And at the end, it’s about being authentic
So, here we are, with our guest Florian Schubert, Senior Innovation Manager & Business Builder at Swiss Re, talks with Hanne and Svitlana about neglecting personal interaction in corporate environments, which can be changed by asking “How are you, really?”
From there, we go a lot of places, while trying to find the absolute essence of human centricity. Is it maybe all about love? Read in and find out!
What did they discuss?
Hanne Lindbæk
Hello, everyone, and welcome back once again to the human centric podcast. We have a great one for you this time, guys. So Svitlana, who is it? Who’s in front of the microphone with us this time?
Svitlana Bielushkina
We have Florian Schubert’s offloading as a senior innovation manager in business builder in Swiss Re, that’s reinsurance company. And the topic we discussed today was actually making work human and human Centricity at work in leadership in innovation in connection to the customers. We did go into lots of angles in places. We did have lots of laughs
So yeah, but I really enjoyed the conversation, Hanne.
Hanne Lindbæk
More than anything I think the CV of Florian really does not describe the person you’re about to meet. Because this is a guy with a lot of topics and experiences; a lot of thoughts in his head.
Svitlana Bielushkina
We have a very special episode, we have a fantastic guest here with us Florian Schubert comes from the insurance and reinsurance industry. But the beauty of having Florian is actually not just talking about insurance, and the business is actually talking about human centricity. So if you check out flow, Florian’s LinkedIn profile, you can count more than 15 times I think, float, and it says that you’re a mentor, a coach, a customer, that you’re supporting organizations and small teams and companies and how to become much more customer centric and much more human centric. And we have been running this podcast for quite some months, Hannah and I think these episodes can be the one embracing it all together and actually diving into the human centricity. Welcome, Florian.
Hanne Lindbæk
Nice to see you again. So I just heard Svetlana, that someone in our staff here, she was saying she’s just delivered her master’s degree. And the master’s degree is kind of human centric. And she was given such good feedback on having chosen that topic. So it seems to be a hot topic out there. And I’m super happy to be discussing it with you today. Florian. How are you in Munich, life good?
Florian Schubert
Life, good. Life is opening up again. Right, I got my first shot of vaccination. So some arcane, it’s a little bit humid and a little bit tough for sleeping these days. But I decided not to complain. And I really do enjoy.
Hanne Lindbæk
Okay, so here we are, I’ve just done this thing to you. And this this discussion we had in the prep call, wasn’t it for and because I just asked you, how are you? And then we go to something personal. But you have this whole philosophy around? How are you and how that’s changed during COVID? Take us there, what is it you want to just describe for us?
Florian Schubert
I mean, that was one of my personal strongest learning during the pandemic now, because in the business environment, certainly we always had this How are you at the very beginning. And I mean, it’s best answer in English was a very short “Hi you too” and it’s just like, no content was delivered. But during the pandemic, and I really loved it personally. People honestly asked about other people and ask how are you? Right? And then people opened up because most people didn’t feel too well with this pressing and very special situation. And another thing that happened with the How are you, for me personally, sitting in home office, it brought so much humanity into it, right? Because there were children playing for example, in the back of the video call, or dogs and cats jumped on the table and got cuddled and so this human side, that often we tend to kind of neglect in corporate environment immediately was there in my humble opinion, personally speaking, I super much enjoyed it and still enjoy it.
Hanne Lindbæk
There are so many juxtapositions here. So here we are, suddenly, further away from each other because we can’t be in the same room. And at the same time, there’s actually bigger intimacy. Because you’re you’re in someone’s living room or bedroom even it’s been absurd for sure. I’ve had an experience. I was in a super strict, quite formal client meeting with a woman I really didn’t know very well. And I was feeling a bit frightened to kind of break the ice and try to be me. And she was being very formal. And then suddenly a kind of a cat’s tail came across the screen cracked up. And that’s it, isn’t it, it creates juice, it creates, like, fellowship, and you just get on with getting on? Well, just so we understand who it is we have before us for and so we’ve done your LinkedIn description. What can you tell us about your story? We just want to start there. Just walk us through what’s important in your life. What are the significant things that have shaped you into where you are today?
