The SHRM webinar, sponsored by Eightfold AI, focused on leveraging HR to drive workforce agility and transformation. Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discussed the importance of redefining workforce strategies, moving from intuition to evidence-based impact, and empowering talent intelligence. They highlighted the need for HR to embrace AI and technology, citing statistics like 59% of the workforce needing retraining by 2030. Examples included Salesforce’s 51% internal hiring rate and Bayer’s dynamic shared ownership model. The session emphasized the urgency for HR to lead organizational change, adapt to new technologies, and foster a culture of continuous learning and agility.

Introduction

• Speaker introduces Jason Cerrato, Vice President of Talent Center Transformation for Eightfold AI, and Mark Condon, Managing Partner at Quantum Work Advisory.
• Jason Cerrato expresses excitement about partnering with SHRM and Quantum Work Advisory, and mentions his background with Eightfold and the Allegis Group.
• Mark Condon and Jason Cerrato discuss the importance of HR leaders taking an active role in driving organizational change and agility.
• The agenda is outlined, including redefining workforce strategies, building a case for agility, and empowering talent intelligence.

Redefining workforce strategies and agility

• Jason Cerrato emphasizes the need to redefine workforce strategies and build a case for agility, moving from intuition to evidence-based impact.
• The discussion includes the importance of HR leaders being technology literate and understanding the impact of AI and agentic technologies.
• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discuss the need for HR to lead organizational change and the potential for AI to remove toil from work and redeploy talent.
• The conversation touches on the evolution of AI from generative to agentic and the implications for organizational design and workforce structure.

The role of HR in organizational change

• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discuss the shift from “old HR” to “new HR,” emphasizing the need for HR to lead organizational change and embrace new technologies.
• The importance of HR in driving cultural change and being adaptable and agile is highlighted.
• The discussion includes the need for HR to balance compliance and risk mitigation with driving change and championing a new culture.
• Jason Cerrato introduces a poll to gauge the audience’s perspective on the importance of workforce agility to their talent strategy.

The importance of workforce agility

• Jason Cerrato shares statistics from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, emphasizing the need for retraining and upskilling in the workforce.
• The discussion includes the importance of agility in responding to changes in the business environment and the role of AI in driving organizational change.
• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discuss the need for HR to build a business case for agility and invest in initiatives that support workforce agility.
• The conversation touches on the importance of HR in driving organizational success and the potential for AI to enhance productivity and cost savings.

Talent intelligence and internal mobility

• Jason Cerrato introduces the concept of talent intelligence and its role in driving internal mobility, skills development, and agile workforce planning.
• A poll is conducted to gauge the audience’s current use of talent intelligence in their organizations.
• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discuss the importance of having a data ecosystem to support AI and agentic technologies.
• The conversation includes the need for HR to focus on workforce data and insights and the potential for AI to enhance organizational agility.

Real-world examples of AI-driven agility

• Jason Cerrato shares examples of AI-driven agility in action, including Salesforce’s internal talent marketplace and career mosaic.
• The discussion includes the importance of internal mobility and the role of AI in supporting talent redeployment.
• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon discuss the benefits of dynamic shared ownership and the need for real-time visibility of talent and work.
• The conversation touches on the importance of leadership in driving organizational change and the potential for AI to enhance innovation and decision speed.

Final thoughts and call to action

• Jason Cerrato and Mark Condon emphasize the importance of being brave and ambitious in driving organizational change.
• The discussion includes the need for HR to embrace new technologies and be technology literate.
• Jason Cerrato encourages the audience to learn about design thinking and apply it to their organizational strategies.
• The session concludes with a call to action for HR leaders to take an active role in driving organizational agility and embracing new technologies.

SHRM Moderator 00:00
Agility is no longer a buzzword. It’s productive, it’s a productivity driving strategic necessity. Yet HR and talent leaders often face resistance when trying to implement the kind of initiatives that can spark true workforce agility and transformation. In this session, you’ll learn to redefine workforce strategies and make a powerful business case for agility with higher ups, to empower talent intelligence and move from intuition to evidence-based impact guiding. Today’s program features Jason Cerrato, VP of Talent-centered Transformation at Eightfold AI, and Mark Condon, Managing Partner at QuantumWork Advisory. Jason has been recognized by HR Executive as a Top 100 HR Tech influencer, and he also co-hosts The New Talent Code podcast, which provides insights and open discussion with industry leaders on all things talent and HR tech. Mark is a pioneer in the talent and workforce sector with over 20 years global experience with both startups and multinationals. With introductions complete I’m pleased to hand it off. Jason, the floor is yours.

