Leveraging AI to Unlock Human Potential | Angela Hood – CEO and founder of ThisWay Global Inc.

Angela Hood [00:01:54 ]: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I love the fact that you invited me to be here. It was great to see you today. I would say the most important thing is something that a lot of companies try to do, but don’t know how they, how effective they are at it. It’s having a very clear vision, mission and core values that they can hire people around. I think people today really need to know who they’re working for and what their work every single day is going to drive forward in the world. They care about that part. And humans are the number one, most important thing that we have in our businesses.

Frank Cottle [00:02:33]: Well, they are. I know. This way global, its ties to IBM and Watson X and really its ties to alliance virtual too. You’re dealing with the largest human resources companies globally, and I will say thousands of corporate clients hiring millions upon millions of people, and you say that’s the most important thing. How are they fighting that out? How does one company differentiate itself in the battle for talent from another, whether that company is large or small, and what’s the role that AI is playing in that to, I won’t say balance or level the playing field, but to help those companies really make those best decisions.

Angela Hood [00:03:23]: A lot of the workforce, especially the workforce that people are really going after, top talent, they know that technology will give them the ability to do a better job, that they will be more successful, that will hit their goals, and they’ll also have a better work life balance, meaning they can have automation and AI do some work for them when they’re on a vacation, when they’re at home with their family, having dinner, when they’re watching a kid’s soccer game on a Saturday. And if you do not enable your team, whether they be existing or new employees, with technology that really helps them have a better life and that’s work life and home life, then you’re really not going to be able to get the top talent because that’s what successful companies are doing and that’s what they offer to new employees.

Frank Cottle [00:04:11 ]: Well, we have a little process in our company. We call it statement fact story. Okay, now you just made some bold statements.

Angela Hood [00:04:23 ]: Yep.

Frank Cottle [00:04:24]: Everything will be better if we just do this.

Angela Hood [00:04:27]: Yep.

Frank Cottle [00:04:27 ]: Give me some facts, give me some data behind that, and then illustrate that with a company or an example that’s making it work.

Angela Hood [00:04:35 ]: Great.

Frank Cottle [00:04:36]: I was fine.

Angela Hood [00:04:39]: I’m used to it all the time, especially from you, Frank. It’s good. We. I was at a really great event. IBM has a partnership with TD Cynics, which is our VAD, a value added distributor. Okay. And we were at an event in Scottsdale called Red White, and you. It was public sector primarily, and it was huge organizations and state government and federal government and all of these defense contractors. And they were having a competition, which I loved. I thought it was great. It was a competition on who’s going to submit the best RFI. And there was a team sitting at my table that morning, and they were competing. And the guy across the table from me, he says, are you the AI lady? Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:05:28 ]: And I’ve been deep faked.

Angela Hood [00:05:29 ]: That’s right. Yeah. I said, sure he is. All right, I have a question for you. He goes, we have this big submission that we have coming up in a few hours. We want to have a website, we want to have verbiage, we want to have language. We need images, we need all these things. He goes, if you think AI is so awesome, how could you have AI help me? I said, okay, let me ask you some questions. So on my phone, I sat there and asked him questions. He answered about 20 questions for me. I typed in stuff. I hit send basically on three different platforms that we use on a regular basis, one of them being granite, that’s part of IBM. And I hit send, I got information back. I sent that to him. They used that to create an entire website. They ended up winning the competition. And when I asked him afterwards, I saw, I meant like a happy hour thing later that day. He said, he is. My mind is blown. He said, you on your phone in ten minutes, did what we were thinking we would need two or three weeks to do, and we had three or 4 hours to do that, to me is an example of when you know how to use technology in the right way and you knew which item or which piece of tech to use in the right place, you can do magic. I mean, it feels like magic.

Frank Cottle [00:06:51]: Well, but, you know, magic is cool if you’re the only one that’s got it.

