Totally Rewarding Chats | Ep. 40: Hacking HR and what is HR working on

[00:00:00] All right, we have Totally Rewarding Chats. This is Sean. How's it going, Paul? Sean It's going great. More importantly, how and where is it going for you with the words behind you? Sean O' That's true. This is the Midwest version. So never, ever did I think I'd be doing a live session from Omaha slash Council Bluffs, Iowa as part of the trailer tour. And very exciting morning. I was in what's called the Polygon. So when they have the tornado warnings, they highlight the super areas.

[00:00:30] Sean O' And for those who haven't seen my trailer, it is not large. And so it's kind of like a free carnival ride when the winds get up over 40, 50 miles an hour and it's shimmying around. Yeah. So, which is kind of cool. Sean O' And here's where you will tell why we have the watch. Sean O' No, it's not cool. Like, let me unpack that for all of those that are like me that don't want to camp. So it's so dangerous where I am right now. There has to be a special place for me to go.

[00:00:55] Sean O' Because otherwise, the room I am in moves around like that does not sound like fun by any definition. Sean O' You know, the sound of the rain once it's coming and going like it's all good. Sean O' And, you know, out here in Nate, you know, out here is actually Nate Lake Manawa, I think is how they pronounce it. Pretty cool out here in Council Bluffs. So cool area. So yeah, it's been it's been interesting.

[00:01:20] Sean O' Yeah, so 19 stops of the 27. So I should just turn the corner two thirds of the way and actually from here, basically turning east and heading, heading, heading down. Sean O' Do you, as you're gallivanting around the country doing the total comp tour, like, do you have an opportunity to stop at some of those like random roadside, you know, world's largest ball of earwax or in all the places that that city folk like me don't experience? Sean O' Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:49] Sean O' Like, do you have a chance or do you just have to pass it by because you've got a schedule and you got to get from Sean O' Mostly a schedule. I did go to one weird truck stop the other day that was a truck stop. I don't know how this is a truck stop slash dispensary. I'm not 100% sure. Sean O' It's safe. Sean O' That's the combo you want. But I don't know if you buy on the way in or on the way out. That also could be important. No, for the most part, and I've been doing it to myself, I've mostly been going from point A, you know, to point B. And then on the weekends, basically, I've

[00:02:18] been kind of playing and racing almost every weekend. The joke, though, has been I was in the thunderstorms and polygon three and a half weeks in one day without any rain. Sean O' It is literally rain and some some weekends it has really rained wherever I've gone. So I'm evidently the problem because I'm going in kind of a circle. It's not like I'm following this storm. So it's a me problem.

[00:02:40] Sean O' Yeah. And they you know what what you've mentioned before is when you mix rain with training and a very small space, it also means we hope that the fan produces some noise in your background just to get the smell out of your train. Sean O' Because I'm sure I'm sure it's pleasant. Sean O' I sent you a picture. I was able to crank. You know, I've got the old school crank washer. Right. And shout out to Liz Neville in Atlanta, who helped me out because I was planning on using that.

[00:03:07] Sean O' And it had rained and I'm like, this isn't going to be good. But yeah. And probably a special shout out to my wife who showed up in Nashville after I then race and train for another week. Sean O' Yeah. And was swimming in the open water. So hanging in here was lake stuff that had been cooking in the trailer while you travel and and the training gear, which also is great. Sean O' And so this year we're married 30 years and I'm sure she was questioning 31 at that point.

[00:03:36] Sean O' Yeah. Welcome to the tour. Sean O' But no, it's nice, you know, as I do laundry yesterday, but it's been good. Sean O' And I know part of what we wanted to talk about was beyond, you know, I mean, I'm happy to talk about training and racing all the time. Sean O' Which I know nothing about either of them. Sean O' Yeah. Sean O' Well, you probably could watch a race and figure out who's in front. Sean O' That, that I am. Sean O' I'm qualified to do, but training is not, not something I could speak much to.

[00:04:04] Sean O' My wife ran a half marathon once like that's the, she's the trainer. Sean O' I'm the, I'm not that. Sean O' Everyone's got their thing. Sean O' Like, you know, I'm definitely in the mindset, you know, you don't have to do this or whatever. Sean O' One, I think move, moving your body's good for your brain, whatever for walk. Sean O' It doesn't even matter. Sean O' And then you need to have something for your brain to check out and do. Sean O' I think you actually sub process, sub process. Sean O' Maria Colocercio at, um, Cindy O was a big fan of that too. Sean I think you do sub process stuff.

