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Find fresh comics and articles on today’s dynamic workplace. Posted twice a month, articles focus on the AI-Human connection, effective leadership and our engagement and joy at work.
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We Humans believe in the things we can see…
Today’s high-level leaders are expected to not only run their organizations but be highly visible in their field. They need to regularly share insights through industry publications, keynote speeches, podcasts, blogs or interviews. They also need to provide insights...
In a sea of AI models now flooding the market, Perplexity stands out as the underdog, making waves among tech giants like GPT and Gemini. Despite arriving late to the party, this scrappy RAG AI—short for Retrieval-Augmented Generation—has redefined how we interact...
Are we on the brink of creating a sentient AI that not only thinks but feels, and knows the nature of its existence? We explore the creepy, eerie emergence of a non-Human consciousness in machines and look at a few unsettling real-life cases, like Bing’s “Sydney” and...
AI is moving fast and creeping into our working lives whether we like it or not. We creatives aren’t particularly good with change, especially the radical kind that might put us out of work. We feel pain when we know we need to stop what we’re doing, learn new tricks,...
The robots are here! We examine the rapid advancements in humanoid robots and their AI-powered brains. Figure 02, Atlas and Optimus as well as the exploding Chinese market. Why now? And what does all this have to do with AI? A lot; and it’s not slowing down. The...
The Voice-Activated Workflow works differently; both the AI and Human leverage the strengths of their own brain-type. But this style of working is not for everyone. It might speak to younger portions of our working community and help make us old people seem more...
Another Text-to-Image AI Player Flux AI is a relatively new visual AI platform developed by Black Forest Labs. Originally built to improve hardware and electronic workflows, it became interesting to the masses once it launched its open-source text-to-image model. The...
Every impenetrable LLM can be jailbroken. And every service agreement that guarantees the safety of your data, once entered into a prompt window, will promise not to use it to train future models. All of this can be broken, loopholed or hacked. Once you give your...
Things didn’t go as planned: you got caught in a re-org, a merger. Whether due to AI efficiencies or not, you suddenly find yourself out of work and primed for a re-boot. You will need to re-enter a very different job market since you last visited, now dominated by...
Microsoft Copilot is a set of AI-driven features that combine and power existing Microsoft products (Windows 11, Bing Search, Microsoft Edge) and all your unmissable productivity apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams). The idea is to use Copilot as you search,...
The rapid advancements in AI, towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) at all costs, have profound implications for the rest of us. We are being disrupted, rendered irrelevant with every new feature, model and rollout. Combine this with the slow pace of...
We all intuitively identify with the “Left-Brain, Right-Brain” model; some of us were better at math while others were linguists. Today’s AI algorithms use a “Mixture of Experts” structure that allows for narrow efficiencies in intelligence types. More...
AI can be a valuable tool to improve the onboarding process for new hires. Onboarding is critical because roughly 90% of employees decide with the first six months whether to stay or leave a company, and 20% leave within the first 45 days. AI can shape the onboarding...
Nothing is harder than delivering a “tight five” in a crowded bar. For a professional keynote speaker seeking to level up, stand-up comedy is the perfect training ground. Specifically, learning the tricks and techniques of comedians. What I gained from my time in the...
AI software is advancing at lightning speed. But what about the hardware? Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years. This drives computing power. But there are physical limitations of how small transistors can be....
AI is one of the world’s fastest growing industries in 2024, predicted to grow 38% until 2030[i]. But in this exciting space with room to expand, why are only 22% of AI employees female[ii]? Like many things, the imbalance is due to a complex combination of societal,...
Designed to make sure Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used safely and ethically across Europe, the EU AI Act like a rulebook for AI development and use. AI is a powerful tool, but it can also be risky. What’s the EU Act all about, and what do you need to know? The...
No matter where your organization stands on the spectrum of AI understanding and adoption, the process of AI integration follows a fairly predictable path. Having a roadmap to shine a light on what needs to happen and when, is both calming and practical for a team of...
It’s impossible to use Enterprise AI without understanding the API. The AI-powered leader will need to deeply understand what this is, how it works, what you need to make it run, and whether or not it’s worth it. A few tips for getting started. AI Leadership, Fiona...
AI is changing the talent acquisition landscape; some 63% of European companies and 99% of US Fortune 500 companies use AI to recruit. On the other side of the talent divide, 75% of applicants use AI to help them land a job. What are the consequences? Ghost...
In the AI-Powered workflow, your “stack” is the selection of AI you use together to meet all your varied needs. There’s no time to road test every single one of these and still carry on with your full-time job. And, most of them carry a monthly subscription. What...