Florian Schubert
As introduced, I’m an insurance guy. And hopefully, we will not talk too much about insurance today, right? Because I think it’s a topic we’re talking about appliqueing everywhere. So it’s definitely not about insurance. But I’m an insurance beast, or better yet, a reinsurance piece. reinsurance, for those who don’t know, simply means companies that are insuring insurance companies. I was with Munich Re for a very long time, then changed to Swift Three. That’s my corporate background, so to say, but my heart and soul were always very much into the innovation space. I mean, as already said, I started to be a startup coach and mentor for some pretty famous operations, like plug-and-play tech startups, boot camps, and the folks alike. and I really love that. Because once again, they’re it’s about human interaction. And it’s about giving something back, because I’m very happy and grateful for the job I have. Yeah, and starting with this kind of tool—the corporate one and the private innovation one—I decided to also take that as my corporate role and started to take on various innovation roles at work. Yes, and also then innovation. I mean, it was already touched on a little bit. I mean, one part that really changed my overall working life was when I got my training around human centered design, design, thinking, and all that stuff. Because, I mean, I was that classic insurance guy, right? 15 years in the industry, knowing everything, I do know what the customer wants and needs. And then you do that training, they force you to prototype test and get feedback, and you go on the street, and the potential buyers or users simply crush you. They immediately tell you that our world looks different. And this enlightenment, this grace of getting feedback, really changed something in me. And afterwards, I always choose roads, where I’ve had very frequent interaction with potential buyers, users, and customers.
Hanne Lindbæk
So let’sjust go here, because it’s a beautiful point. Also, maybe for people who haven’t heard about design thinking before, it’s because Nathan Pfeiffer is the kind of source of some of this material this knee. And if we look at the methodology for designing and innovating, this got this lovely humbleness to it, which is instead of thinking that you know, what the customer is going to want, you actually go out there and you go, excuse me, can I have a moment of your time? It’s just such a basic principle, isn’t it? And yet, it is such a game changer. And now you’ve been doing that for what? 15 years?
Florian Schubert
Something like this? Nothing, I would say more 10 than 15? To be honest. But yeah.
Hanne Lindbæk
That must mean you were one of the pioneers.
Florian Schubert
The concepts existed. I think it’s more about that corporate culture changed. mean, we have been trained and bias to kind of know everything. We’ve been sitting there in our ivory tower. And it mean, it’s understandable. We hire very well trained people, people with experience, and we always relied on this experience. And we always trusted the people. And to a certain extent, and this is now referring to the times we’re living, in data massively changing. In former times, when the future was way more predictable than today.
It was kind of okay to run your business solely with specialists, having the expertise, having the training, having the knowledge and simply predicting what people will need in the future.
Today, in this highly globalized, interconnected, fast changing digital times, it’s not that easy anymore, but fully buying into what you said and I can only build on that. I mean, how special is it right? All we do is talk very early in the development process. have products or services. Also, in our case, insurance products, simply talk early with those who might buy it, right? It’s such a simple thing. And still, it has such a huge impact.
Hanne Lindbæk
I spoke to a bank about this here in Norway, not so many years ago. And they were pretty early. They came back, I remember from Silicon Valley, they went on a study tour to Silicon Valley in like 2013, or something. And they kind of came back and they went, hello, hello, everything needs to change, you know, because of course, the bank industry was going through the biggest disruption I think I’ve witnessed in the last 10 years. I mean, imagine what they used to be and imagine who they are today. And then one of them described it really well. He said “Before, as a bank, you could kind of go out into the future, see what was the head, and then you could turn around and go. So now dear customer, here’s a product we’d like you to introduce to you that you might need in your future”. But now they’re saying everything changes so quickly, that all you can do is float alongside your client. And now together, you’re looking at the surroundings around you the present tense, and you’re going okay, okay, what can we create together. So collaboration becomes much more a part of of innovation these days to it isn’t it?
Florian Schubert
In my humble opinion, collaboration is the ultimate key to the future. Also, our team and my company have the task of building up what we call “cross-industry cooperation.” That means not only working together with the customer, by certain human centered design principles, but we’re also joining forces with former at least perceived competitors, or industries that are far away from insurance like automotive automobile manufacturers, or retailers, or startups or folks alike, or tech companies, for example. So I think you absolutely nailed it in so fast changing times. It’s not just one genius that can find a way into the future. It’s about collaboration. It’s about co creation, and it’s about joining forces for the customers’ best interests.