Jason Cerrato 03:30
Thank you so much, Tony. It’s great to be here with you. It’s always a wonderful opportunity to partner with SHRM, and it’s always wonderful to partner with Mark and QuantumWork Advisory. Thank you everyone for joining us. As mentioned, my name is Jason Cerrato. I’m the VP of Talent-centered Transformation with Eightfold AI, and as you heard a little bit about our backgrounds, I’m just flattered to be joined by Mark. Mark and I have known each other and seen each other on the trail at various conferences, events, learning, listening, reading, of all of the change that’s happening in this space. And I’m just excited to have the conversation with him today. If you know a little bit about QuantumWorks, they are an advisory organization, and they are a partner with Eightfold AI, but also a partner with other organizations that are going through this change today, but they are also part of the Allegis Group, which is where I started my HR career over 20 years ago. So everything comes full circle, and it’s a small world as I talk to you here from the United States, as you’re joining us from Australia. So thank you so much for joining us, Mark. It’s great to have you here.

Mark Condon 04:43
Thanks, Jason. That’s great to hear you actually, actually listen to some of the things that actually say but or act on them. But, yeah, no. It’s always been great to see you at conferences and hope to see you at a few coming up. So it’s been a great, great journey.

Jason Cerrato 05:04
So I loved the intro and hearing kind of the abstract of what we’re going to talk about. And really this thinking about leading this workforce, rewiring. And you know, as you and I were thinking about doing this session. I loved the way you kind of were phrasing this, and I want to have a chance just to kind of talk about that real quick before we kick off today. And you had been positioning this around in this kind of AI revolution, and what’s happening in the workforce, and especially HR, role in it. You had said, you know, are you involved in leading your organization, or is it happening to you, right? Are you actively taking a role in driving it, or is it happening around you? And I think that’s a big part of what we want to talk about today. So just want to get your thoughts on that mark, as you were working with a lot of leaders in different industries, and this is kind of that push pull. Do we go? Do we stay? Do we learn? How much do we know that everyone is kind of dealing with right now?

Mark Condon 06:16
Yeah, thanks for the question. I think, I think it’s a couple of different dimensions to this. You’ve got directors or VPs, and then you’ve got sort of CHROs leading this discussion as well. And I think everyone needs to lead. So you can’t wait for your CHRO or CEO. You have to actually get on the front foot, if that’s a saying that, and really drive it forward, because everything’s going to change. So I think everyone understands that, but then they’re not confident in how to go forward and that’s absolutely fine, but I think you’ve got to rally the organization and say, “What does this mean?” And that might mean getting a business case to actually invest in the short term. And I know that economically, you know, it’s probably been a tough year for many people, but if you say to your leadership, “I can reduce your capital expenditure by x, or operating expenditure by x, and I need some capital expenditure most,” most business people will say “yes!” And so I just think we need to be bold, and you can’t wait for the organization to sort of collectively catch up, you know? You’ve got to just get in and go.

Jason Cerrato 07:54
So in the spirit of not waiting, let’s kick off our conversation today. So we’ve worked through introductions. And what we want to talk about today is kind of this redefining of strategy and redefining of work. And you already mentioned, how do we start kind of building this case for agility, and maybe we’re even redefining what agility is and what it looks like. And then how are we empowering our workforce through talent and talent intelligence. And then what does it mean for learning and gaining intuition for this evidence based impact? And if we have some time, we’ll open it up for Q and A. I know Mark and I do kind of go off on a tangent and like to have long discussions, but we will try to leave time for questions and answers. If there isn’t time for questions and answers, we will capture the questions and answers and try to follow up with people after the session today. And one other kind of word for the session today, we are going to have some polls along the way to kind of gauge the audience. So for those that are listening along, don’t stray too far away from your computer or your mouse, because we may ask you to engage and give us some feedback with some poll questions. So with that. So this whole concept of redefining workforce strategies, you know, and what does it really take to build this enabled workforce? You and I had been talking about this black and, you know, everything that’s old is new again. And we’re almost in kind of a new version of this kind of Taylorism, right, of redesigning work, and this kind of scientific breakdown of tasks and work design and role design, and who’s going to do what, and how are we going to design this work of the future and potentially redefine it in a new way? But we kind of have to get out of our own way to start thinking of that, especially in organizations, while you’re doing your day job and trying to deliver to customers and meet your objectives, and, you know, hit your quarterly goals, that’s the hard part, right?

Mark Condon 10:08
I’ve been reflecting on this, and I think people think that, you know, the current structures will work in the future, and I don’t think they will. And the reason why I’m saying that is, if you have a hiring manager on an ongoing basis requesting a replacement, right that they will that work needs to be re-examined every time, because the ability for that to be, you know, we call it a 5b model, but it, you know, is that, what are your strategic choices for that task? So those tasks need to be re-examined. And this is why I think, “Hey, is the ability to examine the work coming?”

Mark Condon 11:06
Oh, I’m a hiring manager.

Mark Condon 11:16
And then to say, “are we breeze skilling? Is this an internal role? Is this a buy or you have to hire? Is this a borrow? Is this a con?”

Mark Condon 11:35
I just don’t think that’s naturally built into the flow of work. And if you have the flow of you know the data, the flow of data and the flow of work combining, which is where I see this going. This will be just a natural thing occurring over the next two to three years because I think HR would be overwhelmed with the change.

