What if the rate of technological change outstrips the growth of your people?
The bad news is that some people will fight the wave of change rather than use it to their advantage. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way!
In this thought-provoking episode of Thought Leader Conversations, Roger Courville delves into the realm of Technology Intelligence (TQ) with Pamela Sammarco, CEO of Green Training Associates, and along the way you'll learn
The Essence of TQ: Understand the depth and richness of Technology Intelligence and its role in modern organizations.
Bridging Gaps in Talent Development: Explore how Pamela Sammarco leverages her expertise in IO psychology to enhance talent development, focusing on the tech and green sectors.
Navigating Workforce Automation: Insights into how automation is reshaping the job market and the importance of upskilling and reskilling.
The Human Aspect of Remote Work: Discussions on the cultural and managerial shifts in remote and hybrid working environments.
Future of HR in Technology: Learn how Human Resources is evolving with technological advancements and the increasing importance of a data-driven culture.
Learn more at Pam's website, including:
The article with five use cases including Cisco’s ESG Report: Sustainable Technology: A Strategic Framework for IT Executives
Supporting article and GTA’s Power TQ Solution: Power Skills Fuel Technology Intelligence (TQ)
Supporting article: Sustainable Technology: Paving the Way for a Greener Future
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #esg #futureofhr #technologyintelligence #hrtrends
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: You've heard about IQ, you've heard about EQ, but what about TQ? And how might that help you reach your organization's ESG and sustainability goals? Well, hello and welcome to Boost Your TQ, Technology Intelligence, and I promise you this is going to be deep. And it goes a lot deeper and more richly than you might expect.
And I'm glad you're here. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and. hybrid event production team that in a way that helps you focus on something other than tech, but we're not here to talk about us today.
I have the privilege of having Pamela Samarco with me, CEO of Green Training Associates, a full service talent development firm. And I'm just going to be kind of casual in the illuminating a couple of her details here, because I'm going to ask her to speak a little more about herself. And because she's got this long list of accomplishments that will just warm your heart.
They've got a mission to develop people's capabilities and to solve world challenges. And one of the details along the way I'm going to ask her about is how you get a master of science degree in IO as an IO psychology practitioner. That just is curious to me. So Pam works with executive clients to drive.
Impact and business growth with talent development solutions for all kinds of different organizations. She specializes in green and technology sectors including tech, clean tech, renewable energy, green buildings, environmental science, food, recycling, sustainabilities, industries, uh, and I could go on and on.
Pam, I am so glad you're here. Tell us a little more about who you are and what you
[00:01:48] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: do. Hey, Roger. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm glad to talk with your, your listeners and your viewers today. And I think we're going to have a delightful conversation as two, uh, longstanding talent development professionals.
Um, we certainly have, um, So much ground to cover and there's definitely different ways to put to talk about sustainable technology and TQ because it fits into many places beyond just the, you know, the, um, sustainability space and, you know, boy, I've got a great story to tell today. So I'm, you know, circling back to your IO psychology practitioner question, you know, so the interesting thing about my work is.
You know, I, I chose my career and then they formed my academic path and I wanted to work with people and, um, help people thrive and achieve their highest potential from, um, a human behavior standpoint in a business environment. So when I did research on like what the majors were in psychology was, you know, my dad said, you better go library and figure out what kind of job you're going to get.
Right. And he was right. So I chose, uh, you know, IO psychology and I formed my, uh, undergraduate degree and my, and my master of science in applied psychology, which is from Stevens Institute of Technology. And that program was really a concentration in HR management, but it really is the underpinning of taking human behavior, predicting behavior and driving performance through Training, coaching, mentoring, career paths, organization, development, culture, all of those things that we do as talent development practitioners are, you know, the basis for why I love the evidence using evidence based tools.
I love assessments. I like to, you know, differentiators about an IO psychologist are. you know, numerous where there's a rigor, there's a focus on the organizational outcomes. So I always start with organizational impact and I look at it like pieces of a puzzle and I look and say, okay, which, what levers need to be pulled in order to drive performance for the organization?
So then I look at the root causes of where the gaps are. because they do a gap analysis. Current state, what's the desired state? How do we close the gap? And what are the things? So it's not just training, but there's many reasons. There could be business processes, it could be leadership issues, there could be things that get in the way of people performing.
