332. Things We Got Wrong: 4 Years of Terrible Workplace Predictions, Summer Sessions #6

24:22Leanne:Yeah, I agree. I agree. And it all makes sense as well from a trust perspective as well, doesn't it? in terms of what's going on in the organisation and relatively, you know, how good things like pay and benefits are. You know, if you're making a huge amount of profit, but you're, you know, the people that work for you are really still struggling with the cost living crisis and can't afford to buy food, then you're doing it wrong, aren't you? Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. Okay, shall we fast forward to 2025? So this is the predictions were made in December 2024. Just to set the scene, At this point, are you like, how long have we been doing this podcast, man?

25:00Leanne:What do you mean? We've done four years worth of predictions. Is it really four years? 2022 is our first year. In fact, I think our first episode, because there's a little gap between episode one and episode two, and I think that might have been recorded and released around this time of year. Yeah, I think it was August time, wasn't it? It was August, so we're probably almost exactly in our four year. And also, my birthday next year in May, we're going to be somewhere in the mid 400s, I think, of episodes. I know, I know. Anyway, that's a prediction that I'm making based on ChatGPT calculating it for me.

25:35Sorry, predictions. I'm such a sad and lonely old man. I sit out there this morning and all, rather than looking at interesting things, I was like, I wonder what episode number is going to be on my birthday. So just setting the scene. So this was, we remember we said this in 2024, but in 2025 was the year where ai embedded itself into everyday life and i'm gonna say ai quietly embedded itself because that's what ai always said this is when the ai generated video god i remember we could generate images and i was blown away i was using mid-journey via discord and if you don't know does anyone still use anymore i don't know but and i was and you had to go and discord and like have a chat when it was just so like oh horrible to use but um but yeah no i feel like deep fake started then didn't they yeah yeah it was weird but now yeah of course we've got um uh we've got and it's and to be fair some of the footage in fact most of the footage i think it's sonar which is the i'm not seeing maybe it's say no sonar no i think it's on anyway one model uh you can barely distinguish theirs from real footage yeah um then of course what happened is everyone got excited about it.

26:41And then the government went, wait a minute, this is going to be a little bit of a problem. This is problematic. They're worried about trust, misinformation and authenticity. So they got involved in regulation.

26:52Leanne:I love that it took them that long to think. They were like, wait a minute. So somebody could release a video of like the prime minister speaking, but it's not really the prime minister. And then everyone believed them. Yep, exactly. We need to regulate this. You should have fricking done that 10 years ago, friend. There's a guy in the UK called money-saving expert Martin Lewis. and unfortunately a lot of people lost some money because people did deep fakes of him saying you should go and invest in this and they lost their money. So very, very sad. And finally, in terms of the economy though, that was a little bit more positive.

27:22It started to stabilize after a few turbulent years. I think people still, organizations still remained a little bit cautious about hiring. But the workplace conversation changed dramatically. So leaders stopped asking, should we ask AI? And started asking, how do we use it safely and effectively? A couple of stats here for you. workplace AI adoption almost doubled in two years LinkedIn identified communication as one of the most in-demand professional skills Gartner predicts that AI agents will become a standard part of enterprise software over the coming years that is happening right now I am excited about Jack Dorsey's buzz it's like Slack but instead of having people on it you have your agents on it and you just chat to your agents it's one of the if I could be nerdy for a second there's lots of surfaces and harnesses which is basically how you use the AI but no one's really developed something which is how we used to talk they're all going oh look it's great like remember the discord thing i was saying you had to go into discord to create an image now you're going to chat things but you don't go into a chat thing to talk to someone you have slack and things like buzz are going to be um are going to be uh i think it's going to be a big thing never never back against or never back never not back jack dorsey whatever the word is uh anyway right leanne let's get on to what you said so i've got written down here just to remind everyone

28:35Leanne:this getting confusing this is predictions we made for the year of 2025 what was going to happen in 2025 yes so you predicted that empathy would become one of the defining leadership skills of the ai era this is what is we've got it written down your argument wasn't that empathy was becoming more important because employees suddenly wanted kinder managers it was because as ai became increasingly capable of handling routine work the unique human parts of leadership which are listening coaching judgment trust and emotional intelligence would become significantly more valuable. Lee. Nailed it. You did nail it.

29:07You absolutely did.

