The AI Readiness Gap: Why Technical Training Isn't Enough and What HR Leaders Need to Know

All right. Hello everyone.

Welcome to today's live webinar with Achieve Engagement.

My name is Zach Doms, president at Achieve Engagement.

And as your community lead, thank you so much

for taking time out of your busy schedules

to sharpen your craft

and educate yourself with new techniques, new models,

new frameworks that can allow you

to build a better world of work.

And that's really what we're all about here.

I'm really excited for today's session.

Uh, I think so far this year we've done a lot around AI

and we've talked a lot about emerging technologies

and use cases and ways

to make an impact on our people leveraging this technology.

But something that we really haven't unpacked too much

is the readiness piece and how do we actually build

and fill the gap with AI readiness

and what does that look like on the

people strategy side of things.

So I'm really excited to unpack that all with you all today.

I already love the activity going on in the chat.

I see you all. Laura, we got you in New York.

Mia in Texas, Clint and Milwaukee from my hometown.

We got Fort Worth, Texas, Los Angeles,

Connecticut, New York.

If you haven't already added in the

chat where you're calling in from.

And then I would say I would love just

to do a temperature check.

I would love to get a feel on

where you think on maybe a scale of zero to five,

where you are or your organization is an AI readiness.

Zero being like we are not ready at all.

We haven't even talked about it yet.

It's not even, uh, on our mind all the way to five,

as in we are so ready.

We've been integrating it.

We got AI agents,

we've got built in agentic AI in every role.

Where are you in your AI readiness today? Zero through five.

Let's do a little temperature check here.

We got a zeros, we got a couple zeros. No big deal.

That's why you're here, right? One Alicia, A four.

That is awesome. Kyrie three bunch of ones,

two or three, Carrie, three.

Alright, well hopefully by the end

of this we can take that up.

A couple points for you, right?

And I'm hoping you'll be able to walk away

with a couple stories from the field, walk away, I'll,

you can actually work this into leadership development

structures and strategies and the ways that you're coaching

and developing your people and,

and start to understand what does like AI ready leadership

capacity capacities really look like.

So that being said, let's get the show started.

I'm super excited to welcome partners of ours,

longtime friends at Achieve Engagement at Torch.

They've been leading this work both on the leadership

and coaching side of things for a long time,

but now really frontiering

that readiness at a leadership level with ai.

So let's give a warm welcome to Heather Conklin,

CEO at Torch.

And then we also have the head of AI growth, Elise Smith.

So let's give a warm welcome in the chat.

Thank you so much Heather and Elise for being here with us.

I am really looking forward

to learning from the both of you.

That being said, I will pass it over to the both of you

and the stage is all yours.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having us

and welcome everybody.

We are really happy to be here with you today

and talk about this really important topic.

Um, I'm Heather Conklin, and I am the CEO at Torch.

And at Torch we help companies change

by helping their people change.

So we work with organizations like LinkedIn and Reddit

and TripAdvisor to help them navigate major

transformations through coaching.

And so we're here

to talk today about the biggest transformation

that we're all dealing with right now, and that is ai.

I really love the temperature check.

That was a great idea and it gives us a good

place to start from today.

And hey everyone, I'm Elise Smith.

I co-founded Praxis Labs, uh, which Torch recently acquired.

Uh, and now I lead our AI growth efforts here at Praxis.

Uh, we were an AI learning company with AI simulations

and coaching tools that helped, uh,

and helped companies like Amazon and Salesforce

and Uber to developed human centered leaders

that create engaged, inclusive and high performing teams.

I am like so thrilled for this conversation.

I'm excited to hear from all of you.

We'll keep that engagement going

and our goals that we can all walk away with takeaways

and things we can do together.

Yeah, and I am guessing you all are talking a lot about AI

within your companies.

Um, and Elise and I certainly talk

to HR leaders all the time about AI transformation.

Um, it's, it's the topic that just keeps on coming up

and we keep hearing the same patterns.

You know, we hear the same challenges

and the same kinds of questions.

And with that, at Torch, we've actually built an ai,

excuse me, AI readiness coaching solution, um,

because we keep seeing companies who are struggling

with the same parts of this.

And, um, you know, we'll talk a lot more about it today,

but it is with the human side of this change.

And, and that's what we're gonna

keep really focused on today.

So what we wanna talk about here is

what we're actually seeing on the ground.

Um, you know, like I said, we talk to people all the time,

so how are we seeing companies actually successfully

approaching this AI transformation

and what does the impact of that look like?

And we'll also be getting practical

and trying to share as many suggestions

and ideas of where you can get started

and get this right at your company as well.

Alright, so before we dive into

what we're seeing in the market, um, you know,

torch being a coaching company,

we're a very people first organization.

And so wanna start with stories

and let you know a little bit about who Elise and I are and,

and what brought us to this work.

So Elise, can you please share your story first, um, about

how you got here and, and what makes you

really passionate about this space?

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, you know, I think I have always been in learning

and education in my career, and it's

because of how much, uh, it has meant to me and my family.

Uh, I feel like I got lucky

and don't believe that luck should ma be the main

contributing factor of outcomes, um,

and have really focused personally and professionally.

And how do you scale access

and how do you scale opportunity?

Uh, that idea of scale brought me to technology.

I was at IBM Watson, we were, uh,

in the edu working in education building some

of the first generation of Watson for education solutions.

So early days of ai, uh, and,

and machine learning in embedded into products.

Um, and we were looking at how do we personalize learning?

How do we create self-directed learning?

How do we measure learning?

Um, ultimately I went

to be on the investor side

investing in learning and development.

Um, my portfolio was all

around leadership development at a fund focused

on innovation and learning.

And it was in that role that it became so clear to me

that we could do learning differently

and we could do learning differently with technology, um,

and that workplaces could work better for everyone

and that products and services could better serve everyone

and that l and d could be

that lever within workplaces to make that change.

