The future of intranets: Human, helpful, and powered by AI

00:00:00: Companies are so revenue-driven

00:00:02: and the CFO has a lot of influence, and the intranet

00:00:06: or the internal communications platform generates $0 on the surface.

00:00:11: But having done many ROI studies around intranets over 20 years,

00:00:16: it is a huge opportunity to do things

00:00:17: it is a huge opportunity to do things

00:00:20: like decrease turnover, increase productivity.

00:00:24: These things which have serious financial impact are harder to measure.

00:00:28: But moreover, reinforce and promote culture.

00:00:38: What if companies designed intranets

00:00:40: that act less like bulletin boards

00:00:42: and more like campfires, places

00:00:44: where people gather, share stories,

00:00:45: and make plans?

00:00:47: What if generative AI could help us rediscover human connection at work

00:00:51: instead of replacing it?

00:00:52: These are questions that today's guest, Jay Erickson, is working on.

00:00:56: Jay Erickson is the Co-Founder and

00:00:57: Chief Innovation Officer

00:00:59: at Modus Digital, a consulting firm

00:01:01: that's helped some of the world's

00:01:02: biggest organizations rethink how people connect.

00:01:06: From hospitals and healthcare networks to global enterprises.

00:01:09: In this conversation, we'll talk about burnout, belonging,

00:01:13: how side conversations can change a culture, and why

00:01:16: the future of the intranet might be more human than ever.

00:01:19: This is You've Got Comms.

00:01:21: I'm Samantha Grandinetti, and here's my conversation with Jay Erickson.

00:01:25: Jay, it is great to have you here.

00:01:28: Welcome to the show.

00:01:29: I see you're joining me from a very cozy hobby cave.

00:01:34: It looks very nice in there. How are you doing today?

00:01:37: I'm good.

00:01:38: I'm happy to be here, Sam. Thanks for having me.

00:01:40: Yes, all the things I love here, my guitar and books.

00:01:44: So, I have everything I need.

00:01:46: I also have a lot of things that I love and some things that I don't,

00:01:49: like documents to shred or

00:01:53: some junk my toddler left in the room.

00:01:55: So, it's a little less curated.

00:01:59: Well, let's kick off the conversation.

00:02:02: I want to walk back to the phone call that we had in preparing for this.

00:02:08: I was inspired when doing my research about you.

00:02:12: And I saw you wrote an article about creating more human digital experiences.

00:02:17: That's where I really want to start us off today.

00:02:18: So, you say, "There is no B2C software, there is no B2B application.

00:02:22: There is only human-to-human or H2H." What happens

00:02:26: when we just forget the human aspect of intranets?

00:02:30: Yeah.

00:02:31: I think intranets are sitting in the context of the corporate world.

00:02:35: And I think if you look back, historically, the corporate world

00:02:39: really came out of the Industrial Revolution.

00:02:42: And it's this very mechanistic model of looking at the world.

00:02:46: There's gears and cogs.

00:02:48: And you're at your desk, and you're a certain kind of cog,

00:02:50: and a certain thing comes to your desk, and you do a thing, and then it goes down

00:02:54: the line. And it's evolved, obviously, but

00:02:58: there's a view

00:02:59: of corporations like that, and looking at the assets of a corporation

00:03:04: through the lens of what's our inventory, and factories we have, and IP.

00:03:10: In my opinion,

00:03:13: all of that matters, but what really is at the heart

00:03:16: of all corporations are people.

00:03:18: At the end of the day, you have a person who is making a decision,

00:03:22: who is doing something.

00:03:23: And even there's a person

00:03:25: who's the customer, who's the outside, and they're doing a thing.

00:03:28: So, that's a human

00:03:30: involved with it. And all those humans, from the board to the line worker,

00:03:35: involved with these other humans that they're trying to interact with.

00:03:37: So, when you pull it out, it's human-to-human.

00:03:41: I think with intranets, that can get lost, and you can get caught

00:03:46: in this functional mechanistic view of, okay, we've got all the forms

00:03:51: available that people need, and we've got the information,

00:03:54: and all the boxes are checked.

00:03:56: But what does it feel like for the employee

00:04:01: or the team member to interact with it?

