Inside Micron’s AI-Powered Transformation with Dennis Di Lorenzo & Josh Bersin

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well, hello! Welcome.

Josh Bersin: Hello!

Siobhan Savage: Where are you both dialing in from?

Dennis Di Lorenzo: 

I'm dialing in from New York.

Siobhan Savage: Oh, cool!

Josh Bersin: But I'm up in Seattle today.

Siobhan Savage: Nice New York is stinking hot again. Welcome everyone. We're just gonna give about 30 seconds or so for folks to get in. Get their cup of tea. Get seated, get comfortable. Where is everyone dialing in from in the chat? Oh, Idaho!

That's cool. More Seattle, Idaho! Atlanta, Boston, London. That's cool welcome everyone. I'm dialing in from New York and struggling with the heat. It's very swampy, as they would say.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I'm only 20 min from where you are, and yes, I agree. Sure.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, I haven't adjusted very well to I came from Sydney, where it's hot all year round. But this New York hot is a different hot. It's . I don't know. It feels you're walking through a big.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: It's that concrete jungle where it absorbs.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, but he re emanates it right. Where all the dreams are made, though, so I gotta suck it up all right, folks, we're going to get started. So firstly, I want to welcome 2 incredible guests that don't need any introduction. But I'm going to introduce them anyway. Firstly, we're really excited to have Dennis Di Lorenzo join us from Micron. Dennis is the director of scaling strategy, and what will also be known as the chief work officer role very soon.

So, Dennis, massive congratulations and welcome to join us today for this conversation.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Siobhan Savage: And then we have Josh. Now Josh doesn't need any introduction at all, but a massive welcome to Josh Bersin. Josh is the CEO and founder of the Josh Bersin Company. Welcome, Josh!

How are you.

Josh Bersin: Thank you, Siobhan. I'm good, and for those who don't.

Siobhan Savage: I know. And I'm , let's get the intros done fast so we can get to the. We can get to the hero of the story, and for those who don't know my name is Siobhan Savage. I am one of the founders, and also CEO of Reejig.

So we're really excited to really be thinking about this once in a generation, change to work. We are going through a change in our careers, in our companies and in society more broadly. Where this is, this once in a generation change to work. We are seeing organizations micron and others really starting to look at building this AI powered workforce. And what Dennis is going to do today is Dennis is going to talk a little bit about really, how they're thinking about this, the problems that they're looking to solve. We're going to unpack how micron is thinking, , the impact of AI, then onto scaling strategy, we're going to talk a little bit about how this became, , started off as a scaling project, and then has now morphed into, , a very highly visible transformation that's happening across all of their leadership team. And this is a very open, and the dialogue will be, use the chat.

We're gonna try and keep an eye on it. Make sure we can pull as much of these questions in together, so that if you've got any questions for Josh, if you've got any questions for Dennis. Let us know, and we can stop and ask those questions. What we're going to do is we're going to kick off 1st with Dennis. It would be, , better than anyone else to tell the story than you really giving us. what was the problems.

Tell us a little bit about what's been going on in your world.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Sure. my world is Micron's world right? So I think it's it's good to know. the journey that I've been on at Micron, where it started and where we are today. And I've been in this role now 11 months. And when I was 1st recruiting for the position. I think micron was in a really important moment. , micron had secured the Chips Act. We know that the skills based economy conversations about how you're going to acquire talent, traditional models of workforce development education.

My background producing qualified workers for today and for the future of work was a huge question for micron, as it was thinking about growth facilities, and then also acknowledging that as a company that is at the at the forefront of the growth of artificial intelligence, and how it's going to impact, how work is performed, how does it think about its own workforce AI intersection and skilling, and I think the important note is at the moment that my position was created director of script skilling strategy, , . Thank you for Siobhan, for saying Chief work officer. However, we want to define the role right because we all think titles. The reality is my CHROme is at the moment of recognizing that skilling over the last 5 to 10 years has been embedded in team member development, proficiency learning, but that have not really proven results on productivity and impact. And how do we, as a company, think about a strategic approach to work? That skills is the throughput.

It may be the intersection. But we have to think about how work is being performed. How do we? How do we focus on productivity?

And then what are the skills needed to actually perform that work. And so, when my position was created, it was really with a thought, from how do we go from all of these singular skills focused initiatives of the past to thinking through a new strategic work design. And I think that is inherent in my title, director of Skilling Strategy. when I was 1st recruited for this position. I'll be honest with you. , I was at the forefront of skills-based education building workforce development in Rochester, and what . What a director of skilling strategy for an advanced manufacturing company meant was something I had to investigate, and I'll be honest with you.

There was not a lot of research or a lot of other job postings out there to say, what is this work really going to look . But to Micron's credit it was well, we know we need to rethink our strategy, and that this term skills has meant a lot of different things with. But what is the impact and measure and goals that we're trying to achieve in this moment? And so I think that the strategic reflection is the most important reflection in the charge that I was given when I 1st entered the organization, and what became clearer and clearer and clearer even before I took the role. , and I was on the education side of the house, where there's always a hunger to know what skills are needed for you to hire our students right?

