Jessica Neal and Siobhan Savage on redesigning work for AI

Here's the transcript with just the numbers and colons removed, keeping the timestamps:

00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:29.540 Siobhan Savage: Hello, hello!

00:00:29.540 --> 00:00:30.400 Jessica Neal: Bye!

00:00:31.110 --> 00:00:32.430 Siobhan Savage: Are you?

00:00:32.430 --> 00:00:35.629 Jessica Neal: Good. Does it show where people are joining, or…

00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:40.010 Siobhan Savage: I think people are starting to come in!

00:00:40.010 --> 00:00:41.110 Jessica Neal: Okay.

00:00:41.110 --> 00:00:46.469 Siobhan Savage: Where in the world? Every time I talk to you, you are in a different place on this planet. Where are you today?

00:00:46.700 --> 00:00:49.800 Jessica Neal: I am in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:52.369 Siobhan Savage: Again, somewhere different every time I talk to you.

00:00:52.370 --> 00:01:00.570 Jessica Neal: I know. Well, you know, it's summer, and we're just traveling, so we're visiting family. We were in Europe, now we're here.

00:01:00.570 --> 00:01:01.790 Siobhan Savage: I love it.

00:01:01.790 --> 00:01:03.010 Jessica Neal: Yeah, so…

00:01:03.010 --> 00:01:11.180 Siobhan Savage: I love it. I love that Americans just completely exit where they live for, like, a couple of months during summer. Like, they really do. New York is, like, empty.

00:01:11.180 --> 00:01:15.690 Jessica Neal: Yeah, well, I now live in Texas, and it's just too hot to be there.

00:01:16.940 --> 00:01:17.730 Siobhan Savage: True.

00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:25.100 Siobhan Savage: I'm in Texas literally next week with a customer, so that's good to know about what I should wear. Don't wear a wool jumper.

00:01:25.100 --> 00:01:25.500 Jessica Neal: No.

00:01:25.500 --> 00:01:28.509 Siobhan Savage: No. Welcome, everyone!

00:01:29.730 --> 00:01:35.080 Siobhan Savage: Welcome, folks! Hi, is everyone here? Where is everyone dialing in from? I'm in New York.

00:01:36.290 --> 00:01:43.570 Siobhan Savage: And there is a parade that is happening. Apparently, there's this thing in America, in New York right now, that's a big deal around sports.

00:01:44.910 --> 00:01:50.069 Siobhan Savage: Oh, I can see Los Angeles… Where's everybody else?

00:01:52.850 --> 00:02:03.190 Siobhan Savage: It's, like, such an exciting time to be living in America with all the sports, and New York especially with the World Cup, and with the Knicks, there's just so much energy around the city, hey?

00:02:03.470 --> 00:02:04.200 Jessica Neal: Yeah.

00:02:04.410 --> 00:02:13.300 Siobhan Savage: Oh, we got Idaho… We get tuxed… have I said that right? With my weird Irish-Australian accent?

00:02:13.300 --> 00:02:13.910 Jessica Neal: do something.

00:02:14.190 --> 00:02:19.160 Jessica Neal: I was like, no, sorry.

00:02:19.160 --> 00:02:23.700 Siobhan Savage: Kelly! That's… I read that like that, sorry about that.

00:02:23.700 --> 00:02:24.700 Jessica Neal: Oh my gosh.

00:02:24.700 --> 00:02:26.090 Siobhan Savage: Chicago!

00:02:26.550 --> 00:02:34.209 Siobhan Savage: Okay, that's a silly, embarrassing moment. Let's just move on swiftly from that.

00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:47.339 Siobhan Savage: So I wanted to give everyone, while we're just joining, a little bit of context into what the Work Blueprint is all about. I spend all of my time with customers who are all trying to figure out

00:02:47.620 --> 00:03:04.910 Siobhan Savage: what is this new world with AI coming in? What does that mean to work? And what's happening is everyone is kind of trying to get around the campfire right now to figure out, like, how do we blueprint the work? What does that mean for workforces? What does that mean in terms of our organization? And what…

00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:08.030 Siobhan Savage: I wanted to do was to bring the best folks

00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:27.459 Siobhan Savage: into the room so that everyone can learn together, and that we can share from some of the top industry experts around whether or not they're studying this, or they're doing it live, or there's just so many different perspectives. I am so grateful to invite Jessica Neal to join us today. So, Jessica is our first

00:03:27.630 --> 00:03:45.960 Siobhan Savage: Work Blueprint expert, and yes, you are the first, so don't screw it up. I got more to come! And I want to give you some context on why Jessica is perfect to start this conversation. So, back when the industry was changing from DVDs

00:03:46.190 --> 00:03:48.810 Siobhan Savage: to Netflix, she was right

00:03:48.990 --> 00:03:58.279 Siobhan Savage: at the front of all of this change. She was the CHRO, driving not only that rapid growth and change to how work was getting done in a hypergrowth environment.

00:03:58.280 --> 00:04:17.030 Siobhan Savage: So she's kind of seen firsthand how fast, when you go from an industry change and an org change, their operating model was completely new. No one was working like this. So she's got this first-hand experience of seeing end-to-end how it plays out, but she also has this other expertise and role now, where she sits on the investor side.

00:04:17.190 --> 00:04:30.930 Siobhan Savage: So she gets access to the best technology companies in the world. She gets to see how AI is truly playing out, the capability that's happening and getting built within market. And also, I am very grateful to call her one of our advisors.

00:04:30.930 --> 00:04:49.920 Siobhan Savage: And her role is she's really spending time with all of your CHROs in market who are really trying to grapple with what this new world looks like. So, Jessica, a massive welcome to the Work Blueprint, and really grateful to have you as part of this first pioneering conversation that we're bringing to the world. Welcome.

00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:56.769 Jessica Neal: Well, thank you! I'm so honored to be the first, and I'm excited to not blow it.

00:04:56.990 --> 00:05:04.210 Siobhan Savage: So, I would love you to… and by the way, these kinds of blueprints are…

00:05:04.210 --> 00:05:19.789 Siobhan Savage: very raw, very open, very honest, so for folks listening in, whether you're listening live now, or you're listening after on your Peloton, whatever, the purpose of these is we're trying to lift the lid a little bit on what it's actually feeling like, because most people are kind of nervous, terrified,

00:05:19.790 --> 00:05:34.470 Siobhan Savage: trying to get information, so a lot of this is just live — what we're thinking, what we're learning. Jessica, it would be incredible for you to share a little bit of context. What was that journey like? When you look back to that moment when you accepted the offer at Netflix,

00:05:34.870 --> 00:05:45.339 Siobhan Savage: you realize that this was a thing. Talk us through that moment — like, how did that whole thing feel as leading the people side of the business?

00:05:45.710 --> 00:06:03.529 Jessica Neal: Well, you know, I started when I was very young — I'll just say that — in 2006, and I wasn't the CHRO then. I spent my career growing up in Netflix, but I came in to run recruiting for them, and

00:06:03.620 --> 00:06:16.470 Jessica Neal: one of the challenges that they had at the time was that they were having a very hard time attracting the talent to make the shift from DVD to streaming.

00:06:16.750 --> 00:06:34.299 Jessica Neal: So, they needed these amazing engineers that understood how to build a streaming system. The internet was just starting to be able to actually stream video. It couldn't do it very well, but we needed a group of people that could figure it out.

00:06:34.300 --> 00:06:53.009 Jessica Neal: And then, you know, we already had within the product deep machine learning capabilities around personalization and search and things like that, but we needed even more of that. And so, when people thought about Netflix, they thought about a DVD company, and no good engineer wanted to work for a DVD company.

00:06:53.370 --> 00:06:57.640 Jessica Neal: They all wanted to, at the time, work for Google.

00:06:57.640 --> 00:07:13.570 Jessica Neal: And so the challenge was really to build the talent strategy to attract the type of folks that would help make this pivot and transformation. And then, as we were scaling and growing the company, that

00:07:13.570 --> 00:07:24.590 Jessica Neal: led to us going global, and not just being a domestic U.S. company, and so that was a different talent strategy — then to us

00:07:24.730 --> 00:07:31.490 Jessica Neal: making content, and so instead of licensing it, now we're producing content, and now

00:07:31.880 --> 00:07:44.090 Jessica Neal: we have people on sets and were all around the world filming TV shows and movies. And that was a completely different talent strategy.

