[08:15:36:14 – 08:15:37:19]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
First Principles Podcast,
[08:15:38:20 – 08:15:40:18]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
season one, episode two.
[08:15:44:13 – 08:15:59:04]
Lochner Eksteen
Okay, I’m gonna do it actually every time we have a podcast. Number one is I just want to acknowledge how uncomfortable this is to have a conversation around the table where we actually have a conversation because it’s being recorded. But like I said earlier,
[08:16:00:11 – 08:16:12:09]
Lochner Eksteen
with each one of you of our conversations, we are thought, damn it, this should have been recorded. Because there’s people who needs that wisdom and that information. So that’s the idea, yeah.
[08:16:13:23 – 08:16:17:16]
Lochner Eksteen
I’m gonna quickly start with maybe just you guys introducing yourself.
[08:16:19:09 – 08:16:21:22]
Lochner Eksteen
Let’s see if you can maybe just start with a quick, who are you?
[08:16:23:16 – 08:16:24:05]
Lochner Eksteen
For the people.
[08:16:24:05 – 08:16:27:09]
Ursula Fear
Sure. My name is Ursula Thier.
[08:16:28:10 – 08:16:29:16]
Lochner Eksteen
You can explain yourself to them.
[08:16:29:16 – 08:16:58:07]
Ursula Fear
Okay. My name is Ursula Thier. I am a senior talent program manager for an organization called Salesforce. And I’ve been building critical and scare skills in South Africa for over 27 years. And I’m really passionate about what technology can do in terms of building our economy and most importantly building physical papers, skills and jobs. Awesome.
[08:16:59:16 – 08:17:00:19]
Christiaan Brink
Thank you. Christian.
[08:17:01:23 – 08:17:42:20]
Christiaan Brink
I’m Christian. I’ve worked in software all my life. There are stages of it starting fundamentally and building software and then moving into managing teams that build software and everything around that. Now I lead a business that builds software. And always from the point of view, how software changes the world, solves problems for customers at value, create things that make the world work in a better way. And obviously a key component in all of that is the software is the technology doing something that ultimately it’s raised on people who makes that happen. So that’s what I do.
[08:17:42:20 – 08:17:51:19]
Lochner Eksteen
And that’s why I’ve got you here because I know you’re a techie with that human side of you. Karine, just quickly explain yourself to you why you’re here.
[08:17:51:19 – 08:17:54:16]
Carien Human
Yeah, I told my name is Karine. I’m a psychologist.
[08:17:56:00 – 08:18:01:02]
Carien Human
I’m pretty scared to read your minds and talk to you with some difficult questions.
[08:18:02:11 – 08:18:03:02]
(Laughing)
[08:18:04:20 – 08:18:06:23]
Carien Human
I’m really interested to hear what you guys have to say.
[08:18:06:23 – 08:18:12:16]
Lochner Eksteen
So maybe to set the scene, I think we spoke about it earlier when I read some of the story this morning.
[08:18:14:01 – 08:18:23:05]
Lochner Eksteen
The Babylon story of this king building this what we could call a system.
[08:18:25:22 – 08:18:30:16]
Lochner Eksteen
And at the end of the time, he stood on top of this thing and he said, this is my thing.
[08:18:32:01 – 08:18:33:12]
Lochner Eksteen
And when you read that story,
[08:18:34:15 – 08:18:36:03]
Lochner Eksteen
and when I was looking to customers,
[08:18:38:04 – 08:18:41:17]
Lochner Eksteen
it feels like it’s something similar. We raise up these monuments
[08:18:42:21 – 08:18:47:15]
Lochner Eksteen
and we’ve got all these people trying to, in a boldest monument,
[08:18:49:12 – 08:19:01:18]
Lochner Eksteen
which I’ve also seen over the years now turn into what are actually sand castles because markets come and go and it just flattens it and then we need to do it again.
