AI, Media Savvy & The Future of Work

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

Hey everyone, welcome back to FMC Fast Chat, where media meets influence. I'm your host, Jaci Clement, and today's episode is all about how AI is transforming the way we work and the growing need for a much more forward-thinking and media-savvy culture. I've got the perfect guest lined up for you, Rocky Ozaki, founder of Now of Work. Rocky's been leading the charge in helping businesses move into the future, and his AI adoption program has already helped companies throughout North America. Rocky has some upcoming keynote appearances where he's sharing the stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gary Vaynerchuk, so you know he's bringing serious insights on the future of work. So please take a listen to this episode of FMC Fast Chat. Thank you for joining us. I am so thrilled to welcome back one of our favorite people, Rocky Ozaki. Last time Rock was with us was actually around the beginning of the pandemic. So things have changed quite a bit. What do you say, Rock?

Oh my gosh, you're right. Things have changed on so many avenues and I can't wait to dive into some of the things we're going to talk about.

Why don't we talk about what the workforce was like just a couple of years ago versus where we are now and where we're going? So if you just want to break that down into small pieces, let's go ahead and dive in.

Well, I think, and if we even go back to anything that we talked about or what we published and all this. If you think 2 years ago, for sure, we were adjusting from the pandemic, whether it was remote work and adopting technologies and even AI actually 2 years ago. And part of me in reflection now, when you ask what's it like now, I think we're starting to reflect on what worked and what didn't work. Because let's be honest, the pandemic thrust a lot of organizations, particularly ones in the corporate setting, that they had no choice to do a lot of these things, whether it was remote or technology and things. And so now that we can reflect back, you know, things are starting to correct in different ways, I suspect. And people are trying to find what, you know, what their unique employee value proposition is.

What we've seen just recently, I mean, there just seems to be a lot of technology coming at us all of a sudden and a lot of big changes and people really kind of freaking out about AI, how to use it, how do I adopt it? Are we ready for it? You know, is it the end of the world? Is technology going to blow us all up? That sort of thing. Since you work with so many businesses, so you work with small and medium-sized businesses across the United States and Canada. So from your perspective, what are you seeing in terms of how these organizations are operating versus where they should be?

Yeah, I go back to our archetype model, Jaci, in this. And I think there's, you know, I won't bore the audience with them all, but the short answer is I still believe 80, 90% of companies are quite a bit behind where they need to be. And the pandemic was one wake-up call. We just talked about that and said, oh my gosh, like maybe we should challenge our assumptions of what work means and what life means and what our customers actually want. And now we have to start really thinking about, you know, these technologies like AI was the second recent wake-up call. It's like these exponential technologies aren't slowing down. If anything, they're going to come faster. And there's this realization, I think, That most companies are a little further behind than they think.

Now, one of the things we like to talk about at the Fair Media Council is the need for a media-savvy society. And we break that down a whole lot of different ways, everything from old school news to social media, to the technologies and as they're emerging, including AI and best practices. And so we want everyone to be accountable and responsible, and we want people to be trusted and credible. So that's really where we come at it. So I'm wondering how these small businesses can even begin to tackle something like AI.

Right. Okay. So in, for SMB to us is kind of like under $50 million, under 250 employees. And so there's a big difference between if you're 10 or 250, right? So, but generally speaking, what I believe strongly in, and this is one of the gifts we have right now. Is that in the context of AI, for example, it has been democratized. And when we say that in this context, it's like anyone can adopt it. And in that you can build GPTs yourself. You can have your team members probably in your organization know more about AI than some of the executives. And so part of the question is, you know, where do they start and how do they, you know, even attack this? Well, it's actually right there for them. And so this comes back again to Jaci mindset. Do you really believe the world is moving as fast as we think? Do you have that growth mindset where we need to operate in the gray in this exponential world, and we have to embrace failure, and we gotta be lifelong learners? If you as an organization, whether you're small or large, have that muscle memory and mindset, AI to me is not actually that hard to adopt.

How do we begin, I guess, would be the question.

Well, we, okay, so, well, let's go back to what you just talked about, responsible media and all that. Actually, We believe strongly and we created this AI adoption program. And one of the first things we talk about is responsible AI and use and even ethics. And it's all around governance. It just governance feels a little bit corporate, but that is a starting point. Why are we using it? What are we using it for? Well, how, what's our level of transparency and things like that? I think that organizations do have to stop and think about what responsible AI is before they start diving into actual use cases.

Is it too soon to ask whether or not anyone is using AI well at this point?

