#605 AI Won’t Fix Broken Organizations. It Exposes Them | Jürgen Dauck

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to an episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased, joining me, Jürgen Dauk. He's an advisor and consultant, and by chance we also used to work in the same kind of work years ago. Jürgen, um, you know, also you are an author, um, about, you know, about leadership operating system, and we're gonna talk about the book also as well.

What I like to do with all my guests is, you know, I leave to them to introduce themselves, tell us more about, you know, their background, their journeys. Just a hint to our audience today, we are gonna discuss, as you have guessed, about leadership, how the AI is changing that space also as well. We're gonna talk about, like, how companies should be, you know, investing, uh, in the transformation because we're living in unprecedented time.

I don't like to steal time from my guests, so Jürgen, again, thank you for being with me on the show today. The floor is yours. 

Jurgen: [00:01:00] Mehmet, thank you very much. Um, thanks for inviting me to the show. Yeah, my name is Jürgen Dauk. I'm an advisor and consultant to companies and, um, author of the book The Leadership Operating System.

So yeah, how do I, how do I end up here, right? So I started my professional life as a techie, so I studied microelectronics over here in Germany, and as a part-time gig I worked at a small tech firm that was producing hardware and software, right? And then over time I stayed with the company for, for 12 years.

I saw different sides of the business, not only tech, but also marketing, sales, customer support, customer success and, you know, um, I got interested really in the business side of technology. Um, stayed at companies, huge companies like Oracle and OpenText, or midsize companies in the size of one and a half to [00:02:00] 5,000 people.

Did a lot of transformation work and, uh, worked in mid to, uh, higher, higher management positions in those companies. So, and most recently, you know, I decided, you know, I wanna step out of the corporate world and, you know, help companies to build better companies. Because what I saw was I, I, I kept on seeing repeating patterns in companies, things that do not work, right?

And I started taking notes of those things. I saw pockets where things worked better, and I started to get notes, to take notes and, and also to, uh, do some research about it. You know, what is the basis of things working in corporate and why are other things failing, right? And this is how, how I came about writing a book.

But what I'm really passionate about is building [00:03:00] better companies where people can thrive, right? And profit and revenue is an outcome. I am a strong believer that revenue and profit is not a goal, but it's an outcome, a natural outcome of great people working towards one joint vision. And I think this is, this is becoming even more relevant with the advent of AI, right?

So if ... And, and we're gonna talk about that, but with AI, if you have a old-fashioned top-down metrics organization, you are far too slow to benefit from implementing AI. So the companies that I'm seeing that are really benefiting from AI, they are much more agile. They have removed, uh, top-down decision-making and moved more to [00:04:00] shared ownership models, seeing a company more like an organism rather than a machine.

And this is where you, you get the full benefit out of AI 

Mehmet: Right. Jürgen, again, thank you for this introduction and, you know, being w- here with me today. I kind of start, and this is something I like to do since, you know, my old days when I was also a technology consultant and shifted to sales as well. I like first to dig into the problem more, right?

And you've worked with, you sh- just mentioned bunch of organizations, and you just touched on that you saw things that keep repeating, like kind of a pattern, I would say. W- what are like some of these, I like to call them pains, right? Maybe, maybe they're not aware that they are pains, but what are, like, these pains that make them move slower and drift, I would [00:05:00] call it, maybe it's, uh, the right word to say it, drift from the purpose of the company?

Because to your point, I 100% agree with you that if you have great people, if you have the right structure, the outcome automatically becomes, as you mentioned, like revenues and all this. But w- what are, like, these common pitfalls that you have seen repeatingly happen, um, in this organization? Like, if you can share that with us.

Jurgen: Yeah. I, I think one is really organizational design. If you have a typical setup, right, where you have a worldwide sales organization, then a worldwide marketing organization, and a worldwide customer success organization, and then implementation or w- whatever you have for your product or services, what you can see is you often have conflicting KPIs and, and people working against each other.

The classical one is, um, you know, you're at the end [00:06:00] of a quarter, and the quarter end is typically super important to, to close, uh, to close it strongly and, and, you know, uh, to achieve your set goals. And as those numbers come under pressure, people start blaming each other. You know, marketing is, is blaming sales for not being able to sell enough.

Sales is blaming marketing for not bringing in enough leads, not doing strong enough branding. And customer success, who in, in the original sense of customer success was supposed to make the customer happy or make sure the customer is happy, is developed into a second sales organization only targeted towards upselling and cross-selling.

