# 262. Workday’s CEO on driving growth and transformation in the age of AI - **Show:** Inside the Strategy Room - **Published:** 31 Jul 2025 - **Source:** https://omny.fm/shows/inside-the-strategy-room/262-workday-s-ceo-on-driving-growth-and-transformation-in-the-age-of-ai - **Transcript:** https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/inside-the-strategy-room/262-workdays-ceo-on-driving-growth-and-transformation-in-the-age-of-ai-9edf86/ - **Provider:** OpenNash Podcasts (machine-generated) ## In brief Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach argues that AI can lift productivity growth well above recent levels, but only if companies treat digital agents as a managed part of the workforce that coexists with people. He says the real payoff comes when agents act on their own, which requires strong security, governance and ethics. The central tension is speed versus control. Eschenbach wants faster decisions, a growth mindset and innovation, while warning against agent sprawl and over-regulation. He ties both to leadership: explain the why behind change, keep the values fixed while the culture evolves, and serve others rather than chase personal success. ## Key insights 1. **Agents need onboarding and governance like employees** Eschenbach says companies must decide how digital agents are brought in, given access rights and managed, just as they do for human hires. Without that, he warns of agent sprawl, which puts company data and security at risk. 2. **Autonomous agents matter more than chatbots** He contrasts generative AI, where you ask a question and get an answer, with agentic AI that works on your behalf without being asked. He expects agents to become role-based, handling multiple tasks and freeing people for strategic work. 3. **Clean, contextual data beats bigger data sets** Eschenbach argues AI output is only as good as its training data, and that quality, cleanliness and context matter more than size. He says Workday's curated HR and finance data lets it build domain-specific agents and avoid hallucinations from training on the internet. 4. **Values stay fixed while culture changes** Workday's six founder-written values will never change, but Eschenbach says the culture must evolve as the company scales. He pushes speed and urgency, and says employees act better when they are told why a change is happening. 5. **Leaders should serve others, not chase success** Eschenbach says moving from a life of success to one of significance changed his approach to leadership. He measures his impact first by people's career growth, with financial numbers following if the other things are done right. ## Questions this episode answers ### What does agent sprawl mean and why is it a risk? Eschenbach uses agent sprawl to describe companies filling up with hundreds or thousands of digital agents without proper onboarding, access rights or governance. He says this risks the security of the data those agents can reach. ### What is the difference between generative AI and agentic AI? Eschenbach says generative AI responds when you ask a question or give a prompt. Agentic AI is autonomous, working on your behalf without being asked, and he sees that as where the real power lies. ### How much does Eschenbach think AI could boost productivity? He says productivity gains over the last ten to twenty years have been relatively flat, and that AI could raise annual gains from about one to one and a half percent to two to three times that. He adds this only happens if it is done in the right way. ### Why does Eschenbach say Workday's data is an advantage? He says Workday holds the largest, most curated and cleanest set of HR and finance data, all on the same architecture and code base. That lets it build domain-specific agents instead of training on the open internet. ### Is Eschenbach worried about AI regulation? He says companies need strong governance, compliance and controls, and Workday has a chief responsible AI officer. But he warns that over-regulating AI could slow innovation, so a balance is needed. ## Facts - **Sean Brown** [0:00:44]: "Carl was appointed CEO of Workday in February 2024 after having worked alongside co-founder Aneel Bhusri in the role of co-CEO since late 2022." - **Sean Brown** [0:01:25]: "formed some 20 years ago and that went on to successfully disrupt the HR and finance market with its cloud-based management solutions." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:14:15]: "They completely disrupted the HR and finance market and became a thought leader by moving it to the cloud and off of on-premises solutions." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:03:34]: "AI can drive us from an annual productivity gain of one to one and a half to maybe two to three times that if done in the absolute right way." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:03:34]: "If you look at productivity gain over the last ten or 20 years, it's been relatively flat with all the technology innovations that have come into our worlds." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:07:31]: "there are three systems of record that power the enterprise. There's a system of record for your employees, there's a system of record for your financials, and there's a system of record for your customers." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:07:31]: "At Workday, we have the largest, most highly curated and cleanest set of data for HR and finance. And it's all running on the same architecture, the same code base" - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:08:37]: "We're not going to have these hallucinations. We're not training off of the internet. We're training off of that data." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:09:09]: "we don't have to go buy one of these 5,000 AI point solutions that are out there today." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:12:12]: "At Workday, for example, we now have a chief responsible AI officer." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:12:41]: "We're making every single one of our 20,000 plus employees go through AI training so that they get comfortable." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:13:11]: "You got to make sure you don't over-regulate AI because you'll thwar- or slow down innovation." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:13:47]: "I joined about two and a half years ago with my dear friend and the Workday co-founder and one of the most brilliant enterprise software minds I've ever met, Aneel Bhusri." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:14:42]: "we are expanding operating margins uh at the company and being much more thoughtful and efficient in how we're running the business" - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:16:20]: "We have six core values that our founders wrote on a piece of paper, and that's the bedrock and the foundation of the company, and they will never change." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:16:52]: "while the values won't change ever, our culture can and will change as we scale into the future." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:16:52]: "If we're faster than someone else, it's hard to defend." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:04:50]: "Today, a lot of people talk about agents and these digital agents entering the enterprise. And some people say you're going to have hundreds or thousands of them." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:10:35]: "Most of the things people talk about today when they call them agents, they're doing a task. They're just automating a repetitive task." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:21:16]: "I now focus on impact and significance to others, not focus on my own success." - **Eric Kutcher** [0:20:59]: "I got to know you many, many moons ago when you were at VMware and you were the president COO." - **Carl Eschenbach** [0:27:22]: "I look at the people in the organization, I look at their career growth, I look at the success they're having" ## Transcript **[0:00:02] Carl Eschenbach:** We're going to move to a world of AI where technology now starts to work for us. And when we move from a world where today we're focusing on, if you will, generative AI, where you're actually asking a question or you're prompting something and getting a response. The real power starts to happen when we move to this agentic world and these agents become autonomous and they start to work on your behalf without you asking them to do so. **[0:00:30] Carl Eschenbach:** That's the power and the transformation we're going to see. But at the same time, as I said, we got to make sure we're doing this secure, compliant, ethical and responsible way to get the true benefit of it. **[0:00:44] Sean Brown:** From McKinsey and Company, I'm Sean Brown and welcome to Inside the Strategy Room. That was Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday, discussing the pending shift from working with technology to having technology work for us with autonomous digital agents helping us drive future productivity and growth. Carl was appointed CEO of Workday in February 2024 after having worked alongside co-founder Aneel Bhusri in the role of co-CEO since late 2022. In this episode, he speaks with Eric Kutcher, who's our firm's chair of North America and a senior partner based in the San Francisco Bay Area. **[0:01:25] Sean Brown:** Carl talks about what it's been like to step into the CEO role of a founder-led company that was formed some 20 years ago and that went on to successfully disrupt the HR and finance market with its cloud-based management solutions. The conversation covers the onboarding and governance of agentic AI as a coexistent part of the workforce, where Carl posits that the technology will have more of a role-based, multitasking part to play. On driving a growth mindset culture, he talks about the importance of employees understanding the why before they can be expected to operate with a sense of urgency, to execute change and participate in building a company that will endure. **[0:02:06] Sean Brown:** And he shares his lessons on leadership, including the importance of leading with a focus on serving others, whether it be his people, customers or partners, so that they may be successful in bringing impact and value creation. Now, here's Eric. **[0:02:22] Eric Kutcher:** Hello everyone, it's Eric Kutcher and I'm joined today by Carl Eschenbach, CEO of Workday. Carl, it's a real pleasure to have you uh with us. **[0:02:30] Carl Eschenbach:** It's great to be here with you, Eric. **[0:02:33] Eric Kutcher:** Let's start with a macro. We are living in a world, frankly, where productivity is going to be ever more important. We've had full employment, we have real labor shortages. That all points to we need a source of productivity, and some might argue that AI is that source. Tell us about how you're seeing it already impact business in three, four, five years from now, about what business