00:04:03: And is it promoting a sense of belonging?

00:04:06: Are they inspired? These things which

00:04:09: machines don't really care about, but humans do.

00:04:12: Humans are emotional.

00:04:13: Humans get tired.

00:04:14: Humans have good days and bad days.

00:04:16: We want people to be inspired and

00:04:18: have a sense of safety and belonging. And, so,

00:04:22: I think about intranets.

00:04:23: I love the image of a campfire, and I think about it anthropologically

00:04:27: that for 100,000 years, for the vast majority of that,

00:04:33: the meetings were getting around the fire and talking

00:04:37: and sharing stories and making decisions and exchanging information.

00:04:41: And there probably weren't a lot of PTO forms going back and forth

00:04:45: around the Neolithic campfire,

00:04:49: but we evolved in that.

00:04:51: And it feels good when we're in those scenarios.

00:04:53: So, how can we

00:04:55: think about the intranet and create a space in which it has that sense

00:04:58: of togetherness, a sense of safety, a sense of orientation to something,

00:05:04: and being able to share stories and make plans?

00:05:07: So, I like to think of it that way.

00:05:09: Yeah, bringing it back to

00:05:11: that connection of

00:05:12: how a group of people functions together, works together, lives

00:05:16: together, makes progress, instead of just, "Here's the form you need.

00:05:20: Please complete this by X date or please acknowledge." It's a different ask, right?

00:05:26: It's a different way to show up.

00:05:27: Yes, and it can be both.

00:05:29: Yeah, absolutely. So,

00:05:34: when you look at an organization's intranet or digital workspace

00:05:39: and you're thinking about all these different clues,

00:05:41: belonging, you're thinking about bringing people together,

00:05:44: what clues does a company's intranet give you about the culture behind it?

00:05:50: And for the leaders who are shaping those spaces,

00:05:53: what should they be asking themselves if they want the experience

00:05:56: to reflect the best of their culture and not the blind spots?

00:06:02: I think it's a lot of different things.

00:06:05: When we think about

00:06:07: design and experience, we think about the whole thing.

00:06:10: So, it's everything from how easy is it to use, like,

00:06:14: is it easy to log on or do I have to do 15 different

00:06:16: things that creates a lot of work and frustration?

00:06:20: Or is it easy to use and easy to find stuff?

00:06:22: So, creating basic UX principles to make it easy and accessible.

00:06:28: And then, does it look good?

00:06:29: Does it feel good?

00:06:31: Is it inspiring?

00:06:32: Is it pleasant?

00:06:32: Does it make me feel, "Oh, I want to be in here'?

00:06:35: You know, all employees are also consumers.

00:06:38: They're using Uber and Netflix and all these other things

00:06:42: which they're used to a certain experience and then they go here.

00:06:46: And when it's not that or very far from that, it can feel not as good.

00:06:51: And that's just a very basic emotional reaction to an experience.

00:06:56: And these platforms can be underinvested

00:07:00: in because companies are so revenue-driven

00:07:05: and the CFO has a lot of influence, and the intranet

00:07:10: or the internal communications platform generates $0 on the surface.

00:07:15: But having done many ROI studies around intranets over 20 years,

00:07:21: it is a huge opportunity to do things

00:07:25: like decrease turnover, increase productivity.

00:07:29: These things which have serious financial impact are harder to measure.

00:07:33: But moreover, to your point, I think reinforce and promote culture.

00:07:38: So, that can happen in obviously how you project your brand.

00:07:42: A lot of times companies invest in brand

00:07:44: and they project that to the outside world.

00:07:46: Well, it's just as important to project that to the inside world.

00:07:49: And then for those things to be also concordant. I think when

00:07:53: the company's out there putting out press releases, "We care about this

00:07:56: and this is our thing," and the intranet doesn't reflect that,

00:08:00: that discord can also be not great over the long term.

00:08:06: And I think it can be simple things, too, like, what's the tone?

00:08:09: Proactively decide, "What's our

00:08:11: editorial tone?

00:08:12: Are we friendly,

00:08:14: gregarious, informal?" Deciding really what the writing is going to be like.

