From Google To Brussels Chamber of Commerce: Leading Digital Change With Humanity

Forget buzzwords - this conversation digs into how AI creates real value only when it’s aligned to people and outcomes. With Thierry Geerts, former Google country director and current CEO of the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, we unpack the moves that matter: training every employee, cleaning your data, starting with low‑risk wins, and anchoring change on customer satisfaction rather than cost cuts.

We chart three practical waves of adoption-traditional AI for pattern detection, generative AI for content, and agentic AI for reliable task execution-and show where each wave fits. Thierry explains why GenAI headlines outpaced real business impact, how hybrid models outperform either ‑ or thinking, and why SMEs can move faster than giants when the CEO leads from the front. We also challenge a pervasive myth: technology doesn’t dehumanise by default. Used well, it frees time for service, creativity and relationships, much like previous revolutions did with electricity and mobile banking.

Expect candid stories - from Google’s “AI‑first” bet in 2016 to a Belgian bank’s culture shift - that reveal what separates momentum from motion. We talk enterprise lock‑in, compliance bottlenecks, and the underrated power of simple tools like Gemini and Copilot to build literacy before you invest in bespoke projects. The takeaway is clear: demystify AI, set guardrails, measure the benefits, and keep the goal human. That’s how teams become truly digital and more human at the same time.

If this sparked ideas for your roadmap, follow the show, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review - it helps more leaders find practical guidance on building AI‑proven businesses.

To get your ticket for the Future of Work conference in Brussels on the 18th June (and hear more from Thierry and a host of thought leaders and AI experts) visit - www.future-of-work.eu

Transcript

New Season Kickoff & Guest Intro

Thierry’s Path From Media To Google

Marc Curtis 0:04

Welcome to the Pioneers Podcast. We've had a lovely break over the winter period, and we're just gearing up for a new season podcast from a variety of really super interesting people. And we're starting off with Thierry Geerts, who I will introduce in a second, but have a really fantastic conversation with Thierry. Especially interested to hear his perspective on the role of AI in the workplace and how things have evolved over the last few years and why, in his opinion, Google is way ahead of the game in becoming the first AI first company in 2016. Hope you enjoyed it. So today on the Lyreco Pioneers podcast, we have Thierry Geerts. Now, Thierry is the CEO of BECI, which is the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, which you've been doing now for over a year now, I think. Prior to that, you were the country director of Google Belgian for almost 13 years or so. You are a published author of two books, most recently Homo Digitalis, which has sold a significant amount of um copies considering it's uh it's uh a business book, if I can, if I can call it that. And you're also the co-founder of B Central and uh Winter Circus, again, both of which are excellent institutions and very much on the radar from our point of view, from a startup perspective. So thank you very much for doing this. More than well. As I said just before we started, I'm gonna try not to talk too much, but I think maybe a good place to start would be tell me a little bit about your journey to where you started from, how you got into the into the world of digital, which you seem to have been in for you know a great portion of your working life, and and how that's led you to where you are now.

Using Tech For Business Outcomes

Thierry Geerts 1:47

In fact, I'm not a tech guy. I'm interested in technology, but not for the technology, it's for what it's bringing to business. Uh I started my career as a general manager of an industrial laundry company. So uh I did industrial laundry in the 90s, and on a certain moment in time, I had to send an email to the public company, which is an American company. And it was like a aha moment to say, whoa, it is happening, something in 95. Sending a mail was really bizarre. This is something that will be really useful and I need to master. And so I I rebooted my career to media, which for 15 years in the media industry, and then became a kind of tech evangelist, but not the technical guy, but how to use technology in normal business or to transform business to the internet, mobile, internet. And and then I sort of moment in time Google called me, and then um I thought, well, that's that seems a good idea. And I did the same thing in Google by understanding how technology works, but how you can translate that to non-tech businesses in in industry, in in banking, and in not only in the tech industry. And I think that's the interesting place. What can a human do with technology? How can a business be more powerful, more better customer service, uh, more happy employees, and more profitability by using this technology? And that's that's an art. Because if you are too early, let's say you were jumping on the metaverse, then you lost your money. Sure. In short. If you haven't experienced the Gen AI revolution yet, then maybe you're a bit late. So it's a uh not be too early, don't be on hypes, but try to understand the big trends. And I think that's fascinating.

Marc Curtis 3:29

So you've really been driven by the business use case for technology rather than coming at it perhaps from a technology, how do we fit it into a business? It's more about how, as businesses, do we need to benefit from the technology as it's evolving. So trying to be slightly ahead of the game, but but not too much ahead of the game.

