Explore strategies for integrating AI effectively into your business by shifting from traditional leadership to what Keith Ferrazzi calls “teamship.” Join the #1 New York Times best-selling author and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight as he and host Nichol Bradford discuss both the opportunities and challenges AI brings to organizational workflows. “This is not a world of technology or of people,” Ferrazzi explains. “It’s a world of work processes — and we’ve got to be able to radically ‘team’ in order to find the value.”
Explore strategies for integrating AI effectively into your business by shifting from traditional leadership to what Keith Ferrazzi calls “teamship.” Join the #1 New York Times best-selling author and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight as he and host Nichol Bradford discuss both the opportunities and challenges AI brings to organizational workflows. “This is not a world of technology or of people,” Ferrazzi explains. “It’s a world of work processes — and we’ve got to be able to radically ‘team’ in order to find the value.”
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[00:00:35] Nichol: welcome to the A IHI project. I'm Nichol Bradford
[00:00:39] SHRM's. Executive and Residence for AI+HI.
[00:00:42] This week we're exploring the future of leadership,
[00:00:45] collaboration, and AI driven innovation.
[00:00:48] Our guest is Keith Ferrazzi,
[00:00:49] founder of Ferrazzi Greenlight,
[00:00:51] a world renowned thought leader on high performance teams relationship
[00:00:55] building and workplace transformation.
[00:00:59] Keith is the [00:01:00] co-founder
[00:01:01] of the Radical Innovators Collaborative,
[00:01:03] a Community of Forward Thinking Executives.
[00:01:05] Reimagining work in the age of ai.
[00:01:07] He has advised Fortune 500 companies
[00:01:10] is a number one New York Times bestselling author
[00:01:13] and pioneered new approaches
[00:01:15] to leadership and team collaboration.
[00:01:18] Keith, welcome to the A IHI project,
[00:01:20] Keith: Nicole, it's great to see you again. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I'm enjoying looking forward to the conversation a lot.
[00:01:26] Nichol: Great. you spent your career transforming leadership, collaboration, and teamwork. I remember never eat lunch alone. Can you share what are some of the key themes that have shaped your approach to business and innovation?
[00:01:40] Keith: Well, first of all, I,
[00:01:43] Nichol: I.
[00:01:43] Keith: I go back to my history a little bit. Years ago I was the chief marketing officer of Deloitte. Years ago I was the Chief Marketing Officer at Starwood Hotels, and if you look at those two businesses, I. Deloitte back in the nineties had an aspiration of someday we would be up there [00:02:00] at par with Accenture and McKinsey, et cetera.
[00:02:03] And at Starwood we had the same aspirations. We were going to topple the juggernauts of Marriott, et cetera. And you spin ahead 10 years and the reality is. Deloitte was a band of brothers and sisters taking hills together. A a a term that I coined called Co-Elevation Wrestling Ideas, pushing each other higher, challenging each other out of love and commitment.
[00:02:28] And at Starwood, we were a bunch of silos, much more competitive, much more, um. Much lacking the integration of the various sides of the business, and unfortunately, toward the end we had to sell to Marriott below industry multiples. That was so powerful to me that I started a research institute back in 2000 on the future of high performing teams.
[00:02:52] I've spent 24 years of research and understanding teaming and how important. Unlocking value [00:03:00] from the interdependencies within an organization. And as you well know, never before has it been more important than in this world of ai. This is not a world of technology. This is not a world of people. It's a world of work, uh, uh, of work processes.
[00:03:16] It's a world of all of those, and we've gotta be able to radically team in order to find the value.
[00:03:22] Nichol: I am excited about the Radical Innovators Collaborative to, to extend what you just talked about,
[00:03:30] I have gone to a couple of the dinners. Prior to that and was really impressed by CHROs that I met there, and also their interest and commitment to integrating AI in a helpful way. How does AI enhance or challenge this type of leadership, and can you tell the audience what the Radical Innovator's Collaborative is?
[00:03:58] Keith: Yeah, I'll start with [00:04:00] that. So years and years ago, um, a young man in my organization named Frank Condu and I used to host a ton of these kind of facilitate. Isn't Frank Amazing?
