Introduction: AI’s Transformational Moment

We are actually firmly in that future, that AI will replace companies that fail to adapt. We're firmly there. That's just facts right now.

And this idea of company transformation isn't a new thing, right? We've been transforming all the time, evolving how we work.

From Social Media Shifts to Remote Collaboration

In fact, I just remembered on the way up, in about 2010, I was part of the team that took Shell onto Facebook. Around the time when Vodafone was doing customer service on Twitter. like totally transformative moment in time and Qualtrics was doing the sentiment analysis and even more recently 2016 I remember when we scaled

our team to New York with our first team in New York and suddenly we looked at each other and said maybe we should invest in that product zoom maybe we should have video calls maybe we should invest in having better communication like things are changing all the time but actually what's very different about

Why This Wave Feels Different

this moment of time it's very confronting and I say confronting what I mean is for the people who have this opportunity to make the most of this incredible incredible technology it's in everything it's in every conversation

they're having with their family with their friends in work it's on social media it's the expectation in the office they can't get away from it and also

this massive massive massive potential and opportunity comes with this absolutely complete ambiguity where where actually is this going what is the actual potential how far can we go with this and how long is it going to take to

get there like actually nobody in this room can answer that and actually you might see some people try to answer that but they don't know the answer right and

Facing Ambiguity: Building High-Performance Cultures

so how do we that's what I want to talk about today given that ambiguity given that genuine genuine reality that we're all in how do we solve for that to create a high -performance environment to create the culture and mindsets that

that allow all of our teams to thrive and get to a place where someone can jump up like Stefano and go look how I use AI and how it really transforms how I think about my work.

The Promise vs. Adoption Gap

So just some basic top line stats here, brilliant report here from the OECD on the potential, it literally proves out the potential, it's from June, it's months ago.

Specific data points here on some of the areas we know for sure AI can help us with, like just facts.

right and and then we get to this kind of McKinsey level report and we're talking about like despite the fact that we know AI can do so much 1 % of leaders are saying that actually they're deploying let me get away deploy the deployment is as mature as they want and even if you ask a company like there's a

study on Zapier who wouldn't be one of the best evangelists and actually have like transformed how they work and what they can do and how they can promote our our own AI adventure, they say they are like a three out of 10 in what they're doing in AI.

So we're so early in that journey, and yet we're all ready to invest all this money.

What Drives Adoption—and What Blocks It

But what's going to drive the adoption? What's going to actually help us get from 1 % to that 100 % of that investment and that money?

And what right now is blocking the humans? And that's the question that is actually being asked more and more as we invest more into AI and into our teams and yet we don't see the conversion to value.

Now a lot of people in this room are going, but Marina I've seen the conversion of value, I literally am building it right now.

It's not really, there's also people in this room who are at the start of that journey.

Start With Humans, Not Processes

This is a brilliant quote from Joshua Volley, the CEO of Mindstone, he says, technology does not adopt itself. And the point there is

really when we're thinking about AI adoption and actually expanding our influence with AI if we're coming from the technical teams and non -technical teams as well.

We think about the human experience. Start with the human. Don't start with the process.

Start with what does this mean for you and how can I help you succeed? And what are the things that are blocking the humans?

Leadership Sets the Pace and the Norms

Often it's the leadership. Fundamentally, at a leadership level, if we're not getting the expectation set that what AI can do and let's push for it, the teams aren't going to be able to deliver on what's possible.

So, as a leader in the business, so whether you're the CEO or a leader in the team, really owning the expectation and owning what's possible and really leaning into that AI can do so much for us.

It's not a cheat. It's not a risk. It's actually an opportunity and it's non -negotiable.

Make AI the Expectation, Not a Shortcut

I was at a seminar about three months ago with Sarah Friars, the CFO of OpenAI. this is three months ago and she said that that morning someone on her team had sent her a board pack and she asked them has this been through AI and it hadn't in her team they'd actually sent something to the CFO to review before

they even considered there might be other ways to get this reviewed before the CFO has to put that work in right that's not good use of the CFO's time right now so the thing there is explicit being explicit as a leader that

AI is not a cheat and AI is the expectation is actually part of the transformation it's part of being able to empower your team to adopt it really

About the Speaker

effectively so I'm Marina Gori I'm a high -performance AI coach I co -founded and scaled this tech company called super awesome and we were the fastest growing tech company in the UK.

Liam was on this journey with us and I didn't put this picture up here for no reason.

We started this tech company that was eventually acquired in 2020 by Epic Games.

From Startup Scrappiness to Scale

We started it with a physical box. A physical box that went to kids homes that opened up the

opportunity to think about what was needed in the tech ecosystem and we ended up building a lot of tech infrastructure for the kid tech space. a very pioneering move that made the internet safer for kids.

