The Next Wave of Workplace Transformation: Working with AI
In this episode we are joined by Guillermo Miranda, Former Global Chief Learning Officer, Senior Advisor, Member of the Science Advisory Board at BetterUp.
We delve into the three types of AI, highlight the repercussions for companies resistant to AI, and shed light on future-proof skills in an AI-centric world. Guest speaker, Guillermo, champions the importance of adopting a growth mindset and inclusivity during the AI transition phase. Together, we navigate the trans formative waves of the AI revolution.
Episode Highlights:
How to take advantage of the upcoming wave of generative AI offerings
How AI will supplement jobs rather than replace them
The most important skills of the future - The key steps businesses should take to prepare their employees for AI? - How to responsibly leverage AI technologies
How AI will impact the role of managers and leaders in the workplace
Recommended Resources
Follow on LinkedIn Guillermo Miranda
Learn more about BetterUp
Learn how to cultivate more future-minded leadership across your entire organization in the full Winter Insights Report from BetterUp Labs.
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Guillermo 0:00
When you have these kind of very deep transformation events, you can react to it. You can react, fear, and retreating into a corner, or you can react into, let's learn more. Let's understand, and let's embrace the future. Alright? For organisations, the first thing that is important is the mindset of how they embrace these changes that are coming. And the mindset should be a growth mindset. It should be the ability to, how can I do things better? If I have now this capability? How can I incorporate this augmented capacity into my daily routines, and redefined pieces of my day to day, how we can reinvent ourselves into the future?
Chris Rainey 0:55
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the HR leaders podcast, a show where explore the future of work with industry experts, and HR executives and world's leading global brands. So excited for today's episode, we're gonna be talking about the next wave of workplace transformation, working with AI and I'm joined by my good friend who's back again, golembo Miranda, who's a former global chief learning officer, senior adviser and member of the Science Advisory Board at better up, how are you my friend? Nice to see you again.
Guillermo 1:22
Very good. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. Cheers from Madrid.
Chris Rainey 1:29
How have you been? You're on the other side. Now you formally clo of many amazing brands, now you've gone to the other side? How is life treating you my friend?
Guillermo 1:39
Oh, not bad. I think it's it's a whole experience from being an operating executive in IBM, that we're bank going to be part of the advisory boards of unicorns that are really changing the marketplace. So it's a different value proposition. And it's also a way to capitalise off all the experience being on the other side of the counter. So I love it.
Chris Rainey 2:05
Nice. Love it. Well, I thought it'd be good for us to start especially out how you can't go anywhere now without seeing ai ai check DBT to just start with talking about what is AI? Because I feel like everyone I speak to has a different answer. So for you, when you think about AI, what is AI?
Guillermo 2:23
Yes, artificial intelligence has been with us for some time. And there is a very clear consensus that you have basically three types of AI, what they call, the scientists call the narrow AI, the general AI that we are starting to experience and the super AI that is coming. So narrow AI is as simple as the chatbots that we are used every day is as simple as our own streaming recommendations. Based on what you have seen would recommend you now yeah, the crowd or we recommend you now crease on the podcast and then you get the recommendation. So narrow AI solves a very specific problem. And it's based on a deep knowledge of a corpus, a very specific kudos for him for information and is trained to respond to that the chat bots, the automation that we have seen in some processes, the recommendations that is narrow AI that has been with us for all this time I've been in the last probably eight to 10 years very easy very clearly recognisable in internet, generally AI on the other hand is not a specific and deeper, that very clear example in front of our eyes if Chad GPT is Jenner generative AI so you have a much broader corpus of information. And the engine is trained to answer two different kinds of questions and to elaborate. The general availability of this general AI comes also with the increased ability for processing power without processing power. This is not possible. Right? So the JNL AI is closer to human intelligence in a way. Okay. Of course, always remember that everything that chargeability can say to you comes from sources that were initially generated by humans. Yeah, so is organising and repeating information. That is part of this corpus that is being trained in real time past
Chris Rainey 4:47
tense. Only only has the information part in the past not exactly yeah. It
Guillermo 4:53
only has the information in the past. It elaborates it refines but it's based on the information that we have All creators are human beings. And the third type of AI is a super AI. And super AI is based on sort of general AI working in parallel, sharing information and learning if you want the best practices, and that generates a next level of, of knowledge that has not been trained by humans, which is make a conclusion based on these three, four or five experiences. If I do that, and this happens, if I do that, this happens. And then the different general AI engines change information in network and connected work, and come with the conclusions that we did not train originally to do. And this is the deep neural connections that this availability of general AI engines, and that is coming into the future is going to be part of our day to day, not far into the future. And that's a piece of AI that we should look into hope, but also with a very clear mindset of how we will use it. Yeah. Yeah, not mistaken, is there.