00:07:44.120 --> 00:08:01.840 Jessica Neal: And so there were so many different transformations and pivots that the company had, and, as many of you know, we've become the largest entertainment company in the world. But a big reason that we were able to accomplish all of those things

00:08:02.030 --> 00:08:05.229 Jessica Neal: is not only because of the talent that we had,

00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:07.759 Jessica Neal: but because of how we worked.

00:08:08.140 --> 00:08:23.379 Jessica Neal: And I actually think that maybe — and this isn't me just blowing smoke — I think we were ahead of the times because,

00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:35.539 Jessica Neal: in this world of AI and the changes that it's making, not only with work, but with what you might

00:08:35.590 --> 00:08:43.739 Jessica Neal: deem as talent for your organization is changing, but it's something that we valued then.

00:08:44.400 --> 00:08:51.110 Jessica Neal: We hired people that had tremendous judgment.

00:08:51.210 --> 00:08:53.380 Jessica Neal: That could make decisions

00:08:53.520 --> 00:09:12.210 Jessica Neal: in ambiguity, right? We hired people that were driven and passionate about the problem, and I think what I'm learning, and what a lot of other organizations are learning, is that you don't maybe need the person

00:09:12.510 --> 00:09:20.619 Jessica Neal: — or lots of people — to do lots of execution, because a lot of that execution is, or will be,

00:09:20.780 --> 00:09:27.809 Jessica Neal: done through AI, but you do need people that have an enormous

00:09:28.100 --> 00:09:32.480 Jessica Neal: ability to sift through all of that data,

00:09:32.850 --> 00:09:35.480 Jessica Neal: and decide

00:09:35.910 --> 00:09:47.230 Jessica Neal: what to do in the lens of your values, in the lens of your mission, and to own whether it goes well or not.

00:09:47.730 --> 00:09:50.800 Jessica Neal: You know, I've been thinking a lot about

00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:57.840 Jessica Neal: the impacts that this is placing, not just with individual contributors within the organization, but with leaders.

00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:11.099 Jessica Neal: Because you need leaders now that — maybe you don't need the functional expertise leader who's really good operationally. I think you need a leader that's

00:10:11.340 --> 00:10:21.689 Jessica Neal: willing to work outside a frame. Not just a great executor — a great ideator, a great

00:10:22.350 --> 00:10:26.900 Jessica Neal: visionary around something, and then you also need a leader that's going to be

00:10:27.490 --> 00:10:43.330 Jessica Neal: a multiplier in terms of the impact that they're having on the team. Can they attract people? Do people want to work with them? Are they inspiring? Can they develop people? Those are the skills that I think are going to be

00:10:44.230 --> 00:10:46.199 Jessica Neal: massively more important.

00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:57.260 Jessica Neal: And it's just been interesting, because I've been reflecting back on what we focused on, and those were a lot of the things that we focused on that a lot of other companies

00:10:57.940 --> 00:11:03.090 Jessica Neal: maybe didn't value as much, and so I just kind of find that to be interesting.

00:11:03.740 --> 00:11:10.620 Siobhan Savage: I think one of the things that I've kind of learned from just talking to you over the years is you were very deliberate

00:11:10.620 --> 00:11:20.819 Siobhan Savage: in how you structured work, as well. So not only were you kind of creating a new platform, essentially — and I know this sounds silly because they're two different things — but

00:11:20.820 --> 00:11:45.639 Siobhan Savage: where you were moving from DVD to streaming was new platforming skills. It's the same thing as everyone now converting into large language models. So there was this shift — a once-in-a-generation change at that moment — which you guys were pioneering. I thought that was really important for looking forward. But the one thing that I kind of learned from just the time of tracking you,

00:11:45.640 --> 00:11:59.959 Siobhan Savage: watching your work was how deliberate you were — and that wasn't even with AI in the mix. So I think when you look around your peer group right now at a CHRO level, and you get to advise

00:12:00.840 --> 00:12:13.879 Siobhan Savage: the top CHROs in the top companies in the world, what are the things that they're kind of freaking out a little bit about? What are you seeing

00:12:14.310 --> 00:12:31.239 Siobhan Savage: come up in those conversations? Because everyone talks, and it's getting a little bit frustrating that we talk so much about the AI part. But the reality is not many major companies are going to have end-to-end AI, therefore they still require humans in the loop, which means the human part is very important.

00:12:31.410 --> 00:12:39.019 Siobhan Savage: So that's the part I would be really interested to hear your view on. What are you hearing from all of your peers?

00:12:39.700 --> 00:12:46.380 Jessica Neal: Yeah, I think a lot of folks are very excited

00:12:46.580 --> 00:12:50.239 Jessica Neal: about the opportunities

00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:57.940 Jessica Neal: that AI is creating for organizations and people in general, but…

00:12:58.850 --> 00:13:00.870 Jessica Neal: but there's also, I think,

00:13:01.140 --> 00:13:12.199 Jessica Neal: a bit of anxiety, right? Because there's no one organization that any of us can point to that has got it figured out.

00:13:12.770 --> 00:13:17.470 Jessica Neal: Like, everybody's… we're all learning as we go, and so

00:13:17.580 --> 00:13:23.000 Jessica Neal: not having the answers is a little nerve-wracking.

00:13:23.140 --> 00:13:36.580 Jessica Neal: Plus, there's a bunch of pressure being felt from the board, from the CEO, to really figure this out. And I think

00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:40.619 Jessica Neal: the companies that are maybe

00:13:42.840 --> 00:13:57.789 Jessica Neal: doing a little better than others are the ones that I really see focusing on a framework of AI-led versus human-led. They're really going through the work,

00:13:57.900 --> 00:14:03.480 Jessica Neal: looking at it, and assessing it, and I think

00:14:04.120 --> 00:14:19.220 Jessica Neal: this is part of your mission at Reejig, but really looking at not just a role, but a task — how work is getting done — and they're looking at it through a lens of

00:14:19.470 --> 00:14:31.519 Jessica Neal: AI-led or human-led. And I would also say they're looking through this with the lens of their values and their mission, right? And then,

00:14:32.260 --> 00:14:49.129 Jessica Neal: also, it's a team of folks across the company at a high level that include the CHRO, the CIO, the Chief Product Officer, the CTO in some cases, and that

00:14:49.320 --> 00:15:03.670 Jessica Neal: team is really aligned on this framework, and then they're aligned on the things that perhaps they are trying within the organization and their approach.

00:15:03.670 --> 00:15:10.950 Jessica Neal: And I think those organizations are having a bit more success than the ones where

00:15:12.010 --> 00:15:13.160 Jessica Neal: it's a

00:15:13.380 --> 00:15:30.249 Jessica Neal: thing in the CIO world, and they're just pushing out some different products and things, and people are trying them and experimenting with them and that's not sticking, or it's just the CHRO's responsibility, and it's sort of the same thing.

00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.020 Jessica Neal: And they don't really have that sort of

00:15:33.480 --> 00:15:38.679 Jessica Neal: framework, agenda, and shared responsibility across

00:15:39.210 --> 00:15:46.719 Jessica Neal: the organization. I see that being a little bit more fragmented and less successful.

00:15:47.530 --> 00:15:50.940 Siobhan Savage: You know, one of the things that I've seen

00:15:51.320 --> 00:16:06.429 Siobhan Savage: — which sounds a bit counterintuitive — the tech companies are the ones that you read about in the news who are apparently automating out their whole company to the point they don't need HR. That's the crappy story in the press.

00:16:06.430 --> 00:16:07.340 Jessica Neal: Not true.

00:16:07.340 --> 00:16:11.010 Siobhan Savage: No, it's bullshit. Total bullshit. They're usually selling you an AI.

