AI and the future of business - talkBIG podcast | Season 3 Episode 10

AI and tools that change how we do business

Andrew (00:00)

Imagine a world where repetition disappeared, where a lot of the tasks that we do day to day are done through an automated AI bot. Well, that world apparently is not that far away. When I first entered the business world back in the dark ages, I'll actually be honest enough to say that I started without a computer on my desk and everything was manual.

We fast forward a number of years now and not only do we all have computers on our desk, but everything's digital, it's in the cloud and we're seeing people using AI to create images of themselves, create entertainment and to do their work.

My name's Andrew Sykes. I've been a business accountant for 30 or so years and I talk about business, money, the economy and how to help you get ahead.

It's fair to say that the world, particularly the business world, is unrecognisable from what it was back when I started. But what does this mean for the future of our businesses? We do see a lot of fear around this and a lot of change. I was having some coffees with some friends this morning and they said to me, accounting is going to be one of the jobs that go. And I laugh a little bit about that because we've heard for years that this is going to be the case, that jobs will be replaced.

When we talk about AI, we look at the introduction of technology in the past. I was listening to a really good podcast, which spoke about the introduction of the spreadsheet. Now, this podcast — it's from Planet Money NPR and it's well worth a listen. And it talks about an article that they read on the introduction of the spreadsheet.

Now, in their podcast, they reference that since 1980, 400,000 jobs have been lost in bookkeeping and accounting. Those jobs have disappeared, but accounting services have got cheaper. So, we've actually seen a growth of 600,000 accounting jobs. There's an industry that's future-proofed itself.

Kim Seeling Smith, business futurist

Andrew

My guest today, Kim Seeling Smith, is going to have a talk to us about how we can future-proof our business. Welcome to talkBIG and welcome to talkBIG, Kim.

Kim 

Thank you, Andrew, very much excited about our conversation today.

Andrew

So, Kim, you're a futurist. Do you want to tell us a little about the work you do and what does a futurist do?

Kim 

I actually fashion myself as a business futurist. I have a very narrow niche. Back in the day, I too was trained as an accountant. In fact, I consider myself a recovering accountant, but I've always had that commercial hat on. Then I transitioned into recruitment, which got me from the United States, which I know that your listeners can tell that I'm not from around these parts. So, recruitment led me to first New Zealand and then Australia.

I spent 15 years in recruitment. So, I've got the commercial side and the people side. But then in 2015-ish, I became fascinated by future trends, starting with this critical skill shortage that back in 2015, people were telling me I was crazy. “What do you mean there are going to be more jobs than people, especially in accounting? Are you kidding? Do you know the number of grads that we're churning out? We will never get to that place.”

Well, guess what? We're here now and it's just going to get worse. We can talk a little bit about that. 
So, that was really what started me on my futurist journey, becoming fascinated by the critical skill shortage that was coming. But then also I started thinking, well, what else is going to affect business? And the workplace and the workforce, which is really my wheelhouse. And so that's why I call myself a business futurist. 

So, what I do is I help my clients, and I work with organisations in all industries. I think the latest count was 33 industries, but I work with organisations to take a look prospectively at the future to understand, quite honestly, to understand not only what those future trends are, but what those trends, those truly disruptive trends, they could break their business, what they are and how they can wrap their heads around them, how they can future proof themselves to not only avoid the downside of those disruptions, but also seize the opportunities of those disruptions. Because with every challenge is an equal and opposite opportunity, I feel.
 

What is AI?

Andrew

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. So yeah, you have worked, you've written your own book, 'Mind Reading for Managers'. You've contributed to '101 great ways to enhance your career,' and are widely seen as an AI expert. 

Can you define for me, based on all of that, what is AI? It's a term we hear a lot, but what is AI?

Kim

What is AI? Well, AI is a lot of things. So, if you think about AI, we've had we've been talking about AI since the, well, 70 years So it's nothing When I was in university— I have a double major in accounting and computer science. And I remember learning about AI back in the dark ages, as you say, I'll leave the year out of it. But I remember learning about AI. 

Now, AI initially was machine learning. So you would hire programmers to come in on many of your clients have done this especially if they've worked for the larger corporates to come in and to put algorithms or software programs that would analyse large amounts of data and make assumptions about them fast forward to the dawn of ChatGPT that took everybody by surprise and now we are talking to— whether it be with our fingers or our voices— we're talking to an artificial intelligence. So that is an intelligence that's not a human intelligence, obviously. 

AI as human augmentation, not replacement
I like to say that our future is not AI or humans. Our is humans augmented with AI using the artificial intelligence as a tool, much like you referenced in Planet Money podcast, where accountants used to use spread, well still do use spreadsheets as a tool. It's no different. It's a gazillion times more powerful and more effective. Now we're in nascent stages of AI, even though we have moved so far so fast. What you referenced in your introduction about bots working with bots, for the last year, I've been saying 2025 is the year of the autonomous agent or the AI agent, bots that are strung together to help us do what we do better, faster, more effectively.

