327 - Putting AI agents on the org chart: Becks Port (Chief People Officer, Okta)

0:00Becks Port: If you think of an agent as a co-worker, then it has to be managed by somebody. So somebody is accountable for making sure that co-worker is doing the right things, that that co-worker is the quality of work that they're producing is right. You are clear about where the handoffs are from one co-worker to another. And so for us, having agents on your org chart is really critical. Every agent may not end up on the org chart, but where you've got an agent who is executing tasks and making decisions, we feel it's really important to have it on the org chart. You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast, where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and work experts.

0:46We talk to them about how they've gotten to where they're at, what they do every day, and what they see coming next for the future of work. Hope you enjoy.

0:57Bex, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

1:00Becks Port: I'm doing well. How are you? Doing well. As I was sharing with you before we hit record, this is like a rare day where I have no meetings booked. And so I feel like I've been able to accomplish a lot today, which I feel like, you know, some days it's like nothing but meetings. So I'm feeling good. How about you? yeah well i've got no meeting envy because that's not my day has it been like the complete opposite of that yeah complete opposite i'm just back from vacation so yeah well hopefully this is the most fun meeting of your day exactly yeah well we start every episode the exact same way and that's with something we call good news stories we all go around and share anything personal could be work related, just any positive news that you can think of from the last couple of weeks.

1:52And we'd like for our guests to go first.

1:54Becks Port: Okay, well, the positive news, like I said, I'm just back from vacation and I, my cup is full because I was with my in-laws and my sisters and their children, or my sister-in-laws and their children and their families. And so there were 14 of us in a villa celebrating my husband's 50th and my father-in-law's 80th birthday. So it was very, very fun. Dang. Had the whole crew together. The whole crew. And I was slightly nervous, but it turned out okay. Steven, what do you got? My good news is everyone has survived. So I was sharing with Bex before we hit record that this is my first episode back as just a co-host, which means I've started a new job.

2:44And the job is a pretty big job. I'm head of revenue, head of sales. And it's been, anytime there's change, it's like, oh no, I catastrophize. Like everything is going to go wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah. But everyone's okay. It's been a good week. I have, I'll keep it at that. My good news is I'm surviving a new job and everything has been like smooth, going smooth at NPL in this first week. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Well, congrats on the first week. And I'm stalling for a second. My good news is that I will have my daughter solo again this weekend. So in the last month and a half, there have been two bachelorette parties that my wife's gone on.

3:29So there was one a couple weeks ago, and then she's going on another one this weekend. And so starting tomorrow night through Sunday, it's just going to be some solo Daniel and Lena time, and I'm looking forward to it. The last weekend this happened, she got a really bad fever and it kind of ruined our plans. We had to hunker down at home and couldn't do all the fun things that I had planned. And so I still have like that full schedule that I had mapped out. And yeah, we've got some fun things on the agenda for this weekend and I'm looking forward to it. Oh, fun. And so where we want to start today is with our, essentially what I call the Brene Brown question.

4:11It's like, what is your story, Bex? Like, you've had a pretty amazing career, and we want to know the twists and turns. How much compensation risk do you think is hiding in your spreadsheets right now? For a lot of people teams, comp has gotten way more complex than the system supporting it. You got merit cycles, bonuses, incentive plans, approvals, benchmarking, pay equity. transparency requirements. And somehow, a lot of it is still being managed through Excel, manual uploads, or HRIS modules that weren't really built for this level of complexity. And you know, that's all fine and dandy until there are three versions of the same comp file, or one person becomes the single source of truth, or leadership asks why a pay decision was made, and the answer is harder and harder to explain.

5:01That's where BCom comes in. Be Calm is a purpose-built compensation platform for organizations managing complex pay programs, especially those teams that I was just referring to that have outgrown what spreadsheets can comfortably handle. It helps people and total rewards leaders run complex comp cycles at the speed of business, connect compensation, performance, and pay equity in one place, create clear governance with clear audit trails, and use AI responsibly with humans still in control of the decisions. If your comp strategy is getting harder and harder to manage, Be Calm is worth checking out.

