Zabeen Hirji, Executive Advisor and Retirement Disruptor, on How Gen AI and Purpose-Driven Organizations are Shaping the Future of Work

Transcript

Aydin Mirzaee 03:12

Zabeen, welcome to the show.

Zabeen Hirji 03:14

Thank you. I’m excited to be here, Aydin.

Aydin Mirzaee 03:16

Yeah, very nice to chat with you.Lots for us to talk about.

You’ve had a very interesting background, you talk with a ton of different companies. And the thing that I thought might be a really good place for us to start is to start to talk about generative AI and how it’s really transforming the workplace. This is something that I don’t know about you, but everybody in my circle is talking about AI. It seems to be the most talked about thing or topic these days. Wanted to just maybe do a check in with you. And how are you thinking about generative AI? How are the companies that you’re advising thinking about it, and what are the topics that are being discussed in your circles?

Zabeen Hirji 03:57

Yeah, no question. It is the topic du jour. People everywhere are talking about it, curious about it, and I would say overall it’s moving from this raising awareness stage to starting to do something with it. There is definitely that move into adoption, but still proceeding with caution. So let me get a little bit more granular here. The way that I like to frame this is for me, the aspiration is that AI will make work better for humans and humans better at work. And so underlying this philosophy is this idea that AI and gen AI is really there to augment humans. There are certain things that will be automated tasks we don’t, by and large don’t like to do that are tedious.

But the real power, I think comes when it’s able to augment, do things that you couldn’t do otherwise or do them a lot faster. So let me talk about what organizations are doing.

The one theme that I’m seeing is that IT leaders and HR leaders are really working together on this because it is, as you started out by saying, it’s about transforming work. And this is a great time to really bring those two people together and really think about how they want to use it to transform their organization. The next thing is really around change management. While people are talking about it, people know they need to use it, they know that it can be helpful. There’s still some trepidation, there’s fear around. If I start to use it, is it going to take my job away? Let’s be honest, that’s what a lot of people are thinking about.

And the progressive organizations are really having transparent conversations with people and sitting down together and saying, look, we know that this is going to have a material impact on jobs or on tasks that you’re performing, and let’s work on this together. And what that means is organizations are creating opportunities for people to experiment, to test and learn. Of course, the larger organizations are really protecting their data by creating their own closed systems. But the idea of experimentation, whether it’s AI Companion or Copilot, or just having access to ChatGPT or other LLMs, I’m really seeing an uptick in organizations doing that. Because the reality is people will do it themselves. If organizations don’t bring it in, they’re going to use their own devices. And that’s really the difference with Genai, as you well know, is it’s accessible to everyone. And what I’m also seeing is organizations doing things, focusing more internally.

Just this morning I was speaking with a head of HR and she was talking about their decision to do it from an efficiency point of view. Do it inside so they’re not touching client data and not moving forward. Now, I would say that my view is you really should be going with both at the same time so that your customers start to see the value. But there are different approaches, different approaches out there and back to the transparency and engaging employees. So there’s awareness, helping them understand what it does. But there’s an education piece and one mistake that I see organizations making is just focusing on adoption. How quickly can we use it? But they need to build proficiency as well. So the smart organizations are really moving both and saying, you know what, we might go a bit slower on adoption, but we want to provide people with the skills we want to help them with, whether it’s prompting, whether it’s really understanding how to verify sources.

So they go slow to go fast later, and really building up proficiency.

Aydin Mirzaee 08:07

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. I like what you said around if organizations don’t use it, then their employees are going to use AI anyway. They’ll just use it on personal devices. And I’m sure most people won’t do this, but it’s entirely possible that some client data or some corporate information may end up in a system that’s maybe not sanctioned by the organization. So bringing it in house and making it known is important.

The other thing I was going to ask is what are your thoughts around when people end up using AI to produce something? Say that you’re creating a report and you happen to use AI to help you craft it. What are the cultural norms around this? Do People show off and say, oh by the way, like 80% of that was AI. Or is it something people are not admitting when they are using it? Or what sort of transpiring in the cultural elements around use?

