Most digital transformation failures aren't about the technology. They're about the people nobody planned for. In this episode of The Team Check-In, host Emre Ok talks with Barry Flack, a Fractional HR Executive and HR tech advisor with three decades of experience guiding organizations through change, about why roughly 70% of digital and AI projects fail once you look past the rollout plan.
Barry walks through the global ticketing system that cost a fortune and got quietly abandoned because it ignored local relationships, and the recruitment tool that solved one problem by creating a flood of bot applications. He also explains the two things every organization has to accept are unpredictable, and what separates organizations that make technology stick from the ones stuck replacing failed rollouts every few years.
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Emre (00:00.14)
Yeah, nice. it's the we are having record high like heat waves in Turkey right now. So yeah, it's perfect. And as a part of my job, what I do is I record a lot of YouTube videos and the fat the fan interferes with the microphone and the noise from the outside again messes up the recording. So it's a lot of just me basting recording videos, pausing, taking a breath, doing it again over and over.
Barry (00:05.966)
Lovely.
Barry (00:18.893)
out.
Emre (00:29.934)
It's really fun.
Barry (00:31.568)
Your image is very blurry by the way, that matters do you? Is it the same on yours?
Emre (00:38.574)
I don't think it should be a problem. That's why we're doing it here. So your image is also very blurry with me. But when the final thing is done, what's going to happen is it's going to upload both of our recordings to the cloud, put them all together. That's why it's like recording it separately right now.
Barry (00:43.088)
No.
Barry (00:48.89)
Wow.
Barry (00:55.824)
As long as you're happy my friend.
Emre (00:59.852)
Yeah, all good. So what we're going to do is it's just going to be a casual conversation. And like I said, like the areas we talked about, mostly just digital transformations and stories from your career on how this is now this can be done poorly versus how this can be this has been done well.
Barry (01:23.216)
Sounds good. Thank you for your time.
Emre (01:23.768)
So all right, give me one sec just to adjust.
Emre (01:50.606)
All right, yeah, I have everything set up. So yeah, I'll just start things off and just we'll get the recording going and then I'll send you like clips from it as well. It's gonna be pretty cool. All right, awesome. With that said, hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Team Check-In. And with me today, I have Mr. Barry Fleck. He is an ally of AI. He's the Fraud Refractional.
And he is a man of many opinions and is not afraid to voice them and he did not agree to any of these nicknames beforehand. I did not run them by him. Very welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Barry (02:30.764)
I'm absolutely great after that introduction, Emre. Thank you very much. If I was feeling slightly jaded, that has now gone completely. Thank you.
Emre (02:39.726)
Uh huh. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Uh, it is kind of funny how, you know, like the podcast are kind of, you just like the podcast as you just turns on real quick. Uh, I love it. And this is a very special episode of the show because this is the start of a brand new series. This is the first one in the series. This is what we're calling the HR expert series where, I mean, we usually interview people from the world of HR anyway.
But this is where we take a closer, more granular look and we focus on actual stories, sometimes horror stories, sometimes stories of success from the careers of notable HR personalities. And we just take a deep dive into them and see what we can learn from them and see how those stories can inspire us and help us be better at our jobs and just make life a little more bearable. Let's just say that.
With that said, Barry, can we get a brief introduction to you for those in the audience who might not know who you are?
Barry (03:43.6)
Great, yeah, look, I'm delighted to be on. I'm a, I guess, a veteran of the HR world. I've been a practitioner now for about three decades. I currently have got to a stage of running a portfolio career that involves advisory with C-suite, consultancy projects, fractional. I'm also a growth advisor to a stable of HR technology and other.
Emre (04:00.364)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (04:11.952)
Startup scale-ups, write, talk, be opinionated and do everything you've just said, Emre, which is to try and make our lives easier in a place where we seem to have overcomplicated things for far too long.
Emre (04:17.56)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (04:25.646)
Exactly. And I think one thing where we love over complicating our lives is digital transformation in HR for sure. And yeah, that's, think that's a great place for us to start. That's where, that's where we're focusing this episode on. So it's going to be more like some positive stories and some negative stories about what Barry has seen companies, you know, go through during the process of
digital transformations. But more specifically, before we get to some actual stories, I want to talk to you about one of your articles that I think sums up this point perfectly. You once said in an article, culture eats AI for breakfast. So I think that's a great introduction to what we're kind of about to do. So can you explain what exactly you mean by that?