looks like because of AI. **[0:02:57] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, so there is no doubt, Eric, we are in the middle of probably the greatest tectonic shift we've ever experienced with the advent of AI. If you go back and look at all the other big tectonic shifts that we've experienced in our lifetimes, whether it was social, mobile, cloud, the internet, I think AI has the potential to be more transformative than all of those combined. And I think if deployed in the right way, secure, ethically, safely, it can drive a massive step function change in human productivity. **[0:03:34] Carl Eschenbach:** And Eric, as we know, the biggest driver of productivity gain over the last 50 years, or maybe ever, is truly technology. If you look at productivity gain over the last ten or 20 years, it's been relatively flat with all the technology innovations that have come into our worlds. Now, fast forward to AI, and I think AI can drive us from an annual productivity gain of one to one and a half to maybe two to three times that if done in the absolute right way. **[0:04:06] Carl Eschenbach:** Now, the trick here, Eric, is how do we make sure this technology enters our lives and the workplace in a way that we will peacefully coexist with one another to drive that productivity change? We believe here that there will be a peaceful coexistence of people or human employees and agent or digital employees in the future. It's a workforce that you need to start to think about. And by having these new agents move into the enterprise and humans figuring out how to work with the technology and take advantage of it, they then will drive massive productivity gains for themselves. **[0:04:50] Carl Eschenbach:** And the recipient of that will be the companies they work for. But we also think there's some risks associated with it as well. Let me give you an example, Eric. Today, a lot of people talk about agents and these digital agents entering the enterprise. And some people say you're going to have hundreds or thousands of them. And I always ask, that's great, but how do you onboard them? How do you securely make sure that they're brought into the enterprise and they're managed and they're governed? **[0:05:21] Carl Eschenbach:** How do you make sure you have security? How do you make sure you have access rights for all those digital employees, just like you do your human workforce when you onboard them? So we have to make sure something doesn't happen in the enterprise that we've seen with other technologies. And in this case, I call it agent sprawl. We can't have agent sprawl because we run a massive risk when we think about the data and the security of the data they're going to get access to. **[0:05:47] Carl Eschenbach:** But if we think about the power of this technology, we're going to move from a world, Eric, where today you and I spend the majority of our time working with technology to a world of AI where technology now starts to work for us. And when we move from a world where today we're focusing on, if you will, generative AI, where you're actually asking a question or you're prompting something and getting a response. The real power starts to happen when we move to this agentic world and these agents become autonomous and they start to work on your behalf without you asking them to do so. **[0:06:27] Carl Eschenbach:** That's the power and the transformation we're going to see. But at the same time, as I said, we got to make sure we're doing this secure, compliant, ethical and responsible way to get the true benefit of it. **[0:06:39] Eric Kutcher:** How do you bring these two workforces together? How do you start thinking about these agents when they're interacting? **[0:06:45] Carl Eschenbach:** Eric, think about when you start to have agent to agent communications outside of your company. How do your agents now communicate with other agents, whether it's your supplier, your business partner, your customer? How does that all start to work together, right? And this is where I think there's incredible opportunity, but there's also a lot of risk if these agents aren't managed just like us as humans are managed today in our organizations. **[0:07:11] Eric Kutcher:** One of the things that make this whole next generation of innovation happen is data itself. And I've heard a lot of people talk about the importance, the power, the value of that data, especially for an organization that Workday owns and or has access to an enormous amount of critically important data. How does one think about that going forward? **[0:07:31] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, so at the highest level, when I think about the enterprise, there are three systems of record that power the enterprise. There's a system of record for your employees, there's a system of record for your financials, and there's a system of record for your customers. At Workday, we have the largest, most highly curated and cleanest set of data for HR and finance. And it's all running on the same architecture, the same code base, which gives us an unfair advantage to actually now start to think about domain specific agents that can take advantage of that data set. **[0:08:12] Carl Eschenbach:** As you know, Eric, you said it, the output of your AI is only as good as the data you're training off of. It's not the size of the data set, it's the quality, the cleanliness of your data set and the context of that data set. You have to know where the data was originated, you have to