00:16:11.010 --> 00:16:31.110 Siobhan Savage: Literally, if you scratch the surface on all of this stuff, it comes down to the story they're telling usually being correlated to an AI that can do some part of that work. That's how obvious it is, right? But yeah, on one side you've got the tech companies and the startups who apparently have completely AI'd their company and blah blah blah.

00:16:31.110 --> 00:16:35.629 Siobhan Savage: And then everyone thinks that the big, large enterprises are the slow ones.

00:16:35.630 --> 00:16:40.309 Siobhan Savage: What's really interesting — and I've worked for both, and I am also a startup.

00:16:40.470 --> 00:16:45.599 Siobhan Savage: I am building a billion-dollar company with under 100 people. I'm halfway to that goal, right?

00:16:45.600 --> 00:17:03.470 Siobhan Savage: What I have noticed is the enterprises were slower to the game, not because the want wasn't there, but because from a governance perspective — if you sell medicine, if you are a hospital, if you are a bank — there are restrictions in place that mean they're not going to just go out and do that.

00:17:03.520 --> 00:17:18.429 Siobhan Savage: What has become really interesting is when you read in the press, you think that the tech companies are so aggressively ahead of the big corporates, but what I've actually found is that's not super true. Because the tech companies went out, and their strategy was:

00:17:18.430 --> 00:17:30.509 Siobhan Savage: everybody, I'm gonna give you a tool, and everybody's gonna go and automate how you work, and individually, you can work whatever way you want, as long as you're using AI, you'll be great.

00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:35.899 Siobhan Savage: What has actually happened is not only have they spent way more money

00:17:36.020 --> 00:17:53.269 Siobhan Savage: than what it costs for the people, but if you imagine everyone's in a rowing boat and everyone's going in a different direction, the work is slowing down, and it's chaos. So I actually think, when I look at comparing the two customer bases, that the slower, governed world

00:17:53.300 --> 00:18:06.829 Siobhan Savage: actually has an interesting advantage that everyone thinks is super negative. The enterprises are the ones that are being more intentional about the design of the work versus the tech companies.

00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:17.370 Jessica Neal: The Wild West versus a very well-run kingdom.

00:18:17.710 --> 00:18:24.689 Siobhan Savage: Well, and don't get me wrong, the corporates have all these other things around compliance and risk — even deploying an agent.

00:18:24.690 --> 00:18:25.179 Jessica Neal: That way.

00:18:25.180 --> 00:18:35.800 Siobhan Savage: If I was to look at the orgs, I'm actually going to bet that these guys are the ones that are going to win over these guys. That's if I was betting.

00:18:35.800 --> 00:18:37.680 Jessica Neal: It could be. I mean, look…

00:18:38.740 --> 00:18:46.590 Jessica Neal: I think the opportunity that a lot of startups have is that they are getting to build

00:18:47.090 --> 00:18:50.170 Jessica Neal: with AI first.

00:18:50.170 --> 00:18:53.169 Siobhan Savage: Yeah, like me. Like, I get to design it completely different.

00:18:53.170 --> 00:19:05.830 Jessica Neal: Right, and that's exciting, that's fun, but it gives you a different advantage than these other organizations, which are very large, very complex,

00:19:05.830 --> 00:19:14.499 Jessica Neal: and, to your point, do have different compliance and regulatory restrictions where they can't

00:19:14.520 --> 00:19:21.420 Jessica Neal: just scrap it and start from scratch, and they have

00:19:21.830 --> 00:19:29.419 Jessica Neal: hundreds of thousands to millions of customers depending on them. So

00:19:29.750 --> 00:19:34.619 Jessica Neal: it's a different problem, for sure, but I see opportunity in both.

00:19:41.210 --> 00:19:46.889 Jessica Neal: I was trying to think of a nice way to say it. I see mistakes happening on both sides.

00:19:46.890 --> 00:19:47.300 Siobhan Savage: True.

00:19:47.300 --> 00:19:48.190 Jessica Neal: Yeah. True.

00:19:48.190 --> 00:19:57.460 Siobhan Savage: The other thing — and where it's really interesting for our listeners, who will generally be HR folks — I actually see that in the corporate,

00:19:57.460 --> 00:20:14.239 Siobhan Savage: larger enterprise, the role of HR becoming these kind of work designers, work architects, is super critical. Because in the tech world it's like, throw a tool out there and we'll figure it out, whereas we have to be more intentional, which means we have to redesign the work. So we're starting to see this emerging team form

00:20:14.620 --> 00:20:19.719 Siobhan Savage: across companies — workforce innovation, work architecture, work design, whatever you want to call it.

00:20:19.900 --> 00:20:44.569 Siobhan Savage: But I think everyone collectively knows that multi-billion dollar companies right now are being born from the idea of solutions consulting and forward deploying. You look at all of those investments that have just been made into building these consulting practices to go in and forward deploy. Everybody knows that you can't just throw the AI out there hoping it'll stick. Everyone's recognizing now that I've got to understand my task, I've got to re-engineer the workflow.

00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:52.670 Siobhan Savage: So there's this role where we're seeing HR now playing into the space. It's kind of like the skills folks, job architecture folks,

00:20:52.670 --> 00:21:07.779 Siobhan Savage: org effectiveness folks are now cloning into this new version of work innovation, which we're starting to see play out across pharmaceutical, banking, insurance, retail, CPG — and it's starting to theme. Do you think that, like,

00:21:07.780 --> 00:21:13.839 Siobhan Savage: where do you think HR's role more broadly goes? If you were back in an operating model

00:21:13.840 --> 00:21:17.910 Siobhan Savage: and you were designing out for one of the big companies, how would you be thinking about the team?

00:21:18.740 --> 00:21:20.650 Jessica Neal: Yeah, I mean…

00:21:22.410 --> 00:21:32.530 Jessica Neal: And some days I wish I was back in that role, because I feel like it's just so cool — the opportunity that

00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:38.140 Jessica Neal: these folks have to figure out something so

00:21:39.800 --> 00:21:46.209 Jessica Neal: crazy and evolutionary, and to be at the forefront of that.

00:21:46.820 --> 00:21:59.159 Jessica Neal: I think it's just a massive privilege. And I agree. Some days I wish, but most days I'm like, thank God I don't have that job anymore. So, I think that…

00:22:01.020 --> 00:22:13.000 Jessica Neal: Look, I think a lot of the value that was put into HR teams was around

00:22:13.470 --> 00:22:19.720 Jessica Neal: administration, comms, de-risking, compliance.

00:22:19.850 --> 00:22:38.610 Jessica Neal: Those things are incredibly important, and you had these very large teams that would handle them. As our work shifts in our function, those things are going to maybe be taken care of via AI. And

00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:49.059 Jessica Neal: I would just really encourage the teams that are out there right now that are doing some of this work to really

00:22:49.830 --> 00:22:50.730 Jessica Neal: push yourself to go as far as you can personally with AI and not be afraid of it, and get into the business.

00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:13.389 Jessica Neal: I think when you really understand the business and really what you're talking about — whether you're doing it in the world of AI or what we were doing at Netflix —

00:23:13.580 --> 00:23:27.880 Jessica Neal: you're designing work, you're designing how the organization is going to be effective. And I never thought about my job as being an HR person. I don't even like saying HR, I think it sounds

00:23:32.870 --> 00:23:45.659 Jessica Neal: weird and antiquated. So if one of you out there comes up with a better term than HR or people or talent, I'd love it. Send us your thoughts.

00:23:45.660 --> 00:23:58.480 Jessica Neal: But I thought about myself as being a chief effectiveness officer. And I think if you're approaching the organization as designing it around what's going to make

00:23:58.730 --> 00:24:01.400 Jessica Neal: people the most effective,

00:24:02.180 --> 00:24:21.870 Jessica Neal: that's just a really cool way to approach it, and that is going to have a meaningful impact on the bottom line. So you're really going to have to look at how work is getting done, you're going to have to look at tasks, you're going to have to look at structure and design of the org, and if you can figure out that massive puzzle,

00:24:22.650 --> 00:24:29.389 Jessica Neal: the ROI that the organization is going to get from that — not just

00:24:29.660 --> 00:24:32.830 Jessica Neal: for the people, but from the bottom line —

00:24:33.560 --> 00:24:41.770 Jessica Neal: will be massive. And so you have this massive opportunity to be a meaningful impactor to the P&L,

00:24:42.060 --> 00:24:45.519 Jessica Neal: if you're approaching it as: how do we become

00:24:45.740 --> 00:24:58.989 Jessica Neal: the most effective? How do we take the friction out of work? How do we amplify our people? How do we amplify decisions? How do we amplify revenue? Those are all the things that I would

00:24:59.320 --> 00:25:03.310 Jessica Neal: be dying to solve.