Zabeen Hirji 09:00

What a great question because it is so much about leadership and culture. And I’m seeing again I’m seeing an increase in people saying with pride that I used AI. I was just reading one of the leading business magazines, their editor’s message said a year ago when I was using Gen AI, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Now I’m proud to say that this is how I start and then add to it. And the same thing with me. I was just doing a presentation the other day and I said to people, I have this data around trust, coincidentally around trust in institutions and in government and in business. And I wanted to look at four years worth of data. And so I went into Genai and now I know and this is something I would like to come back to actually because it’s something I’m starting to, I don’t know about worry, but certainly think about.

So I wanted the data from the Edelman truss barometer which people are familiar with. So I went in there and I said Edelman trust barometer, last five years of data, show me the trend, give me a chart. And within seconds I had a graph because I asked for a chart. And so I realized, oh, I actually want a table. So I put in table and I go to table. But the thing I worry about and there was some data I needed to check on and again it was related to prompts. But because I know that material, I knew how to that I needed to ask more. So what happens when that baseline foundation of knowledge is gone? I mean I know it because I did things the old fashioned way for a long time.

And will it work the same for people who have no knowledge? And is the, whether it’s hallucinations or the data not being correct, will that be an issue? And so to me that base knowledge and knowledge transfer is still very important and people need to continue. I would say the advice I give to people is you need to continue to read, you need to continue to look at what the trends are, what’s out there. You can’t just rely on Gen AI.

Aydin Mirzaee 11:08

Yeah, I think there is a, this is a famous saying and I forget who to attribute it to, but there’s this saying that says computers are not that smart. They only have the answers. And so a lot of it is what are the questions that you’re asking?

And I was listening to this other interview with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, and the way that he talked about it is just imagining a future organization where there’s tens of thousands of agents alongside his tens of thousands of employees. And that effectively what he’s doing when he’s communicating with his staff is he’s prompting them, he’s giving them the contacts, but not going through too much detail and like letting them surprise him. And there’s an element of that as well. So I wanted to ask you, is there any thought that’s going into. These two worlds are starting to converge a little bit.

Which is you either manage a team of employees or you manage a team to be agents in the future. And they’re probably actually pretty. Pretty similar. So it feels like everybody’s going to have to get better at management because you’ll be managing staff in one way or another.

Zabeen Hirji 12:13

Yeah, definitely. And I think the sweet spot is in how the two come together. And we get the power of the human thinking and the human capability and the empathy, etc. Judgment along with that of AI. And yeah, managing in the context of AI and a hybrid work environment, which is the case for so many organizations. Those two factors need to be considered together because that means it’s less and less time that humans that are working have with other humans. And so what does it mean to managers in terms of creating that human connection, that social connection that we know is important for so many things. It’s important for innovation, it’s important, important for idea generation, it’s important for mental health.

There’s just so many aspects there and we need to be thoughtful. I think that’s the advice that I provide is we don’t have the answers. It’s not a one size fits all. But generally my view and experience is that it’s when you get to polarization or one end or the other of the issue that it’s not going to be sustainable. So how do you manage it in getting that optimal balance? And yeah, so that’s yet one more thing for managers who are already managing so much to add to their responsibilities.

Aydin Mirzaee 13:39

Yeah, there’s a lot to be figured out and certainly one step at a time. We’ll figure it out. I wanted to sort of wrap up this topic by asking you, is there anything that you’ve seen, like from all the use cases that you’ve come across, is there something that really stands out that surprised you or you were impressed by or anything like that was really transformative within any of the companies that you work with?

Zabeen Hirji 14:01

Yeah, great question. What’s different with this technology vis a vis a lot of the other automation we’ve had before is it impacts knowledge workers. That’s a term that’s sort of generally used for people like us much more than anything else has and more than many jobs that are doing repetitive tasks. And that’s new. That’s not something that we’ve seen before. And I was speaking with a friend of mine who’s a litigation lawyer and she said that gone are the days when I’d be in court and then so all of this new information would be put out there and overnight we’d have to have a team of usually junior lawyers and just working through the night, trying to get more data, trying to get precedents to help them in court the next day. And she said now it’s all crunched in a matter of minutes. So of course it has a positive impact on people’s lives and lifestyle as long as organizations and leaders actually make that happen.