Chris Rainey 6:18
You're right was talking before we went live, it's been around for a long time. But it's more recently, it has come to the headlines. And you know, Microsoft, Google taxi, we see them all launched, you know, in a matter of weeks, they all launch their own version of that, right, like chat to you. As soon as he was he launched they all they all every company was like, Okay, we have to launch. We have to we have to get into the market now. And we saw everyone. Yes, yeah, that
Guillermo 6:46
got into a record of 100 million users in a matter of days, which is a level of adoption that hadn't been seen before with any other tool.
Chris Rainey 6:56
And it's crazy now that already for me, personally, anyway, I could speak for myself, it's become part of my everyday life. You know, even even just before we went live, I actually ran some of my questions through tak DBT, to be an honest to see what it would give back. And some suggestions. And I actually Oh, that's a good suggestion. I think when you think about that, so it's become part of my daily life. What does this mean for the workplace? Right? This is, you know, this is, this is why we're here today. This is why many of the leaders and managers and companies are like, Oh, how do we approach this? What was? What impact is you're already seeing this have?
Guillermo 7:33
Well, I think that what we need to see is how this augmented capacity for human beings is coming to be a reality. Okay, the initial version of AI, the narrow AI brought us the ability to automate things, they I will say they administrivia or less processes documents, oh, let's do this enrollment, oh, let's do this. Relations, oh, let's run this usual queries. So it was taking out of our hands, they boring, very repetitive task. And that was okay. Or we're doing things proactively to help on our marketing activities with all these chatbots that you can get answers. And we'll help you. Now, Jen and I AI is actually coming to be part of our day to day exactly the way that you use it. You are the host of podcasts. And then just before the podcast, you ran three or four questions just to enhance, you don't understand. The previous version of that is I have to do research, or I have a researcher says, done that will do all and will prepare notes for me so I be prepared. Now you have an enhanced capacity at your fingertips. And that is the same for people that is working in different fields. And now we are going to start seeing more and more use cases on how this general AI capability can improve the outcome of financial models can improve the outcome of learning and recommendations and the creation of learning pathways can improve the outcome of how you elaborate routines for people that is coming back from recovery from a medical situation. Many many areas in our in the current marketplace that we can see augmented, we have more ability to do things that we have before and that will change the way that we work one more time. So if the first pass was digital transformation, the ability to digitise have data to inform our actions to iterate now, with this data and iteration we will have also the ability to see around the corner that we did not have before and that will changed the way that we operate, we collaborate we reshape some of the traditional roles. And as anything that we have seen before, in terms of disruption into the workplace, we will adjust, we will accommodate and there is a capacity of human beings about ingenuity, curiosity that is very difficult to get from machines.
Chris Rainey 10:22
Yeah. On that point, then can you talk about that the right mindsets and say it, let's say mental agility that can help organisations take advantage of this wave of AI? Because it also, that's something that I feel like we need to develop and support our leaders and managers? With?
