Enrique Rubio on AI in Leadership, Digital Transformation and More

[00:00:00] I'm Felicia Shakiba, and this is CPO PLAYBOOK, where we solve a business challenge in every episode. Today we're diving into a topic that's both thrilling and unsettling, the rise of AI and its impact on the workforce.

[00:00:29] Joining me is Enrique Rubio, a global thought leader and founder of Hacking HR. Enrique has been at the forefront of helping organizations navigate rapid technological changes, and today we'll explore how companies can stay competitive in the age of AI, the challenges of adapting at lightning speed, and what it means for HR and the broader workforce.

[00:00:52] If you've ever wondered how to prepare for a future where AI could outpace your competition or even your workforce, this episode is for you. Enrique, thank you so much for coming and welcome back to the show. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me again. I'm excited to be here.

[00:01:12] Second time chatting about a topic that is the hottest topic, probably, of the world of work and technology, and very likely of HR too. So I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Yes. Well, we're excited to have you. So I wanted to start out with framing the problem.

[00:01:34] You've talked about AI moving at an almost unimaginable pace and companies needing to adapt faster than their competitors. So can you share an example of how this urgency is playing out in companies today? Absolutely. No, absolutely. AI will change and is already changing everything. It will not impact one job. It will not impact one function.

[00:02:01] It will impact everything that we do from the nature of the work that we do to the way we get that work done, the way we interact with each other, with our clients internally in our companies. So every single job, every role, every function will be impacted by AI. Obviously, that includes HR as well.

[00:02:27] And obviously, in this world of behemoths, of the technology space, and the mom-and-pop shops, or small mid-market companies, maybe they are not too small, but they are still small, the largest companies are getting ready very quickly. They are making decisions based on how they know that AI will impact them.

[00:02:52] For example, companies that are freezing hiring, companies that are already talking about developing AI employees, AI managers, AI super workers, AI engineers. And most companies are not those companies. 99% of all companies in America, and most likely 99.99% of all the companies in the world, are small to medium-sized organizations that generally are very busy with their ongoing operation.

[00:03:20] And you're adding something on top, another layer on that operation that is very complex, which is, number one, how can we get ready for AI? Meaning, how do we have to rethink our workforce strategy, talent management strategy, HR strategy, operational strategy, business strategies? How do we have to rethink about that? How do we get people ready fast enough to be able to say, if we need to embrace AI, this is how we will embrace it?

[00:03:48] And we got to do that in an environment of very limited resources. So to me, the biggest problem here is not whether AI will impact our organizations or not, because it will, and it will impact everybody and everyone and every organization, is how fast we are able to get ready for that impact.

[00:04:11] And with this AI revolution, in complete transparency, and as opposed perhaps to many revolutions in the past, where in the short term there were losses, of course, you know, companies that shut down because the other ones that were embracing technology were moving faster, more efficiently, effectively. This AI revolution will leave a lot of casualties on the road.

[00:04:41] There will be a lot of losses on the road and losses that we will not be able to pick back up fast enough. Because once, as a company, you're able to do maybe exactly what you're doing right now. Imagine that you don't even want to do more. Exactly what you're doing right now. But you can do it 75% faster with AI, paying a lot less because you don't need to spend that much money in human capital, in FTEs.

[00:05:08] Then probably your decision will be, I'm going to use AI or I'm going to use technology, and I don't need all these people doing this job. Those people who will probably lose their jobs because they will, some of them will find jobs, but none of them will find jobs. And the new jobs that we know will be created because of the existence of AI, those jobs may not be able to accommodate for everybody. So this is a very significant problem. It's a very significant opportunity as well.

[00:05:35] But in the short term, I think it's going to become an incredible challenge for organizations, one which I don't think organizations can resolve alone. I think that we will need government intervention, private sector, public sector, academia, nonprofits, everybody working together to understand impact, opportunities, and readiness.

[00:06:03] So that to me is sort of framing what's happening with the AI space right now. And when you think about impact, opportunity, and readiness, this is kind of the questions that a lot of leaders are being faced with and them feeling overwhelmed, trying to kind of keep up with AI's advancements at the same time. So can you share how a company might hesitate to act and really face the consequences?

