The Digital Project Manager

Innovation vs. Risk: How a Former Mastercard Exec Designs AI Strategy

• Galen Low

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When AI hype is shouting “anything is possible,” it’s easy for teams—especially in regulated, risk-aware orgs—to feel like innovation is either reserved for the “creative people” or only happens in labs behind closed doors. JoAnn Stonier makes the case that innovation isn’t a personality type—it’s a muscle. You can train it, but you also need permission, constraints, and a shared way of working so the results don’t devolve into chaos (or a pile of half-baked agents someone tries to “just unplug”).

This episode is a practical look at how to balance innovation with risk without turning your org into a two-headed “push-me pull-you” that never goes anywhere. The throughline: design thinking isn’t a tired framework—it’s the operating system that helps organizations create consistent, values-driven guardrails as AI becomes increasingly democratized across every function.

Resources from this episode:

Galen Low:

When it comes to AI transformation in the business world, can anyone be innovative? And if so, what are the ingredients and circumstances that can foster innovation?

JoAnn Stonier:

Innovation is a muscle that you need to exercise like any other, and so while I think anyone can be trained to be innovative, I don't know that it's an inborn native skill for every single business professional.

Galen Low:

I can't not ask you about the tension between innovation and risk because all the AI hype is saying anything is possible, but that doesn't mean that in practice we can just ignore risk.

JoAnn Stonier:

I do think for risk and innovation, you need a balance, right? You still have an organization you're operating. You still have customers who need to satisfy. In this time where you're transforming to the next generation of whatever your firm is gonna be, but you wanna manage the risks so that first you don't harm your baseline business. So managing the risks of your strategy, where you wanna go and applying that business strategy to then AI, your technology, your HR strategies, I think is really critical because then you can create your transformation roadmap.

Galen Low:

Why is design thinking more important than ever in the business world right now?

JoAnn Stonier:

You are placing tools into your employee's hands that they've never had before, that they can execute faster. So your employees can create agents that can do a series of tasks, and if you have not given them any design instruction into how those agents are created or how generative AI can be used, you are doing yourself a disservice because.

Galen Low:

Welcome to The Digital Project Manager podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence In the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay, today we are talking about the inherent tension between innovation and risk, and the role that design thinking can play in AI transformation strategy. We'll be stepping through how risk averse businesses can build a culture of innovation from the front lines right up to the boardroom. And we'll also be exploring some tactics for staying innovative when no one can really be quite sure what the world will look like in 10, five, or even two years time. With me today is JoAnn Stonier, Principal and Owner of Design at Work and former fellow of Data and AI at MasterCard. JoAnn is a global data expert and strategist who has created enterprise data strategy and management that ensure data innovation while navigating data risks. She has held titles ranging from Chief Operations Officer and Chief Privacy Officer at American Express, the Chief Data Officer and Fellow of AI and Data at MasterCard. She's also a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches strategy and operations to industry and military professionals through its CDAIO program. Oh, and she's also an adjunct professor at the Pratt Institute, where she teaches business law, intellectual property law, and business strategy as part of their design management master's program. But her true passion is in design and in what might seem to be like a puzzle piece that doesn't fit alongside her law degree and long tenure in the financial services industry. JoAnn's company, Design at Work, is a New York based interior design practice offering services to commercial and residential clients alike. But we'll get into why that's not as strange as it may seem later in this episode. JoAnn, thank you for joining me today.

JoAnn Stonier:

Thanks, Galen. It's a pleasure to be here.

Galen Low:

I was writing your intro and I was like, there's just so much here. And I'm like, I could shorten it, but I wouldn't be doing you justice. And I think it's all relevant. Thank you for coming on the show.

JoAnn Stonier:

I have to say it's the most thorough intro in a really long time, so it have me smile.

Galen Low:

Well, that's its own episode. We're done. No, we're good. You know, I really enjoyed talking to you. We've chatted before, but we chatted a little bit leading up to this as we were prepping. I know there's a lot of places that we can take this conversation. You are just like a wealth of knowledge, but just in case mostly to keep myself grounded, here's the little we roadmap that I've sketched out for us today. To start us off, I would just want to get your hot take on like a big hairy question that my listeners want to know the answer to. But then I'd also like to just unpack that and talk about three main things. Firstly, I wanted to talk about the role of design thinking in business strategy and why it's becoming even more important in the age of AI. Then I'd like to explore ways that teams and organizations can build a culture of innovation and risk management without feeling like they're falling behind. Then lastly, I'd like to just get your perspective on what the future looks like after the first few waves of transformation and the next few leaps of AI technology. Who will have won and who will have lost, how does that sound to you?

