Ben Pearce (00:00.172)
the lip sync when it starts recording is little bit off right at the beginning so I always just chat a little bit. Right here we go.
Panos Malakoudis (00:04.009)
Sometimes she does, yes.
Ben Pearce (00:12.45)
Hi folks and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. So the madness of Tech Show London is behind us and I've sat down with another great guest to continue with some learning and today we're thinking about the skills you need to be a leader in the modern world. mean, things are changing pretty rapidly and maybe the skills that you need to lead successfully
Maybe they're changing too. So our guest today is a bit of an expert in modern leadership. He spent many years leading consultancy and engineering teams at Microsoft. And then he led coaching programs for the Microsoft leadership community and even got a Guinness World Record for it. And now he runs his own coaching company, City and Solutions. So please welcome to the show.
Panos, Malakoudis! Panos, is brilliant to have you with us!
Panos Malakoudis (01:15.977)
I love being here. Thanks for inviting me, Ben.
Ben Pearce (01:19.214)
Well, note that the pleasure and the privilege is all mine. Now, full disclosure, I've had the privilege of knowing you for many years. We worked together many years ago back at Microsoft, but then we haven't really seen each other for years, but caught up and thought it would be great to record a podcast together. But for all of those people that don't know you for years like I have, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Panos Malakoudis (01:47.919)
way the way you presented me I feel like you know 80 years old many many many years in this in this industry
Ben Pearce (01:51.726)
I'm sure when we first met I had a full head of hair and your hair was black but you know that's the people on YouTube to decide whether there's any changes there.
Panos Malakoudis (02:02.365)
Yeah, less fool, less fool for me as well. So no worries there. Exactly as you said, I've spent more than two decades in Microsoft. I started back in Greece, my home country, and then I moved to the UK. I was always in big tech. Before Microsoft, I was working telecom.
Ben Pearce (02:07.566)
You
Panos Malakoudis (02:21.457)
routers, computer networks, all those things, then moved to Microsoft as an engineer in the past. So I do have an engineering background. That's my trait. Moved to leadership, did that for about 10, 11 years. Moved to learning and development. And after about 22 years in Microsoft, I figured, well, that's probably enough, isn't it? So let's get all that knowledge of engineering, technology, leadership.
Ben Pearce (02:46.029)
You
Panos Malakoudis (02:48.157)
big tech, big organization, learning and development and coaching, and see if I can do something of my own. So I started my own company a few months back, C2 Solutions, and we specialize in really leadership development for the age of AI, because you were right on the money there. Leadership is changing, and it is changing at an accelerated pace, at a dizzying pace almost. So how can we help leaders and aspiring leaders?
really develop or rediscover sometimes those human competences they need for the age of AI.
Ben Pearce (03:24.078)
Okay. Well, before we dig into that, and dig into it we will, I'm really interested and intrigued by this Guinness World Record that you have got. So before we dig into this, what is the Guinness World Record that you've got?
Panos Malakoudis (03:34.761)
You
Panos Malakoudis (03:42.001)
anything in it to remove it from my LinkedIn profile because most people laugh at me about this. And it's not an obscure Guinness World Record about the number of some of the we did in a day. I got it right back here on the wall actually. That's the real thing. So it is a Guinness World Record we got when I was leading the coaching program in Microsoft for the biggest coaching program in the world.
Ben Pearce (03:44.551)
Hahaha!
Ben Pearce (03:58.007)
I can see it, yeah, behind your head, yeah, yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (04:11.433)
in terms of how many sessions we delivered in a year. And if my memory, because I cannot read from the back of my head, if my memory serves me right, it's about almost 5,000 coaching sessions in a period of the year. So it was pretty amazing, the of the experience of...
Ben Pearce (04:31.15)
Okay, and so that was coaching, Microsoft Leadership Community, and through the programme that you arranged there, you helped facilitate 5,000 coaching sessions between the leaders and coaches.
Panos Malakoudis (04:43.973)
Exactly, exactly. It was leaders and other employees as well. That or part of the organization had 60,000 people. So when we started, the aspiration and the get and the bet was, what if we offer coaching to 60,000 employees? What will happen? And it was such, it was such an amazing experience because we started asking around, has anybody done this? And everybody was saying, you know what, not really.
