Unlocking AI and Leadership With Mahan Tavakoli

Skot Waldron (00:01.642)
Okay, Mahan, you told me the purpose of this show is to have fun and to learn something. Is that what we're about to do?

Mahan Tavakoli (00:10.516)
We're gonna have a lot of fun, Scott. I look forward to it. Ha ha ha.

Skot Waldron (00:13.367)
Okay. We've set the bar. We have set the bar here. Okay. So I am, we're intrigued with this whole AI thing that's coming out. Okay. Tell me, let's just lay a foundation. Let's lay a framework for why we're having this conversation now. And why you're the one talking about it.

Mahan Tavakoli (00:36.672)
Well, Scott, right now everyone's talking about AI. However, as much as there is some hype around it, I think we are in for an absolute revolution in the way we live and most specifically, we work, because AI is hitting its exponential curve. So this is the time to talk about it. On my end, for about five years, I've been looking into and fascinated with its strategic implications.

I am by no means an AI expert. Like everyone else, when ChatGPT came out, I was shocked at its potential. A lot of the AI experts I've been having conversations with on my podcast were also shocked by its potential. By the way, none of the AI experts know exactly how generative AI works, including ChatGPT. So what I know is that we are in for

exponential change and a revolution in the way we work. That's why it's fascinated me. And that's where I spend a lot of my time studying it and working with clients on.

Skot Waldron (01:47.33)
Yeah, I was about to say the term AI expert, like, you know, is anybody really an expert in generative AI? I don't know. I guess somebody's more of an expert than somebody else. I guess you can always claim that. Yeah. Um, talk about, cause you come from the leadership culture, organizational structure background and your fascination with AI. How are those two worlds coming together for you?

Mahan Tavakoli (01:51.657)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (02:16.662)
Like, why are you talking? Cause that's what I'm really interested in the potential of that, you know, because even as a coach and we talk about, you know, human skills and how do we bridge this gap of helping people communicate? What's the place of AI in the course of those types of things?

Mahan Tavakoli (02:36.336)
Yeah, it's funny, Scott. I find myself doing the same thing as a lot of times people want to do is putting people in certain buckets. And I've tried to get out of those specific buckets. So on my own journey started about five years ago when I read A.J. Agrawal's book, Prediction Machines. Outstanding book. He has written a new one also when he talked about the fact that artificial intelligence.

will reduce the cost of prediction and the accuracy of prediction, and the fact that will transform the way we live when we can have much more accurate, low-cost predictions. At the same time, I read a book by Paul Doherty, who is now the Chief Technology Officer of Accenture, Human and Machine, and Paul made the brilliant case in that book.

that we are going to be as individuals and in organizations augmented with the power of artificial intelligence. So those two things really stuck with me. I saw use of AI in some of the organizations I work with. However, with the advancements in generative AI, that got me into thinking, along with some of my clients, about the strategic implications, which is what AJ talks about.

and some of the tactical applications of AI. So that's how I came into this part out of my fascination, part because I do believe it is transformative. It's as big, if not bigger, than the Industrial Revolution, much bigger in my view than the internet and mobile phones were. So that therefore is going to impact all of the clients I deal with, how they lead in their organizations.

and how they come up with their organizational strategy as well.

Skot Waldron (04:35.95)
So how do we prepare for this as, as leaders and companies, this is coming. And we can either just go like, you know, blinders and we can just kind of focus on, you know, that's happening. That whole thing out there. Haven't touched chat. GBT. I'm not into that whole thing. Fine. But you're sitting there going whatever, you know, use Alexa. You, oh, whoops, don't turn on. Yeah. I'm just like, dang it. You know,

Mahan Tavakoli (05:03.55)
Hahaha!

Skot Waldron (05:05.846)
Um, she's waiting for me to say something. Okay. So, you know, we, we can be on where we are, but we need to prepare. We need to understand that it's coming. How do leaders prepare?

Mahan Tavakoli (05:17.248)
Yeah, I think it's really important first and foremost to recognize there was a survey that showed only 14% of Americans had played around or used chat GPT. Now it's somewhere around 20% have even used generative AI. There are a lot of clients that I interact with, including CEOs of mid-sized to larger organizations.

where their only exposure to whether it's ChatGPT or BARD, any of the generative AI tools has been minimal at best. They've had someone come up with a poem through ChatGPT and they see it as a parlor trick rather than understanding the technology behind it and the impact it's gonna have. So the first thing I think we all need to do regardless of our positions is to have a growth mindset.

and recognize that this is an opportunity for us to learn and see new potential in the way we get our work done and in the way our organization gets its work done. So a growth mindset first and foremost, I think is what it takes for all of us.