Barry (05:20.132)
Yeah, look, if there is a simple prevailing message that is stuck with me, regardless of the platform being AI or whether the capability is automation, or God forbid back in the early days when we digitized the filing cabinet, which was one of my first openings in the 1990s, we have always elevated the technology enabler. We've always put the tangible piece of kit on a pedestal.
We have never given that same due concern or attention to humans, to people, to the messiness and unpredictability of the finest machine on the planet, the human being. And so that quote, which is clearly a little bit of a stolen one that people have used down the years, is clearly and obviously pointing out the fact that this is a human transformation. This is...
a challenge to how we organize ourselves for value creation. It's about people. The technology is brilliant. It's getting better. It still steals the limelight. We still get consumed by Boston Dynamic videos throwing at us about the wonders of robotics. But ultimately, if we don't pay due attention to first and foremost, it's about people, then quite simply we're left with that awful, awful
statistic about 70 odd percent of projects in digital and AI failing because the adoption is either negligible, low or non-existent down to what you've done on the cultural side of things.
Emre (07:03.278)
Yeah, I think that was the stuff that really captured my imagination in your LinkedIn article as well. So you said 42 % of businesses have scrapped their AI initiatives in the workplace. And yeah, why do you think that was?
Barry (07:17.838)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, look, mean, think we're at a stage now. We have unbelievable hype curves. Yeah, I mean, look, you we are incredibly bowled over in the boardroom and otherwise, you know, by social media and by the idea that we are not doing what our competitors are doing. So AI has come with a blast.
Emre (07:30.168)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (07:43.118)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (07:45.26)
Automation and digital transformation was a very simple piece of that about 10 years ago, 20 years ago. was about foregoing manualized in the digitized world. You know, look, we are now looking at it from a system point of view. And what I mean, we've got a complex set of circumstances that a board takes far too simplistically. It gives the CIO, the head of IT,
a remit to get AI into the organization. It runs in a silo and it puts people at a very surface level to begin with. Do they know the new technology? Can they do this? They bring HR and some guys in, do it at a point where training is required or God forbid there are outcomes around efficiency. So, you know, we've saved some money, we've saved some heads, bringing in a HR and make sure that we can
you know, manage that outcome. But ultimately the technology, the way of working, the what we close out and what we inherit, how we do work going forward is not the kind of conversations we have often enough. And that's why the failure rate is incredibly high. Not because the technology is not great, but because it's not facing into that really difficult thing about how you change the hearts and minds of people.
With all of their messiness, if I do embrace this piece of AI today, do I have a job in 18 months time? You know, that real core, clear and obvious, secure need for a job to matter in the world, you know, has now become part of the social narrative, you know, that we've got. So when you've got all of that going on, we don't pay enough attention to culture, people, to the change that goes on in humans to make technology stick.
Emre (09:41.75)
Love that. love that. Yeah, we've seen that all around the world of HRI, especially this has been a very huge point of conversation throughout our podcast as well, where people are just investing into AI for the sake of having it. We've seen the sparkly star AI icon everywhere just blasted. And it is still an incredible tool. But once again, if you're not focusing on the people side, what are you doing? just something with my audio levels.
Perfect. Now, you mentioned something really interesting. You compared it a bit to the digitizing of the filing cabinet. So I said, that's how your journey into digital transformation kind of started. So can you tell us a bit about your journey into the world of digital transformation in HR? Because I think you've seen many different stages of,
optimization, HR tech, and now AI being implemented in the world of HR.
Barry (10:50.869)
Yeah, look, I am, Emre, and thank you for reminding me of just how unbelievably old I am as my career spans into the 1990s. But look, know, for some of your audience, you know, not a museum relic, but I actually worked with typing pools. You know, we had a level of that sort of inefficiency where you put your document into an in tray and some...
typically middle-aged woman, because that's what it was, would return your document at some particular time that afternoon for you to write on it. creating utility in that first instance was about making smarter use of the evolving piece of technology. So it was very much about taking what we had in an analog world where there were far too many of us, where efficiency in largely manualised organisations was seductive to employers, we put it onto a database. The technology didn't stop. We then got these segmented pieces around the start of the century. It was very much about HR information. What we were going to do with that. The recruitment function, applicant tracking, the performance management system, sitting in silos.
very reflective of the world that we were in, all creating data sources that would allow us to put simply digitize the inefficiency that was still going on when we look back at it. Then we had our drop around about 2010, 2012, had cloud-based, we had SaaS, we had the competition between these slow lumbering pieces of kit that were looking at storing data.
to all of these wonderful point solutions. the sort of, know, the 2000 teens were an obsessive piece about going, I have procured far too many systems, you know, around my organizations that do not connect because these guys over here in the core place do not do stuff well enough for us. But the guys over here only drop a system in dealing with a particular problem in what is a highly complex world.