I mean higher education institutions. Ask that question all the time, and I've been in many rooms where that question is always being posed. But I will say over the last 3 years before I joined Micron more and more. What you saw was companies not being as transparent about what they needed in workers. Right?

They could talk in this lens of skills. But how those skills were going to be applied into work, much, much more opaque dialogues. And I've been in workforce for over 30 years. And I think that became the essential problem and is the essential problem, how much time did companies really spend building the data, intelligence of the work and the tasks that are being performed.

And how is that going to shift right? And if you don't know the work that is current state from an enterprise level. And I want to be clear. This is about enterprise data intelligence.

This isn't about a manager being aware of what a worker is contributing or doing. We all know organically the work of our team members. but knowing that and actually tracking that are 2 different things. And it really is about that data intelligence solving the problem of, okay, we're a company that needs to grow. We're a company that is embracing efficiency and productivity of AI, but committed to a human centered workforce along the AI. How do we build an ecosystem that actually creates productivity? Where the business has the greatest opportunity, right? And whether it is we have to grow our workforce or we have to reskill our workforce to direct it into more impactful work. How do we build that data intelligence and that skill and that model that leads to knowing skills?

But I need to be clear along this journey. One of the things that we've learned is we all talk about skills. how we measure an individual skills. But how those skills are applied into work. how performance measure aligns with the expression of skills, proficiency. particularly in this new world of AI productivity. We need better measures of performance and skill, proficiency of team member. which is where the market was talking.

The last 5, 10 years doesn't necessarily equate to knowing which skills have the highest value for productivity, uplift, right? And what does performance and application of those skills? How are those being measured? Right?

Huge disconnect, I think, in the skills based organization conversations that have been going on, and I give Micron a lot of credit in giving our team. the latitude to lean in to change. Talk about new work, design, talk about the intersection of workforce and to your point. We've been at an accelerated pace. I've only been at this work 11 months. Micron's been at this work probably 5 years, did a lot of learning.

But now they're at the moment where impact matters right? We're we're there. And this isn't a people or conversation. This is a C-suite CEO driven conversation.

And our 1st position was, let's actually take an assessment of where we are today. And so when I 1st walked into Micron, it was, let me do a discovery. I've been a consultant in one of my past lives. I've had many past lives professionally, and we delved into a discovery of what is really our maturity, as what we think, as we think about a skills based organization and recognized that we were unexplored. From a strategic perspective, we, our data intelligence didn't give us enough insight into the work being performed.

How are we going to connect mobility through upskilling? We were at a very foundational level, and our team and our CHRO and our VP, said, Okay, what's the foundational need in, even though we have this vision this 3 year, maturity model of where we want to go. In new work design and becoming. What I'd say is a new version of a skills based organization because it's evolving. it was okay.

But what's the foundation that needs to be built. And we really focused on okay, we need to rebuild our job architecture. Think about new work design. Think about a new work architecture.

What does that look start to move away from just talking about skills? We need task-based intelligence. We need other attributes to really inform where we are, and we have to build that because we don't have insights into that in the moment.

Siobhan Savage: Okay.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Right 2. Was, we really needed a better way of validating proficiency of our workforce and validating proficiency and capability and potential of candidates that were not based on the traditional structures. And we needed to review our learning content landscape and ask, what value and impact was it having on the work that we need to be performed, because the more we learn about the work that needs to be performed, then we actually, the learning should be aligned with our needs. Not, , and so.

Siobhan Savage: Yep.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I'm gonna stop there and say.

Siobhan Savage: No, it's super. It's what I was gonna do was stop you. Only because I think what I think would be super helpful is Josh, given the research and the work that your team are doing right now. what are you, ? Is there any synergies in what Dennis is saying around, how the world has.

Josh Bersin: More.

Siobhan Savage: What are you seeing? Because I think what Dennis has said is such a transformation from where we were a few years ago? Right.

Josh Bersin: Yeah, let me let me let me try to give you guys and Dennis also for you a little historical perspective to prevent people from going into the weeds. Because if everybody's been going into the weeds to be honest. And here's what happened. So this, the idea of skills at work is not a new idea. I got hired in 1978, and I, my skills were assessed as an engineer. I don't know whatever.

Many years ago that was 40 years ago 50 years ago. Can't even count.

Siobhan Savage: 22 and.

Josh Bersin: The way I always talked about it was, you have a job. We can talk about the job in a second, a role. You have capabilities, and then you have skills. And if you go to a manager who's a really good manager, and you say, what are the capabilities that drive performance. He or she knows, because they don't know the word skill, but they know capabilities.

They're good at this. They're good at that. They know how to do this and how to deal with that and what happened was somewhere in the last decade. Somebody wrote a white paper called The Skills Based organization.

If I can get my hands on that person, I want to talk to them because I don't even know who they are. But that led everybody down this dead end of building skills models for the sake of skills models. and Hr. Loves falling in love with, the solution, not the problem. So oh, if we build this big skills model, all these great things are gonna happen, we're gonna recruit better. We're gonna pay better.

We're gonna blah. and I think Dennis and Micron got a little bit hooked into that probably before Dennis showed up. Many, many other companies did, and we've talked to a lot of them. And somewhere in the middle of the project of figuring out all these skills models. For , around these jobs, somebody said, well, , how do we test this? And what?