5:38You can learn more at becom.com slash MPL. That's B-E-Q-O-M dot com slash MPL.

5:46Becks Port: Well, I grew up in a very working class family in a place called Hull in the north of England. And that just instilled me with this huge curiosity of what's out there in the world. There's got to be a bit more than this. And that led me to say yes a lot. And it also made me really curious about people and what motivates people, why are they like they are, how do they make decisions. And so I did a degree, a master's, a PhD in psychology and became a psychologist and started my career in consulting. And I was always wanting to live outside of the UK. and so when somebody said hey will you go on a short-term assignment to India for three months I said yeah sure and I went to India and stayed there for three years and set up a consulting practice there from there I moved to Singapore I joined a bank and took on a whole range of roles doing sort of various things learning and development talent management being a HR business partner over about a 10-year period and I always and so spent nine years in Singapore always wanted to live in the US and so finally got the opportunity to move to the US about 10 years ago and became head of HR for Europe and Americas, lived in New York.

7:07Becks Port: And then I was really curious about tech. So when I joined banking, everybody wanted to work for a bank and then slowly over time, everybody wanted to work in tech. And so I was really curious as to why and joined Netflix. and Netflix taught me that kind of similar to living in India, what you think is normal is not necessarily normal. Things don't have to be the way that you think is the way. So I joined Netflix. Obviously, it's got a world-renowned culture for disruption and doing things differently. So I spent a few years there, then went on to become the chief people officer at 10X Genomics.

7:43Becks Port: And then about six months ago, I became chief people officer here at Okta. Man, so tell us about the first six months. How have they been so far? You know, it's awesome. I feel like I've come home. I feel like Okta is just such a cool company at a cool time where, you know, we are at the forefront of securing AI as AI takes off, making sure that, you know, agents are managed as an identity type the same way as humans is difficult, but it's really important. And so there's lots of exciting innovation going on. We've been looking at, you know, what is the culture that we need? What is life for Okta as we support securing AI and new business frontiers?

8:28Becks Port: So it's great to be here. Amazing. And I think most people are familiar with Okta, at least if you work anywhere like in the corporate world. I think it's a fairly well-known brand, but like to the layperson in the streets, like how do you explain what you do? so this how i explain it to my mother-in-law is you know we enable employees to access technology securely and so the way i explain it to my kids is octa's like the hall monitor making sure that the right people are in the right classrooms and so we're making sure that the right people have access to the right systems and i feel like that's the perfect segue into what we're going to talk about today.

9:13I think you and the Okta team have this belief that AI agents are co-workers, whether we treat them that way or not. And, you know, the risk is when they're co-workers with no managers and no, you know, job description. And so let's just start there. At Okta, how are you viewing these agents and how is that, you know, influencing the way that you're building out the team going forward?

9:37Becks Port: Yeah, I think, you know, we see agents largely as digital workers and as co-workers for exactly that reason. You know, if you think of an agent as a co-worker, then it has to be managed by somebody. So somebody is accountable for making sure that co-worker is doing the right things, that that co-worker is the quality of work that they're producing is right. And you are clear about where the handoffs are from one co-worker to another. And so for us, having agents on your org chart is really, really critical. Now, does that mean every single agent? So, you know, many of us have certainly learned to vibe code.

10:21Becks Port: And so in the last six months, I thought vibe coding was, you know, I had no idea what it was six months ago, but I can now make an agent to read my emails and things like that. Every agent may not end up on the org chart, but where you've got an agent who is executing tasks and making decisions, we feel it's really important to have it on the org chart. And so this feels like a pretty significant mindset shift for some. Like obviously once you get, you know, you get used to it and there's clear definitions and language defined for how, you know, how we're referring to everything and everyone.