So this is very much about how leaders are going to lead through it. But it also means that knowledge workers, people generally with higher education levels, will need to be reskilled at doing other work. And so for these lawyers, for example, they’ve all wanted to spend more time giving advice, talking with clients, bringing real value add to them. So this is their opportunity. But they’re not all necessarily skilled in that. And so the human skills that we often talk about, or people call them soft skills, I don’t like the term soft skills because there’s nothing soft about them. The soft stuff’s actually the hard stuff. But they are going to need to be upskilled.

Education systems will have to change in communication, collaboration, conflict management, so that they can move into these other areas of more interesting, but in some ways different skills required.

Aydin Mirzaee 16:07

Yeah, one of the things that is very difficult is if a lot of the work that junior lawyers or junior employees in general would have been doing, if those are going to be replaced, what does that mean for organizations? Willingness and desire to hire junior employees. And if we don’t hire them, then how are we going to have trained employees later too?

Zabeen Hirji 16:30

Absolutely. And again, such a great point where you really have to think about not just in the short term and short term results, but long term sustainability. And I mentioned earlier, even the overlay of hybrid work, the other way that junior employees learned, that’s how I learned when I first started, is just by being there through osmosis. You overhear a conversation or you happen to be sitting outside a meeting room and your, your manager is walking by, going into a meeting and says, oh Sabine, come on in with me. You’ll find this interesting. Or you learn something and then all of a sudden you build a relationship with them and they’re more interested in mentoring you and coaching you. That’s gone. And they’re fewer with AI, there are fewer of them.

So this absolutely has longer term implications. And what organizations do and what educational institutions do will also be really important.

Aydin Mirzaee 17:34

Yeah, it almost feels like we may require different things from our education system. It’s almost the things that maybe you would have learned on the job. Maybe you now need to learn in a different place so that when you come to the job you’re even more senior than before. And so yeah, a whole lot needs to, to be reinvented.

Zabeen Hirji 17:52

Yeah. And the need for the different sectors to work collaboratively, the stakes just got higher with a number of different big issues out there. Whether it’s AI or climate change is the same thing, but this collaborative model and just skills for people to really be able to manage and in some ways elevate to something bigger than their own organization or their own sector. So maybe a undergrad degree is three years and you go back 10 years later or five years later for the fourth year, or maybe it’s two plus one plus one and transformation definitely required in all sectors. And AI will also be used in all sectors.

(AD BREAK)

Aydin Mirzaee 19:41

Yeah, so it’s very interesting to have this conversation. I think super timely. I did want to also talk about something that you’ve been very passionate about, spent a lot of time on and this is this idea of a purpose driven organization. So maybe we can just start by defining what purpose driven organization means to you, how would you define it?

Zabeen Hirji 20:03

So it’s really purpose led, values based and performance oriented. So there quite often people see purpose as something soft and a nice to have but and it has to be real. And purpose is generally wanting to make a difference beyond profits. So sometimes organizations call it profits with purpose, but it really brings in that notion and that concept of the balance between short term and long term financial and human sustainability. And what’s also happened though, it started with organizations thinking about this more broadly, all stakeholders. But what’s happened is employees have probably latched onto it more than anyone else. They want meaning in their work. They don’t want to wait till they’re quote, retired My stage following a full time, full on career, one job in career as opposed to myself now where I do many different things but have maybe some more time for purpose.

Particularly Gen Z and Millennials are saying we want that in our jobs today. We want to work for an organization that’s doing good. And keep in mind doing good in a thoughtful, strategic way is good for the organization as well. It is. It’s a smart thing to do and the right thing to do. And so what I’m seeing a lot and about a month ago I was speaking with a group of people, sort of early 20s to 40ish. And these are young people who have gone through a scholarship program called the Lore, and they’re called Lauren Scholarship. And they’re socially minded individuals to start with.

