cultural blockers, HR’s long-awaited glow-up, and how organizations can stop tripping over themselves on the way to the future this episode serves it sizzling.
Come for the insights. Stay for the sarcasm. And learn how not to crash-and-burn your AI initiatives.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel Cheesman (00:25.171)
AAAAHHHHH YEAH!
Joel Cheesman (00:30.814)
Enough to know better too young to care. Hey boys and girls, it's the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel Cheeseman joined as always Chad Sowash writing shotgun as we welcome Charlene Li to the program. She's a six time New York times bestselling author. She's a strategic transformation expert who's dropping a new book soon. She coauthored with Katya Walsh entitled winning with AI, the 90 day blues.
Chad Sowash (00:37.86)
Hello.
Joel Cheesman (00:58.09)
For success. Charlene, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.
Chad Sowash (00:59.812)
Mmm.
Charlene Li (01:03.736)
Thank you for having me. think I'm happy to be here.
Joel Cheesman (01:07.242)
Well, we'll circle back at the end to see how you feel about this whole thing. may be, yeah, it may be rock bottom for your career. We'll find out. A lot of our listeners and watchers won't know who you are. Give us a little bit about Charlene.
Chad Sowash (01:08.396)
Well, we'll see. yeah. Well, we'll do we'll do a survey.
Charlene Li (01:22.626)
Yeah, I've been a long time analyst and author talking about all the changes and disruptions that happen to people, starting with the internet way back in like 1999 when I joined Forrester, I started my own research firm called Altimeter research and, Altimeter group. then the, the, the lately I've just been doing my own thing, going back to my entrepreneurial roots after I sold the company. And I love thinking about all these sorts of transformations. And I especially am happy to be here because.
In my career, looking at digital transformation, it is never about the technology. It is always about the people, the transformation side. So firmly believe that I've seen it happen again and again. So same thing.
Joel Cheesman (02:03.882)
And this show talks a lot about the people and the talent at organizations, but I'm curious, what was the inspiration for the book? Who, who is it for? Talk about sort of why you, why you wrote it.
Chad Sowash (02:07.983)
to the people.
Charlene Li (02:15.928)
Well, we started this again. ran into Katja when I was in Boston for a reunion and I was telling her, I'm thinking of writing this book. And she said, I should write this book with you. And I've got, of course you should. She's been a five time chief AI and data officer. So she's, she knows this stuff. I just know it theoretically from research, but she's built organizations. And what we were finding is that people were having a lot of problems not using AI.
Chad Sowash (02:30.957)
Dang.
Joel Cheesman (02:34.153)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (02:34.233)
Mm.
Charlene Li (02:44.91)
but using it to create value. So we wanted to give people a starter kit, not to just use AI, but to create value with it so that they can win with that. And it's written for people who say, I'm doing all these pilots, nothing seems to be working, we're going around in circles, and we have all these use cases, but use cases are not a strategy. So this book gives you a strategy about how you're going to use AI to create value.
And again, one of the biggest things we have as a theme is the importance of HR being at the table. So I'm looking forward to getting into that a little bit with you, but it was basically a starting place to create value.
Chad Sowash (03:23.407)
Oh, they would love that. Oh, they would love that Charlene, they would love that. So in the book, you say that 95%, very, very high percentage of AI pilots never scale because the lack of ownership, urgency, know, business alignment, that Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan back that up saying only 11 % of firms report significant financial benefit from AI. Why?
Why is that? Because we hear every single CEO that's out there say that they want to have AI. They need to have AI. There has to be a strategy put in place. Doesn't sound like they're doing anything.
Charlene Li (04:05.786)
Well, the problem is that there's this huge hype about this. And so we think, we in a bubble? Are we in a hype cycle? I think the real thing that's going on is that we're in a transformation gap. The reality is it's one thing to adopt AI. It's another thing to adapt your organization to AI. So people are treating like a technology implementation. like, press a button, you have AI. We got Microsoft Co-pilot. Where's our value? And they aren't thinking strategically about saying,
Chad Sowash (04:09.112)
Yes.
Charlene Li (04:35.384)
Well, you don't just give it to people. How are we going to use it to create big strategic value for our organization? And that requires your big strategic thinkers, your top leaders, people like your CEO and your executive team and your board to be thinking strategically about how to use AI. And for the most case, in most cases, they've shunted it off to it. They've given it to it. Like go figure it out because they treat it like a technology.
