Pod Insights Human Capital Leadership How Work Has Shifted Over the Past Decade and Workflow Redesign to Accommodate, with Anant Sood About this episode In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Anant Sood about how work has shifted over the past decade and how workflow has been redesigned to accommodate.
Anant is a Co-founder @ & oversees marketing and channel partnerships in worxogo. Prior to worxogo, he spent 18 years at EY, PwC & Opera Solutions across India, USA, the Middle East & China. Most of Anant’s career has been being part of startups building , scaling teams from being one of the first few employees in Opera (a Big data analytics Co) to setting up the consulting practice for EY in Chennai in 2007 to worxogo. Within worxogo, Anant helps building partnerships to drive sales through distribution nurturing partnerships with like Accenture, Microsoft with led to wins (Accenture, KPMG, EXL). His time is also spent on making worxogo’s nudge coach more visible amongst enterprise customers with a one-of-a-kind newsletter going out to ~5000 CxOs across the world.
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Transcript 0:03 Speaker 00 Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.
0:35 Speaker 00 Anant Sud, welcome to the conversation today.
0:38 Speaker 01 Hello, pleasure to be here.
0:39 Speaker 00 It's a real pleasure to be sitting down with you. You're joining us from Mumbai, India. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah in the US. And today, we're going to be talking about work, transitions in the workplace, how things have really shifted over the last decade or so, and how workflows have been designed and redesigned to accommodate those changes, and/or like, where are the gaps? Like, how have we been missing the mark in the design of work as those changes have occurred? And I would argue that in many ways, we have missed the mark, and like, we haven't fully redesigned work in order to accommodate those changes. So this is going to be a fun conversation as we explore
1:21 Speaker 00 this together today. As we get started, I wanted to share Anant's bio with everybody. Anant is a co-founder and oversees marketing and channel partnerships at WorkZogo. Prior to WorkZogo, he spent 18 years at Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Opera Solutions across India, USA, and the Middle East and China. Most of Anant's career has been being part of startups, building and scaling teams, from being one of the first few employees in operas, to setting up the consulting practice for Ernst & Young in 2007 to WorkZogo. And that helps building partnerships to drive sales through distribution,
2:00 Speaker 00 nurturing partnerships like Accenture, Microsoft, and in many others. His time is also spent making WorkZogo's nudge coach more visible. Amongst enterprise customers with a one of a kind newsletter going out to three thousand plus across the world. It's really remarkable, all the cool things that you're doing. And anything you would like to highlight, the way of your background or personal context before we dive on into the conversation?
2:26 Speaker 01 Nice to be here, John. And yeah, a couple of things. So first, the newsletter now is been going on for eight years. And it's now close to about five thousand people across fourteen countries.
2:36 Speaker 00 Oh, that's great.
2:37 Speaker 01 Most of, most of these are business leaders who are interested in the area of behavior science. And essentially applying it to their work context and to how to manage teams. And yeah, in addition to that, we are now, you know, for the last eight to nine years in WorkZogo, working with some of the largest Fortune companies. So the amount of data inside, you know, we get a front, literally a frontline view of seeing how the business leaders are changing the way work gets done, both for themselves as for their teams. So yeah, I'm really excited to be here and yeah, having a big conversation.
3:13 Speaker 00 Awesome, awesome. Well, that's, that's incredible, the reach of the newsletter, all the cool stuff that you're doing. As I mentioned, you know, as I was doing the introductions, things have changed a lot over the last ten years. Or let's, let's even just look at the last five years, right? You know, things have dramatically changed since the pandemic. And yeah, maybe walk us through some of what you've seen in the work that you do at WorkZogo. You know, how has, how have things changed for the average everyday worker, say, over the last five to ten years? And what do workflows look like? How have those shifted over that time period?
3:55 Speaker 01 So in, in fact, this is very interesting because I had a very similar conversation with a Fortune ten leader literally ten days ago. And one of the things that came out, this is one of, you know, Automate's largest insurance companies. And what came out is there were three things, John, that stood out. Number one, you know, pre-COVID, and it's weird, you know, it seems like COVID was just. It's been six years now. Uh, and the the first thing that is, you know, changed in the last five years is yeah, six, seven years ago, hybrid and remote work felt like a work. Now it's kind of baked into operating models of teams and organizations and team leaders and everyone, right?
