Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
Nirit Cohen – WorkFutures
Angela Howard – Culture Expert
Drew Jones – Design & Innovation
Jonathan Price – CRE & Flex Expert
About This Episode
In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, we sit down with Sophie Wade, a renowned workforce innovator, author of Empathy Works, and founder of Flexcel Network, whose courses on future‑of‑work skills have reached over 650,000 professionals worldwide. Sophie brings a deeply human‑centered lens to major workplace changes — from AI integration to upskilling strategies and generational dynamics. Together we explore why companies must design work thoughtfully, invest in people alongside technology, build trust between executives and teams, and prioritize empathy to navigate the ongoing future‑of‑work transitions. If you’re curious how AI will truly impact jobs, why generational viewpoints matter now more than ever, and what leaders must do to meaningfully prepare for tomorrow’s workforce realities, this episode delivers pragmatic insight with a visionary perspective.
About Sophie Wade
Sophie Wade is a workforce innovator, work futurist, executive and board advisor, keynote speaker, instructor, author, and founder of Flexcel Network. Her LinkedIn courses on future‑of‑work skills, Gen Z, and empathy have been taken by over 650,000 learners. Sophie’s work empowers leaders to adapt during economic and technological disruptions and distributed work transitions, emphasizing human‑centric leadership — a theme central to her second book, Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work. She also hosts the “Transforming Work with Sophie Wade” podcast and holds degrees from Oxford and INSEAD.
What You’ll Learn
- Why empathy is a competitive advantage in the age of AI
- How companies are actually integrating AI, and where most are falling short
- The importance of designing workflows before automating them
- How generational perspectives shape technology adoption and workplace expectations
- Why fear and trust (or the lack thereof) shape AI outcomes in organizations
- Real strategies for upskilling and human‑AI collaboration
- How organizational design and management roles must evolve
- What “scaling with technology” really means today vs. yesterday
Transcript
Sophie Wade
[ 00:00:00,000 ]They’re all going to be a bunch of jobs that are going to be replaced by AI, by technology, and have been over the last decades. And then lots more jobs are already appearing, 1. 3 million jobs globally.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:00:14,470 ] AI-related jobs appeared over the last year. That was LinkedIn data as well. So, you know, there are lots of opportunities, but the shift from these jobs that are going to sort of be going away and these new jobs that are coming. That difference in the skills and what you can do. With that technology and be scaling in the way that you’re talking about, it’s a very different world of work.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:00:38,040 ] Sophie, welcome to the Future of Work podcast. Really excited to have you here today and learn everything we can about empathy, how empathy works. How the changes that you’ve been working with over the FlexCell network.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:00:54,450 ] And gosh, 650, 000 people have taken your class— that’s an amazing that’s like a small country.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:02,420 ] You know, so I’m very impressed with that. Want to talk about AI? Everybody’s talking about AI, so you know we’re just joining the gang there. But you’ve done a lot of work and a lot of research and gotten a ton of input from all your various clients and companies.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:22,580 ] How are companies actually integrating AI? That’s something you see.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:28,130 ] and leveling up to the future of work.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:31,620 ] We hear a lot about effort, but we don’t hear a lot about outcome yet.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:01:36,230 ] It’s we’re very much a work in progress. I think this is, you know, these have been, 2025 was very much a reactive year. I think 2026 needs to be much more proactive thinking about how we do this on an integrated basis. And integrated means not just bringing in AI as a bunch of different applications and as sort of, oh, we’re bringing in the technology. But really bringing it together with the people. And that’s the people aspect of this that is so important. So I think. It’s early stages yet.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:02:13,190 ] Still few companies have.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:02:16,230 ] Really thought through, integrated, overall AI strategies.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:02:21,930 ] And those strategies are more focused on the technology than what they’re going to do, where AI really needs to come in, what tasks it’s going to be taking over or augmenting how it’s going to be working with teams and really what it’s going to be doing to be augmenting the different processes that are going on in the business. Maybe it’s changing how the business model works or elements of the business model. So really, it’s all over the place for different companies. And I think this is a, you know, I really call this a year of reckoning. to be thinking. through much more thoughtfully. and in a coherent way. How to be bringing AI in. And bringing the people along too.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:03:11,420 ] As you think about how to bring AI on, if it is that year of reckoning, and I agree with you, last year was a headline year.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:03:21,330 ] 24 and 25 were headline years. AI, AI, everybody. It was a lot of noise, a lot of drum beating, that sort of thing. Um, The headlines we heard were financial institutional headlines. How much was invested in AI? About the data center for AI and this and that so it was really about the construction of AI. And now your reckoning point is very valid. It’s like, well, you know, it’s out there.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:03:51,170 ] How are we actually going to use this stuff and be comfortable with it?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:03:56,130 ] At least not be uncomfortable with it, to where A good example is when I’m in my car, if I need directions, I’m totally comfortable with Google Maps or any of the assist programs.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:04:13,730 ] And that may or may not be true AI—I don’t know, but I’m totally comfortable without assistance.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:04:20,089 ] Mm hmm.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:04:20,579 ] And I can depend on it. I trust it. How do we get there with AI? How does this reckoning come about to where we actually trust AI?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:04:32,320 ] Or should we, should we trust?