Jason Cerrato 12:01
When you said your five Bs, I knew four of them. I was waiting for the fifth and that bundle. That bundle is an interesting one, especially when you start to think of all the levers and buttons we now have to push to potentially make change or come up with ways to do this work going forward. But I think now a part of that is because of this evolution at hand, of all the new tools, new ways of work, and things that have happened in the world of work, and especially how fast things have moved. I mean, it felt just like yesterday. We were talking about generative AI, and now we’re already talking about agentic AI and agents. And I just had a briefing a week or two ago where we were talking about agents of agents, right? That the world is moving very fast,

Mark Condon 12:52
absolutely. And I think this is where everyone needs to really lean in and be technology literate. And this whole thing about agentic, or these different types of technologies, the reality is that AI and technology will take over, sort of, you know, next guess, which is Gen AI, like, what’s my next guess, versus agentic, which is multiple processes which may involve automation and Gen AI and so forth, and then there’s, there’s probably other ones that take over another one, which is, oh, that’s a good one. Let me re-examine that. So you’ll have sort of agentic, managing agentic AI. I don’t think we want to get too caught up as practitioners and some of that, but the reality is, what’s the work, what’s the task, and what’s the work that needs to be done, and how can we get that best done? And what’s best done by humans? And a lot of people, including my wife, say, Aren’t you worried about people, and I go, not really, because I think the work is going to be a lot more enjoyable. And I think anyone that’s creative and wants to move forward will be okay. I think if you want, if you really just like terrible work, you know who likes whipping themselves every day? I don’t know, but you know that I think AI can do some of the really bad work that humans do.

Jason Cerrato 14:32
There is a lot of discussion around removing the toil out of work, but there’s also a lot of discussion around the need to potentially redeploy and up for some of the work that can be automated. But I think also, when we talk about the shift from generative AI, you know, guessing what’s next to kind of the agentic you had mentioned earlier, this thought around the manager requesting that replacement for building the team going forward and how that work would look different, and as the work looked it looks different, the org will look different. And you can’t just continue to pass things forward as they’ve always been. I think a big part of that is because with this agentic capability, we’re not just replicated, the agent brings the ability to start making some decisions. And I know right now there’s a kind of debate going on in the analyst space and the academic space around do we personify these agents? Are they considered teammates? Are they considered employees, or is it just a computer or just a calculator or just a tool, regardless of where you fall on that debate, they do have the ability to make some decisions and move work forward. So as a result, if you think about like the org charts and the way we’ve structured organizations, a lot of that was built around how we’ve made decisions, how we’ve flowed information and how we had to organize to move work forward, and with this capability now to automate and move work forward, those org charts, the way we structure orgs, how many levels, how many teams are going to look very different going forward as we design this work, don’t you think?

Mark Condon 16:19
Well, yes, absolutely. I think it was the comment at one of your conferences in Europe recently. You talked about the difference between managing five people versus 25 and how you and these are my words, but you go from rowing the boat to steering the ship more like you’ve got your navigation. Just sort of visualize, I’m rowing my boat. It’s really hard, but I’m getting somewhere versus the ship, which is, I’ve got my navigation, I’ve got my control tower, sort of, I have the ability to navigate, and I have a lot more responsibility. So I think that’s just a really good analogy to go with. The world’s going to change significantly, but it’s not necessarily worse, you know. Like, who wants to roll a boat, you know? So that would be my comment on there will always be comments about what’s the impact on the work. And I’d go, which work do you want to do? And I also think the commenting about the flow of work. There’s no way a back office part of the HR function is going to be able to manage that change. So it has to be built into the whole talent cycle of redefining work, what’s the right work, and then moving that through. And at the moment, it’s it’s very static, as you mentioned earlier, it’s built on Taylorism 100 and 100 years ago.

Jason Cerrato 18:06
Yeah. Now, I love the ability to have this chat with you, because when we start talking about something, we can dig deep in some of these areas. Here at Eightfold, we were part of a research study that was done with Harvard Business Review, and there’s a picture of it here, empowering HR teams to become AI savvy talent leaders. But this is really thinking about this rewiring of work and HR opportunity to lead, but this balance between picking your spot, being ready for it, and fighting the battle of either being run over or being driven by it. And, you know, in this research, we saw there’s this balance between reconfiguring talent bases for AI, but at the same time, are we ready for what it’s going to take to do that? And you know, there’s this, again, this kind of push and pull in this battle of, do we lead the business and have a say in how we want to redesign this work and the org of the future that we want to design, that we want to be a part of? Or do we, do we kind of carry on the thought of being order takers and let run over us, and kind of just respond to, you know, being driven by just the speed of business. And I think there’s this battle going on of “let’s choose the work we want to do, let’s think about the critical thinking, the creativity, the imagination, the thought provoking work that we need humans to do.” So there’s a lot of this kind of human centered design, and let’s figure out where it makes sense to automate and use AI and where it makes sense to be uniquely human.

