This episode features an interview with Donald Knight, Venture Partner at Valor Ventures and Miriam Connaughton, Chief People and Experience Officer at Simpplr. Donald’s expertise is in creating a culture where employees thrive and has a proven track record of constructing scalable global strategies that support international expansion. Miriam utilizes her three decades of HR consulting experience to shape and deliver a great employee experience, through dynamic HR strategies and AI-powered technology. In this episode, Shawn, Donald, and Miriam discuss the concept of high-performance cultures, how fostering human connection and empathy in the workplace can combat loneliness, and the impact of AI on workplace dynamics.
This episode features an interview with Donald Knight, Venture Partner at Valor Ventures and Miriam Connaughton, Chief People and Experience Officer at Simpplr. Donald’s expertise is in creating a culture where employees thrive and has a proven track record of constructing scalable global strategies that support international expansion. Miriam utilizes her three decades of HR consulting experience to shape and deliver a great employee experience, through dynamic HR strategies and AI-powered technology.
In this episode, Shawn, Donald, and Miriam discuss the concept of high-performance cultures, how fostering human connection and empathy in the workplace can combat loneliness, and the impact of AI on workplace dynamics.
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“Historically, our profession has been rooted on five major time periods. It started because of being administrative in nature. Then from administration, we went into compliance. From compliance, we went into employee satisfaction. From satisfaction, you got companies that are focused on how do they engage their employees, mainly through this lens of productivity. Last, I think the best companies understand that they want people to be fulfilled. If you want people to be fulfilled, you got to recognize that there's plenty of talent at your organization that just isn't. There is a large sentiment of loneliness.” – Donald Knight
“If you have lots of people with similar habits, that becomes the culture. It's habit-creating. If managers in general are good at creating psychological safety in an organization and they have a habit of practicing that, then people will generally report that's a cultural trait here. I feel really included and I feel like I can be my authentic self because it's very psychologically safe here. It doesn't just happen because you say it, it happens because people have healthy habits around that on a daily, moment-to-moment basis.” – Miriam Connaughton
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Episode Timestamps:
*(02:35): Getting to know Donald and Miriam
*(08:46): Being an intentional leader
*(17:56): High-Performance Index and the ripple effect
*(27:28): Loneliness in the workplace
*(46:56): Incentivizing human-centric leadership
*(53:29): The role of AI in enhancing employee experience
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Links:
Connect with Donald on LinkedIn
Connect with Miriam on LinkedIn
Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn
Shawn Pfunder: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Cohesion Podcast. My name is Shawn, and today, we're joined by two guests, Donald Knight, Venture Partner at Valor Ventures, and Miriam Connaughton, the Chief People Officer and Experience Officer at Simpplr.
Shawn Pfunder: Donald and Miriam, welcome to the show.
Miriam Connaughton: Thank you, Shawn. Great to be here.
Donald Knight: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, your timing was great on who goes first or who doesn't. This is the first time we've gone with two people. I'll have to like point out who talks when, when we go through this.
Miriam Connaughton: It's a test of your hosting skills.
Miriam Connaughton: You're up to it, Shawn, we know.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, awesome. Well, I have a couple of questions. We call them icebreakers. Really, this is just a chance to get to know you a little more as humans instead of fancy SVP, Chief People and Experience Officers. The first one is for you, Donald. What's an insult that you've received that you're proud of?
Donald Knight: Ooh, that's a really good question. You could tell you didn't tell us this in advance. I would have had an answer prepared. You know what it is? The biggest insult that I got that I think was a compliment is that I was bossy, but let me tell you why. So like, I have a tendency, this is really good, it's a good one.
Donald Knight: So like, my mom and dad were military, so they were very big on like, manners. And so I always default to like, ladies first, or if I hold the door, I hold the door for everybody. And there was this gentleman, older gentleman, that was coming through. And, you know, I said ladies first, cause there were ladies behind me.
Donald Knight: And so he just decided to just wait. And I was like, Oh no, like we'll do young age before beauty. So I wanted him to go first. And he was like, I know that's why I'm waiting on you. And I was like, well, I can wait all day. And he was like, well, you're the bossy one. So, he was calling me bossy because I wanted him to go first, but it's because I wanted to like, you know, make him feel young again and somewhat give myself a nod at being beautiful.
Donald Knight: So that's probably the biggest insult I got. And I was, I was pretty cool with that one.
Shawn Pfunder: Fantastic. You know what, Miriam, I'm going to ask you the same question, just because I'm super curious now.
Miriam Connaughton: There you go. He gave me a bit longer to think about it. Yeah. My nickname growing up in my family is the boss.
Miriam Connaughton: So we've, that's something else we've got in common there. Don't know. I was a bossy little girl, but no, I think when I got earlier in my career and in the context, I was quite proud of it because it was a bit of a difficult situation. And somebody, this person told me that I was intellectually intimidating.
Miriam Connaughton: I'm thinking I'll take that any day of the week. By the way, I don't think I am, but, you know, he thought I was, so I thought, okay, that's what you think. I'll take it.
Shawn Pfunder: Great. Well, Donald, we know what to look forward to during this conversation. There we go. Yeah. Intellectual intimidation. Two bossy people, Shawn.
Shawn Pfunder: Two bossy people. Miriam, what are the top five most open apps on your phone?
Miriam Connaughton: The most open apps? Oh, that's a good one. So it's actually WhatsApp. So I chat a lot with my family members and friends through WhatsApp around the world. That's for sure. That, email, obviously. BBC, that's my new source, often on that.
Miriam Connaughton: Cause I travel a reasonable amount. BritBox, which is a online streaming service, they still love all the British stuff. Hence, you know, I'm a creature, I have it there. The simple app, actually, you know, last but not least, because we have our own app and I have it on my phone and I use it quite a bit.
Shawn Pfunder: Oh, Donald, what are yours?
Shawn Pfunder: Are they going to be super business-y like Miriam's? Like, I'm just kidding.
Donald Knight: Mine are not nearly as business-y. Mine would be text messages, because I feel like my wife, like, texts me all the time. I would say WhatsApp recently, because my brother just moved back to Germany with my sister in law, my nephew.
Donald Knight: What are the other three? Audible, I do read a lot. I would say the Apple podcast app. I'm a huge How I Built This, Guy Raz fan. I listen to that. And then what is the last one? I'd probably say email, but that's just because, you know, I try to, you know, I have like OCD of like collecting too many emails. It's just like, when people like, if I see someone like present their screen and they have like 700 or I'm like, I'm losing my stuff.