No, not at all. I think that generative AI in particular, the proof, and actually there's no, so the short answer is no, we are seeing ROI for sure. Now, do people still think there's a silver bullet? Absolutely. And there probably isn't, right? But yeah, we're seeing our clients are seeing incremental improvements of efficiency of 5 or 10% in a month or two. And maybe that may not go to 50% like they wanted for years, but there's that incremental improvement for sure in creativity, in getting more accuracy, in actually using your data analytics. And Jaci, what I would caution listeners as well is that while we are seeing ROI from AI and people are using it well, the endgame for me, or I shouldn't say the endgame, the point today isn't just about ROI. It's about socializing a new technology within your organization. So that as it gets better, as it starts to transform more and get better and better, that you're used to it, that your team members have embraced it, your customers are transparent and told how you're using it. We're all learning, right? And so the ROI is actually in a lot of ways trumped to simply, can we socialize what this is with our stakeholders?

Okay. So one of the great big fears people have about AI is it's going to take our jobs away.

Sure.

Do you believe that, or how do you come down in that equation? All right, explain this to me.

Okay, so it's going to take jobs, full stop, right? Every industrial revolution has done that. It's interesting because a lot of these thought leaders who are much smarter than I am say that this actually might be the first industrial revolution where actually more, less jobs are created. So everyone before us, more jobs are created. So that's left to be seen. My viewpoint is this, in the next few years, it's not about AI taking jobs, which is going to for sure. This is about how we coexist with AI. And so as we learn to say that we get better results. And so, you know, I tell this story a lot, Jacqui. I use the healthcare example and is that, you know, at some point, if we want better results in the healthcare world, it's going to be how we use AI, but there are going to be new jobs created from that. And so the story goes is that, yeah, let AI take some jobs with diagnosing diseases and what the treatment plan should be. And what can nurses and doctors do? Become more human-centered. Do what humans are good at, building connections, being more collaborative, having compassion. And so while AI is going to take jobs, I think it's going to create more human jobs in the future, which is really what we all want.

What would be the process for that though? Now, because you have an actual, you have an AI adoption program. So how do you even get to the point where you get past the employee stop of, no, you're here to take my job away, to, oh, I love AI. Suddenly I can act like a human being again.

Well, I think there's, from a really people and culture lens, there's 3 components your strategy probably needs to have soon. And it is reskilling, upskilling, and redeploying talent. So if we quickly break those up, what every modern company needs to do right now is say, What are we doing to reskill our staff in the things that they do with AI? Right? And that's again part of it. Hey, this is your job. It's about complementing what you do with AI. And they're going to see value from it. And they're going to get excited mostly, most of the times. Then we talk about upskilling. Okay. So what else can AI do that we're not using that these people can use with their intimate knowledge of our business and upskill them in those ways? And then redeployment can start talking about when we say, Listen, we might have jobs that are going to go away, but if you're aligned to our values and our mission, our vision, our BHAG, et cetera, we're going to find another job for you. And so that's the redeployment piece. I wish I could quote who the article was from. I think it was McKinsey, but many are predicting, Jaci, that by 2030, 60% of the jobs being advertised don't exist today.

Wow.

That's like 5 years from now, right? And so this is why you start thinking about, okay, let's socialize first, coexist with AI, upskill, reskill. But at some point, let's not lie because everyone knows it. They're reading it on social media too, and they're seeing it everywhere. So they know jobs are going to get lost. So let's have the conversation with our team about what new jobs can be created that add value in a human way to our customers and our team members. That's the two— when you ask how you start, that's the process.

Okay. And as I'm listening to you describe it, I'm imagining that this will put a new pressure on the leaders of organizations to be even more transparent. Because otherwise you're going to have a workforce up in arms saying, I don't know what's going on. You know, why, why should I pledge allegiance to this organization? So is there an actual mechanism for the leaders to be taking control of this situation?

Yeah. I mean, it depends what you mean by mechanism, but what you're suggesting is absolutely true. And this actually, as you're saying that, what I think about is partly the AI narrative. If you don't adopt AI, then you are going to fall behind. Your customers want it, your team members want it, your top talent want it. That to me is almost full stop. And that is the same thing with transparency. The modern company, and there's just 2 parts of it. The modern company is using technology, AI, because top talent wants it and your customers probably want it if they understand it. And customers and employees want transparency. And so there's this, the mechanism, it's like this should be your standard operating procedure actually for every modern organization. It's not just about innovation and agility, it's about transparency. And it's like actually saying with customers how we're using your data, how we're using AI, team members, you know, where jobs may be going. It absolutely is incumbent upon the leaders to do that. Or you're going to lose them.