Angela Hood [00:06:57 ]: Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:06:57 ]: As soon as everybody’s got magic, is it really magic anymore or is it, is it just a new tool we are all using? I mean, I am old. I am close to Methuselah’s age, who is really old. And I started doing accounting with a hand managed calculator, electronic calculator, but you pull the lever on it. Okay. And then, you know, we evolved from that, that, that and, oh, spreadsheets. Spreadsheets. Well, pretty soon everybody had spreadsheets. And so do you think the and I were kind of veering off the HR side of this a little bit directly into AI? But do you think that once everybody has AI, and it becomes ubiquitous and the way we use it and everything, we will all be more productive? Of course. Will it still give you the same competitive advantage you’re trying to have to use it today, honestly, to get to an elevated position amongst your competitors?

Angela Hood [00:08:07 ]: So by the time I was in engineering school, we were using calculators. They were ti and Texas instruments.

Frank Cottle [00:08:12 ]: Oh, sure, I remember those. Those were great.

Angela Hood [00:08:15]: There were people in my class that used their ti calculator better than I could. Right. Like they were whizzes, they were masterminds. Where did I benefit? I could explain to a customer what we were going to do as engineers how it was going to benefit them, but I wasn’t wielding the calculator as fast as they were or even as good as they were. We have differentiation as humans. We’re going to continue to have that with the use of AI. Some people are going to adopt it and be powerhouses at it. Some are going to struggle a little bit. But I think that if you want to be successful and if you are going to be in your career for more than five years, you really need to learn how to use AI, because I think you will end up getting left behind if you cannot operate AI for your own uses in business. And you need to find out what you’re good at. Are you good at using a specific platform? Are you good at using it to create better documents, but to resist it, I think, ends up leaving other people the ability to bypass you.

Frank Cottle [00:09:25 ]: Well, I would agree that with all technology, or we’ll say all business tools, whether it’s technology or not, I think that that’s true. I guess what I’m asking your opinion on is we address AI in the context of human resources. And when we talk about remote work and hybrid work and all these sorts of things, how is AI going to impact the way we hire and then build teams? Will we look for certain AI specialists or generalists? Will we use AI only as a tool to make a selection, or is it the selection based upon the AI capabilities of the candidate? And when we look at remote work, I’m asking 20 questions here. I’m sorry. When we look at remote work and hybrid work, will AI accelerate that? Or will these teams need to be working more closely together in person in a back to the office environment? How do you see this all coming together?

Angela Hood [00:10:33]: So the remote question is a question that is, I would say, top of mind for every candidate in every company, because knowledge workers, so people that use technology on a regular basis every single day, they have the flexibility to be able to use that technology in a home office, in a, you know, a virtual office. If they want the capacity, though, to innovate, we know is better when people are in a room. It doesn’t mean they have to be in a room all day, every day, but when they can get together at moments in time and all double down and stay super focused on a particular problem they want to solve, we know that those solutions happen faster and they happen because of a greater diversity of thought as well. So there’s a few components there that are all about humans. So I think, first and foremost, we have to recognize a lot of people that are knowledge workers want a virtual or remote office. They do not want to have to come in office. Okay? So that’s just the way that is. I don’t see that changing. And so it’s up to businesses to figure out how do they manage that, and this is a big one, and be transparent with their workforce and the candidates that are coming into their company and tell them what the policy is and try to help them understand why. But be transparent. Don’t say it’s one thing and then change it on them. So that’s completely agree.

Frank Cottle [00:11:58 ]: That holds true of every representation, either a candidate or an employer. Maybe. You know, what we always say is that you have to make sure that you don’t try and lie to your mother. Never, ever lie to your mother. She always catches you. No matter what you do. If you try and tell a fib, if you try and fake it, your mother catches you. So we say the client is as smart as your mother. Don’t do anything. You know, it’s out of bounds. And I think an employer has to think that way about the candidate and vice versa.

Angela Hood [00:12:36 ]: Yeah, I mean, just, and here’s the thing. It’s kind of like dating in a little bit. It’s just better to be who you are and you’re going to find the right person. If you try to fake it, you’re going to not find the right person. You’re going to wonder why you’re unhappy. It’s very similar to an employee candidate type engagement.

Frank Cottle [00:12:53 ]: Well, you know, it’s funny because a lot of times you hear people talk about, oh, there’s this dream job I want.

Angela Hood [00:13:02 ]: Right.

Frank Cottle [00:13:03 ]: But you rarely hear people say, oh, there’s this perfect company I’m looking for. And really, the company that has a good job, if it’s the perfect company, is much better than the dream job at a crud company.

