June 29, 2025 • 24 mins
What if AI could make us better humans instead of replacing us? That's the question at the heart of Evolutioned's journey from traditional management consulting to AI innovation.
Joel Madden, Evolutioned's CEO, takes us through his company's fascinating transformation as they developed Ambience, their flagship AI product designed to help organizations tackle conversations they've been avoiding. Rather than focusing on eliminating human jobs, Evolutioned has created a tool that enhances our capabilities by providing evidence-based insights into the messy human dynamics of organisational life.
Listen now to discover how AI might help your organization have its most important conversations and unlock human potential in surprising ways. Then share your thoughts on how you're approaching AI in your business – we'd love to hear your perspective!
This episode is supported by CareSuper.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you.
What is your business?
So Evolution started, like manybusinesses in Canberra, as a
(00:27):
management consulting company, asmall business with a few
people who have worked togetherover the years, who decided to
have a go at somethingthemselves, and we followed a
reasonably interesting path ofpivots and rethinks about what
we're doing and rethink aboutwhat we're doing.
(00:50):
And really what we're about ishelping businesses and
organisations have theconversations that they need to
have.
That they probably have avoidedbecause they might be a bit
scary and they might not havethe evidence for them and they
might not feel like they havethe confidence to have the
conversations that they need tohave, and we've really taken a
path of supporting that throughour flagship product Ambience
(01:13):
that we've been developing withAI and some cool data science
things in the background, toenable organizations and
businesses to have anevidence-based discussion.
That might be a bit scarywithout that evidence base.
So that's where that producthas come from and emerged, and I
guess it's a combination ofmyself and my business partner
(01:34):
Dean's expertise in technologyand my expertise in people,
dynamics and organisational flowto really try to
compartmentalise or toproductise that into something
we can take to market.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, so you talk about scary questions.
What kind of scary questionsare we talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
We have a lot of customers who really avoid
conversations around conflict,around motivation, around the
things that are on the peoplespectrum that may be not their
comfort zone.
So we focus on numbers and wejust avoid talking about the
(02:17):
challenges we have on the teamdynamic or the cultural dynamic
in a team, and they are thethings that really hold back
delivery.
In my experience andobservation over my career.
And so you know, in partnershipwith looking at numbers and
looking at critical path andlooking at dependency, we really
(02:39):
need to look at who's nottalking to each other.
Who are the people that don'tget along?
Who are the people within ourorganisation that should be
talking to each other?
Who are the people that don'tget along?
Who are the people within ourorganisation that should be
talking to each other, who havenever had the opportunity to
talk to each other, and how canwe build some evidence around
that to have those conversationsin a way that aren't personally
(02:59):
confronting and that areactually enabling and empowering
for the organisation ultimatelyto deliver value for its
customers and stakeholders?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So a real focus on some of those internal
relationships and internalchallenges.
So tell us a little bit moreabout your flagship product,
Ambienceai.
As I understand it is, You'reusing AI to help unpick and
unpack some of those challenges.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You're using AI to help unpick and unpack some of
those challenges.
So the journey we've taken withAmbience is that we have worked
with UC and ANU over the courseof the last 18 months to do a
few experiments with AI.
We've engaged student teams towork with us as seasoned
industry, IT and productprofessionals to really test
(03:48):
where we can go with AI.
A lot of the AI talk at themoment is about the lower end of
things, and our vision hasalways been let's use AI to
advance our higher-order skillsas humans and let's help humans
be better humans.
Let's not replace jobs.
Let's make us better at what wealready do and extend ourselves
(04:11):
.
So with the Ambience product,what we're able to do is take in
structured and unstructureddata, make sense of it using
some advanced data sciencetechniques and connect things up
that wouldn't normally beconnected up.
And what we're finding withthat is it's really showing that
people can expand theirunderstanding of a domain space.
(04:39):
In our case, we're focusing onprojects and programs case.
We're focusing on projects andprograms to make changes and
evidence-based decisions that gobeyond your typical thinking
around critical path variances,dependencies and budget, but
actually take into account thewhole domain of stakeholder
(05:00):
relationships, motivations andintent within an organizational
domain.
