Get Amplified
Get Amplified
How Google United 180,000 People with a Purpose Led AI Playbook
Forget the hype cycle, this conversation gets into how AI actually lands inside a company: purpose first, people next, technology last. We sit down with returning guest Darren Thayre from Google to unpack how a 180,000 person organisation moved from siloed product areas to a shared AI language, and why a calm, purpose‑driven message aligned everyone faster than any dashboard or revenue goal could.
We talk through the real mechanics of change: aligning OKRs across ads, YouTube, payments, cloud, and workspace around Gemini; replacing jargon with a common vocabulary that lets teams collaborate without translation; and setting a one‑way‑door commitment so the organisation stops hedging and starts learning.
Darren shares insights from interviewing 150 Googlers; what worked, what didn’t: treat AI as a decade‑long capability you embed, not a three‑year “program” you complete.
If you’re a leader wondering where to start, you’ll get a playbook you can use tomorrow. Run a one‑day purpose workshop to set ethics and vision. Ask every department for three use cases in three weeks:
1) An easy win
2) A six‑month stretch
3) A moonshot
Let teams become CEOs of their own journey. Put an AI assistant in every brainstorm to check feasibility, legality, and past art in the moment. Keep incentives and measures honest, communicate in plain English, and resist over‑engineering your transformation.
Subscribe for more practical conversations on culture, leadership, and the real work of making AI useful. If this episode helped you reframe your approach, share it with a colleague and leave a short revieaw. What’s the first small bet your team will try?
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Welcome to Get Amplified, the podcast about teamwork in the tech industry. Well, Vicky, it's been another hot minute.
Vic:It has, yeah. So we're gonna talk about AI today. And you may recall; never heard of it.
Sam:What's the name of it?
Vic:We recorded a podcast with Reddy Mallidi and I was looking back this morning thinking, that was about three months ago. It was nearly a year ago. It was October last year.
Sam:Surely we've moved on from AI by now. We're on whatever the next thing is, right?
Vic:But you know, when when we recorded with Reddy, I'd say I felt like that was a bit of an education for me because I didn't really know much about AI. Um and in the space of recording that to now, I don't think there's an hour that goes by that the team aren't using it in some way. It's really unbelievable how we have adopted it and the range of things that we're using it for. And it does feel like it has tripled the size of Amplified Group. I mean, and I know we're timing it, but just how we're using it in so many different ways.
Sam:But if only we could find somebody really intelligent and super lovely to bring on the podcast to sort of talk a little bit about the whys and wherefores.
Vic:Yes, so it is wonderful.
Darren:Unfortunately, you've got me.
Vic:It's wonderful to have Darren Thayre back on the podcast. And Darren is at Google, and you know, you think of Google now as leading the way in terms of AI. And we thought it would be great to have Darren on because I think Darren, you've been quite involved in this, haven't you, over the last year since we last spoke to you. So what can you share with us?
Darren:Yeah, it's great to be back. I this is three times. Am I a record holder?
Vic:You are, you are.
Darren:Okay, I love it. Uh that's only me and Vicky a bit or more. I love it. If anybody goes on three times, I'm gonna need a fourth because I love this record, by the way. I think we can permit that. Good. I'll be stalking you. Uh lovely to talk to you both again. I think like most people that are around the space of AI, I'm not a lifelong AI person. You know, I'm a technologist that moved into digital, and then I've been fortunate to work in Google that's been at the forefront of AI for quite a few years, and particularly the last few years. And I say this because you know, you get some people that say, I've been working on this for 20 years, and I always kind of question, have you really? Like, is that real? And there are some folks that have been doing research and you know, in DeepMind and other places that have genuinely been doing this for many years. But I think for the most part, when people say they've been doing it for more than four or five, I start to question the validity of it. So for me, it's been a handful of years, but it's been a hundred percent of what I've done in that time. And you might kind of wonder why do we take somebody that doesn't have an AI background and point him at AI? And if we go back to the prior conversations we had, I've always focused on Google's largest, most strategic initiatives, whether that be big strategic partners or big internal initiatives. And in this case, it's been a lot of work with our biggest customerslash partners who wanted to go on the AI journey, but had never done anything in this space before, didn't know how to embed it in products, how to monetize it, how to think about structure and culture and risks and how fast to go and how much is too much and how do we extract value from it, and all of those big questions that we're still trying to figure out in all honesty. I don't want to pretend I've you know got the silver bullet to it yet, but that's why you bring somebody like me in to point at those problems. I guess I have a passion for delivering great products, and so I've been at the forefront of how can we use this to change experiences. So it was lovely to hear your uh views on how it's impacted your business, Vicky. But then I'm just really interested in the human side of it, and I guess the final thing I'll say as an intro is you know, I don't think any of us have all the answers, but Google being such a big company and being one of the leaders in this space, I believe, I don't want to say the leader because that sounds arrogant. I believe there was this just body of knowledge, mistakes, but also great things along the way that we've done, and I've seen a lot of them firsthand. And I thought there probably will be a case study at some point, like a Harvard case study on how Google has pivoted to AI, because I don't know that it was an AI company a few years back, and I really believe it is now, and we can get into that. But how did it shift a 180,000-person company in the course of probably two and a bit years to get to where it is now in terms of behaviors, and then several years since then? So just a few years, how did it take such a big company, such a big pivot, and roll that out across the whole org in terms of processes, org, culture, training, OKRs? And like I say, we got a lot wrong. You know, there are things that we would do differently, but I think there's just a brilliant body of knowledge there. And it's a great reminder that this excuse of being too big really is an excuse as well. Like I don't buy that. That's been really heartwarming for me to see that a big company can do this, and so I take those learnings and I go to these customers that open the kimono and say, here's the good, here's the bad, don't do these things, do these things, and let's figure it out for you. Rather than preaching this is the Google way, every company needs to do it their way. So if you're a bank, telco, or uh you know, manufacturing company, you need to figure out your way of embedding these learnings. But it's just been an amazing journey, and hope we're going to get into all of that today and share some interesting elements.