Barry (13:13.136)
and a HR job family that you could cut by about 36 distinct different places with its own culture, its own outcomes, its own delivery to a, you know, finally, you know, an overthrow of like this data can now pour information. If we use this data well, it can now create a bigger brain for us to both make ourselves individually cleverer.
and our organizations and the reach, et cetera, et cetera, into new problems, even greater as well. So, you know, the utility is reach new heights, but, know, sort of finally, Emre, along the way of that digital journey, you've got organizations at different stages. You know, there is, you know, there is plenty that are still using Excel as a record of choice, you know, and others that are grappling with having several dozen.
point solutions that are not talking to each other. And now AI that is ultimately as good as the rubbish that gets fed in or otherwise, is now got the challenge of making sure that, you know, we're not just charting out biased hiring decisions or poor assumptions based on poor data. So, you know, it's asking all of us to be more savvy technology wise, something that too many of our HR world has.
kept away from for too long because it was deemed soft, organizational development, you know, it was about that particular agenda. And we're now in this accelerating, you know, you will lose your job to the person who learns AI narrative that's going on at the moment. So, you know, we're at a very interesting time, but let's not assume that all of our organizations have arrived at this sort of maturity level.
that's going to make use of AI. And finally, you know, we've maintained a mindset through all of that, which is about how we deal with complexity that is holding us back. And I can talk a bit more about that, but that is also our biggest, biggest block is, are we willing to think differently about the problem? And are we willing to unlearn lots of bad habits that we picked up along the way?
Emre (15:38.956)
I love that. There's so much to unpack there, but I want to get to like a bit of the juicy stuff. yeah, you've seen, so you've assisted many companies throughout their, you know, digital transformation process. And I mean, I've been there as well. And like I've seen, it's still baffling to me that people are still using Excel as their, you know, main performance review platform where they're like, okay, we'll keep.
This year's performance reviews in Excel, that one too. how many employees we have? Sure, we have so many, but yeah, let's sure keep everything in Excel, because that's very easy to analyze. I wonder why my employees hate performance reviews. But yeah, like definitely been there. So from your career, without naming any names, what is, in your opinion, one of the scariest horror stories you've seen in terms of digital transformation?
Barry (16:38.362)
Wow. Yeah, look, I've unfortunately been part of that 70 percenter piece. But look, you know, a horror story that stands out in a large complex, you know, global organization was in my mind the imposition of a particular piece of global technology that was dealing typically with
how we, trying to ask me not to say brand names here, of serviced our office, how we ultimately delivered inbound queries and categorized and interacted with a very large complex audience. And the sheer scope of how this was done to people for the sake of a very restrictive piece of technology.
Emre (17:11.832)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (17:36.11)
that didn't take into consideration all of that complexity of people and the huge complexity of different cultures, different countries, different ways of working. So the machine would appeal to a very obvious way of working with very little flexibility that was ultimately driven like an external customer service chatbot before it became voice recognized. And it fell over.
ultimately cost a fortune, got rolled in and the power of that local relationships was always going to win the day. was don't send me your query Emre, let's have a chat about it. Yeah, stuff wasn't getting logged because it looked utterly counterintuitive to the kind of things that individuals out there wanted. you know, horror comes from
I'm looking at this under the lens of efficiency. I'm going to use my internal client base as a sort of data scrape of what's useful, what isn't. To do that, I need to force their behavior in a way that suits me and H.I. So they will not talk. They will feed through a ticket and we will do all of this sort of replying to tickets so that somewhere we can understand some common themes.
and it turned into the most insanely anti-human cultural drive I've ever seen. It didn't capture reality, know, people got deviant. It was the equivalent of the spreadsheet one the day because people were not giving up a sensible, this is too important, let's talk it, you don't deserve a ticket, you know, let's go through the alternative way of doing this. And what we got there was...
a very centralized answer to a very localized problem, driving a very counterintuitive approach. And then everybody hated the technology. The technology got the blame. You I'm not putting this on a ticket. I'm not going through that system, which I'm sure have heard so many times. And therefore the horror, you know, just becomes, I need to blame Emory and the team in that region.
Emre (19:49.4)
Yeah. Yeah.
