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Can AI Really Transform Leadership and Employee Wellness?

• Eric Miquelon • Season 2 • Episode 35

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How can AI transform your work-life balance and boost productivity? Join us as we explore this captivating topic with Eric Miquelon, President of Avanade North America. Eric shares his firsthand experience using AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to alleviate leadership fatigue and enhance employee well-being. Learn how AI isn't just about cutting costs or reducing headcount but about maximizing the value each employee brings to the table, ultimately leading to happier, more satisfied clients.

Discover the revolutionary ways AI is redefining employee wellness. We delve into how AI-enhanced tools can help identify tasks ripe for automation, making it easier for employees to manage their time and improve their overall quality of life. Eric emphasizes that in the post-pandemic era, investing in employee happiness translates directly into business success. By providing advanced AI technologies, companies like Avanade are not just supporting productivity but also fostering a culture of well-being.

Eric Miquelon:

What's a different way to do it, you know, do we really need humans doing this? Instead, can we put that human effort at higher value added activities? And I stress that for us, this has not been about headcount adjustment or reduction or anything like that. It's really about maximizing the productivity of our people in a reasonable way. And also, you know, from a recruiting perspective, showing potential joiners that they're going to come equipped with technology and tools particularly being a technology company that they can use to really take more control over their own life.

Mike Giambattista:

You can't see him right now, but the man in the other quadrant of our Zoom call is Eric Michelin, who's president of Avanade of North America and has a lot to say. That's really intriguing and different take on what you're not thinking about as it relates to AI. So this is going to be a really interesting conversation, because I think this applies to let's just be real everybody I know in business anyway. So, eric, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Eric Miquelon:

Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm thrilled to be here.

Mike Giambattista:

So when your PR team sent this note over, I'm just going to read this to set up the conversation, because there's no way I could say no to this.

Eric Miquelon:

They're very effective sometimes.

Mike Giambattista:

Yeah, they're very good at this stuff Leadership fatigue and how you have been using AI to combat it and, more broadly, ai and the idea of wellness. So again, just for context, ai is super intriguing. We're all having a lot of fun with it. It's incredibly powerful. Um, there's certainly some kind of like what the heck am I even doing in this world right now for old schoolers like myself? Um, but leadership fatigue is real. You've expressed it in the early part of this call and you figured out a way or ways to use ai to kind of combat that. So I'd love it if you can kind of just talk that through like why, how well, how did it all start? What brought you to this place?

Eric Miquelon:

yeah. So you know, I think obviously when people hear ai, a lot of people kind of tend to think about automation of business process, you better information, real-time decision-making. Some people also go immediately to is this going to replace my job? Are robots going to be running the world For us?

Eric Miquelon:

We started as an early adopter of Microsoft 365, copilot, and so you think about Copilot being embedded into the office product suite and beyond. And as we started to experiment with it, it was really. It started with what we were asking the same questions all of our clients are what's the value proposition here, how do we justify the investment, etc. What I started to find quickly was that it started to automate and optimize, just make me more effective in a lot of my day-to-day activity catch-up, whatnot. I would spend a couple hours every evening going through email, cleaning up email. I'm sure a lot of people can identify with that and I started to use Copilot to summarize my day, summarize what's most important, what is most urgent to be requiring a response. You can start to think about that all the way to building out PowerPoint presentations, generating documents, and what I found is that a lot of that.

Eric Miquelon:

I call it kind of busy work. It's necessary but still busy. I was able to automate a significant amount of that and, as I mentioned to you previously, I have two children that are teenagers, very, very busy, trying to get everybody where they need to go. My wife and I want to attend their events, want to be present, want to help with homework, and I found myself struggling to be able to do those things I need to do as a father and then also stay with my commitments, and so it's really helped me start to balance that out. And then, as I started to think about it with our teams, it really wasn't about getting more work done. It wasn't about increasing productivity initially, it was about being more effective with the time that we already spend and then securing that time to do what's important, whether it's a hobby, exercise, family, you name it and that, in and of itself, the feedback we've gotten has been very strong, that that's a huge benefit in terms of wellness, mental wellbeing, et cetera.

Mike Giambattista:

You know, I think it would be really helpful just to set some context, because we didn't even talk about your role at Avanade, what Avanade is all about. It's a big name in this space, but there's maybe certain listeners who really aren't familiar, so, and I think that's going to add some weight to what you're saying about this topic. So if you would your role at Avanade and maybe what Avanade is all about, Absolutely so.

