Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

Episode 26 | AI and the Rise of the Intellectual Capitalist

Note: this episode contains explicit language.

The Big Themes:

• Knowledge workers are no longer at the top of the pyramid: Careers like lawyer, doctor, and engineer have long been highly valuable and widely esteemed, but by making tons of knowledge readily accessible and mostly free, tools like ChatGPT are going to push knowledge workers down in the career pyramid.
• The rise of the intellectual capitalist: The creation of "net-new knowledge" (intellectual capital, or IC) is going to define the highly valuable and esteemed careers of tomorrow.
• ChatGPT and other AI tools should be embraced: Yes, there will be jobs lost and people who use these tools for nefarious reasons, but as a society we must embrace the possibilities and opportunities they present. For example, these tools should not be banned in schools, but instead used to spark conversation and creativity.

The Big Quote: "If you've ever created anything new of value for yourself and or your company, in your work, whether you realize it or not, you're an intellectual capitalist... And the big aha now is to take that from the back of your mind to the front of your mind. Ask yourself, what IC have I created already? How am I being super thoughtful about leveraging my IC to make a difference, to create value for others, and for myself?"

Want more from Christopher Lochhead? Connect with him on LinkedIn and explore his podcasts, blog, and books.

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The Big Themes:

• Apex's culture of curiosity: While the CFO's domain is traditionally finance, JJ explains that at Apex, he is focused on business forecasting, not just financial. Workday Adaptive Planning was the perfect tool for the inclusive and cooperative culture at Apex.
• Effective planning keeps Apex ahead of disruption: The ability to create scenarios that incorporate many shareholders' voices has kept Apex strong and solvent during major challenges like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
• Investing in high-growth tech attracts talent: JJ contrasts the boring "plug and chug" culture he has seen in other finance departments with the dynamic environment at Apex, noting that investments in tech like Workday Adaptive is a draw for talent.

The Big Quote: "We're proud of that. When we go to the market, recruiting people, we're talking about, number-one best place to work in Fort Worth, number-six in Texas... And part of that is, we've invested in the tech, right? We've invested in Workday."

Want to learn more about Workday Adaptive Planning? Watch a demo and explore use cases here.

This episode is sponsored by Workday.

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The Big Themes:

• Don't ignore the threat of ChatGPT: Even as a company with incredibly advanced AI capabilities, Google is doing the right thing by treating this kind of new interactive AI chatbot as a challenger to its massive search business.
• Be open to the possibilities of ChatGPT: On the other hand, Microsoft is very wisely looking to bring ChatGPT into the fold and enhance its existing products and services using artificial intelligence.
• The importance of transparency and trust: Christian brings up the potentially sinister side of interactive AI, specifically deep-fake videos that could be used to spread disinformation and sow discord. Business leaders must focus on building trust into the application of technologies like ChatGPT.

The Big Quote: "Gotta free the mind, if you will.... If you had an organization that had free thinkers, you could find very, very easily what ChatGPT or a similar capability could mean to financial services. The implications are significant."

Want more leadership inspiration from Christian? Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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The Big Themes:

• The WFH challenge for young talent: creating a personal network and building personal credibility are incredibly important early in a career, and Pat worries that young people are not getting the networking and mentorship opportunities that working shoulder-to-shoulder offers.
• Work ethic in today's world: Pat defines work ethic not as being the first-in, last-out team member, but rather the cultivation of a reputation among bosses and peers as someone who always gets the job done and gets it done right.
• Responsibility and accountability: the only person who is responsible for the success of your career is you. Some companies and bosses are terrible, but there are still lessons to be learned and experience to be had. Make the most of every job.

The Big Quote: "It takes a full time job to find a good job. It takes a full career to manage and navigate the right career. You're gonna make mistakes... Learn how to actually build a career, a work ethic, and be able then to navigate how you want to manage your career."

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Want additional insights to help you win the war for talent? Connect with Pat on LinkedIn.

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The Big Themes:

• Similarities between Madoff and SBF: Both men "wrapped themselves" in celebrity, fancy parties, and politics. They were able to pull off the deception they created by being good "talkers" and schmoozers.
• Differences between Madoff and SBF: Where Madoff admitted his wrongdoing virtually immediately, SBF has been spinning a story of incompetence rather than crime. Christopher makes connections between this behavior to SBF's identity as a Native Digital.
• Is the end of FTX also the end of crypto? Christopher says no way. This type of scandal will probably help to move regulation of crypto in the right direction, and the market will calm down eventually. Native Digitals don't believe in "analog money," and the promise of crypto remains.