So I think that's reallyexciting and it you know, the
type of thing that we're able touse the product for is.
So you're going into a projectand you you're new to the
project or you're in a typicalposition as a steering committee
(05:22):
member that doesn't have thetime to read a big wad of
documents, so you can go into acommittee and quickly query
ambience and say things like hey, I haven't had time to read my
papers, when are the risks atwith the project and what should
I be asking the steeringcommittee members and the
(05:42):
project team Through to?
I've just received this projectupdate from the project manager
.
Is it on point?
And so we're really seeing whatwe're going to market with as a
truth serum and an enabler forprojects, where our goal is not
(06:04):
to expose people but to giveeverybody a solid foundation and
base to have the conversationsthat they need to have at the
project steering committee andother committees that can course
, correct and enable theconversations that are
meaningful, rather thaneverybody just sitting around a
table and nodding and nothingreally changing.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and I think many people have sat around
exactly those sort of meetings,around project teams and so
forth, but does this run therisk though, do you think, that
an entire project governancegroup might be kind of falling
victim to groupthink becausethey're all using the tool to
(06:47):
produce the same types of setsof questions?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, I think that that is one of the risks, and we
have this project or we havethis product story that we've
built around how we wantambience to work, and that is to
not have it replace thoseconversations but to have it
inform, alongside livedexperience and alongside natural
(07:19):
human interaction and insightand understanding of each other,
to really advance theconversations and to help people
and help organisations deliverthe right sort of value.
I think it's really, in the end, a productivity tool and a tool
that helps to eliminate andavoid waste from a very
(07:42):
humanistic point of view, sowhere do you see the product
going over the next five years?
say I think the I guess the goalfor the product is for it to be
used alongside traditionalproject management as an enabler
(08:03):
and insight generation tool.
One of the things that we'rereally excited about is that we
can take data and information,turn it into knowledge and query
it for insights, and that's thereal power that we've got, and
(08:24):
the exciting part of it we wantto be able to see is a whole
range of use cases emerge fromthat as we start to push it out
into the real world and take itto market and testing it against
those different things.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
So how are you using AI in a way that's different
from other tech businesses?
How are you innovating usingthe tech?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I think it's hard to say that we're innovating.
What we are doing is focusingin on particular use cases and
adaptations.
One of the things that isreally interesting to us is we
were an early adopter of AI andin fact, the origin story of
this is that we were engaged byUC at one point to assist with
(09:15):
some of their teaching, and thiswas around about the time that
ChatGVT was launched.
So we were up against it earlyin a teaching capacity as an
organisation delivering services, because we were seeing
students adopt chat gbt veryearly on and that got us
(09:36):
thinking about use cases andwhere we could be using the
using the ai and and the powerof ai for the better.
Since then we've seen peopleuse it as a personal coach, as
conflict coach, as a biographer,as a ghost writer and lots of
(09:58):
really interesting local,canberra-based use cases that
really are only limited by yourimagination.
My favourite applicationrecently is as a tutor for my
daughter.
So my daughter has a particularphenomenon where she struggles
(10:22):
to create mental images.
Her mind's eye is blurry and sowhen she learns at at school,
if she's learning aboutsomething conceptual or
something that has an imagerycomponent to it, or imagine this
or imagine that she reallystruggles with that teaching
style.
So we've created a little ai umtutor for her using the
(10:48):
frontier models using thefrontier models like Google and
Claude and open AI that reallyfocuses in on how she learns and
she can take concepts thatshe's learning at school and put
them through this tutor and itexplains to her in a way that
she understands so classes forher mind's eye if you like
(11:09):
Correct.
Yeah, yeah, so it reallyaccelerates her ability to learn
in a way that hasn't been therebefore, and so those sorts of
applications are reallyinteresting to me.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So you know, for your business obviously a really
interesting proposition.
How do you go about identifyingyour customers?
