Balancing AI & Human-Centric Leadership with Bertie Tonks

Jacqueline Conway  00:00

The organizational peak is a perilous environment. It’s more complex and challenging than anything that’s gone before, and as a consequence, both executive tenure and corporate longevity are decreasing to survive and thrive at the perilous peak, executive leaders need to balance their functional leadership, a focus on execution with enterprise leadership that is ensuring the organization adapts in our new world. That’s what we’ll be exploring in the advanced executive leadership podcast. Welcome. I’m your host. Jacqueline Conway. I’m the Founder and Managing Director of Walden Croft, a consulting practice dedicated to helping executives and executive teams anticipate, navigate and lead at the perilous peak. How do we balance a human centric organization with one that embraces AI and what’s the impact on a carefully nurtured company culture of a robust performance engagement process? What should the HR community be considering at this critical juncture as they create new approaches that are better aligned to the world that we find ourselves in today. In this episode, I’m delighted to be joined by Bertie Tonks, the Chief People Officer at Collinson, who was voted the most influential HR practitioner 2023 by other HR professionals. Bertie brings such an insightful perspective drawn from his extensive career and his 41 year old personal passion for skateboarding, which has shaped his approach to life and to work, we talk about the importance of maintaining a human centric approach in a rapidly evolving technological landscape, and Bertie’s Insights provide a valuable takeaway for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, leadership, performance and organizational culture, I let him introduce himself before we get into the conversation.

Bertie Tonks  02:14

Well, I think the way I would normally kind of introduce myself is say that my name’s obviously Bertie Tonks. I identify as a skateboarder. So I’m a skateboarder. Been doing that for 41 years. That’s really, really important, actually, in terms of my life story, I identify as he him, and my job title is Chief People Officer. So I work for a company called Collinson, which is a specialist in providing loyalty and benefits programs to or some of them, some of the world’s biggest brands, but in particular, working in fs across companies like American Express, MasterCard, Visa and Chase Bank, and we probably partnered with about 600 other banks around the world. Really interesting organization, very diverse, doing anything from loyalty programs to we’ve got about 1600 airport lounges around the world. Insurance products really born out of a very entrepreneurial mindset in terms of our founder, and we just continue to do some some incredible things and predominantly dominate in the airport space. That’s kind of that’s our sweet spot, really.

Jacqueline Conway  03:16

Okay, great. And you said that skateboarding was part of your school story, and you’d been doing it for 41 years. So tell me a bit more about that.

Bertie Tonks  03:30

Yeah. I mean, I’m 52 now. I started when I was 11, and I remember probably about six months after started. I remember my dad telling me it’s about time I stopped and started to grow up a bit. Well, that never quite happened. And I think it’s just, it’s just stuck with me. It’s a genuine passion. I just, I think it’s who I am more than anything else, and it’s actually quite incredible. You know, Jacqueline, I don’t know many people that have been doing any kind of hobby, passion or interest for that period of time, and I have to say that so many of my lessons around failing regularly, if you’re on your bum more times than you are standing up even at 52 believe me, but but doing that in front of people where people are often you’re ridiculed, but still, you’ll get up on your board and you’ll do exactly the same again. A sense of camaraderie doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You know, everyone’s welcome and we embrace kind of all differences. It’s amazing actually, how many parallels there are to what’s now considered the kind of more modern world of work, really. But for us, it was our thing. It’s our tribe, and it’s something that’s hugely special to me in terms of how it shaped who I am, my thinking in pretty much everything I do, how I treat people most certainly, and having something that’s such a powerful connection is beyond belief. Some full of gratitude for it, fantastic.

