Innovation is a team sport

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:00] Welcome to High Agency, where we ignite conversations that drive change and spark momentum towards transformative action and professional mastery.  So imagine a world where a single person can run a billion-dollar company, where AI threatens to replace 30 to 40% of the workforce, and where the rules of business are changing faster than we can learn them.  It's not science fiction.  It's obviously the reality that we're all grappling with today.  In the 1950s, engineering drafting tables were filled with professionals that were meticulously drawing by hand.  And you just fast-forward a few decades, and an entire profession vanished with the advent of computer-aided design.  That's just one of hundreds of examples of industry transformation, and we're facing some of the same today, but maybe on a much grander scale.  So consider this.  From a quality-of-life perspective, we're living better than Middle English royalty, yet many still feel a deep sense of unease about the future.  And why is that?  It's because we're not just changing the tools we use, we're fundamentally altering the nature of work and how we live.  So in the world of business transformation, there's a saying that the game and the rules are changing at the same time.  It's like trying to play chess while someone keeps rearranging the board and changing how the pieces move.  And amidst this chaos, lies opportunity.  We're seeing the emergence of some thin-wedge strategies where small, focused innovations can crack open the path to large-scale transformations.  We're witnessing the tension between the skunkworks approach of isolated innovation teams and the need for organization-wide buy-in for large-scale cultural transformation.  So today we're gonna talk about all this, the future of work, innovation, and more with Mark Low.  Mark's the director of innovation, growth, and emerging tech at KPMG Ignition.  As a passionate advocate for digital transformation and disruptive technologies, Mark leverages user-centered design principles to create value across industries.  He has extensive experience in innovation and strategy consulting.  He's worked with industries ranging from the public sector to manufacturing.  He's a sought-after lecturer and keynote speaker on topics including intrapreneurship, innovation, design thinking, digital strategy, and the future of work.  Welcome, Mark Low.

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Marc Low

[00:02:28] That guy sounds like a good guest.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:02:29] Yeah, yeah, not bad, right?  Well, thanks for joining us today.  Thanks so much for having me.  So, you know, we've been talking to people that are involved in founding companies and entrepreneurship and innovation.  And it's largely because, you know, there's a personal curiosity.  I really enjoy change.  I think a lot about how chaos creates opportunity, right?  There's that famous Game of Thrones quote, right?  Yep.  Chaos is a ladder.  And, you know, so when we're talking about innovation, when we're talking about change and transformation, it's easy to kind of just dive in and start talking about, you know, what that means to us and how it's impacting us today.  But what are you excited about right now?  Like, you know, we talked about the game and the rules changing at the same time.  So maybe tell us a little bit about your role at KPMG Ignition and what you've got going on there.  Sure.

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Marc Low

[00:03:26] Well, so KPMG Ignition is our showcase for innovation and emerging tech at KPMG.  The gig really is to help clients understand what's coming around the corner and then what to do about that.  So, you know, the sort of the saying that I like to popularize, right, is how do you take it from 30,000 feet?  Very abstract, you know, like AI, digital twins.  These are just kind of buzzwords, right?  And what do you think, how do you land that inside your business?  What does that mean?  And then really, what are you going to do on Monday?  And so, you know, my job is, you know, I'm going to do a lot of things.  I joke with my boss, I feel like I've got the, well, maybe he's got the best job in the city.  I've got the second-best job, which is, you know, I get to have my fingers on all the cool stuff that's happening, not only in our city, but across Canada with startups that are pushing the envelope on all kinds of interesting things.  And then trying to translate that technology into some type of business value for our clients, who tend to be those larger, more established enterprises.  And they're the ones that are trying to grapple with the change that you're describing, right?  So that, you know, they're the ones that are trying to figure out, like, hey, I've been in business for X decades.  I've operated a particular way.  You've got some disruptive force coming from the side.  What do I do about that?  Do I embrace it?  Do I defend against it?  And so those are the conversations that we have at Ignition.  So I feel very, very privileged to be in that seat.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:04:42] No, I mean, it sounds pretty exciting.  Like I would say for anybody that's interested in this world, in entrepreneurship, or in helping companies like that lead innovation, I imagine you'd be like a kid in a toy store to some extent, because there's a lot of, really interesting things happening, very cool tools to play with.  And it sounds like probably exciting and engaged people that are actually interested in making this happen, right?  Because nobody would be contacting an innovation lab unless they're interested in some change.  But, you know, but there's another aspect of that, which is that sometimes people say they want change, but as long as, you know, nothing really is different, right, as long as nothing really changes.

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Marc Low

[00:05:24] Well, nobody really actually wants change.  Let's just maybe start there.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:05:27] You think, eh?

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Marc Low

[00:05:27] Well, the entrepreneurs driving the innovation are motivated to change.  I think our sort of natural human sort of stasis, right, is that, you know, like if you've got a good thing going, and that's how you structure and finance your business, right, is you figure out a model, you figure out if that's profitable, and then you figure out how to optimize for that profitability, right?  So no organization is geared to change.  And we've seen that.  And we typically don't change until we're forced to change.  Or there's some shiny object or some, you know, promise of a brighter future that goes, 'Hey, I'll experiment there.'  And that's where a lot of our conversations are, you know, are coming up now, right?  Is people saying, well, like as an example, we talked about, you know, generative AI in the prelude to our conversation, but, you know, it's a hot topic.  So we get executives coming and saying like, 'What does this mean?'  What do I do about it?  How impactful is it for my business?  Where do I start?  Those kind of conversations.  It's more of a function of saying, well, you know, is that going to change the game for me?  And that's that sort of lever for change.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:06:31] Yeah, no, and that's interesting because it doesn't like, to some extent, the technological change of AI almost isn't, you know, entirely necessary, maybe for some industries right now.  But what it's done in terms of being a catalyst for cultural change is pretty interesting, right?  Tell me more about that.  Well, it's just that it has become such a massive topic, rightfully.  There's so much change that's already created.  But then there's many industries that just see this wave, this tsunami coming at them.  So even if in the immediate future, they don't necessarily see some technological adoption happening, but what I see is that like psychologically, it's opening them up because they can see the crest of the tsunami.  And so right now, they're kind of, you know, getting to high alert and saying, this is coming anyways.  And maybe the AI was the catalyst, but what should we be doing?  How do we respond to that?