[00:04:33] Sean O' I saw another guy, crap, where was he at? Sean O' Who was the CEO of a company. Sean O' He's done a bunch of Ironmans. Sean O' Like part of the training is you process and you do, you think about a million things when you're out there for a couple hours and sometimes nothing. Um, and so I do think it helps process and it's just good for your mental wellbeing to not be in front of the screen. Sean O' Yeah. Sean O' However you get to that place, it doesn't have to be any type of particular event or racing or goal. Like everyone's got their own thing. And yeah, biggest thing I tell people is don't let anyone, you know, you set your goals, you know, on that. Cause jokingly, uh, you can always go to work to be miserable.

[00:05:03] You don't need to add extra hours of that. Sean O' Such a Pollyanna view of work. Sean O' Yeah. Well, just like you can always go find stuff to do that is that way. Like, you know, if you're going to have something in your time and you know, at work, even you who owns your company, like you've got things you have to do. Like it's not a thing. So don't make what you don't have to do be miserable. Sean O' Yeah. No, totally. Sean So we're halfway through the year. Um, actually we're, you know, we're dead. So we're both in the Midwest today.

[00:05:32] I'm in the Midwest for another week, I guess. Do you count Columbus, Ohio? Sean O' Yeah. Sean O' The definition of Midwest has more controversy associated than you think. Sean O' It's two weeks till I get to Columbus. Actually, so I'm thrown off. I'm two weeks more in the Midwest until I'm out of Ohio and then to the Northeast. And the World Cup starts today. Sean O' It sure does kick off in just a few hours, actually. Sean Yeah. Sean O' So I can go. We didn't have, obviously not scripted, but what we wanted to chat about was we're halfway through the year.

[00:06:01] We prognosticated what's going on. But I know between World at Work, all the sessions you do out in the marketplace and where you get asked to go. What's interesting is when you get asked to go present places, they generally have something they want you to talk about. Sean O' They want you to talk about. Sean O' Yeah. Sean O' And so what are you seeing is kind of the trend that's changed over the six months and what are people really talking about? And then I'm, you know, kind of back into the themes that have bubbled up because there have been some themes around the trailer tour. It's supposed to be total comp tour.

[00:06:31] I don't think they like the word trailer. That had some bad connotations, although I was living in a trailer. So I was like slightly offended. But not that. They're going to have to do better. Yeah, it is. Yeah. No, I think if I sort of. Hi, I'm Stacey Nordwall, host of Toot or Boot, the show that boots burnout culture and calls out corporate nonsense. Each week I talk with bold leaders and good troublemakers who are rewriting the rules of work.

[00:06:59] We dig into what's broken, what's working and how to build something better with a mix of practical advice and humor. If you're ready for a healthier, more human workplace, this is your show. I reflect on the first six months of the year and what has or hasn't happened. I think both can be sort of material changes from expectation. I put a social media post out on this just today, actually, about the want-want associated with June 7th. Yeah. I think the lack of action on EU pay transparency.

[00:07:28] I don't want to say it's made the noise around pay transparency go away. That's not the case. I think it's just the priority level has dropped compared to what I think we all thought it would have been in June, you know, back when we would have had this conversation in January. But that airspace that's been vacated by pay transparency has been filled in its entirety by even more sort of depth around AI. You know, the desire for I actually have to make something work or I am on the hook for

[00:07:58] creating some efficiencies or I at least need a strategy or it seems like I'm not hiring that many P2 roles now. What do I do about that? So like the AI knock-on effect has accelerated incredibly compared to, you know, it was on a fast path in January, but I don't know if I would have expected it to follow the path that it has over the past six months. It's interesting on that one. So AI comes up like jokingly. So far I have tracked the longest it's taken to 17 minutes in any given session. Sounds about right.

[00:08:28] And that includes intros, bios and whatever. So and obviously we've had some sessions on AI. So obviously, you know, that theoretically comes up faster. I'm a horrible moderator. As you go. What's interesting about AI is everyone's talking about it, but it has not fundamentally in any of the discussions changed the what they're trying to achieve thing. They're figuring in the how. And so one of the, we're probably the number one selected session through the trailer to a total comp tour. Sorry.

[00:08:58] Was, you know, we did the margarita session in World of Work and a lot of people went with the, which is, you know, given a salty and sour budget, make margaritas. And the premise is you're given 3% merit budget. How do you make it work? Like AI always comes up in that, but it doesn't fundamentally change the 3%. And it doesn't fundamentally change how do you communicate? I mean, maybe you can communicate better using some tools and that's where you're seeing the how.

[00:09:22] So what I've been most interested in is the how around AI in all the discussions has bounced into how can I better communicate? Like actually not what I thought it would be. Aggregating data, modeling out merit matrices with wider dispersion, you know, narrower dispersion of the merit matrix, like doing stuff that, you know, you and I as, you know, probably self-proclaimed nerds would be like, how freaking cool is this? It's been more around the communication.