29:07Leanne:I mean, is anyone actually developing their skills? Probably not as many as, you know, organisations as it should be. But was it the World Economic Forum Future Jobs Report published at some point in 2025 that absolute named empathy is one of the key skills to be developed over the next five years, given the increasing use of AI in the workplace. So I think I nailed that one. I think you did. I think you did. And to be fair, if you are thinking about being AI proof, then And these sort of human skills are stuff which AI, I don't think will ever be able to do that because they can fake empathy.

29:39They're like the biggest psychopaths ever, that they understand, I've got this right, they understand, what's the word for emotion, but they can't display it.

29:50Leanne:Yeah, exactly. Danny Wareham's got a whole thing on this, isn't he? He actually just sums some work into it that basically AI just represents the dark, tried to personalize traits, So they're narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic. And you're right, they can fake immersion, but they're not feeling it. They tell you what you want to hear to manipulate you to do things. And they think they're ace, don't they? Open the pod doors. I'm afraid I can't do that. That's a really weird reference from a film I haven't actually seen. So a couple of stats here. LinkedIn identified communication as one of the fastest growing and most in-demand workplace skills in 2025.

30:26We also saw that coaching and leadership development remain among the fastest growing areas should address reversal of organisational learning investment. So I'm going to say this is 100 % correct. Green, ding, ding, ding. Well done.

30:41Leanne:Thank you. Thank you so much. And I think you have also nailed your prediction. So you predicted that AI agents would become one of the biggest workplace stories of the year. And specifically, rather than helping employees complete individual tasks, You believed AI would take ownership of entire workflows, coordinating work across systems and acting like a digital colleague. I think you nailed that one. Yeah, and I'm sorry, I've realized now all of mine around AI, aren't they? But that's kind of like my hobby. That's your world, isn't it? Yes, my world. I do love it. I do love it. And yes, so if you've never heard of Hermes Agent, nothing to do with the luxury brand, or Open Claw, formerly Clawed Bot, formerly Malt Bot, formerly Clawed Something.

31:26Basically, they are environments where you can build these agents so the agents can work, you know, do tasks, workflows, end-to-end workflows. That is something which the nerds like me are into. We've just installed Hermes for Rob Long. And that's something that, again, Jack Dawsey's buzz. There's so much. There's Goose AI, which is quite funny to say. There's so many different things going on. By Christmas, you will be talking to an AI agent in the way, over email over slack um it'll be sending you dms it's probably gonna be available via whatsapp

31:59Leanne:um this is what's happening so yeah i mean it's it's funny isn't it because it moves so quickly i'm sure people now listen going well yeah of course you know agentic ai is a thing isn't it it wasn't in at the end of 2024 no yeah absolutely it wasn't um and what's really i think interesting is if you look at what's happened um unsurprisingly ai adoption continues to accelerate each year but now every major productivity platform offers AI assistance or agent-based functionality and Gartner predicts that agentic AI will become the most defining enterprise technology of the next decade. Yes, yes, totally agree.

32:37Leanne:Yeah, you nailed that one. Nailed it. Yes, I did. Thank you very much. Well done. Thank you. Yeah, I think we're in for an interesting next six to 12 months. Very, very interesting. Yeah, yeah, here we are. I think we are. Shall we fast forward to 2026? Well, we can't because we are in 2026. Yeah, we can maybe go remind ourselves what we said because I can't remember. No, I can't. Just for context, usually what we do is we go back to the UK for a couple of weeks in December. So often we record like three or four episodes in one week and then schedule them. So that's the one, the predictions and stuff.

33:15So not only was it a long time ago, but also we did like four or five episodes in like two days. so I don't remember what I said.