[00:04:11] Nichol: He's
[00:04:11] Keith: Yeah. Little, little. Shout out to Frank. Um, we used to host tons of these within Frazy Greenlight, my organization, with our clients, with our prospects, with individuals, uh, thought leaders, et cetera.
[00:04:23] And, um, Frank's out in his own, now he's over at Rasad, and he continues to do these with me through the Radical Innovators Collaborative. And what we're doing is we're bringing together individuals. Who truly want to put a stake in their organizations and make a bigger difference. And for a long period of time, we did this with HR leaders as as a, as a group.
[00:04:46] And we would have these dinners and we would go around and people would talk about the things that they were struggling with, and we'd use a format. Uh, that I've created where people would ask them questions and then give them advice and very candid [00:05:00] feedback among peers. And people always walked away, bonded, connected, feeling like they could text people on weekends to get advice, et cetera.
[00:05:08] But in the advent of ai, um, what we need to do is we needed to integrate. Technology and technologists. I really believe the partnership between the CIO and the CHRO is never been more important and defining of our future. Now, what's interesting is it really is a three, legged stool. You've got the people side and the change management side, the arbitration of, HR.
[00:05:34] You've got the technology side, the arbitration of it. But the other thing that you have, which I think we're missing in most of the functions is. actually the redesign of workflows, the redesign of process, and the using of tools in order to redesign workflows with AI as your partner. Now, that's not something, to be honest, that most HR executive [00:06:00] has have as a core competency, right?
[00:06:02] Workflow redesign, but it's something that we need to partner with the business. It really. If I look at my last book, which was called Never Lead Alone, defining High Performing Teams, 24 Years of Research. When you look at the heroes in that book, every chapter is grounded by a hero story and then a few practices to deliver on that shift toward Teamship.
[00:06:26] What I found was that most of those heroes were engineers. These were people who had an engineering mindset. Who decided to start to look at their business and re-engineer ways of working. And that's one of the things that I find missing. We are approaching the re-engineering of work with policies during the pandemic.
[00:06:46] We spent too much time struggling about whether or not we're two or three days in the office when we should have been looking at how do we reinvent collaboration? How do we use the tools that we had at that time? Software to reinvent collaboration. [00:07:00] Instead, we're battling about policy. What I'd like HR to do is step above.
[00:07:05] The policy and start to partner with the business to actually re-engineer ways of working. That's where the breakthroughs are gonna be. And what we did with Radical Innovators Collaborative is we created a consortium of technologists of business leaders, uh, HR leaders and founders, because it's so important to have some of these founders who are out there fundamentally reinventing HR processes, having them right in the middle of the conversation.
[00:07:34] Nichol: I agree completely mix where you have builders and strategists even some philosophers together on redesigning the. Workflows. One of the things we've seen, because at, we're doing a lot of research and we have the vantage point look across companies, across industries, and really seeing what's working and what's not working, [00:08:00] the successful companies are doing you said about redesigning the workflows.
[00:08:06] It's kind of like the A, you know, a visual on it would be AI is sort of like. Increasing the volume like water behind a dam and without redoing the work processes, that it doesn't work and
[00:08:23] Keith: Yeah.
[00:08:23] Nichol: increased volume is going into the old. The old way of doing things, and, and that's really challenging.
[00:08:30] Upwork had a bunch of research on how that was actually making teams less efficient when you bring in ai, but you don't change the workflows. So I, I, I love that.
[00:08:43] Keith: You know, let, let me, let me riff on that just a little bit. Um, so one of the things that, we're bringing 60 CHROs and CIOs together in a couple of weeks on this topic, and, uh, we are, we're having two different conversations. One conversation we're having is just [00:09:00] how do we accelerate. The use of the existing AI tools that we have today.
[00:09:05] So one of the things that I find frustrating with, where we are right now is we've put the tools in place. we have, secure generative AI tools that anybody can use in an organization. But unfortunately we still have fairly de minimis use of those tools. And one of the things that I've seen in my research is we need to use the same kind of.
[00:09:30] Change management strategy to get existing roles using generative AI as we did in the past with things like Six Sigma and Agile.