So what you're getting is, uh, everybody blaming each other, and when the going gets tough at the end of a quarter, this [00:07:00] maximizes 

Mehmet: Jurgen, you know what you mentioned, I think many people who would be listening to us now or watching, it, it will resonate with them because they said, "Yeah, this is exactly what happens."

Now, the contrarian view, you know, if, if I might call it this way, is why that happened because let me, let me, you know, because even myself sometime I wonder about it. Like, 

Jurgen: w- 

Mehmet: we kind of have proved that, you know, experiments show us sometimes that you, okay, don't do this because it's, it's, it doesn't work, or, like, do that because it's the most successful way of doing things.

Now, what I have noticed myself is throughout, you know, corporate history, let me put it this way, there are a lot of things, stories that even we keep sharing them. Sometimes we see them in form of videos with some narratives on top of them. [00:08:00] And, you know, the, the, the, the, uh, if I might say, the market of this education is not scarce.

Like, we have plenty of literature, books, you know, all this, but still, why it does happen? Like, is it something related to the leadership style of people, which is the human aspect, or is it because it's a design, um, I would say, f- you know, fault that whatever you do, it gonna happen after, you know, maybe the company reaches a certain amount of people or maybe because this is the destiny of all, let's say, these companies in the SaaS business or maybe in the tech business.

What, what's the secret of, of this keep, keep repeating happening, and the, is there a way to avoid that? 

Jurgen: There is, and, and definitely good question and, and, and good conversation. From my point of view, the reason why those structures [00:09:00] exist is it was a management principle invented in the beginning of the last century, right?

And it was good for that time. It was built for maximum stability and control, and it worked well for stable markets where control is the most important thing Now, in the 21st century, that model isn't working anymore because the ultimate goal is to be maximum flexible in the market, to be adaptable, to be quick in decision-making, and that is killing, is r- those structures are killing speed.

So why is it that we're still seeing those companies? It's, it's not a matter of size. I've seen, um, even young and fairly small companies trying to implement the same model. The reason for that is, is still, uh, being taught in, in universities and [00:10:00] business schools, right? That is, is number one. Number two, so I, I see and, and I talk to a lot of companies, even f- really big companies that are trying to move away from that.

But what that needs is really courageous and bold leadership because what that means is, um, the owners of the companies, be it shareholders, um, private equity companies, right? If you are the CEO or a senior leader in a company, you have to sell this vision to the owners, to the shareholders who- whomever is, is invested in your company because what you need to let go of is part of the control.

So if you're from a personality trait more like a [00:11:00] managing fear-based, right? If you're a fearful p- person and you try to, um, and you try to, um, to cover yourself by, you know, keeping control What it requires to move away from the command and control element more to distributed decision-making is bold leadership.

Let go of the fear and trust the people, uh, that you've hired, that they can make good decisions. But what it also requires is definitely, um, a strong vision for the company. So without a vision, there's no passion, and without a vision, you don't have any basis to make distributed decisions. If you take the example of Amazon, right?

They are very clear on their vision to become the most customer-centric company, right? To delight their [00:12:00] customers. So whenever a local decision needs to be made, right, they have a guiding principle they can look at, will this benefit, you know, our customer experience? Will they benefit from it? So it's much easier to, to make a decision that way.

If your only vision is we, we want to increase revenue by 20% year on year, right?

I, I think that's a weak basis for, uh, for making distributed decisions. But I think you know, to your point I think a part is founded in how people are educated, and this is why I'm so passionate about speaking about new ways of working and building companies. Mm-hmm. And the second part is, is really f- fear-based leadership, which is, is not enabling, um, this kind of change.

Mehmet: R- r- right. And to your point, I think this is part of it's not only universities, [00:13:00] to be fair, like so we don't, uh, put all the blame on education, which ... But, but by the way, I, I have, like, big ... I talked a lot of times about this, and I have big question mark on this. But because you touch on sometimes how this comes maybe from a company that private equity, VC firm, whatever, that they have invested in a company and they tell them, "Hey, you know what?

Like, company X, which we invested in, they took this playbook and it worked with them like a charm, so go and implement the same playbook." And actually we've seen this happening again and again. What ends up with people is they, they try to implement it, in my opinion, as a shortcut to success. But at the same time, people, Jürgen maybe you have seen it also as a leader yourself, like, people, they, they don't want to say no, but at the same time they know that doesn't work.

