← Embracing Digital Transformation
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- [00:00]
A
So yeah, I think there's a two. It's a double edged sword, right? I mean if you take too much time to promote them, they're all going to run away and you will be doomed with your baby boomers. And if you do that, how are you going to keep the rest of the organization satisfied? Some logic and some rationale and some timing in role required before people are being promoted into more meaningful roles.
- [00:26]
B
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation where we explore how people process policy and technology drive effective change. This is Dr. Darren, Chief Enterprise architect, educator, author and most importantly, your host on this episode, the Future of Navigating Disruption and AI with Navid Nazimian, executive coach, best selling author and HR specialist. Navid, welcome to the show.
- [01:00]
A
Thank you, Darren. Thank you for the warm welcome and I'm super stoked to have this conversation with you today.
- [01:06]
B
Yeah, I am too. I've, I've, I've been recording a lot around hr. There seems to be a big buzz around HR right now and in the people aspect. And I think the reason why is because there's a lot going on right with AI and there's lots of layoffs and hiring installed. There's a lot going. So before we dive into all that because a lot of people want to hear that, but everyone that listens to my show knows I only have superheroes on the show and every superhero has a background story. All right, so Naveed, what's your background story?
- [01:44]
A
Well, if it's really superheroes, I, I thank you for the call and I wish you a great rest of the day. But, but on a more serious note, Darren, I spent actually 20 years in this wonderful function called HR. And I did it at the country, at the region and at the global level. And I did something which in hindsight looks like I did it extra hard for myself. One of my top fun facts about my career is that I never repeated the industry. Meaning over the course of 26 years, after which I spent the last 20 in HR, I transitioned from industry to industry to industry to industry. And that was very broad then, exciting, but also a little hard because each time I felt like I'm the new key kid on the block and I have to learn all about this new particular sector and industry. So that's my professional side. And personally I have been married to my wife for almost 20 years now. So this year we hit the 19 year and we have a 10 year old son. We moved to Dubai after living in many other countries before. So this is country number five. And yeah, this is, this is Kind of my short little introduction professionally and personally speaking.
- [03:03]
B
Oh, that, that, that is awesome. So lots of different verticals. It's almost, that's how that's actually kind of cool because when you move into a new vertical, it's like, I'm new, right? I'm a novice at this vertical. I bring all my HR expertise. But yeah, that's kind of cool because it's kind of a refresher on your, it's a refresh of your career in some respects. That's an interesting perspective.
- [03:32]
A
It is, Darren, but the caveat here is nobody gave me any cookie points for freaking you come out to the industry, right. They all expect you to perform right from day one. And that's what I said. Maybe probably a little harder for me to go in. But hey, I've done it already. I've retired from my corporate executive HR role. So I can now look back and, yeah, have a bit of a smile about all this.
- [04:04]
B
That's awesome. That is really awesome. Where are you seeing, I mean you've been in both regional, international and lots of different verticals. Are you seeing a major shift in HR or are you seeing a repeated pattern that we've seen before and what's going on today?
- [04:22]
A
I actually see both, which is an ant in, in between that. So I, I, I do not hide the fact that every time I came into a new position, often in a new industry, the company believe they are so unique that nothing possibly from the outside world could be infused into that. Organizational people practices. And of course every company is unique. I mean, I work for Roche. This is one of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. And of course if you were to speak to anyone from GSK or I don't know, Novartis, they all believe that they're uniquely different and there is merits and truth in that. But it's also true that there are, you know, we're speaking about the people function here. There are very many practices on the people side that you may be interested at least to hear about to then potentially consider whether this is a practice that also would work for you and in your current organization. And if so, that may potentially give you an outsider in advantage that maybe all your competitors don't have because all they do is just to look within the industry and not really looking outside.
- [05:42]
B
Right. So yeah. So you see that, that's interesting. You see both. Are you seeing any major shifts today that are going on?
- [05:49]
A
I do. I mean, I think every three to five years we have a major disruption that is hitting.
- [05:55]
B
Well, we had Covid but six years ago. So it's time for a new disruption.