Mark Condon 19:56
Look, I think HR is a bit of a crossroads, and I think it’s going to be different for different organizations. And I’m very optimistic about HR. I think HR, I call it new HR versus old HR, you know, like, do I preserve the organization? And yes, I have the ability to manage and become important. But I see new HR as being probably with with the, you know, being polite to the technologies, you know, like the CIOs, become extremely important in most organizations in the last 20 years, I think the CHRO and the leaders in that this is our time, or this is this is your time, because we’re going to redefine The work itself like this is above the execution through sort of technology itself. You think about it, we’re actually recreating an organization, and we’re recreating jobs. So the next 10 to 20 years is going to be the most amazing time for people who can get their head around organizational design, job design, and you’re going through a revolution. So I think I’ll shut up in a sec, but I think the key is, do you want to lean in, or do you want to play it safe? If you don’t lean in, I’m worried there’ll be another function created outside of, you know, people, the chief people officers, responsibility, which is called chief AI officer, and all its transformation, response and responsibilities, will be there. And I just think that’d be a real shame.

Jason Cerrato 22:04
I agree. And to use a comparison, I liked your kind of framing that as old HR versus new HR. I saw it during the pandemic, when everything went virtual and remote and we had to become increasingly transparent and open communicators, and HR had to really lead that. And you went from being the defenders of culture to driving cultural change, and in some cases, in some organizations, that was very uncomfortable for HR, right? Because it was always kind of protecting the organization for this is how our culture is, and this is why it is, versus being the catalyst for changing the culture, and kind of maybe changing the rules and loosening the rules, or changing the way we work, and making this new way of managing through the pandemic workable. And I think that’s just one example, but this is another, kind of broader, bigger example of kind of old HR, new HR?

Mark Condon 23:03
Well, you hit on a really good point. It’s, it’s, what’s the culture? And if you don’t have a culture of change and embracing new ideas, I really worry about those companies, you know. So if you’re working for a legacy, sort of more state company, you’re at threat of a new entrant, right? You’re always a threat of a new entry, unless you’re in economies of scale that are too big for that to occur. But if you’ve got a really competitive marketplace, you’re always at threat of an incumbent, of a new company coming in, and I always measure myself against that and say, Well, how do we prevent that from happening? And it means we need to be adaptable and agile and flexible, and we need to be able to move people to work or tasks as nimbly as we can. And I think it started during COVID, but we didn’t really fully execute that. Now, to me, that’s a practice run for what we’re doing now, even though COVID was probably the biggest change to workforce flexibility we’ve had in 100 years. Yeah, that’s a, really, a trial run for what we’re doing now.

Jason Cerrato 24:34
And I just, I hope people lean into that. Yeah, I’ve said when we went through digital transformation and moved from on prem to the cloud. The HR transformation involved with that was in large part about freeing up data, right, and empowering the line with the data it needed to make faster decisions. This type of transformation is about freeing up talent, right, and moving some of the organizational barriers to let talent flow to work, and let talent shift and redeploy to some of these new areas and new roles that may not have existed before, or create entirely new functions that are starting to blur or co-mingle as these skills and functions kind of recreate themselves.

Mark Condon 25:22
Yeah, and I’m sort of listening, and I’m also thinking about this is a completely different time, and I really want HR to embrace the fact that you know if you’re in the driving seat, but if you don’t really lean forward into that and say, I want to recreate this vision of what HR should be like, we’ve always talked about it. We always talk about all HR. You know, people are the most important thing on the balance sheet, but they’re not. They’re not measured, because the way of measuring accounting is through assets and and, and this is our time to actually go. The most important thing we have is the ability to recreate this sort of Symphony, if you like, between people and technology. And if we’re better than the competition, we win, simple as that, we win. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Cerrato 26:32
So you and I have already touched on this a little bit, but this mirrors, a piece of research that was written by my friends over at Forrester who called this an AI HR paradox, and it talks about HR is uniquely positioned ability to lead some of this change, but also kind of the balance between hrs role as protector and this opportunity to be a growth champion. So how do you balance this kind of feeling of compliance and risk mitigation and safety and protection, with driving change and championing a new culture and leading the organization forward, and maybe in some cases, breaking the rules and redesigning the organization and designing an entirely new way of doing things, those are two things? In many cases, could be very geometrically opposed, and this is what they’re calling this, this AI HR paradox. But in many cases, it’s going to take us dealing with this to push through.

