Trailer

Podcast with Giselle Mota Part 3

Giselle Mota on Unplugging, Trust, Analytics for Collaboration

Summary

Unplugging is essential to enable our mind to rest. Companies should create options to unplug, such as push notifications, and automated brakes. ADP's marketplace allows organizations to submit their products for consideration, allowing them to foster trust and onboard for productivity. Organizations can use data analytics to understand relational dynamics and create virtual experiences to help people onboard and become more connected. Both shared about why people don't want to collaborate, and organizational network analytics is powerful to understand how people are feeling.

Giselle Mota believes that making generalizations based on behavior is risky and that it can lead to an inclusion issue where it's not so much the individuals as much as the organization. AI has ethical issues, such as bias, lack of accountability, data security, and too fast development. Go to market at all costs to create an agile environment, but accountability, explainability and ethics must be in place. We need to think about a multidisciplinary approach to design and technology in the future of work, such as designing for many people in mind, such as caregivers, single women, and different cultures. Self-driving cars need to be designed with cultural context in mind, as the driving rules of engagement on the road are different in different countries.

Andrew Liew Weida and Giselle Mota discuss the differences in driving in different cultures, such as the steering wheel being on the left hand side of the car and the traffic rules being different. In Asia, there is a more respected role of authority than in the US, which comes from a variety of factors, such as anthropology, sociology, and economics.

[00:00:00] Andrew Liew Weida: No. Coming back to that, I unplugging like you, you are right there. There is a movement of this I need to unplug for people who are really working very hard conscious worker, doing very hard trying to over communicate, to build trust. And that's why there was this recent legislation in France just last year they passed that any employer, any boss or any manager that they have to put a stipulated eight hours per day and beyond that time box, in France, let's say in Paris after 5:00 PM if the boss or the manager ping a message that is an email or call he will be violating the French labor law.

[00:00:35] Giselle Mota: Yes, I saw that.

[00:00:37] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah. The right to disconnect. And so that's why there is that need to disconnect to enable our mind to rest. If not, we might be seeing a lot of brain cancers over time. What are your thoughts on that?

[00:00:48] Giselle Mota: I wonder even if it, people who manufacture products that are going to help people plug in more if they themselves will create options to unplug.

[00:00:58] Giselle Mota: So we talked about the phone where it gives you a push notification and it's reading your data and it's understanding how long did you log in that week? How much screen time did you have? I wonder even if something like Oculus VR goggles or any type of experiential experience within the metaverse or whether it's anything will give you an option as the user to see how long you've been in there to tell you a notification of you're exceeding a certain amount of time or even just shut down. So I wonder if the technologies will take on that illness and have that certain kind of value that they would want to help people to not get all lost in these experiences.

[00:01:40] Andrew Liew Weida: I'm with you. I'm also searching high and low for a what call? Automated brakes. Yes. Some kind of alert or notification where to notify the manager leader or even work himself that, Hey, I think you have overclock your body, you gotta go and rest. I haven't seen that so far.

[00:01:59] Andrew Liew Weida: Maybe you might talk to ADP or talk to anybody else.

[00:02:02] Giselle Mota: Or maybe the audience that , listen to anybody in the audience who has an idea. You can check out ADP's marketplace. And literally I've sent a lot of people to this and some people have been talking to adp. But it really, in many organizations, you can do that. If your organization, if you're looking at an organization that has a marketplace, you can submit your product for consideration. And you may end up doing business with a large corporation. You never know.

[00:02:27] Andrew Liew Weida: Oh, you mean ADP also does that?

[00:02:30] Giselle Mota: Yep. A does that. So if you have a product, let's say you came and you made that and you built up your business and you wanted to go ahead and come up with that so we could sell it or offer it to our our clients. Yes, you can come into our marketplace through vet you have to go through a process, but yes, it's the thing.

[00:02:46] Andrew Liew Weida: Wow. Okay, cool. To the audience out there, anybody that wants to partner with adp, please check out Giselle. She's the lady that unlock human capital. Okay, so coming back to the future of work, right? So another thing about the future of work is, one of the interesting things that, that came out of Covid is for anybody that resigned and came onto the new company and they have in the past, before Covid 19, I can go to a workplace and can just shake hands and say hi to all my new colleagues and look at their face, see how they look at, have small, top built relationship.