Jacqueline Conway  04:43

And so how does that translate across into your role in Collinson as the chief people officer? My

Bertie Tonks  04:51

role at Collinson as chief people officer is quite interesting. I think it’s no No day is ever the same. It’s hugely complex. I probably spend. About 90% of my time making decisions, solving problems. It’s quite incredible, really. And I’ve got some thoughts around how, how I want to kind of transition and partner with AI more into the future around that, but a lot of my work is working from the boardroom to the broom cupboard, partnering with people to help them overcome some of their challenges, personal frustrations, understanding how I can unfree some of the big blockages in our organization. And one of my main focuses at Collinson, I describe it as evolving our purpose driven high performing culture. So that’s that’s high performance, but not at any cost. You know, within within a framework, that means that we’re with really doing good to the good in the world, the communities that we serve, the causes that we champion, but also making sure that our people are not only connected to that, but they, too, get to experience something that’s quite special, that helps them achieve their full potential. Because the business is going to benefit from that, obviously, but at the same time that they’re having the best possible experience, I’m determined to make sure that anyone in my business, regardless of the reasons that they leave, and very often that’s because of their manager, some things don’t change, but I want them to have a great career story and to have lots of incredible memories that are that they will take forward with them, kind of, you know, throughout the rest of their career, as a result of being in the company that I I serve and and lead, because I sit on the board, so take that responsibility extremely seriously.

Jacqueline Conway  06:26

And what does culture mean to you? Culture is one of these words where we know it, when we see it, don’t we? And yet it’s difficult to to describe, or to to have a to have a kind of standard term for it when you talk about culture, specifically within Collinson, and you’re, you’re talking about high performance cultures. What? What is a high performance culture to you? And how? How do you know it when you see it?

Bertie Tonks  06:55

Yeah, so I think cult culture is means many things to different people, but but ultimately I do. I talk a lot about tribes. It’s about that connection and feeling, and for me, it’s the way that people think, act and interact, in its simplest form, water will always find its path. And I think cultures will emerge with or without leadership, and when it comes to high performance, which is part of your question there as well, Jacqueline is, I think it’s really important that we, we seek to do the basics really brilliantly. So if, if every single leader cast a shadow across the organization, in terms of their their behaviors, and whether we like to admit it or not, people will dance and operate within that shadow. I see it across even across our business. We have exceptional range of leaders, but we also have our huge gaps in certain areas, but where certain leaders feel a particular way about another business area, you can almost guarantee that that permeates that perception through their senior leadership team and below. And so it’s hugely, hugely important that we get leadership right. Culture is, if we’re going to shape culture, then leadership plays a huge part of that. And I think one of the key challenges I see as CEOs having is exactly that, how do you create that leadership alignment? How do you forge not just, not just trusting relationships and healthy relationships, but, but ones where the the prevalence of a healthy challenge is is something that’s experienced on a day to day basis, but, but there’s a real sense of alignment. So many times I see leaders who agree things in different organizations who agree alignment. When they walk out of the room, they’re like, what a waste of time that was. And, you know, that particular business over area, over there, they don’t really know what they’re doing, and sadly, that has such a huge negative impact throughout the organization. I do think it’s a, it’s a big challenge for CEOs, but getting the right Chief People Officer, I believe in place who can, who can with, with sometimes I have, you know, it sounds a horrible word, but with brutal honesty, enter into conversations, where, as I have done, at times, I thinking I’m going to have this conversation, but it’s so so to the bone. There could be a chance that that the tables turn on me and I’m seen as the problem because I’m being too honest. But I think that Chief People officers have a huge responsibility to fairly regularly believe that if it’s the right thing to do, ethically, morally and principally, that we have to be prepared to say our jobs might well be on the line for doing this, because sometimes it does feel like it’s countercultural, where we see things going on that frankly, aren’t For the aren’t professional for the greater good of the interests of the business performance and the culture.

Jacqueline Conway  09:45

I couldn’t agree more with that. And I think that, I mean, I really resonate with what you’re saying, that if the executive leader is talking about their colleagues on the. Executive team, and they are part of the business in in a sort of disparaging way, or in another group and an out group that that has huge consequences in terms of the way that those teams work together, in their interdependence, in all sorts of things. And so, yes, I mean, and I so, I guess in waldencroft, what we are all about is really, how do then we get that executive team to see themselves as their own, a team to see themselves primarily as an enterprise leader in this in this organization before, and that’s a collective leadership task before they’re a CFO or a marketing person or an ops person or whatever. And therefore you start to then see that they work more holistically at that level, and the implications at the next level and every subsequent level down the organization is is transformed,

