Episode 433: The Human Touch: Why Soft Skills Matter in the Age of AI

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
What can AI do for you?
I'm your co-host, Chris.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onSeptember 11th 2025.
Chris, chris, chris, ai whatcan AI do for you?
Ai can do a lot of things.
It can take notes, it cansummarize things, it can create
code, it can generate pictures,presentations I can go through

(00:29):
an entire list, but one thingthat I'm wondering about is what
can AI do for your socialskills, or how does AI impact
your social skills With us today?
We had the opportunity to speakwith two guests about that.
We had the opportunity to speakwith Andy Wingate and Phil
Barrow.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Andy, hello, hello, hello hey.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Phil, good afternoon, andy, hello, hello, hey Phil,
good afternoon.
Oh, hey, phil, hey, phil, philGood afternoon.
You almost have the samebackgrounds.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, this is real, mine isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
One of us is real.
I was confused for a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
You were both next to each other on my screen, so for
a split second.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I thought the two were together.
If I put it like that, it'slike you know.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yes, if you do it like that, it looks like you two
are in the same room Together.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
I need to like.
You know I've got here's theball.
Phil Ready Catch.
Yeah, you can tell this one isa man, he's far too neat and
tidy.
I got this.
I rearranged my room.
I mean, I'll tell you about itanother time.

Speaker 4 (01:56):
No, don't tell us Well, it's like the beautiful
background.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Beautiful background like the sales director guy at
my place.
He redid his background andit's like he's got like you know
nice things and he's a sellerright.
So it's all about maybe someonesees something and they're like
and it sparks up a conversation.
He gets a connection right.
That's part of the reason itjust looks really well.
I'm gonna do the same.
So I rearranged my desks.
They used to be here and nowthey're here for the shelves and

(02:21):
and then it's like now I've gotto tidy my shelves.
It's on the list, I'll get itone day?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, no, I think with the background it's very
difficult, and now witheverybody being remote, which is
an important topic.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
It's important for the topic we're going to talk
about today.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
It is very important.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
With everyone being remote, I think a lot of people
spend time on trying to, likeyou said, tidy up their
backgrounds, when sometimes it'slike let's just see how you
really work yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Some people in garden , sheds and garages and all
sorts.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
There's some amazing backgrounds out there, I think
like top of the tree is Soranfrom the Microsoft oh yeah, oh
yeah.
Oh, yeah, and then sometimeshe's shared a picture of his
desk layout and he's got thewidest screen I have ever seen
in my life.
It's wider than my desk.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
I got one of those.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
I got one of those too.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
I have one of those too.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Yeah, brad too, I used one once when I was working
from home at mybrother-in-law's house and he
had a giant one, and you knowwhat I prefer two separate
screens.
It was like when you maximize ascreen, it's like bosh, it's so
huge that was my hesitation forgoing to it, because Chris has
that big it's concaved, it's notflat.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I had three individual high-def like 27 inch
5k monitors and then everyonewas telling me get this one,
you'll love it, you'll love it.
I'm like okay, well, how muchviewing screen do you have?
Because I have the threescreens, like you said, because
I would snap them up and dothings.
Now I'm used to this and I usethe mac and what I started doing
was that monitor.

(04:02):
You can have half a display andhalf a display, sure, so that
if you do the maximize, then itwill just do one half.
That's good.
But I've graduated to nowhaving just one big screen and I
positioned the windows that Iwant and I was even looking at
something today and I maximizedit and you have this entire big
real estate of all these screens.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
How many cute tiles can you get, like on the
business central landing page onone of the big, big ones, eh?

Speaker 4 (04:29):
it's great.
It's great for data migration,though, because you can see the
whole package.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yes, that's a good point actually yeah, 100 columns
yes, uh, so it's tough but youget used to it.
I I vowed I'd never get used tousing the screen because I was.
I was cursing at everybody.
You know after afterwards.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
Oh, you are keeping it.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, I am.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Oh, good, well, chris knows the story, because I was
cursing everybody.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm like, why did you guys make me buy this?
And I ended up ordering it andnow I'm sticking with it.
I like it.
I like it a lot.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
I think in the problem definition there's like
wicked problems, difficultproblems, and then there's, you
know, first world problems.
Right, this is definitely yes,yes this one isn't.
You don't club this onetogether with climate change, or
you know, like, what's the bestpolitical system to run a
country or whatever do I go witha 49 inch concave monitor, or

(05:19):
whatever the size it is, or do Igo with three 27 inch monitors?

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I don't know, it's a tough choice it is a tough
problem, but uh, no, it's agreat conversation.
Uh, appreciate you both joiningwith us today and I enjoyed the
conversation we're having andit's nice to be able to have
that conversation.
It's nice to be able to talkwith people, but with everybody
working remote and now with AI,I noticed a big change in

(05:47):
conversation with individuals.
But before we start talkingabout that, would you mind
telling us a little bit aboutyourselves, andy?

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Sure thing.
Hi, I'm Andy Wingate.
Thanks very much for having uson the podcast again.
I'm a Business Central MVP.
I've been working on partnerside for about three years, and
before that I was an end user.
So I was involved in more onthe IT side for about three
years and before that I was anend user, so I kind of was
involved more on the IT side andhad a lot of fun deploying nav
on-prem.
But yeah, I haven't looked backsince going over to the partner

(06:14):
side.
We get to have a lot of fun andwork with a lot of different
interesting people.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Excellent Phil.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Thanks.
Yeah, my name's Phil.
I'm a business centralconsultant and I've worked on
the partner side for about 12years now, and before that I was
an end user and a qualifiedaccountant.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Excellent, excellent.
That end user to partner,partner to end user before we
jump into it is.
I think that's a good sweetspot, because I think being an
end-user or being a partnerhelps you understand an
implementation from a differentpoint of view, because you
understand from a user's pointof view what it takes to go

(06:57):
through an implementation orwhat is required for an
implementation.
And if you're a partner and asif you're a user and haven't
worked with a partner before orhaven't been a partner before I
see I'm all tongue-tied todayI'm all excited the you have a
good perspective of what apartner has to manage and go
through from implementation.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
so I think you get a nice blend of uh perspective
there yeah, and which one is thegamekeeper and which one is the
the poacher?

Speaker 4 (07:24):
I don't know that's.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
I mean I don't know if that's a bit of a british
expression turn of phrase we say.
We say like put game poacherturned gamekeeper.
So you previously you were likerobbing from the estate,
whatever you know, stealing thedeer or pheasants or whatever
and then you become.
You work for the estatestopping the other poachers.
So I think I don't know.
It's a bit of a joke really,but I mean obviously I like that

(07:49):
.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Are you a poacher or what A poacher?

Speaker 3 (07:52):
There's a.
It's an English, it's a Britishexpression.
I guess it's called poacherturned gamekeeper.
It's kind of like you'vechanged sides.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
I got it.
So if you went from a partnerto an end user, you're saying
you went from being a poacher toa gatekeeper.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
And if you went from a user to a?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
partner, gamekeeper.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Gamekeeper.
Gamekeeper, because it's thegame, the deer or the pheasants
on the lord's estate is his gameand he might hunt his game, and
the poachers are trying to getthe game.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
So just so everybody knows.
Andy went on record todaysaying partners are poachers.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
The joke is which way round is it?
And it's better not to say oneor the other.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Right, I understand what you're saying, but you know
wink, wink.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
I mean, phil, let's hear what you have to say.
But you know, since me and Philare both end users to gone to
partners, I think we'll probablyprovide a strong, united front
on.
It's a fantastic journeybecause you get that industry
knowledge, you get that, you getthe language, you get, you know
, you learn a lot of nuances andthen when you go on the partner
side and you're talking toanother company that's in that

(08:57):
industry, you've got like thesecret sauce and they, the
people you can build that trust.
So that's, you know, buildingtrust.
That's an important soft skilland there's nothing better than.
I mean, phil, you know, ifyou're talking to a construction
company, what's the kind ofstuff you tell them that a
regular consultant just wouldn'tknow.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yes, I suppose having that industry knowledge is
super important.
It's kind of, we say, speakingtheir language, and it's true,
and I think it's the commonproblems that face the industry
or kind of specific use cases.
So in construction it's thingslike the cost reporting on
projects specifically, kind ofcost valuation reports,
contracting sides,subcontractors.

