Deloitte’s Deb Golden on Innovation, AI & Leading Through Uncertainty

Up today, live in Las Vegas at CES, we're thrilled to welcome Deb Golden, the US Chief Innovation Officer at Deloitte. With decades of experience driving transformative change, Deb's visionary approach to innovation is shaping industries and redefining possibilities. Deb, so great to see you today.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

Absolutely. I've been always fascinated with the business of consulting at the level of Deloitte because companies like yours have really done a great job at solidifying yourselves in the C-suite, largely by being connected to business results. So if I look at a lot of the ad agencies, many of which are here at CES, you know, I think there has been sort of a predisposition for ad agencies to lean into like vanity metrics, like whether it's impressions or winning awards at Cannes Lions. And I feel like companies like Deloitte are like, no, we understand what drives shareholder value. We're going to stick to that. We're going to drive it. How are you able to do that as a company at scale? Because I just know there's only so many people who can do that well. Like, like how do you build a business around that?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's twofold. I think there's both the importance of driving at scale, but also having your focus on the edges. So I think it's an and, not necessarily an or, because you always have to be looking at what is scale, but having that pulse on the edge is important.

The edge of?

The edge of what's next.

Right.

Because it's not just about what's now, it's about what's about tomorrow. Yeah. And being careful but also curious about asking that question.

Well, it's also, it's also cutting edge and bleeding edge, I think. Yes. Bleeding edge is like, it'll get you a press release and a story, but it's probably 2 steps away from driving business results. But cutting edge, like AI right now, is kind of where you need to be.

Well, and I also think there's this notion of results. Yeah. So it's the weirdest thing to me, like, what is a result? Everybody is so fixated on short-term results. And what do long-term results mean? Because obviously we have shareholder results, but we also have what is the result for tomorrow. And especially in the world of AI, if you look at only short-term results, you're actually going to lose focus on what is even midterm. Of course, time means nothing anymore.

I remember when Facebook, um, I was an early investor in Facebook— not early enough, but fairly early. And when they dropped, their stock dropped from like $50 to $10 when they announced that they're shifting to mobile, right? Because they were trading, you know, desktop dollars for mobile dimes. I remember, right? That's what CNBC said. And their stock dropped dramatically. And it's like short term, yeah, they took a drop. What if they didn't shift to mobile? Where would they be today?

Well, that's right. And if you look like even at brick and mortar stores, right? They've changed even completely. Or if you look at how online shopping has changed, how stores and retail has changed, and if you even just think about consumer preference today, and how we're going to have to change business models. Yeah, thinking about that. So scale and what scale means to your question, scale is also about how to change business models. So you're not scaling the same thing that you do today. And so if your metrics and your vision for what short-term and long-term looks like, you have to actually be able to adopt your business models to be able to look at short-term and long-term goals. So goals mean nothing if you can't actually figure out how to adopt those models.

So I was saying scale. What I meant was you have hundreds or thousands of clients around the world. Yeah. And you have to deliver a type of quality and strategic rigor at scale. Yes. That's what I mean by scale. It's very hard to find people that, you know, 50 people, let alone 5 people, or that you can go send somebody on a plane and meet with the CEO of a Fortune 100 company and know that they're going to be able to go toe to toe with them and really help them. Yeah. And do that over and over and over again consistently. Right. To me is the fascinating thing as somebody who's run agencies before.

And I think it's also the discipline of being able to have both specialists in certain things. Yeah. And then also individuals who can look across those different things. And to me, like, that's also a little bit of my secret sauce is being able to connect all those dots. And so my career has enabled me to be in a lot of different things. So our commercial businesses, our government businesses, in our consulting businesses and cyber businesses and global. And particularly in today's day and age, when you look at how all these things are converging, Being able to see that across the board is a lot of where we are today. So things are blending so much. What's solving for healthcare today is not really healthcare.

It could be— Well, with CES, there's businesses everywhere.

That's right.

Not just technology.