Hanne Lindbæk
Such an important topic. Svetlana, would you like to go a little bit deeper?
Svitlana Bielushkina
Yes, definitely. Florian, senior innovation manager, and the business builder and developer in space three have already started defining the innovation and what it means for the customer. I introduce you also as the one connecting the dots in our human centric podcast because human centricity, and lies at the heart of innovation. Human Centricity lies at the heart of the companies to attract talent to come and work and innovate. Tell us a bit more. What do you mean by “human centricity” and “innovation”? What is it for you? Is it just collaboration? Is it asking the customer so what is human Centricity for the innovation as a topic?
Florian Schubert
I think at the very end, everything we do is human, right? Because it’s human action. It’s humans developing it; it’s humans buying it. We’re now in a phase where we assume tech will be the most important part of the story because we’ve seen all these great tech developments that have just super fascinated us. I’m a man, and we love to play. I’m 44. But it’s still that inner child living in me. And guess how much I loved playing games on my cell phone? Were in format dates, I needed a room size computer to do so. But I think at the end, and this is what we should recall over and over again, it’s the human aspect that drives everything. Let’s just ask a question. When did you buy a shoe because of all the technical features at the very end we pretend to be that’s a women’s questionnaires, but I’m also collecting, not collecting, I’m wearing sneakers. And it’s the same day. I mean, it’s not because it’s super nice to walk in them. It’s the design, it’s the emotions that drive me and also with successful products. You can see it, there’s this emotional hook attached to it. The reason people use it is because they like to use it and it gives them certain services. But at the very end, nobody has a mobile phone with a touchscreen because he or she loves touchscreens, right? It’s because of the feeling that comes with it. It gets just recall at the beginning how cool you felt when you had a touchscreen mobile phone I mean, nobody was talking about the phone I hope that people will talk about me, not their phones, because I know the cool guy.
Svitlana Bielushkina
And I love how you’re saying that human Centricity actually embraces emotions, when you don’t take it separately as something which only you can have at home. But actually, it’s part of what you have with the customer and part of what you have in the corporate environment. and it’s actually a fundamental part.
Hanne Lindbæk
I just had this vision guys, I just had this imagination that 20 years from now someone would listen into this podcast, and I am so curious what this would mean to them like where emotional intelligence where humans Centricity where the human at heart and where emotions and longings like you’re describing Florian, where it all belongs in the future of corporations.
Florian Schubert
It’s super interesting, isn’t it? We are on the edge of Ray Kurtzweil singularity theories, right? where humans and machines might merge to a certain extent. So this opens up a completely new field, in which I am neither clever enough nor would I dare to assume what the world looks like then.
Hanne Lindbæk
And then we’ll have this thing called CRISPR. To that’s what my my son in law is saying this CRISPR will come and save us health wise. And then we’ll have this intelligence blended with artificial intelligence. And God knows where we are. God knows. Yeah. And we’ll all be 200 years old and looking like we’re 40. And with, like, the immense intelligence, it will be cool.
Svitlana Bielushkina
That’s one thing for sure. Hannah. Emotions will stay. Yeah, emotions will stay even in this AI world. Certainly.
Hanne Lindbæk
Okay, we’re going off topic here. But that’s interesting, because we develop so much science and robotic science having to do with human intelligence. And we dive so much into the brain. But how can AI support emotional intelligence? Does it support emotional intelligence?
Florian Schubert
Some day, we at least hope it will, right? But I mean, then it gets super, super complicated, right? It gets complicated on the tech side, ways big computational power will be needed to do though. And then I think we were touching deeper into this field. I’m not an expert on it. I just read about it. But I think for real intelligence, you need to have emotions, and you need to have ethics, right? So what we have now—I mean, AI is kind of—I mean, there might be people out there killing me now. But it’s a little bit of math, right? It’s stochastic and stuff like that. And with all the good, and all the bad, I mean, they’re huge and interesting books, and there’s been research written and done on the topic of bias and ethnic moral issues in AI. I mean, much of the AI learns from data that has been formally processed by humans, right? And the moment a human resides, let’s take a sample from the insurance industry claims processes, designing whether something is fraud or not. I mean, when you work, let’s say, on picture recognition and stuff like that, and the training set holds pictures that have been formally processed and looked at by humans, I mean, there is bias. There’s cultural bias, age, gender bias, everything is in there. Certainly there are counter measures taken but however, I mean, also an AI can get super bias. And so let’s see when it comes to. I mean, I love this example. I don’t know who heard about Ty, this bot Microsoft launched on Twitter, and he learned from Twitter posts right? And it was shut down 16 hours later because it turned into the most racist right wing women gay whatsoever hating AI and why it learned on posts human did on Twitter.
