How AI Is Changing Leadership, Culture, and Team Success

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W four WN Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on Dvparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their satus quo, and are living the life they want.

0:48 You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life, or vice versa. Learn more at www dot gwpark dot com and you can connect with vats contact at gwpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, w Park. Good morning, It's Tuesday, and I love being with you. So I do want to take a moment and have you think about as to how are you bringing AI into your world? And when I talk about AI is artificial intelligence, and it's important that you think about it because it is being around for quite some time and now, but generaldi it's so prevalent and it's changing, if I were to say, even like every thirty seconds. So if you're looking to get ahead, thank you for getting a book.

1:51 For those who have already got a book. If you have not, go get our book, the AI Agency and it will help you get positioned for the next several years and get ahead of here. Well, let's bring in our guest. Welcome Mark. Thank you Devia. Great to be with you, absolutely and wonderful to have you on our show. So share it with our audience. Do you recall a moment from or multiple moments from your lifetime that have left a positive mark on you? Wow? I think it started when I was a very early age. My dad was an entrepreneur per se. He was a consultant, but he's the one that kind of engaged me in entrepreneurship.

2:39 And I cut grass. I was a newspaper boy. I sold Christmas cards, so I kind of got into that entrepreneur spirit. But he also told me and really. Emphasize some of the things that I need to do to be successful. And when you learn that at a very early age, it carries over not only in your schoolwork, but when you first. Get a job. All those things enter into creating what I would say leadership principles that you develop over time that can make a difference, not necessarily in your life, but really what's more important in the lives of other people. What kind of things can you bring that can help support other people and be successful. And there's so much that goes into it. But I learned at a very early age for my dad, So it's not.

3:26 Just one thing. It's multiple things that you learn over time that can make a difference, and you build upon what you learn to help other people. Absolutely, and being in Louisiana, I know you have built one of the fastest growing technology states in the country. So can you share with us what's your contribution there. Yeah, So when I was. Running the Louisiana Technology Council was a nonprofit group and Louisian was forty nine out of fifty states and technology employment. I took over the organization when it was basically almost bankrupt. I didn't get paid for a month, but I knew there was an opportunity. Since you're really at the bottom of the barrel, what can you do to emphasize or bring in technology in this It is to get people to stop thinking so much on tourism, which was the primary driver, and oil and gas. What can we create as an additional industry that can make a difference. And so for ten years we made and did some very significant things. We brought into CIO, Microsoft, We just did all those kind of things that would put technology on the map. And so for ten years we actually went from forty nine to thirty second in technology employment. And that's pretty substantial from two thousand and two to twenty twelve to make that kind of impact. And you know, my goal was really to help people. It's not that I did it myself. It was a combination of all the people that you that you bring into the organization

4:56 that can make a difference that can help people grow and help them realize that technology can make a difference. And it's been pretty substantial and they continue to grow in that area. Oh that's fantastic. And what are some of the lessons you learned along the way that you can. Take Well, you know, the lessons I learned is you really need to engage in people who are smarter than you. And that is sound counterintuitive, but you bring in these experts that have they're experts, they have that expertise in their field that can make a difference and you let them do their job. So you want to hire the people that are smarter than you and you let them go ahead and let them do their job because they're good at it and you've given the resources and the tools that can make them as effective as possible and as successful as possible for the organization. It's just not one it's multiple expertise that come to a level that can really drive an organization to success.

5:55 And that is such a valid point because when you have talent, talent is what takes organization to the next level. What So, now the question comes in, especially with the new generations who don't stick around much, what are some of the best ways and best practices in hiring top talent and as well as retaining them. So I think most executives or most people in the hiring business try to hire for skill. They want to bring that talent in there. They want to get the smartest person. But what I found is the best way to hire people is you hire for culture and you train for skill. That is paramount because when you hire someone and they don't fit into your culture, it creates toxicity within the environment, and it doesn't help people because they're not motivated. So you want to make sure that you have a cultural environment that everybody can surround themselves with really good people. And I think the best way to do that is to really engage what I call the unthinkable approach to hiring, is to find and do deep dives into how people think, how they react to stress, how they all the kind of things that can bring that person into an environment that can fit into the culture.

7:16 And so it's really key in paramount. I stresses so much in my cl roundtables. You hire for culture, you train for skill. It's really easy because people are motivated and you provide tools to help increase their skill level. But it's really hard to change how a person thinks, how they react to things, how they communicate, because they typically bring that habit to the organization and that's a hard thing to change. Absolutely. And so when we talk about culture, so many times you talked about toxicity, what would you say are some of the key elements of having a culture that allows for failure and it also allows for that safe space that if there is toxicity, people can come to the forefront and talk about it.

