Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / The Future Workplace: Where DEX and Real Estate Collide (w/ Phil Kirschner)

Transcript

The Future Workplace: Where DEX and Real Estate Collide (w/ Phil Kirschner) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome item change Makers to the deck show with Tim
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Let's get into it.
• 0:08
  Speaker 3: Hello, change Makers, we're back remote, Tim and I. Having
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: had the chance Tim to record in London together in
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Boston together, we now resume normal service has resumed.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: You might say, it's always it's always great to be
• 0:22
  Speaker 4: able to sit side by side and have good conversations
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: and be able to shake your hand in person. But
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: you know, back in the saddle here is a good
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: place to be too.
• 0:32
  Speaker 5: And we had a little fun right in London.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: The last time I saw you was at the end
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: of a very nice, very nice next think of dinner.
• 0:38
  Speaker 5: I enjoyed that.
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, those are the upside. There's lots of upsides at
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: our events. But it is always good to get out
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: with the team and have a little celebration at a
• 0:48
  Speaker 4: good meal.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: And I would say, Tim, if it doesn't feel like
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: too heavy handed a segue, that combination of going from
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: a virtual to the IRL to the virtual again, that's
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: that's kind of relevant to our to our guest and
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: topic today. Our guest is Phil Kershner. He's a founder
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: and principal consultant at PK Consulting. He's a regular Forbes contributor,
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: and he's an expert on the future of work and
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: workplace dynamics, and it was his writing on these precise
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: topics that really stood out to us here and made
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: us want to bring him onto the show. Welcome Phil,
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: it's lovely to see you. Thanks for joining us today.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Of course, happy to be virtual since we have to be,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: but looking forward to i RL next time. It's inspired
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: by your.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a couple of things to raise a
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: view before we get into that topic.
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: Phil.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: When it was your you know, you were good enough
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: to fill in our Meet the Guest question sheet, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I saw that your motto was a don't confuse visibility
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: with intelligence, which which I liked a lot, and it
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: could really it could really apply to the deck space
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: rather well. But I presume I presume your motto is
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: being applied more broadly here of in it. So I
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: was wondering if you could not unpack that for us
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: a little bit festival.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Sure, I don't remember I remember filling that in when
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: promped it for a motto specifically, but I do find
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: myself saying it maybe to downplay that's somewhat embarrassing encounters
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: that will happen in the world with the large following
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: particular sort of real estate or workplace conferences. People say, oh, like,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I follow you on LinkedIn, which is flattering and it's amazing,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: but always a little embarrassing at the same time. Oh,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: you're so good, Like you're so great. You write so
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: many things on LinkedIn, and a lot of people write
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of things on LinkedIn these days, and workplace
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: digital and physical was a pretty not crowded, but there
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: were a lot of experts before who I knew and
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: loved and trusted, and that number has just exploded in
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the post pandemic era. So maybe just a reminder for
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: myself and for others to dig deeper and look for
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: credibility or qualifications or how people are putting their advice
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to work, and so you don't get misled, either as
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: an individual contributor or worse like, as an executive or leader.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: In this moment, a very you know, hearing lots of
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: voices in your head, how do you know who to
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: listen to?