[08:19:03:23 – 08:19:36:00]
Lochner Eksteen
Coupled with that, we spoke about it earlier, is Peter Drucker’s idea of what a system is. A system is actually a bunch of ports working together. And I wanna put one port, which is software away and not talk about it. It’s one of the ports in a business because the business is a system, but the critical ports are the customer, the product, the service, and the people in the business. And every time I speak to customers, it just comes back to those people.
[08:19:37:03 – 08:19:42:12]
Lochner Eksteen
People know the last episode, we also spoke about people, but I think in this one,
[08:19:43:19 – 08:19:47:23]
Lochner Eksteen
what I’m trying to get through in this message and it doesn’t have to stick to that is
[08:19:50:16 – 08:19:52:08]
Lochner Eksteen
what are we doing in South Africa
[08:19:53:22 – 08:20:08:09]
Lochner Eksteen
to build that port of the system? To build it, to retain it, to make it valuable, and ultimately reduce that joblessness ratio, which is our responsibility, it’s not governance responsibility.
[08:20:09:21 – 08:20:15:15]
Lochner Eksteen
So maybe with that, to start with, Christian, I don’t know if you’ve got anything to add onto that.
[08:20:17:02 – 08:20:39:01]
Christiaan Brink
Well, I do think we are very interesting, dynamic in South Africa in terms of skill sets. And I’m reminded every year that something that I always find very fascinating is this, and I haven’t looked at this statistic in a long time, but about 65% of children reach the age of 10 in this country and they cannot read for meaning.
[08:20:40:10 – 08:20:46:04]
Christiaan Brink
So if we think about the people who start their careers in the workforce,
[08:20:47:06 – 08:21:07:01]
Christiaan Brink
the amount of hurdles that you have to overcome to get that, even if you combine it with two out of three kids in this country grow up without a father in the house. So if you are able to get through school, get a university degree and apply for a job at a business, the amount of adversity that you have overcome is extraordinary.
[08:21:08:09 – 08:21:14:21]
Christiaan Brink
And, you know, aside from the world of work of serving customers and solving problems and so on,
[08:21:16:19 – 08:21:32:03]
Christiaan Brink
the ultimate rewarding work to do is to transform people. You transform yourself by transforming people. And what is a greater endeavor every day than doing that?
[08:21:33:22 – 08:21:34:12]
Speaker 6
I like that.
[08:21:34:12 – 08:21:56:10]
Ursula Fear
I love what you’re saying, because when you come down to the most common denominator, and if you look at the world of software and you look at the complexity of what technology is doing, we’re expecting that the baseline of individual that’s gonna enter into this world has got certain things in place.
[08:21:57:12 – 08:22:05:02]
Ursula Fear
So when you look at the ability to synthesize, the ability to think cognitively or meet a cognition,
[08:22:06:03 – 08:22:45:15]
Ursula Fear
to apply a thought process, to question, to articulate appropriately, to be able to understand efficiently, all of those things, we are making the assumption that that’s in place. And so I fundamentally believe that businesses have become educationalists whether we like it or not. And the sooner we appreciate that we’ve become educationalists, the quicker I believe that we can be in our way in terms of driving employment. This morning driving yesterday they released the latest unemployment stats of from 31.9% down to 31.4%. We are in a crisis.
[08:22:47:03 – 08:23:24:09]
Ursula Fear
And until we start to acknowledge the fundamental foundational deficit that we have in order to create a world of complexity, because we live in a world of complexity, whether we like it or not, and it’s not gonna just happen. So for me, you can’t teach if we don’t have the ability to read for meaning, if we don’t have the ability to process information, to be able to deal with information and unpack it and have a point of view and all of those kinds of things, we’re gonna be stuck, but we keep getting stuck.
[08:23:24:09 – 08:23:34:15]
Lochner Eksteen
But we spoke about it since before the panel started running, and I was, where do you get that? Because we’ve been talking about, is it modeled, do you learn it in the university?