Sam:That's fab. That's really interesting. I remember somebody who worked at Microsoft, and I can't remember who who it was telling me that people talk about Microsoft being an oil tanker that you're trying to turn around slowly, slowly, slowly because it's such a big organization. This person that I was talking to, who would remember remain nameless even if I could remember who they are, said it's not like that at all. It's it's like 150,000 people each in individual boats. You've got to you've got to get them all pointing in the same different direction. Um, so I thought that was an interesting perspective. So was that simple? Does that feel similar at Google?
Darren:Or well, you know, I have a lot of respect for what Microsoft has done, and specifically Satya, because that's another example. People talked about it being too big to change and how it had you know legacy products, legacy mindset, etc. We heard all these things. This is not you know me as a Googler bashing them, but I think Satya's done an incredible job of shifting that company to be very relevant and have incredible products and obviously be very well performing. And so I think there are similarities, but it tells me between these two companies, like it can be done. And when I look at it, I've not really thought about this before, but I think it takes a leader with intent and singular focus. And like this is uh I use the phrase one-way door or two-way door. If I think about the journey that Microsoft has been on and the journey that Google has been on slightly different, it was treated like a one-way door, like we're never coming back from this journey. We're not half in and half out, we're going in this direction, and everybody's going behind it. I've never worked at Microsoft, but that's the impression I get. Um return valve. Might be a lot of uh a lot of boats, but they're all swimming in the same direction or rowing in the same direction. And in in Google, very much so, it is very clear everybody is in the direction of AI, and then it's just about taking advantage of the resources and the help and the support to get on board and learn because I'm not alone in being relatively new to AI, most of the company is relatively new to AI. Um, but it's been incredible to see the shift.
Sam:Brilliant. I think I mean I've obviously followed Microsoft because of my connection through SoftCat, but it feels like Satya has a human element to him that maybe made him not necessarily easier to follow, but maybe people were more willing to follow him rather than be forced down a particular route, maybe the other leaders might have done. Do you feel that that's an important element?
Darren:Yeah, I um I think he's a really inspirational leader. I think when he talks, people listen. And it's a great example that there are different ways of having gravitas and brand impact, you know. But there's the the Balmer years, there's the people that come on stage and shout and scream. And there's nothing wrong with that, you know. I think it's it's um it's not my cup of tea, but being very British, but but it's um it's a way, right?
Sam:We know that how 80s style, really, wasn't it?
Darren:Yeah, and then and then I think we had this wave of product people, like Steve Jobs, obviously coming along. Elon, you would argue, is in this boat that like deeply passionate, incredible product people. And then I think there's just some deeply thoughtful leaders, and I put the satir in this this bucket, that are very calm, very measured, doesn't rush in, never hyperbolic, and people just listen when he talks. And I think you deeply believe what he's saying, and there's a lot of trust behind what he says. And so I think for any company, having that kind of figurehead in place, and it's not always got to be the CEO, by the way. I've said many times before I can have a change leader or a people leader that could manifest these behaviors better if it's the CEO, because that's the very top. Um, but I think it is important because I I've often said, you know, it's true for any of us on this call, we could go and get a job relatively anywhere. You could go across to a competitor or a different firm and get a job, and you'd get similar income doing similar work. I think people want to work with people that inspire them and that they like and that they want to follow and be taken on a journey. I'd love to say that I have anything like the skill of Satya or Sundar or Elon Musk. I don't, you know, and so I want to work for those people. I want to be in the orbit of those people to, you know, experience what they're going to create. And I think Satya has a very understated, high trust, high-integrity way of operating that I think can easily build a massive following. And so I think he's done an incredible job in that regard.
