In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes, Scott Allender and Emma Sinclair talk to Alex Zekoff. Alex is CEO and Co-founder of Thoughtful, an organisation with a mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of automation and AI so humans can solve our most complex existential problems. He believes that automation gives human workers the freedom to pursue the creative strategic work that builds companies as well as their careers. Thoughtful’s Robotic Process Automation aims to help businesses save up to 90% of their workforce’s time, increasing operational efficiency and lowering expenses.
0.00 Introduction
3.31 Can you tell us about your background and why you co-created Thoughtful?
6.51 Can you give us clarity on what you are selling?
9.19 Can you tell us more about what all of this means and where it’s heading in the context of the future of organisations and job security?
13.09 If we fast forward five years, it’s going to fundamentally change the nature of work. Have you got a sense of what the world is going to look like when that happens?
16.52 You talked about health care claims and how you see that in terms of automation. Given the breadth of what you work on, I wondered if you see certain industries that are way behind the curve. What’s your view on leaders and laggers in this space?
18.47 You recently wrote that to avoid a sinking ship, leaders need to approach management by cutting through the noise and focussing on first principles which are defined as a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. What are these first principles?
20.36 We see this in action all of the time. How do you help people to get there? What’s your process?
22.38 How do you help people to break through the assumptions that are holding them back?
24.52 You’ve described how smart people can lie to themselves because they use their intelligence to make convincing arguments that undermine their long-term interests. You mention using a blue and a red team to disrupt that thinking. Can you talk to us about that process?
27.04 If in five years we’ve brought our lagging industries forward in terms of automation and we’ve got more valuable stuff, but we’ve still got humans with a finite amount of potential skill, what will humans be doing in that space?
29.35 It feels like there are broader ethical concerns here (that we must confront) if we continue automating everything.
34.38 In Forbes you made some predictions about this year, and one of them was ‘Goodbye Wokeism, being woke is out in ‘23’. What’s your definition of wokeism and why is it out?
39.13 In terms of a growth mindset approach, can we still pursue wanting to make sure that we’re evolving in our language and how we treat groups and individuals while also potentially directing our attention to larger scale issues such as staying on the planet?
42.27 You've said that companies building software to track productivity and KPIs precisely win over companies that aren’t measuring performance at that granular level. Can you talk to us about how you are seeing this playing out in the relationship between people and organisations?
45.28 We’ve touched on the notion that AI introduces a load of peril, so what are the moral implications for leaders today as we embark on this journey? What do they need to do to prevent future disasters where AI might collapse a company, destroy a marketplace or worse?