Right. And they're popping up to solve— I mean, who knows? Tomorrow we could go get our car washed in a car wash and you're getting a body scan. Who knows? Right? You know? And so when you think about what is solving tomorrow, the ability to ask those questions is not gonna come from the traditional businesses.. And so to me, that is the beauty of a large type business when you have so many people who have disciplines in different things, but also the ability to see across the board. So that's the beauty of it. Yeah. Yeah.

I just feel like it's like there's core drivers that all these businesses have in common across industries in terms of the challenges they face. Yeah. Whether it's, um, inflation or a polarized culture, right? There's certain things that just, or macroeconomic issues, whatever it may be. Right. But then there's nuances to each business industry sector. That's correct. That bleed over and allow you to take learnings from one to the next.

That's right.

That's right. So what is Deloitte's, uh, approach to innovation? Because I, and this is a kind of broad question, but I know there's like kind of two ways you can go about it, right? You can start with the company inside out, figure out the industry, the category, et cetera. Or you can say, this is where the world's headed. This is where the consumer's headed. What can we do about it?

Right. So there's two, again, twofold. I think it's an and. Yeah. So we innovate, I would say every day. So with our clients, we're innovating every single day. So, So whether that's in engagement, whether that's on a specific topic, could be innovation every day. But then there's also what I'll call midterm transformational innovation, right? Okay. So what I'm focused on are the 18 to 36 months out, which I joke about because again, time to me right now is almost irrelevant because we're moving. Speed is also like a crazy word, right? So what is the next thing? So whether that's space, whether that's, there's a lot of obviously talk right now on quantum, there's spatial computing, robotics, right? How are we evolving to the next thing? So those are the more transformative innovation. That's not everyone. That's not 100% of the company focused on those things. You don't need 100% of any company focused on those things, right? So in everyday life, everybody is probably innovating in some capacity, as they should be. There's a smaller portion that's focused on these bigger, larger transformative, what does that mean for us as a business? And by the way, the us could be our clients, it could be us as our own company, or it could be us as our ecosystem partners. Yeah. So as we think about that, again, I think part of it is, and what works for me fundamentally, is how do we challenge today's demands? And you have to be willing to ask the why not question. It's fundamental to who I am. It's fundamental to what I do. Yeah. It's fundamental to pushing past optimizing for efficiency.

Right.

I think AI and what I believe is an over-pivot on optimization is table stakes, right? So AI has proven to us that we have to focus on operational efficiency, right?

We know that. Automation.

Right. While innovation, because it is definitely innovation, that is not how we create net new businesses. It is giving us the path to net new businesses. We've only started to begin to see the value of AI. And so what is that going to be in the next 18 to 36 months?

Well, it's about the pro— AI is not the solution because you have to figure out what the problem is first. What's the problem of the business? Right. What's our best way to get there? And yes, in this day and age, AI will probably play a role in it. Right. I think where a lot of companies make sense, they're like, we need an AI strategy. You don't need an AI strategy. You need to figure out what the biggest problems are in your business. And then how do we approach it knowing that AI is a, is a tool?

Right. And if you ask the why not, right now people think of a tendency to ask that we do things today because we have to do them that way. And if you ask the question, why not? Why do we do it the way that we do it today? And I fundamentally believe there's not a shortage of people that desire change. Yeah. There's not. And we can say it's a certain generation. It's not. It's across generations. Our goal has to be to bridge generations. It's not to separate generations. And there's not one person that doesn't desire change, transformation, growth, development. The challenge is, is that we have systems that don't enable that change.

Right. And the generational gaps is a good point. I mean, I'm a Gen Xer. Yep. I did not grow up with the internet in the household.

Yes.

When I tell my kids that, they're like, what? You didn't have the internet when you were in high school?

Wait a minute. Did you have a TV? Exactly. Did, did, like, did you have the Stone Age? What did you have? Exactly.

And, and then you have millennials and they were the first generation to grow up with the internet in the household.

Right.

And you have Gen Z. Right. First generation to grow up with the iPhone. Right. Right. And now you have Gen Alpha, first generation to grow up with AI. Yes. And those are huge generational gaps that make people rewire differently. Correct. And right now the millennials are slowly entering the C-suite. Yes. And like, you know, I was talking with a friend last night, the ad industry still is a kind of like that old boy network, right? Where it, and that's how work was done. But when millennials become the new CMOs, that's just not how they are. You know, it's about hands on keyboard. And so then the way that industry, as way of example, it's gonna be done differently. And that's a perfect example of how generational shifts, once those people get in the C-suite, will change things a lot.