A

Coaching for High Performance Amid Ambiguity

And really, everything that I do as this high -performing and AI coach is about how do we help incredible people achieve incredible things and thrive, right?

And the question now is, how do we do that given the amount of ambiguity that's around?

As leaders, how do we say what's coming if we don't even know ourselves?

Practical Playbook: Clarity, Culture, Mindsets

And what I want to do today is just share some really simple top -line tips on clarity and culture and mindsets to you know help you deal with the fact that the humans are you know complex I'm sure every one of you guys would agree you're fairly complex right I'm not the only one in the room that's

complex and what like there's a whole journey here it can start with and what is AI and people literally don't know what what what are these tools and what can they do then they might even get to oh I'm exploring them now and even

The Overwhelm Is Real—Channel It

Even last week, or two weeks ago, when GPT or OpenAI released Atlas, you have this moment of like, oh my God, another browser. I just got used to Comet.

Like, have I got time to actually figure out how Atlas is going to be better for me right now? It actually is. I love, I'm a big fan of Atlas.

But literally, that moment of overwhelm, and it's just like, what's next? What's the next thing?

And then you get to the third part, and you're like, am I going to replace myself? I'm actually getting so good at this, I'm going to have no job left, right?

So there's a real genuine human experience that's happening there, that as leaders, that the awareness of it and the intentionality around how we build a culture that's going to actually allow those humans to really actually succeed.

Tip 1: Lead Clearly in Ambiguity

And here's my first tip.

When you're leading in ambiguity, coming from the trenches of the startup world where everything we do is built in ambiguity, we started with a physical box. We didn't know it was going to be a tech company. We hired people to scale the boxes, and suddenly we're a tech company, right?

Communicate What You Know, Keep Loops Short, Explain the Why

number one is communicate what you know here's what's changing here's literally what I know right now here's what I know start with us to keep feedback loop short because things are changing fast three set the expectation that of what

we're doing and importantly why we're doing it if you can get to the why if you can at least get to the why you're going to get to a place where your team will figure out how right you've hired these incredible people if you can get them to the Y you're gonna unlock them and this is just a step a moment to stop

Augmentation Over Replacement

and go actually the reality isn't this opportunity to go and replace everyone even and you might have seen that 70 ,000 jobs that Amazon just replaced with AI right there's plenty right now of coverage around the fact that Amazon probably replaced those jobs because they needed to make some budget cuts to invest in other areas and was a strategic decision not because suddenly Certainly AI is capable of doing 70 ,000 people's jobs, not just yet.

In fact, the opportunity is to really think about these incredible people that we've got. How do we help them augment and transform how they work so that actually they're doing better work?

So this augmentation is the opportunity, this compounding value. Anybody can replace, right? We want to compound. We want to build value.

Case Studies: Klarna and Ikea

Klarna fired 700 people about a year ago maybe from their customer service team because of Of course, if they needed to save money, they could replace that with AI. Very quickly, they realized this world of AI slop, where the customer experience just wasn't there. Suddenly, they're rehiring back in.

They're building their CS team, but actually now they're augmenting that team with these AI tools. The AI tools are doing these pieces of work that are obviously for AI, and the humans are adding value.

Ikea, the same. Ikea now has one of the best customer service AI systems, but equally, their actual humans are retrained to be design consultants.

So now you get this augmentation, this is the value, so this is the moment to just stop and go for your team, actually what's happening here, augmentation.

Tip 2: Build a High-Performance Culture Framework

Tip two, this is a high performance framework for culture, it's very high level but it's a very simple framework to just think about are we doing this well and just stop for a moment and actually step through how you're running your organisation or your team.

Information, Tools, and Access

Do my team have access to the information they need to do their job, do they have access to the tools, AI tools, training, whatever that's going to be.

Have they got exposure to leadership? So I mean literally like FaceTime, like coffees, teas, having breakfast, hanging out, chatting, osmosis.

Things are changing so fast. The more of these touch points we're creating, the more we're going to empower our team.

Relationships and Connection as Force Multipliers

Three, relationships. Like fundamentally it's hard enough, right?

Like let's have people we can rely on as friends, as buddies that are going through it with us. That connection is not really like just about like that fun aspect or how nice it is to have human beings.

Connection scales. Connection is like one of the things that's going to really drive momentum with your AI adoption because you're going to be learning together.

Tip 3: Clarity, Not Control

Tip three, clarity, not control. Super simple, super high level basics though.

Micro, Meso, Macro: Set Expectations Across Levels

Can we get to a point where our team 100 % know on a really micro level? We're talking about ambiguity here, but on a micro level, what's the expectation from you as a human being. Literally, what do I expect from you?