Thierry Geerts 3:48

So I'm not the early adapter because the early adapters, when they talk to normal people, they are like a Martian. They don't understand. So, but you need to be there in time. And and I think that's the moment where I started to be interested. I've I I coded in the past, but I'm not a coder anymore. And now, if there's some new stuff, then the people are laughing at me because I'm struggling with new technology. They say, Ah, the guy from Google, the ex-guy in Google cannot use technology. And that's fine. You have to be fair that there is a lot of new things happening. You don't have to master them all immediately. And sometimes it's dangerous to master something too fast because they you think that's standards, but your customers are not at that level. And if you are too much advanced towards your customers, you can lose that. That's also a risk. So you have to stay in reality, but experiment with new technology.

Marc Curtis 4:35

And you you I guess you you're you start off a little bit from that perspective in your book when you talk about fear of technology as being something that's exploitable. How tell me a little bit more about that? Because what what you're saying to me now is that as businesses, we need to be aware of the trends, not jump too early, but not be too late. Where does the fear component come into that, do you think?

Thierry Geerts 4:57

How does that influence the whole humans are not made for change? We are uh our coding is as if done in history, and we were afraid of every change because it would keep we we would be killed by an animal. And that's uh that's a strange in those days when it's the change is happening fast. So if you don't explain technology to people, they are afraid of those changes, and then if they're afraid, they open for populism. So it's easy to say, oh, it was bad before, this technology is dangerous, people want to control your life, and then they vote populist, and then business don't thrive because we we need to have people that want to move forward. Um, a good example of that is that for the moment, when you want to, if you would need to lay off people, most of the people are using AI now. So you read in news every day, well, this company is laying up 50 people because of AI. It's not true, it's an excuse. They have to lay off people because they're not doing the right business or whatever happened. But it's a narrative and it's working, but therefore, you this fear for AI, and if you have this fear for AI, your employees will not want it to adapt those technology, which would make you more profitable. So it's very dangerous to use that excuse. If you start with an AI project, start with something positive for your employees and your customers before to start with cutting costs, because otherwise your the adoption rate will go down, and then you will not be able to use the positive AI in the future.

Transformation Not Disruption

Marc Curtis 6:28

When when you were at Google and presumably you were at Google when you're writing the book initially, right? So a lot has happened since then. And and and I think being being Google, you were often talking or espousing the virtue of disruption and how beneficial that can be. But now you've moved to a role where you're supporting, I would imagine, quite a few of very established businesses and and kind of more traditional businesses as well as kind of businesses that are evolving. How would you say your view or your perspective has changed, or has it changed at all?

Hybrid Models: Offline Meets Online

Thierry Geerts 7:00

Well, in fact, no, for different reasons. First of all, Meta was saying, let's break things. Yeah. Break things too fast, break things, yeah. And Google was saying we need to do, we have to reinvent ourselves. So digital transformation, not disruption transformation. And it's the combination of, for example, in the in the retail, Google has the best tool to combine real shops with e-commerce. And we we've always been discussing with retailers about the combination of their web shops and their shops, not by break your shops, do everything online, become Amazon. We don't believe in that. We don't believe that all shopping should be done in Amazon. We hope that all businesses will have an e-shop and will be able to have to experience the difference. And by create Google, I was saying, telling myself, I will I want to prove myself if I can do what I was telling my customers to a company that would run. And so I took this old school Chamber of Commerce, 300 years history, founded in 1700, and see if I can apply those methods to the Chamber of Commerce. And the answer is yes. We will not make a pure virtual virtual chamber of commerce, well, people will meet only online, but we have a nice office here where people can meet. 1,000 people are coming in and out of this building every single month, and that is increasing. We are probably going to about 2,000 people coming here, and that's in in parallel, we go from 17,000 people online to almost 100. That's the plan. Right. So it's not that it's cannibalizing. We need both. Some people want to come once or twice a year here and then follow some other things online. They want to have tools online, information online, but they want to meet on an event, or for next week we will gather with a new government of Brussels, they will come here and they want to see people. And so this digital tool is also interesting when you combine it with human advantages. And advantage is I want to still we meet here. But if people want to see this video, they are able to do that whenever they want from whatever place. I think that's great.

Marc Curtis 9:05

Yeah, I mean, I I'm very struck by the fact, and I think we've spoken about this before, that one of the sort of unintended consequences of the rapid adoption of digital technologies of social media and now generative AI is that it's it's forcing us to seek out the human bit. Yeah, it's it's and I had this conversation funnily enough with my wife this morning that we were watching gosh, I think it was some YouTube thing. As an advert came up and we were both sat there with an AI, and and it wasn't that we were able to recognize it was AI, but but what what was funny was that never before have have so many people sat in front of different types of media or content and had to ask the question, is it real? And and and that in turn is is making us seek out those experiences which can which have to be real, which as you say, it's about face-to-face communication, it's about being in a room with somebody. I mean, that's something I'm really fascinated by. How do you see that developing? Do you think that's a a micro trend, or do you think this is just something that's gonna continue to scale?