And if you look at it, but if I were to ask all, if we were to take one from every one of those generations, I guarantee you every one of them, if asked in different ways, would say they empower and thrive for some sort of change. The systems again that are built are not built for them to thrive the way that they want to do it.

The legacy systems.

Correct. And so take something as simple as everyone cannot really agree on what go back to work means, right? Cannot agree. No matter how you redefine what go back to work looks like, look at how the offices are built. The offices have never changed since 1980.

Yeah, people are going to come in now. Like, we have a— we, we opened up an office, everyone's like, you know, we want it. And then when people showed up, since most of our company is still distributed, everyone's on Zooms anyway, no one could hear each other.

Well, right. And so if you're asking people to come back into the building and yet the building hasn't systemically changed, right, you're not changing the system. You're stuck in the past. That's right. And so that's the easiest visual idea to give to people. Right. And so if you think about there's a desire to change, you've got a multidimensional issue with many different generations all desiring to have change, and yet you're not actually focused on the systems that are the things that need to change.

Here's a hard part about that, though. Yeah. Talk about the speed, right? Yeah. I was saying like AI and the things that you can do today with AI. I spend about 95% of my time in it.

Mm-hmm.

It's so much more powerful than even 6 months ago. So I run a software company. We have a, an R&D team that is built on a pre-AI era. Yes. Their jobs, the way they work, et cetera. So the question becomes, for me, it's like, well, what do you do? Do you just completely rebuild it from scratch? No, you don't do that. That's so disruptive. But you, but what if you don't have the right skill sets? What if you need different skill sets? And I think a lot of it is just getting off the fence and you do have to make some hard decisions.

Right.

'Cause you're never gonna drive change in. It's your same example as your office.

So I would, and the debate would be, and doing nothing does what?

Doing, you're gonna be stuck. Right.

Right. Exactly. And so fear, it's not an option. Fear right now is causing a lot of instability.

Yeah, I know.

And also lack of movement. And so I have a—

Meta cut 30,000 employees. Like, you know, because Mark Zuckerberg, it's a single shareholder. He's gonna come in and be like, I'm doing it. And that's how it is. And that's, so some companies have figured out how to move quickly and make it happen.

Well, and I think if you think about moving quickly, speed without actual focus is just chaos. Yeah. And so understanding what disruption means and understanding how people move is actually really important. So that's why even when I think about time and this notion of speed, time is important to understand. What is the target? I can move fast, I can move purposely slow. Speed without any trajectory is literally chaos. And so you have to understand what that progress is and what the impact is going to be that you're looking to achieve. There is always going to have to be a change with any sort of approach that anybody's making to have impact, period. And so we should always, as humanity, want to have continuous growth. I don't care if that's AI. I don't care if that was in the Stone Age. I don't care if that's with a pen and paper. I don't care if that's with quantum. I don't care if that's with fusion. Right. That is who we are as humanity. Yeah.

We evolve.

Yep. And so when you think about what that is, is it scary? Of course it is because you don't know what it is.

And a lot of people just have fear. Like when the printing press came, everyone was fearful. And you know, when the automobile replaced the horse and carriage, it— That's right.

Jobs. That's right. Yeah. And I think now what it is is you just have so many individuals with different generations that have very different characteristics about how they address things like—

Yes.

—change, like fear, like hope, like speed. And I think instead of looking at it as— I look at it as like, I wake up every single day and I say, I hope I can have some impact on the world, and I hope the world can have some impact on me. And we need to adopt that and learn from everyone around us, knowing that that uncertainty is also an opportunity. Yeah. And if we can do that, that doesn't mean that it's gonna be easy. Of course it's not gonna be easy. But if we don't start, we're never gonna keep the momentum moving. Yeah. I do though think this notion of speed is an erroneous goal because the number one question I get is, I'm not moving fast enough, Deb, what do I do? I'm like, well, what is fast enough? Right. Like, what is enough? Well, there's like optics. I'm so confused. There's the optics part. I'm so confused. Part of it's optics.

