Ep. 148 - AI and People: Balancing Tech and Talent | DBB Event Recap

Uncertainty is the only constant when technology moves faster than traditional business cycles. For many leaders, the fear of "being replaced" isn't just a headline—it’s a silent barrier to innovation that stalls progress before it even begins. We sit down with experts from Google, Tyson Foods, JB Hunt, and Slalom to discuss why the integration of AI is less about reducing headcount and more about unlocking human potential that has been buried under manual tasks for decades.

We get into the tactical reality of moving from abstract concepts to operational workflows. This conversation covers the "people-led, tech-powered" philosophy at Walmart, the rise of multi-agent orchestration, and the specific ways companies are using AI-assisted coding to rebuild legacy processes. Our guests share the "secret sauce" of their current strategies: treating AI not as a replacement for the employee, but as a personal avatar that handles the "L1" tasks, freeing up the human to focus on high-stakes decision-making and creative problem-solving.

The unglamorous truth is that no one has a perfect roadmap, and waiting for one is the most dangerous move a leader can make. You have to be willing to "fail fast" and accept that some steps will be experimental. True leadership in this era requires embracing the unknown and focusing on the "human machine collaboration" rather than viewing technology as a competitor. You will walk away with a clear understanding of how to map current job descriptions to future AI-enabled roles and why personal productivity is the biggest ROI in the room right now.

If you care about talent management, organizational transformation, and the future of Northwest Arkansas's business landscape, you’ll get a lot from this episode. Please Subscribe and Share to help us continue bringing these "boots-on-the-ground" insights to leaders in over 100 countries.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Doing Business in Bittenville. My name is Andy Wilson, and I'm the executive director and the host of Doing Business in Bittenville. I got to share with you what a great morning we have had this morning because we just left a conference on AI and people. And gathered around this table are experts on this on this. And we just had the best conversation. And what are we going to do? I'm just going to ask them to quickly introduce themselves and what they do. And then we're going to talk about a summary of this event. And I think you'll really like it because it is such a great conversation. And I think it would inspire you to even get deeper into this whole thing around AI and people and how we're going to integrate this huge change that we're in. And I mentioned in my opening comments that I think today we're on the cutting edge of something great. I think not only is it going to be one of the biggest changes we've we've had in centuries, but I think it's going to create this unbelievable workforce around skill development, about how we can improve our efficiency, how we can improve so many things about our workflow. And we're going to get into that just a bit today, but we're going to start with Marco. And Marco, introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Yeah, Andy, nice to be back here. My name is Marco Klong Klong. I'm a leader in Swam's transformation practice. And a lot of the work I do is I work with organizations to think about how AI impacts their business processes, their organizational structures, and what that means for them. So really looking forward to this conversation. Great. Erica.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Hi, Erica McCourt. I'm with Google and excited to be back here again. Andy, we're becoming fast friends. But this morning was lovely. I work every day to help Walmart really envision what's possible with AI.

SPEAKER_05 2:09

That is fantastic. Every day because it's a good idea. I've never seen her because she's not got this big smile on her face.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Baden Spurlock, I lead talent management at Tyson Foods. I have everything from you know acquisition all the way through development offboarding. So all aspects of the talent lifecycle. Great, great.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Thanks, Andy. Not to contradict you, but I am not an expert. I am an absolute student of AI. Um I'm David Kefaufer. I'm the uh EVP of people at JB Hub. I've been at JB Hut for my entire career, about 31 years.

SPEAKER_05 2:51

That's awesome. I David, I love you so much already. I can tell. And you know, David and I, we there's a real story here. You know, he's he's an operator, and now he's running uh he's CHRO at uh at JB Hut. I was an operator and I became CHR at Walmart. How did that happen? But David said, Andrew, we have to talk. That's it. Oh, yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I have a lot of questions. And Andrew. Yep, Andrew Fano with uh Svalem Lake uh Marco Global uh strategy and technology uh company with local soul. I'm the local soul in uh northwest Arkansas, and uh I get the privilege of working with all the organizations in the area. So it at times I'd had to focus solely on Walmart, but also get to work with uh Tyson's JV Hunt's roots, doing business in Bentonville podcast uh videos, the ad Furies, you know, in this area too. Awesome.