Have you ever entered what you believe is a perfectly harmless prompt only to have a long scolding response from a machine, that our request is somehow improper and thus unanswerable? Why do LLMs feel they need to protect us from ourselves, and inflict their...
The AI-powered leader wants a sustainable, continuously repeating AI maturity cycle within the organisation. A multidisciplinary AI Centre of Excellence (AI CoE) brings together expertise, best practices, and resources to drive excellence and innovation for the...
OpenAI’s GPT Builder allows premium users to build their own version of the foundational model that provide specific information based on the instructions, data and reference material you provide. These babies are multimodal, easy to build and wildly popular with the...
As non-technical professionals are learning about AI and, one by one, incorporating it into their workflows, the bar will slowly be raised about the office. Employees will soon be expected to handle a wider range of tasks and responsibilities because they can process...
If you’re working at a company, AI will likely transform your role, rather than eliminate it. But if you’re a freelancer who takes on certain creative tasks for organizations, your Human skills may soon be redundant. How to tell if your role is at risk and how to...
Only 12% of employees found that their organization does a good job with the onboarding experience[i]. But ChatGPT and Midjourney can combine powerfully to give the new joiner a highly personalized, energetic and distinctly Human welcome to a new role, whether it’s...
Thanks to the tools a pandemic built, the global “Digital Nomad” culture and lifestyle is a growing phenomenon. The freedom to live in beautiful places while still logging in at work, experiencing high levels of wellbeing that you don’t have at home, draws some 10,000...
A two-minute audio clip is all you need to clone a voice; before you know it, you are listening to yourself reciting poetry in French or asking where to find a reliable cat café in Japanese. Voice AI has the potential to give so many more of us the ability to be heard...
As our world becomes ever more complicated and process-oriented, we find our world becoming very small – our digital spaces, the constant distractions and the noise of our current media landscape. We need big stories of adventure, heroes and villains, guides and...
Who has time for the offboarding ritual of employee knowledge transfer, contact collection and the all-important exit interview? Surely not the overworked HRBP with a looming annual re-org to hire for in Q3. And it’s also… icky. Who wants to talk to a soon-to-be ex?...
In our current media landscape, with its abundance of information, constant chatter and noise, building in silence has become essential. Generative AI will thousandfold this condition as it issues forth content in all forms – video, images, audio, words-words-words...
With all the swirling emotions, it’s good to know that Humans still – and may always – have the edge when it comes to communicating with other Humans (which, thankfully, we are still doing). Why the absence of Human-generated content will actually make Large Language...
/imagine… an AI application that generates stunning, original art with the same ease as ChatGPT does for copy. Today’s content creators need visuals as much as they need words. Midjourney is one of several text-to-image GAN applications that ignite the debate about...
Teams who hear the words “urgent” and “crisis” too often, the word begins to lose its meaning and eventually, it starts to get tuned out. If everything is urgent and all things need to happen “yesterday”, then something further up the chain is going wrong. Five ways...
Leaders today need to be visible. Not just physically present for their teams but digitally, producing posts and thought leadership content for internal and external audiences. When words are needed, ChatGPT can help. Refine for accuracy, voice and coherence, it’s a...
Using AI for Professional Content Creation Leaders today need to be visible. Not just physically present for their teams but digitally, producing posts and thought leadership content for internal and external audiences. When words are needed, ChatGPT can help. Refine...
Whether by layoff, reorg or attrition, many businesses underestimate the true cost of losing talent, which goes beyond the obvious visible, “hard” expenses of payouts, fees, recruiting and training new employees. The “soft”, unseen costs are dips in productivity,...
We suffer from a use-once-and-throw-away mindset. This goes for both plastics and people. Companies exhale and inhale staff on an annual cycle, but nothing ever truly disappears. The plastic particles from a single-use bottle come back into our drinking water, our...
Ramadan kareem! If you work in a diverse, international organization, chances are a portion of your workforce will be practicing Muslims; for an entire month starting March 22-23 (depending on the moon), they will refrain from eating or drinking from sunrise to...
We all have one. The brash, high-performer with the big mouth. A fountain of radical ideas, constantly pushing back against the status quo. He bends the rules, ignores advice and does things his own way. Emotional, intense and stubborn, he takes your time and upsets...
For many multinationals, internal communication is split between the office workers and those on the factory floor. Plant and field workers have some of the hardest jobs and provide core value for the company. Yet this group shows low engagement and out of touch with...