So we didn't have anybody to learn from. And we still did it, right? So it was scary and it was fascinating and exciting. And we got a Guinness World Record at the end. Woo-hoo.
Ben Pearce (05:14.424)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (05:20.586)
Yeah, and so what did happen? You know, so you were asking yourself what happens if we've if we offer coaching to these 60 000 people You know what did happen?
Panos Malakoudis (05:30.473)
Well, initially, we figured we would hear from other organizations that had done it in the past. But the more we ask the question and we ask the International Coaching Federation, we really ask the bodies in the organization that we're supposed to know. And they did know and they said, no, nobody has gone and said we'll offer coaching to 60,000, 70,000 employees. Then the next best thing we could do is kind of take an educated guess.
Ben Pearce (05:58.712)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (05:58.793)
which is exactly what we did. And we said, okay, if we open up coaching and we say to career coaching at the time, and we say to 60,000 people who would like to get some career coaching, how many people do we think would sign up? And we took a while guessing, we said, 10%, let's go with this. Nobody has a better guess. It was scary how accurate that 10 % was.
Ben Pearce (06:27.662)
Okay, okay.
Panos Malakoudis (06:28.069)
It was absolutely we hit the 10 % within the first couple of months. And then we nudged it a little bit even further. But that 10 % was spot was spot on.
Ben Pearce (06:36.6)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (06:42.19)
Okay, okay. Fascinating. And then there is the Guinness World Record right behind you. brilliant, brilliant. Well, well done, well done. Well, let's move on from that then and let's get to the matter at hand. what we're talking about today is, and the title of this episode is...
Panos Malakoudis (06:49.277)
Thank you.
Ben Pearce (06:59.842)
five human competencies that every modern leader needs. And I guess the key word I'm gonna pull out of that is modern, right? So five human competencies that every modern leader needs. And by that, guess we're kind of inferring that leadership is changing, but is it? So is leadership changing? How and why?
Panos Malakoudis (07:25.705)
That's a great question Ben. Leadership is changing for a couple of different reasons. The competent is not necessarily, but leadership is changing. Leadership is changing because the focus is changing. When COVID hit, the focus of leadership also changed. Empathy was, before COVID was number 10 in the list of competencies that people need from their leaders. It was very high up in the list. After COVID, it jumped to number three.
So the environment and the developments affect what people expect from their leaders. Now, because of technology and because of AI and the acceleration that AI has in changing the social fabric almost of the world, that also introduces that need for leadership to change and the priorities and the focus of leadership to change in the same way that empathy
increased in importance right after COVID. So when we say kind of the five competencies every modern leader needs is how does the modern technology, how does AI specifically change that focus on what leaders really need to be working on in terms of their own personal development as leaders?
Ben Pearce (08:40.186)
Okay, so I guess what we're thinking about is AI is pretty new. So lots of people are rapidly adopting it. There's lots of rapid change that's happening. People's business processes are changing. People's business models are changing. People's tool chain that they're using is changing. So there's all this rapid change going on at the moment.
And so it's how do you lead your team through this and also take advantage of some of those things so that you can be more effective in the modern age.
Panos Malakoudis (09:18.267)
Exactly, exactly. And the difference, Ben, to previous times, let's say when we moved from mainframes into PCs or when we moved from data centers to the cloud, is that in the previous period, the velocity and the speed of change was manageable. We had time to adapt.
We had time to evolve. You and I went through that period right now when we were clickety click on servers and then we had to adapt. The difference now is that speed is significantly higher. That velocity is significantly higher. Many leaders are struggling to catch up. Many leaders feel that they don't have the time to adapt.
Ben Pearce (09:40.525)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (10:05.929)
to normally just normally evolve into the leader that they need to be for this day and age. So the leadership development industry needs to step up and say, okay, this is different. It's not the same as the previous years. This is totally different, so much faster. We need to move at a different pace, even in the learning and development arena.
Ben Pearce (10:27.574)
Okay, well, we also highlighted this in the title, know, it's the five human competencies. So from my understanding, you've of boiled down what this modern leadership change is into five competencies that we all need. Should we step through them now? I tell you what, should we list all five and then we'll dip into each one and maybe unpack each one?