Speaker 1 (11:33):
That is a really good question, greg, because we've
struggled with that in the earlystages of business.
I worked with the CanberraInnovation Network and one of
the things that they're really,really good at is helping
businesses identify customersand structure their customer
conversations so that they'recreating value for the people
(11:53):
that they're going to be workingwith and that they actually
have a product to sell thatpeople are going to buy.
And when you're talking aboutgoing to market with people
based services, sometimes thosepeople based services can be
confronting, and so we went fora long time talking about our
(12:14):
great customer is going to besomeone who's you know, bold and
open to new ideas and trying tocreate a customer profile
around that, and that was reallyhelpful.
But it also limits your market,particularly in Canberra and
(12:36):
government clients.
So with the segmentation thatwe're currently doing, we're
working alongside projects todemonstrate the insights that we
can give them from ourexperience, as well as that
(12:56):
experience distilled through theAmbience product and the
insights we can generate there.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So there's a lot of concern out there, in the kind
of the commentary at the moment,about AI stealing jobs and
taking away from people'sability to earn a living down
the track.
Now you're talking about yourproduct supplementing people and
existing processes, but do youthink it's true that AI has the
(13:24):
potential to take away jobs?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, I think it does have the potential to take away
jobs, which is why we've takenthat design decision to augment
and supplement and help humansbe better humans.
I think there are jobs thatpeople are not engaging
(13:48):
professionals for at the moment,that they're engaging their AI
to do for them.
That is, I think, going toimpact business dramatically
Within organisations we'reseeing.
You know, you don't have tolook far in the tech news to see
that some of the big techgiants are shedding types of
(14:09):
jobs and replacing them withother types of jobs that are
more AI-enabled.
And I heard somebody talk aboutrecently that they think their
future in software developmentis not managing a team of people
but managing a team of AIs toproduce software.
And so you're orchestrating AIsrather than orchestrating a
(14:33):
team, and there's a number ofthose future-focused stories
around that are to a peoplepractitioner fundamentally,
which is what I am quite scary.
So, yeah, I think that we needto be AI-aware and AI-savvy and
(14:53):
AI-adaptive, because it's goingto be the future, Unless it gets
too scary and it gets turnedoff.
You know, that is anotherscenario for the future that we
might be looking at.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Seems unlikely, though, don't you think it does
seem?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
unlikely.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Although you know, I'm of an age where Terminator
terrified me in my younger days,so there's always that
possibility.
Do you think it is really allthat scary?
(15:30):
Or is it really just anotherevolution, as we've seen with
the development of the woolenmill and the printing press and
tractors on farms and everythingelse?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I think it is another evolution.
The doomsday scenario is aterrible one to think of and I
know it's on people's minds, buthopefully we don't have to
think about that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Joel, jumping back to your,your business, what are the sort
of unique challenges andopportunities that evolution has
encountered over the lastcouple of years, since you've
been going?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
look, I think we think we started a business in
Canberra that was aservices-based business at
around about the same time thatgovernment stopped buying
consultants Great timing, it wasperfect timing and that's led
to us having a number ofrethinks and pivots and
repositioning of who we are andwhat we do.
(16:35):
Number of rethinks and pivotsand repositioning of who we are
and what we do.
I have traditionally not likedbeing put in a box in terms of
what I do professionally, and Iquickly learned that to be able
to be bought by government andby private sector, you need to
be identified as being something.
So we've pivoted between beingan IT company to being an
entrepreneurial company, being amanagement consulting company
(16:56):
to doing contracting andeverything in between, with
customers from government,federal government, act,
government and local businessesas well.
So we've done everything in ourshort time of being around and
I think that that's going tocontinue being the case.
(17:18):
What's been really important tous is establishing strategic
relationships with theUniversity of Canberra, the ANU
and some of the biggercorporates around town and small
businesses around town.
The work that I do in mygovernance role in governance
(17:42):
roles here at the Chamber at theCanberra Innovation Network
have been really important inbuilding those relationships and
building those networks as well.
