Joyce Shin— Why AI Will Make Leadership More Human, Not Less | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 29

Joyce Shin, founder of The Human Edge and ex-head of design operations at Dropbox, helped scale teams and systems there. Trained in neuroscience and raised across Texas, Ohio, Seoul, and Tokyo, she studied resilience and effectiveness, first after a traumatic brain injury and later professionally in tech. She left Dropbox to ask: in AI everywhere, what makes us human? She created the PEARLS framework—six skills in thinking, creativity, ethics, and leadership—areas AI can't replicate. 

This is her first public sharing of PEARLS. Many see AI as just a tool, not a way to rethink business. For startup founders building better teams, this chapter offers valuable insights. 

What we covered 

1. The PEARLS framework, fully unpacked — Presence, Edge, Authority, Roots, Legacy, and Signal as the six dimensions of human and organizational differentiation in the AI era. 
2. Why leading indicators beat lagging ones — The signals that tell you a team is cognitively decaying before engagement scores and turnover catch up. 
3. What acquisitions actually break inside a scaling company — Lessons from Dropbox on cultural integration, tooling, and the human work most M&A playbooks skip. 
4. The shift from linear careers to horizontal experience — Why disparate cross-functional exposure now beats two-years-and-promote, and what that means for how you design growth paths. 
5. The CEO's job in an AI-native organization — Why senior leaders should stop trying to dictate AI workflows and start building the container their teams operate inside. 

Three insights worth keeping 

• AI commoditizes the average, so the moat moves to what AI can't do. Partnerships, community building, and the communication of vision and story all become more valuable, not less, as automation eats the middle of the skill curve. 
• Resilient organizations are based on their identity, not just their processes. Companies that understand who they are and make steady decisions build trust with customers, employees, and partners—trust that rivals using the same tools can't easily copy. 
• Authenticity outperforms polish. The quirks, imperfections, and real-life mistakes of leadership build more trust than highly produced corporate messaging — and that gap will widen as AI-generated content floods every channel. 

Links 

• The Human Edge: https://humanedge.studio/ 
• Joyce Shin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyceshin 
• Future Ventures: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/future-ventures-corp 

About Joyce Shin 

Joyce Shin is the founder of The Human Edge, an advisory practice that helps founders, CEOs, and organizations build the capacities AI cannot replicate. Before founding The Human Edge, she was head of design operations at Dropbox, where she scaled teams and systems through IPO growth, acquisitions, and the shift to remote work. She holds a degree in neuroscience and brings a uniquely cross-disciplinary lens to leadership, organizational design, and the future of human work. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Today's guest is Joyce Sheen, founder of the Human Edge and former head of design operations at Dropbox, where she helps scale teams and organizational systems inside one of the world's leading technology companies. Now, through the Human Edge, Joyce is tackling a much bigger question. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, what remains uniquely human? Her work focuses on helping founders, CEOs, and organizations build the cognitive, creative, ethical, and leadership capacities that AI can't replicate. And redesigning organizations for a future where human judgment becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. Welcome to the stage, Joyce.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Super excited for today.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I am too. I mean, we've had a couple of chats. Um I'm super interested in the work that you're doing. I think it's very much um necessary in today's world. And so why don't we just start with kind of like who is Joe Sheen? How did you come about uh um to doing what you're doing? I mean, uh give give us give us the founder story and why are you so passionate about the human edge? Yeah, um, I mean what drove you to leave, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Oh, go for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