[00:09:50] And then the second piece, and be curious, your thought because of all the work you do with the vendors is how little time they've spent learning how AI functionally works as practitioners. And I get it more so from HR departments of one to one and a half or two, because they have, they have a job I truly don't want so much stuff to do. But their perspective has shifted to, it'll help me communicate, help me do some stuff.

[00:10:15] But the vendors are responsible or my tools are responsible for implementing the AI to make it better. And that was not something I expected. I kind of, one of the questions I had in some of the AI initial panels was, is this a you problem or a vendor problem? Yeah. And I'm kind of taking that out because everyone's like, well, it's their problem. Like they're technology people. Let them figure out the AI. Yeah. Yeah. Two thoughts.

[00:10:44] I'm going to start with that, actually, because I do think that was one of our big pitches when we would do an AI for comp sort of session, even last year, but into the early part of this year is your AI strategy doesn't need to be you're building something, right? It can be leveraging the roadmap of your ecosystem. And everybody, like everyone, all of the hundred providers that we track has AI in their roadmap. Yeah. Like they do all of them with differing levels of impact.

[00:11:14] And, you know, we can go off for months on that topic. Like how, what is it really? And how is it working? But it's there. And if you start with the problem that you have to solve, not necessarily I need to use AI, your vendors might be building it for you. So I think that is still true, right? I'm glad people are picking up on that because that was, I think there was this assumption of like, I have to figure out Claude in order to have an AI strategy. No, you don't actually like you can adopt things that are out there, you know, relatively quickly.

[00:11:43] I do think there's one interesting, like it's changed as an assumption theory that's come out around, around annual increases. Actually, it's when lovable and provider for AI usage, right? Like I build a lot in lovable to prototype things and whatnot. When they came out and announced, we're just going to give everybody 10% raise every year. Yeah. Right. Under the assumption that AI is going to make their workforce incrementally productive. And as a result, we can get, we can afford this.

[00:12:12] Like we can give people these increases because they're going to get better, more skill year to year. So I don't know if that's the answer just to be a full caveat, but it was an interesting I, okay, now this is the first instance we have in my, my view of AI changing the way you design a program, right? Like to your point, it's actually the output that they created is very different under the auspice of AI has produced something in the workforce that we want to reward differently.

[00:12:38] Again, I don't think it's the right answer, but it's kind of a fascinating use case or example of, you know, is it true that people are growing and being and adding value in different ways now that we need to reward differently? So the premise there would be, would the premise be we'll pay you more because we're going to have less headcount, you know, our cost structure is going to be similar, just different, you know, similar cost structure, but how we get to that cost is different. Yeah. They're more productive. They didn't specifically say that in the announcement.

[00:13:06] It was more like, we know that they're going to get more and more valuable as they stay, right? So a year's worth of time with us is worth more than 3%. Like everybody is worth more at that stage. It's kind of embedded that, you know, if you're worth more, that means there aren't as many people, I guess, right? Yeah. And the interesting part of that, what's come up and I'll come back to the AI piece is one of the themes that comes up traditionally in the merit thing is the 3%, and we all know

[00:13:35] this, 3% is kind of the hour, you know, and whatever people say three and a half percent in the market, but literally every poll I take more people are under three than over three. So, but to change jobs, you make eight to 10% and even in this market. And so like maybe the strategy is do you just do an 8% budget? Because for me, the potential great part of the AI in HR is being able to go back and

[00:14:03] say, actually, if we had an 8% budget, we would spend less money over a period of time because you can aggregate so much more data and analyze so much more data because the 3% thing, it just doesn't work. It's, you know, COLA's at, you know, 3% benefits. So few people raise their hand when I say, were you able to negotiate less than a 10% bump in premium rates? So few people. So there's negative leverage on that number in so many different ways. Yeah.

[00:14:30] And so is lovable just basically getting out in front of this and we've talked about and I talk about a lot. Like when is someone going to get smart enough to realize like actually a 7% increase at merit? Disperse the right way. You can still give people that are, you know, high in the range and low performance zero, but you get so much more money that it actually saves you money. Like when are people, when can we start doing that? You know, there's workforce analytics companies and stuff, but that still hasn't matriculated

[00:14:57] its way to this premise that we have the merit. The AI thing that I'd be interested in your take is one of the points of confusion when you ask people about AI is everyone has AI, but what the, I'm going to try it. I'm going to keep it clean. What the, what the freak does, you know, what does that mean? Right? Yeah. There's my fan. There it is. Tornado inside. Yeah. It'll smell a little better. This is the sidebar.