Like, you know, like, this, [00:14:00] this, this will not lead us to anywhere. I'm not against trying, but I think, you know, we are obsessed with following, quote-unquote, playbooks and w- without customization. I'm not against the playbook, just to make it, you know, sure for audience. Mm-hmm. But I'm, I'm with optimizing and customizing, you know, the playbook for you, and I think this is something

And let's talk about it. So if we try to take such organization with a lot of, you know, you know, the issues that you, you just discussed, and now they want to do this transformation, you know, with AI. Like, how ... Well, what do you think the leaders are misunderstanding about that? How do, how do you ... Are you seeing, like, more organizations thinking, "Oh, I have these..."

They come to you say, "Hey, Jürgen, you know what? Like, I have these problems here and I'm gonna implement AI." Are you see- are you, like, hearing these discussions thinking, like, AI is just, you know, the magic wand that you're gonna put and it's gonna solve all the problems? [00:15:00] 

Jurgen: Oh, 100%. I recently spoke to, um, a big company.

They are, uh, a supplier for the automotive industry and, um, they are half Austrian, half Canadian. And, you know, they, they were, they had huge pressure to implement AI company wide, uh, with the expectation to have huge efficiency gains, right? So they've spent a lot of money and effort in selecting and signing an AI agreement.

So they finally ended up signing or extending their existing Microsoft contract and taking on Copilot, right? So a lot of time and money was spent on, on bringing that in, so that finally after one and a half years, they were able to say, "Look, we are now 100% AI enabled. Everybody in the company, um, is able to use AI."[00:16:00] 

Okay, great. So after all that time and money, there was almost no efficiency gains because now everybody had Copilot in their, uh, Office applications, but that didn't mean they would, would benefit You know, um Would really benefit from it. So those centralized decisions don't really make sense from my point of view.

And I've seen other companies that are moving away from this big top-down decision-making. A, a big manufacturer I spoke to, they've spent more time and energy on, you know, first fixing their organizational problems and then making local decisions on very specific problems they were facing. And of course, their AI can be, you know, of [00:17:00] huge benefit.

So if, if you isolate an issue or something that is not really working great, you can isolate that and instead of just saying, "I wanna replace an existing process, uh, with AI," you could first start saying, "Look, what was the process designed for? Is it still relevant like that? Can it be changed?" You know, you just don't take the existing one and try to automate that, but you question the whole process and say, "Look, if we would be AI native, what would that look like?"

And only then implement AI to solve a very, very specific problem. That's a whole different approach than just saying, "We're rolling out AI company-wide." 

Mehmet: Right. Now, speaking about [00:18:00] rolling AI, you mentioned Copilot, interesting point also as well, and we know, like, there's a huge push from all companies involved in AI to, to adopt this.

Now, what I'm hearing, and also like we discussed this with some, some of my guests here on this, uh, podcast, um, i- it's a positive thing if a company actually is willing to invest, right? Because we know s- you know, the companies that back in the days they didn't invest, you know, in, in, um, you know, digital infrastructure, cloud, and all these, you know, revolution that happened in the enterprise.

So slowly, slowly they, they lost their position in the market. But now we see companies, they want to rush into this because there is a real FOMO like, "Hey, if you miss this AI, this is your last exit." Like after this y- you, you might be out of business. But what's happening is also we're hearing that employees are feeling overwhelmed, you know, with, with all these new technologies coming to them.

And of [00:19:00] course, there is like double effect I would call it. So first, of course, a lot of information coming to, to the individual. Second is the fear of losing jobs and we say, "Hmm, okay, y- you, you're trying to, to replace me with an AI thing." So now from leadership perspective, Jürgen, how much is important and what can be done, you know- Make sure that we discuss the culture, you know, we discussed also, you know, the vision.

How we can reinforce, you know, these basics, as you call them, to make sure that when we adopt this, we don't overwhelm o- our employees and actually we don't let them have this fear from, you know, being replaced by AI? 

Jurgen: I think it's, it's a very good question. I think if we take, uh, the sheer talent of people that are typically in a company, right?

If you're bringing them together as a team and you add technical expertise [00:20:00] to, to any team, right? Don't separate IT from, from any business function, but have somebody who's knowledgeable about AI and technology implemented in, in the teams, and then bring teams together and say, "Look, what amazing, amazing things could we do with AI?"

