In today’s episode, we sit down with Katharina William, a prominent figure in the Management 3.0 team and a pioneer in integrating AI with human-centric leadership. We delve into how artificial intelligence is not only reshaping leadership but also how it can coexist with and enhance human values in the workplace.

Key Points

• Impact of AI on Leadership: The discussion highlights that AI can potentially take over many management functions but will enhance the role of human-centric leadership by allowing leaders to focus more on inspiration and employee development.

• The Role of Ethical Leadership: As AI integrates into workplace practices, ethical leadership becomes crucial. Leaders must ensure AI’s use aligns with organizational values and ethics to avoid misuse and promote a positive impact.

• Importance of Transparent Decision-Making: There’s an emphasis on the need for transparency in AI’s decision-making processes. Employees should understand how decisions are made to ensure they are ethical and align with long-term organizational goals.

• Cultural Shift Towards Self-Management: The integration of AI in management tasks will likely shift organizational cultures towards more self-management. This transition emphasizes the need for ongoing learning and adaptation among all team members to keep up with technological advancements.

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Happiness means different things to each of us. After doing extensive research, Management 3.0 founder Jurgen Appelo discovered a common thread: Happiness is something we create. It is not something to achieve. It is a path you choose, not a destination to arrive at.

So many of us spend our lives in pursuit of happiness. Instead of searching for it, we need to find ways to live it, embrace it, and implement it into our daily lives. That’s why we created the 12 Steps to Happiness at Management 3.0.

You can find more information and even download a free poster of the 12 steps here.

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Transcript

*Please note that the transcript has been automatically generated and proofread for mistakes. But remains in spoken English, and some syntax and grammar mistakes might remain.

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:00:00] Before we dive in, you are listening to the Happiness at Work podcast by Management 3point0, where we are getting serious about happiness. I’m your host, Elisa Zander, a happiness enthusiast and Management 3point0 team member. In this podcast, you will hear insights from industry experts, influencers, and thought leaders about what it takes to be happy, motivated, and productive at work so that loving your job.

becomes the norm and not the exception. We will be publishing [00:00:30] every fortnight on Friday, so be sure to tune in and subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today on the podcast, we’re exploring the future of leadership in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. With us is Catarina William, a leading figure in the Management 3point0 team, known for her role as a de facto CEO and facilitator happiness [00:01:00] coach. So as we delve into how AI can transform leadership without compromising human values, Catarina will share her insights and experiences at the intersection.

of Technology and Human Centric Leadership. Katarina, thank you so much for joining me. That was a whole big intro there. Thank you so much for coming.

Katharina William: Thanks for having me here. It’s always great to meet you.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, we should be just, uh, for clarity, we just had a small meeting before as a team, as a team member.

So it’s funny to [00:01:30] now jump into this role. Right. As you know, Katharina, on the podcast, we always start with the same question and that is, what does happiness mean to you?

Katharina William: Yeah, so for me, happiness, it’s Freedom to choose. Freedom to choose what I do. Freedom to choose also what I feel, um, and what my options are.

Because, like, happiness wouldn’t be there without also, like, the downsides, right? You wouldn’t feel happy [00:02:00] if you don’t feel sad at times. But, like, um, so, yeah, happiness is for me, like, The freedom to choose and then I can feel happy or sad or disappointed sometimes, but it always goes up again because I know I can change my situation.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, that’s nice. That’s a nice way of seeing it. And I love, I love how that’s so linked to your motivator as well, because I know that a lot of us have as main motivator freedom in a Management 3point0 team. And I love that you’ve kind of sort of incorporated [00:02:30] that. Hey, no happiness at work episode is sort of complete without diving a little bit deeper into the person that I have.

In front of me here. Yeah. Do you want to share with us a little background? How did you get to Management 3. 0? How did happiness and freedom, et cetera, become such an integral part of your work journey as well?

Katharina William: So did you know that I have been a follower of Management 3. 0 before I even met anybody in the team?

Elisa Tuijnder: No, I did not. No.

Katharina William: Um, so basically [00:03:00] I start, or the first touch point I had with Management 3. 0, or. One of the books of Jürgen Apfelow was, um, how to change the world. And I was working in one of, um, Germany’s biggest corporations at that time. I was working there in HR and change management as a, um, change consultants as well internally.