Hanne Lindbæk
God I don’t want to hear this. This is like an interpretation of humanity. Oh my god, that’s so scary. to Atlanta.
Svitlana Bielushkina
What am Oxo so we are listening and reflecting on and the more I observe technology developments, and the more I observe what’s we are discussing right now with innovation and with the COVID when we all go home, and we connect from our devices, in the kitchens, in the bedrooms, in the profession of HR, in the professional organization, where you work with people and leaders. I think it all makes us go back to the basics. So basically, go back to humanity. And we ask ourselves, you know, what is it that makes people work better? What makes people deliver more value than machines working people deliver more value than machines? And what do people value at work? And you go back to the basic elements if you don’t talk right now about, you know, compensation benefits in salary. You go back to the sense of belonging. Yeah, you go back to the connection to your teams and people. So the teamwork, the trust, the co-creation, and the moments that you’re creating at work So the HR, the human enterprise work goes back to the basic human needs. And talent also selects the company. In that regard, where do I really belong? And the question is: what is belonging and how do you generate it? You know, how do you create an environment that is really human-centric and takes magnesium into account? This is really basic, basic questions, right? Even though we have aI coming up, even though we have, you know, right now COVID disruption, and this digital transformation of the companies, the questions remain to be super fundamental and super basics.
Hanne Lindbæk
It’s all kind of going back to the bed, of course. Yeah, what’s coming up for me is flooring; is this also something we wanted to discuss with you? To me, everything we’ve kind of spoken about so far in this episode leads me to at least one corner of a conversation we very much need to enter into. and that is about hierarchy. Because the hierarchies are super-changing these days, aren’t they? Because, like you said, I can no longer be an expert or a specialist in something because that’s all changing so quickly. And I speak to a lot of people out there in corporations about, you know, the issues of age and authority these days, because suddenly, the youngsters are sitting on all the knowledge. And here we are. You’re getting to be my age, and you kind of feel like you’re over the hill; you’re not going to be on top of the new stuff anymore. There will be a day when I say that sentence, and nobody laughs anymore. And that’s when it gets serious. In the meantime, I think the idea of, you know, the ultimate achievement that has been out there kind of as the golden goal for the corporate world for so many decades has been to get to the top. You get to the top, you become the CEO, or you become the CTO, you become the head of something, or you grow your own company, and you earn more money than someone who knows less. And all of those goals are still, of course, completely driving us. But they do seem to be somehow flattening out, changing, and altering. That was a huge introduction for in what can we say about leadership in this day and age, in view of everything we’re now talking about?
Florian Schubert
It’s special. And it’s different, right? I mean, you pointed to some very, very valid and interesting points, as well as some super-biased points. Right. As we were talking about bias in AI, why does he count? Why does gender still count as much? I mean, that annoys me to a tremendous extent, I mean, just referring to what is happening these days, because today, we’re gonna have this football game German year versus Hungary, and the whole discussion around lighting the Munich arena and rainbow colors. I mean, why are we still so focused on our differences? I mean, differences are what make the world worth living in, right? When you don’t want to use the word difference, you should use “diversity,” right? And diversity is key for everything. Just imagine how boring your life would be when all your friends would be like, like me. I mean, that’s the worst assumption. But now, coming back to the initial question about leadership, I think we are really on the edge of something new. We’ve been touching on that earlier. I mean, the leaders role coming with Chenda age was about setting a vision, right? Setting a vision that people followed afterwards—which was fully okay, don’t get me wrong, and it’s still fully okay— But it’s only applicable when the solution to a problem is known and straightforward, right? And an ever faster times we are now living in it’s so hard to predict the future so hard what the solution will be. And this is fully okay. Old leadership. Let’s call it like this. But I mean, that might be the moment where we could raise that word about a book cover, right? With all that volatility, that’s there, you need to be flexible, you need to be, what is right today might be wrong in two years, or even one year time, right? All this uncertainty, hard to predict the future kinda gets into a position of this old way of leading, also the complexity that digital interaction brings globalization brings, I mean, so much will not be decided by your own right, it will be taken into your company by external forces. Yeah. And last but not least, the ambiguity thing. And that’s why I’m talking about the edge, right? It’s not possible anymore to predict what the future will look like. And therefore I think leadership tremendously, needs to change because leadership will be about setting out a context and environment and the culture within people feel safe, feel appreciated, and can work or do the hard job of innovating. And once in a book I read, somebody said, “It’s way more about setting the stage than performing on it as a leader.”