Donald Knight: So I'm like, you got to go clean that up. Please clean that up. So yeah, I try to stay on top of the emails too.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, I think it's super evident that you both really care about people. I mean, it could have been, it could have been like, oh yeah, it's Candy Crush and this other thing that I had him. But both of you were Connecting to people, connecting to people, connecting to people, that makes total sense to me.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, only one more. I love this question. And you can put on your X Files hat or existential hat or I don't know. What's a mystery, like that we don't know the answer to, that you would want to know the answer to? How about Donald, what do you got?
Donald Knight: Ladies first. Ladies first.
Miriam Connaughton: I would say beauty before age. All right. Gosh, what would I say? You know, I'm a very scientific person. I'm quite logical. I've got science kind of background. So I like, you know, I like a lot of data and I like a lot of proof. I guess I would like to just know, is there life out there on other planets?
Miriam Connaughton: I'd like the definitive proof, because it's so vast, I believe there is. But I don't have the data yet to prove that belief. I love that.
Donald Knight: I love that. Oh, that's good. Yeah. All right, I'll give one serious one and then one funny one just because I want to balance our intellectually intimidating friend over here.
Donald Knight: So the serious one would be If the Adam and Eve story is true, what fruit was actually eaten? Because everyone says apple and I'm like, apple's getting a bad rap out here. Like, so, you know, I'd be curious to see if the story is true, what fruit was actually eaten. And then like the funny one would be like the mystery for me to solve is why do they call it Take a dump and runny nose, because you actually leave the dump.
Donald Knight: You leave the dump, and your nose doesn't run anywhere. There's no legs. So I want to know, like, who came up with that term originally? I gotta know where that came from. That's my serious one and my funny one.
Shawn Pfunder: We're gonna have a great conversation. Perfect.
Miriam Connaughton: That's a good one. All right.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, moving in, based off of your experience, I'm really excited to get to know you a little bit more, but just understand both of your experiences, especially when it comes to leadership.
Shawn Pfunder: So Donald, you mentioned in a previous call that you're very intentional as a leader. Can you sort of fill us in on what you mean by that?
Donald Knight: Yeah, I guess I should say first and foremost, I have personally benefited from leaders who have taken the time to pour into me. Like, any success that I've had thus far The overwhelming majority of it is attributed to people who literally took the time.
Donald Knight: And so what I realized is the throughput, regardless of age, gender, or what time in my life they were my leader, or if they weren't directly my leader, but they were a leader who just took an interest in me. What I realized is like the common thread is intentionality. They found ways to make me sharper, to help me smooth out my edges.
Donald Knight: as talent, and more importantly, like they took a vested interest in making sure that over time that I actually got better, that I actually developed. And so I think for me, I think as leaders, I just, I feel like we have a responsibility to help shape the world that we want to live in and what world we want to leave behind.
Donald Knight: And to me, I think it starts with being very intentional, especially to your point earlier, Shawn, around, you know, Miriam and I really talking about people. That shines through because I think that's just who we are. And I think a part of the reason we're that way is because of the intentional humans that have poured into us.
Donald Knight: So to me, I think that's a responsibility leaders have to embrace.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Miriam, what do you think?
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah. No, what you said, Donald, really resonates. I think I would add advocacy. It's been really important, I know, in my career and, you know, especially earlier in my career, even now in my career, but certainly earlier coming through as a female leader, often the first and only on leadership teams and that kind of thing, and in many circumstances, and wouldn't have progressed and developed in the way I did if it wasn't for very intentional mentoring, coaching, So.
Miriam Connaughton: Thank you. From a lot of my male allies actually in the businesses I was in that when I joined there was a lot more male leadership, but I had a lot of great mentors and advocates for my career. And I think, and part of that advocacy for me is, and I try and, you know, practice this, as we know, leadership is a lifelong lesson whenever done, is the gifts of feedback that I've had.
Miriam Connaughton: I can still remember where I was and who gave me really important feedback. And some of the very, At the time, oh, God, that hurt to hear that, but really super valuable and things that truly made me better. Like you said, Donald, smoothed off some edges, maybe, or, you know, just helped me understand something about myself or approach something differently that meant it went better.
Miriam Connaughton: And I just file all of those things away and then, you know, keep on passing that on as well.
Shawn Pfunder: I love that. It sounds like there's not really accidental. Is that what you're kind of suggesting? Like I'm just accidentally a good leader. Like you have to put effort into it. You have to focus on people. You have to.
Shawn Pfunder: I don't know if it's coming up with a plan, but just being, I mean, more intentional. Have you experienced accidental leadership type of thing, Miriam?
Miriam Connaughton: I mean, I don't know. When I hear that, I immediately think, you know, go to that big debate of nature, nurture, like are leaders born or are they made? And I think it's a bit of both, but I think it's more about just who you are as a human.
Miriam Connaughton: I grew up with just a lot of lessons around kindness. It's a lot of different things around empathy, around treat everybody the same, about really important lessons about fairness. And I think if you carry a lot of good core values just as a human quite honestly, into the workplace, I think those can stand you in good stead.
Miriam Connaughton: So the nature, nurture, I mean have I met someone else? and worked with leaders. And I've done a lot of that cause I consulted for over three decades. I met a lot of great leaders. I met a lot of not so great leaders, but a lot of great leaders. And I think there was some of the way, yes, let's do that. My top 10 leaders, it was, you got the idea that some of them were just instinctively so good at certain things, but I think it's, you know, they were instinctively good at certain things, but nobody's great at everything.
Miriam Connaughton: So, you know, I think it's, I think it's a mixture. I think some people, yeah, just have natural gifts. around certain things. But I am a big believer because I think this is a big opportunity area to create more diversity in leadership. You know, they aren't born, they aren't all just born as great leaders.
Miriam Connaughton: You can develop your leadership skills no matter who you are. And so I think it's a blend of both.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Donald, is it? Like, Miriam brought up some of those points, which I really love on like fairness, like equitable empathy. Like, kindness, those things that feel fuzzier. Can you teach people that? Like, can you teach people, like, in leadership roles to be that way?
Donald Knight: I think you can. I think, to Miriam's point around nature and nurture. I do think some of us are born with certain instinct abilities, but what I have found with many of the leaders that I would put on my top ten list, their greatest skills were acquired over time. Oh, yeah. And someone had to nurture those.
Donald Knight: Either they were nurtured by way of incentive, Either they were nurtured by way of recognition, either way they were nurtured by way of feedback, but the greatest skills that the greatest leaders have been acquired over time. And so to your point, there's a gentleman that I work with. His name is Jason.
Donald Knight: He's a phenomenal human being. And we were recently talking about the CEO that he worked with. And that CEO is still CEO of a publicly treated company. So I will refrain from sharing that gentleman's name, but Jason remember early on when they were at the company, how the CEO of that company said that that gentleman was going to be a CEO.
Donald Knight: And the beautiful thing about the CEO saying that is number one, who identified the talent, the current sitting CEO, right? But because the current CEO said it, Everyone around that person's orbit took a vested interest in making sure that gentleman was developed. And so, was he born to be a CEO? To be determined?