Bertie Tonks  11:03

I think, particularly for particularly for CEOs, their their most senior of leadership are often tried and trusted right there. They are the confidants. They’re the people they rely on to deliver the and lead the performance of the business. And that that because often that that leads to healthy relationships, quite close relationships, right? Because there are to do this well, we have to be able to share vulnerabilities to some extent, particularly at that level. Leadership Teams are having these discussions. But sometimes, because of the closer the proximity and strength of our relationships, sometimes that makes it harder to have the right level of conversations, not easier. And in order to for us to evolve our purpose driven high performing, the high performing bit in particular, we have to start making changes, which is setting clearer, clearer expectations and outcomes, not just about the performance, the what, but also the how, in terms of the behaviors element and how we how we operate, where we see politics and politics will emerge. It will always do that, because you get alliances, allegiances, in relationships and functions, etc. It needs to be quashed. So it needs, we need to be sure that that whilst we can acknowledge that that stuff exists, we there’s also a point which we will we won’t tolerate, yeah, because otherwise it gets in the way of good business.

Jacqueline Conway  12:24

I really resonate with that, because at one, at one end of the spectrum, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s so much kind of in group that, as you see, you get group. Think you have it. People are more concerned with the maintenance of the relationship than the task that needs to be done. And that’s not a productive way to be. But as you say, at the other end of the continuum, where, really, where people are sort of being highly individualistic and looking out for themselves, that’s not where good work gets done either, at the C suite. So it’s this, this place in the middle, and of course, that that’s not just one place, isn’t it? It’s, it’s a continuum where it needs to be kind of up and down that continuum slightly in different places at different times, given the subject matter that’s being talked about and the strategic challenges that you’re facing. Yeah,

Bertie Tonks  13:17

exactly. So I’ll get, I’ll get, you know, and I’ve been guilty of this myself. Jacqueline, you know, none of us are as squeaky clean here, right, because we’re talking about human dynamics and behaviors. But I get senior leaders who who will come to me and they’ll say, I just want to offload. And now, now, as a chief people officer, I It’s my part of what my role is, is to listen, coach, guide, you know, help them navigate some of these things sometimes, but there is also, there are also times where people come to me and we’ve had that conversation, but perhaps it’s the third time that they’re coming to me, and I can see, instead of, instead of trying to focus on the solution and a more positive outcome, this is actually to try and influence in some way my own mindset, that this is a bad person and they need to go. And where I start to see that happen, I would actively. I do actively say, Well, you know, we’ve talked about this. This is your problem to solve, and if you’re not solving it, the first thing I’d say is, are you having this conversation directly with the individual or at the board or executive level.

Jacqueline Conway  14:21

And so you’re talking there about encouraging accountability and responsibility. And, yeah, I mean, what other things do you think are descriptors of the leadership culture in Collinson? Well,

Bertie Tonks  14:36

I think so. So at Collinson, we have, we have a great culture, you know, super, super high engagement levels when we’ve got an 80% whereas 68% is a global standard. At the moment, commercially speaking, our financial results are going through the roof. It’s our best ever financial performance in the company’s history, however, so you look at those indicators, one and attritions. Low you look at those indicators, you say, well, well actually, that’s a healthy high performing organization. I know absolutely that we are capable of way, way more than what we’re achieving at the moment. But if you look at the traditional indicators that I’ve outlined there, you’d say, well, what’s not to like? But I think some, some of the other elements, for me, that the key levers, I think, in terms of performance, are, well, data. Data is, is really key here is, how can we use, how can we use data to inform better quality timely decision making? So that’s really, really important. And I struggle with that in my business, because of the quality of we’ve got some incredible platforms, but what we don’t have is consolidation of that that enables us to be able to look at multiple data points and and drive insight. We’re moving towards that. So we’re doing a lot of really good work in that space. But I think the other things are really fundamentals around how performance is managed. So I’ve talked a lot last year at number of conferences around how we killed off the things like the annual appraisal every year, business managers, exec teams say this, this doesn’t work. The the performance management process doesn’t work. And every year, HR just changes the form. I mean, it’s almost ridiculous, really. Jacqueline, but so, so there’s a lot that we I mean, we’ve done a lot around introducing things like a tri annual performance review process, and, you know, really done some quite innovative, I think, fairly innovative, work around that space to make it it sort of actually, we’ve, we’ve changed our business planning cycles. We have annual but we’ve actually got 120 day business plans that we run to now that’s changed as a result of the performance engagement process that we put in place. Wow, now that’s really unusual that a business changes its its business process to align with the performance, engagement process. It’s really unusual from my own experience, but that thing is testament to the fact that it’s working for us, and still we can see opportunities for further enhancements

