The "Are You Being Served?" Business Podcast Series

Our series of business podcasts features smart thought leaders providing insights on the key issues shaping business success and the global economy. They discuss and critique best practice, the use of emerging technology and address key issues of poor performance. This programme features the CEO of People Dilligence, Claire Hartnell.

Mentioned in this episode:

Smart Resource Solutions

Our series of business podcasts features smart thought leaders providing insights on the key issues shaping business success and the global economy. They discuss and critique best practice, the use of emerging technology and address key issues of poor performance. This edition we feature Asitha Rodrigo. This episode is accompanied by a Further Information Sheet on Ai: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OaV6WpgNptAlX9C3sKcY7lCei4dtUs1l/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112329473571806287114&rtpof=true&sd=true

Asitha Rodrigo discusses the current landscape of AI in business, addressing the hype versus reality of AI technologies. He emphasises the importance of understanding the specific problems businesses are trying to solve with AI, rather than adopting AI for its own sake. He covers the challenges of implementing AI solutions, the need for skilled talent, and the evolving decision-making process between buying and building AI solutions. Asitha shares insights from his extensive experience in software engineering and technology leadership, providing a comprehensive overview of the current state and future potential of AI in business operations.

takeaways

• AI is a powerful operational tool, not magic.
• Understanding the problem is crucial before implementing AI.
• AI can augment business operations significantly.
• The hype around AI often overshadows its practical applications.
• Organisations must assess AI solutions like any other tool.
• Talent shortages in AI are often due to a lack of foundational skills.
• AI implementation requires careful consideration of existing systems.
• The cost of AI tools is rising, impacting scalability.
• Buy vs. build decisions are evolving with AI capabilities.
• AI's impact on business will continue to grow as technology advances.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Smart Resource Solutions Web Site

What is the single most important driver of loyalty—for your customers, and for your employees? Is it price? Brand? Or is it something more fundamental?

What if the secret wasn't a mystery at all, but something you could actually measure and manage?

What if you could know, with absolute clarity, what your people and your customers truly expect from you... and then see, in a simple score, exactly how you're performing against those expectations?

And once you have that intelligence... how do you stack up against your competitors? Where are you truly differentiated, and where are you falling behind?

Most importantly... how do you turn that insight into a transformative action plan that drives real growth and loyalty?

In this episode, we meet CJ and company, who cannot understand why they continue to lose loyal customers. Then we drop in on the webinar they are attending to give them some answers.

Our series of business podcasts features smart thought leaders providing insights on the key issues shaping business success and the global economy. They discuss and critique best practice, the use of emerging technology and address key issues of poor performance.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Smart Resource Solutions Web Site

Our series of business podcasts features smart thought leaders providing insights on the key issues shaping business success and the global economy. They discuss and critique best practice, the use of emerging technology and address key issues of poor performance.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Smart Resource Solutions Web Site

Claire Hartnell is our first guest. Claire spent 25 years as a management consultant working for clients including Coca Cola, eBay, Diageo and LloydsBank. She helped build two in-house start-ups including one where her team delivered £150m net premium income. She has worked across Business functions including Operations, Risk Management, Bid management and of course, Strategy. Over the past decade, Claire has become an expert in organisational and cultural design. She takes a biological systems perspective to help clients build resilient, high performance cultures. She explores this systems thinking approach to business in her Substack: The Organisational Anthropologist (https://clairejhartnell.substack.com/). Claire has recently joined the Steering Committee of social enterprise, the Connection Engine, where she is helping to shape organisational structure.

About People Diligence

www.peoplediligence.co.uk

People Diligence is an Organisational Design consultancy that offers clients a variety of resources including training, consultancy and people analytics. People Diligence's purpose is to help organisations get more from their people - not by working them harder but by working smarter. Drawing from a deep understanding of the principles of agile, continuous improvement and complex adaptive systems, Claire offers a fresh approach to organisational design. PeopleDiligence has been providing its manager training resources to the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur incubator since 2022 with a user rating of 9.2/10.

Mentioned in this episode:

Smart Resource Solutions

clients' needs encompass people. Tools. We also offer consultancy and skills development.

SRS the producers of Are you being served

Mentioned in this episode:

Smart Resource Solutions

clients' needs encompass people. Tools. We also offer consultancy and skills development.