(09:34):
But I think above that, as wellas having been through the
implementation as a user, seeingthe highs and the lows, you've
also had that opportunity toactually use the system in anger
as well, and that counts for alot.
When you're talking tocustomers, you're able to tell
them what made the difference toyou as using it, what are the

(09:57):
best shortcuts, what are thethings to avoid.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
We'll get to this topic soon, but I think this is
all related.
So do you feel that, with theconversations that you're having
with a user as a partner, youcan build sort of a stronger
relationship with them or atrust or a level of
understanding, because they feelthat you understand them more,
because you, in fact, had beenin their shoes before?

Speaker 4 (10:30):
that's a great question, um, I think from my
side um putting erp systems andnaturally you're dealing with
finance teams, uh, more oftenthan not, and um, it certainly
counts for a lot kind of havingthat accounting background.
Um, I think that goes a longway to helping to build that
trust.
Um, I suppose it's difficult tosay if, if I wouldn't have that

(10:52):
not having been an end user, um, not having been in those shoes
, but uh, yeah, I think it'sjust having that, that sort of
general business experience,rather than just being a pure
techie, um, who's maybe justlearned the system?
You've kind of got, you've gotthose soft skills, that kind of
andy and I have been talkingabout there and you've, you've
been there, you've done it um,and you've kind of walked in

(11:15):
their shoes and I think thatshows um just naturally in
conversation sometimes I thinkit helps with the conversations
too because, like I know,there's times where you're you
know now that you're in apartner side.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
When you're speaking to a prospect, you know you
introduce yourself and sometimes, sometimes I throw it in there
and it's like, hey look, I'vebeen in that industry
specifically as an end user, andso it kind of creates that kind
of bond relationship.
It's like, oh, he's going toget what I'm trying to say.
So it kind of builds thatrelationship at the very

(11:47):
beginning relationship.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
It's like, oh, he's going to get what I'm trying to
say.
So it kind of builds thatrelationship at the very
beginning.
So it does help.
I think it's.
You know, the soft skill is thebuilding.
Trust is kind of a generic, likea general soft skill, something
that's incredibly important onprojects because there'll always
be bumps and if the people, ifyou've built up that trust,
you've got a bit of you, of youknow like collateral to spend,
hopefully you don't go inoverdraft on the trust, right,
um, you do still need to deliverthe results at the end of the

(12:09):
day, but if you with the in,with the industry connection, I
think it really you know, youyou can shortcut, can you
shortcut it?
I mean, you can just build thattrust a fair bit quicker.
And sometimes it's just thepractical.
You know I used to work in liketransport.
So if someone wants to cometalk to me about lorries or way
bridges, I kind of know all thecrazy detail and I can and
they're like, oh okay, he knowshis stuff, they kind of lays the

(12:31):
fears early on perhaps yeah, I,I read a book.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
I read a book, uh, recently, ward.
It's called wired for love bystephanie kacioppo.
She's like a newer scientistand she talks about how we're,
how we create connections.
So, come, come on.
Common interest when you have arelationship tends to have a
quicker um trust at the verybeginning.
So as long as you keep that andmaintain that commonality, um,

(12:58):
it's a lot easier to stayconnected with somebody.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
So it's always that's very helpful when you're, I can
see that you sort of build abond, whether that common
interest is something you like,a scenario that you're in or a
situation that you're in, it cantend to, I think, build that
bond.
I've heard a phrase severaltimes in this conversation and
the phrase I've heard is softskills, that's right.

(13:23):
What are soft skills?
And I think, think, as I hearit so much, I think it must be
something that's ratherimportant.
So, what are soft skills and,um, what's the importance of
them?

Speaker 3 (13:38):
phil, do you want to open up and are you open up andy
?
Okay, fair enough.
Um, so soft soft skills.
I guess the the simplestdefinition of soft skills is
everything that's not a hardskill.
And a hard skill is liketechnical knowledge of a system.
Maybe it's BC, maybe it's SQL,maybe it's M365 administration,
right.
It's like there's a system outthere, there's a technical thing

(13:59):
out there, and you either knowit or you don't know it right.
That's the kind of traditionalhard skills, and soft skills are
usually the kind of skills thatare a little bit more difficult
to put in a neat little box.
Very often it usually relatesto interpersonal relationships,
interpersonal skills, and sothey're the kind of skills you

(14:20):
know communication, empathy,problem solving, creative
thinking, things.
Where it's not, you know, ifyou want to configure I don't
know that submission process inBusiness Central, there's an
exact process you follow and ifyou do it slightly wrong, it
maybe doesn't work right.
That's the hard skill.
Whereas, let's say, I wanted toconvince Brad to go on a trip

(14:43):
to Vegas with me, you know likethere's no, no, like definitive
way that I can do that.
I don't know how keen he wouldbe.
I'd have to like suss out andfind out, like what's going to
what?
How can I press his buttons,how can I convince, how can I
entice him?
You kind of got to, you've gotto dig and you've got to be
creative and you've got, and youknow it's a like, it's a real
kind of complicated area.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
It's like a professional personal right,
Like it's more of an emotionalaspect of it, like a personal
connection versus likeprofessional.
I'm just here to do some work,that's kind of like.
I mean, that's a hard skill,but I think there are some
professional soft skills as well.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
So in a professional, like you know, kind of our area
we're really interested in isat the minute is you know what's
changed about soft skills andthe need for soft skills in the
age of AI?
So, with all the different AItools that you've got, what
impact does that have?
Like, were soft skillsimportant before?
Obviously, yeah, I think theyare, and you know and how

(15:41):
important are they are.
Maybe they're more importantnow.
And why is that?

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Like what does ai do to that?
So I don't know, phil, do youagree?
What's?
Uh?
Yeah, I think that's um, that'sa good way of describing it,
and I think it is the, the sortof people side of what we do.
So it's interacting with otherhuman beings, I suppose.
Um, as opposed to the, the hardtechnical skills, as you say,
andy, um, so it is.
It's things, things like beingable to listen, being able to
converse, being able tosometimes lead a room and lead

(16:11):
difficult conversations, andit's kind of the.
I guess it's the people side ofwhat we do as consultants.
So I always like to think it'skind of 50% technical knowledge
of the product and 50% beingable to implement that, and that
involves kind of working withother teams and progressing that
project.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
So many things come to mind with everything all
three of you had said.
I'm always getting the chillsthinking about this with these
soft skills, and so we go withthe soft skills more, as could
be some communication type andemotional type interactions?
I don't even know.
I have about 300 questions thatjust popped into my mind.
I want to frame them.

(16:54):
I think I'll be specific withthem or try to be selective on
my choice of which ones we startwith.
But you're talking within theAI era, where ai is doing a lot
for us.
But with that communication,what, uh?
What has impact?
What impact you think ai hashad on the communication?

(17:15):
But also, what aboutgenerationally, with
communication and soft skillsand crossing generations?

Speaker 1 (17:24):
impact on soft skills .
I think impact on soft skillsand I think Impact on soft
skills.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think, right, Impact on soft skills and I
think it's because where it'scoming into play, because, as
younger talents coming into ourindustry and the younger talents
becoming professionals, as weall were younger talent to
previous generations in theworkforce, I think everyone grew
up differently.
Whereas there's a group ofindividuals that grew up texting

(17:48):
, there's a group of individualsthat grew up with the the they
don't need.
They didn't even use a lot ofthem, don't even have telephones
or tellies.
What do you call them telliesover there?

Speaker 3 (17:57):
they don't have like a landline.
You know sort of like, yeah,okay, a landline that's I.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
I knew that from miami.
But so they don't have alandline in their home and it's
often time when you communicatewith them, they prefer not to
talk, they prefer that you textthem, for example.
Or even if you look atsometimes with the emails, the
emails almost start to form tobe text-based type emails where

(18:24):
you have a couple sentences, yougo back, a couple sentences
back without a thought.
I want to go on to this AIthing as well with that, this
whole email communication withAI, which I think impacts soft
skills.
That's what I'm saying.
Like I just have a bunch ofquestions about this.
But that's where I'm going withgenerationally, with soft
skills and the importance to beable to communicate across
generations with your softskills in this technical age and

(18:45):
the impacts of AI on that aswell.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah, lots of questions there.
One of the things I'll justpick up that Phil said I'm not
done.
Well, I think one of the smallthings right to Phil is you
mentioned like leading the roomand I'd written down.
I was sort of trying to collectmy thoughts before the call and
one of the things I'd writtendown is presence.
You know, no amount of AIsummaries or sentiment analysis
can deliver.