So I like to say I change people's lives as a talent development, uh, professional and as a consultant for 15 years in my business. And then I have a 24 year global corporate career prior to that. So, I'm in my career, I love what I do, and from when I chose my major in college to today, I still get up every day with a passion to help people thrive, build sustainable organizations, and build the bench strengths from, you know, onboarding through succession planning, and training leadership development, and...
growth mindset. There's so many ways to do that. And, um, I thrive in this environment where I can identify how ways to help my clients and make sure their organizations are running smoothly. And certainly, technology is one of my, my first loves, so I love to get, you know, dive in and see, you know, what, what would you, where should we begin our conversation?
[00:05:20] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, maybe that is a good place to start. Let's start with TQ. And, and as I said, uh, For those of you that are listening here, right. I, I, I said right up front that this is a whole lot deeper and that, uh, then you might just expect because you might think, Oh, technology intelligence. I know what it is. I know how technology works.
What else? And I promise you, Pam is going to, is going to take us a whole lot more deeply than that. Pam define TQ and how it relates to accelerating this sustainable business growth that you talk about.
[00:05:55] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: Yeah, and so TQ, so we're talking about alphabet soup today in today's conversation, right? IQ is, is intelligent quotient, but I look at that as knowledge worker intelligence, because we're in the knowledge economy.
We've got emotional intelligence, which is emotional and social intelligence, that's how well you relate to others, how self aware you are, um, you know, paying attention to the emotional cues and personality styles. Then you've got CQ, which is another acronym, which is cultural intelligence, that's the willingness to, um, accept and not, different cultures in an organization.
And then you've got TQ, which is technology intelligence. And that's where the heartbeat of what today's conversation is. And I have courses on all the other, all the other cues, so I can help with those. But today, technology intelligence is critical. So let me begin with the broad landscape of techno of the tech sector, as we see so much going on.
The digital revolution, artificial intelligence, and the accelerated pace of technology implementation, it's sending a tighter wave of change in every organization's workforce needs. Employees are collaborating, communicating, they're working from anywhere. any time in jobs that don't have an on site presence requirement.
Although we are seeing a return to hybrid environments since the pandemic, but that's changed the workforce forever. And it's changed organizations cultures to realize that that flexibility and responsiveness to work life balance is essential, especially with the young workforce that's coming in the Gen Y and Gen Z have an expectation for that.
balance, but it's also because technology enables people to work anytime, anywhere, pretty much. And the onsite, which is interesting, people are coming back into the office. They're being asked to come back, but they want to be there for specific reasons. You may have collaboration needs. It's going to be nice to be sitting in front of a whiteboard where you're surrounded.
By your peers and you're talking about a business problem and you're whiteboarding it and you're able to bring in, you know, get lunch together and, and talk in person. Like the human touch is returning. And PE companies I see are being selective over when they bring their workforce back into the office.
Some have mandates where you're in a couple of days a week. I think we're gonna see a shift, but technology enables it Right. To, well, you know,
[00:08:29] Roger Courville, CSP: so I, yeah. You know, I mean, I started in 1999 in the conferencing industry, right? Audio conferencing, web conferencing. At that time, the bandwidth didn't support video conferencing like it does today.
You know, a couple of two and a half decades later, and interestingly, it is. Therefore, that's, this is the technology that has enabled a big chunk of remote work, right? What we take for granted now. Not that long ago. Didn't didn't work that well. Interestingly, therefore, I pay a lot of attention to not only what the trends are, but this recent thing where there is tension between senior management going, Hey, we want you back in the office and people going, Well, we don't want to be back in the office or, or.
And I think, I think this is what I heard you just say, give me a good reason to be back in the office. Right? And, and this is just my own. Now, this is goes from the research that I've seen to my own, my own instinct. It has is transforming from there's a, there's a segment of the population. And I'm probably even one of them, like as a Gen Xer where I'm like, Don't just tell me to come back in the office.
Give me a reason that talks about the mutually created value. Why is it a value to the organization? Why is it a value to me, as opposed to just giving me a mandate to come back in the office because you don't like managing remotely? One of the things that we would do over and over, um, The company that I've co founded when I left Microsoft, we would do these broad adoption projects where we roll out conferencing within an organization and interestingly, success was dramatically tied to management's willingness.