Jacqueline Conway  16:59

and what’s different about it. So, I mean, obviously it’s more frequent, is it? Is it largely because it’s more frequent that it’s more successful, or is there some other structural difference that makes it more successful?

Bertie Tonks  17:12

A number of factors I can I can be quite succinct in this really, is people. People hated the annual cycle because that just didn’t work. It was you couldn’t remember what you did nine months ago, let alone four months ago, but, but they complained about the amount of time that that took managers and leaders in particular. So I said, Well, I tell you what, we’ll make it lightweight and we’ll do it three times a year, but great. Actually, I’ll be honest, it’s the same amount of time we do this three, three. This is two times more heavy than it used to be, but it doesn’t feel it because it’s more regular. And so all we’ve done is we just have, we don’t actually have a big we do a tri annual. So every four months, someone has a review. There’s the rating scale based on performance and behaviors. If you get a good, strong rating of a we’ve only got five points, but if I get four or five, I’m highly motivated to to up my game for the next because I know that’s going to impact my bonus. If I get constructive feedback, it gives me much more regular opportunity to address the peaks and troughs that are natural for performance and focus on more higher performance behaviors. So we get more frequency. We only ever look back four months. So the only difference here is that at the end of the year, the piece that relates to bonus, and in particular for the variable pay, is there’s an overall rating on the basis of what your what your tri annual ratings were, so on the basis of those so we only ever go back four months, so that that’s been hugely helpful, and a piece that we’re about To go to now is much clearer alignment of behavior and reward. So we are having consist a consistent objective for every people manager around the world, which is with with key results. So we operate OKR, so annualized objectives, but key results broken into triannual performance periods we’re only interested in within this date range. These four months, what are you committing to deliver? What did you deliver? I don’t care if it’s beyond that. If there are interdependencies, if I, if my delivering on an objective is interdependent of another business area or person, then they have to have that as a shared objective. We we, we, we all win, or we don’t win. That’s that. That’s the goal here. We want to take as many of the excuses off the table. And believe it or not, the only the other element, and it sounds really kind of Janet and John Jacqueline is high quality objectives. And it sounds really, really basic. And I got fed up with for years of people talking about things like smart objectives and things like that, because things like that, because I don’t think I could write one of those myself today, but, but is black or white? Yes or no, if you and I sat down in four months time, Jacqueline, black or white, did you or did you not achieve that objective? If there’s loose objectives, and they’re not really, really specific, measurable and at least time bound at. Is All You Need, those three elements. If that’s not in place, then you, if you and I have got a great relationship, you’ll be able to use your relationship skills to make sure that you get a good performance outcome. Trust me, I’ve done it for 2526 years,

Jacqueline Conway  20:18

so I love that, and I’ve got two things going on in my head that I want to ask you about. One is, does that also happen at the exec level? So does the CEO also do those triannual performance conversations with with the executive team?

Bertie Tonks  20:35

Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely. We’ve got a holding company and four operating companies, and that happens within each but actually interdispersed for that. So every month, our leaders and it transcends right right through to our managers. Have two one to ones with their team a month so and they’re only half an hour. One is a no, Bs conversation that goes straight into objectives. How are you doing? Where can i as your manager help you to unblock if you haven’t done it yourself. And the other one is another half an hour, two weeks later, which is focused on anything you want. It can be personable, personal. It can be your development. It can be your career. It can be about your cat. You decide this is your time, but it’s half an hour. You guide it completely wherever you want it, wherever I want it to go, I turn up fairly unprepared as a as a leader, as a manager, to those meetings. So it sounds like a lot, but actually it’s not. It’s. It just makes it feel like it’s, it’s, it’s much more lightweight, but a little bit of structure around that has really helped it to feel like it’s an integrated part of the culture and the way that we drive a higher cadence around our performance,

