Matt Best: Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast with
me, Matt Best, and Jonny Adams.
Jonny Adams: Hello!
Matt Best: Today we're absolutely thrilled to be joined
by Athena Peppes, and you're going to talk to us a lot around
navigating AI adoption, through overcoming fear and embracing
foresight. We're going to address some of those ethical
challenges that come up as part of that today. So we're really
looking forward to getting into that conversation. So Athena,
welcome and thank you for coming along.
Athena Peppes: Well, pleasure to be here today. Thank you for
inviting me.
Matt Best: Brilliant, and just a bit about your background. So
you're a futurist speaker, and you advise on trends in
technology and looking into the future and obviously, and also a
founder of Athena Peppes Consulting and Beacon Thought
Leadership. But I wonder, for the benefit of our audience, if
you could just share a little bit about your background, your
journey so far?
Athena Peppes: Yes, absolutely. So I started off my career as an
economist, working in insurance and then in shipping and mining,
and my role at the time involved forecasting quite a lot, which
is very different to foresight and researching those sectors
and understanding a lot about the policy issues, what the
demand, supply is and those in those sectors. Then I moved to
Accenture, which is a major consulting and technology
company, and I worked in thought leadership there for 15 years,
focused on topics related to the future of business. More
recently, as you said, I've founded my own consultancies,
helping my clients with two aspects of what I'm really
passionate about. One is around long term thinking and really
understanding how technology trends are going to shape
business, they're going to change it, and how to help them
be prepared and actually turn that change into an opportunity
and growth for their organization and the others
around the other consultancies is a partnership focused on
helping them with their with their thought leadership
initiatives.
Matt Best: Wow, fantastic. So I was going to try and come up
with some sort of pun there, but I think this is all going to be
very futuristic. I'm very much, very much looking forward to
diving into this with you.
Jonny Adams: Glad that you finished it, because I was like,
is he? Is he going to do it on absolutely super, super
interested about this topic today, Athena. And really, I
think, in the last number of conferences, or what's going on
in the news feed on LinkedIn at the moment, it's all about the
future. And you know, what does technology mean to us? And
there's a lot more sort of that personal impact. I'm really
super excited to spend some time for you today. So thank you for
joining us.
Matt Best: Perfect. And before we jump into the future, though,
what's customary on the growth workshop podcast is for us to
ask a little bit about what's been going on in your week. What
have you learned? What's been interesting? Maybe something
that you've experienced in your personal life, but you'd be
happy to share with with us in the audience today.
Athena Peppes: Excellent question. I I'll draw on my
recent trip. I just came back from Dubai, actually, yesterday,
I spent five days there, visiting different sites, there
in Abu Dhabi as well. And I was very impressed. It was my first
time there. Was very impressed with the focus they have on long
term thinking and future generations. And have they, they
plan the city, and they plan their economy with that in mind
and kind of working backwards.
Jonny Adams: I've also heard good weather, good food and good
shopping. Is that fair to say? Things may have come into this?
What was your favorite out of those three?
Athena Peppes: The weather not so much because I'm Greek, so I
should be used to the heat, but it's actually very humid there.
And yeah, so quite different. Shopping was excellent. I will
say I've never seen a shopping mall like to buy more.
Jonny Adams: Did you? Did you go out on the plane with a half
empty suitcase and come back, we'll see cases on the way
around. Good on you.
Matt Best: Good on you. Brilliant. Well, I mean, thank
you for sharing that, Athena. And actually, when we dive into
the conversation today, I imagine some of that reflection
from your trip to Dubai, that sort of, that forward thinking
mindset will come out of it. So Jonny, how about you?
Jonny Adams: This week's been amazing. So, I mean, it's great
to have Athena here. She's worked and is a thought leader
herself, and one of my favorite authors, Steve Martin, some of
you may have read some of his books in the past. I went to his
latest book launch. He's just collaborated with the economist
and Matt, you and I have been lucky, but also maybe you know,
showed how our business works is that we've we've worked with his
organization for the last five years. They are behavioral
scientists. They are an organization called influence at
work, and as a SBR, from a business development
perspective, have sort of merged together to bring science and
art together. And for the last five years, we've worked with
him, and I think some of the tips and techniques. That he
writes about in influence and persuasion have really helped me
as an individual, become become better at my job and as a
person. So he talks a lot about the six principles of influence
and persuasion, and he's got some great insights around that
topic. So yeah, went to the book launch. Really good. Had a beer.
