November 22, 2024 • 24 mins
AI is stealing jobs. But that’s not the whole story. In this episode of Innovation Heroes, we explore the often-overlooked benefits of AI in the workplace.
While AI is automating tasks and changing job roles, it's also empowering employees, boosting creativity, learning, and unlocking their untapped potential. We speak with Geoff Wright, Global Solutions Owner at Mondelēz International, a global snack food brand leveraging AI to improve their employee experience.
Listen to the full episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Featuring: Geoff Wright, Global Solutions Owner at Mondelēz International
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Now, it doesn't matter whereyou are, like in society.
If you're around these tools, youcan now show people what you may not
have had the ability to in the past.
In the world of technology,heroes are everywhere.
They're overcoming disruption, deliveringsustainable outcomes, and fearlessly
(00:20):
forging the future to solve what's next.
Join me.
Ed McNamara, as we meet the peopleand businesses driving change in
our constantly disruptive world.
This is Innovation Heroes, apodcast brought to you by SHI.
Someone, somewhere is alwaystrying to steal your job.
(00:42):
Ever since the first person was paidto deliver a product or service, a
second person was there to scare theminto realizing that someone or some
thing was going to provide more of thatproduct cheaper or more efficiently
than the person who just did it.
AI is next in line.
AI is stealing jobs.
You've probably heard that before.
And just like every new technologybefore it, it's true, but
(01:06):
that's not the whole story.
AI is also empowering workers inways that would have been difficult
to predict even a few years ago.
So that begs the question, howcan a tool that's eliminating jobs
also be good for your employees?
Today, we're exploring the oftenoverlooked half of the artificial
intelligence debate, how AIsupports the most important
resource you have at your company.
(01:27):
The people who work therewithout directly replacing them.
AI tools can help employees upskill,innovate, enhance productivity,
streamline workflows, andoffer personalized assistance.
Employees can work smarter, faster,and more confidently than ever before.
The shift is transforming roles morethan simply replacing them, and leading
(01:48):
to new opportunities, all of which willhopefully improve employee satisfaction.
Here with me today is Jeffrey Wright.
Global Solutions owner ofGen AI and Digital Experience
with Mondelēz International.
We're going to talk about how Gen AI andcutting edge IT tools aren't the doomsday
device they've been made out to be.
They're doing more to improve employeeexperience and unlock new skills, all
(02:10):
while helping your businesses bottom line.
Jeff, welcome to Innovation Heroes.
It's great to see you again.
It's great to see you, Ed.
I'm excited for this opportunityto talk about nerdy stuff.
Awesome.
I am as well.
So we've talked about nerdy stuffbefore you were a speaker on a panel.
I was moderating at aconference just a few weeks ago.
Um, and after the panel, wegot to talking about gen AI.
(02:33):
How did you get into usinggen AI in the workplace?
My dad, again, I owe a lot to my dad.
My dad was in it.
So the S and P 500, everyone that'sfamiliar with that ticker, right?
Even in the early eighties, I hadmy first desktop, which was an IBM
with two five and a quarter floppydrives like old school, old school.
Okay.
So I was always, I was always aroundtechnology, but to be honest with
(02:54):
you, I was always like a peopleperson, like human by design.
I was talking about the humanelement, human by design.
We're always talking aboutIT and like, you cyborgs.
But I was always on like the organic sideof things, like the human side of things.
And interestingly enough, my dadwas always in that same space.
He was always around a lot of nerds.
(03:14):
But he always found himself in aspace like either managing the nerds
and, you know, he had these reallycool ideas around, um, you know, how
do you understand the experience?
And this is like, we're talking likein the nineties when people used to
still, I remember going to the office.
He used to, people used tostill smoke in the office.
Right.
And just 20 guys like creepby a window, just smoking.
Right.
And he said something to meonce, and I'll never forget.
I sat down and my dad said, Hey, hewas like, I want you to know this.
(03:39):
He's like, he would give a guymoney and he'd go, go get a
bunch of donuts, random donuts.
And my dad would come back, he'dput out the donuts to everybody
and be like, look, Jeff, he's like,here's how it's going to work.
The people that grab plain donuts,the old fashioned, he was like,
they're going to be the worst.
He's like the guys thatgrad, the Boston creams.
They're going to be loud, butthey're going to do their job.
(04:00):
And he goes, and any, and he goes,anybody that grabs anything in between,
they're going to be like, you know,like salt of the earth, but whatever.
And I sure as sure as hell, I saw,I saw these people go into this,
like the land room, the data center,wherever you want to call it.
And the guys that grad, the Bostoncreams really were, they were loud.
The people that grad, the plaindonuts were the first ones
that complained to my father.
And to this day, I look back at thatbecause I had that epiphany around.
(04:22):
There's something missing in this I.
T.
experience,
but
I got into I.
T.
I started managing big teams, butI never really focused on the I.
T.
side.
I always just focused on my team beinglike happy and like being well, right.
But it's interesting back inthe early 2000s, there was
this big disconnect where.
(04:43):
I always joke, like people werealways talking by the water cooler
saying like how much it sucked.
But then in the server room, peoplewere always like cheering on, like,
dude, we're doing a great job.
You know, we closed that, you know, it's,we closed 99 percent of the tickets.
I'm like, really?
But then you talk tolike the random person.
They're like, dude,you guys are the worst.
Right.
(05:04):
When I started getting more exposedto this idea of gen AI, like this is
when AI started to come into it, where.
AI could do a great jobanalyzing, like, the gaps.
And again, this is 2017, waybefore chat GPT was really big.
Like, all these things were poppin
Right.