know why it's being used, and you have to know who it's interacting with. That context is highly critical as well. **[0:08:37] Carl Eschenbach:** So if you combine a highly curated set of data that's purpose built for, for example, in our world, HR and finance, you know the context behind it, and it's in the business process workflow. You now start to think about building domain specific agents off of that data set, which gives you much higher results than just training off the internet. We're not going to have these hallucinations. We're not training off of the internet. We're training off of that data. **[0:09:09] Carl Eschenbach:** So the data becomes incredibly valuable when you're thinking about AI, and that data, I often think about the data is the new UI UX for AI because it's the output and what people get to actually see and use. So that data, we think, is, you know, incredibly valuable. We have it, our customers recognize we have it. And when they think about Workday, they think about Workday. What AI can you give us, right? Off of the data that you already have, that we don't have to go buy one of these 5,000 AI point solutions that are out there today. **[0:09:51] Carl Eschenbach:** That's the importance of the data. And we think, again, we're uniquely positioned, Eric, to bring our customers incredible value. So when customers think about investing in AI, they say investing in Workday or more investment in Workday is an investment in AI because of that data set. **[0:10:09] Eric Kutcher:** If I think about product in the old world, you spent an enormous amount of time thinking about what is that UIUX? You talked about it in the next version is data, but in the old version, the UIUX that made it consumable, right? That that made the application usable. The thing that keeps going through my mind is in a go forward, I don't ever have to think about that anymore. Because at some level, all I have to do is have the ability to interact with the actual technology in almost a conversant way. **[0:10:35] Carl Eschenbach:** Or take it one step further, Eric. Not only do you not have to converse with it or communicate with it, or type to it or speak to it. Think about AI in a agent specifically that start to become role-based agents that takes on skills and starts to do multiple tasks. Most of the things people talk about today when they call them agents, they're doing a task. They're just automating a repetitive task. We think it's going to evolve to a world where your agents actually become role-based and they can do multiple tasks. **[0:11:11] Carl Eschenbach:** And as they become more aware of the data they're training off of and the context of that data, they'll pick up more skills as well. And that's where I said it starts to become autonomous. So you're not even engaging in it. It's actually working on your behalf and freeing you up to go do the the much more strategic work that really drives the growth of the business. That's where we think it becomes even more powerful than just engaging with AI. **[0:11:37] Carl Eschenbach:** Today, we all engage with it. We ask it questions, it gives us answers, or it prompts us, we respond. Think about when this starts happening autonomously, that's when it becomes wildly powerful. **[0:11:49] Eric Kutcher:** You started to touch on this idea of the ethical component of it, and that really gets into governance. I'm going to big G and little G. Little G being kind of how you think about the hire retire process, if you will, for an agent. But the big G is like, how are you actually using this? What are the questions the board's asking? How do you think about the responsibilities from a data governance and from an AI governance point of view that are kind of new? **[0:12:12] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, I mean, it's a senior level conversation in every company. You got to make sure you have strong governance, compliance and controls around the uses of AI. At Workday, for example, we now have a chief responsible AI officer. So anything that happens inside our company or any product we build, it has to go through this office to make sure it's being deployed in the highest, uh, you know, most ethical way with security and safety wrapped around it. **[0:12:41] Carl Eschenbach:** And it also requires a lot of education. There's a tremendous amount of education, Eric, that has to take place in in the workforce so that people can become more and more comfortable to peacefully coexist with this technology. And that's something also we're working on here at Workday. We're making every single one of our 20,000 plus employees go through AI training so that they get comfortable. They understand it's being deployed in a very uh ethical, safe uh and compliant way. **[0:13:11] Carl Eschenbach:** And I think everyone needs to think about that. Now, here's the trick. You got to make sure you don't over-regulate AI because you'll thwar- or slow down innovation. So there has to be that balance. **[0:13:23] Eric Kutcher:** You inherited a company that I think was very much founder-led, and so you've had to help it move into its next development stage, if you will. How do you think about a the culture and the evolution of the culture of the company and and your role in shaping that? And then B, as part of that, the growth mindset, both as an individual and as a company, right, where growth is king in what you do. **[0:13:47] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, I joined about two and a