JoAnn Stonier:

Easy peasy questions.

Galen Low:

Yeah. Yeah. Simple coffee chat, you know, just a regular type of conversation that you'd have. No, I really wanted to tap into this wealth of knowledge because. You're somebody who has extensive experience in some of the things that are becoming so relevant today in all industries, especially in regulated industries, especially in financial services. But before I even get into that, I thought maybe I'd just start us off with like one big hairy question. I'll take a running start at it. So right now, businesses in every industry, and certainly in regulated industries like the financial services industry, they're all trying to transform their business models to keep pace with their competitors. Amidst disruption created by AI and other stuff. This is all stuff we know, but whereas the idea of innovation has for the past few decades been sold as like an advantage as well as something that like every business and every professional needs to aspire towards, it seems like the playing field is not always as flat as one might think. So my question is, when it comes to AI transformation in the business world, can anyone be innovative? And if so, what are the ingredients and circumstances that can foster innovation?

JoAnn Stonier:

Interesting question. So I think innovation is a muscle that you need to exercise like any other. And so while I think anyone can be trained to be innovative, I don't know that it's an inborn native skill for every single business professional. And when you think about it, many of our senior leaders. Have been trained to really think about risks. Right? And they come out of areas like finance, which is managing money. And we are tend to be risk adverse about losing money. Right? Or a lawyer, right? Who is risk adverse about breaking the law. Right? And then we have innovation labs, right where we put our innovators and creative thinkers. Or marketing or advertising, depending upon the industry you're in. Certainly if you're in entertainment or communications, you might be leaning a little bit more on the innovation scale, right? That's what people would think. But I do think that innovation means looking at things with fresh eyes and trying to understand what is different about where you are going compared to where you are today. So what is changing about your business model? What is changing about your value chain? Right now, as you alluded to, there's an awful lot changing, and it's not just AI. AI is the tool that is pushing us toward more change. Whether that's agentic AI, generative AI, your workplace is going to change. How you use people is gonna change. How you use technology is gonna change how your customers want to consume. Your product and service is going to change. And we've already been through a lot of change cycles, right? So we've watched, as our businesses have become less physical, more digital, right? I mean, you could see that over every previous holiday season of shopping. People have moved more to online from going in to stores, right? So if you are a retailer and you understand that, then the question is how do you wanna change that mix? How do you wanna balance that desire to still come in and have a fabulous experience in store, but also satisfy that desire to do? A fair amount of shopping through the digital world. Right? So innovation, the answer is yes. I think everyone can do it. Do I think people need to be trained up? Yes. And I also think they need permission to be creative. And I think that is a little bit harder when many executives left those creative juices way back to their early education, and they haven't picked up any kind of creativity along the way. They've been very busy managing the risks for their business.

Galen Low:

I really like that framing, especially the muscle thing. I was reading something on my LinkedIn feed and I think the quote was, don't compare your start to somebody else's middle. And I really like that idea that, yeah, sometimes we are a bit further away from our creative side. Our careers may have taken us that way. The industries that we work in may have taken us that way. And yeah, our day-to-day might be a little less creative, less innovative. We might be too close to it to actually be able to zoom out. There's that sort of like muscle atrophy as well. Even if you had it before, you might be building it again from scratch and others in the working world, they're gonna be at different stages. I did a small stint, a consultancy where we had an innovation hub, and at first I was skeptical and then it dawned on me what its purpose was. It's basically like you said, it's like a gym to help executive teams, leadership teams, and all sorts of industries just going to, you know, pump iron.

JoAnn Stonier:

A little bit of looseness, a little bit of freedom to kind of step away from the tried and true. Look, we need tried and true, right? We have different stakeholders that we are beholden to. We have shareholders, right? We have the investing public. We have our employees and our customers, so we need to deliver, right? There is the reason that business right is in business. We want to deliver and deliver really good results. And so innovation requires some risk, right? Because you're gonna try something new, you're gonna try something that may not work the first time, or the first prototype may be awful, right? And it's only the second or third one that's fantastic and really brings about change. But it means you need to reenter that sense of play and trying things, right? And kind of have that, you know, exploratory moment. So that you can actually design the better mouse trap, so to speak. So in this moment where AI is such a transformational tool that lets you have, I think in your innovation, you can iterate much faster. It's time to kind of unleash that piece of, you know, your toolkit.

Galen Low:

The other thing I really liked is the sort of ecosystem that you painted out is it's not just top down businesses trying to compete with one another by saying, you know, transform, be innovative do AI. There's also like the behavior of our customers, there's like expectations that have been set, like liquid expectations. I love your example of like, yeah, online shopping. I remember, you know, elbows out, it's, you know, boxing Week, you'd go down to the store, right? You'd line up, you'd like, you know, some people would stay overnight and now I haven't been to a store on Boxing Day in like a decade, right? It's like these expectations change and that's the other driver.