To change how they lead and manage, meaning do they, will they, would they step up to leading and managing remote people as opposed to, um, meaning they would have to change maybe some of the ways that they say do something like an employee check in or a team meeting or those kinds of things. So anyway, I ramble a little bit, but I'll I think I just heard you say that part of this, this, this shifting landscape of late has been a function of management or leadership, communicating value.
And I don't think there's anybody on the planet that would say it's never okay to work remotely. The question is, when and where is the right place? Is it okay to be remote? When and where do you really need to be in person? Because frankly, there is a time you really need to be in person to be effective in certain roles.
[00:11:08] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: I agree. And, you know, we're both long, you know, longstanding, like I go back into the 1990s, too, with video, two way video conferencing, um, satellite broadcast business, television work, and which was interactive distance learning. I agree with you that the path of, Um, change now that the majority of people are experiencing because we were on the, we were on the innovative edge of that, right?
And now we're backing into like, this is the norm for the majority of the workforce is where a some shift comes in. The pandemic, I think, did a couple of things. It shone a light on the organizational gaps in terms of management skills and the organization's management, the ability for them to. Um, and you know, like the ad hoc informal conversations that would help get things done changed organization culture.
So now management, if the person's not physically present, where are they, what, what they're, what they're doing to work. on deliverables and be held accountable for work and to be as deep in their work as they need to be because it shifted people's mindset. Like when, you know, I mean, I've been in my own business for 15 years and I had a home office with my job at Lucent Technologies.
So if the discipline of work was normal because I had deliverables, I had, ownership of results that I had to drive for my work. I had the opportunity to work wherever I needed to work because I traveled extensively globally for a while. Those, those variables just mean that you compartmentalize and you have action items and deliverables and project work and accountability and ownership to get done what you need to get done, but it has to get done by a certain date and to the standards of the company.
So... People that were then sent home were no longer working the office nine to five, Monday to Friday. They're going, okay, like, I don't know how to work my work day and I'm distracted for a variety of reasons. whether it's COVID, whether it's homeschooling kids, whether it's the lack of ability to sit in front of your computer on zoom meetings and make sure your work is done.
Leaders were having trouble, team leaders were having trouble connecting their people to the work because it was more informal. And you're in the office so you can then see someone in the lounge room and say, Hey, don't forget you owe me a blah, blah, blah. And I think HR has had a, had a seismic shift too, because they're sending the workforce home.
The remote workforce policies, besides the, you know, setting COVID aside, shifted the way people were managed and whether HR operated to ensure, um, you know, performance standards were being met, work was being done, employees were safe and that they were productive. Companies, I think, it tripled during the pandemic of companies that were installing software, tracking software on people's company laptops, where they were monitoring keystrokes, how much time they're spending on the internet, how much time they have Microsoft Office documents open, meeting time, like they literally ended up wanting to, it's sort of like, um, that monitoring and that's that, that moment of people feeling that that's.
It's a, it's, it's a tool, but it is, you know, there were lawsuits that came of some of that. Someone got let go and they, you know, made a lawsuit that the accusations weren't right. So we could go on about that piece of the pandemic, which has shifted, but I think. You know, it's about resiliency, agility, productivity, team management, coaching people differently, and also giving them the flexibility.
You know, moms would homeschool their kids from 9 to, 9 to 3, and then they would work 4 to 12, midnight, right? So, there was an opportunity for them to get their 8 hours in, but just a different 8 hours. And how available are they to other team members that rely on them to do their part before they could...
There were all of those things. So technology has been, you know, now it's been, I think, sort of right sizing and the ability to be in the office. And the reason to be in the office and that they go and that they show up in the office and that there's other people. 'cause I've heard stories about people saying, oh, I'm supposed to be in the office.
They check the badge swipes and all that, and then I'm the only one there. So what, what good is my being in the office if my coworkers are not gonna be in? So there's. Really, uh, turmoil in culture, organization cultures to try and figure this out, even though they're saying, you know, some companies are pretty strict.