So it's really about continuingto have that dialogue with the
business community and with thecustomer community.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So how important is Canberra to your business's
future?
Are you a Canberra businesshere to stay?
Are you looking to expandelsewhere?
What does the future look like?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I think for me and where I'm at with family and
Canberra, absolutely Canberra iswhere we're going to be for the
foreseeable future.
The benefit of living andworking in Australia means that
you can work anywhere inAustralia and remotely is easy
to do.
So we have had clients,interstate and certainly we
(18:33):
would be looking to continue todo that as we grow and as we
continue to evolve.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What about internationally?
Do you see a roleinternationally for your firm?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
With Ambience.
It certainly does open up theopportunity to be doing things
overseas and internationally.
That is internationally, Iguess in the Australian context
I've had thoughts about usingthe word international rather
than overseas recently, becauseI think it's a unique to
Australia and New Zealand thing.
(19:06):
The international market is anobvious one for ambience.
Yes, so that would be reallyexciting.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Do you think there are particular challenges about
getting into other markets?
What does that look like foryou?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
We haven't really had the need to tackle it, but from
the experience of being anAustralian and Canberra-based
business, there is a veryparochial element to it and if I
think about the stories I'veheard from other colleagues in
Australia about a digital and ITentrepreneurial business, many
(19:43):
of those businesses haveactually had success overseas
before they've had successlocally.
So we're very well aware ofthat potential dynamic as well.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, fantastic.
So I guess, Joel, just taking astep back, I mean you've
obviously had a number ofleadership roles over time, now
running your own business, whatare kind of the biggest lessons
you've learned through yourcareer that could be useful for
other people to be reflecting on?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I think that's a good question, greg, and one that I
wasn't expecting to have.
So two things come to mind,because I was trained as a
psychologist many, many yearsago never registered as a
psychologist, but did some, youknow, did all organizational
psychology and a lot ofcounseling and therapeutic
(20:33):
psychology training.
When I was younger, my, mytolerance for discussing
conflict and problems was a lothigher than a lot of my
colleagues for a large part ofmy career, and I think that that
put me in an advantageousposition sometimes and a
disadvantage at others.
(20:54):
And so that self-awarenesscomponent of yourself and your
strengths, as opposed to otherpeople's comfort and strengths,
was something that I didn'trealise until probably 10 to 15
years into my career.
If I'd have known that earlier,I think I would have had a
better time at times.
(21:15):
So that is certainly one thingthat I've become aware of is is
having a high levelself-awareness is good, but you
need to compare that level ofself-awareness to others, and
others will be stronger at somethings than you, often things
that you didn't even know.
(21:36):
That could be a strength, andso the lesson out of that, I
guess, is to have humanrelationships at work.
In some of my jobs I've had to.
Well.
I had the privilege of being ina training and education
(21:57):
position and the organisations,for whatever reason, were not
encouraging but led to asituation where people would
check their humanity at the doorwhen they got to work and that
leads to really terriblecultures.
(22:18):
And so if you can enable peoplein a leadership position to be
themselves, to play to theirstrengths and to recognise that
other people have differentstrengths to them, then you've
got a recipe for some reallypositive relationships and
positive culture.
And if we can align efforttowards creating value, you're
(22:39):
kind of in the mix to having asuccessful organisation and
business.
So that's, I think, thetop-line lesson that I've taken
out of my career.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So that's a really interesting insight and I guess,
to loop back to ambienceai,does the tool help manage some
of those?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
relationships?
We hope so.
If I put the business personhat on for a moment, dean and I
have always had thisconversation about we can't be
the business.
We need to be building thebusiness based around our skills
and knowledge and interests andcapabilities to help other
(23:25):
businesses succeed.
But separating our time fromthe business making money is a
really important part of thatand in some ways we've tried to
productise our expertise throughAmbience.
So that's really been the goal,I think, whether we knew it or
(23:47):
not at the time.
I think that's the reallyinteresting part.
It wasn't until recently that Ihad the moment when we were
working with Ambience and we gotto a point where we went
actually this is starting toproductize what we know and how
we go about helping people.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
So, yeah, that's a good insight.