JoAnn Stonier:

It is. And your expectations not only of your customers, right? Your suppliers, your employees, what they're desiring, what they want. How they wanna work. All those things have been changing the business environment. Right? Before AI, we were talking about the issues with COVID and how employees wanted a different work environment, right? So we adapted to that. It's like there's always some type of change that we're innovating for. We just, at this particular moment, there's a confluence of a lot of different change, and so innovation begins to become more important. But it's also innovation at a faster pace, I think, than we've seen before.

Galen Low:

I wanna like dive deeper into that later on. You've mentioned a couple times this notion of, you know, the structure of an organization and like what the employee experience and what a leadership team needs to do. I wanna dive into that, but first I wanted to zoom all the way back out. Because I need to explain the puzzle piece that doesn't seem to fit because like you and I, we sat down together. I had tragically cut my lip, but you were a good sport and we had a great conversation. And while I held a bandage to my lip, you had just left your role at MasterCard as their chief fellow of data and AI. And you had said to me that now you can just have great conversations with great people and focus on your other passion design. Can you tell my listeners how your love for design translated into becoming a data and AI expert within some of the biggest financial institutions in the world and then back again?

JoAnn Stonier:

Sure. So it is the, one of these things is not like the others when I describe my background, although at this point in time, I think it makes more sense than ever. So. I'm happy that puzzle piece begins to slot in more effectively. So, as you mentioned, when you kindly introduced me, I have lots of different degrees, partly because I get bored easily, right? So I have a degree in computer science. I have a degree in accounting and finance. I'm a lawyer and all of these things have held me in very good stead in my career, right? So I've done a wide range of. Financial positions. Computer auditing was one of my first jobs. I was a financial analyst for a firm I've done work on like re-engineering and efficiency studies, and then obviously law. But when I became a privacy officer that I got exposed to data as a privacy lawyer. Right. And data. As a raw material of new products and solutions, right? Because the intranet, right, made all sorts of products become digital. And so all of these products and solutions had to be delivered digitally while we were also honoring people's personal information, right? So here I was a lawyer with all these backgrounds, right? But I also had a design degree. And this design degree came about partly because of the awful events of nine 11, right? So when I was very young before high school. I loved art. So speaking of innovation, I loved to create and I applied to an art high school and I got in and my parents though were like no. You're going to a traditional academic high school if you would like to pursue art, you can do that later, JoAnn, not now. And so when the events in nine 11 happened, and I worked at American Express at the time, so I was downtown and. There that day. I thought on the January of 2002, what haven't I ever pursued? Thinking of all the people that were no longer with us, that they didn't have an opportunity to like make a New year's resolution or pursue dreams. And I thought, you know, I never really did anything with art and design. Right? And so I went and explored design schools, interior design schools, because that was what I was interested in. I went back and got this design degree. And so how does that fit in with everything? Well, if you think about it, learning how to design is really learning how to use constraints, right? So interior design means the size of the room, the budget, okay, where's the electricity? Where are the windows? Are you going to change the windows? You're gonna knock down walls. Can you knock down the walls? What are the parameters? What style, what colors, right? If the client has all those preferences is no different than designing a new business process, right? What's the budget? What's the constraints on either side? What departments can move things around? What can't be moved? What's negotiable for your customers? What's negotiable for your suppliers? And partly I think also because of my auditing background, I brought that up. I have a very logical way of like visually plotting things out and so. My design degree really helps me visualize what's next, right? So how do you begin to build what's next? And as a privacy and ultimately a data officer, and then with AI, figuring out what changes you need to make today for tomorrow requires a fair amount of design thinking. So my design degree has been my kind of secret weapon for a very long time to think about how do you kind of do that discovery? To think about what are the elements, do the design, develop, and deliver the four Ds of design, right? How do you use that in delivering products and projects created out of data, analytics, technology in the same way that I would deliver. A new kitchen design or a conference room design for some of my commercial clients, things like that. So they actually do meld, but it takes a moment, I think, for most people to see how they kind of aren't very complimentary.

Galen Low:

I really like the approach you took with that, because even at the beginning of this conversation, right, when we start saying creative, I know there's a lot of people out there, and I used to be one of them where creativity meant sort of unconstrained, right? Do whatever, like think super blue sky, you know, like the possibilities are limitless. The angle you took at it was that, you know, there are constraints and especially when you're talking about interior design, where yes, there is a budget and there are requirements and we do need to do discovery and we do need to think about everything from colors to how we get like electricity and plumbing in there. And I think that's a really good lens for folks to put on it. Because I think we have this tendency culturally to say, oh, you're creative. You just like do willy-nilly stuff. You do whatever you want and come up with like brilliant ideas. And that's, you know, like that classic, stereotypical, sort of crazy inventor, right? But it's not that creativity is about just like you said, designing something that's not there yet. It's imagining what could be there. Designing something that meets the needs of what you think you'll need when you're done.