What's the value of it? And how are we going to use it? And they realized it wasn't that useful? Because it was a means looking?

It was a problem looking for a solution. I mean, it was a solution looking for a problem. because the problems are actually very clear, in Dennis's case, I believe the problem is hiring manufacturing people to grow the manufacturing business, or it's building the leadership pipeline, or, or, , recruiting a certain type of technology person or scaling our customer service, or whatever it may be. And so we've got to get back to is, , we in Hr are here to use our specialized skills and tools to solve these business problems. We are not here to push an agenda to build some grandiose thing that we think theoretically is going to make the world a better place. And unfortunately, that's what happened. And technology companies, workday oracle sap.

Everybody else just piled into this. And everybody builds all these skills models. Now what Shaban is doing, and I believe what Dennis is doing, and we'll talk more about it is taking a step back and saying, it's really not about the skills. It's about the work, it's about the company.

It's about the business processes. I always think about it as business processes and then work, not work. And then business processes, because. , the work is gonna change all the time. They're going to be new tools, new automation.

AI, , new machines , , the way I do. My job today is very different than it was a year ago. But it's the same business process I'm trying to accomplish. And the other thing I want to mention is that somewhere in the middle of all of this effort we had to deal with the fact that we had what I would call siloed Hr. Teams, we call it now systemic.

Hr. We had an L. And D group that was doing their little mission missionary crusade, and then we had a recruiting group doing their little missionary crusade. And then we had a pay group doing their little missionary crusade.

And then we had another group doing employee experience. Those are actually all part of the same thing. And one simple way to think about it is virtually every business problem is a combination of what we call the 4 r's. It's either recruiting. retention, reskilling or job redesign.

And if you think about everything you're doing, , opening a new manufacturing plant, whatever it may be is, how do we bring these 4 R's together in the right combination? Then you have to redesign. Hr, because Hr. Was never designed to operate that way. So it's all good stuff.

It's all happening right now, and AI is accelerating it. And I think, Dennis, you're going to have a huge impact there. and I know your job title was director of skilling. But you're probably gonna find out that's probably not the right job title.

Siobhan Savage: That's literally what I.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I think this is a good moment to note, though this is what new work design is about traditional architectures of roles being defined by title versus to your point, Josh, we're constantly reinvent, required to reinvent what we're doing, because while the business processes and business goals may stay the same. How they're actually achieved is what's changing right? And they're being disrupted. And I love the 4 R model because ultimately, whether you're pulling the level of recruitment, reskilling redesign. It's how are you going to balance pulling those levers in an ecosystem that allows the business to continue to move forward and doesn't require you to pause constantly.

Josh Bersin: Well, the other. The other thing that you think about the 4 h is, if you really dig into it, you have different constraints sometimes there is nobody to hire . If you're a healthcare company, there are no more nurses.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Exactly right.

Josh Bersin: 

There. So you have to reskill, and you have to redesign sometimes there's a surplus. So let's just forget about retention. Let's just hire.

It's cheaper to hire than to try to train the people we have. , in a in a restaurant or something. So it's it's a framework for thinking about the business problem that's unique to your company. And then sometimes different parts of the company have different parts of the R. 4 h that are going to be important.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well different parts of the company, and then let's face it. Economic climate. , shifting priorities. You may be pulling the level of recruitment, because you think that growth is necessary. But then, as things shift, and in the last year well, even as we think about advanced manufacturing and the pipelines that are seeking work there, and we could talk about the last 20 years.

Josh Bersin: You guys, are you guys are in the I mean, the Trump Administration wants to create a million apprenticeships this year.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Right and and let's talk about the real scalability of that.

Josh Bersin: Right.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: In a world being disrupted by AI and automation, we need to think about a new type of scale and access to this work. There's great opportunity for recruitment. But the reality is, your workforce also needs to be retooled and reskilled. Look at AI is going to change the way that we're working in this industry significantly. And if we if we think about a reskilling yes, we want to grow microns committed to growing, its talent.

Pipelines in the communities where it'll be building. But we also need to ensure that our workforce stays relevant within the company because you only have so much pipeline, and as this work shifts, and it will shift probably on in 6 month cycles, then we have a commitment to our current workforce, and so there has to be a balance of those 2 things.

Siobhan Savage: One of the things that I think was really interesting about when you were doing your discovery phase. That's when you met me right, and when you were early in that phase, and I had went through my own personal journey over the last 3 to 4 years, where I started very skill centric. And I still believe, by the way, in skills because people have skills. But the missing link for me was the skill needs to be based on the actual work that's being done. And that was the that was the gear that we went up where we were .

Hold on a second. And this was pre AI, right. This was just before that phase of that. And when you and I met we had this conversation, which was very much so around.

Well, if you're going through on one side of your business, you're being charged with this reinvention. So the organization has to be bold, they have to reinvent. You are at the forefront. That is a given, your CEO, your Cfo. Your chief AI officer, and your CIO, are all involved in this big reinvention, and then in the other side, you want to be a responsible company. and you want to make sure that you're not leaving people behind that you're building the right capability for the future.

And when I spoke to you about well, hold on a second. You need to 1st understand the work in order to do both of those things. Can you talk a little bit about that moment? Because I feel that's the part where I think we're starting to get this Aha moment where folks just Josh had said that free part.