And that’s when I read the book, um, because I was reading lots about change management, obviously. And, um, for [00:03:30] me, that was. Like a big revelation already, because I was, I was loving it there. It had a great team. Everything was nice, but you also like in every corporation, like you have, um, lots of hierarchies.

You have also some sociopathic managers. It’s always there. You have a lot of PowerPoint slides that you have to do, especially as a consulting role. And then they just disappear in [00:04:00] some kind of drawer. Um, so it was a great time on the one hand, I learned a lot, um, about structures, about management. Um, I was coaching lots of, uh, leaders in there.

But on the other hand, even though I had so much freedoms for working in a corporation, I was still feeling constrained, too constrained for my, my view. Um, and I didn’t get why I had to be on site all the time because actually my best work, I did

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:04:30] train,

Katharina William: train, because I was traveling between Berlin and Frankfurt all the time, four hours.

Perfect work environment, I can tell you, it was great. But I still needed to be like in some kind of meetings and all these kinds of constraints, they were not for me in, in that, in that moment, um, as well. And so I, I deeply feel I need to change something. And I kind of submerged into the desert and the sea quite literally, because I took time off and, uh, [00:05:00] went to live in Egypt and Bali and other places, worked as a diving instructor.

So completely something different because I really needed that change. But in the end, I always came back to leadership and like how to, how to get results in a company that was when I was like, okay, I’m going back into my, kind of my role before I started working self employed as a change management consultant and leadership consultant.

And [00:05:30] created online courses and I was looking for resources again. And of course I remember Management 3point0 went to the website because there’s lots of free stuff on the website.

Elisa Tuijnder: There

Katharina William: it is. Yeah. Um, I went there and then there was this, um, banner saying we need guardian of facilitators. And I read it and I was like, well, this is what I was looking for.

I can do business still, uh, work as a leadership coach. But on the other hand, work [00:06:00] in a great team. And that’s how I applied. And that is now four years ago. And, um, that’s how I started and became facilitated happiness coach, where I’m responsible for the more than 450 facilitators we have worldwide.

Elisa Tuijnder: So that’s

Katharina William: my, uh, my first role to make them successful, whatever success means for them.

Can be different. Yeah, absolutely. Then at one point, um, our former [00:06:30] CEO, uh, Rolf, uh, left the team and we were looking for a new CEO. Well, I said, okay, I can do that. And I’m doing both roles now.

Elisa Tuijnder: But many people are

Katharina William: trying to make everybody happy, which is kind of challenging sometimes.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. And for our listeners, by the way, it’s a CEO role.

It’s not a traditional CEO role. It’s a very complicated role. Katarina basically deals most with the admin and stakeholder engagement, et cetera. So it’s, she has none of the. The [00:07:00] fun side things of the CEO role, just the, well, some of it, but mostly she deals with our banks and our, uh, and the legal documents.

And

Katharina William: the car, still missing that Tesla, right?

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, absolutely. You definitely need. Hey, so talking about old corporations and old structures, like there’s this new thing, well, new, almost, I remember exactly when it started to sort of pop out because we were on, we were in Tenerife, I think. And we were all of a sudden talking about, Hey, what is this all about?

Everybody’s talking about chat [00:07:30] GPT. And this feels like this is such an integral part of me now already. And it’s really not that long ago that this, that this all started coming up. So you’ve delved in it a little bit deeper as a concept in leadership and did some research for the company as well. So tell us, first of all, what is AI?

I think people by now know, but what are these large language modules and sort of what, what can they do, but also what does it mean for the future of work?

Katharina William: [00:08:00] So with AI and management or leadership, um, we can see that AI can take over many of the things. And I think that is also the scary part. It’s not like at first when it came up and I remember that when we did that in Tenerife, because it was about doing illustrations and we have an illustrator and we, um, kind of gave some prompts to see like, Like the pictures that came out were not sufficient.

Elisa Tuijnder: No.

Katharina William: Not at all. So we were [00:08:30] like, okay, Chad, you’re, you can rest assured.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Katharina William: But I think that’s the, the point where like many people came in at first they said, okay, it’s, it will be accountants or some research things or like, Not like the higher level job,

Elisa Tuijnder: even a week ago, even a year ago. Sorry. That was like, Oh, it will be a little bit for, you know, being like, nothing insane copywriting that it can do in the decisions that it can make.

