Insights from a Digital Transformation Pioneer | Charlene Li

HSU Charlene Li Ao v04

Natasha Nuytten: Hello, friends. This is Human Side Up, where we flip the script on doing diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is not about policies or platitudes. It's about leaders, changemakers, and innovators who are rewriting the rules. In every episode, we explore the processes, mindsets, and breakthroughs, as well as bold decisions that are shaping workplaces and communities where everyone belongs. I'm your host, Natasha Nuytten, CEO of Clara and DEI Network, and a super curious human. I'm really glad you're here to learn with me. Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Charlene Lee. She is a prominent figure in the field of digital transformation and leadership, and has been talking about this and providing us a pathway and a roadmap for years, how we can be thinking about our mindsets, communication, all of those types of things from a leadership position. And she is the founder and CEO of Quantum Networks, which is a consulting group. She's a solopreneur, so she's doing all of the things, but has worked in a lot of different spaces. She's been an analyst at Forrester Research, where she covered advertising, search marketing, social media back in the day. She's also served as a research officer at PA Consulting, leading their thought leadership initiative. So she's been to a lot of places, done a lot of things, and has shared her experience with many of us through keynotes with the World Economic Forum, TED, South by Southwest. She's been on CNN, ABC News, all kinds of places where we know we can find trusted sources and experts. And so she's certainly been called upon in a lot of ways to help support our knowledge in those areas. But you can also add to the list, New York Times bestseller author. And she has written six books on leadership and digital transformation. And I think some of the really notable works that people are going to be super familiar with are Open Leadership, The Disruption Mindset, and Groundswell. And then the latest book that you've written, which I'm excited to have you share with us today, is Winning with Generative AI, The 90-Day Blueprint for Success, which really is, I think, something that you've done with all of your books is the how-to. It's super practical, gets people up and running, like how to actually do things well. And this book in particular really focuses on integrating generative AI into business strategies. Welcome, Charlene. I'm very excited to learn from you and appreciate you making time for us today. 

Charlene Li: Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. 

Natasha Nuytten:  Absolutely. So when I talk about those through lines, I think some of the themes that I have seen in your work over the years are really thinking about integrating technology thoughtfully and intentionally, thinking about it as a tool rather than a solution in and of itself, but also prioritizing the humanity and the people who are using that technology and the culture surrounding it. And thinking about it as embracing change like thinking about it more as an opportunity than a threat and constantly making ourselves students and learners about how we get to being adaptable and bringing these things into our organizations. Does that feel right to you? And what am I missing? Because you've been writing for a while and you are a thoughtful human. So what else do we need to add to that?

Charlene Li: I started my career coming out of business school just going straight to newspapers. And not very many people do that when you graduate from Harvard Business School. And I did this and I graduated the same month that the World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, to just give a little bit of context. So I headed out to the San Jose Mercury News, where again, the newspapers I could see were going to be highly impacted by this thing called the Internet. So I wanted to be in the mix, in the middle of it, helping a very important part of our institutions, newspapers and journalism, go through this wave. And we have seen what happened to the media. And so I have staked my entire career on disruption, on change. And the thing I have learned from all my experiences now is that it's never about technology. We can talk about the bright, shiny objects, AI, whatever it is that's out there. It is never about technology. It is always about the people. Because if you don't understand how people are going to be impacted, how they're going to adopt it, what their fears and concerns about how that will help us become better humans, then we're never going to go near it. We'll never adopt it. And we'll just push it away. And we're seeing that happening right now with AI. People are drawn to it like moths, but we also know it's dangerous. Will Robinson stay away from this? So we have what I call FOMO, the fear of missing out. But we also have FOGE, fear of getting in. So we're, and this has been our history with technology. So I tend to be a technology optimist, but I'm also very much a realist, which is where that pragmatic side of things comes in. And one thing I am particularly proud of, and we'll talk about this a bit later too, is that in the middle of all of this, at one point I left Forrester and decided to start my own analyst firm. And that's called Altimeter Group. And did that for quite a few years and then sold it in 2015. And that was the most interesting adventure, trying to create something that was highly disruptive in a very established space, the analyst space. And so I learned a lot from not just doing the research, but also getting my hands deep into this and understanding just how difficult it is and gave me a really deep appreciation for what people are going through when they're trying to transform. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, that practical experience is so meaningful in thinking about how we bring people along and have those hard conversations. And you mentioned FOMO and FOGO. We often talk about, in our organization, FOFU, which is a fear of effing up, right? I'm afraid to get into it because I also don't want to screw this thing up. So I do think it can be such a driver. So I want to jump into all this. But before we do that, one thing I really like to talk about with our guests is maybe two or three words that you would describe, that you would use to describe yourself. And the way that maybe we would see these on a resume, maybe we wouldn't. But the reason why I ask that is because we've all had our own journey and we've gotten to where we've gotten differently, even than someone maybe that started in the same place that we did. And so when we think about where we've traveled and how you've really acquired all of this experience and knowledge and expertise, I'd love to understand a little bit about how you might describe yourself and maybe some places in your life where you've learned that or where they became real to you as oh yeah, I am that thing. 

