Name: Building the Future of AI Adoption: How McCarthy Achieved 90% AI Adoption in 30 Days
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T16:31:30.697Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: Building the Future of AI Adoption: How McCarthy Achieved 90% AI Adoption in 30 Days

Transcript for "Building the Future of AI Adoption: How McCarthy Achieved 90% AI Adoption in 30 Days": All right. Hello, everyone. Hopefully you can hear me okay. Welcome to our call today. So excited to actually have the conversation with the McCarthy team today. For some of you, it's good morning. For others, good afternoon. Some of may even be good evening. And we've got a number of folks coming in from all over the world, and I thank you for those who've actually started to create some chatter in the chat. Good morning and good afternoon for those who are joining in from different parts of the world. We'll actually get started here in a moment, but before we get started, I wanted to introduce myself and give some housekeeping items for our conversation today. First, just from a housekeeping perspective, this webinar is being recorded, So you will note that we will be recording the session across today genuinely so others can have a chance to listen in who may not be able to join us live today. In addition to being recorded, while we have the chat to kind of share updates, people's feelings, respond, if you will, to some of the questions that folks have responded, there's a formal Q and A section that we would ask that you put your questions for any of our panelists across today. The goal is to make sure that we can identify and sort those questions and also make it easier when we get to the q and a part of the conversation today. You'll also see a section that says documents. That's where we're gonna provide some additional information. So anything that we refer to today that you want to be able to come back to later, you will today, you'll actually see that in the document section as well, just to make sure that everyone has access to it. Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and get started. Just to remind everyone, the conversation today is around building the future of AI adoption. I am thrilled to be joined by the team at McCarthy, and we're talking specifically about how McCarthy achieved 90% of AI adoption in thirty days. That's significant on a number of levels, but we'll talk about why it's not just the night of the adoption, it's sustained adoption, and really what they did to bring that outcome about, specifically in working with ProSci as well. For the discussion, we'll be joined by a number of the individuals with McCarthy. But before we get into that, I wanted to start with sort of who we are and, again, how we're coming for this conversation today, what's really leading us to this moment in the way that we support organizations through that AI adoption. You'll hear that conversation specifically from McCarthy team. We wanted to start off with what call the broader ProSci story in the way that we support organizations specifically with AI adoption. I actually had this conversation probably three times in the last twenty four hours with leaders who've been assigned the responsibility of leading their AI adoption efforts, and as many of you know, the first time doing so. And so really trying to figure out where do I go for help, what kind of assistance can you all offer. So I wanted to give a little bit of a perspective on how we do this at the enterprise level, and we'll also talk about a little bit more towards the end what it means to kind of continue to grow and access some of the capabilities even at the individual level. So for those who know, Prosci is essentially a research organization that started well over thirty years ago, specifically focused on change management and what it means to drive adoption at the organizational level. I call out that research backing because that's critically important to the way that we show up in these conversations, which is everything that we're doing to support our clients is driven by the research and the best practices that we can identify through that research and those sustained studies. The way that shows up in terms of how we deliver that research and actually bring it to life for our clients is what you'll see on the page here. We start off with how are we building your capabilities? We offer a number of sessions around building capability at the individual level and at the enterprise level through our AI adoption training programs. That's everything from all the way down to individual certification, all all the way up through leaders and managers and the work that you play in driving adoption and honestly managing resistance across AI. We also have a consulting arm, and that consulting arm is to specifically help support the work that's required around AI strategies. How are you driving not just that adoption, but as I mentioned, sustained outcomes? And you'll hear more about some of that wave consulting support showed up with the McCarthy team on our conversation today. We also help support with just, I'll call it, assessments. Where do we even start? Where do we begin? Where are the places that were potentially weak across leadership, across governance alignment? But what are the ways that we actually start building that broader community as well? We'll talk about some of that membership and tools access a little bit later on. But there's different ways that we can help leverage, I'll call it, our content and research through how we assess your current state and help you build out to that future state. And then as I mentioned, we have got a host of information and research that we've done specifically around the people aspect of AI adoption. What does it mean to drive the kind of outcomes that you're looking for and, more importantly, sustain them? And, again, you'll hear more about that in our conversation today with McCarthy. So we talk about the way that we drive this work. I just want to put it in perspective that while we do this for organizations all over, today we're going focus in on McCarthy, but I wanted to give some perspective that we are sort of supporting organizations of all sizes. Surely, it doesn't matter whether it's a smaller organization all the way up to large global partners. We've worked with companies like United Concordia that you'll see here, all the way up to Microsoft, specifically around their adoption focus on AI. And you'll talk today more about the Glean work that we've done, but whether it's Copilot or other solutions, happy to support and again, want to give some perspective that we can start supporting you no matter where you are in the journey. So for those who have not had a chance to, I'll call it, fully align with us just yet, I wanted to introduce myself, Ramona Brown. I'm president of our North America market here with InproSci. That's essentially our work across our clients in Canada and across The US. And I'm joined today by a number of individuals across the McCarthy team who really led this AI adoption effort within McCarthy. I'll have each of them introduce themselves as we go into the conversation today. You'll hear more directly from Rico, Adam, Kitty, and Ryan across the day. Before we get too far into the conversation, though, I did wanna maybe just ask each of them to introduce themselves, and then we'll actually start getting into some of the questions that we've got keyed up. Rico, we'll start with you. Sure. So Rico Bertucci, VP of strategy, and I am our AI program lead here at McCarthy. Welcome. Thrilled to have you. And, Adam. Hi. Good morning. Adam Sharp. I'm the VP of strategic improvement and a huge ProSci fan. My my role at McCarthy is really to just help the organization navigate successfully through