10:58But can you share with us like how, what did you, was that front of mind that like, wow, we're going to have to help our people, like maybe look at things a little differently and maybe what tactics did you use and like what worked and maybe what didn't. Share with us just kind of the journey around that.

11:16Becks Port: Yeah. And it is a journey, Stephen. It really is. And we'll, you know, I think we'll all be on this journey for some time. And I think one of the benefits of having agents on the org chart is almost kind of reducing that threat. Like if I go back a couple of years ago, I genuinely believe that there was a belief that agents are going to replace all of our jobs. If you look at Davos a couple of years ago, you know, white collar job loss was kind of the prominent topic. And it felt like there was a belief that it was like literally a lift and shift. So we are going to take your job, your new job as leading sales, and we're going to directly be able to replace what you do with an agent.

11:55Becks Port: I think, and thankfully, the thinking has evolved and we've realized that it's not just quite as simple as a lift and shift. And so what we need to do is to break down jobs into tasks and say, okay, there are parts of your job that could be done by an agent and there's parts of somebody else's job that could be done by an agent and we can create a new job that didn't previously exist. And then that has a massive impact on what your actual existing job is. And so helping people understand and work through on that journey, really, it's about deconstructing and reconstructing roles and thinking about handoffs and thinking about what is uniquely human and what can you actually do is all part of that journey and part of that process.

12:35We had Brandon Roberts on the show last week. I don't know when this is going to air in relation to that recording, but for us, we recorded it last week and he walked us through how they've used like an AI heat map of sorts to do like an audit of every role within the company and so for every person they have access to data around like how their job is going to change what this means for them and maybe like new types of jobs that are going to emerge within their team and so yeah does that is that the type of work that your team is doing? Or is that further into the future? Just curious.

13:17Becks Port: Yeah, I mean, that's great. And I completely agree. If you think about the spectrum of kind of fully digital worker, fully human worker, all of our jobs are somewhere on that spectrum, right? And it's really about saying, okay, well, this is the part that can be digital, done by a digital colleague. This is the part that actually we need to be absolutely done by a human and working through that. I think there are varying degrees of appetite, both, you know, across different roles, different functions, different parts of any business. But yeah, that is absolutely the work. We have not gone to the extent of saying, oh, this is how everybody's job is going to be impacted.

13:55Becks Port: But I think that that's really useful because one of the things I'm seeing, even in my own team, is the jobs that AI is actually creating. So again, back to this, you know, I'd love us to be able to settle the AI anxiety. Like ultimately, AI is going to create new businesses, new jobs, and almost like the invention of electricity. You know, if you worked in a candle factory when electricity was impacted, yes, your job was probably impacted. But the amount of jobs and the leap forwards that we've been able to make because of electricity means that there are many, many more jobs now than there were decades ago.

14:33Becks Port: And I feel like AI is the same but if you're in a role that may be impacted right now, especially, I don't know actually where you guys sit, but especially as we sit in San Francisco and many of the buildings around here have said we've done layoffs because of AI. People are worried about their jobs, but what I'm seeing internally here at Okta is it is creating new roles. I have a role in my team that is head of AI transformation. That role didn't exist six months ago. We've just implemented internal agent called DEX that is sort of query management and it can answer and complete tasks across the people team, across IT, across travel and expenses.

15:17Becks Port: And that, if you worked in our people operations team and were previously answering employee queries, some of that work is now done by DEX. But what now that team is doing is checking, one, the quality of answers that Dex is giving. And two is all of the information that we're putting into Dex accurate up to date. So their job has radically shifted. The job still exists. It just looks different in this new world. And so I'm super curious, like what does an org chart look like? Do you have, is it literally just like a traditional org chart and like in your HRIS you're tracking or in a, like a side system, you're tracking the agents that are considered employees or agents that sit on the org chart and that is like all visualized together.

16:10Like what does that look like?