Chad Sowash (04:38.799)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (05:02.841)
Jesus, yeah.
Charlene Li (05:03.32)
versus the real value creation it could be.
Chad Sowash (05:05.711)
Uh huh. Well, in that's one of the problems we've seen throughout our entire history in this industry being in HR, having CTOs, CIOs make decisions for talent. Cause they have no clue what the hell we do. They have no clue what the process is. They have no clue what the needs are day to day. Right? So it almost, it almost feels and help me out here. It almost feels like the same thing is happening again. It's same as it ever was. Uh,
Joel Cheesman (05:24.116)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (05:33.37)
They don't know, they just know that, we know how to build stuff or they think they can build stuff or they can utilize something off the shelf. Right. and it drives me crazy because this generally, and it has been for, for decades is the outcome is that people just don't use it or it adds layers to the actual process, which isn't efficient because it's an inefficient process that you're literally just, you know, adding layers to. So in the book, what do you do?
Joel Cheesman (05:39.306)
you
Chad Sowash (06:00.729)
to be able to really start to roll out a meaningful way to look at AI.
Charlene Li (06:07.63)
Well, first of all, you get what we call a minimally viable team. This MVT, not MVP, but MVT, consists of the highest strategic thinker, so ideally your CEO. Or again, that person can't do a head of transformation or your strategy offers somebody who thinks strategically and can understand what those are. Your digital and AI person, notice I did not say IT, but a digital and AI person, we'll come back to that. A commercial person or customer facing person, and HR.
Joel Cheesman (06:15.486)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (06:32.659)
Okay.
Charlene Li (06:36.718)
keep it as small as possible. And you are examining your business strategy and say, what are our top strategic goals? And then you ask, how can AI support our achievement of those goals? Better, faster, cheaper, even safer. And that's the way you prioritize. It is against the speed to value and the size of value that you can create. Forget about feasibility. Forget about, again, I don't think people should be doing pilots with AI.
You can do experiments to learn, but if it's truly strategic, then this isn't a pilot. We're going to make this happen because it's so strategic to us. We want to make it happen. You will find the dollars and the people, the technology to make it happen.
Joel Cheesman (07:06.686)
Thank
Joel Cheesman (07:13.044)
Yep.
Joel Cheesman (07:16.788)
Submit.
Joel Cheesman (07:20.362)
I want to throw a sort of real life scenario at you and how this new world of work looks. So a lot of companies use LinkedIn. You know what LinkedIn is. They get licenses. They get like the gold, you know, the gold, the gold package. Everyone has everything that LinkedIn can do. And they end up using like two, two things, right? They just search people and use the mess. So in your world,
What happens to those people when it, when it's not just all the, all the things you can do, all the bells and whistles and LinkedIn, but it's AI because a lot of companies are just buying more products on top of other products that just are different AI's or sell themselves as different. And then nobody uses them because they don't understand it or it's confusing or like, does. It just kind of keeps me from my main job. What happens to those people that don't adapt to the world you're talking about?
Charlene Li (08:11.894)
I use the example of LinkedIn, the people who should have all the bells and whistles are only the people who would truly use it. And so the training and the adoption of it, especially for people like in sales, where that connection is truly there, that's a product fit scenario that you want to have. When it comes to AI, there's a base level of not just literacy, but fluency that needs to be there. And the vast majority of companies, even the top companies are not investing in training.
and making sure that people are fluent. And what I mean by fluid is they understand how AI works and its limitations. They understand how to use it responsibly and ethically, and they know how to apply it to their jobs to get their work done. And I would add a fourth test to that is that they can teach other people how to use AI. You're truly fluent. You can teach other people. So yeah.
Chad Sowash (08:51.919)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (09:00.842)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (09:04.766)
Sounds like Chief AI Officer is going to be something we hear a lot more of in organizations. Is that what I'm hearing? And that'll funnel down to departments.
Charlene Li (09:10.764)
Yeah, chief AI officer or a lead, somebody whose job a hundred percent of the time is to make sure that AI is creating value. Not just that people are using it, but they're using it to create value. And that's going to look different depending on the role. In the same way you wouldn't have training one size fits all, you'll have some base level training of how to use AI prompting. These are systems, this is our responsible and ethical AI use policy.