00:25:03.310 --> 00:25:23.060 Siobhan Savage: I love this. And, you know, we've been co-partnering on a couple of customers together, and the strategy that we're working through — and I love this chief effectiveness officer framing — I do think there has to be some evolution of how we are as a team, because I think people think the HR team is this like police-policy

00:25:23.060 --> 00:25:36.910 Siobhan Savage: thing, when it needs a rebrand. I agree. So yes, we need to all collectively agree to rebrand this thing. But what I'm seeing, and what you're seeing on this work that we're looking at, is that if you imagine

00:25:36.910 --> 00:25:49.760 Siobhan Savage: how we make money, and then where we spend money — that's basically how business runs, really simply. So it's like, how do we help reinvent the stuff and amplify — to your language — the tasks that help us make more money?

00:25:49.820 --> 00:25:55.709 Siobhan Savage: So let's focus on where we make money as a company, and how do we do more of that?

00:25:55.800 --> 00:26:02.550 Siobhan Savage: And then we look at what are the tasks that are lower value, that cost us money, and how do we remove those?

00:26:02.690 --> 00:26:03.360 Jessica Neal: Exactly.

00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:22.149 Siobhan Savage: And there's this third pillar which is really starting to pop out now as well. Just because a task can be automated doesn't mean we should. So one of the algorithms I've now built into Reejig is I can now tell you what tasks you should not remove. Because if you remove them, you will remove the expertise building in your company, which will impact your bench.

00:26:22.330 --> 00:26:30.710 Siobhan Savage: Some things are — if you're a sales development rep, you've got to do that time and do your laps in order to become a good salesperson.

00:26:30.790 --> 00:26:41.620 Siobhan Savage: If you want to be a tax auditor, you've got to do your laps and learn how to read and do the audits before you become the auditor.

00:26:41.620 --> 00:26:53.080 Siobhan Savage: So there's expertise that is really critical for our organizations. I think there's this triangulation between: how do we make more money, how do we save money, how do we protect the company around certain things? Because

00:26:54.050 --> 00:26:57.500 Jessica Neal: That's that human-led versus AI-led distinction.

00:26:57.500 --> 00:27:15.170 Siobhan Savage: Exactly. And you're never going to have a fully automated bank with no people, so the reality is you've got to have expertise still in your company. Don't remove it. There was a whole thing — we're doing a whole pile of work on this — even in government where they removed welders

00:27:15.450 --> 00:27:18.939 Siobhan Savage: and automated that, and now they can't find welders.

00:27:19.400 --> 00:27:22.160 Siobhan Savage: Or in retailers where they removed bakeries

00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:43.330 Siobhan Savage: and bakers. They now have a critical expertise gap. So there's this thing we've all got to remember — we run towards the AI fire, sure, but don't forget that in five years' time, you don't want to be in a position where you don't have the expertise, because someone has to monitor the agents. You have to have a human in the loop to do that. So I think that's what we're seeing play out.

00:27:43.330 --> 00:27:49.070 Jessica Neal: Yeah, and speaking of managing the agents, it's really interesting because…

00:27:50.140 --> 00:27:52.209 Jessica Neal: Everybody's a manager now.

00:27:53.150 --> 00:28:05.020 Jessica Neal: Right? Whether it's a person or an agent, you're managing. And we both know this, and many people listening know this too — not all people are great managers.

00:28:05.350 --> 00:28:06.500 Siobhan Savage: Yep.

00:28:06.500 --> 00:28:15.330 Jessica Neal: If you're managing agents, I think it's going to be very interesting to look at performance five years from now, because your workforce

00:28:15.470 --> 00:28:26.189 Jessica Neal: is going to be humans, of course, and it's going to be agents. And who's responsible for the performance of the agents? Is it the people

00:28:26.300 --> 00:28:27.670 Jessica Neal: managing them?

00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:34.049 Jessica Neal: That's my guess. And if you're coaching an agent to do

00:28:34.660 --> 00:28:41.199 Jessica Neal: the wrong things, you're not going to get great performance. It's just fascinating.

00:28:41.580 --> 00:28:52.040 Siobhan Savage: And the privilege I get to have is I get to sit on both sides — I get to sit in with the customers who are sleeves rolled up, live doing it, and I get to build the technology.

00:28:52.370 --> 00:29:15.669 Siobhan Savage: So I have the ultimate privilege. This is why I feel a responsibility to share everything I'm learning. Because a lot of it is bullshit, and a lot of it is noise. So it's like, how do you tell people really what's happening so that they don't feel like they're out of the loop, or lost, or getting left behind? And there was a really good question that came into the chat as well. The question was: after work redesign,

00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:29.740 Siobhan Savage: how intentional are companies about the change management and enablement, measurement of adoption, and changes in both processes and output by humans — and are they willing to invest in these? I think I can take a first

00:29:30.010 --> 00:29:40.229 Siobhan Savage: crack at what I see real-time in customers right now. I'm going to give you a philosophical thought, and then I'm going to tell you the reality.

00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:50.430 Siobhan Savage: If you imagine that this is a change to work forever — this is not a one-time change management program where we bring in a consultant and do this once.

00:29:50.660 --> 00:30:13.589 Siobhan Savage: This is a forever change to work. It will be continuous. The agents get stronger. Once you update a workflow, you're going to upgrade it again once the technology gets stronger. This is forever. Everyone needs to be clear on that, because I talk to some customers who are like, "once I do this," and I'm like, no — once you do this, you open the whole can of worms of all the other things you're going to do. So there's this

00:30:13.630 --> 00:30:15.269 Siobhan Savage: ongoing change.

00:30:15.340 --> 00:30:27.229 Siobhan Savage: That means that how we do change management in our companies has to change. Change management design, typically in our world, is designed on this one-time programmatic

00:30:27.320 --> 00:30:35.280 Siobhan Savage: view. What you have to build as a capability within your business is stealth change management.

00:30:35.390 --> 00:30:39.009 Siobhan Savage: So think about when your iPhone upgrades —

00:30:39.450 --> 00:30:46.389 Siobhan Savage: work will upgrade like your iPhone upgrades. We've got to get our people used to and comfortable with

00:30:46.410 --> 00:30:56.979 Siobhan Savage: the idea that work will evolve continuously. And as an organization — and this is where HR is so critical, not just on the work we design, but to make sure our people are equipped to do the job.

00:30:56.980 --> 00:31:19.400 Siobhan Savage: In regions in Europe, for instance, if you do not make sure your people are able to adopt the new way of working, you are in trouble, because you are putting that employee in a situation where they can't be successful in their job. So there's this whole thing around: if I go and reinvent how invoicing is paid within my company, and a thousand people do that at scale,

00:31:19.610 --> 00:31:33.170 Siobhan Savage: that's a thousand people that need to be shown the new way of working. So one of the things I'm really working with customers on is moving away from change management into self-change management — how do we create this continuous evolution in our orgs.

00:31:33.170 --> 00:31:45.369 Siobhan Savage: And the other part of it is you should measure that adoption — not based on how many times people are logging in

00:31:45.830 --> 00:31:52.739 Siobhan Savage: to Copilot, let's say, but actually how much has work changed? Like, did that invoice used to take

00:31:52.880 --> 00:32:14.960 Siobhan Savage: 7 minutes and now it takes 2? We can see changes based on output, velocity, things getting done faster — or I only need 20 people to do that now, which means those other couple of hundred people can get pivoted into other, more meaningful work. So that's kind of my take. Jessica, I don't know if you agree or have a different perspective, but I feel super strongly about

00:32:15.600 --> 00:32:18.570 Siobhan Savage: change management just feeling like the dinosaurs.