Charlene Li: I'm very creative and curious. And I didn't realize just how much until people were like, oh, that's a totally different way of thinking about things. And so being an analyst and being able to stay in that space all the time is really my happy space. And I stumbled into this thinking I would take a break from corporate America and be an analyst for two years while my kids were very young. And I just never left. So this is really truly my happy place. But curiosity is always there underlying it. And so I think that curiosity and the creativity that comes with that. But the other thing is I realize that I have been described as being approachable and warm. And I'm just like, this is just the way I am. But I remember early on in my career, I was told to present a certain way as authoritative. I'm smarter than everyone else. And I'm like, this is just not me. And it was only when I got a speaker coach who said, just be yourself. This is so you that I really started to blossom as an analyst, consultant and speaker when my true authenticity came through. And so I do a lot of research, but I do it to help people and to break down really complex things into simple ways so people can do things with it. And then the last thing I would describe myself as if I'm just really calm. I kept getting asked to do leadership roles because people are like, you just stay calm in the face of crises.  And I'm like, I just have this acronymity when I look at things. And so the curious and approachable and warm and just very calm allows me to, again, things I've discovered along the way that these are things that are my superpowers, but like with superheroes, you don't think that the things that you do are extraordinary. This is the way you are. And so that's the words that I would have learned to describe myself with. 

Natasha Nuytten: Thank you for sharing that, because the beauty of what you've just shared is the fact that you showed up as who you are, being authentic, being curious, being warm, is what made your business so successful and allowed you to make a disruption in your space that was attractive that made other people want to come in and buy the business and learn from you and learn alongside you. And I think what's so important about that is technology. We live in an age when technology can allow us to be more ourselves and to bring more of ourselves in a way that we can leverage it to create and disrupt and do things differently and think differently than other people maybe have. So it's like the perfect example. I love that your life has led you to this moment and it's led us to be able to learn from you. So that's fantastic. So I think one of the beautiful things about the principles that you write about, and it's so evident now when you've shared how you came to them, how you came to them, like it's blatantly obvious. I think what's beautiful about it is that those sort of fundamentals you've been talking about over the years have really become the foundation for this time we find ourselves in, which feels very new, but it is in some ways sort of history repeating itself, but with a new technology and moving even faster than we've ever seen, so like I'm thinking about Charlene stepping into the World Wide Web and media, there's some similarities like fire, computers, the World Wide Web. Like humans have to adapt and they have to think differently about how they use these tools. So you've been laying out blueprints for years and your most recent is how we win with generative AI. I'm curious, before we dive into the who, what, when, where, how of bringing AI strategy into our organizations, I'd like to talk a little bit about how you recommend that leaders get their own selves and the rest of their leadership team ready for that type of change. Like what type of self evaluation and sort of mindsets do we need to put on or engage in before we start attempting to lead through this type of technology shift? 