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: So it's a it's a reminder to humility, to embrace humility.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: In other words, a little yeah, that's good, as you
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: say that balance between physical and the digital or something
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: you've written on a lot.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: So to begin with what excites you most about.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: That dynamic and this kind of area in general, and
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: where have you worked on or encounter projects which kind
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: of illustrate what's most exciting about that, and then your
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: view point the way forward to the way the digital
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: and physical will interact in the future.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think overall in the challenge with this kind
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: of hybrid era that we're in is that, like to me,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: leaders are leading with place or presence as the input
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: and making assumptions about everything downstream from there talent attraction
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: and retention or productivity and what it means for their company.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And I kind of miss the old world. Well a
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: few things. One we never did that before. Place was
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: always just taken for granted. It was never considered to
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: be a variable that mattered, but so many other variables
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: within the employees experience, the capability of their manager, the
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: tools that they had access to, the kind of operating
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: models for their team were understood to have an impact.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And I was always really surprised years ago to find
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: very advanced, progressively thinking leaders that were studying all sorts
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: of aspects of their work to see what mattered, but
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: never really considering place to have that much of an impact,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: in particular for office workers and the knowledge working set
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: that kind of shop more retail industrial science has been
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: around for years. Right, We're always trying to take steps
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: out of a process when manufacturing goods, or take steps
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: out of a process in retail. But just like we
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: were never thinking about that in the office, it was
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: taken for granted. We had to be there, so almost
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: as if it didn't matter. Now of course we know
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: that it did, and it does even more now and
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: in terms of the most progressive even implementation is maybe
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the wrong word, because especially spatial projects take years, and
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: even companies that coming out of the height of the
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: pandemic decided to do something different may only be coming
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: into the opening of those new places now. It doesn't
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: happen overnight. But the major difference at least or in
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: particular with my recent time at McKenzie was kind of
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the first five minutes of the conversation from really the CEO,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: if not one of their direct reports, and back to
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the maybe like not confusing visibility with intelligence, at least
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: from my perspective, those leaders who recognize with humility and
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: vulnerability and authenticity right off the bat that everything has
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: changed overnight, right, There have been tectonic changes in our
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: desire for flexibility and the rapid implementation of new technologies
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: that allow us to be more remote or even more
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: flexible with our time for roles that do require someone
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: to be somewhere, and the executives that have just said
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's next, but I know it's different
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: now and set their companies down a path of learning
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: by experience every day piloting being willing to fail very quickly,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: whether that's new design for a meeting room or a
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: new camera or a new way of running a meeting itself,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: down to any other work process is so much more
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: effective in that those companies have been able to dramatically
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: reduce their real estate portfolio but continue to increase the
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: net employee experience or engagement or their kind of value
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: proposition as an employer instead of just saying this is
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the way. And from a digital perspective, you think ten
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: years ago, twenty years ago, someone came out and just
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: said this is the way I figured it out. They
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: would have been viewed as crazy. Yet we're allowing ourselves
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: to hear from execs going no, no, I figured it out.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It's every other Tuesday plus Wednesday's half today this seat,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: and that's going to solve everything for our organization, which
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: just seems crazy.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: A nice phrase virtual first but not placeless, which I
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: wonder could apply to many more things than just for workplace, right,
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: But I mean, is that a kind of good mental
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: picture for executives to keep in mind as they sort
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: of plan an optimal hybrid environment and what role what's
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: the optimal role for leadership in making sure the employee
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: experience are lines of business objectives more generally?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know if I coined it per se,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: but my framing of virtual first or remote first or
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: digital first but not placeless was a response to the
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: fact that saying hybrid in any version carries with it
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: no intentionality about how the work actually gets done. And
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I think it's really important now in so many aspects
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: of our life, from work to politics and how we
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: relate with each other, to try to hold more than
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: one thing at the same time and not make it
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: so binary. So I do think that the way we
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: are working or were working before COVID like, was not
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: working for many people, and by putting us all in
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: our homes for a certain period of time, it has
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: exposed a lot of cracks in our organizations and our
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: cultures that you cannot, I think unsee things around sort
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: of diversity and equity, or the ridiculousness of certain like
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: meeting cultures, and these assumptions again about the role that
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: place had in people or individual teams or individuals productivity.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: We can't unsee those things. So we do have to
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: continue to work on the work. And I think take