[00:15:23] I will tell people for the FYI and useless trivia in trailers, all air conditioners, basically all of them are the same size. And so when you see one that has two or three of them, it's because they're the same size mostly. But when you have a little trailer, that means you have a ginormous air conditioner in here. And the only two settings that it has for fan speed are gale force, wind and tornado. And so it'll come on, cool it down to, I turned it up, but there, but, but on the AI thing,

[00:15:50] like they're very confused on like, are they just using AI to do a little matching? Are they doing it to bring stuff in? Are they doing like, and you think about AI goes all the way to that, all the way to up to MCP or model context protocol pieces, right? Where bots are talking to bots. Yeah. And so that is the part I think they're mostly struggling with because everyone says that now you can just say, I have AI. I know. And you're like, fine. It reminds me of when cloud came out, right? We're in the cloud. And everyone's like, wait, that's great. I'm like, well, who's not in a cloud?

[00:16:19] And what does that actually mean? Totally. Yeah. We, I'll plug it, right? We have a white paper series about AI for comp. Buying AI and comp tech is the third paper in that series. And, and in it two, two big points I would make is one is challenge your vendors when they say sort of AI native, what does AI native mean? It means nothing is the short answer. We prefer the language of like, is it AI first? Is it thinking about how do I do this algorithmically automatically before I make you do something? That's a better framing.

[00:16:48] Like, how is it going to help accelerate what I do? I don't care when you built it. Like, it doesn't matter when you built it or what infrastructure. And then the second is we, is it perfect? No, but we identified five different types of AI that people are saying, hey, I've got AI. And, you know, one is just, it helps you figure out the product. Well, that's a product problem, right? Like, yes, it's AI. Like you're asking a chat bot, how do I do this in the software? But that's not really all that helpful. That's just overcoming a product gap.

[00:17:18] You know, there's query AI where you are asking questions about your data. It's just natural language reporting, essentially. Useful, but not as useful as some other things. You know, we call it inference AI where it surfaces something that you wouldn't ask for, right? It automatically spots something in your data or, you know, it helps you see around a corner. Now that's getting valuable. Of course, there's generative stuff, generating offer letters, total reward statements, job descriptions, right?

[00:17:44] Like just the raw embedding, essentially, of the LLM into Comptech. And the fifth is workflow AI. We tried to not use the word agentic because I think that's another buzzword that's overused. But it's like, it's doing a job, right? It is sort of taking action step to step. And as I went through those five, the value sort of increases. It's not linear because, you know, but I don't want to scale it that way. But if it's just helping you figure out the product and get around, that's really not that helpful.

[00:18:13] So you have to ask more about what is the AI? What's it going to help me do I couldn't do before? And hopefully the answer isn't use my product better because. I'll be, I mean, I think that's all correct. Like I'm a big, the agent piece and think about what you can model and the potential. And in Merit in particular, we talk about the ability to, you know, bifurcate by where you, you know, grade and level have different ranges and you can model what does that look like? Right. One percent to the top and, you know, seven percent to the bottom.

[00:18:41] If you're using your three, you can do it by department. You can analyze who's doing performance ratings. Like there's some cool stuff. The thing I always come back to is as a simpleton and people heard me quote it, like Cheshire Cat is, you know, the infamous wisdom of Cheshire Cat. If, if you don't know where you're going, all roads will lead you there. And so just know what you want to accomplish. And so all AI looks like the best model of car out there.

[00:19:08] But if, you know, if you're a construction site manager or you're a builder and they're showing you the best possible Porsche on there, like how, how do I need that? Like that, is that thing applicable? So all those things you said, Paul, but to me, it always comes back at the simple process of like, what do I want to achieve? And then I would add to what you said more in the terms of be greedy. Like, in other words, like, what do I wish I could do? Like, here's what I want to do and what I know. And here's what I wish I could get to.

[00:19:38] And, but that's still directionally, you're asking them, can I do this thing? And they might be like, well, that's not on a roadmap or that's not like, okay, well, that's fine. Because to be honest, you don't care if AI does it or would you care if AI did it or they actually just figured out a cool way to do it or something else? Totally. You don't really care. It's just, it has AI. Yeah. I'm finding my, you know, you made mention that in the cloud reference, like I feel old

[00:20:06] every time I say this, but like, I've been through enough of, I've been through one other sort of key digital revolution, right? And, you know, you're my age or older as well, right? Where I remember when all of this, or older, I added that in there too. Right. But if you think about the broad sort of digital transformation.com plus sort of late nineties, early two thousands, um, I lived through that and oh my gosh, is this another one of those moments? Like history repeats itself. Is it the same?