00:32:18.770 --> 00:32:25.699 Siobhan Savage: It's a bit old and crusty, and there's this kind of new-age version of change that we have to get our orgs used to.

00:32:25.950 --> 00:32:28.919 Jessica Neal: Yeah, I feel very similar to you. I think…

00:32:29.560 --> 00:32:33.539 Jessica Neal: I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's a little bit around change management, but a little different. I think

00:32:34.280 --> 00:32:41.279 Jessica Neal: the way that most organizations have been working — whether it's around change or decisions that they're making — a lot of it is

00:32:53.840 --> 00:33:01.249 Jessica Neal: built around not taking risk

00:33:01.330 --> 00:33:19.849 Jessica Neal: and de-risking things, and doing things the same way. And that's why we kind of have change management — because of course, there's always change. So I think as much as we can get our organizations to embrace that

00:33:21.100 --> 00:33:30.049 Jessica Neal: the way we're going to be working every minute, maybe, is going to be different from the next, because

00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:46.040 Jessica Neal: the algorithms are going to continue to get better and better and better, and our work is going to continue to be impacted by that. Our organizations are going to shift at a more massive rate. When you look at

00:33:46.370 --> 00:33:51.909 Jessica Neal: the evolution that happened with growth within companies

00:33:52.320 --> 00:34:09.969 Jessica Neal: pre-AI, and then you look at some of the growth with the companies that are sort of AI-first, agentic companies — their path to $100 million versus the path to $100 million a few years ago is dramatically different. Companies are reaching $100 million

00:34:09.969 --> 00:34:13.889 Jessica Neal: in a year or two, whereas that took

00:34:13.889 --> 00:34:20.120 Jessica Neal: 10-plus years before. So running a $100 million

00:34:20.120 --> 00:34:24.349 Jessica Neal: company versus a $30 million company

00:34:24.690 --> 00:34:34.999 Jessica Neal: is very different. And so those things — the rate of change — is just happening so fast. So I think if we cannot get our organizations

00:34:35.710 --> 00:34:48.990 Jessica Neal: prepared emotionally and mentally, and from a work perspective — how we're going to do this — it's going to be very choppy and hard and a big slog.

00:34:49.020 --> 00:35:03.669 Jessica Neal: And look, nobody likes change. Everybody likes things to stay comfortable and the same. But if your company isn't going to get left behind, and your people aren't going to get left behind, you really have to infuse

00:35:03.940 --> 00:35:13.860 Jessica Neal: this way of thinking and this behavior into how you operate. Because today, you might make decisions through consensus.

00:35:15.870 --> 00:35:19.060 Jessica Neal: That's probably not going to be effective and efficient.

00:35:25.020 --> 00:35:25.620 Jessica Neal: Yeah.

00:35:25.620 --> 00:35:39.419 Siobhan Savage: And it even comes back to your point — what makes money, what do we lose money on?

00:35:39.420 --> 00:35:47.890 Siobhan Savage: I think a lot of folks do this soft and fluffy use case selection. We should be making decisions based on data. Where do we make money? What's the work? Amplify it. Where do we lose money?

00:35:47.890 --> 00:35:55.059 Siobhan Savage: Reduce the risk. It's literally that simple. And when I talk about this with customers, I'm like, stop crowdsourcing ideas!

00:35:55.060 --> 00:36:04.549 Siobhan Savage: You put a massive backlog in there and it's all crap. It's not even valuable stuff, and usually it's stuff that's like

00:36:04.590 --> 00:36:24.040 Siobhan Savage: the tiniest annoying task that maybe happens once a month. Not even valuable. And I think, as you were talking, I was just thinking about something that I think is going to become increasingly more important, especially with this evolution and all the change: companies have got to get really good at being clear about what's important and what's not. And leaders especially have to be very good at

00:36:24.040 --> 00:36:28.780 Jessica Neal: explaining the why behind what we're doing,

00:36:28.950 --> 00:36:38.999 Jessica Neal: what we are doing, how we are going to do it. And a lot of companies and organizations just aren't great at that.

00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:39.390 Siobhan Savage: Yep.

00:36:39.390 --> 00:36:46.970 Jessica Neal: If you go a layer below the C-level, oftentimes

00:36:47.490 --> 00:36:52.660 Jessica Neal: people have very different views on what the goals are. And the further you get down the organization,

00:36:53.370 --> 00:36:53.840 Siobhan Savage: Yep.

00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:56.840 Jessica Neal: the worse it gets. And so I really think that

00:36:57.140 --> 00:37:04.760 Jessica Neal: communication and clarity are going to have to be a big part of what organizations get good at.

00:37:05.700 --> 00:37:12.930 Siobhan Savage: So you just sparked something — I'm going to tell you a live problem that I have.

00:37:12.930 --> 00:37:13.320 Jessica Neal: Okay.

00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:23.100 Siobhan Savage: I have several customers who have been sold AI, and they were promised that they would unlock X amount of millions in ROI across their employee base.

00:37:23.260 --> 00:37:27.699 Siobhan Savage: And what has happened is they've brought in these workflows, they've done the agents,

00:37:28.820 --> 00:37:43.259 Siobhan Savage: but no one can find the ROI that was apparently being unlocked. And I think a lot of it is that employees will fill their time up with other stuff they think is important. Like, assume most employees' intent is good — they think they're doing good work and trying to do the right thing for the company.

00:37:43.260 --> 00:37:54.470 Siobhan Savage: How would you communicate to the employees? So if I know I'm going to reinvent how the invoice is being paid, and I know that a couple hundred people do that, I know it's going to probably unlock 2 hours a day —

00:37:54.670 --> 00:38:05.039 Siobhan Savage: who's having that conversation with the employee to say this is changing, and then how do we take that capacity? Because that's a real thing

00:38:05.040 --> 00:38:16.459 Siobhan Savage: that people are getting a bit cranky about, because they're like, well, we're spending all this money but I can't see the ROI that everyone promised. Like, how would you manage that?

00:38:16.990 --> 00:38:20.149 Jessica Neal: Yeah, because they don't know. They haven't had a conversation.

00:38:20.150 --> 00:38:25.560 Siobhan Savage: It's like a therapy session for me because I'm trying to solve that problem. Would love your take.

00:38:25.700 --> 00:38:39.679 Jessica Neal: Yeah, I think you got to the problem at its core — employees don't know. No one is talking to them about this, and the business isn't being clear, and you have a bunch of leaders

00:38:39.690 --> 00:38:49.060 Jessica Neal: who are also not clear. And so the what and the why isn't getting explained.

00:38:49.340 --> 00:39:03.650 Jessica Neal: And therefore the how — it's all confused, right? And communication is a major plague across many, many companies, and it is

00:39:04.080 --> 00:39:08.100 Jessica Neal: one of the reasons why a lot of companies get

00:39:08.700 --> 00:39:15.740 Jessica Neal: slow and bureaucratic and all these things — because they just have all these people

00:39:16.110 --> 00:39:21.180 Jessica Neal: not contributing to the core of the thing. And to your point, I think

00:39:21.320 --> 00:39:33.019 Jessica Neal: employees and managers and everyone are well-intended, and they're doing the best that they can with the information that they have. But often, the information that they have is not the right information.

00:39:33.160 --> 00:39:47.660 Jessica Neal: And so if you really want to do this well, you have to help your managers and your leaders get good at explaining this to their organizations and their people.

00:39:47.660 --> 00:39:54.850 Jessica Neal: You have to get good at explaining it to them. And with

00:39:55.420 --> 00:40:10.589 Jessica Neal: your invoicing example — okay, so I used to spend my whole day on invoices, and now I have 2 free hours. What should I be doing with those 2 free hours? Well, here's what I'd like you to do.

00:40:10.630 --> 00:40:15.839 Jessica Neal: I'd like you to learn this. I'd like you to spend time thinking about X.