[00:06:31] Or one that embraced AI early and saw the transformative results, like how do companies get this right? Or how are they getting it wrong by hesitating? Yeah. Well, they're getting it completely wrong if they are hesitating. I mean, they don't have a choice anymore. Perhaps there have been other technologies where we had a choice, right? I mean, there are technologies that we talk, you know, imagine, you know, virtual reality,

[00:06:58] you know, the metaverse, the virtual tokens that we have talked about in the past, right? I don't know if those technologies still are in the radar, but they didn't impact organizations as much as we thought they would, right? I mean, just think about virtual reality. Virtual reality became, has been around for a long time, but it became a very big thing, maybe like, you know, 10 years ago. And some companies did invest in, you know, virtual reality tools and the goggles and the technology to do training and to do onboarding and to do all of these things.

[00:07:28] But not all companies jumped on that boat because what they thought was this technology is incredibly expensive for it to become mainstream. It's going to have to go, you know, pretty much 99% down in cost of operation, but also in cost of installation, in cost of development. And that didn't happen for all companies. And it actually didn't happen at all.

[00:07:52] That VR revolution that we talked about, you know, probably around 10 years ago, AI is not that. AI is actually going to have a significant impact. First of all, because AI can be used anywhere, everywhere. You know, it has an impact in every little thing that you do. If you are a doctor that works screening for cancer, you know, breast cancer, you know,

[00:08:20] men and women, by the way, which, by the way, I don't know if you know that men do have breast cancer too. So in men and women, AI will have an impact in your job. If you are the HR person working in recruitment, and see how different these fields are, by the way, AI will have an impact in your job. If you are a software developer, AI already has an impact in your job, by the way. So already so many software developers are using AI to create the software for them and the coding for them. And all they do is review to make sure that it's all within the right parameters, right?

[00:08:50] So AI will impact everything, number one. Number two, the speed of development of AI is just in, like, ridiculously fast. Like, I have never seen anything like this moving so quickly in the space of technology, right? So the speed at which we are seeing the improvements in the AI space. And number three, which is perhaps the one reason why some other technologies didn't become mainstream,

[00:09:18] is that the costs of AI are going down. The cost of development, the cost of implementation, the cost of learn how to use, all of those costs are coming down. So if you are hesitating because you hesitated before that VR was going to become a thing, that is not true for AI. So you should stop hesitating and understand that AI will have an impact in your work. Now, the one thing that I can understand, which can be very confusing, is, all right,

[00:09:46] you have a CEO listening to this now and saying, I agree. You know, you convinced me or I already knew this was going to be true. I think AI will have an impact in my work. I just don't know how, where, when, in what capacity, at what level. So that's the exercise that you've got to do now with your own teams. You know, get your senior leadership together. Get your managers together. You know, put together working groups. Bring external experts that can guide you in this journey.

[00:10:14] And, you know, your question is, you know, I already know that AI, in some way, maybe 1% of our entire operation, and I don't even think that's true, or 99% of our operation. But we don't know the answer to that. So let's bring everybody together, because I think by now, AI being so mainstream, everybody has heard something or is using AI in one way or another. Bring everybody to the table and make sure that you gain a very deep,

[00:10:43] but also incredibly wide understanding of how AI will impact or can impact your business today and also tomorrow. And that's going to set you up on a path, hopefully a path of action, where you say, all right, if I know that in the next six months there could be an AI tool doing this, I'm not going to wait six months to train my people on how to use that tool or how to use that AI. I'm going to train them today, you know, to get ready for when that tool exists, right?

[00:11:10] And if I know that there's already talk about developing an AI tool to do this one thing or that other thing, and it may happen in the next one year, so I'm going to get my people ready, you know, maybe in six months from now, I don't know, whatever it is. But it is about understanding how AI will have an impact in your organization today and tomorrow and getting ready for that. And to be able to do all of that, you have to stop hesitating. You just have to act now, not later, but now. We'll be right.

[00:11:39] Optimize your business with a workforce AI edge powered by Vizier. Make smarter decisions and achieve better outcomes with real-time AI insights delivered to every people leader. Explore more at visier.com. Back to the show. You mentioned that it's not just about keeping up with AI, right? But it's really about outpacing the competitors who are leveraging AI. Yeah.

[00:12:05] So how should companies determine their edge and move faster than the competition? Not just faster in the pace of our context of the world using AI, but specifically, you know, what should they be thinking about in regards to how they leverage AI to be competitive? Yeah. I'm going to tell you a joke. I don't know if it's going to be funny, but it was shared by the National Park Service on their,

[00:12:33] they are very funny on their Instagram account. They post all this very fun stuff. And a long time ago, they posted something saying like, if you're hiking with a friend and a bear charges at you, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your friend. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So I'm saying this because you don't have to, you won't be able to outrun AI.