It hasn't quite come to fruition yet, but we are really on the cusp. So, if you think about AI, it can be as simple Siri or Alexa, or as complex as some of those automations that we can put together now using those bots to go book hotel reservations with very little intervention from us. So, it's a—

Andrew

Yeah, it's a really great way of looking at it. And from what you said, what I'm starting to get the impression of, is we started where we had, for example, a spreadsheet or we had an algorithm, and we would have to go and type into it and do everything. Whereas now with an AI bot, I can say, type this into Excel or prepare this spreadsheet. Or as you said, go make this reservation for me.

And it will go ahead and do that. So, it's about the starting to use the tools for us rather than us having to use the tools through the computer.

Kim

Exactly. And it's the interface and we can get into in a minute, but I think the interface is key and it's key from a couple of different reasons. 

How do you future-proof a business in an AI world?

Andrew:

So there does seem to be this assumption of AI taking over. I would cast that back on the journey that accountants have gone through. Which I know the best, because we've been told, we were told a decade ago that there's automation and accounting software, accounting's going to disappear. When the spreadsheet came out, 40 years ago, we were told accounting is going to disappear. But what's happened is that accountants have actually moved along the scale and they've done more and more sophisticated tasks. So, where we used to be down here, we're now up here. The service cost has dropped. We now have more customers, and we can serve more customers at a higher value. When we're talking about future proofing business, are we starting to look at replacing low value, my customer won't pay for it, so I'll automate it. Is that where we keep the human in the loop?

Kim

Yes, and. It's interesting because the technology, Bill Gates has said that we are all going to be made redundant in 10 years. I disagree with that. And I disagree with that for much of the same reasons that you had just talked about. Number I believe that far sooner than 10 years will be capable of doing what most, if not all humans are doing. However, it's the human beings that will AI to replace us. What I'm seeing, which is a scary and it has something to do with some of the other disruptions that I talk about. I talk about the poly crisis, the amalgamation of things like climate change, the shifting geopolitical landscape, economic headwinds, interest inflation.

And the rise of the empowered workforce where the critical skill shortage meets a workforce that is more discerning. Well, if you add all three of those disruptions up, in the middle of it, what we see a constantly evolving and changing workforce. Now, what is really exciting to me is that human beings are endlessly creative. And just like in all of the other industrial we have created more things for us to do.

Yes, my first day at KPMG, I spent the entire day on a 10 key calculator with a tape, putting or adding together a stocktake register. Now you wouldn't hire a new grad to do that, but you don't hire fewer new grads anymore. They're just, as you said, doing different things. So, what I see for the future is that all of the routine, the mundane, the tedious, the repetitive work will be automated.

Andrew:

Hahaha.

Be discerning in what you automate.

Kim (11:47)

And the scary thing that I see is that the speed at which it's done, because there are a lot of senior leaders, probably a lot of senior leaders listening to this podcast or watching this podcast that sceptical, hesitant or downright fearful. And that's a healthy thing. what I see is you take the other two disruptions, especially the poly crisis, and there's a lot of pressure from shareholders on return on investment and on cost savings right now. And one of the easiest dare I say ways to do that is to automate, automate through cost savings. Now that's okay, but what it does is it sets us up for failure because we don't think through what we're going to automate, how it fits into what we do, how it fits value that we add to the client.

And then we may end up making people redundant that have some skills that maybe their tasks have gone away through automation, but they've got some skills and some strengths that we can redeploy. So, I'm fearful of seeing this knee-jerk reaction. And PwC actually talks about Australia is a little bit behind the times in terms of embracing AI. And I'm afraid that the thing that will propel us to embrace AI is this focus on cost saving. So, I would say that, yes, we can absolutely use it to automate and we should, but we also need to take the humans that work for us on the journey and understand how to redeploy them, how to upskill, to re-skill them so that we are prepared for that future.
 

How to find the right use-case for AI in your business

Andrew:

Yeah, because we've certainly had quite a journey on AI. I know for myself, I was part of the first group that got to trial Copilot, the Microsoft Copilot AI. I got a license. I thought, this is great. It does automate some emails. But I found I just started typing shorter emails and doing it myself, recognising that most of what was in there was boilerplate, anyway. So, I actually stopped using it. Because I think I recognise what you're talking about is that you can just take those tasks and automate them. But if that automation doesn't provide value, you won't use the tool. So, I'm now back on and—

Kim:

That's right.

Andrew:

Yeah, it's quite funny. After you presented to the RSM conference, I jumped on and I actually loaded up a set of accounts into Copilot, asked it to summarise. And it gave me a very good summary. Yeah, there was some work to be done. And I could see that it could do like 80% of the work, but I'd have to do the next 20%.

But what really got me hooked was when I said, turn this into a movie script and it wrote a movie script, and it actually wasn't a bad little movie. So, how can we, as business leaders, how can we look at our business and get away from that idea of, okay, well, AI will do my emails for me. It'll do these mundane tasks. What kind of tasks can we look at to create value or what kind of process can we look to get to that point?

