娇色导航

Cathy O'Sullivan?

Hello and welcome to 娇色导航Leadership Live Australia. I'm Cathy O'Sullivan, editorial director for Foundry in Australia and New Zealand. And my guest today is Gary Adler, who is the Chief Digital Officer at Minter Ellison, and he's also one of our 2024 CIO50.

Welcome to the podcast, Gary, congrats again on being one of our top ranked CIOs in this year's CIO50. ? Gary Adler?

Thank you very much for having me, Cathy. It seems a really apt time to be talking about all of the different things that are going on in this very fast moving technology world. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So look to kick us off. Can you give us an overview of MinterEllison, its mission and purpose, and how you and the team support the business? ? Gary Adler?

Sure, so MinterEllison is the largest law firm in this region. We are a legal firm at heart, but over the last few years, our strategy has been to actually grow the firm into a broader advisory so we're providing full suite solutions to our clients.

We include now IT consulting, AI consulting and advisory, risk and regulation.

We consult to higher ed services, so we sort of bring the best of both worlds to our clients, the firm's long state of purpose is really to create sustainable value with our clients, our people and our communities.

And we've long recognised the digital strategy as presenting really a significant opportunity to enhance the way that we work and deliver outcomes. So we see digital as a really key enabler to enhancing the firm strategy, and we look at it through three key lenses.

We call it PCP internally. The first P stands for productivity, and I think this almost goes without saying in a highly and increasingly competitive professional services market.

The second is our clients, allowing us to really work with clients in the most innovative way to deliver the best of breed legal and consulting services in that market.

And the third P is about our people value proposition, and this is about how we leverage technology, particularly AI and automation at the moment, to move our people up the value chain, allowing them to focus on the most complex elements of a matter or a project and the human side of our client relationships, while the tech takes care of the pain and maintain so very much, embedded intertwined in the first firm strategy as an enabler.

? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So with productivity then hyperautomation has definitely been a focus for MinterEllison in recent times. Can you tell us a bit more about your hyper automation journey, and what was the long term vision for that? ? Gary Adler?

So we kicked this off in around 2021/22 and really it was about bringing disparate pieces of automation and tech that existed across the firm into a single centre of excellence.

So we had things like workflow automation, service automation, task automation, elements of AI that we're working with already, and robotic process automation.

And the idea was to bring together the brilliant teams that sat around us and all of these technologies into a single group, so that we were bringing together like minded teams, which was super powerful, we were starting to cross pollinate the skill sets in those teams, and then, critically, these economies of scale actually allowed us to move at pace and really stay ahead of the market and what was going on.

? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So you mentioned that you created a center of excellence as part of that. So how does that automation centre of excellence prioritise which process you automate? What criteria do you use assess that relevance and impact of each initiative? ? Gary Adler?

Sowhere we started, and this is going back to 22 is we looked at high volume areas where there was going to be high return, or the lowest hanging fruit, and then we went to high volume, medium return after that.

But I think the most important thing for us was to make sure that we were working with business leaders right, rather than this being a tech-led initiative, and the business knows where the sore points are. So it was, you know, trying to unlock those painpoints with them.

I think making a business led was probably the cornerstone of our success, rather than digital, deciding what they thought was the most important area to to automate.

And I think the other thing we did is we really worked hard to build the stakeholder buy in making, at times, partners, the product, owner of the product that we were putting in to automate part of their workflows.

And the idea was to make sure that they had skin in the game with joint KPIs, and of course, sharing in the success at the conclusion of each of these programs of work. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

You had that principle of 'everything that could be automated should be automated'. Was there ever any, I guess, resistance to that principle? You know, you're applying it across different departments. How did you address any kind of challenges? ? Gary Adler?

So the first thing we did is we started with an enterprise view, right? Let's look at the entire organization.

We then spoke to business leaders, as I said, to understand the pain points across different areas, and then we try to match it with high volume or areas where there were repetitive tasks.

And usually the strongest cases that fit into this principle were things like legal work stream areas.

