Episode 7. Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz: Redesign Your Operating Model Before AI Redesigns You

Redesign Your Operating Model — Before AI Redesigns You

with Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient and author of Digital Business Transformation

"What you don't want is faster caterpillars; you want real butterflies." — Nigel Vaz

What You'll Hear in 35 Minutes

- Why AI is a chain of "sequential watershed moments," not a single leap

- The S-P-E-E-D framework (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering, Data & AI) behind Publicis Sapient's transformations

- Tackling the $1.5 – $2 trillion technical-debt mountain and flipping the 80/20 "run vs. change" budget

- How Slingshot and Bodhi bring agentic AI + industry patterns into the SDLC to kill "spaghetti code"

- Moving from "tools" to a digital-workforce mindset (Iron-Man-in-the-suit analogy)

- Culture shift: learn → unlearn → relearn as an executive super-skill

Guest Snapshot

Nigel Vaz has spent 25 years at Publicis Sapient and became global CEO in 2019. His best-selling book, Digital Business Transformation: How Established Companies Sustain Competitive Advantage, introduces the SPEED model that Fortune 200 leaders still use to frame end-to-end digital change. Vaz now spearheads the firm's agentic-AI platforms Bodhi and Slingshot, aimed at collapsing delivery cycles and slashing tech debt for Global 2000 clients.

Timestamps

00:00 — Origins: from early internet banking to CEO

03:30 — "Sequential watershed moments" & the post-Turing era

06:11 — Technical debt: why $2 T blocks innovation

11:00 — Fear vs. action: only 15% of firms truly embracing AI

14:45 — Inside Slingshot: combine-harvester for the SDLC

20:45 — Services-as-software: blending people, products, outcomes

24:55 — Operating-model redesign & the Iron-Man analogy

29:15 — Governance moves from review boards to real-time guardrails

34:30 — Closing thoughts: learning > knowing in an agentic world

Resources & Links

Book – Digital Business Transformation → https://www.publicissapient.com/insights/dbt-book-preview

Sapient Slingshot overview → https://www.publicissapient.com/solutions/sapient-ai/sapient-slingshot

Bodhi agentic platform → https://www.publicissapient.com/solutions/bodhi

Follow Nigel on LinkedIn → https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nvaz

Follow Phil on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/pfersht/

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