[00:03:19] Andrew Liew Weida: But I remember I joined one of the Fortune 500 and after three months, some of the teams will have to go back to their own home. And then I was wondering, hey I don't really know enough of these people. How do you think that the future of work technology can enable fostering trust and building up their capacity to onboard for productivity?

[00:03:40] Giselle Mota: I'll go back to some of the technology we just mentioned.

[00:03:43] Andrew Liew Weida: Yes, please.

[00:03:44] Giselle Mota: Because I believe that we could use technologies to, to recreate those in-person experiences and maybe even amplify in-person experiences. Cuz I don't think everybody will stay remote forever. I think that we can already see people are gathering again across the world. But I feel it's smart for organizations to still create those virtual experiences. So let me, let's go through some examples. So onboarding and trying to create those experiences, one would be, let's talk about data analytics. Okay. Those organizational network analytics is a tool that can help you see the clusters of where relationships exist in your organization. So you can literally check to see how are emails being sent back and forth. Where are certain silos existing? Where are there who is connected the most in the organization? Who's the go-to person that. Is cross collaborating with many different departments. So you can start to break down how people engage, how people communicate with each other, and start to use analytics to understand where you can key in.

[00:04:53] Giselle Mota: So one of the ways I think in which you can use, like even analytics to help people onboard and become new employees and have those better experience, you can start tracking to see who's a loner who's not too connected with anybody else in the organization. Why is it a department that certain people tend to not feel as connected or be as connected or and then you can start creating those opportunities on purpose to get people to come together.

[00:05:19] Giselle Mota: So I think at a strategic level, PE organizations, cuz you can use analytics to understand relational dynamics that's one way

[00:05:26] Andrew Liew Weida: I really like The idea that you just talk about using organizational analytics to figure out cluster build relationship. Talking along that line, , I had, I have a true, interesting story and I wanna get your view. One of my ex-bosses who works for some of the big consulting firm . And he asked me for ideas on figuring out collaboration. So I actually shared the same idea that you described So great mind things like yeah, I say, what was the problem that the client was trying to solve?

[00:05:53] Andrew Liew Weida: And the client was trying to figure out who's the uncollaborative asshole here? . Oh no. . And I was trying to share with him that, hey, this. Techniques or these ideas is able to do that, but he was very hesitant to use it with the client because , there is this, line of relationship with the client was like, if I don't get a strong management buys in and it so happened that asshole has so much political power, I'll be in trouble. What do you have to say about that ?

[00:06:24] Giselle Mota: I am shaking my head over here. Disbelief. You know what you should have created this like or something called the ua. You should , this is the metric that we're looking for now. It's the ua. Somebody asked you what for? I think you know what, it goes back to, it goes back to that inclusion aspect and then really understanding as well the problem you're trying to solve. So is it really that you're trying to hone in on one particular person or is the real problem a behavioral problem or an something that's leading to the unsatisfaction or the unsatisfaction of that individual or those individuals in the organization? Usually when people feel like they're not a part of an organization or they don't want to collaborate, it's less about that individual and more about how they feel in the organization. You know what I would ask. I always said, okay, once we identify who that is, I'm actually going to look further and I'm gonna see why that person, or those groups of people may be leading to the behavior that you classify as a UA or as someone who is someone who's being that person who doesn't wanna collaborate. So the Uncollaborative, a poll that you just mentioned in the ua. So I would say, is it that they haven't had a promotion in a long time? Is it that they're not doing work that stimulates them and energizes them? Is it that every time they do collaborate or bring an idea to the surface, they never get they never get highlighted or acknowledge for their achievements and contributions? So I bet you that if you go lay deeper with data, it's going to tell you more. So you, again, analytics is so powerful. You could use sentiment analysis to understand how people are feeling. You could use survey data, you could use all kinds of things. And it's risky when we start to make generalizations on people based on a behavior that we're observing, we have to go a layer deeper. And it could be that you found, what if you would've found that all the people who felt like that were women. or were disabled populations. Cause then you're getting into an inclusion issue. You're getting into an inclusion issue where, hey, it's probably not so much the individuals as much as maybe the problem is with the organization.