So leasing is a good example where there's live stream type work that we do really it was an obvious place to start all those years ago and start building success and telling really good stories across the business as well.

Off the back of that success, we also started looking at areas where we could create market differentiation, or back end processes that were really quite right for automation.

So an example is we put in 10 or 15 robotic process automation bots into some of our finance areas to take care of really painful and mundane work that no one want to do, and again, moved our people up the value stack, a really strong story to tell.

I think the most important thing here Cathy is actually a less tangible element.

And we would look where the energy was go, where the energy is so the energy within the business to truly embrace change where there was pockets of deep frustration, and this is we have found, time and time again, the best way to actually address resistance before it happens because there's both a need and a want and a want in these groups to make change.

? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So what metrics did you use then, when you were kind of illustrating the success of the hyperautomation initiatives and and how did you track and communicate those productivity gains to to the business, to the stakeholders, to the boards? ? Gary Adler?

Not surprisingly, we track everything that we can, so we're very data driven, which is great because it's quite difficult to argue with data. The way we track is also highly automated across the various initiatives.

But really what we've seen over the years now that we've been running a fall or half or automation strategy is literally millions of minutes have been given back to the business in opportunity cost.

And whilst that is communicated via various data, graphs and tables to the board and exec and the other CXOs, the underlying communication really is around that PCP strategy that I mentioned earlier, right?

This is the best way to connect directly back to the firm's underlying strategy in a way that everyone in the business can understand. So what is this doing to improve things with the way we deliver work to clients? What is this doing for our people value proposition?

And what is this doing for productivity across your group? So giving you more time your day to focus on the most crucial complex elements of a matter or more time with your clients. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So the firm was also involved in Microsoft Copilot's early access program. So tell us about some of the lessons that you learned, and I guess how it's influenced your overall approach to Gen AI. ? Gary Adler?

We were really fortunate to be part of the group of 600 across the globe with the Microsoft Copilot early access program, and we were just so excited to push hard and make this happen and really get traction across all pockets of the business.

And to some extent, we sort of have treated like the gateway tool, right? It's very easy to use, it's easy to adopt, and it's very much integrated into people's workflow and the tool sets that we use every day.

And this meant that our people could really start building up familiarity with Gen AI and prompting and what it did and what it didn't do well, along with another tool that we built about 18 months ago. So this was actually before the Early Access Program with Copilot.

It's called Chat with ME.

Essentially, it was an in house version of ChatGPT baked into our teams instance, so it was there in your face, ready, and it was most importantly, secure and sitting in our zero cloud, so you could use it with all sorts of data without becoming too concerned.

And then, you know, as people built up skills in these gateway tools, it started providing stepping stones into more complex or legally focused tools like our advice generator. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So tell us more than about that advice generator that you've rolled out, what have been some of the I guess, challenges and benefits of that initiative. ? Gary Adler?

So firstly, the advice generator is just a great example of leaning on a business stakeholder. This is very much business led, and it's also a great example of what happens when you start with Gateway tools and then move people off to more complex tools.

So it was the brainchild. One of our partners, who had been playing with Copilot and chat with me for quite some time, and he came to us and he said, Could we sort of create something that is purpose built?

It's a legal specific application initially, that could ingest legal advices and relevant legislation to actually create something that is bespoke and creates legal advices in seconds, historically, it could have taken juniors out to pull together the first drafts of advice, sometimes longer than that.

But most importantly, the process was designed to ensure there was a human end loop on both sides, to ensure that the output is trusted. Now, what is the main challenge?

Just like every other tool before AI, it is about driving adoption, and it's not so much about learning new tools. And people certainly see the value of these new tools. But in my view, it's that trap which is about unlearning, right?

And if you think about the way lawyers have worked, it's been the same way, not just for decades, but for centuries.

And it's unlearning, the way of doing things in a way that's very comfortable, and learning new ways of doing things that is actually quite difficult again, despite seeing the vast benefits over doing this manually. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So speaking of learning and unlearning, I know that increasing digital fluency of staff has been a key focus for you in your role. So tell us about some of the practical things you've been doing to, I guess, lift capability in this regard, at MinterEllison. ? Gary Adler?