And then brainstorm on how AI can support them to do a better job, to do a better job for their customers, to make their customers more happy, to get more customers, to get more recommendations. So I think if the people who are closest to any topic are able to, to build up AI solutions, then great things can be built 

Mehmet: Right.

Now, how much important is the, um, you know, learning also [00:21:00] as well? Like, um, being-- I mean, when I m- what I mean by learning is, you know, maybe sometimes we, we've, we've seen this, uh, in enterprise and even like in small organizations when there's a new technology, right? So there's a fear, oh, what if this project fails?

What if this pilot fails? Um, how much also is important, especially now with AI, is to, you know, be trained on speed? You mentioned the decision, uh, you know, at the beginning of the discussion, but also speed of learning and learning in m- in a sense like, you know, you try something. What I like to call it, you know, which is back to basics to something I love, which is design thinking.

Mm-hmm. Uh, I talk a lot about it. I'm passionate about it because design thinking is, is, you know, like you put the customer in mind and just as the example you gave from Amazon, and then you try to iterate. Yeah, you, you might not be perfect from the first time. So how we can, you know, from leadership perspective, I would call it bring the startup mentality, which is like try be [00:22:00] h- daring to try things and failing and then try again to, to an established organization.

H-how we can bring that? 

Jurgen: So you have to embrace those, um, you know, this, this experimentation mentality, and I've, I've worked with a company that regularly held, um, design thinking workshops, which I found great. Just, you know, the people wouldn't learn what, um, what design thinking really is, but they would get an understanding of, uh, you know, uh, going first broad and then, um, you know, consolidating their ideas and get into the habit of experimentation.

And failure in that mindset is a success, right? If, if you're running 10 experiments and, and nine of them fail and one is good, uh, you learned a lot and you achieved a lot. [00:23:00] So it's, it's a change in mindset. And to your question on learning culture, I think you can only really learn by doing. So you can, you can have a lot of online trainings on, you know, how to use, for example, Claude Code.

But- Mm-hmm ... I can personally say, um, so I really wanted to understand, you know, how, how good is the technology? Could I as a non-programmer develop a software application? I wanted to know that. So I tried it. So I, I downloaded, um, uh, Visual Studio Code, uh, got Claude Code into it you know, started with a basic idea and worked my way from, you know, mapping out the idea to, um, architectural design, um, user interface and everything, and then started programming it with Claude Code.

And at the end of the day... [00:24:00] End of the day is a good ... I mean, it took me two weeks, but I, I had a complex application running using different AI tools with API calls, and had a running application that was really sophisticated. So by experimenting and trying out, I learned so much, and I think You know, it is important to try things and not just to learn by w- watching a video and reading, reading a book on stuff.

It's really trying out and experimenting. And I think ... I mean, a lot of companies would say, "But we don't have time." Mm-hmm. What, what I'm seeing a lot is everybody is maxed out and super busy. But if you look into a diary of a lot of people in tech, right, most of it is alignment [00:25:00] calls and reporting calls.

And I can- Right ... I can say that for myself in my, in my last corporate job, I was spending probably on average between 25 and 30 hours a week on reporting and alignment calls, right? And what that means is you're always busy, busy to the max, you're in back-to-back meetings, and you don't even feel productive because in reality you're not producing anything, right?

You're just reporting numbers upwards, whatever KPIs are tracked, and you align the people that are completely misaligned. And since everybody's reporting and aligning, so after a week everybody's aligned but nothing got done. 

Mehmet: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think this is a very important por- uh, point and I think it's, it, it goes back even before the AI because, you know, there was always this confusion, Jurgen, [00:26:00] um, between busyness and productivity.

So this is something ... And I think, you know, the AI amplify this problem more because, you know, when you keep yourself busy but nothing happens, you know, I, I don't know. And what you just ... You know, the experiment you just mentioned, um, it, it also, like, uh, remind me, I, I know I keep repeating this book because one of my favorite books which is the, uh, Innovator's Dilemma by, uh, uh, Clayton Christensen.

So, so this- Mm-hmm ... this book, I, I love it, you know. I, I love it because it discuss, like, actually why companies, you know... And one of the main reasons is because they go into this nitty-gritty of things that doesn't move the needle and, and, you know, like all of a sudden a young, new company, they, they, they start to innovate and these things.

So one of the points in that book is, you know- Of course, it's, it's not like a-- it might not apply to every company, but they say if you also want, if you don't, don't put all the resources of the [00:27:00] company, you just like have a team, kind of a task force where you assign them to go and do try these things.