[00:12:56] That's not going to happen because you are most likely, you're not a company that is valued at a $100 billion with, you know, $50 billion in the bank account to invest on AI. You will not outpace AI. That is not going to happen. You will outpace a company that doesn't know how to use AI or is not using it properly or even more or even worse for those companies. They are hesitating. They are not getting ready fast enough to embrace the AI revolution.

[00:13:26] So, you know, the first component that already puts you in a winning position is embracing the idea that AI will impact you. Even if you don't know how, that doesn't matter. It will impact you. If you are the if you have a bakery, you know, on the corner and you make cakes for people, you may say, ah, AI will never make a cake for me. Yeah, but that may be true.

[00:13:55] But maybe AI can take all your orders for you and then you can dedicate your time only to creating the cakes that you're doing for your client. So you don't have to worry anymore about filing taxes, about taking orders, about customizing an order for your client. AI can do all of that for you. So that alone already puts you at an advantage versus the bakery next door where the guy or the gal, you know, they are like AI. I don't even know what AI is. So I'm going to continue doing my cakes the way I'm doing it. Right.

[00:14:24] So so number one, you already are in a position of of potentially winning. If you understand that AI will impact you no matter what, even if you don't know how. So the second thing, of course, is what I said before. You start understanding what the impact may be. Once you start understanding what the impact may be, you have to act on that. You can't think that you will outpace or outrun AI. That is not going to happen.

[00:14:49] But you just have to look around in your your competitive your competitors landscape and think, you know, what are these guys doing to get ready for AI? Maybe none of them is getting ready for for AI. Maybe that gives me an opportunity to say, you know, how is it that we can use AI to outcompete our competitors in whatever they are either outcompeting us right now or where we have an edge on them? But it's an edge that is, you know, a marginal edge, so to speak.

[00:15:16] Right. And that marginal edge can become a lot larger if you leverage AI to be able to expand it and become, you know, make it make it a better, stronger edge over those competitors. Again, one belief that AI will impact you. Find out how it's going to impact you. Analyze your competitive your competitors landscape. See what they're doing with AI, what they are not doing with AI, what your edge already is.

[00:15:40] And find out the opportunities that AI gives you to go faster, better, providing better customer experience, hiring better people. Those things already will have a significant impact on your business. And if your competitors are not doing that, by the time they realize, hey, you know, the bakery next door is using AI to take, you know, customers, you know, you're far gone. I mean, you are far gone from them. So that's that's the beginning.

[00:16:09] Well, I think what you're saying is we need to be strategic about the way we use AI and by looking at like our own process as an organization and what our strengths, you know, almost like a SWOT analysis and look at how we function in comparison to our competitors. And I want to focus a lot of people.

[00:16:35] And I want to focus a little bit on maybe HR's role or like the organizational role in leveraging AI for their people. And when I think about that, I think about reskilling because reskilling is often mentioned as a solution, but it's such a broad term. And I was wondering, can you really break this down for us? Like what does effective reskilling look like? And do you have an example of a company or an industry that's doing it well?

[00:17:04] Yeah, good question. So I'm going to begin by saying that reskilling is not the first stage in which you should engage yourself, right? Because you don't know what you need to reskill your people on. That's the first question that you need. You have to do that assessment, right? Yeah. You have to begin from the beginning. And the beginning is you got to understand what it is that you need to be reskilling your people on, what skills they need, what skills they have. If somebody else has them in the organization.

[00:17:30] So you begin assessing, you know, if we're talking about AI in particular, and it's not just AI. I mean, there are a million other things happening in the world right now. AI is one of them. So, but if you're thinking about AI, you know, the first thing that you need to do obviously is assess. So you begin with your baseline. You know, what do we do right now? What do we have right now? Let's deconstruct every single thing.

[00:17:52] If you're an HR leader, they, you know, you know, have a big table or in a conference room, bring your people together, put on the table, all the processes that you're running right now. Deconstruct them all down to its fundamental components.

[00:18:07] So if you're doing learning and development, if you're doing performance management, if you're doing onboarding, recruitment, compensation, deconstruct every single thing to its fundamental components so that you can understand and say, all right, in the short term of all of these components that we just deconstructed and we created some connections in between them. So there may be, I don't think any HR department has ever done this exercise, by the way, and now it's a great time to do it. So maybe you start finding some correlations.

[00:18:35] Maybe you start finding some redundancies. Maybe you start finding some connections in between tasks in each of the processes that you have in place once you have deconstructed that, right? And then you identify them. Then you identify the ones that are boring, transactional, sometimes necessarily, but meaningless, you know, disconnected from a larger purpose, but that you still have to do, meaning some transactional tasks, perhaps.

