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AI will undoubtedly become a bigger presence in your working life over the next few years. In fact, it likely already is, even without you knowing it. According to a recent study by Gallup, nearly all Americans (99%, in fact) use products that involve artificial intelligence features, but (64%) dont even realize it.Our current level of AI use may seem subtle and harmlessthink virtual assistants, navigation apps, or weather-forecasting websites. But the speed of new technology is fast and the promises it holds for transforming our work are too tempting for many companies to pass up. Like it or not, no matter your industry, AI is likely going to be your new coworker.So how can we adapt to work with AI, rather than training it to replace us? On the most recent episode of The New Way We Work, I spoke to Nigel Vaz, the CEO of Publicis Sapient, a consultancy focused on digital transformation.Vaz has been helping companies adapt to new technology for decades and sees both parallels and significant differences between our current AI transition and the dot-com boom of the 1990s. How this time is different Vaz points out that when the internet first started to change businesses, many leaders were skeptical that it would have a big impact. E-commerce sales accounted for such a small percent of sales, for example, and it took 20 years for the shift to fully take place. Now, he says, leaders remember how transformational the internet was and are more eager to embrace the changes that AI will bring. The difference this time around is everybody’s interested in ‘What is AI? How is AI going to manifest? What does it mean for my business?’ he says. But there is a recognition that it could be a significant driver. He also notes that the speed of change is much faster now than it was before.We are really asking organizations and people to evolve the way they work on an exponential basis, he says. How employees and leaders can adapt The technological transformation is the easy part, Vaz says. It’s the people transformation alongside the technological transformation. That’s the hard part.So how can employees and leaders adapt to the speed of techs advancements? Vaz says that the average person can (and should) tune out all of the discussions around chip development and instead focus on the applications themselves and what problems they help solveand what data they are trained on. He advises that companies should look at their needs and see if general AI tools can help or if they need customized tools. Learn, unlearn, and relearn So what about employees who are afraid of losing their jobs to AI? Vaz says that the nature of work is ever evolving and its not the ability to perform tasks that makes an employee valuable; its their ability to learn. If you obsess about what you know, you are always fundamentally going to be less valuable to an organization. I think what you have to obsess about is your ability to learn, he says. He uses the expression learn, unlearn, and relearn. The single biggest gift an organization can give you, and you can give yourself, is this mindset that what we value is your ability to adapt and to learn and to evolve as things are evolving, he says.Listen to the full episode for more on how companies and employees should prepare for AI changes, how they should be vetting new tech, and where tech is going in the future.You can listen and subscribe to The New Way We Work on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.andFast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you cansign up to get it yourselfevery Monday morning. Last June, global architecture and design firm Gensler named Elizabeth Brink and Jordan Goldstein as co-CEOs, succeeding Andy Cohen and Diane Hoskins, who jointly led the company for nearly 20 years. Though some U.S. companies, including Netflix, Zola, and Warby Parker, have two chief executive officers, the dual-CEO arrangement remains rare. In a recent joint interview, Brink and Goldstein explained how co-leadership permeates the entire organizationmost of Genslers offices and its regions are led by pairsand the way the model helps nurture managerial talent and train future managers to collaborate. They also shared insights into how they make their long-distance partnership work (Goldstein is based in Washington, D.C., and Brink is in Los Angeles), and why the co-CEO model isnt for every company. Edited excerpts follow: Modern CEO: Lets start by talking about the co-CEO relationship. You are the second set of co-CEOs at Gensler. Jordan Goldstein: The company started in 1965 and Art Gensler, who founded it, led it for a number of years. The prior CEOs, who actually were mentors to both of us, have now stepped into global chair roles. Elizabeth Brink: The co-leadership model is pretty deep in the organization. JG: We have about 300 co-leaders. My introduction to co roles started at the office level. I was a co-office leader starting in 2008. Elizabeths been here 20 years, so weve known each other for 20 years in the organization. I did the co-office director role, then we each did co-regional roles, then moved into [the co-CEO] roles. My background is definitely heavy in design and design-oriented technology. My experiences in the firm have been focused on design on a global scale, practicing in different locations around the world, working with different cultures, different climates. EB: My background has been more on strategy and pushing our design strategy into areas that we have not been, connecting business and design, and also a little bit on the urban strategy side of things. Its a really nice balance. I think we are both also people-oriented leaders, and one of the areas where we really overlap is an incredible focus on mentorship. And thats part of why we work so well as a duo togetherbecause of that kind of commitment. MC: You were elevated to the co-CEO roles simultaneously. But co-leads are not always assigned at the same time, right? JG: Right. For instance, when I was leading the Washington, D.C., office, it was me and another person, and we worked together growing our architectural practice in the D.C. metropolitan area. We did that for a number of years, and then my business partner said, You know what? I really want to get back to just designing every day. He stepped back into that everyday work, and then we brought in another individual who was much more oriented around particular