You will be in the office Monday to Friday. You will be back to the job. Some companies in the financial sector were doing that. I think, uh, you know, um, Elon Musk was having his people come back into the office at, um, what was Twitter now is X and Jamie Dimon of, um, you know, JPMorgan Chase. So we're going to see more change.
I think it's going to be settling into a new normal. And I think that we're still reeling from, you know, how do we operate as a company and how do we get the most productivity from people? And how do we, um, engage our employees? Cause this is an employee engagement. opportunity, which is the reason to be in the office, which is being with people.
I've actually heard the younger generation wants to be in the office because they're still learning, especially if they're new employees, they're in an onboarding phase where being in office with more experienced, um, co workers is a huge benefit. And then the young professionals really want to learn, uh, from the, from the, um, more seasoned workforce.
And all of those are good reasons. So I think it's going to depend really on the corporate culture and how they, how they communicate and listen. Cause they've got to listen to the employee's needs and then they need to respond with the business needs and where the connection goes is where the challenges are.
You talk about automation too, but you've got a question. Go ahead. Well,
[00:17:29] Roger Courville, CSP: no, I was just going to, uh, agree because if, uh, if I'm sensing correctly, the underlying heart, your underlying heart, at the end of the day, we're still talking about people. Right. Yes. Generations might have be influenced by different things.
And to your point, you know, as I understand it as well, Gen Z has taken a pendulum swift, uh, shift back toward, um, uh, sociality in, in a different way than say millennials. Uh, but one of the challenges becomes What is the nature of being social? I'll use an example just here, right? So, uh, our little dozen person company has, technically has an office, and two people go into the office.
and third of our company lives nowhere near Portland, Oregon, and, and they live, we live on Slack all day long, right? Chat and, and, and, and it's just, it is beautiful to watch what happens when people are in each other's lives. Hey, gotta run the dog to the vet, right? And it's, and there's a, there's a personal connection born of, of being together apart.
Even when we've got employees that, uh, we've never met face to face because they live part of the country away. But to your point
[00:19:07] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: That's a good point. The humanization of the workplace is very, very evident. where it's like you can say I gotta run my dog to the vet where prior in Stricter corporate culture and in the you know earlier part of my career you never talked about things that were personal and that you could say I need an hour to go do this and I'm gonna come back and finish my work day and then you actually, it's so much more comfortable and humanizing.
You make a great point about, it's about people and companies are starting to realize the, the, the, the, um, shift in where the, where the, um, where is the power in the workplace? It was the employer over the employees. And now it's more of the employees over the employers, and that's because there's a war for talent and a talent shortage, um, which is then driving, uh, which is driving employees to have a choice about where they want to work.
And if a company doesn't accommodate, Then they, then they,
[00:20:16] Roger Courville, CSP: who wants to work for a company that doesn't treat you like a human being? I mean, you mentioned earlier like people, organizations installing like key log trackers. And I remember a couple years ago, the first time I saw go buy on Amazon, a mouse jiggler, and I'm like A mouse jiggler.
What the heck? Turns out. It's a device that you can buy on Amazon for 20 bucks or something and you plug a mouse, you plug your mouse into your laptop and set the mouse on top of this thing and it randomly will make the mouse move so that when you're not at your computer, it's still, it's still moving your mouse.
[00:20:52] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: So that's not the kind of automation we want, though. Well, right, and it,
[00:20:56] Roger Courville, CSP: you know, think about the, it's, I use that as an example of the opposite of, say, what I have the good fortune of experiencing here at Virtual Venues, where it's like, well, wait, oh, yeah, you know what? It maybe sometimes is too personal, but if I know Pam's having a bad day, or recently one of our employees just had a grandparent pass away, everybody's like, get the hell out of here.
Well, that's what we do as human beings, right? As opposed to, and back to, you know, the, the thinking about how we lead and manage in a, in a remote or hybrid sort of way. Uh, maybe my old way was peripatetic, right? It was like management by walking around and I could walk around the office and kind of both, uh, in an ad hoc way, develop relationship, but also in an ad hoc way, just kind of do a check in with you and figure out where you were at on the project you were working on.
And now if we're doing it remotely. I can't do it that way. And the question is, am I, as the leader or manager, going to adapt? And to I think of one of the points that you made a little earlier, part of this landscape is shifting out from underneath people who don't, don't want to adapt. And so,
[00:22:08] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: exactly.