00:08:19: And now with today's tools where we are using

00:08:22: bionic tools to help us write and edit,

00:08:26: you could build a GPT, a bespoke

00:08:30: filter thing very quickly in a day and embed those things and say, "This

00:08:35: is the tone we want, this is our culture, here's our mission statement.

00:08:38: And any piece that you're putting out, run it against that.

00:08:41: Is it reflecting that?

00:08:42: What are your suggestions to make it more aligned?"

00:08:44: We have some very interesting tools now to do that sort of thing.

00:08:48: Does that answer?

00:08:50: Yeah, I think that does.

00:08:51: And it brings up some interesting examples that I've experienced, too.

00:08:57: I'm on the comms team and we do internal comms at Staffbase.

00:09:00: And when I joined, we sat in the people experience department.

00:09:05: And I remember seeing the exact example that you gave of all these press

00:09:10: releases, all these external campaigns we were doing.

00:09:12: And I thought,

00:09:13: "When is anyone going to tell us about this stuff?"

00:09:16: Because we need to talk about it internally,

00:09:18: and I thought that was such a miss.

00:09:19: And now, we sit in a different department.

00:09:22: We're in the go-to-market department.

00:09:24: And so, we get way more access

00:09:27: just to know

00:09:28: the goings-on of the business and our initiatives and things like that.

00:09:32: You're right.

00:09:33: You can see

00:09:34: when it's discordant.

00:09:35: You can see when it works really well.

00:09:37: For example, when I started at Staffbase, people would share

00:09:40: these amazing personal stories on our social wall.

00:09:42: And I thought a culture like that

00:09:46: where people can share so openly on the company intranet is really cool.

00:09:49: I think your examples, I've experienced that. So,

00:09:55: the idea of these digital experiences reflecting

00:09:59: the people behind them, it makes me think of your work in healthcare.

00:10:03: It's such a purpose-driven, but also one of the most burned-out

00:10:07: industries out there.

00:10:08: You've talked to me, in a previous call that we've had, about

00:10:11: how everyone in healthcare starts from this place of deep passion and calling,

00:10:16: but that it's easy to lose sight of that purpose under the pressure and the

00:10:20: burnout. So, I wanted to

00:10:22: ask you, how do you think communications and digital tools can help people

00:10:26: in those environments reconnect with the why of what they do?

00:10:31: Yes. I think part of it

00:10:32: is this opportunity to do storytelling and come around the campfire.

00:10:37: And I think what I've noticed in healthcare . . .

00:10:41: we do work with healthcare systems, with life sciences companies

00:10:45: on patient-facing things, and also internal things and intranets.

00:10:49: And what I've noticed is

00:10:52: there are inspirational stories happening every day

00:10:56: across the health system,

00:10:58: or even for a life sciences company. Drugs are saving lives.

00:11:02: I myself, I'm a cancer survivor.

00:11:04: Without a certain set of molecules, we probably wouldn't

00:11:07: be having this conversation.

00:11:08: So, I think there are miracles happening all the time, every day.

00:11:13: And, so, what is

00:11:16: your mechanism for journalistic practices, or what is the mechanism for finding out

00:11:20: those stories on a regular basis and putting them upfront?

00:11:25: It takes an investment, but it's one of those things, in healthcare,

00:11:30: everybody comes into healthcare with a passion to do something.

00:11:35: We're all patients. We all have patients in our lives.

00:11:38: It is a very noble calling, and then people can get burnt out.

00:11:40: And I do think that

00:11:42: surfacing those stories, not only celebrating those individuals

00:11:46: who are involved with that, but also allowing others to be inspired

00:11:50: by them, "This is who we are, and this is what we're doing,

00:11:52: and this is why we're doing it," I think that's a huge opportunity.

00:11:56: And I think there's another opportunity for these systems to . . .

00:12:01: As we are increasingly working through digital media,

00:12:06: you and I are speaking over some fiber and all this stuff.

00:12:11: We're not in the same space.

00:12:12: It's pretty amazing and magical that we can do that, but something is lost.

00:12:16: And especially since the pandemic, people are working more remotely,

00:12:21: or also since the pandemic, especially our nurses.