Katharina William: Yeah, exactly. Okay. The copywriters, they will go [00:09:00] and, um, maybe some, uh, search engine optimization, these kind of things. And like the managers, they could feel safe. Right. Yeah. But in fact, it’s not about this. Because AI has access to massive amounts of data and it has the capabilities of analyzing all this data and making decisions based on this.

And this is exactly also what management is about. So [00:09:30] I would like to differentiate a little bit between management and leadership here. And I think we can also say that like. AI will take over a lot of the management responsibilities and it will base, and it already does in certain companies, make middle managers, lower managers, uh, irrelevant.

Um, we can talk about this how, but, um, even on CEO level, um, Like, if you look at studies where CEOs were, [00:10:00] um, were surveyed about this and like, I think, uh, around at least the half of them said, well, my job is replaceable. So why, why? Um, because management, if we look at management, um, it’s about organizing things.

It’s about creating the system in which people work. It’s about taking operational decisions. Like, let’s say, when do we stock up our inventory or we roll out a new, um, product or a new module? [00:10:30] It has to be a final decision on it. But how do those managers take this decision? They analyze lots of slides, Google Sheets, whatever, um, they have in front of them.

And then they take the decision, but AI actually has a bigger capacity to make those decisions.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. We will never be able to have all of that data, even, even if we are super well versed in the company and whatever.

Katharina William: And, and the thing is, of course, AI doesn’t do a perfect decision, [00:11:00] but it doesn’t have to make a perfect decision.

It has to be just as equal, good decision, like a human can do. That’s actually not that hard. And it can, like in an instant, while a human has to go through all of this, it takes hours. And so many of those things will become obsolete. On the other hand, we have leadership, which is more about inspiring, about the human connection, about, um, [00:11:30] encouraging, uh, the people to learn to, and to self manage, and this is something that will stay and will become more important for leaders.

So actually my prediction is if AI becomes more relevant. In companies, then the human side of leadership will become more relevant for the humans to do. Uh, and actually it’s, it’s a good, it’s a good message. It’s a good, it’s good.

Elisa Tuijnder: And when I was looking into [00:12:00] it again, I had this realization that actually it’s a perfect metaphor for the Management 3point0 methodology, since it’s really highlights the importance of every person in, in the structure.

And it takes away these, these unnecessary levels of management.

Katharina William: It is. We have been saying we need fewer managers for a long time, years. Yeah. And now that’s actually, that’s actually the way to do that.

Elisa Tuijnder: Exactly. I mean, good leaders motivate their people, right? It’s what we’re about. It’s a [00:12:30] human centricness of it.

The biggest part of their role is humans, not managers. Making the decision exactly when to do inventory and these kind of things. And if that is all like based on evidence and based on data, um, we can get just to so much better leaders and so much happier workplaces. So before we dive in, how exactly we synergize and then a little bit, and it’s this, this question.

get a bit further into like sort of what’s happened and, and, and these, especially these management side, right? There was this, um, [00:13:00] Jack Ma was the first one. He’s the founder of Alibaba. He kind of started stirring the pot the most. He said that, uh, you know, the, the AI and leadership positions, um, this is going to happen.

And again, like we just said earlier, we didn’t, we thought it would take over. lower level or data jobs, et cetera, you know, the bank, but not, not this kind of thing. So first of all, when we heard that, you know, alarming, maybe reality, maybe [00:13:30] start a bit further into this right now, but do you see it as like, Great.

This thing is coming and it’s helping, or are you still a little scared as well?

Katharina William: Um, I think the reason to be scared is not AI. No, it’s the opposite. It’s the

Elisa Tuijnder: people implementing it.

Katharina William: And that’s with every tool. AI can help us tremendously. And especially also in companies. [00:14:00] If there is no governmental framework for it, if there is no ethics behind it, if there are no values behind it, then of course it can be misused.

In a, in a, also in a big scheme, but, um, people do that anyway. Also with, without AI, there are horrible things that also companies do. Um, and it’s always actually, because they’re not based on values or not [00:14:30] living their values. Everybody has value statement, like probably also like weapon companies have a value statement somewhere.

