Jason (00:44)
Hi Parrish it's great to see you.

Parrish (00:46)
Hey Jason, great to see you as well.

Jason (00:47)
Thank you. And thanks for joining for the Wise in Five I'm thrilled to have you and go through this. And also I'm thrilled that you're gonna be part of the round table we're gonna do in a couple of weeks around product development in the age of AI. So thank you for that as well.

Parrish (01:01)
Yeah, thank you. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Jason (01:02)
Me too. ⁓ before we dive into the the five questions, would you mind just giving a little bit of your background? I mean, you have this amazing background in CX and UX and product development. Would you just share a little bit with the folks that are watching and listening?

Parrish (01:17)
Yeah, I'd be happy to. well I've spent over thirty years in financial services and a variety of digital and client experience roles. at ⁓ major brands like Wacovia, Fidelity, TIAA you know, how I often describe is that I love being at this intersection of marketing, sales, operations, technology, client experience. I kinda, you know, floated my boat when I first got exposed to it. And then I've always been on the business side where I've been able to be

close to customers, the people that serve them, and really to see the business outcomes associated with it. It's over the the course of my career that led me to focus on digital and CX transformation, where I had the opportunity to to work with great people across many different functional areas to drive growth and scale and innovation across both B2C and B2B domains and banking, investing and retirement services. And now I'm I'm focused on sharing my experience to help others solve problems, grow their businesses and

And achieve success.

Jason (02:09)
That's wonderful. And that's why we're so thrilled to have you as an advisor on the The Wisory So thank you. So my first question, which I ask all of our guests, is where do you find inspiration in daily life?

Parrish (02:21)
Yeah. this was a great question by the way, and I where I find daily inspiration is really in practices of gratitude, which I started a few years ago. I'm still trying to get get better at. but I I do that after I after I walk the dogs first thing in the morning and then I you know, do some reflection and you know, that gratitude could be in nature, could be beautiful morning, could be a crisp winter day, it could be in relationships, professional or or personal, could be health.

it could be helping others to achieve their best or help solve problems. but every day is a gift in some way, shape, or form and and really deserves to be treated as such. And so it's certainly not always easy, you know, d depending on what's going on in your life, because we're all human after all. But starting with that really inspires me to do more and get better ⁓ for myself and others. And I I have to thank my wife who who's the one that introduced me to it and ⁓ I'm grateful for her too.

Jason (03:08)
Well, I I think that is amazing and so inspirational. And as someone who focuses on experience, I think that's a great way to channel experience just in in daily life. So you've lived through the rise of online banking, mobile, digital, self service, you know, and now AI. What feels different today about this technology wave, you know, and and I guess what feels exactly the same?

Parrish (03:33)
Yeah, and I'll probably start there because it's it's really best framed and you know what feels similar in in looking at how things are evolving, even though they're evolving quite rapidly, but you know ⁓ being at the early stages, you know, being able to see the promise of the possibilities and being able to translate that into ⁓ what it can mean from business outcomes. storytelling is really important to help people understand what the future could look like.

And alongside that comes, you know, having conviction and dealing with skeptics about what can happen. there's certainly a lot of AI skeptics right now, but I can even remember in my ear early days ⁓ having a bank CIO tell me that the internet was a fad. and why why would they want to invest? so you know you you need to to pair that with strong conviction and strong case ⁓ for why to invest. And then the other thing that's similar are the cycles of intense learning.

particularly at the outset and and sometimes failure, ⁓ candidly, and being able to channel that into how how do you take things to the next level. and then, you know, when I look at like a more macro level, like the phases of the evolution like where we are now really over the past couple years is, you know, we in the internet age we talked about picks and shovels, people like Cisco, et cetera, the ones that built the infrastructure and the and the capital spending and it's a massive

investment that people need to make. And alongside that is also, you know, some naturally comes some hype predictions and hyperbole. certainly today it's about you know what what it what it could be or or the dark side of AI ⁓ at this time. and then you you also see the concentration in big players. So you know we see all the big model players and then you know Google, Microsoft, etc.

that are investing heavily ⁓ SpaceX. And the other thing that feels familiar is enterprises ⁓ rushing to make sure they have an AI strategy, even though maybe they don't really need an AI strategy, but everybody needs to have an AI strategy. And that's accompanied by intense you know FOMO fear of missing out. And of course, at the same time you see consultants building programs and practices to advise firms on how to

AI. And now we're starting to see the gap between you know saying that you're using the new technology, the cost of the investments, you know, people hope now seeing that they're using too much AI or not using it in a thoughtful manner, and understanding what the actual ROI is. So those those are things that all feel similar to to where we've been. But what's different this time, I think, is is the pace of change. So

Jason (05:58)
Yes.

