Episode 1
The Multimodal Experience w/ special guest, Brian Solis
Brian Solis is Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow. He's also a 9x best-selling author, international keynote speaker, and futurist. Forbes has called him “one of the more creative and brilliant business minds of our time," and ZDNet has said that Brian is “one of the 21st century business world’s leading thinkers.”
For over 20 years, Brian has studied Digital Darwinism to understand the impact of disruption on businesses, markets, and society. In his work, he humanizes technologies and trends to help leaders gain new perspectives and insights and inspire new ideas to thrive in the future.
Brian’s research explores business transformation, innovation, the agentic enterprise, and "the future of" industries, trends, and markets.
In this episode of The Multimodal Experience, Brian and I talk about the humanization of technology and what it takes for organizations to deliver in the age of AI.
We also discuss Brian’s latest book, Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future, which was written to inspire a new generation of leaders in an era of AI disruption. Mindshift shifts mindsets to challenge the status quo, anticipate the future, inspire teams, and innovate forward.
Transcript
The Multimodal Experience w/ guest Brian Solis
[:Intro: Welcome to the Multimodal Experience podcast with your host, Bill Staikos. Today's guest is Brian Solis and we are talking about humanizing technology and his book, Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future.
Bill Staikos: Hey everybody. Welcome to a new episode of the Multimodal Experience. I'm your host, bill Staikos. Today we have a true luminary of the digital age on the show.
Bill Staikos: Brian Solis is a world renowned digital anthropologist, nine time bestselling author, and the head of Global Innovation at a company called ServiceNow. where Brian really stands out relative to other leaders in his space is that he has a unique gift for humanizing technology, helping us understand how complex concepts like AI are reshaping our world.
ork has influenced countless [:Bill Staikos: It's a conversation about leadership. Innovation and the one thing that will determine our future and our success in that future, our mindset. Welcome to the show. Brian. It's great to have you on.
Brian Solis: what an intro bill. thank you.
Brian Solis: it's an absolute pleasure to be here and I'm looking forward to the conversation because of all the times I can remember in terms of transformation and innovation, technology revolutions, this is it. and this is a really important time to have this conversation.
Bill Staikos: so let's get into the foundational mind shift question, right?
Bill Staikos: in mind shift, great book by the way. And I encourage readers, we'll put a link to the book in the show notes, et cetera. But you frame the core challenge, or one of the core challenges is overcoming industrial era thinking, right? In a world now defined by multimodal technologies, generative ai, we have spatial computing.
l Staikos: What's the single [:Brian Solis: We all have biases because we're all human, and which sets of biases are really dependent on Us as individuals, but also the culture in which we're operating
Brian Solis: So we have The bias of ourself and we have the collective bias of the company culture. for example, if you work for Sudar RA at Google versus a legacy company in the Midwest, You're gonna have different corporate cultures. But if you want to transform, that also means you have to transform the culture of your organization, which means you have to transform the leadership of your organization.
dsets. For a new era because [:Brian Solis: it was a call, whether for existing leaders to change their mindsets Or to inspire a new genre of leaders to rise up. Because artificial intelligence, because of not just even technology disruptions, just think about all of the disruptions we're experiencing in life.
ptimize it to make ourselves [:Brian Solis: the biases that lead to that are, all over the place. We can put them in a shopping bag of cognitive biases.
Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
Brian Solis: If you think about how these biases work, whether they're recency biases, like you only think about the thing you've heard about most recently,
Brian Solis: Think about school, like elementary school. Think about the sports you played as a kid. Think about high school, university. Think about your quarterly reviews or your annual reviews at work. Everything that we have been taught is how do you operate within the rules of the system.
wing those rules, and it may [:Brian Solis: Those are the rules that you self govern and are also governed by others to put them in the box of business as usual. And so when something like AI comes along and it challenges your conventions, your natural human response. Is to operate within these guidelines because you know, what happens if you don't.
Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
Brian Solis: So that's the mind shift that we have to, as leaders say, it is okay to ask questions right now. Because if we don't ask questions, this is the first technology that's actually not going to reward people for following the rules. And that's part of the mind shift that we need to see it differently.
is value if we solve it? How [:Bill Staikos: And then three is AI the solution? if you're just putting AI on something, it's just gonna enhance the problem even more, Probably just scale it up and create more of a mess
Bill Staikos: That architecture, that rethinking, like what is that first step? Well, I'm a leader. I've read your book. you provide sort of that toolkit in there, but for our listeners before they go out and buy the book, how do you take step one?
Bill Staikos: Like what is the fundamental architecture of that mindset shift?
Brian Solis: I've read a lot of books. I've written a lot of books too. The one thing that I need as a reader is I need to first be coerced, some clever way that I am reading it in the frame of mind that's going to help me get the most out of the book.
we don't see the world as it [:Bill Staikos: Yeah.
Brian Solis: So what I did at the beginning of the book was just sort of set the stage.
Brian Solis: we talk about, cognitive biases, the different types to see if you can recognize yourself in any of them. we also kind of just opened the door with saying, Hey, you know, self-awareness is actually the number one thing needed to begin this journey.
Brian Solis: we all think we do. That's ironic that a hundred percent of us think we are self-aware, but only actually 10% are. And those 10% tend to be a little bit more empathetic. They see and feel the way the other person experiences something.
Brian Solis: So especially when we talk about customer experiences, empathy is like one of the number one tools for transformation, but it's also one of the number one tools for leadership transformation. So where we begin in the book is kind of going through this self-awareness story like, Hey, did you know you're actually not self-aware, but told in the most inspirational and kind possible way so that when you start to get.
Brian Solis: To the first exercise, which is how to get a beginner's mind.
Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
Brian Solis: [:Brian Solis: he's pouring the tea for the student. And he keeps pouring, and the tea just overflows. And the student says, master, you're overflowing. He says, the cup is your mind and you cannot learn anything unless you first empty it. This is the context of the beginner's mind,
Brian Solis: We cannot see the potential for some new emerging trend or opportunity if we don't empty our mind, the concept of the beginner's mind is that. We come to these moments as experts.
Bill Staikos: Hmm.
Brian Solis: we know that we can use technology to take costs out. We know that we could use technology to make things more efficient and better, and we're gonna get high marks for that.
hat we've always done. Yeah. [:Brian Solis: So that's how we begin the journey in the book, is just getting to this place where the idea of the mind shift begins with having a receiver's state, being able to See the signals that these trends can help us unlock versus bringing that expert's mind to 'em and saying, I know what to do with this.
important point that you're [:Bill Staikos:
Brian Solis: Well, so let's bring that, expert's mind and the beginner's mind to this moment, and then say that somewhere in between those mindsets is the journey of empathy. This is important because in all the years where I've done either a customer journey or an employee journey.
Brian Solis: we'll say things like moments of truth to make them sound more meaningful. But what we're really talking about is the way an expert's mind will look at it, which is a touch point.
Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
Brian Solis: And that touch point could be however we define the journey. When we start looking at it from that perspective, we bring that expert's mind to the touchpoint.
Brian Solis: we're looking at the numbers, the conversions the transactions, the open rates, whatever our measures are. So now what we're doing is we're looking at the touchpoint from our perspective. And then how do we make it more efficient?
ce? How do we take cost out? [:Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
Brian Solis: But we're thinking about them now as transactional and customers don't wake up in the morning and say, I hope that when I go shopping today, or when I call customer service today, that I'm seen as a number and viewed as a transaction.
Brian Solis: They are also coming to that moment with their mindset, which is, I'm the most important person in the world. This is all about me. I have hero complex. Let's go. they're coming at the moment, completely different. The irony of this, and I'm surprised that companies have been able to get away with this at scale for so many years, is that the customer is the most important person before a transaction.
center, now you don't matter [:Brian Solis: I've never thought about that
Bill Staikos:
Brian Solis: None of those things are meant to give you a good experience. And the only reason I'm sharing all of this is because the word experience is something that we all take for granted as executives in any touch point, in any moment of truth
Bill Staikos: Thank you, sir.