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, that is excellent. That is a brilliant saying. So as a leader, I need to hear that again. It’s not about being on the stage; it’s about setting the stage for others and, I guess, yourself to perform. That is brilliant. What’s coming up for me too is the question that this attorney asked about, like, how to do change management. And I’m like, forget it. These days, everything is under new management, everything is in constant change. And so the feelings of uncertainty, the feelings of not knowing what is there in the future, just make it even more important to lead for trust, to lead for connection, to lead for a feeling of security, where it can be found, to focus on what we can do, as opposed to all the stuff we don’t know. There are some good directions for leaders in what you just said. I think that’s brilliant. It’s so self-explanatory. But take me there diversity. Of course, it’s connected to innovation, isn’t it? That’s a silly question. That’s not even a question. Can I go beneath it? Can you go? How? Tell me how it relates to what happens when we are diverse and manage to co-create.
Florian Schubert
Absolutely. I mean, it opens up the option space, right? having all these different points of view, having all these different biases, having all this different history of persons. And everything that comes with it helps you. And I think not only in an innovative setting, but basically every time and everywhere, you should see options you personally might not have seen yet. And especially when we talk I mean about the leadership principles and so on for the future. I mean, going into the future today means not making that one big bet. but trying different directions. And what comes with diversity is different ideas. Right? And I think being a leader in the future simply means that you’ve been talking about community, right? It’s about: Why do we belong to this operation? Why do we belong on this journey we’re doing together? And it’s all about a sense of community. So what’s our purpose? Why are we doing that? And how do we do that? How do we engage? What are the rules for how we want to treat each other? And last but not least, and I think this is really rising these days. Also seeing generation if a generation set and so on, it’s about values, right? team internally, but also externally, like in sustainability. And stuff like this, with diversity as a status, this huge bunch of ideas. And being a leader means you need to set a stage where this ideas can just rub against each other where you create an environment that allows these ideas, to be open to have this multiple approaches to give people time to get to fight with each other. There might be a positive way. Don’t get me wrong; there might even be conflicting ideas. But I think what is super important in the future is like they’re slowly happening, good, fast decisions, right? Innovation, the creation of something new, needs time. So give the people an environment, a culture, where these ideas can just mingle and rub against each other. I mean, there’s this expression of creative abrasion around that, and you work on it until you find the best. I mean, having an option A and B. And fastly go for compromise, you mostly end up in Something mediocre, right? Superior, is built over time and develop it merges it arises, right? It’s solely there at the very beginning, after having this separation that’s rubbing on each other, you see, oh, okay. It’s not only A&P that might be seen. And the funny thing is, as I refer to it, it’s called creative abrasion, it’s called conflict, and so on. But at the end, it’s all men, right? It’s about collaboration, not fighting against each other. Yeah.
Svitlana Bielushkina
And I think this is really beautiful, and I love it. So you’re talking about creating momentum, setting the stage, having the culture, having ideas, you know, operating pearls with each other, and maybe rubbing in each other, until they mature, and until he knows one of them or two of them become actual reality. And all of it is an art form for them. It’s really an art, it’s an art of leadership; it’s an art of human connections. It’s an art of human skills. And I just recently read somewhere that, you know, there’s a trend that STEM skills will be super important in the future. So STEM skills, which are science, technology, and, you know, mathematics, are what we’re all aiming for in the company. But now I heard an expression called steam. So, with an “A,” they added the arts as one of the critical skill sets or capabilities of the future because, again, the more machines you have, since AI isn’t there, you need to have more of that, setting the stage for the teams to collaborate and create value. Yeah.