33:22Leanne:I do find that happens to be a lot though if I'm talking to someone they go oh my god I was listening to a podcast where you're talking about X and I was like right nice yeah cool. Danny Wareham, Danny's getting a lot of air time, Danny Wareham said I said something about I did a dad joke and I said Danny did and then Danny said on LinkedIn the other day I was cleaning my pant cream and I was like what the hell are you talking about? Oh did you get to the bottom of that? Yeah apparently and I did listen to the to the episode again and I did I said oh Danny is going going to be creaming his pants or something um he said a horrible phrase i apologize for his for for al from before but that's what i actually said so uh yeah yeah two episodes a week man that's a lot of words 300 yeah 330 odd hours yeah okay so 2020s so i we can't say what happened in 2026 because it's not finished but just just set the scene so far just in case anyone's been under a rock for the last eight months yeah so i think you know ai is now firmly firmly a thing um lots of people are using it and i think a lot more people now are starting to play with agentic ai as well aren't they i hear lots of people using claude co-work and and the likes um economically it's been a shit show um continues to be um oh just stop just stop starting on people you know who i'm talking to just stop it why can't we all just get along i know i know um so yeah i mean yeah we thought the economic picture at the beginning of the year was looking more stable but actually it's it's not looking as as good as we hoped um in terms of workplaces i mean i think we're starting to maybe see a little bit of a shift of i hope just in terms of conversation maybe rather than action is whether ai should replace jobs rather than will they replace jobs but we're still seeing lots of layoffs but i think we are seeing more forward-thinking organization and i think again smaller owner entrepreneur-led businesses that start to treat ai as a member of the team and so it can support workflows rather than completely replacing people or just being another piece of software i was talking to a business leader not so longer who was explaining to me how they've integrated ai now into all of their workflows to to genuinely give value at a time back to employees and as part of that process they only um had to let go one member of staff which is of course still devastating but you know when you're seeing organizations lay off thousands or you know 50 of their workforce and i think that was you know probably maybe like five percent so so yeah I think we're seeing that in 2026 I also think we're seeing a bit more anxiety around it but you know we'll see how it all goes but I think it's also fair to say that leadership capability is being talked about now as one of the biggest barriers to successful implementation of AI in terms of managing change in terms of buying and getting employee buy-in and I think this is what I talked about as part of the empathy prediction was that these human skills or being able to engage humans in a really effective way is going to be so much more important when we're dealing with AI.

36:19Leanne:It's almost like the human skills become even more important. So yes, that's where we are. Anyway, should we go on to our predictions? Yes, so we'll start off with you. And so what you said was you predicted that AI wouldn't make people less important at work. It would make the uniquely human aspects of work even more valuable. I've got written down here. you argue organizations which thrive wouldn't necessarily be those with the best technology, but those that best understand how to combine human strengths with AI capability. I think this is bang on. I think it's exactly what, well, this isn't bang on for the big companies who are getting rid of people because there's always going to be, to be fair, if you are a publicly traded company, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize your profitability.

37:01Wow, that was some big words for our way, wasn't it? So you have that.

37:04Leanne:Fiduciary, I didn't even know you knew that one. I put the douche in fiduciary. But so I think that they almost have to get rid of people if there's an opportunity. But we saw four, didn't we, recently rehiring a lot of people who they got go because they tried to replace with AI and then realized that AI didn't have a fucking clue what was going on. Whereas these old people like me were like, well, I know exactly how to do this because I've done it wrong nine times out of 10 and I spent the last 20 years doing it. So, yeah, I definitely think that we are moving towards that. I think this is bang on Lee.

37:37Leanne:Yeah, I think it's on the right lines, isn't it? I think it might be a bit too early to tell. And I think there's conversations about it, whether it's actually happening. I think it may be in smaller pockets, but I'm much more encouraged by the conversations happening around integrating human and AI. Do you think? Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. I've got down here a couple of points. So leadership and communication remain among the fastest growing areas of organizational development. Employers increasingly describe AI as a tool to augment rather than replace employees, and human judgment continues to be viewed as essential for high-stakes decisions.

38:15Yeah, I start to see the tide turning on the last one. I start to see it more as a taste and judgment call rather than an actual, we're making a factual call. I can see AI putting together all of the pros and cons, whatever. We had Owen Fitzpatrick on recently. Inner Propaganda is his book. Definitely go out and buy it. It should be released now, actually. And he was talking about a lot of this, of like sort of like your beliefs and how facts aren't really that important to most people. It's just what they actually believe. So go back and listen to that. I believe that was episode 323. Definitely worth listening to.

38:52Anyway, sorry, Lee.

38:53Leanne:Yeah, well, we'll go on to your final prediction, shall we? So you predict that organizations would gradually stop measuring productivity by activity and begin focusing much more on outcomes. And you link this to AI as well. So as AI automated, more routine work, you thought that traditional measures, such as working hours, how many emails sent, meetings attended, would be increasingly meaningless, less important. Instead, organization would need to rethink how they defined a measured performance. Yeah, and I stand 100 % behind this because we've all been in the situation five years ago. Someone said, you're either, you've got two options either.