Eric Miquelon:

I'm the president of North America, so the US and Canada. I've been with Avanade for just over 21 years now. I started my career with Anderson Consulting and slash Accenture joined Avanade about three years after it was founded, and we were founded as a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, and so I think many people will be familiar with the Accenture brand clearly the market leader in terms of consulting, technology services, outsourcing, and so we were really brought to life, to, I'd say, capture, the first part of the wave of Microsoft transforming who it is as an organization you think about. I think back on those days we were relatively small, we were a startup. Where we are today, we're the market leader in terms of helping clients maximize the output, the value that they get from their Microsoft investment and, I would say, your investment in the Microsoft ecosystem, right. So a lot of technology services. We also have a customer experience component of our business and we also have an advisory slash consulting component as well.

Mike Giambattista:

So a lot of what we're doing is taking Microsoft's really market leading technology, particularly recently in the space, helping that bring.

Eric Miquelon:

Said again, to my ignorance, that Avanade is a giant systems integrator, which is probably true, but it's one component of a much better picture it sounds like started that way, but I think, as everyone has seen, with all the different trends in technology that many of us know, I think where we stand out is not only our implementation capability but then our ability to tie that to customer experience, employee experience, and also tie the value proposition of why are you doing it in the first place? When we're on our best day, we're challenging our clients to say is that really the right answer to the question you're trying to solve? Let's really unpack that and understand what it is you're trying to accomplish and then let us use, you know, our different capabilities to help come up with the right solution. And oftentimes that right solution can be, you know, more cost-effective, faster time to market. What have you than what our clients are originally assuming?

Mike Giambattista:

So let's point that back to you know what we opened with, which is call it leadership fatigue, the stresses of running a pretty sizable division If you've got all those functions wrapped up underneath you, there's a lot going on here.

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah. And so just to kind of set the tone in terms of size and scale. So our North American business, we have about 4,000 domestic employees in the US and Canada and we have, at any time we leverage, probably another 25,000, 30,000 in our global delivery center. So pretty substantial business of scale. If I reflect on the last 18 to 24 months, particularly in the US, we've had rapid changes in technology, a softening macroeconomic climate. I think you can see that in the earnings of most of the large technology and system integrators. Meanwhile, the cloud-based software as a service companies are growing at record rates effectively Large-scale migration to the cloud. In some cases, clients making the bet to go to the cloud without truly understanding is that really going to be less expensive? What's the value proposition? Some clients realizing in some cases it's more expensive to operate their business in the cloud and say okay, what's my hybrid strategy?

Eric Miquelon:

Pauses in decision-making for AI. Is that? A lot of clients who are getting ready to make investments in, say, erp or other large systems paused and said well, wait a second, should we rethink this with the innovations and modernization that's happening in AI? Everyone looking at their data state. So I could go on and on, but the net effect from a leadership perspective is that our need to stay connected with our clients, in tune with the market and constantly evolve our execution and oftentimes, our strategy. So where we used to put in a 12-month plan and go out and be good leaders and execute the plan, we're now constantly on a quarterly basis saying wait a second, is that really the right opportunity? Is that the best opportunity?

Eric Miquelon:

Is that now a saturated market, and so the stress there as well, as you know, with the, particularly in the US, again the downturn in demand for services like what we provide across all of the ecosystem puts a lot of stress from a headcount perspective.

Eric Miquelon:

Leadership of people you know our core values. We really focus on the individual. I think it's something that sets us apart from many of our competitors. So how do we take care of our people in these times? Constantly retraining people, so how do we do that in a way that's adept? How do we continue to hire at the new entrant levels into the workforce, whether that's university hires or people changing careers? There's an incredible level of stress for leaders that comes from trying to manage all of that, and so I would say that's kind of the source of a lot of where our challenges lie as an industry, and I also believe that companies like ourselves that don't reinvent themselves over the next 12 to 18 months are going to find that they're in a compromised position relative to the market. The way that we even implement our services is changing drastically with the advancement of technology, and AI tools in particular.

Mike Giambattista:

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Mike Giambattista:

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Mike Giambattista:

Find out more at tectonicco. That's T-E-C-T-O-N-I-Qco, if we can digress for a little bit, because you mentioned just a moment ago that say that what your business looks like change has changed pretty radically over the past 18 to 24, I think you said, yeah, that's right. Well, there's a lot involved in making those kinds of course corrections, cultural adjustments, you know, not to mention the technology involved in trying to become 18 to 24 month agile as opposed to one year. You know which would look more like. You know I mean a much slower pivot. If need be weeds a little bit, but I know a lot of people listening to this are dealing with digital transformations on maybe not the same scale, but you know approaching that and are finding the stresses of the cultural change and the technology and everything else involved to be real, to be really real. You know which ties back to AI and wellness, of course, but in your case, what did Avanade have to do to start thinking in those terms and start really adjusting with that kind of agility?

