Strong Leaders, Strong Tech: Equipping Leaders to Grow in an AI World : Closing Panel - From Culture to Compliance: Driving Growth Through People and Insight

That being said, let's keep it rolling. I would love if we give a final welcome to our speakers here. Uh, last but not least within this program, these are three amazing practitioners and leaders, you know, building workplace culture and the workplace experience and actively spearheading these conversations internally. So, I appreciate the clapping hands for these amazing individuals. Let's welcome Courtney King, senior vice president of people and culture at BeatBox. We have Leah Roman, director of people and culture for Tepper Sports and Entertainment. And then we have Ingrid Meyers, senior director of culture and talent innovation at DocuSign. So, let me stop sharing. I'll bring you three amazing individuals to the stage with me. Give me a second. Welcome, Ingrid. Good to see you. Courtney, welcome in here. And Leah, welcome. All right, so I would love to jump into it. We don't have a ton of time to solve everyone's world within this discussion, so I would love if we, you know, jump into some introductions. Introduce yourself, share some of the work you're doing, but again, this kind of theme for this panel and time to wrap up this program. And the whole day we've been talking about, like, how important the culture and the people strategy is to all this, and how do we actually do this in a way that builds trust and engagement? So, let's start with introductions. Maybe share a little bit about what you're working on today, and then, yeah, maybe your initial thoughts on how you're approaching kind of the cultural aspect when you are also approaching the integration in bringing AI to life. So, that being said, Ingrid, I will pass it to you to kick us off. All right. Hi, everyone. (laughs) Um, well, gosh, I... This is actually a really sweet intersection for me professionally. Um, over the last 20 years, I've been spending time in the customer space, the operations space, technology, and the talent function, so you can see (laughs) AI now is really blended into, into all of those, um, fronts. Uh, currently as the, the lead for our culture, belonging, and talent innovation work, um, I am responsible for, how do we evolve our people systems, processes, uh, and programs to be able to accommodate this into the workforce? Now, let me be clear. I'm not the only person that's working on this. There's a whole lot of folks that are coming together, um, across the enterprise. Um, it won't be successful unless there are a lot of people. Um, but specifically around our, our people processes, um, how we look from candidate all the way through alumni, um, the things that we do, um, throughout the course of, of the year related to our people, performance, uh, those types of things. Um, we are now, um, looking at how AI can support, amplify- ... and be leveraged to, to create a, a more quality experience. Awesome. Thank you for kicking us off, Ingrid. Courtney, I'll pass it over to you next. Yeah, welcome. Uh, two weeks in a row also for programming. Just for everyone knows, she also shared some strategies and things with us at our Appreciation at Work program last week, so back-to-back weeks. So you're all warmed up. But yeah, introduce yourself again for our community here, and what are some of your thoughts going through your head when it c- when we think about, like, the cultural aspect and strategy to also bring to life the AI strategy? Sure. Um, hi, everyone, and thank you for that wonderful introduction, Zack. It's been my pleasure. Um, I'm Courtney King, SVP of People and Culture at BeatBox Beverages, and, um, you know, without spoiling too much of the wonderful things that we're all gonna talk about, one of the overarching, um, I guess themes I think about for the work with AI that we're doing here at BeatBox is, AI is an enhancement and it enhances our work. And how do we continue to figure out how to do that while remembering it's people who drive the innovation here at BeatBox? So- Uh-huh. Uh, I'll, I'll save the rest for a little later, and, and, uh, I'll turn it back over to you. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you also. I know we're gonna talking to like, okay, how do we build that narrative that people are the drivers of the innovation? So, I'll pause there. But Leah, welcome. Thanks for also being here- Thank you. ... with us. Yeah, share a little bit about who you are and the work you're doing, and what are your s- some of your initial thoughts on this topic? Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate having me here. So, my role here is Director of People and Culture for Tepper Sports and Entertainment, so Carolina Panthers, Charlotte FC, and Bank of America Stadium. Um, spent most of my HR career in tech, um, but recently switched industries into sports and entertainment, which is wildly different, um, fast-growing pace, looking to help, um, uh... Like Ingrid said, uh, I'm not a sole party here, but we have, um, an amazing leadership team here that is supporting the innovation that's coming along with this rapidly changing industry, specifically in sports and entertainment, around, you know, performance analytics, fan engagement, um, immersive experiences. And so, helping shape that from a people and culture perspective here. Um, so looking forward to the conversation today. Well, let's jump into one of the first themes here, and it's been touched on a little bit throughout the day today, but when we want employees to buy into this and engage with it as a part of our culture, uh, so much of it depends on, like, the narrative and having this sense of safety and trust behind...... the strategy and the implementation of this. And how we talk about AI really determines how much people lean into it or lean out. And I think one thing we're also competing against as organizations are the narratives and the messages within society, right? There's so much doomsday talk and how it's gonna replace X amount of percentage of jobs in the next couple years, right? So there's these narratives, and then we're trying to determine and develop our own internal narratives. So, um, I would love to kind of unpack that a little bit. Like, how do we, how do we create the right narrative internally? How do we create that psychological safety? And Courtney, I'll pass it over to you, 'cause I feel like you're, you're edging to, like, get into some of this stuff already. And, uh, yeah. You've even talked about how we should acknowledge that employees are already using it and how do we normalize that. But, um, and that, and that was kind of in our pre-conversations. But yeah. Share some thoughts on how do we start to drive the right narrative and safety internally so that we can effectively engage in it in a productive way? Okay. Yeah. And then maybe we can talk about the, the secondary question. But I think that you have to start with transparency and purpose. People tend to trust what they understand, and when you share why something matters, how it connects to the business and what it means for them, you'll find that people will lean in. Um, so I, I think that's how we build or start to build the narrative that you have trust, transparency, and some excitement. Um, you know, I think narratives land when people can see themselves as part of the story. I love that. Yeah. And, and I'm curious, is there, like... I, I think the follow-up question we were kind of referring to is like how do we normalize that a little bit and start to kind of cultivate that on a, like, this is a part of the culture? Any additional thoughts on that? Uh, so are you asking, like, how we can normalize using AI because it's happening whether, um, the organization as a whole wants to recognize? Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah. Yeah. So quite simply put, your leadership team needs to openly support the use of AI. Like, it shouldn't be something that only certain people have access to or some closely guarded secret. And I think that one of the ways you can go about that is some employees need the comfort and guardrails of a policy, and so you create that policy. And then your leadershi- leadership should start by demonstrating use cases or ways in which employees can enhance their work with AI. Um, and I, I am sure we will talk about this topic as well, but offering training so that employees in the organization that are less sure or less certain, then they understand how to comfortably use or at least dip their toe into the AI pool. Leah, I'd love to pass it to you next and continue talking about, like, this m- narrative and this messaging. In, in some of our prep calls, you kind of talked about how AI can support the speed and insight and it doesn't, uh, need to replace the empathy and the humanity that our people can also bring to this. How do you make that more real in the narratives or the communications that we're pushing out? Like, what does that start to look like? Yeah. And I, I think a lot of the, the themes that have been discussed today align with that. Again, it, it comes back to this is a huge transformation, change management. Um, most organizations have done some level of that. But at the forefront remembering, you know, how it impacts people and the culture and, and ensuring that through every communication channel, whether that's maybe in a town hall, having your champions and leaders at the forefront and, and speaking to kind of how those examples, um, you know, maybe where they've had tech-driven insights, but how those have, you know, affected their, their decision-making. But coming from more of that people-centric, um, perspective of we can still use the speed and efficiency of the data we're receiving, but at the end of the day, you know, the technology accelerates the, the process, but empathy still has to remain a differentiator in that. I always kind of talk about, like, in a world that becomes more and more AI automated or AI driven, the biggest differentiator of those companies will be the ones that leverage humanity and the empathy in the, the best ways, right? So... And, Ingrid, you brought this up in, in one of our calls as well. And I'd be curious of your thoughts on, like, the narrative framing and how we position this and really get people