Yes.

And part of it is But what's the benchmark of enough, right? Who's the enough? Because somebody to the left or the right of you is moving faster. Like, what is that?

It's whoever the arbiter of speed is, whoever they report to.

And I've yet to figure out, is that again, is that the Stone Age? Am I looking at the sun? Because I'm not sure what that is. And so again, how do you measure that in a way that your stakeholders and your consumers— and what actually makes me a little bit concerned about that is when you think about the world that we do live in today, particularly around consumers with hyper-personalization with AI. I don't know about you, but you walk around and you see these, the happy button, I call 'em the happy buttons. So everywhere you go, there's a, are you satisfied with something? Yeah. So whether it's you're online, are you satisfied? You're at the airport. Are you at the airport? Yeah. Are you at the doctor's? I'm coming out of the bathroom at the airport. It's like, are you happy? We're in business with Suzy.

That's what we do. Right. Right.

Are you happy? And I don't know, I'm walking out of the airport and it's like, are you happy? It's like, I, I don't know. But again, think about your back, backend systems. Are your systems gonna support that input? So I'm getting input now from my consumer that says happy, right? So now how does speed impact that? So every time I'm hitting the happy button or the sad button, or I'm not, what am I doing with that? And so this, this notion of how do I take consumer preference, hyper-personalization, and human empathy and tie that back into my systems. It's a good framework. And that is the disconnect that we are not seeing seeing and paying enough attention to. We are very focused on the notion of we need consumer preference and hyper-personalization. But again, do I have a system development and software engineering team that's built for 24/7 update? No. Right. Should I? Probably not, because I probably don't need to be updating that. Imagine the business. And to your point, is there a metric that's gonna actually define that to be important and/or critical? Yeah. Do I care if my happy button isn't happy all the time? Of course. Can it be off by 5% or 10% or 15%? And that's where I think organizations really need to challenge that question around speed. But again, always going back to the strategy.

Organization and people, right? So if you had a CEO of a company that was super metrics driven, that figured, you know, figured out what the 4 main metrics are for a company and was able to push that down throughout the organization, then you'd have an answer for how fast is fast. Correct. So it really starts at the top. Correct.

And with a goal on long-term impact with short-term results.

Yeah. Or, or I mean, some companies need— can afford to go the route Facebook went. Other companies might not have that type of patience with their shareholders, or like— and, and, of course, and it's not— I'm not saying it's good to be shareholder-driven, but, you know, ultimately there's a board of directors and they dictate. We all respond to somebody.

Exactly. We all respond to somebody. And understanding what that impact is and understanding how to drive to that impact is going to be critical, period.

So let's talk about Deloitte a little bit. Um, What do you see as Deloitte's role with its customers? Right. And then what is your— the role— your role as Chief Innovation Officer to help, I guess, round out that offering?

Yeah, I mean, obviously always looking to make a difference with all these shifts. I mean, we're here to serve our clients as, as with anybody in a customer service-oriented organization.

What's a common use case? Like, why would a company hire Deloitte?

We are all over the board. I mean, obviously we serve from an audit, tax, consulting, advisory perspective. So, I mean, that is a wide breadth, as you might imagine. And so being able to do that, I think puts us in a very unique position to be able to do both audit and tax services at the same time, being able to provide consulting and advisory capabilities. And the reason I love that about what we can provide is our clients have such a myriad of complex issues that they can be traversing many different things and not know what they even need at any given point in time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if they're looking at net new businesses and say they're getting into a new business or they're transforming, And let's say they are looking at us for digital transformation and they're doing something all of a sudden now globally that was once in the US. Well, what's the tax implication? Okay, hold on a minute. Let me go get you the tax person.

Or how are the other global businesses doing? I mean, having the connective tissue to a company's P&L and balance sheet allows you to really understand things in a way that other people just don't.