Vic:I think what you've just said there with following, and we've we had Scott Heron on here, gosh, it was a long time ago now, but I I quote him so often. So he he's just retired from being the CFO at Cisco, and he said, if you want to be a leader, people need to want to follow you. And actually, back to dinner last night with a new client, and we were talking about a previous leader that we'd both worked for, and the impact of that leader, and nobody he was demanding to be followed versus people wanting to follow. And we both left for the same reason.
Darren:Yeah, it's I mean, I think ego starts to creep in when you start demanding and start thinking that your title automatically allows you to lead. Yeah, I would say one of the things I'm most proud of in Google is whilst my title is very long, you know, I'm kind of in the middle of the org in terms of hierarchy, but I think I've been able to build a following because of the type of work I do. Yeah, and I just deeply care about this, and I deeply care about people's careers and them going on to you know exceed what I'm doing. And I think if you do that consistently over a career, you can't fake it.
Vic:Yes. Yeah, yeah. So you said something early on in the prep for this call about Google being multiple different businesses, and now the alignment that you have around AI. Can you just talk to that a little bit?
Darren:Yeah, so I've been in Google coming up to six years, and so there was a world just slightly before AI had kind of taken off, um, just before the pandemic. And I think Google, we all know this, but we don't think about it in this way, doesn't get enough credit for the collection of interesting businesses that has built/slash acquired in some cases. And so you've got YouTube, you've got the ads business, you've got Pay, you've got cloud, you've obviously got kind of Gmail, et cetera, workspace. And so there's all of these different collections of businesses. And when I joined, they're called product areas in Google. So, you know, ads would be a product area, cloud would be a product area. And one thing that I noticed that was really consistent across all these businesses was the culture. You could go meet somebody in Delaware or Osaka or Switzerland, and there'd be that Googly culture, how they behave, how they act. But what was very apparent to me is that they were all heads down focused on their core business that they worked in or product area they worked in. So if they were in advertising, their OKRs, as we call them, or metrics, were all kind of advertising focused. And if you're in cloud, they'd all be very cloud focused. Trying to find the overlaps between those was not so easy. And when you got people together, they wouldn't talk the same language because one person would talk an advertising language, another person would talk a techie kind of cloud language as an example. And so it was quite a challenge to bring these folks together. And then AI suddenly came about, and every one of these businesses, without question, their top priority now is embedding AI within their business. Still kind of a bit head down siloed. And so you've got the advertising people saying, what does this mean for advertising, both in terms of our business now but the future? You've got cloud building cloud services and kind of publishing Gemini models, etc. You've got GPA using it in payments, etc. And so you've got this commonality, and they are all using one product. They're all using our Gemini AI capabilities, which are owned by the cloud business, but it doesn't matter where they're owned, it doesn't matter where they come out of. And so uh and so you've got this common tool that they're using, happens to be AI, happens to be Gemini. For the first time ever, every single business is learning how to get great with Gemini. We just boil it down to like the specific product. Now there'll be different, you know, there'll be image generating models and video, doesn't matter which product they're trying to use. 180,000 people for the first time ever are all focused on how to understand what Gemini can do, how to use it in their business, how to talk to their customers with it. And and the message from Sundar has been very clear that we're going to continue to invest in Gemini throughout the business, and everybody needs to get on this journey for their own sake. That it's not a kind of stick versus carrot thing. It's a this is here to stay, this is the biggest innovation we've ever seen, uh, you know, the words that he uses, and huge opportunity for us. Everybody needs to get on board and be driving this rather than expecting it to happen to you. And so I guess, Vicky, to your question, we didn't have that common linkage before. We didn't have that common thing we were working on. Now, if you get an ads team and a cloud team and a pay team in the room and you say to them, what's your top priority? No question, it's AI. No question. And there's no question, it's Gemini, it's not a different type of AI, it's not using a different tool, it's the same Gemini, the same models, the same tools. You know, obviously we would be very good at deploying tools across them because we've got the cloud business. And so there's that commonality for the first time ever, which has made working together with these teams easier as well, because we've got like this language, this translation, and this common endeavor. And we're all, you know, still early in the AI cycle, honestly. And so ramping up and learning internally, but also what's good for our customers, what works, what doesn't work. But I've never seen more alignment in Google. And you know, it's been amazing to see how quickly it's happened.
Vic:Yeah, that's a very powerful force, isn't it, when you have that many people aligned.
Darren:You know, the the I've used it a few times, but having the common vernacular, like the vocabulary, talking about the same things, because I don't know the advertising world, I've never been in it. I, you know, I kind of broadly understand it. But when they start talking to me about buy side and sell side and the marketplace for arbitrage in between, like I start to get lost. But when they start to say to me, we're using Gemini to see if we can improve personalization and we're using this model of Gemini for creativity, I know exactly what they're talking about and I know what they're trying to do, and it makes complete sense to me. And so it's become like this unifying vocabulary for us, which you know, I think Sundar's done a wonderful job with making it clear everybody's on this journey together and everybody needs to move forwards. But I think AI has been a sort of self-unifying factor as well, you know. Like uh we haven't implemented a vocabulary, AI has just given us.