The Current State Of Adoption

SPEAKER_05 3:47

Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna summarize the slide event we just had, and we came from, and there'll be much information uh that you can read about this live event. Uh when you're and then you're able to be able to review or listen to this podcast. Also, you know, we looked at four categories, or maybe stages even. Uh, and uh the first stage we looked at was the current state, and we're gonna talk about that. Then we're gonna lead the into the leading practices, some of the things that are working today. We'll we'll talk about that. And then we're gonna talk about the cutting edge, what's out there, and we're gonna get to hear uh from from Eric from America and Marco and some of the space they talk about. And then what we're gonna do, we're gonna we're going to lead into a fall event, and we'll do this again. And there'll be many podcasts leading up to that fall event. And what we're gonna do is talk about okay, what's next in the fall? We're gonna we're gonna be growing and learning all the way through. In the fall, we're gonna bring our bring our live audience back again, our experts back again, and we'll talk about it. So let's begin with the current state. So, Marco, I begin with you. Um summarize some of the things that we talked about.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Yeah, I think um I can't remember, I think Vader, and you, you brought it up first about um how uh skilling is uh is still a hot topic of how do you get your workforce to be more AI enabled. And I think what's really related to that is like the choices that organizations need to make of where do we invest AI in your organization, whether that's a business process, whether that's a specific department, what are the AI systems that you want to deploy there? Because that will influence that kind of skill. And so I think that's like the current state of um of affairs too. I also think there's a question about ROI still and how to define that.

SPEAKER_05 5:41

A lot of organizations are thinking about that too. Good. Baden, you know you did bring those things up. Talk about some of those current states at Tussins. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I I think we've got we described it as a spectrum. I've got everything from the resistance to to start with AI, that and that anxiety that we all sense about AI, all the way up to those folks that want to build you know massive solutions over the course of weekend. And they're really, they're really stretching the limits on AI. Um so I I think that's that's the reality. Everybody's everybody's seeing that full spectrum. And as an HR function, how do we how do we bridge the gap or let's say close the gap a little bit on the ends of the spectrum?

SPEAKER_05 6:24

Great, great. Dave. I thought you had some interesting comments about Jerry Hunt and where you are on that.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

I uh same same as Tyson. I I think we're you know, where are you on the spectrum? We're everywhere on the spectrum. Yeah. Um, I think collectively, um I don't know that I wouldn't confidently say we're ahead of the pack, but I I can fairly confidently say we're not behind. Um that's I that's just my opinion. Um I I really focus on on, like you said, the the the early resistance, the the people we have a a pretty wide swath, I think, of uh frontline employees that that have either active or passive resistance. And I think we have a uh large portion of our population that that thinks of AI as an abstract. And kind of what my my goal right now is to take that abstract and and turn it at least somewhat operational. Just get we're not gonna turn anybody into experts overnight. Um, but those that haven't started, I want to get them, I want to get them started, even if it's in the most basic experience.

SPEAKER_05 7:27

And Eric, you know, on uh since you work with Google and you're into space sequel, how how did you feel and hear and see the conversation this morning? Sort of where are we? Where's the car and state? What are you thinking?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah, it's validating to see everyone's on the same stroble bus. I think that we all are taking in a lot of information and trying to figure out real time, make quick decisions that's the right thing for our business, that's the right thing for our employees, um, that you're making the right alignment long term, that you're not locking yourself into a decision that you'll regret in the future. So all of those things are real stress points on top of a new capability that nobody really has their arms around. And so um, my world is Walmart, but it's very validating to hear that these problems are broad across everyone and hearing how everyone's looking at different ways to take those um mega users and highlight what they're doing to show the executives that the interest and the passion is there. I think is really helpful to see the different ways, right? Because if you can start showcasing what you can do with AI, then it takes the defense down and it helps people get excited about it and they want their part.