Mark Condon 27:35
I think this is sort of a really good point about HR and the function used to ask from investment. And I’d probably say no, whereas I think IT and marketing are very good at it, you know, like they say, Here’s my business case. Like marketing, if you look at the marketing principles, they go, “here’s my here’s my data,” which may not be on the P&L, but here’s my data related to eyeballs and all these other metrics, right? Yeah, but HR doesn’t do that very well and, and I think now’s our time to talk about, what are the metrics that drive the need for investment? Because I think the mandates are already there, the mandate from this is how I said the CEO is being talked to by very senior strategy people. And much as I’d love to be in that conversation, we’re probably not. But then they’re coming back to the C-levels, which we are part of those conversations, and they’re being directed to say, “I’ve been told you can reduce your operating expenditure by 45% or 30% and it’s going to be over three years. Where’s your plan?” And those conversations are happening right now, right now. Yeah, if you’re one below that, you need to be aware those conversations are happening. And you need to be, I hate that phrase. You need to be because it sounds very good, and I apologize for that, but I think we need to be on the front foot by saying we know those conversations are happening. What am I doing about it?

Jason Cerrato 29:33
So with that, I do want to get to our first poll. So with the help of SHRM, maybe we’ll get to the first poll around making a powerful business case for agility. And I do have a poll here, so if I can get some help in executing this, how important is workforce agility to your current talent strategy? And you can see here there’s some options, top priority, very important, somewhat important. Not a priority or not sure. And I’ll give the audience a few seconds to get back to their desk or their device and be able to answer this. But while we give them a chance to do that here, what are you hearing or seeing with the organizations that you’re partnering with? Mark, I have to assume there’s a certain way this data is going to come through.

Mark Condon 30:24
Look, I think it’s, it’s hugely important. I think if you talk to any C-level or strategic, you know, part of business, it’s always about, I think the word agility is better than skills. To be honest, I think skills are a bit more, maybe maybe a bit transactional. But you know, how can we be more agile to change business? If you think about it, COVID was a big agility test to organizations, well, AI is if COVID was three out of 10 or four out of 10, AI is like a nine out of 10. So how can we really flex the company to put people from low demand to high demand tasks quickly and as simply as we can. And that might be projects, that might be, you know, secondments, what have you. But we need a task cycle, tasks identified as quickly as we can, and then what is the right way to execute that? And at the moment, it’s always, I have a job description. I need to fill a job, and that’s not going to work in the future, because people say, “Can’t AI do that?”

Jason Cerrato 32:03
When I look at the results, our top result is somewhat important. It’s on our radar, but not fully embedded yet, maybe in parts of the organization, but not everywhere. And then the second runner up, very important. We’re actively investing in agility focused initiatives, which is something I would expect, especially from people hopefully attending this session. Okay, thank you so much for participating. There. We have another poll coming up, so stay close. One of the things I wanted to talk about in terms of why and the case for agility. Many of you have probably seen the World Economic Forum, future of jobs report from 2025. It’s a very lengthy report, but buried in that report are a couple short paragraphs that I grabbed here that really tell a nice visual of what’s happening. And in this paragraph, it says, If you were to kind of sum all of this up into a game out of 100 people. And the way they phrase it, if the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030 of these employers foresee that 29 could be upskilled in their current roles, and 19 could be up-skilled and replayed elsewhere with an organization. However, 11 would be likely to receive re-skilling or upskilling needed, leaving their employment prospects increasingly at risk, where they have to maybe retire to switch industries. Look elsewhere, but if you see this kind of from a percentage perspective, this is out of 100 people, how they break it down into a nice, simple story here, but this talks about the need to not only be able to see this in your workforce, identify it quickly, but then understand exactly what are you re skilling people to do. Where do they need to be redeployed, and how does that match and align with where your business is going, how the market is moving, and can you see far enough in an agile way where you’re doing that in a way that can shift as the technology is changing, as the world is changing, because you also don’t want to do this in a way that’s going to get disrupted, because we all know Things aren’t staying in one direction for very long things are moving. So you need an agile, dynamic way to do this. So that way, as you’re upskilling and redeploying people, they’re also potentially moving and shifting as the market and as the technology is moving and shifting. What do you think about that? Mark?

Mark Condon 34:38
Look, I think I like these statistics, but I would say everyone needs retraining. You know, so 59 seems a bit light, but I think they’re talking about, you know, significant retraining to a new job, whereas I think, you know, there is, we all need to be AI-knowledgeable and be aware of it, to look at the other stats. 19 could be upskilled, agreed to put elsewhere that, yeah, I think that’s that’s great. I look. I think these stats are probably about right. But I think we all need to lean in and say, I’m going to do a course on AI. I need to understand the implications of this, whether the company supports it or not. I hope they do. You know, I’ve become obsessed by this, and maybe it’s just my what my mind, my mind, my mind works better with zeros and ones. But I just, I just think this. This is not a background thing at the moment. We need to make it front of house, and we shouldn’t be threatened by it. I mean, we’re all very human. We’re all human. If we’re human and talented, we’re okay. That’s my point.