16:12Becks Port: Yeah, good question. I don't know yet. My hypothesis around is, like I say, I don't know that every single agent will appear on the org chart. Like, you know, if you've got an agent that summarizes your Slack messages, that's probably not going to appear on an org chart. but where there is sort of an execution of tasks I think that's probably like as I'm thinking about like where does that line sit and making sure that it reports to someone so you know the agent that we're looking to put on our own org chart is we are putting in an agentic coach that is going to help coach people managers around how do I give feedback how do I manage this performance how do I deal with this employee challenge and it will sit side by side with people business partners and that will be an identic coach that we will have on the org chart.

17:02Becks Port: I think the really interesting question is the org chart of the future. If you think about most organizations, you have some form of R &D organization, sales, G &A functions, and they finance, legal, HR, and they kind of sit in a similar way. And there may be some degrees of difference around that, but not many. What AI will do, we'll be able to look across all of these teams as we kind of execute more processes that might involve HR, finance, legal, sales. And so the org chart of the future might actually look very different. We might see that, you know, is there such a thing as a chief people officer in the future?

17:43I totally see why a coach would be entity on an org chart and would sit under HR, like very very different scale and context but Daniel and I were talking last week just like open AI like you know Daniel was saying like how he just doesn't seem to use chat GPT anymore and like that I think is a very common thing like a lot of people use Claude it's superior in so many different ways but for me I use chat GPT I have a chief strategy officer bot and this is like the chief strategy officer at Stevens, all the things Stevens doing. And that bot is by far the most, it's like superior at anything relating to how I get work done, how I like to research, how I like to communicate, how I like to draft things.

18:35And it also coaches me on a like, okay, like I have this situation or I have this problem at work, like how do I solve it? And so I think that's a clear example. You know, one question I do have as it relates to the broader org chart, because I'm super like, I just want to fast forward and see like, what is this actually going to look like? But I guess I get to be a part of like building it with the startup. And so decision making is what I want to talk about next. And like with an org chart, there's like implied decision making or like there can be like a decision making lens. and how are you thinking about like this the future and where we need to differentiate or having have like decision making matrices like there's a human matrix that you know is there an agent matrix like I'm just curious or like is this all still too nebulous it's still too unclear to really understand like where this is all going in terms of decision yeah just curious look I think

19:36Becks Port: right now I think a lot of the decision making still lies with humans and I think as we continue to deconstruct roles and then reconstruct them getting into that it's not particularly exciting but getting into the lucid chart level of the flow of the process flow of like okay what is the decision and what decision can we delegate and when do you say oh no that's like above my pay grade. So like as a agentic coach, I can coach you and so on. But when you say to me, okay, I want to terminate this employee. Okay, that's not I can't help you with that. I'm going to kick you to an actual HR business partner, because they need to decide whether or not you can do that and support you through that.

20:17Becks Port: So that's why this task level granularity, and it's really hard, and it takes a long time to get to and this deconstruction is really, really important. And you mentioned that you hired a head of AI transformation recently. Are these the types of projects that you have them working on? Or yeah, like what's under their remit? I'm just curious what their... Yeah, so within the people team, they are tasked with a couple of things. One, where are the agents on the org chart going to come? So the agentic coach is, you know, the obvious one. Maybe the next one is, do we have an agent that onboards employees?

20:54Becks Port: Think about if you were to think about your new job this week, Stephen, right? Think about if you had an agent that was, hey, Stephen, you meet day one, make sure you choose your benefits, make sure your laptop's working. But day two, here's all the training you've got to do. And day three, if you met this person, hey, what did you think about this person? I've recorded the interview with your meeting with this person. And really that kind of like, buddy that's going to help you onboard into an organization. That might be another one. So this, our head of AI transformation within the people team is looking at what is the technology because it's moving really quickly and what products should we be integrating.

21:31Becks Port: They're also looking at how do we upskill our employees? We are very focused on making sure that we have a very AI proficient workforce. So what AI days should we be doing? What are our AI tools that we're providing people and helping our own employees grow and learn? So one idea you brought up in the prep was this Hank idea. So tell us about Hank. So yeah, again, this is naming an agent and having an agent that can help you. And so I was really fortunate that we were all tasked and my boss said, okay, I want you all to learn how to vibe code and build an agent. So you can build an agent to do anything.

