The Importance of Empathy and Diversity with Wagner Denuzzo

1Huddle Podcast Episode #8

On this Bring It In podcast episode, 1Huddle’s CEO and Founder Sam Caucci sat down with Wagner Denuzzo, Head of Capabilities for Future of Work at Prudential Financial at our first-ever live virtual summit, Compete 2020.

On this episode of Bring It In season one, Wagner sat down with Sam and discussed the importance of empathy, artificial intelligence, advice for interns, remote work, and diversity in the workplace.

Audio available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. 

TOP 3 HIGHLIGHTS

Below are some of the insights Wagner shared during our chat, edited for length and clarity. You can find more Bring It In podcast episodes here.

• “When you apply technology in three years, there will be a ton of new titles that we never envisioned today.”
• “We brought artificial intelligence, not to eliminate jobs, but to mentor our intelligence so we can help the business transform.”
• “Adaptability becomes the keyword here and you don’t need a four-year college degree to be adaptable.”

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sam: Your title is very interesting and not one we come across much. But obviously the fact that “future of work” is in your title, I feel like you got to kick us off with a definition of what the future of work is. 

Wagner: I’ll be glad to do it. If you think about three years ago, the future of work didn’t exist. We are talking about advancing cognitive capabilities, AI, and all that. But the future of work is that a concept emerged from the need to think about how we are going to reinvent the work, how we’re going to reinvent what it means to be unemployed and how we are going to reinvent the workplace. That’s the way I would position it. 

Sam: And so many people, when they hear the future of work, I feel at times we get overwhelmed with the new cycles focusing on robots and automation and technology that oftentimes is positioned as potentially taking more than it’s giving. What are your thoughts on that?

Wagner: I have a different opportunity here. For me, I’m very optimistic, first of all, and you need people who can see the future is better than the present. I think I’m one of those leaders. I think RPA, of course, we need to maximize efficiency. We have been doing this for the history of the industrialized world.

But what we are here now is re-thinking, how do we create value and differentiate organizations? So of course we need to automate some processes that don’t need to be done by a person. But when you think about differentiating our organization, inevitably you are going to figure out that technology is going to be leveraged by everyone.

What’s going to differentiate your organization is going to be the people who use technology on a day-to-day basis to compliment each other in creating a greater value than RPA or the traditional workplace would create. So I think for me, it’s always that compliment, one compliments the other. And when you think about how my job didn’t exist three years ago, it’s the same. When you apply technology in three years, there will be a ton of new titles that we never envisioned today. So I am very optimistic about this.

Sam: So what recommendations do you have for C-level leaders as they look at their budgets? Where do you tell them to start? 

Wagner: Well, the first thing is to get your leadership teams together to really think if you are positioned to have tolerance for change, because people minimize the expectations here but leaders need to expect a lot of change and disruption, and it’s very hard to lead through disruptions when the economy is not very positive. When things are happening around you, you just want to maximize your efficiency in your operational excellence. 

I think for the midsize companies, the question is: Are we willing to go through that dark space where we don’t know if the destination is there. We all hope that the destination is better than where it started from, but you need this leap of faith. And it’s very hard.

Sam: What’s your perspective on what has to change within the org structure in order to position for the type of change you’re talking about?

Wagner: The age of transparency is here, authenticity is here. So when you start thinking about what we are talking about, it is really creating a reality-based database, decision-making processes that allow the organization to move forward with speed. HR traditionally has not been asked to play that role, but now today, if you think about it, HR is critical for the business.

It is HR that’s bringing technology to me at Prudential. We brought artificial intelligence, not to eliminate jobs, actually to all mentor our intelligence so we can help the business transform. It’s a very different value proposition. But then again, when you think about HR and like everyone across the organization, what I would say to you what’s needed here is the humility to learn. 

Leaders as learners. All of us have to really approach the future as learners. If we don’t have the capacity to accept that we don’t know enough, and that’s okay, it’s very hard to move from checking the boxes and managing, to an organization. To your point, what is needed. We need an organization where decision making is fluid, where organizations make decisions at all levels of their hierarchy without having this really difficult process oriented decision-making, which only hinders and slows down everything.

What we need is empathy. We need empathy towards each other so we don’t feel that we are letting people down by pressuring them to do things that they don’t know how to do. The employers will see that employees will define who they work for as soon as this pandemic is over, people are going to walk with their feet, right? They’re going to talk to their feet. So we need to be very careful how we organize ourselves to allow this new workplace to come to fruition. Not only because of us, not only because of the competition, profitability of your organization, but because the workforce of the future is cross generational and they have needs there I think we might not be anticipating. So it’s very complicated, but the major point here, empathy towards everyone, because we are trying to do the right thing. 

Secondly, the idea that decision-making has to happen across the teams, you can no longer wait for decision-making to go up and down. 

Sam: Would you say that the speed at which work is changing has been accelerated in the last few months? Do you feel like things have been new? Do you think that this is a trend that we were already on the path towards? 