Panos Malakoudis (10:47.399)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Ben Pearce (10:54.87)
So what are those five competencies of a modern leader?
Panos Malakoudis (10:59.453)
Well, I call them the five eyes because as an engineer, I like simplicity and I like acronyms as well. And before I tell you the five eyes, this came from research. This came from research, both survey added on leadership teams, but also through my own coaching conversations with leaders. So it's not just something that just came up from the top of my mind, right? So this is evidence-based.
Ben Pearce (11:25.292)
Okay.
Panos Malakoudis (11:25.699)
this is what people said that they need from their leaders. So the five I's are insight, integration, inspiration, integrity, and impact. These are kind of the competencies that we need. And another dimension to look at this insight, integration, inspiration, integrity, and impact. And how do these manifest to the self to the leaders themselves? How do they manifest
Ben Pearce (11:29.294)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (11:47.702)
Okay, okay.
Panos Malakoudis (11:55.625)
for the team and how do they manifest for the entire organization for the system?
Ben Pearce (12:01.9)
Okay, well, should we unpack that? Because as I sort of think of those words, I think, well, that could mean a million things. So I'm not sure I really know exactly what these will mean yet. So, should we dig into the first one? So let's we start with insight.
Panos Malakoudis (12:08.879)
Exactly.
Panos Malakoudis (12:17.191)
Yes, yes. And I'll give you an example of what insight means. I'm coaching leaders in many different industries. And the leaders are telling me, well, our teams, I'm pushing my team, they need to use AI, they need to use AI without really understanding why. So insights is really making the connection between the technology and what the team or the organization really does. There was a recent MIT study.
I think a couple of months ago that said that 95 % of all AI pilots fail. That is worrying and scary. 95%. And if you look at the detailed report, it says that a key reason is that the leaders and the organization cannot make the link for people. They cannot give the insight about
How exactly and why do we need to use these things? Somebody on LinkedIn recently just told me to a post as they responded, they said, people architecture is also important in organizations, right? So if people don't get it, the AI adoption efforts will fail. So insight is really about, can you make the link for people between the technology and their work?
Ben Pearce (13:37.805)
Yeah, okay. And it's interesting, I've been in lots of conversations with people where they've been told, particularly working with the data folks, right, we need an AI strategy, right, okay, but what's the problem we're trying to solve? Doesn't matter, we just need an AI strategy. So what you're sort saying there is, what is the problem that we're gonna solve or what's the benefit that we're gonna bring to our work?
and our day-to-day, which is just good old-fashioned, this is good old-fashioned leadership, right? What's the problem? This is how we're gonna solve it. As opposed to, here's the solution, now let's find a problem for it. So you're just saying it's understanding that problem and then being able to turn that into this is how we're gonna fix it with this technology and bridging that gap.
Panos Malakoudis (14:17.788)
Yeah, yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (14:29.233)
Absolutely and I'll tell you a secret don't tell anyone these competencies they're nothing new right the focus
Ben Pearce (14:32.097)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (14:35.406)
Okay. Well, we've blown the title out of water then. This was modern leadership.
Panos Malakoudis (14:40.303)
It is. can use, we need to use the same competencies that we've used, but we need to put a different focus on them. We need to reframe the competencies. You will find ancient wisdom in these competencies. It doesn't mean that we need to invent new ones, but if this is so simple, why are leaders failing at this? Why are leaders failing to ask the why question? So the inside competency comes and says to the leader that we're
Ben Pearce (14:42.753)
You
Panos Malakoudis (15:09.221)
that we're training, take a pause, stop and ask the questions that you just asked Ben. Why do we need this? I call it, remember in the COVID period where many people were just stacking mountains of noodles, right? Toilets, right? I say the same for AI, right? We purchase, we purchase, we purchase AI. We've never created the insights for the organization of...
Ben Pearce (15:27.414)
Yeah, yes.
