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Episode 8: Pascal Bornet: Lead with Agentic AI — or Risk Being Replaced
226 Plays30 days ago
Hands-On Leadership in the Age of AI
with Pascal Bornet, author of Agentic Artificial Intelligence
“If your C-suite isn’t using large-language models to make decisions, you’re already behind.” — Pascal Bornet
What You’ll Hear in 30 Minutes
• Three competencies every leader needs now – AI-readiness, change-readiness, and uniquely human skills
• Why 15–20 % “experiment time” should be baked into every employee’s week
• How AI agents fuse LLM context with automation action—and what that means for ROI
• Taming “AI overwhelm” and choosing the right pilots
• Pascal’s journey from McKinsey & EY to 2 M+ social followers and a #1 Amazon AI bestseller
Guest Snapshot
Pascal Bornet is a former McKinsey and EY partner who built both firms’ intelligent-automation practices. His newest book, Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life (co-authored with Jochen Wirtz, Thomas H. Davenport, Phil Fersht, David De Cremer & others), explores how agentic systems bridge the gap between powerful language models and real-world business automation. The title currently ranks at #1 in Amazon’s Robotics category and top-10 in AI & Semantics.
Timestamps
00:00 — Intro & Pascal’s origin story
02:48 — “Tech is nothing without people”
04:50 — The three future-proof competencies
15:25 — Why CEOs must fund a culture of experimentation
21:58 — Large-language models in the C-suite
28:55 — Agentic AI: the convergence of LLMs + automation
30:40 — Closing & next-step resources
Resources & Links
Book – Agentic Artificial Intelligence → https://a.co/d/9DD7S23
Follow Pascal on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalbornet/
Follow Phil on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/pfersht/
Loved the conversation? Follow, rate ★★★★★ & review From the Horse’s Mouth to keep bold, practical AI insights flowing to your feed.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Ready to meet the disruptors who are guiding us to the new great utopia by reshaping our world and pushing past corporate spin for honest conversations about the future impact of current and emerging technologies?
00:00:30
Speaker
Tune in now.
Meet Pascal Bonnet
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey there. Welcome to the latest edition of the Horse's Mouth podcast. I'm Phil First and joining me today is a very special guest, Pascal Bonnet. Many of you have probably seen, heard of Pascal over the years. i remember during the early days of robotic process automation when I think Pascal and I first got connected when he was at McKinsey, but I'd love you, Pascal, to maybe chime in a bit about you know yourself.
00:01:04
Speaker
you know What is it you're driving these days? and And is this what you thought you'd be doing when you were coming out of college as ah as an ambitious young man?
Pascal's Background and Passion
00:01:13
Speaker
Hey, Phil, thanks for for having me. And a little bit of background on myself. I'm coming from 20 plus years of consulting.
00:01:20
Speaker
As you mentioned, McKinsey was one of the companies I worked for. EY was another one. For both of those companies, I built their, I mean, I was originally in the outsourcing, process improvement, business intelligence, business type of practices and and initiatives that we implemented for for our corporate clients.
00:01:43
Speaker
When RPA came on came to the world, I specialized in that and built for both of those companies, EY and McKinsey, their intelligent automation practices.
00:01:54
Speaker
got very passionate about the topic and the capacity that it has to make our world more human and boost yeah our company's efficiencies and productivity.
Human Component in Tech Success
00:02:06
Speaker
that I wrote the this this book, Intelligent Automation, that was five years ago now.
00:02:11
Speaker
There was mainly a focus on how can companies, business leaders leverage those but Automation technologies to improve their processes, improve their customer experience, employee experience, and also a a reflection and on how this can impact our world for the better, but also potentially for the worst and what we can do for that.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, passionate about all these that I shared a lot about those topics of automation and and the future of work on on social media and and lucky today to have more than 2 million followers across social media platforms.
00:02:48
Speaker
A key lesson that ah that I learned from those two decades of implementing those transformations in companies is that whatever the technology you implement, whatever how how good and sophisticated it is,
00:03:00
Speaker
the human component is the most important. And this makes a difference between using the same technology in company A or company B. Company A will succeed because it's going to educate, it's going to manage change, it's going to be close to their people, they involve their people. And this will make the difference compared to company B that just wants to implement technology because it's it's about...
00:03:25
Speaker
ah finding efficiency and because everywhere everybody else is talking about about it and and just
Research on Humans and AI
00:03:31
Speaker
for the shiny tool. And so this was five years ago after publishing Intelligent Automation. i focused on researching at the intersection between human and AI, because I really believe this is where the highest value lies for companies in terms of adoption.