[08:23:34:15 – 08:23:59:16]
Ursula Fear
No, I think we have gotten to a point in time, you can’t rely on a single party. You can’t rely on government, you can’t just rely on institutions, you can’t just rely on the individual, you can’t just rely on an employer, you can’t just rely, there is a collective intelligence that we now need to start to deal with. It’s about everybody sitting at the table and equally starting to unpack.
[08:23:59:16 – 08:24:01:08]
Lochner Eksteen
That doesn’t have to be an organized committee.
[08:24:01:08 – 08:24:15:17]
Ursula Fear
No, it doesn’t need to be an organized committee. Because that never works. When you start to, we’ve gotta be able through that collective intelligence, we’ve gotta be able to influence each of those different parties. I’ll give you a perfect example, you say universities.
[08:24:17:21 – 08:24:25:01]
Ursula Fear
Universities, the structure of universities, Council of Higher Education, a qualification in South Africa has a lifespan of five years.
[08:24:27:00 – 08:24:28:19]
Ursula Fear
And the curriculum stays put.
[08:24:29:20 – 08:25:19:10]
Ursula Fear
Our world of software, especially the world I come from, we have got a new release every four months, okay? So how do we influence this structure, which is so regarded and respected in South Africa? But how do we legitimately say, you need to influence your curriculum so that it is building relevant football purpose skills that can enter into our world, and we don’t sit with one of the highest unemployed groups of people, which are graduates. So I fundamentally believe sharpening the pencil together, because no separate party has the answer. We have to evoke this collective intelligence where we open and we sit down, and we all start to change and morph and amend how we actually contribute to what this new picture needs to look like.
[08:25:19:10 – 08:25:22:00]
Carien Human
And, sorry for bringing that. I just,
[08:25:23:04 – 08:25:36:11]
Carien Human
like how does a company, like balance getting someone that already has a level of competence, or feeling like the pressure that they have to know, almost trying this person. Like I would imagine if I employ somebody,
[08:25:37:17 – 08:25:44:23]
Carien Human
a graduate, like you say, I would expect a certain level of competence. And it almost sounds like you’re saying,
[08:25:45:23 – 08:25:50:20]
Carien Human
don’t expect that, you have to cultivate them and almost train in your company.
[08:25:52:00 – 08:25:57:23]
Ursula Fear
There’s a couple of challenges when it comes to entry-level talent entering into an organization.
[08:25:59:00 – 08:26:05:05]
Ursula Fear
The first thing I fundamentally believe where we’ve gone wrong is we leave it up to business.
[08:26:06:08 – 08:26:22:21]
Ursula Fear
Here’s Lachna, he’s got all the potential in the world, and we throw them into the business and we hope for the best. And we have to get to a point where we need to understand that hope is not a strategy. And when you build experience, when you build the application, it’s a science.
[08:26:23:22 – 08:26:31:06]
Ursula Fear
It’s a work integrated learning is a science. And we always describe it as we’ve asked the organization to write the book.
[08:26:32:17 – 08:27:39:21]
Ursula Fear
You experts, you should know what to do when it comes to bringing in this very amazing person with all the potential in the world, but you guys must do it. We’ve dealt with creating entry-level jobs through a training angle. Let’s train them, let’s give them a training course, because we’ve given them a training course in their past, or they’ve got certification, they can do it. They cannot. And so when we have to unpack what is work integrated learning, how do we legitimately start to build the ability for people to do basic tasks into more complex tasks? And we’ll tell you in the world of business, the currency of expertise is grown through trust. You can come into any organization, doesn’t matter who you are, doesn’t matter what you know, but you start with, can we start to give you stuff and can you do projects? Can you do this and can I trust you and can I give you more complex? And that’s how we do it. So we put a lot of expectation on organizations with no proper structure around how we build that application and that work integrated learning.
