Human Assets over Human Resources: Enabling a People First Society

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kelly: This week, I’m joined by Jay Latta. Jay is an emerging technology strategist with over 35 years of experience, focused on industrial and enterprise IT and innovation. He has a passion for analyzing complex technologies and systems, clearly defining actionable insights and helping the C-suite better implement effective technology solutions.

Jay is now developing open networks like PANAFRIN or EERIC. And building partnerships to support emerging technology markets, better enabling innovation and maximizing the benefit to all involved. So excited to have you here today, Jay. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.

Jay: Thank you for the invitation. Big pleasure.

Kelly: I’d love to hear a little bit more about your journey. What led you to do this work today?

Jay: It’s my curiosity. I have a vision of a future where I would like to live in.  I [00:01:00] try to do everything possible simply to make this future happen.

Kelly:  Has that vision changed over time? When did you start to think about the future in this way?

 Jay: Well of course being a little boy growing up and so on, I had several dreams, like for example, becoming an astronaut. So this is one really important part of this vision. But the thing is that the general vision, being in a world that is equal. Being in a world where learning, gaining knowledge is one of the most important things. That the humans can focus on what they are best in not doing some kind of, sorry to say, bullshit work, but really to do something meaningful.

Everyone has a passion. We just need to figure out what is our passion to be the best in it. It doesn’t matter if you simply change this passion after two years, three years when it’s simple enough that you do something different. So this is [00:02:00] somehow this way, too that became clear and clear this vision became sharper and I’ve seen through my whole life corporate life and so on, we are figuring out what we don’t want to do. And your own purpose, your own way, is becoming clearer and clearer so that you really can see, okay, this is what I want to focus on. So my why, my vision, has not changed. It’s simply became with more substance.

Kelly: Someone said to me yesterday on a call that passion comes after experiences.

Jay: I would say it goes hand in hand. Sometimes you develop a passion and you’ve never tried it out. Of course you learn as soon you experience it and  look, everything what we are doing is learning. This is one of the most important skills.  Simply stay curious, learning all the time that it’s not [00:03:00] a burden, that you don’t simply are spit out of the school, and then it’s finished you work until you retire and die.

In fact, it’s a journey. It’s really, you fight. You are interested into something.

Kelly:  How do you find that thing? Like for people that are listening?  There were some times in my younger years that if someone had asked me, what are you passionate about? What do you love? I don’t think I could have answered them.

Jay: I’m pretty sure you would have been able to answer it. Simply think about it. I mean, this journey starts as soon we start thinking while we are playing. One important thing is for example, that as children, we are having all of these skills already. We are able to think in an exponential way when we are playing, we are multitasking able to do multitasking.

We are able to see things from different perspectives. Mostly [00:04:00] as soon we enter into the educational system, this is beaten out of our heads. We need to go linear. We need to develop into this straight thing, do your stuff, do not change the direction as soon you change the direction. And in Germany in Europe, it’s harder because there is no second chance.

In the US, you are more solution oriented. We here, we are problem oriented. So as soon you fail, you are loser. You will never get a second chance. So we need to know who is guilty. Hang him, hang him higher. And I never felt comfortable with this because if you make a mistake, an error, or whatever. If it fails, Hey, you’ve discovered a way how not to do it. What’s wrong with it?

Even if you fail 2, 3, 4, 5 times. Okay. As long you burn your own hands it’s okay. But that there is no [00:05:00] perfect way. There is no linear way. This is a completely wrong understanding. And this came into the whole industrialization because where did industrialization started? It was in the United Kingdom, in the empire, in the glorious empire.

So when they have built all of these plants and so on, and the only people that were able to work in these plants were farmers. Farmers that we’re not busy on their land to do something. So some kind of unemployed, they went into these facilities to work there, but they were unreliable because farming in the past times was more or less.

It was not a competition you’ve worked until it was enough. And then you focused on different things. It mentioned something like this in a heavy industry. When the people simply say, oh fine, I made my money for the rest of the month. I’m going cold. You would not do [00:06:00] anything. So we needed structures.

These structures came from the military. These hierarchies hierarchies became a right now with more and more individualization, completely toxic. You are reporting. And especially in Germany, we love our hierarchies. We love our processes. This is how we are breathing. This is really the most important thing.