I expect you to be able to figure this out. I'm going to set you up for success, but I expect you to navigate through this journey and to actually optimize yourself.

Two, meso kind of level, like what are we doing with this department? Like where are the non -incremental changes that we're going to be looking for? And then actually the team, how are we going to get there? Let's figure that out.

And three, what do we know at a company level in terms of right now where we think this is going? Like if we can get clarity in those three areas or if we spot any weaknesses in any of those areas optimize around us

Enablement: Policies, Training, and Guardrails

and here is an AI version of that I'm not going to go into it now but like literally you can see it's like can I just literally say to my team at an AI level individual can let the individual can deliver their role and determine how to harness max impact you can literally say that's what I expect that's a great starting point and then you might invest in some great training or you know let them do it independently right whatever give me have they got access to is there

But there is simple policy that just expresses what the compliance requirements are, what the guardrails are, so they can actually go and do great things.

Tip 4: Inspire and Raise the Bar

Four, high performance, inspire, set the expectation.

AI as Partner: Beyond Writing Tools

We need to make sure 100%, at the very minimum, the team know ChatGPT is not a great writing tool.

ChatGPT can literally do everything that Stefano and Liam showed us today in terms of being being a partner, being a challenger, being an aggregator of content, being an analyzer.

Replit is not going to build you a website in 20 minutes, which it can do. Replit is actually going to help you prototype 20 websites in 20 minutes, so you can actually fundamentally ultimately build a great website.

Perplexity exists for deep, deep research.

Prompts, Research, and Prototyping Mindsets

If you invest the time in creating exceptional prompts, maybe you're going to get some exceptional, exceptional value from that that's going to inform how you do your role and what our opportunity is in the marketplace so so just moving towards what is possible and bringing

Tip 5: Culture Beats Mastery

that to life for your team five culture beats mastery right some really basic things to start implementing these are these are essentially check them these are essentially things that we're already doing you don't need to create new versions of these you just need to upgrade them so they're 100 % part of how

Ritualize Learning: Weekly Demos and Champions

you operate that means like weekly AI demos Liam and I just talked about this this at the start. On our fourth class at Mindstone, we do an AI demo and we explicitly say, hey, let us be your first.

Let us be your first because when you see how Mary has experimented with this and the troubleshooters her way through that and finally landed on this, you're going to be inspired to try it yourself.

When you see how John has actually managed to completely augment aspects of his role and has actually moved on to really high value work instead, you're going to be inspired by that.

If you're really focused on the fact that that experimentation is valued, that that experimentation is actually what's expected, not perfection, you're going to be winning.

Harness the champions. If you've got people in the team who love this, give them an opportunity to shine.

Give them an opportunity to give that one -on -one contact. Don't underestimate that in your team there are going to be diverse people with neurodiversity who learn differently and you're going to really value that one -to -one structure that's going to unlock their greatness.

They've got they got through school, you know, let's make sure they can keep performing to their absolute best, but they don't have to do it the hard way.

Measure What Matters: Experiments and Insights

Three, yeah, simple. Set a new KPI, number of experiments. Like, number of non -incremental things that you've changed. Number of insights that we've gotten.

HubSpot do this very simple monthly newsletter where AI plays and fails. You know, simple cultural rituals that make a difference to how AI is part of who we are going forward.

Side Note: Shape the External Microculture

Side note, this is really just a side note, but it is important.

Your team are exposed to AI. So one, if you're not doing AI, you guys are all doing AI, if you're not, they are going to be doing it in their own way

and actually what you want to do is power them to actually make that as successful as possible in their role in your organisation.

But another really important part here is actually culturally. There is a phenomenon happening where we work very, very hard internally to create cultures and set expectations expectations and to create an opportunity for people to succeed.

And something seems to happen where there's a microculture outside of work now, where sometimes that can be actually challenged.

And I think one of the best ways that we can help our teams navigate that is by being explicit about that actual phenomenon and taking time to, as a team, talk about the challenges of AI as well as the potential can really set your team up for success. that.

If You Don’t Shape It, Someone Else Will

If you don't shape how AI enters your culture, someone else will.

Conclusion

And finally, the

Recap: Reduce Load, Embrace Experiments, Normalize Uncertainty

So top tips there, just to start thinking about some simple, straightforward things or loopholes or gaps that you might have that actually can really transform your team's ability to really make the most of

of this, reducing that cognitive load, experiment, experiment, experiment, and make that uncertainty explicit. But that's OK.

Empowerment as the Endgame

opportunity is to empower your team to achieve incredible things. We know where we're going next.

And that culture and mindset opportunity is how we can change how technology will transform and augment what is possible.

Thank you. I flew through it.

Thank you, everyone.