Donald Knight: Was he definitely nurtured to be a CEO? Absolutely. He was on all of the development programs. And so Jason really used that as an illustration to tell us around, who are we nurturing over time and who are we developing? You have no clue, like, What that trajectory could look like simply because as a leader, you bestowed that title or that label on someone.
Donald Knight: And so for me, I think it's a combination of both.
Shawn Pfunder: Believing in somebody is really, really, really powerful. Like that story, being able to point that out, that's remarkable.
Donald Knight: I think if we all look back, many of the opportunities that I've been given have been given to me because leaders brought my name up in rooms that I wasn't physically in.
Donald Knight: And so I think the nurturing that those folks have afforded me over time is just something that, I mean, I, I literally can't repay it. And so, The only thing I can do is then hopefully contribute to the next set of leaders and hopefully afford them the same opportunities, but hopefully more than I was given.
Donald Knight: But yeah, I recognize that at least in my arc or in my story.
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah. And I just want to come back, Shawn, you said belief. I think it's so important because I think it's a very relatable human thing. If you think to any time in your life, couldn't you go back to your childhood?
Miriam Connaughton: A teacher or family member who had a bigger picture of you than you had of yourself at any point in your life, in your career, and how that made you feel.
Miriam Connaughton: You know, when you have those moments or those experiences, it makes you feel proud. It makes you feel like you want to do better. It makes you feel like appreciated, seen, all those things. And then the opposite is very damaging as well. Those times and I'm sure, you know, if you're human, you've had them where somebody made you feel small.
Miriam Connaughton: Somebody thought less of you. Somebody assumed things about you just because of, you know, your gender, how you showed up, whatever, and how that made you feel and how damaging that is. And so, you know, I think that belief is really important, that positive belief, that support, the advocacy, because at the end of the day, it's how people blossom, it's how we kind of step into that bigger version of ourselves with support, with advocacy, and how we all grow and learn.
Miriam Connaughton: And, you know, having more of those experiences in your career and in your life is always a good thing.
Shawn Pfunder: You saying that remind me that that changed the trajectory of my life completely at one point, where I was failing miserable. English class, sophomore year, I think I had gotten a 33 percent on like a grammar test or something, and the teacher said, we're going to have to hold you back unless you do extra credit.
Shawn Pfunder: I want you to keep a journal. I want you to do the writing. And when I gave that to her, She said, we're focused on the wrong thing, like you're a remarkable writer, and you're going to be remarkable at doing this. And I just needed to hear it, I think, at that point, you know, went to AP English. I'm a creative writing major, like that's, I went back and told her, she was shocked, but it was just that one thing of her saying, no, you're really good at this.
Shawn Pfunder: Even though it was the thing I was feeling miserable at in another way. Yeah, I see that all the time. Well, Donald, one other thing, you talked about building a high performance index. And I hear, listen, the high performance culture and like slow to hire, quick to fire, like all these things that kind of come with that.
Shawn Pfunder: Break down what you mean by a high performance index. What does that process look like? What does that look like?
Donald Knight: Yeah, let me first give you the origin story. I was talking to a good friend of mine named Chris and we were talking about like, if you could start a company that tracked who originated Ripples.
Donald Knight: Right. So like Miriam now is a chief people and experience officer. But if you track her story back, who started the ripple effect, who led to the many humans along the way that helped you get or achieve where you are today. And like, if there was like a company that could track that, it would be amazing.
Donald Knight: Cause like, if it was like a stock exchange and they were index funds, I would invest in people. who had a history of creating positive ripples in the lives of others or in companies. Like there's something there. It's something to that. And so the idea around high performance indexes, so many leaders talk about high performance and they have very different definitions of what it actually means.
Donald Knight: And most of the time it's actually used in one of only two ways. Despite having various definitions, most people use high performance to fire people and say they're not high performing, or they use it to promote the ones they want to promote and say they are high performing. And so this idea around like, okay, if you look at companies, most companies that are publicly traded, they have an earnings call, private companies, while they may not have an earnings call, they have board meetings.
Donald Knight: But the financial data or the financial performance of a company is actually a lagging indicator. It's not a real time indicator or a future indicator of performance, right? Like. to lagging indicator of people performance. So we started nerding out around like, okay, well, like, what are the metrics around high performance and what does that look like?
Donald Knight: So literally met with like 50 CFOs, some of my favorites, like Chad Gold at G2. And really like, Asked them, like, what are the top 25 metric CFOs track? And then started nerding out for, like, months around what would be the people predictor of that performance stat line. Like, literally, like, nerding out. And I shared it with my buddy, Dean, and he took off two of the 25 and was like, You could bring this to life.
Donald Knight: Like, shareholders would invest in trying to figure out which companies We're doing the right things around their people and analyzing their people performance, especially if you could see a direct correlation or some level of correlation to financial performance. So it's something that has taken over my life over the last two and a half years.
Donald Knight: And my hope is that over the next two and a half years, we can actually bring this to life. And we're partnering with Northwestern University to help have some of those students pressure test the index because you got to make sure you have those intellectually intimidating smart people evaluating some of this index.
Donald Knight: So Miriam, I'll take that as a personal note for myself to share the index with you and have you pressure test it a little bit.
Miriam Connaughton: Hey, you're a fellow nerd, so we can nerd out together. That's fine by me.
Shawn Pfunder: Miriam, have you looked at anything like that before? That, especially I'm really fascinated by the, the ripple effect.
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, you know, kind of what you're on the search for there, Donald, and you know, this is kind of like the Holy grail, you know, I think we've long known and understood correlations between, you know, things like people's intent to stay, people's motivation and all that kind of thing.
Miriam Connaughton: And, and those correlations are strong and there's really good data around that and all that kind of good stuff. But I think. I know I sometimes often through my consulting career, when you're trying to convince sometimes executives, you know, CEOs, C suites, CFOs to do something, you know, the people stuff seems squishy and the soft stuff, I always do that because it's the hard soft stuff.
Miriam Connaughton: And people intellectually or even kind of emotionally know it's important because they're humans, you know, CFOs are humans, CEOs are human. They get it, but they kind of need more evidence. And so. You know, I think you can bring some data to that today, but I think I'm fascinated by what Donald's doing because I think there is definitely more rigor, and I think there's more possibilities as we think about We're drowning in data, but we're not kind of floating all the right insights to the surface.
Miriam Connaughton: And I think I see, if it's like you're doing, Donald, it's really about kind of, we've got, you know, we're in a time where we've got plenty of data. How do we kind of surface those insights that are going to move the conversation forward, move our performance forward, move the employee experience forward in meaningful ways?