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: for granted that like someone is always probably not going
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: to be where you think they are, even if you
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: tell a team, I think you should all be here
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: on Tuesday mornings. The barrier for working remotely or flexibly
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: from some other location for many of these roles is
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: so low now that I see people both as like
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: practitioners or consultants quickly bail out from a situation where
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: they thought they were going one place just because it's
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: easier to work remotely, right Like why why wait in
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the airport for four hours to get to a one
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: hour meeting where you could just like go back home
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: and take that thing remotely. So we have to continue
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: working on the work because someone will always not be there,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and working in a way that is inclusive of someone
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: who isn't in the room at the same time not
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: only allows you to be more flexible, but is conveniently
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: also kind of friendly for future AI, you know, implementations
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: and innovations, having having agents listening into the conversation or
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: being able to watch what you're doing, and even friendly
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: for more dynamic fluid workforce models, having people come in
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: and out of a project more fluidly. So that's working
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: on the work. But at the same time, many of
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: the places where we were doing our work were terrible,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: and some jobs require that people be in or around
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: each other more often, whether that's knowledge work or in
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: like a retail context, and we can and should continue
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: to try to iterate and learn for what makes those
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: places like more sustainable, more humane, more productive, more engaging,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: and do both. So when I say like virtual first,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: you have to work on the work first, because that
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: can transcend any number of places where we do it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: But we also have a lot to do to make
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: our office environments in particular more effective for everybody.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: So I love a lot of the concepts that you're
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: talking about. It brings back so many things I've been
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: in enterprise. It well, if I were to ask Tom
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: how long, it's one hundred years, Right Tom, It's more
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: like not quite done yet. But there's an anecdote phill
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: that I tell from my past history that I think
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: aligns with this concept of visibility versus intelligence, or location
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: versus the ability to do the job. I look at
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: it as capability versus ability. In the very early days
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: of distributed computing, we rolled out remote control where you
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: could take over an employee's device and you didn't have
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: to go there. We had an executive come to me
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: and say, we need to give remote control to everyone
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: on the help desk. I said, don they couldn't fix
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: the machine if they were at the employee's desk. You're
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: giving them a capability that doesn't matter to their role.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: So don't confuse an ability or a capability with that
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: employee's ability. And the same thing can be made for
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: a location. Right there is there a correlation with where
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: they are and their ability to do the job. So
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: with that, I'll give you a kind of a two
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: part question. Do you see a gap between how executives
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: perceive these digital collaboration tools and their actual outcomes or
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: capabilities and be what can leaders do to leverage technology
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: better to enhance that team collaboration when you're in a
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: when you're in a hybrid mode.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really like all those kind of binary pairs
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: and clarity. I too started in corporate it I have
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: fallen into workplace I usually say by accident. I started
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: information security, So those questions are remote control are real
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: for me back in the day, But yeah, you make
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: me think about another problem that I see now, which
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: was always a problem but maybe has been exacerbated by
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: hybrid And that's the like, hey, here you go, here's
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: a new tool buy right. That happens for a d
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: And maybe some of it is simple stuff like oh,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: we've rolled out like a new messaging program back in
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the day, whether that was like Skyper, Jabber or one
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: of those things where it was just like, oh you
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: should have this, here you go gobye, or larger scale,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: more intense implementations like welcome to Windows seven or whatever
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: it was, and those kinds of changes frequently did not
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: go well. You know, McKenzie and many other consulting firms
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: have said for decades that a shockingly large percentage of
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: most corporate changes inclusive of technology changes not necessarily fail
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: but fail to achieve the stated objectives. So like, if
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: you have to upgrade from Windows version whatever to the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: new version because Microsoft says you have to do, great, like
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: it's gonna happen, You're gonna do it, and you're going
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: to tell your employees it's going to make you so
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: much more productive. It's gonna save you time, it's going
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: to know where, You're gonna know where people are. You're
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: gonna be able to collaborate in such with such a
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: document together. Great, but the thing that's slammed through, hopefully
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: on time and budget, and then once it's done, the
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: people in charge of the implementation, you're moving on to
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: whatever they have to do next and are not often
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: resourced to linger and do what the SaaS world would
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: think of as a customer success. And it's more than tool.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: It's more than just resourced, right, it's the I think
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: it's a function of the IT silos. It's my job
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: to get it to their machine. It's not my job
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: to train them how to use it. I have other
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: things that I need to deliver. I'm not a training person.