Thierry Geerts 10:13

It's an important trend, but that we have we overestimate the speed of it. If we have to be completely honest, today Gen AI hasn't changed our life. It's three years out, it's it's yeah, it's from a almost less than that, isn't it?

Marc Curtis 10:29

I mean, well, in terms of adoption by people, yeah.

GenAI’s Hype Versus Real Impact

Thierry Geerts 10:31

Yeah, it's adopted by people, but more as a gadget. Yeah, it hasn't changed fundamentally. Lyrical hasn't been completely transformed by Gen AI. No, not at all. Bessi hasn't been completely transformed by Gen AI. Most of the businesses have they're scratching the surfaces. You use some tools, you translate better, you do some summary of a big text, but it hasn't macroeconomically, no jobs have been lost because of that, and we haven't found a way to be really more efficient. Right. But if you looked at it over a period of time of 10 years, then it will be very different. So I still believe that the impact will be great, but it it's not in one or two years. When ChatGPT came out, then in a month's time there were 100 million users, and then in the media you could read this will change everything, we will need not need a CEO anymore because it will be ChatGPT and no ministers anymore, all strange things. What two years later, nothing happened. And that's the same thing with other transformation in the past. It AI is a third wave of digital transformation after the internet and and the mobile internet. If you look at the internet, it wasn't invented in the 95. But if in 2000 you were not using the internet, was not a disaster.

Marc Curtis 11:42

Well, in your book, you say that I think 19% of Flemish people felt comfortable using digital tools, and that's in 2019. Yeah. So do you do you think that figure has changed? Do you think that that that it's broadly the same? Do you think the people who are in were interested are probably the ones who are now adopters now, or do you think things exist?

Thierry Geerts 12:02

I think the the people are using more technology than they that they are aware of. So in Belgium, 95% of the people have a have a smartphone, they all use daily AI because it's full of AI. But if you would ask the people, are you using AI? the answer would be no, I don't use it because they don't use ChatGPT. Right. But when they use waste or when they use maps, they use uh they do a regular search, it's full of AI. So the awareness, use technology because it's so easy to use that you're not aware that you use technology. And then when you want to talk in business about technology, people are reluctant because they say, Oh, I don't want to use that. But in the private life, they just use it every single day. So we have to explain what it is, uh demystify, and then get into a better adoption. But it hasn't to be completely on or up. It's like they do the normal job, they start to use digital tools, and then as a company who try to invest in AI, they don't also harvest the benefits of it. If you just give the tools to the workers, they will just spend more time chatting with each other, spend more time with the customer, spending more time to write a meal, a meal instead of less. So you need to implement the tools, train the people, but also harvest the benefits. So you have to be sure that they have more work to do because it can be more efficient. Otherwise, they will just lose more time. Right.

Hidden AI Use & Adoption Gaps

Marc Curtis 13:27

No, absolutely. And and I and I think we've seen we've seen aspects of that as well, that you can it's it's almost like the promise of efficiency forces you to spend time trying to find that efficiency. And and and then by the time you've you've got there, you think, well, I could have actually probably done that in half the time, and maybe the result would have been slightly better. I am interested in because when we talk about AI adoption, we often talk think in terms of big companies, right? So we often think about well, Google obviously, but and Lyrico, I think, is a good example. When you've got a company of Lyrico's case, 10,000 people, and you can look at it and think, okay, how can we apply these tools across a company like that? What does it mean in terms of efficiency and productivity and so forth? But I guess the other side of the coin is in the SMB world where you've got companies with 10, 20, 30 people, is it is the journey for them going to be more profound? Is it going to be a different journey entirely? Where's the entry point for smaller companies?

SMEs, Startups, And Big Co Constraints

Thierry Geerts 14:22

A lot of different things. A startup will start immediately completely digital and completely AI. They will they will just purchase a laptop. Laptop will be fully AI driven, and they will never write any procedure that is the old school what they will directly start with that. So startups are 100% in digital and most of the time 100% on AI. Big companies are transforming to that with a lot of consultancy and and coaching, so it takes time, but they'll go it. In between are SMEs, existing SMEs, and then you see huge differences, mainly driven by the uh the CEO. If your CEO of an SME likes the digital, understands the benefits, is more agile than the big companies. So an SME can adopt fast. Problem is if the CEO doesn't believe in AI, he will not be, he will block everything. So nothing will happen. So the huge responsibility to the to the owner and CEO to make the SMEs the transformation. I see really all shade of grace in SMEs going from very, very agile, very motivated, finding and sometimes far more efficient things than big companies.

Marc Curtis 15:37

Well, they're they're not bound by the big the the uh the frameworks that they've got in place, the big ERP systems, or the big they can be a little bit more agile in terms of bringing in new problem of big companies is compliance, yeah, and silos.