Kim:

So, I was talking to somebody from the not too long ago who wants to mentor with me on how to use AI in her business better. She's a small business owner. She's got a handful of staff. she said something that I absolutely loved. She said that was an early adopter, but she wants to continue to automate more and more and more. But she not for the sake of automation.

What I do is I ask what do I need to do right now to achieve the goal that I'm trying to achieve? And is it better for me to do it? Is it better for me to find an application, an AI process to do it? Or is it better for us to do it together? And she started talking about it as an entity. And I thought, that's a great way to look at this. So, from a business standpoint, if you are a senior leader in the business, you need to understand, obviously, who your client what value you provide, and then break down those processes. So, what processes do you need go through to make sure that you are serving your clients and providing the value? Which of those processes can be automated? Which can used on human talent and augmented, and which are they require only human talent? So that's kind of a three-step process that I've been playing with for a while, even before conversation with my friend. But it starts with the business processes themselves. So, what do I need to achieve and how can that be achieved better, faster, more. And really gets into something that we have been doing for a very long time in terms of strategic workforce planning: understanding what assets— now I hate referring to human beings as assets, but from a skills perspective— what assets we have and how we can deploy them to get our work done. We now have another dimension, which is automation and AI. So, we need to have that into the mix as well and ask ourselves the same thing. What assets do we have in automation? Is it humans or is it a combination of both?

Andrew:

Yes, so summarising what I heard from that. For me to follow what you'd said then, I would start with one, do I need to do it myself? Two, can I do it quicker or cheaper if I need to do it? And three, does it add value? And I think that last one could be an easy piece to miss is the value add.

Kim:

I'd turn that around just a little bit, Andrew, because the danger of asking what do I need to do myself is that some people think that they need to do everything themselves. You know, in leadership development training I've done over the last 15, 16 years, that is the number one thing that I run up against is, you know, delegation. People are terrible at delegating. So, I wouldn't actually start with this question. I would start with the question of what is the most effective way to get this done?

Andrew:

Yeah.

Kim:

And what tools can I to do it better, faster, more effectively and cheaper.

AI as a coaching and productivity tool

Andrew:

Yeah, and that's a great outcome. Sort of if you consider, would I give this to a staff member? Could I give it to an AI bot? But that's really from what you were saying earlier on that stage one of where AI is at... You're sort of talking about co-working bots that enhance what you're doing. What does that kind of future look like?

Kim:

Well, it takes a couple of different I look at AI and you know, when you asked me that first question, what is AI? Gosh, that's such a big field, But I'm a keep it simple... You know, some of my clients joke with me, my name is Kim Seeling Smith. My initials are KSS, like the KISS principle. And I am, I'm a keep it simple kind of gal. I always have been.

Andrew:

Hahaha

Kim:

So, when I think about AI, I think about those large scale are called embedded or enterprise AI. So, these are things that you can still hire a to do: robotic process engineering and to automate a number of things. Now, I really hesitate to do that in this day and age because there are so many embedded applications into the software that you're already using. So, if you're on SAP, for example, or if you're on Salesforce or…

Andrew:

Mm.

Kim:

Whatever software system you're on, whatever accounting system you're on, there's a lot of AI already being embedded into that. But that's the enterprise. This is the AI technology that we're going to use as a company. What interests me possibly even more than that is the type of AI that we as individuals can use. So how do we do what we do better, faster, more effectively?

Andrew:

Hmm.

Kim:

And getting just using it to generate content, to generate And I have a fun little game that I've started to play with my I will ask it what I should be using it for. And it now knows me well enough. Yeah. So, I ask, I treat it as both an assistant and a And the mentoring part is—

Andrew:

Okay.

Kim:

"What am I not seeing?" What am I not seeing in my own business? What should you be doing for me that I'm doing What are my competitors doing? It's got a wealth of information about that. So, these are things that regardless of are you on a suite, a Microsoft suite of applications, do you use Copilot? Do you use the Google suite in Gemini and Notebook LM and…

Andrew:

Mmm.

Kim:

which is one of my AI tools, by the way. Do you use that suite of products? Do you use an amalgamation? It doesn't actually matter as long as you are following your protocol for your company's data security, which is really, really important. You can use, you can explore other AI applications and learn to play with those and to understand how those can help all of the tools at your fingertips.

And if you don't whether or not a tool exists, ask ChatGPT or your favourite LLM, or there's another website called theresanaiforthat.com that you can ask as well.

Andrew:

Yes, so you're taking it beyond just a production tool to a coaching type of tool.

Kim:

That is, oh, fascinating that you say that. There's new research out that shows how AI was used in 2024 and previously and how AI is being used in 2025. And one of the use cases that has really come up in 2025 is that coaching aspect, both for personal coaching, lifestyle coaching, but also how to manage difficult conversations, how to performance manage employees. Now, I still wouldn't do that without HR support or legal support, but it's...

Andrew:

Hahaha

Kim:

it's a great starting point to ask those to use it as coaching. I did a use case for a group of high net retired people. And one of the things that I've been talking to them about is using it to pass on your digital legacy to your children and grandchildren.

