How to Lead Change Without Losing Your Mind (or Team)

Nobody gets a leadership job because you're a good actor.

You're in the wrong career at that point.

Everybody's job is going to be innovation.

It's wild.

I'm so excited and horrified.

For all of those out there who also work for fairly large organizations, we're not the fastest to turn, right?

You're a little like a huge ship.

It takes some effort to turn the ship.

As fast as technology is moving forward, as fast as AI is continuing to iterate, how do we get our teams to feel comfortable making that turn?

Wow, just so many dots that need to be connected for all of those things.

The fear of losing your job due to AI is real.

There's no way around it.

The leadership portion of change is not just

telling your team what's coming.

What advice would you have for leaders that are trying to get past that hurdle themselves internally?

I've been thinking a lot about not just change management, right?

Not just just training and communications, but change leadership.

Welcome back to Experts of Experience.

I'm your host, Lacey Pease.

And I am Rose Schalker.

I produce Experts of Experience.

And we just got off the mic with Carly Bissler of McKesson.

She's the VP of Product Management at McKesson Medical Surgical.

And what a fun episode this was.

There was a story that was tugging at the back of my brain while we had this whole conversation for an hour about something that happened to me in high school, Rose.

Do you mind if I share?

Tell me.

So, one of my teachers in high school, I took engineering in school, which was really cool that I was able to do like 3D CAD at school.

Like, I don't know many high schools that provided that.

I was just in my

engineering in my school.

No, I had, and I went three years of engineering in high school.

So, by the time I got to college, I was like teaching the

intro to engineering class.

But I had a teacher there, and shout out Mr.

Putnam.

If he ever listens to this, I would be amazed.

Who he would teach us what he called 21st century skills.

So he said, I can't, I don't know what jobs will be on the market when you go do your career.

Like, and this, we were in high school, so we were going to be in the job market in a couple of years.

But his premise was he can't predict even two years in advance what jobs will be available because technology is changing so much.

So, what my engineering teacher did was he didn't just focus on the technical skills you need to understand to be an engineer.

He's like, there's this whole list, and I wish I knew them off the top of my head, but I don't, of 21st century skills you need to have to be prepared for the job market of the future.

And the reason why I bring this up is because when we talked with Carly today, so much of our conversation was about we can't predict the future, so how do we prepare?

And it's with these types of skills that you try to embrace now that can help prepare you for the future, even though you don't know what's in store.

Yeah, we talked about change management a lot, but I thought it was really cool that we also pivoted the conversation into change leadership and what that looks like and how to establish that trust and authenticity within your team so they trust you while you lead them into this new era of who knows.

The future has always been unpredictable, but as we get into the realm of AI, it's becoming even harder to see even just a few months ahead.

So what I loved about our conversation today with Carly is that she basically gave us this playbook or a roadmap, which she would hate me saying, of how to prepare your team for what's in store, even though you don't know what's in store.

So as Rose mentioned, she calls this change leadership.

And it's about what you need to know as a leader to be present with your team as they go through this transformation and how you can help guide your team through this.

So actual practical tips and steps.

for guiding your team through change, even as things are in flow.

You know, the job market is becoming more unpredictable.

The career you've been in for the last decade is going to look different in even just a couple months.

I like what she, I like the analogy she used about big companies too.

Like really big companies are like a really big ship.

It's going to take a long time to even just make a slight turn.

Like it takes like 30 minutes to make a right turn.

So I appreciate that perspective and how much effort and intention needs to come from leaders within big organizations when it comes to change management.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or they try to make the turn and they get stuck in the canal.

Totally.

Yeah.

They're like, oh,

before we let you guys get to the interview, please hit the like button, hit subscribe, head to Lacey's LinkedIn page, spam her comments, let her know exactly what companies, what leaders you would like to see us interview next, and what questions you'd like answered.

Yes, please do it.

And without further ado, here's Carly Bissler of McKesson.

Carly, welcome to Experts of Experience.

Thank you very much.

Happy to be here.

Yeah, I'm so excited you're here.

Now tell me,

for our listeners out there who are unfamiliar, what is McKesson?

We are often the biggest company that you don't know anything about unless you're in the healthcare field.

So we work within healthcare.

We supply all kinds of services and

products to your healthcare provider.

My specific business unit works with

to supply all of the medical supplies, devices,

everything, I like to say everything from band-aids to major pieces of medical equipment to your doctor's office, to your home health facility within your community.

And so we have our hands in everything.

Now that I've said it, though, you can never un-hear or unsee McKesson.

Yep.

Go to your doctor's office and count all the ways.

So it just, once you see it, you cannot unsee us.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure.

For sure.

And what I find interesting, though, is like your personal background is, isn't your history is not with like these hands-on products.

So could you share a little bit about your history and how you got to McKesson?

Sure.

So I spent most of my career actually, I kind of stumbled into product to technology at all.

I was a psych major in college.

And

a side note, that has served me quite well.

I was going to ask you about that.

When I saw that on your LinkedIn, I was like, oh, like there's so many people we've talked to that have this like little hidden background that they were a psych major or they, you know, like studied psychology in some capacity.

And I can only imagine how helpful that's been given your career choice.

It has.

For a long time, I didn't think it really did, but it turns out it really, it's in everything, right?