And I started focusing on this experienceidea, that where I would say, like,
Okay, so AI can analyze all this data.
(05:25):
Data in a spreadsheet,and there's a huge gap.
There's something missing in the middle.
So I started kind of exploring aroundthis idea of like using, you know,
artificial intelligence, machine learningto map out exactly what my team was doing
and then what the people were saying.
Now we know it as employee sediment.
Which is a very, it's,which is the human element.
(05:46):
But then when I got this role atMondelēz, people that don't know
Mondelēz, I want to be like very, veryclear, we're Oreo, we're Sour Patch
Kid, we're Tate's, we're Cliff Bar,we're Triscuit's, we're Malamar's.
We're a huge company that's hyperfocused on customers, right?
We want to know when we do a Javachip Oreo that it makes you smile
(06:09):
just a little bit more like nextyear as we enhance that recipe.
And then I realized with this role,the idea of experience ties into
like the, the, the artificial or genAI piece of it, which is how do you
like supercharge or like turbo chargeeveryone's customer experience and how
do you Internally, that was my role.
(06:31):
Like you can, you know, mapout like employee sentiment.
Imagine if you could have, youknow, imagine any company out
there right now that has, you know,5, a hundred thousand employees.
Imagine if you could find everysingle person's, all 100, 000 people's
sentiment about the company, like,and then find a way to analyze that.
(06:52):
That makes it digestible.
That is what I do on a daily basis.
First and foremost, like you, you arein that, that, that great position
where you want to, um, use Gen AIto improve the employee experience.
You talked about employeesentiment, right?
Like how do you sellthat to, to management?
There's so many differentways you could go with that.
(07:12):
So my role when I first took it wasnot this, but when I go into a role,
Like I, I, I, if I find somethingthat I could kind of do, but that's
not necessarily necessarily my role,like I like to expand, like I, I, and
to this day, uh, there's plenty ofpeople, including my boss who says,
Jeff, you really make this job waymore difficult than it needs to be.
(07:34):
Like I'm kind of like in this,in this area where I measure
my success sometimes by smiles.
And I know that might sound cheesy tomost, but for me, if I can get an employee
to smile or laugh or understand that whatI'm trying to do in it is there to just.
I want people to do their jobs as bestas they can with the tools I provide so
(07:55):
that they can get done with work and gofishing or hang out in their backyard.
If you can get 40 hours worth ofwork, quote unquote, done in 10, 15,
by empowering those people to use GenAI, we want people that were probably
already maxed out or close to it,like most of us are, and give them
a little bit more breathing space.
(08:15):
So that they're happier employees.
I'm not the only guy, at least I pray.
I'm not the only person looking at,you know, the forget millennials, but
it's like, you know, gen Z, gen alpha,they want to be able to come to a job
where they feel that they're being takencare of to get done with what they need
to do so they can do their own thing.
It's, it's, it's very simple, but for,for me, Speech synthesis is probably
(08:40):
one of the most incredible, uh,use cases for the gen AI platforms.
Okay.
How are you guys using that?
So we use, we use a couple of products.
We use Synthesia.
We use DeepL, which is theunderpinnings for Synthesia.
Um, but for me, as globular as we are,we have every language you can imagine.
(09:02):
I'm sure it's public now.
We just purchased a big,big bakery in China.
You know, we have, uh, you know,every language, I'm almost positive
with every language we have, wehave people working for our company.
So in this day and age, you know,knowledge management, change
management, we're doing a bigSAP upgrade, huge SAP upgrade.
(09:22):
SAP is obviously German, butit crosses all over the place.
And interestingly enough.
Uh, again, public now SAP has standardizedall of their documentation and all of
their knowledge around the synthesiaplatform because they can do one article,
they can do it live, they can edit ita little bit and just press a button.
And now it advertises and posts in like100, I think it's 122 languages now.
(09:48):
I mean, that would have taken, I mean,Ed, that would have taken months, a year.
To have people verify languagesand find people that speak
all these different languages.
I mean, all this different,like dialects and Portuguese and
Brazilian Portuguese, all of them.
And for me, what betteruse case for gen AI?
(10:10):
And I get it like not to be like.
People like to, people are morecomfortable and more likely to
ingest what they're seeing rightthrough a video with somebody that
looks like them, sounds like them.
It's just, it's just, it's part of likepsychology, sociology, it's just human
nature, but it's nice when people seethat we're at least trying as it to
(10:33):
say, Hey, we know your primary, yourfirst language is not English, right?
You're Peruvian, you're Venezuelan.
Whatever your language is.
We have a platform thatcould at least try.
And I think that's all peoplewant to see is you trying.
To make them smile, to give them away to ingest that information easier.
(10:55):
I love the, the breaking down of bordersand kind of the automating of different
languages and clearly automation is, isthe number one benefit from, from gen AI.
You also have like largecreative groups, you know?
So in terms of, um, you know,how, how do you guys use gen
AI to enhance your creativity?
Like, what's an example of.
Like, how that works and how, youknow, that, that impacts the sense
(11:19):
of, of well being and fulfillment atwork, like, whether it's in a creative
position or, or, or working with one.
It's the creative process, and I, I don'tbelieve, you know, there's, there's plenty
of people that are too hard on themselveswhen they're like, Oh, I'm not, you know,
I'm not as creative, Jeff, you know, Idon't really, you know, really do that
stuff, or I'm not really good with ideas.
(11:40):
I, I believe that with Gen AI,like with, with large language
models, right, the LLMs.