And now we're all, I think. And, by the way, I think. AI. And this movement has done us all a favor to stop and reset and rethink, , because we're not going to be able to build this new world on the Old world that we've already constructed.

So talk a little bit about that, Dennis, in terms of where you got to, and where you believe you're required to go.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Absolutely. I mean, it's a perfect way of describing it. It was the Aha moment even though I knew walking in the door that identifying what people need to do to articulate the skills to meet our objective was important. , when you and I met Siobhan was just at the moment where I was recognizing that the traditional job architectures, and systems that we were using. we're not giving us the insights that we needed to understand the work being performed. I mean, I, the day I met you was probably 2 days after I realized we don't really know much beyond business title of what Work is being performed.

And my client, has it not a unique problem? In that we had a compensation driven job architecture focused on titles, bands, and levels. But we didn't spend a lot of time describing the work at an enterprise level in a meaningful way. And so there was a lot of inference of business title to skill, but no real measure in between of how that skill was being applied. And when you started to talk about task-based intelligence.

It really was. Well. it sounds simple, but not simple, because companies did not see value in the articulation of work in a clear, concise manner where the enterprise was tracking. So it's easy to Josh's point. Business leaders know what capabilities they need to perform the work. and that's really important in identifying talent, but being able to predict how work is going to shift really requires that task-based intelligence at an enterprise level to help inform the future. Because if you cannot create that roadmap in this new human AI centered workforce evolution or revolution that we're experiencing to say to the team member, your work is gonna shift in this way, and you need a new capability set in order to meet that objective.

And I and Josh, I love that you said the word capability. Because I, too, have been talking about this, stop talking about skills and start talking about, how do we build capabilities in our team members right? To perform the work, and it's an important shift.

Josh Bersin: It's a particularly confusing time right now, because , the way work design has happened in the past was, , we bought some platform or technology or automation system, and then we fit the jobs around it.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: That's right.

Josh Bersin: And the company that made this thing had to tell us what the jobs were that worked around Boeing tells the airline industry, what jobs they need to have to operate the Boeing plane because Boeing can't sell the plane unless the people can fly it and maintain it and fix it and so forth. But AI isn't that. They just throw it out there that nobody knows exactly how it's gonna be used. The vendors haven't really built end to end solutions yet. So we're all scratching our heads, thinking, well. how do I use this? What am I going to automate? Right, Shaban?

That's where you come in is giving us this match between the technology and the person and the job which normally the technology provider should be doing for us, but they haven't had time.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the to Josh's point as well. the way that I mean, this is my belief, based on getting the privilege of getting to work with some of the best companies in the world doing this right now. And I think the thing that is the most important thing that we've all got to realize is that we can't build this new world on the old model.

And there is going to have this reinvention moment where you got to rethink that whole view. And the most important thing is you need to understand work you need to have that context of understanding work at a task, but also a subtask level, one of the things that Dennis did to us, which he probably won't say public. And you'll kill me for saying this, but what Dennis did was he was this. All sounds too good to be true , send me send me the data.

So what he did was he ? Made us showcase what I knew about micron, because what we've built is we've built what we call a work ontology and the work ontology. Think of, how Google has mapped the Internet. Reejig has mapped work.

So 23 industries. We then look at every role, every task, every subtask, the skill needed for those tasks. And our bet is. And what we believe back then was that we will be 80% accurate without even touching your environment. So that was the bet that we can get it as close to that.

And then we bring it into micron. And then we harmonize that with micron specific data, which is where you get these high validation rates of trusting the data. And one of the biggest problems that we found in our early journey when we focused on skills was the trust in the data, wasn't there because it was being unfaired off. Job adverts, which are mostly really marketing things versus , actually, what is someone going to do in this job?

So that was really where we focused? And then to Josh's point is, see, when you have visibility of what's happening in your company, you can find where the waste is. You can find where the unlock is. You can find where the AI potential is, you get all of this work intelligence which helps inform how to evolve no company.

Right now I can afford to go through a full transformation overnight. They're going to have to figure out where is the place that's in pain the most, or cost us the most money. And where do we go first? st So it's using data to really inform , where do I go first? st Where do I take action and betting to the CEO? And this is where Dennis, your story got very exciting, .

We were on a bit of a roller coaster over the last couple of months, because, , Dennis started off on the journey. It hits the executive and Dennis, why don't you tell that story? Because I think the thing for everyone to listen on this story that was so impressive was this, started out a Hr project which has now become this really important transformation, for , leaders broadly so Dennis would love for you to share that if you can share as much as you're allowed.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Sure. I think it goes back to that foundation building that we committed to in the 1st phase with our CHRO. , we spent a lot of months thinking about. Okay, here are strategic work, streams, rebuilding, architecture, became our rallying cry of our 1st work stream, but working within the people org to figure out what is our new work architecture, Siobhan? To your point.

