Three questions to Lani

Before we dive in Lani, tell us a little bit about yourself!

I'm originally from the UK, now proudly calling Melbourne home. I work as a Transformation & AI Facilitator which basically means I help organisations navigate the messy, exciting, deeply human work of changing how they operate, especially when AI is involved. What I love most is that moment when someone's eyes light up because a concept that felt abstract and intimidating suddenly clicks, often because of a good metaphor or a well-crafted question. I believe ideas need tending, not just generating, and I get to do that for a living. I'm unashamedly an early bird. My mornings often start with movement, a walk, a run, or Pilates and that quiet, intentional start to the day sets the tone for everything that follows.

To fill my cup? I travel whenever I can (there's nothing like new places to refresh your thinking), I spend time with my husband John and the various dogs we look after through house-sitting, and I love the kind of deep conversations that leave you slightly changed afterwards.

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What is something you’ve changed your mind about recently? 

Something small that's been nagging at me. We talk about AI like we're already living in the future, and then I went to renew my passport and had to physically post a document. Proving who you are still means digging out a paper birth certificate. Change your mobile plan and you'll lose an afternoon on hold. Try to actually speak to a human about a service and good luck even finding a phone number. I'd assumed all this technology was quietly making daily life easier. It isn't. We've built astonishing things and left the boring everyday stuff exactly as painful as it's always been. Turns out progress and convenience aren't the same thing, and I'd quietly assumed they were.

Who is someone you admire and why? 

Steven Bartlett. I came for the Diary of a CEO podcast and stayed for how he listens. He asks the plain question everyone else is too polished to ask, then he gets out of the way and lets the person talk. For someone who's spent a career learning to do exactly that, watching him do it so naturally is a little humbling. His book stayed with me too. He's young, he's done a lot, and he's still openly working things out rather than pretending he's arrived.

If you had to give a TED Talk, what topic would you choose and why?    

What do we need to keep human, and what can we hand to AI? I think we've got it backwards in most places. We automate the warmth, the phone call, the person who might actually have helped, and we cling to the admin a machine should have swallowed years ago.

And since you said a little self-promotion is welcome: this is more or less my job. I help leaders work out which parts of their work should stay human and which shouldn't, mostly with AI in the mix right now. The thing I keep finding is that the technology was never the hard part, trust is. So I'll hand the question to you: what's one thing in your work you'd never let a machine near, and one you'd give up tomorrow without a second thought?