JoAnn Stonier:

I tell my design students at Pratt all the time that's their superpower, that they can see things that other people cannot see yet. And that's really what a designer does, right? They can imagine things that are not yet in existence. Isn't that a really desirable skill in a moment where transformation is necessary? Right? So those of you who have designers in your businesses, go chat with them. Now, they may not know everything about AI, but if you can combine those things, right, I'm fortunate enough to kind of have a lot of right brain, left brain activity going on, right? But transformation requires the ability to start seeing the things. That might be there and what are is it that you need? Right? That's the exciting step. It is very fun to do that work and to place the bets on what's probably going to be, and then do it in a way that's replicable that you understand the principles, right? What are. The building blocks of what you're building on so you can explain it to others and they can build in a similar way, so yeah.

Galen Low:

So many people I used to work with, 'cause like I worked in a few agencies and consultancies that focus on human-centered design. If any of them are listening right now, they are smiling because yes, design is important. You mentioned earlier design thinking and. I think the skeptics around design thinking that I've encountered are yeah, it's basically just, you know, a different way of talking about business, but making it sound cool and fun and new. But I was baptized by the other side, which is that, yeah, it's important for everyone to have like a shared vocabulary around what we mean when we're saying design and what we are actually trying to achieve. And you know, conflating both of those things together, both sides. The circles I travel in, like agency and consultancy world, almost everyone I know has probably created a double diamond slide at some point in their careers leveraging design thinking. In other words, design thinking isn't new, but when I'm talking to you, it seems like it's not a tired idea and in fact, maybe it's heyday is actually ahead of us. You alluded to it earlier, but I just thought I'd ask you straight out, like why is design thinking more important than ever in the business world right now?

JoAnn Stonier:

Oh wow. Okay. So again, this is my thinking, but right now, AI is democratizing technology, right? And so you are placing tools into your employee's hands that they've never had before, that they can execute faster, right? So your employees can create agents that can do a series of tasks, and if you have not given them any design instruction into how those agents are created, or how generative AI can be used. You are doing yourself a disservice because it means everybody will design differently. There's no baseline principles, right? So design thinking helps you understand what's important and what isn't. In addition with design thinking, it does make you think through what is important to you, what are your values? How do they show up in your products and services? How do you work with. All the partners that are important in executing with AI, right? Everything everywhere, all at once is changing, right? You need to work with LLM companies, you need different tooling. You're gonna create your products and solutions differently, and then you're gonna deliver them to your customers differently. Well, what's the consistent thread that's moving through that, and what are the design requirements of those constituencies? Otherwise, you're gonna wind up changing everything over and over again, right? Again, if you don't really start with some design basics, you are gonna be constantly changing that. And so that becomes a competitive disadvantage rather than doing the design thinking upfront, which I believe can become a competitive advantage. Right? So I think all of these things become like layer upon layer of, you've done some of this work already. You probably have values, you have a brand and brand attributes. You have some of these basics. You haven't put them together for AI and in a design thinking type of way. And so it can supercharge your transformation if you put it into this kind of thinking and train people in this way. I also think it helps them get organized and transforms your organization, getting them ready for today and for what's coming next tomorrow.

Galen Low:

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JoAnn Stonier:

There's a cartoon that I have that, you know, it's just like a person with a computer in front of them and they're like, well, that agent didn't work out, so I just pulled the plug and it's like, oh dear.'cause it, right. It doesn't work that way. I've worked with a consulting client who actually they were doing that in a lab setting. Speaking of innovation. Somebody, the agent started kind of going awol, so they did, they just shut the computer down and was like, that doesn't work that way anymore. So, and they called me because it was almost like an agentic incident response process. And they were like, JoAnn, what should we do? And I was like, oh dear. Tell me about the agent. What was it supposed to do? There was no guardrails built in 'cause they had no design principles. You know, people talk about Human in the Loop book. What does that really mean? And when was the agent gonna come back and check in? Was there any of that built into the logic? What was the audit trail of the creation of the agent? And it was like, oh boy, okay. Let's have a chat about some design thinking, right? And some consistent attributes, right? Like constraints, right, that you wanna put into the system of design, even in your lab, right? So pretty wild. Yeah, for sure.