- [06:00]
A
It is, it is. And as I said it in my book, which by the way is four years old by now, I find that executive leaders more broadly, not just in hr, are exponentially challenged and they are finding themselves in a poly crisis. I mean, this just this morning, I'm based in Dubai right Now, today is the 23rd of April, 2026. And I had my very first conversation with a brand new client of mine. He was the GM of a payment business here. And of course they're, you know, they are like a B2B brand, so you wouldn't know them. They're not like a PayPal or Stripe. So they are some B2B payment program.
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B
B2B. Right, right.
- [06:45]
A
And their industry vertical called travel is hit badly because there are very few tourists flying into this region. And he's in charge of this region. So that's how the company. And he with his performance is suffering from something that isn't even remotely connected to him, which is the broader regional conflict that we have right now in the Middle east region. So that's just one example. But I could give you 20 of such examples, some of which are down to the leadership of an organization and the culture and the people and politics, some of which are completely outside of your circle of influence and control and you just have to, yeah, manage your way through them.
- [07:34]
B
So, I mean, I think probably one of the biggest, and correct me if you're wrong, if I'm wrong on this, but I think a big disruptor is AI right now. Not that it's taking people's jobs, but that there's the fear that it's going to take people's jobs. And I see a lot of organizations paralyzed because they don't know what to do. Do I invest heavily in AI or do I invest in my people? Are you seeing, are you seeing that too? Or is that just, you know, Darren projecting his belief?
- [08:16]
A
Oh, I do see that. And I think some of the large tech players have started to publicly announce that, you know, I think Oracle is the latest. They had their best year and the very best quarter in the history of the company. And despite that, I think 30,000 is the number I read somewhere is the number of people they're letting go of because they believe that AI can do that job far more effectively and probably at a better price point as well. So you do see those disruptions happening. And it's kind of, I think if anything, we are probably underestimating the ripple effects of this new technology. And that being said, one of my last tasks as an HR executive was to support the digital transformation that Vodafone was going through. Thank God I was not the lead on that. I was just a member of that team. But that was a four year project. Right. And if you think of it, Vodafone is a telecommunication company, so they're almost as nimble and agile as a tech player. Now if you think about the oil and gas or some of the pharmaceutical companies that are very different in terms of pace and slow and product development and so on, I think it's going to be a much longer journey for them to come online and kind of have the use cases line up and get the funding and so on. So I think it's clearly that AI is here to stay and it's already proven to take jobs away. But then again, at the top level, it's not really a concern for those kind of leaders. It's really more about how do we leverage this technology in the most effective way and how do we get, as with anything else, elites over our main competitors here. Why.
- [10:14]
B
So what are, what are some of the dangers that hr, you know, heads of HR and also executives are facing in this uncertain time? What would you say would be some of the, the biggest concerns that are being talked about in executive staff and in board board meetings?
- [10:32]
A
Yes, so I have to be very careful what I say because this is my beloved home function and yet I have been out of it for four years at least as an insider. So I think what I am seeing is a repeated pattern of. I mean, believe it or not, I am connected to many HRDs also in this region and it's not unheard of that companies up to 2,3000 employees are still running their payroll on an Excel spreadsheet, are having seven different systems in use for the various processes of the HR function. So one is used for onboarding, the other one is used for payroll, the other one is used for employee engagement. A fourth one is used for whatever succession planning and the talent management. And so if that's the state of your organization and the sophistication of your people processes, well guess what? AI is like an added layer of complexity on top of all of that because none of those systems are connected and interlinked in a meaningful way. So, so that's one side of the conversation I see particularly with small medium sized businesses that aren't quite as mature as some of the large corporates. I used to work for Adidas or Adidas as you Call them in the us, ge, you know, Vodafone. And so these are a hundred thousand plus signs.
- [11:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have to have more complex systems that are better integrated. Yes, or hopefully. Hopefully they're better integrated. That's not always the case.
- [12:08]
A
They do. What I would say though, the caveat with those large organizations without particularly mentioning any, any specific organization, is that you pay a lot of money for the SAP HR success factors, the Oracle hr, the Workday HR solutions. At one point, again without mentioning the name of the company, we were the largest key account for SAP globally because we spent £250 million just on the SAP implementation, not just in HR, but company wide. And HR was company wide. That's a lot.
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B
Yeah.