So digital fluency has been a long emphasis of mine, going back to the early 2020s when I remember saying to both our board and executive, you know, we can have the best digital strategy.

It can be an award winning digital strategy, but if you don't have the people behind the strategy, you're not going to see return on investment. It's just a great piece of paper or something that's been filed away.

And so what we did after 2022 despite always having, of course, digital training for all sorts of things, is we formalised a Digital Academy into our learning management system. So all of the content was together. It was much more structured and targeted.

We also attached to this a reward system which we called MintCoin.

It's a genuine digital currency which sits on the blockchain, and it's used as, as I said, a reward system for every session you attend, whether it's in person, whether it's an E-learning session, you are presented with a unique QR code at the end of that session, which can then be translated into vouchers of any kind.

Now it's small, but it's meaningful, and something that you can keep building on. I think what's also great is it's adding a bit of competition and gamification to the way we do things.

So for example, we've got a leaderboard that we publish on our innovation leading our landing page that shows where people are across the organization in terms of their learning. The learning options are really far and wide.

You know, for busy, busy executives and partners, we offer what started as reverse digital mentoring. Now we call it digital coaching. It's 30 minutes a one to one session. Ask anything in the comfort of your office, no silly questions.

It's heavily focused on GenAI, of course, at the moment, because that's a big focus of the firm, and if you have nothing to ask, we have a starting agenda to get to get the ideas flowing in terms of what we can be training executives on.

But then across the rest of the organisation, we've got everything from advised e learning to single foundational learning. We have connections into LinkedIn Learning as part of our training program as well.

So really, everything that you can imagine, depending on your level and your role in your organisation to keep you educated with this sort of micro learning that's really just critical today. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

And you also rolled out a dedicated Gen AI Time Initiative. So tell us about some of the most effective elements of that, and how is it benefiting staff on that individual level and from that overall firm perspective as well. ? Gary Adler?

Yeah this has been really, a great game changer in terms of drawing people into training, particularly in a very busy environment.

So we ran this initiative at the start of this year for 12 weeks, really to highlight to our people that learning to use AI and digital fluency is key to the firm strategy, and we're prepared to give people fee credit if they lawyers and consultants across the board, so that they can really dedicate time to this initiative.

Now, during these 12 weeks, what we saw is the metrics, our learning metrics, really rocketed exponentially, which was brilliant, and it's been nicely maintained since then. There's still great engagement around the Digital Academy.

You know, for staff, it wasn't just about the firm's core capabilities and building on them, but part of the sell. You know, these skills are transportable, so you can take them anywhere in your career.

And that really helped the sort of the what's in it for me and what's in it for the firm. So it was a sort of a dual win. What else we are sitting with this?

This is that it's creating a level of stickiness, and both from an internal perspective, people really wanting to stay at mentors because we're leading in this area, as well as new external attraction to our brand, which we're hearing about in interviews, people want to come to mentors because of the digital strategy.

? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So you've been driving tons of innovative initiatives, Gary and you know, from the digital Academy to dedicated Gen AI time to hyper automation. So how do you balance that, you know, driving innovation, but the challenge of maintaining legacy systems?

And is there any advice you could give to other CIOs who who might want to be innovative, but just get caught up in the day to day operations and legacy tech challenges. ? Gary Adler?

Well, first, one of our primary Enterprise Architecture principles is to make sure that we release technical debt at pace, right? So any time a new system is introduced, we give the old system six months and it's got to be moved and shelved quickly. Now, why is that important?

Because it helps remove distractions for our people. So allows our people to focus on the latest and greatest and most innovative tools that the market has to offer that we built.

And of course, this also keeps our awesome digital team highly motivated, because they get that get to put their hands on the latest and greatest look.