And so my co-founder, Heather, uh, another Heather

and I bonded over that shared belief.

We launched Praxis Labs and when we met Heather Conklin, um,

and understood where she was trying to go at Torch,

we felt like we could go further together.

And so stepping back

and thinking about AI readiness, um, you know,

what gets me really passionate is thinking about

how do we include in that conversation scaling access

and scaling opportunity for our teams and people?

How do we upskill, how do we reskill so

that we're reshaping our workforces

and creating more value for us?

All that we can all work and lead and build

and contribute in this new way of working?

And, and, and figuring that out is so important

and is gonna unlock a ton of opportunity

and outcomes for all of us.

But that's a little bit about me.

Uh, Heather, I wanna hear,

and I want the audience to hear your story too.

What experiences led you to focus on this intersection

of leadership development and transformation?

Yeah. Well, let's see.

My background is actually not in hr.

My background is in product.

And so prior to joining Torch,

I was actually at Salesforce for nine years.

And at my time at Salesforce,

I again was in the product organization and,

and really thinking a lot about how we were working as,

as a product organization.

So, you know, I was leading teams working cross-functionally

with so many other teams

and, um, just saw a lot of ways

that we could be doing things differently.

And so at that time, um, Brett Taylor, who has now gone on

to be the chairman of the board of Open ai,

and he was, he ended up being the CO CEO of Salesforce.

But when he very first became our chief product officer at

Salesforce, uh, I got the chance to sit down with him as,

as a rising female in the product organization.

And, and I told him what I had been seeing

and the ways that I thought we really could be working very

differently to achieve such better outcomes and,

and really innovate differently as, as our teams.

You know, at the time I always said it was like, kind

of like the wild, wild west of how we were doing things

and the messages really resonated with him.

And so out of that, we decided

to start an associate product manager program.

And this was a different way of tackling this change

that we knew we needed to enact in the product organization.

And so this program, when we initially created it,

it was all about teaching people fresh out of undergrad how

to be great product managers.

And it was all about the technical parts of that.

I was gonna teach them how to, you know,

do all the hard skills

and learn about the Salesforce products.

But what I realized when we got them in

and we actually started this program, was

that we were missing half of the equation.

The human parts of how they show up every day

and work with other people was really just obviously missing

in our, in our program and in the content

and the things that we were doing together.

And so we actually pivoted

to make the program equally about the hard skills

and about the human side of

how do they just show up every day

and how do they work with all these different teams

and how do they, you know, challenge the status quo?

How do they get people to think differently?

How do they navigate the conflicts

and the different dynamics

that come with doing that kind of work?

And, and that was really, really amazing and,

and it really opened up my eyes to this idea that, you know,

if you really wanna create change, you have

to really think differently about how to do it.

And, and so that's, that's really

where my head got into this place of, of

how do we drive that kind of change?

And, um, and we were, we were coaching people.

That's what we were doing

through this program on all the human sides of things.

It, it was, I didn't really know it at the time,

but it was a lot of coaching and I was in my own coaching

experience and having a profound personal experience.

And so I started to teach them a lot

of the things that I was learning.

And I always say that, you know,

I got bit by the coaching bug.

I can't unsee what I saw then.

And, and really just knew

that I needed to follow that passion.

So I took that and ended up coming over to Torch, um,

a few years ago as the COO

to help the founder scale the business.

And then last year, um,

we executed a successful succession

plan, which is very hard to say.

Um, but we did that.

And I took over last summer as the CEO and,

and really have been pushing really hard

to think differently about what coaching can mean

inside of an organization.

You know, if you think about coaching, it was designed

for individuals and,

and we really wanna make sure that coaching can be more than

that and that it can actually drive real

organizational change.

And I've gotten to see that

and experience it myself through the work

that I did at Salesforce.

And, and so now we're trying to bring that to,

to lots more companies.

So, um, with that, uh, I, you know, I think that

what connects both of Elisa

and my stories is this belief that the technical side

of change is not the hardest part.

Um, you know, it's always the human side

that really determines whether things

succeed or, or they fail.

And, and that's really important, um, for, for us

to keep in our minds as we follow through the rest

of this conversation today.

Fully agree.

Thank you so much for sharing that background.

I even learned something new, uh, in, in what you shared.

And, um, I think it's helpful context for us diving in.

Um, like you said, we've both been in a lot of rooms lately

with HR and talent leaders, um,

who are navigating this moment we find ourselves in.

What are you hearing? What are you seeing on the ground?

Yeah, well one of my favorite examples is this company.

Um, I'm gonna anonymize them

'cause I don't have permission to share their story,

uh, publicly here.

But, uh, but the, it's a marketing automation platform

and I've been meeting a lot with our chief product officer

over the last year as I took on the CEO role.

And, um, you know, she

and I have had so many different conversations about how

to evolve coaching and the different ways

that we can be more impactful inside of businesses.

But the conversation really changed when we got

into AI readiness.

And that was something that, um,

was a light bulb moment for me.

Um, you know, we talked about all kinds

of different changes they were trying

to drive across their company where, you know,

whether it was strengthening their culture

as they were trying to grow really quickly,

or, you know, delivering a higher performance culture.

All these ideas that, you know,

we hear a lot about in the market.

But when we started to say, what about AI readiness?

Um, you know, this company really wants

to be a leader in having AI ready workforce and,

and be like a shining example of,

of AI readiness out in the world.

And so with that, you know, they had started

to go down this path of figuring out what that looks like.

And, you know, for them,

they really broke the problem down in three ways

that I think are, are pretty interesting

and relevant for everybody.

Um, first is just how is the organization structured?

