When an organization gets to a point where they realize they need to change things up, they typically start by looking at people in leadership and management positions. They feel that the issues in the company can be solved by changing the people at the top. But the truth is, instead of starting with people we should first take a look at the system.

The system that you build is typically more powerful than the people who are within that system. Just bringing in a new manager or a whole new team does not guarantee things will change for the better, in fact things may just get worse. It’s not the people that are directly impacting change, it is the system. You have to change the system in order to have change in your organization.

Once you figure out that the system needs to be changed, that is when you need to turn to people. You need bold, visionary people in leadership positions who have the will and the ability to change the core system of the organization for the better. People who are not going to just settle for what the company has done in the past, but who are always striving for something better.

If you want to drive true organizational change inside of your company, you have to start with redesigning, rethinking and rebuilding the system

Alan Trefler founded Pegasystems and as CEO has built the company into a $750 million provider of customer engagement solutions with 4,000+ employees based in Boston with 30 global offices, growing about 20 percent annually.

Trefler’s life’s work has been to design a platform for living applications that businesspeople can evolve to manage the constant disruption and change in today’s customer-centric economy. Trefler’s book, Build for Change, describes a new generation of customers with unprecedented power to make or break brands and changes businesses must embrace to succeed.

Pegasystems (aka Pega) is the leader in cloud software for customer engagement and operational excellence. If you’ve driven a car, used a credit card, called a company for service, opened an account, flown on a plane, submitted a claim, or performed countless other everyday tasks, chances are you’ve interacted with Pega. For the past 30 years, their technology – CRM, digital process automation, robotics, AI, and more – has empowered the world’s leading companies to achieve breakthrough results.

Trefler’s interest in computers originates from collegiate involvement in tournament chess, where he achieved a Master rating and was co-champion of the 1975 World Open Chess Championship.

What is it like to work at Pega?

It’s changed over the years as technology has evolved. They have offices in 31 countries around the world. They have created collections of collaboration rooms so they can share with distributed teams. They are guided by their own software, designed to manage various tasks. They focus on being able to do case/work management to make sure people are aligned. They focus on trying to manage work around customer service.

Trefler believes that although there was a time when you would hear ‘silicon valley’ and think of innovation, today when you think of it, most people would think of ‘entitlement’. They’ve been so successful they have begun to ‘read their own press clippings’ - which is a very dangerous thing.

When asked to define leadership, Trefler says, leadership is defined by character and leadership by the ability to show a level of reliability. Ultimately, it involves people choosing to follow. We have moved past the era of coercion. The elements include being highly informed and knowledgeable - and being able to describe the sensibility.

What you will learn in this episode:

• The connections between chess and business
• Thoughts on universal income
• Skills of leaders in 2025
• Alan’s thoughts on the skills gap
• What Alan would do differently if he had to create his company from scratch today
• Alan’s view of Silicon Valley

Arun Chidambaram is the Global Head of Talent Analytics at Pfizer. His main area of focus is building and sustaining analytical capability within HR for large global corporations. Chidambaram has deep experiences in quantitative and visualisation methodologies, advanced analytics and research, experimentation and modelling, building collaborative and strong relationships across matrix organizations, and driving key business strategies and organisational change initiatives through workforce insights. He recently co-authored an article on TLNT titled “The Challenges in building a strong function around People Analytics function”.

Chidambaram has a background in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research with 20 years of experience in management, consulting, and human resources in positions of increasing responsibility. Prior to joining Pfizer, he held several leadership positions at Harley Davidson, Merck, and ESPN.

What is the role of leadership in People Analytics (PA)?

• Be patient -  but efficient
• Holistic leadership function, you must understand every aspect of people analytics. “I lead a bunch of very smart people who are in high demand, and then I report to very smart people,” says Chidambaram.
• You need to keep track with where everyone else is working to make sure you are in the right place, working with the right people
• You need to work with many departments - and be able to collaborate effectively with each.

How big are PA teams? Chidambaram says 90% are located in HR. In some organizations, there are 3 people in the team who support specific departments. Then they each go partner with those teams and come back with projects. Once people know about the PA teams, the number of projects increases greatly.

What will be the future of PA? According to Chidambaram, if you are early in your journey, then you have to have some HR background. How decisions are made, experience dealing with confidential information, etc.

Currently Chidambaram reports to the CHR. “Eventually, it will go to its own department and CIO and CHRs will need to be driven by data.”

How do you get started? Partner with a business analytics leader, talk about privacy and using data sets. Work on projects, let your team see the benefits and then move into larger roles when the time is right.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What people should know about People Analytics
• The role of AI in PA
• What is the Zone of debate?
• How HR and PA work together
• What data PA looks at
• The 5 stages people in PA use
• Hypothetical situations to show how PA can be used in any organization

We spend a majority of our lives working, therefore work and life are not separated.

What kind of life do you want to have?

In the past there has always been a clear distinction between a person’s work and their personal life. A person would leave work at 5pm and drive home and they would push work out of their minds so they could focus on other things.

Nowadays that clear distinction isn’t there, the lines are blurring between work and life. We hear people talking about work-life balance and work-life integration. But the truth is, work is life and life is work. We spend a majority of our adult lives working, which means what you do is not just a job, or a career--it’s a part of you.

We have to do a better job of blending our work and life together into one instead of splitting them up. If you don’t like how an organization is treating you, if you hate the projects you are working on, if you are miserable where you are at, it’s time for you to take control and to build the life you want to have. Don’t just sit back and think you can wait it out because the pay is decent, your work is your life.

You have to look at it from the perspective that this is not just a business, a career, a job or work. This is you! You have to ask yourself, what kind of life do you want to have and how do you build it for yourself?

Mike McDerment is the founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world’s #1 cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, it was built in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice. McDerment spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parents’ basement. Since then, now with around 300 employees, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and collect billions of dollars.

McDerment mentioned that an employee at Freshbooks told him that the culture of the company feels like summer camp and that is something McDerment is thrilled about. Why?

When a child comes home from summer camp, they are mentally and emotionally fit. They have been challenging themselves all week – both physically and mentally. This produces a very high level of self-esteem and excitement. This is what they want employees at Freshbooks to experience each day. They believe it will lead to a sense of personal growth and self-esteem.

The culture of Freshbooks works to be like the ‘longest living cocktail party on earth.’ Why?

Generally, when you go to a cocktail party you have been invited by someone you like. There you will find some people you know and others you don’t. This environment creates a feeling safety and of being welcome. 

One of the ways they have worked to create this culture is to set up people on professional blind dates – in groups of 3 or 4. They ask employees if they would like to participate and then they match up employees who normally would not connect with on another on a day to day basis. This is one way to help the company feel smaller no matter how much they grow in size.

One piece of advice McDerment gives to larger organizations is to focus on reinforcing the behaviors you want perpetuated. Make sure to celebrate those things.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What it is like to work at Freshbooks
• What the movie ‘Elf’ has in common with the culture at Freshbooks
• Why has Freshbooks won awards for ‘best place to work’
• Why they created a secret competitor company
• How to keep your company feeling small no matter the size

Contact:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-mcderment-68895a1/

There is no question about it, AI and Automation have been at the center of many debates and discussions in the workplace. Many people are asking what the role of AI and Automation will be in the future of work. Will they create more jobs than they replace, or will they replace more jobs than they create.

If you look back at history, you can see that new technology, such as electricity or steam power, has always created more jobs. But today there seems to be a lot of fear surrounding this topic. I think there could be a solution to alleviate this fear.

Unlike times in the past when new technology was introduced, we have something at our fingertips that could be the solution. We have the internet which allows us to have continuous discussions around this topic. We are able to see the impact of AI and Automation around the world at the click of a button. We can read articles, see it on TV, and search for discussions on the internet. We’ve never had access to all of this in the past when new technologies were introduced to the workplace.

Is the very fact that these conversations are happening at a global level be the actual fix to helping make sure that we don’t see this massive job displacement in the future?

Mary Czerwinski is the Research Manager at the Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group at Microsoft. She worked in computer-human interaction for Bellcore, the Johnson Space Center, and Compaq, and also held an adjunct position at Rice University while at Compaq. She moved to Microsoft in 1996, as a usability tester in product development.

Czerwinski’s research focuses primarily on emotion tracking, information worker task management, and health and wellness for individuals and groups. Her background is in visual attention and multitasking. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Her research group of 10 has very diverse talents. One area that they work on is information visualization – how to see patterns in large amounts of data. Another area is to look at tools for programmers as well as making the environment better and more productive for them.

What is an intelligent system? It is a system that uses algorithms to characterize your behavior. It is a software system that can get to know you personally to help you focus and get work done. For example, perhaps there is a piece of software that is making you frustrated. The software developers want to know this so they can work on adjusting and modifying the software based on that feedback.

Another use for the intelligent system can be to create an assistant that is more personal. They are trying to make assistants that will interact in a more human, personal way –ways in which people find more natural. 

One example Czerwinski shared is when a person uses Cortana. If the person says, “Hey Cortana!” in a cheerful voice, then Cortana should answer back in a similar happy tone. Or if the person says something to Cortana in a panicked voice, then she should come back in a calming tone.

Czerwinski says, “This takes a lot of data and training but it is not clear to me that humans are not that much better [at understanding emotions]. Humans hide their emotions a lot – especially at work.” So it takes long user studies to approach this level of detail.

Czerwinski’s advice to listeners is to stop being scared about machine learning and algorithms. Over the next 5 – 10 years we will see some amazing changes in technology that will allow us to get more work done which may encourage some of us to become consumed with working, but she encourages everyone to remember to take time to go for walks and spend time with loved ones.

She also believes we need to manage the technology thoughtfully to make sure we avoid some of the concerning aspects that come with technological advances.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• How and why users’ emotions are tracked
• What is Artificial Emotion Intelligence?
• Real life examples of how Artificial Emotion Intelligence is being used
• Some challenges and concerns that come with AEI, AI and VR and how we can avoid them
• The future of personal assistants
• The current state of AI

Employee engagement is at the center of a lot of conversations inside of organizations these days. The problem is, investment in employee engagement has never been higher while the employee engagement scores have never been lower. So what is causing this disconnect?

Most organizations want their employees to be happy while working, however they are going about it the wrong way. Instead of redesigning the core workplace practices around the employees, organizations are keeping their outdated workplace practices while trying to give the employees special perks, thinking that will make them happy.

To truly impact your employee experience you must start by redesigning your core workplace practices. When organizations decide to forgo this step with the employees in mind and they choose to simply throw some perks at the employees, it can feel like employee manipulation. If you want to have engaged employees, start with redesigned core workplace practices.

Gordon Wright is the Senior VP and Global Director of HOK’s Workplace Practice. Based in Chicago, he leads diverse project teams that solve clients’ business and organizational challenges related to real estate business process, strategic planning, workplace strategy and change management. HOK has about 1,800 employees across a network of 23 offices on three continents.

HOK is a global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm. Their mission is to deliver exceptional design ideas and solutions for clients through the creative blending of human need, environmental stewardship, value creation, science and art. Some of their designs include the Atlanta Falcons stadium in Georgia (the first retractable roof of its kind) and the Crick Institute in London, England (used for medical research).

Current trends in design:

1. The employee experience – How do we create a space that people want to go?
2. Providing Choices - Giving people just a desk and chair isn’t enough anymore
3. Agility – so people can work anytime, anywhere
4. An attractor – the space attracts people - not only to the workplace but to individual spaces

The role of VR and the gig economy in design:

Current research says that this generation of workers may have as many as 30 -40 jobs. With that in mind, design of workplaces must be different than at a time when people came and stayed for decades in one job.

Those in the contingent workforce, tend to move frequently between jobs. They are more nimble within the organization. So this impacts the design requirements.

HOK is currently using virtual reality in mapping out their designs.  This allows clients to have a digital experience of the space before it is actually created. VR mapping is having a significant impact on their current practice.

Wright gave some examples of the differences between now and years ago in regards to the workspace. One thing he mentioned was that space used to be very personal. It used to be that, depending on your rank in the company, you would have a private office or a cubicle that was all yours. You could make your surroundings yours by putting personal items such as pictures or diplomas. Now we have communal spaces - so there is no longer the option to personalize in the same way. But it allows people to collaborate more and choose what type of workspace they want for the day, instead of being stuck in one room.

Open plan environments have challenges and are sometimes only suitable for some employees. We have now gone beyond just open plans. We have co-working spaces, other amenities, multiple options.

HOK has learned that the best workspaces are those in which there is choice. “Choice is the number 1 indicator in how satisfied a person is in their job”, Wright says.

So now they have a variety of ways that they can curate a space to provide choice for employees. It can fit the needs of each person.

Wright’s advice for managers changing workspace is to pick your design partner wisely. The right partner will work to understand your organization. Also, engage with people within your organization – those that see design is a crucial part of creating a healthy environment

His advice to employees is to be open-minded about changes in your workspace.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What enters into design consideration from start-ups to institutions
• How AI and the Gig Economy impacts design
• Workplace trends HOK is paying attention to
• The importance of understanding your workforce as you design
• What data HOK looks at when designing an workspace
• How the industry has changed over the past few decades
• The impact companies can have on a community

Running a business used to be all about revenue, profit, metrics and power. That is not the case these days. So what is it that you need to focus on to succeed?

In the past running a successful business was all about revenue, profit, quarterly metrics and being more powerful than other organizations in your field. But the game of business has fundamentally changed and it’s not enough to run your organization the old way.

Now instead of being all about outperforming the competition, it is all about outlasting the competition. You have to figure out how to stay in the game long term while all others fall behind. So how does this change affect the way we get work done? It requires us to look at the bigger picture and to invest in more long term things. This includes looking at your people in a different way. It requires you to look at your workspace in a different way.

Organizations that understand this shift will be better off than those who try to keep playing the game the old way. We are in the long game, if you are focusing on the short game you are going to fall behind. The game of business has changed, are you going to change with it?

Martin Ford is a futurist and the author of the New York Times bestselling "Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" (winner of the 2015 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award) and "The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future," as well as the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. He has over 25 years experience in the fields of computer design and software development.

He has written about the implications of future technology for publications including The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Ford is a frequent keynote speaker on the subject of accelerating progress in robotics and artificial intelligence—and what these advances mean for the economy, job market and society of the future. Check out his Ted Talk on the topic.

Ford’s perspective on what is going on in the world of work:

He believes there will be impact from technology on jobs. Jobs that are repetitive may be replaced by AI. Even beyond those that are commonly discussed, such as traditional ‘blue collar’ jobs may be affected. For example, lawyers  or doctors in radiology may be impacted by AI.  Jobs that involve creativity will remain for the foreseeable future. About half of the jobs in the economy may be impacted by AI –it could be staggering. So, we need to discuss the possible outcomes.  

Ford also believes that this time the transition will be different than it has been in the past, during the first three industrial revolutions. Why? First, because we have thinking machines – in a limited sense. This is different. Machines are beginning to encroach on human work

Second, it is very broad-based. It is difficult to think of what jobs won’t be impacted by AI

3 scenarios of future of work with AI:

1. Mass unemployment – no one has any money to spend, the economy collapses.
2. It looks a lot like we have now – inequality, quality of jobs is declining, maybe a college grad needs to take minimum wage jobs
3. Things adapt and there is a significant growth of jobs that people can transition into as they lose their current job

Fords advice to executives:

• AI is going to be an enormous disruption and how business will compete
• AI is going to be another kind of capital that will require attention
• This will have a big impact on employees – so think about humane ways to downsize
• What is your responsibility as a citizen? Engage in the public debate on AI

His advice for employees:

• If you are doing repetitive work – the risk is that your job will be replaced. Try to transition to a more creative position or one which has a component of caring – such as nursing or healthcare.

Episode Highlights:

• Cutting-edge technology to come
• The future of work with AI
• Viable guaranteed basic income
• Why this transition will be different than past industrial revolutions
• Possible future of Amazon employees

In order to go above and beyond, you must learn how to unlock the true potential of your employees. Companies that learn how to do this will stay on top.

There are some companies that just seem to stand out above the rest of their competition. Why is that? Why is it that, even though there isn’t that much of a difference between one bank and another or one grocery store to another, there are a few companies that are able to go above and beyond for their customers?

The answer is the companies who go above and beyond take care of their employees. They invest in the experience of their people which in turn unlocks the discretionary effort of their people. When employees feel that they are being invested in, cared for, and respected it makes them want to go above and beyond for their customers, co-workers and the company.

The problem is most companies don’t generally put in the time and effort needed to create a unique employee experience that fits their company. One of your company’s most important assets is your people. If you really want to have a significant impact inside and outside of your company, start by investing in your people.

Paul Oyer is a Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and director of Stanford’s new Big Data program called, Big Data, Strategic Decisions: Analysis to Action. Dr. Oyer is the author of two books published in 2014 – Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating and Roadside MBA.

With big data it’s critical to know what questions to ask. Dr. Oyer says, “Intuition is less important for making the right decision but really important to know what’s the question I need to ask – how do I even begin to ask the right question.” You have to ask the right question before the big data is analyzed. In the competitive environment, if your algorithm is based on your bias then eventually someone will develop one without it - and they will beat it and you.

In the classroom we constantly think about how we take the tools found in big data and how we combine it with good old business sense.  That is where the creativity comes from and the big wins come from.  Dr. Oyer says, “I am not so worried at all about people becoming so reliant on data that they don’t use their own expertise.”

When asked what future jobs may be taken over by AI, Dr. Oyer explains that if a computer can someday do what you are doing, it may be taken by AI. Some examples are: parking attendant, cab driver, transcriptionist, and foundry mold & core makers.

Worried? Get welding training – in general - get craft and trade training

Retraining is very important but unfortunately we’ve been bad at retraining.

It’s very hard for people to recognize that what they used to do is no longer needed. It is difficult then to go and get trained. People need to be open to training.

The gig economy is big and 40% of people working in this fashion by 2020 is not out of possibility. The statistics vary by how it was reported for full time workers. Two and half times the people are part time gig employees and didn’t show in some of the surveys and data.

Now, over 30% of Americans participate in gig in some way, now. People are from all ends of the economy - all ages, education, etc. are in the gig economy.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Paul Oyer’s AI forecast
• The role of big data and why business leaders around the world need to pay attention to this topic
• The gig economy’s future
• Workplace trends for women
• The biggest threats to the future of work and some big disruptions coming

Links From The Episode:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-oyer-1709834a

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pauloyer

Although most people don’t think about it this way, your organization’s physical workspace is a symbol. What does your symbol reflect to employees and outsiders?

What most people don’t understand is that your organization’s physical workspace is not just about the artwork on the wall, the material of the floors, the views or whether it’s an open or closed plan. Your physical space is much more than that; it is a symbol. It is what connects the employees to the organization. It is reflective of your organization and what it stands for.