change. Thank you, Adam. Kitty. Hi. My name is Kitty Lichtenstein, and I'm an innovation manager at McCarthy. But my role on the AI program is to be the change lead over all of our different work streams. Excellent. Thank you, Kitty and Ryan. Hey, everyone. Ryan Soltis, senior innovation analyst, at McCarthy. And my main job on the team is change management and our internal communication for implementation of all the new fun things that we have coming out. Perfect. Thank you all. So excited to have a conversation with you all today and some of the work that that we will have a chance to do together. I did wanna make before we get too far into it, though, stop and pause for an opportunity to just invite those who do want to learn more. Again, you're going hear more of the conversation today, but do want to hear more specifically about the way, that we actually support clients to just indicate some level of interest. The way that we tend to support this effort is if there is interest in learning more about some of that AI adoption support that we can provide, just indicate yes to the, letter a there. For those who are saying, hey. I'm not in a position to talk immediately, but, do know someone who can talk and have that conversation with an organization. I just may not be the best person. We've got b. And then, of course, if there's not interest at this time, to indicate c as well. So we'll take a moment for making sure we can kind of capture that in our poll. And as we're getting some of that feedback, again, I just want to remind individuals we will save time at the end for a formal Q and A panel. For that formal Q and A, we just ask that you make sure that you put any questions that might come up during the conversation today into that Q and A chat, and we'll sort through that as we get to that part of the call. Okay. So before we, go too much further, I would love to maybe just start at the beginning. I think this is one of those opportunities where we genuinely want to know how, if you will, you all made the decision, where you were in some of your journeys. Rico, I'll start with you. I think we talk about this effort around AI adoption, but I really wanna understand sort of what led you, if you will, to talk about where you started with ProSci on the people side of the decision. You know that we were already started some of this effort before you brought ProSci in, and so just give us a little bit of perspective as to where you were and what led you to that decision. Yeah. Thank you very much, Ramona. So we, really started a major focus internally, in what we wanted to build for our AI plan all the way back in very early twenty twenty four. Informally, significantly before that, I would say. And so we wanna put a lot of rigor and discipline around what a long term sustainable program for our business could be, and making sure that we had kind of people front and center. For those on the line that aren't familiar with McCarthy, we are a major construction company. We build we we are in The US only, and we build some of the most complicated, construction projects in the country. So major work in health care, higher education, and we have a number of national markets as well. And one of the things that we've aligned around in the last twenty years is a strategic map. And one of our strategic anchors is top talent. And so when you think about an AI strategy for us, we work so hard to make sure that the people that we put on our job sites, and we have more than 150 that are all live, are all working, that all have complicated problems to solve every single day. We already work on top talent. And then how do you take AI and augment that top talent, sort of give our partners in the field AI superpowers, if you will. So that was the strategy and it absolutely had to be people centered or else it just wouldn't work for our business. Excellent. I think my understanding is I know that you all also had a pretty compressed timeline. And so when we think about the platform as about four weeks from go live, if I recall correctly, when Prosci was engaged, usually organizations in that position would kind of double down on the technical side of the solution. What made you decide to make that investment in the people side instead? And give us a perspective of sort of what changed when you when you started with that effort. Yeah. So this was, about nine months ago. Now is when we actually went live. So we selected a single platform. That platform is Glean, but a a front door for all of our folks to AI. And so we did not wanna complicate that. We wanted to make it super, super easy. It took a while for us to sort of land on that is the correct major investment that we were gonna make as a business. And we also had an effort that was ongoing within our business, which is which was a full ERP rip and replace. And so we were going off of our past accounting system, we were putting a new one in place as well. And we kind of had two options. We could either try and create some synergy between the two. We really believe that, you know, financial systems for a construction company are fairly technical, and and very complicated, and it's normally not the greatest experience in the whole world to learn a new one while you're building buildings every day. We thought there was this huge opportunity to leverage AI and AI adoption within the business to be able to provide our partners with better education and training about the ERP system. Now that compressed our timeline. And the only way that it was going to work was if our people actually adopted first and foremost the tools, so they felt comfortable enough to use them to learn the next technology that we're bringing down the line. And so it was, I would say that there was a large range of outcomes. It totally could have left the rails, but that's why we wanted to work and invest with ProSci as well to make sure that we thought about the people side the right way because we just couldn't get it wrong. We were not gonna get a redo in the fourth quarter. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Rico. Maybe to shift gears now, Katie, and before coming to you directly, just want to highlight something that echoes, if you will, on some of the feedback that Rico just provided. Research for ProSight indicates that 63% of our AI implementation challenges are human, not technical. Exactly what Rikka just highlighted there at the end. And so knowing that the human part is typically where organizations struggle, it becomes intentional, if you will, in terms of how we're coming up with the people plan, not just the technical implementation plan. So Kitty, maybe shifting gears to you, before this project, did that number match your intuition or did it surprise you? And anything that you sort of found in thinking through that people part of it as opposed to the technical implementation. Yeah. Ramona, it it doesn't really surprise me having worked on other types of technical implementations prior to AI. If the people aren't on board, it's not gonna be the successful implementation. And so engaging with Prosci and really learning the methods and the means to get people on board, helped us immensely with this clean implementation because we had to come at it from a bunch of different lenses, on the people side of not only fighting some of the stigma of AI, but also of the change fatigue that our organization, was experiencing during that time. You know, everyone knew the big ERP was coming, as Rico said. So how are we going to convince them, you know, with all the training that they were about to have to do for that ERP system that this is something else to add to their plate and that was only gonna be a value add? And the other thing about AI in this particular AI system is it wasn't going to be mandatory. We weren't