(19:10):
You know, if you're going into adifficult meeting as Phil said,
there's been a misunderstandingwith the CFO you know you can't
AI yourself out of that one,right?
I suppose you can augment thatmeeting by using AI to prepare
and so you don't miss any likeemails or whatever.
But you you've still got to dothe delivery.
You've got to get in there.
You've got to be a peersympathetic to the problem

(19:31):
understanding.
You know you've got to be.
Maybe you need to give someground.
How much ground are you goingto give?
That's the negotiation softskill.
Um, because you ultimately wantto bring them forward on the
journey.
So that's the.
I think like there's thiscombination factor where, if you
do it right, like you could useai, can give you all the
answers right.
So it's like a loaded gun, likeyou've got all these answers

(19:54):
and you just blast them at the,at the client, and be like, well
, we're going to do it like thisbecause you know, ai told me,
but if you haven't used your ownintelligence, judgment,
creative thinking, creativethinking to like correct it,
because most of the time withAI-generated stuff, it's a
starting point.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
I think you know whether you're writing an email,
whether you're writing a report.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, it's like, oh, that's not a bad idea, but I
definitely wouldn't say thatthing.
So the AI bit is like thisloaded gun sometimes.
So you know that was on thecommunication side.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Yeah, I think that probably for me makes um
face-to-face communication a lotmore important these days,
because where ai is probablymaking the biggest impact at the
moment is in writtencommunication, particularly
emails, um, and and we see, youknow, sometimes it's not always
that obvious, sometimes it'svery obvious, but we definitely
see clients kind of emailing us,um with ai assistance on there

(20:46):
and and we use co-pilot andtools like that as well to kind
of help us writing emails,whereas when you're face to face
with somebody and talking tothem in a room, you kind of know
you've got that sincerity thereand and you were talking to
them and not a machine, um, Isuppose when it comes to the
younger generation, I was kindof reading a study a few months
ago where they're saying theprevalence of conversing over

(21:11):
messenger apps and then kind ofthe generation after us have got
a preference for things likechatbots as well and that
impacts us implementing systemsin there because they become
more important as one of thecommunication channels that we
open up to our customers and thecustomers of our who use our

(21:31):
systems.
So it's having an impact, Ithink probably the pandemic as
well and more people workingremotely and kind of not sitting
in an office together, nothaving face-to-face meetings, is
probably changing the way weoperate, changing the soft
skills that we have and we need,particularly around training as

(21:52):
well.
I know personally.
I found it difficult to adaptto training large groups of
people using things like Teams,because you're just not able to
read the body language in thesame way.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
That's a really good point.
Actually, I've just that's avery good point and that was a
question that I had on that aswell as just to jump in.
These are some good things tothink about is the use of and
also go back to the ai the useof video with this remote
communication, and and that'swhat I often say is, a lot of
people are shy or bashful.
I mean, I think early on in thepandemic, when everybody was

(22:32):
remote, everyone was a littleshy about being on camera we
were always like um, it wasembarrassing to tell the other
person they were on mute.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
But now it's like oh, by the way, you're on mute.
You know, like that, but no, II like that you had commented
about the ai when you're on mute, you know, like that it's
normal.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
That's the point.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
But no, I like that you had commented about the ai.
When you're writing an email,right like you, can, you can,
you can use a tool to reallybuild out your response or your
email.
Um, you know conversations, butthe moment that you are face to
face, like you can really tellif, if you know, do you speak
like that on a daily basis.

(23:06):
And so when you get face toface, it's like, uh, you don't
sound like that, right like you,that doesn't sound like what
you just wrote.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
You can't even put sentences together properly, so
the language could change, whichcould impact your communication
or trust, since we're talkingabout trust with an individual,
because if I've only worked withyou via electronic
communication, then when I meetyou face to face and I speak
differently that doesn'tnecessarily say that they speak

(23:35):
poorly or they use, um you know,incorrect grammar or language.
Maybe the word choices aredifferent in the sentence.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Maybe the co-pilot took out all the swear words and
you're usually a potty mouthsort of thing.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
I could talk to you all the time.
I want to start learningBritish English.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
The potty mouth.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Just back to something that Phil said earlier
.
Something just occurred to meis one of the things I've been
reading is the fundamentalimportance of soft skills and as
you upskill in ai tools,whatever they may be, you need
to have a similar training insoft skills.
So imagine this right when wewere in offices when you're
around the water cooler, you'reconstantly exposed on social

(24:20):
situations.
You know you're naturallygetting trained on soft skills
because you've got to manage the, the political situation in the
office, the social scene.
You know you're kind of exposedto it and you you're just
forced to be involved in officepolitics.
You can't, you can't completelyavoid it.
You're always going to getdrawn in a little bit and you
know, is that like a naturaltraining?
And compare that to massivelyworking from home over the

(24:42):
pandemic.
And yes, I'm, we're going a bitback in the office now, but it's
not nine to five, monday tofriday, like it used to be.
The importance for trainingsoft skills, specific training,
like dedicated to soft skills,is now so much more important
because you're and and it tiesin with that younger generation
as well but they've just they,they start work and they never
met anyone for real, like theyposted their laptop.
We have plenty of peoplestarted our place where you know

(25:04):
the first time they meet itmight be six months, eight
months down the line when wehave a you know company or get
together sort of thing yeah,that's interesting, it's that is
and then I just said sorry,brad, just jump in really quick.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
I I do want to put it out there too that um, you know
this ai co-pilot tools,although you can use it to
formulate a response or an email, but I do want to point out
that there are others that umwhere it doesn't translate
really well because maybeenglish isn't their first
language so we do have to reallyfeel it, put it perfectly.

(25:37):
it's like you have to softskills really important, because
even though my, my grammar isgreat, right, like my response
is great, but when I'm speakingwith somebody you can tell like,
hey, english may not be thatperson's English, may not be
their first language, and so youkind of have to understand like
yeah, they put it properly, butwhen they execute that it's

(25:59):
like okay, that's not your,that's not how you typically
talk, because English is notyour first language.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
So, to go back to andy, these are our good points.
And, chris, that's one part ofit.
It goes with what I picked upfrom andy, from what you're
saying is now I have to I'mselfish, I just translate it so
that I can understand um, so welearn to speak as we're aging,
growing up by being aroundpeople, typically early on it's

(26:26):
going to be your parents andyour siblings and your family,
because that's usually whoyou're close with.
So you learn the skills ofcommunication, soft skills, by
your environment.
And then, as you progressthrough life I guess you could
say through education, throughwork you pick up additional
skills.
And then, chris, to your point.

(26:46):
Now you get to a point whereyou're not picking up the skills
from communicating verbally,you're picking up skills from
communicating through writtenword.
So you can excel from thatbecause you're learning from it.
Where now, andy, you're sayingthat it's important to have?
Essentially because we're allworking remote and we have

(27:08):
technology, we almost needclasses on communication.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Well, it's something to consider right in the mix.
You know, every muscle in yourbody or feature of your brain,
if you don't practice it, itwill fade away, right?
So if you're depriving as anindustry or as a society, we're
kind of depriving, we'rereducing the amount of
person-to-person interactionthat someone gets.

(27:34):
That's got to have an impact,right.
What's the impact of that?
It's not nothing, surely, right?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
I don't believe so.
I think that to Chris's point.
I think it's visible I thinkI've had interactions with some
that they've been uncomfortable.
I've had a lot of writtencommunication with them, whether
it's via text, whether it's viaemail.
The communication was wonderful.
But with them in person theywere a little more timid in

(28:03):
communicating and speaking.
But as soon as they walk away,they sit down, they're going to
send you a message and I'm notsaying it's anything improper or
angry, you know, it's almostlike they're not comfortable
speaking face to face.
Um, which is why, when westarted talking about this, I
have, like all these I taught,thoughts in my head about the
importance of interpersonalcommunication skills or soft

(28:24):
skills in the world but it'sfunny.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
It's funny, isn't it?
Like the, but the kind of thewhatsapp chat groups, you know,
are they a blessing or a curse?
We use them for so manydifferent things.
I mean myself and Phil, our twoorganisations, we're working
together on a project at theminute and one of the first
things I think there's multiplechat groups now from the
different streams, differentgroups of people, and it is

(28:52):
convenient.
Right, it is is convenient.
It's just when it kind ofreplaces or yeah, it's uh, if
you, if you're not able to,ultimately you do need to.
You know, you need, you needthose, you need the empathy
skills, you need the activelistening skills.
You can't get that fromchatting constantly on your
phone, right?