industries. She joined me for a couple of years, and then I rotated out. EB: The organization is pretty matrixed, too. Were always looking at what the needs are within each market, within each office, within each region, and who are the best people to be partnering together to create that balance? But our situation was a little bit different because of the scale [of the roles]. MC: Tell me about how that succession process worked. In your situation, when did it become clear that you were going to be each others co-CEOs? EB: We were on our own leadership exploration journeys; we were both getting opportunities across the firm. I had stepped in on building a lot of our work around our people and culture. Jordan had been a really strong design leader. Both of us had been members of the board. And both of us had stepped into some key task force development over the last couple of years. Thats where we really started developing our connection, and I think others saw how well we work together and what we could really bring to the table as a duo. JG: I was really focused on a design career, but as I got into larger, complex projects globally, I really enjoyed the leadership aspect of that. It was 10 years ago when the CEO team [at the time] asked: Would you be interested in this type of path? EB: One of the things thats been so beneficial about both of us having these non-linear career journeys is the depth of relationships that we have stepping into this role. Were leaning on people who have been peers, who have been mentors to us, who weve mentored. MC: Do you share direct reports, or do you divide and conquer? JG: The way we approached it was, for the beginning of our tenure together, we were all in on all [reports] so we could really get the lay of the land and feel where there was natural chemistry within the organization. [A few weeks ago] we mapped it out and said, All right, given what weve experienced, lets talk through it. And we just divided it up. And were now letting people know shes first position on this, and Im first position on that. That doesnt mean we wont both be on the calls or both be in a meeting. EB: What it allows us to do iswhen there are challenges, when there are issuesone of us can go really deep. Its been very beneficial to have spent that time together because we start to understand how we each think about the tricky problems. I know which parts of a problem Jordans going to want to know about. And the reverse: He knows what parts are going to be really important for me to understand. And we text all the time. MC: It seems like trust is such an important part of what makes this co-leadership model work at the regional levels, at the office levels, and crucially at the CEO level. JG: I think its like trust combined with almost like an iterative dialogue. EB: I will say, to put out the vulnerable part of this, too, over the last year-and-a-half as weve been stepping into things, we both made mistakes. Weve had times where I should have read you in on that. Or said, Oops, I misread that situation. But I think where the trust is coming in is in the openness with one another and [acknowledging]: I made a mistake on that one. The trust lies in both of our intentions and both of our ambitions to do whats right for this organization. MC: Have you had co-leaders at the office or regional level where the pairing didnt work out? JG: Yes, and those are obviously delicate conversations because the people can still be valuable to the organization. We just have to help them see a new perspective on how they can contribute, where their value add is, and how that offers career growth opportunities for them. The interesting thing for us is that when the co isnt working, its not just something you see in th pairing, you see it in the office. It translates to other aspects of business. EB: When it works, it really can expand and elevate peoples opportunities to make an impact. But when it doesnt, weve learned to not let that fester. The more you just hope for it to go away, the less it goes away and the more it impacts other people. MC: Would you recommend co-leadership to other organizations? And if a company is thinking about either starting out with co-leadership or adopting co-leadership, what advice would you give them? JG: There are some industries where its probably a tough fit. We actually get questions from clients [about the model]. It has to be something that can stand up on the pillars of a strategy that is embedded in the organization. The thing we havent really talked about is that the co model also enables a level of exploration, for pushing innovation in a way that you know surprises people when we talk about it. When I was an office leader, we talked about [developing] a venture capital mindset, to encourage different thinking. If one person was trying to grow the business and delegated [different thinking], thats very different than if its owned by these two leaders, and they can touch it in different ways. We ended up creating these innovation funds, which were granted based on peoples ideas, which ended up going firmwide. EB: I think the co-leadership model has enabled really rapid growth, innovation, and iteration. I dont know that its something to put onto an established organization. But I think, particularly for a creative entrepreneurial organization that is looking to grow or provide a platform for [professional] growth for a really talented team of people, its a great model. JG: When I was visiting Elizabeth recently, I spoke at USCs [University of Southern Californias] business school, and the students were fascinated by the co-CEO model. You could just see the wheels turning because the students never thought about [the CEO role] that way. It was always the CEO as the singular visionaryand thats not this model. EB: Ego has to be put aside. JG: Absolutely. EB: If you come in with ego, it doesnt work. Does your company divvy up leadership roles? Are you a co-CEO or co-leader in your organization? How do you divide duties, and what are the skills and practices you employ to make the partnership work? Send your comments to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to share some of your insights in an upcoming newsletter dedicated to co-leadership. Read and watch: co-leadership at work Inside Netflixs unusual co-CEO arrangementand why it works Zola co-CEO Rachel Jarrett says you need this skill for a good partnership Is it time to consider co-CEOs?