Panos Malakoudis (15:37.565)
this is why we're doing this. We're not doing this because everybody else is doing it. And we feel we've been left behind. We're doing this because it makes sense. And many organizations really want to go beyond the let's run a pilot or let's run an experiment to really using AI and allow it to take off in real life. Right? None of these competencies are anything new, but the focus on them needs to be different. And think about
again on that insight, how does it manifest in those three layers? How does it manifest for the leader? Well, the leader is leading the organization. The leader needs to reflect and say, okay, what is my role here? How do I create this meaning for people? How do I create this connection between AI and how it will really help the job?
evolve? How will it really help the business? So they need to do their own reflection. The team needs to reach a level of cohesion about how they're using it. AI literacy is very important these days. So how do we make sure that we are cohesion in how we are operating as a team? And when you're thinking of a CEO, a CIO, a C-U-O-O, what is the job architecture they need to create for the organization?
because if the job architecture isn't there, I often use this analogy. It's like putting a GPS on a horse and carriage. If you're using ancient architecture for your organization, putting some AI on top of it, are you really doing anything?
Ben Pearce (17:10.574)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (17:19.47)
Okay. So, insight, it's all about connecting the business problem or the problems to the technology and being able to bridge that gap and explain that complexity. And that might be explaining it up to your leadership team. That might be explaining it down to your direct reports, if you've got direct reports, or across to other people in other departments, if that's how you function it. Okay.
Panos Malakoudis (17:45.947)
and inside and inwards as well doing the reflection. What is my role here as a leader?
Ben Pearce (17:48.558)
Okay, and inwards.
Yeah, okay.
Panos Malakoudis (17:53.481)
And this is where coaching really helps.
Ben Pearce (17:56.771)
Let's move on to the next one. So we've done Insight. What's the next one?
Panos Malakoudis (18:00.987)
Integration. Integration. And integration is how do we lead with technology instead of being led by technology? How do we really integrate it in what we are doing? You see the articles, you see the news, even to this day, 5,000 people laid off, 15,000 people laid off on the guise of, well, we're laying people off because of the opportunities.
Ben Pearce (18:02.52)
Okay.
Panos Malakoudis (18:30.855)
that AI introduces. Well, hold on. AI can augment. AI can help evolve the roles. AI doesn't need to replace necessarily. So how do we integrate AI and lead with it instead of just letting it take over? So it's about experimentation for the leader. What experiments can I run?
I see leadership teams all day long and I love it. Going on off-sites, like leadership team off-sites and saying, we weren't on this mountain and we spent the weekend creating agents, just experimenting themselves. You can no longer have a leader that is just a people manager, a people leader and not doing the experiments themselves as well. So you need AI savvy leaders and many organizations, Microsoft, Google.
They're introducing leadership courses about AI.
Ben Pearce (19:34.799)
And so, you're almost talking about building the technical capability of a leader there. So what sort of technical capabilities are you saying that they need to have? mean, do they need to be able to go onto your cloud platform and start firing up engines and understanding how that data needs to be engineered? are you talking about that level or what level are you talking about when you talk about this integration?
Panos Malakoudis (20:01.681)
It could be, it could be. What my favorite topic these days is rapid prototyping. Right? And rapid prototyping is really something that can operate at many different levels. You have a team manager that would like to create a prototype and a proof of concept about a new approach to the data handling. You might have a marketing leader that would like to prototype
a marketing idea, so not necessarily a technical solution. You can have a CEO or a business leader that would like to prototype a business idea and see how that might do out there in the business. So rapid prototyping, in my opinion, is the next level of experimentation. So this is where we lead the industry. This is where we live the business with AI. We use it as a tool. Unfortunately, these days,
we get so distracted by GPTs and large language models, and we forget that AI is so much more than just the exciting, I'll be honest, and interesting GPTs and large language models. You can use so many different things. So rapid prototyping is a great example of how a leader can get their team together, leadership team together, and start to integrate AI in the decision-making.
not simply replacing. Or I hear many HR leaders say, well, we can create digital twins of people in the future. Well, is that the most interesting thing you can do with AI? Look at pharma. Pharma is starting to create off-grid farms of energy just to support their own energy needs.