[00:20:35] Absolutely not. Are there parallels? Absolutely. History rhymes. History rhymes. Exactly. Someone said that and I'm like, history rhymes. And there are a lot of correlations to this, Paul. I agree. And like the, the doom and gloom run, we're not going to have jobs and think about where it would be without the internet jobs, right? Or the, you know, the.com jobs. So a hundred percent. Yes. And, you know, and there's just some themes that it's like, oh, this is repeating itself where, you know, don't worry about, is it co-pilot or Claude?

[00:21:03] Worry about how you can use AI to be more productive, not which tool it is. Cause you know, I was really good at sort of writing HTML and, you know, but like the technology evolves, the concept is how do you do things digitally? That was the theme in 2000, you know, from calculators to spreadsheets. This is sort of from sort of do it yourself to sort of, you know, started and accelerated with the generative model. Like there's just parallels all over the place that you just got to make sure you don't fall

[00:21:31] into this trap of thinking too short term. The one thing that, that transcends technology change is that the problem and the question matters more than how you get there. Right. So move it to the cloud was an awesome technological change that unlocked value, but like knowing what you needed to do in the cloud was more important. The same is true now, like to your point, knowing, knowing where you're trying to go, what's the challenge I need to address now back into how can I do that most effectively? And how often actually I'll add.

[00:22:00] So, you know, like I can, I can go out and run a model every month or week or day. Like the agent can go do that for you once you set it up and catch people who have moved out of range or whatever, like some stuff you wish you could do more frequently because it just took too long. Right. To do. I think that that's been the big one. The one that's also came up, it's come up three times, which I wouldn't have seen coming. And I think you and I might've talked about it. Or I know I, I talked about it at the beginning of the year show.

[00:22:27] So is prioritizing which companies have AI and their price point, et cetera, because the price of tokens is going to go up or there will be social economic things because of all the data centers or whatever, and the costs will rise. And so how married to the AI version of that, because inherently, and I will say this to your point, the history rhymes when the internet came out, I will date myself. I worked at the 454th website launch monster.

[00:22:56] And that's how early it was. I don't know how many were right. So monster was the 454th site and the number of sites that provided no value or what have you, and it was free and you could use the tool for free and you could do whatever happened. But then to your point, commercial viability had to start coming. And so there are, when you use AI, there's token fees that happen out in the market. And so these companies that have added no fees or they're doing whatever, like how important

[00:23:25] is that tool for you? Because it might be worth the money. Like if they're, if they add up 15 or 20% or it was on a consumption-based model and you had to pay for it, like that's fine. But do you think about all the websites or all the toys or, you know, when the games first came out, like what was the one I gave, man, people are going to want either want or not want to meet my wife. So she came in the trailer with me when it stunk and then she was like a candy crush adopter early on. Right. And so it was free and there were no other stuff to buy.

[00:23:55] Right. And so same thing, but then they needed to make money. And so that has come up three times where people are talking about one, the social aspect of how much you say and use AI for the new, the younger generations, because they're not super stoked about that. And two, the potential cost ramifications coming down the road as token fees move up, companies will have to make choices and vendors on where they start. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:23] I had the first conversation ever in my career, granted AI is relatively new, around like what's the most token efficient way to accomplish this outcome in AI, right? Because by and large, usage is not the concern for most of us, right? Where I'm, my team's not churning through our credits, you know, in the way that you're hearing like Uber's engineers did, like burn through a whole budget in the first four months of the year. You know, we're not that concerned about it, but it's going to be a concern at some point.

[00:24:52] Like iterating a hundred times on this thing is certainly less efficient. It's going to be more costly. It may not be yet given the pricing models of the tools you're using, but thinking about efficiency is going to come up at some point. I still check myself all the time. Like, boy, was I rankled when I had to pay 30 bucks a month for, you know, that extra co-pilot license, but it's only 30 bucks a month given what it can do for me, right? Like it saves me so much time.

[00:25:18] Like it's still, so I guess even though cost matters and I'm with you, like we need to start paying attention more to cost. It's still a bargain in the grand scheme of like productivity. It is, but imagine you have vendors. So where this came up was if you think about their tech stack in comp, right? Your comp tech stack. You've got vendors that are potentially having AI for you to get your data access or whatever survey management, job architecture tools, you know, all the way through to merit and

[00:25:45] then maybe to review and to your point letters, write to information. I assume at some point it's going to be like AI, right? All this stuff. And so the budget will be the budget. And look, not a knock on comp, but comp traditionally has not fared well going to get more money. Like it's, it's been a struggle, right? The struggle is real. You could say, right? So if you have a budget of a hundred K, just make the math easy for me. And you're using AI in all of them and all of them say, we're going to have a 20% premium, right?