half years ago with my dear friend and the Workday co-founder and one of the most brilliant enterprise software minds I've ever met, Aneel Bhusri. And he and I work side by side ever since joining two and a half years ago. I joined a company that was one of the most successful, if you will, enterprise software companies of our generation. If you think about it, they disrupted the world. We talk about AI and its potential disruption. **[0:14:15] Carl Eschenbach:** Think about 20 years ago at work they did. They completely disrupted the HR and finance market and became a thought leader by moving it to the cloud and off of on-premises solutions. And here we are again, doing it with AI. So when I joined the company, it was wildly successful. They have built an incredible market leadership position in the markets we serve. And I had to come in and figure out how do you continue to grow from there? **[0:14:42] Carl Eschenbach:** What are the things you want to do? How do you think about innovating across the company, innovating on the product side, innovating on the go-to-market side, innovating through, you know, uh, M and A. There's all forms of innovation, and I focused on innovation to help us drive growth. Yes, we are expanding operating margins uh at the company and being much more thoughtful and efficient in how we're running the business, but we want to maintain this notion of being a durable growth company at scale and continue to expand operating margins simultaneously. **[0:15:16] Carl Eschenbach:** And I think we've done a really good job over the last couple years, two and a half years in doing so. We've expanded into new markets, we have different routes to market, we've innovated, we've made acquisitions. And one of the things I challenge myself and and all of the people I get to serve alongside of is are they working on something today that will help us grow the company and expand our market share. So we absolutely have a growth mindset inside the company. **[0:15:45] Carl Eschenbach:** Um, we ask people to think about it. It's one of our key ingredients to to leading the company into the future. And I think we're doing quite well maintaining that durable growth at scale while expanding operating margins. **[0:16:00] Eric Kutcher:** So think about your role in all of that, the question of what are you doing that is leading towards increased growth? What is it like as a CEO to have to help everyone recognize the importance of that? When you travel, see various folks in the organization, how do you get them to start to think differently about the role they play in growth? **[0:16:20] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, it it's a great question, Eric. So the first thing we always talk about here at Workday is we talk about the values of the company. And they are a guiding light and guiding principles for everything we do. We have six core values that our founders wrote on a piece of paper, and that's the bedrock and the foundation of the company, and they will never change. I subscribe to them and I will continue to, you know, foster, secure them and carry them well into the future, uh, because it is what makes Workday such a special place. **[0:16:52] Carl Eschenbach:** And those values lead to the culture of the company, and the culture of the company is extremely special. But while the values won't change ever, our culture can and will change as we scale into the future. I really encourage people to think about speed and having a sense of urgency and working quickly and decision making, right, to make decisions faster, to bring things to market quicker. So speed, I often talk about as a business strategy. If we're faster than someone else, it's hard to defend. **[0:17:25] Carl Eschenbach:** It's very simple. The other thing is when you make a change, or you drive change, or you drive evolution or transformation of a company, you need to tell the people why you're doing it. If you just tell them, Eric, to go do this without the why, they'll have a lot of questions. If you give them the why we're doing it and the potential impact it's going to have on our company, our customers and our partners, they're much more bought in and they'll go execute against that business strategy because they know the why behind it. **[0:17:59] Carl Eschenbach:** So just saying, do it because we have to move faster isn't good enough. It's about communicating and sharing with them the why behind it so that you can scale and grow well into the future. **[0:18:11] Eric Kutcher:** And you just celebrated 20 years, and I know building an enduring company is super important to you. So how do you really think about maintaining that same type of great institution? **[0:18:21] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, well, there's multiple things. So first, I'll say it starts with those core values I just spoke about, making sure everyone at the company knows who what our values are and that they are the foundation for the company. And when we hire people into the company, we need to make sure that they understand the values when they come in the door. And we want them to align with our values. If not, it might not be the right place, but that is the core to our success. **[0:18:45] Carl Eschenbach:** The second thing is, I think, for all of the workmates I serve alongside of, and definitely for myself, I always say, Eric, I want to leave Workday in a better place when I leave than when I started. If we're always trying to grow, evolve, take