Often, our top-level leaders live in another world; they work at the same company with the same goals, vision and share the same elevators, but are invisible to the community working for them. How can leaders increase their presence, visibility, and interaction with...
“Quiet quitting” describes an employee who “switches off” psychologically; logging in, doing the bare minimum to avoid being fired or becoming burned out, and at the end of the day, logs off. No more weekend or evening work. “Quiet firing” is the other side of...
Engagement Managers are often measured by how they move the needle on employee net promoter scores or attrition rates. But in fact, it’s all about the details. Conveying the feeling of being heard, seen, valued and respected in the workplace, and allowing for...
We all know what “burn-out” is: a medical-emotional condition that can be identified and quantified. “Burn-in” is an invisible, little-known phenomenon that affects high-functioning teams and is just as dangerous. How do you know if your team is in danger of...
A great way to rocket-fuel employee engagement – especially among your younger cohort – and jump-start the process of fattening the leadership pipeline; taking very fresh voices and training them for very high-profile public speaking roles from a very...
In the Post-Covid world, we define our values as an organization, collectively. We can brainstorm together, in real-time, from step zero, with every person having a say. Enormous, collaborative co-creation sessions which weave together all voices of the community are...
While the pandemic made us adjust to work from home, life after Covid forces us to be flexible about how we define the physical workspace and how this adds to the overall employee experience. Understanding the Four Basic working Personas and what motivates them to...
Turning repetitive tasks into raw materials for light, fun competition works for training, testing, awareness, problem solving and performance at work. It increases our engagement, builds teams and has the capacity to make these tasks more enjoyable. A few easy ways...
“Purpose” is a co-production of everyone in the organisation; fluid, organic and constantly needs adjustment. How do you know your purpose fits all? The answer is invisible diversity, celebrating the different thinkers among us, and making the creation of purpose an...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Early June, 2022 Even if the deadlines are tight and the stakes are high, laughter is the best weapon against high-stress situations. One of the best restaurants in the Netherlands some years ago used to issue every...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Early May, 2022 The vacation that nearly wasn’t… When the pressure is on, many people can only deal with high workload by working from home, away from distractions and spontaneous, new projects. In early...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Late April, 2022 A Case Study April 2022. As case numbers dwindle down and mask mandates are removed, distance orders relaxed and days in quarantine no longer a “thing”, it was time to start trickling back in to the...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Early April, 2022 The experiment Way back when Covid was sweeping through our lives for the first time, we had no idea what to expect. We were sent home in large numbers, teams pulled apart and projects implemented in a...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Late March 2022 What’s a “Workation”? It was bound to happen: the Workation. Even during peak Covid, travel was still possible. Most companies have extended work-at-home measures and the urge to get away from home,...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Early March 2022 Mihály Csíkszentmihályi first described what’s known as a state of “flow” in 1990, as a particular state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best; completely immersed in an activity. Ego,...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Late February 2022 As we come out of lockdown and enter the Post-Covid period in our history, listening to what we need is more important than ever. Good listening campaigns are based on many levels: the “Listen and...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, February 2022 Beyond Succession Planning In any organization, people come and go. Even the best companies have employee churn, and until now, no algorithm has been invented that can successfully predict who will leave...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, late January 2022 The Many-headed “Hybrid” Hydra We’ve gone back and forth for months now. How do we go back to work “when all this is over”? Do we mandate a full physical return? Do we go fully remote? Adopt a...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, January 2022 Remember those first few weeks, months, at a new job? How lost and useless you might have felt? Overwhelmed with new information, hundreds of names to remember, a raft of new tools, platforms, processes and...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, Late December 2021 Another year comes to a close. If we look at our exact moment in history right now, we are in the second year of a Global Pandemic, and nearly at the end of the alphabet soup of Covid variants. We are...
Post-covid employee engagement Fiona Passantino, December 2021 Gallup recently revealed that only 31% of the US working population describe themselves as engaged. The least engaged were leaders and mid-level managers[i]. The Great Resignation is here and it’s...
An organization with a flipped org chart is one where the people doing the talking and ideation are the same ones in the field interacting with the customer. The people doing the listening and implementing are the leaders. The traditional, top-down org chart is...
Keeping employees happy and not quitting is now a matter of business survival. Surveys still work; provided something is actually done afterwards. Five tips on making employee engagement surveys work. Fiona Passantino, October 2021. Engagement. Another email in your...
There is no fast and easy way to solve conflicts in the workplace. Rebuilding trust takes time and dedication. How these disputes are resolved is baked into the formative values of the company, and communicating this is done with a one-two punch of talking about it...