Even sometimes we've seen companies, they do a spin out of, of the main company, of the mothership, and they establish a new company to just do this, and once they are ready, they, they, they bring them in. So i-i-is that something also you, you, you, you think it's useful with the, with the current, you know, trends we're seeing in the AI age?

Jurgen: It's definitely useful. It definitely helps. Ultimately, I would like every team to be a- an experimenting team to rather than just have one team that is dedicated to that, I would dedicate a certain amount of time of the people- Mm-hmm ... to sit together and to experiment. Because ultimately, if you think about that, you, you would have a sales organization that is talking to, to their customers all the time.[00:28:00] 

So they would know best what, what the current situation of their customers is. So if you have a separate team, it's great. They can now come up with new business concepts, new ideas. But if you take the principle of design thinking to have really different backgrounds at the table, right, you shouldn't leave the people talking to your customers outside.

So ideally, I would more turn to an integrated model where you have, you know, experimentation, design thinking space within the teams, within all of your teams, rather than... You know, it's a good first, you know, a good starter to have a separate team dedicated, but ultimately I, I want that to be present, this mindset and the [00:29:00] experimentation I want to be present in, in, in all departments.

And I recently I was, I was working with a client and we, w-we really had a funny story about what AI or how AI is used in companies, right? It, it was a mid-sized company and, you know, one of their managers was really complaining, um, about getting huge reports, I mean, massive PDF documents from, uh, two of his direct reports.

And he said he started to use AI to summarize those reports, so because he didn't have time to go through all those documents, right? And then I spoke to those direct reports And they were producing those documents with AI. So basically what happened is two people produced massive [00:30:00] documents, you know , and every day sending them to their manager, and their manager took an AI to summarize what, um, the AI on the other side had created.

So it, it kind of shows what What nonsense can come up if, if you don't have any better idea how to use AI? 

Mehmet: Yeah. I, you know, I, I think this will be one of the major challenges for organizations, um, because, you know, accept it or not, like, you know, p- people, your people will use AI. We, we are creatures of shortcuts, you know.

I, I came to this conclusion since time, a while of time because I myself like to do shortcuts, right? Like, let's be honest. Yes. Like, we, we, we try... And this, it's, there's nothing wrong. Like, don't get me wrong. Actually, it's good because, you know, to your point about when you mentioned you tried with, um, you know, um, uh, installing Visual [00:31:00] Studio and having Cloud Code and all this, these days I'm playing with agents and agents frameworks and, you know, like it's, it's, it's out of mind.

Now an agent in the morning, uh, it sends me a message on, on, on Telegram and seeing my calendar and just telling me, "Hey, like, this is where you should focus today. This is what you should do," you know? Like, it, it, it's, it's, like, good to embrace what is useful, but we need to- Yes ... you know, make the separation, like, what's hype and what's not, and this is part of the things, you know, what we try to do on the show here is to show the real use cases of the AI and, you know, versus what is hype, which is something you're gonna have it, your people will hate it with time because they will...

Because they were actually doing it without the AI, and now you just amplified this, this thing. Like, you mentioned the example of drafting report, and I can give a lot of other things. Filling the CRM with invented stories, right? And filling, you know, [00:32:00] fields with things we know, you and me we know. Like, your, your people, they don't like to do it, but they have to.

I understand why. But it's like, it kinda like just amplify it 10 times even now with the agents maybe 100 times, you know? Um, but let's see where- One point was- Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Jurgen: And, and you're right. I mean, we, coming from the field, you, you pretty much understand. You know, you have your sales force, um, your people running in the field.

They have to update their, uh, CRM system, you know, in some companies even twice a day, right? And if not, um, you know, they're getting pressure, and yeah, if, if they use automation to fill that up because sometimes they, they're putting stuff in that is not real. We all know that, right? And, you know, sometimes if, if you're looking at how much companies are spending on forecast calls [00:33:00] and CRM inspection How much that costs, right, in terms of money, hours spent, and lost opportunities, you know, where people are not spending their time with the customers but with a tool, right?

And if you compare that with just taking an average of the system- Mm-hmm ... right, y- you understand quite well then, I, I mean, if, if you go to a finance person, they can tell you exactly what, what the range is where a quarter will end. You know- Right ... it's, it's an easy calculation. So all those forecast calls, what are they good for in the end?