[00:19:02] That are time sinks, meaning they take time, but they are not really that important. And then you think about, all right, what AI tools are out there that can do these processes? All right. So you find out that of all the deconstructed processes, you know, there are 10 tasks that can be done by AI.

[00:19:18] Let me give you some very mundane examples, you know, scheduling, you know, writing job postings, you know, creating personalized communications for hiring managers, interview panels, all of this, whatever it is. So you do that, all of that with technology. And then you find out that there's a core number of fundamental pieces that as of now can't be done.

[00:19:43] That doesn't mean that they won't be done tomorrow by technology, but right now they can't be done by technology. So you double down on those areas. And then you say, all right, of these areas, do we have the right capabilities to be able to do more of these core components that technology can't do? And if the answer is yes, awesome, continue doing what you're doing. But most likely the answer will be no.

[00:20:05] I mean, we, you know, of the 100% of our time, we were doing 50% of that that would be done now by technology and 50% of this core component. And I don't even think it's that ratio, by the way. I think it's more transactional and less, you know, human only kind of components, right?

[00:20:23] But once you do that exercise, you will determine that there are things that you need to double down on that can only be done by humans as of now and areas where you can start investing learning and development money to skill people to do that better. That's going to give you, once again, an edge, especially versus those companies that are not doing this using AI.

[00:20:45] Because while they are still going to Microsoft Outlook to schedule all the calendar invites to send out to people to, you know, for recruitment, you are just talking to an AI system saying, send an invite to Felicia, send an invite to Enrique, send an invite to whoever, connect everybody, bring us together. And that's it, you know, in one minute, you will have done that versus them, you know, spending all this time doing those transactional processes, right? So that's the beginning.

[00:21:13] And this is true for all functions, you know, that deconstruction of processes to its fundamental components to determine which ones are the ones that can be done by technology and which ones are the ones that only can be done by humans today. And the ones for which on which you have to double down and you may not have all the skills to be able to do that, that's where your risk killing is. So then you add another layer and this is where you can bring AI to. The next layer that you add is where is our industry going?

[00:21:42] Because we may be investing a lot on these core components, but maybe they are taking us in the wrong direction from the direction in which our industry is going. So you got to normalize this deconstruction process, adding the layer of this is the direction of our industry. So that's going to filter and say of the transactional things that can be done by technology and the core human components that can be done by technology.

[00:22:06] There are 20% of them that are taking us away from the direction in which our industry is going. So we need to get rid of those things or phase them out so that we're going to start including the new things that are taking us in the direction of our company. That gives you another data point for risk killing and upskilling. So that's the way you should try to develop this idea of skilling and risk killing.

[00:22:32] Yeah, I mean, I think you're right when we talk about focusing on the industry and kind of where industry is going and then backing up into the strategy of how to leverage AI in a way that means that's more meaningful for how we work and what we need to work on, you know, as as employees and as basically part of the company.

[00:22:54] Right. I want to kind of shift our thinking into understanding what examples of companies or industries who are maybe leveraging AI to create new opportunities and stay ahead of the curve. Like what what are companies doing today specifically that you can share on how they're being competitive?

[00:23:17] Yeah, well, without getting necessarily into the thesis of which companies, I mean, obviously, the technology sector is fully embracing AI, you know, companies that depend companies whose livelihood and competitiveness depends on having a strong software developer development teams. These companies are now and going into the future will continue to create their own AI software development workforce.

[00:23:46] That that that workforce will be probably managed by some humans, but not all the humans that are doing this work right now. So that means that one of the crown jewels of the workforce, which is being software development, you know, for the longest time, we've always said software developers are one of the safest jobs and the most sought out jobs in the market. That is not going to be true, you know, in the next few months to years.

[00:24:15] Right. Because if you can do what they do at a at a faster rate and at a lower error rate and cheaper with AI and all you got to do is you take a team of hand developers and you bring that down to 10 where this thing developers become AI managers, managers of AI workers. I mean, I think it's pretty obvious what decision a company will make. So some of those companies are already doing that. Some of those companies are investing in these kind of capabilities.

[00:24:44] Right. You have companies that are doing in the in the health care sector. You know, this is a little bit more sensitive, you know, given what's happening in the health care sector. I recently read, you know, United Health using AI 90 percent error rate via the horrendous, you know, price search on medication for cancer patients.