Skot Waldron (06:29.058)
So I agree with that. I mean, growth mindset is the idea that there is an opportunity. Scarcity mindset is kind of the opposite where we limit those beliefs and we hone in on the thing and we're afraid of what's coming and we're afraid we're not gonna have enough or whatever and the growth mindset is there's opportunity for something to happen in the future for all of us.

And as we think about AI and the opportunity, so sure, I can write a poem. Yeah. A lot. I use it a lot for generating quick, you know, email blurbs or social media comments or whatever it's production. It's a production tool mainly for me. Is that the way you see it? Or how do you see it?

Mahan Tavakoli (07:18.584)
Generative AI itself, one of the easiest ways to use it is for production. But let me rely on one of the most brilliant people in this space, AJ Agrawal, and give you the example that he uses. In that many people might be familiar with this if they've traveled to London. London cabbies used to have to study for three years to take a test called Knowledge of London.

So they needed to know how to drive from one place to the next in London, memorizing brilliant, absolutely brilliant, what they had to go through was. Now, part of what AI did, including things like Waze or Google Maps, is that anyone could go from point A to point B. When they introduced Navi AI,

to London cabbies, the ones that were least experienced actually benefited by about 7%. The ones that were most experienced didn't benefit. So, how does generative AI relate? Generative AI helps us, especially people who are less capable, let's say at writing or content creation, to do it better and helps us generate more of it.

But let me jump to the second point AJ makes, is that same artificial intelligence is used in Uber, which now totally changed the game. It was no longer enabling the cabbies to become more effective. It was enabling any individual to use their asset, which was a car, in place of a cab, to go from point A to point B.

avoid traffic and both provide a service that people were looking for and benefit as a result. So it changed the strategic implications of driving in London, taxi cabs, transportation. That's the same thing that's gonna happen with all of our businesses, Scott, in that are we able to produce more content, more effectively, more efficiently, quicker? Absolutely.

Mahan Tavakoli (09:43.188)
That's one level, tactical level of implications. However, there are a lot of overlays of strategic implications for organizations. The job to be done will be done very differently as a result of AI. That's what, in my belief, is going to be a seismic shift that a lot of organizations are not thinking about.

Skot Waldron (10:08.386)
How scared of it should we be?

Mahan Tavakoli (10:11.6)
I love Andy Grove's book and leadership at Intel. Andy Grove said, only the paranoid survive. And I believe for myself and the organizations I work with, only the paranoid survive. Should we be scared? Absolutely. But that therefore should focus us in thinking about how to take advantage of the opportunity. I think the people who should be most scared are the ones that say, nah, this is for tech companies, or nah, this is for...

content producers, it doesn't relate to me. Those are the people who should be scared. The ones that don't have a little bit of paranoia that this is going to impact our organization both tactically and strategically as well.

Skot Waldron (10:57.546)
I love that because if you think about that paranoia, what does it do? It sparks our survival instinct that says, I'm a little skeptic of this and I'm a little bit fearful and now my survival brain needs to kick in and figure out how we're going to make it through this. That's when you start discovering or bringing people into a conversation and creating opportunity for how are we going to use this?

This is coming everybody. What are we going to do with this? And that's going to take a lot of foresight and some of those future thinkers and companies to learn how to innovate in a space like this. And how are we going to take our industry and apply this? Cause it's coming. So we're either going to do it or we're not. And we're going to either going to be empowered by it, or we're going to play the victim of this situation. And playing the victim card is not always ever beneficial.

Mahan Tavakoli (11:55.868)
Yeah, and I think, Scott, more CEOs have gotten a sense for that post-Chat GPT launch. So Accenture just put out a great study that breaks down to almost a third, a third, and a third. A third of organizations were pretty advanced with their AI use pre-November 2022. About a third.

which now makes it a little over 70%, initiated focus groups and other initiatives on AI after they saw chat GPT and generative AI's potential, and about a third don't see it as relating to them and haven't woken up yet. So part of the focus should be for everyone to think about how is this going to impact me.

our organization, again, both tactical applications, operational implications, and then strategic implications. So that sense of paranoia, personally I enjoy it because it stretches you, forces you to learn, grow, and change. And I think things are changing at a faster rate than ever before, and those are the leaders that will survive and thrive. The ones that can change at a faster rate themselves.

and can help and support their teams and organizations to change at a faster rate than before.