Brian Solis: that book was designed. As the message of the book to be an experience When I was trying to find a definition for experience and footnote it and move on,
Brian Solis: I couldn't find one because we were all as experts defining the word experience from that transactional state. So customer experience became these touch points and moments of truth and this vernacular. instead I said, can we all agree? An experience is how someone feels in a particular moment and based on how they feel is how they're going to remember that moment.
uth, how is someone going to [:Brian Solis: That is where we start to lose. If you design something to be extraordinary, then it is extraordinary and it is remembered that way. And that's the magic of Disney by the way. This is how they design a lot of their experiences. when I've done work in the past with say, Virgin America, if you remember that airline, it was designed to be an experiential airline in a moment where you were a complete transaction.
hose moments of truth, and I [:Brian Solis: when you invest in what you thought was a cost center. It ends up being a growth center. for example, with Zappos, we didn't have to offer discounts. People were just glad to come back. we also did counterintuitive things like empowering customer service agents to have their own budget to make something right?
Brian Solis: there's a great story of an agent finding out that someone was a big fan of a particular basketball team they. Not only made the customer right by the challenge that they were having, they sent 'em basketball tickets. And did that hit the bottom line a hundred percent. But did that person spend in multitudes over time?
Brian Solis: Yeah, because we changed the metrics from, cost of that particular transaction. How long did it take to get to resolution, et cetera, to what was the lifetime value of that customer?
Bill Staikos: Hmm.
s the leader who believed in [:Brian Solis: So that mind shift can transform the business across the gamut. another company that does it really well, did it well, better before still. Okay. Today is Apple.
Brian Solis: they realize that if they could deliver a great experience from beginning to end. They could charge more for their products and that became a growth engine.
Brian Solis: this is an example of just how far this can go Tony Shea recognized at Zappos that if he shipped, a pair of shoes to you, the experience starts. From the moment you anticipate those shoes to arrive, when that box arrives on your doorstep and when you open that box, apple has done this too.
Brian Solis: This is why their boxes are so beautiful,
Bill Staikos: hard to open, right?
istics of shipping, branded, [:Bill Staikos: So you've been a big advocate of storytelling, even describing leaders as storytellers. When you think about creating a future that doesn't exist, what advice would you have for leaders? To be able to develop and tell those stories. That provides a practical, you know, from like what it is.
Bill Staikos: So what to what now, kind of roadmap, Because a lot of this has changed management and leadership at the end of the day what advice do you have for leaders to inspire that future so many people are afraid of AI as an example.
Bill Staikos: Like, don't be afraid of this. We're gonna use this to our advantage. I get the beginner's mindset, but how might you frame, if you're coaching a leader, how might you frame that storytelling capability or ability and start to hone it?
Brian Solis: I [:Brian Solis: That particular frame. for example, there's a quote here the world is full of magical things, waiting patiently for our senses to grow sharper. On the other side of storytelling is how you bring that to life. as a storyteller, you have to embrace things like wonder and curiosity.
Brian Solis: Childlike wonder. This is the concept of a beginner's mind. You have to see something that someone else can't. that's where storytelling begins. for example, I tell the story of, my friend, Nicholas Sung, who is a former storyboard artist at Pixar. He did movies like, one of my favorites, up, I think now he's a storyboard artist at Netflix.
ike. I, I'll say this in the [:Bill Staikos: Yeah, yeah.
Brian Solis: and it became a company about numbers. all the things that happened to, what we call a short term mindset or quarter to quarter mindset. he used storyboarding. As a way to remind them of why people put on their shoes. and there's different types of reasons. Of course, there's the shoe drop, the, you know, the shoe aficionado, et cetera.