Miriam Connaughton: That's fascinating to me.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, it reminds me a little bit of one of Seth Godin's books called Linchpin. So it identifies people at a company that are the, there's like a group of people that are really making the company successful, but they don't necessarily show up as the one that's like slamming the ball.
Shawn Pfunder: Like it's assists. They're the ones that are somehow motivating a group of people or the ones that are just always excited and live the vision and have everything pulled in. And it's always seemed to me like those people could be at risk. If you measure high performance this certain way. So if you measure high performance strictly on the results, the number of hours, the whatever it goes with, but it wouldn't be, if you measure it based on the person that's making the points with the ball, by the way, I know that you both love sports and I don't know sports at all, so I'm just doing my best to do an analogy.
Shawn Pfunder: But you do have that player that's like the one that is always getting the ball to the right person to shoot the points.
Donald Knight: Dude, I think you're spot on. I was at a HR conference and they had a behavioral psychologist speak. And he spoke about the Miami Heat team that had Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh all in their prime, all on the same team, with a great coach like Eric Spolstra and Pat Riley, a former coach, in the front office.
Donald Knight: He asked us, Which player had the highest plus minus? And plus minus meaning, when this person's on the floor, the team is scoring the most and having the least amount of turnovers. You have a room full of CHROs, everybody thinks they're super smart, nobody guesses the right person. The gentleman who was actually, who had the highest plus minus during that team is a gentleman by the name of Shane Battier, who played team basketball at Duke.
Donald Knight: And what they talked about is the, the, the Duke way of basketball was around free flowing. And so when he got on the court, he cared less about how many points he scored. He cared less about how many highlights he made. His whole goal was to make the team better. The guy talks about how Shane was able to pull the superstar talent to the side, like LeBron, like DeWayne, and say, Hey, you need to get Miriam the ball more.
Donald Knight: Or, you're dribbling too much, and Shawn's already at his spot. You need to get him the ball faster. And, just hearing you talk about linchpin, which I wrote down, because I'm gonna make sure I read it. Shane Battier was essentially the linchpin of that team. And in many ways, had he not been there, they would not have been nearly as successful.
Donald Knight: But when that team is talked about, he typically flies somewhat under the radar. The other thing he would do is guard the best player on the other team. And so I think to your point, we have to figure out those types of humans inside of our organizations, because we have to figure out how do we elevate and not just who they are, but their daily practices and behaviors.
Donald Knight: So we can then go out and develop those habits and behaviors and others.
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I think for me, it's analogous as well to some of the things, and there's lots of good research around this. As we look into the network effect, you know, we're all very familiar with the network effect in our general life and social media with influences.
Miriam Connaughton: You have influences inside your organization and understanding and knowing who those influences are. And often they're not ones with the highfalutin titles. But they're the ones that, you know, can influence a lot of the business. You know, they, they're connectors. If you do net, you know, you can do network analysis and see who's connecting with who.
Miriam Connaughton: You, you have super connectors in your organization often that are really important. And I think, you know, I don't, that's something you're looking into with the HPI, Donald, but I think getting into those kinds of behavioral networking insights can be really helpful. 'cause I'm a big believer, you know, a lot of people write about, oh, you know, you need to know.
Miriam Connaughton: top stars are and all this kind of thing. You know, every team needs a Steph Curry, but if you had five Steph Curry's on the court at one time, you're never going to win. You know, you need Draymond Green. You need Iguodala. He's not there anymore, but he was one of my favorites, you know, to come off the bench.
Miriam Connaughton: But yeah, we can talk basketball, Donald, but Shawn can just listen in.
Miriam Connaughton: But you get what I'm saying. And I think, you know, I'm a believer. It's about helping, you know, how you learn from the people who are making the biggest difference. It's wherever they are in the organization and the way they're making a difference. It's not all one way, like you were alluding to, Shawn. It's not just all about, I'm bringing in the dollars, I'm ringing that bell.
Miriam Connaughton: You know, you can, you know, everybody contributes to performance in so many different ways depending on their role.
Shawn Pfunder: That reminds me of like, just looking over, I was working on something different. So I was looking over the, like the Gallup research and engagement, and I think it was this year's report comes back to 20 percent of people feel lonely.
Shawn Pfunder: They suffer from loneliness outside. And how do you fix that if not with people that, what do you call it, Donald? It's like the, the plus minus, is that what, like a stat?
Donald Knight: Yeah, plus minus on what they have.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. And finding out who those people are. Or just championing that. Yeah, I've never seen that. You mentioned, Miriam, that you could track that, like some of the network effects, things like that.
Shawn Pfunder: I've been doing this a long time, but I've never seen that. Like, is that something you do at Simplr that you're able to identify that or identify who those linchpins are?
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah. I mean, certainly it's something that, first of all, I've done some of that work in my consulting career for organizations where we've built kind of ways of, you know, Surfacing their own data around what their network effects are.
Miriam Connaughton: And in Simpplr, I can see some of that through the insights from the analytics I'm able to get when we look at who's commenting on things, how they're responding to content or communications that are going out. You can see who your influencers are. You can actually get insights on who's publishing the most, who's posting the most.
Miriam Connaughton: And not to say that also therefore always translates into impact, but it gives you something to work with. You know, you can start to kind of see that. So you know, certainly there's some things that, you know, other tools as well that can help you surface that. And I think, you know, I love the path that you're on with the work that you're doing, Donald, because I think we're just at the beginning of really understanding that, you know, certainly in the workplace, we're scratching the surface.
Miriam Connaughton: And I think AI especially is going to give us a lot more possibilities there. But coming back to your point about loneliness, by the way. But that 20 percent who say they regularly feel lonely in the workplace, it's the same in society as well. So the workplace is a, you know, often a reflection of society.
Miriam Connaughton: It's 20 percent globally that say that. And it always saddens my heart when I hear that, you know, whether it's in the workplace or outside of the workplace. And I think it's most definitely something both, you know, societal, but also in the workplace that you have, first of all, the duty of care as an organization.
Miriam Connaughton: To change those things. And you also know that if people are expressing that, you know, whether they're expressing loneliness or disengagement or frustration or whatever, you know, they're not able to do their best work. And, you know, I think that's, that's something that you've got to pay attention to.
Shawn Pfunder: I talked to a friend of mine who was an emergency call operator.
Shawn Pfunder: And I, you know, you get to the point he starts talking about weird calls that come in and strange things. And then you have, uh, kind of a Donald mindset on why we call it taking a dump or leaving a dump. You just get morbid. And then finally I asked, what are the worst calls? Like, what are the hardest calls?
Shawn Pfunder: And he said, it's the ones where people call up just cause they want somebody to talk to. He says it's devastating when they call up and it's just loneliness. They just, and they'll even say like, I just needed. Somebody to talk to. So I dialed 9 1 1 in order to talk to somebody.