[00:09:40] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:41] Keith: an article in Forbes not long ago that calls for us to think about inviting black belts of Six Sigma into stepping up and saying, Hey listen, I would like to be out ahead of the, of the trends.
[00:09:56] Ai. So, you know, take any role you have in your organization [00:10:00] and make a call to that, uh, that role and say, Hey, any of you in this particular role would like to volunteer and say how you're using AI that you're proud of. We'd love to collect that. And let's say if there's 2000 people in a role. Usually you'll get about a 10% response.
[00:10:19] You know, 200 people. And if you get 200 people and then you look through and you find some real nuggets or best practices, you probably only have about 50. So what you do with those 50 is you pull those 50 people together, you put them into small groups of two or three, and you say to them, listen, I want you all to coach each other on the best ways to use AI to reinvent your role.
[00:10:42] Once they've done that, then you start sharing among the various groups I. Those groups, let's call them black belts of ai. Now that group stands in front of the 2000 and says, look at what we are doing. Look at how we're doing it, look at the results that we're getting. And then what we do is we invite [00:11:00] anybody who wants to move from being unattended to AI to becoming yellow belts, and they join the movement.
[00:11:07] And then you put a black belt in a small group of three coaching them. So now what you've got is you've, I think, you know, generative AI needs to be a movement. People need to be getting into the movement, getting excited, moving forward, and co-creating their future, you know, as, as, as a, as a group of individuals taking hills together.
[00:11:27] And that's very much what I do with executive teams as well on our coaching. It's like you wanna get a group of people. Committed to co-elevation. Committed to bold objectives, but committed to helping push each other to get there, coach each other to get there, learn each other up, to get there. That's what high performing teaming is.
[00:11:45] Nichol: And I wanna go into teaming now, because work really focuses also, or a portion of it, on redesigning the collaboration
[00:11:55] Keith: Yes.
[00:11:55] Nichol: across the C-suite. How do you see AI [00:12:00] reshaping how leaders in teams work together at the highest levels? What are you seeing throughout your vantage point?
[00:12:06] Keith: So, so for 24 years, coaching executive teams and doing this research, what we have found is that most organizations, and this is gonna sound a little heretical, but most organizations have over-indexed on leadership and under-indexed on Teamship.
[00:12:24] Nichol: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Keith: we have, we have elevated the leader and everything that the leader needs to do.
[00:12:31] But when do we have a course? When do we teach the teams on what their responsibility is, what they need to do? I, I say it's one thing for a leader to give feedback, it's another thing for a leader to create an environment where the team gives each other feedback. One thing for the leader to hold the team accountable.
[00:12:48] It's another thing for the leader to get the team to hold each other accountable for the team, to own each other's energy, for the team to lift each other up. You know there there's three layers of our research. The [00:13:00] bottom layer is the relational layer. How do you get the team to have the psychological safety to care and commit to each other's success?
[00:13:07] That we will cross the finish line together. We won't let each other fail. That's that bottom layer. The next layer. Is the challenge layer, the layer that turns the team into each other's coaches. The where, where we move from conflict avoidance to candor, and that layer has simple practices that we have seen and we coach to that allow people to really step into a bolder way of interacting with each other.
[00:13:32] And then the top layer is work I've been doing for 15 years, which is how do we redefine our work in what I call 21st century collaboration? How do we use the tools? How do we use the tools of collaboration software? How do we use ai? So it's really three layers. The relationship layers are foundation. I.
[00:13:49] The challenge layer is how a team can really commit to not letting each other fail by pushing each other higher, giving each other feedback, having high degrees of candor. And then the final layer is [00:14:00] how do we accelerate collaboration, make it faster, make it bolder, reduce the cycle times by using the tools that we have, right?
[00:14:07] So those are the three layers as we think about shifting from predominant hub and spoke traditional leadership to elevating teams to meet leaders in leadership. And that's what we call teamship.
[00:14:19] Nichol: And with that definition, it's also one of the ultimate leadership skills would be to create teamship.
[00:14:27] Keith: It should be, but we don't teach it. Right? So there's two components to it. You've gotta teach the leader to create the environment of teamship. And to, and to use the practices of teamship. And then you've gotta teach the team how their responsibility is, what's expected of them. Now the good news is we have spent 24 years curating what we call high return practices.