Jacqueline Conway  21:41

what you’re describing, which leads me to my kind of second question. Is a real tightness around the clarity of the OKRs, the clarity of operationally, what people are expected to do, and some measurement that’s linked absolutely to that, and that’s at one end of the business process that leaders have to contend with. But of course, at the other end is, are the OKRs correct for what purpose, for what vision and strategy for the organization? And I wonder what the relationship then, is to the longer term goals that you have and these very tight performance OKRs and performance management processes.

Bertie Tonks  22:31

Great Again. Hopefully I can be succinct on this as well. So we each business area, so I we’ve also changed some of the language, by the way, so we’ve called it performance engagement, not performance management, not being funny. I’m a 51 year old man. I don’t like the thought of being heavily managed, yeah, and I’m fairly senior. I need it. I do need it because and it’s helpful, but so that’s been really, really important from a business perspective. Where this starts is each business area, and I work in what traditionally is known as a support function, but we call it an enabling function. Actually, the terminology makes quite a difference, because now I, now my team, feel valued. Rather than just support, we’re about enabling the performance of this same as finance, etc. So, so where this starts is each business area, whether you’re commercial product and innovation, or work in an enabling function creates a three year plan based off of our company strategy. We would meet then before at the beginning of every year, where we share our three year plan, but also we go have a deeper dive for our year ahead. And what that’s broken up in terms of those OKRs, what that’s broken up into the three year into the tri annual performance periods. Now each we do a almost like a pony show. Each each business area does this. It’s about two days of investment in time. And then what we do is we get the chance to across our different business areas to pull that apart and say, well, actually, from a commercial perspective, we’re trying to drive increased revenue in Asia. At the moment, I share my plan, but my plans show nothing in terms of how I’m as a people and culture team, in terms of how I’m really trying to enable the delivery of that goal. Well, then that’s shame on me, and it’s obviously a big gap. So the power and beauty of doing this, doing this exercise up front the beginning of every year is that we get the chance for it, for real alignment and where, ultimately, it’s a bit like that. This is a case of the dog wagging the tail, not the tail wagging the dog. Ultimately, our commercial teams, those that are closest to our clients, with which a huge reliance is on, you know, a very small number of clients, even though we have hundreds, is, you know, starting with the clients, what are the clients after? What’s the value that we’re trying to drive through our clients, partners and consumers? And then from there, we’ve also got another element, which is, how are we strengthening and growing and improving the culture and performance of the business internally? But it has to start with a commercial with, with the commercial end of the stick here, but, but. When I’m looking at that the commercial priorities, I have to think, well, myself and my team, what are we doing to make to make sure we’re better chance chance of delivering that? There’s a lot of I get really bored of HR teams quite often talking about, we need to see it at the table. Well, if you want to see it at the table, you got to be willing to get into the fight. And the fight is out there on the markets, on the where the competitors are and and where our market growth opportunities are, and thinking, What’s the role that we can play in helping to drive and deliver that? And honestly, you step outside your traditional HR box, and very quickly you realize, my gosh, there’s a huge opportunity. Yeah,

Jacqueline Conway  25:35

yeah. And of course, part of that opportunity is because the expectations of work are changing so massively and so rapidly. And I wonder if you have got any insights into the changes that you’ve seen in that area, and what you’re doing, either to be responsive or to get on the front foot and be proactive about it. Yeah.