They don't even need to tap into the network. They don't need that conversation about AI data centers, they're using water, they're using energy. Well, they're starting to use none of it because they're developing the solar and wind farms that will just create all of it. So if we see past all the nuances about
Panos Malakoudis (22:20.213)
all the bad things that we need to be aware of that AI can bring and we start to see how can we really integrate it. That is that competency. The ability to think how do we really integrate it into the flow of the decision making that we have as leaders, into the flow that the team has when are they AI first? As they're thinking of new ideas, as they're thinking of new products.
I'm sure many of your customers are thinking about this. And if you think about it for the whole system, for the whole organization, what does integration mean? Well, have you put in the governance or can people just fire up things and nobody knows? How do you avoid the kind of black market innovation that is happening in many organizations? Can you put in the checks and balances in the organization so that integration
doesn't just go completely wild west.
Ben Pearce (23:21.088)
Yeah. So as I sort of think about what you've said so far, so we start with insight and so that's like finding the problem and then thinking about, how do we now talk about that to people? Here's the problem. And then you've moved on now to integration, which is and now actually let's take some ownership for some experiments, maybe some rapid prototyping.
And actually we don't need to wait for a million people to say yes. We can actually just start with a bit of experimentation without going to black market and getting yourself in trouble. But you've generated a problem, you've got some insight and now you're gonna start to rapidly experiment with it.
Panos Malakoudis (23:58.363)
Exactly. Which then brings us to the third eye, is inspiration.
Ben Pearce (24:03.64)
Okay, okay, so what does that mean?
Panos Malakoudis (24:06.697)
Well, Inspiration, think about the change management. And many people forget that AI adoption is also about managing the change of people, right? So change management, if you think of the ADCAR model, for example, which is, you start with an...
Ben Pearce (24:20.352)
I'm so glad you brought that up because we did a whole episode on it just a few weeks ago. So there you go.
Panos Malakoudis (24:25.243)
Yeah, yeah, so important, right? So you have what is the A? Awareness, right? Do I know what is happening? What is D? Is desire, right? And inspiration sits on that D part of the change management, that desire. So yes, as a leader, I created the experiment. I'm excited about this. But is the team excited about this? Is the team inspired about this?
Ben Pearce (24:36.173)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (24:53.371)
I'm coaching people that are really stressed about it. Does your audience have you ever talked about the sacrament, the the phobo? Have you talked about phobo in this podcast before? I love phobo. It's the fear of becoming obsolete.
Ben Pearce (25:03.884)
I don't think I have.
Ben Pearce (25:09.71)
Okay, okay.
Panos Malakoudis (25:11.001)
I love it because it's a real thing. It's a real fear that people have. So imagine that you're sitting there, you're reading all the fear, monogating and all the negative articles on LinkedIn and Facebook about how AI is replacing everything. And you're really concerned about your role. And your leader comes in and says, I'm excited. Let's do this AI thing. You're not reading the room, right? Mr. or Mrs. Leader, you're really not. You're tone deaf.
So how do you inspire the team? How do you have that conversation about and even surface people's fobo if there is? You cannot just go and say, I'm excited, let's do AI, know, the sky's the limit. Hold on, meet people where they are.
there's the change curve. Again, this is not new things, but we need to reframe it in the context of AI. The fact that the leader is excited because they attended a conference or they did their offsite doesn't mean that their people are equally as excited. So how do you create that inspiration? And again, on those three layers, the self, the team, and the system, the organization, how does that manifest as a leader? Well, you need to be authentic.
You need to be authentic. You need to show that you're practicing. You need to show that you're experimenting yourself, but also be authentic about the challenges. Acknowledge, recognize that it's not that simple as we're all excited about AI, but be authentic about it. In the team level, talk to them, have a dialogue. Don't just say, need to do this. I'm excited. Let's go. Listen to them.
What are their concerns? What are they afraid about? Give them some support. And when it comes to the organization level, well, it is about the culture. If you're the leader, if you're the leadership team, if you're responsible for the culture of the organization, you can make a culture that is rather toxic in its expectation.
Panos Malakoudis (27:23.689)
to deliver AI. I was reading this article recently that some big, really big consulting organizations have put a requirement for promotion that is a metric of AI usage. What a terrible, terrible idea, making usage of AI a requirement for a promotion. What is the culture that this creates?