[00:14:49] So I have sat and, and in the room with Jeff Bezos's team and I have observed the practices of high performing teams. Had conversations [00:15:00] understood what goes on in Jamie Diamond's team and some of the most powerful teams in the world. And what I've identified is a set of practices that teams use that I believe cause their success.
[00:15:12] Then I take those practices out, I dust them off, and I turn them into documented practices that could be applied in multiple teams. Uh, we have a 3000 team data set. We apply these teams to, and when we see it move the needle, statistically it becomes a, here we turn practice. So what the book does, um, which is, as I mentioned, never lead alone.
[00:15:34] So it's 20 years after my first book, never Eat alone. I. I write the book Never Lead Alone. It's a both an homage to the 20th year anniversary, but it's also so important that we do shift from leadership to Teamship. And what we do in that book is every chapter is a critical shift, like a shift from conflict avoidance to candor, right?
[00:15:54] A shift where relationships are accidental to where they're purposeful and engineered. Every [00:16:00] chapter's a shift. Every, every, uh, chapter is, is grounded in a hero story that I talked about earlier. Somebody crushing it and doing it well. And then a bunch of simple practices that I know any leader can use and eat like popcorn and, and it'll, it'll elevate the team.
[00:16:17] So that's, and there's also a diagnostic in there so you can test how you're doing.
[00:16:20] Nichol: What are the ways that you are seeing just the pressure that AI is creating, what are the ways that you see that that would will drive a Teamship model?
[00:16:33] Keith: So, such a good question because the reality is we have to engineer across functions and divisions in order for AI to work, right. Um, I'll give you a for instance. If you look at the. Value that can be created in supply chain re-engineering. So I promise you, we could take 10 to 20% of our supply chain costs out by re-engineering our supply chains.
[00:16:59] [00:17:00] But if the supply chain leader I. Is the one who thinks that that's their job. Uh, you know, running grounded in procurement. They're forgetting the fact that the salesperson and the sales leader is the one doing the forecasting. The manufacturing leader is the one doing the scheduling. The finance leader is the one that has the scorecard and is tracking all of this.
[00:17:20] And needs to have those predictions and, and if we don't create true teamship among those, and the supply chain leader is nothing more than the Sherpa of transformation, I. Not the pedestal leader of supply chain, you're not gonna see the value. I mean, I, I've been working with a company called AT Kearney, and they're extraordinary on their supply chain.
[00:17:43] And I'm working with an AI company called Distal Extraordinary on their AI engineering and these companies coming together with businesses. What I've seen is they've reinforced the way of thinking about teaming, and they've been getting breakthrough results because of that. But it's only when you redefine [00:18:00] teaming that it's even possible.
[00:18:02] Nichol: Well, it's also, you know, one of the things about ai, in addition to it being, well, one, it's not a tech upgrade, it's a social, cultural behavioral change.
[00:18:12] Keith: Smart.
[00:18:12] Nichol: two, it it, it wants to be horizontal, it wants to go across all the data, and it wants to go across all the teams in order to, or all of the functions
[00:18:23] Keith: Well, it needs all the data it needs to feed on all of that to have the best answer right.
[00:18:28] Nichol: Yeah, and it needs all of the teams in order to find, you know, the really high impact items. Because if you're just using AI to do email faster, that is a very, know, that's, it's, it's useful, but it's a low impact thing.
[00:18:47] Keith: Well, let me, yep. No, no, no. I totally agree. I totally agree. I was just excited. You just, you prompted me to, to think about something that, that I just wrote an article in, also in Forbes. [00:19:00] Um, I tend to write between Forbes, Forbes, and, and Harvard Business Review, but these pieces were recently published in Forbes and it, I looked at and I interviewed a ton of founders in the recruitment space.
[00:19:13] Um, and I looked at a ton of. Uh, of CHROs and Chief Talent Officers and CIOs and talk to them about the future of recruiting with ai. Now, most HR functions have been re-engineering, uh, using AI as a compliment. And so what's happening is the recruiter is using AI to design job descriptions for the, the, the hiring manager, right?