(29:13):
yes, no, you can't, and I knowall about those whatsapp groups,
but it is handy to be able tosend your mates a hilarious gif
when you're on a really boringmeeting, right?

Speaker 4 (29:26):
thanks, andy, is that ?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
one of my meetings I don't know anybody who would do
that, it was Nick actually.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
We were both working late on a PowerPoint and then
suddenly he put some hilariousGIF in the PowerPoint.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I was like Nick you can't be good, especially when
you're having a serious meetingand someone sends you a message
and you smile and people arelike why is that guy smiling?

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Well, that can, of course, backfire and that you
know, yeah, there is, of course,you know, with all these things
it can.
It's the tool.
How to use the tool?
You can, you know, likebullying in the workplace, cyber
I mean my kids, you know, likecrikey, like school is tough,
right, my kids have just goneinto year, they're 13s or
whatever year that is.
In in the us, in the uk it'slike year nine and year nine is

(30:10):
pretty a pretty tough year.
Going to school is pretty tough.
Kids can be tough and you'vegot all the stuff that I had to
deal with when I was younger andnow they've got all the
cyberbullying and people takingpictures of other kids and
sending it around.
It's kind of like, oh mygoodness.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
I am so thankful that I did not grow up having that.
For the point that you justsaid, I think being a young
child or an adolescent isextremely difficult.
Because of that, we had issueswhen we were growing up.
Issues as children have beengoing around, I think, since man

(30:46):
had walked the planet.
But now what happened was whenwe were younger, if you had a
problem with one person, it wastypically just isolated to your
classroom, your environment oreven maybe a little bit bigger,
to your school, and it wasn'treally you know, you could just
avoid them or maybe over timeprogressed and settled down.

(31:09):
But now, like you said, like youhave one small thing and it's
like broadcast to the entireworld, where everybody now knows
about things or has problemswith things and even, like you
said, where you can send thesemessages anonymously, which I
think is a big point, not evenanonymously, but it's behind
text or behind other ways, it'snot you know, and it's just

(31:35):
hurtful and it's much easier forthat type of stuff.
So I'm thankful that I had theproblems that I had and I feel
for those that have thosechallenges now, because I agree
that it's not easy andeveryone's focus and attention
onto it I think is valid,because I've seen it Not to
digress from our social skill,uh, social, uh conversation here

(31:55):
, but uh, which which leads toI'm trying, I'm trying not to go
all over the place.
I'm sorry, I know you have somepoints you wanted to bring up
on this as well, but that wholeperson of the type of
communication, the face-to-facecommunication versus
communication behind the writtenword, um, in the emotions that
are behind it, and you know how,when you can see someone's

(32:17):
reaction to something you'resaying versus something you're
writing, yeah, definitely, andthe impact on them.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Phil what's your thoughts on, like the example of
the meeting transcription, likeit doesn't pick up the emotion
right.
I mean you can do sentimentanalysis, but the kind of the
more normal standard tools.
You know.
Phil, how have you kind ofimplemented at your place, like
the meeting transcription tool?
You know, capability?

Speaker 4 (32:46):
That's a good point really.
I mean, we use it primarily toreduce the effort in taking
minutes or, more frequently, nottaking minutes when we should.
So it's just kind of havingthat reference back to it, I
suppose, rather than any sort offormal documentation off the
back of it.
It's just super useful whenyou're kind of writing notes up

(33:07):
or you're doing somedocumentation and you're having
to refer back to a meeting youwere in.
It allows you to kind of goback and see accurately what was
spoken, which is quite handy.
Does it save you time whenyou're having to summarize a
meeting?

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Because I know like far, far in my experience it's
helped me many times where youknow a meeting that I had over a
month ago and then we'recircling back on it and I'm like
I don't remember.
So I would ask co-pilot and say, hey, did we talk about this
particular topic?
And it would give me and say,yeah, you talked about this
topic at this time.
And here's the transcript andhere's a summary and I'm like,

(33:46):
okay, I'm ready.
You know it's like it was superhelpful, because I don't
remember, like I had a at ameeting with a, a co-worker,
that last time we had aconversation about something was
like a month or two, two, twomonths ago, and it certainly
helped me be prepared and not,you know, struggle to like okay,
I gotta listen to thesemeetings to remember where did

(34:07):
we say and you can evenspecifically ask like who said
this?
You know, was this even broughtup?
Like the, the, for example Imean, we're all consultants like
we talked about, um, uh,budgets.
You know, was a budget part ofthat conversation?
Like I don't remember sure it'sbeen like what six months.
And so you look it up and it'slike, yeah, this, it was talked

(34:29):
about.
You know, budget was talkedabout.
It was this many hours, likeperfect, you know.
And it's like, yeah, this itwas talked about.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
You know, budget was talked about.
It was this many hours, perfect, you know.
So it's very helpful.
I mean, phil, were on a meetingnot too long ago and the and
the main sort of organizer there, senior, senior guy, he's like
okay, the transcript's on, sofaces up, like everyone you know
can be more, be more present inthe meeting.
Now, I don't think I've everheard it articulated like that
before, but it's dead rightactually, like you know, unless
you have, unless you're in anorganization where you've got a
dedicated meeting note taker,which is not, I don't think you

(34:58):
get that on most professionalservices things Right, there's
not necessarily the luxury ofhaving someone just taking the
meeting notes.
If you can let the transcriptkind of do the donkey work of
taking the notes and then, well,if you're in the room or if
you're on a team score, you cankind of like you know you guys,
you know you don't know who I'mlooking at, like I might be
really staring at chris or I'mreally staring at brad.
So the transcript, can you knowthere's a, there's a, there's a

(35:22):
, there's a benefit to it there,I think.
Um, and it all comes down tothen how you use that, as like
that example earlier, or likethe ai, can give you all the
information.
It can give you the loaded gunif you've got some slightly bad
news to tell someone like no,it's definitely not in scope.
And then you've got the meetingtranscripts.
It's like the guy, the personwho says it's definitely not in
scope, the senior person, it'slike there's a meeting and he

(35:43):
said no, okay, we're fine, we'llagree, that's not in scope.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
You know, just sending in the transcript saying
like no, you're wrong, you know, like it's necessarily best,
we're doing it right, I gotreceipts I do like the ai
transcription because it allowspeople to communicate and talk
without having to worry abouttaking notes, as we were talking

(36:07):
about, so you can focus more onthe content of it.
But we're talking here abouthow important social soft skills
are.
I keep calling them socialskills.
It's kind of how I referencethem.
Same thing.
Yeah, it's the importance ofsoft skills, which, again, it's
more than just vocabulary, asyou alluded to or even mentioned
, not alluded to, but it's youremotional, it's your empathy,

(36:29):
self-awareness, all the pointsthat you had mentioned emotional
empathy, self-awareness, allthe points that you had
mentioned.
And, chris, Phil, andy, youwere talking about how you use
AI transcription for meetings.
You use AI transcription tocraft emails.
You use AI to generatePowerPoint presentations.
We use AI to generatedocumentation.

(36:55):
We're all saying that there'sthe importance of soft skills
today because we want to havethat interpersonal communication
with each other.
And we're talking about now how, with technology, there's a lot
of electronic communication,whatsapp groups, text messaging,
emails.
Do you feel that soft skillswill be important in the future
or going?
There'll be a point where thenod is important because

(37:15):
everything will be delivered byAI.
Whereas, again, I write anemail to Chris, crafted with AI,
nice, wonderful, beautifulemail.
I send it to Chris.
Chris says co-pilot.
What does this email say?
The classic yeah, write, writeback.

(37:39):
Respond to brad that I don'tlike it.
Copilot will create an email.
Yeah, send it back to me.
Where now the exchange is?
When we're using ai, we'rebeing guided and, with it being
electronic.
How impactful or important willthese soft skills?
I'm sorry I know you had a lotyou wanted to talk about, but I
told you my mind I have to tryto keep focused but how

(38:01):
important will the soft skillsbe in the future?