going to mandate that you have to use Glean, that you have to do all these things. It had to be something that people wanted to do. We had to build that desire, in our people to be able to make this successful. So that was a really key part of of this whole implementation. That's significant. It's interesting that you all made the decision early to not mandate it, Kitty. That really does require a bigger focus adoption. I may be just curious. We hear so much feedback from organizations around the concerns that their employees or team members have around AI, whether it's hesitancy or fear, job security questions, etcetera. And so as soon as AI enter the pic enters the picture, if you will, the the fear factor goes up considerably. Maybe, Kitty and Adam, actually, think both of you had, opportunities to kind of provide feedback on this question. How did you address those concerns head on? Right? I what's really interesting. too is McCarthy is an employee owned organization, and so I imagine that creates additional complexities. But how did you address those concerns head on, and what did you learn about employees in terms of what they actually needed versus what they maybe assumed coming into the AI implementation? So with this, we always fall back, like Rico said, on our map and on on top talent. And, you know, for all the people out there, we're hiring. We're always hiring. There is a serious need in the construction industry for talent. So we come to our people honestly and say, we know you're overloaded. We know you could actually do with more resources. This is the tool we're bringing on to help maybe take some of that load off of your plate. And one of our other key anchors is genuine. Like, we're coming to our folks with a genuine, concern of, hey. This is something that's coming to all of us, to the entire world as something we need to adopt, and need to know how to use to continue to be a great company. To to be the best builder in America, we have to be adaptable to new technologies. So this is something we all want you to learn and to get used to, and how can we approach you in a way that makes this more comfortable for you? So we can go over a little bit later some of our implementation strategies, and and and Ryan can talk about how we got out to our people. But I think Adam brings a really unique lens on his history of experience with change management. Yeah. Thanks, Katie. I'll I'll throw in there, you know, Ramona, based on your question about keeping people informed and and not kinda fearful of things that they may not understand or you know, there's there's definitely perceptions out there about AI. One one thing that we know about people is that they tend to fill a void of information with negative speculation. And so one of the key strategies is let's have conversations on a regular basis. Let's listen to feedback, provide opportunities for people to engage in the conversation and ask questions, and then also supply them with regular amounts of information so that they feel comfortable, that they feel like we are doing the change with them and not to them? And I think that made a that made a huge difference. You know, Ryan and Kitty and the the whole team very focused on regular, honest, transparent communication. And the other thing that I would throw in there, and this is definitely a a pro size staple concept, is the engagement of senior level sponsors. So as as a person that was observing a lot of the communication, there were even unplanned and ad hoc encouragement by almost everyone in a senior level position to, hey. Go glean that. Or I just, you know, went and had a conversation with Gleen about this topic. And those little deposits of encouragement along the way in terms of communication, I think, made a huge difference. That's great to hear. So maybe just I'm gonna I'm. gonna pile on. real Go right ahead. Ramona, can I pile on real. quick here too? I tie both of those things together because timing for this was actually great. And I I think to Adam's point and to Kitty's point, those conversations and senior level leadership conversations, we haven't been going through a three year train strategic planning exercise. And so our executive leaders were literally out on the job site asking what our our partners were interested in, what they wanted to learn more, where their pain points were, And sort of the overwhelming response from from our own people was we can't wait for you to tell us how we can leverage AI. We see all the headlines, and we need we need we would love for more help. We would love to leverage this to the best way we possibly could, and and create just sort of a hockey stick of productivity out on our job side. So we were in this really wonderful place where the business is growing, but also our partners were hungry to learn something new and and saw and believed in senior leadership that this was an opportunity to take work off of their plate, especially like ordinary work so that our folks could folks could go do extraordinary things. I love that. Take ordinary work so they could go do extraordinary things. I think that's gonna be a new headline, Rico. That's fantastic. I think you all also struck on this chord, is unique to McCarthy and some other business that we have online, which is you have a rather distributed team. When you think about your workforce distributed field based for many of them, fundamentally different from a traditional corporate rollout. Maybe this is a question for, Ryan or Kenny, whomever, but really just trying to understand how did you think about meeting people where they were? It sounds like to to some point, Rico, you were physically on-site with them executives in the field, and we know how important executive sponsorship is in this. But we'd love to just hear more about what it was to do this across a distributed sort of field based team. Yeah. I could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. Our team is incredibly distributed across the nation, and we have people at job sites. We have people in colocations. We have people in offices, and everywhere in between. So we thought about, you know, rolling Glean out. We didn't wanna leave anyone out. I think we spoke to just a strong culture around including our people, top talent being one of those, anchors, and then, the we know I, core value that we have as well is something that has really lived and breathed at this company. And I I haven't been at McCarthy too long. And so when I see these things, you know, you could say it's just words on a paper, but we really we really believe in in that. So when we're thinking about rolling this this really big thing out that we wanna be bullish on, really mapping out our impact to groups and seeing how we can funnel communication cascades through executive leadership down to the down to the people on the front lines and vice versa. So we looked at different venues that we can participate at and really be collaborative and hold conversations with people and really hear where they're coming from. I think we spoke to this earlier, but, some people had real concerns about AI. And we learned we learned those things by going to peer groups, by going to, yard days, by going to, some other venues that are smaller from 15 people up to 60 people. And, in those venues, that's when people can ask, like, the really hard questions, rather than those big venues. So that was something that was powerful for us to get feedback real time and how we can craft our messaging, going forward. Yeah. Katie, feel like you have some more as well. Yeah. I think between myself, Ryan, and and Chase who's on my team, we did over 80 in person and virtual presentations. And we tried to hit every group from HR leadership to our learning development teams to everyone in the company. And and