Whichever one you're using, Gemini or,or, you know, Anthropic or chat GPT
it or co pilot, or for my, in my case,from the create super visual creative,
like Imogen and like, you know, Firefly.
(12:01):
But what a great way to say, tellme your idea around our products.
And I actually had a big conference,like a reform at my office where I just
brought up fire, like Firefly, likethe gen, the gen AI image generation.
And everybody first, you know,there was one person or two people
kind of like raising their hand.
They're like, well, what if like, youknow, there was like a, you know, a polar
(12:21):
bear eating a banana in outer space.
Right.
I'm like, awesome.
That's great.
By the end of like the meeting, everybodywas like trying to give me an idea, right?
Didn't matter if you were in marketing orfinance or like facilities, didn't matter
who you were at what level of the companypeople were starting to unlock their ideas
(12:43):
and whether they're visual or not, it'sawesome when you have people that aren't
normally in advertising or marketingcome to you with these ideas because.
Even if it's not the best idea, orlet's just say it's the worst idea.
Now you can visualize it and see it like,okay, now, first of all, polar bears
don't eat bananas or why is he on Jupiter?
(13:03):
And you're like, and it comesup and it's, it's, it's awesome
to see the reaction of the room.
I love big audiences because peopleare like, they also, and it comes
up and they're like, Oh, Right.
You can, you can all of a sudden seethis big audience and we had a hundred
something people just, you have oneperson come up with a great idea
that they can't necessarily paint orenvision it plops it up on this big
(13:26):
overhead or a presentation screen.
And the entire room now is like, Ohmy God, that's, I, that's so cool.
And that is an untapped space.
That is an untapped part of people'sminds that never we had access to
until this platform to say, Hey,you know, that guy from facilities.
Yeah.
The guy that like, like, you know,refills the vending machine with pencils.
(13:47):
He's the one that came up with that idea.
I forgot that movie.
What's the, um, the Bostonjanitor that like, Oh, good.
Well,
hunting,
good will hunt.
Right.
It's kind of like, everybody can begoodwill hunting because now it doesn't
matter where you are, like in society.
If you're around these tools, youcan now show people what you may not
(14:12):
have had the ability to in the past.
Innovation Heroes is proudly producedby SHI, a leading global IT solutions
provider dedicated to making life simplerfor business and IT professionals.
For over 30 years, we've bridgedthe gap between digital strategy
and execution, delivering cuttingedge technology and services to
(14:32):
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Whether you're navigating the cloud orthe web, Strengthening cybersecurity
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SHI is here to help.
To learn more, visit hi.com/solve.
What's next?
That's s i.com/solve.
What's next To embrace the futurewith stress-free, scalable solutions
(14:52):
that you and your people will love.
So
we talked about communications, wetalked about automation, and then
then learning and development.
Um, you know, in, in terms of.
Do you have an example of how you'reusing Gen AI at Mondelēz to, to, to
do, uh, learning development, like,even at a granular level, it doesn't
even have to be modular, but, but evengranular on, on an everyday basis?
(15:15):
So I have gotten into a habit.
If you and I were going to have like asession around like, Hey Jeff, I usually
use Adobe Acrobat, or I'm trying to doa PDF and I do signatures and I'm trying
to do this, I'm trying to do that.
And you know, how does it tie into teams?
I wake up every morning sometimes to.
A dozen, two dozen teams chats.
You know, I have 63 applications.
(15:37):
I try to support here.
Usually it's something around aspecific platform or application.
And I'll find one of those peopleand I'll say, Hey man, do you have
a minute to show me what's going on?
Because like I had seven otherpeople complain that this isn't
working the way it's supposed to.
I always tell them like, Hey,do you mind if I record this?
Sure.
I record it and I start creating videosand content around those items that are
(15:57):
having issues around the world that I see.
And what I have seen is.
A gradual reduction in the amountof people that ping me every morning
for stuff that's not working.
I mean, I own a platform that tellsme how many times people have hard
powered off their machine, right?
I have a platform that tells me howoften people have like done a hard
reset or like a reboot or a crash.
And that is, that is the challenge again.
(16:20):
And thank God Jenny is helping.
That's the challenge.
How do you know what somebody'sexperiencing, like at their house,
at their home, using the technologystack we've given them, how do
you know how to make it betterfor them without them telling you?
Because if somebody's alreadysaying like, Jeff, my laptop keeps
(16:42):
catching on fire, you've lost.
But we have the ability to atleast understand a little bit from
a technology standpoint on howgood or gooder your experience is.
And then we have pop ups in sedimentthat can go up and say, Hey, Ed, we
noticed your, uh, Microsoft Excelcrash like 900 times last week.
(17:05):
Is that like, is that, is that cool?
Are you cool with that?
And nine out of 10, people will say.
It's not cool.
So, but you know, monitoring thatbehavior and it really takes, you
know, uh, you have to, you have tocollect a massive amount of information
from, you know, in your case, youknow, tens of thousands of employees.
Right.
So, um, like how aboutspeaking to the ethics of it?
(17:28):
You know, what, what ethical issues doyou see with using, you know, Jenna AI
in the workplace to, to monitor likeeither sentiment or, or, or behavior,
like what kind of governance needsto be in place to make sure that.
Um, it, it doesn't turn into likea, kind of a big brother scenario.
Yeah.
You know, German works council,GDPR, we do deal with that.
(17:49):
And again, the data collecting,I mean, it's violent.
A lot of it's voluntary.
The end points itself, just likein tune or, or, um, any other
endpoint monitoring system.
Right.
There's some things that you have tolike, you know, we don't track location.
Right.
We don't do a lot of that,that stuff like that.