Miriam Connaughton: It breaks your heart, doesn't it?
Miriam Connaughton: And it, but it just reminds us how, you know, we know this, but we forget it. I think, you know, as we travel through life and we all get so busy, how even the smallest things can mean so much. I've spoken to times of show off. I've spoken to neighbors or people that I come up, you know, in touch with through other things I do outside of work.
Miriam Connaughton: And I say, you're the first person I've spoken to today. And you just think, Oh, my God. You know, cause we crave that naturally. And so it's, it's a real thing. We know it, it damages your mental health, your physical health. Being lonely is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. to your health. I think it was Cigna did a study on that on one of the big health plans.
Miriam Connaughton: It's a real issue and it's a workplace issue, obviously a society issue as well. But yeah, we've got to work at it. And I think it's getting harder because we're not having as many of these in person interactions. I think that's adding to it as well.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Donald, how do you, I mean, loneliness specifically, but just the outside forces of like, you've got anxiety, you've got the outside forces, you've got people that come into work.
Shawn Pfunder: How have you managed that or how do you support your employees in those sorts of situations or address that as a leader of people in your organization?
Donald Knight: I think first of all, it's acknowledging that in all of us, there's this. feeling of or desire to both be acknowledged and fulfilled. I think about like, you know, I'm a date myself a little bit, but one of my favorite shows growing up was called Cheers.
Donald Knight: And if you listen to the theme song of Cheers, it's the writer Gary Portno is basically talking about where everybody knows your name. That's where everybody wants to go. So you have your favorite restaurant or your favorite bar or social scene is because it's that's there. You actually mean something.
Donald Knight: We have to acknowledge that in the workplace. I think historically our profession has been rooted on five major time periods. You know, it started because of being administrative in nature. And then from administration, we went into compliance. From compliance, we went into employee satisfaction. From satisfaction, you got companies that are focused on how do they engage their employees, mainly through this lens of productivity.
Donald Knight: And then last, I think the best companies understand that they want people to be fulfilled. And so if you want people to be fulfilled, you gotta recognize that there's plenty of talent at your organization that just isn't. There is a large sentiment of loneliness. This is the smallest family size we've seen in the Western Hemisphere in history, where the average household is less than two people.
Donald Knight: It's actually 1.6 as of last week. So there's a lot of people out there where their greatest social interaction happens at work. And so we have to figure out what kind of experience do we want people to have. And so for me, I try to lead with. You know, when I'm not having the best of days, I let people know, like, what am I doing to try to mitigate against that?
Donald Knight: What is my morning routine like around yoga and meditation? And, you know, when I do have a pick me up, what was it that happened in my children's life that helped pick me up? And how do you look for people in meetings to make sure that you're paying attention not only to the people speaking up, but the people that are not saying anything?
Donald Knight: Because more often than not Those are the ones you got to make sure you're mindful of. And so I think it's this acknowledgment and this responsibility that I do believe I have a responsibility to help people feel fulfilled at work. Because I think that's when we get their best and their brightest. And to me, that's what I've used to help facilitate either safe space conversations or making sure that I do, like, I call them table for 10 where I'll connect with nine other people at, in the org.
Donald Knight: But trying to make sure that I'm prioritizing not just the business side of the business, but the fulfillment side of the business. Because Miriam can probably tell you this better than I can, but there was a study that came out that said, the average human, if you live to be 75, you end up working 90, 000 hours, which equates to almost a third of your life.
Donald Knight: I just think it would suck for all of us to work a third of our life and that third not be fulfilled. And so You know, in this role and in many roles like it, I feel like people like Miriam and I, we have an extra duty to make sure we shepherd that level of fulfillment in people's human experience, but also helping other leaders that may not necessarily sit in people teams or HR teams.
Donald Knight: To help them understand the role and the impact they can have, the ripple effect that they can have in helping other people feel fulfilled as well.
Shawn Pfunder: Miriam, thoughts on that? My brain goes to the, it's just a job part of it, like a little bit, and then I'm like, yeah, but you really care about your job, Shawn.
Shawn Pfunder: Like, you like what you do.
Miriam Connaughton: It is, yeah, it is. And I know, you know, people Often, and I'm sure you'll have had this, Donald, when you're working today, it's like, yeah, but I'm not their therapist. I'm not their parent. I'm not their whatever. And of course, we're not. It's a job. It's a place of work. It's a business, and we're not responsible and accountable for each other's totality of each other's lives.
Miriam Connaughton: And at the end of the day, like you said, Donald, we spend so much time at work. We have a mantra that we, you know, we aspire to, because every organization is a work in progress here at Simpler, which is when work is good, life is better. And so I think it's, it's about optimizing as best you can, as you say, that workplace experience, Donald.
Miriam Connaughton: We can't solve for anything, we can't solve everything, but, but we can support, we can listen, we can make sure we're doing the best thing possible to equip people, either individuals to develop resilience or, you know, think about how they think about their own careers and equipping managers in that way as well.
Miriam Connaughton: You know, you, we can't take on everything, but I, and I think some of it is like, Some of the examples you gave there, Donald, is also just, you know, helping equip managers, starting with managers, especially because we know they're so important to the employee experience. You know, the whole Gallup research about 2017, they account for 70 percent of engagement in the workplace and they do.
Miriam Connaughton: It's just equipping leaders to be the best possible leaders they can be. And sometimes that means having some of those difficult conversations, you know, giving people space and grace when they need it. It's a very relatable human experience, because I mean, if I did a, you know, we got into kind of big sharing mode, I'll tell you, without going into all the gory details, you know, I've gone through work, I'm sure you've all got stories where I walked into work the day after my first marriage broke up and carried on like nothing had happened, feeling devastated and pretended like nothing was going on in my life, and it was the most devastating thing at the time.
Miriam Connaughton: Or I've gone in after a parent died, or a good friend died. And just pretended like, yes, I would show up. I would get on that plane and I, but I wasn't okay. And, you know, we've all done those. We all know people, or we've ourselves been in that place, where you've been sick, you've had a health concern, your kid's been sick, whatever it is.
Miriam Connaughton: There's always all those other things going on in life that affect us in the workplace. And sometimes, like you were saying, Donald, it can be something very small, like, how are you doing? And just giving people that time to just talk a little bit, or noticing something and saying, you know what, we've got a flexible time off policy, I think you need to take a couple of days off.
Miriam Connaughton: And giving them the support and encouragement to do what they need to do for self care. It's, you know, those small things in the workplace, as they can in life, like you were saying earlier, Shawn, that just, you know, this person's the first person I've spoken to today, that loneliness connection.
Shawn Pfunder: They can make such a difference.
Miriam Connaughton: And they can be turning points for that individual to feel supported, to help them in the moment. And I think we've just all, in life and in work, just got to be attuned to that. And be kind. Do the right thing and be kind.