- [12:41]
A
And then Darren, as a super user, you get to see the actual system in use and you're like, oh my goodness, did we really pay this much to get this very simple vanilla template that barely does anything in return? I mean, it's beyond belief. So, so, so this is, you see two extremes on this scale. One is like still running on eight different systems and trying to kind of, you know, somehow stitch them together and then you have those big hairy, you know, spend on one system. And of course that system is very inflexible and probably not really giving you what you want from it. And so these are the two ends of that. And again, I want to point out that I do not consider myself to be an ERP expert or a system architect or anything like that. This is just from a user perspective
- [13:36]
B
and some from a user perspective, that's a very good perspective. And I've heard that from others as well. Do you see those tools changing? Do you see the way HR operates changing because of tools like AI coming in and making some?
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A
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I do remember this was my very last software implementation. It was super easy. A tool called Eightfold, which is a talent succession planning type tool.
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B
Okay.
- [14:05]
A
And I did just for the fun of it. And we had HR as the first user group to be enabled on the platform before we rolled out for the rest of the organization. So, you know, drink your own champagne or eat your own dog food.
- [14:19]
B
That's right, mantra there.
- [14:30]
A
And I do remember that all I needed to do was to upload my PDF resume and I did that just for the fun of it. And then it went on and came back with two suggested roles for me that would, that the two would consider a meaningful next role. And both of them were bang on. So, so this was really my aha moment where I thought, oh, oh, wow. And you know, this is in the year 2022, there was no AI, there was no LLM officially available for consumers and users. So I'm sure they call it machine learning at the time. There was some AI capability baked into the tool to read out a resume and know enough about the organization and potential positions to be able to come up with two very valid recommendations right at the outset within like three seconds. And so if you think of a tool that's capable of doing that, you could really start to think about how that one tool would be a meaningful addition to what you do. But the reality is again, at that time it was only used for that purpose. And I don't think they had many other use cases built up yet. And so it was a startup or a scale up, something like that.
- [15:48]
B
Yeah. So. So with, with new tools like this that are, it means that HR could probably focus more on developing the humans in their right in, in their organization. Right. And taking advantage of all that great talent that's sitting there, probably not being leveraged very well at all. Do you see that kind of as a, a new shift in hr?
- [16:13]
A
Yes, yes. On that is the broken record of the people function, which is how to be a strategic HR leader and claim your seat at the board or earn your seat at the table, whatever the terminology is. And of course the admin part of hr, unfortunately still quite heavy. Even in those large organizations, despite spending millions of dollars on those ERPs, there is still a fair amount of manual work and manual data reading and touching that is required. I had that same issue because in my last position I was the global head of HR working for finance and I looked after 27,000 people scattered in 24 markets. And you can imagine if you want to run the global share program for those 24 markets, although it's a global program, it's not quite as straightforward as you would imagine.
- [17:11]
B
Well, there's different laws in different countries and cultural, those cultural differences as well that you have to deal with. Much more complex than I think most people realize.
- [17:23]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. And I also say non value adding complexity. Sometimes complexity can be good if it's desired and if it's part of you pivoting into something that no one else has figured out. Think of Google when they first launched the search engine, or think of ChatGPT when they first launched the first large language model. So it's like a real game changer and only one company was able to do that and then gain market share quite substantially. But what I have faced in HR in the 20 years that I spent in the function is complexity, and lots of complexity that isn't necessarily value adding to you or to the customer groups that you're supporting.
- [18:04]
B
Now that. That's really fascinating. All right, so let's talk about the future of hr. Where, and I guess more than just hr, just human management in these organizations. Where do you see it moving to? Or do you see us just doing the same thing that we've been doing? Or are there new services, new opportunities in HR organizations moving forward?
- [18:31]
A
Oh, for sure. I mean, one observation I have is my own little experience as someone who wanted to move into the HR function. And this is in the year 2002, Darren, nobody wanted to hire me, not a single person. A, because I did not have relevant HR experience in my background. I had spent six years in sales. And B, because at the time, HR in Germany was very black and white. And so I got all these rejections and sometimes they would be kind to write me an actual letter and explain. And as the famous song from Eminem suggests, it takes one chance, one opportunity. And that lady who gave me the chance, her name is Daniel Frech, and she hired me into Adidas, into the lowest level HR position that they had, which was an assistant HR manager. So that was kind of my beginning into the HR world. And I use that example because I wasn't the only one who really had to prove to the hiring manager why they should hire me and what is the value that I could potentially bring to the organization and make a compelling case for hiring me. Darren, this is in the year 2019, 2018, where I was running a huge development center for management trainees graduates, right? And at the time, we also used another fantastic tool, which was the candidates had to have an interview with a bot. And that bot measured not just what they said and whether it made sense and all, but it also measured sentiment and, you know, speech pattern recognition, all sorts of different things. And anyway, long story short, and that was our way to make sure that we get into. We hired roughly 900 management trilis any given year globally, and they were spread across the 24 markets. So in order to get to 900 hires, you have to have some quality filters in between.