[00:26:15] And you've got at least five vendors to make the math for me. You are now stuck in the choice of like, do I get rid of a vendor and stay at my hundred K? Do I go try to get a 20% budget increase in a down market to do whatever? Like, so I, this is the part where I'm like, sure for you, because you know, you're in the point and AI where you're doing production that the license fee versus hiring another person or a human or outsourcing, that's an easy one, but also you're a small company.

[00:26:45] Sorry, Paul. Totally. Totally. So you can rationally as the CEO be like, I get that, but how do you matriculate that down a thousand person or a 10,000 person shop? So I'm very curious how that'll go out, but I was kind of glad to hear in a weird way that the comp people are thinking from a business standpoint, like, how's this going to work? Is this part of my decision-making? What are the viability? But I think the thing they're tripping the most on was what you said earlier, what does the AI do?

[00:27:11] So I'm glad actually you're writing those papers out, like here's the five things of what they do and bucket those, bucket those things. And what is the value to me of that? That's right. And that's where, you know, sorry to vendors, but like we push a lot into like when people are picking a vendor, if there's an extra charge for AI, push on what is it going to do I couldn't do before?

[00:27:36] So if it's just helping me do something I absolutely could do, you push on the value of that. Whereas if it's genuinely changing an outcome, like I can now match a thousand jobs, you know, and have to review the hundred that are hard rather than all thousand. All right. That's a real difference in the experience in the product. We can talk about the value exchange between sort of price and return. If it's just I can ask it to create a report that it already created. Why is that turning? I would push back on the time.

[00:28:06] That'd be my biggest pushback on that is not the time. I would look and say, actually, I've said it. Well, I guess that was the first time I got, when the work came after me, like the CFO doesn't fucking care about time, right? You joined comp, they don't care, right? Right. So I'm not a big time. It saves me time. They don't care if you had to match jobs on a Saturday. You had to spend 80 hours in marriage. Sure. But I think they do care if you go back and say this thing that I used to run once a year to look at turnover and who's at risk. Now I can do four times. And I can run that weekly. Yeah.

[00:28:36] Like it doesn't matter, right? And now you can catch and be like, actually, I can reduce turnover or I can get our high performers in rank. Like I can do this so much faster. That's where I would say use that value. Same question, Paul. Like what value can this provide me? Like actually we can tell you this thing that used to do once a year because you don't have unlimited time is there. And I actually think the job architecture and consistency is another one. Like we've talked about job description creation.

[00:29:04] I keep talking about the inversion of that. Yes. AI is a great tool to actually consolidate where everyone thinks they're different and better than everybody else into a really good job architecture because those jobs aren't really that different or you mentioned earlier that actually is a different job. Like it's a really great job. Yeah. We're doing a little campaign to review the different job management providers out there. And that's one of our questions we ask in our structured demos when we do these reviews is like, how does this help me identify duplication?

[00:29:33] Or if I'm looking to create a job at flags, this really isn't that different than the one you've already created, right? How do you can can AI help you govern the job architecture is like, yeah, that's the gem of the question, right? And it should. It really should. And there are some tools that do a good job of flagging. Hey, this one looks pretty similar. Or I scanned your library. Here are three jobs that kind of are the same thing. You know, do you really need three different descriptions?

[00:29:59] So the capabilities are coming or there in some instances. But that's interesting because one of the other things kind of more the pre and post discussions over this that has been really interesting is the theory that AI is going to reduce the amount of time that it takes you to do stuff. And then you potentially don't need more headcount or they're waiting for you to get more efficient so they don't backfill the fourth person in the apartment three, right? They all they all most people feel like they're caught in this middle ground right now.

[00:30:29] I have to communicate more than I had to if I'm in a transparency state. I have to do more stuff. I am not keep management thinks I'm more efficient because AI is magic. And, you know, meta is laying off 8000 people. And, you know, and so and in theory, it's going to be here. But the nirvana of save time and efficiency versus what they're being asked has not caught up, but they can't get additional resources for the thing.

[00:30:55] And so I think there's this weird squeeze going on right now with the reality of what's there. And of course, on top of that, everybody's calling them all the time about why their stuff's better with AI. And there's more and more tools. And you can dev so much faster now. And so there's more vendors. And so there's this weird thing in comp right now where I mean, I jokingly tell people I don't want to be a practitioner at times because it looks really hard. I think it's really hard right now. And this, yeah, it hasn't shaken out kind of like when the Internet came out, like you

[00:31:24] said, Paul, of like, what is a good vendor? What is it actually doing? What is it actually going to do better than Excel? And actually, can I do it in Excel with Claude? Totally. Just fast and like, but they don't know yet. Right. Because we don't know like, you know. That's right. There's the security piece with the company yet. And so I think we're in this really weird spot right now, more so than we were six months ago. I think that's true. I think we actually call it out in our AI white papers as well.