So, using things like HeyGen to create a digital avatar and to pass along that can evergreen and stay around long after you're gone. you're really only limited through your own creativity and imagination.

Andrew:

So, I could finish this call up and then go to Copilot and type in as a prompt, analyse across Outlook, Teams, my diary, my phone records, and tell me where I've wasted time in the last week. And then interrogate that data, say, well, tell me what I could do differently next week.

Kim:

Yes, exactly.

Andrew:

So, turning into a personal productivity tool as well as in producing.

Job displacement and creation in the age of AI

Andrew:

So, we've had a bit of a talk about how AI is changing business. That's fascinating, all of that. But if we start looking at a business application, what sort of jobs? I mean, there's a lot of fear mongering AI is going to take your job. What sort of jobs are actually being replaced by AI?

Kim:

Yeah, well, the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs came out in February, I think, of this year, January, February of this year. And what's really encouraging, and this is such an important point for the listeners out there, what's really encouraging is that the WEF says that by 2030, so five short years away, that the new numbers are 92 million jobs will be displaced.

And if you look at that, most of those jobs are those routine tactical, really repetitive skill sets. But 172, no, 170 million more, so here's where I'm testing my math skills, 170 more will be created. So that's a net increase of, if I'm doing my math right, 78 million jobs. So, what are these jobs? Well, we don't know in a large part because again, human beings are endlessly creative. So, if are sitting here watching this podcast, listening to this podcast, figure out a way how to automate the things that you shouldn't be doing because they're low value tasks and free up your time to think about how to better serve our clients. What new products and services do they need?

Those are part of the 78 million new jobs that will be created. So, the ones that are being displaced, accountants and bookkeepers, well, that's, and we've talked about that. Well, okay, we don't need to lose the people. We can redeploy the people to do other things. Things like data processing, I would imagine, mail carriers and ticket takers because if you've been to a sushi restaurant your sushi train has a robot. We live in a very small town in rural Queensland. So, we even have a robot in our sushi So all these really mundane tasks are going to be disrupted. We need to think, and this is, if there's one thing that I want everybody listening to this conversation to leave with.

Andrew:

Yep.

Embracing change and rethinking how we do business

Kim:

The number one challenge and opportunity is the ability to think differently. Einstein said it best, "You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it." There are lots of challenges around everything that we're going through in the world right now. There are lots of challenges around the implementation of AI. There are some huge questions to ask, will we all be made redundant? And if so,

Andrew:

Hmm.

Kim:

how will we make a living or how will we have our needs provided These are big, big questions. Security, cross-border security, loads of questions that we really need to spend some time thinking about and answering. But on an individual basis, what we need to think about is where is our marketplace moving? Where are the competitors coming from where I least expect it?

So, we are seeing sectors, other sectors going in to compete with sectors that they've never competed with before because technology is allowing them to do that. So I would be thinking what my future as a company looked like, what could kill my business, what opportunities do I have to do my business differently, what tools that I need to use and what human people do I need to have on board to help me with that? don't come at it from an old paradigm perspective. The easiest analogy is age old, well not age old, but five-year-old work from home "People aren't as productive if they're working from home." Well, if you look at the research, they actually are, but it depends. It depends on the person. It depends on how you define productivity.

We cannot solve that problem by just saying, okay, you lot back into the office. I mean, we've tried. It lost Peter Dutton the election; that and some other things, that was a big part of it. We cannot solve these problems. We cannot take advantage of these opportunities, if we think about it from the same paradigm that, you from what got us to where we were, to where we are now. We have to think critically, have to ask ourselves what can we do? A blank sheet of paper. It's really blue sky thinking. And we need to do more of that. To do more of that, we need to have more time. And that's where AI comes in. It can give you more time.

Andrew:

Gives you more time to think. You raise some really good points. I mean, that whole work from home argument... If you look at it in an old-fashioned paradigm, it's because people aren't productive. A more modern way of looking at it is to say, well, lack of productivity in any environment is a leadership problem. Change your leadership and you'll get your productivity.

Job creation, adaptation and innovation with AI

Andrew:

You also raise what I think is a... fantastic point; a lot of the jobs that are going are ones that people don't want to do anyway. Okay, so they're boring, they're tedious, they're repetitious. They need to be done, but if they go, nobody's going to miss them. I did see a really good example of new jobs being created, or new jobs here in Australia. I was talking to a senior person, a software company, and they create software to support call centres. And they're saying that AI used in call centres now means that it's now cheaper or it's cheap enough to bring call centres back into Australia. Because a lot of the routine work's been done by the AI. So, the call volume per hour can go up. And so, we're actually bringing jobs back on shore. Large companies are bringing their call centres back on shore. And that's a real positive.

Kim:

It's done well. There's a company called air.ai. It's worth going onto their website just to look at the demonstration. It's fabulous because AI, but you can't really tell that it's AI until it laughs. And its laugh is so fake, it's not even funny. but, But it's a real life from a customer service representative from Apple. Well, it's an AI bot, but what they done well, these bots, these customer service and sales bots do

Andrew:

Hah. Yeah.