And so, you know, I have a, I have a topic that I teach for remote virtual cultures and help managers be better at virtual culture management. And one of the things is to. you know, ask those check in questions, not how are you doing, but more specific questions. Um, what obstacles, what can they help you facilitate?
Um, where are your, you know, where are the hot spots where you need help and on and on. So one of the most important things, and this is the part about being in the office is that remote worker loneliness. Is it a, is an all time high? So it's not ideal to isolate because of the need for that people and the human interaction beyond, you know, I joke when they go to an in person event, I love being with the three dimensional people.
I'm so done being in my office on the screen watching people. And that's why video is so important because 93 percent of our communication. And I teach this to coaches and middle managers, particularly 93 percent of communication is being. is being on video so that you can see someone because you want to see their facial expressions, you want to see their body language.
We know nonverbal communication, only 7 percent are the words, that's a standard, 50, 55 percent are the tone of voice, rate, pitch, etc. And then the balance are your gestures, your eye contact, and body language. All of those factors are what we receive when we're in person and there's nothing like a face to face meeting that helps inform a manager about a person's status.
So, being isolated in the home office is, um, creating loneliness. I think virtual communities create some of that too, because we've gone off of being in person. And generally there's been a migration toward virtual communities because of how much social media plays a role in our lives and how we think we can communicate with others and be human, um, through the use of technology.
And not that it's impossible because Slack is a brilliant tool for collaboration. I use it all the time for two of my organizations. So there's such value in. Knowing the right, so it's I think choices, and it's properties, and it's decision making. Knowing what to do, when to do, and how to connect with people, and when you should be in person.
You know, it's the, there's an intelligence, and it's not technology intelligence, but it's probably an emotional intelligence, and a leadership intelligence. to bring people together at the right times and to be checking on the folks in your teams regularly and to have those one to one meetings with them, to have weekly team meetings, to have in person gatherings, to integrate what's going on with work and life.
Because you blend work and life at this point, and it's so much more natural for everyone to feel like they can breathe a little bit and they can still contribute and do their job. So, you know, there is a lot to be said for, you can have 100 percent blind trust, and you want to monitor, because people then, you know, they sort of fall away when they go quiet, they're not commenting, or their camera is off all the time.
You know, there's, there's definitely some check ins that are more frequent check ins from a communication standpoint. And I advocate in person gatherings where possible, even, I mean, you know, COVID's going to be with us, so monitoring COVID and mask wearing and all those good things still need to happen.
[00:25:45] Roger Courville, CSP: Pam, what is the data science behind COVID? this kind of revolution, this TQ revolution that you speak about?
[00:25:54] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: Well, you know, the data science starts with the fact that automation is a major driver and workforce automation is creating millions of new jobs and replacing humans with computers that perform millions of other jobs.
So, automation is a major driver, um, from the standpoint that by 2025, which is just two short years away, 85 million jobs will be replaced by automation. And this is according to CNBC's World Economic Forum data. So we, 85 million jobs will be replaced by automation. However, 97 million new jobs will be created to serve companies new needs, and that's in the same CNBC World Economic Forum study.
So when you think about it, we're going to have a net new 12 million jobs. Then coupled with data from the HR Business Review, only 28 percent of talent acquisition leaders, those are your recruiters in HR, report that they have internal candidates as an important source of people to fill vacancies, which means that they're not keeping up their training and their talent development and professional development and skill building and making sure that people are staying current.
So that they can be used in succession planning. So 70 percent of employees then report that they don't have a mastery of the skills they need to do their jobs. 70% of employees don't have the skills they need to do their jobs. And only 12 percent of employees actually apply new skills learned in their L& D programs on their jobs.
So with those data points, we've got automation happening and what we need to look at then is up skilling, re skilling, retention strategies, more sophisticated hiring requirements for human machine relationships. And generally with that, Labor shortage. We have a skilled labor shortage where our available workforce is mismatched with the available jobs.
So this gap is only going to get bigger with TQ or technology intelligence as a premium requirement, because employer requirements are moving faster than workforce readiness and learning agility.