And even if we, um, we haveto find by office, right.
There's, we have ways, wehave like safeguards in place.
Like the German worstcouncil, they go, no.
(18:10):
And then like GDPR, there'scertain things you could do, but,
um, the employee sentiment isit's a hundred percent voluntary.
You get a thing that says, you know,something like, you know, hi, Ed.
Um, what is your current experience withthe technology stack provided to you?
And here's the best part.
If you go, it's like, youknow, option one, it's awesome.
Thank you.
Bye.
There's nothing else Iwant to hear from you.
(18:31):
I mean, there's I personallywould want more around that.
Like, Hey, what are we doing good?
If you say not awesome, you know, itkind of, it kind of pours out into a,
you know, is it your physical hardware?
Is it your physical software?
Is it like access?
Is it printing?
Is it, you know, whatever, because Iremember how many people got hammered
(18:53):
around teams performance during COVID.
And even now, honestly, becausethey're still working from home.
How many people that were like, Oh my God,my Microsoft teams is running horribly.
Video is choppy.
My audio is choppy.
And then you, and then you go,okay, is that a team's issue?
Well, it turns out we hadsome pretty, I was fortunate.
(19:13):
We had some cool, we had some cooltools in place where I could go like,
Hey man, did you know your networkis being hammered by Xbox game pass
and Netflix and whatever, like,are your kids like, Oh yeah, yeah,
my kids, my wife, everyone's home.
Yeah.
And then you could even likestress test the network with some
of the tools we have to be like,yeah, this isn't a team's issue.
This is a internet provider issue.
(19:34):
It was.
Such an empowering moment for me togo, Hey, it's not Microsoft teams.
It's not Salesforce.
It's not, it's noteverything you think it is.
It's not
the example you just described.
There was a perfect intersectionof something that is.
You know going to improve employeesatisfaction is also good for
(19:57):
the productivity in the bottomline of the company, right?
So I think you know for whatyour test with doing and how
do you determine, you know?
Hey, this is great when these two thingsintersect where we just made people
feel better about their either abilityto do their job and on the other side
management's thrilled because You know,we, we see improvement to the bottom line.
(20:19):
Like, is that measurable
again?
Sentiment is, is, is King.
Um, Forrester and Gartner justhad like the top four things for
it to focus on are not digitalexperience, but number five is.
So it's like right there, right?
It is right there.
And I have to imagine it's, you know,in another decade, how your employee
(20:42):
feels, how you are treating them to gettheir work done, that you're asking of
them for a reasonable salary, right?
So that they can get donewith what they need to do to
help society and the business.
To get back to doing what theylove outside of the business is
going to be, I believe number one,I can't imagine, you know, we're
(21:02):
all dealing with the same stuff.
I have to, I mean, I talk topeople all around the world.
It's not, it's not unique tothe U S it's, it's cultures.
It's younger generations, even inthe generations that are really
hardcore about working harderand doing more stuff, right?
Younger generations.
(21:23):
They, they have a different, they havea different concept of what it means
to be employed and what it means tobe working for a great company, right?
It used to be like, Oh, I workedat IBM and I got a pension and I
can work a thousand years here.
And like they, you know, they gaveme free coffee in the morning.
That's not going to cut it anymore.
But like the idea of like,how do you protect the worker?
(21:46):
And it's like, again, Jenny, Ilike, Oh, it's going to take my job.
Right.
We talked about how it's going to take.
Yeah.
Jobs are going like sincethe dawn of time, right.
The guy that used to like, youknow, carry branches, right.
Oh, the wheel was invented.
Yeah.
There's your job, buddy.
You can't carry twigs anymore.
Cause we have a cart with wheels.
(22:07):
Right.
It evolves, but you canprotect that worker.
And protect worker protection ishow you ensure that they are happy.
You focus on them to say, look, Hey,yeah, your role, you know, you know,
your role refilling the vendingmachines is now being taken over
by gen AI and robots and robotics.
(22:27):
Sorry.
But on the other hand, The, thesupply chain, the logistic between
those two has not evolved yet.
So it's not always, it's not alwayslike, Oh, well I need to look, I need
to upskill and learn how to like,you know, fly, you know, uh, a jet.
No, but you can sidestep, right?
You can sidestep and say, look, Iunderstand that your role might be, might
(22:50):
evolve and robotics and Jenny, I mighttake that, but there's plenty of stuff
either upstream or downstream from that.
Little chunk in the workflow thatyou can upskill and learn and do
or try something different, right?
Again, only you know, only you havethe power but it's like Just change
your perception, change your mindset,try to be positive around these
(23:13):
things that can help you change.
We are at, uh, at time, as they say.
Uh, just wanted to thank you somuch again for, for being here.
For listeners interested in learningmore about, about you or would
like to reach out to you directly.
What's, what's the best place to find you?
How do you, how do youlike when people reach out?
LinkedIn profile with AI now, so.
So, but yeah, just ping me.
I get a lot of peoplethat ping me on LinkedIn.
(23:35):
I, and I would love to have conversationswith other people that have ideas
around this struggle with it, oreven like nerd out more with it.
Because I, I tell people allthe time, it's skill stacks.
I'm like the biggest moron whenit comes to certain things.
Right.
So like, but, but when it comesto AI, I'm okay, but there's
plenty of people that know more.
Um, I know how to makea pretty good omelet.
(23:55):
The secret is regard.
Awesome.
Thank you for that.
Give it a shot tomorrow.
We'll work on the cheese in there.
Boom.
Awesome.
Well, Jeff, thank you so much.
AI will replace jobs, butit won't replace workers.