8:09 Well, it really is engaged. Now everybody, everybody's personality is different. So how do you get that right person? How do you figure out because when you do this this test that I've actually developed, nobody can prepare for it. I call it the unthinkable approach to hiring. But you want to engage in how they think. And I ask certain prompts like Vivia, if I'm going to interview you, I said, Tibby, I'm going to say one or two prompts. I wants the first thing that comes to your mind. There's no right or wrong answers, but you want to feel and you get to know somebody really quickly by by by these typical prompts, and I you know, I'll give you a food of them. The confident. I'll come off the top of my head, five single words that best describe you, favorite movie, favorite car, reincarning in as something other than a human being? What would that be if you had one hundred million dollars in lottery?

9:01 What would you do it if you wanted? So all these answers create a pattern of how they fit into the culture. Now what's really important, though, is you can hire these people and you get the culture the way you want, but you've got to put in. You have to put in what I would call. Team work building activities that can help engage people like they're part of a family. And then you reward based on those activities. You give them goals, You have team building exercises, goals, they meet their goals, they get rewarded. All these things and factors enter into a successful organization and motivation, and they feel like they're part of something, part of what I call a family. You want a company that feels like it's a family environment.

9:46 Absolutely so, in your considerable experience, do you recall any actual stories how that played out? Well? When I was working help being a manufacturing company, the sheet metal business, their culture was pretty pretty tough. So we analyzed all the people and well, the first thing you have to do is, I always say the best way to get rid of A players is to tolerate C players. So what can we do to help either engage a. C player and become or B and become an A player, or at the end of the day, how do I get rid of that toxicity and a C player. So some of the things that you do is you do team building activities, surround yourselves around people that can provide what I call core values. That company doesn't have core values, give them a team of building exercises or these core values.

10:44 People can provide input into what are the five words that provide core values for a company and get everybody the input what the core value would be and they all get together and you pick five or six of them. So everybody's part of something that's part of the organization. Same with the mission statement of vision said you have to have employees that want to participate, or you get them to participate in where the company is going, how to go, what the future is going to look like, and they're feeling now they're part of something and engaging in activities that can really help the company be successful. Yeah, and core values. That's such a powerful thing. You know a lot of people don't talk about it, correct, but values is something that can help you charge through tough times in life, whether it is at work or whether it's in personal life. It can help you make decisions.

11:33 What are some of the other team building activities that organizations can do? You know, one of my favorite one is what I call the start stop key routine. So you get and you ask three questions of all your employees and you get them documented, and it's really kind of anonymous, but you could say, what do we need to start doing that we're not currently doing. What do we need to stop doing that's really not beneficial, What do we need to keep doing that's really been really demonstrate success for an organization? And so everybody inputs and provides this information, You get on them all together and you list all these start stops, keep things, and then the team decides, well we need to start doing this. They all decide, and we're going to do these kind of things or stop doing these kind of things.

12:23 And it's up to the CEO to make. Sure that those things that we've all agreed to are engaged upon, so they work towards what I call that start, stop, keep routine, and then you make sure that you adhere to what they want and you implement those things and they all agree to it. And that's what's important because now you're contributing to something that can be successful. And then look, one of the things I think most people forget to do, most leaders is they forget the compliment that they forget to say, you know, you did a great job. I really appreciate all the hard work that you did on this and that's not done enough show it through gratitude by giving them a small gift whatever, those little things. You know, it's the little things that people get to really make a difference. And so I think corporations need to show more appreciation for the work that's done that's outside the norm that makes a big impact on how people are motivated and how they contribute to the organization.

13:21 So you've talked about values in your experience. What are some of the values that are critical to success of an organization or successful of a team, because you know, if teams are unsuccessful, organizations can be successful either. Yeah. Well, you know there's certain specific ones that I think every organization needs to have one is. One value is trust trust within the organization that the CEOs is going to do what he says he's going to do, he or she's going to say is going to do the trust and that the communication is a big thing for me. Look what's on your mind? You need to come tell me because a lot of times people keep things withinside them.

14:04 So it's up to a good leader to engage in employees to communicate both the good and the bad. Same with the leader, communicate both the good and the bad. So there's a level of trust not only in the leadership side but also on the employee side. So trust communication. I like the word called going beyond. What can our organization do that sets us apart from other organizations that are competitors? So what are the little things that we can do that can set us apart that people can remember? And there's a lot of things that people come up with. You get with your employees, you can ask the same question, what do we need to do that shows that we're different than other people?