Angela Hood [00:13:18 ]: That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:13:20 ]: And so I think people’s expectations or the way they frame their own goals around seeking a position has a lot to do with it overall. And things we need to consider on such.

Angela Hood [00:13:36]: There’s a component of that, too, though, that I think part of the problem is companies don’t know how to talk about themselves very well. So they just say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like marketing speak. They don’t say, this is why we exist in the world and this is where we are passionately driven and you are going to help us achieve whatever it is by you using your powers that you have, your skills that you have. Like, they just don’t make that connection. And that’s why I think we hear this is a dream job and not the dream company.

Frank Cottle [00:14:11 ]: Well, you know, it’s funny, too. Let’s take really the biggest companies in the world. Many of them use a third party HR company and service to find and interview candidates. And we could name some of those companies, they’re huge. They’re massive. And they don’t hire. Work on hiring 100,000 people a year. They work on hiring, you know, 100 million.

Angela Hood [00:14:37 ]: Yeah. Okay.

Frank Cottle [00:14:38 ]: So I don’t think most people understand that that’s, and I’ll make this up as I’m going along. I’ll say a company like Cisco with 400,000 team members needs to hire 100,000 team members a year.

Angela Hood [00:14:52 ]: That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:14:53 ]: And they don’t have an HR department that can do that. They can’t do the interview. Every position requires five interviews, and every interview takes 45 minutes. And, you know, there’s a whole process here overall. So to your point, the company doesn’t know who it is, and yet it hires an agent to interview and present itself to prospective candidates in its own place. And I’m kind of goofy, but I’ve never known anybody that could explain me better than me.

Angela Hood [00:15:33]: Right.

Frank Cottle [00:15:34 ]: And if I’m a company, I don’t know anybody that can explain our company better than us. But yet so many large companies are doing this. And that has to be from the satisfaction, from the employee point of view, I don’t think that the people doing the interviews, how do they know how to express this? How do they do that? And how do they even choose that? I know you, you have a whole AI process that helps them select people to even go to the interviews. And I think you should delve into that because that’s critically important. But how do they even know how to, how to speak to these people?

Angela Hood [00:16:13 ]: Right? So, I mean, we work with a lot of rpos.

Frank Cottle [00:16:18 ]: We don’t use the words like we work here.

Angela Hood [00:16:20 ]: What?

Frank Cottle [00:16:21 ]: We don’t use wework here. Bad joke, bad joke.

Angela Hood [00:16:22 ]: No, I know that we work with a lot of recruitment process, outsourcing, rpos. And these are the people that you just described. Right. They work for the largest companies in the world. They actually sit inside those companies and they are, they have email addresses that are from that company. They understand the company pretty well sometimes. I think they understand them better than the company themselves does because they have a view that’s a little bit different. They have the candidate view and they have the employer view, and they’re kind of sitting in the middle and they see both sides. In particular, the way our AI helps them is we go through and analyze all the jobs that that company has open, and we analyze the available talent in the market where that job sits.

Frank Cottle [00:17:13 ]: Okay, stop. Stop there. How do you find that talent in the market to analyze?

Angela Hood [00:17:20]: So we have 8500 partners that are around the globe, these are partners. They could be the US military. So the hiring offices on the bases, not just in the US, but abroad, we have organizations that are with unions, alumni organizations, out of universities, technical colleges. That’s why there’s so many different ones. Right. 8500. There’s people that are members of these organizations and these people are like, I’m this person. I look like this. I want this kind of work. I’m looking to do this based off my certifications. Also, I’m not looking to do certain things. This is in particular with the military. So I know that you’re a veteran and a lot of veterans have experienced something in their military life that they don’t really want to do that work anymore. Maybe they drove and they drove in Fallujah. They don’t want to drive anymore as a profession. And so they say, I want to do this kind of work, but I don’t want to do this other kind of work that is equally as important. So we’re, when we’re bringing in talent into our system, we say, tell us what you do want to do. Tell us what you don’t want to do. Give us your background, put your best foot forward. And they tell us who they are. We match them to jobs.

