Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a key topic in C-suite and board room discussions these days; one with the potential to redefine or at least impact every aspect of business and society. Leaders around the world and across industries are racing to figure out how to best implement the technology to gain efficiencies, increase productivity, and ultimately grow their business. Today, Hoda and Simon talk with serial entrepreneur and Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu to help shed some light on how leaders can harness the power of AI in their business. With more than 25 years in the tech industry, Louis shares his perspectives on how leaders can take advantage of AI transformation and what mistakes to look out for. He’ll talk about the importance of AI ethics, and how leaders can navigate the culture change that AI brings to an organization. He’ll also share how AI and GenAI can create better experiences for their customers and employees. And as someone who’s worked with and served on several boards, he’ll talk about what goes into building a successful board and the power of optimism. We'll also hear from Harpreet Khurana, Chief Digital and Data Analytics Officer at RRA. Harpreet will outline the risk when organizations don’t use AI ethically and sets out RRA’s people-first approach to responsible AI. Read more about our RRA’s Responsible AI Principles. Four things you’ll learn from this episode: How leaders can leverage AI in their organizations and how that might impact how they lead their teams What leaders need to keep in mind when it comes to AI ethics and culture change What goes into building a successful board Leadership tips on building a successful company If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like these Redefiners episodes: Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis Exploring the Art of Possible with Google and Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat Leadership Lounge: Unleashing AI’s potential: Are you ready to lead the charge? Driving Transformation with Volvo Cars President and CEO Jim Rowan Leadership Lounge: How can leaders succeed in a Gen-AI-driven world? A Front Row Seat to the AI Revolution with Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith – Part 1 and Part 2
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of the conversation about AI?
We absolutely love to get your feedback. Simon, today's conversation focuses on a key topic that we've been covering that is the potential to continue to redefine and at least impact every aspect of our lives, business, and society, AI.
Yes, Soda, AI, it's a subject that must be on every leader's mind as they try and wrestle with the implementation of the technology, both to gain efficiencies, to enhance the quality of their business, and ultimately to grow revenues. A few leaders, I think it's fair to say, have jumped in with both feet and are making it work for them.
But I think a greater number in the work that we've done are still working out what it means for them, testing and in the experimental phase, and working out where they can get most bang for their buck.
And I think we saw a very similar adoption curve with the digital transformation about a decade ago, where some leaders quickly figured out the process and value of digitizing their businesses, while others were a bit stuck in maybe more traditional workflows and processes, right? And I'm sure you've seen that with your clients.
I certainly have seen quite a bit of that in the hospitality world with cruise and hotel companies that are perhaps... figured out how to use the AI and the technology to scan through and scour through customer feedback forms, or maybe others are still doing it the old-fashioned way.
Yeah, and we're seeing it in social impact too, where they're thinking both about the way in which they can achieve even better value for the scarce resources that they've got, but also thinking about the ethical dimensions of this, which loom large for quite a lot of social organizations.
Yeah, and I think we're going to dive in quite a bit today on the ethical piece. So today's guest can hopefully help us better understand how leaders can harness the power of AI in their business, especially when it comes to creating better experiences for their customers and employees.
That's right, Hoda. Our guest today is a serial entrepreneur. He's led companies both in the digital transformation and now in AI-led change. Louis Taitou is the chairman and CEO of Coveo, which is a global provider of artificial intelligence-powered business solutions for e-commerce, customer service, and web-based applications.
Before that, he co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of Taleo, which delivers cloud software for talent and human capital management, and was acquired by Oracle for $1.9 billion in 2012. Louis serves on the board of Alimentation Couchetard Inc., which owns and operates 16,000 Couchetard and Circle K convenience stores in 26 countries across the world.
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Chapter 2: How can leaders effectively implement AI in their organizations?
But it's one single platform, but it took us 15 years. to build all the indexing, the search, the semantic layer, the relevance layer, and now all the grounding and the generative AI part and so on. And now we're moving beyond that to being able, for instance, to optimize margins in real time and all of that.
Back to your question, Simon, I think it's the obscure aspect of AI that probably people didn't grasp. or most people didn't understand that the very experiences that, as consumers, we go through all day, every day, from, again, Netflix to Uber, are powered by AI. There are videos of Jeff Bezos talking about machine learning in 2006. But, you know...
As I said earlier, it's very interesting that it took Chad GPT as the catalyst, but I guess now it went the other way. I think it went way beyond hype. And I think we're entering, in a way, a little bit of a phase of disillusionment. As the dust settles, typically reality stands, right?
And now you sort of realize that markets and people are far more educated because some of them tried and failed and experimented and so on. And so people are far more now knowledgeable about what it takes to make this all work properly. And that's obviously a big opportunity for applied AI companies like Cavell.