No, no, what I was gonna say is like how like obviously you must have a really strong conviction based on our conversation, you left a really well-paying job to come and build this.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Yeah, I think um, you know, I think this has stemmed from early on my interests. I've always been interested in humans. What makes us unique? I was born here in the US, I was born in Texas, but I lived um in Ohio, I lived in Seoul, I lived in Tokyo, and having that type of um diverse upbringing, I was really fortunate to be surrounded by different cultures, different belief systems, different languages. I think that really shaped my curiosity about what makes us human, what do we have more in common than what divides us? And so that really spurred my interest in neuroscience. And that's really what I studied undergrad. I was interested in learning about everything at different scales. So, how algorithms work, how neural synapses occur, to how we actually become aware of something, right? Not just perceive all of those things. I had my own personal experience with it. And so I had a um traumatic brain injury in my freshman year of college. And so I had my own personal journey of how to actually rebuild from the inside out. And so that shaped a lot of my personal um fascination with how we actually build resilient teams and organizations, and that really led me to business and technology and reshaping how we work and how organizations and team function.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So from um, I mean, you you said uh born in Texas, uh stints in Ohio, now you're based in New York, you've lived in Tokyo, you've you I think you said so. Like, what's um uh what is the the common element in terms of how you build resiliencies, how do you build grid, how do you build performance? Like culture is a culture, but at the at the end of the day, I'm thinking, or this is my personal belief, not not being a neuroscientist. We all have the same needs and desires. Um, maybe our ways of understanding what self-actualization differs perhaps from a culture perspective, but if if you had to kind of distill it down to like specific traits or specific characteristics or how to go about it, how would you advise companies and founders to go about building this?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah, so I think that like, you know, if we leverage some of the cognitive strategies, as you mentioned, like Mesla's hierarchy of needs, um, we can leverage just simple um foundational principles of how our brains are organized. So um the trium brain model. So, for example, we have the reptilian brain, the neomammalian brain, and the pale, the pale, the paleomammalian brain and then the neo-mammalian brain, right? And so, as you mentioned, like we have to have the foundations set in place before we're able to achieve the higher order of cognitive functions. And so making sure that we're designing teams where we have the baseline security, um, some of those elements where we're able to leverage different ways that we interact with our emotional processing and things like that, that enables us to be more successful.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So, one of the criticisms that AI is drawing, and rightfully so, um and this is just my personal perspective that I don't think that we'll that we'll be able to get to a future where AI is sentient. I mean, at the end of the day, AI is compute. Um how would you um how would you enable these cognitive abilities? Like, um I mean, I see my personal perspective AI is an enabler, it's not a substitute. Maybe it can substitute computational tasks, but it's not a substitute for humans or human-related tasks. Um, so what is your perspective on it? Like, how do we continue to develop cognitive abilities? Because uh, I mean, I one of my favorite tools at the moment is something that uh Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, had had founded. It's uh it's it's Pi, it's a personal intelligence LLM that just it just for me, uh it has my I guess my memory and feelings and kind of how I feel about it and have daily conversation, remind me about this and that, like building daily habits, but kind of like what we approach in terms of building building out cognitive abilities individually, cognitive abilities to the team, cognitive abilities at the organizational level.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, so I think it's you know, how do we leverage AI to actually build some of those muscles and build the scaffolding? So I think like if we approach the way that like learning occurs, it doesn't occur in a linear fashion, it occurs in nonlinear ways. So I think it's really thinking through how we want different outcomes and how we want different abilities, um, what we want to build, and then actually design the ways that we build those in tandem with AI, right? So, for example, critical thinking, writing, communication, these are foundational human skills that we can amplify with leveraging AI, right? So, for example, writing, we can leverage it with giving us ideation, with proofreading, with editing. Instead of popping it into an LLM and having it give us an entire answer, and that'll help us, you know, lose our ability to write. How do we design it in a way that still introduces friction in the right places in the process, enables us to still practice and build these skills that are critical for individuals to build as well as teams and organizations, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