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Marc Low

[00:07:19] Well, what's interesting there, I think, is when we're talking to a company, we do a bunch of research in the market about what organizations are doing around this particular topic.  And I mean, there's a whole segment of the market that like almost half in Canada, almost half of organizations are what we call, what we'd say evaluating, which is kind of like, what I think of that is like, you're like peeking through the hedgerows and you're seeing like what other companies are doing.  And it's like, is that something I want to experiment with?  10% aren't doing anything at all, which in this era feels like you're just like, okay, you're just waiting to get taken out by something, right?  And so, you know, more than half of organizations are really not meaningfully doing that.  So it's an interesting tension, right?  Of you see that tsunami coming, you know, you should be doing, you think maybe you should be doing something about it, but you know, half of organizations are still kind of waiting and seeing.  So translate that south of the border with our American friends, and much more aggressive in terms of adopting that change, and a much larger sort of cultural push to experiment, even if it means that it's not gonna stick, right?  They're okay with that sense; they're much more, I think at ease with the sense of we've got to experiment, try things, and see how that's gonna kind of affect our organization.  In Canada, we tend to want to kind of wait and see, right?  Yeah, we're laggers a little bit, right?  More than a little bit, unfortunately.  Yeah, we've got a bit of kind of motivating to do some sort of change, a little bit of change management to do there, I think culturally in Canada.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:08:46] So that 50% you're talking about, so if it was like, you know, early adopters, early majority, and then maybe late adopters, then the sort of late majority.  Yes.  You're basically saying that most of us are kind of in that late majority?

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Marc Low

[00:09:00] So far, that's what it looks like, yeah, for sure.  You know, a third of organizations are piloting something, which is great, right?  That's what you want to see, that's that sort of, you know, early; in fact, I wouldn't even say they're early adopters.  The early adopters are the 10% or so that are scaling stuff already.  So they figured out how to make the systems work, how to get change pushed into the organization, how to get people using the tools, they're measuring value and saying, hey, this is working, and they're scaling it.  So those are the real, like, early, early adopters.  And then about a third of organizations, from our research, you know, are sitting in that place where they're experimenting with something.  That could be like a Microsoft Copilot, or maybe they're using ChatGPT for a couple of use cases.  And so they're trying to figure that out, but they're not necessarily, you know, they haven't proven that value yet, or they haven't gotten comfortable with what that means for the organization.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:46] So there's something you said there, which I think, you know, sometimes we say very quickly in passing and move on to the next thing, which is the tool or the solution, or the technology you want to talk about.  But you said they're getting people to buy into the change.  Yes.  Right.  Let's unpack that, because I feel like that might be most of the work, right?

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Marc Low

[00:10:02] How much time do we have?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:10:04] Because when it comes to the technology, like that, for the most part, you can, you know, you can figure it out. Yes.  You can find ways of integrating, you can see what makes sense for you.  The analysis exists.  But getting people to buy into the change, that to me seems like it might be most of the work.  It's the whole game.  It's the whole game.  Yeah.  So how do you get people to buy in?  Well, you make it all about them, right?

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Marc Low

[00:10:28] You appeal to the inherent narcissism of the self.  Well, why do you embrace anything, right?  Why do you, you know, why, you know, I saw before we sat down here, right?  You've got an iPhone, you're sitting on an iPad, right?  Why do you use that iPad instead of a paper notebook, right?  There's some Apple has figured out how to create a product that has enough inherent value for you, you're going to make a change, right?  And I think that's like fundamental to any of this.  Think about doing something like, you know, a Salesforce implementation as an example, right?  Forget about AI and all this other stuff.  You don't, I think if you start from the premise of, hey, we're doing a Salesforce implementation, it's like people go, oh, God, right?  Because nobody wants to change, right?  They've done things a certain way.  Organizations are geared for stasis primarily.  So that's where you set it up for failure.  So what you have to unlock is why of why we're doing this and then getting people to buy into that, why and the change and how that's going to make their lives better, right?  Salesforce, as an example, you do that because you want to change the way that you interact with your customers.  I feel like I'm repping Salesforce huge here in this interview.  And Apple.  So you're doing great with the brands.  Oh yeah, all the good brands, right?  But it's never technology for technology's sake, right?  And I think that's the trap.  I mean, we've seen that in AI for sure.  And that's where digital transformations tend to fail, is you talk technology first, technology people process or technology process people.  And then you talk about, you know, it's got to be the other way around, which people then process, then technology, right?  And the technology is the last piece of that.  So how do you get it to succeed?  You get people bought in around the why.  You try to create a vivid picture of how their life is going to be star spangled awesome at the end of this change, right?  And then you support them in that change.  So again, it's not about pushing technology into somebody.  It's about empowering them with tools and training and support and mentorship and all that stuff that makes you feel like, okay, I can do this.  Any technological change is the same type of change that you'd engage in any other part of your life.  But because we're technologists and we interact with this stuff all the time, the trap is to think, well, the technology speaks for itself.  The iPad's so awesome that I'd, you know, obviously I would ditch my paper and notepad for that.  But, you know, there's a whole dynamic to how you get people bought in around that and then support them in that change.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:12:48] So I'm super guilty of that.  Because when it comes to operations or automation, you know, you discover a tool, a piece of software, some technique and- Do it this way.  Yeah.  The new future to me just becomes so evident so fast that I am very guilty of just running around and beating people over the head with the technology from then on.  And luckily we have a small enough operation here at Skyrocket that it can be run as a mostly benevolent dictatorship, so we can get away with that.  But I imagine at a large enterprise, like, you know, know organizations of 100 500 people plus, um, that these are, you know, living organisms almost, and getting people to adopt change, you know, sure there's a lot of recruitment that can happen but there's also an aspect of even figuring out what needs to be done before that, yes.  And one of the favorite examples I like drawing is actually uh from Salim Ismail from Singularity University, yep, and he put it so well when he said that because a large organization organization um really walks and talks and breathes much like an organism; the new ideas are treated like pathogens right?  And when a new idea is introduced it feels like a pathogen to the company, and then culturally subconsciously, 'pathogen'  you know, fighting antibodies will be sent, yeah, to kill off this infection, yeah.  Right so in a when you're working in an enterprise like that, like how do you first even arrive?  At what should that innovation, what should that change be?  Let alone getting to the point of buy-in, well it depends, it depends what it is.