Jason Cerrato 36:13
And I think when we talk about this dynamic way and this drive for agility, I put it here. I think agility is a nicer way of saying finding, finding your way, because you may make a mistake, you may go in the wrong direction, but you also need the ability to change directions quickly and fail fast. But these were some stats and some quotes that I had seen that I think, kind of tell this story when you put them all together and you think about kind of the perfect storm that we’re dealing with, 82% of CEOs think AI will be an essential competitive differentiator within the next three years. So they think it’s going to be a competitive differentiator. They think they have a three year window. Does everyone know exactly what they need to do and where they need to go? Maybe not, but they know they need to move fast. Gartner predicts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 202. I saw that, and I heard a lot of people say they thought on one side or the other that that may have been very aggressive, but you may have read about a month or two ago, there was an article around Johnson & Johnson had deployed a lot of pilot projects and was kind of testing which were successful and which ones had any kind of impact, and was very quickly shut down the ones that had no impact and focusing on the ones that had impact. And they were only like 10 or 15% of the projects, but they were getting out of the ones that weren’t working very quickly and focusing on the ones that were having impact quickly. So I think this just shows you. I think we’re moving to a world where it’s okay if things fail, if you’re failing fast, if you’re experimenting and if you’re learning. So I don’t I think it’s a different world where people get scared by those numbers just just on that.

Mark Condon 37:54
Jason, I don’t like the idea of failing fast. I’ve always liked the idea of, “I’m a design thinking guy,” where it’s like, you know, the infinity loop of development. And this idea of, “Oh, we did something and it failed. Do we have to get back?” It is just a terrible messaging idea. But I love the idea that that infinite loop of will get better, and it’s, it’s more meant, it’s a bit more, I suppose, emotionally stabilizing. I suppose, because people go, “Oh, I went to the end of a project.” But no, you didn’t. You just, that’s just the first pass of the next definition. So I think we have to be prepared to be bold, but also test our work. I think the problem is, when you say or this is, to succeed, you often push through with projects that should have been shut down a lot earlier. So I think it’s just like being experimental, keeping it light, and then measuring success.

Jason Cerrato 39:07
Amy Edmondson did a lot of research on this, and she talks about the fact that in many cases, because especially HR is so risk averse, we design pilots that are so cushioned and buffered that they’ll never fail, and the practice of never failing, we don’t learn enough to be able to test what will happen when they get put out in production, in reality. So part of it isn’t just maybe it’s not failing fast, it’s failing forward.

Mark Condon 39:34
I think the word pilot also is like, this is, I just say this is phase one. Yeah, yeah. You know, a pilot means that people can’t really embrace it, and they have the ability to avoid it, which, when you think about it, basically guarantees its failure. So I love the idea of just saying this is the first phase. We’re going to keep going. And no one can sort of get off the bus, if you like.

Jason Cerrato 40:06
And then these last two, in the PwC 28th Annual Global CEO Survey, almost 40% of CEOs say their company started to compete in new sectors in the last five years, or pivoting or transitioning into new areas to deliver to customers or to compete in new industries with new competitors. But here you see from the global insights report, employee retention and workforce upskilling emerge as the most critical drivers of business success, with 75% and 70% of companies rating them highly impactful. So as you’re upskilling and you’re re-skilling, you also kind of have to know where your business is heading, if you’re pivoting into new industries or pivoting into new areas, or you’re seeing AI as a competitive differentiator. So when I was saying, when you put kind of all of these together, laid on themselves, this talks about the need for agility and finding your way, because all of these in concert are not a straight line, right? Definitely not.

Mark Condon 41:06
It’s a great legacy. Companies are going to feel that the most, and then, ideally they should win. They have all the capabilities. It’s just if they don’t think it’s all about change management anyway.

Jason Cerrato 41:22
So from a perspective of empowering talent intelligence, this is actually what talent intelligence can potentially unlock in an organization, and how this can address some of these challenges and issues. So we have a poll here. Where is your organization today when it comes to using talent intelligence to drive internal mobility skills development or agile workforce planning. Let’s see if we can get a couple responses from the crowd as the votes come in.

Jason Cerrato 41:59
Mark, I want to ask you with the organizations that you’re working with, do you see most of them working on all of these things in concert, or are many of them working on maybe one of them independently, and then they learn how all of these interrelate? Where does this conversation start?

Mark Condon 42:21
Yeah, it’s different for different organizations. Obviously, that’s the sort of get out of jail card. But I think, I think this whole thing of data having a data ecosystem, I’ve been talking to a lot of clients, and it’s like, if you don’t have that foundation where you have the ability for an agent to plug into that, then you’re kind of a year behind before you even start, maybe two years behind, and you’re then in big trouble, because the agent acceleration and change management is going to be a real issue. So I talk to companies like, this is the vision of three years, and people go three years, I’ve got time. I said, No, you don’t have time. Got to get you to get the data ecosystem sorted now or and that’s going to take you a year, yeah, or so. And, and then they go, oh. And you can see the emotion in their face, like, Oh, dear. I have to start yesterday.