Thierry Geerts 15:50

So you have compliance officers that are blocking nice projects, you have you have data that are sitting in a local kind of silos that you can't open, so and blockers that an SME, in fact, doesn't have because the CEO of a 20 people business will decide and will have ownership of all data, yeah, will just decide, take some risk on compliance because that doesn't matter. Nobody's really looking at it, nobody is looking and what their rights be compliance is made for big companies, most of them. We well, we have to be aware of cybersecurity and GDPR, but you can in that you can do a lot of things that are even big companies, are just so afraid of doing a small mistake that they complete.

Three Waves: Traditional, Generative, Agentic

Marc Curtis 16:31

And I and I guess there's also this other fall, and and and I guess you've touched on this as well, which is when we think of AI, we're thinking people automatically assume ChatGPT, Gemin, Gemini, Claude or whatever. They're thinking large language model, effectively chatbots. The big thing, the shift that we know is coming, or we're told is coming, is agentic AI, which from a business perspective, especially from an SME perspective, they probably don't have a view on yet. But that's where potentially the entry point for large companies and big corporations is. So I guess it that begs the question is is the large language model chatbot feature, is that just a the thing that we're doing this year? And it will wonder what we were doing in a couple of years' time. And and is agentic AI, is is there a version of it which is going to be coming to SMEs, to smaller companies? How how does that look when when when you're already talking about something which frankly a lot of people don't even really fully understand yet?

Thierry Geerts 17:31

So let's be clear there are three waves in the wave of AI. There's traditional AI, because yes, there's traditional AI, which is from 2016, which can recognize patterns in a lot of data. Then generative AI, which is creating something new, it's the ChatGPT, and then Agency AI, but it can create stupid things. So it's completely stupid. See, if we you ask a good question, you have a good answer. You ask a stupid question, you have a very serious answer, which is completely it's the confidence thing, is the biggest thing, isn't it? It's everything is delivered with absolute confidence. That's why we have agent AI, because that you cannot really use generative AI in business terms, it's risky because it can really hallucinate. So Gen D AI aims to have that under control and to have real-clear applications that are reliable with the technology of Gen AI. And so when those applications will be, let's say, done by big tech companies or startups and will be very easy to use for companies. So it will be like apps that you can apply on your business. And so, as easy that you have apps on your phone to do whatever it is that's take ways, a company will have kind of apps which are genetic uh agetic AI tools that you can just play, plug and play. Right. The benefits of AI are starting to be visible in companies only now. So AI has been the standard from 2016, and only 10 years later, companies can really say we have now benefits of implementing AI. So with the generative AI, it will take also five to ten years, and the AI, well, the the the tools will be maybe available with two, three years useful things. There are some things already, but not enough. So you see, you have to experiment with that, you have to understand what it is. But if you want to start with one thing now, it's to go for traditional AI. What are your data sets? What can you have as patterns out of that? What can you learn about your customers? So, first of all, digitize properly. Because I saw some companies coming to me. I want to go to AI, and then when I ask two, three questions, they they haven't done the digital work yet. You need the data to be able to use AI. So if you haven't done your digital work properly, you have to digitalize first, then you have to start to work with AI, traditional AI.

Marc Curtis 19:52

It's so funny to be thinking about traditional AI. It feels like an artisanal uh like a small man carving AI in a in a little factory somewhere.

Data First: Digitise Before AI

Thierry Geerts 20:00

2016, Google became an AI first company that was like this is the standard, and we went to the European Commission to make them aware of the potential risks and whatever, and they were like, Wow, will never happen. Uh and only when ChatGPD uh came out, then it was like big panic, right? But for us it was like old school. We're talking about that it's since 2016. So that's the funny thing about technology. That there are hypes, there are things that you see that that apparently the people are not realizing what's happening. But one again, AI is from 2016, it's 10 years old, and it's now the moment to get serious about the traditional AI.

Marc Curtis 20:37

And and I guess what you're saying actually is that agentic AI probably won't even look like AI to us when it finally does get productized because it will literally be a product that does a range of or a very specific thing, which will have AI sitting behind it, but we'll just be interacting with it, as you say, like Waze or email or or whatever. I'm quite curious, just going back to your book a little bit. So you talk about the fact that technology doesn't dehumanize, it makes us more human. And that's one of the core bits of your book. And without wanting to change tracks massively, I'm really interested to understand what your thinking behind that is and whether or not you still think it's true.

Tech That Makes Us More Human

Thierry Geerts 21:15

I'm more than ever convinced about that. Okay. And the reason is Trump is saying make America great again. If you look at history, it was not great. And even 20 years ago, it was not great. Going to 9 to 5 to work, to traffic jam, and then at work you had a lot of fruit tasks, a lot of administration. For banking, you had to go to the bank branch or go to work with PC banking, which is very complicated. So our life is really easier today than it was 20 years ago. Uh and so we have more times for we have more time for human interaction. We have more time for customers. Are we using that time? But the question is it's not a given that you will be. Become more human. So you can win 30% of the time without any problem by using digital tools.