They wanted me to talk about my purposeful third act and what it meant as an individual, not as an organization. And what I heard loud and clear was, well, we want to have purposeful second acts. We don’t want to wait. So I think for organizations, they’ve really also seen how important it is to employees, how important it is to customers. But in a nutshell, it’s really about focusing on all stakeholders, not solely on profits.

Aydin Mirzaee 22:24

Okay, so if you were to, you were chief human resources officer at the Royal bank for upwards of 10 years, right?

And so how would you, you know, if you were to go back and during your time there, how would you and say you had a junior employee that just joined the bank, how would you describe the purpose of the organization to them? Or is the purpose more customized towards whatever the person’s job is?

Zabeen Hirji 22:50

Great question. Both. So I’ll just in very quickly sort of walk you through the process because that also very much involved employees. So this goes back 10 years ago, new CEO and really thinking about how to galvanize the organization, how to get them excited. And at a time when the company performance was strong. Sometimes that can be a way to galvanize people when there’s a burning platform. But this was really around how to create excitement and get people in 40 different countries, 80,000 people to really see what some of the glue of RBC is. And so we didn’t have an articulated purpose.

Our values had been articulated about 10 years prior, which I was also involved in with the prior CEO. We wanted a statement, we wanted to put something out there. And the way that was done was through a lot of employee engagement. We had a online 50 hour online employee jam where we put out the concepts of our purpose and got their feedback. And what that did was it created even more excitement because now they had ownership and they become the advocates and the people who are communicating it. Conveying to new employees coming in as well, not just the organization, because that’s who employees trust more is their peers. So anyway, the purpose was articulated as helping clients thrive and communities prosper. So it’s quite broad, but the words where a lot of time was spent, one was around helping.

We talked about is it empowering? And took a walk back from that because the view there is we don’t actually the bank didn’t have the power to give away. The customers really had the power in their hands. But it’s the communities one that really resonated. There was discussion amongst the management team around is communities really part of the purpose? What about shareholder? And what became so clear, Aydin, was that employees said that we are proud to work for an organization that makes a difference in our communities. When I go down to the local hockey arena and I see that the bank has supported something, I feel really proud. And it was actually something that not only created a sense of pride, but it empowered employees to do more in the community and to ask the bank to get involved in many different things. So it is. And client of course comes is in there.

Some organizations have narrower purposes and you know, in many ways I think we all anchor to a North Star, something that we can all sort of see ourselves in. But your other question was how does it differ in different roles, different businesses? And that’s where there was a very purpose and values go hand in hand. And there was a process where teams would sit down and say, okay, we’ve clarified our purpose, these are our values, which there was a process to what was called modernize them and really step back and say, so what does this mean to us? What are we going to do in our team? That’s Different. What do we need to do more of, less off. And how do we bring it to life? If I’m a teller in a branch, how do I bring. Bring it to life there? If I’m working in it, how do I bring it to life there? And the further away you’re from customers, the harder it can be. So it’s. It has to be seen as live and part of the strategy, not something you do and just paste on a wall, which happens sometimes.

Aydin Mirzaee 26:37

Yeah, I love that. I mean, the things that really stood out and what you said is that it was a collaborative process. You did involve the people. Sometimes I think about large organizations. I don’t know how many employees work at rbc, but I would imagine it’s in the tens of thousands.

80,000, yeah. So that’s a lot of people.

You know, that’s like a small, small country almost.

And so to come up with the purpose behind an entire organization, it was very interesting to hear how much time you spent on a single word. Is it empowered or is it helping? Yeah, so that’s really interesting. But it also seems like there’s that second part, which is, okay, now how does your role relate? And the larger the company is, it does become sometimes harder to tie those things together. But I think if you as an employee can make that mental connection and maybe a little bit of it is on you to say, well, how does. And for you to really think about how your role does tie back to the purpose of the company. But yeah, it definitely does make the work a lot more meaningful.