22:10Becks Port: And it was a really great team activity because we all came up with different things. So one person came up with, I've built an agent that helps me pick my dream team, the the fantasy football team and looking at all the data, somebody else was like, okay, this is a chief of staff. But the notion of it is build something, name it, learn to work with it as a co-worker, because we all need to get over that anxiety and learn how to treat agents as digital colleagues. Why Hank? Why Hank? Oh God, I honestly, I don't know if I've got a good answer for that. I've got another one that I called Octavia, which is largely because that's my favorite name.

22:48Becks Port: And And then I was like, oh, and it kind of sounds like Okta. And so, yeah. And so going back to, you know, like the org structure of the future, if we drill down into the people team, we're starting to see some trends over the last few weeks. So as I mentioned, we talked to Brandon Roberts. We also talked to Jessica Zvon, who's at Leapsome. And she's, you know, starting to think about the future of HR and what this looks like. And they had very similar ideas for how the people team is structured or like the three types of archetypes that are emerging. And Jesse's was, you know, there's like three buckets.

23:24So one, you have like the coaches and advisors on the team. The second bucket being the architects. So the people that are technical in building this new tool stack and making sure that everything's connected and thinking about how everything's going to talk to each other and like where the decisions lie. and then the third being like the physical experience any any thoughts on that any reactions

23:48Becks Port: yeah we're thinking about it similarly you know if I think about kind of the people team I think you end up with like a digital front door where people's initial interaction is with you know some sort of agent for us it's decks and I've got a query and and these are query management I think you've got a focus on employee and manager experience. What is that experience? What does it mean to be a manager in this world? And then I think you have the coaches, advisors, workforce architects. And these are strategic people working with leaders to say, okay, how are you structuring your team? And then I think within every team, you have these roles that maybe are more an engineering background, maybe more kind of traditional sort of tech architects of, OK, how can we, what can the technology do?

24:42Becks Port: Because I say, oh, look, you know, in theory, I would like this role to be an agent. Well, does it actually exist or can we build it? You know, I want to build all kinds of things, but I need my technology team to tell me, well, that's not possible or we could build it, but it would be really expensive or the integration between these systems just won't make that possible. And so I think within teams, you will see more embedded technology architects to say, okay, this is what you can actually do. Because as we really think about the org structure within every team, what are those digital colleagues that sit on it?

25:19Becks Port: And what can we build? And have we got the budget to build it as well? So I want to shift gears a little bit with the time we have left. And so, you know, shifting to digital colleagues, I think is a perfect place to kind of jump off. And one of the things that I think about is, you know, just all of the things that are going to be redefined. And, you know, one dimension of that is like, what is career development look like for me as a human working alongside machines? And not only like development, but even performance. and like you know is it getting the best is it high performance working with humans and bots and having clear like evidence of having you know push my work forward is it being able to get the most out of my work with my agentic colleagues I'm so curious like how y 'all are looking at that yeah so a couple of ways I think the future I mean look nobody knows the future so I think really securing yourself and saying I'm going to be as AI proficient as possible is one of the things one of the ways that we've leaned in you know I can't tell you what all of the roles are for the future so I can't prepare you in a similar way where historically we've had you know career ladders or pathways that you can follow but I can say is AI is going to impact all of our roles so let's make sure that we give you all the access we can to the learning and the tools to make you as AI proficient.

26:53I think the second thing is if you are early in your career, I think there's never

26:59Becks Port: been a more exciting time to join the workforce. Because if you are joining, and even if it is your, you know, your chat, just using chat GPT or building a custom gem in Gemini that is your strategic career and development advisor, having a tool that you can say, hey, I'm going to write this email. Can you check it? Or I'm about to do this presentation on my internship. Can I talk it out to you and you give me real time feedback? I mean, these tools are just so incredible. I look at the internships and I think, gosh, I wish I'd have had that. Do you remember the days like, you know, early in your career where you spent like three and a half hours just staring at the same email?