So, you know, the org design the workflows between teams,

you know, there really needs to be this, um, you know,

really org design, um, side of things that

that is really important to be thinking about.

And the second one was how do they actually measure

and assess AI readiness?

Because it's really different, it's different

for every function, it's different for every level,

it's different for every individual.

And so this idea that we need to figure out

what are we baselining even from, you know, um, yeah,

I think it was great to see your, your numbers, uh,

about your organization

and where you're at with AI readiness.

But that same thing applies down, of course

to the individual level.

And so you gotta really think about that.

And then finally, they're really, the, the piece

that they weren't sure how to fix,

but they knew was really important is

how do they actually get people to adapt

and build the capacity that they need

to be more comfortable in the amount of uncertainty

and unknowns that we all face every day with ai.

And, and so that's the way

that they were breaking down that problem.

And, and so we are really working

with them now on taking parts of the assessment and,

and learning about where people are at with the readiness,

and then also helping to actually have not just the data

about where people are at with the readiness,

but the follow through on how do you then build

that adaptive capacity in their leaders in order

to actually really achieve the kinds of things

that they're trying to do with ai.

And so that I think is just a really great example

of a company that is really at the leading edge trying

to really think about how do they drive this change in a

very like strategic

and systematic way across the entire company.

Yeah, that, I love that example so much

and I think it ties to what you said in your background,

like, if you want to create change, you have

to think differently about how to do it.

Um, that last piece around how to adapt

and really change behaviors to be more comfortable

with the uncertainty reminds me of what, um,

I was hearing at a, a summit recently.

So I recently attended Westbound Equity Summit,

their eventual venture capital firm.

They've invested in companies actually like Sierra,

which is an AI conversational platform that was co-founded

by, uh, early Google team members.

One of whom is Brett Taylor, who you mentioned,

who was CO CEO at Salesforce, uh, while you were there.

Um, and, uh, you know, obviously at the summit,

AI transformation was a main topic.

Um, and one of the predictions I heard from leaders at

that summit was that in five years, engineering, uh,

product development

and design roles are gonna converge that, um, you know,

the ways of working kind of within at least

that product tech eng design function would

fundamentally change.

Um, and we were hearing a lot from a handful

of large AI native companies who are saying that prototyping

is now taking a day versus sprints to get to a prototype.

They're having individuals, um,

whether they're in product engineering

or design, be able to take a task all the way

through to production.

Um, and that at their companies, truly anyone in the r

and d function, regardless of their role are,

are just taking tasks off J Jira to complete them.

And I think, you know,

what they were sharing is it's helping them with velocity

and throughput, um, in ways that we, you know,

could only have imagined in the past.

It allows kind of the time to release just to,

to completely truncate it.

And I think what was so powerful about that is hearing

how these really kind

of AI native companies are doing things fundamentally

differently than kind of traditional ways of working

and how those sorts of approaches can be adopted kind

of at larger scale, um, at maybe more traditional companies.

And so I've been thinking about that, uh, kind

of every day since that summit around how do we take some

of these lessons from folks who are native in this,

who've started in AI

and bring them to our clients who, you know,

have had companies for hundreds of years

and, um, are now trying to figure out how to transform.

Yeah, I I also love hearing the stories of the,

the most innovative companies and,

and how they're really changing how they're working.

And, uh, you know, I'll say it for everybody here,

it can be intimidating too.

It's really hard to hear some of those things

and be like, oh my gosh, you know,

and I hear that I can quickly, my mind goes straight

to all the ways that people have to change

how they're working in order for that to,

to really become true at more companies.

And, you know, I think that

what we can clearly see from both of these examples is just

how much AI is completely changing just the, the very nature

of how work gets done.

Um, you know, they're not just plugging it into workflows

or asking teams to experiment with it

and then hoping for the best.

Like, they're really, really challenging the status quo

and letting go of what was in order

to create something entirely different.

And again, that's a hard change, um, for us, I think

as humans to, to also make, uh, okay.

So before we go any further, we're actually going to take

what, um, what we started with and the quick pulse and,

and go one step deeper.

We wanna hear a bit about where you're at with AI readiness

and AI transformation in your organization.

So let's double click into those, um, those numbers

that you shared there at the beginning.

And, um, hopefully you can see the first poll is up now

and would love to, to have y'all take a second to tell us

how ready you think your leaders are to navigate this.

Okay. And we're seeing some answers come through.

Um, I'll give folks a, a couple, another couple seconds

to get your answers in.

How ready are your leaders to navigate this change?

Not just is your organization overall.

Getting to see the answers come in is very fun.

Alright, we have about a good percent of folks responding.

I'll give you one or two more seconds.

Last response is coming in.

Alright, let's end the poll

and I'm gonna share the results.

So looking at this, uh,

the most people are finding themselves in

that mixed category where some already

and others are definitely not,

but there's a good percent of folks who, um, you know,

are saying that they would need some help to feel confident

that most leaders would need help.

So that's kind of what we're seeing is

that secondary response.

And then, uh, I appreciate the folks who are brave enough

to say we'd probably need

to approach leadership development differently

to help our leaders be ready.

Heather, what do you think? Yeah,

I was just gonna say, I think this is definitely very, um,

very in line with, with what I think we're hearing,

uh, you know, on the ground.

And I think the other interesting thing to me

that we'll talk a little bit more about in this too is even

if you're ready today, it's like, well what about next week?

When the next, you know, like big change comes out with ai,

then how do you get them ready again and again and again.

And, and that really is the nature of what's going on

with AI and, and just the amount

of change that it's driving.

So, um, yeah, good to see where everybody's at.

I know, I'm like curious to learn from the folks whose

leaders already I know.

What have they done, what are, what's working well.

So if you are, uh, brave enough to share in the chat,

I think we could all learn from you.

Alright, let's go to one more question just

to double click in here.