Sam:So it's been almost a way, it's it's been a a way or an excuse, a reason to break down silos. Because I guess you know, you have got the you know, YouTube was at one point a separate business. I don't know how I presume it's been really, really well integrated into the rest, but you you know, you're still gonna have YouTube people and you're still gonna have Gmail people and so on, aren't you? So it's yeah, it's an excuse to knock everybody's heads together and say, come on, guys, we're all pulling in the same direction.
Darren:It's a great point. I hadn't thought about it that way, Sam. I'd what I would say is it's like a hybrid of breaking down the silos because you could have said, let's break down the silos and make it all one company and everybody's in the same team and the same goals, but because they are fundamentally different businesses, you know, YouTube has a streaming business and pay needs to work on payments, they do have to have distinct things they focus on, and you know, of course, of course, yeah. But it's like this hybrid of we've got alignment across our core focus areas, across what we're all learning, what we're all working on, the language we're using, but then we go off and have our specificity and what we need to do to execute that. And so I think it's a really nice balance.
Sam:Interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, it's um that's such a big beast to get that message to. I guess when Sundar says to people, you know, we've got to go in this this direction, this is for all of us. He's almost thinking whether or not people are still within Google, because the opportunity to get involved in something AI related and learn about it and make a success of it and integrate it into whatever product stream you're involved in is going to be essential for people's future careers, whether whether they're still within Google or whether they're not, presumably.
Darren:AI and the right. Yeah, I will say Sundar is unbelievably purpose-driven. Really deeply in his core, if you see interviews about him, he'll talk about he wants children to stay in school and have access to the same resources everywhere. He wants women to have the same rights. And so in his core, he's very purpose-driven. So when he talks about AI, he often says there's a responsibility on us to do this right and to continue to learn and to put this in the hands of people safely everywhere in the world. And so he says, like, you know, for the anybody that's nervous about it or thinks it's, you know, it's not going to be used in ethical manners or you know, it's going to threaten our job, he said, like, come on the inside and help us get that right, rather than being on the outside throwing rocks and and almost being somewhat ignorant to it. So I think I, alongside so many other people, follow what Sundar's saying because of that purpose-driven view. You never hear, you will never hear people say we can make so much money from AI. That I mean, that's probably the fastest way to get fired if you're in Google because that's yeah, you know, hopefully that's a byproduct and it's still early. That's it.
Sam:You know, in theory, if you do the right thing, the rest should follow, I guess, is the hope. Because if you do the right thing, you'll construct a product that is universally useful. And if people use use your product somewhere down the line, there'll be a way to monetize it.
Darren:You know, I I don't want to say we have an unfair advantage because that kind of sounds uh you know the wrong phrasing, but we have many businesses that have billions of users already today, before AI, and so now those many businesses are getting access to AI. So there's billions of eyeballs across these different businesses every day. And so I think for us, we're fortunate that there's many ways for us to monetize AI. I know we're not going to go too down, too far down the monetization path today, but for us, there's there's advertising, there's selling cloud services, there's Gemini as an app, you know, there's you know, there's there's just many ways for us to monetize it. And so we don't worry about that so much as about if we can deliver excellence and a great product and high trust and learn what works and doesn't work, back to that kind of product market fit thing that we've spoken about many times. Yeah then then we believe that just you know there'll be many ways for people to make money outside of Google and for Google to also make money along the way.
Sam:What what do you think? Sorry, Vicky.
Vic:No, I was I was gonna say sorry. I just want to come back to the purpose thing and relate it back to what we do. So, you know, our our formula for great team experience and speed of execution starts with purpose, and we've had multiple discussions because when we work with a team, we actually start with the trust piece because you've got to have the trust to be able to get everybody aligned around the purpose. But in in the bigger picture, if you the reason you've got people in the room in the first place is the purpose, which is why purpose is at the start of our formula. And if you haven't if you've got alignment around a purpose versus just focusing on the number, which we continuously see sales organizations do, it's no wonder people are getting burnt out.