27:43Like I'm like, why didn't we have this back then? That would have made our lives so much easier and less stressful.

27:49Becks Port: Right, and who did you ask for advice and guidance? Maybe your friends, maybe your boss every now and then, but not every day, every minute. You know, you used to stand in front of the mirror and practice your presentation. You didn't have somebody listening to it and giving you really solid, great feedback. So I think that development is gonna be accelerated and I think that that's a really exciting time. When it comes to sort of looking at how do we develop careers, I also think that kind of old school graduate programs might make a comeback. Because if you think about agents taking more junior level jobs, I do think that jobs will be pushed downwards.

28:32Becks Port: Like I don't think that we're going to say, okay, we're not going to have any entry level. I think entry level jobs will become more complex and more interesting. So that's good for people. But I also think that if there are fewer of those, because we've automated so much that we may end up with a more of a kind of pooled model. Like I grew up in England, Marks and Spencers and Goldman Sachs were the grad program that you wanted to get on, right? And you spent three years rotating around and then you came out and you were sort of a bit more well-rounded. I think we might see much more investment of that because if we don't invest in early career talent, then we're going to run the supply and demand issue for mid-level talent is is going to hit us.

29:12On that note, at Okta, do you, or is this something that y 'all are working on or that you'd like to build in the future?

29:21Becks Port: Yeah, we're leaning heavily into our internships. In fact, our intern program is just, they're, they're just rolling off, but yeah, we are absolutely still very hot on early career talent. Thank you. I think you're the, you're one of the first people that we've heard say that in the last, I don't know, six to 12 months. I did a panel a few months ago and the three or four people leaders on the panel with me, none of them, I think the question I asked them was like, what's your strategy with early career talent? And the response was basically like, we don't have one and it's not a focus or a priority for us.

29:55What does the internship program look like? Is it different from what you would have seen 10, 15 years ago or is it largely the same?

30:03Becks Port: I mean, it's largely the same. We bring people in over the summer, we use it as a three month interview process to get the best talent in, and we bring them into a series of roles spread across the business. One of the things that we are looking at is, you know, how do we protect that? How do we centralize that? Because many business leaders are not focused on that right now. They're focused on the issue of today. We need to be thinking about what is Okta's talent pipeline three years from now, four years from now, and so thinking much more longer term so looking forward into the future and just considering you know what the journey has been like so far of redefining the org chart at Okta like fast forward to six months like what do you think is uh like one one like really thing really important thing that we as like practitioners need to be looking at that we're not and what is or that may not be getting the attention and it deserves?

31:04And like, what's one thing that that will unlock through kind of this, this new model of teams working together more tightly through like clear forecharts that include humans and machines? You know, we hear all kinds of stories in the podcast. And I'll never forget the story that was told about a Mexico beach FMLA backfire. One of their employees was out on approved medical leave. And then somebody spots them on Instagram, Feet up on the beach, looking a little too okay for someone supposedly recovering. So cue the call from the CEO wanting to pull their leave and all of the panic that followed.

31:43But here's the thing. There's actual legal precedent that says a photo isn't proof of anything. You can't just yank somebody's protected leave because of how a vacation pic looks. You need real evidence. And that's a trap a lot of HR teams fall into. Making a compliance call based on gut instinct instead of actually knowing the law. And that's exactly the gap 650 has built to close. 650 helps teams manage compliance across the full lifecycle, from handbooks and policies to agreements, legal updates, and research. And their AI-powered research center gives you a way to ask employment law questions in plain English so you can better understand what applies and where.

