S1E30 - What Human-Centric Leadership Looks Like in the AI Era

Yeah, I can see that.

And, and, and, you know, we've talked about this quite a bit over the last at least 24 months, um, probably even longer, um, is really the, the, the value of human work is transitioning.

We're moving from operating a lot of low-value tasks, um, you know, things like screening and scheduling and, and, you know, stuff like that that can be better handled.

Even research in a lot of cases at scale can be handled, um, very well with some of these tools.

But, but you've, you've championed something in here that, that I have found interesting, which you, you call it people sustainability, right? And sort of in that internal mobility piece.

And as, as we deploy these new technologies, es- especially agentic AI, which is really, um, helping us make better decisions and maybe even doing a lot of the work for us-

Mm-hmm

... um, at least the entry-level and mid-level cognitive tasks, you know, the traditional entry points into a company are disappearing, right? So you think about what my first job, your first job was probably doing some level of analysis work and, you know, that's, that's gone.

So if the bottom rungs of the corporate ladder are automated away, like it's just not available anymore, how does a human being enter the system to be developed in the first place?

I think there's a responsibility that's really incumbent on organizations to pay attention to that.

I know we're in college graduation season, and this has come up at a lot of commencement speeches where there's, um, a, a bit of angst around the talk of the industrial revolution's next phase being AI, and I believe a lot of that has to do with, you know, people who've invested in their education and gone that route and are struggling to find jobs because there are fewer out there, um, or, or at least that's the perception.

So I, I guess for me, that perception is the piece that I think still is coming to pass.

Is it actually because of AI? Is it because companies are under budget pressure and they're making reductions, and that's, you know, the point that they can make them? Is it less about AI, honestly, and more about automation or changing the way they're actually doing their work? Because when we think about AI, and I say the big we, maybe not necessarily just my organization, but anywhere, where that all starts is with process engineering and how are you working and what are you trying to deliver, really? That's, that's the place that everyone needs to focus.

We're not really, I think, globally, I don't know of any organizations who feel they've nailed that, so we're really not as far down the path with this as some of the news headlines may lead people to believe.

I truly believe a lot of organizations are still trying to figure it out.

So hopefully in that figuring it out, there's an aspect of how do we bring along the next generation of talent.

In tandem with that, I think that next generation of talent is thinking about the roles they'll play from a career perspective a lot differently than generations before them.

I think they are considering, um...

You know, this is a generation that kind of grew up, um, in the world of, you know, to meet revenue numbers, we might reduce headcount.

Um, that was something that is just part of the world that they live in, and I think because of that, their loyalty to companies is very different than prior generations, and that's also an adjustment.

So whereas assuming that that pipeline of, uh, talent will be available in the future, to some extent, yes, they will.

I think there's also something that's really relevant about how do we proactively engage them, because we're gonna need them.

There's a big change generationally going on in the workforce, and in the next 10 years, if we don't have that next generation talent ready to go, um, there's gonna be a lot of companies, technology aside, that will be really hurting.