00:40:15.850 --> 00:40:33.169 Jessica Neal: But employees don't know that, and so they're doing what — again, they're maybe spending their time doing some other things that aren't important to their amplification, and certainly aren't important to the company's amplification. But I think if you have

00:40:34.460 --> 00:40:47.269 Jessica Neal: more of the how, you know, for those specific roles — and I think one of the things we're going to have to get very good at is teaching people in our workforce

00:40:47.580 --> 00:40:56.770 Jessica Neal: how to have judgment, how to make good decisions. There's a lot of talk out there about entry-level work, and like,

00:40:57.390 --> 00:41:01.279 Jessica Neal: we're never going to need entry-level workers. It's like, well…

00:41:01.660 --> 00:41:05.930 Jessica Neal: I don't think so. But what if,

00:41:06.230 --> 00:41:20.539 Jessica Neal: instead of thinking about it as entry-level per se, you think about it as teaching the next generation of the workforce — and what does that mean for your organization? And maybe

00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:27.829 Jessica Neal: the workers that you hire — let's assume that functional expertise isn't

00:41:27.970 --> 00:41:39.300 Jessica Neal: as important, right? Execution on certain tasks isn't as important, but judgment is. Learning this craft —

00:41:39.350 --> 00:41:52.720 Jessica Neal: to your bakery example — maybe they need to learn the craft of auditing, maybe they need to learn the craft of product, maybe they learn all of those things because you're

00:41:53.180 --> 00:41:59.360 Jessica Neal: rotating them around, right? So I think we need to zoom out of what's happening today and really think about

00:42:05.770 --> 00:42:10.920 Jessica Neal: what's going to be successful 5 years from now. It's very hard to think 5 years from now, but

00:42:11.580 --> 00:42:14.949 Jessica Neal: that would be the lens I'd be trying to apply. Let's think about

00:42:15.210 --> 00:42:19.479 Jessica Neal: the what-ifs. What if this stuff doesn't exist anymore? What am I going to hire people to do?

00:42:19.820 --> 00:42:29.690 Jessica Neal: And I think you are still going to hire people, and you still need people that know how to do things. The things you need them to know how to do are just different than what you need them to do today. Because again, most organizations grew and scaled because they needed more and more execution.

00:42:44.850 --> 00:42:54.450 Jessica Neal: We need more tasks, more invoices to send, so you need more people to send those invoices. But to your point,

00:42:55.190 --> 00:43:11.769 Jessica Neal: maybe a lot of that work goes away, but then there's more work created from a decision-making perspective, a general perspective. And maybe you have more generalists in your workforce than you do specific task executors.

00:43:12.210 --> 00:43:19.429 Siobhan Savage: The other thing that happens is — let's say you've got a financial controller who's responsible for invoice paying.

00:43:19.980 --> 00:43:35.359 Siobhan Savage: Sure, you're removing certain tasks, but you introduce new tasks that you haven't had to do before because of the agent. So this is the part where people don't realize it's a little bit like Jenga. I get these big, crazy newspaper headlines where people are like, oh, entry-level jobs are gone — I call bullshit on that again. That's not true. I think it's definitely going to be more difficult for the younger generation to come into the workforce just because there's this perception that we don't need to hire at this level.

00:43:49.180 --> 00:44:09.530 Siobhan Savage: And the fastest way to make their cuts is to not hire in — just let talent retention go down and natural attrition happen. That's basically the game people are playing right now, in my opinion. Keep headcount flat and grow. That's the bet, so they don't have to do big headcount cuts. That's what I think's happening. But there's not really a lot of jobs

00:44:09.530 --> 00:44:23.559 Siobhan Savage: being removed — and I'm talking about enterprise, proper big companies here, because startups are not a good example. Enterprises are not going to rapidly have all of these jobs removed. What's going to happen is that they're going to evolve.

00:44:23.560 --> 00:44:41.530 Siobhan Savage: They'll chop and change; they won't be completely gone. And you're going to see re-engineering happening quite a bit across job profiles as well. So what you're saying is totally true. But part of the problem for folks right now is what's real versus what the media is saying is just so

00:44:41.530 --> 00:44:46.090 Siobhan Savage: toxic in its opinion. Because look at all the media — it's people selling you a tool,

00:44:46.090 --> 00:44:56.330 Siobhan Savage: and they dominate the whole press. And that's where it's tricky, because managers are reading that stuff. People are going into boardrooms and saying, well, if Facebook's done this,

00:44:56.370 --> 00:45:14.170 Siobhan Savage: why are we not doing that? Elon cut 87% of his workforce and the tech's still running. Let's do the same. That's where you get that tension coming down, and then there's the actual reality. There was a question that came in about the kind of spicy

00:45:14.170 --> 00:45:31.620 Siobhan Savage: point of view about the tech companies. You mentioned enterprise companies are moving more slowly and intentionally, and you're betting on them. What advice would you provide to tech companies to improve and strengthen their approach, instead of typically throwing AI at everyone and having people operating independently? I think there are two things.

00:45:31.950 --> 00:45:41.660 Siobhan Savage: Chime in here, Jessica, if you kind of have a different view. But I think you have to create a sandbox for people to individually be able to be creative.

00:45:41.750 --> 00:45:55.499 Siobhan Savage: The difference between people using Claude and OpenAI is that those tools are individual productivity tools — they are not typically workflow tools. They are: help me code faster, help me do a nicer presentation, help me reply to emails.

00:45:55.500 --> 00:46:03.440 Siobhan Savage: What I look at in an org is how do the core workflows of the business run where I've got lots of people on them?

00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:10.140 Siobhan Savage: So I would say, let your people do things that are kind of isolated to their common ways of working.

00:46:10.270 --> 00:46:15.440 Siobhan Savage: But anything that is critical to making money, saving money, managing risk —

00:46:15.660 --> 00:46:27.149 Siobhan Savage: that's your AI workflow. How do I reinvent that? So the viewpoint I would say is: do an analysis of the opportunity based on tasks and subtasks, look at your agents,

00:46:27.150 --> 00:46:47.180 Siobhan Savage: see what agents are actually available in your environment, and then pick the things that are the most valuable, go reinvent those, and let your teams do those individual productivity things. There is a very common misconception in market that everyone thinks Claude and OpenAI are doing all of these crazy things. They're not. They're making the individual a bit more productive.

00:46:47.180 --> 00:46:50.189 Siobhan Savage: But the real unlock for an organization

00:46:50.490 --> 00:47:09.570 Siobhan Savage: is when you reinvent the workflow — whether it's Copilot Studio in an enterprise where every 100 people are now working in this new way, or you're redesigning with a Workday back-end service, etc. Those are the places where value and true dollars and hours are being unlocked. I don't know, Jessica, if you've got a different view?

00:47:09.570 --> 00:47:13.219 Jessica Neal: No, I think that's right. I would answer it very similarly.

00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:17.860 Siobhan Savage: Yeah, and then there's another question that's come in.

00:47:18.790 --> 00:47:34.240 Siobhan Savage: Recently, I've come across several articles questioning the long-term sustainability of AI, citing concerns about both energy consumption and cost. Given these potential constraints, should organizations be redesigning all of their processes and systems around AI?

00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:45.090 Siobhan Savage: Or is a more targeted approach warranted if AI solutions ultimately prove economically unsustainable? I'm going to give you that one.

00:47:45.310 --> 00:47:47.670 Jessica Neal: Well, I mean…

00:47:48.010 --> 00:47:59.460 Jessica Neal: I think AI is here to stay. I do think that there is an infrastructure problem, but I think a lot of money is going to be thrown at that.

00:47:59.850 --> 00:48:11.750 Jessica Neal: And that's going to create a lot more jobs. So there may be some bumps in the road, but I would not

00:48:11.840 --> 00:48:20.360 Jessica Neal: be hedging for that. I would be building and innovating to amplify my workforce.

00:48:21.520 --> 00:48:28.270 Jessica Neal: Because the train is moving, and the train is moving quite fast.