Shawn Pfunder: I get the impression from both of you that it's not only a, hey, I'm going to ask questions or I'm going to find out or I'm going to initiate the conversation, but you can create a culture or an environment where somebody feels comfortable sharing that with you.
Shawn Pfunder: Even without you asking. So, like, I've experienced the same TMI, right? Oh yeah, my first marriage. And like, I experienced the same, the same thing where you come in, you don't say anything because you're afraid that like, nobody cares about this. Or will this affect my performance? Or is this just going to bring everybody else down?
Shawn Pfunder: And then I've worked at places where that human connection that like, I'm a human being, and I'm trying to figure out my purpose. And I'm trying to figure out what's important to me. And these things happen to me in my life. That Builds an enormous amount of trust with both of them. Donald, you're giving people advice based off of why you're, why you're grumpy.
Shawn Pfunder: Not just, I'm grumpy today, but I'm grumpy and here's what I'm going to try to do about it. And ice cream will be involved, right? Like that's really powerful to me.
Donald Knight: Nah, I like, I love, not even like, I love what Miriam said, their slogan is internally or that catchphrase around when work is good, life is better.
Donald Knight: I couldn't agree more. And I think a part of this is if you think about some of your favorite memories and your favorite places with your favorite people, You always felt safe there. Maybe about four or five years ago, companies started talking about authenticity and telling people to be their most authentic self.
Donald Knight: But if the environment is not safe, people are not going to be their most authentic self. And so part of my signaling when I'm not having the best day or I want people to know, like, I might need grace today, Shawn, if you're looking for me to be the encourager, which I normally am, like, 99 percent of the time, but that 1 percent time, like, I want to make sure that the people around me feel safe enough to know, like, hey, today, Donald, he's not bringing the juice, he doesn't got that energy today, and I think it creates just this environment where people know, like, When they are then walking through those same feelings or emotions that they are now in a safe environment to signal that to the rest of us that we work with.
Donald Knight: And in most times, you don't have to solve their pain. They just want to know that you actually care. They don't need you to go solve to your point around it still being a workplace, Miriam. Most of the time, people just want to know that. that you care, so.
Miriam Connaughton: No, it's, it's that human connection we, we crave so much.
Miriam Connaughton: I mean, I forget who did it now. I'm a bit of a research junkie, so you can probably tell that there's a piece of research done around loneliness, and it was, you are over 300 percent more likely to stay and, you know, want to stay where you are if you've got one person you count as a friend at work. Just one.
Miriam Connaughton: That's all it takes. And then it goes up actually the more connected you feel after that. So if you have one person that, you know, I can think of workplaces where I had many, many good friends, friends I've had over decades from my work life, and then there's other situations I've been in where you don't feel as connected, and we know which ones we prefer.
Miriam Connaughton: And which ones make us want to vance into the office or onto our laptop on the Monday morning because you enjoy the people you're working with and you have a good English expressions, you have a good crack together, you know, you have a good laugh together as well as get a lot of work done. It makes a difference, but it's those small things.
Miriam Connaughton: It's not a huge thing just to say, I've got one good friend at work, or it's a big thing to say, I feel, you know, psychologically safe at work, but small things help you. Feel that and
Miriam Connaughton: believe that and it's those small actions that happen to your point about culture, Shawn. You know, culture to me is kind of just, you know, if you have lots of people with similar habits, that becomes the culture.
Miriam Connaughton: So, you know, it's habit creating. So if, if managers in general are good at creating psychological safety in an organization and they have a habit of practicing that, then people will generally report that's a cultural trait here. I feel relieved. included and I feel like I can be my authentic self because it's very psychologically safe here.
Miriam Connaughton: It doesn't just happen because you say it, it happens because people have healthy habits around that on a daily, moment to moment kind of basis.
Shawn Pfunder: When we talk about this, I'm picturing in my head, knowledge workers, like I'm picturing in my head, you know, the Russian lit majors that got jobs in, in tech, but this applies across the board.
Shawn Pfunder: You got, you know, warehouse workers, you've got frontline workers, you've got mechanics, you've got people doing like God's work. That's the same across the board. This isn't just, Hey, you can afford to have a friend at work. Is that right, Miriam? Like the loneliness, the, what we're talking about, that's across the board.
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, 100%. And you know, it's upwards of 70 percent of the world's jobs are deskless of whatever form, whether that's, you know, you're in a warehouse, you're driving a truck, you're doing deliveries, you're in a hospital, you're not sat at a desk behind a laptop, you know, when you're in those kinds of roles and many more besides.
Miriam Connaughton: That's the majority. of the workplace experience. Not the likes of three of us who, you know, walk down to our home office or occasionally go into a office, you know, and plug in a laptop. You know, we're the minority, even though we get talked about, I think, more. But it's the human condition that is That's what is common.
Miriam Connaughton: And even though people who work in remote jobs or just remotely all the time, you know, from their home office, we do report feeling lonelier. So it's 25 percent versus the 20 percent and people who are in the office all the time, report feeling less lonely at work. It's around 15 or 16%, I think it's still 15 to 16 percent still report feeling lonely, even though they're around people all the time, which is interesting.
Miriam Connaughton: So yes, it's a bigger problem if you're fully remote. But it's a problem in all circumstances because it's the human condition. It's not about where you work that makes you feel lonely. I mean, hands up if you've been in a room full of people and still felt lonely?
Shawn Pfunder: Oh yeah.
Miriam Connaughton: It happens.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Miriam Connaughton: It's not about where you are.
Miriam Connaughton: Loneliness is, it's external factors and it's internal factors. It's not one thing.
Shawn Pfunder: How about you, Donald? Do you have to shift your strategy and measuring like the ripple effect and finding out who those people are that are doing the assist? Do you switch that based off of whether it's a frontline deskless worker?
Shawn Pfunder: Or is it the same for you as well? That it's just the human condition.
Donald Knight: Look, I think the, the foundation is definitely a human condition, but I, I'd be remiss if I didn't say, I think most companies get this wrong when it comes to what Miriam was stating, which is most of the research is done on what we have accepted and have labeled as knowledge workers.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Donald Knight: My concern is that. Not only are the, I call them skilled workers because they typically have some level of expertise that most of us just don't have. But we have not, we haven't been as mindful about the experience they have at work because the work that they do doesn't require them to go into one dedicated physical location.
Donald Knight: And so it's easy to have the old adage out of sight, out of mind.
Donald Knight: And so I do think you have to figure out ways to curate their experience as well. And making sure that they too are equally deserving of the intentionality that you would have for people that do park their time and talent behind a desk.
Donald Knight: And so I think we have to, as a society and as a community, I think we have to grapple with that and try to figure out, you know, what does that look like for the person on the UPS truck? Or what does that look like for the barista at Starbucks? Like, how do you ensure that they also have the same level of connection to the company.