Sophie Wade
[ 00:04:35,500 ] I think it’s really not helped when there’s a disconnect, a discord between executives and employees. And when there isn’t. Uh, sort of coordinated understanding.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:04:52,680 ] About from the executives as to how they’re going to approach it, a lot of them are not using AI that much, but expecting and pushing their employees to be using it. Thank you. And they’re also not being clear about how this is going to roll out, what’s going to happen now. It doesn’t mean that they know exactly. But being much more open and transparent about how this is going to affect things or how it might affect things. And even like, well, if it might. This. to sort of display some of the things that you’re doing. We’re going to be looking to deploy you in different ways and upskill you. And so there’s a. And understanding that we’re in this together. This is a time of— the time of change. We’re bringing on new capabilities, new powerful capabilities. There’s going to be human and AI collaboration. We’re going to bring in agentic AI. We have agents as part of the workforce. And we really value the human. piece of it because who is going to be using the AI?
Sophie Wade
[ 00:05:54,680 ] Who is going to be integrating the AI? You know, it’s the human, it’s the talent that’s going to be doing it. So this is something that really brings down the sort of temperature level. brings down the fear, which is really, there’s a lot of sabotage, the data from the beginning of 2025 from writers. showed that 41% of millennials and Gen Zs had sabotaged and and you know you know undermined the integration of AI so that’s one key thing that’s really important. Why is it fear that causes them to do that? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The people who are using the AI the most have the most fear about it displacing their jobs. And now it’s sort of the latter half of 2025. There was a lot of media hype and I just did a— a newsletter, well, actually, and a LinkedIn post, which was really showing the latest data, actually from LinkedIn, which was showing that. The um. The change in jobs, the layoffs.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:06:57,580 ] All of that was actually predominantly to do with interest rates.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:07:02,850 ] And that it was not about AI. So there’s some very clear data saying that for now. It is not about AI. It can be being used as an excuse by executives. To have layoffs and it could, like, you know, this is, you know, yes, we’re taking on AI and you know, that this is what’s resulting, but that’s not actually what the majority of the data is showing.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:25,040 ] I think, in your headline period in 24-25, and the investment in AI and everything that the promise was increased work efficiency.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:37,430 ] We would have Elon Musk saying nobody will have to work anymore. Nobody. So that’s wonderful. Nobody will get a paycheck either, probably. But the promise. The financial promise was efficiency.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:54,060 ] Increased efficiency for big business and that almost always efficiency translates to layoffs. So I think that the sales proposition, if you will, that raised a lot of capital.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:10,280 ] Promising these efficiencies to big business to large employers.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:17,220 ] Created their own problem in that regard. They created a lot of that fear.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:08:24,690 ] Um— Agreed. I think there was a lot of innovation that was also promised. It wasn’t just about. you know, cuss cutting and not having to hire as many people. It was also about reengineering processes, and we can be doing things differently, and we can explore new markets, and we can create new products. So there’s a lot more that could be possible. Um, based on the existing workforce and future possibilities that would come out of it. But the key thing that we need in order to be able to utilize AI effectively for efficiencies or more, you know, better effectiveness, is we need to design work. So, knowledge work in particular has been vague and it has been evolving for years. What we need to do is understand what the different tasks are that we’re doing, and then we can slot AI in.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:09:25,190 ] Without that, it is very- difficult to be effective and sort of say, well, I’m going to augment what I’m doing in these specific ways because this is my workflow.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:09:38,520 ] And/ or because I can use this or that, I will change the workflow, I will change the process so that I can do. X, Y, Z more. And so these are some of the steps we must take in order to be able to utilize AI effectively.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:09:56,880 ] No, I agree.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:09:59,580 ] You said.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:03,580 ] Augment several times. I think that. ‘Augment’ as opposed to ‘replace’ is the theme, but we have to to keep with it. Work processes workflows can be expanded and accelerated.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:21,080 ] And it’s the expansion of the workflow to do more.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:25,910 ] At a higher speed or a greater efficiency, we’ll say. Uh, through that augmentation that delivers the value, it’s not necessarily the replacement. I think AI will create more jobs ultimately.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:40,590 ] Just like the industrial revolution did, and technology in general has done— it’s created more jobs. And the nice thing about technology jobs in particular is that technology doesn’t know any borders. It doesn’t recognize borders. So we go to more remote work. We go to more adaptation of embedded technologies in all of our processes. We start to solve some social problems as well. And that’s kind of an interesting outcome of this. You mentioned Gen Z.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:18,540 ] Millennials, I think. Let’s talk about generational issues to this whole process.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:26,490 ] Um, and the workplace in general, right now in our company, we have five generations of workers. I’m with the eldest edge of the boomer side, and we have interns coming in from college at the bottom end of the Gen Z. Everybody in between.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:47,010 ] All trying to communicate, all trying to use the This is the importance of established workflows, I think. Amen. Keeping people. Not in their lane necessarily, but with a discipline that is common to everyone. Uh, so that people don’t get lost in this generational issue, but how do you see generational issues relating to AI?