Charlene Li: I think my study of leadership is that good leadership has always been consistently the same. Again, it's about being clear about the purpose, what you're trying to achieve, inspiring people to do that, and then the ways that you show up. And so having empathy, all these have been true for thousands of years of what good leaders look like. The difference is the way it's implemented and the way in particular about how we communicate that and develop the relationship. So I always define leadership as a relationship between people who are aspiring to create change and those who are inspired to follow them. And the key thing here is about creating change because you could be a manager of the status quo, but you wouldn't be a leader and leaders create change and you don't need a title to be able to do that. So in preparing for this, how are you going to show up as a leader? How are you going to think about the change, communicate what that change is? And the reality is most people don't think about leadership as creating change. They think about showing up, leading people, giving speeches, doing whatever, but fundamentally it is about creating change. And the more disruptive, the more transformative the change, the more careful your leadership has to be in how you show up because it's extremely difficult. And generative AI is highly transformative. There's no way around it. You give that, you use it the first time and your mind is just blown like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this can do this. You will not be the same. You will not look at the world the same way. And so that requires a tremendous amount of leadership for people to show up. And the reality is most leaders are not prepared for that. They do not practice it on a daily basis. So understanding how big that change is and showing up and preparing yourself and your organization for the change is the most important part of any sort of transformation. 

Natasha Nuytten: So are there, plus a thousand on what you just said, so are there some one or two things that you think these are sort of fundamental start wish to get yourself ready to or to have your mindset prepared to be thinking about change and to bring, especially if you're the CEO of an organization or you're in the C-suite, you have to bring other people along too. It's not just you that has to have that mindset. So I'm curious if there are like one or two or three things that you think you have to start here to lay the foundation for being able to lead that change and manifest that in the organization. 

Charlene Li: The most important thing is to help people feel safe. If you do not feel safe, you will not change. It is a big reason why I focus so much on governance, which sounds really awful, right? You think about governance like, yeah, I don't want to go near that. But good governance, good policies, good guidelines, robust training helps people feel safe. And if you do it the right way, I call it Goldilocks governance, just enough, not too much, not too little, just the right amount to help people feel safe and then provide the guardrails to say, okay, here are the guardrails on the highway we're going on. You can go fast as long as you stay within those guardrails. So that's what's needed. And so whatever you need to do to help yourself feel safe and your people feel safe, that is your number one objective in creating change. And so that could be a really good plan. It could be contingency plans. It could be we're in this together. The way I like to say it is that we tend to stay in the middle, like a school. You stay close to the flagpole, right? You're not going to go out. If you ever have a schoolyard with a fence, guess where the kids are? They're at the fence. And so you got to put up fences and then take people out to the very edges and go, this is where we're going to hang out. And if you stumble and fall, we're going to be right here with you. We're going to pick you up and we're going to keep going. We're going to stay at this edge, not going to go back to safety over there, but we're safe right here. We're fine. We're going to be okay. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's great. I love that. I think one of the things that's coming up for me here is as you prepare that and you think about creating safety and boundaries, AI in particular has, because we've not maybe learned from all of our mistakes in technology in the past, there are a lot of ethical considerations when we think about putting those boundaries in place. And especially when we're trying to create that safety so that everyone in the organization, regardless of their position or how they show up in the world, feels safe and secure in this change that we're making. So what are some of the most pressing areas where leaders may need to be proactive about some ethical considerations when they're building those sort of guardrails for their teams? 

Charlene Li: We talk about responsible and ethical AI, and those are two very different areas, very much related to each other. And one of the ways that my coauthor and I have thought about this is a pyramid of trust. So you may be familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When it comes to generative AI, you also have a need for trust and you build it step by step. And the first base level of that pyramid is safety, security, and privacy. If you do not feel safe, that you're doing the right things, that your information is going to be protected, that privacy is going to be respected, nothing else matters. So leverage your existing data security, privacy policies, and make sure they're updated with generative AI. Then the second one is looking at bias and understanding, can we use these tools with confidence and that they will be fair? And that is not an easy situation because fairness is not a universal definition. For example, are you trying to promote equity or are you trying to be equitable? Those are two very different things. Then looking at quality and accuracy as a third level, what does quality mean? If you're running a power plant versus you're trying to create social media posts, those are two very different levels of quality you're going to be trying to achieve. And you're trading that off against speed. Then we have responsibility. Who do you talk to when something goes wrong? And then finally, we have transparency at the very top of this pyramid. What will we be transparent about? When? To whom? Internally? Externally? I worked with an organization that said they're in professional services. And they said, we have this issue. Should we disclose that we're using AI? Our clients may love the fact that we're using the latest technologies, but they may also say it's taking you less time and effort to create the findings. We want to pay you less now. We're worried about that. What's the right answer? And this is where ethics comes in. And my point was, there is no right answer to this. How do your values inform you about what you should do? And this is the reality. In business today, we have our values. We talk about them. They're sitting on the wall. But we don't use them very much. Charitable AI puts those values square in front of you. And they're going to force you to say, what do our values mean? And the ethics comes up when you have two values that are in contradiction to each other. Yes. So that's where ethics comes up. So you better center on your values right from the very beginning to know how you're going to react to them. 