They are kind of a reflex for control, which gives kind of the [00:34:00] illusion of having more control, but I don't believe that. So first, I don't believe that more forecast calls will do more deals in the long run. Yeah, you can put a lot of pressure on people to close, bring in deals for a quarter, but what's, what's that good for if your vision is Different Mm-hmm Right?

If you have a vision. So if you wanna delight your customers If that is your goal, you know, that doesn't make sense. And in the long run, you will not have more business by putting more pressure on people to pull in a deal into a quarter. Mm-hmm. And you will also not do better business by doing more forecast calls.

And same goes for if you track marketing just by, by [00:35:00] leads, right? W- y- you're forcing the people to, to cheat the system, in essence. So- Right ... they would be producing leads in, in, um, existing customers, for example, by connecting every new opportunity in an existing account to a campaign. Right. And they would be spending more time on tweaking the system than, you know, really working on something that is bringing value to the company.

Mehmet: Right. I'm, I'm, I'm curious to see how this will change with AI. I know it's gonna be slow, and that's my expectation. And the reason, because you mentioned something now, Jorgen, is about, um, you know, this, uh, hunger for control. You know, because there are people who are obsessed, by the way, um, in just opening dashboards and, you know, just nagging on people.[00:36:00] 

But if I think about it, you know, actually an AI can do this, right? So after a while. Because checking the data if people are putting the right data, so that will be n- there will be no need. I wonder, like, you know, how you think, you know, we can change this faster because, you know, um, I believe, and we repeated this theme a lot of time during this episode today, which is, like, fast decision, fast learning, you know, changing the way.

How we, how we can, you know, fast, fasten also this change when it comes to the leadership way of thinking? Should we go and talk, because you're doing this work currently, Jorgen, should we go and talk to the investors? Should we go and talk to the stakeholders? Should we go and talk, you know, to, to the, you know, let's say the board, and tell them like, "Guys, you know, the old playbook was good," as you mentioned, "in a certain time, but in these times you're [00:37:00] just wasting your time and money, and actually you're, uh, you're letting your people hate their jobs, and they're gonna leave you."

So, so where we start? Where we can start this change? 

Jurgen: I think it needs the leadership team of the company. And yeah, they have to be brave enough to sell this to, uh, their owners and investors. And we are seeing a number of companies that are making those shifts. I know of a big pharma company and a big manufacturing company global companies, really, really big.

I can't mention their names, right? But they are-- they have CEOs that are really pushing for that change. And I spoke to somebody from finance extended leadership team of a huge manufacturing company, right? One of the strongest brands in automotive, I would say And I asked him at [00:38:00] a conference for transformation, I asked him, "How do you see the competition from China?"

Mm-hmm. And he said, "Yeah, that's a very good question." He said, "People think, you know, our biggest pressure is production cost," right? And he said, "But that's, that's absolute nonsense. Yeah, energy prices are, um, higher than, than in some other countries, but our production facilities are optimized to the max.

That is not our issue. Our real issue is we used to be the innovators in our space, but now in the time that it takes us to develop one new generation of our flagship product, in the same time China is developing three or four generations," right? And I said, "Why do you think that is?" He said, "That's [00:39:00] two things.

First is they are much quicker in decision-making." Mm. Right? "Every single decision in our company takes far too long because nobody can decide, really decide anything locally. It needs to go through approval chains and, and, you know, it's just taking too long, and sometimes it's too risky to suggest a change," right, from a career perspective.

And the other element was, um, meanwhile in, in China they have a sheer unlimited amount of, uh, strong engineers, right? But he said, "The reason we are transforming is not that, oh, we, we believe in this vision. The reason is we will cease to exist if we are not becoming quicker, and the only way to become quicker is [00:40:00] if we are transforming to be a company with distributed decision-making where teams are able to make decisions and where we

where the company works more like an organism rather than a machine." And it's a shift in thinking, but those big organizations, I know of this pharma organization and those, this automotive organization, it's, it's a tough one, right? Um- It is ... transforming such a huge organization, and it, it won't be done in two, three years But it's necessary because otherwise you will be out of business against companies that are quicker.

And with AI, you know, this transformation isn't optional anymore. It's- I know ... either you do it or you will be taken out [00:41:00] 100%. I'm 100% convinced 

Mehmet: 100% convinced with you also, Jurgen. And it's not, I tell people it's not the, you know, this, um, what people think, yeah, it's similar to the when the internet started to, to, to appear and yeah, but still businesses existed or for example, when the cloud, uh, started or the mobile, uh, revolution.