Ryan sells himself short. I think he was presenting to a room of over a 150 of our partners, in our Northern Pacific region, and I just got this wonderful email being like, he really killed it. They had a great engagement. There were all these these questions, and then everyone was sharing their stories of how they're using Glean, and all the great things it can do for them. And being able to collect those and saying, hey. What what is a project engineer in San Jose doing with Glean that that a project engineer in Texas or Atlanta could do as well? And being able to collect those user stories and then share them out in in different ways. And as we're talking about having that constant communication of this is what we're doing. This is how this tool with of Glean can help you, and why we chose it because we know that it it has impact and that it's safe for us. And those were some of the key reasons that, you know, we chose this particular tool, and we think that you, as McCarthy, are gonna love it. Wow, that's incredible. Thank you both for sharing that. I think there's a couple of themes that jump out. I think one, certainly meeting people where they are, not just physically, but to the point about having multiple calls over different types of communities, making sure that all impacted teams really understood what was in it for them. Pretty significant. And then you also mentioned the idea of collecting user stories, Katie, which we could not agree with more. It's so important for people to be able to see themselves in the way that their peers are using it and the way that that adoption is happening. And so being able to build that sort of storyline and be able to share that back, certainly, I could see why it kind of gets people on board, into your point, makes it safe for them to use. Let's get some leaning into it. I think the thing that's really extraordinary about McCarthy besides that 90% adoption in one month, which is extraordinary, But the really important piece is sustained adoption. I think we've got many organizations who feel like they've rolled something out and you see sort of this initial spike at the beginning and then it tends to wane coming off of that implementation. And that's not unusual, especially when we talk about something like AI, where there might be some initial excitement and then typically there's some falloff. I think what was really interesting is that you all maintained that 85% or so monthly usage behind that 90% sustain, again, initial adoption. And so I'm really curious to talk more about what drove that sustainment. How did you think differently about what it looks like to maintain post implementation? And so, Kenny and Ryan, if there's anything to share there, I think folks would love to to hear about how you did that. Think some of that has to do with what Rico mentioned earlier of our e m ERP implementation came right at the heels of our Glean implementation. So we knew that building tools within, and building agents within Glean to help people learn the ERP system would draw them into Glean and show them what it could do, and why we wanna use it. Right at the heels of the ERP implementation was benefits and creating a benefits agent so you could ask, you know, it instead of calling somebody or having to go through all the literature, like, what are what health care plan might be the best for me? What are my options for these different things? So meeting them where they are in all different aspects of their professional life was really important. Okay. Yeah. I think, you know, planning for sustained adoption, I think from the start, it's important for us to think about, you know, how are we how are we landing the plane? Are we landing it once we go live, or is it are we landing the plane, you know, far, like, twelve months into the future when we have some other things coming out to our people? And I think once once we start framing the mind of, like, once go live starts, that's when re that or sorry. Once go live happens, that's when reinforcement starts. So just being really intentional about our clear, consistent messaging, Some of the narratives that Adam spoke to earlier of, you know, getting clear on what we believe in and putting that out there so that people can see it and really see our everyone from senior leadership, executive leadership, down to their mid level managers, really believing in Glean. So I think, yeah, really investing in in that has been important, and just making it, you know, have more face time with people. Like, the what's in it for me question would come up a lot, and really driving the value proposition, from a business strategic level to just saving, you know, fifteen minutes a day could allow you to to spend more time on the things that you want to spend time on. Even just fifteen minutes a day, it sounds like something that people can measure, right? They can hold themselves accountable, know how to make space for that. It helps to quantify our AI and team. So thank you both. If we think about sort of what it looks like, again, not just with that sustained piece, but when you hit the adoption goal, not just exceeding it by two months, I think the thing that's also important is how you did this across multiple AI initiatives. So Rico referred to earlier about the ERP, but it sounds like this was also one of three other AI initiatives that were happening across McCarthy. Rico, this is a question for you. Just love to get kind of that senior leader perspective. But for other leaders in the audience that are thinking about AI at scale, what did really made a difference in terms of being able to have that level of increased visibility? What decisions made possible that you maybe weren't thinking about before but having had a chance to kind of do the glean rollout that potentially you did differently across those other AI initiatives? Yeah. Great question. And I think just echoing something, this is a really good lead in from from the last one as well. One of the major values that we saw of creating kind of a maximum level of transparency for our AI program was that each each effort was in a little bit of a different stage. But if you can drive awareness, you can start to create desire specifically with Gleam. We had a fairly lengthy pilot period. We had a number of seats that we were able to sort of hand out and collect feedback from who we expected to be, early adopters or change agents within the organization. We were also able to hold back seats. And so we created somewhat of, like, a minor buzz within the organization. And I think one recommendation is just because you have access to it on day one, you can be really disciplined on how you leverage who gets access to what, to sort of create critical mass of excitement. So by the time we went live, we had more than a 100 folks requesting access the the week before or two weeks before, the work had gotten around. And so the organization was ready to receive it in a different way. I think another point that Ryan made that is just super important is to stay super focused on delivering successfully on the initiative that's top of mind that you are working on, now. Don't just deliver a product and then go on to the next thing that's very exciting. And actually, for us, our example of Glean, we did not promote the full capabilities of the platform on day one. That was pretty intentional. We wanted to provide bite sized chunks for our people to wrap their arms around and to understand. And while our own internal AI program was super excited about the ability to build agents in some of these, you know, like much, much more AI proficient opportunities that we saw in the platform, we held that back from the rest of the enterprise, and we we planned sort of a promotion campaign once this was in partners' hands for education