Natasha Nuytten: Charlene, I need six hours with you to dig into some of these things. You're so right that the use of this technology is really forcing us to think about those things. And it is often the things that we put on the shelf, right? To your point, it's on the wall. It's in the handbook. But it's not necessarily something we've incorporated into all of our processes and the way we interact with each other. But I think what's really something that's really interesting is like the allure of AI. It's so strong for so many reasons because we can create these efficiencies. We can find cost reductions. We can do better work when humans use those as tools. And so I'm curious how we start – when we start thinking about those frameworks, something we've talked about is landing on what's the – things as simple as what's a reasonable amount of risk that we're all willing to take? What's our risk tolerance as an organization when we think about our values?

Natasha Nuytten: us what does it mean to be, how do we define transparency? How do we, to the point that you were making earlier around equity and equitable, how do we define those so that as we start to think about building out those frameworks, how can we help, what are some ways that a leader can, once they've identified what those things are, then translate and or transmit those standards across the organization so that everyone can get the wins and, get the benefits of AI while also maintaining those values within the organization. So how do we communicate that in effective ways? 

Charlene Li: The reality is we talk about change and order, right? We think we're going to have change or we can have order. The reality is these are two sides of the same coin. You cannot change unless you have an order to make it stick. And you cannot have order unless you can change it constantly to evolve it, given all the things that are changing all around us. Nothing is ever completely non-changing ever. So being able to hold these two things, these two ideas and act on them at the same time is the most essential role of a leader. Because if you're going to create change, you also have to create order. And it feels so contradictory. And yet the really good leaders are like, of course, this is the way we do things. The way I think about it is how to build change into your life every single day. And in the beginning, leaders may not feel comfortable doing this. You talked about how much risk we can tolerate. That changes depending on the circumstances. And the way I think about it, and I'm a big risk taker, I take a lot of risks. But that's because I'm also very comfortable. And I will not take risks where I do not feel confident that no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay. I may be a little bit bruised. I may hurt a lot, literally, because I do like physical things, literally bruised and broken up. But I'm not going to risk my life. I'm not going to break bones. So the capacity for us, our capacity for change, for disruption is something that is in nature and innate to us. But we can also stretch ourselves without stressing ourselves to the point of breaking. So my advice to leaders is to practice disrupting, practice change, practice having an adventure every single day. And adventures are adventurous because you don't know what the outcome is going to be. And again, our tendency as leaders is to want to have all the answers, to have everything locked up, to be right all the time. And if we can let go of that, and realize that our strength and our credibility comes not from having all the answers, but from being able to ask really great questions that keep us on the road to our objective. That is the key. So together, you say as a leader, we're going to figure out a way. We just don't know the answer yet. But this is the place we want to go. This is the change we want to create. We have some ideas. Let's get to work.

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. And it really goes back to where we started this conversation and the wisdom you shared there around, you have to, it's all about safety, and people knowing they can do that. So how do people practice disruption? That sounds beautiful. I want to put it on my wall. But how do I practice that?