14:44 And it could be simple, as you know, once you. Get an account going by and giving them bake cookies or something like that, or sending a thank you card. You know, when's the last time give you that You've got to a thank you card in the mail for all the great work that you're doing. Probably not too often the thank you card seems to have gone away, or really thank you card sent me a postal mail. That's different. Those are the kind of things that people remember more than getting the big things, to be honest with. You, Yeah, and those are such powerful things. As a matter of fact, I'm leading a leadership cohort just now and we're in the middle of probably likes. It's a seven week program, be almost halfway through, and one of the gentlemen just asked me for some help, which was not part of the the program that we're working on, and I helped him out. He's part of the cohort.

15:42 And then when I come back for the next workshop, it's it's an in person thing, and I find a beautiful envelope sitting where my computer is usually and he had shed a handwritten note and I treasure them. I have all my handritten notes like that I've received because it's such a mix, it's makes such a huge difference. Yeah, And the situation with that is pretty rare. Not many people do that, and I think we need to get back to what I will call the attitude of gratitude, finding a way to thank people for what they've done. Simple things. Even in personal relationships.

16:25 You know a lot of times my wife will do something and we take those kind of things for granted. But I'll go back and saying, you know, honey, you did a great job on dinner last night. It was a great meal. I really appreciate it. You know, it's it means it's so important to me, And that goes a long way, and you keep doing these over and over again, not all the time, but when it makes a difference and you can feel it when we feel something that's like really appreciated, We got we got. To let people know, and we don't. And that's really a critical important thing when it comes to leadership. CEOs or even anybody at any company level needs to understand that when you show gratitude, simple thank you, note, simple gift, whatever it may be, it doesn't have to take much. It makes a world of difference. And there's actually studies that show this. When you show gratitude, not only does it do great wonders for the person you show it to, but it also does great wonders for you personally. It's like it's like I don't know what, I don't know how they describe it, but actually improves health, both your health and their health because the biggest disease in America is stressed. If you can release stress from somebody by just showing, granted, doing all these kinds of things that can help them out, it helps their health overall.

17:47 Absolutely. And Mark, you've worked with the CEOs during your cor own tables, So what would you say, like, you know, as you have worked with multitude of CEOs, what are some of the qualities that you're seen that they've brought to the organization that have made their organization successful. Well, I think an open level of honesty and transparency. You know, I've been running CEO roundtables probably going on thirteen years now, and the people, well, there's a lot of CEOs, especially younger CEOs. What the most important factor when you establish an organization is to establish structure and then rhythm. When I say structure, structure means a foundation for company success.

18:34 That includes creating. A mission statement, a business statement so you know where the company's going, creating core values. These are the things that we adhere to as an organization, setting goals for all your company employees. These are foundational elements that a good leader needs to implement across the organization and then creating that infrastructure. That infrastructure being providing tools, resources, processes in place that could help them be successful based on that foundation that you've put the place for the company be successful. So you're probably only as good as your weakest link when you're creating that foundation. If you have a poor foundation, it's kind of have passard and eventually it's going to catch up to you. But when you have that foundation, when things get tough, that foundation comes into play and creates that rhythm over time that you keep adhering to to make sure that you can be successful.

19:31 Absolutely, and that's such a relevant point that having that rhythm providing resources and support for people to be successful. Now we have focused our conversation a lot on people like you know, how to empower people. That said, with the advent of AI, the speed of business is changing so rapidly. It's and so many decisions need to be made, whether they're accessibility of information, expect and how are CEOs dealing with that? Well, it's important to let CEOs know that AI is a tool, a tool to be just like when the Internet came out, it was a tool for you to use to help you become a better organization, and so AI is similar to that.

20:20 Tool, though it seems to. Be a lot more engaging and a lot more rapid fire going further, it's amazing what AI can do. But just like you said in your book and I really highly recommend your book, is that there's a human element in the AI that I think a lot of people are missing. You can provide all this information, it gives. You what you you know, a summary of what you need, but it's the thinking on your end and the human element that eventually needs to be made from a decision, because I would say the information you put into AI could be garbage in garbage out right. Sometimes you can put information in the AI get an answer that you want that's not the right answer basically, So you have to be very careful how you use AI to be able to use it for an information gathering but adapted to what your needs are. And it's the human element that a lot of think a lot of people are missing.

21:15 Absolutely, And so as these executives and leaders are gathering information, as we call them information holders. What transition do they need to kind of move into so that they can handle AI with proper care while keeping the human element into the mix. Well, my recommendation at that point is most leaders don't know anything about AI, or they know a little bit about it. They need just like you would hire a financial expert or a human resource expert, they need to hire somebody who's engaged in AI. You know, you're a perfect person to be able to do that.