39:32you're like, what the hell did I say to that person about that thing? So you end up searching Gmail. You spend so long looking for the actual email you send and you still can't find it. Whereas fast forward to now, Hermes, for example, Hermes agent. I know I'm being nerdy, but you've got agent environments which go through all your emails and then essentially create a little mini wiki. And then you go to them and say, did I ever say this to Leanne? And they'll come back and go, yes, on email, this, this, this. Here's the link, here's the link. So you're moving away from that sort of thing. The other thing which I think is really, what I've started to see this happen in the last few weeks, is that employees who aren't developers, for example, will start creating mini apps for their customers.

40:13So, for example, imagine that you had to do a report every week for a customer. Then what they do is they vibe code. It's called vibe coding. I know you know this, just because anyone doesn't know what it is. Vibe coding is basically getting ChatGPT or Claude to build it for you. They'll go into Claude code and they'll go, I want to build this interactive dashboard that will pull the latest information in. I don't ever have to put this spreadsheet together again. It'll just bring it up and they can ask questions on it and you can vibe code that. Other things marketers, I've seen a lot of marketers' employees go, wouldn't it be nice if someone could do a pricing calculator based on this?

40:47So rather than waiting three weeks for the development team to get time to go and build it and add it to the website, they vibe code it, throw it on a domain. So I see that what I'm really enjoying is that employees are getting starting to get a bit more ownership, a little bit more, I can't think of the word in my head, but they've got agency, is that the right word? Agency to make changes that otherwise would have had to go through weeks and weeks of development or weeks and weeks of decisions or whatever. And they can just do this level of MVP, minimum viable products. They can just throw it up there.

41:17So I'm enjoying that very much.

41:19Leanne:Yeah. Again, I think that's the, this is kind of this whole, I'm not sure what the right word would be, whether it's like a paradox or irony But it seems to be that the more AI we have, we start to actually finally rethink what humans need in the workplace to do their best work. And we've actually been studying this since like the 1920s. But it just feels that this is maybe accelerating businesses actually doing something about it. Because I think as you were saying, if AI can complete a task in just a few minutes that normally or previously would have taken a human half a day, then it completely changes how organizations need to look at what it means when humans are productive or effective or impactful.

42:04Leanne:Because it's no longer necessarily about time, is it? It's more about quality and like you said, outcomes. So yeah, I think you're right. I have a sneaky feeling that I'm looking back through all your predictions. I don't think we've included them all. So if you want to hear all of our predictions, go back and listen to four years worth of prediction if you've got the time and the... Who cares? If your fasquet is not empty. Yes. Because the pattern I see with yours is that you're just a little bit too early. Right. I think... Not the first time a woman said that.

42:46Leanne:lol yeah i think just a bit ahead of your time that's what i'm saying um yeah no very good so there you go we'll we're gonna do the same this year um we always do we'll have predictions in for 2026 that we'll record for 2027 oh my gosh oh no it can't be 2027 that is the year i turn 50 years old yeah i predict it's gonna be a good year i I think it's going to be a really good year because I think that we are now getting to the point where it's starting to settle down a bit on AI. There's not many people in the sort of developing world who don't know about it and haven't used it. A lot of people are getting an idea of what it can and can't do.

43:25I do worry for SaaS companies. And when I say SaaS, just because you don't know that,

43:30Leanne:is software as a service. So it'll be anything, most of the software you've got is a SaaS. So like Notion, you know, anything online that you pay a subscription for. I do worry about that because I'm seeing more and more people who are non-developers or even just hobbyists building their own version and saying, well, why am I paying for Photoshop when I can get, you know, Claude Fable can build it for me in five days and it'll cost me 300 quid in credits and then I can cancel it at Photoshop. So I do worry about that, especially the ones which are kind of thin wrappers. So essentially they just do, oh, we just schedule your post.

44:03Like, I'm not going to say the company because there's a company who we both know about and we both know someone who used to wear that and I don't want to shit on them. but that's that worries me greatly i'd be very worried about that yeah like you say it's it's gonna start to shake out isn't it and i and i think ultimately other things will be needed

44:23Leanne:weren't there other demands it's just the same it's the same cycle isn't it it's like how we used to all you know go down to blockbuster on a friday night you know now it's laughable the thought of you know paying like 50 quid a month for like you say for photoshop might sound ridiculous in 10 years time um something else will replace it it also made me laugh i can't remember where i saw this but i read it or someone told me this is saying that um saying that back in the days when his blockbuster you you basically go down and go i can't watch this movie because someone else is watching it can you imagine in today like saying to some kid who's like 12 going you can't i'm sorry you can't watch that movie because someone else is watching it tonight yeah what the hell do you mean yeah you used to have to like like get there like on the dot it open if there was a new film out and you wanted to watch it like you had because they only had so many so many vhs tapes i remember that in our newsagent oh you'd reserve it you'd put your name on a waiting list we had a little sticky note and you could write your name at the bottom of it and uh yeah mad madness isn't it it was the same with the libraries i remember when i was doing my degree like having to wait for somebody else in my year to return the book that I needed to do my assignment on.