Charlene Li: Let me give you an example. I was working with a bank. This is in the early days of social media. And the social media manager told me this great story. And he said, I would go to our legal team, they go, okay, I get it, we have to use Twitter. But I'm going to have to  approve every single tweet. And the leader said, Okay, I'll be in your office three times a day with all these tweets to go through and approve. And they had to approve everything like thank you for being a customer. All those had to be approved every single one, three times a day. This went on for about three months. And then after three months, the legal person said this is going pretty well. I think now I'm comfortable with you not having to get approved the ones that say thank you for opening an account, you can just do those without approval. So in the beginning, those gargoyles were very small, it held like a grain of sand. And then over time, as you get more comfortable and feel safer, we're going to expand it. And what happened after those three months, it basically accelerated tremendously. But that leader had the patience to sit with that legal person three times a day every day for three months to get all those tweets approved because he realized that is what was going to be needed. For that legal person to feel safe. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. So, that's fantastic. And that's a great example. Let me flip that on its head just a little bit. For those who might not be the final decision maker who want their leadership to practice disruption just a little bit, how do we bring them along in this process? I'm imagining it's similar, but when you don't have control over the outcomes, how might people be able to encourage their leadership to buy in? 

Charlene Li: The number one thing that leaders do really is they have three objectives that they are trying to accomplish. And they are excellent leaders because they accomplish those goals year after year, quarter after quarter. So if you're trying to convince them to do something, anything you try to convince them to do has to be in the context of one of those three goals. You will not change your minds about what goals are important. The only thing you can do is to say, here's this new technology, here's a new way of thinking and working and being. It can help us accomplish our goals. Here are the gaps that we have in our strategy. This can help us plug those gaps, and they will give you their attention. That's really useful. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's great. That's all you can ask. Okay, so as we're thinking about this, I'm starting to think a little bit about the skills that are becoming more important. Some that I think have always been important, but that we're going to need to lean into harder, like critical thinking and learning agility. Those two things are becoming more and more relevant as we're dealing with technology. I would love for you to, if you could speak a little bit to how you see those playing a role as we're embracing this technology and deciding how to use it in the organization. 

Charlene Li: Yeah, I talk about three things that are really important. Critical thinking, absolutely, because this AI can just give you such good results, you're going to, of course it's right, but wait a minute, that doesn't square with the reality of what I see. Then the ability to be adaptive is absolutely crucial. I like to say organizations that are doing a good job of adopting AI are the ones who are also just purely just better at adapting to change. They have the processes, they have the experience, they have the leadership, they have the culture, all those things that those things are in place with them to just pick up AI oh, what does this do? Let me try it. And then the third thing I think it's really important, and we haven't really talked about in other types of transformations, is imagination. And the reason why imagination is so important is this stuff, this AI can do things you never, ever thought was possible before. You put this in the hands of people, and they become super human. And it's as if you're like Spider-Man or something, you're suddenly bit by this bug and you have these powers, you have no idea you could do it. Can I hang from the ceiling upside down? And you have to have imagination to be able to explore, where can we take this? What could I possibly do? What can our organization now achieve that we never thought possible before? And that imagination is so important. And again, a key reason why being safe, being able to brainstorm and imagine a new reality in a new world without this sense that there's no way we could do that. That's not feasible. How would we ever do it? We don't have the money, we don't have the time, the people. For the first time, AI allows us to do things without additional time, money, and people. It's a game changer. So I'm constantly amazed every day by how people are being so creative, so imaginative about what they use these tools to do. And so we're at the very beginning here. We're so early, we're so early in the beginning of this. And so what we're going to need are leaders with imagination to say, what is possible? When leadership and management has us doing exactly the same, what are we able to do right now? What is feasible that we can execute 100% with certainty and perfection? And that is not what AI is going to be rewarding. So like though there's one side about execution, and feasibility, and possible, and then just what is doable right now, to what could we possibly do? It's a very different mindset. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's so exciting. I just got so excited. I got like little goosebumps because I started thinking about the impact that making space for imagination and creativity, along with that sort of critical thinking and being an agile organization, the impact that has on culture, and individuals and the way that they show up at work can be so huge. You use the phrase game changer. And I think that's very true. Like we can, simply by embracing imagination, along with all these other things, like incorporating it into the spice cabinet of what we hope our teams are doing, we can create organizations where they're more dynamic, that diversity of thought is embraced people, and the way they walk through the world and the way they solve problems is embraced in such a way that there could be a really huge impact here on something that seems completely disparate, which is maybe our diversity or equity goals as an organization, right? But it really is a factor of inclusion. And how we bring people into problem solving and serving our, whoever our constituents are, whoever our customers are, right? It's a way that we can bring more people into that. Am I off base in thinking that? Or does that feel right? 