Guillermo 10:41
Absolutely, absolutely, Chris. So
Chris Rainey 10:45
both of those are related to actually spending time with my team and having conversations not doing sort of admin. So I kind of outsource all of that. And then last night, when I went home, I had an amazing podcast with a with a D, di, leader, and it's coming out soon. And I wanted to create some content. And but I was like, I don't have time because I want to spend time with my daughter, I want to be a present dad. And I was like, surely there's got to be an AI tool that automatically can edit my entire podcast for me. And lo and behold, there was and I downloaded at all, and put in the the video and the audio, and it automatically switched to camera angles, and edited the whole thing. And I spent the rest of the evening with my daughter relaxing, relaxing, you're doing that. So I know, it's kind of a silly example. But these are the things that we can as, as human beings, as parents, is that as leaders, we can spend time on more of the high value human touch tasks, and sort of automate the rest. So yeah, yes,
Guillermo 11:49
yes. And you will find the other angle, that probably you will not see immediately is that this augmented capacity will start to show us different ways to interpret the to do an interpretation of the same reality worked, human beings, we are used to routines, and we have our own biases. So if you are editing a podcast yourself, by hand, you will carry all your experience of editing podcast, and you will miss pieces of highlights than then an engine that can run 20 times faster and do simulations of different things will capture. So you are not just automating that and make it getting time but you are getting a value of somebody that will not be biassed with your own experience that has unlearn that and can give you new ways. And then you can learn from that. So it's it's a very symbiotic process, I believe.
Chris Rainey 12:54
Yeah. Well, a good example would be screening screening, right for talent. If you use AI to do that, it doesn't carry the bias that exists of the you personally, which is then going to make your candidate pool more diverse.
Guillermo 13:08
Absolutely. And also depends on how it's trained one concept. Yeah, one concept, one concept that is very important, we started the conversation with what is AI, narrow AI general AI superdeck. But there is another concept that is very important that is related with the corpus corpus is what is the information that is being made available for the engine to process and get the answers, okay, and then the training of the engine, how you did the training of the AI engine. So those things are very important. Because first, you have to have the ethical implications of how you train the engines. And then you have to have the biases clean up for the training process. There is a lot of examples of early narrow solution, narrow AI solution that were trained to recognise human faces. And guess what, we forgot that we have a lot of people that are brown, myself, including Latins, or black people. And we think the asset of photography, photography is that we're just white Anglo, Anglo Saxon if you want, and the machine was very good. And the moment that you put somebody that does not come from this training, or it doesn't recognise, well, same with the screen in CVS, you can train with the bias of look for the university title instead of look for the skill skills. And yes, you will have a very efficient tool that will just preserve your own bias to the future is a moment that Yeah, exactly. This is a moment of a watershed moment that we can do. He said many of the things as well,
Chris Rainey 15:02
I'm so happy you brought that up. It's such an A very important point to make. Otherwise, you're just serving up the same thing over and over again. Exactly. It's one of the reasons why I have a chrome, a plugin on Chrome that basically will allow me to be filled with different types of news and media. Because if you're, if you're on media websites, or like YouTube, etc, I'll just give you more of what you already searched for. So you don't you don't get exposed to new ways of thinking and insights or challenged. So I made sure that I've installed that to make sure I'm constantly being fed different views and perspectives, as opposed to just feeding my own narrative back to me again,
Guillermo 15:44
exactly. Yeah, exactly. I play that in my mobile phone. I have the more traditional but I have that.
Speaker 3 15:52
Exactly that that goal. Exactly. Yeah,
Guillermo 15:55
I use that. And yes, I review my traditional streaming my Apple news if you want. But then I go to DuckDuckGo. And I get the NPR, I get the BBC. So you are nurturing your own view in a different way. Intentional, and that's part of of the things you have to be intentional, if you just go to the flow, maybe you are trapped into this situation of less clean up on how you set up the engines for AI?
Chris Rainey 16:25
What would you say there's been a lot of talk around AI potentially replacing human jobs. Can you speak to that concern?
Guillermo 16:32
Absolutely. So I think that change the narrative, instead of replacing, we need to talk about reinvention. And the inventions will have for sure, our potential to have pieces that are painful. Okay, so the way that workplace is configured now, and the job design is done, assumes that you don't have this documented capacity. So when the tiling and workforce planning, people can say, okay, let's assume that now we have this augmented capacity, we need to redesign, and we need to get the job done in different ways, different ways that most likely are going to be much more collaborative, much more iterative, much more value, add focus on the value add, not on the repetition of tasks, right. In that process, there are jobs that are going to be redesigned, there are jobs that are going to be retrained. But it doesn't mean that the people cannot be reinvented. And this is the responsibility of companies, governments and communities and society in general, we need to reinvent ourselves to the next wave of transformation that comes with this general AI availability. And that reinvention requires us to acquire some new skills to get used to work differently. And to be able to have this rhythm of dance with the ambiguity. Okay? And we have seen this happen in front of our eyes, with the COVID pandemic, we were able as US psyche, to very quickly shift and try to find new ways to operate a society and many things that were taken for granted were no longer available, but for in my life as an operating executive, I used to travel very, very, very frequently. And then I got random grounded or I do have services, you have many things and society reinvented in a painful way in some cases. Yes, I totally, we have to totally acknowledge that we have the ability and the generosity to reinvent ourselves. Now, the intentionality as I said, of companies, government and communities is important. Because if not, we will not be able to take society as a whole into this reinvention, there are going to be the pockets that are left behind. There are going to be the pockets that are bias because of the way that we restructure the the AI engines into the future.