It's in leadership.

It's in the way that we support each other.

And it's really big in product.

It is how we think about our customers and how our customers think about our product, understanding the social psychology dimensions of that.

Funny story, my, I have an older sister and she was a business major.

And when I was in college, she told me, you know, you have to take, just take one business class.

And I was like,

I don't need to take a business class.

I didn't.

Probably regret that.

And you didn't take any business classes in college?

I did eventually go back and get my master's.

But sorry, detour of.

of how everything started.

So yeah, I worked for a company called CEB or Corporate Executive Board.

And then we were acquired by Gartner.

So I kind of stumbled into business.

I stumbled into technology

and it was a need that the organization had.

I was kind of a jack of all trades for a while and stumbled into it and really built my career around that.

And then found McKesson as I was looking for that next opportunity and started here at McKesson just before the pandemic, which was an interesting time

to come into the organization.

To a healthcare company specifically.

Yeah.

Wow.

And we played a big part of getting vaccines out,

supporting the healthcare professionals across the whole country during that time.

Such a difficult time as we look back on it.

Such a transformative time in the organization, you know, both in our organization, in the country,

and in healthcare as we see it today.

So much in the industry has shifted.

Yeah.

Well, and with that, I imagine you kind of got thrown into the fire, right?

You switch roles.

You go from something pretty different to now you're in healthcare.

Now there's like this huge, you know, world-stopping event that occurs around healthcare.

So I can only imagine how quickly you had to learn to be able to assist in the role that you're in now.

Yeah, for sure.

It was, it was definitely all in, dive headfirst

into what is going on in the world.

It was nice that I had the tech background.

I had most of the systems that I came into working with.

I had previous experience with, and had been working in that space, oh gosh, for about 12 years by the time, 12, 13 years by the time I came over to McKesson.

So I had had a lot of that tech background.

I had a lot of the both from a work perspective, as well as I have a master's in technology management.

And so kind of had the foundational pieces.

But yeah, then to think about how do we actually supply all of these materials that are needed in a time that the supply was so important.

Yeah.

And what does your day-to-day look like now

for your job role?

I love that question and also

hate that question.

Everything is so different, right?

Like, yeah, yeah.

We were talking about this recently because we were talking just about career development within the team.

And we have a lot of team members who aspire to continue to grow and to be a leader within our product organization.

And, you know, we kind of joke around sometimes about, do they really want, is that really the role that they want to do?

Yeah.

Because there is a lot of, there's just a lot of stuff.

You know, there's a lot of whack-a-mole.

There's a lot of things that pop up that need to be dealt with.

But I would say the top two things that if I think about the value that I provide or anybody would provide in this role, first and foremost, it's relationship building across the organization.

And part of that relationship building is clearing paths.

So there's always something that's going to come up.

There's always a blocker, whether that be

on the change management side, whether that be on the internally facing product side.

So, you know, how do we get our users to use what we're using?

How do they see value in what we're using?

And then on the customer side, you know, how do we support our customers in using our products?

How do we leverage all of the different organizational teams that support in that process, as well as building and maintaining relationships with our technical partners?

So for product management on my side, we are full business.

We are separate from the IT organization,

but we work with them and it's almost a relationship.

like a

life relationship.

It's almost like a marriage, right?

You have people

to be honest about what you're seeing.

they have to be honest about what they're seeing to work towards the end goal really

in a streamlined way and so a lot of my day is spent in that relationship building relationship management space and then you know working with our our senior leaders ensuring that we've got the right capacity the right resources that we need in order to to stay aligned on the the strategic priorities.

What I find interesting about the seat that you're in is that it's not like a maintenance seat.

You're not just trying to maintain what currently is operating, right?

You're trying to simultaneously keep things operating and maintaining those relationships while transforming them as, you know, new technologies come online, new products are released.

So it's like this constant run that you have to keep doing.

You can't just be like, oh, we did it.

We've successfully done all the things that we've done.

Now you need to keep, okay, how do we transform this?

How do we move this forward?

What new thing do we need to look out for?

So I just commend you.

I think it's a very fascinating space that you're in.

Yeah.

And a lot of the things that I'm, you know, we're talking about, whether I'm talking about it with our partners or my team is talking about it with their internal stakeholders and partners.

There's a lot of matrix matrices in the way that we address or the way that we look at our products at our capabilities.

Our product managers are aligned not just by system, but by function.

So, not internal function, but the function of that system or function of that product.

So, they may have a piece of the way that our customers interact with us from a service standpoint.

And so, they would own that.

And they own, usually that's mostly centered within one system.

They may work really closely with somebody else, but our customer service team could cross several different product managers that they're working with.

And at the same time, the one person who's responsible for how our customers engage with customer service,

they would be, they'd be working with several different partners, both internally and externally, in order to get the information that they need.

So there's this constant,

there's this constant trying to figure out, like, okay, this is my space.

I need to make sure that I'm fully

understanding and

understand all the pieces and parts that go into that space while doing enough both customer management, both external and internal customer management,

as well as supporting those groups and bringing in some of their peers as needed to be able to answer all of the individual questions.

Wow.

Just so many dots that need to be connected for all of those things.

Like, oh my goodness.

Wow.

So, Carla, I know when we spoke last, you mentioned organizational transformation is something that you're really passionate about and interested in.