Hanne Lindbæk
Well, the thing is, because we’re never gonna get over ourselves are we as long as we remain on kind of manipulated by something artificial, there’s going to be emotions, there’s going to be feeling small city about stuff, there’s going to be wanting to connect and wanting to belong, and all these things. And as long as we are like that, then art will has always been a silver. I just love so much about what you’re saying Florian to about the slowing down. That’s what we’ve also really tried to investigate in this podcast together. It’s like, veering to dwell a little bit, you know, everything these days in communication in corporations, you try to say as much as possible, as fast as possible and get to an end result. While there’s like the conversation, art, actually, if you really want to go into it and have some fun with conversations, they’re not so much fun. As long as they’re linear. They’re much cooler when you manage to explore a little bit and go back over something and dwell a little bit and give something time to stew. And it’s Kahneman, isn’t it the if you do the Thinking Fast and Slow, and you think about the neuroscience. And then finally, I just wanted to comment to which is brilliantly said by you. And so, so true. The generations below us tend to come with values, at least some of them if you go far enough down, you’ll find that people who like our into sustainability and things, and I’m like, you know, we’re calling them values, they’re just trying to save the planet for God’s sake. It’s got to be on values at this point. What are we learning from today? Florian. What are we learning from this conversation? What can we take away?
Florian Schubert
I think you said something very important about the generations. Right. And you said they are saving the planet? Hopefully, they will do because we are more ruining it. Right. And, for example, sitting with Swiss Re and before that, and Yomiuri trust me, it’s a tremendously striking topic for us, right? Because we do insure all these huge natural catastrophe events. And the money we have to pay it, the frequency in which they happen, is rising. Right? tremendously in some cases. And yeah, these people try to save the roof. But at the end, honestly, they’re trying to save their own lives. Right? If we are very blunt on that, I mean, for me, personally, what I always try to do and this would be one thing I love, also to take the people along after this podcast is like, never neglect the human being right? I mean, so much your stomach, your gut tells you so much in your life, and you trust it. And often, companies pretend to be machines, right? with gear views and steering. And when you turn it there, when you turn A then B happens, but it’s not the case. We’re all human beings. And I mean, I loved what you said earlier about what’s happening also with Zoom and so on. at the end. We are so much happier or so much looking forward to meet our colleagues, right. I mean, most people are not looking forward to getting back in the office. Okay. It might be different when you have a 10 and a 12 year old at home schooling. My little daughter is just 15 months old and just beautiful, so she doesn’t annoy me too much in that respect. But at the very end, why have we been suffering? We have been suffering because of the lack of human contact, right? And also business. I mean, it’s not all I mean; let’s not overexaggerate. But at the very end, most of this is built on relationships, right? Normally, you don’t even sell your technology because your technology is so superior, the cell itself is done, and a buyer and seller have a human connection. Right.
Hanne Lindbæk
So for now, we are summarizing some pretty important stuff that’s really kind of dawning on me about artificial intelligence and then artificial emotional intelligence. So as long as we remain at the steering wheel Touchwood, let’s hope it’s for a couple of decades more, we need to take into consideration the human factor, every time and in everything we do. And we need to face that. And the sooner the better, I guess, we need to also face it into how we work with artificial intelligence. I’m sure they’re doing it already. So you factor that in, so it becomes a part of the board game, a part of what’s actually emerging and evolving from it. I have heard, of course, this is AP. I’m sure you’ve heard of it where you can, because one of the big ways in which we convey emotions to one another is of course through the tone of the voice, not the content, but the tone, the tempo, the pitch, that everything of how the voice sounds. And there is apparently this app now that you can download, and you can train your own voice. Did you hear about it?
Florian Schubert
No, I haven’t. Why didn’t you tell me before the podcast?
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, you don’t need it, darling, you’re doing fine. I haven’t tried it, I should try it myself. But what you do is you record something into it. And it will give you feedback on how you’re coming across. And then you can start monitoring and managing how you actually because emotions are so superduper conveyed by the voice is one of the most important of course, body language
too.