Skot Waldron (13:28.358)
Amen. Mahan, you've got a show yourself called, uh, partnering leadership, 1% global podcast. That's pretty legit.

Mahan Tavakoli (13:41.728)
Scott, I have been fortunate, so part of what I do is I read outstanding books, like I mentioned AJ or Paul's, and I reach out to them and they are willing to come on the podcast and have conversations with me from a selfish perspective. I get to learn from some of the most brilliant people in the world and then share that with my audience as well. I have a great audience of people who have a growth mindset.

The people that frustrate me most, so you are in the marketing, you also were in the marketing and branding space. I know you do that internally within organizations with their leadership. One of the people I love on the marketing side is Christopher Lockhead. He's got a great podcast of his own, pretty spicy language, category design is one of the things that he spends a lot of his time on, but he's got a great quote. He says, it's a dumb time to be dumb. And,

Lockett can get away with saying that part of his point is there is so much outstanding, brilliant content out there. All we need to do is if we learn through listening, just take the time, listen to some podcasts. If you enjoy watching, there are great videos on YouTube. If you enjoy reading, there are outstanding books. So he says, right now we have access to most brilliant minds in the world.

all we need to do is prioritize it and pay attention to it. I totally agree with that. So the podcast has provided me an opportunity to do that with some brilliant guests and share that with people, my audience and yours who care enough about their own development to spend the time to listen, learn and grow.

Skot Waldron (15:33.006)
I mean, some of these guests, Stephen, M.R. Covey, Ken Blanchard, John Cotter, we've talked about, right. And you've talked about some other guests here. What is the thing that you're gathering from these conversations? And I'm going to bring it back to the AI conversation a little bit and just kind of the idea of future thinking and, and whatnot, but what have you gained from interviewing these guests that we should all know about?

Mahan Tavakoli (16:02.068)
So, couple of things. One of them you might not expect in terms of a response, Scott, in that these folks are some of the most giving, generous people I've ever interacted with. They are the real deal. They are genuine. And what I say with the CEOs and executive teams I work with is leadership is example. It's through how we behave, how we treat others, that people get a sense of who we are as leaders.

So one of the things I have loved about my interactions with them is they are the genuine deal. It's not just the book that they've written and the principles that they've put in the book, they are the genuine deal. The second part of it, and I think that connects to the conversation around AI, is that our ability to connect with each other's humanity and lead through that humanity becomes even more important. John Cotter has written about change for...

dozens of years. I mean, I had read John Cotter's work before going to business school, a lot in business school and quite a bit since then. And in his rethinking of change, he talks about the human elements of change and the fact that we need to be able to bring people along. It's not just the framework. It's not just the strategy of the organization. Same thing with Stephen R. Covey, M. R. Covey. He talks about trust and inspire.

how that's the kind of leadership we need to transition into rather than our language having evolved from command and control, however, our behaviors still aligning more with command and control. So what I've learned from them applies as well to this transformation to more technology focused, AI augmented world, the need for us to lead with genuine humanity

and genuine ability to connect with other people on a human level.

Skot Waldron (18:07.938)
We, back in my earlier days as a designer, designed a lot of corporate materials. We did a lot of Andrew Report work, Sesame Workshop, and for bigger companies out in the world that wanted to get Swiss Army and other companies that wanted to get their message out in the space. Now, when we designed Andrew Reports, it wasn't just like a 10K and some

pretty pictures, right? We designed them like a narrative. It was a book, it was beautiful. We cared about the paper, the ink that was printed on, like all kinds of things. We really took a lot of care. Even the 10K was, we were very intentional about the type setting and the way it was printed. And then, you know, early 2000s, the SEC said, oh, by the way, everybody, you don't need to print these anymore. You can just send them out via email and it's all good.

Some companies were like, no, we're not doing that. And other companies were like, oh, big money saver. We don't have to print all hundreds of thousands of annual reports anymore and send it to all our shareholders. So they started going more digital. Then we were creating online annual reports and we were doing that for companies like Royal Caribbean and other people. Now, people missed it. I think there was something beautiful.

about the printed piece that people missed. And we're seeing that with books. Some people are like e-readers all day. Just give me an e-reader, I can put 4,000 books on my e-reader and I'm good. Other people are like, no, I need a tactical thing. That's the camp I'm in. The e-readers, they don't do it for me. So I have a tactical book. I like the paper and I like to smell it. And that sense of something real is something that I missed.