What is coming up top of mind for you right now as organizations are embracing AI and all the other new technologies that are coming online?

And it might not just be technology facing, but also like emotionally or relationship wise.

Like what things are you seeing that maybe are concerning you or exciting you?

And maybe it's like all of it.

Yeah, for sure.

So, you know, I worked for big organizations.

I've always worked for fairly large organizations.

And for all of those out there who also work for fairly large organizations

or have done so, we're not the fastest to turn, right?

You're a little like a huge ship, right?

It takes 20 to 30 minutes to turn the ship.

It takes time.

It takes some effort and not just effort, but that kind of pre-planning.

And

so as fast as technology is moving forward, as fast as AI is continuing to iterate,

You know, how do we get our teams to feel comfortable making that turn?

Otherwise, they're going to turn in a year from now, two years from now, and the technology is going to be way past that by that point.

Yep.

And so I've been thinking a lot about not just change management, right?

Not just training and communications, but change leadership.

So

how do we as leaders within the organization and honestly, how does as you know, the center being product, how do we help our leaders across the organization help their teams make that transition, feel more comfortable in that transition

faster?

Because the technology is going to be beyond where we are if we're not able to move as quickly as possible.

I like that distinction of change management to change leadership.

And you kind of explained it there, but could you just kind of define what you mean by change leadership?

Like maybe an example or just how you would sort of paint that picture of what the difference is between those two things.

Yeah.

So, when we think about leadership, when I think about leadership and leadership style, right?

Your team gets so much from the little things that you do.

Your team takes direction, they understand,

and they feel more informed.

They can get nervous about something.

If you're nervous about something, they can

be at ease because you're at ease as know change happens or as something's going on within the organization a message that you're trying to deliver they can get excited because you're excited about it and you're conveying that excitement um and so i really think about that change the leadership portion of change is not just

telling your team what's coming, is not just asking them to attend a training, but it's truly living the change, living and delivering the message that you want them to actually execute on.

And that goes down to their core of being.

Now we're getting to my psych background.

This plot comes into play.

Sure.

So, you know, it is part.

It is a part.

It's a part of how we all operate.

And it's not just for you to convey those things, but you as a leader also have to go through your own processing of the fact that things are changing.

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I think something that I've heard recently talked about a lot is how much trust is needed for this, right?

Because if I'm a leader and I'm coming to you and I'm saying, hey, I am, I maybe I am living the thing, I am doing the AI thing, I am showing you how technology works, like I'm embodying it.

But if I don't have this trust built with my team where they like trust that the decisions I'm making are for their best interest, trust that the decisions that are being made are for the customer's best interest, trust that, you know, XYZ thing would occur if I did, you know, what they, whatever they've guided.

So

I just, I think that's a really important piece of all of this is like, I can't just, as a leader, come to you and say, here's the game plan.

If that team doesn't respect you and have that trust for you out the gate, then it won't mean a lot and they won't be bought in quite as much.

So I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit too, about how important trust building is with leadership.

Trust, I would also say authenticity, right?

Yeah.

Maybe more so in this case than trust.

You know, trust is,

my opinion, trust is table stakes.

You know, your team has to trust you as a leader.

They have to trust you as a manager, feel comfortable coming to you.

But really being authentic about how do you get yourself to be excited about

AI coming into your CS.

Yeah, not just, not just playing the role of someone who's excited.

Exactly.

Your team knows that.

I mean,

people know that.

Nobody gets a leadership job because you're a good actor.

You're in the wrong career at that point.

So, you know, they, your team sees it and they know.

And so, you know, actually, like, how do you get yourself over that change curve?

How do you get yourself past those things that are concerning?

You know, there's certainly, there's certainly a lot of unknown as we go into this space.

And unknown for a lot of reasons.

What advice would you have for leaders that are trying to get past that hurdle themselves internally?

Like what tools or what tips would you give them to help them get through that acceptance phase first?

So then they can go deliver that to their team.

Yeah, you got to work, you're going to work through it, but I think there's a knowledge gap in a lot of cases.

Yeah, I agree.

So yeah, I'd say there's kind of two parts to it.

One is the change, the emotional side.

And then the other side is the knowledge side.

And you have to work through the emotional side.

Some of that is by building the knowledge and feeling comfortable with it.

But some of that is also time.

Like the emotional side is sometimes time.

You gotta give yourself time to process through it.

Ideally, not get stuck in one of the little fun change curves that you have.

But gaining the knowledge, experimenting with it yourself.

If you've got questions, make sure that you're reading up on it.

And even better with AI.

Ask Chat JBT to explain it to you, right?

Now you're killing two birds with one stone.

You get to both learn about it and you get some hands-on experience with the benefit that it could actually provide.

Yeah.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

So what you've kind of described is sort of this like inside out transformation, right?

Like in order for us to have any kind of external impact in a way that makes a lot of sense and is quick and

quick, as fast as we can move when we're in large organizations, right?

It requires having this sort of internal shift occur first, which is not new.

We know this with like any any technology adaptation or technology adoption that we need to have, you know, buy-in from the team internally.

But I am wondering how you think about doing that with the team.

So, let's say I am a leader, I've gone through this acceptance phase, I've used GPT, I've increased my knowledge a little bit about this.