Speaker 4 (38:07):
I think they will always be crucial.
I mean, you call them socialskills there, and I think that's
probably a much better way ofphrasing it, because where AI
comms in particular are usefuland used the most, they're in a
professional setting, really,and I think if they could make
our working lives much moreefficient and, to be honest,

(38:28):
automate the boring bits thingslike documentation or
summarising meetings and writingminutes then great.
I'm all for that, because itdoes free up more time for you
to have the water cooler chatswith your colleagues or social
events and things like that.
You know, ai doesn't seem tohave been encroached too much in
that area, so you're stillgoing to need those social

(38:52):
skills.
I suppose whether the impact ofai will, um, impede the
development of them becauseyou're using them so much, uh,
you're not building thosecommunication skills in the same
way.
I'm not sure.
I'd be interested to hear yourthoughts on that.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Here's here's a good one for you, and by the way I
got chat gpt to prepare this forme.
I was like I'm going on apodcast about soft you and, by
the way, I got chat gpt toprepare this for me I was like
I'm going on a podcast aboutsoft skills.
May I give you some really greatsound bites.
So disclaimer, I totallycheated, but this one I like it.
Ai gives you the answers.
But you know the empathy softskill helps you ask the right

(39:27):
questions, because if you're not, if you're not asking the right
questions, no amount ofknowledge done, you know is the
right knowledge that that isright, spot on because, yeah,
that that's spot on, because youdo have to know and understand
the emotion, emotion to know howto prompt a response, how to

(39:48):
create a response.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
And you're right, though I mean, it's so hard to
read and uh, read the room whenyou're just all you see yourself
, right, um?
yeah, in a fake background andall that stuff.
So you know, it kind of leadsme to the.
And I do have a question,though when you are in office
and, uh, you're meeting face toface, everyone's a conference

(40:12):
room, you know.
Do you still use teams torecord that meeting in the
conference room just so you canget that transcript and summary
for co-pilot, or do you justrely on everybody else to take
notes?

Speaker 3 (40:27):
yeah, I mean depends on the like.
If it's a workshop or somethinglike that, I'd try to, yes, do
that.
The downside is that I know, Ithink sort of maybe depending on
the license you've got withTeams like if you're all on one
speakerphone then it's you doingall the talking, you're the one
asking all the questions andyou're the one giving all the
responses.
So when you try to do thetranscript, you know summary,

(40:50):
who said what it's like.
We said everything.
But I think maybe that's atechnology thing.
Maybe I think in teams, youknow, if you've got premium
teams, you can like do that thevoice recognition, so it
recognizes your own voice.
Perhaps I don't know, I'd needto up my hard skills to know the
answer to that question.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, and I'd have to go someplace where I'm having a
meeting Again.
Thankfully, in 2025, the needto go to an office has been
minimized significantly,depending upon the organization.
I know some organizations well.
I don't want to say dependingon the organization, I think
depending upon the type ofoutput that you produce for your
work, output that you producefor your, your work, um, you

(41:34):
know some things you need to bein person for.
Some things you don't need tobe in person for.
You know a lot of the technicaltype stuff, but the does that
change, though?

Speaker 1 (41:40):
like, does that change?
I know, brad, like we we'refully remote, right?
Maybe I see you like three,four times a year?
Um, yes, you know that.
Does that change in terms ofcamaraderie, um, and better
respect, because you see eachother daily?
You're in the office.
One of the things that I miss,honestly, is that you know it's

(42:02):
Friday afternoon, let's go to apub, right, like, let's just
hang out after.
Or it's a weekend, hey man, I'mgoing to be over here, you want
to come meet me over there, andso forth.
That you can't have in a fullremote setting.
So then, does that change nowin the way the workforce

(42:26):
nowadays, because you can't dothat, does that change the way
you work together entirely?

Speaker 4 (42:35):
I think it does, um, and I think you, I didn't really
notice until I went back intothe office more, and and one
thing I realized, and it's Ithink it's to the individual,
but when I work from home and onteams meetings all day, it's
it's really quite drainingemotionally and and you feel
back to back.
Teams meetings um, you do feeltired at the end of it, whereas

(42:55):
it's kind of the opposite in theoffice you can sit in in
meetings, face to face all dayand and you tend to find you
feel a bit more energized fromthat.
Um for sure, and and we'requite lucky in the fact we live
in a small island, um, so it'svery easy to go in the office,
and our team uh kind of has thein the office day, uh, where
everybody's together on a friday.

(43:16):
So we do, um, you know, go fora drinking bar, um, at the end
of the day and we sit there andjust socialize together and
we're quite lucky and we'vewe've actually got a bar in the
office, as Andy knows.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
So it's um, it's quite easy to this guy when Phil
said he's on a small island,he's not talking about the UK,
he's talking about the island ofJersey.
So yeah, it's a reallybeautiful place and yeah, I mean
you know, I once got a WhatsAppmessage from Phil.
Oh yeah, friday drinks.
Today, andy, they've taken theboats over to France to go for

(43:48):
some wine.
What I had, a couple of ribs inthere to sail over to France.
But you know, the generationthing.
I think a couple of youmentioned the generation thing
earlier.
Interestingly, at myorganisation we're looking to,
you know we're opening up somemore offices and things like
that and really the drivingforce for that was more the

(44:09):
younger generation and they're,you know, like in the kind of
the um.
You know the kind of theperformance feedback and all
that kind of you know stuff youdo to make sure people are on
track with their learning andhow they're feeling and all the
rest of it.
And you know like it was morethe younger generation that were
like missing that socialinteraction and they wanted to.
They want to get into theoffice, you know on a on a
wednesday or thursday, and thengo out for drinks afterwards,

(44:30):
that sort of stuff.
Because they, you know, ifyou're yeah, if you're in the
younger generation and you'restill, you know you don't have
like maybe you know like gotmarried and kids and all the
rest of it.
You know you don't have all theluggage, you're free and single
, right, you know you like youwant to go and have fun, you
don't want to be workingremotely and just hang up at
whatever time in the evening andthat's it.
That's's your five-minutecommute to the living room.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
You know that's a bit dull, right.
I do want to throw somethingout there, though not just from
the age category or thegenerational category, and Brad
and I talked about this that wetend to forget the culture
aspect of it too.
Because even though you'recategorized as a this generation

(45:10):
but it depends on the culture,uh, that you're, you've grown up
with, you know, and, and sothat can play a big role where
you think, like you know, look,I'm a old millennial, right,
like that's how I'm categorized,but I don't act like that at
all.
I'm raised differently, that myculture is very, very different

(45:31):
, which is kind of frustratingbecause you forget the cultural
aspect of it.
If you speak to someone inJapan or Philippines, they work
hard, they want to be presentand so forth, but people forget
that To your point.
Andy, you just said,surprisingly, the younger

(45:51):
generations that you'reinteracting with are point andy.
You just said like, hey,surprisingly, the younger
generations that you'reinteracted with are the ones
that wants to go out and, um,you know, get together and
socialize, while some of us, uh,here, they don't want to do
that, you know, they just haveclose, specific friends and
sometimes the majority of theconversation is going to be via
text or, you know, chat app.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I think I do miss that.
Well, I don't miss going to theoffice because of all the
wasted.
I call it wasted commute time.
Yeah, but I do recall havingthe times where we would go out
and go back to some points.
It's all about the points.
Just to go back to Chris, toyour point, I think the video
conferencing is great becauseyou can see someone's
interactions with you, you cansee their emotions.

(46:35):
I can talk with you and I cansee if you're paying attention,
I can see if you're losing andyou don't have a comprehension
of what I'm saying.
But also, I think relationshipsand Quran rebuild more once you
meet in person, because there'smany, many people that I had
the opportunity to speak withfor long periods of time.
And then, once you meet them inperson, the relationship

(47:00):
changes because now you havethat something I don't even know
how to classify, where you havea significant change to it.
And I think what opens up withthat is another challenge for
those that are all remote thatyou may miss is it takes effort
now to have those conversationsof oh, let's go to the pub.

(47:20):
Oh, let's go do this, becauseinstead of yelling over a cube
wall or maybe bumping into Andyor Phil or you in the dining
area to pick up a drink orsomething to talk to you.
You would now have to callsomebody.
I have to check are theyavailable, are they red, Are
they green, are they yellow, arethey out of office?
So now it takes effort versusjust a natural interaction.