Kim:

really well is they handle the or questions or objections, and then they escalate the ones that they can't handle immediately. I'm working on a platform right now that does this so beautifully. The bot has been programmed lot of information about this product that I have just purchased, and it's a very complex product, I'm getting my head around it.

And the bot loaded with information and answers probably 70% of my questions. But it can't, it immediately escalates and it's done so seamlessly and so beautifully that I, know, even if I had a problem talking to a bot, which I because of what I don't think that I would have a problem talking to a bot because I feel taken care of. that's the number one thing.

Is AI displacing routine work or creative industries?

Andrew:

Yeah, I was having a conversation with the head of digital at CBA about a decade ago, would have been 2014, 2015. And I think they're a company that gets it. And what he said to me is that if it's routine, it will be automated. And he said, routine doesn't mean not complex, routine might have a hundred thousand steps in it.

But if it's routine and has to follow the same steps, are we starting to see a lot of that? So what we consider AI is just super complex, but it's routine. It follows the same pathway. So we just automate it. Is that a lot of what we're seeing?

Kim:

Especially at the enterprise level and very soon at the individual level. Like I said, with the bots, have to be on a separate platform to put these bots together now, but in the not too distant future, there will be applications that come I can't remember where I got this expression but think it's very catchy. AI is going to automate the dull, dirty and dangerous, the three Ds, dull, dirty and dangerous work.

But on the other end of spectrum, you have it helping you solve those devilishly complex problems.

Andrew:

If that's the case, why are we seeing so many tools focused on creative industries: writing, acting, design?

Kim:

This was probably the number one surprise and it surprised even the creators of these AI were told when ChatGPT was first released that it would help us with content writing and that's creative, but it's, And analysis and those, again, those routine things, but our human skills, creativity, those things would be protected.

And first disrupted industries are the industries. The movie makers are especially now being disrupted by VO. The music industry almost instantaneously The graphic design now we're seeing reports that— there's a study out of Johns Hopkins where they had a control group who were dealing with human doctors and a group that were doing telehealth appointments with AI Not surprisingly, the AI doctors ranked ahead of the real doctors in terms of diagnostic skills. But what was really surprising is that they also ranked ahead of the human doctors in terms of empathy. Now I think that that's, yeah.

Andrew:

Ha

Kim:

I think that that says as much about how we're training our doctors as the capability of AI. And there's been a new study released that shows that AI is more persuasive to change human beings minds than other human beings. So this brings up a few points. Number one is we don't know. I this is all so new, that we are learning about AI as AI is, we are developing use cases for AI that AI wasn't necessarily originally intended for. So it only became really creative because creators started using it and went, wow. And then other people started using it and going, wow, this is than the graphic designer that I've…

I believe that it started with the creators themselves using it and then it just taking off. So this is a technology is even most of the LLMs are not open source, meaning people can't just get in there and program them. It is an open source because AI is being developed based on the use cases, based on how people are using it.

Adapting your career and job skills in the age of AI

Kim:

So that's number one is that we don't know and we're terrible at predicting what the future is going to bring. We've always been as human beings are terrible at predicting. Number two we have to constantly be vigilant because we cannot be complacent that, well, I'm a counsellor, I'm a coach. AI is not going to replace me. one of the top five use cases in 2025. People are using their AI instead of hiring a coach. So we have to be open. And how do we do that from an individual? I'll talk about that from an individual as well as a business standpoint, from an individual standpoint. And I've developed this little three-step framework. Individuals...in terms of what we do in our day jobs. I feel like number one, we have to learn how to use AI to make ourselves better, faster, stronger. Then number two, we have to constantly be looking around going, what's going to displace me? How is my role going to change? So read research, talk to people and just think critically about that. And then figure out given your strengths and your skillset, where can you move to maintain your own relevance? As a business, it's much the same process. How do we see it? Yeah, absolutely.

Leadership and AI: Guiding teams through change

Andrew:

So, can I just ask you, Kim, before you go into business, just really interested in that individual. So what you're talking about is looking at the impact of AI on me as an individual, and then how can I change my skill set to move? Because you keep on referring to a continuum. So I can either accept that AI is going to take my job, or I can try and understand what AI is going to do to my job. And for example, I can be the one that writes the prompts for the AI. I can be the one that uses it as a tool rather than my job. Is that a fair summary?

Kim:

Yes. That is absolutely what we're seeing in the marketplace now in the talent marketplace is a group of haves versus have nots. I like to say AI is probably not going to take your job in the short term, but somebody who knows how to use AI to do your job better, might. So number one is understand how you can leverage AI to do what you do better, faster and stronger. So embrace it. Don't be afraid of it. Play with it. Get good at using it to do what you do and then think about, okay, what's next? What's next for me? And if you think about that... Now, this again kind of flies in the face of not conventional wisdom, but how we're used to doing things we as individuals have given career opportunities. Now that's over the last 20 years, but the psychology from an individual contributor hasn't actually changed that much.