Chad Sowash (09:21.049)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (09:37.871)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (09:37.976)
But then it quickly devolves into very specific roles, specific task, specific best practices. And then people will develop those as they use them. And so our thing is that we believe that CEO should have a mandate, should have a mandate that their teams, their employees, all of them become AI fluent within three to six months.
Chad Sowash (10:03.577)
Yeah.
Charlene Li (10:04.246)
And people are like that soon, like, well, pick your number, but it got to be in the single digits. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (10:06.282)
Good luck with that.
Chad Sowash (10:07.139)
Yeah. Hey, you want to get it done? mean, again, you've got to pull it. got, got to draw a line in the sand somehow, right? I've got, I've got a, a great story. First and foremost, GM, they, they integrated a different process, you know, methodologies through tech, whether it's, you know, AI, RPA, some, different levels of technology. And the change management aspect, which is very hard. It's very hard.
The change management aspect took them about six months longer than it really should have because they literally didn't draw that line in the sand. And my question, even before you get to the line in the sand, is more focused on the top cultural killers, you know, that leaders need to root out first. I mean, there's fear, there's the politics of everything.
The, the me, me, me scenario, which I was in revenue for a while. So I know the sales organization is always a me, me, me. You should spend time on me first. And then there's the lack of accountability. Can you talk through some of those cultural killers upfront before they even start focusing on tuning into change management?
Charlene Li (11:16.642)
Yeah. Fear and anxiety is a number one issue you have to deal with when it comes to AI. Only 39 % of people in the US believe that AI is going to be more beneficial than harmful. That means you're facing these huge headwinds already that people want nothing to do with it. They've heard nothing but bad news. You can't trust it. It's going to take your job. I mean, why would I want to go running towards it? So it's like a small number of people who will watch it.
Chad Sowash (11:20.427)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (11:35.631)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (11:45.164)
And so you can't teach them to use AI until you address those fears and anxieties. I know one organization has training just to talk about those fears. And it's just an open session to say, we're going to talk about AI. We're committed to making sure everyone has these skills. But we also know there's a lot of concern. So come to the session to ask all the questions. And we won't be done until you're done with the questions. It's not us talking at you. It's you asking us questions.
Joel Cheesman (12:14.206)
Yep.
Charlene Li (12:14.466)
And then once they dispel those, then they can do the training, but they're not going to hear a single thing. As long as their head is spinning. This is, this is Skynet coming for us. So this is, this is just, we know from experience that you have to deal with those mass loss hierarchies of needs and that people don't feel safe and secure. They're not going to listen.
Chad Sowash (12:31.086)
Yeah.
Well, you have companies that are actually saying, we're going to get rid of hundreds of people and we're going to put AI in place. And that might not be the company that you're with, but you're hearing that out in the wild today. So how do you dispel that though? I mean, it seems hard because it almost feels like, wait a minute, they're duping me. You know, I'm literally just going to train the AI to take my job. How do you get past that?
Joel Cheesman (12:40.756)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (12:58.998)
I think that you can talk about the realities, which is, yeah, we're all worried about AI taking our jobs. And our plan is to use AI to achieve our institutional goals. But here's our commitment to you. I can't commit to you that you will have a job. can, we have never been able to do that. I don't even know if I'm going to have a job. This is the reality of this is. What we can commit to you is that we, AI or not, what we can commit to you is that we know that AI is going to be part of our future.
Chad Sowash (13:20.771)
Yeah, AI or not. Yeah.
Charlene Li (13:28.376)
It's going to be part of everyone's future. And we are going to invest in you and the skills and have the tools so that we can be, and you can be, the most knowledgeable, well-equipped employee possible to deal with this new reality. So that regardless of whether you're here or someplace else, you are going to be well-equipped. Will you go on this journey with us?
Joel Cheesman (13:42.686)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (13:48.715)
So I'm hearing a lot of processing and education and upskilling. And you have a quote from the book that I love. Speed is the new moat. I love that. Speed is the new moat. say more about that. And if you're in this quagmire of process and education and upskilling, how do you get to speed that you're the kind of speed that you're talking about? is there an example of a company that's really embracing speed?