Barry (19:55.376)
because they're not playing ball, they're being deviant. He's a problem, he's at fault. And we have these dishonest conversations that sort of go, well, look, had you told me many months ago, I would have said here were the systemic problems with that system in this region that I would have loved to have worked on with you. But I was never asked.
Emre (20:17.472)
I get that. And I think a lot of the times the problem with implementing large scale software into your organization is, you've mentioned it so many times, it's not accounting for the human side of things. Humans are messy. And if your software is not flexible and it doesn't take into account the messy side of things, it is going to fail in that organization. But I'm curious, I'm sure...
A lot of money was spent on this software solution that ultimately failed. But also, how long was the implementation and training and education of the people process? Because that is also worth a lot on its own. And that's also worth a lot of man hours now.
Barry (21:10.068)
This was an 18 month rollout in all of those beautifully mechanized, you know, phases of geographical selection that make no sense apart from typically the location and choice of the vendor, you know, and other arbitrary things that don't particularly make any sense. And of course, the other challenge one I always put in that, you know, we'll talk about a bit more is, you know,
software implementations look great on your Gantt chart. The idea that you are heading towards something that's called Go Live that makes so much sense in a budgeting, contracting risk, you know, perspective. And then you have Go Live plus one day, you know, which is just this, you know, next day of bizarre adaptive human beings, the market, you know, everything that's going on.
Emre (21:50.478)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (22:08.652)
The whole concept that we've got a very fixed rollout handed in at a moment in time that then doesn't factor in the following day and onwards that has just changed the game, you know, completely. And then it changes the game for people who are meant to be using the technology that is already out of date, that it already has issues. So the whole, you know, my point here is our IT colleagues are clever people, they're talented. They're not to be blamed here.
We've sort of built a system that still endures from back in the days when we're taking the stuff out of the filing cabinet, where it just becomes a safe, easily, here's how we contract with you. This is how it looks, here's how we pay for it. And we've carried that mindset and we carry it internally and the RFP and the how we spend and the vendor and all of that theater that goes with a rollout.
you know, of which it is meets challenged. It's leaving the CIOs exposed because they do that bit beautifully well. But the day after and onwards, we're looking back and the CEO is going, you know, why are you back looking for something different when I spent, you know, several million a couple of years ago and you're not using that toy, you know, becomes parent child, you you and HR are always asking me for goodies. You know, what's the joined up piece here? Yeah, you know, so like a lot of things, Emory, it's a bit that goes like...
stop this. We should have stopped this years ago. know, AI has now put it front and centre because the technology won't stop and therefore it's challenging us as humans to say, stop the nonsense of historically the way we work. Unlearn some of those habits that made us rich that allowed the system to form and look at this differently and accept that differently.
Emre (23:46.936)
for sure.
Barry (24:03.876)
might be a bit more scary, might look different, but it has a better chance of sticking and being part of your organizational fabric and much better than the installed software, know, go live, date, close, goodbye, that we've had historically.
Emre (24:22.338)
So I want to unpack this just a bit more. So I don't think in this story, we're also, we're not blaming the actual tool itself, right? Because I'm pretty sure people, you know, I'm sure people selling your organization, the tool, they didn't lie about its capabilities. I'm sure, you know, the tool was, you know, the straightforwardness like, Hey, this is our software. This is what it does. It's a ticketing tool, yada, yada, yada.
So how could this multi-million dollar failure of an investment slash waste of everyone involves time and plus cause of frustration, how could this have been avoided?
Barry (25:09.648)
The avoidance, and it's a sort of slightly deep one, is to recognize what's happening around us is what we call complexity. So the complexity in simple terms for our audience is to absolutely come to peace with the fact that there are two things that are always unpredictable. One are human beings, yep, and the other is what I would call the market.
Yeah. And we have loads of examples of just, you know, I sat in a room doing a business plan for that year, several weeks before COVID hit us. Bang. You know, the world was rewritten. You know, the idea we can plan in a systemic way that lets us understand that five year plans and one year, whatever. So except that that complexity just is. What we've done and why we get to where we are, Emre, is...
because we overlay a sort of complicated look and feel, Gantt chart systems, predictability, the machine will guide, the artifacts that we put in, and Alan will come on to talk about it, but the sort of way we've gone down performance management, is one of those. How do we push against the tide of complexity? Well, as humans, our brain needs to...
understand this complexity. It needs to segment. It needs to categorize in our heads, know, ways of putting order where order doesn't exist. And that therefore means that we have lots and lots of rituals that are run by the big four, consultancy, big IT, anything, you know, that literally goes, you know what I know, that our way of engaging is you give me money, I give you system.