[00:19:42] That, and by the way, that saved them a ton of time right now. What's happened is there's some, there's some founder companies that are starting from scratch and they're looking at this and they're saying, well, wait a second, why do I need a recruiter like AI can [00:20:00] actually have a conversation quickly with a hiring manager and we can then pull the job spec and very quickly we can post that on job boards and very quickly we can calendar.
[00:20:14] AI can calendar the, um, the potential interviews. And by the way, AI can probably triage for the hiring manager, which they think is the best candidates, and they could suggest questions where there are gaps in people's resumes for the actual interviews. And then when it's done and the individual chooses the candidate.
[00:20:38] AI can actually start scheduling all the onboarding tactics and all, and actually can begin to run a virtual interview with that person of people who they're gonna be meeting on their first day and give them a virtual tour. So what we found, and I just finished this, people in a, in, uh, at this piece in Forbes, I do believe that we're approaching a very short period of time where [00:21:00] you're gonna have humorless recruiting.
[00:21:03] There's one particular company out there that moved from 1 million a RR to a hundred million AR in less than a year, doing just that human less recruiting. Now, if you engineer inside of HR with ai, the future of recruiting, you're gonna find augmented recruiters.
[00:21:23] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:24] Keith: If on the other hand, you step back and say, what's the end-to-end way?
[00:21:29] To use AI in its fullest, you're gonna find recruiter list recruiting. And so I think this is a bold principle.
[00:21:39] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:40] Keith: scary. And which brings up another issue, which is how are we having conversations with our people when in reality a number of roles will disappear?
[00:21:50] Nichol: I, I wanna talk about that, but before we go there. When we're thinking about how and where and when we apply ai, [00:22:00] do you suggest thinking about what should stay human? What should become human like where, where do we put people and where do we want people? I.
[00:22:11] Keith: Yeah, I'm probably taking a more aggressive approach to this. Than are a lot of individuals, and I think part of the reason a lot of individuals are taking a less aggressive approach is they're fearful of the messaging of what AI will replace. And so as a result, they're kicking the can down the road by not talking about it and doing more human augmentation today.
[00:22:34] Also, the reality is, in the very short term, you have a situation where AI isn't fully trained up on all of these roles, and you're gonna have a lag, which a lot of companies don't want to experience in the short term. But if you look through three years and you look at the asymptotic nature of the change today, and you look out three years, it is undeniable to me.
[00:22:54] That we will be radically replacing a lot of roles. I do believe that the majority of [00:23:00] call centers will be displaced. I do believe that there are a lot of roles that will be displaced. Now, I don't, I'm not one that believes that we should be kicking the can down the road, nor turning a blind eye because of challenges of communications.
[00:23:15] I believe we should be going straight into it and then coming up with what is the, I. What are we gonna do with these amazing souls as they're moving from these roles into whatever else there is? And I think that's even a broader role that we should be having. Even in DC when you've got, you know, some of the innovators of tech, these technologies.
[00:23:35] Are now policy makers and don't seem to be providing a safety net for the people will be displaced. So, I mean, I think there's, there's bigger and broader roles, but as a company, I would be looking at how am I going to even help use AI as a part of the transformation plan for the individuals, uh, as even coaches.
[00:23:52] You know, I wrote two of these papers that I'm gonna be presenting next week. One is the, you know, the human list recruiting, and then [00:24:00] the other one is the Future of AI Enabled l and D.
[00:24:03] Nichol: just really quick isn't. The resistance that organizations are seeing part of that res resistance having to do with not articulating what we're going to be doing with all of these souls like
[00:24:17] Keith: Yeah.
[00:24:18] Nichol: I find often when I'm at conferences and the question is asked, what about the people? follow up usually is, historically, every time there's been a technology shift, there have been more
[00:24:33] Keith: Yep.
[00:24:33] Nichol: But then when you try to push on that point you actually say, okay, well what, what's the plan? What are we actually going to, how are we actually gonna transition people? Because I agree with you.
[00:24:44] I think we,
[00:24:45] Keith: This is a different technology.