We did a lot of environmental scaling of quality work, intelligence, because we knew that it was an important foundational build. But as we were working with you on that, on that work, intelligence, that selection and then kicking off. This work was a moment where our CHRO came back and said, Okay, we need to demonstrate value, that of this foundational build, and we had a skilling summit where we brought leaders from the people organ, some representatives from the business together at varying levels of the organization and being able to have a strategic conversation about work, design. skills, proficiency and AI driven learning, and how it's going to disrupt the landscape of talent development, I think, became the Aha moment for our leadership, and the idea that we actually now have some predictive modeling. If we have our work, intelligence validated and consistent with our company's demand that we could be looking at this AI human centered work redesign in a much more strategic enterprise way to inform business value before investment right?

And I think that was the Aha moment for our C-suite to say we've really got a roadmap here if we can commit to it and help their company jump over a few steps because the realities are. We have not invested as in industry, and I think this is true of many industries. When I speak to peers and others a lot of time in developing that work, intelligence that we trust. and if we can accelerate into work intelligence that we trust we're going to get to better decision making around AI, and it opens up a lot of questions as we've been talking about work, design and work intelligence and how it's going to inform our business decisions, our talent decisions. We're now talking about the intersection of human AI centered work. What does that mean for our culture team?

What does it mean for our management strategy? What does it mean for the business to be thinking about capabilities of human and agents working together. These are all. Now, okay. we can.

We can start to see we need governance. We need structure, we. And how do we put this in place. So it really opened up.

And our CEO could see, wow, there's actual data analysis and work intelligence out there that can help this company make better decisions and ensure that we are still at the forefront of human centered work, even as technology continues to evolve and make us more efficient. , and to your point, Siobhan. When that moment happened, our work was suddenly being rolled out to the business. At an accelerated pace to say, how do we build? Trust in all of this? Because if we're moving in this direction, we have to do a trust.

Build.

Siobhan Savage: Yep.

Josh Bersin: Thanks, Josh. I'm sorry I didn't mean no, no, I was just gonna I wanna try to generalize it a little bit for everybody who's on the webinar? So there's a couple of things that have led us to where we are. And I want to give you some perspectives on what this means to you as an Hr person in an organization. So we built these. We built our companies around jobs and jobs are an old industrial idea that you own your job, and your job is fixed, and your job has a title and your job has a level. and as long as you pay your dues you can, .

Do your job, get a good pay and retire. and then all of a sudden we decompose the jobs for a whole variety of reasons. and said, No, it isn't really about the job. It's about the productivity and output. So let's create this function called org design. which, by the way, is very old. I've read books on org design, and they're interesting, but really old ideas. And we said, oh, let's , 5 managers to 10 people.

Blah spans are controllable, and you would hire a consultant who would come in for 6 months and interview and survey everybody and say, what the heck are you doing? Oh, now that we know what everybody's doing, let's redesign your jobs to make things better and more productive or better for customers, or better for quality, or better, for time to work, or whatever the output is. that's the that's the world we're living in. Hr. We've never had the concept of a work intelligence, the word work, intelligence, never existed until Siobhan came along. To be honest, it's beginning to become obvious now that we need this because we have this AI stuff that just wipes out a bunch of stuff that we're doing. And so all of a sudden, we're in this new world where our jobs as Hr. People.

And, by the way, as business people, I don't think Hr. Is not business, it is business is not to push an Hr. Agenda. It's to look at the company and do what we can do from the human capital standpoint and make it run better. forgetting the 4 r's for a minute.

That means you need to use a tool Reejig and figure out what is actually going on. And, by the way, Dennis, you're not the only company. Most companies have very little idea what their people are doing. The line managers know. But at a global level, nobody's looking at it.

So all of a sudden, using Reejig and other tools Reejig, you can see where 30%. 40%. 50% of the payroll is wasted on stuff that could be done by an agent, or an AI or a bot or something else. So this is a whole new idea. and if you try to fit it into the old idea of org design, it's not going to work or design was based on the job architecture. So I think the reason this is such a fascinating trend is we're rethinking what the What Hr. Does now. By the way, does this belong in Hr, maybe it doesn't, .

Maybe I don't. I don't know if it belongs in Hr. At Amazon, at Amazon. It's probably not in Hr.

It's probably in the business. and Hr. Is just coming along for a ride. But this is the way we have to run our companies now. And , I think, Dennis, you're you're you've got a just an incredible mandate.

And obviously with the CEO involved. There's gonna be a lot of pressure to figure it out. But we're, , in the case of Reejig, I mean, I'm extremely excited about what you guys have done. We're embedding it into Galileo, which is coming out in August, and you can go in those of you on this webinar.

You can go in and look at whatever job function you're working on. And you can run the Reejig analysis. You say, Aha! 30% of the stuff people are doing here. They really shouldn't be doing.

And you don't have to hire a consultant and spend 2 years trying to figure it out. That's where we are.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: And I'd to. Just, , Josh, everything you said is just so relevant to what . Our team and micron is living every day in on this journey, but the reality is of org design, and those traditional job architectures. What defined hierarchy was managing people or decisions you might be making in order to get to what we perceived as higher level, position or titles.

Josh Bersin: Right.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Now, the way we're thinking about spans of control is okay. Let's not think about managing people, but actually deliverables of work really to define lever and org. The old structures of org design do not know how to think about progressive task, progressive function and progressive deliverables that require higher level skills and knowledge because it was okay. If you manage 10 people, chances are you were higher up on that org hierarchy than others.