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah, it's a great question. So we were fortunate, with some good leadership, to really get started early on the path to modernizing how we operate our business and how we deliver for our clients. So we started to prepare really about two years ago in terms of getting our data state in shape, really our information management, setting the stage so that as the tools start to become real, they start to become robust. We're able to take advantage of that as an early adopter really customer zero and oftentimes for Microsoft, given our relationship and to start to put the technology to work for us as a core business. As I talked to a number of our clients now that are a little bit further behind that journey, there's no shortcut to get the plumbing, so to speak, in place and then, as we are able to leverage the latest innovations, we have active use cases across our entire business.

Eric Miquelon:

So our legal team, for example, is one of the earliest adopters of using AI and co-pilot technologies to really change the way that they work, increasing the volume of work they can do without having to add additional headcount. We have a client that was able to take they work in the public sector, so bidding on public contracts and they were able to take an RFP response that would take seven to 10 days and trim that down to one day by leveraging technology. So you know what Ito-day activity, their satisfaction, their wellness, quickly iterating and implementing those use cases starts to build a groundswell. And then, all of a sudden, now the best ideas we have are coming from our core employee base where they're saying wait, what if we did this? What if we did that?

Eric Miquelon:

Once you prove it out for yourself, then it's easy to go talk and have a casual conversation with a client or whomever to say, look, this is how we're using it. Let's look at some similar use cases for you. And I think it's sort of that ad hoc agility of saying, look, we're not going to go spend 9 months working on something. What can we get done in the next 4 weeks, next 6 weeks? And I think that that's helped us in terms of being able to learn, fail fast, really embrace kind of the principles of capital A Agile and then obviously pass those learnings on to our clients but also iterate our business in a much more nimble way.

Mike Giambattista:

Really interesting. I think that's worthy of an entire another discussion at some point. Absolutely, it seems to be such a universal topic right now and I'm sure it will be for a long time to come. Point, because it seems to be such a universal topic right now and I'm sure it will be for a long time to come. Um, as it relates to the, to the idea of AI and wellness. You know, I think if you're, if you're on the outside looking in, you see the term and you're thinking, oh, it's going to be a wellness app that's got an AI component somehow, and and that's wrong. But what you're talking about is a much broader definition of how to use AI enhanced tools just to make your own life better.

Eric Miquelon:

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And really taking a hard look to say I talk to my team, I direct reports about this all the time. I take a look at my schedule on a daily basis and say, okay, what do I have that either could be delegated, could be done in a different way? You're really thinking about how do I maximize the return on my time, investment and obviously Avanade's investment in me?

Eric Miquelon:

And I think, when you start to look at it through that lens and say, look, why do we do this business process this way? Oh, it's because, and I think when you start to look at it through that lens and say, look, why do we do this business process this way? It's because, I think many can identify, it's because we've always done it that way, right, well, what's a different way to do it? You know, do we really need humans doing this? Instead, can we put that human effort at higher value added activities? And I stress that, for us, this is this has not been about headcount adjustment or reduction or anything like that. It's really about maximizing the productivity of our people in a reasonable way and also, from a recruiting perspective, showing potential joiners that they're going to come equipped with technology and tools particularly being a technology company that they can use to really take more control over their own life, their own day. You know how they use their time, when they use their time. That's been a really strong message. That's resonated really well.

Mike Giambattista:

I think it's a big differentiator. I mean, I don't know of any company out there at all who is speaking about employee wellness in these kinds of terms. I'm sure there are some, I just haven't come across them. But Avanade, being who you are, probably has a really good handle on what the tools are and how they can be used to these effects. So I'm just going to say that AI and wellness is a theme. That take it from me, which means nothing. It's a theme, but it's a huge deal, and I think the way you're approaching it can be a game changer for a lot of companies who are just thinking about AI in terms of, you know, increased output and improved efficiencies, without really looking at the benefits to their employees.

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah, I think the topic of wellness obviously has been one that's been prevalent ever since the beginning of the pandemic really, and sometimes you'll run into some roadblocks, with financial decision makers, for example, saying, okay, well, show me the hard business case around this and there are hard savings that you can absolutely demonstrate. But some of this is making a bet that, if I've always said in the consulting business, it can be a complicated business to execute, but it's a simple business in concept. If our people are super happy and our clients are super happy, great things happen. And making sure that your people are as happy as they possibly can be, in particular given when you're in sort of a macroeconomic climate where buying has slowed and I think we're seeing signs that it's turning now but that's when the pressure in our industry really ratchets up, and so knowing that there are tools and that you're really focusing on investing and enabling your people, I think is really a game changer.