4:38 Speaker 01 That's the first one. As a consequence, collaboration is no longer synchronous. You can't just lean over your, you know, desk, talk to your coworker or, you know, have a chat at the water cooler during a break of some sorts. It's become asynchronous. So all our conversations, either it's with peers or with leaders or uh even with, you know, teams, people who are not in the same team, it's become async. That's the first big change. The second one is the amount of demand, cognitive demand that this nature of work has changed is massive on the knowledge worker. We don't, we don't really see it in that way, but just as an example, if you look at any knowledge workers
5:20 Speaker 01 screen today, from six years ago, there's at least three times the number of systems or tools or app that have, you know, I'm pinging or popping and distracting them and that context switch that we put to do is so much more. And that's the, you know, that's the second one. Third, our attention spans have shortened now. Having at work for sure, but even in our personal lives, I I cannot, I can count the number of times where in the evenings you have television on and you have a second screen in front of you while you're scrolling while something is happening, right? And that is something that we carry at, carry with us to work.
5:55 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:55 Speaker 01 So, so, so I think obviously there are lots more, but the tier four major ones, async, collaboration, hybrid and remote is now part of you know, the standard operating models. Information has just exploded, purely just in the number of apps and distractions that we have on our screens. And our attention spans are just so much shorter now. We cannot sit through a one hour, a movie anymore without looking at our, you know, another screen at least X number of times. I'll leave that X for everybody who was to.
6:21 Speaker 00 Yeah. Well, like, production companies have changed the way they write scripts and the way they produce shows and movies because they assume that people will have their. Phone scrolling while watching a show or a movie, right?
6:33 Speaker 01 Absolutely, yeah. And I'm sorry, in fact, I remember seeing one very recently and I wrote about it last, I think, two weeks ago. Matt Damon talks about the fact that Netflix now says the way you write your script, you need to have the big explosion up front in the first five minutes as compared to when it was happening in the end, and you need to repeat the main plot points at least six times because and that's a, and that's a, that's kind of a, an input to how business leaders need to look at work for themselves and for their teams.
7:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's interesting because communication in the workplace has always been challenging, right? Um, so let's say there's any change initiative, some new adoption, some new tech, whatever, right? Uh, any change requires communication. Communication is hard. It's always been hard. Um, but when you have fragmented attention, um, for all the reasons that you just mentioned, um, it becomes exponentially harder to, to communicate effectively, right? People are distracted. They're getting pinged through Slack channels and Teams messages and emails and they're, they're constantly getting distracted. And we have distributed teams and so it's also asynchronous and it's just harder and harder to reach people with the messages that you want to reach them with, uh, and to cut through the noise.
7:46 Speaker 00 Um, and you know, that's, that's one of the key through points that I'm hearing from everything that you just said is it's just going to be harder and harder for an intentional manager or leader as they're trying to lead a team that's async, that's distributed, that's distracted. Um, you know, to really, to really hammer home like the, the core mission, the vision, the strategy, change initiatives, anything like that. All that's going to be so challenging in what is really a turbulent world. Um, with, with more constant change happening all around us, with greater levels of competition,
8:25 Speaker 00 uh, with constant technological disruption, you know, with geopolitical, you know, disruption, like everything, right? Like it's, it's just getting harder and harder.
8:35 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And, and to add to this, you don't get to see your coworkers every day, right? So, uh, and, and you know, one of the very interesting things, John, that you mentioned is if you look at, and this is a study we just did recently. If you look at Zoom calls or team calls that are happening, now you have more AI note takers than actual humans on calls.
8:58 Speaker 01 And you know, at the end of every call, you're gonna get seven performance, the meeting summaries that come out saying this is what happened. No one follows up on it because that's still a human that's gotta do it. And you know, we just think we're being more productive. But but that's certainly, you know, that's one of the things that how do you ensure that that distraction can be reduced and more intentional work happens? So yeah, I completely agree.
9:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's hilarious.
9:22 Speaker 00 Well, very good. So so things are changing, you know, the the areas that you just described. You know, I think everyone has experienced, especially post pandemic.
9:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
9:32 Speaker 00 That's that's been the new reality for so many of us. Do you feel like workflows and and the way work gets done, work design has really adapted to accommodate this new reality, these changes that have occurred?
9:47 Speaker 01 So there are two change of thought here. The answer, so me personally and at work, so we have a point of view. And we see business leaders having to, they seem to fall into two distinct groups. The first one is, you know, we we need to provide our teams with more information. So what they end up doing is a lot of tools and information that comes in that's available is, you know, literally the team is bombarded with it. So if you've noticed, let me take an insurance, claims, customer support agent, you know, having a conversation with with with a customer. They'd get literally, you know, these next best action recommended tools that are coming. So every time you're making a call, there's a screen that's constantly feeding you information.
10:31 Speaker 01 So that's one one way that, you know, leaders are kind of thinking of making that change. The other side, which is the side we believe in at work, so is it's about ensuring that the con. Now, because AI is gonna do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of analysis and, you know, data crunching and all of that. From the change in the workflow, it's about how do you ensure the individual's playbook is maintained? So as customers, I, you know, I hate those IVR calls where I go keep pressing hash nine or zero or trying to figure out where how to get to a human, right? And so so from. Workflow perspective, there are two, and we are seeing this play out right now with a lot of companies and leaders.