We understand each other as small gears in a huge machine where you just need the strong, cleaver, and a bit of oil to keep it running. And we are educated that we are so small gears, so unimportant that if we break the machine, we’ll continue working. This is wrong. It’s completely wrong because the more we are doing office work in the past on an assembly line, you became an expert to do one specific [00:07:00] thing.

Now with more flexibility, the people started to realize, Hey. I don’t need the assembly line. The assembly line needs me. And the younger these generations become, the more they are curious about possibilities, about opportunities. They don’t go into a job to stay in a corporate for the next 35, 40 years. No, maybe after one and a half, two years, they simply go somewhere else because they are curious.

And here it’s really to break out of this linear thinking out of this “you need your career to marry, have children, build a house,” whatever all of this is nonsense. It does not serve our main human need, which is to stay curious. To be creative.

And I see here as a huge enabler, for [00:08:00] example, artificial intelligence, that it can really through RPA, robotic process, automatization, cognitive processes, automate all of this stuff to enable us to minimize our own nonsense work, this recurring soft sending reports out and whatever the pandemic showed us very clear, that we don’t need the management to observe us.

In Germany, the management is called Geschäftsleitung. Translate it. The one who is sitting in front of you, mostly sitting in front of your way. And you see through these hierarchies. When we are at home, there is no guy who simply observes you, if you are fulfilling your whatever, and doesn’t give you addition. Hey Jay, do you have additional capacity? Hell no.

And when I talk with my former colleagues, they tell me the pandemic is the best what [00:09:00] ever could happen to them. Because now at home, they are masters of their own time. There is no guy who, who walks by side and tells them, Hey, I want to, I need to leave a bit earlier. Can you take this from me? No.

And so you are focused on your own stuff. You do it. There is no manager who annoys you, and the people, mostly these people, what they are missing is the Chitty chat in the coffee canteen, but not really being under observation.

Kelly: The reports are starting to come out too. I know a lot of working mothers, so I can tell you for sure that the majority that I know have enjoyed and never even see how they could go back into an office environment, because they’re able to handle all the things in life by being at home.

Jay: Exactly. And now a second thing happens, the controllers, the accountants that are so obsessed of [00:10:00] self-improvement, of cost optimization, all of this nonsense. They started to realize that it’s cheaper when the people are not coming into the office because the cleaning woman does not come every day.

It’s okay when she comes once per week, if you have this completely empty glass castle. Hey, it’s too expensive. You need to heat it. You need to maintain it. So they started to shrink all of these. Companies started to look around if there is something cheaper on the market. They don’t need to pay the coffee for the people.

They don’t need even the new white gold, toilet paper. So this optimization that is in fact freedom for the people, where they can start now to think about new models how to make money. And now something very, very interesting happened even before the pandemic.

The generation Z, these millennials, and so on. [00:11:00] They are clever because I’ve been in several hiring interviews simply to ask right questions because HR mostly has absolutely no clue whom they are hiring. They have no idea about the job cards.

And when you have this guy’s fresh from the university, from the college, whatever, they might get a proposal, an offer. And it’s mostly in Germany, 35 or 40 hours per week. And they start to ask, well, 40 hours, I don’t know. Can I get a part-time job?

And you should see the eyes of this HR guy, like. “But this is a full-time position. Why do you can’t afford that are super cool car. You can’t build a firm.” And the answer mostly is, well, I’m more interested into our work-life balance. Into my wellbeing. 

And now something different happens on [00:12:00] the other side. Because these guys are not dumb. If it’s accepted by the corporate, they don’t go every day, five days per week for four hours into the office.

No, no, no. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, noonish. They leave for a long weekend and you see then the old guys who somehow arranged with it, that they will work for 40 years at this company and they see it and they start to think about it. Hey, come on, am I dumb? I’m working here for my 40 hour contract for nearly 60 hours per week.

The tax is extraordinary. I pay 50% tax. And it’s like, Why can’t I have something similar a long weekend. Why can’t we arrange something like this? So this awareness of [00:13:00] something’s going wrong. I don’t need to have a job that I don’t really like, to make money I don’t need, to buy nonsense that doesn’t bring me any additional benefit, to impress people, I don’t want to be too rude, that I don’t like.

 Kelly: Nope. You just went through the thought process that someone might have, why am I doing this? They keep asking themselves why, why, why? And then they realize all of this time, I’ve just been trying to do something that is not actually serving me and making me happy.

When you think about this from a skill perspective, this is actually a learned behavior because we’ve learned to behave the way. That society wants us to all of these years. And this is just reversing that, maybe unlearning it and relearning a new way.