Brian Solis: But then there's the runner who convinces themselves that they can do a marathon. And that story has to be one that's told The reason we have to start with things like Wonder and Curiosity and that beginner's mindset is because we think storytelling at a high level is about how well you can tell a story.
Bill Staikos: Mm-hmm.
y about grandma and this and [:Brian Solis: What makes a great storyteller is they see something that the audience does not, and what they do better than anyone else is they get that person to see themselves in what they couldn't see before and believe it is their story. This is what Disney and Pixar do so well. So the concept of a storyboard is not to tell the story, it's to test it.
just taking ourselves out of [:Brian Solis: this is why, for example, we hear stories of things like, oh, it's gonna take jobs. It's going to, increase efficiencies. This is called the Cassandra Complex. if people just tell this story and they think change is gonna come out from it, what it ends up doing is causing fear, anxiety, uncertainty, and shutting people down.
Brian Solis: So you gotta tell the story in a different way. We have to take a step back. We have to wonder, we have to ask different questions. We have to be curious like what are some of the things that we could do where it makes people do what they couldn't do before And could that drive growth for the organization if we invest in it, when everybody else is gonna invest in automation?
% [:Bill Staikos:
Brian Solis: And that means that a normal mindset would say 47%, that's cost we could take out.
Brian Solis: AI's already proving this. But they looked to say, what is the other 53%? What's not being solved? What could we do that could solve for that and maybe make better? Situations, experiences, services for our customers. And it turned out that a lot of them were about interior design, whether it was for business, personal or consumer, applications.
Brian Solis: so they re-skilled those human agents as interior designers, spun it out as a pilot. in the first year, that new service generated 1 billion euros of net new revenue. So you have cost takeout and you have cost growth. I know we're gonna run out of time, but I'll tell one super fast one.
Bill Staikos: Yeah,
Bill Staikos: yeah.
tors when they were at their [:Brian Solis: So when you can put someone in the story to see the outcome you need them to see, but feel it because they're the hero of the story.
Brian Solis: They're going through the ups and downs. They gain empathy along the way. that's how you get someone to see it. It's not easy, but that's how you get someone to do it. it starts by believing right now that you're not doing it today.
Bill Staikos: One last question, two minutes or less,
ot serving the brands we buy [:Brian Solis: Ah, we can't do this one in two minutes.
Bill Staikos: I wrote a book,
Brian Solis: I wrote a book called Life Scale it was the realization 'cause I'm also a digital anthropologist who studies how technology affects behaviors
Brian Solis: I had observed, this is like 10 years ago, that social media, mobile devices were actually controlling us from an attention standpoint. And then what happens once they give all your attention, these are the things that happen to your brain, to your body, et cetera. and then how to, Take back control without giving up technology, same thing is happening with AI right now.
Brian Solis: AI psychosis, there's studies that show that we're starting to talk like it. there's studies that show that we're actually, eroding our creativity, and. critical thinking skills. By depending on it, letting it do the thinking for us. this is a hard one to answer because we're not as consumers doing anything about it.
ts and YouTube videos at one [:Brian Solis:
Bill Staikos: No one in this show, Brian,
Brian Solis: Yeah, please listen to this at one, two, at the most, maybe this is where we pick up in the next episode. This is one where we have to be mindful. I call it an ignite moment. And the ignite moment is knowing the consumer is not going to look out for themselves, but you could.
Brian Solis: You could give them a touch point, A moment of truth, of respite, of illumination, and what could that look like where you slow it down just enough for them to say. That's extraordinary. That's different. And so we could get into the Art of the Ignite Moment. It was actually supposed to be part two to X.
Brian Solis: and then I got distracted with Life Scale. but maybe we could talk about it in that verbally form an outline for the next
Bill Staikos: Beautifully said by the way. And that's a beautiful way to end this episode. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.
our books on the show notes. [:Brian Solis: Looking forward to the next conversation. Thank you.
Bill Staikos: soon.