SPEAKER_05 8:43

Right.

unknown 8:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And so just seeing that every company is kind of in their own journey in that, it's not unique to any one customer.

SPEAKER_05 8:49

And I think that should that should be some type, you know, of understanding for our viewers, is that because I'm with I think they're gonna share many of how you've shared your thoughts and where we are in a reality standpoint. And Andrew, as you think about this and look out at your look abroad, your company, Slalom, and you you what do you what are you saying from your customers?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Well, what's refreshing is to see here is I think true leadership. So there's management where you have things that you've got to do to asset process. And I think leadership is is where you're in those uncharted waters and you're kind of finding your way. It was great to to hear that there's an objective look at it that if someone comes in saying that they they've got it figured out, that they're probably a little bit full of it. If you look at the absolute leaders in AI, the heads of those companies will even speak to an uncertain future. Make some of them maybe a little more brighter, some may have a a little contrast to that. Yeah. But what I saw and what we're what we're seeing is sometimes you don't have that um that embracing of the unknown, and which I think is really true leadership. So I commend you guys on embracing.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Beware of anybody that says they have healthy.

SPEAKER_05 10:01

You know, yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things I think Bayton, you brought up that I thought was really good. You talked about, you know, what we're reading in the headlines and all that stuff we see about the thousands and thousands of employees have been laid off. And it was last week there were two examples of that, of course, and made the headlines and many more since then or before then. But you you mentioned uh and talked about some of this. Fear. I would call it fear.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Okay. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting. I think the narrative that's playing out with all these companies saying they're reducing headcount through AI efficiency, I think it's a bit of a red herring. Um, yeah, we've we've seen some overstaffing in certain industries and and and things that just needed to be reconciled, but it sounds really good to say we're using technology to do something. Sure, what I think is is much more important and what I think is taking more of a foothold with AI is if we don't do the affair thing, if we're not using this as a headcount or workforce reduction, if we're using this as an unlock, that to me is where the real power of AI is. So can I can I can we use it to solve a problem we have not been able to solve previously using the same people we've already got in the chair? I think that's the more interesting dialogue that's happening inside of inside of companies.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

And and I don't want to get off track, but I I do want to make the point that I think every c company, and I think maybe a lot of us underestimate uh resistance uh to AI because of all these headlines of thousands of people getting laid off, which I completely agree is I think uh um misleading. Um but I think there there are people that you know you know that think, hey, I if I participate in this, I'm gonna I'm gonna train the company on how to replace me. Um and I think that and and a JB Hunt, I can I can tell you 100% that's not the case. We're a growth company. Um, and we are transparent about we do want to be more productive. And if we grow, if we grow 20%, we may not hire 20% more people. We're transparent about that. We want to get productive. But um, you know, we have a long history of uh uh no mass layoff, so we have that going for us. Um but the key thing is for people that it's such a misguided approach in my mind, because uh it this this train's rolling, and what I'm really concerned about, and I want to make sure I feel I feel personal responsibility for people that think that way, and I understand exactly how they feel. I don't I don't blame them for that at all. Uh I just think it's misguided because if they don't participate, uh they're gonna wake up in a year or two and they're gonna wish that they had.

Leading Practices That Work Today

SPEAKER_05 12:42

Great comment. So, Erica, one of the things you get to do, you mentioned work with Baltimore and a CEO, John Ferner, recently posted uh a letter and he talked about AI does not work without people. And they talked about that. That, you know, we have to have our people, but we're gonna retrain our people. And and and one of the things I know, Eric, by moving to the next step is called leading practices. Let's just move to that now. To the work that you're gonna be doing with Walmart over the next course of a time, okay, is working with the US and Canadian population inside of Walmart to do the skill training and all of that. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, for sure. So um Walmart's tagline, I think it's been out there for a couple of years, is um people led, tech powered. And so that really frames up their approach that they don't want a robot greeting their customers in store. They want an associate, but a robot can sure source the grocery pickup order and nobody's gonna be offended by that. So um there's definitely a place for technology. But when it comes to their customers, there is unequivocally no question that it is about their people being that frontline um interface and interaction and they want to preserve that. In order to run an operation like Walmart at their scale, the cost of labor is insane. And so the more efficient they can get with any technology is just gonna help them. One thing I just love working with Walmart is the fact that they um, if you look at people's badges, I mean, they have 30, 40, 50, 60 year badges, and they are so committed to this company. And Walmart's doing it right because they're saying, yeah, is going to be so important, we need to equip every single employee associate that we have with access to that training, access to devices to be able to get that training, get that experience. And so they are all in, all committed and um helping the associates serve that up. So as associates think about maybe I started in the store, where do I want to progress my career? They're now given access to training to set their future path, um, which is pretty amazing. It's something I just think Walmart's really an industry standard in that.