Fantastic, joel Medden, CEO ofEvolution.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Thank you for having me, greg.
Just a reminder that thisepisode of the Canberra Business
Podcast is brought to you bythe Canberra Business Chamber
(24:33):
which is a supported peer centerand industry super fund.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Thank you.
Thank you.
What is your business?
So Evolution started, like manybusinesses in Canberra, as a
(00:27):
management consulting company, asmall business with a few
people who have worked togetherover the years, who decided to
have a go at somethingthemselves, and we followed a
reasonably interesting path ofpivots and rethinks about what
we're doing and rethink aboutwhat we're doing.
(00:50):
And really what we're about ishelping businesses and
organisations have theconversations that they need to
have.
That they probably have avoidedbecause they might be a bit
scary and they might not havethe evidence for them and they
might not feel like they havethe confidence to have the
conversations that they need tohave, and we've really taken a
path of supporting that throughour flagship product Ambience
(01:13):
that we've been developing withAI and some cool data science
things in the background, toenable organizations and
businesses to have anevidence-based discussion.
That might be a bit scarywithout that evidence base.
So that's where that producthas come from and emerged, and I
guess it's a combination ofmyself and my business partner
(01:34):
Dean's expertise in technologyand my expertise in people,
dynamics and organisational flowto really try to
compartmentalise or toproductise that into something
we can take to market.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, so you talk about scary questions.
What kind of scary questionsare we talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
We have a lot of customers who really avoid
conversations around conflict,around motivation, around the
things that are on the peoplespectrum that may be not their
comfort zone.
So we focus on numbers and wejust avoid talking about the
(02:17):
challenges we have on the teamdynamic or the cultural dynamic
in a team, and they are thethings that really hold back
delivery.
In my experience andobservation over my career.
And so you know, in partnershipwith looking at numbers and
looking at critical path andlooking at dependency, we really
(02:39):
need to look at who's nottalking to each other.
Who are the people that don'tget along?
Who are the people within ourorganisation that should be
talking to each other?
Who are the people that don'tget along?
Who are the people within ourorganisation that should be
talking to each other, who havenever had the opportunity to
talk to each other, and how canwe build some evidence around
that to have those conversationsin a way that aren't personally
(02:59):
confronting and that areactually enabling and empowering
for the organisation ultimatelyto deliver value for its
customers and stakeholders?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
So a real focus on some of those internal
relationships and internalchallenges.
So tell us a little bit moreabout your flagship product,
Ambienceai.
As I understand it is, You'reusing AI to help unpick and
unpack some of those challenges.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
You're using AI to help unpick and unpack some of
those challenges.
So the journey we've taken withAmbience is that we have worked
with UC and ANU over the courseof the last 18 months to do a
few experiments with AI.
We've engaged student teams towork with us as seasoned
industry, IT and productprofessionals to really test
(03:48):
where we can go with AI.
A lot of the AI talk at themoment is about the lower end of
things, and our vision hasalways been let's use AI to
advance our higher-order skillsas humans and let's help humans
be better humans.
Let's not replace jobs.
Let's make us better at what wealready do and extend ourselves
(04:11):
.
So with the Ambience product,what we're able to do is take in
structured and unstructureddata, make sense of it using
some advanced data sciencetechniques and connect things up
that wouldn't normally beconnected up.
And what we're finding withthat is it's really showing that
people can expand theirunderstanding of a domain space.
(04:39):
In our case, we're focusing onprojects and programs case.
We're focusing on projects andprograms to make changes and
evidence-based decisions that gobeyond your typical thinking
around critical path variances,dependencies and budget, but
actually take into account thewhole domain of stakeholder
(05:00):
relationships, motivations andintent within an organizational
domain.
So I think that's reallyexciting and it you know, the
type of thing that we're able touse the product for is.