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Marc Low

[00:14:25] I think that's the first that's the first kind of comment right so uh, I mean in our innovation work we tend to talk about it kind of in three horizons.  Right?  So uh, you know the first being just optimize your business of today, right and that's the type of thing where uh, it's more constrained to a group like you know picking let's pick a practical example so rolling out generative AI as an initiative if it's something like you're probably going to be primarily focused on how the business works.  Today, it tends to be constrained within a group, so you know your 'it'  group for example might drive that second horizon, being that stuff we are looking to kind of explore new markets, new products, right and that tends to be a little bit broad in the organization.  And then the stuff that's really transformed, transformative needs to be driven typically out of the executive suite so it depends, it kind of depends what the nature of that sort of change is.  That's the first kind of comment, right.  Um, and I should also prefer all these comments with uh, you know one of the brilliant things about being at an organization like KPMG  is i'm surrounded by people way more way clever than than me who do that type of change management type work you know all day long right so uh you know it's uh very very fortunate to be surrounded by people who who are literal experts in that you know phd level experts in those in these domains so i'm i'm going to give you the you know my my kind of innovation version of uh of what professionals are you know do at kpmg right um but the next piece i think is really about understanding you know who those uh who are the groups that you're working with and spending a lot of time up front making those personal connections so trying to  Understand what motivates people right to your point organizations are just groups of people coming together to achieve some type of shared outcome, uh, and within those you've got a whole variety of personalities motivations, and so on, so the the when the work when it's done well is spending a bit of time understanding and mapping what those personality structures are within within those groups you're going to be operating with um and trying to you know form those personal kind of connections or bonds right we've got a we're um we're you know we're gearing up to do something together even if I'm coming as an outsider.  Into your organization, uh, you know we're going to band together to achieve this outcome.  My job is to articulate that brighter future that we're going to go and fetch together, and then understanding who are the people that are going to be supporters in that, who are the people that are going to be detractors, who are the people that are going to be skeptics, and so on.  And then you've got to play to each one of those groups to bring them along in that journey.  And sometimes it doesn't work right; sometimes the skeptics are too loud or too influential, right?  Um, and that's that's when those types of engagements tend to  tend to derail and you do see that right i mean statistically the vast majority of digital transformations and that's a big bucket term right but then they tend to fail yeah right and uh and mostly i think that's because the human dynamic hasn't been solved for and you think you're pushing you're pushing a technology solution or you're saying you know our future is going to be so much brighter and you haven't done the work of you know meeting somebody where they're not going to be able to do it and you're going to be able to do it and you're not going to be able to do it and you're not going to be able to do it they are and and doing  That kind of empathy work, that the human work, that needs to get done to get stuff landed.  And that's when those things tend to derail you know.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:17:26] It's interesting actually because uh, you talk to people in leadership that are leading technological change and they tend to want to talk about the technology, and most of their reaction responses are to the technology right um.  And you talk to people that work in digital transformation or technical innovation and they want to talk about the people and the human side right right um.  We've had other guests previously that are deep in the digital transformation space, yeah, and the  conversation is entirely around humans and people and how they work and sometimes internal to the organization because you're ultimately coming to bring technological change their focus winds up being entirely on technology and that's all they want to talk about yes so i'm reminded of this like really actually kind of funny quote from Osho it's like eastern spiritual philosopher who said that what did he say he said um every time i talk to a prostitute um they want to talk about god and every time i talk to a god and every time i talk to a prostitute they want to talk about god priest that want to talk about sex.  And it's this weird dichotomy where, you know, the technology change is actually human change.  Right.  And right now we've got the biggest sort of looming thing in front of us, which is AI, which is triggering everybody to even have these conversations in the first place.  So imagine the innovation space itself has probably heated up a lot.  I mean, you've been at this for some time.  So what have you seen even the last couple of years in terms of the appetite in companies to have this conversation?

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Marc Low

[00:18:45] Well, I mean, AI, you're quite right.  I mean, in our line of work, AI has completely changed the narrative.  You know, that sort of three-horizon model that I was describing, I think we've been working in some form of that paradigm for, I've been doing work in that sort of domain for more than a decade now, probably.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:19:04] And now suddenly everybody's like all horizon three.