Galen Low:

I really like that image of like, you know, the person in the chair or like the emergency hotline, design thinking, emergency hotline. What do we do, JoAnn? There's all these like agents that have just been, you know, like the lost and forgotten toys, like.

JoAnn Stonier:

And you begin to think like, this could become really scary, like future movie, right? Like for all these broken, you know, half-baked agents that continue on, right, and then learn from each other, right? It's like, oh, I don't want that future. No. I better keep talking, be about design. It might be a good thing.

Galen Low:

Let's maybe go there because like we, you know, we started this out. Obviously, you know, you've got a lot of left brain and right brain. Your career has taken you into regulated industries. We are talking about, yes, being creative and giving people permission to be creative, but maybe not just going out with no constraints and creating whatever, and then just unplugging them if they are, you know, boring or don't work so good. Honestly, given your credentials and your experience, like honestly, I can't not ask you about the tension between innovation and risk because all the AI hype is saying anything is possible, but that doesn't mean that in practice we can just ignore risk. And when we were chatting a few weeks back, you had brought up this notion of the push me pull you, which I had to look out by the way. But it's a fictional two-headed lama from Dr. DeLittle. And you used it as a metaphor for this tension and maybe actually as a recipe for success here. So I thought I'd just ask you, what mindset and tactics does a team or organization need to employ to find the right balance between innovation and risk? And like how can they become, maybe I'm misusing the metaphor here, but how can they become the optimal Push me pull you?

JoAnn Stonier:

I think we have to explain that now for anyone who's listening, but I was fascinated by this creature in my own mind. By the way, my father read to me from the original book, Dr. Doolittle. Not the movie, the Disney movie. It was the actual, like, I still remember what the book look, I had no pictures in it. So it was just the text and he would read it as part of like bedtime ritual. We marched through all of the different creatures, right, that were in the book, that Dr. Doolittle taught how to speak. And some of them were real, like the dodo bird, right? But extinct. And then there was this creature called the push me, pull you, which as a little girl I was fascinated by. It was a two-headed llama and in my mind's eye, right, I had a visual image of it, but it didn't get very far right, because it disagreed with itself, right, a lot. So it would like go three steps forward and then the other head would pull it three steps back, right? So this idea of the tension between this poor animal with two heads. And no tail going back and forth all day. I felt very bad for this. Push me, pull you. But I do think it's a great image of tension in an organization of people trying to go in different directions when there's tension in between. I do think for risk and innovation or bringing it back, right? For all the people who are now like, what the heck is she talking about? I do think that you need a balance, right? Because we're also in this time of great innovation, there's going to be a lot of unknowns, right? And back to those constraints. Like I said, at the top, you still have an organization you're operating. You still have customers who need to satisfy. You still have products and services that you need to provide in this time where you're transforming to the next generation of whatever your firm is gonna be, whatever your product set is gonna be, whatever your service set is gonna be. You wanna manage the risks so that first you don't harm your baseline business, you need the money it generates, you need the customers you have. You'd like to keep some of your employees at minimum, but many of your employees, you'd like to understand what are the skill sets you need. So managing the risks of your strategy, where you wanna go, and applying that business strategy to then AI your technology, your HR strategies. I think is really critical because then you can create your transformation roadmap, right? Because then you're balancing innovation in tech. So I think there's a balance here that risk plays, plus, I think risks of all types, right, are good design constraints, right? You, there's some basics like cyber, okay, cybersecurity. You still want those things. No matter what you transform into, right? You would like to keep your data secure. Employees and customers really like that. Regulators like that. You like that, right? All those things are like good housekeeping. And then also as you transform, the risks are also, look, there are legal risks and compliance risks as well, but there's also risks to who's transforming around you, who are gonna be your new competitors, right? What is it that the market is gonna be? How fast is the market moving? And I think all of those risks inform your choices. And so I think risks are actually understanding all of them from all the different perspectives around the AI governance council seats, right, that many companies have formed is really important in informing your innovation strategy and kind of setting some of those guardrails for innovation too. So that for your people who are doing the innovation and then ultimately your agents as they're created, how do you make sure you're adjusting your business for risks that you know today and then the new risks that are gonna emerge tomorrow? So I, I don't know that there's a tension. I think that there's a definitive relationship.

Galen Low:

That's interesting. What are your thoughts then? We were talking earlier about innovation labs. We arrived at the idea that it's actually more like a gym to build that muscle. But I've also seen some organizations that almost split, right? Instead of a push be pull you, they're actually two lamas. One is gonna do the regular business as usual conservative stuff. Then you have the SWAT team, right? That goes and does whatever almost seems unconstrained. Is that a risk if part of the business is trying to be more innovative than the rest of the business, does it sort of defy a healthy tension?