(47:45):
I think that is a big change inthis technology world.
Maybe with AI we can get to apoint where it doesn't feel that
way.
It just sort of forces us totalk to each other.
I don't know like you think ofthe future somehow.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
yeah, maybe because I completely agree there.
Actually because I think when Igo into the office, speak you
know quite freely with withanybody who might be in, and
there's a lot of people you knowin our office who I wouldn't
work with directly.
So if I was just workingremotely I wouldn't interact at
all probably with them um,whereas when you're in the
office you do have those chatsand you just catch up with

(48:22):
people and you build thoserelationships and kind of
working fully remotely you dorisk missing out on that for
sure.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, I think to have a successful like if we kind of
move the topic on to asuccessful partner organisation,
like we're all deliveringmicrosoft products, right, um,
having you know, having yourcolleagues, you know people join
, join companies and they leavecompanies.
Some people stay longer, somepeople stay shorter, right, but
generally speaking, you know, ifyou can build a connection with

(48:53):
someone, you know there'salways like it's kind of like
going through the thick thewhole, like going through the
thick and thin thing.
Right, you kind of want you,you want people to when times
are tough.
You know you, there's alwayslike it's kind of like going
through the thick the whole,like going through the thick and
thin thing.
Right, you kind of want you,you want people to when times
are tough.
You know you want to gettogether.
You need that preexistingrelationship.
You need that trust built upwith your teammates to it gives
you strength, gives youresilience to, like, you know,
whenever there's difficultprojects or difficult situations

(49:14):
, it's always coming up fromtime to time, right, it's uh, I
think that you know that thatpersonal connection makes a
massive difference than you knowif you'd only ever just spoke
to everyone through teams andyou didn't really kind of, you
didn't get a chance to um, buildthat slight, slightly different
relationship that you get whenyou, you know, occasionally like
you know has to be every week,but occasionally it's like go

(49:34):
out for a meal or go to the pubbut have a chat about things,
get to know people on a non-worksetting which, unless you kind
of do a forced organized teamschool like that, like I mean,
it's no longer the pandemic, sowe're no longer doing.
We did it, you know, pub quizzesover over zoom or whatever,
when it was the pandemic andstuff, and uh, friday drinks,

(49:55):
that kind of thing's fallingaway now.
Right, I think there's anotherwork there's another component
to that, though.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Like, for example, if you want to bounce ideas, right
Right, brad had mentioned youknow he requires a little bit of
work, and now you've got tolook to see okay, is Brad red,
is he yellow?
Is he even in his desk?
Is he working on something inthe middle of something?
Clearly, he's not going to showup on his calendar, but he
could definitely be working onsomething.
But if you're in an office, Ican just walk by and say, ah,

(50:25):
brad's right there.
Hey, I'm going to bounce someideas with you.
Man, you got time.
It's so easy you can't do that.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
I just thought of another, an old finance
controller I worked with, notold, a while ago.
I worked when I was on the enduser side.
There was a financialcontroller there, head of
finance, and she said you know,she would walk around the office
and she'd be like how arepeople's desks looking?
And it was like the piles ofpaper.
She kind of knew because somepeople like just suffer in
silence, right, and other peopleare very vocal about when

(50:55):
things are difficult, noteveryone's the same and she
would be that in officesituation.
You know she likes to know likehow, how are people's workloads
?
By looking at, by wanderingaround and seeing you know
they're slamming the phone downand huffing and puffing, you
kind of.
You know you don't, if you'reall on teams you miss all of
that, right, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
That's a good point.
You don't get up that bodylanguage that we spoke about,
where you're learning from yourenvironment as well.
So in this world of AI, thesoft skills it's more than just
AI, I think.
We talk about the world of AI,but it's also the world of
technology, I think, as well.
Ai has a big impact on thecommunication with it, but

(51:34):
technology, which AI is a formof, also is impacting how we
communicate with each other andthe stuff that we've been
talking about as well.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
I guess we've spoken a lot about AI around the large
language models, text summary,that kind of stuff.
But another major area of AI isthe ability to write code.
So what difference is AI?
What's the importance of softskills?
Major area of ai is the abilityto write code.
All right.
So if you're, you know what's.
What difference is ai?
What's the importance of softskills?
What's the difference on the aiis made.
So now you've got the abilityfor a you know, like a, let's

(52:08):
say, a seasoned developer.
So they know what's right, theyknow what's wrong.
They're using, they're using aito generate code really quickly
.
Um, you know, if you, if youthe understanding, the
requirements, the communicationthat you have with the client,
with the, with the end users, tounderstand, understand what you
know, what you're building.
If, if the competitivelandscape is now that the

(52:30):
writing of the code is so muchshortened, you know, like I'd
say it's more, it's, there'sless time that you're having
meetings with the clients asyou're like maybe doing sprints
or whatever, and you've builtthis much or that much you can.
You can you know how quicklycan you build an app now brad
with with uh, you know github inin vs code with sorry, you know

(52:52):
the agent, it depends itdepends, I think.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Uh, I've been, you know they have the tools.
Now you can track thepercentage.
I think it depends on whatyou're working on.
Some things it does really well, some things it does marginally
well, some things it doesn't dowell at all with yet Okay.
So I think you have to take alook at that.
But I think from a productivitypoint of view, I would
definitely say you're talkingabout 30% to 40%, and again I'm

(53:15):
throwing out an average basedupon a wide range of tasks.
I have been tracking it and,like I said, some things it will
do very, very well, or 80%, 90%of it on the first shot.
Even if you're looking atco-pilot review, when you
request a reviewer for a pullrequest, the co-pilot for that

(53:35):
has even gotten much better, andI know for certain cases when
you're doing code reviews,copilot caught some things or
made suggestions that somebodyelse should have caught but was
overlooked, or maybe they didn'tthink it was significant or was
nitpicking and they didn'tmention it.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
So it's greatly helped.
Does the ability to generatethe you know generate an
application faster?
Does it mean you need lesscommunication skills?
Because, because you know youcan just throw it, throw out
lots of apps?
See what sticks, as opposed tospending a lot more time
crafting, understand deeply,understanding the requirements
and, you know, building theright outcomes with the app, if

(54:17):
you can put something togethervery quickly.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
They're crossing into the whole vibe coding
conversation where you're justgenerating stuff.
I think it depends on whatyou're generating and for why Me
wanting to write something athome to use for a utility.
You're going to send me downthe spiral for the future
applications, but we'll refrain,we'll save this for another
conversation.
Okay, but I think you still, ifyou're publishing an app for a

(54:45):
customer to use or an end userto use, I think you need to
definitely have some code reviewskills and understanding of
what copilot generates for you.
Um, I don't think, yeah, Ithink you still need to have
some uh skills to properlyreview the code and validate the

(55:07):
code and adjust the code asnecessary.
Uh, but it still can do someamazing things.
I'm not saying it can't, uh,because it does write some code
and in some cases it probablywrote it better than I would
have, and I'll be one of theones to admit it.
Um, that you know anybody willtell you that it's not doing
well.
Uh isn't being totally honest,but again, like I said, there's

(55:28):
a range of it is there?

Speaker 3 (55:30):
is there a parallel there between um?
You know, I've tried, I've sortof done a little bit on umilot,
you know, for GitHub inside VSCode, but the problem is I'm not
a developer to start with, solike you've got to have those
development skills to reviewwhat it's giving you, and so
let's translate what's theparallel for, like meetings and
workshops and all the rest of it?
You know, if you're really goodat delivering workshops and if

(55:53):
you're really good at producingoutput from workshops that you
feed back to the client, ifyou've already got that skill
and you look at what Copilotgave you and you're like, okay,
yeah, tweak it a little bit,then send it.
You know, I guess it's similar.
Is that a similar situation tothe whole vibe coding thing?

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Well, I think it depends on the language as well,
and I think you know if you'rereferring to Business Central
and AL.
I think it's improving, it'sgetting better, I think,
depending upon the models thatyou use.
My only fear with that is nowwe have a lot of individuals who
understand the language, sothat you do have a wide group of
talent that can review the code.
But just as we talked aboutwith communication skills and as

(56:32):
you listen to some of the otherepisodes, I mention this often
I think the coding skills woulddecrease, because I think the
need for coding will change.
It's be more human languageright about for development,
because it's no longer going tobe.
Even if you look at back thethe evolution of programming or
development, you know youstarted with assembly language.
I I'm.