Frank Cottle [00:18:39 ]: Well, just stop that there. I want to make sure that we, you clarify, but you’re not a job board. Like it. Indeed, definitely not. This is raw talent that you’re pulling out of different sources as opposed to people that are saying, I want a job as an ex on a job. Like, indeed, nothing against. Indeed. They do a great service.

Angela Hood [00:19:03 ]: Right.

Frank Cottle [00:19:04 ]: But what you do is very different. You find people that aren’t necessarily looking for.

Angela Hood [00:19:11 ]: Yeah. And we consider them passive. It means that they didn’t actively apply for the job. The job gets sent to them and says, look, this job’s live. This is with an employer that we can tell you is a strong employer because we do, we’re selective about who we work with.

Frank Cottle [00:19:26 ]: Right.

Angela Hood [00:19:27 ]: We have thousands of companies that have passed that test, but not every company would. And we then say, okay, here’s the job that we think is matched to you. It’s really interesting because the AI understands correlations that we as people would not pick up on. So I’m going to give you an example. A person that has a master’s in library science, a lot of them got laid off or they were told, we don’t, you know, we’re not going to keep the library open anymore. So you don’t really have a job to do during COVID and so there they were, like incredibly intelligent people. Not a great job to have. And we found that they’re really good on data science teams. Now, my team didn’t realize that. I did not know that the data scientist team didn’t know it, the library science person didn’t know it, none of us knew it. AI figured it out and said, this is why they are really good with understanding the Dewey decimal system, which is really compatible with building schemas, which data scientists need to do.

Frank Cottle [00:20:31 ]: Yep, that would make sense.

Angela Hood [00:20:33]: It’s a way of thinking. Right. It’s like an applicable way of thinking. The extra bonus here is that more job security and 300% more in salary than they were making in a library science type job.

Frank Cottle [00:20:50 ]: Well, whatever 300% more is.

Angela Hood [00:20:54 ]: Yeah. It’s just so those are the things where technology can really help us. It can remove blinders we have because it’s looking at so many data points that it makes relationships that we may be overlooking. We see this a lot in the type of sales roles that people take. We have. We’ve discovered that a lot of times people that are really good in customer success come out of high end hospitality roles.

Frank Cottle [00:21:21 ]: Yes, I would absolutely agree with that. Within our industry, within the flexible workplace industry and the co working business center sectors, etcetera, hospitality hires, if you will, for decades have been excellent because people equate when you use the term workspace or anything to do with office. They think of physical real estate. But the reality is that our sector, the co working and business center sector, has always been a service industry first. And we used to joke, you know, to the hospitality people, you know, you change the sheets of the morning when they arrive in our office to make the photocopies. It’s the same. Customer needs the same thing, and they want everything on demand.

Angela Hood [00:22:12 ]: That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:22:13]: As a result of which, the service element is critical. Much more so than the facility in many cases.

Angela Hood [00:22:21 ]: Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:22:23 ]: Think about it. What will you go to? A local diner that knows your name and knows what you like to order and prepares it just right, versus the biggest brand of chain in town. Absolutely. Now, is the diner maybe as nice, maybe not. Same with the hotel. If they know your name and they really, really pay to it. I think of the old tv show cheers. What was the thing they say? Well, it’s what. The place where they know your name.

Angela Hood [00:22:52]: Right.

Frank Cottle [00:22:53 ]: That’s what made the culture there. Everybody came in and said hi, so and so and so. It’s like. But that is really important. Another thing, when you talk about AI, you’re removing some human elements. Humans have biases.

Angela Hood [00:23:13 ]: Oh, so many.

Frank Cottle [00:23:14 ]: We all have biases. Good, bad, and sometimes ugly, sadly. But how does AI work with that? Does the company build their biases in, or does AI strip it out? Or is there a balance? Or is it just AI doing its job? And how does that work?

Angela Hood [00:23:36 ]: Yeah. So two points I always like to start this conversation with, because this is my passion in the world, is bias is not the same thing as discrimination. And I think people need to understand that bias is a survival mechanism that we have developed as humans over the entire existence of our people. Right? Doesn’t matter how long ago we had, we saw a saber toothed tiger eat one of our buddies, and we’re like, right, saber toothed tigers. I don’t like them.