I'm telling them this is completely different. And of course, we're not there yet, and this is why I mentioned about the agents little bit and my own experience with it. Like if I can do it on a small scale, imagine today one company, if they have done it the right way, and actually this is funny enough about the decision and the automation, you know, right, and the, the authority.

So if of course, agents can do mistake, don't give them full access. I'm not saying this. But if you put them into a sandbox, probably you will be surprised, you know, how much good, not perfect, how much good they can do a lot of things. And if your competitor is [00:42:00] using them today, you are like really, really, really, you know, sh- you should be having, you know, red flags and, you know, alarms in, in, in your place, um, in your company if, if you're not following with AI.

Because absolutely it's, it's like the major disruption and it's not a hype. Again, I tell people, you know, actually I, I try to bust the hype on this show, but when it's something real, I tell you, "No, it's real. We, we're seeing it." Um, just if you allow me, Jurgen, an example also from people who are similar to our, um- 

Jurgen: Yeah, sure

Mehmet: yeah, to, to our domain. Like what we used to, I remember, you know, maybe 10 years back if I want to prepare a quote or maybe I want to prepare a proposal, so this was a long of ti- a long time to, to do. So now, you know, I can go to Cloud Co- Cowork or I can go to any of these other tools, and if I have the templates there, it's done.

I building ROIs tools, you know, uh, for some [00:43:00] of my, um, you know, people I work with, and they tell me like, this used to take about three, four days sometime to prepare this to get the information, and they get a very nice clean PDF customized with the logo of the company. You know, i- i- it's really fascinating how fast you can move with this.

Now, there's something I didn't ask you about, Jurgen. Tell me a little bit more about the book and you know, why you called it The Leadership Operating System. Like, what can we expect? You know, and of course you don't have to tell me the teaser of all the book, but I mean, just for the audience to, to have k- some, some sense of, uh, what they can expect.

Jurgen: Yeah, sure. So, and thanks for asking. So with this book, I took kind of all my experience and the different areas where I think, you know- It's a make or break for a company. Mm-hmm. And it starts with, you know, how a strong vision is influencing everything [00:44:00] that a company is doing. Um, then the organizational design decision, how you built the company or how you transform it.

Then I also put a strong emphasis on really understanding your customers. You know, every company would tell you they know their ICP, their ideal customer profile. Yeah. And typically they're spending millions on, on data analysis on their customers But usually nobody has time to actually talk to their customers.

And I also see this as a huge gap. You know, you're developing all those marketing campaigns without ever talking to your customers. You built your ideal customer profile on data, but data is great, but you are building an, um, hypothesis. You have to go to your customers and to understand and check whether your hypothesis is right.

Are they even using the product the [00:45:00] way you, you think they're using them, right? Then I look at the people element. Excuse me. So, you know, the main, the lifeblood of a company is the people. Even if you think about, you know, getting the maximum of, out of AI, you know- Right ... it is bright, engaged people that are driving your business.

So but selecting the pe- the right people and putting them in the right roles is super important. Companies look most of the times in, in even if you look at a job description, they talk about hard skills and then, yeah, it has to be a cultural match. But not much effort is spent on, you know, what personality profile do I need?

Do I need somebody who's analytical or do I need somebody who's [00:46:00] more strategic or more broad? Do I need an executor or a thinker? Extrovert, introvert, all great people, but they will only flourish if you put them in the right roles that match their personal traits. So if you're just looking at job history and, oh, has always worked in sales and, and has been working for great companies, oh, and, and did his numbers, okay, check, great person.

I've talked... I had to, um, you know, take somebody out of a sales team that was a brilliant mind but didn't feel comfortable in front of people. I mean, seriously, uh, uh, th- this guy was really suffering because he, he didn't feel comfortable, um, talking to people face-to-face, was more analytical, was, was not a [00:47:00] personable person, but had to go to customers every single day, right?

Mm-hmm. He was completely in the wrong job. Never really successful and, you know, when, when I joined that company and had my first one-on-one with that person, uh, he was really scared and said, "Well-" "I, I think things are not working great." And he said, "I know, I know. And, and am I getting fired?" I said, "No, I, uh...

But first I wanna know how did you end up in this job? B- I, I don't think it's a good fit for you." So really getting, getting people in a place where they can flourish Everybody has got talents, right? But just put them in the right place. So I'm looking at all the different elements that I experienced over 30 years and, um, try to give some good advice where to start, where to look to build better companies.