Charlene Li: No, I, again, it's just one of the things that I have as my purpose statement, catalyzing transformation to maximize human potential. And it is at the center of everything that I do. And I see AI as this huge rocket booster for people, and especially people who may not have access to education. It means granted, people who have, who are, have tremendous privilege are going to be able to leverage this, but it is a great equalizer. And one of the things that you just mentioned is a sense of agency. I talk about the disruptive mindset, the three beliefs of disruptive organizations and their openness, agency, and a bias for action. And agency is the most important one is when people feel like they have the right, they have the power to think like an owner. They take on that responsibility, and they're not waiting for someone else to give it to them. And that's empowerment. And you're waiting for someone else to empower you. Agency says, you've had the power all the way from the beginning, you've had this capability, now use it. Yes. So being able to show up with this incredible rocket booster behind you, of transitive AI, knowing how to use it, and that an organization knows how to leverage you as well, in shared purpose, your purpose and the organization's purpose are aligned, that's magical. So I think about what the purpose of business is, and it's not to make money. It is to maximize that potential of people to create impact, to create value, and in an aligned objectives that you have. And if making money happens to be one of those things, or if it's having a mission-based impact, if you're a nonprofit, whatever it is, you're tapping into that power, and unleashing that power, I think is what these initiatives around DEI, but just frankly, inclusion and belonging, and just really good engagement of your people, is what it's really about. There's so much politicization right now on DEI, and it's because we're focused on numbers and other things. Whereas if we really focus on the power, unleashing that power inside of people, and that potential, it completely changes the conversation. 

Natasha Nuytten: It totally does. We've, it's been taken over, and a lot of times used as a euphemism for, and like a euphemism for black and brown people, right? And diversity is, it is, that is part of it. But it's so much more. It is the differences in the experiences that we've had. It is the differences in the way other people see us, and how that impacts how we walk through the world. The way that we see ourselves, and the things about us that are not visible, right? And the experience we've had, the way we've experienced other people, and solutions ourselves to be able to serve in different ways within the organization, and to our teams, and to each other. And that relationship and connectivity is such a huge piece of it. And to your point around it being about inclusion and belonging, right? There isn't a human on the planet who doesn't want to feel like they are welcome and belong where they are, right? And that matters. And there are systemic things. And, there are things that need to be dismantled and restructured. That is absolutely evident. But I also think walking through the world as a Jamaican Belgian, as I am, there are so many other things about us. And having the opportunity for this incredible opportunity really for technology to allow us to unleash that is, is really a beautiful and really exciting thing. It's very cool. 

Charlene Li: I think we need one example. There's something called the broken one of the ladder, the career ladder. And if you look at the entry level positions, and people's promotion to being that first level manager, what we find is that if you take a ratio and index of a population, let's say, men get promoted at 100%. Okay, so it's an equal level. And you compare that to that promotion level, white women are promoted at 81%. So a little bit less than men, but still there. Women of color are between 50 and 60% of white men. And so that intersectionality, something is happening inside of most companies where that ladder is broken for women of color. And so it is not to say it's right or wrong, but you've got to wonder, what are we doing inside of our organization? Because we feel that at the entry level, everyone is coming in with highly credentialed and they're all right there. But something in our organization is promoting women of color at half the rate of white men. What are we doing not to realize that potential for those people? And that is not a DEI number, it is looking at numbers, but it is also saying, what could we do better? How can we use these technologies to provide that extra promotion and that extra knowledge and training, not just for only women of color, but across the board to just prepare everybody to be better managers and identifying people. So that is, those are just some of the ways that technology can be used. Because training and coaching is typically reserved for people at higher levels in the organization. And yet you need that at the very beginning to foster that leadership mindset, those skills around how to create change and lead people. And everyone should be trained on that. And you can scale with all these new tools. And you can—

Natasha Nuytten: Charlene, I want you in every organization. I want Charlene Lee in every one of those organizations, preach. 