It looks like this. We put it in. We try and improve the process. But, you know, there isn't the alternative mass way of doing it. There's outliers and there's always been outliers who we should be looking at, but we've ignored. And we've got predominant players out in the market who perpetuate a collusive environment where we go to market, we get them, they come in, they install, they look bright. They've got great spreadsheets. They've got great
Barry (27:32.826)
PowerPoint decks, the system looks clean, it looks lovely, it's intuitive, it produces data analytics. You know, we're excited, but we're really playing a little bit of a mirage, a bit of a game that says, this is all bringing order to a world where we feel out of control. And until ultimately the answer to your question, we come to terms with that and embrace that complexity, we'll continue making the same mistake over and over.
Emre (28:00.152)
love that. yeah, it's, it's just a matter of actually understanding your own surroundings. And like you said, your own complexity, think it's almost similar to how, you know, how it is when you go to an Ikea showroom, and it's just trying to sell you this one piece of couch, but they've decorated it in such a way that the libraries behind it is so organized and everything else is so neat.
You look at it, you're paying for the couch, but you're also thinking, thinking, this could be my living room. This whole thing. It's just, know, but it's, that's not how it works. That's not how it works. How it works. You're buying a couch.
Barry (28:36.08)
Absolutely.
Barry (28:41.656)
Yeah, you take it. Yeah, it certainly doesn't work when you go and buy clothes and you look at a beautifully model and you look at the mannequin and then you put it on and go, this looks like a tent on me. What have they sold me? But you're absolutely right.
Emre (28:58.342)
Oh, you do Yeah, I trust me I've been burned by those you know like five yeah, just Five you know five seven guy trying to jump on to like the oversized shirts trend I looked like a hobbit hated every second of it
Barry (29:06.768)
You
Barry (29:18.48)
Brilliant.
Emre (29:21.25)
Alright, desperately moving on from this now. Now, I mean... Yeah, exactly. I thought it would have been my thing, honestly Barry, anyways.
Barry (29:26.512)
Before we get the therapist in for you.
Emre (29:40.334)
now I want to, I mean, we've talked about the bad, think the next, logical step is, how have you seen, like, what is an example of a story where you've seen, okay, these people, they did digital transformation, right? And if you're doing it in your organization, check them out. This is how you do it.
Barry (30:03.044)
Yeah, look, thankfully I have, or equally I'd be visiting your therapist as well. So there are successes to talk about, you know, and thinking back and thinking of some of the patterns for the audience to consider on that. Look, it'll come as no great surprise that some of those things that come out of it that are success criteria are organizations who before they've considered technology,
have got in place the kind of organization that is very much about setting them up for that success. That is looking into a market and giving their people the time, the space and the support to make decisions at the right level. To sort of not have an overbearing board that ultimately is building software solutions that give them more data to control.
but are actually pointed towards how do we make the experience for our customer better? How do we get those who deal day to day at the periphery of the organization look and feel as if they have even more brain power to satisfy that customer and whatever that looks like for their industry. So you've got things that look more decentralized. You have a leadership team that feels less controlling. You have a very serious
sense that upgrading your technology and your digital fluency is a thing that you should not risk, that you should go after. They've made statements that suggest we want to utilize this not to get rid of people. They make bold statements around that. They create an environment that when technology enters the fray, it's there to help the individuals working there to do their job better.
to compliment the kind of organization that they're already living and breathing, rather than some of those we've talked about, are, you know, like I've got AI, it churns out some wonderful, wonderful insight for me. But if I make a decision to act on that insight, I'll be getting reported to my head of department. Yeah, you know, they'll be setting up a meeting asking me what I have been doing and why they didn't get involved and.
Barry (32:27.054)
What they going to explain to the board? Yeah. I mean, that, to me is a manifestation of our conundrum around AI as we've arrived today, which is it's liberating. It gives a massive, you know, sort of closing in a gap between an idea and an execution. Wouldn't it be great to give people the tools to create a prototype and, know, and run with that in a particular way, rather than going, well, that was interesting. Let's go back to our desks.
and do something that adds no value because I really can't be bothered being shouted at again, know, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, for the audience there, the human bit is not about it being switched on when the tech guy comes in. It works best when that organization has taken a step back in some instances and said, we need to work more on our, what we used to call, you know, the organizational design piece, the capabilities that we've got.
messaging from our market that we might not like, but they're telling us about what they value, what they don't. And it's different. That was 18 months ago, but we need all of those ingredients. And then we're going, my God, how do we use the technology to really fire that stuff up? Without all of the distraction of technologies arrived, you failed people. This will not do it better. And sooner or later, we'll be asking you to leave because we're just getting the machine to do it.
and all of the distraction that goes with it.