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: Agree, So it's a silent.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Totally right right, and training training is like maybe the
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: lowest version of that. But we found, like some of
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the researcher which I'm most proud at McKinsey, when we
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: started looking at the role that various versions of flexibility
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: have on it's called organizational health or like what how
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: employees think that the organization operates and what you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: what outcomes they believe those those ways of working create
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: for the organization. And something that we found really kind
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of knocked my socks off, which is like if you
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: ask someone or if you give someone flexibility, like I
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: can I veryware when I work now in a way
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: that I couldn't before, and they say yes, it leads
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: them to think positive things about the organization, some of
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: which are obvious, like positive outcomes around the workplace, but
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: others are less obvious, like they'll actually think that the
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: organization is has a better sense of strategic direction. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: so that's great. It's like a one and a half multiplayer.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: But if you then say, listen for when I am
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: supposed to be somewhere for whatever reason, do I agree
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: with why I'm supposed to be there, it's a little
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: bit more impactful. But the icing on the cake was
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: we asked, like, if you have clear ways of working
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: with your like within your team, that's actually the most
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: powerful lever. So going back to a question on tools,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: give me Slack, give me teams, give me Zoom, give
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: me whatever. That's like five percent of the battle. And
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: it's the teams that are really really specific in how
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: they're going to leverage the power of those tools down
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: to you know, the fully remote companies that have to
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: do this by necessity will say it's like this is
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: how we title our meetings, this is where we put
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: the notes, this is when we do and do not
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: use WhatsApp. I don't know it's really specific, but with
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: that level of administration, maybe taking five percent of the
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: freedom away from the employees but saying you use it
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: this way, it unlocks an incredible amount flexibility and tends
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: to address a lot of the coordinat issues when it
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: comes to hybrid because then you're taking the place out
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: and are able at all times to say, look, hey,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: we're here together for our gathering, we're doing lunch. I
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: don't have to worry about the business as usual because
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: I know how we're tracking to our objectives. I know
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: where we're documenting decisions. I know what's going to happen
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: if something urgent goes wrong, and I'm not constantly checking
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: my inbox for that. So yeah, the advice leaders like
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: you cannot undervalue the role not just that new technologies play,
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: but the detailed ways of working that you have to
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: wrap with that for your teams. And the technology implementation
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: team isn't going to do it, And you know, the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: goal is probably leveling up at some point to a
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: chief of what it feels like to work here and
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: associated functions who would be doing that not only for technology,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: but new HR policies and new places to really be
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: constantly iterating around, like the choices groups are making on
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: the operating system for work for them.
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: I like that idea. Maybe something like a chief adoption officer, right,
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: somebody that can.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Make something yeah adoption and like adjustment and admitting it
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: didn't work. And I don't know how many other a's
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I can come up with on the Monday morning, but.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: So we know, and you touched on a bunch of
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: it over the years. Any new technology that's intended to
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: improve productivity will ultimately cause a dip in productivity. The
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: employees need to know how to use it. They need
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: to understand how the company wants them to use it,
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: like all the things that you've talked about. I've been
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: to a couple of Gartner events over the last month
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: or so and they're clear on that as well. Adoption
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: will dip with any new technology, and their focus, as
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: you can imagine right now, is on AI. And don't
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: be confused in thinking that AI is the easy button
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: that A solves all these adoption problems. Give it to
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: them and they will automatically just know how to use it.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: It's easy, it's intuitive, but it's not and it's also
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: not as cheap as you might think. It's going to
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: cause a spike in expenses, especially while those employees are ramping.
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: AI right now is top of mind for everybody from
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: an executive's perspective. Let's talk a little bit about AI
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: specific to the digital employee experience within dex is AI.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Do you feel just about automation to maximize it productivity
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: or do you think that AI within deex is going
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: to play a larger role to create productivity in employee
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: environments to help them thrive, whether they're remote or on site.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: Where do you see AI in dex helping the most.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. So speaking of Gardner, I've
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: been showing people a lot recently. There in noaugural Future
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: of Work hype cycle, which is an amalgamation of other
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: hype cycles, and again, anyone coming from my tea is
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: very familiar with that, And there are elements in this
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: one in particular that I think have shown up in
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: other arenas over time, whether it's like HR technology or
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: a tea support technologies. Right, but they created an inaugural
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: one in May or June or thereabouts for the Future
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: of Work, And there's a pairing of items on there
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: that I have called out recently in conversations with leaders,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: maybe relevant to your question. One right there at the
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: trough of disillusionment to that dip the thing we eat
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: the most. It's what they call virtually virtually facilitated social connections,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: which I think is a fancy way of saying zoom
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: happy hours for team happy hours, which we are over
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: in a big way. Forced fun is the worst. But
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: then way on the left at the beginning, right, just
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: kind of coming into the horizon marked is something that
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: will take ten or more years to show up. That's