Donald Knight: And often that means curating experiences that are tailored to the environments that they're in, which looks very different sometimes from those that are, you know, quote unquote, knowledge workers. So yeah, I do think in its foundation, it's rooted on humanness, but I do think there's some level of customization that's required in order for them to have that same level of connection, because look, there's, Tons of studies on proximity bias and what happens when you're, when you do report to an office, the connections that you may have with like a senior executive like Miriam is very different from the person that may not have to go into the same Simpplr headquarters every day.
Donald Knight: So how are you somewhat like mitigating against that intentionally to make sure that everyone has that same type of experience? So I do think you have to modify that a little bit. And figure out what works for them.
Shawn Pfunder: Bespoke. The hard question around this, or the one that I'm most interested in then, is if you have leaders.
Shawn Pfunder: And we know that when they do create, I can't believe I'm using that word, bespoke experiences for the folks or like they're intentional about it. Don, you brought this up a little bit earlier when you said the word incentive, like how do you incentivize people that go into management roles, that go into leadership roles, that go into the C suite?
Shawn Pfunder: How do you incentivize them to be more human, to be more intentional, to care about the loneliness epidemic we're looking at or to care about Essential workers that haven't become essential workers again, you know, that it's slipped. What do you do to incentivize them?
Donald Knight: First, I mean, you have to have qualitative measures.
Donald Knight: Most companies look at quantitative measures when evaluating performance or recognizing and incentivizing performance. I think you have to have a qualitative component that is centered around people. And to that end, mine can't be in contradiction. With Miriam, if we're on the same team, because if so, we just incentivized her not to be part of the team, to only focus on her team and not mine.
Donald Knight: So you gotta have those qualitative measures. I think who you promote, who has more share of voice. I think there's three companies that I know have done this really well. UPS, at one point you couldn't become an executive if you never sat on a truck. Nike, their current CEO, Elliott started out as an intern.
Donald Knight: I think that's amazing because he can speak to the many jobs that it took to get to CEO. And there's another gentleman, another apparel company, Chris Davis, who's the president and chief marketing officer for New Balance, despite his parents owning the majority shares in New Balance because it's a privately held company.
Donald Knight: They didn't give him an easy road, like he had to start doing the entry level work and work his way up. And I think there's something to that because it then promotes to the organization that they value that level of leadership, that you have a certain level of connectedness, not just with knowledge workers, but also with skilled talent as well.
Donald Knight: And I think that's the second one. I'm also mindful of like, You know, when I graduated high school, the only people that got talked about in the graduation ceremony pamphlet were people that were either going in the military or Or people who had scholarships. And I think we missed the ball. Like if I could go find my principal, principal Dubowski, I would tell him, I think we missed it because there were plenty of people that right now they're buying baby boomer businesses because they went into the trades, they're super skilled.
Donald Knight: Many of them have done financially well off, but we didn't celebrate those professions.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah.
Donald Knight: I can see how that could have been detrimental. Mental. To who they are because we basically were saying if you went into the military or if you got, you know, scholarships at some of the biggest schools or Ivy League schools, then you were worthy of recognition, right?
Donald Knight: But if you went into the trades, if you went into skills, you weren't necessarily as worthy as said recognition. So to your question, Shawn, about how do you incentivize that? I think we got to recognize those wins as well. Recognize, you know, the truck driver that has zero safety incidents over a million miles driven.
Donald Knight: Whether you're at a Coca Cola down the street from me or UPS, how do you celebrate that? How do you celebrate those linchpins inside the organizations that may not have fancy titles in front of their names? But when the people want to rally around a certain common voice that drives the culture, it's those individuals.
Donald Knight: And so I think we got to figure out how do we incentivize it and tie it, uh, qualitatively, but also then celebrate it in shared spaces the same way we celebrate others.
Shawn Pfunder: Miriam, I was just curious, I was like, how do you do that qualitatively?
Miriam Connaughton: You know, it's just some things that Donald already mentioned. I mean, it's who you celebrate and who you recognize and who you tell stories about in your organization.
Miriam Connaughton: It says a lot. Oh, that's right. Yeah. About what you value, what your values are, you know, it becomes almost like the oral tradition, the oral history of that company. And for me, that's a really valuable part of culture. In my consulting days, when I was doing a lot of work around, you know, organization, culture, and change, I was always like, it felt like a culture detective, you know, when I first was getting to know a company and meeting the people and learning about how they operated and their programs and, you know, how they use their physical space, all of the above tell you something about this place, but one of the biggest, most important things I would ask people to say, tell me the two or three top stories that get shared here with New Highs.
Miriam Connaughton: And there's an amazing commonality between the ones that people who've been there for a while say, Oh, well, yeah, the time when the CEO did this or the time when, you know, that happened and how we responded as a company, that really said something. So I think it's, it's who you recognize, the stories you tell and the stories you share.
Miriam Connaughton: And it's not just for leaders, like, you know, you posed the question around leader, Shawn, but I think how you answered it was right, Donald. It applies to everybody. It's criteria for promotion based on what criteria, who, and how do you get promoted? And I think very importantly, although I know I can cite examples, I'm sure we all have in our career where despite that, you know, people have promoted some, well, yeah, but their numbers are great.
Miriam Connaughton: Yet they get the worst ranking as a people manager and everybody kind of knows they're a bit of a jerk or whatever it is, but no, but their numbers are really good. When you do something against the grain of what you want and aspire your culture to be, that's also very telling and people will remember those things.
Miriam Connaughton: And you know, one of the things, you know, it's a bit of a cliche, but what you kind of tolerate is what you get as your culture in part as well. And so I think the other side of that is important to pay attention to. Hold up your heroes. Tell all the good stories, recognize people, appreciate criteria for promotion, but be very aware of, you know, some of that, what you tolerate is what you get as well, but it's hard to manage it all.
Miriam Connaughton: As we know, Donald, especially you've got a bigger organization than I do. You can't manage everything that moves, but you just try and put the best systems and processes and oversights and set up the right conversations so that you minimize those kinds of risk opportunities happening.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah, I know not everybody do performance reviews and, or manage performance in the same way, but that traditional sort of, doesn't meet expectations, meets some, exceeds, things like that, becomes really powerful if somebody's just killing it, numbers wise, or killing it, just knocking stuff out, but they get a meet some.
Shawn Pfunder: Because how they do it is just like burning through the organization. It speaks volumes, I think, when something like that happens. Well, I'd be remiss if I don't talk about AI. I know this is something, Miriam, you've looked at a lot and talked about. And listen, I work at an AI company, so I get AI ed out these days.