My advice to CIOs is to firstly, set a three to five year North Star, and this is how the hyper automation strategy was born, and to again, ensure that your key stakeholders, the board, the executive and importantly, your own team, have input and ultimately sign off on it right?

It must be business led, not tech LED. Then underneath that, and this is the more tech led part, build a 12 month tech strategy and roadmap each year to align with the North Star.

I don't think you can do it any longer than 12 months these days, because the pace of change is just too quick. And most importantly, and this is the hardest bit stay the course, have conviction and backbone to stick with that North Star.

And if you're finding that you're being distracted by either your team or your stakeholders, point everyone back to that North Star. This is the North Star we've set. This is in line with the firm strategy, and this is what we have committed to do.

And anything outside of that really is a distraction. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So looking ahead, then what do you think are going to be some of the big challenges facing CIOs in the next five years or so? ? Gary Adler?

Well, the two big ones for me, the first is the speed of change is truly exponential.

And even for someone whose career is all focused on digital change, it is just so difficult to keep up with GenAI now in the mix, it's gone up even further, and it's difficult to predict the needs of the business.

How that's going to change the needs of our clients and our customers, because the world is also changing around us more than it has in the past. And so again, the importance of having that North Star to keep you grounded.

To keep your strategy grounded is more critical than ever. And then that agile, 12 month strategy that will continue to take change shape based on the technologies that have been pushed out through that year.

And then, of course, this is a very obvious one, but the cyber risk, it continues to grow exponentially, and again, now underpinned by generative AI in the hands of nefarious access and actors, it is truly worrying for us as a firm.

Our hard watermark is actually driven by our clients, and in this instance, it's financial services and government that really make sure we run our cyber posture at the most stringent possible levels. But this is a game that we've got to keep ahead of all the time.

And I would say to other CIOs, keep your eye on the ball. Make sure you're getting the investment from your board, your risk committees on this one. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

So with that background, then what do you think are some of the skillsets we're going to need more of going into the future? ? Gary Adler?

Well, I think AI right goes without saying, and this cannot be owned by technology.

This is a skill set that must be democratised across your organization if you are to keep pace of change and to keep ahead of your competitors, or keep pace with your competitors and your clients or your customers expectations. So I suggest really investing heavily in that.

But overarching, I think it is just staying ahead and learning about everything. Micro credentials are that you knew you need to agree so you need to restore important grounding. But keeping ahead means focused on continuously learning and taking those opportunities to stay ahead of the.

The change in our modern world and the constant volatility. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

And finally, then Gary, what's next for you and the team? Any exciting projects in the pipeline? ? Gary Adler?

Well, this is the bit where I personally eat my own words, because it is about staying the course, right, and sticking to that hyperautomation strategy that we put in place a few years ago, and again, having the conviction to push distractions away.

Now, a big part of this for us is being really heavily focused on a goal that we've set, which is 80% adoption of our AI tools next year. And this is, of course, more than just a technology goal.

It's a very important people goal, and hence we have a very close and excellent partnership with our can do talent teams and change teams. It's continuing to build on our AI tool set and automation tool sets.

So the advice generator I spoke of earlier and chat with me continue to advance those tools, but also we will look more closely next year at some of the excellent off the shelf tools that we expect to drop with very legal domain specific focuses.

And of course, this is all underpinned by data. So we have a continued focus on data transformation, breaking up data silos, and, of course, data governance as well.

And finally, this last one seems almost boring these days, but it does remain critical to our strategy, and that's getting our last two very large systems of record.

That's our document management system and our practice management system, which is essentially our law firms ERP, into the cloud now that our vendors in that space have mature offerings. And those are pretty large undertakings.

But other than that, it's just staying pace and keeping an eye on things that there are, of course, projects that we can't predict that will come up because things are changing right in front of our noses. ? Cathy O'Sullivan?

Well, congratulations again to you and your team for all your success, and I look forward to seeing more of what you get up to in the future. Gary Adler, Chief Digital Officer at MinterEllison, thank you so much for joining us. ? Gary Adler?

Thank you so much for having me, Cathy.