21:56 You wrote that book. So I mean we need to hire somebody that can draw them and direct them and give them the knowledge and the tools that are necessary for them to use AI within their organization. It's almost like I hire an AI consultant to say, Okay, here's what I'm doing, here's where I want to go. Help me get to where I need to do the most effective way possible. And I think that's really really important going forward is to have somebody that has knowledge and AI that can bring nows resources and that knowledge to you to the company to be successful. And you can't do it on your own. Look, some of the problem with most executives I have is they try to do everything, especially when they're young as an entrepreneur, but as you transition and you get bigger, you've got to understand you've got to make this what I call paradigm shift and get and change your thinking in your mindset to be able to use outside resources to be successful. And AI, I think is no different than hiring a financial expert or whatever to do what you need to do for success.

22:58 Thank you Mark first of all for your support. I appreciate it and talking about AI. You have brought AI into your own business. Tell us about that. Well, you would think that at my age I wouldn't be involved in a startup company, but I got involved with a startup company about four years ago and what we wanted to do is bring AI technology and we've done a startup basically, very very very generic in this. I'll be very quick and basically take video content what I call organic content, not made up AI videos, but we take organic content that people have and what we do is we cut and splice the best of those videos and create a single one for you automatically in minutes, based on the choices you make, and we do it frame by frame. So the whole idea is to be able to take all this content individual has or companies have TV stations, aviations, all this video that's in there.

23:57 What can I do with it to be successful work? Instead of me having a videographer go through all this data, how can I sip through all this data, do all that what I call grunt work, and then produce something that's pertinent to me in the choice Because everybody has different ideas. Of what they want in a video. So what we've done is being able to take that through our patent technology to be able to give people and it's done in minutes where you don't have to hire videographers, but you can do it internally yourself. You mentioned four years, so it has been a journey. What are some of the lessons you've learned along the way. Well, one of the lessons raising money is tough. So I did this while back in nineteen ninety four. It seemed a little bit easier when I had an internet company who raised money and.

24:45 Went to market and we sold them. When you start raising, one of the lessons learned is raising money, you have to really have what I would call structure or to find mission. What you're doing, how you go about doing it, how you can be successful where that money is going to go to. So raising money is tough. Startup is tough. A lot of startups fail. You got to have the right people to be able to do that. And spending money is tough, you know, because you got to have the right people do the right thing. So a startup today is much more difficult than it was, I would say twenty five years ago because of the way you have to and there's a lot of money out there, but you got to have all the processes or all the business plans and the goals and everything else you.

25:38 Need to do to be a successful organization. You mentioned that having a startup is much tougher than what it was twenty five years back. Can you shed some leg on that. Yeah, I found that when we raised money for our internet company, it was a little a little easier. Of course, it was tough for the Louisiana back then that it is today. But what I found is being able to have the. Ability to track investments coming into it and have we go through Karta, which is an online service that tracks all the investments.

26:20 You've got to be. Really specific because of the rules and the regulations have changed substantially over the last twenty five thirty years to be able to create an an investment vehicle like we have an AI. So you got to adhere to those rules and regulations. Seems to be more relaxed back then, but now they're they're much more difficult, and you want to make sure that you have and you adhere to those sec rules and regulations like we've done. Make sure that everybody has their stock, all that stuff that goes into it. We provide a service through a third party and be able to be able to make sure we keep all. That on track absolutely. And that's that's an important point because a lot of times what happens is that people have a passion, people have an idea, and then they think, oh, I can go and go ahead and start a startup.

27:11 So if somebody is thinking that, what are some of the key essentials that they need to think about even before kind of seeing if the market idea is whible. Or not, well, I think they have to do a lot of research and development in terms of what their idea would look like and what other people are thinking. Now, I will tell you this much. You could talk to all these. People and they'll tell you that you get a lot of negative feedback. But my point on this is if you're really passionate about something and you have an idea, it might be a good idea, it might be a bad If you have an idea, if you're really passionate about it, I think you can make it work. The struggles that most entrepreneurs have is these peaks and valleys.

27:52 You get to the plan point of going, oh, this is so hard, Why am I doing this. You've got to keep pushing. You got to going forward. You got to get people that to say, yeah, keep going, you're doing the right thing. That's difficult because you've come to a lot of times where I'm saying I just can't do this anymore, and you just got to trudge through it and eventually you'll be successful. That's the most difficult thing for entrepreneurs to do with within the startup. But if you get the right people and you have funding to be able to do it, go for it. You have to go for it only one condition. You've got to have the passion to be able to do it and have to stick it, stick it out, go through it, and you know eventually it's going to happen.