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Marc Low

[00:19:08] That's actually an interesting one.  Right.  So not, not, well, I mean, everyone's, everyone wants that promise, I think.  But that means a lot of things.  That means a lot of things.  And, and that's one of the things that really does change in the the innovation conversation, the real like change, how are we going to change the organization?  You know, are we going to change our business model and so on?  Those are big, hairy, like sticky conversations.  And it's good to have that as an aspiration, but most of the work tends to be in that kind of, you know, explaining stuff.  So the, the, the, line that we always get, right?  So around generative AI, we've been working now for like 18, 20 months or so, helping clients understand what it means.  And we've documented like 850 use cases for generative AI inside organizations.  Now, like that's the literal tip of the iceberg, right?  Because if you think about even inside Skyrocket, the number of cognitive processes that are happening inside Skyrocket, it's in the thousands, for sure, for sure, right?  And if you talk to like a Coca-Cola or a Loblaws or something, it's, you know, way, way bigger than that, right?  So everyone wants to know, like, what are the use cases for my function or my organization, my industry, right?  That's kind of only part of the discussion.  You know, it's, again, it's about how is it going to change the way that work gets done, right?  So anyway, it depends a little bit on, you know, on where that kind of starts inside the organization.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:20:43] And when we were talking previously, you talked about, you know, some of the tools that you've been using, right?  You talked about some of the tools that you've been using to kind of recruit people into that change and get the conversation started.  And again, this is, you know, different than my strategy, just beating people over the head with a tool.

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Marc Low

[00:20:56] Which I doubt very much, by the way.  Knowing you as I do, I don't think that's the approach at all.  No, that's generous.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:21:02] But, you know, starting with, like, what parts of your job really suck, right?  Because when you talk about- My job or just in general?

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Marc Low

[00:21:11] Oh, no, just in general.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:21:12] Because your job sounds pretty amazing.  My job is amazing.  But in terms of the cognitive processes you're talking about, really, we're talking about cognitive load, right?  And that's something that, you know, even small enterprises are challenged with because there's a thousand micro-decisions you're making and certain things you want to be automatic because they're not high-value.  And you want to be actually taking most of your human energy, which is a very finite resource and has to be managed very carefully, increasingly.  But you want to take most of your human energy and actually apply it where-Where that special insight is needed, right?  You don't want to be making decision fatigue, essentially, right?  You don't want to be making a thousand useless decisions.  So when you get that first conversation started with a client and with their internal team on what parts of your job suck, what do you do when someone doesn't know, right?  Because I think sometimes it's easy to point at something and say, OK, this is a real pain point.  Yeah.  But there's also areas where people just get so used to doing things a certain way that they don't even realize that this is a pain point.  This is a kind of waste of their time and their life, right?  Like we had a great project management conversation a couple episodes ago.  And before project management even came along as a methodology in the 50s, right?  The normal way was you just kind of keep talking to each other until the thing happens, right?  And you have to repeat a conversation 20 times, so be it.  But that was just the norm.  And if you talk to somebody that was working in a factory in those days and said, 'You know, what are the pain points in your job?'  They might have said, 'Well, it's really- It's really muddy when I'm walking to work, right?'  But the inherent aspect of just being really redundant with conversation and trying to move projects forward that way, they wouldn’t have necessarily pointed at that as a pain point, right?  And today it might be that, I know one of my pain points is building spreadsheets.  So I’ve worked with many project managers or others that are in some job of needing to organize humans and resources around something.  Yep.  And we’ll immediately get to the work of constructing, you know, big, complicated projects.

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Marc Low

[00:23:12] Yeah, right.  Yeah, yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:23:14] And I kind of look at that and I think, you know, that’s the norm.  They haven’t necessarily looked at that as a pain point, right?  That’s just how they’re getting the work done. Yes.  But I look at it and I say, what a waste of human energy to be building these things that are sometimes redundant and are repeating a lot of the same information that exists in other places.  Yeah.  So how do you even get the conversation started when somebody is so locked into a mode of thinking that when you ask for a pain point, they might not even look at their own, you know, what they're doing and where they're kind of wasting themselves?