And this is what my clients are telling me, that people still expect to be handed the training, to be handed the career opportunities. And this is very much a DIY adventure now. You have to take responsibility for your own career and understand how you can keep yourself one step ahead of your own competitors who might be vying for your job.

Andrew:

So last question before we go back onto that business, you mentioned like a five year horizon. So is it fair to say that this pace of change is escalating? That it's like act now to start getting ahead of this?

Kim:

Yes. Yes. So going back to the have versus have nots, people with the willingness and the ability to embrace AI will maintain Those that do not may find themselves struggling, especially as the pace of change And it is going continue to increase exponentially, which is really, you know, this is one of the most challenging parts of the era in which we live is that there is so much happening at such a rapid pace and we're not necessarily built for that rapid pace of change. So we need protect ourselves. We need to make sure that we are practicing good habits to keep ourselves in the game as this changes rapidly.

But yes, we absolutely need to take proactive responsibility for our own careers, regardless of whether or not you're just starting off or you're the CEO of a company that is about to be Regardless of where you are, you need to think of your own career as the company that you're running.

The new workforce: Skills for the future

Andrew:

So you work with a lot of those people who were driving that change, CEO and leaders. What are they doing to ensure that their team, their employees remain relevant during this period?

Kim:

be here.

That is a great. The smart ones, the ones that really thinking about this in not only a realistic but a futuristic knowing that this pace of change will not stop, knowing and really understanding that the human beings that they employ are They are looking at how to take them on the journey.

This is the biggest change management project that any of us in our lifetimes will ever experience. And I don't care if you are a, you know, $500 million company lots systems, lots of company wide systems, and you want to implement or if you're a small business owner with a staff of Regardless, it is a change management project.

And the biggest thing, well, one of the biggest things that can derail change management projects is the failure to take people on the journey, to help people understand why that change is necessary. But here it's actually even more important because you as the employer are somewhat responsible for understanding what your people's strengths and skills are and what upskilling or reskilling they need. And if you are a small business owner, that may mean that they might leave, but give them the opportunity to develop so that they land on their And the other thing that is a real challenge is that this is a scary, scary topic for a lot. So the additional kind spanner that can be thrown into this works is that will challenge people's identities and senses of purpose.

And when their identities and senses of purpose are challenged, they can get into mischief. So if we're not proactively looking out for that and really spending time with our people... What I love about AI is that it allows us to be more human and it frees up our time so that we can be more human. So if we really partner with the human beings that are working with us and for us and help them on this journey...

Not only is it the right thing for the humans, it's the right thing for the business because you're going to uncover some talents that you don't even know they have, but it's also a risk mitigation strategy because they're not going to get into mischief because they feel like they're included and heard.

Andrew:

Yeah, that's really important, isn't it? And that's how we manage our workforce and make sure that everybody's engaged throughout a process. I mean, generally we would say that, you know, in a business, profit lives at the margin. You know, it's very easy to see your profit disappear. Do you see a new class of workers coming through, employees coming through that do have these skills are able to effectively use AI. But then we have those who are really valuable in some parts but are missing some parts of the skill set.

Kim:

Yeah, and I think that doesn't differ too greatly from any type of skill set. There are people, again, with the ability and the willingness embrace this and to want to learn about it. And it has nothing to do with People keep telling me, the younger generation, they are interested in adopting AI. Gen Xs and baby boomers, we're not so interested. Well, I know baby boomers and Gen Xs that can run circles around Gen Zs in terms of AI. It's all about willing to give it a go and to that curiosity mindset I think is so very But one of the things that I think the younger generation does bring is two things.

And that is more, well, they're digital natives. So they're just used to this and they're more willing to embrace the technology. They're also, and I'm talking specifically about the Gen Z's here. They're also the generation that is not only willing, but feels like it's necessary look at things differently and to try new things. They’re not very risk averse because they kind of come at it from a standpoint of what do I have to lose? You know, fail fast. What do I have to lose? Let's just try it. If it doesn't work, let's try something else because they feel more than any other generation, they feel like they are responsible for their own career, that they're responsible for driving their livelihood, their ability to provide for their family. I think that, and they're also very, very purpose motivated. And I think that that combination, I feel very, optimistic about the Gen Zs. And I know that some of the people out there listening to may disagree with me and be thinking, what, does she not realize how difficult they are to It's just that they're cut from a different cloth.

Andrew:

Hahaha

Kim:

And we can be upset about this or we can try and understand them. Teach them a little bit, absolutely. But don't try and mold them into your own image because it won't work.

Andrew:

No, because look what really resonates is that point of being a digital native. And to me, that doesn't mean that they're better at using the technology. What it means is they don't have the limitation of knowing how to do it without the technology. This is the way we used to do it around here. ⁓ So they're more open. Their minds are more open to it. So really...

Kim:

or the funeral rites. Yes. ⁓ shan't.
 

Creating a culture of innovation and experimentation

Andrew:

One of the big challenges, if we go back to talking a little more about business, it's around that adoption. How can business leaders try and ensure, how can they create an environment where there is that willingness to change and wanting to adopt?