Elisa Tuijnder: I’d love to read one of those actually.

Katharina William: Um, security. Oh, exactly. Something

Elisa Tuijnder: like that. Preciseness. Uh, whatever.

Katharina William: So as long as there are no values in there, they are not lived, then it’s dangerous. But on the other hand, it will come anyway. I’m [00:15:00] rather be there to embrace it and say, okay, let’s, let’s prepare for it. Let’s, let’s see how we can, how can we work with it and we see like, what is the new role of. A manager or a leader or a CEO.

And honestly, if an AI relieves me from going through massive amount of data and at least, um, proposing decisions. I [00:15:30] would be happy and I’m, I’m thinking it can be done better than 99% of all humans. Yeah. Um, and then you still have the leaders who, based on a value, uh, value framework would then take the decisions or, um, like, um, choose the decisions from the several, several options.

That’s for me actually something that is a positive change [00:16:00] if we are preparing.

Elisa Tuijnder: I feel like you see that as well. There’s a lot more buzz around ethical leadership from, from big companies that we spoke with last year. I think with EY that that’s really pushing this ethical leadership through an ethical considerations around everything.

But it’s also super important, um, because if we just keep going and doing and, and, and, and not thinking about what, what harm we’re doing, it can lead to potential [00:16:30] severe consequences. And that’s happened throughout, right? Because they, you know, this is not just AI. That was the, that’s the oil industry.

That’s the big tobacco, all of these kinds of things. And they also knew what they were doing technically. So they are,

Katharina William: they’re still there. Um, still do. But, um, I think there’s like, there are certain Prerequisites that also need a change of mindset. One of the big things is transparency.

Elisa Tuijnder: Absolutely.

Katharina William: If I don’t [00:17:00] have transparency for my workers, for everybody in the company, They don’t know if the decision taken by AI is the right one or not.

People need to have this transparency, how the decisions are made, and also the capacity to, to be able to see, is this correct or not? Is this correct in an ethical way, but is this also correct? Does it make sense in the longterm? [00:17:30] The

Elisa Tuijnder: AI the information you feed it as well. So if, if things are going to be held back and not completely disclosed or tampered with, then the AI can also not make the right decisions.

Katharina William: So you have transparency and you have, on the other hand, like constant improvement and constant learning. And we’ve been talking about learning organizations since. Or earlier, uh, but it’s now it’s needed, right? It’s needed for the people [00:18:00] to work with AI, um, to, to understand it. It’s, uh, needed because we are using more and more new tools and the tools will change even quicker than before.

And so that is to enable these two things is the job of a leader. And so everybody needs to be responsible, uh, feel responsible for the success of the company. And that leads again to culture and

Elisa Tuijnder: being affiliated or [00:18:30] feeling affinity mostly with the company culture and the company that you stand for.

And there’s a long way off for a lot of companies there.

Katharina William: Yeah, but one more thing about like, is it good or not? Um, like, cause people are like, Oh, I, it’s not good if AI replaces men or humans or managers. But we have statistics, I mean, for a long time that 75 percent of the people who leave the company are not leaving because of their job, they’re leaving because of [00:19:00] bad managers.

So what is there to replace?

Elisa Tuijnder: And the potential for happiness at work is huge in that, in that respect, uh, as well. And I don’t think we can even fully comprehend, uh, what’s going on. What a shift it potentially could bring. It’s scary because it’s new and that’s always the thing and and yes it has the potential to do bad things but a lot of things have the potential to do bad things in the in the past.

I just wanted to see if there were already kind of places that that are doing this, that are, uh, [00:19:30] that are trialing this or even have implemented this and don’t worry about it anymore.

Katharina William: Well, of course they’re, they are like a multiple levels. If you go in a very basic thing, I think in every company, um, a work, at least one of the work.

Yeah. I talk more with

Elisa Tuijnder: your manager is bot A.

Katharina William: Yeah. So, AI is there, but, um, so Jack Ma was talking about, um, the role of the CEO and that one [00:20:00] day, like the best CEO would be on the cover of the Time magazine and it would be a robot. Um, so actually they are already companies who have a CEO that is, uh, that is a robot or, uh, AI.

