"I have been deep underground at the coal face, where if procedures are not followed, people can die."
Monash Business School, Boss versus botThat is where I spent my career, and it is why I talk about AI the way I do. I speak to senior leaders, and to the people who advise them, about what makes an experienced decision-maker trust a machine and what makes them refuse.
Monash Business School, Sky Room, 30 Collins Street, Melbourne. A fifty-minute panel for people still working out what to do with it, followed by drinks.
Monash eSolutions. Forty-five minutes by Zoom for the people who meet AI resistance daily, across students, academics, researchers and professional staff. Not persuading a room that is already convinced, but giving them something to say to the four groups they serve.
Monash University Transformation Office. The opening session of a new webinar series for leaders, with 327 Monash staff registered. The argument comes in two halves. Fix the process first, because AI pointed at a mess only makes a faster mess. Then unlock the value, which happens through the people who have to use it rather than through the tool.
Monash eSolutions, Shared and Campus Services. Two and a half hours at the quarterly all-hands.
Monash Information Systems research community, at the Monash Club. A short thesis talk to academics and doctoral candidates, with a visiting international scholar in the room, followed by discussion from the floor.
Monash eSolutions extended leadership team, with a live demonstration of agentic AI. Booked for ninety minutes and ran for three.
Monash eSolutions. Ninety minutes with the six AI fitness trainers chosen to work with the university's senior executive group: what occupies a senior leader's thinking, and how the first fifteen minutes earn you the next fifteen.
Three things, usually. Why experienced leaders hold AI at arm's length, and what changes it. Why AI applied to a process that does not work only magnifies what is wrong with it, which is Bill Gates's rule about automation and binds just as hard now, and why the much older sequence out of Lean manufacturing, stabilise then standardise then mechanise, is the answer to it. And what agentic AI looks like running live in front of a room, which tends to be the part people talk about afterwards.
I take a small number of engagements each year, and I am most useful to a room of senior people who have to make real decisions rather than an audience looking for a demonstration of the tools.