00:48:28.490 --> 00:48:35.630 Jessica Neal: So there is an infrastructure problem, and there's economics to figure out, but

00:48:35.860 --> 00:48:40.709 Jessica Neal: some very rich, wealthy, smart people are going to be all over

00:48:41.440 --> 00:48:41.910 Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

00:48:41.910 --> 00:48:47.299 Jessica Neal: that. Investment dollars are going to go into those companies to solve those problems, and

00:48:47.530 --> 00:48:51.109 Jessica Neal: yeah, I wouldn't hedge against it.

00:48:52.060 --> 00:48:58.109 Siobhan Savage: The biggest issue right now, today, is that companies are just

00:48:58.310 --> 00:49:06.859 Siobhan Savage: blowing out a lot of their budgets because they're throwing it at a wall hoping something sticks. So

00:49:07.110 --> 00:49:21.490 Siobhan Savage: I'm not an expert in the impact of AI on energy, etc., but what I'm an expert in is how this impacts the work and the workforces. And the big problem that folks are having — and most CFOs are freaking out about right now — is that

00:49:22.200 --> 00:49:29.290 Siobhan Savage: in some instances, customers have deployed agents and AI workflows that are costing them more than the people they displaced.

00:49:29.520 --> 00:49:34.799 Siobhan Savage: Right? That's real. And that's a token-maxing problem —

00:49:34.940 --> 00:49:54.580 Siobhan Savage: everybody was given a leaderboard for who can smash the most tokens and spend the most money on AI, which was just stupid. Why would you even do that? But that was their weird way of trying to incentivize people to adopt AI. And that's again back to the tech companies — and I'm one of the tech companies, so I feel like I can say that.

00:49:54.580 --> 00:50:13.539 Siobhan Savage: I also think there's a really funny chat going on — my accent is really hard to understand when I say "hours," so people are like, what do you mean? So, sorry Marianne — when I say "ours," I mean H-O-U-R-S.

00:50:13.540 --> 00:50:26.549 Siobhan Savage: So what I was saying was that the unlock of a proper reinvention of a job or workflow is actually the hours — how much time have we freed up?

00:50:26.550 --> 00:50:27.460 Jessica Neal: Hours.

00:50:27.460 --> 00:50:33.680 Siobhan Savage: Yes, I can't say it! Hours! So, have we unlocked hours? Like, how much time…

00:50:33.680 --> 00:50:35.180 Jessica Neal: I understood you, girl.

00:50:35.490 --> 00:50:45.639 Siobhan Savage: Yeah, you've hung around me enough. I've got this weird Irish-Australian-American thing going on with my accent. We'll cut that part out.

00:50:46.420 --> 00:50:49.629 Jessica Neal: Texan is a little deceiving because of the accent, but yeah.

00:50:49.630 --> 00:51:02.620 Siobhan Savage: There are some words in America that I just can't say out loud on a call without worrying about it. But I think the thing

00:51:03.030 --> 00:51:06.650 Siobhan Savage: that I love about your expertise —

00:51:06.920 --> 00:51:29.970 Siobhan Savage: we met because of your role within the tech space, sitting alongside and watching the AI movement, and we were early — we were first. And the thing that I love about your expertise is you've been at the helm of this rapidly changing

00:51:30.290 --> 00:51:47.399 Siobhan Savage: department. And the stuff that you're talking about — not only have I seen it and lived it, and I've got the battle scars — but when we come into this new era, I am so passionate about

00:51:47.400 --> 00:51:51.169 Siobhan Savage: career pathing in this space. I think this is HR's moment

00:51:51.170 --> 00:51:55.019 Siobhan Savage: to completely reinvent ourselves.

00:51:55.020 --> 00:52:20.010 Siobhan Savage: And there are so many people that will be on this call who are so fed up with the way that we get boxed in on the HR side. I have so many conversations with investors, and it pisses me off — they're like, "oh, but that's a HR thing." And I'm like, it is not a HR thing. If you imagine that the companies today are paying for all these external

00:52:20.010 --> 00:52:44.730 Siobhan Savage: people to come in and tell them how to reinvent their company — do you not think that's crazy? These people have never reinvented a company before, but they're on the outside looking at your company, telling you how to do it with no expertise, because this is all new. So my vision and excitement for everybody on this call, everybody listening: this is your moment to own this new era, to build the capability internally.

00:52:45.270 --> 00:52:51.300 Siobhan Savage: I'm also seeing across customers — and I don't know if you've seen this as well — CIOs now reporting to CHROs.

00:52:51.430 --> 00:53:14.080 Siobhan Savage: It's becoming this new evolution, which is the most exciting thing, because we are not just looking at capacity in our org as people — we're looking at agent and human capacity. What do you think about that? And I get very excited on this topic, because I am so ready for us to have this moment as an industry. Take it away, tell us where we're going.

00:53:14.310 --> 00:53:24.899 Jessica Neal: Good lord, I hope I can do that. But just like I was saying earlier, I would be so excited to be in this role right now. I think it is like

00:53:25.520 --> 00:53:33.219 Jessica Neal: the opportunity for us to really show the value and the impact of

00:53:34.160 --> 00:53:50.580 Jessica Neal: being a strategic partner in the business and impacting the bottom line like no other. And the fact that you see roles like a CIO role coming into HR, HR becoming the chief operating officer —

00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:53.710 Jessica Neal: I do think, you know,

00:53:53.780 --> 00:54:07.349 Jessica Neal: and this is a different topic, but many CHROs should be the CEO in many ways of the company. Because really, once you have a product and an idea, it is

00:54:07.390 --> 00:54:25.980 Jessica Neal: architecting the way that you will operate and work that makes the difference. When you look at these successful companies — whether it's Amazon or Apple or Netflix or whoever — the ones that are truly successful

00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:27.740 Jessica Neal: have figured out

00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:39.929 Jessica Neal: how to hire the right talent, deploy them on the right things to make a massive impact, and they have an excellent operating culture — all very different from one another, but

00:54:39.930 --> 00:54:40.730 Siobhan Savage: I mean…

00:54:40.730 --> 00:54:58.789 Jessica Neal: excellent operating culture. And that's where I think we're being pushed to go, and we have to figure out this operating model and this new construct, and I think it is so exciting. And so for all of you that are sitting in the seat,

00:54:58.820 --> 00:55:02.109 Jessica Neal: dive in.

00:55:02.760 --> 00:55:10.170 Jessica Neal: Don't be scared about it. Dive in and prove why you're there, and that you are a true partner to the business.

00:55:10.660 --> 00:55:24.790 Siobhan Savage: You know what I've seen — and I completely underestimated this and didn't see it coming — I hosted a whole pile of my customers for what we call Pioneers Club, which is where they all get together and share and learn. And every single customer in the room

00:55:24.790 --> 00:55:43.400 Siobhan Savage: was talking about the role of the HR business partner in this new world. I was always thinking about this core team doing the reinvention, but actually in every major org, the HR business partner is the direct line into the business that owns the relationship with the leaders, and they're fielding all of these questions around

00:55:43.420 --> 00:55:57.919 Siobhan Savage: what's my workforce going to look like? What will the impacts be? So there's this really interesting thing that we're going to see — also this evolution of the HR business partner — because they are moving from generalist

00:55:58.080 --> 00:56:06.530 Siobhan Savage: roles into now being requested to lead in this moment. And a lot of what I'm trying to get my head around is

00:56:06.840 --> 00:56:23.350 Siobhan Savage: what is the operating model for us as an HR team in this? And I see a couple of different playbooks happening across customers — and I serve the big and most complex, not startups — so when I look at these orgs, they either have a small COE,

00:56:23.410 --> 00:56:28.810 Siobhan Savage: which is like a workforce innovation, work strategy team — small,

00:56:28.810 --> 00:56:52.590 Siobhan Savage: like Navy SEALs, they drop in and out of the company, dropping into departments, usually alongside the HR business partner. What they are doing is advising on where the AI opportunity exists, then looking at modeling the AI impact. We're in beta right now with some customers where we're modeling the cost per agent versus cost per person, so they're not making that mistake of

00:56:52.590 --> 00:57:04.530 Siobhan Savage: pulling people out only for it to be more expensive. So they're sitting at that Navy SEAL level, and then their activation there is the HRBP. And then I have other customers that have large teams of, say, 50 people

00:57:04.630 --> 00:57:20.630 Siobhan Savage: that are also looking at org-wide effectiveness and helping all the business lines. And in those models, I'm seeing a couple of core skills pop out. What the tech market would call forward-deploying engineers, we in HR would probably look at as work design.