Charlene Li (14:16.782)
Well, there's also another Mac accent that you have to slow down and go fast until you have these blockers. Nothing is going to change. So you have to address them and it may feel like, my goodness, this is taking forever. Are these people not going to get it? Like how many more times do I have to explain this? And the sooner you can get them to be hands on and using it. And then we talk about understanding the limitations responsible AI, but using it in their job in a way.
that they have decided that I want to use AI, not the way that you have decided, but I know my job better than anyone else. I will be able to understand how I can use AI. I'm going to figure it out with my peers, with the other people who I trust. And we're going to figure that out. And so I think that sense of ownership is extremely important in this learning process. So.
Again, as the faster you can get to them to that point of using these tools rather just talking about them, the faster and sooner you would get that aha moment. And when that aha moment goes to stand back and you won't be able to stop them. So it's like, make sure you have all that training in place, a guardrails in place, responsible and ethical AI policies in place, security policies, data, everything data governance, because they are going to go fast.
Joel Cheesman (15:35.051)
And there's, and there's probably a level of, you know, lead fall or get the hell out of the way with something my dad always used to say growing up. And it sounds like for your advice to employees is if you don't get on board, you're going to, know, you're going to be left behind. And you talk about in the book, what you call super humans. And I'm reminded by a recently Facebook had a, half of healthy layoff, if you will. And they were laying off people in the AI department, which I thought was, was kind of unusual, but.
What I, what I feel like Facebook and probably others are doing is they're having some people that are your super humans that really understand this stuff, really understand scale and speed and then probably some support. And then the people in the middle, if you can't, if you don't learn this stuff and become a super human, you're going to be left behind. Am I, am I on, am I on par with that or am I off base?
Charlene Li (16:26.638)
Well, I think that you're always going to have people with different levels of AI fluency. Some people are just really, really good at it. And some people are like, OK, I can survive with it, right? Superhumans are a completely different breed. since I gave you the copy of the book, it's changed a little bit. We find it to be talking about people who are using AI to enhance their humanity. And in particular, we call it integrated intelligence.
Chad Sowash (16:49.327)
Hmm.
Charlene Li (16:54.37)
So there are different things that help us be human. There's empathy, there's intuition, judgment, wisdom. These are things that are inherently human in us. And we can use AI to enhance those things and also integrate them so that instead of AI taking away our humanity, it's helping us be more human to use these tools in better ways. And hopefully we choose to do this. We are always at choice, but that we choose to be more human.
For example, a lot of issues that happen inside of organizations is because of lack of understanding. And you can use AI to expand your scope of understanding of other people, of situations. And that would hopefully allow you to be more empathetic, check your intuition, help you make decisions and judgments better, and just exercise better wisdom and judgment. So those are the things that I'm hoping people not only use AI in the organizations to get better ROI and value, but also to deal with this very human aspect of it, which is how will we become better people?
Joel Cheesman (18:01.546)
Do organizations embrace and value those traits more than they do today? I guess we talked so much about tech, but maybe being more human is the key to success.
Charlene Li (18:11.566)
Well, I think COVID really brought it out. The fact that we needed to be more vulnerable, to be more accessible, to be more humble, and that these things are really important because it was taken away from us. We normally did these things so automatically in person, and you had to make an effort to do this and to exercise it even more so. So there's been a stronger emphasis on this. Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School talks about psychological safety and how
important that is so that if people want to change, if they want to take risks, they want to be innovative, you have to create safety for them. Again, this is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Our need to feel safe is extremely important. And those human aspects that create trust and trust is the most important thing if you want to create change. The most important thing. If there is no trust, change will not
Chad Sowash (19:05.711)
That's like talking to CEOs and asking them what the most important thing is. And they say, our people, for the most part, know that's generally bullshit. They care about the numbers. They care about the metrics. We hope that they buy into empathy one day, but in most cases you take a look at it and it seems like not much has changed from a leadership standpoint. So from a measuring speed to value, which you talk about in the book,
Harvard and MIT research on customer operations shows Gen. can accelerate measurable business outcomes in under 12 weeks. I that's pretty fast. 14 % lift in call center agents, those types of things. So the question, what's the one metric that any leader should use to measure early AI value, whether it's revenue impact, conversion lift, cycle, time reduction. What's the focus, do you think, at that point?
to be able to demonstrate it, to be able to keep it and continue to use it, you're going to have to demonstrate it to the C-suite.