It was fantastic. What about you?
Matt Best: Nice. So I went to a slightly different event,
actually, and it was an engaged sales event recently in London,
which talked about Mark was focused on marketing and sales.
And a lot of what we talk about on the growth workshop podcast
is, of course, around kind of client centricity and that focus
on bringing that, that all together in organizations. And
there's a lot of discussion at that, at that event, actually,
which is really insightful, so similar came out with some Yeah,
I feel like I've learned a lot this week, which is always a
good place to be.
Jonny Adams: What was the one thing that you took away that
was like, Yeah, that was good?
Matt Best: You know what? There's one of the speakers was
talking about the importance of when it comes to sales and
marketing enablement, the importance of creating a
community around it, acknowledging that normally
those teams are quite small, so the ability to scale is
challenged, right? So, yes, it's scaling through enabling
leaders, but also creating a community of people to support
getting that out into the market. So selecting individuals
from different teams to be sort of champions and change
carriers, which I think is really, really important to to
maximize the impact of that. SoAthena, as we look, as we look
to the future. Again, I'm going to try not to say that too many
signs, but one of the we were reading in one of your blogs
recently, which is actually titled, could humanoid robots
close the gender equality gap in that book, you or in that blog,
rather, you talk about, you know, the process of adopting
technology, and how it involves overcoming some of those
natural, understandable and justified concerns, right? But
our challenge as humans is not to avoid this progress, but to
make productive, informed and moral use of it. So certainly,
whenever I think about the sort of evolution of AI and look
around at some of the people sat in those C suite jobs, right?
You can, you can sense some fear in that. What do you do? And how
do you help those leaders in getting comfortable with that
and maybe being able to make informed decisions around how to
effectively and appropriately leverage these technologies?
Athena Peppes: Yeah, it's a very good question. There's a lot to
unpack there. You You mentioned the word fear, for example. I
think perhaps there is a little bit of fear, but actually the
the main concern is around those leaders being fully prepared,
especially in an environment where this technology is just
changing so fast. I think we're currently in a in a technology
or innovation super cycle. So one development you see in
artificial intelligence is quickly bringing in another, and
that's how I ended up writing the article around humanoid
robotics, because there's a lot of emphasis in the AI research
community at the moment in terms of how large language models and
generative AI can be embedded into the previous generation of
robotics, and that can bring about another wave of growth.
You know, that's all happened quite fast, and it's only been a
couple of years since chat GPT was released. But actually, the
field of AI, the research that's been done around that, has been
going on for much longer, since the release of chat GPT, there's
been a lot of hype, a lot of media attention on it, a lot of
company investment. So all of that can make leaders feel like
things are changing really fast. What am I doing? Everyone's
doing this. What do I do? The reality is that if you kind of
look at I was thinking about this the other day, because in
the last six months, I think I've had more than 200
conversations with different organizations. The topic that
always comes up is artificial intelligence, in terms of what's
top of mind for those for those companies, but the pace of
adoption is very, very different, right? And that makes
sense, because if you are in consumer goods, you will just
naturally move a lot faster and adopt and respond to trends a
lot faster. But some industries, like pharmaceuticals, are a lot
more heavily regulated, so you'd understand that there might be a
bit more hesitant or slower reluctant, and want to be a bit
more prepared before adopting any new technology. There's also
the dimension of size. I personally have seen that a lot
of the narrative that we get around technology trends,
including AI shaped by very large technology companies,
right? But as I just mentioned, the industry makes a difference.
The size makes a difference of an organization in the UK, if
you if you look at the data, 99% of companies are actually SMEs.
If you look at that by revenues, it's about 50% employees, 60% so
they're the backbone of the economy, right? And so it can
feel like. Everyone's ahead of you in AI, there is a lot of
fear, you know, lack of confidence. How do I go about
this? Surely everyone knows what they're doing. And actually,
that's not the reality, because if you go a bit deeper, you'll
see there's a lot of variation in terms of adoption.