Shawn Pfunder: But I am curious. When we're talking about, I guess, increasing employee satisfaction, increasing employee engagement, creating more connection between humans using the robots. Like, Miriam, what are you seeing that's making that possible when it comes to AI?
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah, you know, and I say, yeah, it's kind of a tongue in cheek, isn't it?
Miriam Connaughton: Every podcast has to mention AI at the moment. You know, I would say, you know, we're still fairly early days in this. So I know everybody's talking about AI, you know, let's be honest about this. You know, we're relatively early. When we look back in five years time, 10 years time, we'll realize that this is, wasn't when it all kind of came to fruition.
Miriam Connaughton: It's when it started. You know, it's like when we started with the internet, everybody got rightly very excited about the possibilities, but you couldn't have imagined where we took it and where it went. And I think that's the same with AI. But I think some of the things that I'm at least optimistic about is one of it is what we've touched on already, which is the power of insights from data that AI can give us, which will help us answer some important questions like how do we get people better connected?
Miriam Connaughton: Who are our super connectors? Who's out there feeling isolated? Maybe not voicing it, but we can see from the data that they are, or they're not connected in the way we need them to connect to function really well. So I think getting those kind of insights, AI is going to help us elevate more of that. I hope we don't get to the dystopian place where your AI assistant is your friend and your best friend at work.
Miriam Connaughton: I still want that to be you.
Shawn Pfunder: And you don't know that is an AI assistance.
Miriam Connaughton: I know it's like, you think you're talking to that lovely coworker, Donald, such a friendly guy, but really it's just all AI, but hopefully we don't get to that place, but I think joking aside AI are good right now. It learns rules.
Miriam Connaughton: It's good at repetitive things. It's better at repetitive things than we are as humans. We make more mistakes around some of those repetitive things. So I think as it takes more of those on, I think hopefully it will give us those productivity gains, meaning just time back that we can focus on things that are more impactful to us.
Miriam Connaughton: Performance in a different way to the human experience in the workplace, to giving leaders, managers room to breathe, to be better managers. Cause I know that's kind of the blight of managers saying, well, I don't have time for all this people stuff.
Miriam Connaughton: I think it's going to hopefully give us some more of that breathing space.
Miriam Connaughton: And I hope we harness that in the right way. Those are a couple of things that I'm very excited about. There's that productivity release. Hopefully it can give us to focus on things that are more impactful for us as humans. And then that insight piece. That I think it can give us as we truly get to some answers that we haven't been able to answer yet.
Shawn Pfunder: Yeah. Yeah. Donald, how do you feel about the robots? How are you using them?
Donald Knight: I am a robot. I'm just kidding.
Shawn Pfunder: I mean, the video is going to get that good. We'll be like, Hey, he looks real.
Donald Knight: I mean, I would underscore the same sentiments as Miriam. I think most humans right now are still grappling with the potential impact that AI can have and typically when you see societies introduce new Innovations, whether it be going from agriculture to the industrial revolution, whether it was the internet or even now artificial intelligence.
Donald Knight: I mean, the over, there's a large portion of society that is essentially scared and fearful. And I understand why in the sense that it's something new, but similar to Miriam, every time humans on this planet have had to evolve, We've always risen to that challenge. And so I think this is just another challenge of us trying to figure out.
Donald Knight: We have an opportunity to accelerate the fulfillment that people have in the human experience. We really can like really revolutionarily change the way that people work every day. And. That this technology has allowed us to do that. And you know, whether you're Sam Altman or you're Alan Turing, I'm appreciative for both because of their contributions to the technology.
Donald Knight: But I agree with Miriam, we're so early on, but I think this allows us to like truly dream about, okay, what do we want that to be? Interaction between companies and talent to look like moving forward. And then like, how can we make sure that we're deploying the technology in a way that automates some of the mundane or routine things, or how do we elevate the right insights in order for us to be able to move quicker and more swiftly, but make more sound decisions?
Donald Knight: So I'm personally excited. I typically run towards the eye of the storm, not away from it. But I just want to make sure, like, for the listeners that may be listening and they're struggling and grappling with that, I get it. Because we also have something else that's rather unique, is the generational continuum of people in the workplace has never had this varied of personas.
Donald Knight: You know, humans are living longer. And so, what may be default for some when it comes to working with technology and evolving is completely different for others. And so I think it's also, there's a responsibility. for companies to somewhat create the testing space, the environment for people to build that level of comfort.
Donald Knight: I wear, my favorite jeans are Levi's and just to hear that this gentleman didn't start the company so I can go buy jeans from him was just hilarious to me. I was like, what do you mean? It's like, he didn't have me in mind when he knew I wanted a dark wash 507. Like, and I think that's what's happening with AI.
Donald Knight: It's like, What it may have intended to be, the way we deploy this could literally radically change the human experience for a positive way. And so I hope that we all rise to that occasion the way that we always have on this planet.
Shawn Pfunder: There's an irony in there, which I really love is that the robots are AI.
Shawn Pfunder: And I agree with both of you that it's giving us the opportunity if we can take it and we use it to be more human. than we have been for the past 200 years. So it's the industrial revolution. Here's the opportunity to connect.
Miriam Connaughton: Yeah, 100%. I would bet on human intelligence over artificial intelligence any day of the week.
Shawn Pfunder: Well, both of you, very inspiring. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared and talking through this. I hope we get to chat again, Donald. Like I'll say like, Oh no, Donald, let's connect. And then. We'll run into each other at a conference five years from now and you'll remember, Hey Shawn, remember when you said that?
Shawn Pfunder: And then you never connected, but please stay in touch. And Miriam, you're a wealth of knowledge, like your experience of consulting the stuff that you've worked on. It's just been really enlightening for me. And I think super enlightening for the listeners. So thanks again, both of you.
Miriam Connaughton: Appreciate that. Thank you.
Donald Knight: No, thank you for having us.
Shawn Pfunder: All right. So in closing, where do we find you? Where do we find out more about you? What you're working on? Donald. You first.
Donald Knight: Oh man. All right. This is cool. Uh, I'm on literally every social platform as Donald F. Knight. No, the F is not for Francis. It is for Franklin because my grandmother had an affinity for Benjamin Franklin.
Donald Knight: So yeah, Donald F. Knight on LinkedIn. Um, that's where I'm at. And if you want to email me, I don't mind cause this is a great listeners. And I told Shawn that I would let you all connect with me. So DonaldFKnight at WBD.com. Reach out to me. Would love to stay connected.
Shawn Pfunder: Awesome. Awesome. Miriam?
Miriam Connaughton: Mine's a little more slimmed down, but for business contacts, LinkedIn is where to find me.
Miriam Connaughton: My email's also on there too. And I'm happy. Always love connecting. It's community is what matters to the human race. So I'm a fan.
Shawn Pfunder: Perfect. All right. Thanks.