Charlene Li (20:09.038)
Yeah. The one thing I've learned about CEOs in the C-suite, they only care about a few things. And it's usually the few things that count on one hand. And so let's say it's three things. If AI, yeah, again, this is, this is what they care about. This is the thing that drives them and makes them so successful. So if AI is going to make an impact, it has an impact on one of those top three things. And if it doesn't, they won't care. There's no way can change your priorities. And so the metrics become
Chad Sowash (20:16.271)
Reporting to the board.
Chad Sowash (20:22.02)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (20:37.678)
how do you measure the things that they care about? That's how you measure AI. Is it helping you move the needle? it sort of, depends, but it depends on a very specific thing. What's on their dashboard. If they see the numbers moving on dashboard and correlate that AI, they're going to support it a hundred percent. And so I tell people, if you're going to be the AI lead or you're proposing AI for an organization, do not start with the technology. Start with the problem. And it better be an important problem that the CEO is going to make time.
Chad Sowash (20:49.837)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (20:53.098)
Hmm.
Charlene Li (21:06.197)
in their busy, busy calendar, you're one of 15 meetings they're going to have that day, you better make a count that it applies to one of the things they care about because otherwise you're not going to get buy-in. They'll tell you, they'll throw you off and like, okay, go do a pilot and prove it, but it's just a way to distract you and keep you happy and get you out of my face.
Joel Cheesman (21:11.178)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (21:24.835)
Yeah. Get out of my office. Yeah. Get in my, well, and we've seen that with HR in, in talent acquisition and whatnot. They make up their own metrics that the CEO gives two shits about the entire C-suite. They don't care about it's like little metrics that they go, go play with their Tinker toys over there. That's great. We need to better understand the business metrics. And I think this might be a great opportunity to be able to get again, the talent organization.
more involved in the business. Now in the actual framework, because there's like a, in some cases, an 18 month kind of like rollout that you've you've outlined. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's incredibly important for all of these leaders that are going to have to be working pretty much in unison to be able to get something like this rolled out.
Charlene Li (22:12.814)
Again, align and connect your AI initiatives and what you're doing in HR to those business strategies and objectives. And then the way I recommend is to have an AI roadmap. And I call it a roadmap in particular, because it's not a strategy. You already have a business strategy, right? Let's be clear. You don't have a separate AI strategy. You do not have a separate HR strategy. Everything is in service of your overall business objectives and strategy. So over the next 18 months,
Chad Sowash (22:21.636)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (22:42.284)
Because your strategy is typically written out a couple of years out over the next 18 months. How are we going to deliver value every single quarter in HR and as using AI against those business objectives and everything has to be framed in that. And then people like, okay, we get it now. So this is how HR is providing value. This is how we're supporting our strategic objectives. And it's from an HR lens, but in, again, you're looking at those strategic objectives. So.
Chad Sowash (22:56.911)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (23:06.575)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (23:12.014)
People look at me like I'm crazy. Like how do you roll out an AI roadmap for 18 months when we don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow or even next week, let alone next quarter. And I like to say that this roadmap is written down in pencil. It has to be written down though, because then you know what you're building today to be able to achieve what you want to have in 18 months. And then at the end of every quarter, you have the opportunity to update.
the rest of the roadmap because you've learned so much more. You've learned what doesn't work. New technologies have come around. your employees have different expectations. Customers have changed. and so you can update everything with your best knowledge at that point and you add another quarter. So it's a rolling 18 month roadmap. That's updated every single.
Joel Cheesman (23:51.903)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (23:59.453)
Undoubtedly some of this is going to get pretty...
Chad Sowash (23:59.96)
Which is, which is always a big issue in projects because you're always, the issues are expectations, responsibility, and then accountability. Right? A lot of people hair on fire, not sure what they're accountable for. They just know the CEO wants to do X, Y, and Z. What's my part? It's incredibly important, as you'd said, to have that roadmap and have it written in pencil on a whiteboard. Who the hell cares? Just write the damn thing down.
Charlene Li (24:25.902)
It's about clarity. It is all about clarity. And so to your point, what are we doing to create value? What are the metrics of our success? Who's doing what and who's a co who do we go to when something's not going as we expected? So there's, it's all written out. It is not up for guessing or discussion. Like we've made a decision. This is the path we're going on. But he said, go, we'll see you in three months. Okay. Where are we? Is everyone here still?
of all our arms and limbs and everything here. Okay. All right. Ready? Make the plan again. Ready, go. See you in three months.