In fact, it can improvethe employee experience.
It takes repetitive and time consumingtasks off their plate, enhances
(24:16):
creativity, boost learning anddevelopment, all while helping your
company make better strategic decisions.
A big thank you to Jeff Wright forsharing his insights and expertise.
Remember, the decision isn't investingin AI or investing in your workers.
Investing in AI is aninvestment in your employees.
Until next time, keep innovating,stay ahead of the curve.
(24:37):
For Innovation Heroes andSHI, I'm Ed McNamara, and I'll
see you again in two weeks.
Now, it doesn't matter whereyou are, like in society.
If you're around these tools, youcan now show people what you may not
have had the ability to in the past.
In the world of technology,heroes are everywhere.
They're overcoming disruption, deliveringsustainable outcomes, and fearlessly
(00:20):
forging the future to solve what's next.
Join me.
Ed McNamara, as we meet the peopleand businesses driving change in
our constantly disruptive world.
This is Innovation Heroes, apodcast brought to you by SHI.
Someone, somewhere is alwaystrying to steal your job.
(00:42):
Ever since the first person was paidto deliver a product or service, a
second person was there to scare theminto realizing that someone or some
thing was going to provide more of thatproduct cheaper or more efficiently
than the person who just did it.
AI is next in line.
AI is stealing jobs.
You've probably heard that before.
And just like every new technologybefore it, it's true, but
(01:06):
that's not the whole story.
AI is also empowering workers inways that would have been difficult
to predict even a few years ago.
So that begs the question, howcan a tool that's eliminating jobs
also be good for your employees?
Today, we're exploring the oftenoverlooked half of the artificial
intelligence debate, how AIsupports the most important
resource you have at your company.
(01:27):
The people who work therewithout directly replacing them.
AI tools can help employees upskill,innovate, enhance productivity,
streamline workflows, andoffer personalized assistance.
Employees can work smarter, faster,and more confidently than ever before.
The shift is transforming roles morethan simply replacing them, and leading
(01:48):
to new opportunities, all of which willhopefully improve employee satisfaction.
Here with me today is Jeffrey Wright.
Global Solutions owner ofGen AI and Digital Experience
with Mondelēz International.
We're going to talk about how Gen AI andcutting edge IT tools aren't the doomsday
device they've been made out to be.
They're doing more to improve employeeexperience and unlock new skills, all
(02:10):
while helping your businesses bottom line.
Jeff, welcome to Innovation Heroes.
It's great to see you again.
It's great to see you, Ed.
I'm excited for this opportunityto talk about nerdy stuff.
Awesome.
I am as well.
So we've talked about nerdy stuffbefore you were a speaker on a panel.
I was moderating at aconference just a few weeks ago.
Um, and after the panel, wegot to talking about gen AI.
(02:33):
How did you get into usinggen AI in the workplace?
My dad, again, I owe a lot to my dad.
My dad was in it.
So the S and P 500, everyone that'sfamiliar with that ticker, right?
Even in the early eighties, I hadmy first desktop, which was an IBM
with two five and a quarter floppydrives like old school, old school.
Okay.
So I was always, I was always aroundtechnology, but to be honest with
(02:54):
you, I was always like a peopleperson, like human by design.
I was talking about the humanelement, human by design.
We're always talking aboutIT and like, you cyborgs.
But I was always on like the organic sideof things, like the human side of things.
And interestingly enough, my dadwas always in that same space.
He was always around a lot of nerds.
(03:14):
But he always found himself in aspace like either managing the nerds
and, you know, he had these reallycool ideas around, um, you know, how
do you understand the experience?
And this is like, we're talking likein the nineties when people used to
still, I remember going to the office.
He used to, people used tostill smoke in the office.
Right.
And just 20 guys like creepby a window, just smoking.
Right.
And he said something to meonce, and I'll never forget.
I sat down and my dad said, Hey, hewas like, I want you to know this.
(03:39):
He's like, he would give a guymoney and he'd go, go get a
bunch of donuts, random donuts.
And my dad would come back, he'dput out the donuts to everybody
and be like, look, Jeff, he's like,here's how it's going to work.
The people that grab plain donuts,the old fashioned, he was like,
they're going to be the worst.
He's like the guys thatgrad, the Boston creams.
They're going to be loud, butthey're going to do their job.
(04:00):
And he goes, and any, and he goes,anybody that grabs anything in between,
they're going to be like, you know,like salt of the earth, but whatever.
And I sure as sure as hell, I saw,I saw these people go into this,
like the land room, the data center,wherever you want to call it.
And the guys that grad, the Bostoncreams really were, they were loud.
The people that grad, the plaindonuts were the first ones
that complained to my father.
And to this day, I look back at thatbecause I had that epiphany around.
(04:22):
There's something missing in this I.
T.
experience,
but
I got into I.
T.
I started managing big teams, butI never really focused on the I.
T.
side.
I always just focused on my team beinglike happy and like being well, right.
But it's interesting back inthe early 2000s, there was
this big disconnect where.
(04:43):
I always joke, like people werealways talking by the water cooler
saying like how much it sucked.
But then in the server room, peoplewere always like cheering on, like,
dude, we're doing a great job.
You know, we closed that, you know, it's,we closed 99 percent of the tickets.
I'm like, really?
But then you talk tolike the random person.
They're like, dude,you guys are the worst.
Right.
(05:04):
When I started getting more exposedto this idea of gen AI, like this is
when AI started to come into it, where.
AI could do a great jobanalyzing, like, the gaps.
And again, this is 2017, waybefore chat GPT was really big.
Like, all these things were poppin
Right.