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Marc Low

[00:23:41] Well, may I share a slightly different perspective on that?  Go for it.  On that story?  Yeah.  So I was about to give you the trope about, you know, the consulting joke is it depends.  But I mean, it does depend, in that there are certain processes which from the outside might look like a waste of time.  And some people need those processes to wrap their mind around what needs to get done.  And so the art is to figure out, to listen well, which sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, right?  But, you know, to really like listen empathetically to what's happening in your, so if I ask you to describe your Monday to Friday and we start to like lay that out and like map those processes and what are the outcomes you're trying to drive and you're looking for value levers in that work that say, how do I, you know, are you clear about what needs to get done when you get to Friday at five o'clock, right?  What does success look like for your week?  And are we mapping those activities back?  Sometimes there are going to be activities in there that feel like, 'Oh man,'  if I'm doing a, if I didn't have to do that thing.  I'll tell you how my mind works often.  If somebody, so if somebody ran that process back with me, oftentimes the way that I need to get to, if I'm constructing, you know, if I'm doing a, building a keynote or building a piece of thought leadership, I have to go through the reps of doing that research and grind and thinking about what that, what that argument is to get to that output.  If somebody says, oh, but all that time I see on your Monday to Friday, right, Friday you said you were going to have this keynote built, but you spent four hours doing research and synthesizing arguments that Jenny, I could do that for you.  If I skip that step, you don't wrap your head around, I don't get to the end, right?  And so even in your example of creating that work back schedule, some, depending on your position in the organization and the, and the way that you need to get to your output, sometimes that's a useful process for you to get done.  And so the art is in the listening of going, okay, explain what that, what that, you know, what that work is, what that cognitive load that you're describing is, and now let's map that back to what outcomes.  You need to get and how you synthesize information to get to that output, right?  And the art is in distilling which ones of those are stuff that can be stripped away by a piece of technology and which ones, the person, because of the way their mind is geared actually needs to do that, to, to do their job effectively.  The tension I think is in when you're looking at it from a top-down view, you know, the management would say, well, if I'll, if, if I could replace that piece of work, if I could strip out that four hours with a piece of technology or somebody could do that more effectively, I'll just make that decision.  That's, I think where things get kind of sticky, right?  Because that that's, you're talking about, well, what's the optimum use of that, of the organization's value, right?  Cause they're paying for that time.  And what's the optimum use of that person's kind of cognitive ability.  But those two are at these conversations actually different conversations, I think.  Yeah.  Um, and, and make for the hard, harder conversations about what it means to change organizations when you apply technology.  Anyway, I've gone off a little bit of a rabbit hole there.  No, no.  It's an important kind of distinction in terms of not everything.  My point is, I guess it's not; everything is a kind of management consulting oriented, like, uh, you know, how many hours for what dollars equals output, let's just rip and replace that thing because it fundamentally undermines, uh, how that, how that team structure works.  And that's the tension for, for leaders and navigating this change.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:27:03] And I think actually, um, there's a lot of light bulbs going off for me and this, um, I feel like you should build yourself as like a change therapist.  Because this conversation has actually been really helpful for me even because I think there's a personal dynamic in that that's probably been missing for me a little bit of looking at activities, looking at actions that we take and you know, which ones are driving outcome without necessarily appreciating very thoughtfully and empathetically as you have of what the individual needs might be to how to process and understand that change.  Right.  Um, but no, I think that's, that's super helpful.  I think as a result of that, uh, Monday morning that the team at Skyrocket is going to be, is going to encounter a kinder and gentler Mo Doley Wall.  There you go.  You're welcome Skyrocket.  Um, so let's just go on a bit of a tangent for a bit because we're talking a lot about present day, what you've got going on.  It's all quite exciting.  Um, and I think any one of the things we've touched on, we could talk for two hours about, but I'm also really curious to hear about why you're doing what you do.  Right.  Right.  Because there's certain natural inclinations that have landed you in this role.  Right.  Um.  So, um, you know, I've, I've seen your trajectory in the world of startups and before that, uh, working always in problem solving and building spaces. Yeah.  And I'm just curious to hear about, like, why this world interested you at all, you know, why Mark Lowe?  Yeah.  Why now?  Yeah.  Why are you doing this?

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Marc Low

[00:28:27] Um, geez, now, now you're the change, change therapist.  Um, I, I love, uh, I love going forward.  I love going from zero to one on stuff.  I love the, the intellectual challenge of trying to, uh, unpack a market dynamic, try to place a solution inside of that, uh, and ultimately how to create value.  Like when you're the, the active, uh, I came up in sales and marketing alt really effectively in my early in my career.  And so, my, um, the end goal is always how do you are, you know, identify some value and the sales process about how do I make your life better?  Kind of reserves a wealth of solutions that I bring.  If I do that well, I'll, I'll get compensated for it.  Right.  Uh, so all the work that I've done really for the last sort of 10, 12 years has been around either helping organizations like, you know, I've spent a lot of time now in big four consulting firms, but it's always been in that sort of zero to one space of creating new ventures and that, or, uh, in helping organizations kind of grapple with the same, right.  Uh, you know, I'm not, I, by choice, I haven't spent a lot of time doing, you know, I haven't built my career in like ERP implementations where the solution set is really known and the problem definition is pretty well done.  Um, I'd like to spend time in that kind of ambiguous uh space, but the less satisfying answer is it's, it really has been uh, I mean, my career has been a series of um, very fortuitous kind of outcomes that weren't you know, I didn't, I wasn't sitting in high school designing it this way.  Um, I'm the classic example of uh, very fortunate to meet great people along the way that opened up certain you know little cracks in the door that gave me a view of something interesting and then um, you know, I've been you know, fortunate enough  To kind of follow those bits of inspiration, right um you know early in my career came up with an organization here in Vancouver called Vision Critical which is now a company called Elita but like early days of like SAS software solutions and nobody even knew what that was we were kind of one of the first companies articulating what that meant to you know not have an on-prem installation of software and so I was you know I was early in my career and watching uh watching really really clever people try to grapple with like what that meant, how do you figure out uh messaging, how do you message change.  And innovation in interesting ways, that and articulate what that value proposition is for a client uh and build a market right uh and saw how hard that was and got and just had you know amazing examples that I still lean on and I mean that company has birthed into Vancouver yeah you know we still we talked a little bit you know before we sat down right of how small the market is and you know there's still guys that I roll with out of that uh out of that group that I met you know that's I won't even say how long ago now it's you know and so it's a bit of a commentary on Vancouver in the market there but just you know great people.  that that I kind of watched, and then you know uh what I was seeing there was the guys that were having the really strategic conversations were credentialed, and so you know my thought was okay well I'll go get a credential.  So I went to the NBA and then I met um the Chief Innovation Officer for Deloitte at the time, and uh just one of these like super dynamic guys who like you know just his personality fills the room right?  And uh and just articulated to me like hey I've got this great mandate to go and rock some boats and create some change and help clients do some stuff.  I was like man that sounds that sounds awesome right?  That begat another kind of five-year stretch of uh, of working with organizations to do that and you know big, you know like when we talk about those three horizons that third horizon transformation stuff right, how does uh, how does a bank with 150 years of uh, of legacy, you know completely transform their business model, you know those type of engagements so it was like really intellectually challenging, uh, you know the classic long hours, hard work, big demands but like you know made me grow so much right, so I just had a series of of those type of experiences and so um, you know but but the the golden thread has always been that  Kind of, uh, you know either building stuff zero to one or, uh, helping organizations do that and it's just such a great, such a great kind of challenge to do that and that's why that's why the work's been interesting so I can, that's what it continues to be at KPMG.  It's now, uh, you know topics like digital twins and generative AI, and how do you help an organization grapple with that and then bring that to life?  Right, sometimes you're not even totally sure what the question is that you're answering when you start and it's about, you know, framing that in a way.  You go, 'Okay, now we understand what we're trying to solve for now.'  Let's talk about who are the people that are going to be solving for that, and then what's the right solution to do, then how do you build that kind of together?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:33:14] Right so the classic like, build the plane as you fly, you just jump off the cliff and drop a couple of wings to your arms, and then you you know you just try to stay afloat, right that's the it's an awesome challenge, you uh, you get quite excited when you're talking about it, yeah, it's apparent on your face, you're glowing, um, the interesting thing for me and I think there's a bit of a pattern emerging here as well is nobody really works in these spaces unless you're inherently  An optimist, right?  Like this is a space for it's for optimists it's for people with a growth mindset because if the first time you encountered a challenge or the first time you saw a gap, your natural instinct was to retreat or see a threat there, right?  You just like, 'there's no that's a you know there's no starting yeah, there's no getting getting over that yeah.'  So there's an inherent optimism that you see in entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and innovation spaces, yeah, and that's I think been a pretty common thread for anybody I've talked to.  I'm sure CEOs we work with it's inherent um, but you know what were  Your sort of influences growing up, like why you know, why the optimism, why looking at challenges with excitement rather than fear and trepidation.