Research has shown that physical workspace has a huge impact and value on our organizations. It help connect employees to a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. It helps outsiders to get a feel for what your organization prioritizes. It creates an atmosphere conducive to productivity and innovation.

We should be mindful of this when we create our workspaces and we should be careful to not just copy the workspaces that other companies are creating. Your physical workspace should be unique to your organization, your goals, your way of working and your priorities. When people step foot in your organization, what will your symbol reflect to them?

Cindy Parnell is the Executive Director at Arizona State University Career and Professional Development Services.  At 103,000 students, ASU is the largest university in the country. Parnell’s team of 35 serves all students.

Career services is a unique department in that it has multiple constituents including students and alumni. Career advisors are specialists who know and understand trends. This drives the programming and it is helping students by getting targeted information to help them move to their next steps.

Traditional education is focused on theory, knowledge acquisition - the true liberal arts education that is embedded with research.  At ASU they take a more real world approach. One option is for students to work in a team in an interdisciplinary approach. The students who make up the team come from a variety of programs, so there could be students who are studying engineering, law and business alongside students studying art, communication, and teaching. They come together to work on a ‘real problem’ and then present it to the company which posed the problem. This allows students to work together to produce solutions around real world issues.

Parnell says, “The new wave of education is around creating ‘master learners.” ASU is creating a group of master learners. The jobs don’t exist for many students that are just beginning their college programs, so it is about creating opportunities to practice critical learning skills. Non routine jobs will most likely be what exists for the students when they leave college. So ASU realizes they need to teach that.

To do this they create environments for students to come to together to practice and then to debrief. Then the students will know how to adjust. ASU wants to drive learning and can allow missteps – without real world consequences and teach the students to then move along.

Some of ASU’s Innovations that are discussed are:

• Public service academy – an optional program for students with all different majors to learn and work in cross sector organizations. They are exposed through a variety of internships
• ‘Eventithons’ and hackathons hosted by Fulton Schools of Engineering – the faculty drive these. They work with employer partners so employees from these organizations work alongside college students. It gives students opportunities to gain skills and connections
• A new course being implemented- it is open to any student, of any major - for a 6 week course they work alongside a corporate partner to work on a project. This allows for students to see how working together with different people can create new things and they will eventually present to the organization.

Parnell’s advice to employers is to connect with students earlier. Don’t wait until they are applying for jobs, connect with them while they are just starting college.

Parnell’s advice to parents is to let the students dabble and try different classes to see what they can excel. It’s ok to for them to change majors. It is important for students to get relevant experience.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Thoughts on the ‘return on investment’ - ROI - of a college education
• How important is the brand of a university
• The role of diverse teams
• How companies are partnering with ASU to connect with students on a personal level
• What are ASU Takeover days
• Innovative ways ASU is preparing their students for the future of work

The way we think about work is a little bit backwards. It’s time for us to redefine how we view work, managers and employees.

If an alien were to come to earth to make some observations they would notice several things including the population of earth, the lifespan of its inhabitants and that a huge part of their lives is something called work.

We spend a large part of our adult lives working, but the problem is a majority of us are working in jobs that don’t fulfill us. We are working for organizations that don’t care about us and for managers that don’t treat us well.

I believe we have a very backwards view of work. If you were to look up the words work, employee and manager in a dictionary you would find words like struggle, servant, and zookeeper. With the amount of time we are spending at work with our managers and coworkers I think it is time for us to redefine the way we think about these words. How can you redefine work in your organization? What is an employee at your company? What does it mean to be a manager in your company? It is up to you to redefine what it means to work at your company.

Natalie McCullough is the General Manager of MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics at Microsoft. Her experiences are broad, from years of consulting organizations of all sizes and across industries. She found her true calling – helping people manage their scarcest resource – when she became the Chief Revenue Officer at VoloMetrix, the company that pioneered the category of workplace analytics, and was later acquired by Microsoft.

McCullough holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University.

People Analytics or Workplace Analytics is when data is used to maximize the workforce. This data looks at a variety of things – for instance, what are the most engaged and least engaged employees’ lives like. One result appears to show that employees’ leaders have most impact on their level of engagement. According to McCullough, “Regular solid one on one time is the number one reason the employees feel connected to the company.”

Microsoft has Office 365 that gives signals to look at using email and calendar data. This can be seen in My Analytics that arrives in an employee’s inbox. It is a 100% empowerment tool. The employee is the only one that can see the data. It is designed to assist the employee in improving their work life. Employees can see the amount of time they spend in meetings, on email or even the amount of time they spent multitasking in meetings – by measuring how much time they spent emailing during a meeting. In other words, how focused – or not – they were in the meeting. It is a “Fitbit for work”.

McCullough’s advice to managers/leaders to get started with data is to start on the journey with transparency and growth mindset. She also suggests experimenting. Don’t bite off something for the entire organization, focus on one thing to begin with.

Her advice for employees in regards to data is to remember that you have the right to ask employers what data is being collected. She says you should get ‘greedy’ and use the data to make your life better.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Suggestions for starting to use data in your organization & life
• Uses for Office 365
• Why Microsoft analyzes data from people
• Who ‘owns’ People Analytic?
• How to use data to better manage your organization and optimize your workforce

No one wants to work for an organization where they feel like they are not taken care of. So why is it that billions of people around the world end up stuck in these types of jobs?

I think in the business world we’ve been telling a pretty good story – call it a lie if you want – but we tell millions of these every day. In an interview people ask, “What is it like to work here?” and instead of telling them the good and the bad things about the company, we build it up to be the best place to work in the world.
We always tell people how great our organization is – how amazing of a place it is to work. We tell them how great the managers are, how they will look out for you and have your back. We tell them that your peers will look out for you, as well. We tell them that there is no bureaucracy. We tell them about the trust, the fun, the collaboration and transparency. We create this story about how it is a great place to work.

However, when that person starts working there, they find it is the exact opposite. They find that the employees are stuck in worlds filled with bureaucracy, using outdated technologies, sitting in outdated environments. Managers are taking advantage of employees, employees are backstabbing each other and there is tons of conflict and red tape.

We are propagating a false story – a lie of what it’s like to work for these organizations. So, what is the solution? The solution is transparency and honesty. Thankfully, that is what we are starting to see. We now have Facebook, Glassdoor, Vault and Google. If employees don’t like something about their company, their boss or their peers they make it known. This is forcing organizations to truly become the organizations that they say they want to be.

Morten Hansen is a Management Professor at the University of California Berkeley and the author of a new book, Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better and Achieve More. He also has a previous book titled Collaboration and co-authored a book called Great by Choice with Jim Collins.

Prior to joining the I School at UC Berkeley, Hansen was professor at Harvard Business School and at INSEAD, France, where he retains a part-time role. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.  His research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal, among others. He also speaks and consults for large companies throughout the world.

There is a notion that the harder we work the more successful we will be. So we become very busy and put in lots of hours. Technology has made work all absorbing. So the new book, Great at Work, looks at helping people look at the work they do with a focus on top performers.

Top performers do these two things:

1. Choose priorities.
2. They are hyper-obsessed and have targeted intense efforts on fewer projects. If you are doing less then you need to make sure you are doing better than others on that topic.

Some topics in his book include:

Redesign work: The top performer changed the way they work. They ask, ‘How can I do this role better?” They look at what they are doing and challenge the status quo.

They also hunt for pain points such as: Where are people complaining? Where can I find solutions? and they ask ‘dumb’ questions such as: Why are there receptions in hotels? Why have 2 months of summer vacations in schools?

Don’t just learn, loop:

• This topic looks at how do we continuously improve? Most people are on autopilot; they’re not thinking about improving.
• We need to have a quality learning loop. This is a method of learning that can be applied to any skill at work – or home.

Passion and Purpose:

• If you want to be a top performer, don’t follow your passion. But you can’t ignore your passion either. The third way is to ‘match passion with purpose’.
• Try to understand the kind of benefits this company brings to customers.

Forceful Champions

• In today’s workplace you can’t just focus on the hierarchy, you need to be able to work well with peers. You need to convince others to buy into your project or your vision
• Be a champion and be willing and able to navigate the landscape to get what you want done.
• Inspire people and be persuasive – it’s a skill you have to learn

Fight and unite:

• We need to fix meetings: meetings are the ‘curse’ of today’s workplace
• Meetings are places to have a debate and then implement with what you decided, but most of the time unnecessary meetings are called just for the purpose of being able to say “we had a meeting”

How do you get people to work together without consensus?

• If you don’t have a team goal, people will look at their own agenda.
• If you let people have solid input in meetings, they are more likely to go along with the decision – make sure people are heard
• No consensus? Then the senior manager makes the decision

When it comes to the way we work, Hansen believes we have a skewed view of what success looks like. Hansen says, “I think the fundamental problem with the way we work now is what I call the "do more" paradigm of work. We believe that doing more is the way to succeed in having better results. More hours. More projects, more activities, more features in a products. And so on. So we are piling on work. And then people are stressed out by trying to accomplish all of these things. But it doesn't necessarily lead to better work. It leads people to be stressed out. And then these perks are not gonna really change that very much. And I think that's where we're gonna go back to the root cause of the work itself to change that.”

 What you will learn in this episode:

• How to be a Top Performer
• Hansen’s outlook on AI
• What The Purpose Pyramid is
• Who is responsible for passion and purpose: the organization or employee?
• How to become an Entrepreneur of Changing the Way You Work Inside Your Company
• Why the way we work is not working

With companies making a move towards relying on data and algorithms to make decisions, it is important to remember that there is still a human aspect that has to be considered.

Many organizations are making a move towards relying on data and algorithms for their decision making, but we have to ask if this is always a good thing. The truth is, no matter how calculated and precise these programs may seem, there is still a human programming the algorithms and there is plenty of room for error.

One example of this was included in a book by Cathy O’Neil entitled, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. In her book O’Neil told a story about a school in Washington D.C. that decided to use an algorithm to find the lowest performing teachers in the school. They ended up identifying around 200 teachers who had low performance levels and the school let those teachers go. One of the teachers, Susan, was particularly surprised that she was one of the teachers who was let go as she always had high reviews from students and was well-liked by peers and supervisors.

It turns out that what the algorithm couldn’t identify was that the low scores were not Susan’s fault. What had happened was the students in Susan’s class came from another school where teachers were editing the tests to make it look like the students got all the answers correct. So when those students moved into Susan’s class where their answers were not edited, it appeared that their scores were falling drastically.

What we have to understand is we still need a human aspect when it comes to making decisions. Data and algorithms are great, but we still need human input to understand why the data is the way that it is. We cannot simply rely on the data alone.

Tracy Reinhold is currently the Chief Security Officer at Fannie Mae, a role he has held since 2015. Prior to working for Fannie Mae, Tracy spent 22+ years working for the FBI, first in the Intelligence Program in areas such as counter-terrorism and national security, and then as an FBI career agent.

With between 10,000 to 12,000 employees, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgages in the form of mortgage-backed securities, allowing banks to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations. Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac.

According to Reinhold, every company is a technology company today. It doesn’t matter what your core business is, whether it is in finance, logging or retail, it is bettered by technology

At Fannie Mae the security system is complex. For example, they have sensors on all their floors to figure out the most traveled patterns in the building so they can figure out the best evacuation routes or occupancy plan. This is beyond the usual idea of security functions within a company.  

Security is a cost center for any company. It’s not adding money to the bottom line, as opposed to what it really does - take money away from the bottom line. So in order to be viable, you have to think about what sort of technology can be leveraged to protect the building.  Or consider how it will also enhance the building operation. Ask how could this better utilize the space that the core business is currently using?

Something else going on at Fannie Mae is to leverage technology to enhance access control to what they consider critical spaces.   For example, to reduce a company’s security force. If a turnstile that allows one to reduce 3 shifts of security personnel, the initial investment of $65,000 for that turnstile is quickly offset. So when one makes a pitch to the C Suite, you need to articulate how you will make a return on that technology investment.

When asked if he is worried about the use of increasing technology, Reinhold says, “I am not worried, I’m aware, and I think that is the difference”.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Many innovative ways Fannie Mae is utilizing technology in their buildings and with their employees
• What it is like to work at Fannie Mae
• The current state of work and security
• Why every company is a tech company today
• How Fannie Mae deals with threats/hacks

Companies like Google, Netflix and Facebook have great perks and workspaces, but just trying to copy and paste their ideas into your company will not get you very far.

There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about the unique and impressive things that companies like Google, Netflix and Facebook have implemented. These companies have some great employee perks such as free food, massages, work flexibility and unlimited sick days. They have fun and exciting workspaces that include rock climbing walls, breathtaking views, on site gyms with trainers, open floor plans and napping pods. A lot of company leaders see what Google, Netflix and Facebook are doing and they feel they have to do the same to attract and retain their people, but this is a horrible idea.

The fact is, companies like Google are not making these decisions on a whim, so neither should you. They are implementing these things based on people analytics, data, research and studies.
They reach out to their employees to find out what they want and need and that is what determines their next move. Every company is unique and therefore simply copying Google is dangerous and it won’t get you very far.

The truth is there is no secret to figuring out what perks and benefits to offer your employees. If you want to create an organization where people genuinely want to show up to work you just have to ask your people and listen to them. Focus on what makes your company unique; what are your values, what are your goals, what do your people care about? Trying to be like Google kills what makes your organization special. So instead of trying to copy and paste from Google, try figuring out what is important to your organization and to your people before implementing perks, benefits or a new workspace.

Francine Katsoudas is the Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer of Cisco. She plays a major role in the company's overall performance, leading organizational strategy, promoting operational effectiveness, and elevating team performance through innovative leadership.

A 20-year veteran of Cisco, Katsoudas has extensive experience leading organizational transformations. Prior to her current role, she was the HR leader and business partner to the Engineering leadership team helping oversee its workforce of more than 25,000 people. She has also held leadership positions in the Service Provider, HR Operations, Customer Service, Acquisition Integration and Services groups.

A new venture at Cisco this last year was Leader Day. One day brought 8500 leaders together both in person and remotely, around the globe in 7 locations and it included leaders that report to CEO. Leader Day was meant to create a community for the 8500 people striving to be better and it was developed due to desire to align expectations for leaders . The event started with everyone listening to the same keynote speaker and scenarios. After that the entire group of 8500 were then divided into groups of 10 and each group had exercises that they discussed based on those scenarios.

Cisco looks at 3 pillars within the talent strategy:

1. What do we want individual experience to be?
2. Teams – create an environment that builds and develops world class teams
3. Team of teams – how do we work with 73,000 employees to drive alignment and innovation

In addition, Cisco has identified 11 'Moments that Matter’. Identifying the concept of ‘moments that matter’ has led to managers becoming more thoughtful about issues surrounding these types of moments. It has also driven a new level of appreciation.

What you will learn in this episode:

• The story behind ‘getting rid of annual performance reviews in 3 days’*
• The path that led to Katsoudas to her current role at Cisco
• What is ‘The best of we’ and ‘The best of me’
• Should you be aware of your personal brand?
• How do you deal with fear at work?
• An offer to other orgs to collaborate with Cisco on new topic

*Check out previous podcast with Jacob and Francine to learn even more about this subject!

It is quite common for people to worry about technological advances such as AI, Automation and self-driving cars. And while these changes are coming, it won’t happen overnight.

The impacts of technology are all around us. You don’t have to go far to hear a conversation about how technology is shaping the future of work and the way that we live. You can see it on television, you can read it in the newspaper or in online blogs, you can hear it on the radio--it really is all around us.

The subject of technology is usually at the forefront of any conversation about changes in our world such as AI, automation, the Internet of Things, robots, self-driving cars, etc… A lot of times people are quick to panic when these subjects are brought up. They worry about automation taking over jobs, they worry that self-driving cars will be dangerous, they worry that robots will become too advanced.

But it is important for us to remember that there is more to these changes than just the technology. Just because we have the technology in place to create these things doesn’t mean that they can be implemented tomorrow. There is a lot more that has to happen aside from the technological ideas and know-how.

Other things that have to be considered before things are implemented are rules and regulations, ethical issues, culture, society and the environment. For example, we have to have rules in place that will help a self-driving car make critical decisions in the case of an accident. Also, before something can be widely implemented humans have to be comfortable with the idea of using the technology. There was a time when Airbnb or Uber probably wouldn’t have been accepted by people, for example.

Don’t get me wrong, the changes brought on by technology are inevitable and they will keep coming. But we need to remember that we aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden be living in a whole new world; these things take time.

Kimberly Samon is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Weight Watchers. She has more than 20 years of HR experience in the Retail industry. Previously Samon was at KSL Advisory Services, a private Corporate Strategy and Human Resources Consulting firm providing expertise to companies on all facets of their business.  Before assuming that position, she held top HR and Strategy executive roles with Simmons Bedding Company, Frito-Lay, HQ Global Workplaces, Lacerte Technologies, and Kinko’s (now FedEx Office).

Samon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University, a MBA in Management from Mercer University, and a JD with a focus in Labor and Employment Law from Stetson University.

Weight Watchers started in 1963. With over 18,000 employees, it is the world’s leading commercial provider of weight management services, operating globally through a network of Company-owned and franchise operations. In the more than 50 years since its founding, the company has built its business by helping millions of people around the world lose weight through sensible and sustainable food plans, activity, behavior modification and group support.

Weight Watchers has gone through a major transformation over the past several years. When Samon started working there the industry was in turmoil, but they have found a way to refocus their brand and in turn they have seen the company return to success. It started as a company that was solely focused on weight loss, but now it is a company that looks at the overall well-being of their clients. It is not just about losing weight, it is now about being your healthiest self--physically, mentally and emotionally.

Samon believes that instead of thinking of work-life ‘balance’, it is important to think of it as work-life ‘integration’ – we need to give ourselves permission to not work 24 hours a day. For instance, Samon will go to events during her children’s school day but then will work later in the evening.

What will leadership skills look like in 2025? The fundamentals like communication will remain the same and results orientation is always going to be fundamental to organizations. Now people want to be attached to a purpose, and a meaningful mission. So how people show up may change but fundamentals won’t change.

Samon’s advice for employee skill sets are to have technology skills, be agile – as a way of thinking.  and have the ability to collaborate.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What it is like to work at Weight Watchers
• How Weight Watchers has evolved over the last few years
• Fundamental leadership skills for now and the future
• What practices listeners can use to be more authentic, empathetic and vulnerable at work
• The distinction between traditional and non-traditional HR
• How WW justifies spending money on Employee Experience

Want to get a visual of what our future may look like? The best thing to do may be to grab a sci-fi book off of the shelf.