What is your biggest concern about AI transformation

in your organization?

Is it employee fear and resistance to change?

Is it leaders not knowing how to guide teams

through this lack of clear strategy

or direction technical implement implementation challenges

where, yeah, I love, I love that Karen.

It's all of it. If you had to pick one though,

I know hard, hard to choose.

What do you think is coming up as the biggest concern

or biggest blocker,

right? We'll give folks you

Think it's great to name that it is all of it.

Uh, and and I think that's, you know, again,

it's like this change is,

it's just unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Um, and that's what makes it so uniquely challenging.

Absolutely. Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and end the poll.

Yeah. There should be a button for all of it.

We acknowledge it was a little bit of a trick question

'cause it is all of it, but let's go ahead

and share the results.

You know, overwhelmingly seeing that it's the lack

of clear strategy or direction that is really kind

of leading folks in, in how they're going

to navigate and the biggest concern.

Yeah. And, you know, torch, we,

alongside the coaching that we're doing,

we're always gathering a lot

of rich insights about what's going on inside

of the organization that might be standing in the way.

Because again, you can say we're gonna coach people toward

being AI ready, but you also need

that feedback back from the leaders to understand

what else is going on that might be standing in the way

of you getting to what you want.

And I will say that, uh, you know,

looking at data across our customers, the idea of clarity

of priorities and strategy

and direction, whether it's for AI

or anything else, is always a top theme.

Uh, it it is is definitely something

that we see again and again.

And so I think it's interesting to hear, you know,

from you all that you're, you're feeling that as well.

And, and obviously that means that there's a lot of focus

that has to go into how do you develop clear strategy

and direction and, you know, a big part of

that battle is also then communicating it down in a clear

way that builds the trust

and builds the commitment from your, your leaders.

And so, um, you know, these are all definitely highly,

highly related, but, um, not surprised for me to see that

that one's the, the top.

Yeah, I, I agree.

I I love what Bob shared in the chat

that every person should be taking kind of, uh,

an assessment to gauge their literacy and readiness with AI

and aggregating that to help Lev level that up

to an AI strategy.

And I think, you know, what you all have shared

around the readiness of your leaders around that lack

of strategy is, is what we're hearing a lot from clients.

It's what I'm hearing from leaders in my network.

Um, and,

and I think we are seeing ourselves at this point where, um,

we do need to think about

how do we do this? How do we do this differently?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I, I think the piece about getting leaders ready

for the change, it just takes me to where I,

I think I'm seeing a lot of roadblocks inside of companies.

'cause I think most companies are still approaching this,

you know, in that, in the way

that we've approached every other technology rollout,

you know, we're thinking about

how do we train people on the tools?

How do we, you know, create the,

the change management communications?

You know, maybe you're doing lunch and

learns and hackathons.

Um, but AI really is different.

And I think we touched on some of this here already,

but, you know, it's not a one-time implementation.

It just is continuous amounts of change.

And, you know, the technology just changes so, so quickly

that it, it's hard for anybody to keep up with.

It also affects how people are actually thinking

and how they're making decisions.

It's not just like a tool that they're using

to support other things that they're doing.

It is fundamentally changing how they're thinking

and making decisions.

And that requires really different forms of collaboration

and experimentation in order

to not just figure out what's going on with AI today,

but to get ahead of that and, and stay ahead of it.

'cause every company is trying to figure out how to do that.

And, you know, I think that those are all the,

the more implementation focused aspects

of AI transformation.

But the other one, and the other reality

that makes this a very unique challenge is

that it actually challenges people's sense of value

and their expertise.

You know, there's a lot of fear with ai, uh, and

and I think whether you realize that

or know it yet, um, I promise you it's there.

I can see it in the, the data that that we have.

Um, and, and so it just is really this, you know,

it creates this more personal, uh, amount of change that has

to happen with AI as well.

And we have never actually been very good at transformation,

uh, to begin with, you know, research from Bain

and BCG actually has consistently shown over several decades

that most change initiatives fail, like to the tune of 50

to 80 to 90% of change initiatives are failing.

And that was before ai.

So now we're asking organizations

to actually navigate the biggest transformation in history

and use all the old approaches

that have been failing for decades.

Yeah, I, it is, um, I, I wanna dive into some

of the things that we're seeing that are working,

but I first wanna call out just like

how different this transformation is with ai.

And I think one of the key pieces

of this difference is it's the first technology

that actually partners with human cognition, right?

Previous technology changes, whether it's like email,

computers, smartphones, like these were tools

that enhanced our existing work.

They made our processes faster, they made us more efficient,

but you didn't really have to change how you thought, uh,

uh, they were, it required to learn a new interface

and features, but not like a cognitive transformation.

And I think that's what we're really seeing with ai, that,

uh, you know, when AI partners with human cognition,

it it, like you, it requires you to think with ai,

not just using AI as a tool, it's like this continuous,

like adaptation, um, as

because AI capabilities are evolving like every day.

Um, and it makes I think the human skills, these skills

of creativity and empathy and compassion

and strategic thinking, kind of the primary value drivers,

uh, that we can bring to the workforce.

And, you know, uh, this is supported

by the World Economic for Forum.

They released a report,

kinda the five-year workforce outlook into 2030.

And they found that while AI

and big data are at the top of the list

of fastest growing skills, it's, it's the human skills

that are critical for this AI implementation

that it's harder.

These are the skills that are harder to replicate

with AI leadership, teamwork, negotiation,

relationships, building.

And I think it's how we, you know, what's,

what we're seeing working is

how you actually build those skills.

How do you make sure, you know, the capabilities

and capacities are there to navigate all of the uncertainty.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm,

I feel like I'm seeing companies come at it from

three different angles.

So there's like the command

and control, you know, the fear-based compliance I saw Yeah.