Eric Miquelon:

The other piece for us is again I'll go back to our early career stage joiners. Oftentimes what they bring is tremendous technical acumen or functional acumen, but obviously they lack oftentimes industry experience in particular. So we've experimented with building co-pilots, where we take our industry expertise and enable those early career stage joiners to be more effective from day one, and I think that that's been where we've successfully implemented that. That's been a really big positive impact as well, Because oftentimes I think again, particularly in the US if you're graduating university and you're trying to differentiate against low-cost labor markets other places in the world, how do you do that? And this is just one way that we can enable them, as well as enable some of those other low-cost markets, to be more effective as well.

Mike Giambattista:

Can you talk a little bit about some of those, some of the ways that you're using these technologies to probably not onboarding but you know further, more deeply integrating new hires into your processes and knowledge base?

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah. So if you think about, let's just say, you're going to gather requirements for an ERP replacement to take something that I think probably a lot of people could identify with. To take something that I think probably a lot of people could identify with, it used to be a scenario where you put very experienced people, either physically or virtually, in a room together and you start asking a lot of questions and whatnot. All of that business process information, the industry information, it's all within our knowledge base, and so how are we using tools to start to prompt those questions and sometimes make it self-service? So you're gathering information in a way that's, I'd say, more digital in format and then obviously reducing the amount of dedicated time required from these subject matter experts. Now, that's not to suggest that we need fewer subject matter experts. It's stretching those subject matter experts further and also optimizing the cost for our clients, because if you don't need somebody fully billable 40 hours a week doing this work, there's a win-win there. You don't necessarily have to be. You could cover 85% of what you need to cover with some assistance. Then you bring in the SMEs for the 15% that really does require that hands-on expertise. So that's just one example of how we're doing it. The other would be around software engineering using GitHub Copilot, so that's been a fantastic tool for our engineers to be able to.

Eric Miquelon:

I started my career as a software engineer and I remember at that time, obviously, the amount of data that was available was much less, but you're searching the web and you're trying to find snippets of code and things like that. Now these tools can prompt you with them in real time. It really drives up efficiencies. We're seeing numbers 30, 35% efficiencies and also again enabling less experienced engineers to be able to be more productive, make a bigger impact. At the end of the day, when we talk to our people about what's most important for them, they want to understand that they're really making a difference making a difference to our business, our client's business, to the world more broadly, and so another element of well-being is, you know, optimizing what you're doing, so your energy is focused on those difference making activities versus some of what might be considered more mundane, right right.

Mike Giambattista:

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that Avanade's recently put out the AI readiness report, which surveyed something like 3000 people all over the world, across a bunch of industries, to understand the kind of state of AI, their thinking behind it, their you know where they are in their prep stages and their levels of maturity. It's a fascinating report. I've been through it. It was hard to put down in time for this call, I'll admit, but I'll alert the listeners to the fact that we'll have a link to that below this podcast when it comes out. You'll find it there, but it's worth calling out a couple of high-level statistics.

Mike Giambattista:

I don't know if you want to comment on these, but if not, we'll just let them hang in the air because it's a big deal. 92% require AI-first models within the first 12 months. 36% of CEOs have confidence in leaders' AI fluency. The flip side of that is the rest don't, and that's a giant gap. 64% believe AI will maintain or increase job numbers. Big plus there. 63% agree employees will need new skills for generative AI, which goes to just what we were talking about?

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think the first recommendation I would have that goes along with that is really to become well-versed in prompting. That is the syntax used to really interface with these AI engines. That is the syntax used to really interface with these AI engines I'm sure everybody not everybody, many people have experimented with, whether it's chat, gpt or what have you. The quality of the prompts change the quality of the outcome, certainly. I think the other that we find is the quality. It's not just data quality, it's understanding your data.

Eric Miquelon:

Now, data quality is a super important part. There's no fast way to skip past making sure you have quality data. Now, data quality is a super important part. There's no fast way to skip past making sure you have quality data. But one of the scenarios we looked at is trying to use AI to help in our recruiting models, and what we discovered is that if you're using your data to train these models and your demographics of your current workforce doesn't match maybe the demographic of what you aspire to through the lens of race, ethnicity, et cetera, particularly in the US, where the access to the data is a bit more prevalent than some other countries all of a sudden you can start to train your model with biased data. So it's at a complexity that I, honestly, hadn't even considered prior to experimenting with it and saying, okay, how do we train the models with data for what we aspire to be, not necessarily what our history has been?

Mike Giambattista:

Interesting. Again, I'm going to encourage everybody who's listening hit the report. Even if you don't go through it and completely get lost in the weeds like I did, the high levels are still very well worth it. There's a lot of learning in there. Eric, I want to thank you for your time. There's so much we could be talking about and I'm making a list right now at the bottom of my sheet of all the stuff that we can talk about on our next conversation, which I really hope happens. But for now, thanks a million for doing this, Really appreciate it and looking forward to the next time we can?

Eric Miquelon:

Yeah, my pleasure, looking forward to speaking again.

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