00:12:25: HCPs, in general, healthcare providers,

00:12:28: but nurses especially,

00:12:30: have not recovered as a community from 2020.

00:12:34: And there was burnout in the nursing community before that.

00:12:37: And, so, how can you create safe spaces

00:12:41: to have conversations just to connect human to human?

00:12:45: And that might be in-person, it might be over Zoom, it might be . . .

00:12:48: There's a company that I'm involved in called

00:12:50: Slow Talk that came through the Modus incubator,

00:12:54: and it's working with nursing populations to create, and it's voice-only.

00:12:59: It's saying, "We're so burnt out by all screens." So, it's just voice-only,

00:13:03: but it's curated by AI.

00:13:05: And it also allows leaders in an anonymous way

00:13:09: to track engagement and dissatisfaction.

00:13:12: This population on this unit, they're really suffering.

00:13:18: Can we put attention towards them organizationally?

00:13:21: It's a pretty cool thing.

00:13:22: But there's just a lot of power of connecting individuals

00:13:27: to have human-to-human conversations, but using technology

00:13:31: to do that and curate and facilitate those conversations.

00:13:36: I think that's such a cool example.

00:13:37: And I think when you say, "Oh, it's audio only,"

00:13:40: I think people can be so much more candid when they're not thinking

00:13:45: about how they look on their screen in a meeting or something like that.

00:13:50: I think they can imagine they can be a little bit more themselves.

00:13:53: Do you think that's probably the case?

00:13:56: Absolutely.

00:13:57: I think it's better for the nervous system.

00:13:58: And I think they can also pop in their earbuds and go for a walk.

00:14:02: You can have a different kind of conversation.

00:14:04: And people listen more

00:14:05: because when you're on the screen, you're paying attention to a lot of visual

00:14:09: cues and things and then multitasking.

00:14:13: We're in this thing now, and I am paying attention to this conversation, but

00:14:16: I also have three screens with a lot of information on it just there.

00:14:21: I do think there's something powerful about going audio-only.

00:14:25: In my meetings,

00:14:26: unless there's something to be shared on a screen, I often will ask,

00:14:30: "Is there anything we need to look at on a screen?"

00:14:31: If not, I'll just pop the earbuds in and walk and listen.

00:14:35: I find I'm a much better listener when it's audio-only.

00:14:39: That's a really interesting observation, I think.

00:14:43: I'm curious, you have this company, Slow Talk, that has this initiative.

00:14:48: I'm wondering, what other ways can we

00:14:52: create these little moments of connection?

00:14:55: I imagine that this same need for this one-on-one connection

00:15:00: or this really authentic connection, it must be ubiquitous.

00:15:03: You must see it across lots of different companies.

00:15:06: Do you see that same pattern across other industries?

00:15:08: And what are some good ways that we can mimic something like Slow Talk?

00:15:13: Totally.

00:15:15: In part, that has inspired us.

00:15:18: We've been working remotely as an organization since 2002.

00:15:21: So, we've done a lot of things over the years to . . .

00:15:24: How do we build and maintain culture and belonging?

00:15:27: I mean, we've had offices,

00:15:28: but there's been significant remote components of the business for that time.

00:15:32: How do we do things to promote culture, create connectivity?

00:15:35: And we have . . .

00:15:38: What started as a program called Donuts is now a program

00:15:42: we have called, as you used the word, Moments.

00:15:44: And so, it's Moments.

00:15:46: And it really is pretty simple.

00:15:48: There's an administrative way to, we're like, "We want this group to connect

00:15:52: with that group," and set some business rules around it.

00:15:55: But what it does is it just goes in the background

00:15:58: and has access to people's schedules and just randomly takes two people,

00:16:01: and you can set

00:16:02: it, could be three people, whatever, and puts them together, creates a meeting.

00:16:06: And there's a half-hour moment

00:16:08: on their calendar and they just show up and they just talk.

00:16:12: There's just no agenda and you just talk.

00:16:14: And then they . . .

00:16:14: Part of our culture around it is to post to our water-cooler channel

00:16:19: a screenshot of them.

00:16:20: a screenshot of them.