Marc Curtis 22:04

Right.

Thierry Geerts 22:05

Then you can decide to go for 30% of your time on social media, do whatever stupid things, and then you make everybody jealous, and you start to be polarizing everyone, and you be don't become more human. You can decide to work harder. Well, that doesn't make you even more human either. But you can decide to invest in yourself. If you look at myself, I was a weekend dad. So starting to work on Monday morning, at the end of the Friday evening, and then on the weekend I was a dad. Thanks to digital tools, I'm not available during during the week. Well, now not anymore because they are out, they've grown up. But in the last years, I was really more available during the week because I could work from home, for example, for some days, which was impossible 20 years ago, and then be available to do whatever else. I invested more time in training, which made me more. And I invest more time in talking to entrepreneurs, whatever, which is something that I like to do. So I used this time well, and I became more human. And it's just that we are so used to what we use every day that we don't see the benefits anymore. When I was a student, they had to find a phone number, they had a lay the yellow pages.

Marc Curtis 23:21

It was like a I was I was literally telling my son about my I've got a 12-year-old son, I was telling him about it last week, trying to explain to him what a yellow pages were.

Guardrails, Policy, And Social Media

Thierry Geerts 23:29

He was like, I have I have still one at home that I cherish because I have to show that. So you were you were like to find the plumber, you were like pages of pages of plumbing in in an old book that you have to calling, whatever. So to to do my thesis, I had to go to the library to find books, and then the the information was hidden in a book. So it was you had to read all the book to find the two pages are interested. So if you to look at that, we are definitely more human today. I can access more information, I can talk to more people with the video conferencing is an amazing thing to have five billion people connect with each other. So if I would tell my grandfather that we can I can talk to five billion people, whatever on the planet in real time, and I can have on my phone all videos about I want to do the plumbing myself, I I will I find an how-to video, it's amazingly profoundly human. If you're aware of that and you are aware of the things that are not so fun, once again, a lot on social media is very negative for humanity. I think if you look at digital is a positive thing for humanity, social media is uh as definitely positive as but it's going nuts. But for businesses, I think that LinkedIn is definitely positive.

Marc Curtis 24:48

So if I can just push you back a little bit on that, I mean it's clear that digital technology definitely gives us the potential of having more human time. And and I completely agree. I think the COVID experience was horrible for lots of reasons, but my son was young when it happened, so it was fantastic. I got I got to spend more time with him than I ever would have done prior to that. So the potential is there. And then on the flip side, you've got social media, which is, as you say, horrible and brings out the very worst in people or or for whatever whatever's going on. I don't want to litigate that one particularly. So is it enough to say that the potential to be more human is there and then say, but it's up to you, or is there a way that we can create better environments to encourage people to take advantage of these?

Thierry Geerts 25:35

Oh, sure. I think that it's since it's not a given, society has a role on that. When I say society, companies, governments, and in Europe we have a lot of laws that are definitely good ones. We now have to implement them properly. So there are laws against values of social media. We now have to make them reinforce them, which that hasn't happened yet. The problem is that the populists understood the power of social media and took the power there, but that's not new. When the Nazi came on power in Germany in the 30s, the radio came up.

Marc Curtis 26:09

Yes.

Company Duty: Train Everyone On AI

Thierry Geerts 26:10

And the Führer was very great in in human communication, so in voice. And so the Nazis sold very cheap radio to the Germans so that the message of Hitler would be spread all around. And they were faster than the democratic people, and so they won the game when they lost the war. And so that's happening today with social media. So democracy is quite weak to understand the new technology, how that we have to train and educate the people to use that well, and that the populists are not the first one to get that up. But okay, that's that's society. Uh people are evil in a certain way, but I think that if we bring that back to business because we are well, no, I was gonna say, coming back to the coming back to to businesses.

Marc Curtis 26:58

I mean, clearly businesses have a have a have a role to play in the formation of society. We spend 50% of our lives at work. So without and and trust me, by the way, I would happily debate the the political ramifications of new technology. Yeah, but that's not true. But apparently, this is a business podcast, so we should probably stick to that. But but given that, what can and what should businesses be doing in that in that arena?

Thierry Geerts 27:23

So the the companies are the have the responsibility to train their people, and and so you really have to train everyone on AI today. It should have been done already, so that they understand what it is, the dangers of it, the positives of it, and then give them the tools that they can use. I was talking to a lot of people in companies, and the people that are not allowed to use AI are first of all quite afraid. They say, Well, it seems to be something important. My company, I cannot use it in my company. Will my company resist? Will it still be there in 10 years? So that there's a the people that I could say, oh, you can use whatever you do you want, play with it. Well, I don't think that's a good idea either, because then your copyright is out there and whatever. So the the good thing is to train everyone, everyone, not only people in marketing on it.