Darren:Yeah, I you know we when we pivoted towards AI, there were a lot of salespeople that said, Well, am I gonna make my number? You know, are we gonna make money from this? And the market at the time, if we recall, was saying our advertising business was gonna die and Google was not gonna survive, and all this noise was it was very noisy, in probably not a very positive way, like in terms of the market noise. And I just remember Sundar saying, look, this is an enormous opportunity, and I don't want to put a dollar value to it because it almost dirties the opportunity for man and womankind and society. But what I'll tell you is that we're gonna try and do this right, we're gonna do it at scale, we think we've built the right to do this at an unprecedented scale, and we believe that we've got to do it to stop other people doing it wrong almost. And so we've got to show the way that it could be done. And so many sales folks just went, wow, you still haven't answered my question about sales plans and comp, but I'm getting on board, you know. Like I'm gonna take this leap. And for many of them, it's been proven to be a great journey to be on for their careers, their learning. And already we're seeing, you know, many people are doing really well in terms of comp and other things because you know we've got this kind of volume and movement now, but it took that purpose at the beginning, it really did. Otherwise, it could have been a very technical conversation. You know, we could have led with Deep Mind and LLMs and why we have the biggest network and blah blah blah. None of that inspires you, right? You want to try and change the world, you want to have an impact that you can look back and tell your kids about and be proud of.
Sam:Do you think Sundar's sense of purpose is an echo of the original Google do no evil motto that people sort of felt had gone by the wayside a little bit, had stopped being talked about. Do you think he's resurrecting that?
Darren:Um, so I guess maybe not explicitly. I don't hear that phrase anymore, but what I will say is Sundar's been in the business kind of a really long time. I don't know exactly, but it's 20 years. Um, okay. And so um so he has grown up with the business in many regards and was there in the very early days and was a product manager, right? And worked his way up. And so he was around for a long time with the original founders, with that original culture. So, what I would say is Sundar's got a really interesting balance of the original culture and beliefs, but also brings his background of a pretty humble beginning in India and kind of working his way up to this position. Um, and so I think it's in his DNA as well that I remember where I came from, I remember how I got here. He often talks about a few moments of kind of sliding doors moments that could have gone the other way and he would not be, you know, in this kind of position, in this place, running this kind of company. And so I think he has a great deal of personal humility around the journey and how it could have easily not been him. And I think if you couple that with the original founder's beliefs, and by the way, it's well known that Sergei is back in the business because he's so passionate about AI, he's not running the business, Sandar runs it. So you've got a founder that's back in the business now, as excited as they've ever been around this new opportunity. So I think all of that together means it probably has been revitalized, and I think it's lit a fire under these people to kind of um be prouder than ever of what could be achieved in this company if they do it right.
Sam:That's interesting. That's yeah, I um you know that kind of culture, direction of travel, purpose, everybody pulling in the same direction, yeah, very dear to my heart from my my soft cat days because that was and from the outside appears to still be the the culture within soft cat. So um, you know, fantastic that that's the direction of travel there, and it's it's it's really interesting to see because this AI thing is a massive shift, isn't it? It's it undermines people, it makes people nervous. Any change of that sort of ilk is scary to people. Um, you know, you talked about compensation plans and so on. How you know, how do you get people on board when they're they're the way in which they're paid? Which yeah, okay, so most of us, I'm sure, work for love rather than money, right? But but people are people are very interested in in, yeah. I know you do, Vicky, but it's your it's your business. But you know, people are very interested in what they get paid and how they get paid, and the transparency around that. And how do you how do you drag people down that route?
Darren:What I would say is there's been a lot of messaging in Google around the shift to digital and the shift to mobile, and how we believe, and I certainly believe personally, that this is a bigger shift than those. And that's saying something, right? Because if you think about how profound digital was for us, I mean, what company is now not digital and which part of a business is not digital these days? And mobile, I mean, my gosh, these days, just like we I can't live without my mobile. And so if it's even half as big as that, it's changing generations here. And you know, the leaders in Google believe it's two or three times as big as that, and so and it's hard to articulate what that means, and people sort of think that's hyperbolic, but I guess at the beginning of digital, you probably couldn't have articulated digital either. And so so, but going back to your question, Sam, I think what people are saying, certainly in Google, is I buy into this being as transformative as mobile and digital, and I buy into the fact that Google has a right to be one of the leaders in that space, at least today. You know, it hasn't got a divine right, it has to keep delivering, of course. And so this feels like a really good place that is clearly leading in terms of models being released and the amount of AI, et cetera. And so it feels like a safe bet if you're an employee to say like this seems like a good place that's purpose driven, that's at the front. So I think that's how people reconcile this.
Vic:I just wanted to say so you're you're talking Darren very generally about the feeling inside of Google. Again, when we were doing the prep for this, you spoke about the fact that you've done so many interviews internally as part of your job. So can you just talk to that a little bit? Because I think that kind of explains why you can say the things that you're saying.