Another article this morning about

how Google is doing exactly that.

You know, it's, you get on board with AI

or you don't have a job here.

And, and, you know, there's a lot of that kind

of top down mandate stuff that we're,

we're definitely seeing out in the world.

And then there's another path that's more of like this, uh,

it's like a systematic middle ground is, um, you know,

what I would call it, but it's this idea

of training and programs.

Like you're dabbling, you're doing some things

that are certainly gonna be moving, moving things forward,

but there's still a lot of, um, like, you know, just kind

of like random experimentation happening,

but not really, um, you know,

strategically coming at this problem.

And then the last one is just really thinking about this

as strategic development.

How do you actually do what Elise was talking about,

where you're, you are helping people to think differently

and, you know, it's hard to change how we think

that is not something that humans are,

are necessarily great at, and it takes time, um,

and it takes support also.

And so, you know, I think that this idea

that they're really thinking about how do they help people

with that kind of change of their thinking

and their ways of, of operating, those are the companies

who are coming at this from a much more strategic place.

And, you know, I think most companies are, are in path

to like the middle one, um, where again,

they're trying lunch and learns and hackathons

and, you know, they're giving people innovation time and,

and doing these kinds of cross-functional se sessions.

Um, but what's really interesting

to me in this is it's a great example of the, the age old,

like knowledge to application gap.

You know, people can go to these things

and they can learn about AI in the workshops

and get really excited about it, um,

or fearful about it if they're on that side of things.

But either way, they're returning back to their work

and thinking, all right, well how do I actually apply that

to my specific work?

And oh, by the way, how do they do that on top of all

of the other things that they're constantly

navigating day to day?

And so, you know, there's this hidden reality to all of this

that doesn't get said out loud very often, which is like,

I don't actually know what I'm doing,

and if I'm doing this right

or I'm afraid I'm gonna look stupid if I

ask basic questions.

You know, these companies who are saying, you have

to be ai you know, first,

otherwise you don't have a job, like, doesn't create a lot

of room to say that you don't know what you're doing,

or you know, that you might, you, you need a place to,

to show that you're, you're still learning

alongside everyone else.

And you know, again, the realities of having to do that

as extra work on top of the day-to-day, um, and,

and just maybe seeing other people who seem to be getting it

and you don't, and that, you know, that creates, again,

a different different layer of, of complexity

inside of a human mind.

And so with this, you know, I think that this kind of

approach is, is it's great for trial and error.

It's gonna be something that certainly,

like some people are gonna stand out

and move above others will probably fall behind.

And, and, you know, and that, that's how this is gonna go.

But I do think it, it really creates this idea

that it's gonna be a longer road.

Um, you know, it's probably a few years

of random experimentation.

And, and also you're missing this opportunity

to really understand like, what, what is going on, um,

that can help you scale this organizationally.

Like what's really working, what's not,

and how do you do more of what's working

and do less of of other things.

So, um, you know, I think we're gonna talk more then about

where do we wanna go with all of this?

Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I think what you said about

first in the example of the client with Torch,

who is really thinking about how do you adapt

and build that capacity, you talked about the complexity

that's going on in, in everyone's brain as they're trying

to do this change management

and how they're trying to transform.

And I think that really is where this power of coaching, um,

with training, with practice, with, uh, reinforced

reinforcements, um, is really powerful.

Uh, and I think it's because like, uh, you know,

in coaching there's this ability for someone

to help someone understand how this specifically applies

to them and their work.

It's working through actual challenges on the ground versus

just like a, the theoretical use ai.

Um, it's building that confidence that, you know,

whether it's, uh, a human coach or you're using AI coach

or AI practice simulations, you're able to do that trial

and error you talked about without

that performance pressure.

There's, um, you know, you can integrate that

with your own personal values and frameworks

and connect kinda these capabilities

and new ways of working to

what you individually are strong at.

And I think that's, that's so powerful.

And that was something that you highlighted in the example

of, of that client who is really

becoming this AI readiness workforce.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know,

we talk about this a lot,

but it just, AI impacts every industry really differently.

It impacts every company really differently, every function,

every level, you know, individual people depending on

where they're at, very, very differently.

And, and so, you know,

nothing one size fits all is really gonna work here.

And I, I do think that I'm seeing companies still trying

to solve like an individual development challenge

and with, with things that are really built for, for groups

and for large scale approaches.

Um, but, you know, we wanna make sure that we're moving out

of like a place that, you know, just feels productive

because there's a lot of activity happening, um,

into really getting deeper about the problem and,

and really getting deeper about the kind of transformation

that you, you need to have.

And that, I think is, is exactly what Elisa was saying,

and I know it's been my personal experience with coaching.

It's been the one place where I get to take things out

of theory and make it really real to me

and to my role, my team, my strengths

and my areas that I'm working on.

Um, and have, have a thought partner for that

because there's, you know, there's a lot

to hold by yourself.

And, and I think that, um, in this moment, um, with,

with all the, the added complexity around ai,

like people do need additional support

in order to get things done.

And so, you know, I think that brings me to just this idea

of, of the question I think that companies need to start

to ask themselves is like, how much time

and competitive advantage are you gonna be willing

to leave on the table while people just kind

of naturally figure this out?

Um, you know, you're, you're com you might just think like,

maybe hopefully my competitors will, you know,

let their people kind accidentally move toward ai.

But at the same time,

you can actually take this much more strategic

and systematic approach to building the kind of capacity

that would get you breakthrough results, you know,

in months instead of years.

And, and I think that that's the human side of this, that

that companies are still maybe not giving enough weight

to with this problem.

And you know, I saw an article just yesterday, um,

from a new study that just came out of MIT that says

that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing.

And, you know, again,

I think this just highlights this disconnect.