Zabeen Hirji 27:40

Definitely. And what I would say before we close off here, that also happens. And it’s. I was speaking with a young person not that long ago from another organization, and he was saying to me, I can’t find the purpose aligned with between me and what the organization is doing. It’s not misaligned. If it’s misaligned, you may not wish to be there. But I don’t see a strong alignment and I don’t know what else I can do. So if you go back to the purpose of the bank, around helping communities prosper, he wasn’t from the bank, but whatever their purpose was, I said, pick it up and look for something you can do outside of work or maybe even inside of work where you can create an initiative or a project or some kind of activity that’s going to be meaningful to you and talk to your manager about it.

Because most managers, they are happy to listen to ideas. And if you come with, this is what I’d like to do. Most of the time they say, sure, let’s give it a go. I think the purpose, when it is articulated, should empower others to say, okay, this is what I want to do and it’s outside of work and is the organization. Here’s how I think you can support me. Might be giving them a little bit of time, might be giving them access to some resources.

Aydin Mirzaee 28:55

Yeah. So I really like this because, I mean, this is a very important thing for organizations to do and sometimes it makes sense to revisit this at some sort of cadence because the world changes and your company can change. But my question to you is, and maybe this is an obvious one, how did you know that it worked? I don’t think anyone’s going to disagree with you that there should be purposeful, driven organizations, but how did you know that once you went through all this process that it did have that positive effect?

Zabeen Hirji 29:24

You are asking really good questions. So, like a lot of things, there aren’t peer metrics around that. There are a lot of things where there’s correlation, but you can’t always prove the causality, if you will. But I think for the organization, you do look at performance, you look at customer feedback to try to glean whether things are changing in terms of them seeing the way we’re helping them. Are we bringing the best of RBC to them? Because that really was a big part of it. You look at employee engagement surveys and you make some changes to some of the questions to get a sense. But the way that I really look at it, 10 years later, it’s still at the core. And something that employees, if you go onto social media, they’re constantly talking about their organizational purpose and how we did this and how it’s of our customers or for communities.

And the corporate citizenship or philanthropy strategy is really connected to that. And so, you know, it is. There’s a suite of metrics that you look at.

Aydin Mirzaee 30:33

Yeah. And that makes sense. And one other thought that just came up is we started the conversation where you were saying that these days people do want their purposes to be aligned. And as I think about it in the interviews that I’ve done to hire folks over in the more recent years, this is actually something that does come up much more often. And people will specifically say things like, I want to make sure that my values are aligned or that really want to be bought in on the mission or the purpose. And is that something that you found is happening more frequently? And if so, do you know why? Why is that this is now more of a topic than it was before.

Zabeen Hirji 31:14

Yeah, well, workers first of all have more agency just in general. And they are, I think that people, the boomers for example, or Gen X, while I would argue that they cared about it, they didn’t vote with their feet. They said, okay, fine, I’m going to live with it. As long as it doesn’t cross a line, I’m good. Whereas generations now they’re just more willing to ask for what they want. What I would also say is that the pandemic really caused a lot of people of all generations to reflect and really think about what is it that I want in life, what do I want my work to give me? I’m not just going to get what I need from my life, my work needs to provide some of that as well. And I think there’s just momentum where it’s normalized to ask about it now.

Aydin Mirzaee 32:09

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. People are more mobile, more agency. And the thing that I also wanted to make sure that I mentioned is you do a lot of work, but today you are the founder of purposeful third act. So I’d love for you to maybe tell folks what that’s all about. Why is it third act and not second act and maybe just tell us a little bit more about that initiative.

Zabeen Hirji 32:33

Yeah, thank you. I love to talk about it. So let’s talk about the act. So the acts in kind of our model right now is the first act is you go to school, so learn, go to school. So 0 to 25 sort of range. The second act is working in a full time, full on career. So say that’s 25 to 60. Ish.

55, 60. And the third act is what comes after that, say 55, 62. People used to think 70, but it’s with longevity, people living longer, people living healthier.

Aydin Mirzaee 33:10

I mean these days you run for office at 80, so.