Sophie Wade
[ 00:12:12,450 ] I think.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:12:16,080 ] I think those workflows aren’t going to be the same for people of different generations because they’re used to working in different ways.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:12:23,950 ] I know that I’m very comfortable with technology, but it’s sort of an adjunct for me. It’s additive. I use it in specific situations. If you tell me, ‘oh, this new app,’ I’ll be like, ‘Great. Okay, thanks, Frank.’ And I’ll, you know, use it for that particular thing. I don’t have time to play around and explore and kind of like, ‘Oh, I wonder what else it can do.’ I don’t have time for Gen Z, you know, they have been growing up with all kinds of, one, different strategies, a lot of information. They have incredible. Power and capabilities in the palm of their hand. And so they have a very different expansive view of what technology can do and AI as part of that.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:13:10,100 ] If you give me, and, you know, a Gen Z, the same opportunity to attack a project. I will probably not have as expansive and numerous ways of looking at it that a Gen Z might. And that’s the opportunity for. different generations because we have different ideas about technology. We’ve used it in different ways. So my experience will, and the context that I bring, will affect how I approach technology, the sort of possibilities that I think about how to use it. I can bring those Gen Z will bring bears. And that’s where all the different generations and the sort of different technologies, approaches can really be beneficial for organizations. So it’s so important right now to bring everybody into. to actually be listening to definitely to the youngest people in the organization who have been exploring technology to the greatest extent.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:14:14,580 ] And they’re using AI for all kinds of things, whether it’s finding a flight. you know, Organizing where that they should. Know pick up their laundry all the you know organizing their schedule writing emails and there are lots of people different generations are doing the same thing so we we need to be recognizing the different viewpoints, the different contexts that different generations bring. and benefiting from those.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:14:42,270 ] those same contexts also. challenge us. When we assume, when we don’t empathize or we don’t put ourselves in other people’s shoes as them.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:14:55,530 ] to understand how different their context is. And one example of that, for example, that I like to think about. is If you are Gen Z, There are a majority of them who believe they’re going to do a job that doesn’t exist yet.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:15:14,220 ] So if that’s the case, Why would I choose a career now? If I don’t know. I don’t know how things are going to be developing. I don’t know how things, you know, what new jobs might be popping up out of nowhere. Now, that might well affect how much effort I put into this particular job or the career I appear to be on, because who knows? Something much more fun, interesting, engaging, right up my alley might come. You know, a year’s time or two years’ time. So I’ll engage in this, but it’s more about developing new skills, developing new capabilities.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:15:54,530 ] Trying to understand how this whole thing fits together. I’m not lazy. I’m not job hopping. I’m exploring. I’m expanding.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:16:02,070 ] I’m trying to be competitive. and be ready. For a very uncertain and unstable future.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:11,610 ] Well, I, I don’t think this is new. You know, a maturation period.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:19,560 ] Going back to the 19th century or late 19th century. The grand tour before you started doing anything. A gap year between college and work or between high school and college, even sometimes. A maturation period.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:36,570 ] Is a generational.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:39,970 ] It’s been around probably since day one.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:16:43,400 ] But the pace of change and the number of people. So I gathered a whole group of. You know, mid twenties, mid to late twenties group. When I was finalizing my second Gen Z course for LinkedIn. And I threw out this question, which I thought was. Relatively straightforward.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:17:03,330 ] Um and all of them had been, you know, rapid fire, they had answers to everything. And I said, ‘So.’ You know, what do you want to be doing five to 10 years from now, career-wise? Silence. Dead silence.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:17:17,690 ] Which surprised me.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:17:20,710 ] I can understand it though. I can understand it because I’m not sure what I want to do five or 10 years from now.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:17:27,339 ] Nobody.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:17:28,349 ] I want to.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:17:29,030 ] But you were in your late 20s?