SPEAKER_05 15:01

Right. Let's continue that conversation. I I really like it. Uh others talk about where you see this leading practices. Where what do you what do you other things? I know Raiden, you had some thoughts about that earlier and David. So talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, I I see I see us transitioning work differently than what we have in the past.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

So Okay, you've got to underline that or you just uh that's powerful. Say that say that again because this is that's really critical to this whole future. Say it to your mind.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, so we're we're transitioning work practices of the past. We're we're moving things in in ways that we haven't contemplated being able to do before. And I think that's one of the bigger unlocks. Um, so the example that we we talked about today was, you know, I'm seeing I'm seeing coded solutions where we're taking something that was very, very manual before and we're automating it in a different way. We're rethinking what the output was. So the example is, you know, you go from the old, you know, spec sheet that's got all your numbers on it as a leader, an operations leader, to now you've got a podcast that you wake up to in the morning that tells you what insights you need to be tracking down inside of your facility. Um, you know, those are the types of things that you know we couldn't have imagined a few years ago or even six months ago, but it can be coded in the weekend now. Yeah. And that's fascinating to me how how quickly we're able to get to new solutions.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

I remember I spent almost a full day getting raped with that PL review, you know, because you know, uh everyone is in the room wanting wanting to know from my PL what I was going to do different to improve my PL. And you know, you had to call you district managers. You had to spend a night a day. Now what you're saying that I I can wake up the next morning and get that podcast and that AI has now looked at all that for me. Now I can go to work on solutions.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Right. So I make that somewhat how efficient you can be as a leader, yeah, walking in and saying, okay, here are the things I need to focus on and do today.

SPEAKER_05 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Versus spending the time trying to read the PL, you know, draw out your plan. Yeah. You know, I think it changes everything. And what we've noticed is it's it's not just changing the work of that plant leader, it's changing the work upstream of the people that were doing all that metric gathering. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:21

Um, yeah, I I think like uh, you know, what what you're kind of talking about, Vaden, is like at Swan, we call that the human machine collaboration, intelligent collaboration of this more like hybrid world where you have human and AI working together. Um, a really great example that I mentioned in in the talk earlier is about like the the coder, the developer with an AI system, with AI assisted coding, right? Um, and so it it it's the new replace of the uh two and seed kind of thing. But where you're talking about is really you do that everywhere. And I think the the challenge that a lot of organizations are are trying to think of is how do you build that ecosystem of that human machine collaboration, that intelligent collaboration, where you're where really you're you're allowing people to experiment because otherwise, how do you know this is the right bet? And I think like a lot of organizations are just trying to figure out where do I place my bets um to know that this is the right choice to invest AI and that that's where um that uh that human machine collaboration can really happen.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Yeah, that's all I I would just say like we at JB Hunt, we have some really cool stuff that's some heavy-duty stuff that's being worked on, like deeply embedded AI workflows. Um what excites me equally as much, and I know that's hugely important, but excites me as much as the uh a lot of the smaller things. We have a program called Elevation, where any employee from all 33,000 employees can submit an idea through a platform and it gets it gets considered and we go through an ROI process on it. And in the past, a lot of those ideas, great ideas, but they involve IT uh investment. And we've had to put those aside because they're not the ROI is not there. Right. Um, we're in the process now of actually going back through all those ideas because the IT investment now is in many cases only a fraction of what it was before. Uh so the idea of being able to implement not not three or four really big things, which is also I love, yeah, uh, but hundreds of small things. And that's what really that really excites me.