Bertie Tonks  25:59

Yeah, definitely. And I think the biggest thing, which I think particularly for your listeners, that they’ll be learning about all the time right now, is AI, Gen, AI, etc. And I think, you know, there’s, there’s huge potential here, and I’m starting to look at this and starting to uncover some of this potential in terms of how this is affecting the future of work. And I do believe, well, there’s a lot of conversation around AI is going to take our jobs? I don’t think it will. Actually, it might do in some areas, but predominantly we need to get excited about this, because what it’s going to do, from my perspective, is take out the repetitive, boring stuff and actually give us an opportunity to focus on higher value activity within our organizations. I talk about that from an HR or people and culture perspective, because I’m hugely excited, and I can really see I’ve got very clear vision that’s forming around the opportunity in this space that we’re going to be leaning into. But one thing’s for sure is we can’t let it just happen to us. So we’re doing lots of work at the moment looking at AI robot automation. So wherever we have repetitive, rule based activity, wherever it might be, across the organization, how can we pull this information together, whether that’s within individual job areas where we’ve got that that’s kind of traditionally been hidden under the radar because actually it’s the comfort blanket of the individuals in those roles, or because we see it as part of the value stream, or because we see it as part of the value stream, how can we use AI robot automation to help, to help tackle that? So one of the things we built, we’re doing is building that capability within our organization. We’re starting to we’ve already got aI capability, but we’re also looking at automation and robot capability. So I’m not talking about mechanical robots, but robots that that act almost as a physical data source, that you can plug into systems that will start to run and, you know, deal with duplication and script and drive simplicity. And actually, it’s really, really exciting Jacqueline, because the value creation that that’s that we’re already seeing is incredible, but I expect it to be exponential, even over the next two years.

Jacqueline Conway  28:07

Yeah, and I want it’s interesting you see that about, about it being really exciting, because where, where my head had gone. The question I was going to ask was, I mean, we hear a lot of scaremongering going on in the press and and social media around AI, and the implications of AI, and you’re talking about it being exciting, and is it? Is it exciting across the board? How, what’s the anxiety levels of your people like, for example, if they are feeling like the even, even dull, repetitive tasks. But if it’s replacing them potentially, then that can be very anxiety provoking, and then the level of enthusiasm for taking these things up is obviously far diminished if people are concerned that it might have an impact on their job.

Bertie Tonks  29:00

Yeah. I mean, look, one of the things I and it’s not the whole of the HR profession. I love my profession, but we sometimes lag behind a little bit in some areas. And I think, you know, we should be, we should be more than leaning into this. We should be out there, you know, scouring the scouring the internet, scouring conferences, listening to what people are doing in this space. I believe we’ve got a leader, whether it’s in HR or otherwise, a duty to our organizations, the success of our organizations, for our people to be actively being hungry, to understand what’s happening in this space, and it is going to transform the world of work. And many organizations are actively being interested and being hungry to consume what value this can drive here and now or near future. They, for me, are the ones that are going to come out even stronger and are going to win in their respective markets and services. However, I think to turkeys. Don’t go. For Christmas, in order to reduce the fear factor that that’s generated from this, I think it’s what you what’s really important is you take out, you create some case examples, some real that you can profile, and create a really good, powerful platform in your organizations for where it’s right. We took these elements of the job, yes, then we might lose jobs sometimes, but actually, here’s all the value creation that we’re now seeing. Use data as your best friend to help with that, but also it’s not all about data. So we get qualitative and quantitative data from from this type of activity. That shows us that actually people’s jobs are now enriched much more, and client experiences are much greater. People are getting access to the information and data that they or services that they need more regularly at the time that they really need it.

Jacqueline Conway  30:48

Well, I was just where my brain went. There was it’s also about the quality of working life that is left for the people who are doing jobs where a large proportion of the mundane, rule based work has been repetitive work that’s been taken out. And is it to fill their time squashed even more with more and more stuff, or is there an acceptance that there is an opportunity for humans to do the things that humans do best, around creativity and perhaps having a bit more capacity, a bit more spaciousness in their day, to do something that is uniquely human and is enriching As a human being, to come in and experience your day like because, of course, we all experienced in lockdown, that sense of some of the spaciousness of our day, where we met a colleague when we were making a coffee, or, you know, the proverbial sort of water cooler, where There was enough spaciousness in the day, sometimes to allow for human interaction, for serendipity, for creativity to occur. And then everything went online, and our days were kind of absolutely back to back with Zoom. And, you know, you kind of wondered when you were going to have a comfort break. You know it was, yeah, it just kind of got manic. And so, so, so, I guess, you know, is there a conversation going on around using AI, not just for value creation and efficiency gaining, but in some way to make the organization more human? Do