bought in. And you talked about a little bit, like, this is really something on how humans can be amplified with AI, not replaced with AI. So what's, what's kind of your thoughts around that? Yeah. It's the... The best story wins, right? So we all have to be good storytellers related to AI and what it means to our workplace, what it means to the workforce, um, and, and how we're going to be using it. Um, i- my, my belief system is that many of the, the roles that we have, we are just going to be able to do them better, faster, higher quality, um, drive value into the organization at paces that wa- that was not possible before. And, and so I do look at AI as an amplifier. Um, and, and there are several different examples across multiple industries where AI has been in use for a long, long, long, long time to be able to predict things. Like, think of the medical f- uh, the medical field. Uh, radiology, for one. Um, AI has been in use for a long time to look at things that humans can't find or at least identify them, and then circle back with humans to go validate and say, "Hey, was that really what I saw on that, you know, that X-ray, that..."... um, uh, i- image. A- and so I, I think that because there's been such a lo- um, you know, focus in the last, say, three years, um, AI's been on, in the news stories every single night, every single week, that the perception is that this is new, and it isn't, right? There's a component of it that is, but this has been coexisting, it's been living with us side by side for a really, really long time already. Um, and so getting people comfortable with that story, getting people comfortable that it is just making me, Ingrid, as an employee, better, faster, being able to drive value, um, to me, it makes a human more valuable, frankly. Um, and so the fear associated with AI replacing jobs, uh, there's gonna be some of that. There, there, there will be. I don't know that it's going to be to the degree that we anticipate. I think that's such a productive, like, narrative, and, and I think something culturally you need to get the organization behind. Like, hey, are we approaching this technology as a way to amplify our people, amplify their ability to impact whatever space we're in, and amplify even the experience that they're having with our organization? Or is the paradigm and mindset as the executive team going in like, "Hey, are we doing this to cut costs, you know, try to eliminate..." Like, those are two different narratives, and that's really gonna impact how well your people engage and buy into that journey with your company. So, I appreciate kind of the mindset, Ingrid, that you're sharing there, of like, I actually see this as an amplifier of the human potential, and it can uplift the human experience with, with our people. So, okay, so now that we kinda unpacked the story piece a little bit, I would love to talk a little bit more on, like, the operating model behind this, and like, what are some of the tactical things we should start to, like, build in, in our infrastructure and within our roles, and even guardrails so that it does amplify people and not, you know, maybe take us in weird directions that doesn't actually uplift the impact that we're able to make? And, uh, Leah, I would, I would love to kind of pass it to you, maybe, for this too. And, and Courtney, you kind of highlighted this a little bit. Like even as a, a starter policy is kind of sometimes a great way to start. So Leah, what does maybe a starter policy for employee AI use start to look like, and how does that actually help people experiment in a safe way? Yeah. I, I think first and foremost, an organization has to do the due diligence to understand current state, where their people are in terms of their comfortability and level and use with, with AI. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of the, the fear that comes along with change in general, we need to kind of take a step back and try to simplify it. Um, and I think the more we can do that from a base of kind of thinking about it from three just principles of, you know, give guidance on, you know, transparency around w- how and when AI should be used, and even going as far as identifying what tools you want them to be using. 'Cause you're probably gonna realize, you have a number of employees that are already utilized it, whether it's personal use or even work use that maybe hasn't been approved. And so, finding, um, an opportunity to, to simplify that, standardize it, so that way, you can start putting the controls and governance around, how do we move to that second piece, which is perf- protecting the sensitive data and IP that comes along with that, the risk mitigation? Um, but really making sure we highlight that and, and help employees understand that yes, there are some hotspots where we have to, to be cautious, but at the end of the day, you have the ability to, to own what you're, you're doing, and we wanna make sure you're empowered to, to do it in a safe way. And I think the third one, at the core of it, is there has to be over- human oversight at all times. So making sure we're always at the forefront, thinking about that as the policy, the governance, how are we doing that, and still leveraging it from, yeah, the, the human element, um, at all, all pieces of how we roll this out. I think in some ways, like, having that at the foundation actually feels relieving for people, right? Like, okay, finally I got the permission and the clarity of how I can engage with this. I don't need to hide it because I've already been using it. Yeah. Now I've gotten that permission. And then, even in some ways, now also I have clarity of how I can push the boundaries around this in a way that my organization's bought into. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Um, so I think that's like, foundationally, it actually creates freedom for your people. Mm-hmm. I think sometimes policies feel like, oh, it's this corporate thing. It's gonna create, you know, uh, disengagement anytime we implement- Yeah. ... a policy. But really, it's a, it's a way to provide freedom and clarity for people. Um- Yeah, and the empowerment that comes along with it. And, you know, you probably will have a very, uh, robust, um, very detailed, um, AI policy that comes along with it. But I think at the core of it is, yeah, simplifying it and kinda taking that fear element out of it for, for employees so they can feel safe and valued and trusted to, to use this safely. Ingrid, what about you? Any thoughts on operating models or practices, rhythms, and things that we can start to do that helps create more momentum within the organization and reduce some of those fears and anxieties that people have on, on engaging with this? Yeah. If I, if I build on sort of the policies, the practices, the guidelines, right? Um, and add to, to, Zeck, what you said about permission, uh, I think the next lever really is around, uh, training and enablement. Mm-hmm. So, we have half a dozen generations in the workforce or thereabout, and there are going to be groups that are much more comfortable with it and groups that are not.And, you know, I'm a strong proponent of, how do we level the playing field? Because that's what AI is, right? It's a great equalizer, right? And so, how do we level the playing field for those that are, um, technology focused and maybe those that are not by having some educational sessions, uh, so that everyone has an equal opportunity to maximize their performance, their, their, uh, contributions, the products, their deliveries or deliverables, I should say, um, with, with the tool set that is being enabled by the organization. And, you know, one of the things that, that I'm really proud of that we're doing, um, at, at DocuSign is, we are creating these educational, um, mechanisms, uh, across the different tools that we have. Everything from, um, you know, our, our Google Suite, um, all the way out to custom tools that have been designed for us to use by us. Um, and the, the, the learning has been phenomenal. Um, you know, I went into a session last week and I was like, "Oh, I'll just play it in the background. I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna pay attention that closely." And the depth that they were going into, from an instruction standpoint, blew my mind. I was like, "Oh, my goodness, I have to go look at this again." Because they were really, really demonstrating and showing how you could, as an individual, whether you're technical or not, maximize that tool for your own benefit, what you could build with it, how to use it. Um, and so I think enabling the organization, and Lia, you ment- you said the word empower. How do you empower your workforce to use it once you've given permission, put the policies, the guardrails in place? Um, and I do think that that is a, a key step that all organizations should be doing, um, to, to ensure that every employee has equal access to being able to apply, uh, AI tools in their day-to-day. Courtney, have anything else to add to some of this? Especially about like, okay, start to create the operations and the momentum. Ingrid, you shared a great point of like, how do you, how do you make sure everyone's lifting up to kind of enable this and it actually unlocks kind of some of this capacity at scale for everyone. Um, yeah, Courtney, what are your thoughts? Like, how do you lift everyone to build these competencies without also maybe slowing down some of the power users or maybe the champions, right? Like, we, we want them to kind of help spearhead the way and maybe actually guide the rest of the organization, lift them up. But what are some of your thoughts on how you build that internally? So I love what Ingrid said, you know, basically she said AI is for everyone. And I think how you can do that is you have to recognize who is where. And you can... we won't get into the how you can do that. There's multiple different ways to do that. However, I think you start with your beginning level employees. I think you offer voluntary training so that they can have an understanding of what AI is, what it isn't, um, maybe some, you know, simple use cases. And then for your intermediary or intermediate, uh, users, you're gonna... um, of course they would have, uh, access to that initial training, but it's voluntary so they can