Over the years there has been a multitude of great science fiction books and movies that have been released. Authors like H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Philip Dick and Orson Scott have created fantastic futuristic worlds for us to think about. Movies such as The Matrix, Avatar, Interstellar and Total Recall have been very popular entertainment. But what is the role of science fiction in the future of work?

Works of science fiction, whether they are books, movies or TV shows, allow us to get a glimpse into what the future could be like. They have allowed us to see things like robots, AI, connected devices and self driving cars before they were mainstream realities.

It is one thing to read research, data reports and to look at the numbers to see projections 10 to 20 years out. It is another thing completely to be able to physically view practical (or extreme) ways in which different technologies and advancements could be implemented into our world. It is hard to grasp what the future could look like when all you have is data and numbers. Works of science fiction movies and books help paint a picture that makes it easier to visualize what could be.

So the next time you are wondering what the future may hold 10 to 20 years down the line, pick up a good science fiction book or go out and see a science fiction movie. You may get a good glimpse into what’s to come.

Jordan Birnbaum is the VP and Chief Behavioral Economist at ADP. In his role, he is responsible for the integration of behavioral economics into software design and marketing communications of new talent-based products. Birnbaum has more than 20 years experience as a start-up specialist and entrepreneur, as a Founder / Senior Vice President at Juno Online Services and Founder / CEO of The Vanguard, Los Angeles. He holds a BS from Cornell University and a Master’s degree in I/O Psychology from NYU.

ADP – Automated Data Processing - began in the 1950’s. It is a Fortune 500, company with 50,000 employees worldwide. 1 out of 6 people gets paid by ADP. They have adapted and evolved to look at down the road at the art and science of providing payroll.

“Behavioral Economics is putting ‘would’ in front of ‘should’”.  The idea is to improve the predictions of human reactions to just about anything. Being able to define ‘the should’ is critical.

When it comes to loss aversion, “human beings are twice as motivated to avoid a loss as we are to secure a gain.” So it is twice as motivating to avoid losing $100 than it is to gain $100. The impact of gaining it is only half as impactful.

How can managers and leaders apply this in a company? Through communications.

An example of Loss Aversion:

Trying to get people to participate in leadership development programs. Two sentences and understanding how to frame:

1. Consider all the career advancement that you stand to gain if you were to improve as a leader.

Or

2. Consider all the career advancement that you stand to lose if you don’t improve as a leader.

Changing just 2 words makes the second sentence twice as motivating as the first. So understanding how to frame things relative to what we stand to lose versus what we stand to gain is often the difference between success and failure.

Birnbaum’s advice to listeners is to realize that ‘should’ is not a very good predictor and he says behavioral economics is a great party topic!

What you will learn in this episode:

• The power of saying...”but you are free to decline.”
• What role Priming can play in business, marketing and other spaces
• What is a Heuristic method and its role in behavioral economics
• What consistent irrational behaviors we should be aware of
• How to drive behavior change in the workplace
• How loss aversion can be used by managers

Celeste Warren is the Vice President of Human Resources and Global Diversity and Inclusion, Center of Excellence at Merck. In this dual role, she has responsibility for the strategic and operational Human Resources support of Merck's Global Legal, Compliance, Communications, Population Health, Patient Health and Global Public Policy Organizations.

She is also responsible for working with Merck’s global leaders to advance and embed diversity and inclusion as a strategic approach to maximize business performance and create a competitive advantage. Warren is extremely passionate about D&I and she has received numerous awards for her work including Diversity Global’s 2017 Influential Women in Diversity award and most recently she was named one of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century.

Merck is a pharmaceutical organization that makes drugs, operating in about 140 countries with about 60,000 employees.

What is the difference between diversity and inclusion? Warren explains that diversity is simply our ‘differences’. For example: men/women, Black, White, Latino or a disability that is not visible, whether someone is married or single, genetic differences, and in general, what difference someone identifies with.

Inclusion, on the other hand, is creating a culture that allows all people to ‘bring themselves into work’.

When you have employees with differences within the organization, how do you create a culture of inclusion that allows them to be able to bring themselves into work? We have to find out whatever people identify with - so they can be productive. We also have to ensure that people aren’t marginalized and that their ideas are received and considered, to contribute to the success of the organization.

There are four diversity ambassador teams at Merck that look at D/I.

The first is employee business or affinity groups. There are 10 groups in Merck that come together once a month to talk about issues within organization to be the voice of organization.

The second is their global diversity and inclusion business consortium. This group focuses on how business leaders need to do their job through the lens of D/I and so they learn from each other

The third is the global diversity and inclusion extended HR leadership team who ensure that work is done with the lens of D/I

And the fourth group’s focus is on creating a culture for employees with disabilities.

Advice for managers to be more aware of Diversity & Inclusiveness

1. Look inside themselves, what are the capabilities, how knowledgeable am I? Read articles, around D/I and see what is happening around the world.
2. Build your own capabilities - take a few online courses to look at unconscious bias and how it impacts your leadership
3. In staff meeting, bring in an article around diversity and start a dialog, create a safe, brave space to talk about these things. What can I be doing better? What can I do to better create a culture?
4. Take that information and go to your peers/ your manager. Have that discussion with your manager to figure out how your organization can create a more diverse and inclusive environment.

Warren’s advice for individual employees is to understand your own biases, come into the workplace and talk with your peers about it – bring in an article, get together with others and talk about things happening, have a conversation with your manager and join an employee affinity group. Get involved and be a leader. 

What you will learn in this episode:

• What role diversion and inclusion plays in organizations
• Why should organizations think about diversity?
• How is diversity and inclusion tied to business goals?
• What data should organizations look at in terms of D/I?
• What roles individual employees, managers and leaders play in creating a more diverse and inclusive organization

A study about satisfaction carried out by a professor of psychology gives us something to think about in the workplace.

Tom Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, did a study along with some members of his team to find out how levels of satisfaction are affected by spending money on experiences versus spending money on physical things. Gilovich and his team found that people who spend money on physical things such as phones, computers, houses or cars tend to have a drop in satisfaction as time goes on. On the other hand, they found that people who spend money on experiences, like skydiving, traveling or learning a new skill, have higher satisfaction levels overtime.

How can we translate this phenomenon into the workplace? A lot of times the relationship we have with our organizations tends to stay very transactional. When we first get the job our satisfaction levels are high, we are excited, expectant and happy. However, as time goes on we tend to become more and more dissatisfied with our jobs. We get bored, disconnected and burned out.

Organizations need to find a way to allow employees to feel as if they have purchased an experience--as if they have climbed a mountain or gone skydiving. They need to find a way to help employees get that feeling of increased satisfaction as time goes on. If organizations could do this successfully, think of what that would do to the way we work, the way we feel and the way we live. What do you think? How do you think organizations could fix the way we view work?

Chip Heath, PhD. is the Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  He is also the co-author (along with his brother, Dan) of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and a new book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact.

The Power of Moments looks at defining moments. Defining moments are those that stand out in the flow of experiences. In life, there are probably a half of dozen ‘moments’ that stick out. For example, when you meet the person you will marry or have big moments in your career. But you also have smaller moments – like times on a vacation.

Defining moments can be good or bad times. One example of a bad defining moment is when basketball player, Michael Jordan was in high school. He tried out for the varsity basketball team but did not make the team and was instead place on the lower, junior varsity level team.  This was a defining moment for him. So, throughout his life, when he has gone through tough times, he would remember seeing his name on the list for the less prestigious team. That memory would drive him.

4 Elements of Defining Moments:

1. Elevation – ‘Rise above the everyday’. These are moments of powerful sensory sensations – like watching a fireworks show where there is sound and lights.

In an organization it would be a promotion - if it came with a celebration in some way.

2. Insight – ‘Rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world’. In our daily lives, every now and then a break-through happens, something becomes clear to us. For example, this is the person I want to marry or this is a job I don’t want.

In the workplace, if you can provide insights to clients then they will love you. “Often what people want from us is a level of insight rather than comfort or pleasure.”

3. Pride – ‘Capturing us at our best achievement’ – undervalued at most organizations. It is hard to praise people as much as they would like to be praised. There is a huge benefit of saying ‘I saw what you did… great work’.
4. Connection – ‘connecting with others’. Connecting with others is very powerful.

“Connection requires a level of depth that we don’t often get to in the workplace.” But when we get to that level of depth it’s amazing that we can get to it very quickly.

Heath says there are two reasons why don’t we praise people enough. First of all, we think we are doing it. We ‘feel’ positive towards employees and we think we’ve said, ‘nice work’. It takes discipline to articulate the words.

Also, it is surprisingly embarrassing to say positive things directly to someone face to face.

If organizations can take the time to look at the four elements of defining moments and figure out how to create powerful and impactful moments for their people, the results can be astounding.

How can your organization take the first step to creating “Powerful Moments”?

What you will learn in this episode:

• How John Deere tractor company welcomes new employees
• The power of praise
• How to build in defining moments into your organization
• What role does ‘creating moments of stretch’ play in one’s life or organization?

Now more than ever employees are looking for a sense of purpose and meaning in their work. But where does that purpose come from--the worker or the organization?

There is a story about President Kennedy visiting to NASA in the 1960s. While he was visiting he was walking down a hallway and saw a man who was carrying a broom and a bucket and Kennedy asked the man what he did at NASA. The man, who was a janitor at Nasa, replied, “Sir, I help put a man on the moon”.

That story has been told and retold because it is a great example of the importance of having a sense of purpose in the work that we do. But where does that sense of purpose come from? Is it something that the organization is supposed to provide for you or is it something that the employee is supposed to come to work with?

I think the answer is that it is partially the responsibility of both parties to create. I believe that the organization needs to help employees connect what they are doing to the impact they are having in a way that helps them see how they are changing the organization, the community and the world. Organizations can do this through stories, through helping employees feel like they belong at the company and giving them opportunities to grow and advance.

But it is also partially the responsibility of the employee. The employee cannot just show up to work and assume the organization is going to hold their hand and do everything for them. Employees need to have an open mind, they need to find ways to contribute and they need to figure out why they are working for the organization in the first place.

The greatest sense of purpose comes when both the organization and the employee create and nurture that purpose and that mindset on a daily basis. Do you agree with me? Who do you think is responsible for creating a sense of purpose at work?

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a PhD in social science from Caltech, Master's in physics and philosophy from the University of Chicago and worked for nine years in artificial intelligence as a research programmer at Lockheed and NASA. He helped pioneer the field of prediction markets, and published The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth, which was the topic of our discussion in a previous podcast episode back in 2016.  His most recent book is entitled, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life. He also blogs at OvercomingBias.com.

The big mistake we are making – the ‘elephant in the brain’.

the elephant in the room, n. An important issue that people are re­luc­tant to ack­now­ledge or add­ress; a social taboo.

the elephant in the brain, n. An important but un­ack­now­ledged fea­ture of how our minds work; an introspective taboo.

The elephant in the brain is the reason that people don’t do things they want to do. They have a lot of hidden motives. People think they do certain things for one reason but really do these things for a different reason.  Some of the motives are unconscious. This may be due to many reasons but one of them is the desire/need to conform to social norms. The book, The Elephant in the Brain includes 10 areas of hidden motives in everyday life. These include:

1. Body language
2. Laughter
3. Conversation
4. Consumption
5. Art
6. Charity
7. Education – one reason people really go to school is to ‘show off’
8. Medicine – it isn’t just about health – it’s also about demonstrating caring
9. Religion
10. Politics

The puzzle of social status in the workplace is one to be explored. People are always working to improve their position within an organization but often the competition is ‘hidden’ by socially expected terms like ‘experience’ or ‘seniority’. To discuss one’s social status in the workplace is not acceptable. So, to continue to explore and think about people’s true motives can be beneficial.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why people have hidden motives.
• Are people just selfish?
• Why do companies have sexual harassment workshops?
• What could be alternative reasons to hold workplace meetings?
• How Robin and co-author Kevin Simler researched for the book
• Do we have the power to change our self-deceptive ways?

Michael Arena, PhD is the Chief Talent Officer at General Motors. He is responsible for enterprise talent management, strategic workforce analytics, talent acquisition, executive development and global learning. GM employs 200,000 people across the globe. Major markets include North America, China and South America.

Prior to joining GM, Dr. Arena served as Senior Vice President of Leadership Development for Bank of America's Global Consumer and Small Business Banking group and spent two years as a visiting scientist within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, where he studied the intersection of human behavior, innovation and social connectivity. He is also currently a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of a new book coming out in June, 2018 called Adaptive Space: How GM and other Companies are Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations.

One area that General Motors has looked at is Social Network Analysis, also called ONA – Organizational Network Analysis. This is what you see in your social network – it is a map or grid. Every person is a statistic. Are they someone who is a central connector? Or are they a broker who bridges two groups to drive them. So, GM might start with a survey that asks people about who they interact with each day. Through those surveys they map the connections together. Then they leverage that information and tap it into it.

One example of this is when GM looked at team results. In one area they found that the cohesion scores of a team were correlated to their response rates to requests -the higher the cohesion, the quicker the response rates.  Teams that were spread out had lower response rates and lower quality responses. With that in mind, they relocated people so they were ‘looking at each other’, then created ‘huddles’ – where people could share regularly. It improved productivity by 25% in some cases.

There are multiple areas that are being looked at in GM. One initiative that General Motors is currently focused on is called GM 2020 – it is a bottom up emergent movement. The focus is on how they can reinvent the ‘future of work’ – today. What are some of the key imperatives needed to make it happen? They look specifically at four areas:

1. Talent gap
2. Connected Simplicity
3. Sustainability and Purpose
4. Innovation

They also have conducted two day ‘blitzes’ called Co-Labs where  particular challenges are worked on – focusing on leadership and innovation. At the end of the session the groups make a pitch. They have found that this is a good way to develop – engage people in real life business challenges.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• What does a Chief Talent Officer do
• How GM is looking to be a disrupter in the future
• Why an intentional workspace is critical
• The culture of GM
• The role of a ‘futurist’ at GM
• What GM is doing on the People Analytics front

In the past we have always depended on humans and their ideas, intuitions, and feelings to figure out certain issues in our companies such as how to build teams, work on projects and carry out performance evaluations. Now, we have an increase in devices and ways to collect data in the workplace so we are able to track anything and everything. With this move towards data collection and technology we have a new field emerging, people analytics.

With this new field we are able to add in data and science alongside of our intuitions to help our companies function as successfully as possible. Data can help us figure out things such as, what the most successful leaders in organizations do, what the key qualities are that make up an amazing team or how the best customer service professionals talk to their customers (and for how long).

I don’t think that we will ever completely remove the human aspect, but I believe that by combining data with human ideas, intuition and feelings companies will be able to make better, more informed decisions. This truly is an exciting and fascinating time. Successful businesses should make an investment in people analytics.

Teresa Roche, Ph.D is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the City of Fort Collins, Colorado. Sixty miles north of Denver, Fort Collins is home to Colorado State University, with 32,000 students, several large high tech employers, and leading businesses in the brewing industry. There are 2400 employees at the city, with 28 that are in the HR department.

There are similarities and differences in private and public sectors. One difference is found in various types of departments that this public sector has - such as a wellness team and a volunteer program manager. In the public sector, there is a requirement to serve all people’s needs. That is quite different as compared to private companies that may focus on one group – the customers.  In addition, there is an emphasis on transparency in public forum. The city of Fort Collins’ finances are available online for anyone to view.

Budgeting is BFO – budgeting for outcomes. They have a triple bottom line – social, environmental and economic.

Some trends that Teresa is paying attention to are:

• Technology changes – such as smart cities and driverless cars
• Ensuring they have an inclusive group of talent, be connected to each person across the city
• The way work can be done

Fort Collins’ vision is to have a culture of innovation. However, there is a tension between the ‘fail fast, fail early’ in the public sector as compared to private.

What is required in a leadership role? The ability to have a clear vision, the ability to set goals, and attract and retain people. One needs the basics of leading others to accomplish results. In the public sector, Roche believes the question is--how do we respond to patterns and signals. “I think it takes a special person to lead in the public sector”, Roche says.

Roche’s advice for others is to realize what is possible for the city you live in and then demand more from the city.

She also mentions the 3 P’s she is looking at:

• Purpose – aligning the purpose of people and cities
• Presence – leadership who can ‘remain calm in the storm’
• Practice – no separation between work and learning

What you will learn in this episode:

• Similarities and differences between public and private sector HR
• Leading an HR department in a city
• Why Fort Collins, CO was named a great place to live
• What is BFO?
• How the public sector is looking at AI
• How to create a culture of innovation

A lot of times managers and executives tell their employees how they should act and behave. They explain what their expectations are for the employees and they lay out ground rules for working for the company. But a lot of times those same leaders are not exhibiting those behaviors themselves. There is a fascinating story about Gandhi that can really teach us something about leadership. The story is about a woman whose son was addicted to sugar. No matter what she did she could not fix this addiction in her son. Doctors, friends and relatives all told the young boy to stop eating sugar because it is not good for him, but he wouldn’t listen. Finally the mother decided to take her son to see Gandhi to see if the son would listen to this well respected, wise and pious man.

The waited in line to meet Gandhi for a very long time and when they finally got to him the mother explained that her son was addicted to sugar. She told Gandhi her son would not listen to anyone telling him not to eat sugar, but surely he will listen to you. Gandhi told the woman to come back in two weeks and he would help them. The woman was confused, but did what he said.

Two weeks later the mother and son returned to Gandhi. The mother explained to Gandhi that they had been there two weeks before and that her son is still addicted to sugar. Gandhi looked at the boy and said, “Son, you should stop eating sugar”. The mother was again confused and asked Gandhi why they had to wait two weeks when that was all he was going to say. Gandhi replied, “Two weeks ago I myself was addicted to sugar. How can I tell somebody else to stop doing something, when I am doing that same thing?”

We should use this as an example of how to lead. How can we ask others to behave in a certain way when we ourselves are not behaving that way. We need to first start with ourselves and see what happens.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). O’Reilly Media delivers online learning, publishes books, runs conferences, urges companies to create more value than they capture, and tries to change the world by spreading and amplifying the knowledge of innovators. He is also the author of the new book, WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us

When asked about changes in business since the 80’s and 90’s, O’Reilly said it appears that businesses are focused are on the future and their ability to sell rather than building a real business. Another fundamental change is that most of the work is done by a program, the managers of the bots that are doing the work.  There is also a group of workers that are managed by the bots – like Uber.

One of the trends O’Reilly is currently paying attention to is AI and automation. Do we use machines to replace people or use them to augment people?

O’Reilly believes the future of AI is up to us. They can run us over. Or we put technology to work to solve hard problems. Rethinking the way we do things, not just small tweaks – but in significant ways about the way we do things - for instance, health care.