Jay: Exactly. Learn, unlearn, and relearn. We need to internalize some kind of self-assessment from time to time, simply to look into us [00:14:00] and to see if this way is still future proof, the pandemic accelerates a lot of things and rethinking, and the new generation, these are the customers of the future and the employees of the future. So if the old structures do not adapt onto this, they are doomed.

In German industry more or less on these real heavy classic companies, these new generations return their contracts these offers when they apply for a job. Around in average 25% of these job offers are given back within a month. When these younger generations tell you, I can work for you. You are not transparent, the behavior, this hyena cage, this turtle competition that I’m working with passion on something and then my name is [00:15:00] taken out. My superior puts his name into it simply to make Korea. This is a behavior that is not accepted anymore.

Kelly: It’s so true. It’s surprising to me as we chat, how much I feel like you and I look at the world in a very similar way. This idea that there is this future that could possibly exist, but tell us what is the future you would like to see?

Jay: Well one thing that you’ve said. Puzzle pieces. This is one of the most important things that we have to understand. Ecosystemic thinking, the future is about collaboration, cooperation. Competition is outdated. We need competition in sports. We need competition in some kind of hackathon to find out the best fitting idea.

And this ecosystemic thinking embeds, this corporation idea where you don’t need to be the biggest of the biggest simply to become a monopolist. This is toxic. This vision of the [00:16:00] future is, for example, completely questioning our working model. The working model, when I’ve mentioned, for example, the UBI, in my opinion, the UBI should be a corporate issue. Unconditional basic income or universal basic income.

We will need this as long as we still are trapped in our monetary system. Maybe one day, we don’t need money anymore because I’m a huge fan of the post scarcity, where you have so much that it can be it’s fully automatic. Of course, everyone will be officially unemployed, but everything can be produced so efficiently that you can give it away for free or for less.

And this will lead, of course, there is this huge German angst that I will be unemployed. No, it just means you will not need to do work for money [00:17:00] because we are lazy. Yes. But we don’t want to sit in front or just a minority want to sit in front of a TV and rot. The rest starts to think about I’m bored. What makes me happy?

So maybe some people will start make limericks, even if it’s a crappy limerick, you will influence someone simply to say, Hey, I can do it better. I guess that manual work to do something with vault creativity, art will become a complete new thing, self-expression. So I don’t see it negative, but this is a far vision. We need to skip the money.

The near future will be a really that people can listen on to their own needs onto their passion. Staying curious. So this UBI idea means that you will not get money for doing nothing. Therefore not a [00:18:00] governmental thing, a corporate thing. You will be let’s say a corporate ex, you are living in the city, whatever. You know that you need to survive to have a life without being hungry, you would need let’s say $2,000 per month to somehow survive.

When you are younger, you can offer more lifetime. The older you become, the more you are not willing to make nonsense work. So you are experienced and you can work a bit less. So maybe when you are in your twenties, you can offer, let’s say six hours per day for your UBI. The older you become the less, because you are more efficient and so on.

The rest of your [00:19:00] valuable time and it depends on you, if you simply decide to sleep longer or to do something meaningful, maybe that if you need more money within the same corporate, you could look out for a project where you could hop onto it as a freelancer.

So we will face some kind of hybrid model being employed for your UBI and then doing on top staff, maybe at the same company, maybe at a different company, maybe for an NGO or whatever. It’s in your control, how you will proceed with this. The important thing here is as soon we escape this linear thinking, we should see it more or less as some kind of spheres.

Because what kind of jobs will you do? It’s something that you already know. So this fears will be overlapping. [00:20:00] Because everything what you do on a different project, it’s some kind of learning. Continuous learning so you bring more efficiency into the other stuff. So it’s lot of accelerating, self optimization, learning and so on and so on.

With new technologies or adaptive learning, augmented learning, we are able even to go into micro degrees, where it’s not necessary to study for six years or whatever to do to have your degree. When you simply hop from one passion to another passion, where it’s simple enough to learn for this one job if you are smart enough within six weeks. If you need a bit longer, maybe let’s say three months to get your micro degree in being specialists in this one thing to enable you.

Maybe [00:21:00] we could also do some subcontracting. There was in 2015, I think at Verizon. There was this one guy in the IT department that figured out his job was something that he was able to subcontract. Some guys, was it in China or in India? I don’t remember anymore.