[00:08:26] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah. Talking about that. I think a lot of cases, well in Asia, I don't know, I know you heard of this thing called the bling syndromes. . So tell me about that. Yeah so in, in Asia any corporates there will be two camps. One camp is I will really drive change. And when I say I drive change is, I will drive it at the organizational level, meaning I will help to create either sustainability or profit or reduction in cost or reduction in risk.

[00:08:54] Andrew Liew Weida: So the other growth of camp is that, oh it's just too much work. Too many organization, too many bureaucracy, too many retail. Yes, my boss asked me to do it. So I will just create all this project and just talk up it and make it shiny and as make it work. Bing bling. And therefore the conversation along this camp people is, oh, how does this project makes me look good?

[00:09:17] Andrew Liew Weida: Does this project makes me look good in front of the ceo? Does this project makes me look good in front of the board? And what is your view on this bing bling syndromes?

[00:09:24] Giselle Mota: I think that's such a waste time. Wow. If that's a dynamic that's happening, what a waste that doesn't really bring change.

[00:09:31] Giselle Mota: It doesn't bring efficiency or air, cultural change or organizational efficiency, nothing. So I think it happens a lot. We, and even in the United States that happens. . Yeah, sometimes I wouldn't, I didn't know that the word is blinging bling over here, but I don't even know if we have a term. But I think sometimes here it's more about what goes to market. Let's get something out to market. Let's make sure that this thing sells, even if it's not baked all away, even if it's not ready, even if it has holes in it, even if it's not as inclusive as it should be. Right now, for example, I'll tell you real quick that here in the United States there's a big issue and the European union and others have been focusing on the ethics or the lack of ethics in artificial intelligence. Especially, for example, when you use AI to help recruit , using it to hire people. So the bias and the ethical issues that come from that. Now many products were deployed and already are in the market that use ai for particular different reasons. And one of 'em is for hiring. And now all of a sudden there's this greater increase of demand for accountability because many people have exposed that they were discriminated against why didn't I get this job opportunity? How is this algorithm coming to its conclusion that I am inept for the job, that I am not a happy person, that I am not a good personality? Like how is this judging me? Like that, right? Yeah. And yeah, so that's one thing. And then the data security component as well. What are you doing with my facial analysis that you captured from my video interview, but what are you doing with my voice? Or what are you doing with the data that I gave you? Because you're asking me about vaccination status and this and that and maybe even exemption. And so where is all of this data going? Who has access to it? How are you protecting it and governing it? What we see sometimes is we go forward so quickly with different things that then later we have all these issues that come up, like what I just described. So it's not the bling, I don't know what to call, what would you call that here?

[00:11:32] Andrew Liew Weida: , we also have that syndromes like the too fast. Two furious car accident problems. Yeah. There you go. . Yeah I have worked with some banks and some of the developers, they're really great people, but the boss will typically are say, okay, this project, you're gonna go to market. How long does it take? And the guys was very honest. They say, okay, to do one, we need to do a bit of three iterations , to develop this software, to make sure it's stable, to make sure you can explain the ethical side of the AI application, and then the director was like, what? It takes three months. Come on, I'm gonna give you 1.5 months. Then the juniors was like, boss, but how are we gonna finish this in 1.5 months? And then he's no. The most important is go to market. At all costs. At all costs.

[00:12:11] Giselle Mota: Go. At all costs. Go. We'll get a lawsuit later, but just go.

[00:12:15] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah.

[00:12:15] Giselle Mota: It's a strange intersection between what I mentioned earlier how do you stay agile where you can create that environment? Because you do have to, you can't sit on a product forever. You definitely have to launch.

[00:12:26] Giselle Mota: Yes. So there's that, and you have to have agility, but at the same time, you must at the same concurrent time. And that's where people are pushing more now. You have to have some things in place that account for ethics and governance and cybersecurity and people's inclusion and lack of biases . So yeah it's an interesting balance.