Parrish (05:58)
the ability to compress time to value ⁓ without as many people and the use of brute force. So you know before we might lock people in a room for a week to dive deep on a problem and come up with like a low res prototype to type. Well now you can do that in a matter of minutes. But so that that really is going from you know this notion of assisting or doing the work to having you know a the AI do the work for you. So

You know, the past waves, you know, like mobile might have provided you tools to be more efficient more efficient. And you needed people with very specific skills like mobile app development. Well, you don't need that anymore now. and it doesn't just boost your productivity, it it it reasons, it can make decis decisions and it can execute the work on your behalf. Doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a human in the loop, but it it just changes the nature of that. And the part of that changing nature is like this disruption of ⁓ cognitive

Cognitive thinking, which is, you know, before we might have transformed how we store information or how we connect with others or how we communicate, like so.

Jason (06:58)
so to to everything you just shared, Parrish I guess my question is, so what has AI changed about product development that most people or teams have not recognized yet?

Parrish (07:09)
Yeah, I the the one thing that I ⁓ thought about is you know a lot of people think that ⁓ AI and product development it's gonna enable you to just ship much more stuff. and I think it's it the the nuance is that it's not about doing more things, it's about doing the right things intentionally better. So, you know, not just about shipping features, but shipping the features that customers love with less friction in the process. So, that nuance I think is important and you know

we as as product managers want to do as much as we possibly can or probably ship as much as we can, but it's it's really about impact over quantity, sheer quantity. And that impact can come from the application of AI in the process and the frameworks that you're using.

Jason (07:48)
I I think that's exactly right. And so I mean, a as as kind of a a partner question to that is so what human skills do you see becoming even more important as as AI continues to to grow in usefulness?

Parrish (08:02)
Sure. I mean there there are three that, you know, right off the top of my head that I think about. So one is is collaboration, another is communication, and then the third is curiosity. So these are really important human skills to have. And I think about collaboration because, you know, roles will become blurring across teams. Teams will have to work incredibly well together, even though you may have fewer people. Like those folks have to work really close together and also have to understand the power of how they're ⁓

applying AI and how they're utilizing it. The second around communication, so being able to communicate and to do so with clarity and and and real intention and up the obsession about customers and so how you communicate the story and what you're doing on behalf of customers and the outcomes you're driving. And then you know the ⁓ curiosity is something that kind of came to mind earlier this year. I was guest lecturing at a class ⁓ on digital marketing and revenue operations and

One of the things I shared with the class was ABC, which isn't always be closing, it's actually always be curious. And it's a real means to differentiate yourself, whether it's, you know, your your team being curious or you as an individual. I think that those skills are going to be really important as the AI age evolves.

Jason (09:14)
I I could not agree more. And I think, you know, I teach entrepreneurship at at Indiana University. And whenever we talk about AI and the skills that are going to be needed, curiosity always comes up as one of those. We it's we have curiosity, collaboration, and critical thinking, you know, as as the three three C's that we talk about. So so pretty much right on. So in in five years, right? Let's get our crystal ball out. In five years, what will separate the truly great

Parrish (09:25)
Mm-hmm.

Jason (09:41)
product teams from those that are just merely average.

Parrish (09:44)
Sure, sure. Well and by the way, I do have a crystal ball. But it's it's remarkably marking me on this subject. ⁓ as it should be I had I had a strategy role at one point and my my team gave gave me that, but it it doesn't work for together. anyway, ⁓ you know, as ⁓ if if we look ahead, you know, I think in five years I I touched a little bit about the willingness to blur rolls, you know, I'm a

Jason (09:48)
There we go. As it should be, right?

That's terrific.