[00:25:10] I am hoping that we don't use AI in that way. But AI can save so much in administrative costs. You know, imagine all that screening that you go through when you go to an ER or, you know, urgent care, whatever it is, all that screening, all that set up process for any patient done by AI properly, obviously. Which, again, this is when we need government, a good government, you know, to regulate how this works.

[00:25:34] Right. To not allow those companies to just do whatever the hell they want with AI, but to be in some ways regulated. Those are two examples of companies that are already actually using AI in this direction. There may be a million other ways in which they're using AI, you know, because AI is not new, by the way. Generative AI is newer, but AI is not new. AI has been around for a long time. So, but these are some sectors that are using AI in this way.

[00:26:01] We'll be right back. Back to the show. For the smaller companies or those with like more limited resources, the thought of competing with AI giants like Amazon or OpenAI, I'm sure that can probably feel very daunting to them. So, what's your advice to these organizations, these smaller businesses for staying relevant and competitive when we are trying to compete with these giant organizations?

[00:26:30] Very good question. Double downing who you are. You know, I mean, there are people who would rather pay 10, 20% more on the local shop in downtown than paying less, faster on Amazon. So, why is that? Why is that? Because they want to support their local business. They know who they're talking to. They know what they stand for. They know what they are supporting.

[00:27:00] Not to get too political, right? But, you know, you got to be very clear about what you stand for. I mean, if you are a shitty company that is dismantling your DEI programs just to align yourself to, you know, the new administration, I'm really hoping that people one day say, I'm not buying anything else from you anymore. You know, I'm going to go down the shop in the corner. Yeah, it's going to be a little more expensive. And, well, you know, maybe I'm not going to have that much money to buy the next thing next month. But that's the one that I choose to support.

[00:27:26] So, double down on who you really are because I think we're going to need a lot of authenticity in the next few years, particularly in America. In the next four years, we're going to need a lot more authentic companies to say, I stand for this. I stand for small businesses. I pay my taxes and I'm proud of paying my taxes because my street is clean because I'm paying my taxes. And I stand for, you know, love and kindness and compassion and inclusion if that's what you stand for.

[00:27:55] You know, there are other companies that may stand for the exact opposite to that. And they still get their clients. I mean, I am sure that those companies will have to also stand for what they stand for as awful as that may be. You know, stand for, you know, like make sure that you have a clear purpose, that you tell people and communicate very clearly what it is that you are, what makes you different. Because at the end of the day, yes, Amazon and all these companies, it's very convenient.

[00:28:22] But at the end of the day, people also make choices based on values and principles. And if they are clear about who you are and what it is that you support, you know, I mean, they will do it. You know, they will do it. Am I saying that it's going to be everybody? Probably not. That's never going to happen. But here they are. I mean, all of these companies, Amazon, Google, you know, Facebook, all of these companies have been around for a long time. You know, and still 99% of all employees right now work in small to medium-sized organizations.

[00:28:52] So, you know, they are going to become more effective and efficient and they are going to become faster. But ultimately, their mandate is profit. And that's their only mandate. And very often, they are like a steamroller. Whatever comes from the way, they just, you know, break it apart because profit is the mandate.

[00:29:13] If you're a small company, care for your community, care for your people, care for your city, you know, vote for the right people, you know, support the right causes in your community because you're going to get that back. We have already seen it. You know, we have already seen that happening. So, I'm hoping that we double down on that. And so, essentially, you're saying, yes, these other giant companies are going to leverage AI effectively and probably more effectively.

[00:29:41] But the small or medium-sized businesses, the local businesses, it's really about telling your story and making sure that people want to come and purchase from you because of who you are and what you stand for and what the values are. And so, as much as we are leveraging and thinking about ways of using AI, we should equally be thinking about how we tell our story and what we stand for. Yes. And this is why.

[00:30:09] If you think that only relying on AI will make you in any way a relevant competitor to these companies, you're already done. You're lost. You will never be able to compete with these companies. That's not going to happen. And to create a company like Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft or Google, that doesn't happen overnight, you know, unless you discover something ridiculously valuable. But that is a miracle, to be honest. You know, I mean, even Bill Gates, when he was asked, how do you do this? He said, I just had good luck.

[00:30:38] You know, and that may be true. You know, back in the time when he created Microsoft, there were a lot of companies doing the same thing that he was doing. He was just, you know, maybe a little smarter and a little luckier. But at the end of the day, just on the AI front, if you think that alone will be your only differentiator versus these big companies, you're losing already because that's not going to happen. You won't be. They have more people, more resources, almost infinite resources compared to you.