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32:32Becks Port: You know, I think it is back to the team effectiveness, right? Like I think teams will look really different. And so how do you get the organization really collaborating? And the unlock is really doing the difficult work. Like this process of getting an agent on an org chart is a 12-month process. And by the time you deconstruct, you reconstruct, you bring in an agent, you reconfigure the team, you hire the new talent, restructure people's jobs. These are, it's not a quick process. So I think the unlock is doing the difficult work and figuring out where do you want to really lean in and where is the added value and where is the experience better to have something done by digital, digital coworker versus a human coworker.

33:19So maybe about like four or five months ago, I started nerding out on all things OpenClaw. And, you know, started, I went down that rabbit hole. I got like the Mac Mini. Me too. I did it all. Yeah. Kind of embarrassing. But through that process, I learned all the do's and don'ts. And one of the pitfalls to avoid is slowly giving more and more access to your agents that you create. And, you know, if you don't do this, you hear the horror stories of like, you know, people like sending their client list out. Or I think I won't call any names out, but Steven got an email from somebody like offering him to be an advisor or something.

34:05And it was like their open claw bot had just gone wild and emailed everybody in their database. And so what can companies do to prevent that? Like, obviously, like most companies probably aren't on open claw, but they're building agents differently. Yeah. Any advice for the companies out there to avoid?

34:26Becks Port: Yeah, I mean, look, I think that securing AI is hugely important. You need to know where are your agents, what do they have access to and what can they execute? I think having things like a kill switch so that if something does go rogue, you can close everything down instantly is going to be we're going to see more and more of that. I mean, even over recent weeks, we've seen some of the bigger names. It's not that open claw, no one's surprised when it's gone rogue. but even in kind of some of the more mainstream names where there's been issues and challenges with agents doing things that we didn't want them to do.

35:02Becks Port: So, yeah, that is absolutely crucial. One of my biggest reflections having worked in this new job, just in terms of org design, working at a company that has agentic employees or AI employees and also has mainly human employees, it's fascinating. it's like wild to see and our our employee one of our employees is in engineering has a name it has you know a few slack channels that it's communicating in and it's like constantly communicating and i go into those channels and i look at i don't know what the heck it's saying because it's like all engineering things it's like ah you know this pr created blah blah blah blah blah and and but it's just like constantly going and going and going and that i you know apart like once the dust settled from like literal mind being blown my realization was like like this is this feels like an entity that is getting an insanely an insane amount of work done and so I have like I'm in awe and I'm kind of freaked out by like this entity but it's like core to what we do and we're I've never seen a product team like move this fast and an engineering team move this fast and so like from the from like from an insider like on the ground like you know seeing the things that this literally happening it's a no-brainer like I can see why you know The argument to me is like for like putting a AI employee on an org chart.

36:53It's absolutely crystal clear now. To be honest, though, like before when we I was a podcaster and HR person and marketer talking about it, it was really hard to wrap my head around. And so I'm going to be making an effort to try to like provide like specific as I can. And I can't share too many details, but like, does any of what I am sharing with you resonate or relatable at all?

37:20Becks Port: Yeah, completely. And I think one of the things that we all need to be cognizant of is like, this is a colleague that never sleeps. Right. And so you go to sleep and you wake up and you are behind on those messages that it's communicating to. And so there's more of imagine many of those digital colleagues and how do you manage the overwhelm and the information? Because, you know, we all probably work, I don't know, nine to five or whatever hours that we work. And then email slows down and Slack slows down and we rest and recharge, which there's a whole sloth of science that tells us we need that.

37:58Becks Port: And that's really good for us. But if we've got half of our workforce that doesn't need to do that, how do you manage? How do you not miss information? How do you, if you've got an agent working for you that doesn't stop, how do you manage and hold that agent or digital co-worker accountable when you're behind all the time? And I think this notion of like vigilance and checking and holding accountable and being sure that the decisions are right and the information is right is going to become critical. But we are all going to be on the back foot. And, you know, thinking about that makes me stressed.

38:34I feel like this is the conversation where a lot of the things we've been talking about in the last few months are, they're all connecting in this one conversation. But something else that we've noticed is that a lot of the people that we have on are getting like more span of control, like within the people function, because the lines are getting blurrier and blurrier around IT and security and people. and so yeah like how how do you where do you think the people team what do you think the people team should own and how are you thinking about this at Okta?