And and and and that makes absolute sense. It it echoes a lot of the studies uh out there. Um it it it there's a there's a bit of a bifurcation, and I'm and I'm curious to uh to to get your perspective. There's a bit of a bifurcation when it comes to AI. If you use AI as a as a replacement, the studies are showing is that AI is making us dumber. If you use AI in the context in which you described it, it's actually making us smarter because it's it's uh it's it's stretching our mental capacities uh in terms of what's possible. And so if think of it as a creative partner. So this is kind of guess one part of the question. The other one is like you you talked about learning being nonlinear. Um, how do you approach lean learning and how would you advise companies to approach the transition from kind of like the current roles and kind of how those roles evolve into the future in terms of how do you equip the the workforce or the the people on the team to transition from where they are today to where they need to be five years, 10 years out?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I think one of the things I think like um it does change fundamentally like growth trajectories, right? We've typically viewed growth as a linear um way of we've got to stay in a rule for two years, do X, Y, and Z things to move up. I think now it's more um getting disparate experiences. So, how do we work with cross-functional partners? How do we get experience into different teams, different mindsets, different products and work, enable us to actually develop a coherent, a unique perspective in our own work, right? That enables us to think a little more differently, that enables us to think of different solutions, um, understand different perspectives in a way that allows us to be more successful and build better solutions and products, right? So I think like if we design it in a way that, you know, how can we get experience from different teams versus just our own team? How do we um and there are there are more organizations doing the more horizontal exploration as a part of growth, right? But I think um we're gonna be seeing some more of those trends, especially now in the age of AI, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I mean, what you're describing to me seems like fundamental, and companies that embrace it and adopt it will position themselves well for success in the future. Um do you have um I mean a model that you can kind of describe in terms of how companies should go about building this?

SPEAKER_01 10:05

I mean, so what do you mean by what um what do you mean by like what model?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Um in terms of what she described, in terms of how companies should think about building out the skill set or building out the the cognitive models in terms of in terms of um how do they transition the the workforce into into the future?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, so I actually have um a framework called the Pearls Framework, and I've developed it based off of my experiences. And I think it's really based off around like how do you build your specific human edge in this new age of AI? Right. So as like companies go from or as we go from AI being able to do a lot of what we do on a day-to-day basis, doing all of our automation, doing all of like the you know, bare tasks. I'm thinking through like, whoa, do how do we make ourselves differentiate in this new age? And that I mapped out the Pearl framework and it's uh What does Pearl stand for? It stands for presence, authority, roots, legacy, and signal. And I think these are the things that you know shape our identities, our mindsets, and our perspectives as individuals. And if we scale them to organizations, they build the organizational and team edge as well. And so um building some of those frameworks, I think, and enable, you know, to identify what makes us unique, and then um enable that to infuse it into the way that we grow and the way that we learn.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

And you know, go for it. Sorry. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Uh so I was just gonna say something about the name. Like it's called the Pearls because I developed it just like a pearl is formed in nature. Um like I actually looked up the history of how a pearl is formed. Um, a sand goes through different transformations, whether it's pressure and time, and it's actually a mysterious process, we don't know how it's created, and then turns it into a pearl. And I think that I think all of us go through different mistakes, different failures, different experiences. And it's only through um, you know, timeless wisdom, reflection, and time that we get to these insights or these pearls of wisdom. And so that's the name of the that's the name of the framework.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Love it. Can you just repeat for me uh the the acronym? So it's presence. What was the engage? Edge?

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Uh okay, so edge, what is the A?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Is authority.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Authority, okay. R?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Roots.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

L is legacy.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Okay. And S will signal. Um is this framework publicized anywhere? Published?

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Not yet. I think this is the first time that I've shared.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