And I started focusing on this experienceidea, that where I would say, like,
Okay, so AI can analyze all this data.
(05:25):
Data in a spreadsheet,and there's a huge gap.
There's something missing in the middle.
So I started kind of exploring aroundthis idea of like using, you know,
artificial intelligence, machine learningto map out exactly what my team was doing
and then what the people were saying.
Now we know it as employee sediment.
Which is a very, it's,which is the human element.
(05:46):
But then when I got this role atMondelēz, people that don't know
Mondelēz, I want to be like very, veryclear, we're Oreo, we're Sour Patch
Kid, we're Tate's, we're Cliff Bar,we're Triscuit's, we're Malamar's.
We're a huge company that's hyperfocused on customers, right?
We want to know when we do a Javachip Oreo that it makes you smile
(06:09):
just a little bit more like nextyear as we enhance that recipe.
And then I realized with this role,the idea of experience ties into
like the, the, the artificial or genAI piece of it, which is how do you
like supercharge or like turbo chargeeveryone's customer experience and how
do you Internally, that was my role.
(06:31):
Like you can, you know, mapout like employee sentiment.
Imagine if you could have, youknow, imagine any company out
there right now that has, you know,5, a hundred thousand employees.
Imagine if you could find everysingle person's, all 100, 000 people's
sentiment about the company, like,and then find a way to analyze that.
(06:52):
That makes it digestible.
That is what I do on a daily basis.
First and foremost, like you, you arein that, that, that great position
where you want to, um, use Gen AIto improve the employee experience.
You talked about employeesentiment, right?
Like how do you sellthat to, to management?
There's so many differentways you could go with that.
(07:12):
So my role when I first took it wasnot this, but when I go into a role,
Like I, I, I, if I find somethingthat I could kind of do, but that's
not necessarily necessarily my role,like I like to expand, like I, I, and
to this day, uh, there's plenty ofpeople, including my boss who says,
Jeff, you really make this job waymore difficult than it needs to be.
(07:34):
Like I'm kind of like in this,in this area where I measure
my success sometimes by smiles.
And I know that might sound cheesy tomost, but for me, if I can get an employee
to smile or laugh or understand that whatI'm trying to do in it is there to just.
I want people to do their jobs as bestas they can with the tools I provide so
(07:55):
that they can get done with work and gofishing or hang out in their backyard.
If you can get 40 hours worth ofwork, quote unquote, done in 10, 15,
by empowering those people to use GenAI, we want people that were probably
already maxed out or close to it,like most of us are, and give them
a little bit more breathing space.
(08:15):
So that they're happier employees.
I'm not the only guy, at least I pray.
I'm not the only person looking at,you know, the forget millennials, but
it's like, you know, gen Z, gen alpha,they want to be able to come to a job
where they feel that they're being takencare of to get done with what they need
to do so they can do their own thing.
It's, it's, it's very simple, but for,for me, Speech synthesis is probably
(08:40):
one of the most incredible, uh,use cases for the gen AI platforms.
Okay.
How are you guys using that?
So we use, we use a couple of products.
We use Synthesia.
We use DeepL, which is theunderpinnings for Synthesia.
Um, but for me, as globular as we are,we have every language you can imagine.
(09:02):
I'm sure it's public now.
We just purchased a big,big bakery in China.
You know, we have, uh, you know,every language, I'm almost positive
with every language we have, wehave people working for our company.
So in this day and age, you know,knowledge management, change
management, we're doing a bigSAP upgrade, huge SAP upgrade.
(09:22):
SAP is obviously German, butit crosses all over the place.
And interestingly enough.
Uh, again, public now SAP has standardizedall of their documentation and all of
their knowledge around the synthesiaplatform because they can do one article,
they can do it live, they can edit ita little bit and just press a button.
And now it advertises and posts in like100, I think it's 122 languages now.
(09:48):
I mean, that would have taken, I mean,Ed, that would have taken months, a year.
To have people verify languagesand find people that speak
all these different languages.
I mean, all this different,like dialects and Portuguese and
Brazilian Portuguese, all of them.
And for me, what betteruse case for gen AI?
(10:10):
And I get it like not to be like.
People like to, people are morecomfortable and more likely to
ingest what they're seeing rightthrough a video with somebody that
looks like them, sounds like them.
It's just, it's just, it's part of likepsychology, sociology, it's just human
nature, but it's nice when people seethat we're at least trying as it to
(10:33):
say, Hey, we know your primary, yourfirst language is not English, right?
You're Peruvian, you're Venezuelan.
Whatever your language is.
We have a platform thatcould at least try.
And I think that's all peoplewant to see is you trying.
To make them smile, to give them away to ingest that information easier.
(10:55):
I love the, the breaking down of bordersand kind of the automating of different
languages and clearly automation is, isthe number one benefit from, from gen AI.
You also have like largecreative groups, you know?
So in terms of, um, you know,how, how do you guys use gen
AI to enhance your creativity?
Like, what's an example of.
Like, how that works and how, youknow, that, that impacts the sense
(11:19):
of, of well being and fulfillment atwork, like, whether it's in a creative
position or, or, or working with one.
It's the creative process, and I, I don'tbelieve, you know, there's, there's plenty
of people that are too hard on themselveswhen they're like, Oh, I'm not, you know,
I'm not as creative, Jeff, you know, Idon't really, you know, really do that
stuff, or I'm not really good with ideas.
(11:40):
I, I believe that with Gen AI,like with, with large language
models, right, the LLMs.
Whichever one you're using, Gemini or,or, you know, Anthropic or chat GPT
it or co pilot, or for my, in my case,from the create super visual creative,
like Imogen and like, you know, Firefly.