JoAnn Stonier:

It depends on your company and its culture, right? So do you need a group that's gonna, let's leave the push me, pull you behind, but that's gonna kind of push the company forward in innovation. Do you need some creative folks that are gonna push the boundaries and do they need a different set of parameters? Which to operate under, right? Because if you have a firm that's been very tradition bound, very, maybe it's a heavily regulated industry, perhaps you need that. You need a team to kind of lead the organization in kind of breaking some new ground for new thinking. Right Now, I'm not saying break all the toys, but just breaking into that new thinking, but. Ultimately you wanna structure that so that kind of thinking becomes your new way of doing product development. If that group is always the ones going out doing the innovation, unless they really bring in different teams that are going to need change, I think they become the special children, right? That the rest of the organization resents, right? Because they're always changing things. I have to now change in order to meet their needs if I'm running a functional area. It's less fun and I think you get less organizational adoption if you can get some of their skills also into your functional areas, your other departments. I think that's also a win-win when we know like lawyers need to know how to use AI for legal activities as well as. How to negotiate in an AI driven world, right? HR teams are going to help create the organization of the future. Why would you leave them out of the conversation? So I think you need to like realize that you need to bring everybody along.

Galen Low:

I like the idea that is the how the muscle works. You mentioned earlier you do need to be cognizant about what's going on in your marketplace. What are your competitors doing? What are your customer's expectations? So speed helps. Like an accelerator or an incubator or a SWAT team, you know, that structure can get you working quickly to figure a thing out. And then I like the idea that then it communicates back to the, you know, broader organization, you know, almost comes back with the facts. It's like recon, we did a thing, we tried it, it was experimental, and yeah, here's where we're at. And then the other part of the muscle scale.

JoAnn Stonier:

And it also lets them fail, right? So, you know, you can do some failures in that group. That's great too.'cause then those learnings should come back when, I don't know, some other team comes up with that idea. Let that team say, we tried it, this is why it didn't work for us. What's different, right? And what you're gonna try, or what's the same? So can we also organizationally learn quicker too? So I think it has value, I think, but when it becomes the only way it can become problematic, it becomes a funnel rather than kind of an enabler. Right? An enabling function.

Galen Low:

That's interesting. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if we can actually use that to dive into, I don't know, just some of like the brass tacks on innovation. Because you know, like you were saying, right, there's like this sort of permission to be creative and of course everyone's gonna have a different interpretation of that. But even that idea that failure is okay, right? And like to get to that sort of culture, I kinda wanna just dive into, you know, this like pressure to innovate. And like how that translates to folks doing the work or make, making decisions around the work. And if my memory serves me, you and I, we were having a conversation about the sort of top down pressure from the C-suite and the board above them for innovation to happen. Right. And it's almost in the zeitgeist, it kind of becomes this decree. But you had made this point that like even board members. They come in all different shapes and sizes. They're equally vulnerable to peer pressure and optics and just not wanting to fall behind. So getting into the brass tacks, like what are some methods you have used for getting multiple levels of an organization aligned on things like AI readiness, when not everyone is starting from the same level of understanding and like how do you cut through that, like performative confidence, right? The showiness and get to that like messy middle to figure out what's actually going on.

JoAnn Stonier:

Hopefully we're getting through that performative moment, but in some ways I think we are for generative AI, I think we're still at a semi performative moment for AG agentic AI. But I think that the C-suite, and I'll include, you know, kind of heads of large functions, CFOs, CHROs, chief marketing officers, the CEO as well, I think they have a heavy desire to learn everything so that they can do their leadership jobs well. Right. I think they do need to have an understanding of how things work, right? I don't know that they ever needed to code in those jobs. Notice I didn't say the CTO, right? But they need to know how technology supported their functions, their companies, their firms, and then as a board member, depending upon your background, 'cause you usually are one of those positions you come in to perform as an advisor to the firm that you're on the board. What I'm finding in some of the work that I'm doing with the Cantelli group, where I'm an executive advisor, is that, you know, board members, we did a board workshop back in December, and board members really are starved to have some baseline understanding. So how is an agent created? How easy is it? What can it do? What do you mean that Waymo's, a series of agents like. Having the ability for a safe space, for a safe conversation so that they can have enough information to engage with their organization. And I think that, you know, we started out with a lot of baseline AI training for everybody in the organization. I think what's happening now is. Everybody's beginning to understand that they have a role to play in AI transformation, right? HR is gonna need to figure out the organization implications, and they're using AI to manage the talent pipeline, but now to create like talent inventories, right? And understand skill sets and understand who do they have. And now if this is the talent and skills inventory we have today, what do we need tomorrow? Like that's the strategic shift. But AI is now part and parcel of the tools. Embedded in an HR function, right? So these are the exciting changes, but I think the heads need to understand it. I think the folks in the trenches need to understand it. And certainly the ability to supervise it means you must understand it. And I think that's still a messy middle. So why do I say that? In order to govern this well, right. It means that, and typically we still do hierarchical governance in most firms in the United States, right? So your team is in there and they're building products, and then they hit a speed bump and there's disagreement. So I'm gonna go to my next command, right? And it's about an agent that we're building, and HR has one view, and marketing has another view. And now we need the. Managers or leaders, right? And they can be anywhere in the chain to make a decision. Can they make that decision? Is where I think there's still a gap, right? Because they're each gonna rely on their person. Okay? But their people can't agree. So how is those decisions being made? That's the governance moment and that's the training moment, right? That I think we're still in right now.