Joel Cheesman (25:03.924)
Yeah, certainly, certainly sounds messy. and you talk about in the book, embrace the messy middle. more about that.
Charlene Li (25:12.942)
No, I've never seen a transformation or plan go as, go as planned. It just never does. Right. And as leaders, we think we create a plan and okay, we worked so hard on this plan. It's perfect. Give it up. You're much better off writing a rough plan, having a direction of travel, and then doing things, experimenting and be finding the plan as you go along. I mean, build it and know when you have to pivot.
and know when you have to persist. This is the hardest thing for any leader to do. Startups understand this intuitively, and it's incredibly hard. Do we pivot or do we persist? And I can guarantee you, when you're making that decision, it is going to be gut wrenching because you really don't know what the answer is. So from a disruptive leader's perspective, this is what you get good at. You get better at guessing, and you also get better at managing those nerves and the stomach acid.
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (26:04.009)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (26:06.296)
Uh-huh.
Charlene Li (26:10.826)
It is, it is hard. And you know, you're doing it right. If your palms are a little sweaty, stomach's a little squishy, you know, you're doing it right then. Cause that's going at speed.
Joel Cheesman (26:19.082)
Yeah, invest in Tom.
Chad Sowash (26:20.451)
That's that's that's because that's because generally because Joel's been eating Taco Bell. He needs all of that stuff
Joel Cheesman (26:25.938)
Arby's does not agree with me very well, Charlene. We talked to a lot of startups and a conversation we had a few years ago stuck with me and it was the roadmap for startups today is not the five or seven year build. It's the two to three year build. And I think where you're going is even a shorter sort of roadmap for startups. I on, am I?
Right there. also what does that do to the VC community and how we invest in companies and what's the future around that as well in this new reality?
Charlene Li (27:03.106)
Yeah, when you said two to three, you build, I'm like shaking my head internally, like, no, no, it's like a two to three month build. And at this point, you can be a product manager, speak, you know, tell a coding platform what it is that you want to build. You can have a front end vision of what that looks like within minutes that I can show to my team. And like, this is what we're thinking of. And before you would have to spend weeks designing that front end and what that experience looks like. Now you can do it in minutes.
Chad Sowash (27:29.615)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (27:29.966)
That's a completely different way to do things. So anybody can create a finance back ends a little bit of mess. Still the vibe coding stuff, writing the super base and, you know, committing to, to get hub. It's like, no, so not for everyday users, but I think the real potential for all of this is that our ability to meet the expectations, to understand what customers want and then to build it for them in real time. Like, is this what you were thinking of?
Like, how does this look? And then to be able to take that and you do it not just with a few people, you can do that with hundreds and thousands of people with AI now. mean, Nestle is using tools like Outset.ai to understand what customers want. And before you had to trade off qualitative versus quantitative. Now you can do qualitative at scale with AI. So this is an example of how you're reinventing the way you do work.
We're not just making it a little bit more productive. We're able to ask questions that we never could have answered before. If you could ask a thousand people, what is it that they want in this product category and get detailed life experiences for them that are in real time, what could you do? How would you change the way you even develop product and market products?
Chad Sowash (28:28.58)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (28:50.94)
And in a world where everyone has the keys to the castle, so to speak, it doesn't take tons of money or expertise to do this stuff. What differentiates businesses? it branding? it service? what it just seems if everyone can do it, what, do you stand out in that world?
Charlene Li (29:10.126)
Speed is the new moat.
Joel Cheesman (29:14.154)
So build, iterate, iterate, iterate, stay ahead of the competition, that's how you'll win the customers.
Charlene Li (29:20.014)
Yeah. And forget about the competition. Like this is, this is, do not measure yourself against the competition. It's the worst thing you could do. You're measuring yourself against your customers needs. I talk about it in my last book that the key to disruption is to understand what your future customer needs to anticipate and get better and better constantly at being able to look out further and further into the future. There was a reason why people at Amazon and Meta, those leaders look out 10 years.
Chad Sowash (29:38.094)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (29:49.09)
and they're building for a future 10 years from now. Very few organizations do that. Now they are sometimes wildly wrong, but they have a vision and a thesis for the future that they are building on. And they've done that over years and decades where they can trust that the fact that they can put that together, it's again a direction of travel. Most organizations can't even think past the next week and month and maybe quarter.