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: what they're calling workforce nudge tech and for the kind
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: of productivity question, that's what we all need. And you know,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: hybrid has created such a level of kind of cognitive load.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: I always go into the same floor and I know
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Tim sat over there, and we are, you know, Monday
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: morning meeting and conference room a everything was more or
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: less predictable. But now maybe someone didn't even walk in
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: the building and we're sharing space more and someone's like
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: sitting in a room over there, and my client didn't
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: come into their office either, so now they're on the phone.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Like all that is just complicating our day, and the
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: easiest thing to do in face with all of that
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: coordination text and cognitive load is just not bother. You're like,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I'll stay home, It's fine. We need like multi dimensional
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: agent powered hyper personalized advice on what to do next
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: or what not to do. And that could be as
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: simple as like, ah, you know you're supposed to talk
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: to Dom today one on one virtually, but you didn't
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: know Tom's gonna be in New York next week, So
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: would you like me to update the meeting, make it
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: in person, book you a lunch reservation. I don't know
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: all these things based on my preferences, based on Tom's preferences,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: which our little agents are probably constantly talking about in
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: the future, Like we need that to get over all
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: the complexities just to just to coordinate ourselves much less
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: find the needle in the haystack of organizational opportunity for
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: groups that might need something that you know or someone
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: who's just creating something you didn't know, and like, we
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: need that help. And it feels very far off, but
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's helpful to ground people, and like we're
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: going that way because Amazon already tells you with a
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: very high degree of certainty the thing you probably want
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: to buy next, and Netflix already tells you with a
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: pretty high degree of certainty that thing you should watch next,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: because it's got your whole like digital you know, fingerprint
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: from a single funnel, right, Netflix nos what you watch
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: because it's like one channel for one purpose and the
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: just they know everything work, notge work, is multi channel,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: multi everything. So it's gonna take a lot longer to
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: be able to mash all that together in ways that
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: are secure and like work with our own preferences. But
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: that's far beyond like automation, that's just a constant distillation
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: of the insane amount of data in ways that can
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: help us be more productive, better for ourselves, like as
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: a person, but also for organizations and our projects. Now
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: on the automation front, sure like we will continue to
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: make things like easier and take steps out of processes,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: in particular for delivery VI ty services. But I'm more
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: excited about the kind of opportunity that in particular, generative
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: AI is going to allow for new ways of interacting,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: new ways of gathering feedback, more than anything else because
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: facilities groups in particular. But the sort of alignment of
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: digital physical in the workplace is like it is so
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: hard two like to get users to report issues that
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: they're experiencing in their environment. Digital ones are hard enough,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: but that's like I'm already in my application and maybe
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I could hit a real little help button and chat
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: with someone. But as soon as you enter into any
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: physical equation now it's like, oh, it's the it's the
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: technology in my hybrid Meetingly, from my experience, users like
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: don't report that stuff. They just don't. So can we
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: use AI to make it like as simple as ever were?
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just shouting into the room and some microphone
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: hears me, I'm like, now the screen's broken, and then
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: just leave, and that's going to create an absolute tsunami
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: of feedback. But the benefit is you can you can
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: make it easier to submit to feed but I can
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: use Jenny I tools to mash it all together and
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: to sell it down to the one thing that's really broken,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: and you know, dispatch somebody accordingly. So I'm excited for
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: all of that.
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: I love the concept of the trough of disillusionment. I
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: think you can make the place that our employees live
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: in a trough of disillusionment day in and day out.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: And here's my working theory. Gartner called it the trough
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: of disillusionment because Princess Bride had already picked the pit
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: of despair. I much prefer the pit of despair, but
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: I don't think they could use it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right somewhere, And there's a continued metaphor about what
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: happens when you like up to ten, Yeah.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: Exactly, ours go to eleven. Yeah, so talk about let's
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: talk a little bit about all how all of this
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: stuff comes together and to two different movie references there
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: by the way, talk a bit about because we could
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: go down a whole spinal tap thing as well. While
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: we're talking about ten versus eleven, talk about how business
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: leaders can focus on metrics right. Typically a business leader
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: is looking at metrics like revenue and customer satisfaction and
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: market share, all the business side metrics, but they also
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: need to turn internally to metrics like employee productivity and
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: retention and innovation and adoption. DEX has usually seen as
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: influencing the internal metrics, the things that it can control,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: the things that the business can control. But I'm curious
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: how what your thoughts are about decks directly impacting metrics
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: that matter most to leaders for business success without limiting
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: it to just the internal stuff.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of it as I can't did this
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: example before, and I often tell a lot on the
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: physical side, but I think it's as dark, parallel and
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: then digital. Years ago, when I was struggling to kind
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: of demonstrate the impact of new ways of working, like
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: in an office, new ways of office design, and found
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: that it was no longer effective to be kind of
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: forcing my measured statistics. He here's what I found from