Galen Low:

I like that framing and like, I think it sometimes gets brushed to the side, the immense pressure that leadership teams take on. I'm thinking of our Chief Operating Officer, Phil. You know, it is common to hear the comments internally. They're like, I don't know how Phil knows so much about so much stuff. Then has an opinion on it all. And you know, I kind of unpacked his flow of like how he stays informed and you know, it's like a, it's a digest, right? You kinda like, it's a flow of information and like from trusted sources. And then you get into this territory. You had mentioned, you know, coding and A CTO and maybe not any other C-suite leaders necessarily needing to code. But then you also mentioned like, what does it take to create an agent? It's like this kind of weird middle ground. Like, it's like a no man's land. It's purgatory between automation and building an application.

JoAnn Stonier:

Chances are, in the past, all the coding was done in the CTO's team, right? Very little coding was done in the CHRO's team. The challenge is now agents may be in the CTO's team and in the CHRO's team, and so that's why the CHRO needs to understand what is an agent, how is it created, and everybody needs to get involved in those design decisions because all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, an HR agent. Is gonna see, I'm gonna argue sensitive data about employees, right? Who has access to that? What agent can see what data, right? You know, in all of these decisions. And that's where an HR officer must get engaged in ways that he or she may have never been engaged in previous versions of technology other than a user and maybe a designer in tandem with a technology colleague. That is the difference in this democratization moments.

Galen Low:

It's very interesting about what you mentioned about like the hierarchical model versus something that maybe is a bit flatter and like, I don't know, do you see like a lot of tension across leadership teams from the work you're doing as an advisor where Yeah, it used to be that shared service. You know, in a way it's like you take it to the CTO. CTO has its own resources. They have their workflow and their way of sort of maintaining, you know, governance and privacy and security. But now it's kind of happening everywhere. Like you said, everyone has a role to play in AI transformation, but literally as a result, AI transformation is happening everywhere in the organization. Are you seeing a lot of conflict maybe between some of the usual fiefdoms of power around technology and things like HR and things like operations?

JoAnn Stonier:

I'm not seeing conflict yet, but I do think there's transformation coming to our organization structures, and I do think agents are gonna cause some of this.'cause right now everybody thinks of agents as like customer service agents, but eventually the ability to have an agent be part of your workforce. Right. I was at a seminar where somebody said, the current generation of leaders is the last set of leaders that will have carbon based employees only. And I was like, what? And I was like, oh. In humans. Okay? Very fancy way of saying we will have an agentic hybrid workforce, and if that's the case, okay, where are we drawing lines when agents are designed to learn, okay, they're gonna learn. If we don't design the boundaries in accordance with the current org structure, they will do things that they don't know the difference between HR and marketing and finance, right? But they're gonna do tasks, right? So if they are goal and task oriented. Then how do we look at what's efficient and what makes sense?'cause maybe one agent should serve two current functions. But I do think there will be blurred lines and there will be a new look and feel to some organizations where traditionally something was done in one area, it might move. Right? So I do think there's an organizational. Redesign moment, not immediately, but I do think we're gonna see that heat start happening in the pretty near future.

Galen Low:

Actually, maybe we can use it as our example for the sort of future question. I was gonna ask you about the future. This is probably a great spot to zero in. We've been talking about, you know, talent sort of databases and mapping and understanding skills. Not necessarily just roles we've been talking about, hierarchical, maybe flattening that out. Everyone's involved in AI transformation. Organizations are going to have to deal with the fact that not all of their employees or workers, I guess, are going to be carbon based life forms. Humans. Some of them are gonna be agents, and to your point, agents just know work is work. They're not wearing their marketing hat and taking off their marketing hat, putting on their HR hat. It's just their understanding is different. And I was kind of getting at this idea that maybe there's gonna be conflict now or you know, soon, but I guess maybe just in order to be effective when designing right this future when being creative. About this future where we don't really know what it's going to be like. How do organizations need to be thinking about what kind of collaboration is needed to be ready for this, like ag agentic hybrid workforce of the future, and when is too soon to start that collaboration?