And when did he subcontractor these guys, he still had enough money to go on cool vacations. This is super smart. He was fired. Not because he outsourced his own work, but because his management was pissed that they have not figured out.

And I see here, if you apply for a job, I mean these new things, how we hire people. It’s nonsense. These job cards are something you need to be [00:22:00] fresh out of the university, but already with 30 years of experience, be super cheap with whatever. Come on, seriously? This is who are these people making fun of. So if you have these scales, where you could hop into it and maybe we should define major skills and minor skills. Some kind of rating.

For this job, it’s essential that you fulfill this and that and whatever. And from these minor skills, if you fulfill, let’s say 60%, why not outsource, subcontract.

Kelly: This one little thing.

Jay: Exactly.

Kelly: So fascinating that you say this.  And this kind of comes back to your AI mentioned before, right? Because of course in the hiring world, we’re so reliant especially on large companies with the systems that narrow people down for us and help us fill roles.

And when you describe it this way, I’m 100% on board. [00:23:00] This is the future I would love to see as well, but in the immediate, there’s a lot of change that would need to happen. In the way that people consider, this is what I’m looking for to fill this particular role.

Jay: I don’t think it’s a far future. I’m pretty sure because I already started to work on some projects. For one company I am on paper designing, we call it a corporate AI. Which will be a system that can analyze decision-making processes. This is easy. If you are in a corporate, you can press everything in the process.

So the sources where you get information from can be analyzed. The sexy thing here is that you can doc onto it, a bias mitigation tool. Where you can simply eliminate all kinds of biased things and simply take it as neutral as possible. As long as humans are deciding in this processes, they have [00:24:00] their expectations.

 Also our data, how we collect data. All this data is already biased because if you start collecting data, you have your life experience, your have your expectation. So of course, you have your focus on things it’s different than how I deal with it.

So here, as soon you put this into a real AI, not in one of these fake AI’s, into an algorithm that can detect this, that can go through it. And to the management, to the one who decides on to a smart phone, put in hey to this and that issue, my recommendation would be, do you agree?

Yes or no? If yes, because it’s transparent, it’s everything and so on. If no? Explain to me why not?

So the algorithm can learn. This is this one thing, we’ve extended it so that [00:25:00] in this vision, every employee should have a corporate assistant on his smartphone that would be talking with this corporate AI. This assistant will plan your meetings, will take your meeting minutes, will help to organize you and so on and so on. It might also have access or to let you through the speed gates and so on simply to manage all the stuff for you.

Kelly: That’d be amazing. Let’s press go on that right now.

Jay: It would be a proxy to another layer, which I call the human digital twin. Which should be a twin of your person. Having your health record so when you are in the morning at a dentist, If [00:26:00] anything changes, it will be immediately uploaded so that you will have it onto your file.

The sexy thing here is just one facet of this thing. This human digital twin should be a representation. It could, for example, take over worse messages or Skype messages. If you are not available, simply represent you. It could interact through this corporate assistant with the corporate AI. This will become important because health stuff, if you don’t feel very well, and we have so many wearables, we are predominantly under observation.

So under control. And assume, for example, right now in the pandemic, your temperature goes up or you don’t really feel well. This digital twin could simply announce through the [00:27:00] corporate assistant that today you are sick. You don’t go. Or if it’s something, this I will explain in a few, if it’s something not on your physical level, but something on the mental level, you are stressed, you are whatever. That it simply would give a note to your manager.

“Hey, I will not tell you what’s going on. Talk with your employee. Talk with the one who you are responsible for.” Because this kind of responsibility is completely, I don’t have the feeling that in large corporates they care about. And mostly in large corporates, the HR is not for the employees. It’s for the management.

It’s some kind of firewall to keep the underlings’s away from you. So here, the HR needs to rename themselves into human asset or human capital, really to value these [00:28:00] people.

When we deep dive again into this human digital twin, skills. Super, super important. Skills are nothing that is really fixed. It can change because something might happen. And one of your skills being less risky might turn you into a complete risk taker.

If your pet dies, it might change how you think about some things. The more you learn about that simply you see in a documentary, something it explains for you completely, and you change this one perspective on things.

So here, I know a company in the pharma industry, they have developed small apps for the smartphones. So when you need a break, you simply play a small game. These things are continuously measuring your skills. So [00:29:00] it’s not like a kind of assessment that you do when you are hired or maybe if you are lucky once per year, it only is these assessments are just a snapshot.