00:16:20: You're seeing other people, "Oh, they connect." And people often

00:16:24: will say, "Oh, we talked about our trip to Venezuela," or not trip to Venezuela.

00:16:30: It's in the news.

00:16:30: Probably nobody's taking a trip there right now.

00:16:32: Probably not.

00:16:35: We talked about our trip to France and we talked about this and that.

00:16:38: It's just these little moments

00:16:40: that are getting dropped into the water-cooler

00:16:42: channel where you, as an observer, you learn a little bit about someone.

00:16:45: It’s that sense of, it kind of adds

00:16:49: some real-life feel to the water-cooler channel in a way.

00:16:54: And it's fun and it's relaxing.

00:16:56: People look forward to it because it's not like

00:16:58: they can just show up and just hang out and talk and get to know each other.

00:17:01: It's all across the company, different functions and reports.

00:17:07: Everybody's involved and we found that to be really helpful.

00:17:09: So we've developed actually a plugin for Staffbase

00:17:12: and we're about to go into alpha on it.

00:17:16: It's a standalone piece of software, but now there's a Staffbase plugin

00:17:19: that hopefully will allow people who use Staffbase

00:17:22: to turn this on and have this run and just create these moments.

00:17:26: That's going to be interesting. I just love that idea.

00:17:29: I do something,

00:17:31: this is like a remnant of a piece of culture that was around

00:17:34: when I first started at Staffbase where you just,

00:17:37: whoever's new, you see like, "Hey, there's a new person

00:17:40: starting announcement in our company Slack."

00:17:43: I just set up a meeting with them and just have coffee and chat with them.

00:17:47: Because I don't know what they do yet and I want them to feel welcome.

00:17:50: But I also just . . .

00:17:51: I work 100% remotely.

00:17:54: So, this is a great opportunity for me to actually just make a connection

00:17:58: when I'm not going to hang out with them in the office

00:18:00: because I'm not going to be in the office very much.

00:18:03: I think

00:18:05: implementing that across a company would be so powerful

00:18:08: because I've seen how powerful it can be in my own conversations.

00:18:13: Yeah.

00:18:13: And the key there, like all UX, is just make it simple, make it easy.

00:18:17: A meeting just shows up and it shows up at a time that works for everybody.

00:18:19: Nobody has to do anything.

00:18:22: That's a big part of it, too.

00:18:24: Well, and so, I think

00:18:26: you've come to, of course, a topic

00:18:28: that everyone is talking and asking about, which is AI.

00:18:32: In a previous call that we had, you said something that got me excited.

00:18:36: You said, "Gen AI is going to replace the intranet," and that's a big statement.

00:18:41: I think it might scare some people.

00:18:43: So, what do you mean by this?

00:18:45: Is this a doomsday prediction for intranets or something a bit cooler?

00:18:49: Well, I'm not sure it's as dramatic as any of that.

00:18:54: First of all, what is an intranet?

00:18:55: I like to say internal communications platform,

00:18:59: which might include a SharePoint, and it might include a SharePoint site.

00:19:03: It might include Staffbase also as a communications platform.

00:19:06: So, those things can coexist.

00:19:07: Sometimes it's just one or the other.

00:19:10: I'm thinking more of the SharePoints of the world where it's this website,

00:19:13: this monolithic thing that has a tremendous amount of information

00:19:18: to navigate, and find, and search, and you go to, to get the thing that you need.

00:19:23: And as people have designed a bunch of intranets with folks,

00:19:27: there's this

00:19:28: myth that, "Oh, well people are just going to browse around

00:19:31: and find stuff." And I think that's pretty funny sometimes that . . .

00:19:35: I mean, what world is it where it's like, "Oh, I have 15 minutes.

00:19:38: I'm just going to see what's going on down this deep click path on the intranet."

00:19:43: Maybe there's some news on the homepage that people get excited about.

00:19:45: That's that storytelling piece I do think is important

00:19:48: and that needs to live somewhere.

00:19:49: And that might live, if this bigger monolithic thing goes away,

00:19:53: there's places where those things can live and through more internal communication

00:19:58: platform like a Staffbase, but more of those, a Sitecore

00:20:02: or SharePoint or these monolithic intranet things

00:20:06: are going to go away because

00:20:11: it's just going to be so much easier to go to an interface.