[00:12:45] Andrew Liew Weida: I totally agree with you that we definitely need, like I said, accountability, explainability and ethics, which definitely has to be in place. And, but also on the other hand, I wanted, Point out that the pressure to go to market in a very unrealistic manner just because the boss wanna look good or trying to finish it fast, to hit his kpi to create more shiny projects. It could backfire. So what happened in the end in some of these companies? Yes, the software developer delivered, but end up he was sick for a month. Some people have to go to even overwork die , the Japanese call it kayosaki or something. It basically means death from overwork.

[00:13:24] Giselle Mota: Oh, wow. Yeah. Goodness.

[00:13:25] Andrew Liew Weida: And it's getting more prevalent in Asia because in Asia we tend not to say no to our bosses. We tend to like, almost like a military, like whatever the boss is I'll just soak it up until I crack.

[00:13:37] Giselle Mota: Wow. Yeah. And that's pretty sad. Yeah. It's a societal pressure and I think this is why I think even the products that we produce and definitely the way that we lead our organizations need to think about a multidisciplinary approach to everything that we do. We are humans, true humans are doing the work, right? And when we design something or when we think about technology in the future of work, the work, the workplace, the worker himself or herself for themselves. We have to think about what goes into designing, because I have to design with many people in mind. I have to design for the person, like you mentioned before, maybe you're a caregiver, maybe you are a single woman, right? Yeah. In the workplace maybe I have to design with an anthropological or sociological approach thinking about cultures. Because even if you're in Singapore and you create a product or you deliver a service that's going to reach the Netherlands, that's gonna reach Egypt, the United States, you have to think about cultural context. You talked about self-driving cars. I think a moment ago. You cannot create a self-driving car in Singapore that you think is going to work with the same universal rules of cultural application in another country. Because a car when it's driving down the street, and if it thinks that it's gonna have a decision to either brake because you see an elderly person crossing the street, or do you swerve and hit the animal that's crossing the street, which one in your culture has more value? What do you do? Do you brake the car? Do you swerve? What do you do? Either way, you may cause real accident, this autonomous vehicle needs to know what to do. Maybe in Singapore. The cultural aspect of value is different anthropologically from the value that's in the United States, and so we'll have to account for these things.

[00:15:25] Andrew Liew Weida: I totally agree with you. Even like you, like we use the analogy of driving, right? Even the driving rules of engagement on the road is very different. Like for example, I used to work and live in the US and I think they, they drive on the left or the right.

[00:15:40] Giselle Mota: Now you're making me think of my car. So we're on the left. Our steering wheel is on the left hand side of the car, but we drive on the right side of the road.

[00:15:47] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah. So in Singapore it was the opposite. So I remember when I was in the US I thought, okay, I can drive. I've been driving for 15 years. And then, but then when I look at the road, oh my God, why is the steering wheel on the other side? Why is the traffic rules on the other side? , while the principle of safe driving, learn how the brakes look at the green is the same, but the paradigm is not . So I was struggling so in the same way we bring it back to the real world, like I say in, in America, people like to say hi, they like to communicate more.

[00:16:16] Andrew Liew Weida: They tend to be more explicit. Whereas in Asia we tend to say very short sentences. Okay, yes, boss, but that has so many meaning, so many interpretation that it can be opened up a can of worm when they try to work with the Americans. That's where, like I said, the same technology, but if it's designed differently in, in a different country of different culture it might not operate well with the application,

[00:16:43] Giselle Mota: yeah. So like an engagement tool to try to understand what motivates your employees how do they feel at work? What's gonna be different based on what you just described as well? We have different things that motivate us culturally. We have different values that we have try ascribe to roles like here in the United States. I think we're a little more relaxed on this hierarchy situation where we often don't see someone in a high position as someone who's way different than the person who has the lowest position in the company. Whereas I think in Asia to what you're describing there is this more respected role of authority than what we see here in the United States. And that comes from a lot of things. That's not just anthropology, that is sociology, that's the government's over time our economics. Everything that we've seen here, when somebody runs for an office. You're seeing them on late night TV shows doing comedy sketches with people. So that it's just changed a lot, the perception of authority.

[00:17:39] Andrew Liew Weida: Yeah. I really agree with you on that. I think especially you mentioned about the culture about hierarchy. Yes. In the us people are more there's more egalitarian or equality, whereas in Asia when you give an idea of merit, the boss will just say, because I'm the boss you mean this is not gonna work without giving an explanation.