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Marc Low

[00:34:23] I think I'm like I'm not...  I describe myself uh professionally as like a techno optimist right um I think I'm a bit of a reluctant optimist in some ways, a reluctant optimist, yeah, is that a thing?  I don't know, I mean, I'm inventing the term um so uh you know your upbringing always uh influences uh or it typically influences, right how your your your view of the world um uh I am blessed with amazing parents but you know uh but I think a dad who uh you know has a...  I think a bit of a view  of like you know um are we really getting is this is are we really getting better are we improving like you know is this is this you know and so I've always got a bit of that voice in my head of like um I think a healthy amount of skepticism especially when I hear you know people pitch new solutions or you know kind of solutions in search of a problem uh you know a bit of that sort of healthy skepticism of like is this really are we are we gonna be better at the end of this right um so you know that's kind of the one the one lens um you know having just spent a lot of time in the technology space like that the the challenge of of bringing those  solutions to market to bring those to life right those are good you know that that's just intellectually stimulating for me but I've also because I I spent a chunk of my uh in the middle of my career um overseas in South Africa and in in sub-Saharan Africa you know I've also seen the ability uh for technology to really drive positive change um you know where people want it I think you know like a very good example of that I think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's sensitive of like cultural dynamics of uh kind of that western view of like you know technology is going to make your life better like well maybe maybe not maybe  they want it maybe they don't right but in the places where uh you know where they do want it man I mean the ability in in Africa right the ability to uh you know provide access to electricity in rural rural environments right and what that means for for for somebody's um you know standard can mean for somebody standard living et cetera et cetera et cetera right so like real based level stuff right now I'm not talking about now putting a Starlink uh you know internet on their uh you know in their in their rural village it's like just some of the basic basics and that the change that can have the profound change that can have  so I kind of see that as the thread that pulls all the way through right is that I've seen the ability for technology to drive that really fundamental change and make an impact in people's lives and the work that we do here I gotta say is like not the impact is not the same right it's uh like just because of the dynamic at it's you're you're dealing with a different set of problems um but the the fundamental thing remains the same which is like do you believe that life can get better by virtue of deploying a great technology solution my answer is is yes and the cynicism is I think a good like you know a good healthy dose of it right  check and balance of like is it getting better not technology for technology's sake right it's like what how how is your life going to get better as a result of this solution and that's you know so take a practical example is you know helping uh you know helping an organization deploy generative ai it's like it's not just about pushing it in there and saying you know because everyone reads the headlines they know that they can see the disruption coming they say oh you know like classic joke right if you had a department of three people and the headline is 33 percent of jobs are going to be redundant like you're looking going  Well, which one of the three of us is going to be the one that's going to get right and so empathize, empathy there to say like what is what impacts it's going to have for you how do I make and how do we support you to to you know be part of your change journey even if that change journey means ultimately you're not going to be inside this organization at some point right?  You leave with a different set of skills.  I think you have to have that lens when you do this, you need to do this kind of work well.  I like that.  Sorry, I won't be prescriptive; I just think I like having that lens around it it makes me feel like uh, I've got agency right around.  This change uh, it makes me feel like I've got a positive impact when I'm helping organizations talk about these things so um, you know, it's it's it's part of what kind of rounds the circle for me a bit.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:38:32] I mean from a values perspective, like I I think you should have that perspective that you're describing, of you know the societal impacts good and potential you know adjustments that might be needed and necessary um, and that's definitely the opportunity with with technology for sure.  But I mean even at the start of this segment um, I started with this like Sam Altman quote, right?  You know, we're in an era where we're gonna see the  First, uh, you know, one person's billion-dollar company, right?  And I think for a lot of very aggressive techno-optimists, um, the opportunity is a it's a highly individualized one, right?  It's about how do we actually eliminate, eliminate, and become ever more lean, ever fewer people, ever more profitable and productive, and you know, making waves out there, right?  And the two seem to sort of be at odds, right, because one is actually saying that it's almost like a retreat from humanity to the individual, yeah, and the other is saying, actually, these are massive waves and tsunamis of change that are coming upon us, and  We actually have to see who all they're affecting and how to mitigate and have empathy for that are affected, right?  And like you know it's it's a paradox because the two kind of seem to be in opposition to each other.

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Marc Low

[00:39:50] They are I think they are fundamentally in opposition, yeah, yeah.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:39:52] And so how do you how do you navigate that like is there some dissonance around saying well you know all this stuff is good but we're becoming like we're only really kind of looking at the individual uh yeah benefit?