(56:52):
I took assembly language incollege, by the way, I took the
class we're doing the pop andall that other stuff and the
registers.
And then you progress to havinglanguages like COBOL, pascal, c
, where you have written in code.
It still all takes it, itcompiles it down to the machine

(57:13):
level for language.
But I think, as we'reprogressing now with Copilot,
you're now prompting forapplications to be developed.
So I think there will be achange to where you no longer
need to code as we think aboutit today, because I think you're
going to tell a system what itwants.
The system's going to translateit into a form that can be used

(57:36):
by the computer.
I think we're going to take outthat middle piece.
See, right now everybody'ssaying GitHub.
This is my imagination.
You see you're going to get meon a tangent on this stuff.
I'm sorry.
You have GitHub Copilot rightnow that's going to draft code
in a language such as AL.
Yeah, why does it need to be AL?
Why can't GitHub Copilotgenerate code that does what you

(58:02):
want, based upon how youarticulate that within your
prompt.
Again, would that be a socialskill, you know, being able to
to articulate what you want, toco-pilot then it can generate an
application for you, right?
so this is where I'm sayingtoday we're you follow my
progression that we're basingeverything based upon what we
know today, whereas sameindividuals with the horse and

(58:24):
buggy when the automobile wasinvented right, they start
comparing the horse and buggy tothe automobile.
But look at the progressions asthe automobile had come around,
where it's not even the sameanymore yeah, you had a good
point of like you know whatwould be the future language.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
You know you had a good point of like you know what
would be the future language.
You had mentioned English or agood structure.
There's going to be some sortof if you look at a prompt, how
proper prompt, right, there's astructure.
In the best way you caninstruct chat GPT, you know,
choose whatever AI you have.
So you're right, brad, you haveto understand a proper

(59:03):
structure of articulating ofwhat you, what you want, and,
and I think first is like you,you know what kind of tasks,
what's the instruction, and yougot to put the context, you know
what kind of a persona of thatchat GPT should they take, and
then what the expectation of aresult.

(59:24):
Those are the typical structureof, I guess, in this sense, a
syntax of what a prompt shouldbe.
So you have to learn thosethings.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Do you think it's prompting?
I guess it's a hard.
Is it a soft skill or a hardskill?
Talking, talking to the llms?
Oh, I think it's both, becauseyou got to be nice.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Sometimes you gotta be, nice to this, that's a good
question just just just on onetail end, just to finish the
thing.
I won't go for an attention onthat, but I think, I think we
will lose that developmentability because individuals
aren't going to have thatlearning period in the middle
Right, right you have the seniordevelopers now who understand

(01:00:06):
the languages today.
Again, I'm emphasizing thelanguages today.
It doesn't mean, you know,everyone has the question of
what's going to happen withsenior developers if you don't
have the opportunity to learn asa junior developer, because
Copilot's a bunch of junior cansimulate junior developers and
you need a senior to go throughit.
After giving us some thought, Iwas like wow, we're not going
to have senior developers.

(01:00:27):
But I think what's going tohappen is I think development's
going to change.
It's going to adapt todeveloping with copilot, versus
learning a language and beingable to process the language.
Again, how many COBOLprogrammers do you know today?
There's not many.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
So I think that will go with that, unless you work
for the government.
Go back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
I didn't mean to jump in, I just want to throw that
last thing in there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
No, I think you're right.
I mean, andy, you said itrequires soft skills.
So, brad, yeah, you kind ofhave to be nice sometimes.
You know you said it requiressoft skills.
Sorry, brad, yeah, you kind ofhave to be nice sometimes.
You know you got to structureit properly and you got to be
like you are this agent and youare instructed to do this.
So there's a syntax you followand at the same time, you know

(01:01:13):
you got to be nice to it.
You can't just say do thisproperly, they'll remember you
if you're nice to them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Yeah exactly the Microsoft.
They're like the dev guy fromMicrosoft whose name has just
escaped me from the minute.
He always talks about tacos andhe does a lot of.
He says like maybe if you'relike, the LLMs have sourced from
the internet right and in theinternet there's the nice side
of the internet and there's alsothe slightly shady side.
From the internet right and inthe internet there's the nice
side of the internet and there'salso the slightly shady side of

(01:01:42):
the internet.
Where people are, there's flamewars and trolls and all the
rest of it.
His comment is you know, ifyou're nice to the AI, maybe you
tap it into the nicer side ofall that training that it's done
.
That gives you better answers.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
I like that.
I like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
You know, someone asked me this past weekend you
know it was another parent.
They're not in the, in ourspace, they're not in a tech
space, they're in a veterinarian, and she was asking me of my
opinion.
And I'm going to ask you guysthe same thing.
Hey, my kids are in their teens, they're about ready to go to

(01:02:16):
college.
You know what I see.
She was like what I remember.
You know you go into tech.
The question that she had wasshould my kids go to computer
science?
Should they learn how toprogram, should they learn how
to code?
And that was an answer that wasvery difficult for me to give,

(01:02:39):
because if you asked me three,four, five years ago, it's like
yeah, absolutely.
You know there's a lot of thatopportunity, but because of
Copilot, ai, chatgpt what a grokdoes that change?
You know, can you learn how tocode by just working with a

(01:03:01):
co-pilot, slash, grok, chat,chat, gp or whatever?
Can they learn it just as muchthan in a class setting?
That?

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
is a whole different episode.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
And I was like I don't know how to answer that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
That is I wish.
I don't have a pen with me, butwe need to.
Chris, jot that down.
We'll do a future ofdevelopment conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
I couldn't answer that man.
I don't know, You'll have toget some developers in for that
one.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
I'm not qualified to answer that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Well, it's just what you're talking about there,
Chris, should you go into that?
And what we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
But what you're talking?

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
about there, chris, should you go into that and what
we're talking about?
So it's uh.
But what you said earlier, brad, about assembly I'm sorry, phil
, you're saying yeah, it kind ofleads in we talk about how tech
more than just ai, howtechnology is kind of changing
our soft skills, our socialskills, and I think the style of
learning actually and the toolswe use to learn has changed
massively.
Because what we see now, um,particularly in the younger
generation, brad, is like shortform media is king right
everywhere you go.

(01:04:03):
It's tiktok, it's instagram,it's kind of short snippets and
I think the way people learn haschanged and we kind of have to
adapt our styles as well to dothat.
And, um, we find, you know, backin the day, where you'd have
huge day-long training sessionswith a user that were draining
actually and always thoughtafter a couple of hours people
kind of switch off anyway.

(01:04:24):
But now it's especially onlineand remote.
You can afford to do muchshorter but more frequent kind
of sessions on there.
That's probably more akin tohow naturally people learn in
bite-sized chunks.
So we can kind of usetechnology, use AI, to support
that, make it easier to learn,feed in and see your point there

(01:04:47):
, chris, and I think AI is oneof the tools we use now to learn
things, rather than just go toGoogle and find blogs.
We're asking ChatGPT, we'reasking.
Copilot and it's finding thosematerials on our behalf.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
It's wild, so Phil back to the original original
question yes, in the age of AI,are soft skills more important
or less important, or the same?
Ai has not made any differenceto the necessity for them I
think they're a differentiator.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
So so why do people hire business central
consultants to come and delivertheir projects?
It's it's always been becausebecause they know the product
and they understand kind of howto implement it.
But in theory, you could go tochat gpt and ask it how to
implement business central andwhat you need.
You could go to chat GPT andask it how to implement Business
Central and what you need to doand take it step by step and if
you followed it you'd probablyget there as an end user.

(01:05:45):
So the soft skills reallydifferentiate us and AI, I think
.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Totally, that's exactly what I'd written down
there.
The soft skills they become asAI takes over some of the burden
of some work.
It kind of AI takes over someof the burden of some work.
It kind of concentrates the,the difference of the delivery
that you make and the feelingyou know that that that ability
to do good delivery, I think youknow it's the someone with
excellent soft skills, reallyfantastic soft skills.