But it's not about managing people anymore. Spam.

Siobhan Savage: It's a month.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: It's about how what work has the highest value.

Josh Bersin: Funny thing about it, Dennis, is the comp system that I just got off a call and perform. Oh, I know it all that stuff is based on this old arc, where this is a complete wipe out of many.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I agree, I agree. I agree. And because now, how do we measure greatest impact of the tasks at the highest level, they're going to bring the business value. Well, it throws out that whole org structure.

And how are we gonna actually pay at higher rate for the contributions that matter most in our work, environment. And how does the work intelligence do that? I agree with you? It's every ever you're you're watching all those old models.

Josh Bersin: Yeah, there's 1 thing. Let me let me run something. There's a human thing here that's been occurring to me because I'm getting a lot of questions about this. So let's suppose we go through all this automation. you fast forward to 2 years from now, or whatever it may be, and all the AI is working. You still have human beings doing stuff. People still need managers.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Alright!

Josh Bersin: So at the end of it all, I don't think we're gonna end up with companies, with 3 humans and 10,000 bots.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I agree.

Josh Bersin: I think there's a little bit of an inflammatory idea here that we're going to move to this totally flat, . bots doing everything, us managing the bot. People are people, and we need, , leadership and alignment. And where? Where's your mind on that.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: My mind, is that what we're trying to do now is assess where human based tasks and work are going to have its greatest value and to your point. management of people and management of age, and at the intersection of management of agents, is going to exist in the future of our workforce. It just is at what level, how many and where, and go back to spans of control. We have. Companies have been thinking about this even before AI. Where do we have management?

Bloat versus? Where do we have bloat of individual contributors to the business to gain efficiency? Well, what work intelligence does with a good performance model is, tell you where the work, what the work required to be efficient, productive, and contributing to the business exists. But then, who's performing the work at the highest levels to bring us that value?

And I think that is where human contribution has its greatest value in the business, whether it be at the management leadership or individual contributor role. It's just that you have better designed function and work. And AI is not going to replace the human. It's going to augment efficiency and allow us to direct our work in more of a higher value way, I mean, and I do think the when we were at Aws there was a conversation of okay.

We think about the things that we can prioritize in our work to contribute to the business, and sometimes there are things that we have to put effort into that takes way more time than the priority that actually may bring more value to the business that we're not getting to for strategy and innovation, because we have to keep the trains running on time. Well, AI is going to help us make that more efficient. Right? So I do. , my own belief is we have to rethink how we value work in our compensation model.

We have to understand where humans greatest contribution in this new AI human intersection is going to hold sway because it's imperative. AI is here to perform tasks. It doesn't take out the need for human centered work, but we may also have to rethink the work week. because what we valued is 40 h of contribution well as a con.

Siobhan Savage: Of worms.

Josh Bersin: There's an article that came out this week. There's a new study that shows how great the 4 Day work week is.

Siobhan Savage: No, probably.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: No, no, let me let me- let me just say let me just say.

Josh Bersin: We're not, CEO says. Great. If you've got an extra day a week, you can do.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. What have you been doing this whole time?

Dennis Di Lorenzo: But let's think of it. Let's think of it this way, because when you're a consultant, you learn that whether you're spending 20 min or an hour. It's the deliverable and output and impact on the business that you're contributing. So I'm not suggesting we break the 40 h work week.

What I'm saying is that you may have 40 h of contribution based on today's traditional model. That's only bringing 50% value to the business. In this new work intelligence AI centered workforce design. You may find that 20 h is bringing you 80% business impact doesn't mean you may not require 40 h of contribution. And that's what you're you're going to see the shift on right.

If 20 h gives you 80% business impact in this new model of work design versus the old model of 40 h, only giving you 50%. Well, you've actually increased the value of the human, regardless of how much time they're spending in the work.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, let me give you a real life example of what I see across the board, because, , I'm getting to play in every major industry right now, seeing this across the board, there's 2 major examples of where, when AI becomes topical at the CEO level and what they care about. So one, where's the pain? So go and use AI to remove some form of pain. The nurses example Josh has given.

There is no nurses. How do I free nurses up to do more of the work that they can only do, that the qualified nurse can do. And how is this other part? Could this be done in a different way. So there's this pain connection to the business needs to solve a problem.

The other use case where we see a lot is where, for instance, and a kind executive a salesperson, a salesperson is measured by the amount of meetings they book and the pipeline that they create. Now, if a typical sales rep books, 5 meetings a week, and that is their quota, and that turns into X amount of pipeline, how do I get that rep to build more pipeline. and the conversation then becomes what is all of the work that the account executive is doing, and what work could be done in a different way to free them up, to focus on those tasks that give them the outcome of meetings. So the Ceos are caring about. the work. And people keep talking about this high value work and freeing people up to do meaningful work at the end of the day.

It's about outcomes. And how do we increase the outcome of the individual which leads to a outcome for the business which is money. , or some reason of value to the organization. So I think we're in this moment of, there is 2 messages to market right now. They're the Ceos that are pretending there's not going to be impact to people which is not true.

There's going to be impact. It's just whether or not they're going to say it out loud. And then there is the Ceos that are being very outward around talking about. We want to increase productivity. We want to increase efficiency, and there will be impacts.