00:20:14: And that might live on a website, but an interface that is conversational

00:20:18: or you're not navigating.

00:20:20: You're not using traditional search.

00:20:21: You're just saying, "Hey, I want to go on vacation,"

00:20:24: "I need that form," or, "Remind me of the policy."

00:20:28: And it's going to start to hook into more systems, too.

00:20:32: If you have Workday, for instance, you say, "Remind me of the vacation policy.

00:20:36: And how much do I have left for this year, and will it roll over?"

00:20:40: And it'll know your account in Workday and it'll know the policy.

00:20:44: It'll be able to make sense of all that and advise you on

00:20:48: what your vacation PTO situation is.

00:20:51: And what I think is very exciting, too, is that this is going to start

00:20:56: to show up inside of Slack and inside of Teams.

00:21:00: In UX we say, "Build the sidewalks where the people walk," so people

00:21:03: are living in those systems.

00:21:05: Once you have that

00:21:07: conversational layer in the middleware, it's relatively easy to expose

00:21:12: that to a user inside of chat or Teams as a bot or a channel

00:21:16: and it's able to work with it conversationally.

00:21:21: I don't think internal communications platforms are going away.

00:21:23: I do think the monolithic

00:21:27: internal website pattern

00:21:30: of internal communications is going to go the way of the dodo.

00:21:35: Well and I think the way,

00:21:37: right now you're talking about, "I need to find information.

00:21:40: I have to search for information," versus, "I need information.

00:21:44: Information is served to me

00:21:47: based on what I ask for." I think even just

00:21:51: in the way that information is surfaced will be different.

00:21:55: And also, I think what's exciting, too, is

00:21:58: something will happen that hasn't happened before,

00:22:00: which is not only will you get information, you'll get advice.

00:22:03: So, it'll say, "You have 11 PTOs remaining.

00:22:07: It's October.

00:22:09: You should really schedule that because only two days roll over.

00:22:15: Think about taking your time off." I mean if that's something

00:22:17: that the corporation wants to promote, which I think the smart ones do.

00:22:21: They want people to be recharged and rested and actually use the PTO.

00:22:24: Of course.

00:22:25: So, I think there will start to be this

00:22:29: more of an advisory capacity as well.

00:22:32: It'll do a little more than just serve you the information.

00:22:34: Well, and if we're going to be having all these conversations

00:22:38: with AIs in the future,

00:22:40: I think as the people building

00:22:43: these experiences in comms,

00:22:47: you want to maintain your relationships with all of your employees.

00:22:50: What can we do to keep this experience human while still embracing AI?

00:22:56: I think it's part of how you build the AI and thinking about the tone.

00:22:59: Again, if you want that

00:23:02: editorial guide for your

00:23:04: copy to be friendly and humorous and whatever you want it to be,

00:23:09: whatever that internal brand identity is, when you build

00:23:13: those systems, build that in so it reflects that.

00:23:18: Like bots who write patient communications,

00:23:21: there's been a few studies published in journals in healthcare,

00:23:25: they score significantly higher on empathy scores than healthcare professionals.

00:23:31: Now, I don't blame healthcare professionals because they're overtaxed.

00:23:35: They have two seconds to write something.

00:23:36: They can't sit down

00:23:38: and take the time to write something that would feel empathetic to the patient

00:23:41: just because of the volume of what that is.

00:23:44: But these systems are doing that, and so it's providing

00:23:47: what feels to the patient or to the user more human.

00:23:51: So an answer to this is, if you create these bots and you

00:23:54: do it right and you have the right tone, it can feel human.

00:23:58: So, obviously, it's not human.

00:24:02: I'm playing with the question a bit to say

00:24:05: it's human-esque, it's human-ish, it's human-like.

00:24:09: It is, on some level, more human.

00:24:11: And then as all the cogs in the machines of the corporation

00:24:15: start to get replaced by AI, then what's left

00:24:19: is the more

00:24:23: relational work, more visionary work, more collaborative work.