Sophie Wade
[ 00:17:32,440 ] You had some ideas. We didn’t have that many choices. I didn’t have them. There weren’t that many choices that I could choose when I was in 25 to 28. There were sort of specific channels. There wasn’t an incredible, and there weren’t, you know, jobs popping up out of nowhere. There was sort of— You know, you could do this or that with the background that you had and the experience you had. There were only certain pathways, certain tracks forward. That would, that were sort of logical unless you did— you went to business school, which is actually why I went to business school. Thank you. To be able to change tracks. And so that’s the difference in terms of what the possibilities are. And AI is really supercharged that. This has been the case for a while. But AI, because technology has been— creating so many different jobs over the last 20 years. But now those jobs are appearing and rapidly disappearing, just as skills are.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:30,640 ] Yeah, I. I think technology has been creating jobs since, at least in my career, since the 70s.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:18:37,710 ] Of course, of course. The pace of change is a very, very different thing.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:41,910 ] This isn’t new. It’s funny, I asked the question, did I know what I wanted to do when I was 27, 28? And I’d say, yeah, I wanted to build things. I knew I wanted to build things.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:51,460 ] And I have. I’ve been lucky enough to build a lot of different things.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:57,030 ] Oh. buildings.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:59,560 ] different. types of businesses, etc. It really didn’t matter to me so long as I was able to exercise.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:19:07,770 ] a certain amount of creativity.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:19:10,280 ] And I was never confused by that. was never confused to the degree where I said, ‘I’m going to sit and wait and see what happens because people are no longer able to do that. You know, I never would have accomplished what I hope to accomplish if I’d done that.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:19:28,740 ] And so they’re not, right. I mean, they’re accused, being accused of job hopping when really they’re trying to get new skills. They’re trying to move within organizations. Often that’s not possible. So they may, you know, they have been. You know, this job hopping that that a lot of them have been—has been sort of is talked about and complained about. While I see that very much as being skills acquisition and that’s, you know, confirmed. I agree with that.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:19:55,680 ] I agree with skills acquisition completely. It’s the obligation of a company, no matter what the structure is, to create an environment where skills acquisition is respected and expected both.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:15,269 ] And the rewards that come along with that and with the increased performance as a result of that skills acquisition has to be. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a 24-year-old or a 44-year-old or a 64-year-old or, heaven forbid, a 76-year-old.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:34,350 ] That same process has to be applied. Absolutely.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:20:38,310 ] The companies aren’t investing enough. I mean, that’s one thing that is really urgent for 2026 is. You know, upscaling investment and upscaling scheduling and strategy, and then scheduling to make sure. Because as AI skills need to be up-leveled. And the rapid fire within even AI skills to make sure that people have the skills that are necessary. And that then they can be applying them within their team. And for the benefit of whatever process is being re-engineered.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:17,060 ] Do you think that historically, investment rewards companies that scale?