I've kept it very close to my heart, but uh I'm happy to share.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I think it's foundational in terms of what companies will need to embark upon. I mean, obviously they um they you have spent a significant amount of time thinking about it in order to develop the framework. I think this is a beautiful framework based on what you're describing. Um in in prior organizations, like one of the most common things we have done in terms of evaluating team performances is starting with capability assessment to kind of understand what do we have from the team and then what's uh what skills do we need to build and how do we go about it. But I really like the the uh the the tenacity, the the the multi-tenant uh aspect uh of the framework in terms of how you go about building this. Um so yeah, I I would love it uh without giving away the the trade secret and the secret sauce, if you can if if you're able to share with uh with our viewers and listeners, kind of like uh the gist, the summary of the of the framework, because I think it's it's it's a it's an important framework.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, so I think typically like we do focus on a lot of like the technical and the operational skills, right? But we what we don't do is we don't really measure like the the intangible skills, things like character, attitude, like motivation, mindset, identity. And those are the things that I'm trying to like set a framework around. And so for P for presence, it's not just like your title, your skills, your experience, it's how you make people feel, how you show up, how you carry yourself. Some of those like non-verbals, right? Edge is edge isn't just your opinions, your perspectives, it's your unique combination across different experiences, your perspectives that only you have, right? Authority is not just your like credentials of like where you went to school or like your years of experience. It's it's that earned credibility. So, you know, what makes you like what did you go through to actually get those insights? What did you work on, or things like that? And so it's fully some of those things. And happy to I can go deeper, but you know, you might just continue down the line.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Um, kind of like roots, legacy, and signals.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Just give us a little bit more of a I think roots is um it's I think it's more than just your background, it's more than where you just came from. It's like the deep history, it's the nonlinear path that you took. It's both your successes and the failures and how they really shape you. They're like the core of what you want your foundations and your identity to be based off of. Legacy, I think, is thinking a little more broader. It's the longer-term mindset and longer-term perspective of how they shape your short-term decisions. So, what type of legacy do you want to leave behind? What type of broader impact do you want to have onto your communities and to your broader world? And so that's the legacy. And I think that's something that we don't really talk about in a day-to-day basis. The last one is signal, which is really what makes you spiky. So it's not having a well-rounded skill set per se. It's the themes that come up repeatedly. Is um, you know, they can come up in different variations, in different formats. Um, they could be things that different people that you know across different times of your life the same the same things that they say about you. And so that's the that's the signal piece. Like the is the integration about of it, I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Makes sense. Um I love this framework. I I also love it. Um, just based on kind of like what what you what you shared. Um as I'm thinking about this, uh it's it's an important framework through or important lines through which organizations think about building um their capabilities. Um, what capabilities do you think will become the most important, or maybe not the most important, but more important as AI becomes more capable and more prevalent within organizations?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

I think it's um developing the character, the resilience, um, the ability to adapt quickly. I think those are the things that um will be able to um make us more successful, is because in the in the world that's increasingly changing and the world that's increasingly um moving faster, it's the ability to like spot what's what's happening in the future and then being able to adapt to that, right? It's being able to bounce back from different situations. Um, and it's being able to like do the right things in in different situations as well. And so I think those are some of the key things that will make you more successful. I think it's also uh stems from your identity. So what you identify as um that really stems from a lot of your that will impact a lot of your actions and behaviors.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

I completely agree. There's um uh are you familiar with the high agency framework?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Well, go for it.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Uh I mean high agency just kind of describes the concept of of a of a person or somebody that uh that shows a lot of grit and resilience. That the the the the shows initiative that uh um sees challenges as opportunities, uh doesn't necessarily rely to be told what to do. Um it just uh somebody that sees everything, sees the world as can do instead of cannot do. Um and so it there's there's a number of different people that they're that write about this. Um, but to me that what describes the people of the future are people at the high agency. Now, one thing that um what I'm trying to understand and square off is like not everyone comes across as high agency, even if they are, because some some people naturally kind of to you to your point, um, if if if I if I'm interpreting correctly, roots, you may have cult cultural connotation, cultural nuances that uh um show up differently. It's it's not that you're not high agency, just you are bringing is is different. And so um, are there things from a cultural perspective that that people should be mindful of in terms of positioning themselves for success in the future?

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I think it's more than I think it's instead of just like one thing, I think it's a cultural fluency. So I think it's being able to understand different cultures, I think being able to move between different cultures as well enables us to, you know, have better conversations, um, dialogue across the global landscape that we now live and work in. So I think it's like the cultural cultural fluency is going to be increasingly more critical and important in this new age.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

I I completely agree. I mean, um I'm assuming that when you were at Drawbox, you were working with global global teams, and so from that perspective, you need to be uh culturally fluent to understand who you're working with.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yep, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

What does um then in this case, what is a psychologically resilient organization, the future would actually look like in practice?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

I think it's um staying true to their use and who they are, right? So like we've seen you know organizations not take different stances across different situations, but I really respect organizations that um, you know, know who they are and make decisions that are consistent with that on a regular basis and over time. I think that's what really builds trust with like their customers, with different stakeholders, is some of those things. I think it's hard to do sometimes, um, but I think that builds that psychological resilience is that mindset of knowing who they are, what they stand for, and sticking through that through different situations and decisions that they make.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Just just playing on this, um, one of the recent examples that comes to mind is Darry Amade, like the founder of Entropic, when uh um when he uh I I guess he lost the contract with uh with the government uh because he said we're not gonna use AI for um for war. I can't remember exact exact phrasing, but um what is your perspective in situations like that? And how should leaders um tackle situations like that where uh they have organizational culture that they have to be mindful, they have customer culture, they have brand. Um it's it's a it's a difficult situation to navigate. So, how do you drive this psychological resilience? How do you drive the behavior within a company? Um, and to your point, how does everyone within the organization know how they should behave?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