Marc Curtis 28:11

But is it is it just about training them how to use it, or is it because and I think we've had this discussion as well before, and and when I came to your excellent event talking about the impact of of AI and marketing a couple of couple of months ago now, and one of the questions I I was keen to hear an answer for was how what are the skills beyond understanding how it works and what the dangers are, what are the actual skills that we should be helping our employees and our you youth people our young people to to get now that will enable them to navigate this future?

Culture Change Through Customer Focus

Thierry Geerts 28:45

It's it's not a full course of two years or AI technology. That's I don't say that's useless, but that that will not work. It's evangelizing, demystifying, and handle the risks. And and that seems easy, but it's not. But if you have it well planned, it's like a few hours for employee. I will take an example from the mobile transformation. So Belfuse Bank was a traditional bank, not a good reputation, and then the the phone banking came up, and they decided to because they were having had a positioning problem and they were considered it as a bad bank because of 2008, they decided to use this mobile revolution as being a way to of revival. They treat everyone on digital. What is it? What is it for? How can we use it? Everyone, also for people from the front desk, people are older, and and they transformed their bike to the to mobile banking. Today they have the second best banking app in the world for Little Belgium Bank. They have an amazing image, and most of the employees did the transformation from traditional banking. They had to close down offices, uh shops, whatever, but it was successfully done by explaining everyone why it was useful, what customers could do with with uh with uh with the the bank the bank apps, and and and now we have to do the same but with AI. So you cannot explain exactly what will happen because nobody knows exactly what will happen, but you can put the people in a comfort zone to understand what it is, that they can talk to their colleagues about it, uh they know kind of vocabulary, and then what why it would be useful for the bank, why it would be useful for the customers, and then when tools reappear, they will be enthusiastic using that.

Marc Curtis 30:36

Sounds almost like I mean the Belfast example is you know, is it's historically and and and you know normally understood to be quite difficult to get a a large organization to change its DNA and its its kind of core belief in itself, right? Yes. You know, how the c the story that a company tells about itself is very ingrained and it it lives beyond you know the the four walls of the company, it lives in the people. So so to to to perform that kind of massive kind of cultural shift, obviously they were able to do it. It sounds to me almost like that's kind of where we are with the AI thing.

Thierry Geerts 31:10

The cool thing is that the main message of the CEO was not about we will transform to mobile banking. The message was we go for customer satisfaction.

Marc Curtis 31:20

Right.

Thierry Geerts 31:21

And then the in those trainings it was clear that to make the customer more happy, he would be able to use those tools. He could do go to a branch, but he was able at night also to do some things with the smartphone. Well, now it's obvious, but was not obvious in in 2011-12 when they did the transformation. So by putting forward better service to your customers, where technology can be used, then you can have a real enthusiasm to everyone. It gives you permission. If if today you say, come on, guys, we will all be trained on AI, but a lot of people will say, you know what, I'm too old for that, or I'm not interested, I'm not afraid of that. If you do the training on to say, well, we would want to increase customer satisfaction, and you will have a training on new tools that will be available to do those that I think you you can tweak the people that are afraid to interest. If you can bring them from being afraid to be interested, then you have to do that. Then the rest will happen.

Industrial Revolutions & Real Pace

Marc Curtis 32:16

And I get and I guess that's the the underlying thing is there is is like if this is where your customers are, that's where you need to be, right? Yes. And and and so to your point, which I think is a really good way of framing it, if you know, rather than looking at how the world is changing and saying we need to be part of that change or ahead of that change, actually, no, we're a company, most companies service customers of some kind. So you need to be where the customer is going to be. And and if that involves learning new tools, new ways of working, then an image of the book is we are not a homo sapiens anymore.

Thierry Geerts 32:49

We are more evolved species, we are homo digitalists. Everything that we can that we can have have as tools make us just more powerful than we were before.

Marc Curtis 32:57

Would you say we're almost, you know, and you talk about this a little bit in your book about what cyborgs are. And do you do you think that's kind of where we're already heading?

Thierry Geerts 33:04

I don't like the cyborg thing, because the cyborg seems artificial. Yeah, but this is profoundly human, right? So I really think it's an advanced version of the humans. That's why it's a it's an evolved species towards the uh homo sapiens, we know homo digitalis. Um, and then you become aware that your customers are homo digitalis as well. So uh, well, those customers are doing a lot of things on whatever device, so you have you need to be there. But you have also your employees that you that are homodigitalis in their life. If you use them as an homo digitalis in your company, instead of you know main machine like we did in the understroke times, you know, up to nine to five, always the same paperwork to do. That's that's not human. What is human? It's human interaction, is context, is creativity, is customer satisfaction, those are profoundly human events.