So you're going into a projectand you you're new to the
project or you're in a typicalposition as a steering committee
(05:22):
member that doesn't have thetime to read a big wad of
documents, so you can go into acommittee and quickly query
ambience and say things like hey, I haven't had time to read my
papers, when are the risks atwith the project and what should
I be asking the steeringcommittee members and the
(05:42):
project team Through to?
I've just received this projectupdate from the project manager
.
Is it on point?
And so we're really seeing whatwe're going to market with as a
truth serum and an enabler forprojects, where our goal is not
(06:04):
to expose people but to giveeverybody a solid foundation and
base to have the conversationsthat they need to have at the
project steering committee andother committees that can course
, correct and enable theconversations that are
meaningful, rather thaneverybody just sitting around a
table and nodding and nothingreally changing.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and I think many people have sat around
exactly those sort of meetings,around project teams and so
forth, but does this run therisk though, do you think, that
an entire project governancegroup might be kind of falling
victim to groupthink becausethey're all using the tool to
(06:47):
produce the same types of setsof questions?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah, I think that that is one of the risks, and we
have this project or we havethis product story that we've
built around how we wantambience to work, and that is to
not have it replace thoseconversations but to have it
inform, alongside livedexperience and alongside natural
(07:19):
human interaction and insightand understanding of each other,
to really advance theconversations and to help people
and help organisations deliverthe right sort of value.
I think it's really, in the end, a productivity tool and a tool
that helps to eliminate andavoid waste from a very
(07:42):
humanistic point of view, sowhere do you see the product
going over the next five years?
say I think the I guess the goalfor the product is for it to be
used alongside traditionalproject management as an enabler
(08:03):
and insight generation tool.
One of the things that we'rereally excited about is that we
can take data and information,turn it into knowledge and query
it for insights, and that's thereal power that we've got, and
(08:24):
the exciting part of it we wantto be able to see is a whole
range of use cases emerge fromthat as we start to push it out
into the real world and take itto market and testing it against
those different things.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
So how are you using AI in a way that's different
from other tech businesses?
How are you innovating usingthe tech?
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I think it's hard to say that we're innovating.
What we are doing is focusingin on particular use cases and
adaptations.
One of the things that isreally interesting to us is we
were an early adopter of AI andin fact, the origin story of
this is that we were engaged byUC at one point to assist with
(09:15):
some of their teaching, and thiswas around about the time that
ChatGVT was launched.
So we were up against it earlyin a teaching capacity as an
organisation delivering services, because we were seeing
students adopt chat gbt veryearly on and that got us
(09:36):
thinking about use cases andwhere we could be using the
using the ai and and the powerof ai for the better.
Since then we've seen peopleuse it as a personal coach, as
conflict coach, as a biographer,as a ghost writer and lots of
(09:58):
really interesting local,canberra-based use cases that
really are only limited by yourimagination.
My favourite applicationrecently is as a tutor for my
daughter.
So my daughter has a particularphenomenon where she struggles
(10:22):
to create mental images.
Her mind's eye is blurry and sowhen she learns at at school,
if she's learning aboutsomething conceptual or
something that has an imagerycomponent to it, or imagine this
or imagine that she reallystruggles with that teaching
style.
So we've created a little ai umtutor for her using the
(10:48):
frontier models using thefrontier models like Google and
Claude and open AI that reallyfocuses in on how she learns and
she can take concepts thatshe's learning at school and put
them through this tutor and itexplains to her in a way that
she understands so classes forher mind's eye if you like
(11:09):
Correct.
Yeah, yeah, so it reallyaccelerates her ability to learn
in a way that hasn't been therebefore, and so those sorts of
applications are reallyinteresting to me.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So you know, for your business obviously a really
interesting proposition.
How do you go about identifyingyour customers?
Speaker 1 (11:33):
That is a really good question, greg, because we've
struggled with that in the earlystages of business.
I worked with the CanberraInnovation Network and one of
the things that they're really,really good at is helping
businesses identify customersand structure their customer
conversations so that they'recreating value for the people
(11:53):
that they're going to be workingwith and that they actually
have a product to sell thatpeople are going to buy.