Kelly: I love what you’re saying, because depending on what is going on, we’ve learned this through COVID that our personal life actually affects our work life all the time. It’s all intertwined. I’ll use  what happened to me last night and this morning as an example of how my day would have gone today, if I had let it. I didn’t sleep for like three days for whatever reason, I have no idea.

I just couldn’t sleep. And it really got to me at the end of yesterday. So I went to bed early. I finally got a full night of sleep, but I still felt just as you would, a little off. I woke up a little later than I would have today because of all of that, which meant everything was rushed.

And because everything was rushed, there was a little tension in the family. Stress about this, stress about that. And then all of a sudden, the way that I normally am as a person, which is super bubbly, positive thinking, that my brain has now [00:30:00] all of a sudden decided to go back to the, like the lizard brain, right.

Because I’m like just going on with what I can deal with at that moment. And if I had been taking a break and on that app, that app would have alerted to the fact that whoa, you need to go for a walk. Like get out in nature and just relax for a minute, because you are not you right now.

But that happens throughout our day, throughout our week, throughout our year.

And so to like assess, when you think about this for anyone out there that’s a sports fan, they are assessing players in this way all of the time prior to games. In the past, you would have had your top players were always starters. Now, it depends on where they’re at that day and they test out their hydration levels, all of this. It’s just the same way from a mindset perspective.

Jay: Yes. Our smart watches are continuously looking on to oxygen in your blood, into per heartbeat and so on and so on. So all of these can indicate in what condition you are. I mean, you may be when you’ve not slept for three [00:31:00] days, maybe you’ve been so nervous because of our interview today. So excited about it. about

Kelly: Of course.

Jay: But the thing here is really with this continuous checking and testing, they have to develop these apps together with psychologists and they can rate your skills and your development. And when you make a new high score, it might happen that the HR reaches out to you.

“Hey, you would be a complete perfect genius fit for a project. Are you interested?”

This is proactive human resource or proactive human management. And this is what we need. So there are these weak signals from several companies. We just need to combine all of these, really fancy things and having something. We are living in an extreme complex world and we need these gadgets to de complexitize, then [00:32:00] we need focus on us and really to get back quality time.

Kelly: Think about a six hour Workday as an example, what other things would you focus on in your life? How much happier would you potentially be? There’s so many things.  Because we have to close out this particular conversation, I would love to say there’s a lot that we’ve talked about.

People like you and I, that are listening in. And I tend to say people that have been able to think outside of their box, this is not bad if you’re not in this place. You are still on a journey and that is 100% fine, but I want to also speak to people that may not be in this place yet.

And everything we may have talked about may have made them a little scared about what is in store for them in the future. What action can they take to start opening their awareness to some ways that they can use what’s been put in their, I say skilled toolbox, but basically what you’ve learned over your lifetime to maybe think about things in a different way?

[00:33:00] Jay: My recommendation is mostly, you’ve named it before, sitting in front of the TV after a stressful day, this just numbing yourself. So instead start reading. This really starts to fire your own imagination.

When you just consume things, this is already the imagination from someone else. It’s an interpretation of whatever. We need to develop or get back our curiosity. There is nothing wrong. There are no wrong questions. There are no wrong answers. It’s about discovering. It’s about getting curious and listening on to what makes me happy.

And I promise everyone who starts to be curious, questioning things, to develop passion, to listen on to what makes me really happy. [00:34:00] We are living in times where more and more people want to have something like this. So they reach out to you. And you can see if someone is happy. So getting these people that are inspiring me is important that you can share your thoughts about.

And even if it’s just talking about the last book you’ve been reading, you will discover new facets on life. And you will discover new opportunities. This is my promise to everyone who sees this interview, it’s really we are the masters of our future.

No one else can understand this. So take this future in your own hands.

Kelly: That is wonderful, wonderful advice. Jay, for anyone who wants to find you, where can they find you?

 Jay: Well, of course, via LinkedIn. This is one of the most important business platforms. So search for Jay Latta, then you will see my sneaky head.

I have a website where [00:35:00] I’m sorting my thoughts, jaylatta.net. And via email j@jlatta.net.

So reach out to me whenever you have a question or simply drop a line to my host and she can connect.

Kelly: We can do that too, for sure. This is fantastic.  We will 100% continue this conversation and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Jay: Thanks a lot. Likewise. I wish you a great day to everyone. Enjoy. See ya. Bye-bye.