O’Reilly advises us to focus on the value that you are trying to create rather than the value you are trying to get. If you are trying to extract value, it’s not sustainable. We have to “Create more value than you capture.” You will have a successful business. Doing more with technology, solve problems and you will create more jobs.

Some of O’Reilly’s parting advice is to act like the ‘owner’ of the business rather than a ‘worker’ and to think about what you would like the future of work to look like.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, the company that has been providing the picks and shovels of learning to the Silicon Valley gold rush for the past thirty-five years. The company delivers online learning, publishes books, runs conferences, and has repeatedly shaped the discussion for each successive wave of innovation. Tim is also a partner at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, an early stage venture firm, and is on the boards of Code for America, Maker Media, PeerJ, Civis Analytics, and PopVox

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why focusing on shareholder value is a problem
• Myths of self-driving trucks’ future
• Why O’Reilly says, “Create more value than you capture.”
• Why we need to rethink the structure of benefits
• O’Reilly’s view of jobs vs. work
• Trends O’Reilly is looking at with the future of work

There is one thing we as humans possess that technology will never have and if we can hone in on it, we can overcome the technology takeover. The topic of automation and AI in the workplace keeps coming up. A lot of people are worried about job loss and technology take over. One major thing that comes up when thinking about our move to automation is what is going to be the role of humans? What will be our purpose in this new automated world of the future?

After traveling all over the country and meeting a ton of people from all sorts of industries and backgrounds I am convinced that our main role as humans is to be human. There are no machines or robots that have our ability to connect, empathize, communicate, and sympathize. We also have the ability to be vulnerable. Technology just cannot replace us in these aspects.

So we need to keep learning how to be more human and we have to keep connecting and building relationships. Those of us who are good at being human will grow, expand and continue to be successful. So don’t forget how to be human!

Jeremy Welland, PhD is the Global Head of People Analytics at PayPal Holdings, Inc.  PayPal is an American company with 18,000 employees, operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world's largest Internet payment companies.  

He also serves as a faculty member in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of the Pacific.  Prior to PayPal, Welland was the Director of People Analytics at Pandora Media, Inc. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.

One of the ‘hot topics’ they’ve been working on at PayPal is the subject of diversity and inclusion. One area in particular was focusing on pay parity for women. They have been successful in this and will work to maintain it.

To find the truth of what drives people, why people leave, etc., they often will start with asking managers what they believe.

They find the results can fall into 3 responses:

1. Hypothesis confirmation – what the manager thought was correct
2. Myth busting - find that it is not as strong as believed or there is no relationship at all
3. A ‘purple swan’ -finding unexpected surprises – it wasn’t on anyone’s radar at all

One thing they learned about employees at PayPal is termed the ‘evangelist effect’. Looking in detail at employee responses and the surprising correlation between people that mark ‘satisfied’ and then leave the company versus those that marked ‘neutral’ or ‘very satisfied’.

Welland’s advice for others is to make friends with your CFO, pick a group or one early adopter who can help champion your product, and make friends with other departments

What you will learn in this episode:

• PayPal’s People Analytic team structure
• How People Analytics is being used at PayPal
• Strong AI versus Weak AI
• Thoughts on how AI will augment future work
• What the work environment is like at PayPal

So many us work for organizations where don't feel valued and appreciated. We only live once and we all deserve to work for organizations that genuinely care about us and create environments where we genuinely want to show up. Don't you want to work for this type of an organization?

Heather McGowan is the Co-Founder, Author and Advisor for Work to Learn. She speaks internationally on the future of work and the future of learning. She advises and partners with education and business leaders to most effectively prepare for rapid and disruptive changes in learning, work, and society.

In higher education, McGowan advises presidents and senior leaders to develop students’ learning agility as well as critical thinking skills in order to prepare graduates for jobs that do not yet exist.

McGowan also guides corporate executives to re-think and re-frame their business models, and their understanding of team and organizational structures, to be resilient and successful in changing markets. She is the co-author of the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate  and numerous well-received articles.

In looking at the future of work, which skills will benefit future students and educators? McGowan suggests seeking to understand, to learn and adapt.  Work on upgrading your “Operating system” – the overall ‘you’.

How about the future of education degrees? Is there a ‘future proof’ field? McGowan believes in thinking like an ‘X’, so you can look at all disciplines (similar to ‘liberal arts degrees’), as opposed to focusing on one specialty in depth.

When it comes to the 4th industrial revolution, McGowan says, “we are seeing this merger of cyber physical systems and the internet of things where everything around you has some form of intelligence--anything mentally attained or predictable can be achieved by an algorithm--and it’s no longer just the physical labor that gets replaced by non-biological intelligence but it’s cognitive labor as well”

Because of the fact that cognitive labor is now being affected by this 4th Industrial Revolution, we have to move towards learning agility as well as becoming more adaptable and empathetic, to ensure that we stay relevant in the workplace.

There are 3 interlocking factors that are transforming work, called the “3 A’s”:

Atomization – a job being broken into job components –the ‘thing’ that needs to be done ‘gig work’, working 24/7, working around the work

Automation – work done entirely by non-biologic intelligence – like software that schedules in a life-like sense

Augmentation – using something to extend the human potential – like the robots used in surgery

McGowan’s advice for people who want to stay relevant is to step into a community such as LinkedIn or another group that are learning communities as these groups learn a lot from each other, really connect with these groups and make a commitment to learn something new everyday.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why students need to think as futurists
• ..and how we need to prepare students to lose their jobs
• Why we should stop asking the three “what” questions
• What learning uncertainty is
• A look at the evolution of work and where we are today

Peter Walmsley, the Chief People Officer at GSN Games, is an experienced and committed leader with extensive Executive Human Resources experience in multi-national organizations across the USA; Europe; Asia and North Africa. He has a track record of success in setting the strategic direction, driving organizational change, providing leadership for the function, developing and influencing critical business relationships and delivering results aligned to business goals in places such as American Express and Fidelity.

GSN Games is a leading provider of cross-platform entertainment, including social casino games and skill tournaments designed to fuel every player’s inner winner. They are based primarily in the US and India. Part of GSN, - Wheel of Fortune on TV. About 500 people, it is the design and development of these games. Founded in 1999 as skill games site WorldWinner.com, the company has evolved into a premier social, mobile and online games company.

Working at GSN involves an open workspace with game consoles all around. It is an open and transparent culture. Upper management is available to questions and conversation with employees. Unlimited vacation times with good benefits are also some of the perks of working at GSN. Additionally there is an emphasis on a healthy culture balance of work and private lives.

How do you budget for the ‘perks’ – such as free food or redesigning the office - often found in the office?

• By spending a lot of time with general managers it allows for understanding on the needs of employees. Once he understands the needs he is able to facilitate the programs by using this antidotal data.

How do you ensure shareholder value at the studio level?

• Make sure we have an effective operating model
• Make sure we have an effective workforce plan
• Make sure we have the right people

How do you deal with different offices and their cultures in different parts of the world?

• Put in place a framework, a set of principles that are basic
• Be aware of local customs
• The local HR director is accountable for ensuring with local legislation and then working with leaders to make sure that all are aligned

Walmsley’s advice for individuals is to embrace change and reinvent yourself periodically

His advice for executives is to listen and hear, move away from personal discomfort, and have the courage to take risks.

Things you will learn:

• What it’s like to work at GSN
• How GSN handles the annual employee reviews
• How Walmsley believes the role of HR has changed
• How to deal with managers who don’t embrace changes in the world of work
• How to handle differences in corporate cultures when you have offices around the world

Jenny Dearborn is the Chief Learning Officer and Senior Vice President at SAP,  a global software company. Dearborn leads an internationally-acclaimed and award-winning team recognized as the #1 performing corporate learning department in the world by eLearning Magazine. As global Chief Learning Officer for the 67,000 employees at SAP, Dearborn is accountable to design, align and drive SAP’s overall learning activities to enable measurable business impact. She is also an author of a new book, The Data Driven Leader.

Before SAP, Dearborn began her professional career as a high school teacher. After a brief stint in that role, she moved into education in the business world. She was Chief Learning Officer at SuccessFactors for two years where she won numerous industry awards for the measurable business impact of her sales enablement initiatives. She was at Sun Microsystems for 6 years where she was the global Chief Learning Architect across all corporate content and was the Chief Learning Officer for the Americas. Dearborn was at Hewlett-Packard for 8 years where she started as an instructor and instructional designer and progressed to executive positions as the Learning & Development leader for Global Sales & Enterprise Marketing, Global Technology Services and Global Corporate Learning Strategy.

According to Dearborn, people analytics is crucial for leaders to use the data to understand the best way to use their time. First, look at the goals you are trying to achieve. From there you identify data that you need to assess properly.

Suggestions for a smaller company to use data to form change:

1. Start by asking questions – what are your problems? What are you goals? Do you have a dashboard to see how things are going?
2. Do the research. Be curious. Put data together
3. Build relationships. Be ‘nonthreatening’. You need to often convince the people that have the data to be willing to share it.

How does a person become a human leader in a world driven by data? Data allows you to be more human. It gives you the opportunity to focus on what people truly need to make a difference in their lives or performance. If we spend our time in a variety of programs or conversations that aren’t targeted – without knowing what will make the biggest difference in their lives then we aren’t being productive.

In 5 – 10 years Dearborn believes that organizations will have more tools to support productivity, more voice triggered support systems, more voice to text in our everyday environment and there will be more robots in our lives.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• The fun collection that Jenny has acquired
• The role super heroes play in Jenny’s life
• What data is available on SAP employees and how it is used
• What is the ‘coaching index’?
• How to use data for leadership
• How to start implementing People
• Jenny’s perspective on Millennials
• What SAP is doing internally around learning

My conversation today is with Rebecca Chandler, the Chief Learning Officer and Global Director of the Learning Group at Steelcase. We are talking about real life examples of what Steelcase is doing to promote learning and development, how learning has evolved over the past few decades and how leaders and managers can role model the desired learning behavior in their organizations.

Rebecca Chandler is the Chief Learning Officer and Global Director of Learning and Development at Steelcase. Steelcase is a global organization that provides furniture solutions that reflect what they’ve learned about human behavior. It employs about 14,000 employees.

Chandler is charged with making Steelcase the pacesetter for learning organizations worldwide. Steelcase looks to her team for learning solutions that are linked to the needs of the business, and to progress in creating learning that is globally integrated and holistic in nature. Learning is embedded in the culture of their organization, Steelcase views it as just another way for their employees to "love the way they work".

A Chief Learning Officer is usually with tasked thinking about the learning infrastructure to support the local culture and goals.  They look at the curriculum, what the organization is focused on, how people share learning and how to speed up learning.

Steelcase education is on an evolution. They offer a lot around active learning. They understand that people need to engage in a variety of ways.  They have a “Think, Make, Share” program.

The ‘Think’ gives people a chance to do pre-work. This is often called a ‘flipped classroom’.  This leverages the time when people are together.

‘Make’ includes the time together which provides opportunities of creating projects with feedback from an expert.

‘Share’ is about learners/employees going back and teaching others. This solidifies the knowledge they’ve gained. Other times they may be asked to do some sort of action project.

Steelcase’s learning programs fit into one of these 4 buckets:

1. Leadership
2. Culture
3. Innovation
4. Functional Excellence

Technology in education – learning systems push content to the organizations. There is a need to understand how people are using technology and then design from that perspective. Technology should enhance the learning.

Role of culture in learning- Culture and learning go hand and hand. We like to develop curriculum that aligns with culture

Role of physical space in learning – Providing opportunities for people to use space creatively. At Steelcase they consider the entire building a living laboratory.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What a Chief Learning Officer does
• How the world of learning has changed
• The role of technology in education
• Real life examples of what Steelcase is doing to promote learning and development
• How leaders and managers can role model the desired learning behavior in their organizations.

Marc Goodman is one of the world’s leading authorities on global security and the New York Times Bestselling author of Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World —selected by the Washington Post as one of the 10 Best Books of 2015 and by Amazon.com as the best book of 2015 in Business & Investing. Goodman founded the Future Crimes Institute to inspire and educate others on the security and risk implications of newly emerging technologies. He also serves as the Global Security Advisor and Chair for Policy and Law at Silicon Valley’s Singularity University, a NASA and Google sponsored educational venture dedicated to using advanced science and technology to address humanity’s biggest challenges.

Beginning his career as a police officer, over the past twenty years Marc Goodman has built his expertise in next generation security threats such as cyber crime, cyber terrorism and information warfare through work with INTERPOL, the United Nations, NATO, the Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Government. For over a decade, Goodman trained numerous expert working groups on technological security threats while serving as a Senior Advisor to INTERPOL’s Steering Committee on Information Technology Crime. He has worked with various UN entities and was asked by the Secretary General of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to join his High Level Experts Group on Global Cybersecurity.

Crime has changed drastically over the last few decades. One major change is the ‘location’ factor. Previously, crime was local – a bank robber or a car thief who lived locally, committed the crime locally. Now, the internet has changed that and the location of the crime can happen anywhere. For example, someone in Russia can attack someone in San Francisco. This requires law enforcement to work very differently. “You no longer have co-location of victim, criminal and evidence.” This factor has broken the criminal enforcement system.

How does hacking work? Cyber attacks are automated. This is another thing that is different than the past. Previously someone had to do the crime. Now it’s automated. There is ‘crimeware’. It can be programmed to do identify theft, attack data, etc. Only a small percentage is customized. Those are often the state sponsored attacks.

Identity theft is more serious than credit card theft. A person takes over your credit cards but also mortgage, Facebook, medical records and so on. This can take years to clear up.

Additionally, there is the hacking of video cameras – for instance through baby cameras. Perhaps you take your cell phone into the bathroom – you don’t want someone to hack into that while you are there. Every computer is hackable. Your phone, your camera, your car are all ‘computers’ and, therefore, hackable.

Ninety-five percent of all data breaches can be linked back to human error. If employees are not aware of ways this can occur they are putting their company at risk of being hacked. Companies are being proactive training their employees. For instance, they are sending out fake phishing emails to assist with knowing which employees might click on a bad email and then using it as a teachable moment.

A few things people can do to protect themselves:

· Increase laws, public policy and regulation. Regulation could be useful. For example, CA first to have mandatory data breech hack notifications. As the result everyone in CA was notified. People in the other states were not notified. Good data breech notification is important and strong penalties. · Check out to see if your accounts have been hacked @ haveibeenpwned.com · Go to Goodman’s website: futurecrimes.com – tips

· Be careful what you ‘click on’

· Consider changing the account in your computer that you are using in the ‘administrator role’ to a ‘user’ role.

What you will learn in this episode:

· How crime has evolved over the last few decades

· Steps you can take to reduce your risk of being hacked

· Find out how your online dating site might give away more info that you want it to

· How the Equifax hack happened

· The connection between terrorism and technology

Susan Steele is the former CHRO at Millward Brown, the former CHRO at Deloitte Consulting and currently she is an Executive Partner of Global Talent & Engagement at IBM. Steele has had repeated success at building and turning around the HR function, driving new sources of revenue, enhancing client care and improving business results.

With IBM’s more than 350,000 employees around the globe, there is a great deal of innovation in HR. For example, when a candidate is using a cognitive tool called Watson – a job finder or candidate fit tool - it can assist them in the application process.  In fact, anyone can use Watson, just go to IBM.com and look for the career site. Watson is part of the career page.

Most recruiters are working on filling 10 -15 roles at any one time. Using Watson to prioritize the candidates is very useful. Recruiters also use Watson to use to see which candidates will be successful. Even with all the Watson technology, it is still only making recommendations to humans. It isn’t handing over all the decisions on a cognitive tool, people can overrule or go beyond it. “The tool makes recommendations rather than taking over the recruiting function.”

Once people are employed by IBM, internal mobility is encouraged. They use a tool called Blue Matching. It is a cognitive tool to assist locating different roles that might be a good fit for current employees. It is great for lateral or other internal moves and might include positions they haven’t thought of.  It is widely used.  However, this isn’t a matter of just getting technology and plugging it in. It also needs the support and culture of leaders that believe that internal mobility as a positive, rather than the employee leaving the organization.

A current focus at IBM is learning agility. Every organization is challenged to develop new skills quickly, be able to pivot and address new opportunities and market disruption. So, taking Watson and transforming the learning opportunity has been very beneficial. Imagine using your phone to get personalized learning opportunities. Like podcast? It would know that and recommend some of those. Prefer books? Again, it would use those in ‘bit size’ pieces. If someone had 5 minutes to listen to the learning as they are waiting in airport, etc. then serving it up in a using a very user friendly format improves access to the learning. “IBM  learning is through the roof”. Everyone is expected to have 40 hours per year and many are going beyond that because it is so engaging. “Learning is being turned on its head because of cognitive technology.”

One of the current challenges at IBM is finding the right talent with the right skills. To help solve this, they are taking a broader perspective. Their CEO is talking about a ‘new collar job’ – don’t need a college degree. This describes about 10 – 15 % of their employees in the US that they have recruited in the last few years. They have technical skills, coding, etc., but they not roles that require a full breadth of a college degree. 

Things you will learn:

• How Block chain and HR work together
• How the ‘internet of things’ will be applied to learning
• How the future of HR differs from HR of the past
• How Watson is used in IBM’s hiring and training
• Insight into IBM’s current workplace flexibility
• What IBM is doing to develop new skills quickly within their organization

Links from the episode:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steelesusan/
• Twitter: TalentTalking

Bill Schmarzo, author of “Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business” and “Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science”, is responsible for setting strategy and defining the Big Data service offerings for Dell EMC’s Big Data Practice. As a CTO within Dell EMC’s 2,000+ person consulting organization, he works with organizations to identify where and how to start their big data journeys. He is a University of San Francisco School of Management (SOM) Executive Fellow where he teaches the “Big Data MBA” course.

Big Data is a term. The adjective ‘big’ has no meaning. Most companies are interested in looking at the ‘boat load of data’ they have but are not sure what to do with it. Right now, companies are only looking at the data to see ‘what happened’. “The biggest challenge from IT side and business side is to understand how they can understand data to effectively power their business model.”

Dell is using data to do predictive maintenance on their equipment. The goal is to fix devices before they break. They do this with employees and health care. “We try to drink our own champagne – use data internally, so we can be credible in the marketplace.”

Why have data if you aren’t going to use it? “Data by itself is a glob of nothing. You need to have an analytic strategy to tell what data is needed.”

Organizations need to know what problems they are trying to accomplish then can make analytics on those. If you know the problem to solve, you know the analytics and data you need. Then it becomes easy. Ask the questions first. Business has to drive IT. Data is a business conversation about economics. Then you can exploit the use of data.