And when you're talking aboutgoing to market with people
based services, sometimes thosepeople based services can be
confronting, and so we went fora long time talking about our
(12:14):
great customer is going to besomeone who's you know, bold and
open to new ideas and trying tocreate a customer profile
around that, and that was reallyhelpful.
But it also limits your market,particularly in Canberra and
(12:36):
government clients.
So with the segmentation thatwe're currently doing, we're
working alongside projects todemonstrate the insights that we
can give them from ourexperience, as well as that
(12:56):
experience distilled through theAmbience product and the
insights we can generate there.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So there's a lot of concern out there, in the kind
of the commentary at the moment,about AI stealing jobs and
taking away from people'sability to earn a living down
the track.
Now you're talking about yourproduct supplementing people and
existing processes, but do youthink it's true that AI has the
(13:24):
potential to take away jobs?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, I think it does have the potential to take away
jobs, which is why we've takenthat design decision to augment
and supplement and help humansbe better humans.
I think there are jobs thatpeople are not engaging
(13:48):
professionals for at the moment,that they're engaging their AI
to do for them.
That is, I think, going toimpact business dramatically
Within organisations we'reseeing.
You know, you don't have tolook far in the tech news to see
that some of the big techgiants are shedding types of
(14:09):
jobs and replacing them withother types of jobs that are
more AI-enabled.
And I heard somebody talk aboutrecently that they think their
future in software developmentis not managing a team of people
but managing a team of AIs toproduce software.
And so you're orchestrating AIsrather than orchestrating a
(14:33):
team, and there's a number ofthose future-focused stories
around that are to a peoplepractitioner fundamentally,
which is what I am quite scary.
So, yeah, I think that we needto be AI-aware and AI-savvy and
(14:53):
AI-adaptive, because it's goingto be the future, Unless it gets
too scary and it gets turnedoff.
You know, that is anotherscenario for the future that we
might be looking at.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Seems unlikely, though, don't you think it does
seem?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
unlikely.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Although you know, I'm of an age where Terminator
terrified me in my younger days,so there's always that
possibility.
Do you think it is really allthat scary?
(15:30):
Or is it really just anotherevolution, as we've seen with
the development of the woolenmill and the printing press and
tractors on farms and everythingelse?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
I think it is another evolution.
The doomsday scenario is aterrible one to think of and I
know it's on people's minds, buthopefully we don't have to
think about that.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Joel, jumping back to your,your business, what are the sort
of unique challenges andopportunities that evolution has
encountered over the lastcouple of years, since you've
been going?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
look, I think we think we started a business in
Canberra that was aservices-based business at
around about the same time thatgovernment stopped buying
consultants Great timing, it wasperfect timing and that's led
to us having a number ofrethinks and pivots and
repositioning of who we are andwhat we do.
(16:35):
Number of rethinks and pivotsand repositioning of who we are
and what we do.
I have traditionally not likedbeing put in a box in terms of
what I do professionally, and Iquickly learned that to be able
to be bought by government andby private sector, you need to
be identified as being something.
So we've pivoted between beingan IT company to being an
entrepreneurial company, being amanagement consulting company
(16:56):
to doing contracting andeverything in between, with
customers from government,federal government, act,
government and local businessesas well.
So we've done everything in ourshort time of being around and
I think that that's going tocontinue being the case.
(17:18):
What's been really important tous is establishing strategic
relationships with theUniversity of Canberra, the ANU
and some of the biggercorporates around town and small
businesses around town.
The work that I do in mygovernance role in governance
(17:42):
roles here at the Chamber at theCanberra Innovation Network
have been really important inbuilding those relationships and
building those networks as well.
So it's really about continuingto have that dialogue with the
business community and with thecustomer community.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So how important is Canberra to your business's
future?
Are you a Canberra businesshere to stay?
Are you looking to expandelsewhere?
What does the future look like?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I think for me and where I'm at with family and
Canberra, absolutely Canberra iswhere we're going to be for the
foreseeable future.
The benefit of living andworking in Australia means that
you can work anywhere inAustralia and remotely is easy
to do.