Chris Rainey 19:25
What are some of the specific things that companies can do then to help with those skills in the future and help those employees?
Guillermo 19:33
The first thing is to start using AI. So if there is any doubt about AI general AI is here to help us. We need to start using is like the adoption of the narrow AI on the chat bots on the marketing profession on financial simulations. Yep, there was an adoption is slowly here probably is going to be faster. So intentionality of adaption is important take on intentionality of how this will impact across the board. So it's not about fixing one situation, it's about understanding across how this impacts the whole talent lifecycle of employees if you want, and be prepared for that. And then also be very clear that there are pockets that are going to have more difficulty to adapt. And those are the bucket that we have to double down and help support and rain falls into the future. So embrace the future, sure, have intentionality to be very inclusive and process and put the mechanisms in place in order to help the whole community, the whole organisation to come along in this reinvention process? If you don't do it, then you will have a fragmented reality. And that's the big risk for organisations.
Chris Rainey 21:01
Yeah. What about in terms of the skills, though, I know you're doing a lot of work around this area, what are those skills? What are those skills that a future people should be developing and focusing on?
Guillermo 21:15
Well, I think that the skills of the future are are based on on three layers that are different. First, there are very clear foundational skills, and foundational skills in the sense of understanding what is AI and ai ai. As I said, it's not necessarily just this big robot that is coming to replace us is the small chatbot that is helping us to book travel is the small chatbot or engine that is helping us to optimise our financial portfolio is the chatbot that is answering as the cue to create a task in a platform, but also is the general AI that is helping to enhance my job as a designer, in has my job as a podcaster enhance my job as an advisor, and how you have to understand how it works. So that that is foundation is how it was then you have to have the soft skills that are more based on your mindset, your mental agility, your resilience, attitude, that are acquired, this is not somebody, Oh, you are a bit of a mystic, we can all be a bit and optimistic. If we get the right incentives to be a bit optimistic, if we have the right neuropsychologist call it brain plasticity. Brain plasticity is the ability to reroute the loads of activity in your brain. If you have that brain plasticity, you will adapt to new things. So those are what traditionally were called soft skills. Yes, the skills that are not technical skills, those skills are very important. And things like providing mentors, providing coaching, very intention as a coaching in terms of having the leaders develop those abilities, having the science behind having the right interface, etc. And providing the space for the people to reinvent and learn new skills is important. And finally, of course, the car skills. So financial analyst, and I've been used to work on my financials analysis with this model, I will need to acquire the skill to use a different tooling and new capacity. Our day to day, it was very clear in many companies how they met the methodology of agile became pervasive. And then with COVID, immediately, we all became experts to do Agile on on platforms like mirror like mural. So up to know how to use it, you learn something new, so those technical skills for the different use cases, and the different professions are important, so foundational, the soft skills there, the mindset, and then the technical skills that will help you to work differently on a day to day on your specific use case.
Chris Rainey 24:32
What about decision making as as, as we start to get more and more information from AI? And it starts to handle more decision making tasks? How do you think that then impacts the role of a manager and a leader? You know, because they're gonna have to develop a whole new set of skills and when in terms of using AI and technology to make decisions that makes sense?