SPEAKER_05 19:33

You know, that that's a great point. You know, when you said that, I have to, you know, my almost 30 years at Walmart. I have to think about what Sam Walton taught us. You know, he would tell us, get go get in the stores and listen to the people and listen to the customers. You know, and we would do that, but we were limited. I mean, you know, you're limited by doing that. Now, what you're saying that you you're gonna open up this funnel and you're gonna be able to hear so many great ideas from your customers and your and and your employees.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Yeah, and we we've been doing that for a for a long time, and it's been such a great program. I need to. And it's it's gonna be even better because we have we have backlogged thousands and thousands of ideas that we can now go back and look at that may now have an ROI that didn't. That makes me smile, David.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

I just want you to know, because there's nothing better than listen to the people in your company and your customers and then improve on that. That's awesome. Andrew, as you think about, you know, look at your landscape. What are you what are you seeing or hearing on that?

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Well, and I'd like to hear uh from the group so far is you know, this uh the way the work's changing. You know, AI can help an individual with a task. But you know, one of the things that that Marco's been kind of challenging uh some of our clients on is this organal organizational network map, but having the agents included in that mapping to see what very functional, high-functioning individuals are interacting with, not just from an individual basis, but from an agent basis. And then you when you think about some of the future, it's it's not having the one, the agent that sits beside you to help, but there's also kind of the agent avatar. And so so many jobs that are out there today are really ones where there's a backlog and an individual could use a little help. And there is curated all of the answers to the tickets that they've worked on or all of the things that they've curated in in their emails or at SharePoint when you you take a good look. Maybe you made a good point about hope, SharePoint documents in the session. But where you you have that, and so that your first line or your L1 questions that that eat up a lot of your time during the day, you have your own kind of personal avatar that has your personal space and information to take care of that, really increasing the bandwidth. So not replacing the individual, but helping you get more done, helping you reduce that backlog.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

It'd be personal update, personal productivity. I think is I think I think is huge. I I'm very excited about that opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 21:49

I think that's probably one of the hottest topics that I'm hearing a lot of this year so far is like um a Gentech operating model. What does that mean in an organization? Is there like thinking through how do we uh how do we think about it? AI agents. And I think for like the HR leader, what that means is like, what does that mean from a talent management perspective? What does that mean from a skilling perspective? What does that mean from like a workforce strategic workforce planning perspective with that with that kind of operating?

Multi Agent Systems And Guardrails

SPEAKER_05 22:15

I tell you, I I think I'm so excited about what's the future workforce is going to look like and how we're going to train, develop that and around skill and all of that. It's exciting to me. And you, you know, get into session planning and all of this. You know, what great opportunities ahead of our eight HR teams and all of that in the future. As we change and figure out the future work, it's going to be exciting. Okay, quickly, we got to go to the next one. And um, I really want uh Marco and Erica to lead out on this because uh Slalom and Google, you're working with organizations and you're looking at this workflow, skill-based development, things like that. So lead out on that. Tell us what you're thinking about that, what you're doing, and then we'll get our input.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

Yeah, and I think like we were talking about like where the limitations were in the discussion. Um, I, you know, what Erica and I kind of talked about in the discussion earlier was how we are seeing this growing pattern of like agents of agents and multi-agent orchestration, right? And it's the autonomy aspect, as Erica put it, that is really challenging. A lot of organizations are not yet confident to give that level of autonomy for um uh AI agents to really go throughout their enterprise and start making um uh uh taking action, right? And I think part of that has to do with a lot of the governance, a lot of controls, a lot of guardrails to build that confidence. Um, so as those systems start proving out, um, I think we're gonna start seeing a lot more um uh multi-agent orchestra engine. But a lot of organizations are are really heading that way right now. There's just the confidence is not there. Uh, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

No, I think you nailed it. So that's that's really what we're the you gotta build the blocks, right? And so I think you've gotta figure out what your problem is that you're trying to solve, figure out the right orchestration for the agents to solve that. And then as you have that confidence and your data and everything is is feeding in correctly, and over time, I think you'll prove that you can start giving more power and control to the agent to be doing decisioning for you. Um, so it's just a great space to be trialing and testing and learning and seeing what it does, and then of course, correcting if it's not within the guidelines or parameters of your business.