Give me an idea. What kind of companies in terms of industries would be the easiest to adopt AI versus those that would probably be the stragglers, you know, being very slow to adopt?

Yeah, I get that question a lot, Jaci, and it's an excuse for anyone to say there's going to be someone slow to adopt, right? Like it's just not. And I think that also comes with the unknown around what AI actually is. And so let's riff on the fly. Is there an organization or company or sector that doesn't do creative work?

Hmm. Good question. Not that comes to mind.

Does any company not craft, you know, have meetings and craft emails?

No.

Does any company not like want to have, well, actually this might be, but most companies I suspect does sales and marketing and social media, right? So it doesn't matter if you're the archdiocese of some city or if you're a funeral home or if you're a tech company. What I just described are some of the very immediate and simple use cases for every company to adopt AI. When in our program, Jacqui, this is actually a great question because we just had it. We got off a call just now with one of our cohorts. And one of the reflections was they dove into AI right away, shotgunning and taking on all these different AI tools without the governance we talked about, without a real roadmap, without going through a process of vetting use cases. And their reflection was, I wish we had just adopted our meeting recording AI software first.

Really?

Because it was a soft entry. Yeah, because everyone was like, oh my gosh, it summarized our meetings. It helps us with our action plans. No one's going to lose a job because of it. And every company could use that. Could you, don't you think, in meetings? And now they're starting to use AI for what? Crafting copy, you know, for marketing, using it for some social media posts. Even further, I talked about emails. They've got a big announcement. We talk about transparency. A company wants to talk about how they're going to use AI. Well, why not use AI to write that first draft of the email? And so part of the story around a lot of AI, Jaci, in the generative AI space is never start with a blank piece of paper. So in any context of your business, if there's a blank piece of paper where you're sitting there thinking, what should I draw? What should I write? How should I approach this? There is an AI use case for you right there and a starting point, no matter what industry you're in.

That's interesting because I don't think anyone would think to just kind of start right there. You know, now I have found personally, I will write things, throw it through, you know, ChatGPT and say, can you edit this for me or turn it into bullet points or turn it or turn my commentary into a week's worth of social media posts? And it does that within seconds. But I do find that that little disclaimer saying this can be wrong, so you need to check it. You know, when it comes back with facts and figures, those I go back and manually check and I have found errors, but I've also found, which I think is interesting, sometimes I'll type something in and I'll say, translate this for me. And the way it translates my message is completely different than what I intended. So now I'm looking at it as my copy editor saying, well, that's not what I meant, but if people are going to interpret it that way, I, I need to take my humanity back to, to the writing part of it and rewrite this a different way.

Yeah.

So I'm finding it helpful in that regard. And I think that's a very non-threatening way to use it. Yeah.

And, and your experience touched on actually what everyone should be recognizing. Number one is that AI is in its infancy. And so what you describe is not always accurate. They call that hallucination. In generative AI, they're going to give you an answer. Actually, in any kind of AI, you're going to get an answer, whether it's right or not. That's, that's a debate, but it's going to give you a response. And so then let's take it to the next story. Remember we talked about coexisting? And so right now, this is not about AI replacing you and your social media people. This is about helping us accelerate and doing something faster. than what we did before, but we have to go back and vet it. We have to go back and do that fact checking like you said. And that's what we talk about coexisting with AI, but it will save you time. And if you start to embrace that, and that's your initial use case, Jaci, you're gonna start to see value from AI. And when the next tool comes along, you're like, okay, I had some wins before. It didn't take my job. It gained back value, created a more human experience. What's next? So you've described the journey, I think, for a lot of people still on this AI adoption.

As you talk, I'm wondering, you know, because technology changes so quickly, and what we know is education moves very slow with adopting change. Are we actually graduating a workforce that is going to be able to just step into the roles, you know, 5 years from now when things have changed dramatically, as you already described?