Charlene Li: But I look at this, right? This is the optimist in me that sees AI can absolutely help us be better humans, can help us be better organizations, better leaders. And so the opportunity, again, this is about imagination. What if everybody could have a personal coach? How could we communicate better by having these tools to help us with what I call subtle translations? But the way that I speak and understand you, and we can understand each other better with these tools in real time, speaking to each other. That's fantastic. And say that it'd be great if somebody who doesn't have the greatest EQ would have, they're in a meeting or something and on the screen would flash you're speaking too much. You should shut up and listen now. I call it the mansplaining app that would just knock you on the head. So again, it's, and it could be also used for microaggressions. Just by understanding the context that you may not be able to see. And if you knew, if you only knew you would change your behavior. So again, that's the possibility. I'd love it. My imagination says maybe we should develop a mansplaining app, and with Zoom calls I can take on all that information. But again, it's that the possibility is only limited by our imaginations. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's fantastic. I absolutely love that. And you've been so very generous with me today in your time with us. So thank you for that. Before we go, I have two quick questions. One, is there anything that I haven't asked you that we should be, that we should talk about really quickly before we go, or we should be thinking about moving forward? 

Charlene Li: We talked about this very briefly. And so before we were getting turned on the microphones and that is the importance of wisdom and this space and leaders we think have experience, have the knowledge to be wise. And the reality is wise leaders can fall out of wisdom and make foolish decisions. So how do we stay in wisdom and make better decisions all the time? And this is especially important because knowledge now is becoming commoditized with AI. You don't have to have a lot of knowledge, but you do. And it puts an even bigger premium on being able to be wise and make good decisions. And so my hope and what I imagine the world is that if we can understand what the roots of wisdom are, how to develop it, how to actually teach it and practice it as something that we value, then we can make better decisions. And we could even potentially teach wisdom in our schools at the youngest ages, because we can all, we all make decisions every day and we can just make better, wiser decisions. We'll be better off. So AI itself may not be wise, but it can help us be wiser. Charlene, 

Natasha Nuytten: I think you just defined the outline for your next book. So sign me up. I will pre-register for a copy. I think that would be amazing. And you're right. There is such a, the humanity part around leading is the hard part. Making decisions that look good on paper is one thing, right? And being able to draw upon theory and other people's experience is one way of looking at it, but to really think about impact and balancing the strictly on paper good choices with what human good choices and you would think that they're the same thing but they're not for everybody right and so I think it's wonderful for you to talk about wisdom as that critical element so thank you for that and I really appreciate it so how can we as leaders and as listeners and learners be helpful to you we should all buy your books we could start. Is there anything else we can do to be helpful?

Charlene Li: I was in my presentations and things I give my contact information give my email my cut my social links my website and encourage people to stay in touch and almost nobody does it's astounding so and it's sometimes because people feel like they shouldn't bother me I learn from people telling me their stories of what's worked what hasn't worked asking for advice I've learned so much from this conversation with you already today so I welcome the conversations I welcome the engagement so if you have found something that tweaked your mind or something that resonated with you ever question please get in touch I would love to hear from you. 

Natasha Nuytten: that's fantastic we will make sure that we include your contact information in the summary so people can reach out to you unless there's something you want shout out now

Charlene Li: Yeah my email is charleneli@charleneli.com it's pretty easy to find me that way we can do 

Natasha Nuytten: awesome I love it Charlene thank you so very much I really have appreciated the conversation you were right you are a calm presence whoever told you that was right and I also just really appreciate your curiosity is shine shines through and so I am grateful for that and I appreciate the gift of your time so thank you and I will find you and I will keep in touch with you and I want to see where you take us next as we're learning together so thank you 

Charlene Li: yeah thank you for having me

Natasha Nuytten: I told you it was gonna be a great conversation I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did we're gonna link to Charlene's information and her website in the show notes and as she said she wants you to reach out so if you have questions ideas or you're doing something interesting in your own world please get in touch with her get in touch with us we'd love to hear from you and look forward to talking to you next time