[00:24:47] Nichol: that are going to disappear,
[00:24:49] Keith: Yeah.
[00:24:49] Nichol: how are we going to find the new things and how do we communicate to our teams and our people what they need to learn so they can participate in that future?
[00:24:59] Keith: [00:25:00] There, there are not going to be new things. That will be replacing many of these roles.
[00:25:07] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:07] Keith: You're, you're, this is a different technology. This is not the replacement of a horse with a tractor. This, this is the replacement of cognitive thinking, and this is a massive shift that is not gonna be quickly replaced by just new people through growth.
[00:25:25] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:26] Keith: UMIs are going to be only increasingly taking roles. We currently consider, uh, you know, critical like lawyers and accountants, um, inside of organizations. We're not just talking about, you know, a a chat bot, uh, with, you know, superpowered with ai, but replacing a call center worker. We're talking about massive roles being replaced and so, uh, including coaches.
[00:25:52] Including coaches, I have seen systems now providing coaching. That is extraordinary and, and, [00:26:00] and, and inspiring that are fully AI based. So, you know, and that's, and that's my world, right? So, you know, I suggest that there is a macro conversation we need to be having here that we're afraid to have. There's no question about it.
[00:26:14] And I'm working on that right now. I was just talking yesterday with the World Economic Forum folks in Davos that, you know, how do we begin to equip our leaders to manage through this transition? But it's also a question of how do we equip our country? To manage through this transition and displacement.
[00:26:32] And I think it's a critical issue and I do feel that there's a combination of ignorance and, um, and frankly, cowardice that's stopping us from having the conversation more boldly today.
[00:26:43] Nichol: what I find is that when I'm talking to people out in the field is that there. They people understand AI is going to eliminate roles, and then when they [00:27:00] hear from their leaders. Their leaders are not addressing this. They know something is going to happen, and so there's this gap. feel that if we started to actually have those macro conversations, and then also if companies were having those conversations internally about, you know, what, what is next? And, and I don't mean replacing specific roles, but I guess. My question for you now really is like, what does the future of work actually look like in this AI enabled world?
[00:27:35] Keith: I think the biggest question we're going to be facing ultimately is how do we make sure that people still have purpose?
[00:27:43] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:43] Keith: And, you know, um, I could, we don't have time for this, but being a foster care parent, I've seen how the foster care system has disenabled foster children. To have agentry, and I could [00:28:00] go into this, but I don't believe that a, one of my dear friends is a great guy named, um, Andrew Yang, who's been a big proponent of universal basic income.
[00:28:09] And I do believe that a solution eventually is gonna be a combination of universal basic income and really looking at job works and how do we help people find purpose and how does that purpose feed society. In into the future. And I think that's a conversation that's a powerful and important conversation in the world where AI has supplanted a significant amount of the workflows.
[00:28:31] How do we find purpose as people and how can we create a structure and a social net where that's possible and the value that's being created by AI could fund that, and then it has to.
[00:28:42] Nichol: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:42] Keith: Because we can't have what we found in my hometown of Pittsburgh where the steel industry crashed in the seventies and while the city.
[00:28:52] Rebounded of Pittsburgh. Those people, my, my people, my family, my cousins, they never did. And they were disenfranchised [00:29:00] and they were impoverished along the Monongahela and they never rebounded. And that's why we had our political unrest in the last few elections 'cause those individuals shifted 'cause they were pissed off at what the Democrats didn't do for them way back when.
[00:29:13] And they were just looking for hope and we're, we're gonna find the same kind of disruption. In the in the future if we don't be very proactive in thinking about that path. And that's things that I'm working on right now. Look, at the end of the day, this is all through my, my foundation, the Radical Innovators Collaborative.
[00:29:31] I. Frank and I started, and T-Mobile started a bunch of, and SHRM you guys have been amazing in, you know, in the early formation of this. But, you know, look, humbly me, I still believe that my core work as a firm is about high performing teams. And I do believe that that's the only way we're gonna solve this problem.
[00:29:48] We're gonna solve it through high performing teams coming together and crushing it together as a team. This is not siloed. It's not just leaders. We've gotta find this [00:30:00] solution as a collective, and hopefully the book is a good roadmap for that.