And where the Hr folks are really getting pulled in at the board level is, the public perception of the business needs to be that we are being bold. But also we're bringing our people on the journey to ensure that we've got the right capability that's going to be needed for this future workforce that we're building.

Josh Bersin: 

So that's really where we're seeing that. And another idea, . Look, everybody thinks AI is a big productivity tool. We're, gonna , reduce the number of people reduce our labor percentage and time to market and all that. I think the other thing that you have to be careful of is. what is the business you're in, and how do you add value.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: That's right.

Josh Bersin: Yeah, you can reduce the number of people. Great. Okay? You got a 10% cut on headcount that feels good for about a quarter. Few other people are working harder.

Our training, , investment has to go up because we're hiring more people, and we're redeploying people. But all of a sudden we're back to where we started from. Can you use the AI to do stuff that you always wanted to do that you couldn't do before.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Try.

Josh Bersin: And do these other things, Dennis, I'm sure you're gonna run into this because, , the cost cutting part of it is probably gonna be over in a year. I mean, everybody's gonna have that.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well, and.

Josh Bersin: Thinking beyond that, however, then you're into redesigning the way the company operates.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Bye.

Josh Bersin: Why this work intelligence is so strategic. It isn't just, , cost saving, getting rid of 30% of the effort.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I think that you are hitting on exactly what our strategic. Again, we talk about building the foundation versus our strategic vision and ongoing business impact. If we're leaning into work. Intelligence.

Yeah, there may be a reset moment to your point of how do we restructure the business and maybe achieve some short term savings. But that just to your point, Re levels the playing field on our business model. The real question is. AI, and work is going to continue to evolve. How does this work design model continually help you direct your resources to give the highest level of value and impact to the business, and I think to your point, Siobhan, a lot of people are talking about high value work, but no one's identifying high value.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, what is high value work.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: What it is. High end value work means right. And but I think let's go. Let's dig into the work intelligence model, which tasks and subtasks actually have that are human centered tasks that are going to remain contribute most to business growth or business sustainability.

Josh Bersin: I'll tell you a funny example. Can I give you guys a funny example in my life? So we sell a very intangible product. We sell a membership in a research thing, I don't even know what to call it.

And they get to call us. And we give them all sorts of data and stuff. And so for years and years and years we've been figuring out what makes people renew. . Is it?

Is it more frequent access to our website. Is it better data? What is it? It turns out it's the relationship they have with the humans in our company. That is what they want the most. That is what they value when it comes time for renewal.

I don't know if any AI model would have caught that, it probably would have stripped it probably would have just been a little piece of right ship, sir. I'm getting at Siobhan.

Siobhan Savage: Be robot. Josh.

Josh Bersin: Yeah, I mean, we're gonna I think this work intelligence is really interesting for a lot of reasons, because you're gonna see what the nucleus of value is.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Agree.

Josh Bersin: And all of a sudden.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well agreed, and with the work intelligence model. Josh. you now know that your highest value is that relationship and the time that your people are spending with your clients. But looking at your own organization work, intelligence can tell you, what can we automate? So our people are spending the most time on.

Josh Bersin: Right.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: And chips.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: That's the goal. Right? Do what.

Siobhan Savage: Really funny if you take AI out of this equation. And we were just having a webinar where there was no AI. And the agent movement didn't happen, we would still be having a really valuable conversation. Because, you see how work and jobs have even been built.

It's everyone sleepwalked into building these companies and just things evolved over time, and we have no idea how. I don't even know half the stuff.

Josh Bersin: 

It's not sleepwalking. It's a hundred 200 years of business books and case studies and exams.

Josh Bersin: 

Architectures and.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah.

Josh Bersin: Who's.

Siobhan Savage: And think about, even if you remove AI, even if you were to just look about where the bloat is, where there's duplications you've got, , a hundred people called different titles, who are all doing the same thing, who don't actually know they're all doing the same thing. You've got massively crazy, archaic job architectures that have been designed for dinosaurs that are labeled in a way that doesn't make any sense when it comes to the organization. So even at a level without AI that we need this new infrastructure, we need this new view of work because the way that we've designed our companies is fatally flawed, and we can't be agile because we've got this really static way of doing it, and no one has a clue about what anyone's doing. No one has any idea.

Josh Bersin: That Dennis said, for a sec. I think the other thing that Dennis, you're probably realizing this is this is a massive, skilling effort. because, assuming we come up with all these new AI tools, or whatever they may be, they're different in every case. We have to teach people how to use them. Sure.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well, you have to. TT.

Josh Bersin: And they're afraid of them right now. Everywhere I go they're afraid of it every. I just got off the call with another company. That's said.

Everybody in the company is afraid of getting laid off. They don't even want to touch it.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: Well, I. And then I think that's where educate, . Siobhan talks about our story. . I believe that we have to jobs of work, transformation units, skills, transformation units.

We are have to be educators on how work is shifting, how AI can actually help you be more productive, more valuable to the company. This isn't about replacing you. However. Now let's think about you as a contributor to say, if AI makes me more efficient. Where can I?

What do I need to develop, or where? What skills do I already have that actually have greater value to the company? And where can I put my time? Because to Siobhan's point? . AI no different than we, .