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Marc Low

[00:40:04] Yeah, I mean I gotta say I love the conversation right uh I think that's where the real juice uh the juice of it is um and first comment I think is where  The pendulum is swinging in one direction; it has for almost, well, a couple of decades probably.  Right?  You know, if you kind of draw a line from uh like the first First dot-com boom and bust, right?  Uh, through the 2000s, right?  Technology was really coming online in the mainstream, you had all these great innovations that were coming you know coming to the fore, great financial crisis right?  Has this devastating effect on the economy, and then kind of rebuilding, uh, rebuilding all that, and then you know, uh, pulling all the way through to Covid.  Right?  All these forces were fundamentally kind of attacking that legacy view of what  organizations as uh like a reasonable profit margin for for work right so you put a dollar in the top of revenue and you pay all the people and then you know the owners would keep 15-ish percent right that was uh you know that's if you if you extrapolate out against a variety of industries that was more or less than that and you know all these you know forces have come to to really uh you know disaggregate those that those organizational forces we came together because we thought you know um Ronald Ronald's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great  He's a great guy wrote this uh book in the early 1900s, The Theory of the Firm, and the whole idea was, you know why isn't why wouldn't Moe and Mark just be out in the metaphorical wilderness right hunting and killing what we, you know what we uh what we can, and the answer is that in certain circumstances it makes sense for us to join forces in the same way that you would, you know, civilization came together in the first place, right?  We've got a shared set of skills, so you firms were this aggregation of skills where we're better together, and you had there was value great, there the solutions.  Were better, you created brand and that had a you know, had market forces attached to it that would allow you to win work etc.  etc., right?  And technology has been this force that's actually been kind of disaggregating that in in some uh significant ways.  COVID, I think one of the you know um the the big lessons of COVID right was that it we said okay uh, you know, work from home and it was like this overnight you know, COVID hit and it's like cool uh, everyone used to come to work, I mean five days a week in the office was the standard thing.  COVID hit, everyone went home, well what were you doing there?  You were starting to compartmentalize  people's individual roles and responsibilities you're starting to you know itemize what pieces of work they were doing right well the next version of that is then go okay well hang on a second if I can really quantify what this person does then the next decision if you if what you're looking at is how do I maximize my profit my next decision is okay well how do I get a cheaper better version of that right I'll go find that person in a cheaper you know geography I'll replace that with the technology and so on and then generative AI has kind of been this extension of that force in some capacity right is to go great it's talking  About how do you replace elements of uh, elements of work, and what uh, how can I drive more profit from that?  Right, these are all positive forces like this; nothing exists in a vacuum, but it's exactly what you described is I think they're they're antithetical forces in in some way because the idea of a one-person billion-dollar company is absolutely antithetical to that Ronald Coase version, you know, theory of the firm, story of value and people coming together having a human experience, banding together with with their shared kind of collective wisdom and then pushing a solution to the market that creates value.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:43:36] And, you know, can can sell can sell value and and retain some level of profit so well, I mean the COVID frame there is actually quite profound what you mentioned um because I've never actually heard it articulated so clearly right because pre-remote work revolution, yeah it was people first right, right?  You hired people, people came to the company and then you decide what the people are going to do, right, right?  And then when it went remote and now it's function-based, yes, now it's function-first and then as a result, you have a withdrawal of that humanity, yeah, and now you're looking to figure out where and how and I'm sure I've been  Guilty of this, where, and how to identify functions and automate them right?

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Marc Low

[00:44:16] Um, and and if I just interject one second there's I mean like we're seeing the impacts of that in terms of organ how organizations function now so uh you know firms like KPMG, like one of the things that we that we're working really hard to rebuild is that sort of connective tissue of teams right?  Because uh, really actually every meeting is a default remote-first meeting because not everyone is in the office at the same time, so every meeting has some...  we work on Microsoft Teams, so everything is a team's meeting by default and some people might be in  The same room that has really profound impacts on you, if you're coming out of university entering our firm, the way that you used to do is you would watch a partner interact with a client, sell work, manage the client relationship right project manage right, how do you figure out how much effort is required to deliver this piece of work and then how do you manage that when your plan inevitably gets thrown out the window because the dynamics change, you know, in the heat of battle all that has has been really you know put on pause, and so it's challenging for us now to to kind of regain that team that that team momentum like  I think we're doing a good job, but it but it's requires this you know conscious effort to do that right, and so um, you know all these sort of things are are really in tension with uh, you know what you're trying to do as an organization.  And if you think that the only thing that you're trying to do is deliver the end solution for for X dollars and retain profit if that's if that's the your sort of corporate view of what the role of that organization is, then of course you're going to go function by function and go, 'What's the most efficient way to do that?'  And this business is you know selling somebody value, taking a dollar, retaining  Some profit at the end of that right, that's that's the gig of a capitalist system, so of course that's that you should there should be elements of that right, but it can't just be the thing of well how do I get to the absolute most efficient way to do that right, because take that to the nth degree, that Sam Altman's comment right of the one person billion dollar organization great if you're a venture capitalist right, that's that that's the view of the world it's like how can I put in the least amount of money and get the maximum return That's taken to the nth degree, right?  That's what he's articulating there.  But that is fundamentally at odds with why we come together as humans to explore, create, build something that hasn't been built before, and then put these solutions in the market.  And you started the intro saying we live better now than royalty did in the Middle Ages.  Well, we do because humans have come together to create those solutions, right?  And that's how you've created values.  People have come together, understood somebody's human experience, created something that didn't exist before, and then built that thing.  And that's why our lives are better, right?  So I think this idea that we can break all this apart into its component pieces and just get it down to its bare essence, I think that's ultimately a recipe for a little bit of disaster.  And so that's what we're trying to navigate in this period of change is you do have this technology that promises the one-person billion-dollar company.  How do you hold that?  How do you hold that tension, right, in terms of the work that you do and what that impact can be on organizations?