Sophie Wade
[ 00:21:25,775 ] Hmm.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:26,880 ] Always has.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:28,420 ] Scaling has always been dependent upon human resources scaling along with it.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:38,440 ] Changing scaling from a human resources issue, a row of nice people sitting in cubes to get something done, and scaling that way. Versus scaling through.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:50,790 ] Augmented tools or tools which augment the human process.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:21:56,620 ] Is that part of the shift, the generational shift, where the older generation, people like myself as an example, still see scaling with people. And can’t make the mental gap to scaling with this augmented resource the same way. So our business planning, our way we look at things, is different enough to where honestly we have to all retire before it’s going to get us to accomplish what needs to be accomplished for this younger generation.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:22:27,940 ] Well, scaling through technology has been huge over the past 30 years. I mean, certainly I remember the first wave of the dot-com. Oh, yeah. That was very much the first time that companies could scale and really take off, I mean, with the Hockett sticks. I was doing venture capital.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:22:48,900 ] I got to tell you, Sophie, I remember when we went from hand-run adding machines to handheld calculators.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:00,110 ] A Texas Instruments calculator was like this magic tool you could do all sorts of stuff with.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:23:05,930 ] So we have been benefiting from a nonlinear, you know, you have to add one person to keep growing. A linear growth model. We have had a much more exponential, tech-scalable. And that was the doctor . com. boom that we had. 25 years ago. Now that has been increasing much more before AI as well. And I think now we, it is. another level above that when we can have these agentic teams where you have People who are going to be orchestrating, that’s the new verb instead of managing, they’re orchestrating agents. So I think that is going to. um allow another you know step up of that but It’s going to be in particular divisions. It’s going to be in particular areas. It’s not going to be necessarily in every single company. That they’re going to be using tons of agents. I think that’s going to increase more and more depending on a specific task or a whole project.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:24:08,510 ] So I think there’s going to be an evolution. But it is definitely allowing more possibility. That doesn’t mean, as going to your point, that there’s going to be a big shift in jobs. Jobs are going to be moving. So this is where— the sort of challenge and the opportunity is. Yes, there are going to be lots of parts of jobs that are going to be up that are being automated away. They’re all going to be. A bunch of jobs that are going to be were placed. by AI, by technology and have been over the last decades. And then, lots more jobs are already appearing. 1. 3 million jobs globally appeared.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:24:52,100 ] AI-related jobs appeared over the last year. That was LinkedIn data as well. So, you know, there are lots of opportunities, but the shift from these jobs that are going to sort of be going away and these new jobs that are coming. That difference in the skills and what you can do. With that technology and be scaling in the way that you’re talking about. It’s a it’s a very different world of work and the and the opportunities are very are you know are exponentially different in some ways.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:25:21,600 ] Do you see? We talk about social problems and global issues and things of that nature, and I made the comment that technology doesn’t understand borders.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:25:32,650 ] Do you think that these jobs are going to be concentrated in classic technology marketplaces? Or do you think that these jobs will be distributed, and the use of AI as a foundational tool will be distributed?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:25:52,230 ] To other environments that actually need the jobs worse than maybe the traditional locations do.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:26:03,310 ] I was looking at some World Bank data, which is a very interesting report from last year, which was showing that in the more developed countries. Um, that’s where the technology sort of clusters are. That’s where more the development is happening. That’s where more of the venture and the venture capitals capital is coming. That is certainly happening. Um, it was interesting to see in that report, I didn’t read all of it yet, I think it’s like 134 pages. It was very interesting, that there’s much more comfort in China and I think in the Middle East— with AI— than in some of the Western European and the U. S. countries in terms of trusting AI and trusting what it can do and trusting the data that we get from it. So I think that isn’t necessarily good or bad, because there are a lot of mistakes that are already being made because people don’t understand to what degree the hallucinations are part of AI.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:27:12,720 ] That’s sort of part of it because it’s not trying to look for the absolute truth. So I think there’s a lot that we need to be working through, but yes, it’s not, it is clustered for now. I think there are There’s a lot to.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:27:28,770 ] There are lots of unclear yet in terms of where the opportunities are really going to be. That AI is going to be additive to and augmenting. There’s a lot of growth in India right now in terms of opportunities that appear to be AI related and response on the skill side. So I think it’s early days in that yet, because we’re still with the sort of, as we were mentioning, this is kind of like a foundational.