There is a new position, the Chief Data Officer. It’s a good idea, but there has been poor execution. What has been happening is taking a CIO and giving them a

new title of CDO. However, it should be the Chief Data Monetization Officer. The job is to determine how to monetize the data you have available. This should be an economics person rather than IT person.

Schmarzo’s advice for people who are thinking about big data?

Business people: Read his book written for business people. Also, check out his blog as he frequently blogs about big data. He recently wrote about how to become intelligent like Netflix.

Everyday people: You need to understand the basics. Start reading, attending the free online classes, read blogs. Begin to understand what is machine learning and AI is all about. Don’t be afraid; just spend 15 minutes a day to become more familiar.

What you will learn in this episode:

● Why the term Big Data is a misnomer

● How Dell is using data

● The ‘mindset’ of data

● Why big data is about economics, not technology

● How much of a CIO’s background should be in technology vs. business and economics

● What role data plays in AI, wearables and machine learning

Links from the episode:

● Blogs: infocus.emc.com/author/william_schmarzo/ (Blog)

● LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schmarzo

Today’s guest is Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. During our conversation Seth talks about what it was like to work at Google and why he left, how he went about analyzing the data for his book, why he believes we are all liars, and what he learned about our true human nature.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has used data from the internet -- particularly Google searches -- to get new insights into the human psyche. A book summarizing his research, Everybody Lies, was published in May 2017.

He worked for one-and-a-half years as a data scientist at Google and is currently a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times. He is a former visiting lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Seth received his BA in philosophy from Stanford, and his PhD in economics from Harvard.

The area of big data that Seth researches is ‘social science questions about what people want and need’. It is very straightforward based on information that humans create. (Like from Google or Facebook)

Traditional social science experiments take months but today it is possible to experiment in minutes using such resources as Facebook.

When asked what a data scientist is, Seth said that it is someone who knows how to code and build models of human behavior to predict what people will do and what will work in the future.

For his book, Everybody Lies, Seth used Google searches to measure racism, self-induced abortion, depression, child abuse, hateful mobs, science of humor, sexual preference, anxiety, son preference, and sexual insecurity, among many other topics.

Just a few of the topics discussed in the book are sex, searches for sons vs. searches for daughters, anxiety, and insecurity.

Sex:

When asked questions about these sensitive subjects, people may lie. But searches indicated a variety of areas people search - areas that people don’t talk about. Therefore, people seem to have more interest in these topics than they are willing to admit.

Son/Daughter

Searches with the term ‘daughter’ are most often asking about issues related to appearance. For example, ‘How can I get my daughter to lose weight?’ For the term ‘son’ it is often, ‘Is my son gifted?’ There seem to be marked differences between sons/daughters in the searches that use these two terms.

Anxiety:

While common thinking may be that those living in large urban areas such as NYC or San Francisco are more anxious, Seth’s research showed that searches for these terms was higher in Kentucky, Rhode Island and Maine - and in rural areas, contrary to common thought.

Insecurity:

Stereotypes are often wrong. It is often assumed that women have many more insecurities about their bodies. However, the data does not show an overwhelming number of women versus men searching about these topics. In fact, about 60% were women and 40% of searches are men – not a ‘blowout’ on the side of women - that might have been thought.

Seth’s advice for individuals living in this new data world is to understand that Google has a lot of incentive monetarily to keep our data private, so he is not worried. One thing he is concerned about is that we may enter a society where we put resources such as time and energy, towards how we present ‘on paper’, because we are worried that we might be penalized based upon our ‘paper trail’ - and that could become a problem.

His advice to organizations is to use A/B testing (analyzing what people click on) is highly effective and should be used even more.

What you will learn in this episode:

● Surprising most often searched terms in Google

● Advice for individuals living in this new data world ● Tips and discussion on Google Trends – website with data that is available to everyone

● What was it like working for Google and why he left

● How Seth analyzed the data for his book

● Why Seth believes we are all liars

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, a company that works with organizations, ranging from AstraZeneca to Xerox, to help them do more great work. A Rhodes scholar who earned both arts and law degrees with highest honors from Australian National University and an Master’s degree from Oxford, he is a popular speaker at business and coaching conferences, and was named Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006

He is also the author of a number of books, his latest book, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, was published in February 2016 and is a bestseller.

Bungay Stanier talks about how it is possible, in 10 minutes or less, to ask strategic questions to drive changes in behavior, have a more engaged, smart, autonomous team that will allow you to work less hard and have more impact …if you stay curious.

The 7 essential coaching questions that he talks about in his book are:

1. What’s on your mind?

• This open ended question brings up things that are most useful and valuable

2. And what else?
3. What’s the real challenge here for you?

• Focus question, if you ask this question more than once – the ‘challenge’ will shift. Once the person gets clear on what the challenge is, the person can often figure out the answer.

4. What do you want?
5. How can I help you? or What do you want from me?

• ‘Lazy question’ – allows you to find out what people are really looking for in terms of help

6. If you say yes to this, what must you say no to?

• Strategy question -

7. What was most useful or valuable here for you?

• This is a learning question, as a manager you are a teacher, so when people can reflect on what was most helpful. It also allows the manager to understand what was most helpful in this conversation

To have authentic conversations, the culture needs to be one in which employees feel safe to share. Consider TERA when considering your work environment.

TERA stands for:

Tribe – make it feel like ‘you & me’, rather than ‘you versus me’

Expectation – how do I know what is about to happen

Rank – how do I feel the same as you rather than less than you

Autonomy – how do I get to make some of the choices, rather than you telling me everything  I need to do

Bungay Stanier advises employees who want to be coached by their managers to be the change they want to see in the world. Practice being more coach like yourself. Ask your manager for what you want (and buy the book!).

His advice to managers who want to get started as coaches is to pick one thing and see if you can get some traction on that. Go to coaching.com and download the first few chapters. Pick a question, build a habit around it, practice it and when you fall off the wagon, start again.

What you will learn:

• The 3 main coaching principals
• How coaching not only benefits employees but managers as well
• How coaching in 60 seconds or less is possible
• ‘Coaching’ is not only is a valuable process for business leaders but parents, teachers…anyone who is involved with people

• What is ‘weaponized math’? 
• How is the internet building a new kind of ‘class’? 
• What are the 2 definitions of ‘big data’? 
• The potential bias found in the use of algorithms in teacher evaluations, hiring practices, firing  

Perez-Breva, PhD is an expert in the process of technology innovation, an entrepreneur, and the author of Innovating: A Doer’s Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong. (MIT Press 2017).

Currently Perez-Breva directs the MIT Innovation Teams Program, MIT’s hands-on innovation program jointly operated between the Schools of Engineering and Management. During his tenure, i-Teams has shepherded over 170 MIT technologies to discover a path to impact. He has taught innovating as a skill worldwide to professionals and students from all disciplines; and has gotten them started innovating from pretty much anything: hunches, real-world problems, engineering problem sets, and research breakthroughs.

There is a lot of confusion around the term Artificial Intelligence – AI. What is it?

“Today AI is essentially an aspiration. What we do have is – a lot of – automation, machine learning, data learning and robotics.” The dream is to have a partner. Google show how you would operate with AI. You go into Google, use keyword and can get the information you need. We are all more powerful because we can so readily go onto Google to find answers. Siri and Uber are neither really ‘intelligence’. Intelligence is much harder than what we thought.

Does Perez-Breva think  job displacement will happen? He believes we are confusing AI with automation. Automation has always made jobs ‘disappear’. For example, gas lights, now we have light bulbs. We have always had jobs be lost to automation. The question is to how do make sure we are training leaders so that they are creating those new jobs into the middle class.

Automation can create gateways to the middle class – such as Ford did 100 years ago. If you don’t find a new job, it is a lack of imagination.

Robots are in all of our local coffee shops – are they taking the jobs of humans?

Not as easy as it might seem…the number of robots that would need to be produced and maintained is massive. One robot in one coffee shop is an example of human endeavors but one in every coffee shop seems a bit of a reach.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Who’s right? Musk, Hawking or Zuckerberg?
• Perspective on self-driving vehicles
• What is AI?
• How long will it take to achieve AI?
• What is the difference between intelligence and awareness

Blake Morgan is a keynote speaker, a Customer Experience Futurist and author of the new book, "More is More: How The Best Companies Work Harder And Go Farther To Create Knock Your Socks Off Customer Experiences.”  She is also my wife. Blake is an adjunct faculty member in Rutgers University’s executive education MBA program. She contributes to Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and the American Marketing Association. She hosts The Modern Customer Podcast and a weekly customer experience video series on YouTube. 

More is More is about hard work. Blake says that companies today cannot sit on their laurels. “The only thing that will differentiate themselves from their competitors is customer experience.” Customer experience is what the customer thinks of the brand. It doesn’t matter what a company thinks, the customer has        preconceived ideas of what it is. 

The book discusses – a ‘D.O. M.O.R.E.’ framework.  This is not just spending more money but making customers lives easier and better.  Do More comes from the following:

D – Designing something special

O – Offer a strong employee experience

M – Modernizing with technology

O – Obsessed about customers

R – Rewarding responsibility and accountability

E – Embrace disruption and innovation

What are some trends Blake is seeing? More big companies are hiring remotely. With that in mind, it is important to be smart about the types of people who you hire. Hire for attitude not only skill set. Hire people who are wonderful representatives for your brand.

What you will learn:

• Life in the Morgan household
• What it is like working ‘next to’ your spouse!
• Getting started in speaking and writing
• Why Blake wrote her book
• How customer experience fits into the future of work
• How customer experience and employee experience fit together

Leena Nair is the Chief Human Resources Officer for Unilever. Since 1992, when she joined Unilever as a trainee, Leena has had many firsts to her credit. Prior to her current role, she undertook a wide range of HR roles in India  and currently, she is the first female and youngest ever CHRO of Unilever.

Unilever is a Dutch-British transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands and London, United Kingdom. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's largest consumer goods company and is also the world's largest producer of food spreads, such as margarine. With 170,000 employees, Unilever is one of the oldest multinational companies; its products are available in about 190 countries.

“I can’t talk about being ‘more human’ if I am not living it every minute of the day.” Leena’s commitment to creating a more human experience is embodied in the way she functions each day. She gives 100% of her attention to the people she is meeting with each day – she doesn’t carry a phone to check emails, instead she waits until the evening before handling them.

Leena gives 3 main steps to being human:

1. Find your purpose in the organization you work
2. Cultivate a feeling of well-being
3. Have the capacity to learn and relearn

How do we get leaders on this journey towards being more human?  Most managers are going through the same feelings as employees. They are required to do more, with fewer resources and are left feeling anxious. Encourage them to recognize their feelings and understand these are the same feelings as their employees are dealing with each day. As companies have become more focused on becoming more human, health care costs have been reduced. Productivity has gone up, pride in the company has increased – there are many positive aspects.

Unilever found that people were spending 2 million hours calibrating people, giving people labels and ‘putting them in boxes’.  Leena changed that by getting rid of the labels and boxes and instead asked the managers to spend the 2 million hour having conversations with people. She asked them to invest their time in the people, making HR much simpler.

What you will learn in this episode:

• How to make an HR ‘more human
• How Unilever is moving away from a vertical progression model
• Leena’s 3 steps to making decisions
• How to help people who aren’t comfortable being human at work
• Things Leena and Unilever as a whole are doing to encourage human qualities at work

Links from the episode:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nairleena

Twitter: LeenaNairHR

• How many cyber attacks NIH encounters each day and how they protect themselves against the threats.  
• Differences between private and public organizations 
• How people stay motivated at NIH 
• Workspace changes NIH is going through 
• How Dr. McGowan first became interested in science

• How less than $1000 launched the video game industry 
• Why the ‘Pong’ ball was square instead of round 
• Why Nolan will never ‘retire’ 
• What it was like to work with Steve Jobs 
• How the Tiki room at Disney helped create Chuck E. Cheese 
• Nolan’s view of the world of technology and how things are changing 
• Why it is important to read science fiction 

Georgia Collins is the Senior Managing Director and Co-Leader of the Workplace Strategy Practice at CBRE. CBRE is a Global commercial real estate company that ‘helps clients identify opportunities to reduce and/or reallocate their costs, more effectively manage their resources, improve employee engagement and make decisions faster’.  With specific responsibility for research and development, Collins’ focus is on enhancing and expanding their service offerings so that clients can better understand, and more effectively deliver, environments and services that improve employee effectiveness and act as competitive differentiators in the war for talent.

Collins has more than 15 years of experience in the field of workplace consulting. A recognized leader in the industry, Collins’ project experience spans a wide range of markets and industries.

Prior to joining CBRE, Collins led strategic business consultancy DEGW’s North American practice where she led significant engagements for companies like Autodesk, Cisco, eBay and Microsoft. Prior to DEGW, Collins worked as an urban planner for Sasaki Associates.

Change management considers how to create workplaces that inspire and allow people to work at their best. When opening a new office, CBRE uses 80% of standard resources – market stand-up desks, for example. The other 20% are designed to be specific to that particular office. The time spent defining what makes each location special is an important part of the change. So offices in Hawaii look and function differently than those in Chicago.

Three steps in the process to successful design is thought of as a pyramid, with the base as the foundation, the middle, relational and finally the top of the pyramid is transformational. Specifically,

1. Foundational – what are the things that people need to do their job? (i.e., fast internet or parking)
2. Relational – how do you enable people to build their internal networks? (collaboration areas, break rooms, etc.)
3. Transformational or differentiating – what makes this particular organization special?

Collins’ advice for corporations is threefold. First, consider how to strip out the friction in work. Second, think about how to elevate the work experience. And third, intentionally don’t ‘plan’ everything

What you will learn in this episode:

• What Workplace360 is
• Why CBRE decided to make some changes and how they figured out what changes to make
• How to get people that are reluctant to embrace change to come along
• What is ‘life admin’ or ‘work admin’ and how it might work for your office
• Personalization in an open office – is it possible or necessary?

John Hass is the Chairman, President and CEO of Rosetta Stone, a language and literacy company with around 1,000 employees in the U.S. and around the world. Prior to Rosetta Stone, Hass spent two decades at Goldman Sachs both in New York and in Chicago. He was in the advisory part of the company working with Fortune 500 companies around the world on strategic initiatives. 

Learning another language has a lot of benefits, whether you are taking a language class in school as a 4th grader or whether you are learning some key phrases in another language for business purposes as a 40 year old. Some of the impacts that go beyond just learning another language, are creating a cultural awareness, inspiring empathy and rewiring your brain to make it easier for you to learn in general.

Hass says learning another language is, “a demonstration of a willingness to meet someone halfway, when you’re working with someone cross border, cross culturally, your willingness to speak their language, to be part of their environment, is always very well received in business, in culture, in travel and in most of what we do. It’s a very powerful, powerful tool, but it’s an incredibly rewarding tool as well.”

When asked about the changing nature of learning in general, Hass brought up a staggering statistic regarding newly graduating high school students. He said that according to the former United States Secretary of Commerce, students currently in high school will change jobs 10 to 16 times throughout their career. Because of that, learning has to adapt to prepare these students for the world of work they are entering. Education needs to prepare students to be flexible, adaptable and it has to give them a broader set of skills.

Hass is a huge believer in perpetual learning. He understands the importance of lifelong learning and says, “you have to love to learn, you have to be willing to learn. Your learning can’t end when you graduate with whatever final degree you have. You have to continue to learn to be successful.”

Another important aspect about the future of learning is personalized learning. It is not good enough anymore to have one teacher standing in front of 30+ kids teaching them all the same material, at the same rate, and in the same format. Hass believes that AI and other technology will play a huge role in the future of personalized learning and allowing students to learn at their own pace and in a way that makes the most sense for their abilities.

Hass admits that he is not an expert in robots or automation, however when asked about his take on robots in the future of work, he says this really goes along with his beliefs about the future of learning. We have to broaden our skill-set and improve our flexibility. He sees robots and automation replacing jobs in industries he never would have expected in the past, and he believes we are only at the forefront of this move towards automation, so we need to be prepared. 

Hass’s advice for the audience, especially the younger people just about to enter the workforce, is to look for new ways to learn, love to learn and always continue to learn. Find great sources that allow you to continue learning throughout your professional career.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What benefits come along with learning a new language
• John’s take on the changing nature of learning
• Who is responsible for learning? Individuals, Companies, or Schools?
• What technology Rosetta Stone is using
• A look into Rosetta Stone’s corporate culture
• What does personalized learning look like
• John’s view on robots and automation in the future of work

Dr. Alissa Johnson, aka Dr. Jay,  is the Chief Information Security Officer for Xerox Corporation.  She is also the former Deputy Chief Information Officer of the Executive Office of the President. Dr. Jay is an IT strategist and visionary with experience in government and private industry.

As the world goes to a paper-less society, Xerox Corporation is focusing on companies’ document workflow. They work to ensure that all of these assets are protected, crossing many boundaries. Dr. Jay’s department looks at both the offensive and defensive aspects of cyber security in order to anticipate all of the things that ‘might happen tomorrow and five years from now’.  She describes how organizations get billions of attempts of hacking a month.

Due to the constant onslaught of potential hacking, it has required companies to collaborate and share information to work to offset the threats.  The hackers are automated so this has required companies to think along the same lines. Her advice is to ‘protect the crown jewels’ – the critical information in an organization, for example intellectual property and passwords.

Security Tips for Individuals:

1. Change your password
2. Have multiple bank accounts – put an amount in each account – that way if it is stolen you will have some money in other accounts. It is important to diversify - don’t have all your eggs ($$) in one basket!
3. Don’t be afraid of technology, but be smart. You can’t go all in with everything – for example, mixing work friends with high school friends on Facebook or LinkedIn.
4. Be mindful of everything that is connected. You have to know what is connected

Security Tips for Organizations:

1. Set where you want to be in your ‘risk appetite’. Consider that the threshold is something that can be reevaluated each year but maintain during that time period.
2. CISOs can’t hinder innovation – perhaps the answer is … ‘Yes, and …’
3. Remember the basics – password updating, etc.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What the future of privacy and security will look like
• The difference between privacy and security
• The risks of automation
• New possible hacking techniques
• Suggested book to read: The Cuckoo’s Egg. The introduction of cyber security.
• The future of virtual reality in education
• The trade-off - use of smart homes and loss of privacy
• What technology Dr. Jay is paying attention to…and what is ‘overrated’

Seth Godin is the author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow.

In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth founded both Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog (which you can find by typing "seth" into Google) is one of the most popular in the world.  His newest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, is a bestseller.

Godin says that it is important to define work. People have been brainwashed to think that work is something where we need to ‘do what we are told’ – that it is all about compliance.