I'm I'm Gen. X. We lived, , no computers on our desk. I'm I'm preaching to the choir with you, Josh.

To . AI, we've we've had small disruptions going on. This moment is a major evolution of I was a continuing education, Dean, for a really long time. Retooling, reskilling is the people who did that always were more successful in being able to be transferable, or, , mobile or achieve leadership status. The reality is, you were able to do that in cycles as a as a career professional that were longer term. Right?

You could take 2 years. You could take a year. Now, it's really you have to ask yourself. Every maybe 6 weeks are there areas I need to develop. And I now have the tools to help me understand what I need to develop in real time in order to stay relevant.

And , if I think just if I think not embracing a tool that's gonna help the business and help me be a greater contributor is gonna stop this revolution. Well, that's the mindset of that we have to lean into. But how do you create the safe space to have that conversation and bridge the gap and educate the business. the team member and leadership. Because I see those 3 domains differently.

The business organizations within your company operate in one way, that to your point the people org is a business organization that has its own practice, but it has to be an enabler. Then you have C-suite with larger goals. They? And then you have team members who have aspirations and goals, and you have to look at those populations, and continually educate, inform, and make sure they understand that there what your objectives are, and the realities. And I have this conversation all the time. , companies have reorged down and up based on business for years.

This idea that AI all of a sudden is just another thing to push out workforce. Well, , there, , we've seen economic depressions. We've seen technological disruptions. Humans are still at the center of work.

It's just a matter of the work that we're going to perform. Yeah, the one thing, the one thing as well, I think.

Siobhan Savage: We've got a little bit of time where the jobs paths are not moving out of jobs at a pace, because it's , there's taking a minute for this thing to start really happening, which gives you time. whether you're a chief learning officer, CHRO, you've got time to now prevent anything from that world of , everyone's being pulled out of jobs because we've got this time to look at. Well, where is that opportunity for skilling, , and I think the data. If you're in the Hr. World right now, you should be making best friends with the CIO and CIO's team are driving this innovation.

One of the things that Dennis has done really well is this is not just. Hr. This is being connected into the business more broadly, so that as work does transform that, it's getting connected back into the Hr folks so that you can re-engineer the jobs. Remember, every time you deploy an agent you remove a task, but you also add in new tasks. So this is what Josh was saying.

It's not a consulting project. You do once, and it gives you a directive. It's the continuous evolution of work, and the AI companies are still on this journey right this hasn't been fully fleshed out, and the models are not where they need to be. You give that some time, and things will start getting even better.

And what you'll start to see is that.

Josh Bersin: 1st time in the history of technology that everybody bought automation and they didn't know what they were going to do with it.

Siobhan Savage: It's , Oh, we got this thing. Now, what? Now? What?

And I think the other thing that I see with companies is where they've done this thing where they've said everybody go deploy, agents, we've given you access to these tools. Now go! And for me that's , Oh, God, don't do that, because if you imagine in a company, things get done through systems and processes and ways of working, and if you allow everyone to go and create a version of that process. Can you imagine the chaos that you're going to create? You're going to do the opposite of what the AI is intended to do.

You're going to slow everything right down. So you need this enterprise view of how do I actually do this from a transformation perspective to do it in a way where Dennis is doing it, so that you're looking at the opportunity and then thinking about where the agents could be deployed. And then what will be the impact to the workforce? So that's where it's this. Byo!

AI! Everyone go for it , I just think, just caution that a little bit in your world, because I think it'll be a very, , different time. I've got 2 questions, so we're getting close to time. But before we wrap up, Dennis. people are getting started on this journey to both of you.

What do folks need to think about? They're right in the point where this is a new evolving category. This is a new space. What are the things that you recommend folks should think about when they're starting on this journey.

Dennis Di Lorenzo: I would say, have a very honest assessment of your current organizations. Gaps in work, intelligence. understanding. And to Josh's point, skills, based organizations, research articles. They're all the best to inform thinking.

But that's not a strategy. And so what are your business problems today that you're trying to solve for has to be the starting point. What your where are your gaps in intelligence to help inform the solutions to those business problems? And then what is cultural tolerance for change?

Because I've had this conversation as well. This is not an exercise in skilling. This is an exercise in systemic Hr and organizational change management.

Siobhan Savage: Josh.

Josh Bersin: Here, here.

Siobhan Savage: Amen!

Josh Bersin: And I would say, the other thing is, there are no sacred cows, because you're gonna have to shatter a lot of things that you may have spent a lot of time on the Comp model, the job model, the succession model, the performance management model. So don't be afraid. If those things suddenly look they don't fit, because they're going to have to come along for a ride.

Siobhan Savage: Yep, I completely agree. And I think , leaving you all with this incredible insight, a massive thank you to Dennis for sharing his story. You can follow Dennis on Social, a massive thank you to Josh as well for your continuous wisdom of this topic, and just really pioneering us into this new wave. My one recommendation to folks is, , start with this day, 0, thinking. , don't come in and rely on all the old models.

Let's start thinking about how we completely reinvent this. Thank you. Everyone for your time. Hope everyone has a great rest of the day.

Take care, everyone.

Josh Bersin: Anyways.