and training on how to leverage the platform more significantly. And so as much as possible, at least for us in our organization, everyone's interested about AI, but they don't wanna read an AI email from me. They wanna be able to go to a spot and understand what we're doing as a business that can take this technology that will really impact our bottom line, but they want that information when they're interested in capturing it. And so transparency across the entire portfolio is super important so that we can meet the people where they are, and when they're interested. And that has been super successful for us. That's huge. And I think that transparency across the portfolio, I think many organizations struggle with that. And so just hearing sort of how, you all put that into place and sort of the importance at play to getting folks continued not to just stay on board on the the current implementation, but sort of how that showed up in future implementations is great to hear it go. Ramona, can I. can I add on to that. a little bit too? Like, I think what Rico just said, like, people don't wanna read a email from him, but they'll they'll definitely read it from, you know, their manager or their supervisor and also their executive leaders. I think studies show that messaging from executive leaders as well as their direct manager get read most often and are most effective. So I think on top of that too, we like Kitty Kitty started a change agent network. So they were the the glean change agents. So this was kind of our little army of people that we utilized throughout the company, and they were they were local people. So the people that we saw people who had, good, relationships with others, who had some some sort of clout or authority in their specific work streams or groups. So utilizing those people to put messaging out, I think, also really helped us with, increased confidence in Glean. Because if people have those have confidence in those individuals, it's gonna translate to things that they recommend. Like, if somebody if your friend recommends a restaurant, you'll probably go there at some point. So we felt the same way about Glean. Yeah. So I think it was it was a lot of heavy lifting because of how distributed we are to start this change agent network, and it was a lot of homework that was put on us. But once we had those individuals and had we were organized in a way where we had them all in a Microsoft Teams, and we really helped them move messaging and gave gave them frameworks to go off of or venues that they could be a part of and maybe some speaking points, making ourselves available for any help that they need. But that investment really paid off. And, yeah, I would recommend, you know, starting a some sort of change champion, chain change agent network to help move your messaging with local people who have the relationships already. And and from the chat, I saw were those people nominated? How did we select them? And it's it's a little bit of both of who's we we put out feelers at the beginning of our AI program of who's interested in AI? Who's who's got the itch of, like, I wanna try something new? So those those first folks, we said, hey. Who wants to be here? And getting people in the door who really have that desire for for doing something new. And then we also went to folks too that, you know, like Ryan said, have influence in different areas and said, do you want to be one of the first? You may be a skeptic, but let's bring you in early so that you have this background of what this is, why it's important. It really helped also that we had a great product that we weren't really having to sell them on the value of the product once they got to use it. That was that was also really key for us is that we weren't trying to sell something that, you know, was bad fish. We had something really great, that people wanted. That's fantastic. There's a number of themes that you all have kind of hit on that are core to some of the things that we know make for successful adoption. Just want to reiterate some of them. Think to your earlier point, Ryan, the sender matters a lot. Right? So we know people do wanna hear from their direct managers, especially when you're making a significant change. They also wanna hear from their executive leaders the why. So, yes, you all are helping to build the frameworks and the talking points, but who is ultimately sending that message matters a lot to kind of continue to build on some of that adoption. You will also reference the change agent network. That's a core that we know matters a lot. This goes back to some of the points that you just made too on hearing from a friend or just that sense of someone locally to be able to see themselves in that solution by that that fellow local peer matters a lot. And so that change agent network becomes a bit of those champions who are helping to kind of drive further and really amplify what you're trying to do across the organization beyond even the efforts that you all are making. And then if I just go back to the point here that Ryan referenced too about, yes, we're providing the frameworks, but there's something in it in terms of helping people understand how to use those frameworks. We know that difference between knowledge and ability, really helping them understand what that looks like to kind of put that in place. And so it's fantastic to hear some of the things that we know make for successful adoption showing up specifically really coming to play in your in your clean implementation. I just wanna do a reminder for those who haven't added any questions into the q and a to do so because we're gonna go there next. But sorry. Was there another point before I I came to our last question here, formal question? Yeah. I'll throw one other kind of theme into the mix. And, you know, in past working with technology partners and, you know, colleagues, a lot of times for a technical kind of project, the finish line seems to be go live. We're like, hey. Look at that. We put that into production. We're on time, on budget. You know, nailed it. What we're what the other trend that I hope that it comes out and is important, I think, to to recognize is shifting the finish line to well past go live. It's utilization, adoption. People are actually embracing it, and it's no longer a new thing. It's just the new normal. And people just use it because and that's that's where where I think we are at this point with Glean specifically is that it's just it's becoming just part of how we work. So it's not a new thing. It's not something we have to to Kenny's point, we have we don't have to force people or, you you know, do any kind of metric around it, around utilization. People are using it because they enjoy it. It's adding value. It's and it's helping. So another macro level theme, I think, is out there. It's a really important theme, especially as it relates to AI implementations because you're right, Adam, there is no such thing as an end date. Right? There's go live, sure. But if you think about it, there's probably going to be multiple versions of go live given that you've got organizations who are continuing to iterate different types of AI agents that they're going to use cases that are going to continue to evolve. And so that sustain and adoption really becomes way more important. And you're right, becoming your normalized way of working. I do want to be mindful, so just to kind of think about for those folks who are going to leave this webinar and have to go have some follow on conversations after this, specifically around what it is to try to lead these AI implementations. And so, Kitty and Rico, I might come to you for this kind of round here. But if someone leaves the webinar today and they're going back to the organization to have that next level conversation, what's