I feel bought in, I feel excited.

How am I spreading that excitement to others?

How am I getting them interested in it?

What kind of tools can I provide them so they're increasing their knowledge and also bought in?

So yeah, like once we get past the, I'm a leader and I've accepted this new technology, how do I get my team to do the same?

Yeah.

So

I personally find sharing the ways that I'm using it or asking other leaders to share, you know, hey, this, this peer of mine is using it in this way.

My boss is using it in this way and sharing that.

Cause a lot of people don't think about it.

It's using AI in your day-to-day life.

And I'm talking generally, I'm talking about generative AI that most people at this point have something at their fingertips on it.

But, you know, it is change.

It's change.

It's not one-time change.

It's not a, okay, you know, you're going to go through training and now use this system.

It is, okay, when I go to write an email, do I start with myself or do I let ChatGPT or whatever version you have, compiler or whatever, do that for me initially?

Then I go back and edit.

I still bring my own version to it, but sharing some of that, sharing the way that that you're using it will help others to think about using it in a different way.

I've been trying to do that a lot with my team, using some of that during our team meetings as well.

We have got a chat, an ongoing chat for the team and really encouraging people when I hear about it to post in there and share how they're using it.

I mean, most of my team is using it to help write user stories, to for sure, to write all of their user acceptance criteria.

And that takes, that takes a good amount of time away from their day that allows them to still focus on the things that make them really good at their job.

Generally, you don't have a product manager who's really good at their job because only because they're good at writing user acceptance criteria.

For sure.

Or really at, you know, that's kind of just part of it.

And if they can offload that and, you know, still add their own contacts and obviously perforate and make sure that it still fits.

But, you know, it allows them to focus on the things that that human brings to the table.

I like that your team is doing this kind of publicly, like publicly amongst your guys', you know, in your team.

And you said it was a Slack channel that you're using or what it, how are you guys doing?

We've got a team channel.

Teams.

Okay.

You have a Teams channel set up.

I think that's so cool because a lot of people, and maybe we're getting past this hurdle.

So

maybe this will become outdated in like a week when people listen to this.

But I feel like there's still a little bit of shame associated with using AI, especially generative AI.

Like it's a little, I feel a little guilty to say I used AI to write that email for me.

So I think you as a leader coming right out and saying, no, I am using it.

And here's all the ways that I am using it.

And I'm so excited that we get to use it this way makes it easier for the team to go do those things and share it with you that they've been successful in doing that.

I think a lot of people still want to be able to put their name on stuff and they feel like they can't if AI helped them write it or help them do whatever, which I disagree with.

I think it's human plus AI.

Together, you've formed this thing.

But yeah, I definitely love this idea of like doing it super publicly with your team.

Yeah, it's interesting as you were talking about that.

I'm like, I don't know that I've ever, I don't know that I, I get, I didn't get on the shame board.

You didn't get on the shame train?

No, no, no.

I actually find that it's more shameful not to be using it.

I save time in my day.

I have too many things to do.

I save time in my my day and did this thing.

And I use the emerging technology.

I don't know.

Can we still call it?

I mean, it's every day there's something new with it.

So it's like constantly emerging, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, and I use this thing and I got my job done faster.

And I think that's great.

Yeah.

I wasn't on the shame train.

Yeah.

Oh, for sure.

That's good.

That's good.

When we were talking last, Carly, you mentioned there was a story of a customer product that you saw launch in record time by using some of these new technologies.

What was the the internal reaction and what were some lessons that you saw when this happened?

Yeah, it was a really interesting experience.

Every organization that I've ever been at, and every organization that I've ever worked closely with, there is this rhetoric around IT is slow, right?

It takes so long to get the thing that we want.

And so that kind of just spins, especially your internal-facing technologies.

And so

we recently heard a story around a new product being able to launch really quickly and really quickly within the organization.

And, you know, normally the product would have taken at least a year to get off the ground.

And the team launched it in four months,

which is awesome, right?

That's what we all want.

That's what we've been complaining about for so long.

Yeah, IT moved fast.

Yay.

Right.

And the organization really struggled with the change.

Now, it wasn't perfect, right?

There's There's some learning experiences that happened,

you know, as we're coming to expect, but the organization really struggled with the change.

And some of the things that we heard were, well, you know, we didn't, we didn't go through, you know, 10,000 different test cases.

Well, we did.

You may not have tested every single case that you could possibly think of, but those cases were tested.

The other things that we heard, it just came from fear.

You know, what if this doesn't work?

You know, we just kicked it off.

We didn't, what if we didn't have enough time to go through all of the processes that we normally do?

And a lot of those things were sped up.

And so it was really eye-opening to me to watch the organization go through.

a, we want this thing, we want this thing, we want this thing.

And then to understand

that we as non-IT members of the organization then struggled with that change.

And a lot of that came from

fear about how we could possibly move forward.

And honestly, I think some of that also came from what we're experiencing across the board with AI and that

fear of unknown and a little bit of fear of what is my place in this space where AI is moving so rapidly

and potentially could take some of the work that I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I've heard this,

I guess I shouldn't say I've heard this on the show because most of the people that we talk to do not have that

fear from inside them, just like how you weren't on the shame train, right?

A lot of people don't have that fear because they're interested in these technologies and they're eager to, you know, embrace them.