00:03:48
Speaker
And the better you adopt those technologies, the better the impact will be for your business. that I wrote. So this book, which is the outcome of this research, which is irreplaceable.
00:03:59
Speaker
how can we stand out in the age of AI for us as individuals, as leaders, but also as companies? And I talk about the three competencies of the future. so basically what all of us companies or people should consider Focus on now, to build now, to be relevant and better in the future.
Future Competencies for AI
00:04:20
Speaker
So the three compet competencies of the future being AI ready or tech ready. Okay. So meaning meaning understanding how to use those technology to the highest extent,
00:04:30
Speaker
but also understanding that and mitigating the potential issues that it comes from from from them. The second is about being change-ready in a world where everything is going faster and faster on an exponential pace.
00:04:43
Speaker
We need to be ready to a new level of adaptation and a new level of resilience. This is valid for us as people, as leaders, but also for our companies.
00:04:54
Speaker
And the third one is in a world where AI is taking over more and more of the capabilities we thought were uniquely human. Creativity, for example, what are the uniquely human abilities that make us, that technology will never really achieve and that make us complementary to technology and where if we build them to the highest extent, we create synergy and we create higher value with technology. You've had quite the journey, Pascal. You've had quite the journey. We'll get on to the next book in a minute. Quite the journey.
Pascal's AI Journey
00:05:24
Speaker
It's interesting because met with Simon Sinek a couple of times and he told me that.
00:05:30
Speaker
I said, how did you get so famous? Like, you know you are a global superstar. And he said he had a lunch one day with some kid who was an expert in YouTube. And he said they did one video with him and it just went completely viral.
00:05:43
Speaker
He didn't know how it happened. But there was that one thing he did that propelled him. to being such a voice in the industry. You seem to have gone through a similar phase. Like you suddenly went from ah consultant at McKinsey when I first met you to this voice of AI, I mean, what ah number one in the AI bestsellers list on Amazon right now.
00:06:06
Speaker
Is there anything you can share um was there one thing that you did that propelled you, that got you out there, or was it more of a sequence of things? I think it's ah it's a sequence of things.
00:06:17
Speaker
The first one is writing my first book. And i think the this has been possible thanks to the pandemic. So just to tell you how those coincidences are very random.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, the pandemic gave me time to finish it and to publish and to publishish it And when you write a book, that's crazy what all that that happens. And yeah, people come to you and say, oh, wow, you've said something that I wanted to say for a long time. Oh, you've helped our company so much in doing this.
00:06:45
Speaker
And you really got passionate about how you can help people and businesses get better and and you want to share about it. it's It's really about sharing a passion, I would say, just just about that.
00:06:57
Speaker
So going from, you said, the corporate world where some people buy technology for the sake of technology, some are investing because they feel they're finding real value, real change.
AI Adoption Challenges
00:07:10
Speaker
What do you think is true today when you You know, you go back into the corporate world and you talk to your old clients or new enterprise leaders. Do you sense there's a sea change going on with how they're approaching transformation and innovation when it comes to AI? Or do you think it's still very much, we're still very much steeped in the same issues we had 10 years ago?
00:07:32
Speaker
I think we are still overall in the same issues of data quality, of process, messiness, of change management issues, communication issues, and so on. So all this, yeah, definitely remains.
00:07:47
Speaker
But on top of this, we are adding... ah lot of complexity, where with a lot of new technologies that can bring a lot of efficiency. The CEOs I work with today are all, yes, they feel overwhelmed by all that is happening. And you see, I mean, you see the news every day. You have a new model coming out with a new capability, with a new benchmark, with a new... It's very difficult for them to understand what is essential, what is not.
00:08:13
Speaker
So I think we are, to answer your question, it's getting more complex. It's getting more complex because of the speed at which all this is going. It's also very personal, don't you think? Someone said to me the other day, I just can't get enough of this AI crack. like that's a bit But it's true in a way, like there's five or six really awesome tools out there. I run an analyst company.
00:08:35
Speaker
And I've started to use my ChatGPT Pro perplexity a lot for now and just like a research assistant thing. Like it's honing tools for me. It's helping me pull data together better. It's it's becoming like ah something to help me do my job better.
Using AI Tools in Business
00:08:51
Speaker
And then I'm bringing on people who are actually running boot camps, getting other analysts on calls to say, we're all using these tools and we're all figuring it out together.
00:09:03
Speaker
And we're saying, hey, have you tried doing this? Have you tried doing that? Have you tried taking these 10 bullet points and asking agentic tools to... translate these into an avatar, for example.