So no, I mean, I mean, I'm very critical of education today and I do recognize the world they live in and the constraints they have for sure. But at some point we have to stop making that an excuse. And there's a lot of reasons, right? And so whether it's other jurisdictions around the world, we live in a global economy. There are superpowers in this world and everyone's trying to dethrone, right? And so if we in North America can't adopt our technology and our education faster, Then guess what? There are others in the world that are going to. So there's actually an imperative there that I think a lot of people are missing. Now, on the good side, interestingly, I obviously watch a lot of podcasts like yours and I read a lot of blogs and there is a leading post-secondary school, a leading university in the US will remain unnamed. But what they came out and said, they were fighting this as well because a lot of schools are saying no AI, you know, in your work, et cetera. Well, one of the most forward-thinking professors said, well, wait a minute. As you said, are we really preparing our students for the real world? And when he went in, he was a bit of a skeptic as well. He went in, in his program. He said, you know what? I'm going to play with this. He created an entire program within— for the semester with the talking points, the tests, the exams, and everything all on an AI. And it came back and he admitted, he said, This is 80% of the way there. When he had that realization that he could do that in his, all that rigor and discipline around, you know, going through and looking at the precedents and all these thought leaders around the world, and he just threw that in and created a program that he would endorse in a matter of hours. His realization was that has to change the way that I allow my students to use it and how we're going to use it. Because to your point, otherwise it's not real world. We put the education system and students in a bubble if we don't allow them to use it, in my opinion.

And I think, you know, a bigger issue is, again, just with basic technology and access to technology. So it's not just a matter of the kids graduating need to be tech savvy and media savvy. They actually need to have the tools at the ready, which we know there are a lot of places, at least in America, where we still have that great divide. I don't know how it is in Canada.

Yeah, I mean, there's a divide for sure, but on the flip— and so this, you know, again, take a global context, right? And so for a long time now, a lot of these other countries where there's more poverty, and so we can take like the Philippines, for example, forever the Philippines have had the population had way more cell phones, percentage of population had cell phones that was exceeding that in US and Canada. And so what follows that? So they may not have a landline. They may not always have, you know, as much food they want to eat or all the things, the luxuries we have, but guess what? They all have AI. And when we talk about democratization, anyone who has a cell phone today, Jacqui, has access to AI. And so now you start thinking about, take it more broadly, more people technically have access to AI than they do potable water, right? Like in clean water. It's like, it's like, yeah, like maybe there is a divide, but there's not. My 14-year-old daughter has access to AI on her, on her, on her cell phone. And I explained to her how every, every piece of software she's using, how that's leveraging AI. And so in that sense, I'm teaching a 14-year-old who's not getting any of this in her school about the power of AI and how she can leverage it. So the divide isn't always there.

But now how do we get schools to start to adopt The strategy of let's really make these kids, you know, proficient at what the future is going to throw at them. Because I would imagine interviewing for a job, being asked if you know how to utilize AI is going to be as commonplace as, do you know PowerPoint or Excel and things of that sort?

Yeah. Well, my expertise is more business than it is government and education, but I think the story is still the same, right? Is do the leaders, do the leaders have the urgency? And the growth mindset they need to adopt this? Because I would suspect, and I'm just making this up, that many of the principals and teachers also feel like their jobs are being lost. They're busy, they're overworked, they don't— they're not using AI. And so they're living in a bit of ignorance and it's not a default to them. Now let's look at the policymakers. What's their motivation and what's driving their urgency? And so it's a complex thing because government is so intertwined with with the decisions around education that until, you know, we as people start speaking up more, I feel like until we start seeing more of a threat from other, you know, countries around the world and how advanced they are, to be honest, I'm not actually that confident, at least in North America, that we're keeping up. And I don't know how to change that.

That's one of my concerns as well, because it does look like we're being left behind on different measures throughout, throughout the world, however you want to slice that up. But now I guess let's segue a little bit into one of the big things early in the pandemic was, okay, now you can work from home because no one was allowed to be in a group. So we moved to the hybrid model and we moved to work from home. And then we moved to, you're back in the office a couple of days a week. Interestingly, Amazon just announced that it wants its employees back in the office 5 days a week. What's your take on this? What are you seeing in terms of, you know, company comfort levels and working remotely not working, or was it? Because we're seeing conflicting information about that as well.

You know, it's— and Google's executives have said some similar things. The irony to all this is that technology companies who were pushing the envelope of what the modern employee experience looked like and all these things, and the ping pong tables and the beer taps and the remote work and the unlimited vacation, all these things they're pushing. And now they're the ones who are saying pull it back. So, I don't think it's universal for one. I think a couple of things. Number one, that's really, really on brand with Amazon. And so, if you go back and you look at what Amazon talked about 10 years ago around what their employee value proposition was, they were not afraid to say that you are going to work a lot. The equivalent was Wall Street. So, if you want to work at Amazon, you want to be a manager here, you want to be a leader here, You're going to work long hours. You're going to do this. And if you don't like it, don't apply.

Okay.

