00:05:35 · Ezekiel Iferia, Heather McLean
[00:05:35] S0: Alright. Alright. Thank you for sharing that with us. So, you know, you you you walked away from a senior leadership role at one of the largest technology companies, you know, to build something from scratch. So what was the moment you knew corporate life was no longer enough? What did it take, you know, to actually make that leap? [00:05:59] S1: The moment for me was, you know, I'd been in... I'd I'd kinda started off as a project manager, worked my way up to a senior director role and had, you know, hundreds of people that I was helping to lead. And at at some point, I got just really burned out. I was in back to back meetings every day, all day, didn't find time to kinda work on the things that I wanted to work on or the things that I needed to work on. The thing for me was when I realized I'm not growing and learning as a person anymore. Right? I was just going through a lot of the the motions, going through the daily meetings, but but I wasn't learning new things. I was kind of fighting the same battles over and over, and I felt like I just kinda reached a ceiling in my advancement, and so that was when I realized something needed to change. Right? I was definitely burnt out, and it's definitely not growing as a person. So it wasn't it wasn't good for me anymore, and it probably wasn't giving my best to the organization at that point. So that was sort of the moment for me. And then, sorry, you had a second part of that question. What was the... You said something about what was the leap?
00:05:59 · Heather McLean, Ezekiel Iferia
[00:05:59] S1: The moment for me was, you know, I'd been in... I'd I'd kinda started off as a project manager, worked my way up to a senior director role and had, you know, hundreds of people that I was helping to lead. And at at some point, I got just really burned out. I was in back to back meetings every day, all day, didn't find time to kinda work on the things that I wanted to work on or the things that I needed to work on. The thing for me was when I realized I'm not growing and learning as a person anymore. Right? I was just going through a lot of the the motions, going through the daily meetings, but but I wasn't learning new things. I was kind of fighting the same battles over and over, and I felt like I just kinda reached a ceiling in my advancement, and so that was when I realized something needed to change. Right? I was definitely burnt out, and it's definitely not growing as a person. So it wasn't it wasn't good for me anymore, and it probably wasn't giving my best to the organization at that point. So that was sort of the moment for me. And then, sorry, you had a second part of that question. What was the... You said something about what was the leap? [00:07:11] S0: Yeah. You know, what did it take for you to actually make that leap?
00:07:11 · Ezekiel Iferia, Heather McLean
[00:07:11] S0: Yeah. You know, what did it take for you to actually make that leap? [00:07:18] S1: A lot of courage, I guess. I had to just to decide I was gonna do this. Right? So I kind of left without having a really good plan. I had a couple months of savings, I knew I didn't have to get a job right away. And then the more I thought about it, the more I was the more I can... Was convinced I wanted to build my own company instead of going into another corporate job. And so I really wanted to focus this new company on prioritizing the needs of people and the needs of our client above other things. And so that is sort of the the foundation that McLean Forrester is is built on. It was sort of came out of the frustration of corporate America and, you know, how corporate America really does prioritize profits. I wanted to see a company. I wanted to build a company that would really put people first and prioritize them. And so that's kind of... That's where we started. [00:08:15] S0: Alright. So, you know, you work with clients who know they need to do something with AI but don't know where to start. So what are, like, the first three questions you ask them?
00:08:28 · Heather McLean
[00:08:28] S1: Well, one of the first questions I wanna ask is where are you at today? Right? Where are you on your AI journey? Because some companies are already experimenting. Some companies, you know, they have enterprise licenses, and some companies don't have a clue where to start. Someone is at. So so I've gotta figure out where they're at right now. And then once we figure that out, we can kind of figure out... The second question is where do you want to go? Right? Do you want to be leveraging AI in many of your business processes? Do you have certain pain points you'd like to address first? Or do you want us to help put a strategy together, right, to help figure out some of that stuff? And then the last question I sort of ask is, okay. How does your leadership feel about this, and how does your team feel about this? Because you've gotta have support on both ends for this to be successful. You have to have leaders who are going to stand by and hold people accountable to certain goals and who are going to back you up when things get challenging because they always do. And then you've gotta have a team that is open and willing to do things differently because what we've seen is when organizations just like bolt on an AI tool or they just give people ChatGPT, you only get small gains. The real gains are when you start redesigning and reimagining your business processes using that AI, that's where companies are seeing the real value. So you've gotta have the leadership and your team members on board. So those are the three questions.
00:10:02 · Ezekiel Iferia, Heather McLean
[00:10:02] S0: Okay. So why do why do those questions actually matter more than any technology decision? [00:10:10] S1: Because because most digital transformations, most implementations of technology are usually not a technology problem. They're usually people problems. And so those questions are sort of getting to the root people problems that we see most often. [00:10:29] S0: Alright. Alright. So you you said technology is almost never the real problem, you know, when organizations struggle to adopt artificial intelligence. So if it's not the technology, how do you how do you fix it?
00:10:49 · Heather McLean
[00:10:49] S1: Well, let me give you a couple of examples of of what what the issues are if they're not technology. Right? So Mhmm. First one would be like a lack of change management. So people people aren't brought... Bought in. The leadership's not bought in. The the team is not bought in. So... And you've got to put things in place, put processes in place to make sure that that change management really does work. Right? Another reason that they're failing is that there's no clear strategy. So sometimes companies will just sort of jump in. They'll buy a tool, but no guidance, no governance, no strategy around where they're going or what they wanna accomplish. So, you know, it kind of goes back to, like, goal setting. If you don't have a goal, you're... How do you know when you even get there? So AI is no different than any other new technology. You've got to have a strategy in place. Another thing that sometimes trips up organizations is, I mentioned this earlier, is that they're not reimagining their business processes. So just giving folks a tool is not gonna get you the gains. You're not gonna get your money, you know, back on that investment. You really have to reimagine how your business changes and how those processes change. And then the other thing is a lack of leadership support or accountability for implementing AIs. You've gotta have somebody who is who is responsible, and you gotta have leadership support to get through those challenges. So those are the reasons... Those are the people sort of reasons that technology, AI technology can fail.