Workday well into the future and set it up for the next set of employees and leaders, I think that's a great mindset. So what am I doing to make this a better place for the future, right? **[0:19:15] Carl Eschenbach:** Of anyone who's going to be around or work with or for Workday, I think that's critically important. And then the last thing I'd say is is what we just talked about, having that growth mindset. Growing is fun. Growing means you're winning. So making sure people are coming in excited, full of enthusiasm and energy to grow us into the future and truly disrupt in a very positive way to traditional thinking when it comes to the markets we serve. **[0:19:46] Carl Eschenbach:** We did it 20 years ago, it's happening with AI, and we need to do it again as a company. And I think we can build, you know, upon the greatness of Workday and make this truly one of the greatest, most iconic enterprise software companies of our generation. We have so much opportunity and we're going to drive value creation across our customers, our partners, our employees and our shareholders. Value creation for everyone will get this flywheel amongst those four and drive us deep into the future. **[0:20:20] Carl Eschenbach:** And this place can be set up for more success in the future when new leadership takes over well, well, well down the line. But we have to have that mindset, Eric. **[0:20:29] Eric Kutcher:** We use the word stewardship. We are literally there to hand it to make sure that we move it forward. And as you say, to leave it for the next generation better than we found it. **[0:20:38] Carl Eschenbach:** Amen. Super important. It's a it's a mindset, right? That's our responsibility. And if we are here to strive as leaders to give more than we get and focus on the success of the people we get to serve alongside of, focus on the success of our customers and our partners. Everything else somehow has a magical way to take care of itself. **[0:20:59] Eric Kutcher:** All right, I got to know you many, many moons ago when you were at VMware and you were the president COO. You then were an investor and then obviously now a CEO of an iconic institution. What are some of the lessons of leadership and how has your own view of leadership evolved? **[0:21:16] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, I mean, we could talk about leadership all day, Eric. It's a passion of mine, and I think it's critically important when you're put in a position to serve others. Um, and I'll start with that word serve. Once I transformed or transitioned my life from a life of success to a life of significance, everything else changed. I now focus on impact and significance to others, not focus on my own success. And by serving others, somehow success will follow, uh, and can follow you in probably even more success than if you focused on success itself. **[0:21:51] Carl Eschenbach:** So serving others, focusing on impact, focusing on significance that you're bringing to others, I think is a a key component to leading in this, uh, new world that we're living today. I also think, you know, Eric, that your attitude that you bring to the office and to your employees and your peers, uh, and the people you serve alongside of every day is what ultimately will determine a lot of your success. I often say your altitude in life is completely determined by your attitude in life. **[0:22:25] Carl Eschenbach:** Having interacted, engaged with a lot of senior leaders in the world, I think the ones who are most humble and grounded and remember where they came from, who remain highly authentic and vulnerable, are the type of people that others will follow. As soon as you think you have made it, you have, in my book, to the end. So just remember where you came from, focus on serving others, focus on giving as much as you can to others, and somehow success will follow you. **[0:22:57] Carl Eschenbach:** And always strive to give more than you get. And it's a great life lesson, life lesson, meaning both in business and in your personal life as well. **[0:23:06] Eric Kutcher:** This idea of serving, this idea of making others better. I really believe that really great leaders make others better. **[0:23:14] Carl Eschenbach:** I am a very blessed man who get to work alongside some incredible people. And it's all about others, not about yourself. As soon as it's about yourself, uh, you failed. **[0:23:24] Eric Kutcher:** As you think about kind of the arc of your own career, what were some of the things you wish you knew 25 years ago with all the hindsight that you now have? **[0:23:34] Carl Eschenbach:** Yeah, I think there's a couple things. When I shifted my life, as I just said, from a life of focusing on success to a life of focusing on significance and impact to others through influence, I think that absolutely changed a lot for me. And I would encourage people to start doing that early in their careers. It doesn't mean you're not driven, you're not motivated, you're not hungry to advance your career. But the greatest way to advance your career is by serving others and for others to help lift you up as you want to go on your own career journey. **[0:24:07] Carl Eschenbach:** The other is, I'd say, build a deep, meaningful, trusting network. But that network can't be surface. Hey, I know Bill or Sue. It's got to be deep, meaningful relationships that you invest time in that can help you expand your career in the future. Build a network. I always say the power of your network is only as strong