So we have Fujian NetDragon Websoft. That’s a company based in Hong Kong and they have Tang Yu. Tang Yu is. Female looking CEO, um, which is AI and she actually, um, helps in decision making, she [00:20:30] does risk management and it’s an open model that is constantly evolving. And they could see that actually that, um, the company after she was implemented outperformed the Hang Seng index, which is like the biggest company, quite successful already.

And that’s, uh, since a couple of years. But another example that I liked is some of the smart factories from Hugo Boss. So they are basically all the supervisors were replaced by AI. [00:21:00] And, um, the way it worked is like they, um, it’s a suggestion process optimization. It evaluates risks. Also based on like the, um, the accidents, what happened or the super important

Yeah. And what I like is they then suggest to the workers to practice, um, certain error prone steps. Uh, AI can basically just say the facts, okay, here this is, um, this is what had [00:21:30] happened. This is the errors you did or the whole unit did. Um, let’s practice this. And it’s. It’s completely unbiased and it’s, uh, it’s not with some kind of connotation.

Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it’s great to get feedback from humans, but sometimes who wants like the opinion of, yeah, there’s always like, also this personal, personal connection It comes in. [00:22:00] And if, if I get the result and I say, okay, I have, uh, I did a step 10 times and I failed five times. Well, okay, then I need to work on it.

Elisa Tuijnder: Um,

Katharina William: so

Elisa Tuijnder: yeah, Objective. It’s totally objective, right? It’s not, um, it’s,

Katharina William: it doesn’t, You don’t have to feel attacked or anything. Exactly. It makes it easier to,

Elisa Tuijnder: to, to stomach.

Katharina William: And then of course, I mean, there is no big wonder that, uh, Elon Musk is involved. [00:22:30] Bizarrely,

Elisa Tuijnder: to be fair from the technology side. Yes. But from the culture side, no.

Katharina William: No, I’m talking about the technological side. And, um, so Tesla, uh, factories do have basically almost 100 percent of their workforce as engineers. So every, like every decision about which component is being used, which improvement is being used is based on real time data and it’s taken [00:23:00] by AI. So by, uh, by the management system.

And, um, that of course gives a huge opportunity, a competitive opportunity for other companies where you have, I don’t know, 60 percent of the workforce working as engineers and, you know. actually doing it. Yeah.

Elisa Tuijnder: So. Absolutely. Yeah. And also the, the, their, their organizational structure and the way they, the way they have these teams that they go really far in all of these thought experiments and they actually do them.

And then they seem to, to seem to really [00:23:30] work on the technical side. Uh, if that really works and, and, and, and the competitive side, and they definitely have a, an advantage there. Yeah.

Katharina William: So they are, they are like, these are like big examples where they’re also like, had to, of course, like implement their own system.

So there is no warehouse solution that you can buy for this. Um, it was all then obviously, um, coded and everything for them.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. The pioneers who did this, and I’m so impressed about Hugo Boss, like [00:24:00] a company that has a long history and a complicated one, how, how they are like really, Yeah, embracing this.

And also they embracing a lot of environmental policies. I looked into this after, uh, after I first heard you talk about the factory. And I was like, they’re, they’re, they’re also making sure the ethical side of using AI is really well thought through and talked about with everybody involved.

Katharina William: And I think there are many more examples, if any of the listeners, um, [00:24:30] knows about like little companies that do that.

That would be great to hear from and we would love to hear about this and also see like, how did that change your management and leadership style? So if you’re listening to more examples about companies that are not on the main focus, like Tesla or something, reach out to us because we are happy to talk.

Yeah,

Elisa Tuijnder: reach out to us on LinkedIn or on the website or anything like that. Uh, that’d be fantastic. We’d love to, to, to learn more about small companies and, and, and, and [00:25:00] startups or anything about how this is impacting, you know, taking over in these managerial roles. That’s really interesting. So as two members of the Management 3point0 core team, we have to explore how the mindset of Management 3point0 can influence the AI revolution or can cooperate with the AI revolution and how our practices sort of kind of alongside AI can get reinforced and get better and work on the human element side of things.[00:25:30]

Katharina William: So, um, basically we can already start with what we said before.