[08:27:39:21 – 08:27:44:18]
Lochner Eksteen
But how do you build that? So I think it’s important, because I’ve seen your team,
[08:27:46:10 – 08:28:13:04]
Lochner Eksteen
I don’t know their backgrounds. So we work with, in my world I see two different workers, you know, customers, it’s the people who orchestrate the system and the users of the system. Seems like almost deployment has gone that way. Like you’re either a user of the system or you’re orchestrating how the users work. And it seems like the people who’s got more legs to go are working on this side, where they are more orchestrators than…
[08:28:14:23 – 08:28:23:14]
Lochner Eksteen
So in your team, what did you have to do? You don’t have to name names, but is there an individual you can think of, listen, we got a email at this point.
[08:28:24:22 – 08:28:25:15]
Lochner Eksteen
And mixing that,
[08:28:26:16 – 08:28:41:15]
Lochner Eksteen
what we spoke about earlier, working from home versus working to office thing, because in our world it’s a big topic, in your world as well. If people want to point, nobody wants to work remotely. How does that affect, I think you said it earlier, how do you learn how to work?
[08:28:43:03 – 08:29:19:00]
Christiaan Brink
Yeah, look, I think maybe I’ll take a better step back and start your little story, which I found very humorous the first time I learned it. Some of you might know George Orr or Martin as he wrote all the Game of Thrones books and so on. He’s always been complimented for writing very good, strong female characters. So I saw this one interview where they were discussing that with him. And you can see after a while, he’s getting annoyed with this discussion because the person asks him, “How are you able to write “such good, strong female characters?” He said, “Well, I have a secret weapon. “I pretend that there are real people.”
[08:29:20:16 – 08:29:21:07]
(Audience Laughs)
[08:29:21:07 – 08:29:29:01]
Christiaan Brink
And so I think there are this concept of the people who arrive at your doorstep, like your point on collective intelligence.
[08:29:30:05 – 08:29:31:22]
Christiaan Brink
They are now your workforce.
[08:29:33:00 – 08:30:19:21]
Christiaan Brink
And they arrive at your doorstep with all the formative experiences in their life, all the lack thereof. And I think in our dynamic in South Africa, it’s very important to always kind of think about the lack thereof. What is the lack thereof in this individual? That’s sometimes counterintuitive because you don’t think of a lack thereof if you’ve never had it yourself. So you have to go a step beyond that. But I always distinctly remember the moment where I realized that people who work in tech industry or software where I am, they are people who fundamentally excel because they started like being interested in a thing. They were interested in software or they were interested in testing or some form of subject matter. Now they enter the world.
[08:30:20:21 – 08:30:35:12]
Christiaan Brink
And what’s very bizarre was in the attitude test, I ask, “Do you wanna work with people or not?” And it’s such a bizarre question because the world of work is about working with other people. And so if you realize, “Okay, these people arrive here. “They’re interested in things.”
[08:30:36:13 – 08:30:42:02]
Christiaan Brink
Working with people is not natural to them, especially because they’re more introverted, et cetera.
[08:30:43:03 – 08:30:57:16]
Christiaan Brink
You have to really work intentionally at helping them to work well with other people and being very focused on that. So that’s really been a priority for me and the business is develop what you could, I guess collectively, call the EQ skills of people.
[08:30:59:11 – 08:31:47:09]
Christiaan Brink
And you see it in different forms like people arrive there and you look at whatever email they write to a client and then it’s like, “Okay, well, no, “let’s take a step back. “If you send that email to you, would you like that? “There’s that in the other, maybe there’s that and so on.” It’s all about teaching people how to interact with other people. And at some stage, your subject matter skills take you to a certain level in your career and what takes you further is your effectiveness in working with people. So, you know, there’s collective intelligence. Everybody has to play their role. But in business, I can’t focus every day on what role everybody else should play. I can focus on what role I can play with my team and leaders and managers and so on. And that’s the only way I try to consume myself.