People that go out on their own – freelancers - fall into two camps. The first are those that are ‘workers without a boss’.  They do fine work when they have a client that acts like their boss and then they get freaked out when they can’t get another gig. This is because they are compliant and loathe taking a stand on something at the same time they are compliant.

The second group of freelancers are those that often fall into the trap of thinking they need to invent something original, be the first to do something. When in reality, no one asked them to do something original; instead they need to do something worthy, which creates value.

Often, people are hiding in their jobs –without realizing it. There is a cushion of comfort at their job. The company will take care of you if you become ill, there is a sales department that will sell for you and so on. However, this can keep employees from their end purpose, interacting with their customers and really understanding everything that goes on in the workplace.

How should we be preparing for the future of work?

1. Learn how to be generously persistent as you fail. Try something new, fail, get back up and try again. Once you’ve mastered that – start something else new, fail, try again …until you are comfortable of the concept of launching something new.
2. Work on understanding symbolic logic, how ideas work and the validity of an argument from a scientific point of view. This will enable you to be an informed consumer of information and form your own opinions - the opposite of dogma and compliance.

Godin’s advice for employees is: regardless of the past you ‘get the chance to do the future over again’.

His advice for manager is that a manager and a leader are different things. A manager gets you to do the same thing you did yesterday but faster and cheaper.

Leaders are people who take a team and figure out how to solve a problem even though they don’t know how to do it. If you are manager, figure out how to be a leader, if you are a leader figure out how to shine a light on problems.

Things you will learn:

• How to hire people that you really need
• Putting your ‘sucky’ job in perspective
• The reality of AI in the past, present and future
• What makes Godin successful at what he does and why he left full time work
• How to be a perpetual doer

Jon Gordon is a best-selling author whose books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world. Gordon’s principles have been put to the test by numerous Fortune 500 companies, professional and college sports teams, school districts, hospitals and non-profits. He is the author of 17 books including 5 best-sellers: The Energy Bus, The Carpenter, Training Camp, You Win in the Locker Room First and most recently, The Power of Positive Leadership.

Gordon explains how - from the brink of bankruptcy - he built up a personal brand to write best-selling books and develop a very successful speaking career.  He describes that he tackled this by being very purposeful and ‘building a brand and business’.  The process was that he:

1. Created a website – added events and articles
2. Wrote a one page overview of his speaking topics – The first was 5 Ways to Become Addicted to Positive Energy
3. Sent out 1000’s of emails with the one page – 99% did not respond
4. Eventually got a speaking gig with the Jaguars team and they became a client
5. Spoke for ‘free’ in many locations, adding clients along the way & then included on them on his website
6. Created a newsletter with no advertising – just great content, people shared it and it grew. (Currently 120,000 readers.)

Now, 15 years later he charges $35,000 a talk, and has over 3 million books sold. Gordon says one of the most important parts of his process was, “Showing up every day, sharing the message, being passionate about it and never really about the money. It was the message.”

Great leaders are the same as great coaches. They have the ability to connect with the people they work with. They need to believe in them and see their potential. Also, it is very important to provide accountability to those they lead.

Gordon gives three actions to become a positive leader. They are:

1. Talk to yourself rather than listen to yourself. Listening is often full of fear and doubt. Speak encouraging words to yourself – and listen to those.
2. Realize that the world is created from the inside out. It is not our circumstances that have power; it is our state of mind.
3. Grit – the number one factor of success. It is not talent, title or anything else that determines your outcome. It is the ability to keep moving forward in the face of obstacles. Don’t give up, don’t listen to naysayers.

Things you will learn:

• Steps to develop a positive outlook on life
• What makes a good leader or manager
• One question Leaders should ask their employees
• How to build your personal brand
• How Jon went from working for a .com to being an author and speaker
• Your role in overcoming negativity in the workplace
• How to measure and evaluate a positive leader

David Deming is the Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses broadly on the economics of education, with a particular interest in the impact of education policies on long-term outcomes other than test scores. Before becoming a professor at Harvard, David attended Berkeley and Ohio State University where he was trained as an economist. He has always been motivated by policy oriented questions and how economics can affect the real world.

When asked if there is a skills gap, Deming indicated that if you look back to the job market 30 years ago organizations would hire people with few skills but then they would invest in those people to train them on the job. They were willing to take a chance on the new graduates. Now, the jobs are more fluid, employers don’t want to pay to train employees and then have the employees leave a short time later. So we have people graduating from school without skills but people aren’t willing to invest in them - we don’t have the ‘connective tissue’ to pull the two together.

One idea, Deming pointed out, is to develop a European style of building durable partnerships between universities and employers to bridge the skill gaps. They can share the cost and effort.

On the topic of Universal Basic Income, Deming said it has some ‘appealing aspects’, and it is transparent and easy to understand. He also maintains that it does not discourage work and in fact, has some appealing aspects. People talk about it as a solution of the ‘technological unemployment’ (which Deming does not think will happen). Everyone gets the base amount of money – so if you want to earn a lot of money then this won’t help. It is different than welfare. Welfare is a work disincentive because we only will give it to you if you are poor. Universal Basic Income goes to everyone regardless of the amount of money they have.

Deming gave some advice to organizations. He says, don’t be afraid to take a chance on somebody who doesn’t come from the standard background - but might be good a fit for you.

His advice for individuals is to try to be good at two things that are not common together. For example, a good coder who is also good social skills will be in demand and provide more opportunities.  

What you will learn in this episode:

• What David sees for the future of higher education and whether or not traditional education institutions will exist in the future
• The 90/10 gap in incomes
• The role of AI and its impact on future jobs
• Future job skill sets needed
• What schools should be doing and whether or not they should look like a workplace
• What skills should we learn in school and how quickly will they be obsolete
• David’s view on the skills gap

Steven Tobin is a Senior Economist and the Team Leader at the Research Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and currently heads up the Policy Assessment Unit. His team is currently focused on undertaking policy assessments across a range of labor market and social issues. Before joining the ILO, Steven held several management positions at both the Federal and Provincial level of the Canadian government.

The only tripartite U.N. agency, since 1919 the ILO brings together governments, employers and workers representatives of 187 member States , to set labor standards, develop policies and devise programs promoting decent work for all women and men.

One trend that Tobin is looking at now is unemployment. There has been a downturn in Latin America which is pushing the global unemployment lower. The US and Canada have been doing well in this area but the lower numbers in emerging countries are negatively affecting overall rates.

This downward trend impacts us all as the world is becoming more connected – if there is less demand for a product in places, such as Latin America, it will ultimately affect workers and consumers in the US.

The US economy is one of the strongest labor markets in the world. However, there is still a perception among some people that something is wrong.  They feel they are working hard but can’t get ahead. This leads to feelings of injustice and may have played a role in last year’s elections. It also may be fueling the ‘America First’ emphasis.

There are jobs available in the US – and other countries – but are there enough? Many are short term, casual jobs and may lead to a mismatch of expectations.  They do not provide the same benefits that ‘standard’ jobs do, such as sick time, paid vacation and retirement benefits.  The ‘gig’/freelance economy is a trend that the ILO recognizes and sees growing. Their concerns are whether people are choosing these types of jobs for their benefits or rather because there are no standard employment opportunities that meet their skill sets or needs. 

This gig economy leads to challenges for entire societies. Who should ‘take care’ of these employees when they cannot work? In Canada they have created voluntary accounts in which self-employed people can contribute to a 401 K and so on.

Finland and Canada are piloting the use of universal basic income on a small scale. Basically, it is when everyone is guaranteed an income whether they work or not. The question remains as to what extent this would replace programs such as unemployment insurance. This notion of providing a minimum of a safety net is growing in the policy sphere.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• What the next 3 – 5 years will bring in terms of employees/employers
• Some main trends in the world of work
• ILO’s perspective on the role of AI and technology in the future of work
• What is ‘Zero Hours’ employment?
• Universal employment pilots
• Why it is important for us to pay attention to economies outside of our own country
• Steven Tobin’s perspective on the US economy
• The difference between job creation and quality job creation
• Steven’s perspective on Universal Basic Income

Monica Pool Knox is the Head of Global Talent Management at Microsoft Enterprises.  She started with GTE (which would later become Verizon) and since then she has worked at several large companies including Pepsico, Sony, Twitter and she is now at Microsoft.

Microsoft has 120,000 full time employees in 109 countries. But they also have a contingent workforce which is larger than their full time workforce! Contingent workers are doing everything that full time workers are doing, however, they allow for flexibility for the company. They may move to another part of the company or leave altogether once the assignment is completed. Microsoft also has a third classification of workers – full time employees that can be redeployed to another part of the company.

This often meets the needs of both the employee and company. “Talent in the workplace – people want different experiences, different skills,”  Pool Knox says. People used to look at a company’s financial records but now things have changed and the mission and purpose is what is really important. If the culture isn’t something people want, they may opt to do something different.

The office is now ‘whereever you are’. The mentality of blending work and family and having harmony and integration is now where people’s focus is at. This requires companies to be flexible when they are looking for the top talent to attract and retain. This is a big shift from years ago.

Pool Knox says that she is worried that technology moves faster than we do, so are we going to have to have the new skills that are needed in the market. We need to find new talent to support those emerging skill needs. Microsoft goes to the traditional places – colleges, looking at talent pools in San Francisco and Boston and so on but they are also finding new opportunities in untapped places – unexpected places.

Pool Knox gives advice to leaders thinking about the changing nature of talent. She says managers need to think about how they are getting work done. Think about how teams form to get things done – be open to a variety of possibilities. Encourage diverse teams – diverse in terms of education, backgrounds, and so on and then how to leverage those members to accomplish the objectives.

And her advice to individuals is to get as much experience as possible to add to your tool box – this will make evolving easier. Consider learning a second or third language. It will help you not only in the workplace but with colleagues as well. Also, reach out to people via LinkedIn or other networks – people that might have new ideas and then connect with them.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why it is critical to evolve as an employee
• New ways people are learning
• The role of a growth mindset in business
• How Microsoft views the gig economy and contingent workers
• How the talent landscape and the employee/employer relationship has changed over the past decade

David Fairhurst is the Chief People Officer at McDonald’s. Prior to joining McDonald's in 2005, Fairhurst held senior roles at H J Heinz, SmithKline Beecham and Tesco. For four consecutive years (2008-2011) he was voted the UK's 'Most Influential HR Practitioner' by readers of HR Magazine and in 2012 was awarded the magazine’s first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for an HR practitioner.

McDonald's is the world's leading global food service retailer who, including franchisees, employs more than 1.9 million people, in 35,000 locations serving approximately 60 million customers in more than 100 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local business men and women.

McDonald’s is known for its operational excellence. They see this as a ‘3-legged stool’ made up by the suppliers, the franchisees and the company.

McDonald’s is often a first job of many workers. Their focus on training has provided an amazing legacy of alumni employees to the restaurant. Fairhurst talks about the ‘workforce cliff’. This is the point where the workforce supply and demand converges – the number of babies born versus deaths.   In the US it will occur in 2020. With that in mind, the idea of a multigenerational employee group is even more interesting and practical. He explains that research has shown that in restaurants where there are a large age range of workers, there is a positive culture.

What do companies need from their employees? This may vary across sectors but it is a good question to ask. McDonald’s has determined three things that they need from their employees, calling these the ‘3 C’s’.

1. Competence
2. Confidence
3. Commitment

McDonald’s also has looked at what employees value in their workplace. They found it to be what they call the ‘3 F’s’.

1. Family – work/life balance
2. Flexibility – if family emergencies come up, can the company handle it?
3. Future – ways can you make me more employable or valuable

The real power in knowing these things is when you can get these to merge. Fusing the needs of the company with the needs of the employees can produce great results.

McDonald’s drives change across its global company by looking at 4 things. First is transforming the culture of their system – the customer is the center and then, by definition, also the employee

Secondly, strengthening the talent management process. They want a robust talent pipeline

Thirdly, making sure they have the right leaders with the right capabilities in the right structures to ensure they can meet current and future trend. And lastly, they are constantly seeking to strengthen their access to people.

These are continuous and do not stop in their goal to lead and not follow. The opportunities are endless but when you take a little insight, it can create a massive impact - when you have 1.9 million employees.

Fairhurst’s advice for others is to, “Stop worrying about what you do not have control over. Get sleep and pour over what you can do. The differences you make today will get you noticed.”

What you will learn in this episode:

• How David Fairhurst got to this point in his career
• What is McDonald’s Velocity Growth plan
• Why it is important for McDonald’s to make a transformation
• Challenges McDonald’s has had to overcome
• The impact of AI and automation on their restaurants
• Fairhursts advice to leaders, managers and employees
• The role of a multigenerational workforce
• What is the ‘workforce cliff’?
• What Uber and McDonald’s have in common
• Why is all-day breakfast a big deal for McDonald’s?

Kim Scott is the New York Bestselling Author of a new book, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity  Kim is also the co-founder of Candor, Inc and co-host of the podcast Radical Candor. She led AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick Online Sales and Operations at Google and then joined Apple to develop and teach a leadership seminar. Kim has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and several other tech companies

Radical Candor is demonstrated when one cares personally for someone and also challenges them directly.  Great bosses can be source of growth and joy. It is evident that they care about you. They will also tell things that you need to hear. The framework consists of four points:

1. Radical Candor – praise and then criticize
2. Obnoxious Aggression – when you challenge but don’t care (praise that doesn’t seem sincere or criticism that isn’t delivered kindly)
3. Manipulative insincerity – when you neither care nor challenge (non-specific praise or criticism that is not clear)
4. Ruinous Empathy – compassion without providing honest feedback

How does Radical Candor contribute to an employee experience? It will give you a witness to your life and it will help you grow in the way you want to grow. When you are doing great work, you want it recognized, when you mess up, someone will let you know. 

Scott gives four steps on how to get to Radical Candor. First, come up with a go-to question. People don’t want to tell you so it’s difficult. Think of a question. For example: Is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? Whatever question works for you - figure out how to ask it

Second, embrace the discomfort. The only way to get the feedback is to make it more uncomfortable for them not to answer. So – after you ask the question – shut your mouth…count to 6…

Third,listen with the intent to understand - not to justify or respond. You cannot be defensive or you will not get any more feedback in the future from that person.

And finally, reward the candor. Give them a reward for telling you – if you agree with the feedback, fix the problem. And then tell the person and thank them for helping you. If you disagree, first of all focus on what you can agree with…then say I want to follow up in a few days. Then explain why you disagree. Sometimes the only reward is a fuller discussion of why you disagree.

Scott says some of the most common mistakes are showing employees care but not challenging them directly (Ruinous Empathy), getting so busy we fail to show we care personally or challenge directly and just flatter people – (Manipulative Insincerity), being reluctant to have ‘getting to know you’ conversations – these are the basis for the beginning of caring, and criticizing the feedback.

Do you have a ‘bad boss’? No matter how terrible your boss is, you can be a good boss. You don’t need to imitate yours. You can create a good micro culture.

Start

Kim Scott is the New York Bestselling Author of a new book, Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity  Kim is also the co-founder of Candor, Inc and co-host of the podcast Radical Candor. She led AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick Online Sales and Operations at Google and then joined Apple to develop and teach a leadership seminar. Kim has been a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and several other tech companies

Radical Candor is demonstrated when one cares personally for someone and also challenges them directly.  Great bosses can be source of growth and joy. It is evident that they care about you. They will also tell things that you need to hear. The framework consists of four points:

1. Radical Candor – praise and then criticize
2. Obnoxious Aggression – when you challenge but don’t care (praise that doesn’t seem sincere or criticism that isn’t delivered kindly)
3. Manipulative insincerity – when you neither care nor challenge (non-specific praise or criticism that is not clear)
4. Ruinous Empathy – compassion without providing honest feedback

How does Radical Candor contribute to an employee experience? It will give you a witness to your life and it will help you grow in the way you want to grow. When you are doing great work, you want it recognized, when you mess up, someone will let you know. 

Scott gives four steps on how to get to Radical Candor. First, come up with a go-to question. People don’t want to tell you so it’s difficult. Think of a question. For example: Is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? Whatever question works for you - figure out how to ask it

Second, embrace the discomfort. The only way to get the feedback is to make it more uncomfortable for them not to answer. So – after you ask the question – shut your mouth…count to 6…

Third,listen with the intent to understand - not to justify or respond. You cannot be defensive or you will not get any more feedback in the future from that person.

And finally, reward the candor. Give them a reward for telling you – if you agree with the feedback, fix the problem. And then tell the person and thank them for helping you. If you disagree, first of all focus on what you can agree with…then say I want to follow up in a few days. Then explain why you disagree. Sometimes the only reward is a fuller discussion of why you disagree.

Scott says some of the most common mistakes are showing employees care but not challenging them directly (Ruinous Empathy), getting so busy we fail to show we care personally or challenge directly and just flatter people – (Manipulative Insincerity), being reluctant to have ‘getting to know you’ conversations – these are the basis for the beginning of caring, and criticizing the feedback.

Do you have a ‘bad boss’? No matter how terrible your boss is, you can be a good boss. You don’t need to imitate yours. You can create a good micro culture.

Start by soliciting feedback and understanding what would make your boss’ job better. Ask if you can provide some criticize. If you can - create this culture with your own team - and then work with your boss to create it.

If you can’t get to the point where you can get radical candor with your boss – if you can’t criticize your boss, you might want to start to look for a new job.

What You Will Learn In This Episode

• Do leaders need to find a purpose for their employees or is it the responsibility of the employees to find purpose in their work?
• What makes a good employee?
• Is it possible to learn to have career conversations?
• Efficient workplace practice ideas
• Why Kim Scott wrote her book
• Examples of bad bosses and good bosses
• How to have Radical Candor

by soliciting feedback and understanding what would make your boss’ job better. Ask if you can provide some criticize. If you can - create this culture with your own team - and then work with your boss to create it.

If you can’t get to the point where you can get radical candor with your boss – if you can’t criticize your boss, you might want to start to look for a new job.

Things you will learn:

• Do leaders need to find a purpose for their employees or is it the responsibility of the employees to find purpose in their work?
• What makes a good employee?
• Is it possible to learn to have career conversations?
• Efficient workplace practice ideas
• Why Kim Scott wrote her book
• Examples of bad bosses and good bosses
• How to have Radical Candor

Anindya Ghose is the Professor of IT and Business Analytics at NYU and the author of TAP: Unlocking the Mobile Economy.  He is a Professor of IT and a Professor of Marketing, at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He is also the Director of the Center for Business Analytics at NYU Stern. In 2014 he was named by Poets & Quants as one of the “top 40 outstanding business school professors under 40 in the world” and by Analytics Week as one of the “top 200 thought leaders in Big Data and Business Analytics”.