Frank Cottle [00:24:04 ]: Yeah, I don’t like rattlesnakes. I’m from Texas.

Angela Hood [00:24:06]: I agree with you completely. And second, the smarter you are, typically the more biased you are. And this is why when you’re really smart and you’re successful, a lot of times it’s because you have figured out shortcuts, and you use these shortcuts to make decisions faster, to make better decisions, to make decisions that are aligned with your company or your person. Works beautifully. When you’re picking your life mate, where you want to go on vacation, the next restaurant you want to go eat at, all of those biases, great. Embrace them. It’s illegal and also unethical to have that affect people being able to put a roof over their head or food on their table. So there’s a lot of regulation around it, and it’s just, it’s, you know, bad ethics. So now what do you do about it? Right? You cannot get rid of it. It’s survival mechanism. You can train people to have more awareness that it exists and try to help them accept that they have biases. But still, that doesn’t work. It’s proven that doesn’t work very well. So what we did was we RTech removes the information that causes the bias. So name, ethnicity, what university you went to. Maybe your socioeconomic level is indicated by the postcode that you put on your, or your zip code that you put on your resume.

Frank Cottle [00:25:35 ]: Those things will certainly university, but things like postcodes and stuff. I know going back, I was at Deloitte for a while, and I know we looked at candidates. We looked up all sorts of things to see what we could learn about the final four, so to speak.

Angela Hood [00:25:53 ]: That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:25:54]: And those things were things that we actually, unintentionally, probably biased part of our opinion. Right.

Angela Hood [00:26:03 ]: Well, and that’s what I’m saying is most people are not bad people, and most people are not doing things out of malice. They’re doing it because they think that they’re using the shortcuts that have made them successful. They’re applying those same shortcuts, and now they’re causing unintended things to happen. And they don’t realize that there’s 188 biases, essentially, that we as humans bring to every interaction. And it can be around, you have glasses, you don’t have glasses. You have the same name as my name is ex husband or ex wife. So I don’t like the name. I mean, it just goes on and on. And so how do you do that? So we built a system that strips out all of the, we call it the fluff. Right. It’s the biases, but leaves the information that is contextualized, that factual, that is relevant, and then we match that to the company and the job description. So it’s not just, you know, a sales job in a startup and a sales job in a Fortune 100 is a very different sales job.

Frank Cottle [00:27:11 ]: Correct.

Angela Hood [00:27:11 ]: It’s not just enough to say, we’re matching you to a sales job. We’re matching you to this job, at this location for this type of, type of a company in an industry that you’re happy to be in. Some people don’t want to work in certain industries, so that’s where the matching happens. Then and only then do we do a ranking. But the ranking is in buckets. It’s not 12345. It is. This is your top group. It’s kind of like gold medalist, silver medalist, bronze. Some companies say, we want to look at everyone. We want to look at everyone that’s gold, silver, bronze. We only don’t want to look at people that do not meet the qualifications we require, that they’ve been to medical school and they haven’t been to medical school. There’s no way this person can do this job. That’s who gets moved out of the list. But the great thing is, our technology takes those people and then says, is there any other opportunity that that person is qualified for? Maybe they haven’t seen, maybe they don’t know about. And by doing that, we increase the volume of qualified candidates for any company by 38%. And all of this is happening with technology, and it’s happening without bias. And then the candidates are handed over to recruiters. And the reason why we know it’s powerful is we will be on a call with a recruiter and they will say things like, I had no idea how many people I was overlooking, or I had no idea that we actually had really diverse talent in our industry, in our market that I’d never met before. I thought I knew everyone that did X job. So we are opening eyes and we’re opening opportunities by using AI in a very effective way.

Frank Cottle [00:29:07 ]: Well, you know, it’s funny. If you were to ask me, I would say, I just want people with an iq over 165 that haven’t been in prison and aren’t under therapy.

Angela Hood [00:29:16 ]: Wow. Okay.

Frank Cottle [00:29:17 ]: Everybody else, everybody that’s got that IQ and hasn’t had those two problems, I want to talk to them.

Angela Hood [00:29:23 ]: Right?