Guillermo 24:56
Oh, yes, absolutely. So look, I As a manager for some time, we have been evolving from this model of the manager make the decision to the Manager enables it. Okay. So the same way that now you enables a team where you have different players that are a multidisciplinary team, you will have get an additional layer, which will be your AI engine, and the AI engine will bring as scenarios to take action, they they machine in cases of investment or thing is not going to make the full decision is going to bring your scenarios and then you decide the same way that you just did the research before us playing, I asked this, I got this information. And I decide to use these three sources of information. I know in my my experience, I this disregard these other two. So that ability to manage this scenario is important, you will have an enhanced capacity to run a scenario. Now, on the other hand, more task oriented things are going to be relegated to the AI engine. And that's the piece we're very clear, ethical framework is important. We need to be conscious, and we need to be very clear on where are we delegating some decisions. So managing the queue of medical appointments, okay. And managing the queue in the NHS in the UK, that's important, you know, you get you get a ticket, you get an appointment. Yeah, yeah. So in those cases, if you are going to delegate to an agent to help to make that you have to be very clear on the trade offs that are needed, and have always an escape for acumen decision making, or in the cases where the ending is now they want to elevate the case and say, hey, here, we have this situation, we have the three Secretary equivalent, and I cannot decide, do it as a human. So have this mechanism and mechanism of opt out for the engine when you are making automating some of these decision making. That is we are reinventing society, because we are inviting into our society and protagonist, a character that we didn't have before. So this is very important. If you want a parallel industrial era, we invite into our families, something that now is assumed like a standard to have basically a car to be able to mobilise people. And that was a big way that we invited into our family a character that is part of the families, most of the families that can afford it, or are using that as a day today. They don't think about
Chris Rainey 27:57
my now my house is my entire house is automated. To your point. Every part is automated. Yes, even my even my fridge is smart. It knows what foods in there and what foods missing or what I need to order it and automatically orders it for Alexa. So yeah, it's like, it just kind of operates in the background, you kind of don't even know it's working. I have another one recently, which is really helping me to my co founder dusu, which is it's like a it's a a Gmail extension of chat DBT which prioritises my emails and then automatically writes responses. It doesn't send them I still have to look can do it. But it does 80% 90% of the work. And then it ends. I can go in. Here's all the emails, here's all some suggested replies. I can sometimes just hit send, send, send because it gets it gets it perfect. And now it's just saving so much time to be able to do that. Absolutely, as well. You mentioned briefly the ethical side. I feel like that's a part that's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out. Yeah,
Guillermo 29:08
absolutely. I think that look. I will in the US Congress, there was an audience about ethical AI, and what are the implications to regulate? Or have a say on how we want to shape this new character that we are inviting into our society and our community? And there was a very good example, and one of these politicians and said look guys a few years ago, when we have all these social media platforms, government decided to step aside and let the innovation go. This time, I think that because of the implications for the future, and because how advanced is the technology, we cannot let the innovation flow. We have to Take a saying. And we have to have a framework on how this should operate, and how we put limits and how we help the innovation to be fun out. And not necessarily. It's about direct supervision is probably more about very clear framework and very clear areas where we should not use this capacity. Right? Yeah. And if society takes this right, we are really inviting into our daily lives. The support to make our lives much more comfortable, there is the danger that this character in our lives, turns against us turns and creates an an unexpected and bad outcome, but this in our hands to decide how we want to regulate the situations. And this is macro level, the more micro level, in your house, in your organisation, we can make decisions. In my house, we have made a decision about social media for the family. And we have all an agreement that this is no more than two hours on the weekends. And until homework is done, there is no screens. And if it's 8pm, and you have not finished, there is no more screens. And the screens are for communication, not for playing. Only during the weekends, we have out regulated and he's working. Sometimes the kids come with an exception. Sometimes that is an important event sometimes, and you'll
Chris Rainey 31:45
be the workplace again, it'll be the same way. So in the workplace, we'll set Yeah, that I think the danger is though is that we set in the workplace too many policies. Oh, yeah, that then hyperinflation. Exactly. I think that's the concern. And I can see a lot of people going that way, unfortunately, because they're scared the fear of it as well. But for one thing, it sure is an exciting time to be alive. And
Guillermo 32:14