The Mobile Economy is any transaction that occurs on a smart phone or tablet. It is currently more than 3 trillion dollars of the world’s economy – or 4.2% of the world’s GDP.  So we are only scratching the tip of the iceberg.

Technology has changed the way companies can interact with consumers. Location accuracy came out about 10 years ago. At that point in time, people’s location could be pin-pointed within 200-300 meters (~1000 feet). Now, the latest smart phones can locate the user within 5 feet. This information opens the door for many uses.

Beyond the retail use, the Mobile Economy touches other industries such as banking, healthcare and construction.  Using wearable sensors, workers walking and working patterns can help reshape where workstations should be or even how to design exits or entrances in busy airports.

There are nine forces shaping the Mobile Economy. The first is context which looks at what the customer is thinking. There is also location, time, and weather. Saliency, or the ranking of your product, is also critical.  Some other forces that come into play are crowdedness, trajectory, social dynamics and tech mix.

The next generation which includes smart homes and cars are closer than we think.  In 2 – 3 years they will include refrigerators that remind you to pick up the groceries on the way home from work.  The smart phone will become the remote control for all of your appliances and devices.

Ghose has found four behavior contradictions… people say they:

1. Seek to be spontaneous but really they value certainty
2. Find ads annoying but really they fear being left out, so they want ads
3. Desire choice and freedom but too many choices and they get overwhelmed
4. Want to protect their personal freedom but will use their personal data as currency to get things they want

Ghose’s advice for organizations is if you want to succeed in the Mobile Economy then you have to win the consumer’s trust.  You must act as a ‘butler’ not as a ‘creepy stalker’ and you must notify and ask for consent.

His advice for consumers is to embrace the world of messaging and ads. If you do, you will receive lower prices and more targeted messages. If you don’t, you will receive more spam and random messaging with higher prices.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What is the Mobile Economy?
• Why write a book about the Mobile Economy when the mobile phone has been around for a long time
• The role smart phones will play in the future
• How brick and mortar stores track consumers movements…and why
• Privacy in the Mobile Economy
• How the Mobile Economy is being used to help the healthcare industry
• The 9 forces on the company side that are shaping the mobile economy
• The 4 behavior contradictions on the consumer side

Today my guest is Archana Singh, the EVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at John Wiley and Sons Publishing. Join us as we talk about what transformations Wiley is going through, why these transformations are important, how to create a sense of purpose for your employees and much more.

Today’s guest is Archana Singh the EVP and Chief Human Resource Officer at John Wiley and Sons Publishing. John Wiley was founded in 1807, and amazingly over 200 years later they are still going strong. They currently focus on business books, research and journal publishing with sizeable work around digital assets and learning, assessments and educational technology services, as well.

Wiley is found in 60 locations across 40 different countries, employing 5000 people. There has been significant growth in the last 15 years with a blending of digital and traditional higher education publishing.

How has worked changed?

1. There is more ownership as an employee of what is worked upon. Therefore, as an organization, how do we harness that? There is an increase need for us to understand this.

2. Everyone is seeking flexibility. How do we get our organizations to move to a more outcome based, rather than time driven focus? How do we change our dialogs to provide this flexibility?

3. People’s minds are more fragmented – they have so many things to do and worry about. How do we – as organizations – get the productivity that is needed? How do we harness this to create advantage for our organization?

What is the role of an employee?

Three things:

1. Employees want employers to care and encourage connectedness

2. They also wonder how they can participate in shaping the organization. They want to make an impact.

3. They also question - am I employable and am I learning enough? They want to feel they are being relevant - both internally and externally

Singh gives advice to companies looking to reinvent themselves. She says, to begin visualize what your mission is and where you want to be. Where do you want to be at the end of one year? In 5 years? She also states it is important to engage people and to hear what they think. Encourage employee participation and use a joint approach to identify what matters.

What you will learn in this episode:

* Initiatives going on at Wiley to continue to transform a company over 200 years old.

* What organizations can consider to transform their physical space without a budget

* The role of the mission statement on company culture

* Ideas of how to create a sense of purpose among your employees.

* Singh’s advice to companies who are looking to reinvent themselves

* How work has evolved

Quotes:

* Our true north is life-long learners - whether it is a researcher or a student - and they guide us in what we do

* There is an increased need for us to understand how to tap into this freelance energy.

* Every small thing we do is more important than ‘big bang’ programs.

Today’s conversation is with Dr. Jody Foster, author of The Schmuck in My Office and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. Our discussion centers around dealing with difficult people at work and learning to look for the reasons behind their annoying behaviors.

Dr. Jody Foster is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania Hospital. She attained her MBA, with a concentration in finance, from the Wharton School. She is also the author of the recently released book, The Schmuck in My Office

Dr. Foster was involved in forming a program to deal with disruptive physicians which became publically offered due to interest in resolving the same issues in other settings outside of the medical field. After the program became public, Dr. Foster was approached to write the book to share the program’s main ideas to the general public.

We all have traits that make us who we are. None of these are problematic by themselves, however when we allow these traits to interfere with our work or our relationships with coworkers, they can become an issue. In Dr. Foster’s book she lists out 10 types of traits that are often observed and can become disruptive to a workplace if they get out of control:

1. Narcissus – their ego fills the room
2. Venus Flytrap – their initial appeal may draw you in, but anger later surfaces
3. Swindler – the rule breaker
4. Bean counter – the controlling micro manager
5. Distracted – has real difficulty in time management, frequently has unfinished projects
6. Mr. Hyde – someone who struggles with an addiction problem, one that was not apparent when hired but then another ‘person showed up’
7. The Lost – one who is experiencing cognitive issues, and who is getting sloppy
8. Robotic – one might say they were a ‘person on the spectrum’ – very little social skills
9. Eccentric – the person has odd or magical belief patterns - the beliefs are ‘strange’
10. Suspicious – thinks that there are conspiracies, looks over their shoulder

Dr. Foster states that the most common are those titled, narcissus. They may demonstrate behaviors that seem like they feel entitled, seek attention and exaggerate their accomplishments.

One key way to deal with them is to attempt to understand them. It may be that the person has a low and fragile self esteem. They may be afraid to be found smaller than average, in some way. They also may not realize they are dominating the conversation – they are used to controlling the conversation and they may not even have full realization they are doing it. Giving some positive feedback and acknowledging their story may be helpful.

Dr. Foster says, “You want to find a culture that is right for you.” It could also be that the disruptive person is working in the wrong setting for their personality type. Sometimes a worker that is labeled as disruptive is actually just in the wrong workplace culture. “What is considered disruptive to one person may be attractive to another”, states Dr. Foster.

Dr. Foster gives tips for dealing with difficult people. First of all, she says, you have to accept the fact that people don’t want to be disruptive. It is important for us to work to understand the people around us. We also have to understand that what is disruptive in one culture may not be disruptive in another. You should try to call out disruptive behavior when you see it, waiting just causes hard feelings to build up to the point of anger.

You should take a step back and examine why a certain behavior is bothering you, in some instances it could be because you see something in a person that is a trait you don’t like in yourself. Another tip Dr. Foster gives is, if the other person doesn’t see a problem then you have to set limits. And finally, ask the question, ‘Am I the schmuck in the office’? Are you going from place to place and continuing to ‘see the same issues’? If you are, you could be the problem.

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Tips for organizations for dealing with ‘schmucks’
• Personal life ‘schmucks’
• If you aren’t happy in your job why it might be time to do some reflection!
• Why Dr. Foster wrote her book
• What are the 10 types of people and how can you identify them
• How can we get to a point where we can understand the truth behind someone’s actions
• Real life examples of how to deal with others
• What roles does the environment play vs. the individual

My conversation this week is with John Hagel, the Co-Chairman at the Center for the Edge at Deloitte, and we are talking about the future of work: what you need to know, how to prepare and what to look forward to.

Today’s guest is John Hagel the Co-Chairman at the Center for the Edge at Deloitte and author of 7 books including: The Power of Pull. John leads the Silicon Valley based research center for Deloitte. Their charter is to identify emerging business opportunities that should be on the CEO's agenda, but are not, and to do the research to persuade them to put it on the agenda

Automation and the future of work are part of a bigger shift of how business is changing globally. The main issue is the rapid increase of technology. Hagel believes that ‘robots can restore our humanity’. He explains that the way we define work - highly standardized and integrated tasks - will be able to be accomplished by robots – which are much more efficient than we will ever be - leaving the creative work to humans.

Hagel says the availability of robots will become the catalyst for a shift in the work that humans will do. Instead of routine tasks that can be done with robots, humans will be focusing on being creative.  This transition may be a painful one for some people – taking them out of their comfort zones - so we will need to look at how we can support people as they move to these new roles.

This change can be stressful, but we need to find a way to turn that anxiety into excitement. Hagel says, “People who learn fastest are those that are passionate”. They are constantly looking for the next challenge and are excited about it.

How do organizations or even individuals face this magnitude of change? Hagel suggests ‘starting on the edge’. In a large organization, such as a school, find a way you can demonstrate a new kind of work to use as a magnet to pull people in. Use time after hours to encourage creativity and provide opportunities rather than trying to change the traditional school setting.

Individuals should think about what makes them really excited. What hobby are you passionate about? Start to explore how you can make it more of what you do for a living. Start on the edge…don’t quit your day job, do this on the side.

Develop a questing disposition – what are your reactions to unexpected challenges?  Most workers go into fear and avoidance mode. The passionate are excited by the challenges and actually go looking for them.

Another element is a connecting disposition.  People with this attitude seek out others who are experienced in the field they are pursuing – so they can get answers faster.  They work to connect with others.

What is the future of work? In the short term there will be 3 things:

1. Evolving in world as customers we have more power. We want creative services and products that are customized – not standardized mass market.
2. Recognition of different work segments – Millennials and Boomers who are looking for ways to do more creative work and learn more in the process
3. Technology coming in and replacing routine tasks – work meant for humans not done by machines.

What you will learn in this episode: 

• How can robots restore our humanity?
• Will there be a job apocalypse?
• How your favorite hobby can be your next job!
• How gamers and surfers’ perspectives can help you find your next job
• Advice for parents and employees about the future of work

This week’s guest is Daniel Franklin, the executive editor of The Economist and editor of The Economist’s annual publication The World In....  which focuses on predictions for the upcoming year. He is also the author of the book, Megatech: Technology in 2050

Looking beyond the immediate horizon is helpful when looking at future trends. In particular, Franklin looks at the drivers of change. For instance, follow the money and what does that tell you?  Look at what might hold technologies back or push them forward and that gives some insight into future trends.

The title of the book – 2050- is a metaphor to encourage one’s thinking to push out to what might be possible in the future.

One of the future technologies that Franklin is paying attention to is farm technology. By 2050, it is predicted that there will be 10 billion people on the earth. The need to feed all of these people is critical. Therefore, a combination of advancements – such as distant farming, the massive applications of data to farming, when to sow and harvest, when to water and fertilizer, will help to meet the need to support that population.

While food is very important, so is energy. In the future, solar and wind technologies will become a large factor. Franklin sees that more power will be in our homes rather than in a big grid. This leads to a discussion of the potential to create a lack of incentive in the workplace towards finding other ways to produce energy when the “sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing” and how that will be resolved.

Moore’s Law [processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers will double every two years] has proven to be ‘doable’ by the industry. The ‘metronome’ – the regular beat of efficiency – has led to astonishing changes. The smartphone is one way in which this is exemplified. The smartphone has allowed people to now have computing power in their pockets - the same power that used to take rooms to achieve.

This makes us hungry for ways to have more and has become the lifeblood of lots of industry. We have reached the point where we can’t go any smaller so there has to be another means where we can continue to produce gains and efficiencies such as in the past.

This is the challenge of Moore’s Law – if the computer loses its metronome.  The bad news is that it’s tougher and more expensive and gains don’t come as regularly as in the past. The good news is the computer capacity will continue to grow, such as the use of ‘clouds’ and improving software.

Franklin’s advice for business leaders? Think big and broadly about the possibilities that are there, be prepared for things to happen faster than you probably imagined. Think about what happens to your industry when data processing becomes more efficient and be prepared to be flexible in the heart of your operations.

Franklin also says we shouldn’t be afraid of trends. Instead we should look at them from the point of view of ‘what does it offer me’? We should be excited about the possibilities of future trends, rather than fearing them.

Things you will learn in this episode:

• Science fiction and its role in the ‘real world’
• The future of wearables & autonomous vehicles
• What about virtual reality in the future?
• What are some big picture things that Daniel Franklin is paying attention to?
• What the future of farming will look like
• Why when it comes to energy we have a problem of plenty rather than a problem of scarcity
• What is Moore’s Law and why is it important?
• Where is augmented reality at now and where will it go in the future

Monique Herena is the Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at BNY Mellon. As Senior Executive Vice President, Herena oversees BNY Mellon’s Human Resources and Marketing and Corporate Affairs departments. In her role as Chief Human Resources Officer, she is responsible for all human resources strategies, policies and practices.

BNY Mellon, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton, has 52,000 employees across 35 countries and 6 continents. They have two main businesses, investment management and investment services. The make-up of the company is diverse - 46% of the US workforce is women and 30% representing ethnically and racially diverse people.

BNY believes that putting people first is critical to every aspect of their mission. It is how people experience the company – through their talent.  They invest in people, believing in the power of development- “People can always be better in the next moment than what they are right now.”

They have put together a report, appropriately entitled, People Report, which is told through the voices of the associates and their experiences in a digital only experience. In this, one is allowed insight into what it is like to be an employee at BNY.

Four pillars that are the framework of the company include Lead, Innovate, Impact, Collaborate and Inspire.

Lead includes the desire to be more mobile and be where clients are – making wealth management applications more mobile, socially connect with other people, an emerging leader program – BK University – all which drive the business.

Innovate looks at the workspace becoming even more efficient and includes everything from robotics, to better accuracy, reducing risk and cost savings.

Collaboration is important to BNY. Company-wide leaders look at different ways there are to help each other to work virtually, different digital centers, have chat bot technology and so on, encouraging collaboration across all kinds of ‘borders’.

Inspiring people to be their best includes many facets such as VetNet that supports veterans returning to the workplace. This has doubled the number of veterans at BNY. They are also placing an emphasis on gender equality and are working to achieve this across the industry.

The employee experience is a two-way street. A performance review should not be just the manager’s feedback but how the employee participating in available resources. The employee needs to take a joint ownership in the process. Those that contribute the most are the most successful.

There is a ‘push versus pull’ strategy. The push says – “I’m here, what are you giving me next?” The pull strategy includes creating your brand, working hard which in turn, leads people to notice the person.

Herena’s advice to organizations who want to know what to do to start putting their people first, check out BNY Mellon’s People Report and also, from a leadership point of view – the earlier in your career that you learn to ‘make it not about you - and get other focused’ the more successful you will be in that career

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Why ‘setting the tone at the top’ includes getting up at 4:25 am each day!
• Should there be an emphasis on keeping up with business ‘trends’?
• Does every investment have to have a dollar and cents return?
• Background on People Report done by BNY Mellon and their findings
• How BNY is putting their people first
• Why bother making investments in your people if your company is already doing well?
• How do you differentiate between perks and true organizational change
• What do Millennials want

This week’s conversation is all about the gig economy. Listen in to find out how big the gig economy actually is, what the skills gap is and how we can fix it and how individuals and organizations can adapt to a rapidly growing gig economy.

This week's Future of Work podcast features a conversation with Steve King, a partner at Emergent Research. Steve has extensive consulting, marketing and general management experience with both large and small companies.  He has served as vice president of Corporate Marketing for Macromedia, vice president and general manager of Asia Pacific for Lotus Development Corporation and vice president of marketing for Isys Corporation. Steve's current research and consulting is focused on the future of work, the rise of the independent workforce and the impact of Big Data on small businesses.

The gig/freelance/independent worker economy has two levels; those who have this as their full-time employment and those who use it as a way to supplement their income.   There are various estimations of the number of people who are gig workers in the U.S.

Some research shows a low number of independent workers – less than a million people to a high number - 75 million people. The 75 million includes people that have taken surveys online and received payment for it or play a game and get paid for it.  So, it is critical to define work when discussing the number of freelance workers.

Emergent Research estimates there are 18 million full-time gig workers and another 22 million Americans who are part-time.  Here, full-time is defined as working 15 hours or more per week and it is the primary source of income.

Though the percentages of workers vary, there are three things we can take away:

1. Gig industry is a bigger than any other and just as big as the government segment.
2. It has clearly been growing over the last decade.
3. It is permeating every sector of the economy. There are gig workers who are lawyers, doctors and other highly skilled professionals along with the commonly thought of Uber and AirBnB.

One trend in the economy is the shift in workers’ perceptions of job security. In 2011, 27% of people believed that independent work was more secure than traditional work.  The same question in 2016, found that 47% of workers believe that independent work was more secure.

King’s advice for companies when considering the independent worker is to get a grasp on the number of independent workers they have working in their organization.  Often in large organizations, they find that 20 -25 % of full-time employees are freelancing and 8% – 10% of part-time employees are independent. 

King also says organizations should work to understand where freelancers are playing an important role in their organization. Often they are found in IT or marketing.  Then it is important to understand the role they play, how to attract the right talent and then how to train them.

His advice for individuals thinking about the role of freelancing in their own careers? It is important to be prepared. Success in gig work comes from preparation and choice. People who fail in gig work are those who are not prepared. If you are interested in starting with a gig job go with part time and keep your day job.

Things you will learn in this episode:

• How many Americans are considered part of the gig economy
• King’s thoughts on the taking economy
• What safety nets can independents look for in the future
• What are some gig markets that are less known
• What aspects have created the skills gap and how can we fix it
• King’s advice to individuals and organizations when confronting the gig economy
• Are traditional jobs disappearing

This week’s podcast features two guests, both from Acadian Asset Management, Churchill Franklin and John Chisholm. Join us as we discuss what Cognitive Diversity is, why it is important, why companies find it challenging to implement and where the future of finance is going.

Churchill Franklin is the CEO of Acadian Asset Management and John Chisholm is the Chief Investment Officer at Acadian. Acadian is an institutional asset manager, managing roughly 75 billion for investors. They invest in equities all around the world, both in the US and developed markets, as well as emerging markets. Acadian follows a very quantitative approach towards investments. They build models that help predict returns and invest in those securities in which are believed will likely generate the best returns, to build the best portfolios. The culture is one of listening – to both clients and colleagues in trying to be proactive in responding to the market place.

Acadian employs 320 people with a main office in Boston and additional sites in London, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo.  Found are investment, marketing and operation professionals. They come from a variety of backgrounds such as finance, science and math and often there is a benefit to have traditional investment backgrounds - but not always necessary.