The beauty of having the ecosystem both internally and externally is I think, an invisible value that particularly, again, in today's day and age, how we solve problems historically has been very siloed. Meaning, I don't just mean like an individual Deloitte or a competitor perspective. People used to solve problems inside their own four walls. And in today's day and age, problems are solved as an ecosystem now. The fact that not only can Deloitte do that with in ourselves across the board, the ecosystem that we share with our ecosystems and alliances partners, with our academic partners, with our broader, even candidly, our competitor sets and our other clients is massive. So being able to do that. So, you know, one of the things I am working on are these flywheel events. So when you think about academic research, so things like quantum computing. Yeah. I'm not going to sit there and go and hire thousands of people to go research quantum computing, but I'm going to go create very important academic research with other entities that can help us go build that and think about the forefront with our clients. Sure. So those that are looking at doing clinical research trials and how can we go and advance that, we're actually doing use case development with academics to go and build that. And we're gonna go do that on a global aspect so that we can actually produce academic research in that vein. So those are the types of ways that it's like, we're not just gonna do that independently to say, Deloitte said this is amazing. We're going to say Deloitte said this amazing with an academic research entity, with a client, with an ecosystems partner, and potentially with even a competitor. Yeah. And think about how impactful that is, not only for ourselves, but for our clients and for the world. So that's, I think, how we're going to solve these types of problems. And for me, that really adds to where we see the complexity of today's day and age. So that's, that to me is just a fascinating way of looking at the world.

So when a company is operating well, that enables them to have the right mixture of conviction, and speed and, you know, strategic acuity to make sure that you understand where you're going, that you're not just stepping on the gas without a steering wheel. What is normally the case with the leadership at that company that you found to be common?

They're uncommonly common, maybe. I mean, that sounds a little bit odd. You know, it's interesting. Everybody's like, what's your checklist for leaders? I don't know that I have a checklist for leaders, which I often actually get. Empathy. I do. I have a big thing on leading from human centricity and empathy. I know there's a lot of discussion around authenticity, but I tend to go towards empathy and individuals who not only listen, but obviously I come from a huge background of being able to challenge the status quo. We solve for people problems. And I think the people who are willing to solve for those people problems, and again, I don't care what day and age we're in, you're always solving for a people problem. And when I learn from, I mean, I've watched 13-year-olds who are solving highly complex technical problems because they lost a parent at a young age or because they're a first-generation immigrant, right? Or because they're, they ask simply like, why does it exist this way? And I don't know another different way to think about it. Yeah. And so When I think about the leaders who are really solving and changing the way that they approach the world, it's because they're solving from a human-centered grounding.

Right. Yeah. It's interesting that just how it, it really doesn't matter about the age. It's kind of a way of thinking and it's just, that's why I think a lot of companies mistakenly have this sort of tenure-based approach to promoting leaders. Yes. And it's just 'cause you've been there for 20 years doesn't mean you should be working for people who've been there for 5. I mean, ultimately Ultimately, there's some things you just can't teach. And yeah, you see that. And I think a lot of companies are scared to promote, you know, a 30-year-old to COO, but like, you know, or they shouldn't be scared to promote an 80-year-old or hire an 80-year-old. Like, I think ultimately you have to look at what that innate human skill is.

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting to me, like when I think about tenacity and the types of skills that you bring to the table and how to actually balance IQ, EQ, management style, management skill, because understanding those things that you can actually all bring to the table and surrounding yourself by individuals who actually bring those challenges and ask those very difficult questions. It's not only important to ask the why not, it's to have the courage to lead through the why not. Yeah, because it's really difficult to manage through change. It's not easy. One person once asked me, and I'll never forget it. I moved through this entire, very difficult, challenging thing, got through it very, very successfully. And the individual looked at me and they're like, Deb, you should be so proud of yourself. It was amazing. And I was like, yeah, it was really great. I was like, but I was kind of sort of expecting, you know, some grand thing at the end. And they're like, were you expecting someone to clap for you? I was like, you know, I kind of sort of was like, where were the applause? And it really made me sit back and think, what is the expectation knowing that change is really difficult and that there aren't a lot of people who can really move through a lot of systemic change because of what it actually takes to move through that change. And so when you think about the people who need to lead through the why-nots, it's to have the courage to be able to actually take the time and the energy and the challenge that comes with the why-not. Yeah.