(12:01):
But what a great way to say, tellme your idea around our products.
And I actually had a big conference,like a reform at my office where I just
brought up fire, like Firefly, likethe gen, the gen AI image generation.
And everybody first, you know,there was one person or two people
kind of like raising their hand.
They're like, well, what if like, youknow, there was like a, you know, a polar
(12:21):
bear eating a banana in outer space.
Right.
I'm like, awesome.
That's great.
By the end of like the meeting, everybodywas like trying to give me an idea, right?
Didn't matter if you were in marketing orfinance or like facilities, didn't matter
who you were at what level of the companypeople were starting to unlock their ideas
(12:43):
and whether they're visual or not, it'sawesome when you have people that aren't
normally in advertising or marketingcome to you with these ideas because.
Even if it's not the best idea, orlet's just say it's the worst idea.
Now you can visualize it and see it like,okay, now, first of all, polar bears
don't eat bananas or why is he on Jupiter?
(13:03):
And you're like, and it comesup and it's, it's, it's awesome
to see the reaction of the room.
I love big audiences because peopleare like, they also, and it comes
up and they're like, Oh, Right.
You can, you can all of a sudden seethis big audience and we had a hundred
something people just, you have oneperson come up with a great idea
that they can't necessarily paint orenvision it plops it up on this big
(13:26):
overhead or a presentation screen.
And the entire room now is like, Ohmy God, that's, I, that's so cool.
And that is an untapped space.
That is an untapped part of people'sminds that never we had access to
until this platform to say, Hey,you know, that guy from facilities.
Yeah.
The guy that like, like, you know,refills the vending machine with pencils.
(13:47):
He's the one that came up with that idea.
I forgot that movie.
What's the, um, the Bostonjanitor that like, Oh, good.
Well,
hunting,
good will hunt.
Right.
It's kind of like, everybody can begoodwill hunting because now it doesn't
matter where you are, like in society.
If you're around these tools, youcan now show people what you may not
(14:12):
have had the ability to in the past.
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that you and your people will love.
So
we talked about communications, wetalked about automation, and then
then learning and development.
Um, you know, in, in terms of.
Do you have an example of how you'reusing Gen AI at Mondelēz to, to, to
do, uh, learning development, like,even at a granular level, it doesn't
even have to be modular, but, but evengranular on, on an everyday basis?
(15:15):
So I have gotten into a habit.
If you and I were going to have like asession around like, Hey Jeff, I usually
use Adobe Acrobat, or I'm trying to doa PDF and I do signatures and I'm trying
to do this, I'm trying to do that.
And you know, how does it tie into teams?
I wake up every morning sometimes to.
A dozen, two dozen teams chats.
You know, I have 63 applications.
(15:37):
I try to support here.
Usually it's something around aspecific platform or application.
And I'll find one of those peopleand I'll say, Hey man, do you have
a minute to show me what's going on?
Because like I had seven otherpeople complain that this isn't
working the way it's supposed to.
I always tell them like, Hey,do you mind if I record this?
Sure.
I record it and I start creating videosand content around those items that are
(15:57):
having issues around the world that I see.
And what I have seen is.
A gradual reduction in the amountof people that ping me every morning
for stuff that's not working.
I mean, I own a platform that tellsme how many times people have hard
powered off their machine, right?
I have a platform that tells me howoften people have like done a hard
reset or like a reboot or a crash.
And that is, that is the challenge again.
(16:20):
And thank God Jenny is helping.
That's the challenge.
How do you know what somebody'sexperiencing, like at their house,
at their home, using the technologystack we've given them, how do
you know how to make it betterfor them without them telling you?
Because if somebody's alreadysaying like, Jeff, my laptop keeps
(16:42):
catching on fire, you've lost.
But we have the ability to atleast understand a little bit from
a technology standpoint on howgood or gooder your experience is.
And then we have pop ups in sedimentthat can go up and say, Hey, Ed, we
noticed your, uh, Microsoft Excelcrash like 900 times last week.
(17:05):
Is that like, is that, is that cool?
Are you cool with that?
And nine out of 10, people will say.
It's not cool.
So, but you know, monitoring thatbehavior and it really takes, you
know, uh, you have to, you have tocollect a massive amount of information
from, you know, in your case, youknow, tens of thousands of employees.
Right.
So, um, like how aboutspeaking to the ethics of it?
(17:28):
You know, what, what ethical issues doyou see with using, you know, Jenna AI
in the workplace to, to monitor likeeither sentiment or, or, or behavior,
like what kind of governance needsto be in place to make sure that.
Um, it, it doesn't turn into likea, kind of a big brother scenario.
Yeah.
You know, German works council,GDPR, we do deal with that.
(17:49):
And again, the data collecting,I mean, it's violent.
A lot of it's voluntary.
The end points itself, just likein tune or, or, um, any other
endpoint monitoring system.
Right.
There's some things that you have tolike, you know, we don't track location.
Right.
We don't do a lot of that,that stuff like that.
And even if we, um, we haveto find by office, right.
There's, we have ways, wehave like safeguards in place.
Like the German worstcouncil, they go, no.
(18:10):
And then like GDPR, there'scertain things you could do, but,
um, the employee sentiment isit's a hundred percent voluntary.
You get a thing that says, you know,something like, you know, hi, Ed.
Um, what is your current experience withthe technology stack provided to you?
And here's the best part.
If you go, it's like, youknow, option one, it's awesome.
Thank you.
Bye.
There's nothing else Iwant to hear from you.