00:09:16
Speaker
How are we using this to make a difference with our business to stay ahead of the rest? Because, you know, i feel as an information company, we have an opportunity because we have an authentic voice.
00:09:28
Speaker
At the same time, we're also under massive threat. because you can see how your own clients can start to build out these tools so they don't need you anymore, right? So irreplaceable is a fantastic way to describe how to be better at this. How do you make yourself irreplaceable?
00:09:44
Speaker
But when we get to the corporate world, Are we seeing a similar vibe, do you think, from some of these leaders? that Are they actually personally getting pulled into this or they just think we have to be AI aware, we have to be good at this stuff?
00:09:57
Speaker
Are we on the train is where I'm going with this, Pascal? Or do you think we have to go through another iteration of are we replaceable before we get there?
Strategic Tech Integration
00:10:06
Speaker
I think it's not easy to be a CEO today in this context.
00:10:11
Speaker
So I mentioned about the complexity and the ah the overwhelming environment in which we are. But besides this, you have huge opportunities and massive possibilities for your company to completely change the game.
00:10:27
Speaker
This happens almost every day that you have a new capacity that comes on the market. That can be better than your competitor or can directly change your your industry. The key thing today is how can you how can you pick the ones that are the important, the most relevant, and the most actionable for your company?
00:10:45
Speaker
I like to take the image of ah renovating renovating your house. Because the adding to this complexity is the fact that we have a company as a CEO. You have a company.
00:10:56
Speaker
This company exists. It has its systems now. It has its people now, its processes now. And all this technology is coming and you still need to your company to work.
00:11:07
Speaker
okay Every day you need to deliver your revenue, your cash flow, and you can't you can't do a full renovation, go out of the house, rent another house and get the whole renovation.
00:11:18
Speaker
i mean, here, building new systems and building a new company. You need to renovate as you live in this house. and And this is very complex.
00:11:30
Speaker
So it's about picking what is the most important to renovate. Speaking what, I mean, not taking too much risk. I mean, you won't renovate the roof without being sure that you have the right walls. And you want maybe in some maybe some aspect of decoration almost more important than changing the windows.
00:11:48
Speaker
And it's really about having clarity on your strategy, i mean understanding well your market, and and understanding extremely well your clients. So it comes back to those to those basic, I would say, fundamental things.
00:12:02
Speaker
But also it comes now, there is a shift that CEOs need to make in order that to... Avoid being overwhelmed and to go with the flow and making sure they are not left behind.
Innovative Work Culture
00:12:15
Speaker
It's about trying regularly those new technologies that are coming, trying them, getting hands on. There is no other way to understand the technology today than trying it.
00:12:27
Speaker
So have your teams try try things. Give them the time. What I recommend is educating our teams to those new technologies, to AI, to generative AI, to agentic AI.
00:12:40
Speaker
But what does it mean? It doesn't mean getting them into a so classroom anymore. I mean, we don't we don't have time to do that. And anyway, whenever the classroom is finished, the technology that you've taught is already obsolete. So it's more of a mindset and a way of working.
00:12:57
Speaker
And what I recommend is give to your team members 15 to 20 percent of their working time for them to stay updated of what's coming out.
00:13:09
Speaker
What are the new tools, new AI that are coming out that can help them in their work, that can help the company? And secondly, ah for them, whenever they identify a technology that is worth, that is relevant, to try it.
00:13:25
Speaker
Fail at it Yeah. like I mean, really this experimentation and this spirit of experimentation of failing ah to succeed, because the more you fail, the more the more you succeed, is extremely important. And it is us, the leaders, to tell, to be able to give this mindset, this time, this time.
00:13:45
Speaker
And to reward, so the the incentives that we give, the KPIs and the OKRs of our people should be aligned with that, ah rewarding them for innovating, for failing, for keeping themselves updated, for automating their work, for...
00:14:04
Speaker
bringing other people from their teams into into this work. And nothing think there is also a collaborative effort where you want everyone in the company to share what they've identified as opportunities to improve their work so that others can try it as well.
00:14:19
Speaker
So the role of of ah the CEO, which used to be very in an ivory tower, you know, seeing, and having a vision and it's not enough anymore. and And I think it's very important for the CEO to show that They are also they are also hands-on, and they are rewarding these type of behaviors.
CIOs as Collaborative Leaders
00:14:38
Speaker
Dude, you just completed a big study that showed you know most CIOs are still very much these cost center managers now. like they They've got to keep the budgets down, theyve got to keep the ships sailing.