Darren:Yeah, sure. So you know I'm more of a consultant by trade than a tech person. Most of my career probably two thirds was in consulting in in transforming businesses. And so in my heart that's what I am you know I'm best served when you put me in front of a CEO or a bunch of leaders that want to go into the unknown. And so in this case common scenario is a CEO says Google, we're really strategic partners come in and help me figure out what this journey looks like for me. And it would be very easy for us to come in and say well the answer is Gemini or the answer is a Google product you know or the put all these Google products together. But the truth is we've said this before can have all the technology in the world that doesn't turn you into Tesla or to Apple. I mean if you think about it think about Netflix incredible company they're 100% on the cloud which means in theory we three could get together today and start a competitor to Netflix and we'd have access to all the same services they would. We could start it right now, but we're not going to have a business like Netflix, right? That's just not going to happen. And so technology isn't the answer. Otherwise we'd all have these businesses. And so I was a firm believer that showing up with our menu card of tech is definitely not the right answer and not in the spirit of how Google operates and not really the problem they're trying to solve. Because the problem they're trying to solve is how do I grow? How do I remain relevant? How do I make sure my people get aligned? How do I deliver excellent experiences? The tools might get them there, but it's only part of it. And so knowing that we didn't have the answers but that I thought we'd been on this wonderful journey, I wanted to have hard evidence and hard experiences to tell people about and so I I did this survey I interviewed about 150 Googlers across different businesses, different countries and you know the the the high level question was you know what have we done well over the last few years? What have we done badly? Is there anything that stands out? And is there anything that you would recommend to a customer that was going on the same journey? It was pretty simple, but same sort of questions. And I just got back this really interesting set of answers that I pulled into a pack that I now take to customers and I say you expect me to talk about cloud or Gemini. I'm going to talk to you about how we need to go back to purpose, how we need to fix internal comps, how we need to think about um you know business planning, how we need to think about investing long term because typically when you do something new these days you want a return on investment in three years forget that for AI that's a fallacy. You know you need to be thinking much longer term. But also things like you know with digital the shift to digital once it was done you could kind of tick a box and say right I'm now fully digital whatever that means you know you sort of know about your processes and your website and your apps etc but what I learned from these surveys is people think AI is going to be with us forever now and is going to keep changing. You know if you imagine the progress you've made in just a few years imagine 10 years from now but it's a moving target. And so it's not like digital in the regard that you can't take a box and say I'm done. It's not finite. And so if it's not finite then you have to take a different uh horizon of investment and it's not like a three year jam it in do it as fast as you can digital transformations are massively disruptive and not always mostly not good frankly. And so if you have this you know kind of perpetual horizon then you can be more measured with your investments maybe even slower with them frankly but no they're going on probably forever and you can not feel like you're late or that you're going to make decisions because of FOMO and be knee jerk but make the right decisions. Make the decisions that will change the company forever. And so these were some of the learnings that came out of the study. And the biggest ones for me I think were around aligning the giant company getting everybody behind a purpose getting everybody aligned on OKRs making it clear this is not a scenario where we're one foot in and one foot out and maybe we'll go backwards if this doesn't work. We're definitely going in this direction those kind of things and translating that into a set of tasks and what you can do to replicate that I just found that to really resonate with leaders and sure by the way you can use Gemini but like that's when in the context of what I've just said that's like the least of your concerns. We'll get to some use cases at some point but I often find that's where leaders start at the moment they're like tell me how I can use it right now and I say to them whoa whoa I wish I had a remote control here but I often mimic pausing them and I'm like I want you to pause listen to me for 45 minutes and if you still want use cases I'll send somebody else in it's no worries and they never want use cases at the end they want the bigger transformation.
Sam:Yeah this is a bit like when um yeah in my Softcat days maybe maybe 10 maybe even 15 years ago we a customer would say right we want to talk about cloud the CEO's read about cloud in the back in in BA highlife magazine in first class on his trip back from New York or her trip back from from Kuala Lumpur or whatever. And they've they've said we need to go cloud so can you come and talk to us about cloud and I take a deep breath and I go here we go again and I say right you know this is not about cloud this is about what's going on in your business and how you know you need some technology that's going to support that direction of travel and how do you consume it and but actually let's start with the business you know it's similar similar to that it's it's when you go into talking to people about AI to say right I'm going to implement AI is the wrong thing to take or wrong the wrong tack to take it's more you know what what do I need to do to improve my business and therefore how can AI support that and underneath that which technology platforms are out there that might be most appropriate?