the first conversation they should be having and with who? If you think about sort of where you all were even starting this nine months ago, what would you direct them to? What would you share? Again, that first conversation they be having and who should they be having it with. I think, having a passionate sponsor like we have in Rico is really key to getting any of this done. Finding someone in the company, that's like minded, that's, you know, hopefully in an executive position that can help you figure out the way that's best for your organization to adopt something like this. Where are you standing now? What is your technology strategy? And so having that sponsor is really key into what we were doing, how we were handling it, and being able to take that messaging both up and down the organization for why this is important. Our CEO was totally bought in. We have some meetings in the fall, you know, in each region, and he went up on stage in a glean hat because he loves the product that much. But you you don't go straight to the CEO, right, with with this kind of thing to start. You you have to build it from the ground up and and and have your sponsor in place. Significant. Yeah. Can you I I mean and thank you very much. I would say with all the executive sponsorship that that we have had, for me, at least for the change sponsor, this felt like it was a little bit on easy mode, because we've got our CEO and a glean hat, and we've got to Adam's point, we have so many senior leaders within the organization that were interested. I think the the one or two points that I would add on, one's gonna be top down and the other is gonna be bottom up. I would absolutely recommend the the change sponsor network that you put together. So executive leaders that you want to be active and visible, in the program long term to roll up their sleeves and actually use the tools. That was that was a huge unlock for us. I actually put together, like, a small challenge. That's a weekly challenge of every time that you are working on business strategy, no matter what it is, go to, you know, go to Glean and this specific setting for your model and use that as your thought part and force yourself to do it and see what it's capable of doing. Or, you know, there's these different tips or tricks that actually get the tools in the hands of your leaders. And once you start working with them, it is kind of addictive. It's it gets very exciting and, you know, your visionary executive strategic folks are going to start connecting dots and saying, wow. If you can do this for me here, I can do this over here. And let me try this or let me try that. And it and it's, like, sort of this incredible unlock and starts to become fun. I think the other part that is super important is from a bottom up perspective, know where your organization is at, and don't try to start with something that is beyond the appetite of the of the employees or partners that that you are going to push it to. So if the entire AI industry shut down right now, and there was no progress made in the technology whatsoever for McCarthy, there would be significant capability that we can still unlock in our Glean platform, which is awesome. It's a great spot to be. We have massive usage as it stands right now, but we're not gonna overwhelm or overload our partners and try to get them to do, you know, backflips before they do a cartwheel at the end of the day. And and that has been really important to us. So but like I said, we gated just chat and just enterprise search. And and, like, that is all that we pitched for the first sixty days with this program, to just find access to to documents that is hard for you right now and just start there. Once we got that foot in the door to Adam's point, once it becomes sort of standard operating procedure, then the the the entire, partners group, the the all of our employees have become really, really interested in, okay. So what can it do next? Right? And then you can roll out something like deep research, which is remarkable in its own right, but we held that back from our. organization. I think that's so smart on so many levels, Rico. It's reflecting sort of that appetite for what we can actually absorb in some ways, right? What do we think we're prepared for? It is a journey. And so think about the crawl, walk, run. Not looking to run on day one. How do we actually create the opportunity to crawl and get everyone on board and sort of create that journey and that path for how we'll kinda continue to to level up across the across the coming months and years? I'm I also just wanna be mindful because I know there's a number of folks who've kind of created some more questions in the chat. I have more questions. I want to be really thoughtful about making sure we make time to get to some of the other folks' questions. Before we go too much further, I do want to just say a huge thank you again to Rico, Kitty, Adam, and Ryan. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing more of, again, sort of the behind the scenes story. Yes, we featured the case study, but I think it's incredibly valuable to hear in your voice and your words so much of kind of what worked and genuinely the support that ideally ProSci was able to provide in making that journey possible. While we do have time to answer some questions, and so I'm going to pull that up here for our formal Q and A. Before we do that, though, I just want to do a little bit of a reminder on the poll. When we started off the call, I mentioned that there's work that we provide enterprise support on generally to help organizations do this, exactly what you just heard from the team today. And that's everything from helping to build the strategy. How are you creating that change agent network? What are the right frameworks to build? How are you creating that level of alignment at the leadership level? Do leaders know the role that they play when we talk about active and visible sponsorship? That looks really different when we talk about AI specifically than a traditional technology implementation. So if you haven't had a chance to, I just want to do a reminder to kind of create some opportunity for those who may be looking for additional support via the poll. I also referenced this concept before, Hey. the. way that we support, everyone. yeah. Oh, hey. Sorry. I would just add a plug there because I I would I would throw out there that another suggestion for people who are looking to have conversations about AI utilization and adoption. If change management is new to you, it's always helpful to have a partner, a guide, somebody who can walk that first lap with you as opposed to just trying to figure it out on your own. And I think having the the ProSci advisory team side by side, you you can hear those of you familiar with ProSci methodology, you can hear those pro sci comments come out in Rico's comments and Kitty's comments and Ryan's comments. The the utilization of the pro sci methodology and the advisory team is also a recommendation that I would add if you are new or if your organization is fairly new to this change management or the people side of the equation. I think that's a valuable a valuable thing to consider. It's great to. hear you. They, our ProSci team that was helping us, Brandon and Todd and Georgia, they were really instrumental in you know, I I think you said it was four weeks, but I think, actually, they Prosci was, really a key partner, and we're like, hey. We're gonna launch this in mid June. And I think Prosci was in the room in, like, the May. And they're like, could you do mid July? And they made a great case for why that should be. And we moved our launch date a month into the future knowing we had a September 1 ERP drop date. We that we had that. And we said, is a month and a half enough before that? And ProSci said, this is how we can walk you through it to make sure that that's enough. And that having this this time to start planning the change management instead of just rushing right into it, They were true partners in this by helping us not only look at all of the the documentation and research behind change management, but actually saying this is how it would be implemented, and this is how it would be better if you did this and we did that. So many thanks to our ProSci partners who were there on the front lines with us. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, Adam and Kitty again. My hope is that it comes out in some of the themes, but I really appreciate you all just highlighting where specifically First Site team members and some of the support they were able to provide. I can't say this enough. There is no such thing as bringing us in too early. It just does not exist. The more time, the better opportunity we have to kinda create additional outcomes, but there is no such thing as bringing the change management of pro site team in too early. I do wanna highlight just a couple of one of the questions that have started to come in because we have started to get some additional questions from individuals on the call and recognize that we may not have time to get to all of them. Again, we'll do our best to kind of sort through some of it, but I wanna make sure that we have a chance to kind of tee this up. And then at the end of the call, I'll actually come back to some of the additional ways that we can support even beyond some of the enterprise support we talked about today. But maybe if we just start with what specific tactics helped you all activate those champions to successfully help others? I think some folks have a sense of there are individuals who kind of put their hand up and are willing to act as change champions. But what tactics really help to activate, you know, people have other full time work that they're doing? What are the ways that you really leverage those tactics to kind of get the most out of your change champions? Whoever wants. Yeah. I can speak to that. Mhmm. Yeah. So I think we really wanted to get the people that raised their hands because those would be the most engaged, motivated individuals that can help us push, glean. We also didn't wanna leave any gaps too. So investing time into mapping out your people, how do they funnel into work streams, or are they business units, departments, offices, kind of looking at how your people are structured. And every company is going to be a little bit different, and ours ours is a pretty unique company with, our corporate side as well as our our partners in the field. So investing time upfront to map out where your people are will ensure that you don't miss any. And then once you map those map those areas out, approaching those, business leaders or, a senior leader in the area and asking them, hey. Who who are some individuals that would be passionate about this? Who are some individuals that would, get along well with others and, are approachable, who communicate well? So looking looking for those individuals that would do a good job, but are also really passionate about what we're doing. It's huge. Thank you, Ryan. Think one other question that, caught our attention, and I think this One, yeah. Please. other tactic, and so this dovetailed really nicely, was, I I was doing sort of an executive roadshow, and this is in q one and q of of what was likely to be coming at, you know, each of our regional executive committees. And one ask that Kitty helped me kind of put together was if you had 20 or 25 partners from your region that you that could lean in and allow your region to cocreate what this AI program could look like for our entire enterprise. We're gonna be asking all of our regions to do so. And so not saying that everybody, is available, but asking, hey. Can we can we get that list of and and we got 20 seats that we bought bought and paid for, ready to make available and sort of you know, if if you can't afford to to offer up some talent, well, then other regions are gonna do some work and make some decisions on behalf of the enterprise as well. That kinda left that a little bit unsaid, but there is this component of, enabling each of our regions to feel like they were a part of the creation of our overall strategy, based on the people that they were able to put up for it as well. So that was the so many, many people volunteered, and there were a handful of people that were sort of hand selected by executive leadership and were somewhat voluntold, to to make sure that the right things, were considered as as a part of this rollout as well. Is significant. Thank you, Rico, for sharing additional. I also, team, there's a number of references that have been made, and I just wanna maybe take a moment to kinda speak to some of them around the different tools and frameworks specifically that kind of profile was able to provide. And I think this shows up as well as some of the tactics that both have been highlighted. For those who aren't aware, we talked a little bit about the consulting of the team that's been directly supporting through consulting. I also wanna just frame this work that we've done specifically in continuing to help individuals and teams with AI journey through first time membership, which is essentially providing access to tools, guidance, and community. Community of Cult specifically is a lot of the ideas that are being shared here are tactics that have been shared, not just within specifically McCarthy, but some other organizations as we think about how are we creating greater opportunity around that community work. And so I just want to call that out. If you haven't or are familiar with the workaround pro side membership, we'll actually include the link in the docs section here. But it's essentially ways that you can get access to work like our integration framework, a CAIA system that helps actually build out some of these different change communication templates, and just the broader change professional communities. So, again, how do you leverage peers in other parts of the organization? So I just wanna reference that for folks who may not have seen it. Coming back to some of the questions that have started to show up, and I just want to highlight this really important one because we hear it all the time about change fatigue, right? So just so much change is happening across an organization. What does that start to really take its toll, if you will, on individuals that you're asking for more than things like the work that you all did around glean? And so for anyone who wants to answer, what did you put in place to kind of prevent or reduce that change fatigue? And what were some of the things that sort of made a difference at least in sort of the short timeframe that you were working with? Yeah. I can, I can jump on this one? to you, please. Yeah. So and this is definitely a work in progress, but, essentially, what we are doing and this is not just this is not just limited to AI work, but this is to all change that's impacting people, is we're essentially looking at and Ryan mentioned the impact in groups. We're looking at all of the projects that are underway and the impact in groups and the timing of of those and essentially creating a heat map so that we can have conversations about, okay. There's this AI functionality that we wanna release in the fourth quarter, and there are these system changes, and there are these HR changes, and there's finance. So we're looking at the entire ecosystem of activity around changes to make sure that we level those out. We are also utilizing the pro side change risk grid to score and to determine the degree of impact of each of those different changes on our on our people. And