Wagner: What’s funny is that we’re all accelerating our strategy, let’s call it that way, business strategy towards a fast environment, better bolder. But what the pandemic did is to slow us down, to think about our workforce more carefully to really take care of ourselves. And that was very positive because I think our creating a different consciousness, leaders now are very committed to empathetically deal with what happens outside the walls of their organizations.

So now it’s personal. I was just telling somebody intimacy is creating high-performance. If you think about it is the intimacy that we are creating with our employees and we are leaders that’s enhancing our commitment to high-performance. And that’s different.

Now, of course, right after this pandemic, you started to become a day-to-day occurrence because now we’ve been in it for months. Now you can see the accelerations become exponential again. Now people are trying to figure it out, how to reinvent themselves, reinvent the workplace, bring people back, which will never be back. We will never be back to what it was. So now I see that it’s a lot of energy to move ahead with speed. Which is creating a lot of challenges, of course, for those who have kids who don’t have schools, you know how it goes, just a symptom of how difficult it is to be competitive in this environment.

Sam: How do you respond to this statement? If I were to say that the future of work is going to affect different corners of our workforce differently, specifically low-income frontline workers. What are your thoughts on that? 

Wagner: Now the numbers can lie. First of all, diversity of our workplaces.We need to increase the diversity of our workforce. Why? Because we owe it to all communities to give opportunities to everyone. So underserved communities right now are being hit much harder by the COVID 19 pandemic. They’re being adversely impacted by all this. 

So what we need to pay attention to is that these are consumers of the future. These are the consumers, our clients, our customers. You know, I think every company has this idea that they’re going to grow their market share. How do you do that? You do that by creating a just economy when the economy allows people to be part of the whole environment. Every company benefits from it.

So what I’m trying to say is that yes, we see that some underserved communities are being impacted much harder than others, but it’s up to organizations now to step up the efforts to give access. For example, Prudential, we are looking to, we just need workshops for nonprofit organizations to really help these underserved people who have no college degree sometimes to give them access to internships, to give them access to employment.We are trying to create the enablement that allows these people who have not participated in the economy to be part of the economy.

 So, of course I agree with you, the reality is harsh. People are losing jobs at higher rates in communities that are underserved. You can see that some communities are having a hard time getting back to work, especially in a service environment that we have, but I believe it’s up to every organization to do their best.

We are trying really hard. And again, I’m able to mistake about this because for the first time, we are really thinking twice about, do we really need the requirements to be so strict? Do we really need these people to have master’s degrees, college degrees, or they need to learn machine learning. They need the AI. They need to interact with technology, or we just need their creativity. 

Sometimes it’s just a matter of bringing the people who have the best attitude and the adaptability. Think about what’s happening right now. People who have to adapt quickly will be the survivors of the future because we continuously are going to be confronted with never-ending information, new information that requires you to act fast and adapt.

So adaptability becomes the keyword here, and you don’t need a four year college degree to be adaptable. 

Sam: Yeah, totally. If you were giving advice to young people taking on an internship this summer, what’s your advice to that group? 

Wagner: It’s healthy to have plans for your career. But please stay in the present. Stay in the present because you might be missing opportunities to learn and expand your knowledge and increase your experiences in all the skills that the future requires of you might not be on your destination journey. It is important to have plans for your career, but the plan that you should have is ‘how can I possibly maximize my learning’?

That’s what you have to focus on. How can I expand and broaden my experience? If you are in a profession, could you possibly have transferred with skills to seek an opportunity in a different industry that gives you an incredible acceleration of your learning, and that way you’re good with capability, and the future is going to require a lot of capabilities.

If you’re not ready, it’s going to be difficult. So basically what I tell them is stay present. Try to manage your anxiety just by staying present and being supported by each other. Because now it’s a community environment where we need each other to survive. Coming out of school, what you need is to learn emotional intelligence because you need to balance your emotional wellbeing.

We do our achievement tendencies because we all want to achieve something, but you need to manage and control the anxiety, the emotions that come up every day, because things change continuously. And then I say to manage relationships, you need to be emotionally well. I think about radical collaboration nowadays, companies can no longer have boundaries between functions in these units.

You need to have cross collaboration. That’s what I call radical collaboration. So students, the idea here is not to isolate and focus on how competitive you need to be. The idea here is to open your eyes to new opportunities and start collaborating no matter where, no matter with whom, because the hierarchy of yesterday is going to be gone soon, and you’re going to have to collaborate up, down, and across. That’s what I tell them. 

Sam: What is your hope for the future of work? 

Wagner: My hope is that all of us start paying attention to leadership as a key ingredient of our success. Traditionally, we think about leadership development for those who have executive roles or managerial roles, that’s no longer the case. 

In an entire organization, you need to apply all your best leadership skills and you yourself have an opportunity to really develop those skills. So he’s up to all of us to seek and develop these skills that we are going to need to collaborate. So I think my hope is that leadership development becomes part of every day in everyone’s lives because that’s what’s going to be required.

Sam: That’s great, Wagner. I love the humility to learn. It was one of the things I wrote down as you were talking. Thanks for joining us today. 

Wagner: Thank you so much, Sam. Take care.

Topics Discussed: Empathy, Internships, Artificial Intelligence, Diversity, Leadership, Education