[00:30:03] Nichol: Yeah. And high performing teams coming together to, to discover what's the right thing for their company and their community. And so because they're, you know, the reality is that we don't actually have the solutions today. We have to discover them. Okay, so
[00:30:23] Keith: Amen.
[00:30:24] Nichol: it back to our audience, who today they're. Many of them are at the beginning of their journey, or they might just have gotten through the first several rounds of pilots, and they're starting to experience resistance. would you advise them create a, a fertile,
[00:30:45] Keith: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Nichol: fertile ground for these changes?
[00:30:48] Keith: Yeah, I'm just finishing this piece right now. Haven't decided where it's gonna be published, so just type my name and, and just type about, uh, Keith Ferrazzi accelerating AI in the workplace. [00:31:00] Number one, we've gotta get an excitement among people to be at the forefront of this amazing blessing of a new tool, and that's the idea of calling people to a movement and getting people.
[00:31:11] Excited to take hills together, reinvent roles, et cetera. Look, they're not, everybody's gonna disappear in a role overnight, but the ones that will disappear are the ones that are resisting even the use of the tools. So if you're at the front of the pack, if you're calling people to be black belts of ai, those are the individuals that have staying power in organizations.
[00:31:33] The second thing you need to do is begin to ask yourself, what workflows are we gonna reinvent? What workflows are we gonna reinvent and who are our teams to achieve it? And stop looking at the org chart just because your chart. Is how you get paid or how you get your review. It has nothing to do with how work is done.
[00:31:53] So the step is, is just pick a couple of critical workflows, just a couple. You could do recruitment, you could [00:32:00] do doing annual performance reviews. You could save 40% of people's time doing annual performance reviews by reinventing that process alone. Um, you could pick supply chain as a big one, right? But that doesn't, you don't think if you're an HR leader that that's your job.
[00:32:14] But of course it's your job. Anything that's re-engineering the way people work. I believe is anybody's job today for the taking? Is it gonna be the it's job? Is it gonna be the business leader's job? Is it your job? It's a collective, and you can be their Sherpa. So that's the second step. You know, just pick a critical process to be re-engineered and humbly, humbly reach out to your peers and say, let's go crush this together.
[00:32:39] Let's go crush this together, because you can only do it as a team.
[00:32:42] Nichol: Yes. And the final question is for a leader just beginning their journey and they're looking across the organization, who their partners are, would you speak a little bit about how they might create a relationship with the CIO or
[00:32:59] Keith: [00:33:00] Yeah.
[00:33:00] Nichol: on the, in the organization?
[00:33:02] Keith: Yeah. Thank you. Um, in, in my book, never Lead Alone, I talk about how do we reach out and enlist. New teammates and the first philosophy is this. If you wanna reinvent the future of recruiting, then you reach out to the CIO or somebody within the IT organization that has responsibility for HR and say, I would love to invite you into a team that we could co-create.
[00:33:30] Reinventing the future of recruiting. The first person you invite into your team, you are inviting them into their team. This really is an equality, and you need to reach out with humility. You need to reach out with that excitement. You need to let people know that this is a career redefining opportunity for all of us, and that we could truly deliver a radical elevation in performance, in customer experience, in shareholder value, and we can do this together.
[00:33:55] And we couldn't do it otherwise, and we weren't together. That's the pitch. That's the pitch. [00:34:00] It's a humility, it's an excitement, it's an onboarding into co-ownership, and then you dive into the actual nitty gritty work.
[00:34:08] Nichol: So everyone in the audience first step is reach out and enlist the people across your organization. The way that Keith described, Gosh, Keith, we could talk forever. This is all so interesting, but for now, that's it for this week's episode of the A IHI Project. A big thank you to Keith Razzi for sharing your insights on radical innovation, AI driven collaboration, and the future of leadership. Before we wrap up everyone, I encourage you to follow the A IHI project, wherever you enjoy your podcast.
[00:34:46] If you found today's conversation valuable, please take a moment to leave a review, comment and share the episode. It really helps spread the word. You can also find all of our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash [00:35:00] a ihi. Thanks for joining the conversation and we'll catch you next time.
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