- [20:33]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [20:34]
A
The first one was just send us your resume. And then the second one was some human person just screening through those resumes and then making sure that those that look half interesting are being, you know, moved to the next phase. And that next phase was this bottom tool. And then came the development center, so, which also included an actual in Person interview. The development center was also in person physically. So then we had, I don't know, 60, 80, 100, depending on what development center cohort this was of young talent coming to us. And this is my aha moment, Darren, where I suddenly realized, hang on, the table has turned. So it's not really for these top talented individuals to come and prove to us why they are worthy of being hired. It was the opposite, which is, I could go to Unilever, I could go to nesv, I could go to Vodafone. What do you guys offer that would be worth my why? And so that's the big shift, as I called it. And I had a nice conversation with my colleagues on the back end of that as a debrief, thinking, what the heck just happened here? Because this newest generation, which was Gen Z or millennials or whatever the demographic was, it's just so fundamentally different than anything else I've seen before. And I've worked with baby boomers and the X's and the this and that and yeah, the tradition. This is a whole different caliber of talent. And if you want to succeed in this war for talent as it was in the time, we have to really shape up differently. I mean, we moved our offer letter timing from four days after the development center to having printers on site and, and, and issuing signs offer letters to those that we wanted to hire right there, right then. And so it was really, you know, you had to really fundamentally rethink this thing because if you didn't, well, chances are that you may leave some of that time. Yeah.
- [23:04]
B
Do you, do you think right now. Because I mean that right, right now it seems like there's a, not a lot of jobs out there and a lot of people looking. Is that, is that true or is there just not the, the capability of matching very well. Do you know where I'm going with this? Because it seems like AI has been thrown in the mix of this. And I know I can write a unique resume every minute. If I want for a very specific job, I take my resume and rewrite it with Chad GPT geared towards a specific job. Is this making it much more difficult to find people now or people aren't looking right now? What's, what's the, you know,
- [23:55]
A
I hear both sides of this. One is certainly some of the graduates are finding it difficult to land their dream roles because there are very few entry level roles for early talent. And that's your typical Stanford, Harvard, London Business School kind of a graduate who could choose between 5 to 10 offers and often went for the highest offer or the one that provides the steepest career option or what have you. So investment banking, consulting, those were the top positions. They are sometimes struggling to have an actual validated offer. So that's one side of it which I'm hearing again, I'm not in the hiring anymore, so this is all kind of anecdotal.
- [24:50]
B
Yeah, but you're hearing from your old pals, right?
- [24:52]
A
Yes, yeah, yeah. And at the same time I'm also seeing search firm partners and other people who are specialized in finding the top talent, sometimes struggling to find, as you beautifully demonstrated with your hands, the matching talent. And so the company is ready to hire, the budget is there, they have spend time on the search firm brief and they really have this idea that who they would like to hire with what capabilities. And yeah, still there are only so many people who are on the lookout actively looking and those that are passively looking, depending on where they are and what the circumstances are, they may be more, less excited about those calls and more keen to stay put because they may be given up something that may not be coming the way again. And so if the new world doesn't work out, then that's a bad situation to be in.
- [25:53]
B
So I mean in the past we used to use money to do that, right? We used to say, hey, I'll give you a better offer, more money and you'll jump. But what I'm seeing is Gen Z isn't just motivated by money, they're motivated by lots of other things as well.