11:13 Speaker 00 Hmm.
11:13 Speaker 01 And I'll talk stick sticking to insurance right now, but specifically ones who say let A I do a lot of the heavy lifting and the automation and making the individual, the individual is relevant. So it could be you or me having a conversation with the customer as part of a team. It doesn't really matter if it's you or me because there's a prompt that's literally telling me a script of what I need to say. The other way of, other chain of thought, which is the way workflows changing is saying each of us have our own playbooks. How we deal with customer situations and A I kind of becomes like a coach or complementing our abilities to become better versions of us. And then that retains the go to code, uh, human element of, of the interaction with the customers.
11:54 Speaker 01 So we see, I'm seeing these two distinct groups of, uh, leaders, conversations as well as, uh, how, you know, process design is changing, uh, in teams. Was that your question? I mean, does that answer your question?
12:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think that helps. Um, and, and I think you're right. Like it totally depends. Um, it depends on the organization. It depends on the team, you know, to whether, you know, process redesign has occurred. Uh, whether work redesign has happened, um, you know, whether workflows have actually been adjusted to accommodate async. Whether it's been adjusted to accommodate the constant bombardment of, of being pinged all day, you know, with, with different notifications and all those sorts of things, all the things that you've laid out.
12:37 Speaker 01 Um, yeah.
12:38 Speaker 00 I, I suspect, um, that for the vast majority of workers, that their workflows, their, their general design of work has not largely been adjusted.
12:51 Speaker 01 Um, right.
12:52 Speaker 00 You know, over, over the last five years, say to what it was pre pandemic. Um, and so, uh, for most people, I think, um, you know, as I hear anecdotally, as well as in some of the research that I've done. I, I think most people's work day to day is more or less designed in, in the workflows are very similar to how they've been, uh, for quite. A while, yet the reality of that work that has to get done has changed dramatically. And and they're not terribly compatible, right? For all the reasons that you said. And so we have this reckoning, I think.
13:34 Speaker 00 And we have this, this, this new reality that is becoming harder and harder for people to to reconcile it, to cope with. If you're in a, if you're in a workplace, if you're in a team. Where where workflows haven't been adjusted, where your work hasn't been redesigned in such a way to accommodate. Say async or distributed teams or and you know, all these different things. If that hasn't occurred, it's just getting harder and harder for you to to successfully do your job, right? And to to collaborate with your people. You know, if you're still operating under the same job design as you did pre pandemic. But now you have to work with people all over the world in different time zones asynchronously.
14:18 Speaker 00 Or or you're a manager and you're managing people who are never together, you know? And you're trying to do it the same way you always did in the past. It's it's it's gonna be so hard. It's it's in some ways, it's gonna be almost impossible. And so it's just a reminder to folks that, you know, at a fundamental level, as work shifts. As the nature of of the workplace changes, so does work design and so do workflows. And this has always been the case. This isn't new. I mean, this isn't just a pandemic thing. This isn't just a AI thing. This is, this has always been the case, you know? Every new innovation, every, you know, industry, we're now, you know, people say industry 5.0.
15:01 Speaker 00 But the industrial revolution, every, ever since the wheel, right? Like every time there's a new innovation, workflow shift and we we have to adjust and we have to change. And and so we just have to make sure that we continue to adjust to to to be more effective. Let's let's talk a little bit more about AI. Specifically, you know, there's so much fear about displacement. And there's Definitely, there's going to be task displacement. There's no question about that. There's, there's A I has become so good at doing so many things. And so the question becomes, you know, is there going to be displacement around tasks? Is there going to become augmentation around our roles and the work that we do?
15:47 Speaker 00 Talk us through kind of your thinking around that and, and what you do at work, Zogo. You know, how, how can A I help leaders? And how can leaders remove the fear, you know, of their people and on their teams around, you know, the, the A I replacement, you know, displacement aspect, you know, as, as people are worried about their jobs.
16:09 Speaker 01 Absolutely, and we all are.