Darren:Yeah and one thing I'll say we probably overengineered digital transformations and I'm guilty of this you know like we we designed these programs that were so complex nobody can understand them you know do you do you remember sitting in town halls and somebody would talk to you about the digital transformation and felt like you were sitting in an MBA course you know and this is just talking to you about oh the jargon and if if you can't understand your own company's plan what chance have you got of executing it and so when we eventually get to use cases with customers I am not that smart and so I dumb it down so much and I say to them I think you need to put the power into every single employee's hands and they need to be the CEO of their journey. And so rather than you forcing this on them with some heavily designed program I want you to send a message that over the next three weeks every single department in your business needs to go and think of three use cases in their area one that's kind of near term and sort of a no-brainer easy one that's like a might take six months and one that's like a moonshot and they need to submit those and we want every single department to do that without any help which means they've got to use tools they've got to learn they've got to study they've got to play with some things and we get all these objections like oh I'm not technical I can't do that well you can use ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever your tool is to help you for a start but you must have inklings of ideas of how it could be used in procurement or finance or creative and so on. And so you get your use case set within three weeks more use cases than you could ever ever need. But then I go a step further and say well do you need to set up a digital transformation style program now to roll those out I feel like you could just say to each department go work on that low-hanging fruit use case the the one that's quick and easy and if you need a bit of help let us know but otherwise just crack on and you'll probably won't get it right at first but imagine the learning if everybody in your company does that and so I think we just overengineered things. I was definitely guilty of this I think this bottom up groundswell of and by the way if you do what I described with the use cases suddenly every person is doing some learning without realizing it. And so fast forward six months everybody doing a few use cases you've got a company that suddenly is quite snappy with AI and knows what they're talking about and has tried it and failed and you know figured some things out and you've got a groundswell of usage.
Sam:And how how on earth can you digitally transform your business or apply AI to your business if you don't understand your business and the processes within it.
Darren:And you know you talk there about low-hanging fruit but it surely it's the same with AI right you know you're gonna start off with using AI to um to do the boring stuff the basic stuff and build confidence in it yes I mean I lead an innovation team and you know one of the things like we do a lot of brainstorms you know just like uh design thinking style things and so now I've banned we'll never do a brainstorm without Gemini being digitally in in the room somebody will be using Gemini while the other humans are brainstorming and that's just such a simple thing. So I'll say like um think of ideas for this use case or this problem or this scenario whatever it is that we're brainstorming we'll throw that at Gemini and I'm not saying Gemini will come up the best ideas come up with some novel ones sometimes but during that brainstorm we've all had those moments where you go oh wow is that possible I think that's been done before I can we make money is that allowed in this market all these questions that historically you've had to take offline and then go and do some kind of study around instead we've got the person using Gemini in the room that can be like let's just Gemini now like is it legal? Is it possible? A real example of how we're using it yeah yeah like it's such a simple example I mean like why would you not be using it for brainstorms I'm slightly worried by the fact that you talked there about Gemini and then you talked about the other humans in the room and so it sounds like AI has become sentient in Google oh I just mean somebody has to sit there and talk I know I know I know I'm just yeah it just made me just made me chuckle it's just I think if you get good you know I hate the term prompt engineering because I think it's really an overhyped phrase but if you get good with prompting and anybody that does enough prompting will get good with prompting you can even ask Gemini or ChatGPT give me a good prompt yeah and you can ask it really creative things. You know if if we were starting an orange juice business right now and we're brainstorming on that I think you'd put a prompt into Gemini that would be something like I want to know the last five businesses that have launched in the orange juice space and I want to know what their weaknesses are and where there's a gap in the market and the personas they're targeting and how I can find a niche either in between them or something that would disrupt them. Like I think you can be super specific with the question you're asking rather than just let's come up with a new orange juice idea you know and so I think you can do things that humans would struggle you know if I threw that question to you folks or you to me that's really hard to know on the spot. You'd have to go away and do a bunch of studying. And so I think you get to a different outcome really quickly but I just you know are we going to be replaced by robots anytime soon Google doesn't believe that I don't see it. I think we're so far away I honestly feel like we're at step one of 10 plus steps in terms of AI yeah maybe more than 10 honestly but let's say step one of 10 in terms of AI rollouts but it's an and thing rather than an all thing. I think humans have to get on board not be ignorant not block their ears and pretend this is a problem or going to take their jobs get on the learning journey because you know I I was doing a brainstorm the other day and there was a lady in there that was so proud she kept telling me her age which was an odd thing for a stranger to tell me she was like I'm 67 and I'm using chat GPT this is so cool and I was just like anybody that leans in can do this you know I think I do think learning a lot of the new digital ways of working was challenging if you are not very techie or have been in the workplace for a while but learning how to prompt anybody can do it.
Sam:Anybody so we've probably Derek taken up rather too much of your time already and we should start to bring this to a close but do you think you could come up with some sort of a summary for our our listeners of just just some basic advice for getting started and thinking about these things yeah I'll give a few off the top of my head in no particular order.