00:14:49
Speaker
And everything we're talking about here is completely foreign to the way that CIOs have operated for the last 30, 40 years. like Suddenly, they have to become...
00:15:00
Speaker
business leaders, collaborators, working with their business counterparts to figure this out, it's so much more personal. it almost feels like we need a whole new breed of people to run enterprise technology because some of these people who are in there today are struggling. don't know about you, Pascal, but when I talk to clients,
00:15:21
Speaker
I can tell within five minutes whether they're getting their hands dirty with this or whether they're just bullshitting. right And I think we're at a phase now where we're in an industry that's run by fear.
00:15:33
Speaker
versus possibility. Like a year ago, were all sitting at conferences, starry-eyed still, looking at ChatGPT and Gen AI large language models and thinking of the possibilities.
00:15:43
Speaker
Now it's like you can feel the paranoia in the room. ah I've got to get on top of this or I'm toast, right? So are we at that point in the world where things are going to change quite dramatically?
00:15:55
Speaker
i had a great description with a colleague of mine yesterday where yeah We were looking at a 2030 vision for like a genetic AI, for example, where it's going to take five more years to get to a place where this is real.
00:16:08
Speaker
Now we have the wonderful President Trump has come along and he's poured gasoline onto a smoldering platform. Whether he likes it or not, he's ignited. A whole bunch of chaos and paranoia and fear in the business world.
00:16:22
Speaker
And we think the timeframe for organizations to really agendify themselves is 2027. It's not 2030 anymore. They're getting constricted. They're getting chaos.
00:16:35
Speaker
Uncertainty is driving more focus on this. One, do you agree with this? And two, are you experiencing clients starting to get more aggressive with making changes now? Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think there are two ways to react to what's happening.
00:16:51
Speaker
This is very close. I mean, we face the same thing in our lives as well as as an individual. Change happens and a very quick change happening. Either you fear it and you talked about FOMO, for example. and So the fear of missing out. A lot of CEOs are currently facing this because they they see all this happening.
Mindset Shift Toward AI
00:17:09
Speaker
Am I missing something?
00:17:10
Speaker
This comes from perspective. a good point in themselves. they want to They want to survive, they want to succeed, and so the fear of missing out. But there is also those people who just take a step back and, first of all, don't fall into the drawback of constantly thinking they are missing something and and constantly chasing things and But take the step back and say, okay, whatever is happening today, i want to have a look.
00:17:37
Speaker
I'll have a look at what just happened yesterday and how we really go into in depth into it and understand what can I do with that and what but are the opportunities I can get from it.
00:17:48
Speaker
So it's really changing the mindset from being scared of something to being, to see it as an opportunity and seeing how, how I can size it and how I, and this mindset is changing the whole thing.
00:18:02
Speaker
It's not, how can I adapt quickly to this technology? It's how can I use this technology to do something that is changing the game and that I'm passionate about it. Yeah. It's all that unlearning concept comes to mind. on Let's just forget about the way we used to think. We we got away for years. It's like, you know, we spent 10, 20 years watching CIOs boast about their SAP or Oracle implementations. And they were very public about it.
00:18:32
Speaker
suddenly ah ai is it top secret. ah No one can talk about it. it's But it's so personal to people. It's so much more of an impact, not just on our businesses, but on ourselves and our careers.
00:18:43
Speaker
Phil, just on that on that note, which which I think is very important for C-levels. So we are getting into an environment that is boosted by technology, change that is boosted by technology.
00:18:54
Speaker
ah So it's us also to use technology to help us in our decision making, to help us understand better this environment and make the right decisions. And I really believe that today, if a C-level doesn't use a news and large language model ah to help them in making their decisions, they are really missing a big thing and they should really get the help of technology to help them survive and succeed in a world boosted by technology.
00:19:22
Speaker
That's critical. i mean, any decisions that I make, I will double check. Am I complete in what i've I thought about? What are the other opportunities? What is the right way to implement it? What is, yeah, those large language models. So it can be Claude, it can be Chagipiti, it can be Gemini or whatever, but use those tools to help in the decision making. That's so
Pascal's Book on Agentic AI
00:19:45
Speaker
important. We go faster.
00:19:46
Speaker
We go better. That's The only way to. That's a very basic recommendation, but I think it's fundamental today. So finally, the new book.
00:19:57
Speaker
What inspired you? Because you you are the real brains behind our wonderful, gigantic, intelligent, artificial intelligence book. What inspired you to write this one? Here we go. Here's the book.