It's not a great culture. So what is the culture that will really inspire people? What is the culture of experimentation? What is the culture of saying to people, give it a shot? What does it mean AI first?
So that inspiration is very important.
Ben Pearce (28:09.934)
And it's interesting. Yeah, and I'm just sort of thinking like that phobo. I've not heard that term before. I really like it. So that fear of becoming obsolete. And it's interesting because as I apply this to what we're talking about today, there's two ways that suddenly spring out to me. The first way is, well, as a leader, right, you've got to adapt because what you've done before.
isn't what you need to do to succeed. So maybe you now need to be thinking about experimenting with AI and stuff like that, which maybe you've never done before, because you've been running one-to-ones or you've been doing whatever you've been doing as a people leader, for example. So firstly, there's that adapt, you you've got to be up for adapting. Second thing, maybe for the team that you're leading, you know, they're going to have to adapt.
you know just the last episode I did was all about how that's changing in software engineering and what the the current modern skills for a software engineer are versus what they were before and it makes me think of the industrial revolution you know like where if you were in if you were in the textiles industry you needed to be really good at weaving let's say for example and that's a very hands-on thing with thread and you need to weave but suddenly in the post machine world you now need to be a machine operator
And the skills to be a machine operator are very different to the skills that you need to be a weaver. And do you want to be a machine operator when you used to be a weaver? That's the other thing, isn't it? Because the skills are changing so much. Actually, is this thing that you're doing now, is this what you want to do? Or do you actually now want to do something else because those skills that you've got are now more relevant to this other thing rather than the thing that you do? It's quite interesting times, I think.
Panos Malakoudis (29:55.977)
They are, they are. And I use that example very often, you're spot on. The difference is that in the industry revolution and even in the cloud revolution, you had a few years to adopt, to adapt. Now you have months. That's the primary difference, right? People had years to move from one mindset to the other mindset. had the industry, kind of the move from mainframes to PCs happened roughly over a decade.
Ben Pearce (30:08.076)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (30:26.061)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (30:26.887)
It took about 10 years, right? I remember we were not talking in when we were back in Microsoft, we were not talking about co-pilot three years ago. It wasn't a thing, right? was AI was, you the AI team was talking about it, but the it was it was dizzying how fast the whole thing came, right? That's the primary difference. And this is where people are struggling and leadership development and leaders need to step in.
There's no time to just for this adjustment to happen just organically because the change is too fast.
Ben Pearce (31:02.274)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so inspiring yourself and inspiring the team to want to constantly adapt. That's a key part of modern leadership. Let's move on. We're out. Time is escaping us. So let's move on. What's the fourth one?
Panos Malakoudis (31:15.101)
Yeah, yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (31:21.543)
Well, it's integrity and integrity. And it's not difficult to comprehend because it's about governance. It's about knowing the law, knowing the rules, but also the ethics of it. I give this very simple example. There are many people, many of our listeners, including myself, that you go to chat, GPT, to Gemina, to your AI of choice, and you write a prompt.
You're not overthinking it, right? And you get the response and then you give it a response. And then, know, 30 minutes later, you get frustrated and you've had a very long conversation. Every time you adjust your prompt, you're using resources, you're using energy, you're using water. And yes, it is becoming more efficient, but it's still using resources. So training yourself and training your team and your organization into prompt engineering.
is actually responsible AI. By people knowing how to use it better, they're using less resources. I think that's a very strong example of how we need to have integrity in the use. Just buying tons of it and making it people use it, even that metric I mentioned before, uses of AI. Hold on. Are you just burning down forests to just meet a metric? This is really integrity. The ethics?
Ben Pearce (32:38.094)
Mm.
Panos Malakoudis (32:48.647)
and the responsibility of using AI properly.
Ben Pearce (32:53.262)
Yeah, and inspiring other people to do that as well. So taking people on a bit of a journey so that everybody thinks it's not just about how do we cut costs, how do we do this new business model, but how do we create a world that we want to be in? Where the data that it's trained on isn't bias and recommending all kinds of horrific things.
Panos Malakoudis (33:15.069)
Yeah. Most big tech organizations, and not just tech organizations, big organizations that are properly using AI, they have an ethical review board.