Emre (33:52.206)
Yeah, I mean, that was the initial, that was always the initial worry with implementing AI tools for sure. But I think one thing we're learning from both stories that you've told us, Lena, both sides of the coin, where you told us is, I think one lesson we can derive from it is, sure, these tools are here to help you, but...
Again, it's not about falling in love with these processes, right? It's not about saying, oh, this tool offers this process and now it's going to work like clockwork in my organization because that's the process, you know, that tool is promising. Maybe every once in a while you'll find an organization where you say like, okay, that's the process they're promising. And if we implement it, it works like it works in our organization. Maybe you'll get that once in a while, but...
More often than not, what you end up with is you end up trying to pigeonhole your people into a process they're not familiar with and your team might not be suited for. Maybe if that process is tweaked and maybe if that tool is flexible enough, sure. But if you're using these tools as a method of, you know, forcing processes on people without considering these complexities, that's where we fail.
Barry (35:13.838)
Yeah, look, it's in the midst of, as I say, this incredibly pessimistic view of technology and AI, and I've always been an optimist. Back to what looks good, what doesn't, the good organizations still maintain agency. Yeah, they still decide how they organize and they still decide how this drives the kind of behaviors.
ways of working, how they show up for the client. And so a big challenge over the last 15 years has always been how much is automated, how much is human, and that plays out in different industries. But whether that's a leadership team, whether that's down at the periphery, we have the agency to make the decision. It's not that we're giving the technology the license and the sort of...
you know, the brain part ago, I'm taking that away. You know, that's where the exciting bit goes. Our clients out there and our customers out there, you know, have new problems. know, we don't always have to overlay the technology on that old way of working. That's the beauty. We grab the agency, we make these decisions, you know, we lay out a workflow that now makes sense in 2025, not 2005. And we begin to delight.
clients in a way that we've never done before because of the utility, because they've asked us, because we've interpreted. You know, this is where, and look, I've seen it all the way along, Emory, that these debates become polarised. Yeah, it either becomes like everything in society, they're all doomed, or it's all optimistic. Yeah. Our challenge has always been dial the technology down a bit, folks. It's brilliant, but it's not the be all and end all. And
intentionally do what you need to do to make your enterprise successful as you move along by making your decisions, by driving your stuff intentionally and not suddenly going, we need to get AI in and it does this thing and we didn't really ask it. And you get that still, oh, this is, oh, look what it's done to us. Shape it, shape the way you're working, shape the decisions. None of this is easy, but it's a hell of a lot.
Barry (37:33.54)
more predicted to be successful than being a slave to the technology and know, horseshooning it through people who just didn't want it or who have very legitimate concerns.
Emre (37:45.592)
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, this is something I've talked to death about on this show as well. I mean, this is the internet, right? Something cannot be average. It's either the best of the best, or it's either going to be the worst of the worst. mean, to be honest, if you're not pitching something as the next big thing, as the next revolutionary, amazing, awesome thing, that's not boosting shareholder, like that's not boosting share prices. yeah, everything is pitched as, know, the absolute best of the best.
and it's going to revolutionize how you're going to do things as opposed to just, okay, we have this tool. It's decent and it will be better, but right now it's decent. We don't do that. Not at this moment. No. And I think, yeah.
Barry (38:26.8)
Well, looking at some, sorry, you know, look at there's the issue of consequences as well. Yeah. So this, you know, as we do this, you know, I want leaders to be thinking over the horizon about consequence. One of the greatest stories that I always say on this for people to watch out for. And, if you look at our incredibly clever people in recruitment technology, you know, along the way, we created something that sits on one of our major platforms.
called Easy Apply. And Easy Apply fixed a particular issue of, you know, experience for somebody who's an applicant. It has absolutely killed the recruitment industry with volume. It has absolutely now been amplified in its inefficiency by the fact that bots can now grab hold of those open apply pieces and completely swarm.
functions in talent acquisition that have been reduced. So, know, bit of an extreme case, but we've built lots of those along the way where it's about once again, are we predicting and understanding? And you know what? Look, even if we've got the assumption wrong, the adaptive nature of my organization means that we step into that and change that in six months. We don't leave our customer out there with that version.
in the industry where they're grappling around going, I used to enjoy this, but look what's happened to them now. They've done this to me. All of that is in our gift. All of that is part of the organizational makeup that is still very human and still looks for the technology to do what we need it to do to add value.