so, essentially, what we can do is make informed decisions around how much change is are we introducing into the environment to hopefully and I I call it rationalize the change agenda. Right? Not do less change because that's not the point, but to make it so that it's consumable by everyone. And the last thing that I'll that I'll throw in there about that is that the that AI AI utilization and the the work that we're doing there has definitely been prioritized. So if if Rico and his team say, alright. We're gonna we've got this release coming out in q three, that's gonna be a a priority item, and other things will be adjusted based on that because strategically, that's an investment that we've decided to focus on. Love that. There's so much in there, Adam, and thank you for sharing. Think consumable for all is another big one, right? This is so important. And the change rationalization, to your point, it's not doing less, but it's really trying to understand. The risk grid is a tool that we use, to your point, fairly often to really help understand where is that risk, how do you make those adjustments, and what is the right level of absorption, especially for those heavily impacted teams. So I appreciate you kinda sharing some more detail. I think, oh, we hear a lot around the change fatigue and so really being intentional about, again, that people focused work around the AI adoption in particular becomes even more important. A couple more questions that are continuing to come through, and I wanna make sure we get as many of them because we can. Can you all speak more about your communications waterfalls? What were some of the expectations that you set, and how did you monitor the execution and reactions, if you will, coming back from some of those communications? So we did, plan out our communications waterfalls with our ProSci team of how and, you know, there were there was a lot of change going on at the time, so we were limited on the number of emails we could send. Right? We we basically had one email of it's coming and a second email of it's here. And so planning around that, using our change managers, but also using our people manager network within the organization to say, you know, the head of the preconstruction department in this region is is going to say something because we went and talked to him and said, hey. It would be great if you shared a story with your department, about what you use Glean for because you got in two months ago. You got in early. And so those executives that Rico was talking about when he did his executive roadshows, the change agent that Ryan was talking about, but really doing all of that work to get others to make the the ask and the communications for us. We also had all of those peer group trainings. So we were coming at it from many different lenses and many different ways without having to send that big email again and again and again because we know those aren't as effective as hearing from your direct manager and from people in your office. We also have newsletters in at McCarthy by region, and people love them, and they they take a lot of work to put together. But working with those teams to do a Glean user story from someone in that region every month of what they're using Glean for this month. And that continues to this day that the newsletters feature a, how are you using Glean? We had Internet stories. So ProSay helped us plan it, and then we had to plug in all the people and all the places. That's great. And I love that you're still using it, Katie. I think that hearing it in the newsletter, that also helps support some of the sustainment and honestly the reinforcement as well. It's so significant in so many levels there. Thank you. I'm curious as well about this last question, which is one that we hear quite often. Can you talk about the benefits measured, qualitative and quantitative from an ROI perspective? Riko, maybe we'd start with you, but I think any others. I think this is one that we often get, especially when it comes to these kind of investments, and AI is not one that we've had folks have had deep experience on. So understanding sort of how you all approach that would be great. Yeah. If if anybody out there has, like, the perfect example of explicitly how you you calculate ROI in in AI, please let me know. But I will walk you through what we did on this one. So we're always looking at answers to the test, but our approach because this was a significant investment by our business, and so we absolutely need to be disciplined with our own, shareholder dollars. We all own the place, and so we wanna invest in the right way. And so there was actually a study done, specific to Glean around productive productive hours saved if you get a certain amount of adoption. So if your workforce is using the platform, this is, you know, a third party that evaluated. This is how much time is saved. And so we really took that document, broke it down in a number of different ways, and tried to calculate sort of the reinvestment that our own workforce was able to make back into our business. And so what and we were we were extremely conservative on that. So in my opinion, if every single partner in the business is able to save two to three hours, in every given week, but two days a week, they get to go home earlier and have more work life success, and are able to see their family. That's awesome. We would love for them to reinvest that one hour or possibly more back into our business in other ways. And so we sort of prorated what we determine as a productive hour saved and then put a dollar value to that based on salary and burden expense at the end of the day. And we we ended up getting to, like, fairly conservatively an expected five x return if we were able to get to the adoption metrics that that we saw. Now that depends on how effectively we we reinvest those hours, but it was hundreds of thousands of hours. And I think we are seeing that right now, That's. incredible. Incredible. I do agree, team, this is not the easy place to start when you think about the ROI equation. This is also a place that we spend significant time and research on. So when we talk about prototyping a best practice research firm. This is an area that we can help provide some additional guidance. We are at time. I think we could easily go on another hour and I hate that we can't get to all of the questions. I did want to just share a reminder for those who have an interest in kind of hearing more about the support and work that ProSci can provide. I'll put up the QR code just to make sure that individuals know sort of how to get in touch with us or how to kind of come back and identify additional ways that we can support. I also just want to say a huge thank you again to the entire McCarthy team for really just sharing not just your experience and the tactics and the insights, the lessons learned, but also I'll call it the personalization of it, really what made a difference for each of you individually in terms of sort of seeing the successful implementation. We always want to be great partners, but I think it's fantastic when you've got equally strong leaders to work with and making sure that we can help bring to life the glean implementation in this case, which really get the outcomes that you're looking for across your adoption efforts. Thank you all for joining us today. For those who were on the call or the webinar with us, appreciate you all taking time out of your day. Again, we'll make the recording available on our website and you'll also find some of the additional documentation available as you go as we get into the implementation pieces as well. But thank you, Ryan and Kitty and Adam and Rico. Appreciate all of you joining, and have a great and wonderful rest of the day. Thank. you. Thank you. you, Emma.