Florian Schubert
May a chump jump in there shortly?I think that is super important. Because the example is so nice, right? in my humble point of view, but it’s really my humble point of view. And presumably it’s only once again the human side. And it’s a mixture between wish and fear. But I think it’s going to be together, right? It’s not going to be humans versus AI. Normally, it’s always stupid humans who start wars. Right. Presumably, it will not be the AI starting it. But I think we’re going to help each other. Yeah, I mean, this is a good thing we’ve been talking about, right? What would an AI need to start a war with emotions? Without fear, are there no feelings? Why should it start a war? I mean, no reason for that. Right? Yeah. But as you said, it’s supportive. And it’s super interesting. Have you heard about zoom fatigue? Another thing that is mostly happening to women is that people get overly stressed by these zoom meetings, trying to read gestures, and it affects the pitch of people’s voices. And funny enough, I mean, if we were honest, being men, we know that women are pretty much smarter than we are. But yeah, women are so much more affected by it. and it’s really exhausting. It’s considered an illness now because people try to read their counterparts as they would in an on-location meeting. And it doesn’t work because you have this short legs between reality and video makes it decouple. And yeah, it’s an illness these days.
Hanne Lindbæk
We are also talking about the tone of voice because of the platforms on which we are working, such as Zoom and WebEx, and the teams or whatnot. in order to be efficient. They flattened the voice. This is why we’re all shouting at one another the whole time. Do you know how many teams meetings have you been in when you going? Okay, everyone. And so now it’s me, and I’m going to tell you this, and it’s like, “Ah, the voice is terrible.” And I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I remember it just about a year ago, when we’d had the pandemic kind of shut us down for the first six months or whatever, like four months, and the people I spoke to who were the most exhausted were the therapists. Because they’d been sitting online trying to do therapy in this kind of flattened, weird digital universe then you can start describing fatigue for sure.
Florian Schubert
Can I briefly comment and say that I think this is also a very interesting point because we’ve also been talking about digitalization? I mean, just reflect on what this is: is this digitalization, or am I always talking about electrifying, formerly analog process? She’s sitting on Webinar X, sitting on Zoom at the very end. And yeah, that is now a little bit more straightforward. But it’s telephone right? Aside from the video, which you could also have on your phone, it does not really add anything of value in a digital way. For example, why don’t we get a transcript of this discussion afterwards? Just like automatically, for example, as in very simple and kind of stupid digital value add, but however, so I think also here we are just on the edge of real digitalization.
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, that is so true. Oh, that’s a piece of innovation right there speak louder, we must bring it back to DT. Suzanna, are you ready to try and kind of steer this ship to port? Is there a method to our madness?
Svitlana Bielushkina
I have another element which you wanted to add to the human Centricity discussion. And I think it was also mentioned by some of us in the conversation today about being a whole person at work. Yeah. That is also what distinguishes us from machines and artificial intelligence (AI) at work. And what I mean by that is that, actually, it’s very hard these days to separate where you are at work from where you’re at home. What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about work? Are you thinking about the movie you’ve watched, so it becomes so integrated. And I think these days in Florida would make it really great to hear your reflections in here. I think this connection and also for the leadership for this new normal new humanity, it is important to take it into consideration is important to kind of connect to people and sometimes even celebrates life events, you know, whether it’s the birth of a child, or it might be the birthday, or is anniversary to work. So that becomes anyway, I think a part of setting the scene that you said, yeah, so it’s a part of Krishna, the environment. So it’s not just about work. It is about human Centricity of the whole being, what do you think about it for them?