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:47:32] I feel like this is a conversation that's actually missing from all the discourse around technological change, AI, everything that's happening, right?  The humanity of it.  Because if you just looked at the discourse, you would imagine that humanity was always just hunter-gatherers, right?  And I wouldn't know this had I not researched it for a presentation to an agricultural group.  Right.  But 12,000 years ago, we decided to give up hunting and gathering, which was actually low-calorie expenditure for a high-calorie return for the individual or for the small unit.  We gave that up for an activity that was actually like massive calorie expenditure for low return, which is farming.  But farming needed larger communities to actually sustain it.  But as a result, we became more sustainable as a species. So.  So, that act of coming together, that act of creating a shared wealth and a shared resilience is actually the whole reason why civilization exists.  But I feel especially as technocrats on some level are kind of mired in this blindness of privilege, I guess.  Right.  Right.  I'm just assuming that if you're out for yourself and if you're enabling yourself with technology and becoming this like centaur of like half human, half technologist.  Superhero, right, that then you'll be able to become very individually powerful and that's actually the desired state, right?  And I think what's actually missing from, you know, current conversations around AI and the rest of it, we talk about impact, but we're not really talking as much about shared humanity.  Right.

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Marc Low

[00:49:14] Yeah.  Well, it depends.  I think like the point's well taken, right?  As I say, thinking of it for me, thinking of it like a pendulum.  That's kind of like a pendulum.  That's kind of swung in one direction, I think is useful, right?  The folks that are pushing, that are invested in the technology, finding a home, that's, you know, that's the narrative that you're seeing on that one side, right?  There are also, I mean, there's a whole community of people who are exploring what this means and having really interesting conversations, like fundamentally, like philosophically interesting conversations about what the impact of that technology is.  And the other thing I would say is.  Nothing is happening in a kind of uniform way, right?  So our, you and I work in technology, we're talking about technology in our day-to-day work, right?  But there's bound to be kind of almost counterculture, you know, reactions to the stuff where people are going like almost that sort of, you know, Luddite kind of.  Yeah, the other extreme.  Of like, no, you know, and I think because the narrative around the impact of the technology.  And it's so star-spangled awesome and it's so amazing and the, you know, that we think, you know, it's easy to think that it's going to be uniformly adopted, right?  And there's still lots of people who don't have iPads and iPhones and whatever, right?  And I think the same will likely be true here.  If you zoom out at a sort of, you know, civilizational level or at a cultural level, right?  I think the question is, if you are working with a piece of technology like AI and you know that it has transformative impacts.  And you know there's going to be a whole.  Section of people that are, you know, not interested, not, don't have access, don't, what are the, what does that mean if you, are you going to create a sort of stratify, you know, increase that stratification, that gap, you know, those are the sort of, I think those are the really important conversations to be, to be having, or at least to be having in your mind as you're driving these conversations into, you know, into organizations, right?  And so that's why I love the, the, the, even the title of your podcast, right?  High Agency.  It's this idea of like, how do you, how?  How can you hold the tension of knowing how good the technology is and knowing what impact it can have and having a view of, 'there's, there's no such thing as impact without, without, you know, some sort of significant outcome', and, and some of those outcomes can be positive and negative.  You should be mindful of both, right?  And if you do to your point, if you're doing your job well, I think that you're holding that, that tension in a, in a kind of meaningful way and having, and what I like about the work that we get to do is to have agency in, in that story, right?  I don't feel like I'm a passive consumer of consequence.  I feel like I've got a voice.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:52:00] You know, the effect of things, you're actually able to shape something.

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Marc Low

[00:52:03] Super, super important, right?  Like, uh, you know, you mentioned in your introduction, right?  The sense of like, uh, you know, there's a bit of a narrative of like people feel like they're, uh, like they're locked out or like, even though you've, if you're objective about it, we're living better.  It doesn't feel that way sometimes.  And I think a lot of that has to do with that, a feeling like you're at effect of the world, right?  That things are happening out there and that I'm a consumer of the consequence of whatever that those decisions are.  And I don't have voice in that.  And so, that to me is a super, super important lens around technology.  And, um, in what we try to do with the work that we do is to, you know, to have a positive voice in that, uh, in that change, not just, you know, ramping down or ramming down, you know, technology for technology's sake and damn the consequences.  Right.  It's, um, that, yeah, it, it, the work that you do, if you're talking about AI and its got impacts on jobs, that's people's livelihoods.  Right.  That's how they feed their families.  Right.  This is not, these are not no-consequence discussions. Right.  And so, uh, you know, being empathetic and mindful of that, and then, and then doing the work in a way where you feel like you're, um, you know, you're, you are adding value, I think is really, really important.  So I feel, I feel very lucky to be able to do it that way.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:53:13] Awesome.  Well, Mark, thanks for your time.  Thanks for coming in.  Um, where can we learn more about you?

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Marc Low

[00:53:21] Well, uh, obviously the, the KPMG website.  And if you are so inclined, there is also a personal website, um, marklow.com, um, where I post some of the work that, uh, that I'm doing, um, which is also a great place to learn more and, obviously, LinkedIn and all the socials, but yeah, what a pleasure to be here.  Thank you so much for the great conversation.

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Marc Low

[00:53:41] Awesome.  Thanks for coming in, Mark.  The pleasure was mine.  Alright.  Thanks so much.

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Mo Dhaliwal

[00:53:45] Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about, that's high-agency, like, and subscribe, and we will see you next time.

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