I think that's why it's so important to focus on the leaders and the founders, right? Because it really stems from them. It's the example that they set. And so if they see the leader doing um stake through the values, the the employees are gonna be more like me to stage through their values. And so I think I think that really sets the stage and that really sets the environment and the conditions for which all the employees operate in, right? And so that's why it's so critical to focus on like the leaders' edges first, because that sets the stage for how the team and the organizations will operate, behave, and make decisions. And so um the way that would be that's the way that I would view the role of leaders.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Are there uh I'm I'm curious, are there um signals uh or early warning signs that a company may be outwardly successful, they're scaling operationally but decaying cognitively or culturally?

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I think you know you can see like the typical metrics of like engagement, attrition, turnover, uh, interest, things like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

But I think you can those are lacking indicators that kind of in the past, like okay, we've had turnover, like our turnover is six percent. Kind of like it if you're later, is there anything that you kind of like a leading indicator that you're looking at is like, okay, I need to monitor this, or like you've like training hours, for example, is a leading indicator, how much how much time I'm gonna invest versus like why I had it employee turnover. Like, how would you have how would you help founders and and leaders think about um what are the things to watch out for?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, I mean, I think um one of the things to watch out for is just like um I mean that's a that's a that's an interesting question, I think. Um, what are the leading indicators? I think it's like people's willingness to go above and beyond. Um, I think that would be an indicator that they actually do buy into like the bigger vision or the bigger purpose. I think that's one thing. I think the second thing is just their ability to um, you know, work well within that group. That means that like that that cultural fluency um is there, um that that team bonding and that team element has been developed. And so that plays a role in the success of um and the success of an organization and team. So I think those are two of the leading indicators.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I'm not trying to be provocative, but I'm curious. Are you aware and do you believe that companies will start to use AI in a way that that drives semantic analysis? Like, for example, like it's reading communication and whether it's through uh chat apps or email, and it's looking for sentiment in terms of terms of like um are people happy, are people not happy, are people engaged, are they not? Are they raising the hand? Are they not?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I think it's not already happening. I think um you can tell you can tell us some of those things by like asking any LLM to analyze tone, voice, or um things like that. So I think that it is already happening, and I think that you could um um even change and modify the type of emails you want to write, whether it's like professional, casual, informal, anything like that, right? So I think the sentiment piece definitely is happening. Um I think it's only gonna get better.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Makes sense. Um now I see you as uh uh as a blue flame thinker, and and and obviously the the the studying that that you have done in terms of uh neuroscience, how would you parlay this in terms of organizational design? How would you advise companies to redesign the organization for the AI era?

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah, so I think that neuroscience really provides insights into how we can create environments to build high-performing and resilient teams based off of how we think, how we're fundamentally wired. Um, because organizations really haven't been designed to do so. This is an incredible opportunity to, you know, tweak and refine some of those strategies, right? I think a lot of organizations already realize that people are the most important asset, or people are a very important asset. And so it's just a matter of taking the next logical step to actually build to embed that into the operations of a team and organization.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Um makes sense. Um and I couldn't agree more. Um for most companies these days, unless we're talking uh industrial companies, the the asset really goes up and down the elevator every night and every morning. Um so as you're thinking about this, what uh which which job functions do you think would become dramatically more valuable because of AI rather than being replaced by AI?