Jason Cerrato 43:38
So as we look at the results here, where are people in their organization today? We have 42% in early stages. We have 24% and not yet started, and 17% in making progress. So I’d like to thank the people that have not yet started to join us today. Hopefully this gives you some things to think about, or some talking points to bring back to your organization or your leaders, and for the folks that are in early stages or making progress, we look forward to learning more about where this journey takes you. But obviously this is a journey where we’re all kind of designing this together. But also the world is moving very fast. But the thing about this technology and this process is every step is a step where you learn and you advance. So it’s one of these things where waiting is kind of at your disadvantage, right? The more you kind of move forward, the more you learn, the more you iterate, the more this develops and grows.

Mark Condon 44:37
Jason, just on that. I think this is, I think the person that manages sort of workforce strategy, analysis, workforce insights has often been, I think of the movie Office Space for those of people old enough, and they’re in the basement managing the data. I think they’re going to go from that to shining lights in the front office, you know, beaming lights and paint. I just think this is the most underestimated, underrated skill set we have in the company, and that’s the biggest shift. If I was in Workforce data and insights as a skill set and had a real handle on AI, I’d be going, “You know, start adding zeros to my salary.” I just see this as a different game.

Jason Cerrato 45:28
When we talk about workforce data and insights, that’s a great segue to this slide, because this is actual, real data. That was all.

Mark Condon 45:34
That was all made up. Jason, that segue was just completely,

Jason Cerrato 45:41
This is actual real, real data from an organization we were working with where they were looking at their data, kind of a before picture, and this was, if you think about how we got here, we’ve often built career ladders and competency models and kind of skill structures functionally. So when they looked at kind of their people analytics, they were looking at competency usage by department, and what they saw was that competencies and skills and kind of the career data in large part resided within the function in which it was designed. And there was very little that actually went over the wall into other functions and was universal across the organization. So when we think about why is internal mobility so difficult, and why is it hard to understand where I can go in my organization, and why is it hard for me to see how my skills translate to that part of the organization over there, it’s often because, even if it’s a similar job, doing similar work, in a similar role, it may be called something different or characterized in a different way. And part of what kind of AI and skills and talent intelligence helps us unlock is is connecting these relationships, these adjacencies, these skill clusters, to kind of see over the fence and see over the wall, but also dynamically update this as this work updates, as these skills update, and as this changes over time. But I just love this as a quick little visual, because this is real data.

Mark Condon 47:19
Yeah, it’s chaos, isn’t it? Why the hell I always go, you enter an organization, and instantly your skills are put into a steel box, and it’s like, no one ever gets to see who you are anymore. It’s like, yeah, you know that. That’s not right. You know that’s just, it’s just massive stupidity. You know that people can’t see what you can do.

Jason Cerrato 47:46
So at QuantumWorks, not only do you help organizations as consultants and as implementation partners and with process strategy, you also put out some thought leadership. And you had a white paper on some of this work. And in one of the white papers, you had created this kind of talent intelligence maturity curve for any of the folks that haven’t seen it or want to do a quick Google search, you can find it. But in that research, this was one of the charts and tables that was in there on this town intelligence maturity curve, and you broke it down into five levels, kind of from an ad hoc format up until leading. And I love how you’ve broken this down into one where, when you get into leading, a key word I see is a lot of things done in real time, a lot of things done continuously, with pattern analysis and optimization, and then continuous forecasting, dynamic adjustment based on business conditions, driven in concert with the business right AI powered talent marketplace, predictive matching. A lot of things we’ve talked about today, somewhat easier said than done. But also, you know, a journey to get to this kind of connected, concerted approach to how this will be done going forward.

Mark Condon 49:07
I don’t think people should think this is too far away, but what I would ask people to learn the phrase is, if this is our goal, what would need to be true and work backwards. And so if that’s the goal, how quickly we do we need to achieve it. What’s the return on investment when we get there? What benefits the organization? And then build a roadmap to that goal? I don’t see the current HR structures working in the future. My apologies to those, but I also see it as a positive in that it’ll be in the flow of work. Things will have to happen much more rapidly. And at the moment, you know, job adjustments might occur every six months, or whatever. Banding, you know those types of things, these things are going to have to happen in real time, matching, and we’re gonna have to have some rules around that. And I understand that’s gonna freak people out, but it’s really exciting as well, and it’s going to make HR, if we get it right, the most important functioning company, because we’re going to be making cost savings, productivity improvements far beyond what you know the chief technology officer did in the last 20 years.