[08:31:49:17 – 08:32:39:16]
Lochner Eksteen
If we can maybe touch specifically because it struck me earlier when we spoke about it and I wanna go back to that, this learning how to work is certifications, et cetera, so obviously important to get that. But I wanna come back to this topic of the people who’s watching. When I employ techy people, do I allow them to work from home three times a week, three times a week? Do they work at the office? If I have an office and I want these people that we are trying to orchestrate as off-systems, right? Whether it’s an admin or a dev or whatever the case might be, a BA, what’s good like? In terms of environment for them to learn. We’re talking about, I’m not talking about a 40, 50 year old. I’m talking about these young people who we need to bring into the market.
[08:32:41:00 – 08:32:49:20]
Ursula Fear
I think a young person just starting off as a job, they need to be in the workplace.
[08:32:50:23 – 08:34:07:01]
Ursula Fear
I think that what is the frame of reference of what you can draw on? And when you don’t have that ability, I mean something something like always having your camera off in a meeting. I always joke, one day I was listening to the radio and they were talking, people had to phone in about what you did in your meetings, your Zoom or your team’s meetings with the camera off. Your, people were in spinning classes, people were, you know, and I always think how much is lost when your camera’s off? And yes, fair enough, connectivity is the issue. All of those kinds of things. But when we are trying to build a workforce in this country, the foundation has got to be sufficient that people can really springboard from. And when you haven’t got the ability to give them a good frame of reference of what good looks like in terms of business, communication, you know, punctuality, how you convey yourself, how you problem, so all of those things and you stuck doing it in your own way. So all of those things and you stuck doing it in your lounge or if you’re lucky enough to have an office, you’re very constrained. And I think therefore it takes us longer as a youngster coming into the workplace. It does take you longer to get them ramped up in terms of what we see and deem as professional and excellent.
[08:34:07:01 – 08:34:08:07]
Christiaan Brink
Wanna add on together?
[08:34:09:16 – 08:34:16:02]
Christiaan Brink
Yeah, I just think that, you know, another part of learning the world of work, and I remember in my first job, so,
[08:34:17:04 – 08:34:44:06]
Christiaan Brink
the fact that you were there, the person you reported to were there or other senior people, you could really draw on these experience and learning from these people. Even if it’s just a small little conversation whilst you pour yourself another cup of coffee or something, but the person you directly reported to, because again, you start your career learning a skill, and that person is teaching you hands-on every day and you ask questions the whole time. It’s not the same as typing a question and getting an answer.
[08:34:45:06 – 08:35:39:08]
Christiaan Brink
And then I think that I also think a lot about now in this world of fire where everybody’s saying, I go, well, all the entry-level work and jobs will go away. And then I’m thinking the people who are making these decisions, what will this succession look like? There are young people that needs to come in all the time and learn the world of work, and that kind of creates the time and pull. But there is something that we’ve lost during the pandemic and learning from a mentor, hands-on. And I think also for that reason, why people are of a strong focus in getting people together back in the office. But it’s also not conducive to be at the office and sit in a meeting room on teams. Then they’re just doing the same thing somewhere else. I think business is now very intentional in creating collaboration opportunities where they see people are not collaborating, because the true magic I think happens in collaboration.
[08:35:40:09 – 08:35:46:12]
Christiaan Brink
So I think that’s my one question for you. You’re mentioning things people learn.
[08:35:46:12 – 08:36:09:10]
Carien Human
It’s almost outside of their awareness by watching people model stuff and answering questions when they’re not really realizing what they are asking or what they’re answering. Do you think a leader or a company or an organization should be intentional about creating space with that? Or do you allow it to kind of happen naturally?