[00:31:06] I mean, they can throw $10 billion at one problem and you can probably barely pay, you know, the taxes for every year. So that's not how you compete with them. Now, you leverage AI to become better, more efficient, more productive, you know, provide better customer service to, you know, to make sure that your values are properly communicated. So you still have to leverage AI. You cannot leave that conversation, you know, on the side.

[00:31:32] You still leverage AI, but you double down also on values, culture, who you are, what you stand for, what you support, you know, and you are present in your community. Because once again, yeah, you know, we all live in cities and whatnot, but people want those companies that stand for something that impacts them positively.

[00:31:51] So ultimately, you know, when one of those massive companies comes down the road and then you're the small one, you're like, well, yeah, we're both using AI, but I have invested, you know, thousands of dollars in the past few years on educational programs locally here in my community. I have supported this and that cause, you know, we clean the beach in the, you know, or the street or the forest, you know, we supported our firefighters. I don't know what it is, right? But be present in that way.

[00:32:19] AI will just make you more efficient, but that doesn't mean that you are a better company for that. You may be making more money, but that, you know, will you, will that be, will that alone be enough to compete with these behemoths out there? No, because as much money as you can make, it's not going to be enough to compete with them. You know, it's funny. You make me think of something that happened to me in a day. So I order my groceries online and it's a fantastic way to shop.

[00:32:52] And like I used to be able to look at the groceries and maybe I got like something spoiled. I said, this is spoiled. I'm not going to eat it. It was easy for me to return. It's changed. And now I will get spoiled groceries sometimes, you know, one or two items and I go online to return it and I can't do it. And I, and I think to myself, this is, I'm not going to pay for something that this is like a horrible customer experience. Yeah.

[00:33:22] And when I think about kind of going down to like the local store, I'm like, well, I'm going to have to pick it out myself because I know that if I go to my local community and I see the people who are selling an apple or whatnot, I'll get a, I'm going to get a good apple guaranteed every time. Right. So it's kind of like this, this fight between possible bad apples and, and always fresh apples. Do you know what I'm saying? Convenient for apples. Right. Right.

[00:33:52] It's, it's just like the, the customer or the client experience is either guaranteed, you know, with your, with your local community shop or may or may not be what you're looking for when you're dealing with someone that's not human a hundred percent of the time. So it's just an interesting thought that I had when you were talking because that is really the difference. I can't, you know, like, it's not that I buy in the local stores all the time. I don't think anybody does these days, you know what I mean?

[00:34:21] There's, there's a component of convenience. If I'm working, you know, here, my computer and by just by sheer coincidence, I realized, oh my gosh, I don't have a, you know, chapstick anymore. Or, you know, I know I'm going to forget when I go to the store. So I just go to Amazon and I go on chapstick, you know, right. And in a couple of days I have three chapsticks in my door, you know, so convenient. But that doesn't mean that, you know, that you would not value the local shops that you know are in your town.

[00:34:47] You know, the local restaurants, the local small shops, the local companies that can do something for you. And by the way, you know, some, some larger companies do stand for the community. You know, I love Costco, for example. I wouldn't have a Costco where I live, so I don't use Costco. I live in a small town, Flagstaff. So Costco said to their shareholders, we are keeping DEI, whether you like it or not. This is the right thing to do for the business to begin with. It's making us more money, but it's also the right thing to do for the people.

[00:35:16] So you go to Costco and you know that, well, maybe not everything they stand for is something that you can agree with. But maybe there's something that you cling on and you say this is the right thing. You know, Ben & Jerry's, you know, company that for so long has been in the forefront of social justice and equity, you know, in society. Right. You're going to buy an ice cream, you know, who do you want to buy? You know, the guys that don't care what they are putting in your ice cream or the guys that are putting, you know, the most organic kind of components while also having. Right.

[00:35:45] They're cutting the strawberries for your ice cream. You know, yeah, they're having, you know, they are having the right kind of impact and the right kind of thinking. So, so, you know, it's not just that the companies are locally. It's that you know what they stand for. You know, like, I mean, especially these days, you know, you got to know, you know, who you are supporting at the end of the day. Right. Because if you don't stand for something.

[00:36:13] Again, believe me, I'm not preaching to the choir here. I'm not saying that I don't buy from Amazon as much as I dislike the recent, you know, political stance that their founder took. Right. Complete shift, by the way, from the way he was before. But surprise, not surprisingly, I mean, I'm, you know, I think there's a there's a difference between, you know, believing in something because you believe it's the right thing. And believing in something because it gives you utilitarian value, you know, and these are completely different things.