And [00:48:00] again, the, the reason I'm doing that is I am passionate about building better companies that are better for people to work for, where they can have success, have fun, and better output is, you know, more success is just a natural, natural result out of that. 

Mehmet: That's a great, again, you know, you mentioned this in the intro and it's nice, like you, you mentioned it towards the end of the, uh, the episode today, Jurgen.

I think this is a very, um, noble, I would call it, you know, goal that you have to build like a greater companies, because I think although like we see in the literature that majority of the companies, they fail after their first couple of years and only the few, they stay. But there's another statistics, you know, that shows, you know, and I learned this from my American friends who were on the show with me, you know, like, you know, they, they have a, they have something that they measure the number of companies that they were [00:49:00] on the S&P 5- S&P 500, you know, and then how many of them they're still there.

And, you know, there's also like companies that actually they go out of business because of these mistakes also. And, you know, it's a very thriving, you know, mission that you have to help the new ones and help also the existing ones, because at the end of the day, this wa- how, you know, if we love what we do, we can help a lot of other people.

This is why I do-- Again, you asked me before we started recording about the, the show. This is one of the main reason also why I like this podcast, because, you know, we can, um, inspire others to do great things, uh, listening to someone who's expert like yourself, Jurgen, in building better companies and, and keeping them resilient, um, to, to changes.

So I really appreciate, you know, the time with me today. Just one more thing, which, uh, based on what you mentioned at the end. You know, f- to me, I think, you know, the, the product people, which we call them the product [00:50:00] management people in any organization, so who are, you know, they can talk marketing, they can talk sales, they can talk to customer success.

So I think these kinds of roles, they're gonna thrive because these are the people who actually they do it fantastically. I, I've, I've been lucky enough, you know, when I work in any organization, th- they were the, my favorite people to talk to, the product people, because they have to be like- You know, multitasking and multi-language in a sense.

They talk marketing, sales, engineering, you know, and, and with everyone. So these kinds of role, I think especially with AI, they're gonna become very important. Um, even like, you know, I, I went and I bought some books about product, product management and from how, how to, to be the best, you know, product manager because I think, you know, this is one of the skills that we can learn also.

To your point, Jurgen, because you mentioned at the beginning about the teams that they always fight, like sales and marketing, customer success with engineering, and so on. [00:51:00] So learn the empathy, and I think when we establish this empathy, you know, um, people can thrive in the organization. So, so thank you for bringing this up.

At the end, where people can get in touch and, um, you know, if someone want to, you know, have maybe some consultancy, Jurgen, where can they can find you? 

Jurgen: So there's two ways basically. One is, um, on LinkedIn, so I'm very active on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, Jurgen Dauck, um, you'll find me. Would be great to contact me Even just to stay in the conversation, I would love to hear the feedback, you know, on how your organization is doing.

I'm, I'm a lifelong learner, right? So getting your feedback is really important to me. And, um, you can go to my book website, which is the leadership-os.com. There you'll also have a section where you can download, um, self-checking templates, right? To just score yourself on how, how mature is my [00:52:00] organization on, um, on the path to implementing AI.

You can get that for free. Doesn't cost anything. Just register on the website. So it's, um, the leadership-os.com. 

Mehmet: Great. I will make, you know, people's lives easy, and this is what I do with all my guests. So I'm gonna put the links in the show notes. If you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, you will find the links that Jurgen just mentioned, his LinkedIn profile, the book link in the show notes.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll find them in description. And again, Jurgen, I can't thank you enough for this, you know, very rich, productive, I hope for many, uh, discussion and I hope, you know, organization they will, uh, benefit out of it to, you know, keep building great companies and if someone is struggling, probably come to you and, you know, try to see if you can help them.

So thank you again for being here with me today. And usually how, uh, I end my episodes, everyone knows. So if you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing [00:53:00] by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so, give me a small favor. We're trying to make an impact, so share it with as much people as you can think they can benefit out of it.

And if you are one of the people who keep coming again and again, thank you very much for the support, you know, your messages, your notes, your feedback. I know some of you, you message me privately saying, "Hey, like, you know, we like that, you know, what your guest said. We cannot like it. We cannot share it." I understand this.

Full respect. I understand. And this is why we are your voices also as well. So appreciate, you know, your support and as I say always, stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye. 

Jurgen: Thank you.