Emre (40:15.436)
Yeah. And that right there, you know, for the people watching that right there is absolute unbottled passion about a particular subject. How can you tell this by the way he's moving his hands around and accidentally tapping his microphone? That's that right there. That right there is excitement. I love that. And just bringing again, I think you.
brought us back to HR now with the easier plan, the recruitment bit. what I want to ask you is, what are some HR processes that you've seen organizations achieve great success by automating, maybe through AI or maybe through digital tools? What are some HR processes that benefit greatly from automation?
Barry (41:05.679)
Okay, well look, let me start to sort of, you know, I guess like get close to your particular domain. I think what I have seen over the last couple of years in large complex organizations is the automation, you know, the clever piece of AI around coaching, around information, around the democratization as we used to call it, you know,
people across the organization getting the kind of insight, help, assistance that we've just not been able to do ourselves because we've grappled with such structural issues as middle managers and greater spans and why do we hire the best technologist and make him or her a team leader, you know, with no social skills to connect with people and no depth to be able to give them any value. So.
they go back to where they think they're going, which is, you know, an overbearing need to sort of manage and control a particular piece of work that is, you know, there be a way where they're going. So loads of we've talked about it. We've written about it. We're in there bemoaning the fact. And look, we've got now an ability from a conversational point of view with the technology that's going.
with the added extra of filling language models full of nuance that creates the organizational frame. So it doesn't take me if I work for company X out into the internet, out into the worldwide web. It keeps me within the guardrails of my organization. It provides enormous value at times that quite simply suit me. Not necessarily, hey, Emre, we're not meeting until next Friday, but actually I'm losing sleep at the moment.
And everybody goes, look, you know, I'm up to me at my eyeballs and doing this. can't do this. So we've got something there that, you know, is something we need to be cognizant of. Yeah. And what I mean by that in consequence, you know, don't fall in love with your, you know, with your chat bot, you know, don't, you know, if we have got something that's on tap 24 seven that never sleeps and that provides value.
Emre (42:57.08)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (43:22.638)
and provides value at work and then provides value in an extended basis, you know, and I'm not using it in totality to the human being and the messiness of people who do exist elsewhere. They need to be social. They need to not be lonely. Yeah. So the here's a real case study for me that worries me. Create value in that it solves for this problem. Bit of a risk. Does it make our businesses
a more lonely place to be in? Because if you overlay that with hybrid, remote, you know, are we creating young individuals who don't go to an office, sitting with their chat bot, creating a relationship and a very clever one that is now increasingly without human interaction as raw and messy and awful at times that is. Because look, Emily, I am who I am today by...
lots of different messy conversations and lots of horrible and brilliant, you know, experiences and they've been very human. And so I worry that, you know, we need to be careful and the people in the business in Airdrop to embrace both sides of that value proposition. Brilliant for this poses a risk. How do we build something that sort of, you know, goes after both? You know, and I think that's a, you know, we need to do that because people are stretched.
We filled our days full of utter rubbish. You know, they're always in bloody meetings. They're always in PowerPoint decks. They're not devoting the time. They're not trained to do it. You know, they can't be with the messiness. People's expectations when they come in is to say, Hey, Emory, you need also to be my financial counselor. You need also to be my marriage counselor. need to be my, you know, the remit for managers. You know, unlike my 1990s days, it's now blurred.
You know, I'm going to be open and once again, have kids, know, teenagers, very open, tell us everything. But, you know, are we equipped, you know, well-being, are we equipped to deal with that? We've a lot of complexity and stuff to deal with as we move through. And that wasn't a problem for me 30 years ago. Yeah. And we can increasingly add technology to that. And we can increasingly solve a problem today and yesterday. And then we need to be cognizant of the
Barry (45:46.68)
new problem that we could solve for tomorrow, that if it goes untapped, we'll create all those horror stories I've just talked about when somebody sends out that 97 % of employees are lonely. Does your audience, do you know what the biggest indicator of retention is in the workplace? That's an open question or a closed question. The number one indicator for retention is having a best friend at work.
Emre (46:09.494)
Okay.