00:57:20.820 --> 00:57:37.740 Siobhan Savage: They're calling it the sexy thing, but a forward-deployed engineer basically goes ahead and talks to people, interviews them, watches the process. Guys, that's all it is. Forward-deploying is not this super crazy thing. What they're trying to do is understand how work runs,

00:57:37.740 --> 00:57:47.079 Siobhan Savage: pull that back, and then design the fix. That's a work designer. So in HR, you're starting to see this new role popping up — this work designer. So you're going to have

00:57:47.130 --> 00:57:57.530 Siobhan Savage: HRBPs that are generalists but also have an ability to communicate with data. You're going to have your work designers and your work architects.

00:57:57.530 --> 00:58:15.620 Siobhan Savage: The job architecture people in enterprises are having another moment — what used to be a compliance thing, that you just needed a job architecture for paying people and reward and all of that, is becoming this hot and important thing where the company wants to know. So there's this work designer, there's these work architects,

00:58:15.620 --> 00:58:27.230 Siobhan Savage: and the CHRO role — I actually agree with you — it becomes more of a chief effectiveness officer. We need to find a different name, but it's that. It's like:

00:58:27.560 --> 00:58:33.520 Siobhan Savage: I know my agent capacity, I know my people capacity, and how do I maximize the moment to make sure that everyone

00:58:34.120 --> 00:58:43.419 Siobhan Savage: can work together effectively. And there was a question that came through as well around human-agent teaming.

00:58:43.560 --> 00:58:55.340 Siobhan Savage: Have you any views on team design when you're thinking about people now needing to be managers of agents?

00:58:58.200 --> 00:59:08.320 Jessica Neal: I mean, yes and no. Someone mentioned Five Dysfunctions, which by the way is a great book — definitely worth reading when thinking about your team. But I think,

00:59:17.470 --> 00:59:27.270 Jessica Neal: when we're talking about work, and agents, and humans, and who's doing what,

00:59:27.490 --> 00:59:32.700 Jessica Neal: my guess is that inherently the hierarchy becomes more flat.

00:59:33.390 --> 00:59:52.790 Jessica Neal: Because maybe you don't need as many leaders, you don't need as many VPs, because you don't need as many big teams. So I think the design of teams gets flatter, but ownership and impact grows, because maybe

00:59:52.940 --> 01:00:02.200 Jessica Neal: you're a product designer, but now you're also doing product management,

01:00:02.200 --> 01:00:18.249 Jessica Neal: and maybe you're doing a bit of coding as well, because I think we're all going to learn how to do this. So maybe you're a builder, a designer, and a product manager. Some of the work is

01:00:18.490 --> 01:00:23.410 Jessica Neal: blending into one another, versus you had these very clearly delineated teams —

01:00:23.770 --> 01:00:33.960 Jessica Neal: okay, we need a team of this, and a team of that. So I think some of that's blending, and so maybe you don't need

01:00:34.070 --> 01:00:36.930 Jessica Neal: 5 product designers, maybe you need two.

01:00:37.460 --> 01:00:56.359 Jessica Neal: You don't need a whole team of product managers, maybe you need one, and then the product designers are also helping out in that. I don't know, I'm just making stuff up, but that's my guess — things become less hierarchical, things become more flat, and people become more generalist and more owners of work.

01:00:57.040 --> 01:00:58.529 Siobhan Savage: Yeah, and I…

01:00:58.830 --> 01:01:05.950 Siobhan Savage: a lesson we learned — we moved away from structured R&D, so we had product managers, engineers, designers,

01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:07.210 Siobhan Savage: etc.

01:01:07.320 --> 01:01:10.389 Siobhan Savage: We've turned it into this team of builders.

01:01:10.390 --> 01:01:11.180 Jessica Neal: Right.

01:01:11.180 --> 01:01:24.189 Siobhan Savage: And the good news was shipping faster, people taking accountability end-to-end, which meant velocity went up. The bad part was that we didn't realize

01:01:24.600 --> 01:01:40.630 Siobhan Savage: that when you give people AI and say go and code as fast as you can and build the most incredible things, there are other things you need to add into their ways of working. And when you code using AI tools,

01:01:40.790 --> 01:01:46.659 Siobhan Savage: sometimes, if you're not careful, you're not writing the code — therefore you're shipping stuff you didn't write.

01:01:46.660 --> 01:01:49.580 Jessica Neal: Oh yeah, you've got to be very careful.

01:01:49.580 --> 01:02:09.049 Siobhan Savage: And we learned that lesson pretty hard. One of my customers — who I love dearly and took full accountability for — we basically shipped so fast that we impacted their environment, because we didn't realize that when we built all this code, we basically couldn't check it properly, and then when we wanted to release a new thing, it broke the whole thing. So it caused

01:02:09.060 --> 01:02:13.310 Siobhan Savage: this hidden risk that we didn't know about. Now I've had to go, whoa.

01:02:13.310 --> 01:02:37.249 Siobhan Savage: As a team, we want to go as fast as we can, but we cannot be breaking things. We need these new ways of working. And that's another thing that's become pretty obvious for us — everyone talks about all the good about removing tasks and letting AI handle things, but there's all this new stuff we haven't had to think about before. Which is why the work designer is really important, because they're also saying, okay, and by the way, Bob, you're going to have to

01:02:37.310 --> 01:02:44.950 Siobhan Savage: QA your code like this, you're going to have to do this, because when we want to make a code change,

01:02:45.200 --> 01:02:57.630 Siobhan Savage: we need to be able to see all of this. So there's just a really interesting thing I'm learning right now that cost me a lot of money and a lot of pain, but it all comes back to work design. I didn't do that properly, I went too fast.

01:02:57.880 --> 01:03:05.859 Siobhan Savage: And luckily, I have a really good bunch of customers who are right along with me, who are prepared to pioneer. But you can't do that again, you know?

01:03:05.860 --> 01:03:24.150 Jessica Neal: Yeah. Well, I think within the product and things that are impacting customers directly, you've got to have a good process around that, because you can't just be throwing any type of code change out there — that could impact

01:03:24.150 --> 01:03:35.650 Siobhan Savage: everything. And it's not even just coding — think about invoices, paying people's wages, all of the things. There are just so many examples of why you've got to think about what you're doing.

01:03:35.650 --> 01:03:39.019 Jessica Neal: I mean, you can't get payroll wrong.

01:03:39.270 --> 01:03:39.870 Siobhan Savage: Exactly.

01:03:41.030 --> 01:03:43.580 Siobhan Savage: Jessica, I could keep you here forever.

01:03:43.580 --> 01:03:44.480 Jessica Neal: I'm here, baby.

01:03:44.480 --> 01:03:50.529 Siobhan Savage: I'm so grateful to have you here. I think everyone here will be grateful that you were here and sharing all of your learning.

01:03:50.550 --> 01:04:07.330 Siobhan Savage: Folks, if you want to learn a little bit more about how the world is evolving, we've created a course just to share — I feel that responsibility. Jessica, thank you so much for sharing all your learnings with us. We'll send a summary to everyone of all the best nuggets that she released.

01:04:07.330 --> 01:04:18.060 Siobhan Savage: And follow along. You can also follow Jessica on her LinkedIn — she's pretty active and pretty spicy, has a lot of hot takes, and she also interviews really cool people. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you.

01:04:18.060 --> 01:04:19.040 Jessica Neal: Good for you.

01:04:19.370 --> 01:04:21.189 Jessica Neal: Thank you for having me, everyone.

01:04:21.410 --> 01:04:22.340 Siobhan Savage: Bye!

01:04:22.340 --> 01:04:23.400 Jessica Neal: Bye!