But I see it looking in on like news articles or on LinkedIn and all the posts about AI and the fear that's there.

So there's definitely this thread of fear that is growing in organizations.

The fear of losing,

losing your job due to AI is real.

And there's no way around it.

The work that we do, the work that we as humans do

in a corporate setting with AI coming into place

is going to change.

And it's not clear what way it's going to change.

And that is that is fearful.

And that is fearful for a lot of people.

And I think as we go back to change leadership, the change that every leader is going to have to deal with within themselves is the fear that they have in the back of their mind of whether AI is going to take their job or it's going to take their employees' job or it's going to change their job in some way, shape or form that they're not ready for.

And then recognize the fact that everybody on your team is also having those same fears.

And they may not be having them about themselves.

Maybe they're having them about their spouse or their children coming into the workforce.

You know, we just,

there's not a good answer for it at this point, other than we need to know and we need to recognize that everybody's going to go through that process of fear for themselves.

And holding empathy for your team, no matter where they might be, right?

And just being able to say, rather than say, oh, your fear is silly, right?

Which I see a lot of that rhetoric in response to these LinkedIn posts, right?

You shouldn't be scared, or just go upskill yourself.

Like, it's not that easy.

I don't know how to upskill myself, or I don't know which skill will still be relevant in a year.

So, how am I supposed to know?

Um, so I think just holding lots of empathy for your team and for yourself and for their partners or friends or family that are going to be going through these things is going to be the path forward for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's not a good answer.

There's not a, you know, oh, it's fine.

Everything's going to be fine.

Yeah.

It isn't going to be for some folks.

um i do think that knowledge is power i do think that focusing on resiliency and adaptability within your teams within within your organization as a leader are things that will serve everybody well uh no matter what you know what path forward we have

One of the things that I experienced a lot at a previous organization was really rewarding folks who found an innovative path, even if that innovative path meant getting rid of their own job.

And it was pretty well known that if you found a way to get rid of your team, get rid of your function, get rid of your own role, the organization would find you something else, right?

You weren't out.

And in fact, that was a really great way to grow within the organization, that innovation.

And I think a lot of organizations don't have that or have lost that, but letting people know that that if they find those things, if they innovate, if they, if they're at the forefront of it, that it's going to mean good things for them versus that self-production.

Yeah.

Well, and then they try to hide like, oh, I don't want to show you that I'm using generative AI to help make this 10 times faster for me.

Right.

Yeah.

Cause I'm afraid then you'd be like, why do I need you?

And instead of that conversation, you can be like, look, boss, I completely replaced myself.

Yeah.

What can I do next?

I'm eager for another role in the company.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Oh.

What I like about this too is a good segue to another question I had for you, which is about how these companies can encourage more change in the organizations.

We talked about, you know, massive ship can only turn slowly right now.

So how do we flex that change muscle in a big organization so we can be quick and agile in a way that startups can be?

Yeah.

Everybody's job is going to be innovation, right?

We all have to look within our own role.

We have to look within

processes that we touch, that we see, that we interact with to find a better outcome, find better ways of doing things and seeing those better ways of doing things, seeing that new technology in that space as assets to the organization, not as a cost center.

And, you know, fostering that innovation, rewarding that innovation, not just a one-time reward,

but letting people build their careers on innovation.

With this shift that you just spoke about from AI as a, did you say as a tool to an asset?

To a cost center to an asset.

Yeah.

Okay.

AI as a cost center to an asset.

Can you talk to me a little bit more about like that shift and what you mean by that?

Yeah.

So thinking, and this is not mine.

I should preface this.

This was.

Oh, yeah.

No, no, no.

Claim it.

It's yours now.

My computer.

So, you know, thinking about

the things that we are creating, the

AI that we are creating and putting into the organization, not as discrete or individual projects that have a start and an end and have a cost and a set ROI that ends at some point.

But really thinking about these the same way that we would think about a human asset and the fact that that asset is going to get better over time, is going to give back to the organization over time, is going to continue to grow and improve and change over time and increase their scale.

And seeing it that way

is a mind shift change that I'm still trying to honestly get my head wrapped around.

And what that actually means as a product leader, what does that actually mean for our products?

What does that mean for designing our

next 12 months?

I don't want to call it a a roadmap, but our next 12 months of five months, three months of work.

And

how do we do not just AI first, but really think about the assets that we're adding to the organization and the continuous benefit that those will drive?

Yeah, I think that's a really important shift because it is so easy just to see it as like, okay, one and done.

Like I'm going to invest in AI and then I'm done, or I'm going to invest in this tool and then I'm done.

But because they get better and better and better over time, like the tool that you've invested it in right now will

10X, 100X, whatever.

In five years, it'll be a completely different story of what it's doing for you and your organization.

So, yeah, it is a lot like when you hire a person and you teach them, and over the years, they get smarter and better at it.

And so, I think that's a really interesting shift.

And it is hard for me to conceptualize that still,

but I think we'll start to see it a lot more in action.

Yeah.

I almost shuddered when you said five years.

I'm like, oh my gosh, like five months.

Five months.

Yeah, I know.

Well, no, but but can you imagine in five years?

Like, where are we going to be in five years?

It's, it's wild.

I'm so excited and, and horrified.