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:27:59,720 ] 24, 25. AI was all the rage, you know, headlines. Now it’s like. This is the base layer. We’ve understood that this is where we are. And now we actually need to be refining, defining and refining and identifying where we’re going to use it, designing work. And this is sort of where we’re building the real stuff and working out what we’re really going to be doing with it in a strategic and coherent way.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:22,990 ] Well, you say these are all the things we need to do.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:28,340 ] And I think you’re very right in that regard. So I’m going to ask. What’s the plan? How do you do it? Specifically. Now, I can make a list, a to-do list.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:41,250 ] But getting that to-do list done is always a different matter. Especially if you ask my wife.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:47,610 ] Uh, but you know it— it’s always a different matter of execution versus planning.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:56,350 ] What I’m seeing right now is a lot of I don’t call it planning, a lot of ideas. I’m not seeing yet.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:29:07,490 ] Enough. Focus on execution at the corporate levels. See them— everybody’s still struggling a little bit, as we did in previous generations of technology or industrialization. There’s always a struggling period. I see us going through that right now. Um, You could say it’s an experimental period, too. Yeah. Put a more positive spin on it, which I think is equally accurate. But how? What?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:29:38,110 ] What’s the path? What’s the guidance that you can give? To take this multi-generational technology-infused and augmented new way of doing business and say, to me. I’ve got a nice company to someone else that has a nice company to a manufacturing company, an agricultural-focused company.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:02,110 ] A service company like ours.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:05,790 ] What’s the path we should be on today? Oh, big question. Yeah, give us some answers. I don’t want more questions. I want answers.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:30:17,570 ] Well, it depends, of course. Oh, wait, I can’t say it depends.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:21,670 ] That’s never an answer.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:30:24,810 ] It’s actually always the answer. Um, perhaps so. What I would say is, uh, Yes, there’s the positive way of spinning this. It’s going to be messy for a while. Because we’re in such a period of change right now. And every single organization is going to have to be facing and dealing with it differently. They’re going to be using different aspects of AI with different parts of their business, integrating it in different ways because of different types of workers.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:30:57,160 ] We’re de-layering organizations. We’re allocating managers. Different ways because, once we get much more specific when we design work, we can actually be figuring out who’s going to be doing what, and then we don’t need to be having managers who have you know 10 reports they could have some of them could have 20 reports and other people don’t need to be managers they can be individual contributors because some people are can be amazing and they need to be promoted and rewarded and you know excel and move move up but they don’t need to be managing people because they may be horrible at it. And that’s not a criticism. It’s just, that’s a fact.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:31:37,670 ] I’ll bring up one thing. If I can interrupt, I apologize.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:31:41,350 ] My brain and I won’t keep the thought very long. Um, in our own company, we have a contact center as one of the groups in the company. And with the contact center, we decided a year and a half ago, we wanted to improve our services to our customers. Hmm, hmm. And to include a variety of after-hours and weekend services and that nature. And we looked at the team, and we said, ‘Well, we can hire about another 50 people. I said, no, no, no. Let’s work with somebody and build up. an AI bot. If you. um, structure to handle all the these additional services we want to provide.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:21,620 ] And to your point, very specifically.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:26,240 ] We now have a manager.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:30,590 ] We have.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:32,100 ] whose focus is training the AI as opposed to them. And in addition to the manager that works with skill sets and upskilling the people. So we actually have an AI training manager.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:46,100 ] For that group of employees, if you will. Right, overall and that’s the kind of shift that people need to go through. Thinking, and because AI is not a magic tool. It’s just a hammer.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:33:02,980 ] It’s a good tool. It’s a good tool.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:33:06,550 ] But it’s just a tool. And you have to train and skill the tool, the use of the tool, not just.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:33:14,940 ] Reskill the people, but the tool itself. Right now, it needs a lot of upskilling.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:33:21,050 ] Right, so this is a fundamental piece of this.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:33:26,280 ] It means rethinking middle management.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:33:31,410 ] So you have Amazon who said— Completely agree with that. And so there are going to be some people who are going to never be managing people, but they’re still going to ascend, but they’re also going to go through diagonally and horizontally to upskill, to be-to be getting new capabilities. and progressing.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:33:50,340 ] positively through the organization. other people will be managing as as your customer service person who are going to be managing Um, orchestrating bots and other agentic AI and some people who the few people who are actually fantastic managers because there aren’t that many of them. They will be both managing, but as we are much more specific and clear about what their people are doing. And there’s AI and other types of productivity tools and project management tools.