Barry (46:16.356)
Yep, loads of meta studies, loads of data boils it down. But if you have a best buddy that you have formed, you know, beyond the working relationship with, you're more likely to stick with the business regardless of what it does to you than somebody who is lonely and has not connected and, and, and, and we are creating a retention issue, a lonely issue, you know, whatever on that. So look, I've probably taken that question in a slightly different
Emre (46:17.322)
Amen to that.
Barry (46:45.796)
direction, you know, on that. But I think it sums up for me a bit of a technology solving for things that we've inherently worried about and is now going to create new ones that shouldn't stop us from doing a, but should get us to be cognizant because that's great. Look, that's what our brains are here for. We want to solve for that problem. You know, you and I can speak for the next 10 minutes of ways of making that lesson issue inside the business, you know.
forcing mentors together, getting people into the office, creating fun events. We can do stuff, but that's great. But if we don't, we walk into that. Have I ruined your question, Emre? My apologies.
Emre (47:26.51)
I think, no, no, no. think, look, my question was C plus or B minus at best. And I think the way you responded is like, that was peak and I love that. that is over the years, I've had many guests on this show and we've discussed AI and like tools, know, HR tech a lot in the workplace. And this is the first time.
Someone has asked the question, is the tool you're implementing in the workplace making your people more lonely? And I think that is a brilliant question to ask. And honestly, it's really poignant and it just sticks with you in the air. yeah, come to think about it, even going back to the original horror story you told us about in the ticketing system.
That is the issue. It's you're blocking people. You're going out of your way to block people from having these interactions and these conversations, especially with a ticketing system where these conversations are supposed to encourage those conflicts, encourage those difficult conversations. Again, yeah.
Barry (48:44.848)
Yeah, we've got a million of those stories, Emre. It's a, look, if I've looked along the way, mean, look, we've solved for, I think, a problem that is linked with that old belief system that we think poorly of too many people in the organization. If, so back to your question of earlier, what are the sorts of things that set
an organization of its success. One of them basically spans McCarthy, who was a thinker back in the 1950s, who basically put that theory X and Y up. And the theory X is a trope about people who are demotivated, who don't want to work, that there is no, apart from, there is no scientific basis. People come to work with all of the best intention. And so monitoring
for technology or I need in performance management to have this law dancing because I don't trust you've done it, you know, has become there for thinking that turns into software. And it might solve for someone who goes, I've reported that 99 % of people have finally done something, but you've got all of these people sitting there going, traumatically, we have a system in place where I don't sleep for three days before my annual appraisal.
because last year was horrific and you know, what's it gonna tell me? And you know, because people don't deal in their brains with the unknown. So why are we putting people through that? You know, this is part of the question, you know, why we've turned some of this stuff into, you know, make it coaching, make it much more about a developmental focus, make it much more, you know, resonant with I'm making you successful, Emre. I'm not sitting here going, gotcha, you know.
back in November last year, I got a bad report from a customer. And now that it's 10 months later, let's talk about it for the first time, because it justifies a mark I need to give you at the end of this meeting. And I had to look for evidence. I've been there. Bell curves and forced distributions. I've been there. I've seen all of that. this is all of our challenges. It's about creating infrastructures that make people successful because they want to.
Emre (51:09.1)
Yeah. give me one second. think, I think my camera broke off for a second in there, but, yeah. you've made so many amazing points on this and, yeah. like you said, the infrastructures we put in place and I think it all just everything you talked about, it all boils down to shore.
We're creating these processes. We're creating accountability. We're doing all of that. But is all of this making our people less comfortable, making them more lonely? And just, again, I love that bit where you said, is it causing them sleepless nights before their performance appraisal comes? And I think that is straight up a question we can pass on to the audience. As we wrap this episode up.
Are the digital processes you're implementing making your people feel more lonely, causing them sleepless nights before their performance appraisal comes? And just let us know somewhere in the comments. Barry, thank you so much for coming on this episode. It's been amazing having you here. Where can people find you?
Barry (52:21.945)
No
Barry (52:26.052)
Yeah, look, can find me. fairly prolific on LinkedIn. Please come, connect, join. I write prolifically and have a newsletter there. So look, always up for fellow travellers who want to have a conversation, who want to join what is ultimately a little bit of a sort of growing movement to make our workplaces better places.
Emre (52:47.918)
And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe. It really helps us show out. And if you want to try the highest rated performance management solution in the Microsoft ecosystem, Teamflect for absolutely free. You can always click the link in the description. This has been the Team check-in. Barry, it was awesome having you here. Bye-bye everyone. All right, awesome. That was a great episode.
Barry (53:07.504)
Thank you.
Barry (53:13.498)
Good luck.
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