00:20:09
Speaker
Currently number one in the Amazon AI bestsellers list, everybody. What inspired you to write this? And what type of reaction are you getting? And maybe what is your but one big takeaway from this hole this whole latest book experience?
00:20:23
Speaker
Yes. So we started really talking about agentic, I would say, ah yeah a bit more than a year ago. And I think Andrew Enger really put this on the on the stage. I think it was in March last year, something like that.
00:20:36
Speaker
by yeah being the first, I think, to to talk about agenting AI, as yeah we used to say agents. Of course, with my background, which is the same as yours, having helped companies to automate end-to-end business processes, to free up their people, to focus on more insightful, ah exciting activities, to improve productivity, improve customer and and and employee experience using those end-to-end automations.
00:21:03
Speaker
As large language models are coming, they are giving us new opportunities to improve do so beyond whatever we've been able to do with those automations. So ah for me, it's a natural evolution of my expertise from those RPA rigid fix that were not adaptable at all to intelligent automation that was a mix of AI and RPA to help manage invoices, documents, and so on into those end-to-end processes, having now the capacity, having now large language models that are capable of understanding context, understanding goals, plan actions, and act on tools, and then learn from their actions to improve themselves.
00:21:50
Speaker
It was not you know and even an idea not to write a book on that. having Having written Intelligent Automation, it was the natural evolution of this type of opportunity that we are giving to businesses and to people and to society.
00:22:05
Speaker
Well, the biggest frustration when we were first writing about RPA in 2012 was the fact that the technology couldn't do what a lot of agentic doing. currently doing and is getting better at doing and the concept was there 13 years ago but now it's becoming reality and you know let's not discount the use of rpa because it was it still is a very very good tool for patching up systems breathing new life into architectures and things like that but i really feel we have tools today that can take us to a very different place and um yes change is hard and this is probably the hardest change we've ever had to go through right so
00:22:44
Speaker
yeah I think this book's been
Closing Remarks and Future Collaborations
00:22:46
Speaker
a great experience. I've really enjoyed supporting you on it, Pascal. So thank you for asking me to do that. And I can't wait for everybody else to give us more feedback. We're going to be sharing a copy at our New York Summit next week as well to to many folks who are there. so I really appreciate your time today, Pascal, and may this be the first of many future conversations that we have in this post-agentic world.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yes, that yeah definitely definitely. I think we are we are really at the right time at the conjunction of two big technologies, and that's that's really what motivated me to launch the writing of the book.
00:23:20
Speaker
I mean, we we started writing the book a year ago, just to tell you. And at that time, almost no one was talking about that. Just, yeah, as I said, Andrew Unger was, I think, the first one to launch this world, Agent EKI. And yeah, it was really nascent and very interesting and very exciting to help companies building those first pilots and building on a our experience of automating end-to-end processes using ah RPA and other technologies is incredibly enriching and we become so rich of this experience because there are a lot of similarities between those types of transformations.
00:23:58
Speaker
So today we are really at the conjunction of two big technologies, large language models coming with their capacity to understand context, to break down goals into action plans.
00:24:10
Speaker
And on the other side, we have what we've been working on, automation, the capacity to automate tasks, workflows, Both of them have had before agenting their limitations.
00:24:25
Speaker
LLMs couldn't do anything. So they can give you great advice, but they can't implement it. And the fact that they can't implement it makes that sometimes their recommendations are wrong.
00:24:37
Speaker
They are not applicable. And on the other side, we have what we know very well, that those automations that were quite rigid, lack of understanding of context.
00:24:49
Speaker
And whenever something changed in the context, that could break the whole the whole automation. So having those two forces coming together and giving to those large language models the capacity to act and giving those automations the capacity to understand context and build action plans and differently,
00:25:08
Speaker
based on the context, creates agent EKI that today gives huge opportunities for companies, but also risks of going into the wrong direction.
00:25:18
Speaker
So that's really what is behind this book, directing the companies, the CEOs, the leaders in the right direction. And thanks again you for participating in today's.
00:25:30
Speaker
Excellent. Well, the next time we'll speak French, Pascal. D'accord. D'accord. Merci bien. Au prochain fois. À bientôt, Phil. À bientôt.
Podcast Conclusion
00:25:45
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Remember to follow Phil on LinkedIn and subscribe and like on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform for no-nonsense takes on the intricate dance between technology, business, and ideological systems.
00:26:05
Speaker
Got something to add to the discussion? Let's have it. Drop us a line at fromthehorsesmouth at hfsresearch.com or connect with Phil on LinkedIn.