Jonny Adams: There's a piece that I think was really
interesting. I know you're going to continue on this trend of
asking the question is that you reference, you've had many
conversations, and we also do, like we did some market
analysis, where there isn't really a growth consultancy in
the space that's taking and capitalizing on this AI
conversation. But what I mean by that, Athena, is that, could you
give like, a summary, and without putting you on the spot
too much, what are those common questions that you're getting
asked about, or common concerns? Maybe. So why I ask that
question is, I think the listeners that are typically the
individuals that you're talking to might go, Yeah, I also have
got those problems or questions. Do you have like, a trend of
what they're asking you at the moment?
Athena Peppes: It's a little bit varied, I would say. And that's
why I mentioned kind of the industry and size of company. I
won't mention names, I'll just give you a couple of examples as
illustrations. So for example, I was talking to a marketing
agency that works a lot with life sciences and pharmaceutical
companies, and they were the ones that were saying, Look, we
see the potential to use AI and what we do, but it's very
important to take our clients along with us in that journey,
and they're a little bit hesitant, because they worry
about that regulation. And when you say AI, that could mean a
lot of different things. It could be something very simple,
right? It can be something super sophisticated.
Jonny Adams: Should be AI for dummies. You remember the book
that were your like, you know, I think my mom and dad got...
Matt Best: How do you use a computer for dummies?
Jonny Adams: There must be one.
Athena Peppes: I'm sure there is. But it's a little bit like
that. And I think the issue is sometimes, if you're very senior
executive or, you know, then it can feel a little bit like, oh,
I can't say that. I don't know exactly what's happening in that
space. And actually the best way to kind of get around any fears
just better understanding, better knowledge, more
conversation around the talk. Expert, yeah. Another example is
how to use it for pricing. How to use AI for pricing.
Jonny Adams: Describe that a little bit more when I'm
curious, I've talked to a professional service firm. So
future will look like there's been a lot of consolidation in
financial services over the last number of years. There's going
to be a heavy pivot towards professional services being
consolidating in the UK market, with a lot of classic sort of
money needed to be invested by investors, as we all know, it
was going on at the moment, and that was sort of a bit of
insight shared to me this week, but, but pricing was the key
point that investors are looking for at the moment. So how do you
think AI and pricing? I'm curious about that because
that's very topical.
Athena Peppes: Yeah, that came from another kind of lead, and
they're just interested in understanding basically how they
can get better data faster, into their into their sales teams
using it, and how AI can help them do that, so that they can
have more competitive pricing, so they can think a little bit
differently about what their pricing strategy. So my dynamic
sizing board, yes, or modeling different scenarios, right? And
being able to understand, okay, if I do this, what if this
happens? What would the impact be? And some of that might be
already there. But obviously it's becoming a lot more
sophisticated. The data sets on which these models are trained
are a lot bigger. So in theory, they should be better quality,
but then you also get issues around that, like, is it really
that robust? We know there's an issue with hallucinations,
right? So if you create a tool to help your teams with with
pricing, how can you make sure that the data gives them is also
very robust? You're also dealing with very sensitive data, right?
How do you ensure that it's, it's secure when it when it
comes to pricing? So those are some of the questions that are
coming up around this.
Matt Best: Something that's sort of interesting, and I'd love
your perspective on on some of those industry type trends you
mentioned, sort of Life Sciences and pharmaceutical fair to
assume that they're a kind of fairly highly regulated
industry. I think, you know, some of the more consider it
kind of more straightforward, sort of AI technologies are
still struggling to get into into some of these industries,
just as a result of the regulatory environment. Do you
see this as much the job of regulators and policy and policy
makers as it is the businesses themselves?