So we have had clients,interstate and certainly we
(18:33):
would be looking to continue todo that as we grow and as we
continue to evolve.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
What about internationally?
Do you see a roleinternationally for your firm?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
With Ambience.
It certainly does open up theopportunity to be doing things
overseas and internationally.
That is internationally, Iguess in the Australian context
I've had thoughts about usingthe word international rather
than overseas recently, becauseI think it's a unique to
Australia and New Zealand thing.
(19:06):
The international market is anobvious one for ambience.
Yes, so that would be reallyexciting.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Do you think there are particular challenges about
getting into other markets?
What does that look like foryou?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
We haven't really had the need to tackle it, but from
the experience of being anAustralian and Canberra-based
business, there is a veryparochial element to it and if I
think about the stories I'veheard from other colleagues in
Australia about a digital and ITentrepreneurial business, many
(19:43):
of those businesses haveactually had success overseas
before they've had successlocally.
So we're very well aware ofthat potential dynamic as well.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, fantastic.
So I guess, Joel, just taking astep back, I mean you've
obviously had a number ofleadership roles over time, now
running your own business, whatare kind of the biggest lessons
you've learned through yourcareer that could be useful for
other people to be reflecting on?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I think that's a good question, greg, and one that I
wasn't expecting to have.
So two things come to mind,because I was trained as a
psychologist many, many yearsago never registered as a
psychologist, but did some, youknow, did all organizational
psychology and a lot ofcounseling and therapeutic
(20:33):
psychology training.
When I was younger, my, mytolerance for discussing
conflict and problems was a lothigher than a lot of my
colleagues for a large part ofmy career, and I think that that
put me in an advantageousposition sometimes and a
disadvantage at others.
(20:54):
And so that self-awarenesscomponent of yourself and your
strengths, as opposed to otherpeople's comfort and strengths,
was something that I didn'trealise until probably 10 to 15
years into my career.
If I'd have known that earlier,I think I would have had a
better time at times.
(21:15):
So that is certainly one thingthat I've become aware of is is
having a high levelself-awareness is good, but you
need to compare that level ofself-awareness to others, and
others will be stronger at somethings than you, often things
that you didn't even know.
(21:36):
That could be a strength, andso the lesson out of that, I
guess, is to have humanrelationships at work.
In some of my jobs I've had to.
Well.
I had the privilege of being ina training and education
(21:57):
position and the organisations,for whatever reason, were not
encouraging but led to asituation where people would
check their humanity at the doorwhen they got to work and that
leads to really terriblecultures.
(22:18):
And so if you can enable peoplein a leadership position to be
themselves, to play to theirstrengths and to recognise that
other people have differentstrengths to them, then you've
got a recipe for some reallypositive relationships and
positive culture.
And if we can align efforttowards creating value, you're
(22:39):
kind of in the mix to having asuccessful organisation and
business.
So that's, I think, thetop-line lesson that I've taken
out of my career.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So that's a really interesting insight and I guess,
to loop back to ambienceai,does the tool help manage some
of those?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
relationships?
We hope so.
If I put the business personhat on for a moment, dean and I
have always had thisconversation about we can't be
the business.
We need to be building thebusiness based around our skills
and knowledge and interests andcapabilities to help other
(23:25):
businesses succeed.
But separating our time fromthe business making money is a
really important part of thatand in some ways we've tried to
productise our expertise throughAmbience.
So that's really been the goal,I think, whether we knew it or
(23:47):
not at the time.
I think that's the reallyinteresting part.
It wasn't until recently that Ihad the moment when we were
working with Ambience and we gotto a point where we went
actually this is starting toproductize what we know and how
we go about helping people.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
So, yeah, that's a good insight.
Fantastic, joel Medden, CEO ofEvolution.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Thank you for having me, greg.
Just a reminder that thisepisode of the Canberra Business
Podcast is brought to you bythe Canberra Business Chamber
(24:33):
which is a supported peer centerand industry super fund.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Thank you.
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