Bertie Tonks  32:37

you know what’s really? It’s really so I’ve reflected on this quite a bit that, you know, Jacqueline, over the last, probably over the last six months or so, think about the HR profession. There was a guy who basically founded the HR profession called, guy called George Elton Mayo in, I think was around 1948 something like that. So he came up with the HR profession. And what he talked about back in, back in those days, was that the relationship between employees and employers should be much, should be humanistic, not mechanistic. And he explicitly said that employers and workers deserve to be treated as individuals with dignity and self respect. We’ll move, move to today. If we look at there’s actually a Polish spirit based spirits company who have, have actually hired inverted commas, appointed the world’s first AI CEO called Mika. Okay, so, so that that’s, that’s, you know, that’s a move that’s already happened. Wow, which, which, which, sounds quite incredible, actually, if I think about my role probably, as I said, as I said at the very beginning, probably around 90% of my job is about decision making and problem solving. I would like to I think what, what George Elton Mayo said about the relationship between organizations and their people is profound. And I think that that is as strong as a principle today as it will be as it was then, and will be in in 4050, years in terms of the world of work and our relationship with our people. Ai won’t replace that, but I think it can enhance it. If I think about the the Mika example for this polish based spirits company, I thought about, well, what does that mean for me in my profession? I could see us. I could see a moment where I share a seat with an AI CPO, I could see a moment where, very, very clearly, where I could share that seat, where I would be its coach, confident and guide around the human elements that it might that it might miss, but where it can help me challenge and question, what I call the hose pipe test is where you you create a decision, and you throw you then thrust all a range of scenarios through that hose pipe to see whether there’s any leakages. But I could see a point where, where I’ve got Bertie and xx, which is the AI joint. C. Of people, officers, and I could see that happening within the next five years. If I think about how I use things like chat, GBT, if I think about the extent to what I use that for today, it’s phenomenal. Well, if I had something that was more advanced than that and that, I could, you know, build a again, inverted Commons relationship with where I was, its human conscious conscience, and it was my robust decision making. Yeah, I honestly, I I could see this. I could, I could see this working very well as a partnership. Because honestly, especially now we’ve got, you know, AI is learning 24 hours a day, 24/7 learning way quicker than I can with a much more global, a global appeal. I think the challenge is, however, is the is always going to be the ethical dilemma, and that’s why I think it has to be with a human counterpart that sits by the side of that, perhaps with an extra layer of security and, you know, etc. But no decisions are made. Ultimately, unless I make them. I have just got my co pilot, as it were, really but even things like, I think, as as we go forward, things like neuro data or bio data, there’s always been this ethical debate around the need to keep these things very separate, because work is work, and honestly that the lines around that are already blurring. We’re already seeing company some some companies, I won’t name them on here, because, unless they’re paying for you, they don’t deserve a name check, but, but, you know, I’m already seeing some companies start to start to push the boundaries a little bit, some well known organizations in this space. And actually, if we’re talking about high performance organizations, how cool would it be? And I talk a lot about hyper personalization of experiences, the employee experience. How cool would it be and powerful if we could start to use neuro or bio data to identify that Jacqueline actually, when she’s at work, her heart races, heart rate is going through the wall. And actually she may not see it, but actually, as her manager and as us as an organization, I want to limit any damage to her, because actually, there is, there is a point which is my duty of care to you, Jacqueline, but if you go down and you’re one of my key people, that’s bad business as well, by the way. So there’s, there’s, there’s two sides to that, to that coin. So, so how can we use this, this kind of data, I think we’re going to, we’re going to see a much, we’re going to see more of a convergence, actually, between the home and the work life, the boundaries of which have already blurred significantly over the last couple of years. But there’s going to be even more of that in the in the future world of work, and I’m talking in the next year to five.