Marc Curtis 33:55

So, in a way, what you're saying is that you know, historically, technological advance has always been a story of making human beings fit with machines or technology, technological advancements. I seem to have forgotten how to speak English. Whereas this actually represents the probably the first time in history where we can tailor the technology to fit around the human being rather than the other way around.

Thierry Geerts 34:17

Well, it's the fourth time in history that we are using technology to improve our life. We had four industrial revolutions. Uh, first of all, the the steam power and and uh the steam power, and then electricity, then computers, and now AI data. So let's back on electricity. Um electricity has made us profoundly more human as well. The fact that we can have a fridge that you can the washing machine. The washing machine.

Marc Curtis 34:43

One of the biggest liberating inventions in history.

Practical Advice For Leaders

Thierry Geerts 34:45

More time for family, more time for other things. Uh but in the beginning times of uh electricity was very dangerous. A lot of electric electrocution because people didn't know they was dangerous. A lot of companies were just they just burnt because they had like issues with electricity, and then the fire came up. Um, and also you hired at that time you heard an electricity manager, so there was somebody that's doing electricity. Now it's just like a normal chief chief electricity officer. And now in companies we still have a chief digital officer, but in fact, the company should be completely digital. It was cool to have a chief digital officer in 2010, but in 2026, every officer should be a digital officer. So I think this analogy with electricity and and and digital and profoundly comparable. Yeah, it's total technology. We need electricity to be able to digital, so the the order is very logical, um, but it's not more than that. So let's not overestimate this effect. If I look at my life, you could say there was a lot of technology in the last 20-30 years, but the changes in my life are lower than the change of life my my grandfather. My grandfather was born without a car, life with or without a car, no planes, no electricity, no telephone, and two world wars. So I think the life of my grandfather was more shaky and and you know, with more fears and risks than our life. The experience that we have today is it's going too fast, too many things. If you get a distance, once again, Chipity, so far, macroeconomically, nothing happened. It's a it's a tool, it's cool, some people are using it, for some businesses it's it's annoying, but on the big size of it.

Marc Curtis 36:28

Well, going back to your your electricity analogy, I mean, when electricity was first introduced, people, as you say, you know, nobody really knew what it was for. There were lots of people kind of coming up with crazy reasons to use it in the home, you know, and and it sort of eventually flattened out, and we were using it for lighting, for powering devices in our homes, and and you know, and there we sort of stay for a while. We're kind of at that point now where everybody's plugging AI into their homes and getting electrocuted, yeah, you know, or not. Yeah, and very unuseless stuff, yeah, you know, and but in there somewhere there's a few use cases that will start to emerge, presumably, that will propel things forward. Yeah, um I've I've got two more final questions. Um they're sort of quite formulaic questions, you'll forgive me for this, but I can see that we're we're coming up to time and you're a busy gentleman. So if you could if you could give every leader, every business leader who's listening to this, um, one thing that they could potentially be doing differently next Monday, what would that what would that thing be? And it doesn't necessarily have to relate to AI or digital transformation, but probably probably that's what they want to hear. So if there's one one single piece of advice to give business leaders.

Why Google’s Bets Became Right

Thierry Geerts 37:37

Um if you want to uh make your business AI proven, you first of all have to train all your employees and suddenly start to use the tools that are available. Don't try to do AI by yourself and hire an AI engineer. Just try to train people and use the tools like Copilot or Gemini that are available already. Because then you can become AI proven in some months instead of having a full big transformator transformational project.

Marc Curtis 38:06

And that's interesting, that's an interesting perspective because there are a lot of tools out there, AI tools that can be used to build other tools. But but you you're you think we're maybe at the point now where we just need to understand what the potential is rather than investing too much in trying to build stuff ourselves or or reinvent the wheel. That's the next level.

Thierry Geerts 38:26

Once you are the if you have this basic AI basics, then you will understand what the potential of AI is, and then you can say, Oh, this is interesting. That I want to go deep in that. But if you start from strategy and say, Oh, I want to invest 200,000 uh euros in a project on AI, you will probably choose the wrong project.

Marc Curtis 38:44

Yeah.

Thierry Geerts 38:44

More than 50% of those projects are appealing for.

Marc Curtis 38:47

Yeah. So don't listen to consultants, is what you're saying.

Thierry Geerts 38:50

Well, take your own opinion and maybe as consultants, but don't let don't let the consultants decide for you.