Kim:

Yeah, two things, one having to do with technology and one not. The one having to do with technology is encourage to understand the security and take actions to mitigate those risks. But then within those boundaries, allow people to experiment and allow them to tell you how they can use this technology to be better, faster, stronger.

The other and this is the more challenging aspect of it, more challenging than the is allow them to experiment and to fail. And that is a big roadblock for a lot of, especially senior leaders, is allowing their teams to try new things and to fail and providing that safe to fail environment. That ⁓ so important.

Andrew:

Yeah, and I think we're increasingly seeing that as a theme when it comes to strategy, an environment where it's safe to fail, where yes is a default answer instead of no, and then reducing the impact of failure. And you're going to get creativity and productivity and engagement and efficiency. So.

Kim:

Yeah. Yeah.

When does AI not work?

Andrew:

So taking a sort of counterpoint of view and we have always people who say things are great, we have a negative. Where have you seen AI not work?

Kim:

AI doesn't work if you don't, first of all, if you don't understand how to lock down your data and provide data. And it's so clever how they do this. So first of all, if you're on an enterprise AI system, if you're in a Copilot environment, Copilot will ring fence your data. And that is one of the huge advantages of having an enterprise system. So it could be Copilot, could be ChatGPT, which is Copilot based on, it could be Claude or any one of those things. implement it and one of the advantages is that they lock down your data. But as an you need to find the settings within any single application. I'm talking LinkedIn, I'm talking Facebook, certainly ChatGPT and some of the LLMs. And it's so clever how they word There's a little button.

And in ChatGPT, it's under data controls and it says, improve the model for everyone. Now, doesn't that sound like a wonder? You want to help people, don't you? Improve the model for everyone. That means take my data, please. ⁓ So you want to lock down your data. So where it doesn't work where you don't understand the security aspects of it. It also doesn't work if you try and throttle the usage.

Andrew:

Hahaha. Mmm.

Kim:

So back in the day, and Andrew, you probably remember this too, when Facebook and LinkedIn first came the scene, a lot of your clients and mine were locking that down, locked down YouTube, locked down. Well, you know what? They've got things like and they're going to use the technology, especially if it helps them. So don't create a policy around this. 

Andrew:

Mmm, yep. Hmm.

Kim:

Educate the dangers and the risks of exposing your data other places. The other, and this is a big one, the other place that AI goes horribly wrong. Well, it doesn't go horribly wrong, but it's is the thing that large scale AI implementations is the quality and quantity of data. So if you bring in programmers to do a robotic process automation, to automate some systems to build you a system and they doesn't have the quality or the quantity of data that it needs. You will be sorely disappointed and it will bring it to its knees and your investors or shareholders or owners of the company will not be very happy with you. There's a reason that Salesforce, I can't remember the name of the company, but this happened just a few weeks ago.
Salesforce acquired a new company. Well, that's not unusual. Salesforce is very successful. They're a large They don't do a lot of acquisitions to my knowledge, but they do some. This one, however, was not another software company. It was a data cleanup company. So there's money in the data. And the other place that it goes wrong is when you don't, just like any change management project, when you don't take your people on the

Andrew:

Mmm. Yep.

Kim:

Not only because it will challenge their sense of purpose and identity, not only will they resist, they actively try and stop it. And so we have to bring those people on the journey. So the technology is there. The technology is quite It's what humans do with that technology and how we implement it that things can go a little bit awry.

Andrew:

Yeah, that's a great point because you can't automate a process unless you first have a process. Yeah, so it is so significant if you look at any sort of automation or RPA or anything sort of 70 or 80% of your benefits are going to come through standardisation of process to start with. If you're an organisation that has 20 or 30

Kim:

Exactly, and document it. Know what it…Absolutely. Absolutely.

Andrew:

offices or outlets and you have 20 or 30 different database instances all with their own data dictionary, etc. You're not standardised. really going to struggle. ⁓ I do that truism that if you want to beat your competition, don't look at what they do well, look at what they do poorly.

The future of AI: Opportunities and challenges ahead

Andrew:

As I said before, for all those who are positive, we have naysayers. You know, if you Google third AI winter, you'll see plenty of people saying that AI is overhyped. Where do you see it going over the next five or 10 years?

Kim:

Yeah, I don't think it's overhyped, but I think it's because again, the technology is there. It's increasing very, very fast. We are very fast approaching AGI and after AGI is artificial super intelligence where AI is smarter than smartest human being on the planet. Now that's exciting, but it's also terrifying. ⁓ But again, it's keeping the humans in the loop and this

Andrew:

Hmm.

Kim:

Is such an important point. We can never delegate and abandon. We absolutely have to keep ourselves in the loop. I think that in the next five years, the capability, there is one caveat here, and that is the amount of power generation that AI uses, which is just off the That's a problem that we need to solve. And we need to solve it using, obviously, using smart

Andrew:

Hmm.