Ben Pearce (33:26.168)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (33:28.217)
Is this the right thing to do? Can AI do it? Yes. Should it? Let's talk about it.
Ben Pearce (33:34.094)
Okay, okay, and so it's baking that, should we do this, baking that in to all the decisions that you make every day. Love it. And then the final one, what's the final I?
Panos Malakoudis (33:43.622)
ethics.
Panos Malakoudis (33:48.509)
The final one, it's making sure that there's impact. That's the final I. So we're going from insight, integration, inspiration, integrity, and then we go to the impact. Again, I think we covered it in the beginning as well. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the challenge? What is the opportunity we're trying to manifest?
What is the impact here? Is it really making an impact? Remember where I talked about the MIT study? 95 % of AI pilots fail. Fail to fail what? Fail to produce any measurable impact. What can we measure? We need to measure what really matters in everything. Not just introduce it, but what is AI doing? So the leaders.
as they go to their team and their organizations should go beyond, are we using it? And they need to start saying, OK, what is the impact of this? What is the impact of the team? What is the impact of the organization? And my new, also favorite word is stewardship. What is the impact to the world?
especially with the layoffs. What are you really doing here?
Ben Pearce (35:07.022)
Yeah.
Panos Malakoudis (35:07.837)
You're using AI, your company's more effective, but what are you doing to the social fabric? What are you doing to the trust of the people?
Ben Pearce (35:16.29)
And it's interesting, isn't it? Because you do have to balance that a little bit. I mean, maybe it feels like we're being a bit down on AI. And so to be honest, I am quite a fan of AI and there are two things that I find that it helps me do. And one is do things quicker. And the second thing is do things to a higher standard.
So I can do things to a higher standard more quickly and there's very specific things, use cases that I use where I feel that really helps me do that. So that's really good. I've been working with some folks that are trying to talk about how AI, the impact that AI is having on their organisation and...
I don't know if it's the same company that you're working that you've talked to, but it's a very same approach. Whereas the example you used, they have people being promoted because of their usage of AI, not their impact of AI. Same with this company that I'm working with, where they can tell you all about the adoption rates. They can tell you all about peak usage, all about how the AI that they bought is being used. And they've got some amazing data points. They haven't got
one story about how it's been useful and the thing that you know that everybody keeps saying is meeting transcripts we've got meeting transcripts and auto-generated actions and you go right brilliant and then you ask the next question is anybody having a problem forgetting the actions that they've got everybody's hand goes up because now they don't remember committing to it they've never read the notes they've never read the transcripts
Panos Malakoudis (36:35.965)
Yeah, yeah.
Ben Pearce (36:59.542)
And now there's about 50 actions assigned to them that they didn't even know about and have got no emotional connection to whatsoever. So it's really interesting. It's going back to that, right, what's the impact of this? How do we measure impact? And for me, adoption and usage rates is not impact.
Panos Malakoudis (37:16.605)
Well, think of an impact as a pyramid, right? And on the top of the pyramid, you have the elusive ROI, which comes with a dollar amount or a pound amount, right? What, how much money did I make as a commercial organization as a result of this, right? So adoption rate, you're measuring here on the bottom, right? Do people like it? Are people using it? All right.
Ben Pearce (37:19.703)
Okay?
Ben Pearce (37:40.77)
Yep. Yep.
Panos Malakoudis (37:44.411)
It's important. You need to track this, right? But is that enough? So if people look at this as a pyramid and they say, OK, we need some metrics, measurements here on the bottom, but we need some observations, you know, is it so people like it? Are we noticing a change in their behavior? Are they changing the way they work? That sits somewhere in the middle of that pyramid. Right. And after you have noticed the change behavior.
How is this affecting the business? Are we selling more? Are we answering more support calls? And before we're selling more, because we're selling more or because we're answering more support calls, are we more efficient? And is that leading to higher revenue? If you're a chief transformation officer, if you're a chief technology officer, you cannot just stay at the bottom of the pyramid.
which says, well, people like it, people use it. We won the award inside the organization. Our team, we won the award. We got the trophy in Las Vegas in the company offsite or whatever. So what? Show me the other why. Show me that the business is better off because of that. So impact the ability to be able to go back to the organization and your CEO and your board of directors and say, here's the impact.
of what we did. The ability for a team to do that to the team leader, here's the impact that AI had. Otherwise, congratulations, you successfully created a habit.