[00:28:13] Roger Courville, CSP: Interesting the way that you just put that. Let me reflect that back to you and make sure I just heard that correctly.
Because if so. There is a, there's another parallel, uh, in historical technology trends. Did I just hear you correctly when you said that the, the rate of change is outstripping the rate of change of workforce development? Did I catch that correctly?
[00:28:39] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: It's the rate of technology is outpacing workforce readiness.
So organizations are not keeping up professional development skills. Employees are not having the skills that they need to master their job. employers maybe are not putting enough money and funding into professional development. There's a continuum. That's not a, that's a very broad statement. So what I see is, you know, when, when, uh, you know, we've got a volatile economy, the first thing that companies do will contract in terms of their marketing budgets and headcount reduction.
Like those are easy cost cuts, but that doesn't help enable the long term strategy. There's a talent shortage in the world, right? And the general speak, generally speaking, there's a huge talent shortage. And that talent shortage tells us that we're not going to have enough workers to accomplish the work.
And there's going to then be a revenue impact to that because companies won't have the workforce that's going to, you know, that's going to deliver the, their business goals, their products and services, and that, to me, the underpinning of that also is the speed of and rate of technology is outpacing how quickly people.
get up to speed and are ready to use technology in their jobs and or their job is being replaced. And the automation of their job means that the job goes away and then what do you do with that worker? So companies will sometimes exit the worker because their skills are obsolete and they don't invest in the upskilling and reskilling and new career paths for those people.
So I look at, um, you know, Verizon, for example. They call their employees Verizon citizens. They had a huge initiative where I think five, was it 500, 000 of their workforce were jobs were going to be automated. And they took those people and they up skilled them and re skilled them and redirected their career paths instead of exiting them from the company.
So, workforce automation happens. But the question is, what do you, what do you do with your workforce? And how do you, um, first of all, keep their skills where they need to be for the job. So it's paying attention to training requirements. And number two, if their job is going to go away, what do they need to do to prepare?
So I'll give you some examples of jobs. Machines are going to replace humans to perform jobs like Data entry, administrative, accounting, bookkeeping, assembly and factory workers, because the robotics coming in, um, customer service, now even when you call up, you get an AVR that is, you know, an automated voice that's an AI person, how can I help you, you know, what do you need, and you say a few words and they answer They give you answers on an automated fashion, right?
So those are examples of machines replacing humans already. You can't get a live person on the phone sometimes when you call. Um, you know, there's all kinds of those tech, uh, data intensive jobs that can be replaced. So new jobs that are going to grow in demand to serve automation, you're going to have people that need to oversee that automation or develop it.
data analysts, scientists, AI and machine learning specialists, big data specialists, process automation specialists, digital transformation, information security, software and application developers. So those are where the job growth is going to be. That's just a high level, but that information comes from the World Economic Forum.
And primary growth area by vertical sector will be health care, life sciences, pharma, technology of course, and green sector or sustainability around climate tech and green tech and, um, all of those areas of sustainability. Because the underpinning of, of sustainability is technology and innovation is being used to solve.
the problems of, of reducing carbon emissions, um, and so forth in every sector. So technology, climate tech, clean tech, green tech, those are some, some, uh, you know, labels, if you will, around the use of tech in, in, uh, in the, in the sustainability and green sector
[00:33:03] Roger Courville, CSP: space. Well, you know, I mentioned a couple minutes ago that there was a parallel that I was aware of that, uh, when I said, Hey, is my understanding correctly what you're saying, and it actually ties in also to what you were just talking about.
Um, Clayton Christensen was a Harvard business prof, uh, or maybe it was Yale. I think it was Harvard. Anyway, some, some decades, a couple decades ago wrote a really influential book called The Innovator's Dilemma. And then a couple books later was like, uh, Seeing What's Next. And I remember the opening, uh, it was, the, the core challenge was that in the process of business development, often products development was, was outstripping.
the development of new features around products was outstripping a market's ability to, to adopt and adapt to those new features. And that would create this kind of delta that would put pressure on, on, uh, profit margin, et cetera, by the nature of then how, how people would respond. Interestingly, that's really parallel to what you're just describing about the nature of the business.