Parrish (10:08)
a big fan of you know growth hacking and using cross functional disciplines to solve problems. ⁓ but now with AI, you know, teams could do multiple things from strategy to design to prototyping to coding and analytics. And you know in intentional org design or maybe even deconstruction. I think it's gonna challenge the way that historically people have functionally set things up. but what what's gonna be really important is shared values and aligned goals will matter more than ever.

you know, to to unlock value because also that pace is so quick. And then, you know, the other thing that's going to be different, I I think in regulated industries, which obviously I have a lot of experience in, is that you know being able to integrate and rethink the the steps required to go to market, which can sometimes be the long pole in execution. Like they're probably still the long pole in execution today. you know, whether that's like legal risk or compliance or different controls. So I think

that the the ability to think ahead to those and understand how to optimize them and compress them as well will be really important.

Jason (11:07)
Yep. So this may be an unfair question, but I have to ask it. So if you were starting a company today, right, and AI was available from day one, right? You didn't have all the legacy stuff that we're talking about, how would you build it differently? Like what how would you approach this in a in a different way than trying to retrofit AI into some things that are already built, processes, platform, whatever it may be?

Parrish (11:29)
Yeah,

yeah. I well I think it probably starts with just having a different architecture or a radically different architecture. So it's about the data architecture and having things being modular and not necessarily hooked into one model that you're using or one system. So being able to be much more kind of open source ⁓ than ⁓ than legacy firms have been in the past. You know, having

Jason (11:46)
Mm-hmm.

Parrish (11:52)
those learning loops, self-improving learning loops in some cases ⁓ with AI, and in some cases with AI generating it, but humans in the loop reviewing it. And then you know a second component pillars are really around lean operations. So you know we've we've talked about lean for a long time, but typ typically it's about process improvement. But this now really helps you think about scaling the business without having to add people and how how to do that.

thoughtfully and have, you know, the autonomous support that you need. Instead of hiring, you know, three or four support agents, you just have one AA agent that is handling everything for you. And then it it it changes the work that somebody might do that is responsible for that that particular product or that digital experience.

Jason (12:31)
Yeah.

Are are there certain roles that you would say we have these roles today as as people and those roles may be more done through technology, through AI. you know, and and they become duplic duplicative t in some some manner.

Parrish (12:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'm I'm not sure if they're duplicative or if ⁓ AI helps unlock a a different level of insight. So it could be in the ideation phase, or it could be in research ⁓ and testing, certainly in design, certainly in product management, like figuring out specs of the product, problems to solve, how do you understand what the go to market strategy is. So

I think all roles will be touched in some way, shape or form. Yeah.

Jason (13:15)
Yeah, I think you're right. And

and I don't want to like give away too much because we've already started to plan what our roundtable is going to be. And the the rich conversation that's going to come out of that is just going to be amazing. Well, and and Parrish, you went through the five questions. We actually did six questions. So we had an extra question and you passed with flying colors. So thank you. Thank you. But I do have a bonus question for you. So as you know, businesses and leaders,

Parrish (13:20)
Yeah.

Okay. Always like to overachieve. Yes. Thank you.

Jason (13:41)
start to engage you on the The Wisory, what questions should they really be coming to you with? What would what are you best positioned to help them answer?

Parrish (13:49)
Yeah, I think I can help answer questions about how and not even just specific to AI, but how do you think about ⁓ creating a roadmap for digital transformation or client experience transformation, in inclusive of AI, of course, in in these days? what are the the right kind of organizational levers to pull and what what are best practices that have been applied across industries that can help people take their aspirations around ⁓ digital transformation or

experience to the next level. ⁓ and then, you know, questions like a really important question I that I always ask is, well what what customer problems are we trying to solve? And to orient around those and then to understand context about, you know, what's happened in the past or what are the aspirations for the future. So th those would just be a couple things off top.

Jason (14:33)
That's fantastic. Well, I can't wait for ⁓ teams and leaders to engage with you. Thank you so much for making the time to answer these questions, to be an advisor on the The Wisory, and to participate in the product development roundtable we're going to be having in a few weeks. So thank you for all of it.

Parrish (14:52)
Yeah,

well thank you, Jason. It's it's a pleasure and a privilege. Yeah. Take care. Bye bye.

Jason (14:55)
Well, same. All the best. Thanks, Parrish.