You know, PE companies are pouring so much money

into the technology parts of this

and the technical training,

but very little into preparing their people

to actually adapt to this level of change.

And, you know, that

that human readiness investment is just still nowhere near

the size of the technology investment that's getting made.

Yeah. And that is to the detriment of the success

of the change management of the transformation.

Heather, I know we've helped many clients think through this

and, and begin their journeys

or continue their journeys, like, oh, I'd love

to hear some more examples of what you're seeing,

of what's been working.

Well, one of my favorite stories is coming out

of LinkedIn, and so LinkedIn, you know, came to us last year

and we're going to scale coaching

to everyone in the organization.

And they part, they had partnered with us at Torch

for many years doing coaching in a variety of ways.

But last year they just really saw this need

to create more adaptive and agile leaders.

And with that, you know, they, they thought that they needed

to give people that individualized coaching support

to help them navigate their careers in, in this, in this age

of AI and, and all the changes

that we've been talking about.

And so with that, we actually rolled out coaching with them,

um, you know, across the company there's a, you know,

a few other providers involved in that as well.

But, um, but we are coaching everybody, uh, you know,

director and below at, at LinkedIn

and trying to help them to bring this need

to be more adaptive and agile with AI into their roles

and their functions and their individual teams

and individual strengths and, and challenge areas.

And it's been such an amazing, um, you know, journey to see,

we've coached so many people now, um, over the last year.

And along the way, not only are we bringing that kind

of like more precise way of coaching into LinkedIn

where we're, we're coaching people toward a goal

and toward an outcome that the company

really needs from them.

And, and that will benefit each of them individually as well

as they're showing up better in the ways

that the company has these expectations of them.

But throughout that journey,

we're actually collecting all these really rich insights

about what is going on, you know, day

to day in the organization

and being able to share that back with them

and say, all right, you want people

to be more adaptive in agile with ai.

Um, you know, think about that poll results that, that we,

we looked at, you know, the second poll where it was like,

well, there might be a lack of clear strategy.

And so, you know, as, as, as much

as people might be getting ready to be more adaptive

and agile individually, they really need the right clarity

of strategy to be running at,

or again, things like communication and,

and other things that might be going on

that actually might not have anything to do with ai,

but, um, but it's certainly standing in the way

of you having the success

that you're trying to have with ai.

And so, again, we've just learned so much along the way and,

and they're getting just a much richer picture of

where individuals are at as well as

where the overarching organization is really at

with the kind of change that they're trying to drive.

And, you know, we like to call this a,

a continuous learning loop, uh,

because the more that they're able to learn about

what is going on, the more specific and targeted

and precise we can be with

how we're actually helping to drive change.

And again, take that out of completely out

of one size fits all mode,

but make it really, um, specific to, to each individual.

Yeah, I love that example.

And I, I think LinkedIn is like such a, a leader in trying

to think this through at the whole workforce level.

I know so many leaders who are like, we are pinpointing,

we are targeting, what would this look like for them?

Yeah. And I love pinpointing and targeting.

I think that is a really important way to get started here.

But, you know, I was just speaking with another CEO

who is talking about their customer success team

and thinking that they're rolling out all these new products

and they're building AI first products now.

And, you know, she was really thinking like, do we have, um,

do we have the, the people that we need in order

to get this, to get this done

and to support customers in these new ways?

And so I think it's great to bring

that down into the very specific functions

and unique problems and roles

and start somewhere,

get really specific about a particular place, you know,

to work on things, um, and,

and start to solve that problem more thoroughly

and then learn, you know, what you can do there

and how do you take that and replicate it in other functions

and other parts of the business.

That's, that's really great as well.

So, alright, uh, Elise, I wanted to come

to one other example, which is very, very close

to home here, um, which is you as the CEO of Praxis Labs

actually led a, a big pivot with ai.

So could you tell us a bit more about what that looked like

and how did that make your, your teams have

to change how they were working?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, um, really close to home, uh, you know, and,

and leading the, this change is, you know,

trying to get through this.

It's generous because it was really a team effort.

My co-founder, our CTO Theresa Vu who goes by Tivu,

our full leadership team, really drove our AI transformation

and it, it started at the end of 2022.

We saw the release of chat GPT and my co-founder Heather

and I knew that something had changed fundamentally in the

capabilities of ai.

We'd both been in this space, um, for a while.

And our CTO had actually done her masters in machine

learning and had worked in the ad space

with big data prior to joining us.

And so really Heather and Tvu began to test and play around.

They asked the team to test and play around,

and we spent the first half of 2023 really understanding

what was possible both for how we work internally

and how we could leverage these new capabilities within

our products and services.

Um, we were studying and tinkering

and making hypotheses on what would emerge in the next year

and how we could be ready for that kind of

continue evolution of ai.

And, and I really give it up to Tivu and Heather

because they pushed us to not think of our old ways

of working and our old ways

of developing products as precious.

They encouraged us to envision what could be

and work backwards from there instead of trying

to do like incremental changes that would get us

to, to a new place.

And so instead of being like, wow,

we've always done our processes x, y, Z way,

let's just like add AI to that process.

No, we were saying, what could a whole new way

of working look like and how would that be unlocked with ai?

And so really they created a clear plan of

what we would test, what good would look like,

the timelines for us to hit.

Uh, we were iterating with how we, uh, how we sprinted

and we reorganized the team

to enable faster ways of working.

We brought our clients along,

they gave us feedback on our prototypes.

Like, like every week it was this velocity and throughput

and iteration retrospectives and,

and just going through that cycle really quickly.

And so by the second half of 2023,

we had a clear view of what was possible.

We had restructured the team for this new way of working.

We built a whole new AI native platform product suite

and launched those products throughout 2024.

And I think what's fun is we've continued to iterate

and learn and change our approaches as AI continues

to advance, um, be.