as the number of nodes that are in it. Find those nodes and have those nodes help you expand your network because it is one of the gifts that will keep on giving in your career. **[0:24:47] Carl Eschenbach:** Build a real network with others that you can help impact them in the future and they can help impact you in the future. That's something else I would absolutely focus on if I were early in my career right now. And then the last is stay technically relevant. And what I mean by that, especially in the world we're living today, is whether you're in technology, whether you're in marketing, whether you're in operations, whether you're in sales, technology powers the world, technology drives innovation, technology is what makes all of us smarter. **[0:25:26] Carl Eschenbach:** Lean into technology, don't be afraid of it. Figure out how you peacefully coexist with it. Figure out how you leverage it to help you in your career, but also help others drive productivity for all of the human mankind. Technology is all about the future and the future of growth. And with growth comes exciting things in your life. **[0:25:51] Eric Kutcher:** I want to add one more. You talked about this idea of being more vulnerable and and humble. We all make mistakes, and in fact, it's through those mistakes that we probably grow more than through our successes. Sharing those mistakes and not trying to hide them, I think, is another part. That I do remember someone giving me feedback a hundred years ago of like, you need to to to kind of tell the stories of failure. **[0:26:14] Carl Eschenbach:** Listen, we make mistakes every day, and I'm sure I'll make plenty today. And the other thing, Eric, is with all the wisdom and all the knowledge and all the experience you've now gained in your career, it doesn't mean you have to be the smartest person in the room. Sometimes it's okay, even if you might know the answer, to say in whatever meeting you're in, I'm not sure. Let me think about that, or let me go figure that out. **[0:26:39] Carl Eschenbach:** I'm not sure I know the answer. Does anyone else? That's vulnerability, because the higher up the corporate ladder you go, the more people expect and think you have all the answers, and it's just not true. That's why you have a team. That's why you focus on others. That's why you surround yourself with people smarter than you. That's true vulnerability in admitting that there's nothing wrong with it. And I'm just telling you, the more you admit it and you show your vulnerabilities, the more people will align around you and help you ultimately be successful. **[0:27:13] Eric Kutcher:** Last question how do you measure the impact of your leadership or even folks on your team? How do you know when you're having the impact you desire? **[0:27:22] Carl Eschenbach:** Well, I think there's multiple ways you can measure it. I think a lot of people would start with the numbers. I don't necessarily start with the numbers. I think the numbers follow if you do the other things right. I look at the people in the organization, I look at their career growth, I look at the success they're having, the potential impact you're having on them and their families, and the potential impact they're having on the company. **[0:27:44] Carl Eschenbach:** I do think there are metrics you have to track almost on a weekly, daily and quarterly basis on how you're running the company through KPIs. So there are metrics you have to follow and make course adjustments along the way. And then ultimately, it's all about driving value, value creation. I said this earlier, Eric, value creation for your employees, your customers, your partners. And if you do all of those things right, you'll measure on the value creation for your investors and the people who believe in your company. **[0:28:15] Carl Eschenbach:** And the ones who are cheering for you from the sidelines to help you and think about going and creating that most iconic software company of all time. That's how I'd measure it. **[0:28:25] Eric Kutcher:** Thank you. I expected nothing less in terms of wisdom about leadership, what AI is like in the moment and where it's going to take us going forward, wisdom about how to change an organization. Thank you for sharing your story. **[0:28:36] Carl Eschenbach:** Well, thank you, Eric. **[0:28:39] Sean Brown:** And our thanks to Carl and Eric for this interesting discussion, and thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and we welcome your ratings and reviews on any podcast player. You can also reach us via email at itsr at mckinsey dot com, which stands for Inside the Strategy Room. If you'd like to subscribe to our weekly series, just follow us on any podcast player where you can also access our entire library of more than 260 episodes. **[0:29:07] Sean Brown:** We've also organized our podcast library across nine major themes, browsable on our Inside the Strategy Room collection page at mckinsey dot com slash itsr, where you can also access written transcripts of each of those episodes. And finally, if you'd like to automatically receive our latest publications and insights, we encourage you to sign up for email alerts on our insights page at mckinsey dot com slash scf, or connect with us on LinkedIn at the McKinsey Strategy and Corporate Finance Practice page. **[0:29:36] Sean Brown:** And we've included links for you to follow in the show notes. Thanks again for listening. We look forward to having you join us again next week Inside the Strategy Room.