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:34:21,949 ] They are going to be it helped very much in terms of how the work is or. or tracking how the work is done. And their role as a manager becomes much more about a coach, much more about oversight. and and you know helping people upskill or there might be another manager who is focus solely like BCG does, which is who’s focused solely on career pathing. Thank you. And, you know, where that somebody might upscale or different people in their team might upscale. So managers are going to have these very different roles. And we need to be really looking. The last time there was a sort of big change in organizational philosophy or organizational design was in the 1990s.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:35:05,070 ] Which was to do with flattening the organization. It’s taken years to flatten the organization from this sort of militaristic, many, many, many levels of hierarchy. And there are lots of different elements that go together with that. It’s not necessarily about bringing AI in and, you know, you know, laying off lots of managers. This is a sort of fundamental organizational structural change. And it has been coming for a long time. So that’s one element of it. So I think there’s a big step back. I wish I could do it. It’s not a simple just of saying, like, this is what you do. There are some very fundamental ways that business operations are changing because of technology, not even AI, but this is digital transformation.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:35:53,360 ] And with that digital transformation, which needs to bring people along, there are all kinds of ways that each organization is going to change. And that is the key. Overhaul that needs to happen. This year. If it hasn’t already started, it needs to really happen. This year. It’s going to take time. It’s going to have lots of different pieces to it. And the question is, What are the priorities? Where are the places that you’re going to be starting? Because it’s not all going to happen at once. But where the cost is. That are going to other key things for your business and for your workforce.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:36:28,140 ] Who are the champions who really get it, who can help bring it along, who can bring everybody else along? Those are the types of things to be thinking through and starting making progress in terms of the strategy and then the tactics, because there’s a lot. There’s a lot that needs to change. And right now it is unevenly distributed. Around the world and within companies. And within teams. And so this is where the human piece of it also becomes incredibly important because leadership needs to be able to connect with their teams and be able to help understand. Who’s capable of what? How they’re dealing with it. Where the issues lie, because of emotional or capabilities issues, where their brains are overloaded, where the capacity is overloaded. Because we’ve got a lot of transitions to go through. Um, So long-awaited answer. Did I answer it?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:37:29,250 ] No, you did. I think you did. I want to kind of make one comment. I come from the flexible workspace sector, business centers, co-working centers, incubators, et cetera. That’s what my background is. And when we define our industry, we say the industry combines people, place, and technology into a single bundled structure. That is. delivered with a highly flexible service agreement. And if you think about business in general, it is people, place, and technology, and highly flexible is key today and right. When I look at a coworking center, the brand promise of a coworking center with those people, place, and technology, et cetera, is business growth through a collaborative community.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:38:23,520 ] collaborative community being the key there. And when I look at a recent article that came out, uh, and Jennica just uh stole ‘cold working’ as a part of their lexicon. Now.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:38:41,379 ] And that’s good, I think. Some people say, ‘Oh no, they’re stealing it.’ And I say, ‘No, no, no, it’s right.’ They’re right on. But The collaborative community structure that is required in business now includes a new population.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:38:57,820 ] And that population are, are, are bots, if you will, are artificial intelligence tools and elements which are almost personified.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:39:11,710 ] Um, in many many the way they’re used oftentimes—and I think that that collaboration structure.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:39:20,880 ] Regardless of generation.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:39:22,900 ] Regardless of the type of business, that is what we need to think about is. How to work collaboratively.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:39:31,190 ] In a flexible format and I I think that that’s the way I look at it at least and All the information you’ve provided helps.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:39:42,020 ] Help crystallize that in my own brain. So I’m very grateful to you for that. I appreciate your time today, Sophie, very, very much.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:39:49,800 ] Well, the principles that I think about modern work are like, Learning, intention, flexibility, and empathy. So yeah, flexibility is right in there and we’re continually learning. To try and understand and absorb and embrace and adapt. With and for. All these different changes that are happening with intention, because we can’t just be passive these days. So yeah.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:40:16,500 ] You summed it up spot on. Thank you so much.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:40:18,460 ] We are a collaborative community.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:40:20,580 ] We sure are. We shall.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:40:22,740 ] Thank you, Sophie, very, very much. Appreciate your time today.
Sophie Wade
[ 00:40:26,030 ] Thank you, Frank.