[00:31:50] Like the build versus buy decision is different now than ever before. You know, 10 years ago, if I walked into a client and said, you know what? You should build your own merit tool. Like what? Like, why would you ever do that? Right. Like the risks, the challenges, the cost of managing a custom, you know, application would have been ludicrous. Right. We taught everybody and it was right to move to configurable, you know, SaaS platforms.

[00:32:20] The economics are changing there. Right. Now, there's some real risks and considerations. So don't get me wrong. Like, I still think there's a place for real enterprise software. But the decision is different than it's ever been. And people are just learning to ask the question now. OK, well, how would I think about build versus buy again, given the choices I have? When your vendor becomes the IT department internally, your partner, like it's really there isn't maybe I haven't thought about this way before. There's not a best practice yet. Correct.

[00:32:47] So there used to be kind of a, you know, it used to be like, OK, this is the starting point of what most people do. And now I'll just kind of tailor that to, you know, my org. Right. Because, you know, I do believe everyone's org is they are there at some level. They're all unicorns. You know, I got different humans at different works, you know, whatever. But you could start with, you know, if you were looking for data and you were a, you know, manufacturing plant in the Midwest, like you have a general start of where you would start. Right.

[00:33:15] And how you would do it and the tools you might use 10 years ago. Fine. Now you're like, crap. Like, where do I start? And who do I look to? And they're all like, I don't know. What are you going to do? And actually, I do think the affiliates or whatever group you can get into, you know, World at Work Forum, what I don't know. There's all other places like that has become, I think, more mission critical for companies to kind of network, to figure stuff out, because I'm yet to find the vendor who calls you up and says, our stuff's kind of marginally OK to bad.

[00:33:44] You know, there's just all great. Yeah. Yeah. And so I do think it is. Yeah, I do think it's a hard time. Yeah. I also you raise an interesting point where I.T. I feel like in the duration of my career, that function has evolved a lot. And I don't I don't spend my day thinking about I.T. I think about people. But like my partnerships with I.T. when I was in house were I don't want to say transactional, but kind of transactional. Right. Like we had to figure out how to buy the systems we wanted to buy.

[00:34:13] And they kept the lights on the core infrastructure. And you do whatever the heck you want within that infrastructure. Right. Like you've got your shared drive, your place to secure the Excel spreadsheet, do what you want in a build versus by AI world. They are the vendor. I think it's a good point. Unless they agree that like you're going to do your own thing, which I don't see a lot of, you know, organizations of any size doing. And is I.T. ready to step up to that? Right. I have some clients where I see I.T. leaders and CIOs sort of clinging to I want to own it.

[00:34:41] But the capabilities aren't really there for them to partner well internally in that vein. Right. They're not product people. They're infrastructure people. And now people want to build products to sort of do this work. And they're not equipped to partner in that way. So I think there's an interesting challenge with how we work with our own internal partners yet. And is it going to be I.T. I.T. is it a new function? Is it, you know, is it how do we get this done if we're going to build things is harder than it sounds in large organizations where I.T.

[00:35:12] may not be really equipped to do that yet. And they're getting press from other departments, too. You're not the only department. So, yeah, the way I told someone the other day was there's it's not just more variables in an algebraic equation. We've moved to an integral based calculus. We're not quite yet to differential equations, which would be fun. But, you know, the complexity, you know, kind of three dimensional complexity to get this stuff done. And again, we're so young in the journey.

[00:35:40] And so I do, you know, I do hear a lot of people talking about, you know, is there really differentiation? I do think, you know, they're staying with vendors. They they they trust and know a little bit and kind of riding stuff out a little bit to kind of learn. So there's a lot of this wait and no over the six months, especially on this, getting out to talk to people. And, you know, you know, just hanging out and chatting with people about what you're seeing. I think they're all I do think people feel better when they're like, am I am I? You know, I can't figure it out. You know, I don't know exactly what's going to happen.

[00:36:10] You know, is that weird? And you're like, no, it would be completely weird if you had it all figured out. That's right. You know. Yeah, totally. Totally. So. Over the next six months, if people are listening, we have guests kind of a wide range coming, Paul. So we have we've got someone who does kind of coaching stuff, you know, kind of usually more, you know, executive or whatever, but kind of professional growth coaching. Kind of make sure I get my list going right.