JoAnn Stonier:

So I think collaborating, starting today is probably a good idea. I think many organizations have started that collaboration around an AI governance council for generative AI or kind of predictive AI. I think Agentic AI takes it a step further in that you need to think about what matters to your organization in the ways that you have trained your employees on your company values. Right? Have you been the first mover, the bleeding edge, the leading edge? Are you a fast follower? Are you somebody that's the low cost provider or the, you know, the luxury provider? Who are you? How do you wanna show up in the future in addition to what are you going to become? I think a lot of those key questions need to be answered. And so governance has typically been kind of the risk piece of the equation, right? I think for AgTech and the future, it's a little bit of marrying that innovation and strategy function of who are we, where do we wanna go in this new world, what are the values? Matter and how are we designing that? And I think those conversations, the more those conversations are had, so people know, how do we pivot? How do we make the hard decisions when something comes up that we have to decide, like what's our hierarchy of needs? Who's gonna come first? Is it our shareholders? Is it our customers? Is it the competition? Like what's the trade-offs? Right? How do we make those? We all kind of do it today, but I don't think we are as clear as we possibly need to be with so much in change. Right. I, so I think collaborating and know who's gonna ultimately make those decisions, what's the rubric, how are you gonna make them, is really important. Starting in 2026, if you haven't already started having those conversations. Then I think being honest and transparent with your employees that these are the things that matter Once you've decided that these are the things that matter so that they can innovate and also manage the risks appropriately, right? Because the playbook has changed. And Lord, we know that like politically things are changing, economically, things are changing socially. We are going through a time of intense change. So it's not just the technology that's pushing this. The whole globe is kind of feeling a little. Frenetic and on the pace of change right now. So maybe all of these things are a good moment to kind of get ready and even as individuals, because the pace of change is so frenetic.'cause I get questions as a professor, what should my child major in and how should they decide? Right? Use all your skills and be endlessly curious, like what are you interested in? And go get interested in that. But recognize technology, AI quantum, whatever's after that is going to transform how things are going done today. So think about that, like incorporate that into your thinking because it's going to happen. So you might as well be part of the change. I think the worst thing you can do is like, be like this for the change and drag your feet and say noon and, I think it's going to happen. So I think again, recognizing that change now, and we're terrible with this as humans, but change is kind of part of our condition or constant condition.

Galen Low:

That is the human condition, isn't it? Staying curious, but knowing that the wave of change is coming, whether you like it or not, I think is a really good stance. And what is interesting is, I mean, you know, I think company values get, you know, a bad reputation. You know, they get printed on walls and everyone's like, yeah, whatever. We don't even do any of those things. When you are in this state of uncertainty and disruption, like those are the things we latch onto. It says we don't know what's going to happen, but we do know that we value this and we should set up a, you know, a council or a governance structure that can make decisions in alignment with the values that we agree on so that we can, you know, help people carry on no matter what the wave of change pushes us towards.

JoAnn Stonier:

And if they are the wrong values, then change them. Right? And if you haven't looked at them in a while and they're just a dusty old poster, maybe they are the wrong values, that's okay. But like find the ones that really do matter to you, right? That would be a good thing right now. Like, don't have the old ones. Have the ones that really matter.

Galen Low:

That's actually a good one. It's a great place to start, right? And it's simple and something that is known, but they are tough conversations, aren't they? Values?

JoAnn Stonier:

I ask people this, I will ask. You know, corporations are artificial people, right? How do you wanna show up in this world, right? And what do you wanna be remembered for? And if you can circle on those two things, it becomes really easy. What do you wanna be known for from your customers, your shareholders, your employees? And what do you wanna be remembered for? Well, you wanna be remembered good positively in those two things. So what are those attributes? How do you start, right? So that's maybe the place to start.

Galen Low:

JoAnn, thanks so much for this. This has been such an interesting conversation. For folks who wanna learn more about you, where can they go?

JoAnn Stonier:

They can go obviously to my LinkedIn profile, but I don't always keep it all the way up to date. So I'll admit that. I'm also affiliated with The Cantellus Group, so you can go to their website, but I'm also working on my own website coming soon. So you'll be able to go there in about a month and a half. So that's just joannstonier.com. So thank you, Galen. This has been a blast. I've enjoyed talking with you. I look forward to staying in touch.

Galen Low:

Yeah, I love our chats. I'll include those links in the show notes below. Alright folks, that's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies and playbooks, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.