The AI Headlines You Should Be Most Suspicious Of

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Julie Avril, tech executive and author, discusses the dangers of 'AI washing' and why companies claiming AI dominance may be hiding weak fundamentals. She emphasizes human-centric transformation, psychological safety, and sustainable value creation over hype.

Key takeaways

• AI success requires human infrastructure, not just technology.
• Companies boasting AI leadership may be performing, not transforming.
• Psychological safety and truth-telling are critical for real change.

Transcript preview

There's a lot of change going on and a lot of motion and I don't think anybody hasn't figured out. So any company that looks like they have it all figured out, I'd be suspicious of. money, why the companies talking loudest about AI may actually be the ones to avoid, and how to tell whether a transformation is real or just a really good story. We hope you enjoy. Hello everyone and welcome back to Motley Fool Conversations. I'm Motley Fool analyst Rachel Warren, and today our guest is Julie Avril, a powerhouse technology executive, author and board director who has spent nearly three decades leading some of modern retail's biggest digital transformations. She formerly, she formerly served as the global Vice President at Lou Lemon, where she spared a cultural and technological overhaul that helped scale the company's revenue from 2 billion to over 10 billion. And before rewriting the playbook at Lou Lemon, Julie pioneered major digital and omni channel initiatives as the first ever CIO at REI and in tech leadership at Mordstrom. Today she advises boards, CEOs and founders at the intersection of AI capability and organizational readiness, the place when most transformations stall. She speaks globally on leadership in the leadership in the age. of AI and helps organizations build what technology can't deliver. Teams that tell the truth, leaders who can turn pilots into real change and cultures to sustain transformation instead of performing it. Julie has just released her highly anticipated new book, Chief Impact Officer, real transformation comes from human, not just artificial intelligence. Julie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Rachel, and thanks for that kind introduction. You know, as noted, you spent years leading technology transformations at Ed Nordstrom, R. E. of course famously helps scale Lou Lemon's revenue to over $10 billion. You know, for individual investors managing their own portfolios looking at the public companies they own, what does real sustainable value creation look like on a balance sheet during that level of growth during those types of transformations? I think it's when you're building both the foundation and the growth when you can enable both and there are tough choices you have to make along the way but the important thing is to look not just where you're going tomorrow but also in the future. So for it to be sustainable you sometimes have to make the tough choices and invest in things that maybe are going to serve you a couple years from now and you have to make choices to maybe not turn on that revenue facing feature today because you know that you need to create a future. And another thing that really stood out to me, I mean just from the title, a real transformation comes from human, not just artificial and tell. Why is human intelligence a more reliable indicator of a company's performance than just artificial intelligence? What is the interplay between those two that you see right now and moving forward? I see companies today making a lot of headlines around AI, right? It is powerful, it is new, and it has tremendous possibility to lead our companies in many different places. But it is still about the people. The technology is getting easier and easier. easier. And so we're focusing more on the technology than we are on the people. My experience is that if transformation doesn't start with what's the business problem you're trying to solve and you're focused more on the technology, you're going to end up buying really expensive technology and not moving your business forward. And so that's my focus area. Like what are we trying to solve and the people who understand the business and are driving that business. this need to be part of defining that future and helping bring it into reality. Yeah, I want to dig into that concept a bit more. I mean, through your advisory practice, you work with company leaders and boards often coming in where tech transitions stall. And something you've spoken about is this idea of companies, a performing transformation rather than sustaining it. I wonder if you could maybe tell our audience a bit more about what does performing transformation look like. What are the same? signs that a retail investor can look for, whether it pertains to AI or otherwise? Yeah, I think look beyond the headlines. So for example, right, we have seen this concept of AI washing, right, where companies are proclaiming, I'm laying off thousands of people in order to, or because of AI. And then you look a little deeper, and it's not because they've actually found the efficiencies to be able to lay these people off, but it's because they've hired maybe during the pandemic and now need to right size their team so that they can take that money invest in other things. So performing is is declaring right like what's my AI strategy and the board comes up and they bless it and underneath that you don't have the individual leaders that are saying you supply chain leaders saying here's how AI is going to help me get the right products to the right place when when the customer is there to get it. And it's just, you know, efficiencies out of supply chain. So yeah, performance is, performance is companies that are going for headlines, you know, looking to be AI forward without actually doing the work of understanding what AI is supposed to do in their organization. And we're seeing that a ton today. Well, and something as well that you write about is technology itself is really the hard part. The hard part is really building the human infrastructure around it. You know trust, decision right. truth telling teams, maybe talk us through that a bit more and what is the downside, what are the losses that we see if a company lacks that internal culture? Yeah, I bring up a couple examples in my book of where truth telling is important. One is when we return to office from COVID, right? And I was part of this, right? We wanted to bring people back into the office three days a week and we just sold the upside of it, right. It's going to be. amazing to have everybody back in the office together. We're able to rebuild our culture to build connections to be the company that we used to be when we saw each other