16:12 Speaker 01 And in fact, one of the things in, if seen in this conversation of replacement, and I'll share some stats with you. There's a study which says, you know, by twenty thirty, ninety, ninety to hundred million people will get displaced because of A I. And this, and that same study says that there are going to be a hundred seventeen million new jobs that are going to come up because of the way we are going to have to now use A I in our, you know, in our processes. So remember the example, I, I mean, just literally we're talking about no tech, yeah, no takers coming in. We used to do those notes at the end of the meetings, right? That was a thing that we did. But from a workplace perspective, now we just have one more tool that's been layered on saying, hey,
16:54 Speaker 01 so now we've got seven meeting summaries coming to us as an example at the end of every call. We still need to make sense of all of those and then do the tasks or, you know, agree on what are the next steps with our teams, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the roles for managers now is about having the right conversation with their teams about how A I is, is obviously going to change the nature of our work, of most of us. But it's actually going to make us think differently about what good looks like for us as well as for the team. So we, we will have an A I coworker or the copilot or something of that sort with us. But that essentially makes us more productive and focusing on things that we could not do earlier. As an example in
17:37 Speaker 01 WorksoGo, we ran a so, we have close to about three hundred thousand employees today using our tool job. And again, this is eleven countries globally. And what we see is, is one example of a five hundred member team, three countries. And literally that process runs around the clock job. So in this, I'm just giving you a live example. Uh, and we've been, you know, this WorksoGo tool's been deployed for the last eight years. The shift that we've seen in the nature of work and for the frontline team, the ones guys were doing the work. Is now they have A I tools who are taking away some of the manual repetitive tasks that they were doing. Right.
18:16 Speaker 01 So their, so their role has now shifted from being the doers to being the evaluators of the X percent of that tasks. That they were doing by the, you know, by, by the automation. And so now, so zero jobs have been lost in this team as an example. But the nature of every individual out of those five hundred, four hundred of those people now have to mentally reorient to becoming auditors. I'm using the word loosely auditors, but they're, you've got to do the work, but you also got to audit an output that's coming in which. Quality control, yeah. Exactly. So, and that, or for them, it's, it's a very big shift. So like you said, from the beginning of time with the wheel, fire, all of that, right? We had to change the way we were doing things.
18:57 Speaker 01 It's the, literally the same thing that's happening. We've seen this and I'm giving one team, we're seeing this across thousands of teams. For the frontline teams, it's about reorienting yourself and there'll be different ways you'll do it. For managers though, we're finding this very fascinating thing, which is because some of the, and because of the WorksoGo Nudge coach. Their ability to be more personalized with their feedback to every individual has gone up three X. Which means a manager, if I'm a manager handling a team of ten, earlier when I'm doing a team hurdle. I literally have very little time to talk to each one and give respective feedback. Today, we are seeing that they're doing three times the number of conversations. Because the, the part of the managing job, which is about compiling, collating, analyzing what my team is doing.
19:42 Speaker 01 Is now a lot of it is being done by a tool for them. So now they can actually, in some way. Be more human with with their teams and have a personalized conversation. So it's changing. I don't, there will obviously be a reorientation of jobs, but I think it's going to be for the better. As long as both managers as well as frontline folks use it in a way that you know, kind of move with the times and you know, get better with what it does.
20:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, I I agree. I I think it's it's definitely going to require a mind shift adjustment. It's going to require us to look at our roles differently. It's going to require us to shift how we do what we do.
20:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:20 Speaker 00 But, uh, you know, I I'm not concerned that my job is going to completely go away. But there's going to be certain things that I used to do that I'm not going to do anymore. And there's going to be new aspects that I, you know, will have to do as I evaluate. You know, the automation to to ensure as audit, quality control. Um, you know, and and then to build off of and leverage, you know, the the tasks and the outputs that the automated systems produce. Um, and so that augmented piece, um, having the augmented augmented systems. Um, to help me be more productive and have more, um, you know, outputs and and and to springboard.
21:00 Speaker 00 You know, my own creativity and and those sorts of things are all, um, you know, things that I I I'm looking forward to. I I think it's it's really something that can can help us move forward. So, uh, you know, it who who knows how things are going to continue to progress, but but I'm optimistic for the future. Well, Anant, I note the time. I need to let you go here in a minute. But, um, as we wrap up, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team. And then give us the final word for today.
21:30 Speaker 01 So so I'm on LinkedIn. You can, you know, can look at our website, W W W dot worksogo dot com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, Anant. So, uh, like I said, there's a link for my newsletter as well. Uh, it's it's a fun and reverent take on what's happening in the workplace today. It comes out once a month. Uh, I encourage you all to have a look at it. Uh, my final, uh, thing that I'd say is, you know, it's almost like getting on the road. Roller coaster. Now you can be scared about how it's going to change or you know, you know, get ready, strap in and be ready for a fun ride. So at Workzogo, we're seeing a lot of that happen on a day to day basis. But I think as we move along, I think it's going to be more
22:14 Speaker 01 positives than negatives that happen for all of us. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the ride and seeing where it takes all of us.
22:22 Speaker 00 Awesome. Awesome. And An, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what An and his team at Workzogo can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe, that you can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.
22:43 Speaker 00 Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.
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