And, and so we kind of had to have had to evolve.

And I think what I'm most proud of is doing so all

of this change by leading with our values

and making sure that we were putting our team

and our human-centered approach, uh, first

as we were navigating all of this change.

Yeah, well it's so impressive what you were able to do

and, and to make that big of a change in such a short time

by getting so focused and really like leaning in.

And I, I think, you know, obviously you guys coming into

to Torch, you've really pushed on this here at

Torch as well.

And and there's something very meta about all this

that we're, we're right in this boat with all of you,

you know, we're really trying to figure this out ourselves.

And you know, I think that one of the things that I,

it always strikes me as, you know, Elise was able to make

that change at Praxis.

We're trying to make so many changes really quickly at Torch

and you know, again, like, um, drinking the same champagne,

um, as everybody else here.

But, um, but I think that, you know, it's just,

it's really challenging.

I always say that, you know, Praxis was a small company, um,

and also, you know, torch is a smaller company as well

and it's hard to drive that change.

So I always have a lot of empathy for people who are trying

to drive it at just this massive scale.

'cause it really is very hard to do and,

and hard to, to bring it down to every level and every role

and every function and not lose really precious time, um,

with, with the, with the kind of slowness

that change can often bring inside of organizations.

So, you know, with that, I know we're coming close on time.

Um, you know, I wanna just take a quick second to share

a little bit about some of the questions

that I think we're really hearing from HR leaders.

And, um, and then would love

to hear more from your questions as well.

I can see some in the chat, but get

or get your questions in, um,

before we transition into to q and a.

But, you know, I think when we talk to, to HR leaders, um,

we're really hearing a lot of like, are are we behind,

you know, or where do we start?

Um, how do we actually measure that we're creating the kind

of impact that we wanna have in this space?

Because traditionally, you know, l

and d sort of metrics don't really capture what,

what the business outcomes actually are.

And you know, there is, again,

there's fear at the leadership level as well about like,

what if we do the wrong thing?

What if we invest in the wrong thing

and we don't wanna make really expensive mistakes here?

Um, and then of al always, always, how do we move faster?

You know, everybody's trying to figure that out.

And you know, what I would say is, again, you know,

you're not behind everybody's figuring this out together.

Um, I think that the companies

that are really showing success here aren't the ones

with like these perfect strategies where they've sat down

and mapped everything out

and they know exactly where they're trying to go.

It's, it really is the ones who are, uh,

who are experimenting and learning

and changing things much more quickly

and adaptively like what Elise described with Praxis,

you know, you kind of, you have to be willing to, to let go

of, of old things and,

and move in this new direction fully in order

to really see these kinds of results.

Um, and you know, I think most importantly it's,

it's the companies

who are really addressing just the human reality of all

of this and, and not, not pretending that it does not exist.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I know we only have about 10 minutes left

and we have a handful of questions.

Heather, I'm gonna actually ask, uh,

the first question to you.

It's coming from Emmy.

Uh, she said that your comments that for many companies,

AI readiness currently equates to rolling out training

and encouraging experimentation really resonates

for companies you work

with at the leading edge of AI adoption.

What role are their HR leaders playing in shaping strategy?

What have you seen Heather

across the clients that we work with?

Yeah, I think I, I think I see a variety of things here.

There's certainly like the very forward thinking HR leaders

who are at the leading edge

of this change in their companies

and really, uh, you know, taking hold of of

how do we actually get people to do this differently?

And then, you know, certainly in other companies they're,

they're playing less of a role,

maybe they're still actually thinking about

more traditional kinds of, you know, programs

or ways of supporting their leaders

and they're not even fully there yet.

Um, but I will say that for the ones who are at

that leading edge, one of the other things

that strikes me is that they're

all talking about doing this on their teams first.

So it's not like, well, I'm gonna come up

with a great program and then

I'm gonna push it out to everyone else.

Like they are actually taking their teams

and saying, alright, you know,

how do we be a best in class example of this on our team?

And we go through this change, you know, ourselves so

that we can talk about it with other people from a place

of like real lived experience and, and credibility and,

and you just understand the problem

so much differently when you've really

gone into it yourself.

And so, you know, even that first example I talked about

with the marketing automation company

and that chief product, or sorry,

chief people officer I've been talking to for a long time,

she's really pushing her team to, to go first.

And, and, and they're taking, they're doing different things

where they're actually automating different workflows,

sharing that out, understanding what some of the, you know,

human sides of the challenge are.

And that's how they've been able to come up

with the structure for how they're thinking about driving

AI readiness across the rest of the company.

But, um, I really like that idea and,

and I think it, it certainly is like a,

a great best practice for us all to,

to continue to aspire to.

And you know, that's again, that's like the same story as

what we're we're doing at Torch.

We're not just talking about this, we are right there again,

living it, living it right alongside everybody as well.

Yeah, I I think what I would add to that, and,

and I see Bob actually put it in the chat as well,

is I think, um, folks are really leaning into assessing kind

of the kinda adaptive capacities, not just AI skills, um,

which can help, uh, them identify

how they can really move the workforce forward.

Um, starting with people, I think we've also heard

of like building internal change agent networks rather than

just like the top down communications.

I think we've seen people really address these incentive

problems directly helping people understand

how AI enhances rather than replaces their value.

And really having that honest conversation around some of

that fear that it brings up

and creating safe spaces

to acknowledge those concerns rather than just kind

of dismissing them, um, because they are there.

And I, I think I saw that in the chat as well.

Uh, and so I think it really is not just like how much

of our AI tools are being adopted,

but how much of our, uh, how are people adapting,

how were their, where their capacitys at

and how do we help them develop those, knowing

that those are gonna be critical to navigate the change

that will continue to come.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, well I know you shared some really interesting insights

from, um, the Westbound summit that you went to,

but I would, another question here is just

what has surprised us both the most in watching companies

attempt to AI transformation in real time?