Frank Cottle [00:29:24 ]: Because they’re, you know, you can’t beat smart. It just comes to that. The, it is funny how, when you, you think about it, I’m gonna. I’m gonna kind of wander down a rabbit hole here. AI helps. It’s me, only better. When I use AI, that’s the way I look at it. I’m able to do everything I do, but I’m able to do it a little bit better. Yeah, faster is good, but better is what you really want to achieve overall. That means that my productivity. Productivity return on investment of time or money is hopefully going to be higher. I would be able to produce more goods and services. AI is a younger generational thing. 65, 70 year olds aren’t jumping into AI at the same speed as Gen Z is. Now, here’s the dilemma. Let’s take Japan. Japan has an aging workforce and an aging population that is not being replaced. Basically, it is a shrinking population and ultimately a shrinking economy as a result of it. It’s already begun to shrink. Will AI used in the workplace starting with the selection process? Starting with the selection process, which you guys kind of control on a global basis, I don’t think people realize how huge you all are. Is that a solution to global depopulation? To keep productivity up so that younger generations can help support the load of older generations?

Angela Hood [00:31:30 ]: So it has been discussed a lot. It’s also been discussed this idea of, if the work is being accomplished by technology, should there be just like a flat salary that everyone has provided? Right. These are social questions that are, I think, premature. And the reason why I say that is because I’m watching how technology is being adopted. And at the rate that it’s being adopted right now, there’s a lot of people using it that are kind of, I’m gonna say using it like parlor tricks. Oh, look what I did with it. Or they’re not using it to actually yield true benefit for them or their companies. So I think right now what we’re seeing is there’s about 6% that are using it in a way that is leading to meaningful interactions in their company, whether they’re using a chatbot, whether they’re using, you know, it for a hiring perspective. There’s still all this capacity, though, that is still being done by humans. And part of the thing you mentioned about the age, I learned when I was at Cambridge that we as people act a different age, and it has nothing to do with the number of days that we’ve been on the earth. So there’s people that are 70 that act like they’re 20, and there’s people that 20, they act like they’re 70. So I don’t think it’s around necessarily the how long you’ve been on the planet. I think it’s about your mindset. I think people that have an adaptive, agile, curious mindset will always be relevant.

Frank Cottle [00:33:14 ]: I think where we get my experience to that curiosity.

Angela Hood [00:33:18 ]: Yeah, yeah.

Angela Hood [00:33:19 ]: And that’s not unique, but that is an advantage they have. I think it’s Henry Ford who, when he was still president of Ford Sr. Ford Motor Company, was 80 years old or so, or still a CEO, and somebody asked him, seriously, well, don’t you think you’re a little old for this? And his comment, I’ve always remembered, was, well, you’re only old when you stop learning.

Angela Hood [00:33:44 ]: Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:33:45 ]: And I hope that for you and for me and for everyone that’s listening, that we never ever stop learning, and therefore we never ever grow old. We just experience and can apply that to new things.

Angela Hood [00:34:00 ]: Yeah. And I think that’s the difference is a person that has that mindset that you just described, they’re gonna be, they will be part of this evolution. They will be part of the transformation that’s happening. This, people compare AI sometimes to the Internet. It’s really much more like the invention of electricity. It will be behind everything eventually. It will be a component. Right. It’s not going to be driving it. Just like electricity is only part of any type of thing that we’re using. The computer I’m sitting here using it has electricity going to it, incredibly powerful. I have to have it. But there’s all kinds of things in there, silicon chips and everything else that actually make it work.

Frank Cottle [00:34:48 ]: Well, no, I agree. In our own company’s technology stack, we look at our processes as being the core to how the stack is built. And right now, I would say 25% to 30% of all of our processes now are AI driven or AI enabled, and I would say more AI enabled than driven. It’s not pure AI. AI is assisting the process rather than being the foundation. And that’s the adaptation I think you’re seeing overall. You know, the electricity started out with light bulbs. That’s when the adoption happened, and then it maybe moved to refrigerators and then air conditioners came along and then everybody learned how to use this tool. And I do think the Internet’s the same way. To me, the Internet is data. And when you think of all the information that you’re farming using AI, that’s where it lives. It lives in the Internet. It lives in that massive data bank, if you will, overall. So I see them all connected. I do think that whether it’s Internet of things or AI of things or electrical power of things, that we are on the cusp, the very cusp of the next generational leap forward. Yes, one hand. On the other hand, we’re also on the cusp for the first time in history of population reduction across the planet.