Athena Peppes: Yeah, I think there is an element of that, in
the sense that sometimes organizations might wait to see
what the regulation is before they adopt something right? I
think then culture comes into. Play and kind of how fast you
can be. Some organizations might say, well, but in the meantime,
we're still missing out on all this potential, this growth. I
think the other thing with being an early adopter is potentially,
of course, it's high risk, but also you might be able to
illustrate the benefits to the policy makers as well as they
shape that policy. The key thing, I think, around
regulation policy making, is that, for sure, organizations
have to deal with just a patchwork of regulation, because
each country or each region, say, in the case of the EU,
takes a very different approach. That's another part of the
dynamic. You have to think about that in the US, they tend to be
a bit more relaxed. I would argue, if you look at the trend
over time, that they are actually becoming a lot more
focused on on regulation, for sure, but look at the UI act
that's already come into into force, that is quite intense.
I'm not an expert in the space. I can't comment specifically,
but on a webinar recently about like, how many assessments now
companies have to do? Because even if you have the same tool
every time you use it, if you use it for sales, you have to do
a different assessment than if you use the same tool for
marketing or internal employee training or different kind of
things. There is a lot of that. But I think the back then, it
comes back to the balance we talked about a little bit
before, right of, how do you make sure you take advantage of
the opportunity and not miss out?
Matt Best: And if we think about, kind of practically
diving into some of the practicalities of the work that
you do, when you sit down with a C suite executive who's feels
maybe a little bit under qualified, is getting pressure
from the business to adopt new technology. He's worried about
the risk. And you know, whether that be, you know the because,
because risk is always on the other side of that, the other
side of that equation, how, what's your approach, typically,
to doing that you mentioned, sort of education and building
and understanding is so important. So is that at the
heart of what you do, in terms of you of helping these
executives in understanding what this looks like and how it could
shape the future of their business?
Athena Peppes: Yes, in terms of how to help them, it really
depends on where they are on that on that adoption journey,
because some come and say, we know this is a trend. We know we
need to do something. We kind of don't know what to do. Others
are experimenting. They've already rolled out some proofs
of concept. And just want to thinking about scaling, you
know, across different business functions. The way I help them
is to think a little bit about the future of their
organization, and where is it that they want to be, and to
also make sure that when they're thinking about those
technologies, they're not just thinking about today, but what
will AI look like in five years time, so that you can be
whatever you introduce now, can be more resilient, I would
always start with the problem. So what's the problem that
they're facing, right? It's the classic consulting of trying to
understand, in some cases, it's not them, it's their teams. How
do we take our teams along with us? In other cases, is like, Oh,
we feel resistance, because people think this is going to
take over their jobs. How can we make them sure there's actually
potential to help? It kind of varies a lot.
Matt Best: If you're looking and again, I kind of digging into
this, and I'm really curious, is your perspective? We talk a lot
when we when we're working with leaders, around, kind of toward
an away motivation of your employees, right? So away
motivation being, I'm afraid of something, so I'm going to do
something because of the consequences of something else.
And toward motivation is I'm going to do something because I
really want to strive for it. So it's sort of proactive versus
cat versus stick, if you like. Are you seeing that, if you had
to sort of balance the the equation on which side is that
falling? Is that? Is it more about with the executives that
you work within the businesses you work with? Is it? Is it fear
of being left behind more than what opportunity could we
unlock? Or is it the other way around?
Athena Peppes: I think it's kind of, it's almost actually a
little bit above that, in the sense of, maybe, I'll give you a
stat, and that might help. So some of the research that I've
done in the past has been focused on change, quantifying
change, a pace of change, and understanding how the C suite
sees that and how that compares to actual data on change on the
ground. Now, 88% of C suite executives surveyed said that
they expect the pace of change to accelerate, but 52% said they
not fully prepared for what that change will mean for their
organization.
Matt Best: So there it is, right?
Athena Peppes: So yeah, because, as I said that, and then you can
go deeper into that, but the implications are huge, right?
Because they have to make decisions about how to allocate
their budgets, their time, for people. So if you're not fully
prepared, then how are you going to make. Those decisions. And
the idea is, most of the time they spend dealing with the day
to day, operational delivery for the next quarter, financial
results, that kind of thing. So how can you, or in this case,
me, help them kind of take some time out of the day to day and
think about their organization in the future and where they
want to go. And there's different ways to do that,
right? You can help them with recognizing the trends that are
out there. I always use rise in my mind as a way to kind of
structure that so eyes for recognizing trends and just
understanding what signals are out there, what's happening, the
eyes around imagining the possibilities. Okay, so, yes,
I've read about this interesting trend. What does that mean? And
so the example of a humanoid robotics I was just thinking,
Who knows whether, in the future, we might have companies
instead of giving you certain types of benefits like health
insurance, what if they gave you a home robot to do all your
housework for you, so you wouldn't have to spend your time
doing that, and you could be more productive.