[00:36:39] We've got, you know, some people who do some presentations out in the market. And then, you know, practitioners also coming out talking about best practices. One of them is not till like August. Shana Cook from Dominion Payroll. They actually have an employee that's an AI bot on the org chart. So I'm kind of super stoked. Yeah, she's she's great. She'll be here. But if people have anyone that they're interested or a topic, you know, drop Paul or I a note. HVAC, you know, maybe HVAC provider.

[00:37:06] I'm pretty Andy, but I'm not especially after going through the tornado and thunderstorms. And I'm not 100 percent sure I want to try to replace that with something smaller in the room. Yeah. Do they build mufflers like mufflers for HVAC? I can shut all the I can shut all the things but one, but it actually gets louder because then it's like venting it all the air. And even if I point at the other direction, it doesn't take long because there's not a lot of space in here. But it is. Yeah, this is this is legitimately convinced you.

[00:37:34] I was just I was just going to say that like this is this is why the answer to the question. You have an unencumbered weekend. You can choose to rough it in the woods or hang out at a posh resort. There is a correct answer. Like you don't have this problem. I'm out here with no people chilling out, you know, having a drink, looking at, you know, hanging in nature, playing in the lake. Like, it's great. There is no other answer. You know, I don't want to have to share an elevator with a bunch of people. I don't have that problem.

[00:38:02] I don't want to I don't want to share the smell with the rest of my family. Like I have an 11 year old boy who is discovering that he needs to clean himself differently, like literally live in life. And I don't want to be too close to that for a weekend. How big of resorts are you going to where you each have your own bedroom? Like, I didn't even know they don't let me in places like that. Even if it's one bigger room, like the the circulation, like when I walk in there. So they make we we we do by default have a small trailer.

[00:38:30] So when she got here, like it's it doesn't have a room. Some of them have a separate space. Like, yeah, you could like you can solve that problem to where it's about the size or bigger than your room. And more importantly, if it's raining outside, we're not in it. Whereas you're sort of choosing to sort of engage with the world, you know, and touch touch ground, touch earth. Race dates are race dates, you know, like that's that's your deal. That's just work. That's work. And it's actually one of my favorite parental unit moments.

[00:38:58] My daughter did her first Fondo under mile ride thing in Tulsa and it rained all the time. I was 70, so it was warm. But my like the moment that will live on forever. They close part of the roads. There's water coming across all the standing water. She's tiny. She's five foot tall, 100 pounds. And so she's going to whatever. She's newish to biking. And she's like, Dad, I need to eat a waffle. Those sports waffles, right? I give her a waffle. No sooner do I give it to her that she goes to draft behind me that a FedEx truck goes by.

[00:39:28] And drops like a tsunami. We were rip curling through this thing. And all I hear back is my waffle, my waffle. And I look back and she's got like this waffle that's starting to disintegrate with road goo on it and everything else. Yeah. And my ladylike daughters. I tell people, I don't know. I have amazingly strong women that we raised. They're not ladies. She just ate it. She did it. Like, yeah. I'm like, yeah.

[00:39:57] I'm like, it was a proud parental moment. She didn't want. She just plowed through the day. I am not cut out for any of that. Went home and put her stuff in a washer and dryer. So which actually my wife who was there and did a shorter ride that day took my stuff right away and was like, there was zero chance of staying in the trailer. Because I'm a typical guy. I'd be like, I just put it in a pile and dealt with it later. She's like, no, that's not happening. Yeah. But if people have guests like or topics or whatever, I'm going to try to get some stuff with TA on.

[00:40:27] We'll try to get some more AI. But if people have guests, you know, let us know. Anything we can do better, let us know. I think we should. If you just have questions you're curious about from us, right? We don't put Sean through the speed round often. We don't put Paul through the speed run often. If there's a question you're curious about, send it to us, right? You know, we'll dig into the mailbag if a listener has a query. Oh, yeah. That would be kind of interesting if people have questions that they want us to answer. Toss it out. We can bring it on.

[00:40:56] We can give it to a guest. Like, you know, absolutely. We're very open and democratic here. At some point, we might have to throw some change up saying because we are getting people who I've met out who will walk up and be like, FYI. They know the answers already. Yeah. I'm crunchy peanut butter. I'm like, okay, I'm not going to keep track of that. I can barely keep track of my own preferences. But yeah. So this was great. And again, I'm stoked you have the AI series coming out. Paul and I are happy to talk about this stuff at any point in time.

[00:41:24] And if you want just other resources to drop a note, and we're happy to point you in the different parts of directions. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, enjoy. I will be weirdly, hopefully I'll catch you in person. Yeah, pass them through the neighborhood here. IRL, as I spend the weekend near Rockford. Otherwise, thanks. And we'll catch up with everyone soon. Yes. Thank you. Good to see you. Yeah. Let's see you there. Stay tuned. .conf시죠?