It's like both of those things.

Well, and back to fear, like, what does it actually mean?

We don't know yet.

But five years is, feels really long from now.

Think about and how the world changes.

It is, it is sort of a fun, I guess, question to ponder sometimes.

Like, can I guess what it will be like in five years?

Because this is a question, you know, what's your, what's, what are the trends you're betting on for the next five years?

That's a question we've asked podcast guests for like a decade because we've been hosting these shows for about 10 years.

And, you know, for the first eight years of us asking that question, it was like a fair question to ask.

Like, oh, yeah, what will it be like in five years?

And now I ask that question and it's not a fair question at all because no one can predict anything.

Like we can barely see to your point five months out.

It's pretty wild.

It is wild.

And

yeah, I mean, where, where does it?

I was hoping you weren't going to ask me that question.

I don't know.

I don't, I have no idea.

I'm excited to see what happens, but I don't know.

Yeah.

Rose, do you have any questions you want to ask?

This is a really broad question.

It might be a little elementary for the conversation we're having about AI, but I was wondering, Carly, if there's a thought leader in the space that you recommend people follow, or if there's a book that's really inspired a lot of your leadership and like change leadership and change management philosophy.

I personally learn best

by experimenting and will get like little pieces of bits and pieces, especially from a leadership perspective.

Not just experimenting on my own, but picking up little bits and pieces from leaders that I admire, leaders that I have worked with over my career.

There are little bits and pieces of, you know, I'm an amalgamation of.

of all of the experiences and all of the people that I've that I've gotten a chance to work with.

I've worked with some amazing leaders over the years.

And here at McKesson, it's a whole different level of leadership that has a really interesting mix of leaders who are really passionate about the leadership that they bring and really strong leaders in their specific area or in their space.

connected really closely with the mission that we have within the organization of supporting healthcare across the country.

And I've never experienced that type of connection.

Every company is like tied to their mission, but that really intrinsic,

everybody's just here,

not just to further their career

and to do a good job, because that's why we all come to work, right?

But really about the mission and really about how can we support health care and support healthcare for everybody in this country, especially as that landscape is so changing.

My follow-up question would be if you had to identify a through line, a pattern or a characteristic of these leaders, would it be a very clear vision or a commitment to that mission that you described just now?

Or would it be a commitment to establishing trust and authenticity within their teams?

I think that authenticity is there because of their established connection to the mission and the fact that it always comes back to our customers and our customers, the patients that our customers serve.

And so it does always come back.

And that

authenticity is so present with every single one of them.

But they're different.

They're different people.

They have different lenses.

They have different approaches.

I think that's the best part is because you can kind of pick and choose little bits and mises that work based on the leadership style that you're trying to build and based on the leadership situation that you're in at the time that makes sense authenticity is one of those buzzwords right now i feel like we're seeing everywhere but i really like the picture you're painting kind of like what it actually looks like in practice yeah yeah yeah i was just having a conversation with one of my direct reports around this topic of finding a mentor I have a lot of mentors, right?

I go to this person and bounce ideas off of them about this situation, or I talk to this person about that situation, or how am I handling this thing over here or that thing over there?

And, you know, you start to build your, it's a committee, right?

It's a committee of people who support you and surround you versus that one person.

Maybe this is controversial, but I feel like that idea of this one single mentor is going to, you know,

you're going to ask them to be your mentor is kind of antiquated.

Like, how do you identify that committee that's around you?

And whether they know it or not, they're supporting you in that way and they're helping to to grow you, grow your career.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I sat in on an interview recently with Jill Kress, who's the CMO of H ⁇ R Block, and she actually brought up networking and this idea of community.

And she was like talking about how the younger generations, ironically, chronically online, using social media all the time, but don't really take advantage of networking.

or community building within their career.

So I feel like that really ties to her

point really nicely.

And it's a constant reminder for me to take advantage of not necessarily focus on one person being your mentor, but building that community yeah and i would say the same thing that is similar to my approach for product right it is it's not that you have that one person internally who's going to tell you all the things right you don't have one customer that you go to asking them how should i build my e-commerce platform for you right you're you have to take in all the information around you

you have to get you know, feelers out in the different spaces and understand how things will resonate.

And, you know, leadership is the same way.

Like the way that you kind of present yourself is the same way.

It's like, how do you bring all of that stuff together and understand as inputs to understand how it plays out for yourself?

That makes sense.

So we talked a lot about transformation in an organization internally.

And I think this is really important right now with what's going on in AI as technology continues to accelerate.

How can we be ready as a team for those changes, especially when we, as we said, can't predict what those changes are going to be, right?

So what are the skills my team needs to have to be ready as best as they can be?

But we've talked a lot internally and I want to go a little externally now.

So like whenever this is done right, this is done well, what does the CX impact actually look like?

From a customer's perspective, what are they seeing after we've gone through this whole internal, you know, transformation?

More and more people are actually used to using AI in their day-to-day than they may know, right?

Like think about the last time you Googled something.

Are you just using keywords to return the results?

Are you starting to actually phrase out that question?

Because Gemini is there and it's going to give you the answer.

I moved recently and I needed an answer to, hey, how can I get

this process set up at my new house?

And I had to go through FAQs to find it.

What?

Why do I have to read all of this?

Like, why can't I just ask the question?