Marc Curtis 38:56

Absolutely. Um, the final question I ask, and and I and I like to because I think it's a it's an interesting question to gauge you know what's what what people see as being inspirational in their lives and and the kind of person they are, but I always like to finish on one question, which is if there's somebody throughout your life who you've looked to as being a real pioneer, somebody who has either inspired you or that you've tried to emulate, who would that person be? And sorry for the surprise questions.

Enterprise Sales: Google vs Microsoft

Thierry Geerts 39:24

Yeah, yeah, that's um um and it's not because I worked for Google, but I really uh impressed by the fact that Google was always right in a just in a so did the search when they started with the search, the a lot of people were saying, Well, why do would you work on search? It's solved with their Yahoo. So you don't need to start a business on that. It's it's a visitor. Why did we say uh it was in fact already cloud computing? So in the 90s was already cloud computing when they purchased YouTube for 1.67 billion. Everybody was saying those those guys are nuts, but they understood that the web would go from text and image to video, and Google video was a disaster. So they they they they were honest to say we are not successful, this is a mega fence, we need to do something, and they purchased YouTube today doing 60 billion revenue, so it was a very cheap uh thing to buy. When they said in 2010 we will be mobile first, the revenue on mobile for Google was 5%. So it was crazy to bet all the company on the 5%. Then they said um we are an AI first company in 2016 also. So if you don't know, uh if you look at one company that was probably a good compass to have an idea on what you have to bet or not, then they still have a look at Google. And you still think they're they're making the right kind of decisions now? Well, yeah, well, they look at the transformation on Gen AI. Today they they uh they they they really nailed it. Um the difference between uh some other companies is that AI is really embedded in the company, it's not a separate division or another company which you have to purchase the the the computer power or whatever, they have it uh in in one, and AI is definitely something that you have to integrate in those tools so that the people can use those tools and easier to use. And it's not really I quit Google, so I have nothing to sell anymore. But if you look at the the Google tools, they're really very easy to use. Everybody's using Gmail, you don't need a training to use email. Um it's it's just as an interesting side point because because by the way, I agree.

Marc Curtis 41:40

I mean, Gmail, I mean it changed everything about email, really. Yeah, I mean the spam fill, I mean we forget how good the spam, and actually, this is one thing I would say to anybody who wants to be reminded how good Gmail is, go and look at the spam folder, you know, and and and recognize just how revolutionary that was back in the day, you know. Because what what I'm what I'm interested in though, and and maybe sorry, so it's an extra question on top of my final question is why isn't Google more present in the enterprise space?

Thierry Geerts 42:12

Why why there is it it's super clear in the uh the fans of Google, like Page and C mean they make brilliant products, and then those projects were picked up by the people without any marketing, in fact. So people were starting using search and maps and in ways you haven't seen a billboard.

Marc Curtis 42:31

Well, Gmail, I remember Gmail specifically, it was kind of this hot new oh, you can get an invite. If you get an invite, you know, and everybody was an invite, you know.

Thierry Geerts 42:40

So when in 2000, let's say 10 the uh the the workspace was ready, so they the old the suite with with spreadsheet and those things. Uh so this was so far much better than any other solution that the mindset was this will be used by everyone. But the problem is big businesses are purchasing through process, yeah. It's not that people are starting using it. You you need buyers and you need an IT manager. And they understand estimated how these buyers and IT managers were locked in with suppliers and didn't want to change.

Marc Curtis 43:17

And so uh and Microsoft understands how to sell enterprise fundamentally, I suppose.

Thierry Geerts 43:22

Microsoft is a is a B2B company, and in fact, Google is a B2C company with now amazing B2B tools, but not yet the and and I think that's it's nice, it's beautiful. In fact, they they believe in good products, not in a sales machine selling you a bad product that that works. But the problem is that today Microsoft is definitely with higher market share in in uh in business, and I think that's uh uh what it's definitely more efficient to work with other tools, but uh we'll see in the future.

Closing & Future Of Work Event

Marc Curtis 43:53

All right, Thierry, thank you so much for taking the time. Really enjoyed our chat actually. I feel that there's an awful lot more we could discuss. Maybe you should interview me next time and then you I can tell you about Hoppler. No, thank you so much. Really good to really good to chat to you. So that was Thierry Geerts and myself discussing some of the issues impacting the workforce and businesses around the world in the wake of these huge advances in AI technology. Fascinating conversation, and I really enjoyed it. So thank you, Thierry, for that. It was really super interesting to spend time talking to you, and I hope I get a good chance to do it again. If you want to hear more from Thierry, then I urge you to visit the Future of Work website and see if you can get a ticket for our future work event on the 18th of June this year in Brussels. There will be a link in the description of this podcast. There will be some amazing speakers this year. Thierry will be one of them delivering a keynote in the afternoon, but we have just a fantastic programme of workshops, speakers, roundtables, not to mention all of our incredible sponsors who will be there showing what their vision of the future work is for the next few years. See you soon.