Chad Sowash (30:16.974)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (30:17.29)
And your plans are a bit of a joke because it's just something they have to do to appease the accounting department and finance to put a budget together, but it's not really a plan to budget.
Chad Sowash (30:23.897)
So we...
Joel Cheesman (30:35.434)
Chad, did you have a question? He's muted.
Chad Sowash (30:38.531)
Yep. Nope. Sorry. Connection got a little crazy. so we, we actually talked to John Higgins who's head of the town organization at, sent you health and he was able to, without, know, going to the CEO and doing a lot of these things, he's able to build, into his organization, more process efficiencies through using AI. And next thing you know, the guy is the head of the, at the head of the table.
giving his overview of how he actually made his organization much more efficient through AI, RPA, all that other fun stuff, all those great acronyms and the money that he saved, what he was able to do delivery wise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So with many of the organizations that are out there, not every CEO is going to take the time to be able to do what you're talking about. What about those HR leaders, those talent leaders?
Can they use this as a roadmap and a framework to go from a to, you know, to I guess, no, from zero to a hundred, cause we're talking about speed, in a very short time and then be able to demonstrate to the organization. This is what we need to do. Is that something that they can do kind of like in a microcosm?
Charlene Li (31:52.834)
Yes.
Absolutely again within the confines of your span of control You can do a lot of this right and and I'm just giving the enterprise level but you can translate that to a departmental level My my question becomes why hold it back from the rest of the organization? Right if you're seeing all the success being able to bring it to the rest of your colleagues in the C-suite and to say look We're doing a ton of great work here. You guys want in on the secret here?
Chad Sowash (32:00.399)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (32:19.971)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (32:24.546)
And they're like, yeah, what are you doing? Like we're hitting all, we're exceeding our numbers. We're doing great. We're doing things. We're reinventing things. We're seeing tremendous ROI. That we like, yeah, tell me what that magic formula is. Like give me that genie's lab. me make those wishes. So the, I think again, there's, there's a, I think what that was happening there potentially was IT was being possessive about it. There was no plan. The CEO just want, they all just want to shut it down. Who knows.
Right. There's lots of issues around that. there's so much shadow AI going on in organizations where they banned it or they only have Microsoft co-pilot. shadow AI is when somebody you have limited AI and maybe have Microsoft co-pilot, but they really want to use chat to BT, but it's locked down. they carry around a second laptop and a second phone so they can use AI and it says, no, we can't use any of it because hallucinates it can't, you know, we're going to lock it down. can't use it.
Joel Cheesman (33:00.532)
Define that, define that.
Chad Sowash (33:03.771)
Chad Sowash (33:21.903)
Mm.
Charlene Li (33:22.35)
And I go, but they're using it. And it's, even at more risk because of the shadow AI use. And you're much better off declaring what we call AI amnesty. Just like bring it out of the shadows. We're not going to ask, but from now on you have to use these platforms that we have vetted. They're disconnected from the model. there's no training. And if people are like, well, how do I do that? I go, if you're one AWS, go and ask about Amazon bedrock because literally they can
Chad Sowash (33:40.271)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (33:52.354)
with a turn of a key, push of a button, take your existing data security policies, apply them to AI, and you can have AI access through these powerful models within a week. So there's no excuse. There's no excuse to be able to give people access to these powerful tools, because if you don't give it to them, they're going to use it anyways. And don't kid yourself that they're not using it.
Joel Cheesman (34:05.447)
Love that. Love that.
Joel Cheesman (34:18.89)
All right, Charlene, I'm going let you out on this one and it's a little bit self-serving. But my guess is there are probably a lot of other people in the same boat. have two teenagers and as a parent, it's very challenging to sort of give advice on how to succeed in the future. I feel in some ways you've got the recipe. So just want you to take a few moments and pretend you're talking to a teenager or maybe young person getting ready to graduate from college. What advice do you give them to thrive in this new world?
Charlene Li (34:47.822)
My advice to anybody early in the career and also frankly later in their career is that the skills you need to learn are not going to be taught to you in school. The things that you need to learn to be successful with this is not going to be taught to you by a company. It is going to be driven by your curiosity. By your imagination. And so do what you can to feed that. Always be feeding that.