The Big Quote: "What we have here is a classic situation where when something's new, when something is generally not well understood, and when something's generally not regulated, you're going to end up here. So I think at the end of the day, the crypto world will be stronger for this because we'll get some of the regulation that we have that makes some of these things hard, although Madoff proved you can get away with bad shit in the legacy world very easily... But I think it's a mistake to say this is the end of crypto."

Want more from Christopher Lochhead? Connect with him on LinkedIn and explore his podcasts, blog, and books.

Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:

• What inspired Alloy? Less than a decade ago, Clay says, companies were trying and failing to build their own private clouds, because the technology just wasn't there yet. But Oracle believes it now has the tech to meet this desire among customers.
• What kinds of customers are interested? Clay points to organizations that deal with a lot of regulation as the prime audience for Alloy—they're interested in cloud but it has never worked for them before. This includes governments and companies in industries like financial services, healthcare, and telecomm.
• Is this the future of cloud? Oracle does not believe the future of cloud is to consolidate power among a few vendors, Clay says. Alloy is intended to infuse flexibility into how cloud technology can work for customers, putting much more control in their hands.

The Big Quote: "Cloud infrastructure has been around for at least 15, maybe 16, 17 years. We're only 30% market penetration. It's not because people haven't heard of it yet... What they need is they need better solutions that actually solve their problems."

Want to learn more about OCI and Oracle Alloy? Connect with Clay on LinkedIn.

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The Big Themes:

• Consistency: Companies that ask employees to give up the benefits of remote work and come back to the office must also require executives to do the same. Otherwise, trust disappears and team members disengage.
• Clarity, candor, transparency: Explaining the specific benefits of returning to in-person work is essential. Saying that productivity will go up is not enough—leaders must provide examples, and help employees understand how their experience will improve.
• Culture and environment: The key to a successful move away from all-remote work is to create an office environment that people want to be part of. Starting at the very top, companies must cultivate a positive and enriching in-person culture.

The Big Quote: "The reason why leadership is so hard is because every day, every day as a leader, your job is to show up for everybody but yourself. That's extraordinarily hard... If you are not prepared to very literally show up for everyone else, then you might want to think twice about bringing the workforce back into the office."
 

Want more leadership inspiration from Christian? Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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The Big Themes:

• What's really going on with layoffs? Among the six companies Wayne pulled numbers for, five of them actually have had net-positive employee growth over the last several years. But they are letting people go, and Wayne explains why.
• Should non-tech companies hire big-tech engineers? There is a big opportunity here, Wayne says, but execs at non-tech companies have to be very, very careful and thoughtful when preparing to bring these folks onboard.
• What's the best way to have job security today? As an advisor to three very different groups of job seekers, Wayne has honed his most important advice: Learn new things. Always be curious. And don't turn down opportunities to learn and do things.

The Big Quote: "This may be the opportunity to shake the tree, to shake the company up and say, What if we had a continuous integration, continuous delivery tool chain? What if we were using more modern tools? ... What are we trying to accomplish culturally? And how can this availability of very cutting-edge talent, who might be disciplined differently, fit into our culture?"

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Want more of the CIO and CTO perspective?
Connect with Wayne on LinkedIn or through his Acceleration Economy Analyst page.

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The Big Themes:

• Customer stories at Cloud World 2022: Bonnie praises Oracle for including the voice of the customer in many of the keynote talks at the conference, including Oracle Me HCM customers McDonald's, Marriott, and the Church of Latter Day Saints.
• Six key takeaways: These three customers talked about their implementation experiences with Oracle HCM technology, and Bonnie wrote up six important insights that other companies considering HR tech upgrades should keep in mind.
• Fundamentals must come first: Before pursuing HR and HCM software implementation, business leaders must have a strong grasp of processes, personas, and the employee lifecycle and overall experience.

The Big Quote: "Role clarity is important... All three organizations felt like it's very important to understand how the team is going to be in the future, in the cloud, because the team infrastructure and what they are responsible to do in a cloud environment is very different than with legacy systems."

More from Bonnie Tinder: Connect with Bonnie on LinkedIn or send a message via her Acceleration Economy Analyst page.

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The Big Themes: 

• This is about adaptation, not ageism: Native digitals are not better or worse than native analogs, but they are actually a new category of human being. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it's not.
• Businesses at risk of obsolescence: Leaders who do not account for the differences of native digitals are going to face (1) the failure to hire and retain anybody under 35 and (2) the inability to market and sell to anybody under 35.
• The Mentor Myth: Chris says that the secret to native analogs thriving in our native digital world is understanding that the older generations have as much to learn from the younger ones as vice versa. Read more in "The Mentor Myth" ebook.
   

The Big Quote: "We are the last native analogues to walk Planet Earth. period. Human beings have embedded technology into the core experience of life. And that will be true forever going forward."

Want more from Christopher Lochhead and Category Pirates? Explore his podcasts, blog, and books

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