You have led organisational transformations at companies from Microsoft to Amazon, Volkswagen and Audi. In your view, what constitutes a successful transformation?
I would say that great transformations are those that enable organisations to work in a more agile, transparent and faster way and to innovate more frequently. I also believe that they have three key attributes: First, successful transformations don't have a start and an end point – they are a continuous process. Second, they are multidimensional – in other words, they are never really just about a business goal or just about technology or just about culture. They combine many things and require the skills of many different people. And third, successful transformations are those where organisations manage to get people on board, both emotionally and intellectually.
Where do you see AI having the most profound – and perhaps also the most underestimated – impact on large companies in the next couple of years?
I think the biggest challenge with AI is that its impact is either underestimated or overestimated. Above all, people forget that AI is not just a new technology or future workflow – it is a completely new operating model and way of working. The arrival of AI means that you feel like you are sitting next to a virtual colleague who is doing things with you or for you and complementing you. This will force firms to operate differently and even redefine productivity and performance in the future. In short, the most underestimated part of AI is the depth of change it will bring to the way organisations work.
You have a background in engineering and are a recognised expert in technology-led enterprise transformations. What first sparked your interest in tech?
I grew up in Cameroon. When I was young, we didn't have enough money for a television set, so every Sunday we would walk for 1.5 hours to the home of one of my mother's cousins to watch television. The amount of effort we had to make to go and watch that device – and how precious it appeared to me at the time – made me really curious about technology. Once I began studying, I understood how powerful technology is as a tool to drive change and I saw the huge impact it can have on the world − especially in developing countries because it empowers people to solve their own problems, improve their quality of life, contribute to better prosperity and deliver better outcomes for society. So yes, my interest in this field was very much influenced by my upbringing in Africa.
What advice would you offer to business leaders to help them avoid common pitfalls when they embark on a transformation journey?
A leadership team that is beginning any kind of transformation needs to be aligned behind a clear, shared vision of what it wants the outcome of the journey to be and it must be capable of executing on the one big goal of the transformation. Do the leaders want the organisation to be faster? To deliver better quality? To be closer to clients? Once this has been defined, it gives the entire team a direction to follow. Another key factor is communication, communication, communication. Leaders need to tell people the story of the change that is happening around them so they support it. I believe that people are not afraid of change. They are afraid of being changed. They want to be an actor in what is happening. And that is where communication is essential.
Do you believe that employees can truly be “augmented” through AI – or is there a risk of them becoming increasingly reliant on tools at the cost of their ability to take decisions, exercise judgment and innovate?
I think both possibilities are true. I am very much a technology optimist: I think technology is here to augment human ingenuity, human capability and human creativity. At some point, I hope we are going to be in a positive “science fiction” scenario where we don't need to do work that doesn't inspire us. We will be able to delegate those tasks to a machine or algorithm. The challenge that we are starting to see now is skill atrophy among the young generation due to AI adoption. When they use AI to perform very simple tasks, they risk losing their ability to create and to analyse and develop their own judgement. At this point, we might move from augmentation of humans to a higher dependency on AI – with the loss of methodical skills.
What is the answer?
Like with every technology, we need to use AI with care and with intentionality and to make sure that we protect what differentiates us as humans. Otherwise, we will make ourselves obsolete in this system. I think we need to strike a balance: As a society and as individuals, we need to see AI as a tool, not as a replacement for our own efforts. And this is specifically where younger people need to receive help and be educated on how to achieve that.
History has shown that (r)evolutions that redefine the way we work invariably trigger scepticism or resistance among affected employees. How can organisations foster a cultural shift or change of mindset among their people in order to harness the full potential of digitalisation?
I don't think that we have all the answers yet because when it came to some of the bigger technology disruptions in the past, society had more time to adapt. From railways to the telephone or telegraph, the pace of adoption was so slow that people had time to embrace their effects. However, the rate at which AI is advancing and being adopted is going to outpace our ability to adapt as organisations. That is going to create a lot of fear in people about becoming obsolete, so communication is key. But we also need to train people by creating a kind of lab where people can come with a “real” problem and use AI to solve it. If they experience first-hand what it means to be empowered by technology, this might then see it less as a threat. And when it comes to designing new systems, we should not only consider the youngest and most proficient generation but should also test them on the older generation to foster inclusivity.
What about automation?
Companies should explore how technology can be used effectively to automate certain tasks and remove some of the friction and unnecessary work. If we take the example of a private bank, automation could also be used to ensure that Client Relationship Officers have a full range of personalised information on clients at their fingertips precisely when they need it – helping to reinforce trust, support their judgement and deliver great value. I am convinced that automation can create a lot of room for creativity, for more client relevance and for a closer relationship with clients if used in the right way.
To what extent are your own management decisions data-driven – and how often do you simply trust your instinct and follow a different path?
My decisions are 70% driven by data and 30% by instinct – and instinct is ultimately the sum of our (sometimes unconscious) past experiences. I have a very rational "German engineer brain" that tends to challenge my more intuitive "African heart" but I find that my best decisions are reached when the rational and the intuitive manage to agree. So my 25-30 years of experience are extremely relevant for my decision-making but so is high-quality data – and beyond the data itself, the reasoning process and my curiosity about what this data is telling me and why.
Looking beyond business, how important is it to actively foster digital inclusion and technology literacy across all sections of society, including the older generation, to ensure that no one is left behind?
This is key and it is a subject that I am passionate about. A digital divide is opening up between generations, between genders and also geographically – between developed countries and poorer nations. As a society, we must try to ensure that digital tools become so widely accessible that everybody can become digitally literate and have the agency to use them. And while many young people can use these tools intuitively, they still need to be educated about the consequences of their usage, which is far from intuitive. For example, they need to be aware of how much personal data they are sharing and how much they are exposing themselves in the background via different applications. In short, efforts are needed to promote digital literacy and ensure the technologies we introduce create more opportunities and more equity for everyone rather than increasing the divides that exist elsewhere in society.
Thinking about the future, which human qualities or values must be maintained at all costs to preserve the essence of mankind in a deeply digitalised world?
I think we need to recentre ourselves around what makes us human – and that is empathy. It is our ability to be creative, to care for each other and to contextualize things that are ambiguous. This is a human skill that is very, very challenging for the best algorithm to replicate. I think we need to go back and rediscover what defines us as human and what has always brought us together and recognise the importance of it.