And unfortunately, Gemini didn't respond, didn't give me just the answer.

It pointed me to the FAQ page and I had to go read something.

But our customers are already doing that.

We're already moving down that path.

Like, you may not realize that you're using AI, but you're starting to use AI in the way that you interact with systems already.

So what that looks like to the customer is that it just feels normal.

right it feels like the way that they're interacting with everything else it feels like me not having to go read three pages of a FAQ document to find my answer.

It means I'm getting that answer immediately.

It means that, it means you're anticipating what your customer needs and what that customer, best ways to support that customer in some cases, ideally, before they need to ask the question, right?

You know, we have all the data.

You know, when your customer's order is delayed.

You know, when there's something going off, you know, going funky.

And

so, how do you start to anticipate some of those things?

And so, from the customer's perspective, it feels normal.

It doesn't feel different than what they're experiencing elsewhere.

I'd also add,

I have spent most of my career internally facing, so I'm going to go back to that in a little bit.

But, similar to what the customer is experiencing, at some point, we all know that

there's an end to using AI to get your questions answered.

There is an end to that personalization that

an AI agent can do for you right now.

That may change over time, but as of right now, there is an end to that.

And our customer service teams, our customer experience teams,

whatever your organization has them set up as,

they are so valuable to your customer because they're human, because I can get a hold of somebody because it's a real person who understands and has empathy and reacts to me and knows who I am and values me as a customer of theirs.

And that's why the human being in it is important.

And I don't, I have a hard time.

This is probably not going to...

kind of play back well, but I have a hard time in that five-year mark.

I have a hard time seeing that we lose that personal touch.

I have a hard time seeing that we lose that

sales boots on the ground interacting with our customers, that customer experience person, whoever that happens to be.

I have a hard time seeing that

the value that the human brings to.

those types of relationships and interactions goes away.

AI can help with those easy things.

AI can help to arm your person, whoever that person is that's working with the customer, to

know who you are when you call, right?

And to pull up all the things that you may be concerned about and to make sure that I know when I'm talking to Lacey that I know why, you know, what makes you a valuable customer and I'm able to convey that to you.

It helps me to solve the problem really easily and make that feel better.

But there's still a human touch there.

I agree.

I agree.

Yeah, I just had an experience with FedEx where I missed the delivery.

Like, I needed to sign for it.

And I was home.

I must have just been like, you know, you're like ready for it.

You're like, I got a four-hour window.

I'm going to be there.

And whatever.

Maybe I'm getting the dogs from the backyard.

I have no idea how I missed him, but I did.

And so I called FedEx and immediately I'm able to get a hold of someone.

You know, I went through some of their chatbot stuff.

They realized the chatbot was like, I realize I can't solve this for you.

Gives me the number.

I call them.

I'm not even on hold.

I immediately get a pickup answer from a human.

And they immediately know my name, my address.

They know exactly what time the delivery is missed.

They know exactly where it's at.

And I didn't have to explain anything to them.

They just had all of that in their system.

So like, I'm impressed at what.

these tools are doing to help support these agents.

But in that moment when I was kind of frustrated, that I'm like, oh, how did I miss this?

I didn't want to talk to a chatbot.

I did exactly what you just said, Carly.

I wanted to to speak to a human.

I wanted to just get my frustration out, figure out what was going on and have it resolved immediately.

And they were able to do it in like a two-minute phone call.

So I don't see that getting replaced.

And maybe in five years, you and I can re-listen to this and see if we're wrong, but I don't see that getting replaced.

Yeah.

And the reality is, is then you can scale your humans to be able to do those things

because you have the agents that are handling the noise.

They're handling the little things that you don't, that a human isn't valuable in.

Your human is not valuable in telling you your order status over and over and over again.

The human is valuable when you've missed the delivery or when something's gone wrong and you need that extra touch and support to the customer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was great.

And it was so sweet too, because the guy that answered the phone was like, oh, I love your name.

It's so nice, so cool.

And like immediately I'm like, okay, I was kind of like annoyed, but now you flattered me.

And so like, shout out to FedEx.

They're doing a good job training their team over there.

Yeah.

And they're, you know, behind the scenes from their transcript sediment is like, oh, she liked that answer.

We're going to do that again later.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And it was so nice.

It was like, it didn't sound scripted.

You know, sometimes people are being nice and it sounds super scripted, but it was actually like.

an emotional nice moment.

So, or at least I'm going to pretend it is because it made me feel good.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, and then if you think back to the conversation that we were just having around fear, right?

That's what we need to focus on.

You know, we're not replacing people.

We're allowing the humans to be the things that we know humans are really good at.

And we're good at being humans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hopefully.

Hopefully most of us are.

Sorry if you're a cyborg listening in 10 years.

We're not talking about you.

Well, Carly, this has been so, so much fun.

Rose, I want to hand it over to you.

I know you've got a lightning round.

And Carly, this is like some quick hits.

Rose is going to ask some questions and you just tell us your answers as we go through the line.

All right.

I'll do my best.

Yeah, absolutely.

We always say lightning round, but we're like,

we're so slow with it.

Yeah, we're like, take your time.

Make sure you think about it.

And if there's one you'd like to skip or you don't have an answer for it, then we can always just cut it out.

Okay.