For sure. So shifting gears to you as we wrap up here, I mean, I'm first of all curious how much time you spend personally on thinking about the consumer and consumer trends and where are you getting those insights and information? Because obviously it's two-thirds of the economy. It's a— yeah, ultimately it's connected to everything. Yeah. At companies, I'm just curious how you spend your time in that regard.

I think about the consumer all the time because I'm also a consumer. So I think about a consumer all the time. I'm logged into just about everything. I mean, whether that's paper or whether that's reading. And yes, I'm still paper. I actually still write things. I'm very connected to writing with pen and paper.

Generational gaps, right? Yeah.

I love, I actually love a Sharpie and a Post-it note is like my still fan favorite, but I'm also connected. I love data and automation. So I am typically connected actually to automation on everything that's wearable. But then I also take it, I've created my own LLMs for my data analytics for my health. Yeah. I do the same thing. Yep. So I'm very, very connected and very aware. And then for external consumer, listen to a lot of podcasts, yours. But I also listen to just very different and dynamic views. Again, as I said, I love to be impacted by those around me. So listening to very, very diverse voices is very important to me. So understanding things that I wouldn't normally probably listen to is the way I also just go about listening to that. Makes sense.

Yeah. So we have a lot of younger listeners to the podcast who want to be in a role like the Chief Innovation Officer at Deloitte one day. Yeah. What are some of the things that you think young people should be focused on earlier in their career to put themselves on the right track so they can stand out and, and really excel in an increasingly competitive, globalized world?

So this one's going to sound super simple, but never, ever, ever stop being curious.

Yeah, we hear that a lot.

I mean, my My, my mother died when I was young, and one thing that she did, which I found years later, was she saved all of my report cards from when I was younger. And regardless of the fact that I did very well in school— not surprised— I talked a lot. Also not a surprise. But what I was talking about was I was asking a lot of questions, and my mother always wrote— because you always had to sign, even if you did well in school, you had to sign the report cards back then. And she would always write, because the teacher would be like, "Deb likes to ask a lot of questions." And my mother would always say, "Perhaps instead of asking why she's asking questions, support her asking those questions." And every year she asked that from literally like 2 through 9. I mean, it's amazing to be able to have that memory. It is. And so I would say not only be curious, but surround yourself by people who challenge you every single day. To sustain that curiosity. And to this day, I surround myself by a core group of people who are not only happy to be around me, but challenge me to be true to who I am and actually really embrace the fact of my curiosity and really push me to continue to want to excel.

Yeah, to embrace your strengths. Yes. Awesome. Well, we always wrap up the podcast by asking if there's a mantra or saying that's got your professional career? You just shared some, but is there anything else that comes to mind?

Biggest one for me is being willing to lose in order to win. Yeah, that's huge. It's like I— again, the thing about innovation as well, specifically, you have got to fail more than you win. I mean, 100%. You are actually not innovating if you're not failing. And a lot of people say that, oh yeah, we do that. We're in a fail culture. We actually really aren't. And so you really have to understand what that failure is and realizing it is a very different mindset. And I live a lot by sports culture. Um, it's a lot of what I live behind. And so if you think about a lot of how people become very elite in their sports culture, they really do fail a lot at what they do, but they also surround themselves by a lot of things that have nothing to do with sports. They do a lot of other things around nutrition, around sports psychology, around other ways to actually build their mind, build their body, build their entity and build their downtime. Yeah. And so when you think about all those things and how to actually build and grow, they're also losing a lot of other things before they're actually winning. And so when you think about that mindset, you can say it a lot, but you actually have to go and live it as well. And so understanding how to do that and understanding it may take you 15 times of doing something, failing at it, recovering very quickly, and then when you get that win, understanding why you won that and then moving on to the next one. So that is the biggest thing for me. And I really honestly thrive around doing that.

Awesome. Yeah, well, this has been such a great chat. And thank you. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule here at CES.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me. For telling me about all the great work you're doing at Deloitte. I appreciate it. And I can't wait to see what's next for you. So on behalf of Susan and I, we team, thanks again to the great Deb Golden, US Chief Innovation Officer for Deloitte, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon. Take care.