[00:36:41] Because if you have your principles, you go the way, whether it pays off to you or not. But if it's utilitarian value, I think money, profit, whatever, then you can switch directions, you know, to the next thing that's going to make you more money. But, you know, going back to the conversation on AI that we were having before. Again, you know, every company, every leader, every person should be thinking about using AI. That is, there's no doubt in there.

[00:37:08] You won't be able to compete the big ones, but you can make sure that you're telling that you're saying I'm using AI. I am more effective. I am more efficient. But I am doubling down on the things that make me a unique company. I am investing on my people. I'm still hiring people. I am re-skilling the ones that I that I want to avoid having to fire. You know, if AI ends up doing their job, those are the companies that you want to have around that you want to support. And that's a company that you want to be, by the way.

[00:37:37] Most people need to be re-skilled to learn how to leverage AI. This is a new tool that everybody eventually will touch at some point, you know, in their career and in their day-to-day. So I think that there's going to be a lot more of that as soon as organizations figure out how to leverage it properly, right? They're still kind of going through the strategic decision-making.

[00:38:04] Many of them have moved forward, but I think we're all in different places as organizations. I want to ask you one final question, which is really for the leaders who might be listening. You know, what are three actionable steps that they can take today to really start preparing their organizations and themselves for AI this year? This should be already taken.

[00:38:30] We should be taking this for granted, as in there should not be anybody out there who wouldn't think that AI will have an impact on them in one way or another. In life and work, by the way, and everything in between. But there are people still who don't believe that this is going to happen to them, right? There are people who feel safer, who think that their companies will be impacted, whatnot.

[00:38:49] So your first action item is sit down, do a couple of ratings, and start believing that AI will have an impact on your organization, on your people, on yourself as a leader, so that you can start acting. Right? Once you, you know, if you don't believe it, you don't act. Once you believe it, you start acting. So, number one.

[00:39:10] Number two, because most likely if you are in a place where you have just transitioned from not accepting that AI will have an impact on you to now realizing that it will actually have an impact on you, most likely your immediate next place will be a place of ignorance as in, okay, I believe that this will happen. I just don't know how it will happen to us. Bring your people together. Somebody in your company must be curious enough to be reading about AI.

[00:39:39] One person has to know something, right? And that may become the beginning of the beginning. So bring your people together. Make sure that they, you know, like you have an open conversation. Begin by saying AI will impact us. How? How do we envision that this will happen to us? So maybe you bring an external consultant that can help you, but begin with your people because that's already enough talent in there to at least kick off the conversation.

[00:40:08] And number three, of course, once you have that conversation and you determine this is how we think it's going to impact us in the short and long term, short, medium, and long term, start acting on it. Now I start saying if we determine and identified that there are some areas where we are very certain that our company, our industry will be impacted by AI, invest the resources that you need to invest in order to get ready. Because whether you do it or not, somebody else is actually getting ready for that.

[00:40:38] So you don't want them to out-compete you. You know, you want to be ready. So believe it, analyze it, and act on it. The other thing that I wanted to say was that we have done a lot of re-skilling at CPO Playbook for our clients. But I think that before you even get there, it's really important for organizations to understand what their blueprint is for their people, right? Who are the managers, the senior managers?

[00:41:07] I mean, most times clients will come and they'll say, we want to re-skill. And I'll say, who do you want to re-skill? And they'll say, well, we want our managers or senior managers. But this person is kind of a manager. But, you know, they might not be in that role yet.

[00:41:24] But, you know, all of that needs to have clear, you know, everyone needs clarity in their role and a very clear direction in order to understand who we're re-skilling, when we're re-skilling them, and what exactly about that re-skillability that they need that's going to support their long-term vision. So there's a lot that goes behind it. But I agree with you, Enrique, that that is really where I think the future is going to be this year.

[00:41:54] Yeah. And, you know, what you just said is critical. Because it is not the economy that fires people. In 2022, all the layoffs in the technology sector, right? I keep saying HR here and there. All the layoffs that happen in the technology sector, it was not because of the economy. It was because of the CEOs. Yes. They made a mistake. I hate to say it, but it's true. Oh, no, it is the truth.

[00:42:24] And, by the way, we have become so numb to what these people say that it's just like we hear them say and accept blame, and it's just like we don't care. They said we became fat after COVID. The government put so much money out on the street. We started hiring all these people knowing that they were going to run out of that money. They knew that they were going to run out of that money at some point.