Because in the end, everybody needs to feel responsible for the success of a company, and it’s a lot about self management and that’s what management 3. 0 stands for, uh, to, um, to enable people, uh, to manage the company bit by bit and in their, um, in their area of expertise. So, [00:26:00] uh, that’s something that works perfectly with AI.

On the other hand, we have also our five principles, um, that kind of always go well with, uh, with the implementation of AI from a manager. So for example, I’ve managed the system, not the people, which is like one of the most famous principles. Votes, exactly. And for me, like the leadership of a company needs.

To think about the system [00:26:30] they want to have anyway. And also with the help of AI, that’s the whole value based thing. Okay. What, what can we base all this data in the decision making on? Because the AI just takes decision based on a certain algorithm. So if I don’t install any. ethical and value based governance, then it will just take, let’s say, um, the most efficient or most cost, um, if you

Elisa Tuijnder: don’t [00:27:00] ask impassioned to the mix or anything like that, then

Katharina William: no compassion, no environmental protection or whatever.

So, The leadership has to think about, okay, what do we want to have? Uh, um, so that’s, that’s something that fits perfectly also to manage the system of the people. On the other hand, we have, um, something like Energize People. There we see that people cannot be just scared of AI or they [00:27:30] cannot just sit back and say, okay, and now AI is doing everything I don’t need to do.

So, um, leadership needs to inspire those people to continuously evolve and, um, also to continuously take part in the improvement of AI and to work with it, to explore all the different options that chatGPT and all the different other tools have. So based on those principles, actually, um, leaders [00:28:00] can kind of tangle along and see how can AI fit into this picture.

One

Elisa Tuijnder: thing that I recently noticed, and I know we have, we talk a lot about creativity and innovation and how that’s important for, for a workforce and for a team. And I feel like since I’ve been working a lot with the AI, I, you would think that it gets monotone, but actually it’s done the complete opposite for me.

It sparks ideas. It’s like my sparring partner as well, uh, so it can give me like a basic prompt, but it really [00:28:30] makes sure that all of these small lights of creativity or these small things of innovation, they’re really enhanced by this. And that’s, again, also a beautiful thing to see how we can use that with the Management 3point0 methodology and the emphasis on creativity and innovation on a personal level, even.

And imagine that capacity of that potential that you have within a team. Yeah, again, I think we just don’t understand the, even the enormity of the positive influences it can have. [00:29:00]

Katharina William: Yeah. And when we look at the, the, the three things that I also mentioned before, um, like what Management 3point0 from the mindset, but also from the tools that we already have.

Um, so if we say the, the company has to be. More self organized, um, like the teams have to be more self organized because you don’t have this like big hierarchy. And like this one manager who has to, uh, [00:29:30] to twist all the different strings. And whenever you have self organization, you have transparency and you have continuous improvement and upskilling.

So it’s three big prerequisites for, um, the like efficient use of AI. Um, if you look at our tools, so for self organization, you have, uh, something like our delegation, um, uh, delegation, uh, delegation, uh, board. And, uh, There, you can also [00:30:00] basically include AI so you can see, okay, which decisions and very intentionally, which decisions are done by humans, which decisions are done by, by AI before AI, I was always using, um, the, um, Uh, the holidays as an example that a manager really doesn’t do have to decide who’s taking holidays.

This can be by the team, but actually if you put in the right parameters, AI can do [00:30:30] even better. So, um, and there are of course, different other decisions. And if you look at, uh, transparency and you have, um, the whole OKR, OKR said, uh, we always talking about. Um, so we need to know what are our goals. What are, um, the key results we are expecting and where are we standing?

The measuring part. This is the measuring part. And that helps tremendously with AI, because I [00:31:00] don’t know about you, how you feel and how, what you see in different companies, but, well, many companies are great about looking at the objectives. And then a couple of months later, they’re like, Oh, there was an objective, uh,

Elisa Tuijnder: or they put in KPIs that are completely irrelevant because that’s the data they have.

And they don’t see, they see a dip or they see an increase and the understanding of around it isn’t, isn’t there. So. [00:31:30] You can get to so many better metrics and that will lead to such a more complete picture and you can track them along the way. The importance of your data management is, it was already important, but it’s becoming more and more important, but the measuring of these, of these things is revolutionary in that sense.