Zabeen Hirji 33:13:

Right, exactly, exactly. And in fact, you know, it’s so funny when I retired from the bank and I say retired in quotations and from the bank, but I was thinking, oh, I’ll do this purposeful thing for about five years. And then I saw Nancy Pelosi out there and I’m thinking, no, I don’t think so. I, she could do that. I can certainly continue to do what I’m doing. So back to this idea of purposeful third act. And so there’s longevity as clearly one of the drivers. The other thing that I would observe is there are many big issues, social issues, there’s income inequality, there’s Social justice issues, and they’re global geopolitical issues, climate change.

There’s so many things that are having such a huge impact on the world, but on the next generations. And so for me, the part that excites me, people have been talking about third act or whatever they call it, next chapter. There’s different language for it. I underscore the purpose and really bringing the concept that we just talked about from organizations to an individual level and looking at individuals who have come from leadership roles or senior professionals to really commit to having greater impact, making social or environmental impact and go through a mini process, just as I described with the bank, which is what I did to. What is my purpose? What’s the impact I want to have in this third act? And my view is that collectively my mission is to have thousands of people to actually do this and to just. People like to have sort of a general indication. So for me, and say spend about 25% of their time, I spend about 50. That really is driving that change.

And what people in that stage bring is wisdom, the confluence of experience, skills and emotional intelligence to really help to solve difficult issues to the relationships that you have as well. So what I find, for example, every day, pretty much I’m making a connection somewhere, hey, somebody talks to me about something they’re trying to do. Usually in the social impact space, it’s, oh, well, you know, I think you should meet such and such because some magic might happen there. Or it could be somebody from a community that’s underrepresented, that’s equity deserving, that hasn’t had the opportunities and have the skills. And I’ll say, oh, I think I can connect you to such and such. And it’s so easy to do when you’re in this stage and you’ve had this experience. And so that’s really what I’m trying to create. It’s a portfolio.

You can choose whatever issue you want. Mine is unlocking people potential and building inclusive prosperity. No surprise. And the second sort of part that I just, you know, I’d want to close off with, it doesn’t take away from doing other things. I have commercial work that I do and work with businesses for a couple of reasons. The main reason is it keeps me current. I can’t rely on saying, well, five years ago, seven years ago, at some point, 10 years ago, this is what I did at RBC. I need to be current on technology, on business.

And so for me, the advisory roles really fits into that. And I’m looking to make impact, to learn and to create joy in my life. So it’s a full holistic view. Health and wellness, social and relationships, spirituality, financial. And then the purpose piece.

Aydin Mirzaee 37:03

Yeah, that’s a very good explanation. And I didn’t realize that act number one was something. You’re right. Like basically the first 25 years pretty much spoken for. And you’re just in the mode of learning. And so, yeah, it’s really good to see you create this organization and want to create this change in the world.

Zabeen Hirji 37:21

Yeah. And I think ultimately probably chapter two and three or act two and three are going to be intermingled because people will work, take time off, do something purpose related, go back to work because of longevity.

Aydin Mirzaee 37:35

Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s true. So, Sabine, this has been an awesome conversation. We’ve talked about so many different things.

The question we always like to end on is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft. Are there any final tips, tricks or words of wisdom that you’d leave them with?

Zabeen Hirji 37:55

Yeah, I don’t like questions with one answer, but I would say that sometimes people say, what would you attribute your professional success to? And for me, it’s learning and adaptability. Learning is something right from the start. But even today, my goal is to learn something new every day. So even doing this podcast, I’m learning based on the conversation, based on the questions that you’re asking me. Hopefully when other people are listening to it, things may come up there. But I’m always focused on learn something new every day. Curiosity, ask questions. I talk to the person sitting next to me on an airplane.

You never know what you’re going to learn. And that making that a way of life, pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is even more important today when knowledge, the half life of knowledge, is getting shorter and shorter. So somebody just the other day was said that when you’re learning, you’re growing and when you’re growing, you’re living. And I thought that was a really nice way to put it.

Aydin Mirzaee 39:05

That’s great advice and a great place to end it. Sabine, thanks so much for doing this.

Zabeen Hirji 39:08

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.