we are witnessing something that has not happened before. And I think that we need to consider two elements that are very important. The first one is human curiosity. human curiosity, is something that will help that to us to have a better use of all this tooling that is available. And human curiosity, again, is something that can be nurtured is not just there is some curious people, and there is no curious people. That is wrong. Curiosity is something that you can nurture is a muscle that we should nurture, as a community. And that's what brings all the difference between how you automate that an AI engine and the brain of acumen. And the second thing is ingenuity. Ingenuity is part of who we are as humans. And that also is very different, difficult to replicate in an artificial intelligence engine. And we need to resurface that. Let me give you an example of ingenuity, very parochial and domestic. But we were at home, also playing with charged up team, and with my son Rodrigo. We did a little experiment. And there was a very important game that happened last night in the in Europe. Oh, yeah. For the champions. Yes. And they return they return Sunday smiling. But what happened at home, that he said, Okay, let's try what are the streaming the free streaming options? So we went to Chad GPT. And we put how we can watch on free streaming this game, okay. And he came back with a very clear answer, hey, there are IP regulations. They are television rights. So the free streaming is illegal in a very elegant way. He told Rodrigo, now, there is no free free streaming. Don't ask me for that because it's illegal. And then rather you work in full ingenuity answers back and say, Thank you, I really understand and I believe that we should behave properly. So in order not to use any of these things, and to avoid these probability, please tell me which are the websites that I cannot touch and then
Unknown Speaker 34:49
leave? Yeah, no for
Guillermo 34:51
the website. We didn't use it, I have to be clear. Then you have human ingenuity up front. So happening.
Chris Rainey 35:00
Yeah, no, I love that. Is that is this taking all back to your role now and the way you've shifted your career? Is this one of the reasons why you were excited to join a company like better up who are working with companies to develop these skills developed? Curiosity, mindset, etc?
Guillermo 35:21
Absolutely, absolutely. Look, I have seen a platform like that up, change workplaces, I have seen the power of how using coaching as a tool, and having the signs behind, and the business outcome intentionality, you can really help manage. And it's all about this, shaping the mindset, helping to build resilience for the ambiguity, and the fluidity of the changes, and nurturing this brain agility to come out with different ways. And coaching does that very well. And this is why I feel very comfortable, and very happy to be related with a company like better up that is helping the world, the workplace to advance in a direction that I want my kids to enjoy. There are moments in your life that you say, I will put my energies on things that will bring something better for the future. And that was, I consider myself lucky to be able to be in that boat and to be related with organisations that are doing precisely that. Again, in the framework of business outcome, this is not charity. This is a business outcome, but well organised. So very functional workplaces exist, instead of so many dysfunctional workplaces that that we have seen.
Chris Rainey 36:47
Yeah. And I said before I let you go, we've covered so much. And there's probably people listening to like, oh my god, there's a million things I need to do. But if you had to leave them with one thing, what would be your parting advice, and then we'll say goodbye.
Guillermo 37:01
Well, firstly, embrace AI. This is all about an augmented capacity we have, we are living in very exciting times where societies advanced, let's embrace the change. Let's be very, very intentional on how I'm very eyes wide open into the realities and the challenges. And let's have clarity that you can create biases, you can create an ethical situation. So you have to do it with your eyes wide open. And third, trust on human curiosity, human ingenuity, so we can shape the future together and train your brain. We are
Chris Rainey 37:44
yeah, there's never been a such a powerful time as well at all to train yourself, right? Sometimes I'm sitting there for hours just constantly training myself and being deep diving into it. And I love the approach that your son took. I'm interested to see how kids now adapts to AI and because they're gonna grow up with this, they're gonna grow up with this as a normal, everyday Yeah, taught the same way. We grew up with Google in a different way.
Guillermo 38:12
And one more thing that is important is this is not about knowledge workers on and that's the other big difference. Because in many cases, we tend to think about knowledge workers, the professionals that are in front of computers. Now AI is changing the life of mechanics, changing the lives of retail workers changing the whole way that we organise, work. And that's also extremely exciting. We have the opportunity to add value into before very administrative boring tasks.
Chris Rainey 38:48
Love it. Well, this is always fun chatting to you. Like I knew I knew we wouldn't get through all the questions in time but we covered a lot to be honest. You covered you covered a lot. Yes, you did an amazing job. But for everyone listening make sure you go follow Kalambo on LinkedIn apart from that in Georgia should everyone thanks again Glover and I'll see you again soon. Goodbye, my friend.
Guillermo 39:08
Absolutely.
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