organization growing at a rate of change that is faster than the people adapting and adopting this, this new, which creates a delta, um, which as we well know, I mean, it's well publicized that there is a, uh, a worker shortage. And one of the things that I see frequently is a response of fear. As in, oh my gosh, you're going to outsource my job to a robot, or the equivalent thereof, or artificial intelligence, or the equivalent thereof, without realizing, oh, here's what I can do to get ahead of the game, and, um, and reposition, so, to your point about upscaling and rescaling people, um, Anyway, I just thought it was kind of interesting because he did a lot of work around the subject of innovation and how innovation may create a problem, but it also can be used to solve the problem, and it's not an unsolvable problem, it just naturally creates a problem when the pace of change outstrips the pace of change by those in being affected, adopting or, or adapting.
And, uh, of course, 50 years ago, um, Alvin Toffler predicted it with what we now know of what we call future shock, right? He's like the pace of change will get to this place where it creates. shock, culture shock within, within localities, right? Whether that's geographic or an organization's, um, culture, just in the same way that you might experience significant shock if you went to a different culture where their foods or means of greeting each other or something were radically different than what you were used to.
And that level of culture shock would be one of the consequences of the speed of technological change. And I think we've... Well, we've been seeing it and we continue to see it. Now the question is now, well, you know, now what? And I love just the fact that you're wrapping your heads around this with regard to workforce trends or, or even thinking through the business case of why something like TQ is important to workforce retention.
So just out of curiosity, particularly given your role in talent development, um, What is that human resources or leadership or training leadership role for, for how to even think about it, let alone embrace what to do about it?
[00:37:00] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: Yeah, absolutely. So it's a great question, Roger. I, um. I love the progressive, innovative organizations.
I've worked for my entire career. To your point about innovation and, so my experience with innovation is deep. I've worked from startups to global brands. I've worked with HR executives, CEOs, COOs, and technology executives in my career. Work in my career. And so that experience kind of pulls together the story in response to what you're saying because truly the in innovation is never perfect, but it's a beginning place and innovate.
Um, we need to, we can't use the same thinking to solve the, the problems at hand. And that's cer certainly a famous quote from, I think Albert Einstein. Right? So we, we've gotta innovate in order to solve problems. We also need to lead change. because when you innovate, that means change. So having a great change strategy is critical.
When you have an innovation, there's an impact to it. And you have to plan that change because we're creatures of habit and humans need to have consistency. We look for patterns of behavior. So to lead your. employees, your customers, your suppliers, everyone through those changes is critical. So I teach both innovation and leading change as part of my power skills, which is part of what we'll talk about in a short bit.
But the HR role is critical here. So when I talk to HR executives, this is about automation, workforce planning. It's also about how to unleash your employees potential. So what we want to do is, is look at HR's role. in, in the role of strategic business drivers, the future readiness themes. We want to look at individual and organizational resiliency, and there are new future HR jobs that will create that director of wellbeing work from home facilitator.
So we're talking about HR strategy needs to be. Um, changed in order to, uh, in order to plan the workforce automation. So there's two parts to this is you've individual organization, resiliency, organizational trust and safety are critical creativity, innovation, data, literacy, human and machine partnerships and other types of HR roles that get X that get expanded on.
So there's HR jobs of the future. I'm glad to. share more about that. Cause I think that's a topic in and of itself, but the people in automated automation workforce planning, you know, we look at the five trends of HR using technology within its function. Cause HR now is automating, right? You can have an, uh, a video job interview with AI and you know, there's not even a person present and those kinds of things.
So HR uses technology now. in its platform. There is an organizational investment in digital transformation for a data culture. So we're working to our data culture. The use of AI is huge. I wrote a, uh, thought leadership, uh, post on LinkedIn on AI, human machine relationships and partnerships and robotics, job, automation, virtual reality, or X reality.
Cause there's mixed reality, virtual and augmented reality. So they call it X. Um, X Reality, because there's so many versions of that. But the bottom line for HR, here's the thing, HR increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the use of technology for its culture and its people in the entire employee life cycle.
HR has an increasing role in ethics, data privacy, and psychological safety. HR also, and talent development, need a strate seat at that strategic table in regard to the technology and the business's digital future. And we want to identify HR's technology for its functional needs, plan employee redeployment and re skilling career paths.