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: my program on leaders saying you should listen, you should listen.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: We found it much more effective to to try to
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: create a circumstance where they were interested in what we
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: were doing as opposed to do like us pushing on them.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And one way to do that was to work with
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: the people analytics function at the bank there worked at
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: back then to see if anything we were doing caused
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: their sort of like their needles to move, you know
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: what I mean, like you're already looking at you mentioned
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: attrition or engage, like that's already on the dashboard, the
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: business has designed it. It's important. I didn't have to
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: convince them of that that The question is is there
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: anything that I'm doing that makes those things move? And
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: I was very surprised to find at the time that
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: despite a shocking amount of confidence in the number of
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: variables that this group you know, was aware of and
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: said they could slice and dice these human capital measures,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: by place wasn't one of them. And I know if
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: place wasn't one of them, that whatever like chat tool
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: adoption also definitely was not one of them. And it's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: not the metric of it's not the input like I
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: use this tool we do, or don't run meetings this
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: way we do, or don't go into the office at
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: these times like those are interesting for the teams that
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: are running those functions. But what we have to be
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: able to do is look for differences in the actions,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: differences and the behaviors and the tool adopt in the
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: spatial choices of individuals and teams, and look for where
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: those differences are moving the needle in the existing corporate measure,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: whether it's all they have to revenue or lease something
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: for human capital like attrition and attraction and engagement, or
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: down to like micro levels, not micro levels, but productivity
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: within a particular team, number of widgets or tickets closed.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And there are there are inklings of these tools out there,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of very AI powered, like AI powered kind
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: of sales operations tools that we'll look at individual sellers
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: digital kind of fingerprint and you know, collaboration patterns as
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: it pertains their clients to tell a sales team listen
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: the person who listens more in meetings or says compliance
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: or takes their client or prospect out to life on
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: the third date, that that matters, Like we don't know
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: why it matters, but they're selling more. Yeah, that same
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: logic just being applied at scale. We will need technology
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to always be looking at like what are the minute
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: changes in the ways of working that are moving the
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: needle instead of just like trying to measure engagement, say like, oh,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: how are you feeling? How are you feeling, and assuming
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: that that's going to demonstrate the leadership that something is better.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: You have to look for the patterns that are creating
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: change at the organizational level, which probably means a combination
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: of more kind of pulse based listening, but listening without asking,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: like looking at the activities, looking at the choices in
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: a way that no human will ever be able to do,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: which comes back to the AI front, like we will
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: need that help to find those fine tuned changes we
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: can make.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: You shouldn't have to ask employees that working in the
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: fire swamp isn't the most productive place to.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Be right, Yes, correct.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: On that note, phil final question fhere speaking about leadership,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: how should corporate leaders prepare their organizations for the future?
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Here and thinking about deck specifically, you know, what practical
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: steps can they take to ensure it's a strategic priority
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: rather than just an afterthought in the context of broader
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: workplace transformations.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think like if if you believe in the
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: future where the nature of the organization is going to
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: continue to change and go from like very tight, you know,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: strictly defined boxes and lines, everything very controlled, into greater
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: use of digital remote distributed possibly like gig and freelance
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: talent or that kind of skills based resourcing within your organization.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Like it's going to create a tension between like different
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: teams wanting different preferences or having different preferences for how
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: something gets done with the centralization, the security, the consistency
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: that you need to be able to have clear like
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: ways of working. I don't envy anyone who has to
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: solve for this problem, but I think it's going to
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: make more like porous and preference oriented organizations and channels
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: for digital work, right, like instead of saying you have
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: to call the help desk, like I should be able
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: to get feedback in basically any way I want, because
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I can do that out in the real world. And
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: work is becoming much more of a retail oriented day
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: to day decision or maybe even who I'm doing work
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: for at any one time, which could be multiple companies.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: There are multiple projects within one company, and if you're
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: holding yourself up to the standard that's being set by
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: kind of the retail world A long, long long way
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: to go, especially to be able to do it not
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: only seamlessly and securely, but in a way that still
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: allows us to measure what's working and push for a
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: better overall employee experience.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: Superb final thoughts, Phil, and it was great.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I know it's a bit of a to referring in
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: the background there to finally get you on the show and.
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: Record properly, but as absolutely pleasure to do so.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for me, Thank you, Thank you guys
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: so much. Yeah, this the gray space between how this
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: problem manifest sort of digitally and physically is a wild
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: and fascinating, very exciting and challenge of our time. I'm
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: excited to kind of dex world in real estate world.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: They're being matched together, whether they like it or not,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: I think it will create some really interesting outcomes.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: Cool. Thanks well.
• 33:59
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• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Until next time.