And that's actually what we believe in. There's no perfect or right company culture. Every company needs their very specific, just like a value prop, their employee value proposition. So, where my kudos go to Amazon, if they follow through with this, is that they're drawing a line in the sand and saying, this is what we look for and this is what we want, and it's your choice. I don't see anything wrong with that. On the flip side, they're going to have to be very hyper-aware of what the market really is saying and what top talent actually wants because the pandemic didn't change anything, or since the pandemic, nothing in my view has changed around how we've challenged our assumptions of life. Where do I spend my time? Where do I want to spend my money? What does work mean to me? So I have a fear that they are going to probably lose a big part of their talent base. Now, this may not seem for a lot of people that to be the direct answer to this, but here's the other one. And I'm shocked around Amazon and maybe they have done this and this is why they're making the decision. When we, Jaci, coach organizations to level up and modernize, what's one of the first things? Well, you know, top 10 anyway, top 5 is do you know your numbers? Like what are your core metrics in your organization to say you're successful? Your scorecard at the highest level and your KPIs for every team. There's probably generally 3 to 5 at every level. What are they? Because the reason I say that when you talk about going back to work, if you're hitting your numbers, your marketing team are constantly hitting their KPIs, your sales team are, your HR team, whatever it is, your people and culture, all that. If they're hitting the KPIs, does anyone and should anyone care where they work?

No.

I don't think so. Right? But the problem is, Jaci, so many companies don't know what they're measuring. And so, they think they need to bring back the people because they're not hitting the numbers. But prove it. And if that's the reason, then that's a good story why you're doing this. But otherwise, it's like, dude, I think most people, whether you're a baby boomer or millennial, values their life and the time when they spend it. And it's not 5 days in the office commuting. Maybe you're not social, you're more of an introvert. Maybe you'd like the comforts of your home. Equally, some people want to go to the office. To me, it's all about choice. So, a bit of a ramble there, but I'm not fully convinced. I don't have the details of why Amazon made that decision.

Yeah.

But I'm certainly not convinced, Jaci, that's going to be the norm. I don't see everyone following suit.

Okay. Interesting. Now I want, I want to focus a little bit more on you specifically because your organization is called Now of Work. So how do you stay ahead of the curve? Because that to me seems like a huge challenge in and of itself.

Yeah. And so I, we practice what we preach, Jaci. So number one, we have the growth mindset. And so, we are, we know we don't know it all and we fail and we try things and we experiment a lot. And we also talk a lot about ecosystems. And so, in that sense, no modern company is going to win working in a silo, whether it's your teams or your organization. I think most people would agree with that. And so, for us, we leverage our ecosystem. We're constantly out there, you know, whether it's incubating or mentoring or just sitting in with a startup tech company, seeing what the latest technologies are and what problems they're trying to solve and what they're trying to disrupt. We're constantly going into our clients in their corporate offices and saying, what problems are you trying to solve? What pains are you solving? How are you doing that? And we bring that back to build our programs. And so, if you're constantly learning and constantly humble enough to know that you don't have all the right answers and you can actually practice that with rigor and disciplines and frameworks that we have, it's hard not to at least be in the know of what's going on. We may not always be right, Jaci.

Yeah.

But we're in, we're in the know because we're constantly in that ecosystem collaborating and finding out what problems are trying to be solved out there and how we might be able to help.

Okay. Are there any common pain points that you find across the board with organizations that you're working with?

100%. And it's so interesting too, right, is that these things haven't changed. I've had my company for almost a decade. And guess what we always hear about? We need better leadership. We don't train our middle managers enough, right? We need to generate sales. We need to like create like better repeatable and predictable processes. We need better change management. We need better culture. Like it actually, the narratives haven't changed from 10 years ago to today. It's how we're solving them today that's different. Yeah.

All right. All right. Rock, we're out of time already. So since that went way too fast, I'm going to ask you any parting thoughts, anything we should have talked about that we didn't touch on that our viewers and listeners may find of value.

I, you know, I, I, we're really broad on what we talk about. I think it's not, it's not what we miss. It's reinforcing that when we talk in an exponential world, Jaci, and AI in particular, embrace this journey, be part of the journey. We live in a world that's moving so fast. If you don't start to dip your toes in these things, Find out what, for example, AI means to you, where you can get value out of it. If your head is in the sand, my fear is you're gonna fall behind. So embrace it, learn, and just kind of accept the ride that we're on with that growth mindset. That's the point I'd wanna reinforce for everyone listening right now. Henry Schein is pleased to support FastChat and its outstanding contributions to inform and inspire consumers while sparking important and positive change The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news and working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org.