Because if you can be driven by the things that you're curious about, then you will go learn it. That motivation will be there. So follow your curiosity, trust your gut on this, and go down those rabbit holes. Because wherever place that you can create depth, create expertise, is going to serve you. So create that depth and expertise. Don't stay on the surface level. Like, follow it to the ends. And you can use AI to teach you how to do that too.
Chad Sowash (35:33.241)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (35:44.33)
I know you're well educated, you went to Harvard.
Charlene Li (35:45.038)
So, yeah.
Charlene Li (35:53.365)
they can. mean, those those degrees, I mean, the education I got was fantastic. But I still think that the best education I got was in high school, like where I learned a lot of these core skills about how to learn. And, you know, the curriculum is fantastic. My but I think the colleagues that I had my peers were where I learned the most and I continue to learn from them. So again, if that is something that's important to you, and I think
you will make the most out of a four-year college or a graduate degree if that is what you want to choose. I advise a lot of people who think, should I go to business school? Well, why do you want to go to business school? If it's get credentials, that's one thing. I can tell you that as a woman of color, to have credentials like Harvard College and Harvard Business School, invaluable, invaluable. And so it's just credentials, but on top of the education.
Chad Sowash (36:40.006)
yeah.
Charlene Li (36:47.65)
But I think also it is not a requirement anymore. I had partners and employees who did not have four-year degrees. I didn't care because they were incredibly smart, curious, hardworking people. And that's what they needed to be successful. So you know yourself well enough. Do you need the discipline of a degree to be able to learn? Basically, what you're doing in college is learning how to learn. So
Chad Sowash (37:14.179)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (37:15.148)
You may need that time. I went to business school because I was, I wanted to know all the terms. I wanted to be able to walk into any business situation and know that I would have some frameworks to be able to deal with that situation. So that's why I went. and, I just wanted that acceleration. So I spent two years, lots of money went into debt to go to business school to be able to do that. And I came out into a job that paid barely more than what I started with. Cause I was in consulting. I went into newspapers.
Chad Sowash (37:35.987)
Hahaha
Charlene Li (37:45.512)
And, but it was because I could see that the internet was going to come and make a big impact. I graduated from business school the same month that the internet was born, the worldwide web was born. And so I could see that there was going to be huge disruption to businesses. So I went to newspapers, which is where that disruption was going to happen super fast. And so a year and a half later, we put the newspaper online. I was one of the first people to sell advertisements.
Joel Cheesman (38:06.74)
Mm-hmm.
Charlene Li (38:13.418)
on newspapers, understood the business model. And again, I've made disruption the centerpiece of my career. And so this is why I say you have no, no one would have told me that I would make disruption in my career, that I would be writing all these books, that I'd be speaking. I could never imagined that future for myself, but it was such a natural extension of the things that I was curious about. So my advice to people.
Joel Cheesman (38:37.298)
And I'm sure you never could have imagined the highlight of your career being on the chat and cheese podcast. Am I right? Am I right? It's all down here from here.
Charlene Li (38:43.978)
Exactly.
Chad Sowash (38:44.015)
Am I right? Lucky. That's Charlene Li. Everybody's Charlene. You've got a book. At least we hear that you've got a book that's that's out there. Can you go ahead and tell, tell the kids out there where they can find the book, where they can connect with you? Uh, give us it all. What do you got?
Charlene Li (39:00.61)
Yes, the book is called winning with AI and you can go to winning with AI book.com and right now you can sign up for getting a notification of when it's available for preorder and everything else, but we'll keep updating that page and you can connect with me and learn from me at CharleneLi.com and my email address is Charlene at CharleneLi.com and I try to give my email address out to as many people as I can because I want people to write to me and almost nobody does.
Chad Sowash (39:30.191)
Ha!
Charlene Li (39:30.592)
So this is a challenge to your listeners. I'm serious. I want to hear from people. I want to hear what's working, what resonated with you. What are your questions? And I'll do my best to answer and respond. But it is the way that I learn and I say curious.
Joel Cheesman (39:48.235)
Don't call me, email Charlene. Feed your curiosity and trust your gut, Chad. Now I'm hungry again. That's another one in the can. I know, I know. Charlene, thanks a lot. That's another one in the can. We out.
Chad Sowash (39:55.824)
unless you're eating Taco Bell. Don't trust her gut.
Chad Sowash (40:03.864)
We out.