And I hear, I'm saying this whole thing because I think that it's, it's getting that way a bit now. And we've seen it with texts and email that we were like, well, kids don't talk on the phone anymore. Why don't you, you know, we were just like, the human voice is missing now. And what's the next evolution of that? Is AI going to spark the next evolution of

Mahan Tavakoli (20:13.594)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (20:27.65)
why don't they talk on the phone anymore? But it's something else different entirely, you know? I don't know, what do you think about that?

Mahan Tavakoli (20:35.188)
Well, the choice is ours, Scott, to a great extent. And there are aspects of this technology that will get us to think back and say, oh, the good old days, we used to do things differently. But I do believe there are aspects of it that will bring out more of our humanity. So for decades, I was involved in leadership and management development. And part of management training has been the five

elements of management, the traditional functions of management. You Google it, study it, all universities and MBA programs have it, planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling or directing for those that don't like the word controlling. Those have been the functions of management. If you think about it, for those who understand AI and the potential of AI, AI can do most of those.

much better than any human can. However, it's deleting the human element that AI can't do if people focus on the human side. Now, one other quick study to share with you as a fun aside is that people interacted with a chat bot or a doctor not knowing whether they were interacting with a doctor or a chat bot in getting their questions answered.

they saw more empathy in the responses that the chat bot was giving them. So AI can have empathy if the doctors continue being compensated, being incentivized, and being focused just on sheer quantity. However, if the doctors focus more on that human connection, truly understanding the person in front of them, rather than trying to move people along,

they can have more empathy, more connection than the AI can. So same thing in organizations. The planning function, the controlling function, a lot of those can be done better with AI. However, that ability to coach, that ability to connect with another human being, sense their emotions, bring them along, can be done best by a very capable human. So I think this becomes an opportunity for us

Mahan Tavakoli (23:02.884)
automate everything and think back to the good old days when there was more humanity or double up on our humanity and our leadership. And I'm an advocate for the latter.

Skot Waldron (23:16.462)
Hmm, that's good. I like that perspective and thinking about what, what is AI missing that we still need to fill. Do you think that will ever be filled by AI? I mean, that human thing, like, I mean, I've heard studies, there was a, what podcast was it, was it hidden brain, the hidden brain podcast where they had, they did a series on AI.

And one of the experts on AI was on there and she was talking about right now, chat GP brain is probably the size of a squirrel, right? Squirrel size brain. And it's doing what it's doing. So what happens when AI brain gets his size of a human brain or even larger? What will it be able to do at that point in time? So I ask you the question will, do you believe that AI

could take the role of leadership in augmenting or duplicating or replicating that human connection somehow in some way.

Mahan Tavakoli (24:28.628)
So to a certain extent, yes, and pretty quickly. To other extents, no. So there are lots of chatbots, including there is replica.com, where people have relationships with their replica chatbot. And in many instances, they have emotional engagements with the chatbot. You can laugh at it or realize that when Snapchat rolled out its chatbot,

150 million users of it. So people are emotionally engaging with and interacting with chatbots. That's part of what a lot of leaders and organizations don't recognize. Younger people are more willing to experiment and are developing relationships and connections. So will that change the way we connect with each other in the future? Absolutely. At the same time, when we jump to the other side, I love

Vanessa Bonds, she's a professor of behavioral psychology at Cornell, has written an outstanding book. You have more influence than you think. And she gives a lot of different studies as examples, including one where when people occupy the same space and taste the chocolate, let's say a bitter chocolate, even when they are not looking at each other's faces, so they are not picking up.

facial cues, the sensations in the brain are more pronounced when there is another human being in that same space. We don't exactly know why, however, we do connect differently to other human beings. Therefore, at this point, I don't believe AI will fully replace humans. It can augment. But to...

differentiate ourselves, we have to double up on our own humanity. One of the people I love is Yuval Noah Harari, and he talks about the fact that when AI gets to know us better than we know ourselves, and when AI gets to understand our emotions better than we understand our emotions, that's the danger zone, and his recommendation is therefore you need to get to know yourself better.

Mahan Tavakoli (26:55.292)
you need to connect with your own emotions better, and you need to get to know other people and connect with other human emotions. So I'm an optimist. I believe AI can augment things that are boring, repetitive. However, it cannot take the place of humans who fully understand themselves and are able to effectively connect with other human beings.