And Louie, on this topic of where the value is going to be created as companies and executive leadership teams and board directors are thinking about the next 10 years, what should they be thinking about? And what advice would you give to leaders so that they don't maybe make mistakes that have been made over the last 10 years?
The advice I would give is there are a number of known use cases in the area of digital experiences. You will not be able to compete in areas such as retail, commerce, business-to-business commerce, in areas such as customer service, when an advisor at a bank can ask a very complex question
questions such as, you know, what are the, you know, for my client, what are the tax implications of a mortgage on a second home in Northern Wisconsin, given the change of regulation by the city of XYZ and blah, blah, blah, press return and get that answer. You know, that's game-changing. And you cannot underestimate the human augmentation associated with that ability.
Of course, it's hard to do, and companies like us know how to execute on that. But you should not underestimate the ability that this will create. Again, I come back to my previous statement. What happens... when suddenly people online can handle 30% more complexity, 50% more of the time, 90% faster. That's what we're talking about. It's the age of proficiency, not the age of efficiency again.
And that's really, really, really profound. And so my advice is embrace it quickly.
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Chapter 3: What ethical considerations should organizations keep in mind with AI?
Chapter 4: Why is understanding AI adoption crucial for business leaders?
Chapter 5: What leadership qualities are important in the age of AI?
It's clear that artificial intelligence offers amazing opportunities to innovate. Yet, it can introduce significant risks if left unchecked. That's why it's important for organizations to put proper safeguards for AI development and use. In fact, many will be legally required to do so through regulations like the EU AI Act. Yet, our research reveals a concerning gap.
Only 27% of leaders feel their organizations provide adequate guidance on ethical use of AI, and just 24% believe they have sufficient protections against AI misuse. So what's the solution, especially in an environment where the underlying technology is moving so quickly? One important first step is to develop and implement responsible AI principles that guide organizations on ethical uses of AI.
At Russell Reynolds Associates, we've implemented six core principles grounded in a people-first approach. What this means is that we want to ensure human oversight remains front and center in AI development, and we consistently look out for impacts of AI adoption on people. Want to learn more about our responsible AI principles and our people-first approach?
Check out the full details, including resources that you can use to create your organization's responsible AI initiatives in the show notes or visit russellreynolds.com.
Now back to our conversation with Louis. Louis, let's talk about customer and employee experience. You've already mentioned the first of your values was to be dedicated to customer success. You'll know better than we do how fickle customers can be. One bad experience is enough to turn 50% of customers off straight away and onto other brands.
The most recent polling we've seen by Gallup suggests that employee engagement is low in the US and even lower internationally. So thinking about those two things, customer success and engagement and employee engagement, what for you are the great advantages, the great potentials of AI and Gen AI in improving those results for companies?
Right. AI has the power, and that's been demonstrated in Spade, to essentially create experiences that are extremely individualized. that are prescriptive in nature and now, thanks to generative AI advisory. What I mean by advisory is, well, we understand personalization, but actually I often talk about individualization because
Madison Avenue has been using personalization for more than two decades, and it really meant persona. What I mean here is moving from persona to person. So if you have a million consumers, you should run a million stores, is what I'm saying. That's number one. AI has the power to drive prescriptive experiences. So not only catering to your needs, but anticipating what you might need.
and driving recommendations and et cetera, and really suggesting alternatives and et cetera, maybe just like Uber does and et cetera. And then AI has the power now to create advisory experiences, particularly generative AI. So prior to... generative AI, you could go online and say, what is A? What is B? What is C? You get fairly profound content or knowledge or answers to that.
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Chapter 6: How can companies balance innovation and ethics in AI?
Chapter 7: What are the potential pitfalls leaders face with AI adoption?
I love Slack. And how about my card game?
Louis, who was a mentor that had the biggest impact on you?
Oh, I've had several all the way back to when we took Bond Public and et cetera to work with executives from large tech companies. So I won't name a specific person, but I will just say that people who have lived the most intricate moments to me are the most helpful and the most intriguing. And I value that a lot.
And one common characteristic between all of them is they're all very genuine individuals. That's probably the quality I admire the most.
Do you like to focus on the journey or the destination?
Oh, definitely the journey. I think most people focused on the destination, unfortunately, I find. And the journey is the rewarding part. I've had the opportunity to exit my first public company at age 33. And most entrepreneurs that I know that have exited businesses talk much more about the journey than they talk about that destination.
When you're 33, actually, there are not a lot of people to play with on Wednesday mornings. But there is so much about keeping you alive, right? And building and being challenged, competing in a good way, right? Why do we compete? Well, because it keeps you alert. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you innovating. Those are all themes that pertain to the journey, right?
you know, what else would we do, right? If we weren't engaged and doing something. And yes, being challenged every day. That's life. So I think that's 100% the journey.
Louie, what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
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