Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee Episode 2
Doug Barton, director of the UWEBC, talks with Nathan Lasnoski about how artificial intelligence is reshaping work across the enterprise. They explore the growing role of agentic AI, the importance of helping every employee build AI skills, and why organizations must pair widely available tools with bold, business-specific strategies that create lasting value.
Transcript
UWEBC Podcast Introduction
Customer experience, technology, people, and supply chains are shaping how organizations operate today, but keeping up isn’t easy. At the UWEBC, we connect leaders navigating transformational change every day. Each week, we bring you the journeys and perspectives of Wisconsin leaders shaping the future of business.
From the University of Wisconsin–Madison, this is the UWEBC podcast.
Doug Barton:
Hey, everyone. It’s Doug Barton. We’re back for another episode of Catalysts in Cars Getting Coffee. Where’s the coffee?
Nathan Lasnoski:
Yeah, exactly.
Doug Barton:
We screwed this up. I’m here with Nathan Lasnoski. Nathan, say hello.
Nathan Lasnoski:
Hey!
Doug Barton:
We’re going to share a little bit of our experience in digital transformation and AI.
We’re actually on a short drive and dressed for our bike ride, which comes after this. Nathan’s showing up with a tight collar, looking good.
We’re excited to be with you, and I thought I’d begin here. Nathan, I shared with you that I got to be with a bunch of HR leaders today. We were talking about the future of HR technology, and that naturally brought up artificial intelligence.
I’ve been planning this program now for three months, probably six months, actually, since my members told me they wanted to learn about the future of HR processes and how they will be changed and improved with artificial intelligence. They also wanted to learn about HR’s role in enabling the AI age.
On stage, I had leaders from three companies. One was Workday. They’re actually doing quite a bit of business and work in my member companies. We also had Oracle on stage. Oracle has quite an HCM portfolio to go with the rest of its financial, ERP, and supply chain offerings.
Finally, we had an innovator spotlight on a company called Draup, which offers really interesting analytics around talent.
I think the thing that surprised me was the degree to which every one of these vendors has an agentic AI strategy and how they really see themselves at the center of creating agents that do work, like digital workers.
I thought we’d start there and talk a little bit about your experiences and how generative AI has given way a bit to what comes next. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Nathan Lasnoski:
I’m really thrilled that you kicked it off with the HR conversation because you’re absolutely right. It has been exploding there, and I think one of the main reasons it has been exploding in that space is that I don’t think people got into HR in the first place so they could fill out TPS reports and answer questions about benefits. They got into it because they love people and want people to flourish.
Doug Barton:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Lasnoski:
If we really believe that agentic AI is going to change the working world around us and change the way all of us do our work, then the human resources organization and the organization as a whole need to think about this as a challenge for every employee, not just some employees or certain parts of the business. It is about how every employee takes advantage of artificial intelligence to be more.
That’s really one of the most significant opportunities that exists in every business.
I was at the Wisconsin Technology Association yesterday, and some of the CIOs on stage were asked, “If you had the opportunity to have a do-over on the last two years, what would you do differently?”
I thought, “This is going to be rich. I’m really interested.”
What they said was that they wished they had moved faster on employee artificial intelligence.
Doug Barton:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Lasnoski:
They wished they had enabled every person with the skills and capabilities to take advantage of AI faster because of the inherent benefits it brings to the table.
I thought that was really well said, given how all of us moved at different rates. Some people were more cautious than others, and some had more trust concerns. But all of them said, “I wish we would have moved just a little bit faster there.”
Doug Barton:
Yeah.
Nathan Lasnoski:
It’s an incremental skill-building opportunity for every person.
Doug Barton:
Yeah. This reminds me a little bit of when I saw you on stage with Sam Hilgendorf, CIO of Fox World Travel, and others at Summerfest Tech last year. I loved your advice to enterprises thinking about where they have real, differentiated value to address with AI and should probably put a disproportionate amount of effort, and where they might get commercial, off-the-shelf tools into their teams’ hands.
Do you want to recount that a little bit for our listeners? Do we have listeners? Listeners we don’t know?
Nathan Lasnoski:
Absolutely. The first conversation, of course, is that every employee has the opportunity to take advantage of artificial intelligence, and that’s through tools that are available off the shelf.
It’s through the Copilots of the world, ChatGPT, Claude, and the various other tools. Everyone has a task they’re performing, and more and more of those tasks are also about determining how to delegate a task. How do I delegate a task to an AI agent?
Companies also have to consider how their overall mission gets force-multiplied by AI. Part of that force multiplication comes from multiplying the capabilities of every employee.
Doug Barton:
Yeah.
Nathan Lasnoski:
But it’s also about leveraging their core capabilities as a business and enabling AI as part of them, whether that means delivering their product faster, becoming more operationally efficient in delivering it, or leveraging what they know about their customers to better serve them.
That could mean using what you know about the restaurant business, your manufacturing customers, your product customers, or your end customers to deliver more value through your product. That might involve predicting something, prescribing something, telling a story, becoming more efficient at something, or doing something faster.
Most of that doesn’t come out of a box. Most of it is something unique about you and your data, and that’s where companies need to have a little bit of a moonshot.
Doug Barton:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Lasnoski:
They need to say, “Where do I want to be in three years?” and work backward from that to determine what needs to be true for them to be in that place.
What I’ve found is that some companies are afraid to be bold there.
Doug Barton:
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Lasnoski:
Sanjay Mohan from the Milwaukee Tech Hub Coalition had this really great example. He said, “Nate, there are the rocks and the sand. The sand is like all the things that you do for employees. But if you forget about the rocks, you can’t get the rocks into the sand anymore.”
You need to understand where you want to be in three years. Get those rocks in there, then fill in all that sand with all the things your employees are doing. They’ll complement each other well, but if you don’t remember those rocks, you’re not going to get them in.
Doug Barton:
Yeah.
Nathan Lasnoski:
You’re just going to have the sand. You’re not going to be able to take advantage of it.
Doug Barton:
Yeah. Sanjay’s quite a bright person. I ran across him many, many years ago, and it’s really great to have him in the community. He did rip off Stephen Covey there, though, didn’t he? I’m pretty sure.
Nathan Lasnoski:
Yeah.
Doug Barton:
That’s a retread.
Well, awesome. We don’t want to make this too long, but do you have anything else you want to say to the audience?
Nathan Lasnoski:
Now’s the time, man.
Doug Barton:
Yeah. Hey, we’re going to have a great bike ride.
Nathan Lasnoski:
We are. You’ve got to get the right clothes on.
Doug Barton:
I know. That’s all for now, guys. Happy Friday. Take care.
UWEBC Podcast Closing
If you want to keep the conversation going, check out the UWEBC website for more events, resources, and details on what’s coming next. Thanks for listening, and from the UWEBC, we’re glad you joined us.