So, first question for the lightning round, Carly.

What's one soft skill that will become a CX superpower in the AI era?

Well, we've talked about authenticity.

And I would say that's that, you know, being a human is good, right?

We've said that that's the value that you provide is still being a human.

Honestly, I would say adaptability, right?

Things are changing.

Roles are going to change.

The organization is going to change.

The way that the organization goes to market is going to change.

You know, for some of us, more so than probably others, industries are going to change.

And so being able to adapt quickly.

That's a great one.

All right.

Number two, what's one buzzword in tech or CX that you would love to retire?

Okay, this isn't a buzzword, but the first thing that came to my head, and this is terrible for a product person to say, is roadmaps.

I'm over it.

As we talked about, what is going to happen in five years?

I don't know what's going to happen in three months.

I also probably don't know.

I focused my team a lot on replacing roadmaps this year with end goals, outcomes,

and focusing on that so we can iterate quickly, we can continue to drive towards something without laying out a litany of functionality that's all going to go out the window in three months.

So, that totally makes sense.

That's a good roadmaps.

Okay.

Uh, number three: what's the biggest red flag you see in how companies are preparing for AI right now?

Oh, boiling the ocean.

Oh, that's a buzzword, too, that we can get rid of.

Um, yeah, I would say, you know, trying to figure everything out before moving forward, right?

I'm, what are all my potential AI things that I could potentially do in someday, shape, or form?

And then, you know, build your five-year roadmap of how to get there.

The way that AI is working and how quickly it is, you got to get something out.

You got to work on a small thing, whatever that quick thing is that.

that's easy to get after.

Start small, start somewhere.

All right.

Last question for the lightning round.

What's one experience you've had recently as a customer that left you impressed?

I recently changed doctors and moved to

a concierge practice which is a whole different thing that um if you don't know much about it it's worth looking into it's a it's an interesting direction that healthcare is going in and when i walk into their the doc's office i don't have to sign in they know who i am as soon as i walk in take you know it can be taken right back and you know the the doctor the whole idea of concierge medicine is that uh you pay essentially a subscription so the doctors then can keep their patient lists smaller and they know everything.

The doctors know everything.

They know everything about you.

They've already done the research.

They've already read every single piece of your medical history.

The AI has read every single piece of your medical history and summarized it for them, but they know they have it and it is so personalized to who you are.

It is an interesting space.

The tools that they are using, I'm hoping that they bring to everyday practices to make it easier for your normal doctor to have to provide that type of experience.

But it is just different.

It's so different.

They're without needing to ask, they are looking and paying attention to research coming out and proactively reaching out.

It's a totally different world.

Wow.

It's a totally different world, although it's what doctors used to be back in the day

when they actually had time to go through and a smaller patient list and so um it's a it's an interesting direction well hopefully yeah to your point ai can help support yeah like normal doctors being able to do that right it's a fascinating space paying attention to the way that ai is actually uh hitting into some of those those areas for the first time

probably a couple months ago, the first time since the pandemic, we saw doctors feedback on

their potential burnout rate starts to drop again.

And so, they are the medical profession took a huge hit during COVID and after.

Short staff, everything kind of just really hit that community really hard.

And so, a lot of the reasons why they cited in the survey that people are feeling better about it, doctors and healthcare professionals are feeling better in the space, is because of the addition of AI to take some of those

little things off of their plate that would take time away from them being able to see patients.

Yeah, that makes total sense.

And also being able to flag new research that comes out like, hey, this patient has these symptoms and da-da-da, they're dealing with these problems.

New research just came out that matches this.

And rather than them have to be up to date on everything by themselves, suddenly they just have a curated feed.

Definitely a cool space for sure.

It is a cool space.

There's a privacy space that's also.

Yeah, I don't want to go there.

I don't want to go there.

We talked to

this guy named Taylor that was just on our podcast about cybersecurity when it comes to healthcare records and people like dropping health records into Chat GPT.

And I'm like, ah, this is so sketchy.

I know.

So, yeah, I mean, that's a whole thing in and of itself.

But I feel pretty confident that there are tools out there that are taking that privacy concern super seriously.

My mother and dad work in government contracting still.

They haven't retired yet.

And they have just gotten the first rollout of it, like a GPT for military people,

AI for military.

Yeah.

So, like, I'm like, if, if the hopefully, right, if the military is using this, there's enough security

concerns, all those things have been addressed.

So, also hoping that from a healthcare perspective, we are able to have that kind of security.

Yeah.

And is it really that different from electronic medical records, right?

As long as it's a similar system that is kept

separate.

I mean, I hope that there's as little or, you know, similar concerns and enough security in place to do those things, but it can be really revolutionary for the experience that we all have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Rose, I'm sorry, I hijacked your lightning round.

No, you're good.

That was my last question.

So back over to you.

Carly, this has been amazing.

Thank you so much for taking the time and joining us.

Where can people find McKesson or where can they find you if they're interested in following up with you?

Yeah, thank you.

This was awesome.

So you can find me.

I'm on LinkedIn.

McKesson also, you can find us on our website.

For healthcare professionals, you can sign up for an account directly from our website.

And for non-healthcare professionals, for the consumer out there, we do have a shop on Amazon.

So you can search for McKesson products there and get us directly to your house.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you, Carly.