28:33 That's just my opinion. Yeah. No, Well, you've lived it and so many times I've yourself, and definitely what you're sharing is that you have to stick it out. And so many times what happens is that that startup CEO comes to that edge I'm done. Right. What can they do in that moment when everything appears. Dark, Well, they can get with the people who supported them in the past and kind of get them some kind of motivation, get with family and friends, people who are mentors and they can maybe be their cheerleader. You can do it. You've done this before. You have everything in place.

29:22 You can do it. You just have to get with people that convince you that you can do it, because they are going to be dark times where you don't feel like you're going to be able to do it. But you have a As long as you have a support team and you have a outside team or a mentor that you can obviously talk to, they're going to be able to help you through it. Absolutely. And there is your company now, and tell us more about it? What is it? What are your plans for it in the future? Tell us if you've written any books. Yeah, so, with the wall of media, we've done this probably almost five years now and we've raised one point two million. We're continuing to raise money. We're almost at the end of our line for money raised, but I continue to put money into it over time because I feel so passionate about the fact that this is going to succeed.

30:17 Our end result, though, is this. This happened to me in nineteen ninety four when I started an internet company in New Orleans. We knew that some of the. Big boys were going to do what we're doing, and we were the first ones that provided Internet connectivity for businesses. People may not know this, but there was an ISDM. We were the first with ISDM, we were first with T one connectivity. A lot of people don't remember that, but we knew that a big boy's going to buy us out, and within three years that actually happened. With the ALI company that we put together. We think the same thing's going to happen. We have a patented technology that nobody else is doing, and they're all focusing on really text stuff, but nobody's really focusing on organic video that you can take and analyze it frame by frame, convert it to a data and then any videographer can say I want this, this and this and it'll cut and splice those things and produce a video and then you could do whatever you want it through a video editor like Final Cutpro. We think we're ahead of the game of that now, Apple, Google, Amazon, all those guys are gonna probably eventually do it.

31:27 But we've got the technology. We've done a lot of research and they said, well, they can probably do that in three weeks. No, they can't. The other reason they can't because of what we've done in video analysts, frame by frame without the hallucinations. That's the key point about that. We think someone's going to say, I want your technology, I want to integrate to what we're doing, and we're going to have a competitive advantage over the big boys for a certain period of time. And that's the end result, and that's the goal that we're shooting for. And where can people learn information about your company? They could certainly go to Evolvemedia dot ai. They can certainly contact me at m Lewis at Evolvedmedia dot ai and send me an email and inquire about it. So I'm open, I mean anyway they can reach me. I'm happy to talk to them. Twenty four seven. I do sleep, but I'm very passionate about what's going on, So I'll take text messages, I'll take whatever throughout the day.

32:28 I know, Mark, you're so passionate about it, and I'm positive that you know your company will succeed because you bring that passion and experience to it. Anything else you'd like to share with our audience about your contact information about your. Book, Yeah, they can go to Mark LEWISLLC dot com. I've got you know, I do some consulting work. I do CEO roundtables, I've got a book. Give a damn the cult to take in the cultural change that I'm passionate about because I think society is going down this path of self centered path that's hurting us. In a way. We don't have that interaction within people. I think technology has been great overall, but it hasn't been great for human communication, to be honest with it, even though it's increased human communication, the face to face communication I had when I was with IBM and doing all these things was significant and we're getting away from that.

33:25 But they can learn more about me. I also want to appreciate you for all the AI work that you're doing. In the book you put out, I think that's really an important element in terms of how people can learn, especially on the leadership level, about what AI brings to the business and how they can utilivise AI to make it more effective. So you're doing great things with AI. I'm happy to be with you today, Thank you for all your support, and I look forward to continue to work for you with you in the future. Thank you Mark for sharing your wisdom because I know that what you shared is going to help a lot of people. And I'm sure Audience that you know you found so much value in what Mark has shared. Do check out his websites, both the websites, check out his book excellent book and I can tell you that you'll enjoy it. And if you, of course have any questions, Mark is very easy to approach connect with him. So thank you Mark for joining with us and sharing your nuggets.

34:32 And thank you wonderful Audience for being part of the show, because without you, the show would not be possible. Reach out to us like you always do, let us know how we can serve and support you, and thank you on for being a tech genius. Be well and take care until next time. Thanks Divie, thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence. With your host, d v Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Dvpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dot dwpark dot com and you can connect with vat contact at dvpark dot com. We look forward to you joining us next week.