SPEAKER_04 24:31

You you know what's probably uh another pattern that I'm seeing too is like does the organization have the right components to even create that kind of uh multi-agent orchestration? And that not only do we have the right architecture, infrastructure, and technology, but do we also have the right talent? Do we have the right people that can develop um like higher code AI systems that really require that kind of skill set, that kind of data science background? Um so there's a lot of questions that that I've working with organizations to think that through of like, what are the components do you need to actually have that ecosystem? Because um it's to the point that you both uh have been raising, um, of like you don't want to fall behind, but what are the how do I, you know, what are the decisions I need to make? Or how do I even get there? I think a lot of organizations are in that space right now.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Good. Great. Comment stops.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

No, other than I think the the idea of it seems like every step, every decision you want to make, you don't have a you don't have a clear cut answer. There's not a lot of clear-cut answers in the space right now. And what what well we try to take the approach of is that the the most dangerous thing is not to take any step at all. Like we have to sometimes you have to, yeah, uh, you have to take take a step out and fail fast. Uh if it if a failure is not a bad thing, failure just it's that much more that you've learned. Yeah. Uh so we've tried to take that approach. We're uh aggressive, but not overly aggressive. It's like a fine line.

SPEAKER_05 26:02

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great word. Great word.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yeah, and I would say the the overarching piece, and you talked about culture in the session a little bit today. The overarching piece is we've got to get really solid on where we need the human to still make good decisions and where we need the human to play a critical role. Okay. Um, which we are having some very serious conversations as an organization right now about where do I need the human to be 100% in control of making the choice one way or the other and not giving up the wrong work to the agent. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 26:38

Okay. Andrew, thoughts, last-minute thoughts, or on this wonderful day we've had this morning, we've had uh any closing thoughts you have?

SPEAKER_02 26:49

I shouldn't be the one closing us out. No, I I I was surprised Marco didn't mention, like for for some of the things that we're we're just talking about there, when you're looking at the the clarity and what on where you want to go, AI can has also been been useful in some of the things that Marco has done around looking at what the job works look like today and what the job descriptions look like today, and looking at the tasks just to help you do that mapping so that so that you get ahead of it. So for the the training, the upskilling, reskilling, you know which which categories certain roles fall into and how you're gonna do that. Because that getting ahead of that navigation, knowing where to train them on, right, how to enable them, like what Google's doing, that's that's critical. And so I I I put that in there just because I was thinking down the last session, but that's not a closer for you. It's a closer.

Closing Thanks And How To Engage

SPEAKER_05 27:38

Uh any other thoughts for we before I close. Any other thoughts? Um Marco, Erica, uh, you know, I can't thank you guys enough for coming in and bringing this content to a group of HR folks, you know, and and and helping us out a lot today, you know, because you you have and Vaden and David from your perspective in HR, thank you for coming and sitting at the table with us and and being and and and having this dialogue. It was we couldn't have done this dialogue without you. We couldn't have done this dialogue without you. And Andrew, thank you. Uh, I appreciate you. Uh you you've been my partner through this whole whole uh process. It means a lot to me. To our viewers, thank you for so much. We appreciate you. Um because of you, uh, we're now over 2,000 views a day, and we're in over 100 countries today. And that's because of you. Continue to uh support us uh by sharing uh the content. Don't forget you can reach out to me on LinkedIn at any time and send me a message about what you like or any thoughts for the future or what you don't like. You just let me know about that. And on behalf of Doing Business in Bidonville, it's just great to be with you again. Again, thank you to my guest. What a great morning. Thank you to you for listening. I hope to see you soon. Goodbye.