So yeah, curious Elise, if you have any surprises

that you've gotten along the way?

Yeah, I think, I think while we've talked about, you know,

you have to move mindsets

and adaptability, growth and learning.

I think some of the things I have seen, um,

that like you also wanna bring joy

and fun into this process.

I think one of our clients was telling us about, um,

and it was everyone in the company could participate in

creating and building with AI agents

to build kind of prototypes.

Um, and so I got on a call with one

of the partners we're working with

and uh, our program manager was like, yeah, I'm,

I'm really hoping my prototype wins the hackathon with ai

and she's made a tool that would be helpful internally.

And I think I could just see excitement from her in a way

that maybe talking in kind of, you know, AI is coming,

it's happening can be less exciting

and more just like a Okay, great.

I, I think there is still a space in place

for experimentation, for playfulness, for joy, for people

to get their hands on it

and doing it in a way that can actually help their workflows

or help their teams is, is really powerful.

And so I think what surprised me as well,

I know we talk all day

and every day about building the capacities and mindsets.

I think what surprises me is that there still needs

to be a place for joy and for creativity in this.

Yeah. What, what would you say?

I think the thing that stands out to me is, you know,

I talked about the, the more like command

and control, fear-based approach to this change.

Um, and it's just, it's this acknowledgement that still, I,

I just, I, I, you know, I wanna like grab people

and be like, come on.

Uh, it's just that again, it's the idea

that this change is really like so personal to everyone and,

and the, the companies who get that.

And so yes to the joy that you just talked about, Elise,

but also they're really investing more in like,

the connection between people around this.

And, you know, of course that's where a lot

of joy comes from for people.

Um, and, and so companies who are really not just

saying, this is what we're gonna do,

and, you know, pushing it through and, and leaving it there,

but they're, they are really thinking more about

how do you connect people around these problems, whether

that's through, you know, the hackathons

and things that you're talking about,

but creating like safe spaces to say,

I tried this, I failed.

Um, or, you know, I don't really know what I'm doing.

Let's have open forums where we can ask questions

and really get, um, get the, the, I don't know, kind

of aspects out.

And, and interestingly, you know,

I think it's like counterintuitive for so many people,

but, you know, admitting that you don't know and,

and really being able to say like, I'm not sure

how we're gonna go forward, but we're gonna figure it out,

is where a lot of trust gets built

and a lot of connection between people.

And so, um, I think it just, it's always interesting to me

to think about how for as much as AI is such a,

a technical problem

and a technical change that we're navigating, um, you know,

my, my most optimistic side of it is, is can it,

can it actually create more of that connectivity

and joy, um, you know, between people as they learn

to figure this out together?

Yeah. I think we have time for at least one more question,

and I see one from Wendy five years from now.

What do you think will separate organizations

that thrive in AI transformation from those that struggle?

I, I mean, I think companies acknowledging that,

you know, we have to change how we drive change,

those are the ones that are going to,

to really see something different here.

Um, you know, I think companies will learn how to get really

adaptive and really, um, you know,

like iterative about driving change

and not just think of it as the old school, you know,

change management approach.

How do you get people comfortable with, with navigating

constant and continuous change?

I think the companies that really invest in building

that capacity in their organization will just be set up

for success, you know, whether it's with AI

or any other changes that come in the future.

Um, and I think that the,

the really leading companies are gonna be the ones

that finally figure that out and,

and take us out of that stat of, you know, over 70%

of transformations failing.

Um, I think when, when companies can address the human side

of this and, and build that, um, then,

then I think they'll really pull ahead and,

and stay ahead in a way that, um, you know,

that I don't think they're gonna do otherwise.

Yeah, I fully agree.

I think it, and I think it's companies investing in this

reskilling and upskilling and both

with their current workforces,

but also with the future workforce.

I think, um, you know,

our education systems haven't necessarily prepared folks

to think and do and work differently.

And so how do you reach even kind of earlier generations,

not just the folks in your current workplace,

and how do you begin that reskilling

and upskilling building that pipeline, uh, of talent

who can think differently, who can work differently, who are

adaptive, uh, and able

to navigate nuance in a really human-centered way.

I think those are the companies that are gonna win.

It's the folks who bet big on their people

and invest in that re-skilling that up-skilling that

personal development

and that internal kind of human-centered leadership.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I think this is a moment of, of just huge opportunity.

You know, yes, AI transformation

and transformation in general is very challenging.

Um, but it's also a chance for us to finally build the kind

of adaptive human-centered leaders

that organizations have needed for years.

Um, you know, and,

and I think with that, um, there's just, yeah, again,

just tremendous opportunity here.

Yeah. Uh, I think what I would want to end

and leave this community with is you're not alone.

We're all learning together.

Some of us are further along,

but we're, we're all still figuring it out.

Um, and approaches are still emerging on how to do it.

And so, you know, really just double clicking that, starting

with that human dimension, starting with the people.

Don't let that get overlooked in your workforce.

Address the real fears rather than

pretending they don't exist.

Um, and share what you're learning so that we can all learn

and do this work together.

Yeah. Well thank you so much everyone

for joining us for this conversation.

We'd obviously love to continue the conversation with any

of you who wanna dig deeper and,

and talk about what this could look like

for your specific situation.

So if you're interested at all in learning more about our AI

readiness coaching solution

and how it might help you to navigate this change

with your people, um,

we would love to explore that with you.

So look out for the follow up resources you're gonna get

emails and different contact information

and next steps about how you can learn more.

But, you know, this is really all about learning.

We're all figuring it out together.

Second, what Elise said, you're not alone.

Um, and, and there's a lot of exciting learning ahead.

So thank you again for joining us

and we hope to connect with you soon.

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