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Generative AI transforms the way we work, but its impacts arent limited to what it can do. It can also teach us about language and communication. We typically think of hallucinations as sensory perceptionslike a sound or imagethat seem real in the mind but didnt occur in external reality. In the era of Generative AI, the word hallucination refers to a large language model that produces incorrect or fabricated information. But hallucinations arent just an AI problem, because inaccuracies are an equally common occurrence in human interactions. Most conversations contain hallucinations, and the corporate meeting is a space that is especially prone to that. Meetings are often where we tackle the most challenging communication tasks. Balancing priorities, working through clarifying questions, delivering newsthese tasks require the tools of real-time responses and nuanced inflection. Meeting hallucinations occur when incorrect assumptions derail conversations. These misunderstandings can lead to circular conversations or meetings that dont accomplish their goal. These hallucinations are a key piece of the puzzle of our meeting culture. And this is why many despise meetings even though they remain necessary. The concept of common ground In my subfield of linguisticspragmaticstheres a foundational concept called common ground. During a conversation, common ground refers to the information that all parties have established to be true. If information is in the common ground, you dont need to restate it. In my role as a data scientist at AT&T, we dont feel the need to say things like: this is an AT&T meeting, we are data scientists, or this is a work meeting. However, its fair to say that all of those assumptions are in common ground at any given time. Or do they? The challenge with meeting hallucinations occurs when you have mismatched common ground assumptions. One persons understanding of what constitutes common ground (e.g., the purpose of the meeting, the goal of the project, the best outcome of the discussion, the role of the meeting participant) doesnt always match someone elses. Meeting hallucinationsor mismatched common ground assumptions in meetingscan lead to conflict that diverts the focus. It can also mask the fundamental disagreement, which might not actually be about a specific solution requirementbut the goal of the solution writ large. Addressing meeting hallucinations will reduce the frequency of meetings, increase productivity in meetings across the board, and perhaps most importantly: will enhance the buy-in to your meetings. Here are some best practices to follow to overcome these subtle, hidden miscommunications: Reflect on common ground assumptions before a meeting Preventing meeting hallucinations starts with understanding what is in your own set of common ground assumptions. Before you begin a meeting, think through what you want to achieve. Consider what you believe to be true about the topics youre discussing. Reflect on whether all parties in the meeting share this belief. Boldly state the obvious at the top of the meeting No one wants to beat a dead horse. But its worth talking through relevant common ground assumptions with other meeting participants. This way, you can avoid unnecessary miscommunication and avoid wasting time. Whether the common ground assumption is about timelines, who owns the work, or the overall goal of a project, take the time to say the obvious part out loud. It might not be obvious to everyone. Identify possible communication gaps by restating the common ground assumptions When meeting hallucinations happen, they require you to recognize that a moment of conflict or confusion isnt always due to the discussion topic. If you feel like a meeting is going south, reset the conversation. You can do this by reestablishing common ground assumptions or flagging statements that seem to introduce a new common ground assumption to the context. Perspectives based on unrelated previous outcomes, rigid takes on a situation based on specific training, rushing to judgement without all the informationthese are common issues that many have with corporate meetings. Theyre also core drivers of AI hallucinations, and they are also lurking in our corporate culture. Meeting hallucinations might feel like a strange way to think about meetings. But once you apply it, youll find that youre finally meeting your colleagues where they are.
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