Ben Pearce (39:24.098)
But maybe not a good one.
Panos Malakoudis (39:24.297)
That's what it is. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. But usage is just a proof that you created successfully, you helped create a new habit for people.
Ben Pearce (39:29.708)
Yeah
Ben Pearce (39:37.41)
Yeah. So we've got those five eyes. Now you've mentioned this a couple of times as you've been going through this, that you can apply these at different levels. So you can apply them to yourself. So what different levels can you apply these at?
Panos Malakoudis (39:54.481)
Yeah, I figured there are three levels to yourself as a leader. So looking inward, how do I create insight for myself? How do I integrate technology? How do I let technology lead with me instead of instead of of me? How do I keep myself inspired? Can I really be authentic if I'm not inspired about AI? If I have a FOBO? How can I lead people with their FOBO if I have FOBO? Right.
How do I make sure that I use AI responsibly? And how have I, how disciplined am I about asking the impact questions? So the first layer is inward looking to the leaders themselves. The second one, as a leader, how can I do this with a team? How can I create the team norms around AI, the team standards? And then if you're responsible for
the systemic context if you're responsible for a big part of the organization or you're the owner, the founder or the CEO of the organization, how you do that on a systemic and even societal impact, the impact that the company and the users of AI has on resources or energy or water and stuff like that. So inward self, team level and at the system level, the same five competencies, the same five vise.
Look at it as an X and a Y, right? And where do you sit in that table?
Ben Pearce (41:24.92)
Yeah.
Fascinating. Do know what? I've just glanced at the clock and sadly, I think our time here is rapidly coming to an end. Could you summarise what would be the key takeaways from the conversation we've had today?
Panos Malakoudis (41:42.621)
The key takeaways is keep those five eyes in your mind and the three dimensions as a table and you can self assess, right? These are not new things. I'm not suggesting something that I invented, but I am saying that we need to use that ancient wisdom, that wisdom of leaders and put it in the context of today's challenges. We don't need a new set of competencies, but we need to realize that these five competencies
are most important in these day and age. Right? And just come up with them.
Ben Pearce (42:16.782)
And just remind us of those five eyes. Just remind the five eyes one last time.
Panos Malakoudis (42:20.293)
insights, integration, inspiration, integrity, and impact.
Ben Pearce (42:30.094)
Yeah, and I think that's really interesting and the other bit that I've really loved that's come out of this is phobo. had not come across that before, so fear of becoming obsolete, but I will definitely reuse that because I see that all the time and I feel that myself, right? And you feel it like, you know, we're both parents, like bringing up the kids, you know, how do you bring them up to be...
well equipped to succeed in the modern employment world. We don't want them obsolete before they've even left school sort of thing. So it's this fear of becoming obsolete. I've not come across that before and I really like it. So thank you for that. now if people have loved what you've been talking about, want to get in touch with you, how can people get hold of you?
Panos Malakoudis (43:19.517)
Well, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Panos Malakoudis. Happy to connect over there. They can visit my website, is sitiumsolutions.co.uk. I'm sure we'll provide all the links. And they can also find me on Forbes because I'm writing articles for the Forbes Coaches Council and all this approach will share the link. I've written an article about all those five I's and about this approach.
Ben Pearce (43:44.162)
Brilliant. So I'll pop all of those in the show notes. So feel free to go into the show notes and I'll pop all of those in. I will say over the years, I have struggled with the spelling of your name at times, Panos. Particularly, we've not used your full name, but I remember learning to say your full name, which correct me I'm wrong, is Paniotis Malakoudis. Try...
Panos Malakoudis (44:05.299)
Yes, yes, 20 characters, the whole thing. I mean, I don't blame you. I don't blame you.
Ben Pearce (44:07.694)
I know, trying to spell that was a challenge for me. So I shall make sure that that goes in the notes so that we can get all of that right. So final thing for me to say is, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here. So thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak to us.
Panos Malakoudis (44:24.251)
It was for me too Ben. Thank you for having me. I love