Jason Cerrato 50:39
So here, here, I’m right behind you for that. And in the last section here, we wanted to talk about shifting from intuition to evidence based impact, and we wanted to show some examples of this evidence based impact. So here’s a couple of AI driven agility in action. Here’s an example. Just last week or so, I saw this article on the right in Fortune Magazine. Marc Benioff says AI is radically reshaping Salesforce that 51% of their Q1 hiring was internal, as 1000s of employees were redeployed. But if you go on their website and you read their blogs, one of their common blog contributors are CHRO and the talent team, and if you’ve been reading any of them, a lot of them have been talking about how agents and digital capabilities are reshaping their workforce, and a big part of that is they are customer zero for AgentForce, which Salesforce has been rolling out to the market. So internally, what they’ve been doing is they’ve built this functionality called Career Mosaic, which is kind of what we just talked about, breaking down barriers to build new careers that kind of span the organization and help people move and redeploy into new areas, especially as agents come in and potentially reshape roles and reshape functions, and they’ve done some personalized career planning with a talent marketplace and in kind of laying that groundwork. Here now you see some evidence based impact in Q1 51% of their hiring was internal, with employees being redeployed, right? So here you see some of that work showing up in action. Mark. Do you have any examples of kind of redeployment or internal marketplace you want to mention?

Mark Condon 52:29
I just quickly, I love so I won’t mention it, but it was a financial institution, but they measured internal velocity is a stat, you know, like to say, how much are people moving through the organization? Because if people are moving, they’re probably happier and more productive. And they said that was just, you know, a stat that they wanted to measure. And that’s what this is all about, and that was 15 years ago. I just think that should be a key stat for organizations. What’s my internal velocity, or talent velocity? And if that’s high, I’m winning.

Jason Cerrato 53:19
So this next example is from Bayer. And I think you mentioned Bayer already once or twice during the hour here. Their CEO came in about a year or two ago and brought in this new kind of leadership that he referred to as dynamic shared ownership, which you can see there across the top of the slide. And basically what it was was breaking down their organizational model to remove kind of the self induced constructs of bureaucracy and delays that were causing them slower innovation, slower time to deliver to customers things that impeded results that slowed down revenue generation. So basically, what they had done was they had shifted to this organizational model where instead of aligning the organization around leaders, they started aligning the organization around customers and creating these teams associated with tasks for how they generated revenue aligned to customers that work in 90 day cycles. And basically the way to do this created a ton of culture change, but also required talent, intelligence and skills to start to unlock this, because this creates, number one, the need for a more agile, real time visibility of talent and what work people are doing and what work they’ve just completed and what they can do next. Because a lot of this also increasingly becomes project based when it’s driven more by the customer, and in these 90 day cycles, rather than how we would have done this historically, with very static jobs and static roles embedded in an org chart. Any thoughts on that, Mark?

Mark Condon 55:09
Oh, and that’s exactly this sort of real time, you know, reassembling of the company, the current structures don’t work. And the great thing about this is leadership. You know, the leaders? I think this is an ideal situation where Bayer is led from the top, but I think in a lot of organizations, it’s unclear. And I don’t want to think that most organizations, you can’t lead from below as well, because this, this is the future, this is what’s happening, and we need to embrace that. In some companies, leadership will move really quickly, and some won’t, but you need to move quickly it would be my and as and as a result of this, they’ve already seen benefits with innovation.

Jason Cerrato 56:03
Where they’re developing products much faster, cost efficiency, decision speed, as they’ve removed bureaucracy. And to the point you just made around, how fast is your talent moving? Workforce engagement, you know, employee empowerment, people reporting more meaning in their work, because now they’re seeing how it was, how it delivers to the customer, more directly. And then this last example, the US Department of Defense has an internal talent marketplace called Gig Eagle, and what they use that for is for their audience around the reservists, the National Guard, active duty personnel, Department of Defense, civilian workforce, and even eventually they want to include military spouses. To use this for short term mission needs across the department and beyond. But if you think about it, what they’re trying to capture here is their visibility to a broad set of talent, but also a wider set of skills beyond what they capture in military job codes and military roles. Because if you think about reservists and National Guard, they have skills outside of the military that they do in their civilian jobs. And as you think about projects and new challenges and things that come up in the Department of Defense, it’s in their best interest to know a person’s complete self for what skills they may have, especially as new challenges come up, for things they have to respond to very quickly. So this is something where they’re using this to generate operational agility and workforce optimization and strategic scale, even in the Department of Defense, an internal talent marketplace. So we wanted to provide that just as a couple quick examples of, you know, evidence and action, of doing this in a dynamic way, driven by real time data, but also responding to environmental factors and delivering to the business any final thoughts. Mark, as we come up at the last minute, my kind of sort of key theme is, be brave, be ambitious.

Mark Condon 58:14
And learn. I also would advocate anyone who wants to navigate strategy is, around this is design thinking is a great methodology to unpack this. So I’m a bit of a freak on that stuff. So, in a good way, hopefully, but yeah, design thinking, apply the technology and read it read a lot.

Jason Cerrato 58:52
Well, I appreciate you joining me. I appreciate your time, your partnership, your ideas. You got my gears turning. I always enjoy talking with you, and I appreciate the opportunity to partner with QuantumWorks and to partner with SHRM. So thank you everyone for joining us, and back to you.

SHRM Moderator 59:08
Tony, thank you, Jason, bye.