Both Churchill and John come from diverse backgrounds.  John went to MIT and started in aerospace engineering. After going back to business school, he joined up with Churchill to launch Acadian in the mid 80’s and runs the investment side of the firm.  Churchill leads the culture and leadership. He started with a degree in American literature from Middlebury College, was a commercial banker for a while, became a treasurer in a company and then moved to start Acadian.

Churchill and John are examples of implementing Cognitive Diversity. They deeply believe that the more perspectives around the table the better for their business and ultimately for their clients. The diversity is demonstrated by having a variety of backgrounds, personalities and individual perspectives that bring various points of view to discussions.

Research has shown that having groups with diverse thinking styles will generally perform better than having a homogenous group.  This is true for mixed gender groups as well – research has shown they perform better, as well. With a more diverse group, discussions can test a variety of theories with other points of view.

These different perspectives bring different ways of problem solving – there may be those that use intuition, some may test out ideas, others may use some type of rigorous, theoretical frameworks to find a solution. Each of these can contribute the thought diversity that is needed to find the best answer to a problem.

Acadian uses a variety of methods to find those employees that are a best fit for their firm. Depending upon the role they are seeking to fill, they may probe a candidate’s thinking processes with questions such as…how much water would it take to fill up an office? The answer is not the critical aspect here; rather it is the thought process that the interviewee took to get there.

The different thought processes might include the fairly common way to go about it – the logical chain of answers. It might also include where one starts at a high level and breaks the problem into pieces or an experimental approach. Each of these may be a valid response and depending on the position being filled may work.

Cognitive Diversity is often a challenge to achieve. It is ‘easier’ to hire people that think alike, laugh at the same jokes and so on. One way to avoid this is to ensure that you have interview teams made up of diverse thinkers. This will help to avoid getting pigeon-holed into a particular style.

When asked how the world of finance has changed in the last decade, Churchill and John noted the huge growth in the availability of data as well as the tools that allow the data to be understood. This has led to a critical demand in the use of a quantitative approach.  There is a wide range of interesting and perhaps, unusual types of data available. For instance, the use of satellite data is relatively new. This may include looking at the directions or activity of shipping containers in a particular region.  It may also include the brightness of lighting in certain areas. This can assist in forecasting.

One future trend in the finance world is understanding how the role of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing can be profitable.  These ‘socially conscious’ investments previously needed to have reduced return expectations on investments but it seems that Europe and Australia are ahead on this aspect and there will be more to come on this subject.

What you will learn in this episode:

• What is Cognitive Diversity?
• What role can Cognitive Diversity play in moving your organization further?
• Interesting future trends in the world of finance
• Predictions of the role of the use of ‘cash’
• Stories of how Acadian implements Cognitive Diversity
• How the world of finance has changed over the past few decades
• the role of technology in the world of finance
• Churchill and John’s thoughts on whether to use a robo-adviser or a human advisor for personal funds

David Green joined IBM about a year ago to help IBM customers grow their people analytics and technology. He has been involved with HR since the late 90’s and also writes and speaks about data driven HR.

Historically, HR decisions used ‘gut and intuition’ to drive decisions. Now the use of data in the form of people analytics is providing value, allowing better decisions to be made.

One example is a large, global company that was looking at building in China. However, the head of the analytics looked at the data and discovered that it was not an ideal place to locate the company. It was found that the talent in the region was very ‘thin’.  The completion for this work group was high in the area, creating additional shortages. This would have made it difficult to not only hire the initially needed workers but then it would have also limited their planned expansion.  This company did not open there - saving money and other possible difficulties.

Though there are examples such as this, there remain three areas of skepticism currently seen in the use of people analytics within the business community. The first is whether the business can adequately analyze the data. Secondly, they are often concerned about the cost of its use. Can they afford to invest in it? Finally, does the HR staff need to be ‘experts’ in data?

Green’s response to those areas of concern focus on the idea that people analytics is a long-term investment. It is not something that can be rolled out over night. His suggestion is to start small.  If an organization has a hypothesis of what might be valuable information to gather – start there.  Don’t waste time and money on predicting for something that is not a problem for the organization, so give it some thought before you make time and money investments.

Three steps for a healthy start:

1. Learn the business and what matters specifically to that one. Identify leaders within the organization who are open to the use of analytics.
2. The Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) is involved and can assist with insights to focus upon.
3. Ensure there is a ‘bold’ person at the head of analytics. Often a strong business and political background is needed to drive forward.

People analytics can often uncover counter intuitive issues. For example, it was commonly believed that graduates with high GPAs from Ivy League universities would be the most productive employees. However, Google’s use of analytics found – for them- that a higher GPA was not a good predictor of the best workers.

The caveat here though is that though this may be true for Google, it may not be true for other organizations. It is once again that ‘one size does not fit all’ and each organization must discover what works for them.  One suggestion is to start with a small sampling – see if that works. Then validate the insight and work from there.

People analytics do have a subjective component to them. Insights can be skewed based on people’s interpretations or perceptions.  This requires that the data is entered is accurately and there are checks and balances. Since this data is about people, it must be augmented with both judgment and transparency.

Transparency is a critical feature of people analytics – both legally and morally. Without it, people will revolt and the data will not provide the insights the company is looking for with its use. Nor will it be good for performance, retention or overall trust within the organization.  If employee trust drives the implementation, then positive results will occur. This might include giving people the option to opt out of the program. Or it may include giving employees the data that is revealed. Microsoft has done this with positive results.

Advice for organizations looking at getting into people analytics includes:

1. Just start!
2. Be curious – ask how you know if you have the ‘right people’ how do we know if we are paying the right salaries?
3. Read up on your particular business challenges – don’t copy (Google or …), talk to peers about your business

Things you will learn in this episode:

• Suggestions for technology tools to use as an initial foray into people analytics
• Future of artificial intelligence in the workplace
• What is Blue Matching?
• David’s advice for companies who are not using People Analytics yet
• Examples of companies who have found issues using People Analytics
• Areas of skepticism
• Why you shouldn’t try to be like Google

In this podcast we take a look back on some of the interviews I did in 2016 and listen to some of the past guests talk about key issues they feel are shaping the workplace of the future.

In 2016 I had a lot of great conversations with a wide variety of senior leaders. Last week I took a look back on the 2016 podcast interviews and discussed six lessons I learned from my guests last year. This week I wanted to let the guests speak for themselves, so I gathered up some highlight clips from last year’s podcast interviews and put them into one podcast mashup.The subjects range from how innovation is changing to automation and AI to the six reasons why we work.

The first interview I looked back on was the one with Jeff Wong, the Global Chief Innovation Officer at EY. In our discussion we talked about innovation during a disruptive era and one of the main points was about how innovation is changing. Wong said he believes that innovation is changing a lot and it is really driving companies to think about themselves differently. Companies are now forced to pay attention to things like training, environmental and community impact and inclusive capitalism in order to be successful. Wong says companies need to think about whether they are “training a workforce for the future, or are you training a workforce to do the function of today”. He believes that his job as a Chief Innovation Officer requires him to “do old things in new ways”.

One of the fascinating topics I touched on with a few guests last year, was the subject of People Analytics and how it is revolutionizing the way we think about employee experience. Ben Waber, the President and CEO of Humanyze, talked to me about what makes up people analytics. He said that while survey data is useful, “it is not data about behavior, it is data about perception”. Because you cannot survey people every single day, you lose the ability to accurately get a picture of the day to day workings of your office. With People Analytics you are able to get real world data in real time which allows you to fix issues as you go instead of waiting for the end of the year.

Ellyn Shook, the Chief Leadership & Human Resources Officer at Accenture, talked about the problem with annual employee reviews which points to why the topic of people analytics is so important for the success of a company. She says the problem with annual reviews is just that; they are only done once a year. She says “very little works in annual cycles anymore”. We are a society that is used to immediate feedback, so telling employees to wait a year to see how they are doing at work is not realistic. Shook says that her company realized that they were putting a lot of time and effort into their annual reviews, but they were receiving very little value from them because they “spent too much time talking about their people, instead of talking to the people”. In order to get the best results you need “forward looking, real time and on demand” data and feedback for your employees.

Employee experience was another hot topic I discussed with several guests last year. Some of the guests who touched on the subject were Monika Fahlbusch, the Chief Employee Experience Officer at BMC Software, Francine Katsoudas, the Senior Vice President and Chief People

Officer at Cisco and Karyn Twaronite, the Global Diversity & Inclusiveness Officer at EY. In our discussions we defined what employee experience is, how large companies are able to scale employee experience across a wide range of languages, locations and cultures, and the importance of focusing on diversity and inclusiveness. Fahlbusch says that to create employee experience you first must listen to your employees. Your employees will help you find the overarching problems, or “pain points” if you learn how to listen to them. You also need to look at your individual company and figure out what experiences you should be focusing on. To do that you need to understand things about your company such as what are your values, what are you trying to celebrate, where are you trying to go in the future?

Katsoudas talked about scaling employee experience across hundreds of countries and thousands of employees. She says Cisco’s belief is “one size fits one”, meaning they understand that the ideal employee experience in India will not be the same as that in England or the US and that’s okay.

Twaronite gave an example of why it is so important for senior leaders of companies to not just list out the available benefits for employees, but they should also be role models who walk the walk. She shared a story about the EY Chairman and CEO, who was giving the keynote for a company wide event, and during his speech he apologized to everyone and explained that he would be leaving the event early in order to honor a commitment he made to his daughter. In doing this he was transparent, authentic and helped employees feel that the work flexibility benefit was not just a bunch of empty words.

One subject that I am always fascinated with is technology dealing with robots, AI and automation. Three guests I spoke with who got into this topic of discussion were Robin Hanson, Thomas Davenport and Mihir Shukla.

Robin Hanson, who is the author of “The Age of Em”, the Associate professor of Economics at George Mason University and the Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, spoke about the extremely futuristic topic of what an Em is. Hanson discusses the fact that there are two different scenarios that could happen to get us to a point where we have robots that are as smart as humans. One way would be to “slowly write and accumulate better software on faster and cheaper machines”. This is what we are doing now and if we continued on this path it would take several centuries to reach this point. Another way would be to port the “software” from our brains into an Em. If we find a way to do this, the Em age could happen within one century.

Thomas Davenport talks about how there are two camps of people today, those who are opposed to the move towards automation and those who are embracing it. The people who are opposed are scared about the implications of automating jobs. They feel that this shift in our economy will create chaos and wipe out jobs for humans. The camp of people who are embracing it feel that automating certain jobs could be a good thing and that we will always find a way to create new jobs for humans. Davenport believes that reality is somewhere in between the two camps.

Mihir Shukla talks about how software bots can complete mundane tasks, and also tackle more complicated problems as well. Many employers want their workers to complete today’s problems while thinking about tomorrow’s challenges using yesterdays technologies and approaches. Processing invoices, verifying documents, generating reports, data entry, and other mundane tasks still need to be completed, but by humans or bots? Introducing mundane and complex tasks to the digital workforce allows the human employees to think, create, discover, and innovate; basically doing things that humans do best.

Other subjects that are touched on in this episode include recruiting millennials, whether or not open workspaces are the next best thing, how to identify a Superboss, the six reasons why we work, how to drive behavior change and entrepreneurs vs. freelancers.

Looking back at the guests from this last year it is easy to see that there are a lot of changes happening in the workplace and I am excited to see where we go from here. I am working on lining up a great list of podcast guests for this year, so be sure to stay tuned and keep listening to the weekly future of work podcast!

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

• Are offices going to disappear? 
• What smart offices with automation look like
• How psychology and sociology impacts design and architecture  
• Is designing a new workplace something that is only feasible for large companies with a large budget? 
• What do employees want from workspaces 
• How choice impacts engagement 
• The benefit or impact that workspace has on employees and organizations as a whole 
• Which is best, open work spaces or closed work spaces? 

Links From The Episode:

Gensler.com

Gensler Workplace Survey

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Ron Storn is the Vice President of the People department at Lyft. Lyft is a ride-sharing company based out of San Francisco, CA that unites technology and humans for more affordable rides. He has been with Lyft for 3 years and he is at the head of all of the recruiting and human resources for the company. Lyft has been around since 2007 and when they started they had 80 employees and now they have 1200.

Over the past 20 years the function of HR within companies has really changed. Back in the 1990s the HR department was more about execution. The head of the company would tell you who to hire and when and HR would do it, no questions asked. Nowadays it is more about being an integral part of the business and the HR department is more involved in the whole process. It doesn’t matter how good your business plan is in theory if you don’t have the people to pull it off.

With this shift in mindset about HR, companies have started spending more time figuring out how to attract and retain talent. The fast rate of growth at Lyft from 80 employees to 1200 in the last 10 years is a testament to their success with attracting and retaining employees. They are doing some really unique and effective things to get the best talent.

One hot topic nowadays is figuring out what Millennials want in a workplace. Storn states that there are three things that Millennials really want; they want to work with top notch people who they can learn from, they want to work on interesting things, and they want to have a connection to the company’s mission. Storn believes that Millennials are enthusiastic and passionate and they really want to make a difference. One of the issues companies have with Millennials is that they want to make a difference very quickly and then move on to the next thing, but the process doesn’t always happen as quickly as they want it to.

Lyft has some really unique internal programs that help create their corporate culture. One example is a tradition they have for new hires. Every two weeks they have an all hands meeting where the whole company comes together for a meeting. During this meeting they do a comedic roast of all of the new people.

Another program they have for new hires is an incentive to get to know other people within the company. They give the new hires a coffee card and tell them to take another employee who is not in their department out for coffee.

Storn says Lyft is set apart from their competition by their experience. They believe it is important to share stories with the employees to show that what they do affects their customers. One example of how a driver impacted a customer is shown in a story about a driver who was driving a passenger on Valentine’s Day. The driver handed the passenger a note that said Be My Valentine and the passenger started crying. The driver pulled over, turned off their meter and talked to the passenger for awhile. A few weeks later a friend of the passenger wrote a letter to Lyft thanking that driver for saving their friend as their friend had been contemplating suicide but felt touched by what the driver did.

Lyft also puts a lot of effort into creating a unique working atmosphere. At one of their buildings they have a secret Willy Wonka room where you push a picture to open up a door into a secret room. Their new building in Seattle will have a secret coffee bar. They also have a mixture of open and closed working spaces that allow employees to work in a space that is conducive to what they are working on. They really encourage collaborative working, so no one has an assigned office.

Lyft has four core values that they use to shape their corporate culture and employee experience. The four core values are be yourself, create fearlessly, uplift others, and make it happen. They want employees to come to work and be the same person as they are at home (they even allow dogs in the office). They encourage workers to feel empowered to fix problems on their own, focus on the team instead of I, and to do things instead of sitting back and waiting.

When it comes to attracting and retaining the best talent Storn advises managers to change their mindset and meet employees where they are at. It is important to appeal to what the employees are looking for. Make them feel like they are adding value to your company. For employees who are looking to have a better work experience Storn says make your voice heard. If you are looking for a new job, don’t focus on the job alone look at the company as a whole. He says, “Pick the company, not the role. The role will follow”.

What you will learn in this episode:

• How HR is evolving
• Employee Engagement vs. Employee Experience
• How Lyft attracts and retains top talent
• How can you help employees connect with the big picture
• Find out what Millennials are looking for in a workplace
• What unique techniques Lyft is using to improve employee experience
• What can employees do if they are looking for a better employee experience

Link From The Episode:

Lyft.com

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)

So in this EM world, what would EMs do? In Hanson’s view they would take over all of the work form the humans. Some EMs would do virtual jobs and some would do physical jobs, therefore they would be able to switch from a physical form to a virtual form in an instant as we are able to get in and out of our car to go somewhere. EMs would live mostly in city centers and interact with each other as humans do.

And what would humans be doing during this time? Well, first they would all have to retire. After EMs are around humans wouldn’t be able to compete for jobs so they would retire to live off of their savings and live a life of leisure. Hanson believes some humans would have money from creating EMs, because in the beginning the people who are the best in their fields would be sought out to scan their brains for EMs earning big money. Later on younger people would most likely be sought out to create EMs as they would be able to learn new things the quickest. Some may also make money from investments or have money saved up. Those who don’t have money at this time probably wouldn’t survive, it would just depend on how areas would take care of each other, divide money, and provide for humans. EMs would most likely run 1,000 times faster than humans so they would evolve much more quickly than humans have. Therefore, the EM Age may only last 1-2 years so in that time humans probably won’t have time to change much.

There are different views that people have when they read about EMs, either they think it is fun and exciting to learn and think about or they think it is crazy or scary or impossible. For people who think it is impossible, Hanson explains that we have had 3 major eras of humans; Foragers, Farmers, and Industry and in each era there has been a sudden change to bring about the next era. So the next era after ours could be the EM Age. People who lived 1,000 years ago would probably think that the innovations we have today are crazy or impossible. Regardless of what the future holds it will still be strange to those of us who are living in the current era.

Hanson’s book touches on several aspects of the EM Age including the basics, organization, economics, sociology and physics. In the way of physics Hanson touches on things such as the relationship between the body size and mind speed of EMs as well as the energy and cooling usage that the EMs would need.

In the section on economics Hanson discusses many things including the fact that EMs will happen when it is feasible to make them at a low cost. Even if we had the technology now to create them, it would be too expensive. It would have to cost as much as or less than it costs to pay humans to do those jobs now.

When Hanson talks about organization he talks about how EMs will have similar units as we have among humans; cities, families, firms. However they will also have clans. Clans will be EMs that are copies of the same human and they will be more identical than twins. And in the section on sociology Hanson talks about how sex and mating will be different for the EMs. On the one hand they are a copy of humans and therefore it would be ingrained in them to have a need for love, sex and connection. However there would be factors that would make this difficult such as their work drive not allowing them to focus on anything else and the fact that the ratio between male and female probably wouldn’t be equal.

Many people may ask how could we get a future that no one wants. It is hard to imagine anyone in today’s age that would want all humans to have their jobs taken over by machines and the possibility that humans would be without money and therefore not be able to survive. However, it would not be a result of what we all want together. No one is choosing technology collectively; it’s not something we vote on or agree on. It is done by individuals who are innovating things in order to move forward and make money. The EM Age could come as a result of decentralized competition. Each of us trying to individually get what we want could end in all of us together getting what we don’t want.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Find out what an EM is
• What the next 100 years look like with Ems
• Why should we care about EMs now
• How robots and automation will affect the way we live and work in the future
• Find out how EMs are different than automation and AI
• How will EMs live and work
• What the role of humans will be in an EM Age
• What would be needed to create an EM Age

Link From The Episode:

The Age of Em on Amazon

(Music by Ronald Jenkees)