Katharina William: Yeah, and absolutely. And then you have something like continuous improvement and upskilling as a third, right. And, um, you have tools like the competency metrics, um, where [00:32:00] you can easily, um, include AI as well. Yeah. Or. Uh, the change management game or the improvement dialogue, which you can actually also feed, uh, an AI tool with.

So they are asking the question. Yeah. I don’t know why. So there are many different ways of how to integrate Management 3. 0 mindset, principles, And practices, um, with the use of, of

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:32:30] AI

Katharina William: to just to make it more systematically, because my, my fear is actually for many companies, they’re just like, Oh, cool. Let us embrace AI.

And let’s take this tool and this tool and this tool, and then there is no real system.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah, it was just about to say like, I love how immediately toxin that we have had with Jurgen Dimar about is, you know, the system thinking and, and also the, that you need to reevaluate what you already have. You can’t just keep adding.

Right. This is one of those [00:33:00] things that I’ve always taken away from his talks, like people just add things. Okay, great. Now there’s ai. But then there’s also still something running from the seventies, uh, at the same time, and just this kind of scrapping of processes, scrapping of things, and not adding more, creating the culture around it and, and not just adding more tools.

And, and I think that’s gonna be the biggest challenge for a lot of established companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to do this, but how do we do this? Right. Because they, they won’t go, they, they [00:33:30] don’t like going back to the drawing boards. mostly. Yeah. No,

Katharina William: and especially not with the whole. Workforce.

Absolutely. I don’t think that AI, AI tools, especially if you use, um, like bigger systems of them, um, can be just put down, chopped down. No,

Elisa Tuijnder: absolutely not. You

Katharina William: need to, you need to involve also the, um, the workforce, uh, to see what kind of resistance is there, what kind of fears are there. Sort of always the case,

Elisa Tuijnder: [00:34:00] but people forget

Katharina William: that.

You always have to say it. I know.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah.

Katharina William: I know it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s exhausting. I know that. It’s the most basic principle of change. It’s the

Elisa Tuijnder: most basic principle in change, like, you know, communication and involvement, right? Like, but it seems to still not gone through.

So the, the, the, the synergy is enormous. The, the, the [00:34:30] potential with both sides is enormous. And I think with our, yeah, with our mindset as well, it just, it works so perfectly together. Um, Let’s, let’s get to some, some tangible things for, for our listeners, uh, because it’s a lot of very, very fluffy at the moment, uh, or like big, big ideas.

Um, how can say like a team leader, uh, like a smaller teams at the moment, if the, if the company is still, you know, cause they go [00:35:00] through bureaucratic rigmarole, it might take 10 years before, before they adopt like an official stance. on this, uh, this, so how can they implement this? How can they take, take this forward and, and how can they work with it best, uh, from this managerial team leads kind of structure?

Katharina William: Yeah, so I think something tangible, um, would be to work, uh, with the competency metrics. Because [00:35:30] also in a team, you have to decide, okay, what kind of, um, what kind of tools, what kind of functions do we need? And I wouldn’t just look at all the tools, which are great. Um, but I would look first, which competencies do we need in our team?

Not being fancy, but really useful. And the way the competency, uh, metrics works is we have the different roles that we need in a team and, um, the competencies. That are needed for them. [00:36:00] So, uh, and then we would look at what is the level we have already for the different team members? What do, which level do we need?

Which level do we have for the team members? And so we know like, where do we need some upskilling? Where do we need new team members, et cetera. Um, and I would just include AI in it. So let’s say, um, we have a team where there’s also some, um, and that’s analytics. [00:36:30] inside there, or the, um, budget monitoring or something like this, and you put it in and you can see, okay, for this, we don’t have maybe the competencies or maybe also not the interest.

Um, so, and then we can see, okay, these are the competencies we need to cover. Let’s see, can we cover it with, AI tools. Um, is that, let’s say it is copyright. Uh, let’s say it is research or something like [00:37:00] this, and then we can use, we can find the right tool for it. Um, that’s something where you can involve the whole team because then everybody can decide together, like, okay, we need this.

This would really help our objectives or roles. Um, and you can even like involve the team, of course, in the research, which tools, um, have those functionalities, have those

Elisa Tuijnder: competencies.