SPEAKER_01 28:19

I think things like partnerships, I think community building, communication, I think those would be the things that um will become incredibly more valuable in terms of how do we actually tell our decisions, communicate our decisions, communicate our product, our vision, our story to different partners, different stakeholders. I think those, and I think partnerships will become another increasingly critical one in terms of how do we build global partnerships? How do we build partnerships for the long run versus just the short term? How do we build partnerships that are, you know, how do we build trust in our partnerships? And so I think those would be some of the things that will become increasingly important in this new age.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

I mean, those are all innately human and it makes sense, like those can all be substituted. Um, how should scale of founders think about this as a competitive idea of advantage or as a mouth in terms of partnerships, communities? Like what would be advice, what would be your advice? How would you orchestrate it?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

I think this is gonna be one of the ways that they can definitely lean in on, and this is gonna be one of the um differentiating values is you know, because as AI can do so much, um that really commoditizes the average, and so the way to stand out is through these relationships, through these connections, and through the communities that they build.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Um I I agree. I I love what he just said that AI commoditizes the average. Um, so how do you like do you have a characteristic or do you have um um advice in terms of how do you elevate from the average in terms of like what it's building community, what it's building customer success organizations, what it's like positioning yourself for the future, building modes kind of like uh how do you move off from the average, which AI is amazing at in it because it's statistical modeling, but like getting to a point where um like just like uh like one of the most publicized cases in terms of Jeff Bezos being uh customer obsessed, like if we're building communities, if we're focusing on customers, if we are focusing on partnership, how do you elevate that to that level where everything that that companies do is is kind of like the 10-star experience?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah, I think it starts with being like not trying to be like perfect and having everything branded or um branded a certain way. I think it's actually being authentic and not authentic by oversharing. I think it's like the unique things that make a company unique, like the works, the imperfections of leadership. I think those are the things that if you share them in a way that is genuinely human because it's real life, I think that's that's gonna be the thing that resonates with people. I think that's what builds trust through through partnerships, through your clients, through your employees. I think those are the things that we're gonna want to index on are the actual human qualities because humans aren't perfect. We make mistakes. Like I think if like and and we can see like we all know that we all make mistakes, and so like not being afraid to um, I guess, cover all of those things in such a polished way. I think that's one way to build some of that trust and build some of that competitive note.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Makes sense. Um I'm just I'm I'm fascinated from um I'm fascinated with people that have been part of like very fast growing companies. I would love if you can share a little bit about your Dropbox experience and what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 32:26

I loved it there. So I joined three months after the IPO, so I missed their the IPO phase. That's one of my dreams is I want an IPO with a company. But I really got the best of that experience where I got like that pre, I got that startup, I got that startup culture, and then got all of their growing pains, right? Growing and scaling pains. So I joined originally in the recruiting operations team and so was aligned with the design team there. And so I really got to see the ins and outs of how a company hires, retains, maintains their people. I worked on so many different projects. I was one of those people who like I like to meet different people, and so I started chatting with people on different teams, different departments, and just got to learn about what they were doing, what they were working on, and um just naturally worked on different projects with them, collaborated in different ways and built those relationships early on. And I think that really provided a lot of value just for myself in terms of knowing what I was good at, where I wanted to grow, and where I just naturally gravitated towards. And so it was, it was, I loved it there. Um, I went through different office moves with them. Um but ultimately I um transitioned over to their design operations team. And I loved it even more there, where um I got to see just a whole different landscape of the product engineering design dynamic and how you know from a user experience, how things were built and things like that. Brilliant loved the time there. It was incredible to see to grow with a company and I to see them through, you know, COVID, through going from in-person to virtual, through all those transitions to different acquisitions as well. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Um, I mean uh acquisitions are probably one of the hardest things from uh from a cultural perspective in terms of driving integration. Um, how did how how did uh um Dropbox approach it? Were there any kind of aha moments, anything that's that was just unique to uh to what was being done there?