(01:06:13):
Maybe their project is goingthrough bumps but at the end of
it the consumer, the customer'sstill happy because you took
them on the journey, you tookthem through the bumps, okay,
versus someone with not so goodsoft skills.
You know that it's moredifficult to to do a good
delivery because the you knowthe difference becomes.
You know, knowing businesscentral becomes the hygiene

(01:06:35):
factor.
Right, and the ability to bringpeople with you on the journey
is is always been important, butit becomes more important.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
That is true.
I think the confidence goes outthe door when you don't have
that soft people skills.
You know when you, when you're,especially when you're
communicating you can only gofar with the email responses
using copilot, but when it comesto, like, calming the room, you
know you're going to need thatsoft soft skills because you're

(01:07:03):
right.
I mean when, when, when thingsgoes in chaos, when you have the
proper soft skills, you calmthe room right.
It's like okay, this guy is, heknows what he's talking about,
he's, he's translating it, heunderstands us that's.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
That goes back to a few things.
They said presence, I think,phil you, you had mentioned that
early on his presence and whatit also ties back to, for what
I'm hearing is all what we'vebeen talking about is it's not
just the interpersonal or thethe social skills, it's the
connection, it's you're building, the relationship between

(01:07:42):
individuals that you can't getif you're doing that through AI
or using technology.
I think, after all, we are acommunal species.
We'd like to be with people asmuch as even myself.
I like to be alone 99% of thetime.
Occasionally I like to be alone99% of the time.
Occasionally like to be aroundpeople.

(01:08:03):
So I think what you're saying,or what I hear you're saying, is
that relationship building isimportant part of an
implementation to keep it intothe space that we're all in
today.
The application use andfunction and how to.
That consultant may not be.

(01:08:24):
Again, they have experiences.
I'm not trying to devalueanything, but the information's
easier or more readily available, right, easier to access, more
readily available on how to usebusiness central.
You need someone with thatrelationship, with that
experience, that you can build arelationship with, build trust
in.
I think we talk about that aswell to help give you that

(01:08:46):
comfort as you're going througha journey.
Right, it's almost like beinglike I think Chris you talked
about before like being on aplane.
Are you going to be comfortablebeing on a plane if it's on
autopilot?
even though there's no pilot inthe seat on a plane, if it's on
autopilot, even though there'sno pilot in the seat, even
though a pilot probably flies avery small portion of the time
at this point, or would you feelmore comfortable if a pilot was
sitting in the seat?

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
yeah, depends on the pilot I guess yeah, but uh, yeah
, you, you make some good pointsthere because I think it's the
experience that you bring,because the number of times I've
been asked by a customer, whatdo other people do?
Yeah, we've got the sameproblem and you bring that

(01:09:30):
experience of otherimplementations and how common
problems are solved by otherorganizations.
And I'm sure AI could do that,but but there's a high value, I
think, by people placed on livedexperience, uh, and, and
someone who's personally beenthrough it, that's.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
That's a really good point.
The.
If you look at all thedocumentation of the official of
how business central does aparticular process, that is not
the same as how a real worldcompany deals with the day in,
day out mad world that we haveto deal with.
Vendors don't send you perfectinvoices with the PO quoted on
it every time.
Right, you have to deal withthe nonsense of nothing matches

(01:10:10):
and how are you going to do that?

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Yeah, I get a good analogy for this one, because
soft skills and, uh, experiencehelp in situations like that.
Like if you ever, if you ever,climb a mountain, pick whatever
mountain, and there's theirsherpas.
You guys heard about sherpas.
Right, the sherpas are reallythe people like hey, I've been
up there many, many times.
I know what to do in situationsthat are crazy or different.

(01:10:37):
Do you need them?
No, you could probably ask AI.
It's like how do I prepare?
Show me the map where I need tostop.
That's fine, you could probablytry it, but it's going to be
rough for you.
But if you have a Sherpa, it'sa lot easier because then you
have someone that you can relyon and say, hey, I'm with a
situation.
This map says we should be here, but the Sherpa's like no, the
weather's changed, you've got tobe at this area Because AI's

(01:11:02):
not going to know what thevariables of what life throws at
you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
It might get it wrong right.
An experienced person has gonethrough the process before.
Yeah, that's the whole thingwith AI.
It's not always accurate.
You've got to check it.
So if you're just relying on AIfor answers, sometimes it's a
concern.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, I'm kind of like staring into space, because
what is it going to be nextweek?

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
That's the other thing right the models change in
the background.
I mean just talking on models,the transition on ChatGPT from
4.0 to 5.0, massive backlash onReddit and various other
internet forums because they'resaying that they've dumbed it
down and people were using.

(01:11:53):
You got used to a certain typeof response from the prompt you
developed, because developingcomplicated prompts is a skill,
like skill, like you were sayingearlier.
And then suddenly the modelschanged in the background and
that prompt that workedyesterday today doesn't work.
Yeah oh it gives you adifferent answer that's what I
think about, even this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
I think by the time this is released, this
conversation may be dated onsome things.
I say that jokingly, but theworld is moving at a rapid rate
and I think that, as we alltalked about, technology, and
specifically technologies thatstart and now into the AI world,
does affect and impact softskills and I think that it's

(01:12:32):
still and today it's animportant part of someone's
abilities, capabilities andaptitude and input on any
classification to be able tohave those soft skills and
that's a differentiator.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Right, Right, Like, I feel like that's going to be a
future differentiator, becauseyou can anybody can use Copilot
to implement things.
Now, right, Like, it's prettystraightforward.
Everyone has a structuredtemplate, whatever.
But I think the differentiatorof people you work with is going
to be that soft people skills,and how are they going to guide
you and how are they going to bethere for you and once you're
done, are they're still going tobe there for you?

(01:13:08):
You know what I mean.
Are they're going to check inwith you?
And you know how's it goingwith Business Central.
Here's a few things you coulddo.
I mean that relationship.
It's going to be important.
Ai is not going to check inwith you.
It only checks in with you whenyou ask for it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
I think that's the key word relationship, I think
what we've all talked about.
I think to me the commondenominator to all of this,
whether it's from animplementation or the inner
office working relationships.
So I think it's good.
Andy Phil, thank you very muchfor taking the time to speak
with us this afternoon.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Lots of interesting pointers there.
Me and Phil have got to writeour directions.
Talk on soft skills and AI.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
We can have a follow-up with this if you want,
or even if you want, to talk onthe top.
On my mind, these conversationssometimes it's tough for me to
hold on because we can go downso many different paths, so many
different roads with it, andstaying on point is extremely
important, but I would do trulyvalue the time that you spent to
speak with us today because,like I always say, time's the
currency of life.
Once you spend it, you can'tget it back.
So, anytime anybody spends anytime with us, we greatly

(01:14:12):
appreciate that.
Um so, if anyone would like totalk to you more about soft
skills and AI in the workplace,what's the best way for someone
to get in contact with you, andy?

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn.
I'm on LinkedIn, Andy Wingate,or I think you can get off.
You go to my blog,blogwingate365.com.
There are links to all thesocials and whatnot there.
But yeah, you'll definitely beable to find me on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
How about yourself, Phil?

Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
Yeah, LinkedIn's good for me as well.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Uh, phil barrel.
Uh, or the blog site is uh,barrelnet.
Great, thank you, and I willhave to say I'm embarrassed to
say, when you were talking aboutyour blog just now, I just
realized that wingate365 is yourlast name All these years of
this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Wingate is his last name, not 365.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
No, that's what I'm saying Like sometimes, because I
have to pause there for aminute.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Wait, I didn't know he was 365.
That would be amazing, wouldn'tit?

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
That right there.
I'm embarrassed to say that Ilooked at, like you see, some of
these domain names that there's.
There's many of us that blog orcommunicate have websites and a
lot of them will use somevariation of something and I
sometimes I wonder where didthey get that?

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
he loves windows.
So much he changed his lastname.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
I thought it had to be with something like that,
with like a Windows 365.
You're being catchy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
There is an application.
There was an applicationWindows Gateway which had
wingatecom or whatever.
That one was gone, so I had todream up something else.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
So you know, like I said, I bring this stuff over
and I have it, but it justclicked with me, so again thank
you both and we look forward tospeaking with you both again
soon.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
Thanks very much for having us on.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):
Thanks for having us on Brad Nice to meet you both.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode
of In the Dynamics Corner Chair,and thank you to our guests for
participating.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom, that is
D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, andyou can interact with them via

(01:16:35):
Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E.
Via Twitter, d-v-l-p-r-l-i-f-e.
You can also find me atmatalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot
I-O, and my Twitter handle ismatalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in the show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.

(01:16:56):
Thank you and take care.

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