[00:42:50] And, you know, like nobody can put $2 trillion a year in the market every year. That doesn't happen anywhere. They knew that, you know, faucet of money was going to stop. And still, they decided to get fat. They hired all these people. They expanded all these service lines. They expanded all these new things that they were doing. They became bigger and bigger and bigger, knowing that they were not getting ready for the moment that money would stop running.

[00:43:18] And, in fact, it stopped running. And what did they do? Knowing from the beginning that that money was not going to last forever, they started firing people. They started shutting down lines of business. They started firing people that they thought helped them go through some transition, and then they used them, and they didn't need them anymore. So, I'm saying this is a very extreme case, by the way.

[00:43:41] But what I'm saying is that when you don't get ready and you're faced confronting the reality right up your nose, then you have to make decisions very quickly, most likely to save your business. I wish it was just to save the business, but some of them made a lot of money, by the way. But if it was just to save the business and you're confronted with reality, generally, for most companies, the most immediate thing to do is fire people. Just let them go, right?

[00:44:06] But if you have gotten ready for that over time, then you know that if that can happen next year or whatever, you know that there's a possibility of a recession or there's a possibility of a little bit of a market downturn. You know how that may impact you. You start getting ready for that today so that the impact on the people and on your business, but especially on the people, it's not as severe as if you were confronted with a reality that you may have known what's going to happen,

[00:44:35] but you never got ready for it. So I think that is so deeply irresponsible for those companies. And more importantly, I feel that the government has failed society when they allow companies to just walk away with something like this, you know, firing thousands of people just because they didn't get ready on time, knowing what they knew was going to happen. Anyway.

[00:44:59] You know, we have an episode with Alex Saylor about the relationship between the CEO and the CPO, which is the chief people officer. And for anybody who's listening, you should really go listen to that episode because it is painting the picture of what could happen, right, when you don't have that close relationship with your strategic people leader.

[00:45:22] If you don't have, you know, if you're not in lockstep of understanding the future of your workforce and really doing that workforce planning exercise, it's going to turn out, you know, the way you're saying, Enrique. Okay. It's going to turn out to the point where leaders are going to be blamed because they didn't think ahead and they didn't marry their people strategy with the future of their business and where they're going.

[00:45:48] So I understand like a little bit because, you know, nobody really knew when COVID was going to stop and nobody really understood exactly what was going to happen. And there is a lot of ambiguity there. So, you know, there are, you know, companies where leaders just, you know, they made the wrong decision or, you know, they didn't mean to.

[00:46:07] But preventative measures can happen when you have a very strong strategic HR leader or people leader that can help you identify how to make those better, more strategic decisions for your business. And you don't have to go through that much turmoil, you know, with the people in your business. And you look like a better employer, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it's about caring, right?

[00:46:32] I mean, I think I'm not saying that some of these companies didn't care, but I am saying that some of them actually didn't. You know, when it came to making the tough choices, the tough choices were not. Some small companies did, by the way, at the beginning of COVID, I remember small companies and not so small. I remember Airbnb, for example, cutting a significant amount of all executive pay so that they could keep their workforce working.

[00:47:00] You know, they did laid off 45 percent of the workforce. And I don't know if you remember the letter from Brian Chesky explaining what was happening and why they were doing what they were doing. It is a testament of kindness and compassion. You know, I mean, it sucks. They had to make a business decision. But it was not just let's fire people and don't care about them. Right. Some of the companies had to cut, you know, executive payment bonuses, all of this, you know, shareholder, you know, shares.

[00:47:29] You call it whatever you want to call it. And all with the objective in mind of preserving as much as they could the opportunities for people who were already working in those companies. They didn't want to fire anybody. Not all companies are like that. So, you know, I salute the companies that are doing the right thing. The companies that are possibly doing the wrong thing or just finding the first escape goal, which is firing people when they're going through a little bit of a turmoil.

[00:47:58] If they knew that this was going to happen, well, shame on them. If they didn't know, well, you know now that you have to get ready for the AI revolution, which will impact your organization and your workforce. So there's no excuse anymore. There really isn't. Right. Right. And if you need more help, call CPO Playback. There you go. There you go. You got the good people helping you out. Exactly. Well, Enrique, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:48:25] And I'm excited to connect with you again and learn more. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me again. This is a great conversation. Thank you. Thank you. If today's episode captured your interest, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving a review. To learn more about how CPO Playbook can support you or a leader you know with executive coaching or organizational transformation, visit us at CPO Playbook.com.

[00:48:53] Your support as a subscriber means the world to us. So thank you for tuning in. I'm Felicia Shakiba. Let's connect on LinkedIn. See you next Wednesday.