Katharina William: That’s that’s something [00:37:30] tangible that you could do in a workshop, for example.

Elisa Tuijnder: Yeah. Yeah, with your team members. And again, a lot of the tools of Management 3point0, they’re, they’re set up so that they’re easy and that they’re, you know, easy to work with, but they’re also really set up so that we can have the conversation with the team.

It’s basically a conversation starter. A lot of them are conversation starter. And it’s also a good point, I guess, with the deep competency matrix to then start in, to start to take in, [00:38:00] um, what can AI do for us? Thanks. really seeing from, from, from that point of view, how can it enhance us and how can it make us better as a, as a team?

And I, I think that could be incredibly valuable. And I, I also wanted to highlight there, what I, what I like doing is, is the team competency matrix, but also use the diversity index at the same time, uh, sort of, and, and Management 3point0 for our listeners, when we say diversity, it’s not just diversity in gender or ethnicity or [00:38:30] anything of that.

It is, it is also in. People who are working full time, half time, or people who are from a different market, from a different language, from a different background, um, anything you can think of, anything that you could need from a diversity perspective. I’ve used this before now, and it works really well.

Like, hey, you’re this person, what would, you know, asking the AI, like sort of from that perspective. And obviously I don’t take it word for word, but it makes me able to put that hat on a little bit easier. Um, and [00:39:00] I think the combination there is also quite powerful.

Katharina William: Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s a nice, uh, use case.

Even if it’s

Elisa Tuijnder: just from like a perspective of like an introvert or an extrovert, I’m very extroverted. I’ve asked ChachiBD at times, I’m making an exercise. What would an introvert think of this? And how could I, and it has given me a lot of creativity and ideas because of that.

Katharina William: Yeah. And I mean, that, that helps.

And also like, even for, for new, [00:39:30] not only new time mebers, it’s kind of called, can be also, um, long time leaders who, um, are maybe introverted or are more focused on operational things. Um, and then they have to coach somebody or they have to deal with a certain personal situation and just. To ask, you have somebody they can ask without being afraid that HR or somebody will look at them like, maybe you’re a bad leader, but you can ask.

Uh, [00:40:00] ChatGPT with the right prompts and you don’t have to do it one by one, but you get some help with it. Like, how should I address a certain topic, um, with my team member who has a performance tip or, um, seems to be distracted all the time.

Elisa Tuijnder: Again, it gives ideas and it really helps facilitate the conversation.

If you don’t take the ideas and then structure them a bit, the best way that you, that works for you and to the person at the other side. Yeah. Yeah. absolute enormous [00:40:30] potential. And I really love to keep talking about this, but I don’t think we have enough time. If any of our listeners would want to get in contact with you, Katharina, or, um, just have this further, this conversation around AI, um, where, where, where would be the place for that?

Katharina William: Well, basically LinkedIn, it’s always a good place. You will find me there in Katharina William. And I’m happy to have those conversations. Um, I’m happy to hear about, [00:41:00] uh, examples where it worked, where it didn’t work. It’s also always good to know. So, uh, everybody is, uh, welcome to just, uh, write me there. Um, send a contact request.

Say. What’s on your mind right now? Obviously also the Management 3point0 website is a very good, um, way to, to get more, uh, information about like different practices, but you already say that probably. Um, And, um, the [00:41:30] next forward events, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. We’re doing definitely,

Elisa Tuijnder: we’re planning something around AI.

Also, it’s a podcast in combination.

Katharina William: Yeah.

Elisa Tuijnder: So.

Katharina William: So that’s, uh, that there are many different ways to, if you want to get a personal touch, that’s usually LinkedIn.

Elisa Tuijnder: Perfect. Thank you, Katarina. I really enjoyed this conversation and sharing your insights on the future of AI in combination and synergy with Management 3point0.

So thank you so much. for

Katharina William: being

Elisa Tuijnder: here. Thank

Katharina William: you.[00:42:00]

Elisa Tuijnder: You’ve been listening to The Happiness At Word Podcast by Management 3.0 where we are getting serious about happiness. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you enjoy our shows, don’t be shy. Write us a review. Share the happiness with your colleagues, family, your friends.

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