39:11Becks Port: Yeah I mean Okta we're still owning kind of all of the traditional things that a people team would own we've got a really fabulous IT and data team but that is a separate team they're just very collaborative and so for us the ownership hasn't changed, but there has never been a more important time to have collaboration across the different teams. And I do wonder, it's back to that kind of org chart of the future. Right now we sit in functions. Do we shift to kind of processes we want to get done? Like you think about paying an employee that spans the HR team, the legal team, the finance team, the payroll team.

39:52Becks Port: Is our team structured around process or things that we want to execute on rather than traditional kind of functions in the future? I don't know, but I do know that AI will help us break down some of the barriers and silos that many organizations and all organizations have. I really like that. I like the process lens because I just having been in compensation and being part of a team that ran an extract from the the hras and or comp system i worked at goldman which is a big company and cramming that data together then reviewing that data then sending it over to the payroll team that have to apply withholding formula like whatever they're doing and then to send a file like i just remember like a lot of back and forth and mind you that was like 2011 when I left.

40:46So it's probably gotten, you know, somewhat more automated, but still a lot of back and forth. And I just think that that's like the perfect thread to put an agent in.

40:58Becks Port: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, if you think about kind of banking or any organization of scale, like you think about kind of like, I don't know, risk management in a bank and all of the processes around that, all of that is just prime because a lot of it is repetitive. A lot of it is very, you know, kind of data driven. And so I think there's huge opportunities there for scale of agents, for sure. We'll see. We'll see. And then I was like, my mind immediately went from risk management to operations because the joke always was, you know, they're pushing the buttons and And it's like, ah, do we need to do that anymore?

41:35But our time is almost up. And so we have a couple of traditions on the show before we let our guests go. The next one is what we call rapid fire questions. It's the same set of questions that we ask every guest. You ready to do this?

41:49Becks Port: Yeah, let's go. Excellent. Let's do it. First question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone starting in HR today? Say yes to every opportunity. Oh, I like that one. Next one. If your team gave you a superpower nickname, what would it be and why? Oh, gosh. I have no idea. Big picture thinking. Big picture thinker. Love it. Next question. What's a strategy or practice from another company you'd love to steal? So I guess in some ways we have or I have over my career. Talent density, driving talent density, fewer, better people, which is from Netflix. And who do we need to have onto the show next?

42:33This is the question that leads to so many amazing guests that we've had on. I think that's how we got you on. And so anybody that you'd like to nominate?

42:43Becks Port: You know, if you do know Sally Fauche, she runs the consultancy called Fauche, does all sorts of like cool leadership interventions. And she's just so broad in her thinking and incredibly smart. and somebody I always enjoy working with and listening to. Love it. We'll have to reach out to her. And that gets us to our final tradition. We call it one word or phrase close, a word or few, just to kind of summarize the last hour we spent together. And we prefer for our guests to go first. Opportunity. I'm going to say Hank. Go ahead. I'm going to say Hank. And I picture the icon on their Slack being like a robot with a cowboy hat or something.

43:34I'm going to go with org chart. I'm just going to be in my mind just visualizing how this is all going to play out. It's fascinating. It's so cool to have a front seat to all of this and to be able to have the privilege that we have to work in people or, in our case, being close to the great minds that are like solving these really hard problems. So thank you for joining. We've all, Daniel, I didn't skip you. You gave yours already. Sorry, for a second there. I thought I was skipping you. We can edit this part out. Thank you so much for joining today. It's been a blast.

44:09Becks Port: Thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed the conversation. It's wonderful to spend time with you. Amazing. Thanks, y 'all. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Modern People Leader. We really, really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five-star rating. It would mean the world to us. And connect with us on LinkedIn. We want to know what you think about the show. And you can find links to both of our profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and see you on the next episode.

44:48Thank you.