choose to participate or not, but you're gonna give them live training opportunities to actively build skills. So something that's at a little, uh, faster pace, maybe. Something where they can show their skill in action, uh, but not necessarily get bogged in, bogged down into what is prompt engineering with your, um, you know, entry level employees. And then for your power users, I think you provide opportunities for peer learning. Um, set up opportunities where those power users are showing their peers and other employees how to use these skills in their everyday jobs or, or whatever it may be. So, you know, they say that being able to teach a skill is one of the ultimate masteries of that skill. And so that's kind of a, a three-prong approach that I think of when I think of, like, not stalling or slowing down anyone, but kind of giving something to everyone. Which I think, yeah, like, what you kind of shared is, okay, if you have your power users and a way to actually enable their development in that space is, as you shared, like, giving them opportunities to teach others on it. That helps their skill level within that domain. It's also a recognition tool where you're spotlighting kind of what they've been doing. So you're celebrating what they're actually able to kind of champion, which keeps them engaged and on that path. And then you're lifting up the rest of the organization through the social learning. So it's, uh, I think like... and it's an awesome model for you to embrace, and we talked a lot about that all day. So, okay, so this is flying by where we're not gonna be able to dig into all the themes, but we're coming up on like the last few minutes of the program. So, uh, I would love to kind of close out and talk a little bit about some of the aspects around like the compliance and the data-driven trust piece of things. And even in the research that we just shared with everyone, you know, we talked about how heavy, like certain things like backgrounds, you know, background screening can be from a compliance standpoint. So it's like, okay, we want to leverage these tools, but then there's some certain topics and subject areas that are very heavily regulated or very high at risk if you get it wrong, even by a percentage point, that might be a huge issue within the organization or for the individual. So, uh, Courtney, I'd love to kind of pass it to you as we kind of close out this discussion together. What are your thoughts on how do we start to balance experimentation and the playfulness of engaging with these new tools, but also...... you know, creating the right guardrails and safety measures so we're not falling into maybe at-risk situations like compensation, for example. Sure. Um, so I think that in this policy, we talked about ... Or whether it be a policy, employees need to know what platforms and systems are approved for usage. Because I think we all know here that there's a lot of, um, things out there, and so we don't want employees using a tool that is unsafe or wildly inaccurate, or whatever it may be. Um, we want to encourage employees to use the right settings, um, ideally ones that maintain privacy, that don't share inputs to improve the algorithm. Um, and then, uh, you know, candid conversations about what is off-limits, so, uh, proprietary information, um, uh, you know, sensitive social security numbers, things of that nature. Um, and then share real-world, um, opportunities that, uh, uh, um, real-world opportunities that employees can take to experiment with these platforms. Um, and then also create a process so, you know, when, when you get started, your approved platforms are probably going to be, uh, a grouping of, like, commonly known or things that are already being used. But allow for a process that if an employee discovers something that they believe should be an approved tool, have an approval process where it can at least be reviewed. And then, lastly, kind of jumping back around to, like, things that should not be included. People do need to understand, don't automatically assume that they understand why not, right? And so they need to understand why the things that are off-limits are off-limits, not just because it's written in a policy. Um, like we ment- or like I mentioned earlier, employees are much more, more likely to have buy-in for something if they understand it. Um, and then r- reinforce the non-negotiables. Um, you mentioned, I think, like compensation, um, maybe learning and development, so you reinforce why those are non-negotiables because there are some things that we must have to protect. Fairness, um, human insights, et cetera, and decision-making. Uh, so make sure that employees understand that there are some areas that are off-limits because they are either sensitive and/or they are areas where human insight is required. Yeah. I think it comes from, like, yeah, just having some of these kind of conversations around our risk tolerance levels on different subjects, like you shared. And, and so much of it kind of, again, goes to if we can start to have these conversations to define these guardrails, then it gives people the freedom to kind of jump in and kind of focus their time and attention on things. So, um, I appreciate you sharing that, Courtney. Mm-hmm. Leah, anything to add on your front with this? Like, especially where we can create certain standards or compliance standards that actually help build the trust. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I, I think it's just taking that proactive approach of, I think we've touched on it already, it's less about the restriction and helping understand the whys behind. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, there's still a learning curve for, for all, regardless of skill level. Um, so the more that we can help be proactive and meet employees where they are to help them feel like they can do what they need to do, um, and amplify the, the work that they're already doing. But at the end of the day, I think if we're able to do that, it's, it's gonna unlock both time and intentionality for us to be able to focus on the areas that we desperately want to focus on from a people and culture perspective. And so it, it's helping employees just understand how to do it and in a safe and, um, you know, compliant way. Um, but again, this is a, a change management initiative that's gonna be ongoing. It's not a one-and-done, and we're gonna have to evolve with it. Um, so ... And un- unfortunately or fortunately for a lot of organizations (laughs) I'd say, like, a lot of the learning experiences also come from seeing how other organizations fail to put in these guardrails. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden, that shines a light like, "Oh, actually we didn't think about that. Let's start to create that infrastructure for us so we don't fall trap to those issues within the future." Mm-hmm. Um, so it's like a mix of, like, we want to move with velocity, but we also want to make sure we're doing this in a way that supports the health of our, our organization and the safety of our people. So, um, Ingrid, any kind of closing parts on this topic as well, like, how we continue to kind of build the guardrails, the structure, or even the tracking, like, the certain metrics to show that we are doing this in a way that has confidence and trust behind it? Yeah. I think one, one point, uh, building on Courtney's point about, um, ensuring that people understand. I think, honestly, if we were to ask our employee population, and, and I don't know that we, we do this enough. When I say "we," I don't mean my company, I mean, uh, in general. Corporations, um, may not do this enough, but how do we ... I, I think we would all be really surprised if we were to ask employees to build a policy around this. Right? Um, if they understand what's at risk, if they have a true understanding of what the gain is.I think employees would actually build a, a pretty cool policy around this that they would then adhere to. Um, built by the employee, for the employee, protecting the company and the data and its assets, right? Um, so I know that's a, a slightly different perspective and, um, th- that, that's one piece. Around the, the how to grow the confidence, um, from an employee perspective, I also would bring the lens of how do... Am I proud of the work that I'm producing? Right? Mm-hmm. Um, am I, uh, proud of the speed with which I am delivering value to the organization? So I would actually turn it a little bit. Yes, there's the how many products and widgets are, are going out the door and moving into production. I would actually look at is it changing the employee wellbeing and how is it changing the employee wellbeing about how they look at their work, how they're fulfilled by their work, um, and are we creating that, um, connection as well? Yeah. It reminds me of like I, I went to this program a couple weeks ago around like the builder's mindset and how can we can cultivate this internally and support people on their journeys to self-mastery within the crafts that they're focused on and part of our jobs internally as, as organizations is to help them with the quality of their, their craft and growing and learning and sharpening their craft and amplifying them as you shared before. So, uh, this was a awesome conversation. Too quick and, uh, I wish w- we had so much more to unpack together so for everyone listening, I encourage you to connect and follow these individuals. Uh, obviously brilliant and amazing and doing some amazing cultural work internally today. So, Leah, Courtney, and Ingrid, thank you so much for joining us for this program today and I learned a lot from you in this short amount of time. Uh, so yeah. I appreciate you so much. Thanks, Zach. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Thank you. Yes, everyone give it up to these individuals. They, uh, volunteered their time to share their guidance and their expertise with us, so really appreciate them. I love the emojis coming in, uh, and we, we had to cut it too short but that was an awesome conversation. I, I really encourage you to think about the cultural aspects of all this and the narrative framing and the guardrails that you're doing that don't only create safety but actually create freedom for your people to engage with these things. (instrumental music)