Florian Schubert
That’s a philosophical one. Right? I think it’s a practical, I think, something around diversity, right. And at the end, it’s about being authentic. I mean, presumably, with being this whole human being that I am, I heavily annoyed some of my colleagues, right? Because they aren’t; they are way more introverted than I am. So at the very end, I think it’s about being authentic. It’s no need that everyone is this outgoing, whatever person, but be just the person you are, and have also a culture that accepts that, right? That’s so funny, isn’t it? When it comes to hiring, when it comes to HR concepts, when it comes to companies themselves, we all talk about diversity, but at the very end, we still have processes in place that try to avoid this, right? I mean, being that I don’t know, I don’t have the numbers, but just grab a huge one like Siemens or any of these companies with hundreds of thousands of employees. It seems to be a little bit challenging with 380,000 individuals who are super diverse, and so you also need this combining factor. But I mean, the story about being yourself, I would want to share a story that really struck me during pandemic times now, being that design thinker, Interviewer customer interaction guy I am, we regularly interviewed board members of insurance it and consulting companies. And one Insurance Board member who is also responsible for the claims part of the operation was sharing a story about how different it is to sit in a claims call center. and having a super aggressive, disappointed customer on the other side of the line. And how much of a difference does it make if this happens in a secure call center, office environment, or corporate professional building? you leave at home and literally close the door and then it sits in the building compared to how it was now. While this was happening, you still saw your children playing in front of you, and all this aggression, this pain, and this fear immediately reached your home, right? Your castle. I never thought about it, but just try to imagine how different that is.
Hanne Lindbæk
So in the world of yoga, they have this terminology took me far too long to understand what it means but when they took it About vinyasa in yoga. They talk about the idea that if you do something, you do whatever you do, and then you recover by stretching, breathing, and doing a kind of pattern that gets your whole body kind of, you know, back to zero. And then you do the next thing you do. And then you recover. And so the idea of, I think, vinyasa is that the terminology means that if you do that recovery, well, over time, what you’re doing in between, i.e., the postures in yoga, will get better. So if we take this back into human life, and sitting in the corporate world, I think it’s so vitally important that if you have a job, like what you just described, that you have some kind of system to recover, that you have somewhere to put all the aggression that’s coming your way, and somewhere to put away the frustration, and of course, the old days, where did we used to recover on our ways to work on our waste from work? Right? You’d sit there on the tram or whatever, and you’d go home, or you’d call your friend and go, “Oh, my God, you know,” and these are just very human ways of just kind of letting go of the disturbance, the physical disturbance that any emotion actually represents. So I think what we need to teach people is to keep recovering, even though we’re sitting with mindfulness. Yes, it’s a timeout.
Florian Schubert
Yeah. Once again, cut a chair, right? I mean, not only recovery, but also digesting, sorting yourself. I mean, some days, look at our schedules during COVID. Hopefully, my world looks a little different knock on wood there. But seeing my line managers or higher hierarchy levels, I mean, they are scheduled in, I don’t know, 1530 to 4560 minutes, a lot from the morning till the evening; when they take their bio break, I wouldn’t want to know, right? It must have been during one of those calls. But the interesting part, as you said, is about recovery. But it’s also about your mental, your brain kind of draw a thing, right? You need to have time to reflect what happened the last 20, then let’s take an ideal world, not 30 minutes meeting, but 25 minutes meeting with a five minutes break. So you have this five minutes to reflect, take notes, what’s happened, what did the people say? and it doesn’t happen. And one psychologist, about whom I also read an article, So I can’t recall which one, but he said, “When you don’t do this refraction test.” It’s like the meeting hadn’t happened, right?
Hanne Lindbæk
Here’s the headless chicken reality of the corporation: So many of the corporations I see these days are all running around, doing and doing and doing, and then never digesting. There’s one final tip in here for us all. And we have to start looking toward running off this conversation that way. But I think I just want to bring us back in when you talk about call center communication, because I’ve seen a lot of it over the years. And I’ve even trained a lot of people in call centers, and I find it incredibly impressive that they are warriors for any corporation. Because if you’re trying to behave nicely, and then just think about the way that a lot of us allow ourselves to behave when we call fellow human beings and ask for things in right. So if there’s one big, final moral to this story, I think it’s how the guys behave.
Florian Schubert
This episode mates the life of a call center agent better. I mean, it would be way more than ever dream to have it.
Hanne Lindbæk
Then we are happy because they’re going to become AI They probably already are.
Svitlana Bielushkina
I will take it to Visby if no five minutes recovery, if no five minutes reflection on the meeting. It didn’t happen. Florian, I will take it with me in my corporate life. Thank you so much, Hana. floating, it has been a really engaging and for me, very enriching conversation, trying to really understand what human centricity is. What is it for innovation and diversity? What is it for leadership for the skills we need to have? And I think we rounded things up very nicely with authenticity, and mindfulness. So thank you very much; Florian was really fantastic.