When you automate jobs, you want to have a plan for those people. Do they have skill? Are we in a skills first organization where you can take those skills redeploy that employee somewhere else. Can you upskill them and get them on a different career path? So you have to have that workforce automation plan and you want to design jobs and align technology capabilities within that business strategy and you cultivate and elevate internal talent because you're not going to get a lot of external talent given the talent shortage in the market.
Take the employees that you have and invest in them.
[00:41:30] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, we could probably spend another hour just on that. To me, one of the core challenges is what I think of as a building versus a growing strategy. And it takes a bit to grow your people. Right. A building strategy thinks about people like interchangeable parts, at least in my opinion.
Right. And it's like, Oh, well, well, that person's not suited as we'll get rid of them and get in somebody who has the skills instead of growing people from one point A to point B. And if I'm mistaken, and we'll get down to our last couple of questions here, you refer to power skills. for technical professionals, right?
Which is a people strategy. What, what are those and how do they help you unlock this, this whole thing?
[00:42:26] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: No, power skills are, um, developing. I, uh, developing your people. with their professional skills. They used to be called soft skills, but really when you've got someone with technical and technology expertise, you want to layer in the professional skills or what I call power skills that elevate their performance.
So they're really smart. They've got lots of credentials and certifications. When you look at an IT professional's professional development plan, it's not including some of the things that are those people's skills. So the technical credentials and certifications are not enough. to be successful in your organization.
Companies hire people for IQ but fire them for missing EQ. So smart technology professionals need the people smarts too, because what we do is our job. How we do it is our work relationships and how we manage our relationships with other people. So growing technology professionals, growth and development, and these are STEM professionals, but these skills are relevant for every organization.
Let me say that. to elevate any people, any person's skills with these that I propose, help implement change, enable the business, drive efficiencies, and reduce risk. So you want to move barriers out of the way for people to perform, build their skills, collaborate, achieve performance metrics. And I've written an article on Power TQ Skills, which is a solution I offer, which fuels the technology intelligence for actionable business results.
They're simple things. Connect, uh, personality styles, um, working with external customers on delivery, excellence, critical thinking, um, leading by example with DEI, um, driving urgency with, um, an intelligent risk taking. I have team leader skills and then I have individual skills and there's a full article and.
How to help you get there is what this power TQ skill solution is that I offer.
[00:44:31] Roger Courville, CSP: Thank you. And, uh, you know, uh, and I'll just say this, uh, because if you're not watching and you're just listening, uh, green training associates. com is where you can get ahold of Pam. Pam at green training associates. com and, uh, Pam, I'm seriously, uh, I know there's a ton of resources there at your website, not least of which are some visuals that.
that give people a visual element for putting together kind of the way that you think in frameworks and the nature of, of some of this stuff. Maybe as just kind of a wrap up question here, what do you recommend? What do you recommend to listeners here as the most important business actions when it comes to what you call TQ?
[00:45:15] Pam Sammarco, CPTD: Sure. I love to build sustainable organizations, so I recommend developing your people's interpersonal and professional skills, a growth mindset, ensuring that you upskill, reskill, mentor, have career path solutions that enable your workforce to thrive, and develop a skills first mindset where there's agility and flexibility to drive the organization's needs.
And TQ, um, Technology Intelligence is just one of those strategic intelligences that every organization needs to pay attention to. So I'm, I'm delighted to be here today, Roger. This is an exciting conversation. I hope your listeners found value and I'm excited to, um, speak with anyone that would like more, more information.
So absolutely reach out to me and... I'm glad to make sure that we help you with delivering impact and building a sustainable organization means that your people are thriving and achieving their highest potential and driving the performance that your organization is seeking.
[00:46:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Thank you again so much, Pam.
And as I promised each and every one of you at the top of the show, this was going to be so much more deep than, uh, than you might have initially thought of. We threw out the, that little thing, TQ, and we'll appreciate Pam Simarco's, um, idea Not only at the top level, but in the deep, deep place that we've spent the last hour.
Thank you again, Pam. Pam at green training associates. com. You can visit our website at green training associates. com. And again, thank you to our virtual venues crew here, where you can instantly scale your hybrid and event production team as our sponsor today. We'll see you on the next episode of thought leader conversations.
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