45:32Nuts, isn't it? Yeah.

45:34Leanne:Oh, how times change with the world. Also, I think I'm going to come back to this prediction in December, but I think we're heading towards an AI bubble. Do you remember the dot-com bubble of the 2000s? Not personally, but I know of it. You'd be about three years old. But yeah, so basically a load of people would invest in all these new websites like pet.com, pets.com and all this kind of thing. And then they would just collapse because they went and bought slides for the office and spent all that money. I think that's happening with AI now. I agree. There's too many AI companies, isn't there?

46:07Leanne:Just doing stuff. And the other thing which not that many people know is that Anthropic and OpenAI, which are Claude and ChatGPT respectively, they massively, massively discount their tokens. So if you were to go through the API genuinely cost like five or six times more for each token and so as soon as they go public which they're both going to do this year i think then i reckon a lot of people are gonna be like what why is my limits reduced down why is it costing me more money why am i now paying a hundred pounds a month not twenty pounds a month to get the same amount of usage yeah um yes maybe but you know what that maybe that's a point where someone goes you know what we can get a contractor and do this for about the same price and actually give somebody a job yes like that i like that a lot subsidizing by the way listeners is what the word i was looking for and i know you were shouting it out lee shall we sum things up do we did we keep school uh no couldn't be bothered um i think we were we were right on so i think i think as i said i'd sum it up by i can i don't think any of my predictions are particularly groundbreaking that that nobody else still coming um i think a lot of people would have said human skills be more important as ai continues um so yeah yeah i think mine were kind of predictable predictions and i think you were actually good at making genuine predictions i see now that's that's lovely to say but to be fair i do spend a lot of time on x um reading very very clever people for people far cleverer than me and all of mine were around ai which i'll be honest was i wish i didn't have to say this but i think it was kind of obvious where it was going so um uh yeah yeah anyway well leanne i think that you are you are beautifully optimistic and I want you to continue to be so because if if these if your predictions come true then the world will be a better place and the world is already a better place with you in it oh what do you want what are you putting it for we're gonna get some lunch in a minute I want I want a decent lunch by the way it's not misogynistic Leanne does the lunch and I do laundry yeah Leanne yeah and I do laundry and cleaning and whatever so um yeah just just in case we're about to get cancelled for me being a being what what's the manosphere is it is that what I was yeah my trad wife is that what you're saying what's a trad wife exactly that yeah traditional wife when i think of trad wife uh wife i think of like headscarves and 1900s yeah house coats amish i did so there you have it final episode of our summer sessions are complete welcome to september guys i hope i hope in some parts of the world it is raining because it needs it i think but if you don't want it to rain I hope that yeah yeah back to school this week good luck everybody godspeed I'm sure there's parents going yeah finally get out my house so congratulations to you and also fun fact today the first of September is our anniversary it is our 14th wedding anniversary today my love yes it is yes it is I remembered that I definitely remember yeah honestly the jewellery I got this morning the thing is I've got to go and pick it up.

49:11It wasn't quite ready in time. So I've got to go and pick it up this afternoon. Shit.

49:16Leanne:Yeah, no, it's all fine. We'll be back next Tuesday with the usual back to our normal programming this week and work our news roundup, our truth or lie, our surgery. And we have so many great guests lined up for you over the next few weeks. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, thank you for keeping us company over summer. We've had the best time. And thank you again to all our summer session guests, including Georgia Hodgkinson, Megan French-Dumba, Danny Wareham, Dr. Jake Chuba, and of course the awesome Emma Jameel Emma and then also our guest Tom Emery Owen Fitzpatrick Chris Love It With The Hair the funniest guy in the world he's brilliant Chris Love It Dr.

49:52Rachel Morris and then of course thank you to Kate and to MFD for letting us steal their steal their episode and having a little bit of a lighter day for those days

50:02Leanne:indeed yeah so if you've enjoyed our summer sessions as much as we have we would love you to take the time leave us a review get in touch with the show head over to linkedin all the good stuff all the links as always are in the show notes say goodbye leanne bye guys bye bye you