00:24:27: Work that

00:24:28: these machines are not going to be able to do for a very long time, in my opinion.

00:24:31: So, I think there's going to be less work of someone sitting at their desk

00:24:35: and cranking stuff out and more work

00:24:37: where people have to actually collaborate together in spaces.

00:24:41: I think that trend is going to happen.

00:24:43: And then you can use AI to create

00:24:46: those connections and say, "I see you're trying to solve this problem.

00:24:50: Let me put a meeting on your books with this person in the organization

00:24:54: who knows a lot about that," and connect the humans.

00:24:57: So, again, how can we use this technology to make people bionic

00:25:01: and also create more human connection on purpose?

00:25:05: That's the invitation.

00:25:06: That's so interesting.

00:25:08: In the case of the patient seeing notes from an AI, that AI

00:25:12: is built to acknowledge

00:25:15: humanity with empathy,

00:25:17: in a case where a burnt-out nurse is probably

00:25:21: just trying to cross this off her list, just trying to get it done.

00:25:24: But then you have another opportunity to think about how to make the space

00:25:30: in your workday to get together to problem-solve, and be creative,

00:25:33: and be strategic, instead of, like you said, just cranking stuff out.

00:25:39: Right.

00:25:40: Very cool.

00:25:41: If you think, again, we're looking to the future here.

00:25:45: If you think about the next few years where comms and IT

00:25:49: leaders are heading, what's one thing that you hope they remember

00:25:52: about the human side of digital transformation?

00:25:56: Look, there's no question that we live in a golden age of technology.

00:26:00: And there's amazing stuff that can be done and happening, and it's very exciting.

00:26:04: People can get very focused on that and put their gaze there

00:26:07: and their energy there and what we can do with this implementation,

00:26:10: how quickly we can do stuff.

00:26:12: But to just remember that at the end of the day,

00:26:16: what matters most is a bunch of human beings

00:26:19: who are in relationship to each other, who are trying to do a thing,

00:26:22: which is pretty much the same that our ancestors did 50,000 years ago

00:26:28: when they were gathered around a campfire and say, "Hey, should we go over to that

00:26:32: next valley?" and, "Oh, tell me that story from what happened today

00:26:35: out in the forest." And we've evolved to be that way.

00:26:40: In a world where we're seeing rise of what is being called an epidemic

00:26:44: of loneliness and some other things, how can we create spaces

00:26:48: to get back to coming together and belonging

00:26:52: and really giving people a sense of connectedness

00:26:56: in a felt way and not just in a way that shows up in a spreadsheet?

00:27:01: And I think that's such an important thing to remember

00:27:03: because every time we talk about AI, we're thinking about productivity maxing.

00:27:08: We're talking about how can we squeeze

00:27:11: more out of your workday by getting our

00:27:15: AI to help us write something or complete something or analyze something.

00:27:18: But you're just really taking a step back and saying,

00:27:22: how can you actually just make room for humans to be human at work?

00:27:26: And with these digital experiences, actually create that

00:27:31: space or platform for that.

00:27:34: Yes, and all that other stuff.

00:27:36: It's not mutually exclusive.

00:27:37: You can do both.

00:27:39: Well, I think that's actually a very hopeful way

00:27:43: to round out this conversation.

00:27:46: There is actually room to be human in the age of generative

00:27:49: AI and productivity maxing and everything.

00:27:54: Thanks for having me.

00:27:55: Thank you so much for this thoughtful conversation.

00:27:59: I love how we've talked about intranet.

00:28:00: It's not as this big static technology, but this living thing that evolves

00:28:04: and can look different

00:28:06: based on whatever organization you have and what needs you have.

00:28:10: I hope people take away some energy for using this technology

00:28:15: to build connection and really support their people,

00:28:19: and learn more about Slow Talk because that sounds really interesting.

00:28:23: For our listeners, if you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow

00:28:26: You've Got Comms on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:28:30: We release new conversations every two weeks

00:28:32: with the people shaping the future of internal communication,

00:28:35: from leaders like Jay to the voices redefining how we connect at work.

00:28:39: Thank you again, Jay.

00:28:41: I really enjoyed this.