SPEAKER_01 34:44

So I don't know if it was unique, and I I don't think I had the purview from a company perspective. I had the purview from like the organizational perspective. So I was in charge of like when we did acquire, how were we actually going to integrate the creative teams with our creative teams from a business perspective and then from a cultural perspective, operational perspective, right? They were using different tools, they needed different access, emails, all of that type of stuff. Like it has to be managed on the back end, and so that's um what I was doing with some of the integration with, and also just some of the different cultural um making sure everyone like you know like was happy, getting along, fitting in, and like didn't feel left out. Some of those things I think it's important, I think, for um to make to ensure like a successful transition and successful transition, right? Because that's almost our everyday experience. And so those are some of the things that I thought were most important, and those are the things that I indexed onto my role.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Um curious, what were the things that were breaking as Dropbox was scaling? What were the processes that were just not holding up? Scale is hard. Um, you know, growth is phenomenal, uh, and it does fantastic, but it you know, you have to be able to shore up the foundation.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

I think one of the things was just the manual element of everything. So when I was there, like things were being still being tracked like manually in like documents versus Excel, or things were being tracked in Excel versus automated dashboards. And so, like, I think that was the part that I, you know, actually did help um, you know, um transition and scale some of those automations. Um I think those are some of the things that were very manual that were to be expected because they were a startup and it is part of that growing and scaling, one of those growing pains, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

And so when you joined Drawbox, how how many employees were at Drawbox? And when you left, how many employees were there?

SPEAKER_01 36:56

So I guess it wasn't a start, it wasn't a start, it wasn't established.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Well, it's a I feel yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yeah. So I don't, I don't I can't quite remember the exact numbers. Um so I don't want to misquote them.

unknown 37:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

I think it was like around like 3,000 or so. I'm not 100% sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Um the human edge. Um what would be the primary focus um at the human at the human edge? Um and what was the moment you realized that you that this company needs to exist and need to focus on this? Um, why start this company now kind of like give us your conviction behind the human edge?

SPEAKER_01 37:50

I think um it's because there's a because AI is moving so fast, I think that there is a gap in the market in terms of there is going to be an identity shift that needs to that's going to happen in terms of if AI can do what I can do, what makes me different? What value do I provide? Um and so helping to build some of those, um build some of those identities, build some of those skills, I think is increasingly important, especially for some of the younger people today, where they are thinking through what jobs do they have? What is their future going to be? And so I think you know be the time that they're most excited about their lives, most excited about their futures. And so, how do we keep that momentum going for some of these younger people and the next the next uh leaders and professionals, entrepreneurs? And so that's really driving some of the some of the work and some of the need here.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Interesting. Um if uh if if if if we have a prospective customers listening, kind of like uh what are the signals uh that they should be aware of in in terms of like identifying that I have a problem, I need to solve this problem, and then in order to be able to perhaps sell it to a decision maker that holds the the purse strings, kind of like what's the ROI from uh that that can that can be derived from engaging the human edge?

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Yeah, so I think you know, we've seen um a lot of the research that says a lot of the current adoption isn't as accessible as it could be. And I think you know, it's because it's not a customized, individualized approach. And so if we start from, you know, what makes us what makes you competitive in this age, what makes your um company and your organization competitive, what is your edge? And then and then if we lap, um and then if we map on to that, the AI adoption strategy, that's gonna make it more successful in terms of how you leverage AI, how you don't want to leverage AI, when you use it, when you don't want to use it, what data has what it doesn't have access to. Those are based off of um all of the leaders' parameters and values. And so I think that's one um way to get the ROI in terms of implementing AI to drive cost efficiencies as well as productivity gains. I think that's one way. Um I think you know, if leaders are thinking through how do they remain competitive in this new age, what makes them differentiated? I think those are all the, and if they're thinking through like, hey, like I want to make sure that I'm competitive in the next year, the next five years, and building organizations that are high functioning, resilient, high performing. I think those are all key indicators.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Do you have advice in terms of how leaders should think about org design? Um, vis-a-vis what you just said in terms of AI is here to stay kind of like how we should combine human and AI.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Yeah, so I think in terms of org org design, I think of um it as understanding the actual people and the individual. So if I were to map on this separate language, it'd be like understanding your in your people's individual edges. And so like what they want, where they come from, like what their skill sets actually are, how they want to grow, what they're like, what they're spiky in, and then like designing the team based around some of those based, um designing the team based around some of those skill sets, then integrating into that the integration that they have with how they budget, uh where the humans still are in those different loops. I think that's one way to um create teams that to be resilient as well as um have Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Um any any parting thoughts, any words of wisdom that you can pass on to uh our founders and listeners?