- [26:12]
A
Purpose, career progression, all sorts of different things. Access to senior leaders, expectation to grow very, very quickly in the organization. I was having a staycation here in Dubai also just to support the local economy that's been suffering from this regional conflict. And I know the area director of the chain of hotels and I had a coffee with his chief of staff and she was chatting to me about that. She said, and she's much younger than I am, but she said I'm old school, right? I had to work my way up to be so close to the MD of the cluster of hotels. And I have 25 year olds who want to take my position after a year or two in this industry and it's just beyond me how would anyone consider them for this role. And then they are resigning and moving elsewhere because they're not growing their career as quickly as they want to. So yeah, I think there's a two. It's a double edged sword, right? I mean if you, if you take too much time to promote Them, they're all going to run away and you will be doomed with your baby boomers. And if you do that, how, how are you going to keep the rest of the organization satisfied? Some logic and some rationale and some timing in role required before people are being promoted into more meaningful role.
- [27:39]
B
How do you, how do you resolve, how do you resolve all these? Because there's, there's technology changes that are out there, there's cultural changes. It's, it's a, it's kind of a mess right now, right? You got a lot going on. So how do you navigate this as a, as a senior leader in, in an organization?
- [28:00]
A
I mean, in my current time and role, I'm also much more involved with board boards and board appointments and the like, which is very different than my active duty as an executive. And I was kind of in the hamster wheel or in the trenches and, and just delivering. So one of the practices I have seen that is really working well for boards is to throw the whole philosophy of you must be 55 plus, you must have 25 years plus of professional work experience. You must have these credentials, ideally a master's degree, this, that, which, which is very old school board appointment selection criteria for one or two of the seats. And these one or two are much younger, much more in tune sometimes with a major part of the business if they are in the business of selling products and services to very young people. And these one or two seeds will have something uniquely added to the skill matrix of the board, which is what most of these board members, quite frankly do not have, which is digital natives that have a gazillion of these tools at their disposal any point in time to really understand how to leverage those. And so this is kind of what I can share with you, your listeners and your audience as a practice that, that may work, work for them as well, is to have a bit of a mix between, you know, you can think of the same construct in a leadership team, right? You, you, you, you may not need to promote the Gen Z into a, an SVP or an evp, but if you create like a chief of staff role, if you create like a, you know, something like a rotating, like a
- [29:55]
B
mentorship kind of program, right, that gets them.
- [29:58]
A
But, but more than that, more than just giving advice on how to grow your career, but really having them to be part of the conversation, having them to have a voice in the room, having them to have a vote when it comes to major decisions and having them to struggle with what everyone else who's 20 to 30 years older than they are, is grappling with and having them to have a go at it. So, so I think that's, that's the one angle that I find still widely unexplored, both on boards and certainly in executive leadership teams. Because as far as I see that panning out, it's very much the old school kind of formula there, done that. And, and then you have to earn the right to sit at the board or at the, at the top leadership level and so on.
- [30:44]
B
As, as a, as a gray hair. My, myself, I'm like, yeah, I have, I have lots of wounds and I've gone through the gauntlet. I should be able to sit on a board or be an executive now because I've already gone through all the pain and suffering. Yeah. Why should I let some whippersnapper, you know, some young guy come up here that hasn't suffered, hasn't gone through that? That's the attitude. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So that's, that's an interesting perspective. Hey, Navid, if people want to find out more about what's going on, if they want to find your book, where do they find that?
- [31:21]
A
Yes. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, I mean, everywhere you can buy books from, you can also find my book. And if people have short attention, Spanish, particularly younger years, I think it's becoming more rare that they actually read 252 pages in a, in a physical, anything in their hands. There are also short versions of the book available on Get Abstract and other platforms. That uproar is another one where you can just read the seven page summary and if you find value in that, you can then go ahead and buy the actual book, whether in a Kindle audiobook or physical version. So that's the book. And then myself, I'm on LinkedIn. I have a, a very active presence on the platform. I have a relatively large following and I have a weekly newsletter that is currently subscribed by 8,000 executives. So those are three ways how your audience can get in touch with me or get a little acquainted with the work that I do.
- [32:26]
B
That's awesome, Navid. Hey, thanks for coming on the show today. This has been very insightful.
- [32:30]
A
Thank you so much, Darren. And thank you for the opportunity to talk about my passion function people in charge.
- [32:40]
B
Thanks for listening to Embracing Digital Transformation. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us five stars on your favorite podcasting app or on YouTube. It really helps others discover the show. If you want to go deeper, join our exclusive community@patreon.com embracingdigital, where we share bonus content and you can always connect with other change makers like yourself. You can also always find more resources@embracingdigital.org until next time, keep embracing the digital transformation.