Jacqueline Conway  37:34

So this, I mean, this blew my mind, this conversation, Bertie, and so what’s happening for me, as I’m thinking you’ve already touched on the ethical dimension of it. So in order to interface well, with your AI counterpart, if that’s your AI Chief People Officer, yeah, yeah, then the capacities that are absolutely essential in your role are going to be around the ability, the cognitive ability to think things through in a in a way that is different from the AI, and to make ethical and other decisions well that perhaps are not the reasons why people who are currently Chief People officers or whatever role might have a an AI kind of second seat. You know, you one chair by human and the second chair by AI. So, so that says something about how we develop senior leaders to be able to, because we already rely too much in a non discerning way, don’t we? In some places where it’s just like, follow the data and it’s like, yeah, but the data’s crap, but it’s like, you follow the data and so and it is that sort of, you know, rubbish in, rubbish out, kind of thing, we are going to have to get much, much better at that in order to do that work, well, if we want to interface with AI, well, aren’t we, yeah, how do you know what? How do we then develop leaders for that?

Bertie Tonks  39:08

Yeah, and you’ve hit on such a good point there, and it’s just just made me think literally as you because sparkle thought as you’re talking all the all the discussions at the moment around these ethical debates, around how AI is fallible, how it’s using historic data, which is biased, you know? And actually we’re like, whoa. Actually, this is biased. How can we be trusting this? Jacqueline, I’ve made so many wrong decisions in the last three months, and as an individual, I am fallible, right? As we all are now, with the best intent and the best knowledge and experience that I consolidate to help inform a lot of my decisions, or some of the discussions we have. I’m I’m no more or less, I would argue, fallible, than than than AI. AI makes, makes a decision, and we find one case, case example, where it’s used bias data. I’m sorry, but human beings are conditioned. To be we riddled with bias.

Jacqueline Conway  40:03

I do want to just ask, if I may, just just one last question on that, which is about multiple generations in your business. So what we’re seeing is that, you know, business now spans potentially four or five generations, and so are, and we make assumptions that the younger generation are because they are the digital natives, are the ones who are going to more quickly and easily lean into these things. Is that something that you have seen across Collinson? Yeah,

Bertie Tonks  40:38

I mean, we’ve got minimum of five generations in the workplace, as as most people have of us. You know, when you get to us fairly sizable organizations, that that does bring unique challenges, definitely. But actually, what I find is, whilst the digital natives, the younger generations coming in our push, are wanting to push the boundaries, what they’re experiencing outside of work is very it’s very it’s almost like we cut that experience off the moment they step into our thresholds, because we’re not so digital, but, but they’re pushing the bounds. But quite interesting. What I’m also seeing across other generations is a lot of people don’t want to be left behind, so they there is actually a real eagerness not to be seen as the father, you know, the father that doesn’t even know how to use an iPad, or, you know, you know nobody, or how to how to connect the TV, what no one really wants to be that person, not, not really. So actually, I’m seeing a real eagerness across generations. I think we the diversity angle is quite an interesting one, because I think we need to play, we need to play, definitely a multi generational view. I think it’s a really good point to raise there Jacqueline, but also neurodiversity as well is really important here. I was talking about someone this morning to one of my team who is in a finance role, really, really important finance role within our organization. And we’ve got a real crux point coming up within the organization, a big thing to do and and actually, I know because, because this person’s neurodiversity, that they are absolutely going to nail the brief. I have no doubt, because to them, it’s literally not doing so it would be counter to the way that they’re actually wired. Yeah, I think what is key here, we’re talking a lot about about AI Gen, AI and these, these really, really important things. We have to close the loop here by saying that, you know, we have to focus as leaders on being human or human centered organizations. So for all of the things that I’ve talked about, there’s a goal here to do, to do just that.

Jacqueline Conway  42:37

This episode raised a lot of questions for me about how we engage with AI and the impact this may have on the culture that we create in our organizations. What are the underlying assumptions that we have to have about people their value and what accounts for good work as we all inevitably do more with AI, and what genuine opportunities does it afford us to make work and life more meaningful? On a later episode of the podcast, I’ll be exploring this topic further, looking at how we balance the business and human implications of AI adoption, and most importantly, the second and third order consequences of AI and how seemingly small decisions can compound to create a radically different world you.