Jonny Adams: Oh, please, that sounds amazing.
Athena Peppes: I know, but I'm not. The point is not to predict
or to argue for it. It is just to say what if or what you know,
and to pose those kind of questions that really straight.
Jonny Adams: And is that the "I", because it's unpacking that
sort of quite boxed view, and actually we're opening up our
blind spots to think, well, what could...
Athena Peppes: Yes, so imagine, like different possibilities,
right? Then the S is for shape scenarios, because you can
imagine those kind of possibilities, but people
respond differently to seeing a story of what the organization
will actually look like. So you can take, say, two dimensions.
If we take the example of AI, you can take a dimension around
advancement of the technology, and another one around regulate,
like fast to slow, and another one around regulation, lenient
to kind of tight, and then almost create stories of so you
can imagine like a little quadrant of that, and think
about stories of what, what would that world look like, and
how, how do you operate? How do you what does your organization
look like in that future? And then that's where the E comes in
around enabling action. Because once you have those different
stories, what you can do is say, But hold on a second. If that
came to bear, that would mean we're obsolete. Or if that came
to bear, that would mean we'll make a lot more money. How you
influence that? You know? So that's the that's the idea
behind using foresight frameworks to help you think
about the future, but see growth today.
Matt Best: I think anyone like you talk about that, that with
execs, you can imagine the calmness that comes over the
boardroom when they all go, Oh, okay. So we can put this into
those mode, into those moments. And I can think about this in
the big, big picture, without feeling all of that pressure.
And I can be, you know, I can be conscious of of those, of those
other stages. So I love that. I think that's really and I think
actually, for anyone listening to this, whether, regardless of
where you sit in, in your own or in your own organization, is a
really, a really important way of, kind of having that
perspective. Because you mentioned the robot in your
house doing the cleaning, and like, some people will be
going...
Jonny Adams: Athena doesn't have a robot in the house just yet.
Matt Best: But some people will be going to the kind of I Robot
view, right? Will Smith. They go, Oh my gosh, it's gonna,
like, destroy us, Black Mirror. No, God, let's not go there.
Athena Peppes: Which is very forward looking and excellent at
prediction.
Jonny Adams: Somewhat worrying.
Matt Best: But then the reality is that we take ourselves back,
kind of came back, kind of 2030, years and said autonomous cars,
everyone would be going having exactly the same response that
people are probably having now to the idea of having a robot
doing the cleaning. So I think it's just sort of, I guess,
being able to sort of see that and put that in perspective,
it's really important.
Athena Peppes: Well, and also to let you know that that already
actually exists. The I'll send you a video, which I'm sure
you'd love to watch. There's a company called 1x they released
a robot, humanoid robot called Neo. The video is of this. I
don't know. Would I say he, she? I don't, I don't know. It's Neo,
yeah, yeah, helping this person get ready for work, right? I
mean, it's kind of fascinating, and there's a lot of VC funding
and investment, and even the big tech players like Nvidia are
really backing a lot of companies in this space. So it
feels futuristic, and part of the job is to help organizations
see that perhaps it's not as out there as you might think. Some
of that is already there. Yes, you could argue about the pace
of it, whether people will want to adopt it or not. At the end
of the day, technology is not neutral. It's up to us to decide
if we would want a robot around children, for example. On the
other hand, if I was to put my economist hat on, I would argue
might be a good thing, because we have aging demographic, aging
population in many developed countries. How do we care for
them when there's a lack of carers? Should policy. Makers be
investing in this should companies be working with them
to help address this problem? There's just so much to unpack there.
Matt Best: Athena, thank you for joining us, and to everyone
listening. Join us for part two as we continue this
conversation.