Angela Hood [00:36:28 ]: Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:36:29 ]:So those things, is that coincidental?

Angela Hood [00:36:33 ]: Right? Yeah, that’s a great question.

Frank Cottle [00:36:35]: You know, is it just. That’s the way it worked out? So this will be interesting to see the role and the dependence on AI we create as our workforce ultimately shrinks.

Angela Hood [00:36:51 ]: Yeah. So I think the other part too, about AI is we need to make sure that we’re using it in ways that, I would say, cause us to have more connection, not less, with one another. And we should be able to do that because we, I think personally, we got into, in particular in the US, we got into a place where we were working so much that we didn’t really go out and like, meet each other, and we didn’t go out and have big gatherings like we used to. And we started seeing smaller and smaller gatherings. And then COVID happened, everyone went into this huge isolation mode. And I think we have struggled to come out of it. And that’s the thing that I see as a possible positive, is the fact that if we can have AI and automation help us get the things we need to get done that are. Have to happen, but they’re not fun and we don’t enjoy them and they don’t add joy to our life. If we can have it do that, where we then have more time to get together and spend time with friends and family and your neighbors and go on a walk and go on a hike and all those things. That’s how it should be used in my mind. And some people are better at using it like that than others.

Frank Cottle [00:38:10 ]: Well, you know, I will say that’s a very western culture viewpoint, by the way. I’m going to not name any countries, but I’m going to take on an eastern culture and say, aha, I can get ahead of that western culture. We’re doing a three day work week because we’re still going to do a seven day work week.

Angela Hood [00:38:32 ]:
Yeah, that’s right. Yep.

Frank Cottle [00:38:33 ]: So as long as cultures are competing for market share of everything, how do you think that we’ll find that balance? Especially when we’re hiring across borders, which means across cultures, because technology doesn’t recognize borders.

Angela Hood [00:38:54 ]: Right.

Frank Cottle [00:38:55 ]: And I know our own company is spread across several borders. Yours is spread across probably 194 borders.

Angela Hood [00:39:04 ]: A lot of borders.

Frank Cottle [00:39:06 ]: We’re only 54. But what difference it makes as you go forward on all of these things? And coming back to our first question, how do you hire to the culture of a company using AI that crosses multiple borders and have that same company and all those various places have the same ambition and goal? Or is it even. Is that just. No. Ain’t gonna happen. Don’t worry about it.

Angela Hood [00:39:44 ]: I know. I think it should happen. I think you have to work hard for it to happen. But we were talking a minute ago about curiosity and experience and intellect, right? So those things still need to exist in order for you to work for our company or for your company. Doesn’t matter where you’re from. Those things still have to exist. And there’s a lot of scientific proof. This is not me. This is scientific proof that says you have to have some downtime. Your brain needs to have some fun. It needs to breathe some oxygen. It needs to go, you know, it needs to exercise. It needs to do all these things in order for you to be able to solve problems. Companies accelerate and differentiate themselves because they solve problems. And they don’t do it as a company. They do it as the people inside the company. They’re the ones that solve the problems.

Frank Cottle [00:40:38 ]: Correct.

Angela Hood [00:40:39 ]: Those people still need moments to spend doing joyful things. That’s why we think better than others. You get endorphins. It causes you to be able to solve problems. You get rest. You know, we all know that we need sleep in order for our brains and our bodies to rejuvenate. So I think that if we can get this balance right, we don’t have to work harder or longer hours. We have to work smarter. That is the magic. And I don’t know that there’s enough guidance given to companies. That’s one thing that we get asked a lot from our customers is to say, can you give us more guidance about how to adopt technology in the right order, in the right places, with the right people in our company? And that’s the part that the world still needs to figure out how to do effectively.

Frank Cottle [00:41:35 ]: That is a big challenge.

Angela Hood [00:41:37 ]: It is.