Darren:The first is I believe that purpose becomes more important than ever for AI and maybe it should have always been at the center of everything we did but it it hasn't been for most firms and the temptation will be to spend 10 weeks on this or hire a consulting firm I think that's completely the wrong thing to do. Get outside advice by all means but if you aren't kind of owning the creation of your purpose when it comes to thinking about AI it's it's kind of worrying I also don't think don't overengineer these I I wouldn't spend even eight days I I'd get a group of purpose driven people that care in a room for one day and I would brainstorm what should our purpose be when it comes to AI? Like what is our ethical standpoint? What's our vision for it? And once you've got that I think everything after that can hang off of that and so that's the first thing and I just want to I can ask every CEO do you have a view in mind of AI ethics and your purpose and how you want to be perceived by the market and employees on this and they don't have an answer. And so this is a day worthwhile invested. Second thing I would say is pause on rushing to use cases and first think about what would need to change in your company for you to become an AI company if that's your ambition. You know in many cases it is your ambition to be seen as an AI bank or an AI powered company or an AI lead or any of the above what does that mean? And if you're honest with yourself it probably means you need to change everything the way you communicate your structure how you measure how you invest. And so if that's true for Christ's sake act that way don't suddenly chase some tech initiatives because tech initiatives alone are not going to give you that big change you need. Yeah what I would say with that is and we've mentioned this before on the on the conversation if this is around with us forever there's kind of no rush in a way now it doesn't mean don't do anything for three years but you know you don't need to rush and get this done within two years. You could spend you could say this is a 10 year journey even but get on the journey and be very deliberate and do it at the right pace but communicate communicate communicate and yeah I remember sharing a stat with you a while back that if you put people at the front of your program at the the purpose of it the reason you're doing it then you have a much higher chance of transformational success. I believe that can be true with this as well. It doesn't matter about the technology whether it's AI or digital or cloud it's putting your people at the front of this and so figuring out what does this mean for your people is my advice.
Vic:And then last can I just just pause you on that one before you go on to the first one because what you were just talking about there so I am eternally grateful to you for introducing us to switch and the model and we are using it with so many clients so that change framework but what you've just talked about there because I'm thinking about AI with switch is is get on the journey you know where your purpose is so you know pointing to your destination of this is where we're going but it's shrinking the change isn't it it's get on the journey and just start making some small changes.
Darren:Yeah and digital you could look to your right and your left and say well our competitors are doing this we need to look like them we need to be like them with AI I don't think two banks need to look the same necessarily they could go down very different paths of how they adopt or don't adopt and how they use it. And so I don't think you need this FOMO or this we need to do what our competitors do.
Sam:I think create your own journey the right journey don't rush it break it into smaller chunks put people at the front of it I guarantee you win every time yeah yeah solid yeah it's um you know it comes back to and we've done this a million times with tech throughout the years or throughout my years in tech at any rate you know it's not technology first it's people then process then technology and you know you you said it in not so many words Joe Bagley said it's times that we've had it on yeah you know it any impressive technologist doesn't start with the tech the tech is the last thing and there we and here we are again at people yeah yeah exactly that yeah so Darren just before we go you know you know you're probably running out of books but do you have any any recommendations maybe even in this sort of arena would be particularly helpful but anything that you think our listeners might find useful yeah you know what it's a challenge in this space because there are not that many great books I've found so far and they're out of date do you say they're out of date really quickly and then you get people um like Eric Schmidt and others that do these great books that are quite philosophical and deep around the future of AI.
Darren:I personally struggle with what do I do with that? It's really interesting but it's like hard to use it. And then at the other end you've got techie books and I'm like I can't understand this you know there is a book I recommend that I think is really practical. It's a book called the AI Leadership Handbook at AI Leadership Handbook. It's got a subheading of a practical guide to turning technology hype into business outcomes which is very darren in what I focus on. It's got an author called Andreas Welch hope I'm pronouncing the surname correctly and what I like about it is it's quite tactical in many respects. It's not the book that's going to inspire you about the future and it's not the book that's going to tell you where AI is going uh years from now etc it's a book that's going to talk about frameworks for leadership how you get alignment stakeholder buy-in uh how you get momentum how you help humans to get over their fear and how you deal with behavioral change all with AI in mind. Oh wow relevant to what you folks do. Yeah yeah and it's you know I struggle to find it because you know not one of these big name authors you know not been a CEO of a tech company but super relevant and I use the frameworks all the time so now what I do when I start a transformation is I give a copy of this book to every one of the people on the journey super easy to read and just very practical. Brilliant.
Sam:It almost sounds like the underlying tenets within that book could probably be acquired applied to any form of change not necessarily the adoption of AI. Clearly your author's looking at it through an AI sort of a window but sounds like a really useful book.
Darren:Yeah I think AI hasn't completely changed the way we change firms that's the bottom line right like we sometimes think of it as it's so new and so different but the truth is humans haven't fundamentally changed company companies haven't fundamentally changed we just need to not lose our heads with how we bring these two things or three things companies humans and AI together and I think the book does a really good job of taking time honored frameworks dusting them off and saying how do we need to tweak them for this journey and it's just really easy reading.
Sam:Brilliant thank you. Yeah time honored frameworks there's nothing new under the sun that's what they say love it. That's brilliant nice one thanks Darren well we will look forward to having you back on the show at some point in the very near future I'm sure uh to dispense more pearls of wisdom for us. And it just remains for me to say thanks as always for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified group your comments and your subscriptions are always gratefully received and we'll see you on the next one.