SPEAKER_01 42:04

I mean, I think this is one of the most incredible opportunities and the most exciting times that we're gonna be in. Um we literally have the ability to create the future that we want to live in. And I think that that to me is just exciting where as founders, as leaders, you can literally create the conditions for your team. And so, I mean, I think you know, it's just gonna be more exciting to index on the things that you're specifically capable of. I think we're gonna see more of that instead of, and that's something like it's gonna be interesting to see like what innovations, um, what different types of products and things people come up with.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Curiosity question Do you think that we're gonna see more people um naturally follow their innate strengths and abilities? Uh, because now we have greater visibilities or maybe greater awareness around kind of like what are we good at and what we're not good at? Or um I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

I think it can be bifurcated where I think like um you have the incredible opportunity to index on the things that you're good at, and then you also have the incredible opportunity to really get better at the things that you're a little weaker in, right? Because we have the tools available, we have the technology available. So I think we're gonna see maybe like a both of these skills in specific areas and then well-rounded in generalist areas as well.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Do you think that we're going to see fluidity in role descriptions? Like, I mean greater fluidity.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Uh my my context behind the question is like um you know, before we had a role description and that person was doing A, B, and C, and that's kind of like what they did. And and and now with AI, you were seeing this morphing of skills and abilities be enabled by. By AI. And so if you know how to use AI, it becomes a super super tool for you. So I'm just thinking like the previous role definition, at least the hypothesis that they hold is the previous role definitions are no longer going to be valid or not valid in the same capacity. Like if you have an accounts payable clerk, I mean, maybe, maybe, but even there, if it's accounts payable, I'm assuming that that role can be largely automated. You can use blockchain, you can use different technology to kind of like, you know, payment uh invoice comes in, it matches certain uh controls, uh, it uh it matches certain criteria, the controls are applied and executes automatically. So I'm just kind of curious as to how would the roles evolve.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I think they're gonna be more like I mean it it depends, it depends. Like, so it depends on like the different levels too, right? So if you're still a junior, like a new like a junior person, I think there's still a certain level of um base, more basic things that you're gonna have to learn in terms of technical operations, just how a business and a company operates. Um, and then I think you know, as you get more senior and as you get more like a domain expertise, then you're gonna be the ones that like you be consulted on when you know, working in like the feedback loops for AI, building those partnerships, the more relational dynamics, right? And so I think it it does depend on the different levels and the different seniority of work. I think that is interesting to see with the different skill sets that are coming on to the younger people today. Like they they can leverage AI because they've grown up with it, and so a lot easier. And so I think like it's gonna be interesting to see what that dynamic is. Um and it's gonna be very interesting to see what that dynamic is, and interesting to work with leaders to actually create the ways that we can all cohesively work together in this new age.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Um wanted to follow this trend for just a second. What would be the role of a leader or let a senior leader or CEO in the age of AI? Kind of like what would they do versus what would AI do? And kind of like how would the teams be organized? And kind of like yeah, just kind of curious, what does the future of the CEO role look like in the age of AI?

SPEAKER_01 46:40

I think it's I think it's it's definitely more like, and this is what I would index on is like how do you create the actual environments for your team? So, like how do you create the operating norms, the practices, the cultures that your team operates in, and your teams can actually just design how they interact with AI, right? Because they know, because you're on the ground, they're doing the work. So I think like the leader's job is like is to create that can that larger container in which the organization functions, how they make decisions, how they speak up, what they stand for. So I think it's gonna be more of the landscape is creating the conditions in which your people perform, and that's gonna ultimately create more resilient organizations as well as more integrated with AI organizations as well.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

Thanks, Joyce. Um, last question, I promise. If people are looking to follow your work and get in touch with you to talk about a human edge, to talk about uh the Pearls framework, how should they go about it? Where should they follow your work?

SPEAKER_01 47:51

Um, I'm active on LinkedIn, so definitely follow me on LinkedIn. Um, you can also reach me through my I can LinkedIn is probably the best way. And um doesn't respond there.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your pearls of wisdom, Pon intended. Uh, this has been extremely valuable.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Well, thank you so much, Bust. I'm very happy to um um to be invited to this opportunity. And so um thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

My pleasure.