(18:31):
I mean, there's I personallywould want more around that.
Like, Hey, what are we doing good?
If you say not awesome, you know, itkind of, it kind of pours out into a,
you know, is it your physical hardware?
Is it your physical software?
Is it like access?
Is it printing?
Is it, you know, whatever, because Iremember how many people got hammered
(18:53):
around teams performance during COVID.
And even now, honestly, becausethey're still working from home.
How many people that were like, Oh my God,my Microsoft teams is running horribly.
Video is choppy.
My audio is choppy.
And then you, and then you go,okay, is that a team's issue?
Well, it turns out we hadsome pretty, I was fortunate.
(19:13):
We had some cool, we had some cooltools in place where I could go like,
Hey man, did you know your networkis being hammered by Xbox game pass
and Netflix and whatever, like,are your kids like, Oh yeah, yeah,
my kids, my wife, everyone's home.
Yeah.
And then you could even likestress test the network with some
of the tools we have to be like,yeah, this isn't a team's issue.
This is a internet provider issue.
(19:34):
It was.
Such an empowering moment for me togo, Hey, it's not Microsoft teams.
It's not Salesforce.
It's not, it's noteverything you think it is.
It's not
the example you just described.
There was a perfect intersectionof something that is.
You know going to improve employeesatisfaction is also good for
(19:57):
the productivity in the bottomline of the company, right?
So I think you know for whatyour test with doing and how
do you determine, you know?
Hey, this is great when these two thingsintersect where we just made people
feel better about their either abilityto do their job and on the other side
management's thrilled because You know,we, we see improvement to the bottom line.
(20:19):
Like, is that measurable
again?
Sentiment is, is, is King.
Um, Forrester and Gartner justhad like the top four things for
it to focus on are not digitalexperience, but number five is.
So it's like right there, right?
It is right there.
And I have to imagine it's, you know,in another decade, how your employee
(20:42):
feels, how you are treating them to gettheir work done, that you're asking of
them for a reasonable salary, right?
So that they can get donewith what they need to do to
help society and the business.
To get back to doing what theylove outside of the business is
going to be, I believe number one,I can't imagine, you know, we're
(21:02):
all dealing with the same stuff.
I have to, I mean, I talk topeople all around the world.
It's not, it's not unique tothe U S it's, it's cultures.
It's younger generations, even inthe generations that are really
hardcore about working harderand doing more stuff, right?
Younger generations.
(21:23):
They, they have a different, they havea different concept of what it means
to be employed and what it means tobe working for a great company, right?
It used to be like, Oh, I workedat IBM and I got a pension and I
can work a thousand years here.
And like they, you know, they gaveme free coffee in the morning.
That's not going to cut it anymore.
But like the idea of like,how do you protect the worker?
(21:46):
And it's like, again, Jenny, Ilike, Oh, it's going to take my job.
Right.
We talked about how it's going to take.
Yeah.
Jobs are going like sincethe dawn of time, right.
The guy that used to like, youknow, carry branches, right.
Oh, the wheel was invented.
Yeah.
There's your job, buddy.
You can't carry twigs anymore.
Cause we have a cart with wheels.
(22:07):
Right.
It evolves, but you canprotect that worker.
And protect worker protection ishow you ensure that they are happy.
You focus on them to say, look, Hey,yeah, your role, you know, you know,
your role refilling the vendingmachines is now being taken over
by gen AI and robots and robotics.
(22:27):
Sorry.
But on the other hand, The, thesupply chain, the logistic between
those two has not evolved yet.
So it's not always, it's not alwayslike, Oh, well I need to look, I need
to upskill and learn how to like,you know, fly, you know, uh, a jet.
No, but you can sidestep, right?
You can sidestep and say, look, Iunderstand that your role might be, might
(22:50):
evolve and robotics and Jenny, I mighttake that, but there's plenty of stuff
either upstream or downstream from that.
Little chunk in the workflow thatyou can upskill and learn and do
or try something different, right?
Again, only you know, only you havethe power but it's like Just change
your perception, change your mindset,try to be positive around these
(23:13):
things that can help you change.
We are at, uh, at time, as they say.
Uh, just wanted to thank you somuch again for, for being here.
For listeners interested in learningmore about, about you or would
like to reach out to you directly.
What's, what's the best place to find you?
How do you, how do youlike when people reach out?
LinkedIn profile with AI now, so.
So, but yeah, just ping me.
I get a lot of peoplethat ping me on LinkedIn.
(23:35):
I, and I would love to have conversationswith other people that have ideas
around this struggle with it, oreven like nerd out more with it.
Because I, I tell people allthe time, it's skill stacks.
I'm like the biggest moron whenit comes to certain things.
Right.
So like, but, but when it comesto AI, I'm okay, but there's
plenty of people that know more.
Um, I know how to makea pretty good omelet.
(23:55):
The secret is regard.
Awesome.
Thank you for that.
Give it a shot tomorrow.
We'll work on the cheese in there.
Boom.
Awesome.
Well, Jeff, thank you so much.
AI will replace jobs, butit won't replace workers.
In fact, it can improvethe employee experience.
It takes repetitive and time consumingtasks off their plate, enhances
(24:16):
creativity, boost learning anddevelopment, all while helping your
company make better strategic decisions.
A big thank you to Jeff Wright forsharing his insights and expertise.
Remember, the decision isn't investingin AI or investing in your workers.
Investing in AI is aninvestment in your employees.
Until next time, keep innovating,stay ahead of the curve.
(24:37):
For Innovation Heroes andSHI, I'm Ed McNamara, and I'll
see you again in two weeks.
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