Kim:

And smart energy means a combination of renewable old school where appropriate to use it. absolutely have to feed this beast if we want to keep this beast going. Now, hopefully AI can help solve these challenges, the complex challenges that we have.

So that may be something that throttles it. Obviously, if we have governments that try and lock AI, so that's the polycrisis part of the What are governments going to do? this going to be the source of more conflict? I don't know. I think the technology will keep advancing.

What will stymie it is human beings and the power generation requirements.

Andrew:

Yeah, okay. And the ability to just to process and process more and more data, speed. So actually, a hardware technology and logistics problem rather than a software problem.

Kim:

Yeah, the software is there. The software will continue to become more and more useful and more and more and grow in rather surprising ways as we've already talked about. Again, it's keeping us in the loop and it's learning about AI. I mean, AI, studying AI is teaching us how the human brain works.

And some studies are coming out that say that the human brain is actually suspected to work differently than how we think that it works. So, it's a tremendous and pupil all at the same time. It's a fascinating, fascinating technology and fascinating, fascinating time that we live in.

Andrew:

Well, there's no doubt that it is starting to change our world at an incredible pace. I found it really funny before when you said, ages ago when you're talking five years. I can only imagine what we're looking like in 12 months or 18 months or two years because the change in pace is incredible. To me, that says that businesses should be starting now. If you haven't started on the journey of reviewing your business and implementing it. So, what's one piece of advice? Where would we start? If you're a business and you want to get started on this journey, where would you start?

Kim:

I would honestly start thinking about those, from an individual standpoint, thinking about those things that dull, dirty and dangerous work. And if you're really starting from scratch, start with yourself first, and then educate yourself on what AI can do from an enterprise perspective. So, I would start with the software applications that you already use.

If you're using Xero, for instance, if you're Salesforce, what AI, if you're an engineer and using design software, what AI is already embedded into it? So, start learning about that. Start from the individual perspective and then the company perspective, what do you already have that AI is embedded into and how is that helping you? And then continue to educate in terms of how.

What AI applications are out there on the marketplace to solve some intractable problems? let's say that your customer service area is a problem that you guys have been, as a company, you guys have just been trying to get right and your NPS is down because your customer service scores are down. And well, potentially there's an AI application out. So, start with real life

business problems and then find solutions for those problems. Human beings tend to go, ooh, myself included, have to say, ooh, shiny and new, let's go play with as a senior leader, you need to think strategically about the business and then figure out the tools that you can use to help you do what you do better.

Andrew:

And I think to a certain extent, we are talking some shifts in the paradigms on how we look at business. We tend to generally very much manage costs rather than manage opportunity. Some of what you're talking about is cost. Do we have any tools to measure the benefits? How are we actually measuring the benefits of AI?

Kim:

Again, you can use AI to do that. If you bring in somebody to put together an RPA process for you to look at, first of all, you need to figure out what you're measuring, what you want to measure. And that is, that's the number one roadblock that a lot of companies have is they can't figure out what they even want to measure and then how to measure it. So, figure out what you want to measure and then where that again, where that data is captured and then how it's extracted and analysed.

So that I would start with what are we measuring and then what data do we have to measure it? The number of times that I have worked with companies on putting together OKRs and they'll we want our OKR to be X. Great. How are you going to measure X? Hmm. Don't have a process for that. Okay, well, that might be a good place to

Andrew:

Yeah, you define what you're going to measure. And look, I think that ties back to where we really started, which was keeping humans in the loop, a valuable part of the process. So, designing the process, measuring the process, setting the expectations of what success looks like. Any final words for us?

Kim:

Absolutely, absolutely right.

Yes, I was just working with a client. He's the CIO of an engineering consultancy. I do a lot of work with professional services other industries as well. he and I were doing an on video about the tech stack that they have for collaboration. And I asked him, what's your one piece of advice? And I've heard him say this before, so I knew what he was going to say. And he says, if you see the three diamonds, or one diamond, it depends, but AI, the icon for AI tends to be diamonds now, either one diamond or one diamond with two diamonds at the side. If you see the icon for AI, the symbol for AI, just push the button. That's my idea.

Andrew:

Push the button and lean into it and give it a go. And look, I would agree on that. We did mention that AI has been largely used in, or it's been a lot of emphasis on creative. I think we forget that if we went back 30 years ago, a lot of that creative was done with pen and paper. It's only hit computers in the last 20 years. And that didn't, that transition,

Kim:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew:

didn't kill creative people. I think this transition, I think humans are wonderful. I think our Gen Z that you talk about, Gen Z as we would say, I think they're wonderful people. They're intelligent, adaptive, creative. They will learn and adapt and hopefully teach some of us older people how to do it as well. 

So, Kim, thank you very much for your time. We might grab some links off you and include them in our show notes with this of some of the things that you've mentioned. Thank you very much. 

We've been joined by Kim Seeling Smith today. My name's Andrew Sykes, a partner at RSM, and this has been our talkBIG podcast. If you really liked it, we'd love you to leave a review. Also, some ideas on any future topics that you would like us to talk about. Once again, thank you for joining us on RSM's talkBIG podcast.