Frank Cottle [00:41:38]: That is a big challenge. But, you know, I think. I think you’re right. Technology. There’s always been a technology from the first, right. Yeah. The first flint shaped stone axe. That was a breakthrough technology thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of years ago. Today’s technology is just a different type of axe in many respects. It’s just the next. The next thing that we’re going to use. And, you know, it’s funny, you talk about balance. When I was, I guess, at the end of my college years and that sort of thing, I was talking to my dad, who was, you know, kind of an old rancher type guy and that sort of thing, and. And he. We’re talking about me going out into the world in business. And he said, just. Just remember that, you know, life is kind of like in the old caveman days, that you got to go out and kill a few mastodons and bring home some berries and that sort of thing. He said, but life is sitting around the fire putting art on the wall and singing songs.

Angela Hood [00:42:46 ]: Yeah, that’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:42:48]: That has always stuck with me, and I’ve always remembered it and kept trying to keep that balance in my life. And I don’t think the fact that I have not worked as many hours as anybody, somebody or somebody else, has ever held me back.

Angela Hood [00:43:03 ]: Right?

Frank Cottle [00:43:04 ]: Yeah, of course not. I do believe you need that creative, that creative time. Just thought time. And to me, it was always best looking at water, whether it’s the ocean or a lake or river. If I can sit and stare at the movement of water, I can personally get into my zone and think of nothing and everything at the same time.

Angela Hood [00:43:27 ]: Right. And none of that has anything to do with AI. And that’s. That’s my point, is if you can let your automation and AI be doing the things that are really boring and don’t satisfy you, but still have to get done, like that report still has to get done, those calculations still need to happen. You know, all those things. If you can let technology do that and free you up to go spend more time staring at the water, you know, whatever it is that, you know, some people love running. I can’t imagine running is not my happy place. Right. But some people love that. And if that’s what it is. Then go do that. You know, let technology help you spend more time finding joy. I just. It’s. I think it’s unfortunate the companies don’t think about it like that all the time for their employees. They think about it like, you know, the ROI of this technology is going to be xy, but really, z is where they’re really going to get the lift because they’re going to have better retention of great talent and happier, more fulfilled workers that are working for them. That is where they will get the lift. But it’s hard to buy.

Frank Cottle [00:44:38 ]:Yeah, I think you hit it, and maybe it’s a good point to end up on is a retention. If your team is stable, you’re blessed. You really are. And you need to look internally at whatever magic you have that has made it that way. Whether it’s technology, whether it’s the creation of a culture, whether it’s a particular leadership model, heaven forbid it’s some sort of weird cult. I’m just going out there. But really, there’s a magic to companies that hire somebody when they’re young and that person’s still there 30, 40 years later. Because they want to be.

Angela Hood [00:45:22]:That’s right. Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:45:23 ]: Because they want to be. And the strength of that developed corporate knowledge is very powerful.

Angela Hood [00:45:32 ]: Well, I know for a fact that you have that. When I was meeting your team, people were like, I’ve been here decades. I was like, oh, that’s amazing. Because it’s an indication that what you’re doing really matters. The future of work is so incredibly important. We spend more than half our life working, so we should do it right. And so figuring out the future of work is incredibly important.

Frank Cottle [00:45:57 ]: Well, it’s a time flow issue, and I think the old saying is, the man that stands in a river never feels the same water twice. And the reality of that is the future comes at you like a river.

Angela Hood [00:46:12 ]: Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:46:12 ]: So you have to stand in it and think through it and hopefully absorb some of what it does. But anyway, so I don’t know how to end up this. This could go for days. This could go for days. Will you come over for dinner tonight?

Angela Hood [00:46:26 ]: I’m a little far away, but normally, absolutely. Next time I’m in Dallas, you got it.

Frank Cottle [00:46:31]: But, no, I’m really grateful to you, Angela, for your time. I know how busy you are, how many people are trying to pull your strings, and I really am grateful to you for the time. Appreciate your thoughts very, very much. And I know our audience, which is ever expanding, we’re in the top three or 4% now of all. So, you know, that’s really, really an audience will be grateful for what you’ve shared with us today.

Angela Hood [00:47:00 ]: Well, your leadership on this is amazing. Thank you so much for having me. I loved joining, and I’m always available to join you, Frank.

Frank Cottle [00:47:08 ]: Well, thank you, Angela. Take care.

Angela Hood [00:47:11 ]: Thanks.