Skot Waldron (27:23.886)
The ones that are fearful of AI are the ones who probably don't connect very well. I mean, that could be the other argument, right? I mean, it's the people that don't have the relationship or don't know how to lead or don't know how to communicate well that are going to be more fearful probably of the thing that's coming at them, right? Because they don't know they're vulnerable.

Mahan Tavakoli (27:48.872)
And Scott, that's why people like you and me and your listeners need to engage in their organizations and in the community with conversations around AI. That's something I don't think we did enough of with social media. And even though social media, in my view, is nowhere near as impactful as AI will be, still, we let, in many instances, with all due respect, emotionally underdeveloped,

Mahan Tavakoli (28:19.724)
intelligent college dropouts, start social media companies that were then focused primarily on engagement through outrage and other factors rather than people who are more emotionally intelligent wanting to produce things that help connect community better. That is, your point is exactly why I think it's essential.

for us as individuals and as leaders with a desire for that connection with humanity to be involved in these conversations, not to just let someone who is very capable on the technological front but doesn't understand the implications on the humanity front to lead the development of AI.

Skot Waldron (29:10.818)
So good, so insightful. People, I'm sure people are intrigued by this conversation. I was intrigued when it was proposed that we talk about this and I was like, oh my gosh, I gotta have this guy on the show. Like, this is so relevant for now. On your show.

Give us a little bit of a preview of what people could expect if they come over to your show and they start wanting to know about partnering leadership and how to get a hold

Mahan Tavakoli (29:46.632)
Yeah, my focus, Scott, is primarily on organizational leadership, targeted at CEOs and senior executives of organizations. And once-a-week conversations are with thought leaders, some of them with CEOs, billionaire philanthropists like David Rubinstein, Gene Case, folks that have successfully built and established their organizations. Most of them are with global thought leaders, many of them that you mentioned.

From an organizational strategy and alignment perspective, however, the AI conversations, which I've been having once or twice a month for the past couple of years, are a big part of it because I do believe artificial intelligence is not just a side technology. It is not just for the chief technology officer of the organization. It is really going to impact how every single one of us do our jobs.

Every team learns how to collaborate with each other and AI will play a role in that. And then every organization, it will have strategic implications. So I focus my conversations on organizational leadership. AI is a part of what I believe will be very impactful on that organizational strategy and leadership.

Skot Waldron (31:06.23)
What's the one thing people should do right now as it pertains to AI and leadership?

Mahan Tavakoli (31:15.348)
First and foremost, experiments. And don't be happy with your initial experimentation. So whether it's ChatGPT or BARD or the literally thousands of AI tools that come out every day, don't just be happy with a little experimentation. With almost every one of the CEOs I work with, Scott, we have talked through the AI implications. But once I've had them sit down,

and I use Claude AI with a bunch of them, and we upload a document, and then they get a chance to have a conversation with that document. They start visualizing, wow, how this can unleash the knowledge that they have in all parts of their organization. So I don't think just listening to conversations will help, even though listening to Scott's is an outstanding way to improve yourself.

I don't think just reading helps. Play around with it and don't be happy with just the first couple of experiences. I've had way too many CEOs tell me, oh yeah, that chat GPT, as I mentioned to you earlier, someone got it to write a cutesy poem. I don't know how it's going to impact my organization. No, don't be happy with that. The implications are going to be huge. Trust me on that. Spend some time on some of the

bigger platforms, and there are lots of tools and resources to build off of from there.

Skot Waldron (32:50.958)
Brilliant, brilliant, Mahan. Is there a way people get in touch with you? They wanna talk to you more, invite you on their show, get your word out, how do people get in touch with you?

Mahan Tavakoli (33:02.396)
Absolutely, you mentioned the podcast Partnering Leadership and there's partneringleadership.com. I have conversations with brilliant thought leaders and mahan.tavikoli.com. I'm on all the socials as well.

Skot Waldron (33:16.018)
Okay. There's not too many people that have Mahan Tavakoli.com. You had to fight for that URL. Did you.

Mahan Tavakoli (33:22.441)
I did have to fight for that. No, I didn't. But the fun part, Scott, is nowadays, even if you don't know how to type someone's name, or Google, or with Bard added to it, can easily find anyone you want for you. So people who want to find us can easily find us.

Skot Waldron (33:23.871)
You did!

Skot Waldron (33:40.054)
That is the truth. That is the truth, man. Oh, it's been so good. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. You've added some cool insights. Some things made me think. I hope it made some other people think too. So thanks, man.

Mahan Tavakoli (33:54.64)
Absolute blast having a conversation with you, Scott. I really appreciate it.