[08:36:10:16 – 08:36:42:11]
Christiaan Brink
I think you should do both. But I think again, like what is implicit and what is a lack thereof? Post the pandemic, we should all assume there’s a lack of collaboration. So I have to be intentional as a leader. And you can’t solve all problems all the time. But if you can see in a certain area, like something is not working here, most likely if you go and you look into it a bit more, you’ll find a lack of collaboration or teamwork around that. And what I always find interesting in employee engagement surveys,
[08:36:44:04 – 08:37:26:17]
Christiaan Brink
it’s like wishing for world peace. When you ask employees, do you want to collaborate more, they all say yes. But there’s a disclaimer there that they’re not telling you. It’s like as long as the other guy or the boss or the manager creates collaboration first. I must not be the one who does. I want it, but I don’t want to be the instigator. I think if we understand that about the human condition, then again, you have to be intentional about it because people’s default setting is somebody else must do it. We try and teach people that concept. I hammer on this all the time. Look, to be a great collaborator, initiate collaboration, but assume everybody’s not gonna do it and most won’t. And you instigate it and you get a better outcome, I find.
[08:37:29:00 – 08:38:36:00]
Ursula Fear
Also nothing, there is no perfect environment, work environment anymore. So it’s not like you can’t have remote work for youngsters. I just think how we move that dial has needed to be contemplated a lot more in terms of what we enable these people with to be successful. Going back to that, we assume there’s this sin of assumption that we keep making, that people are gonna understand how to conduct themselves. And it’s not about spending a half day with a sort of kind of intervention. It’s about having these principles that you drive continuously and doing the additional intentional or letting things happen naturally about this collective sort of collaboration and connection. I think the learning is through connection, human connection. And so you also need to start thinking about what are the environments, whether I’m at home or whether I’m in my office, what are the environments that are gonna enable us to thrive?
[08:38:37:08 – 08:38:41:23]
Ursula Fear
I think that’s the question that we’ve gotta solve, is how do we fish with air and everything?
[08:38:41:23 – 08:38:51:02]
Lochner Eksteen
What are the conditions for people to thrive and irrespective of where you’re coming from, what your context is, what your circumstances, that’s what we’ve gotta hold.
[08:38:52:11 – 08:38:59:03]
Lochner Eksteen
So in my previous company where we worked, I had this idea, I read it in a book called
[08:39:00:08 – 08:39:05:13]
Lochner Eksteen
The Soul of Desire, it’s the book’s name. And the guy spoke about our,
[08:39:06:14 – 08:39:19:00]
Lochner Eksteen
as we grow older, we use our creative spark, stress, angst, depression, you know, all the normal stuff that it’s everybody that a creative part of us gets lost.
[08:39:20:02 – 08:39:39:12]
Lochner Eksteen
And really in our industry, it’s actually a creative process I found. My own background is the arts. I studied arts when I started working with dance wings I realized, but it’s a tool. It’s the one that’s painting, the other one is sculpting, this one is just doing this way, but the process is a really creative process. And what I found was,
[08:39:41:11 – 08:39:47:07]
Lochner Eksteen
if I ask him, doesn’t this your child know what you do? Can you show him or her something that you did today?
[08:39:49:12 – 08:39:50:08]
Lochner Eksteen
Because we’ve lost that.
[08:39:52:03 – 08:40:01:17]
Lochner Eksteen
If your daughter asks you, what do you do? What are you gonna show her? What can you explain to her? So what we did at that stage, we tried it, as a taller developer, listen,
[08:40:02:19 – 08:40:46:20]
Lochner Eksteen
the back end of some system that you built, you obviously solved a unique problem that you really felt good about. Just bring out that piece of code or that flow and let’s bring it out. And we gave it to an artist and we said, listen, make something out of it. And we put it on a wall. Now, not everybody has to go to those extremes, but what’s happening to this workforce, it’s a steady bit of percent of people, are they, do they need to go and be working in the company, on the products, delivering products or service, or would you suggest that they go into this world of creating systems and not necessarily have something to show except for a screen, but there’s a tension there. I just wanna know, and it’s really abstract, but can you speak into that?
[08:40:48:02 – 08:42:21:21]
Ursula Fear
The way I see it, I think we’ve lost our ability to communicate, whether you’re communicating through a bit of code and it’s been interpreted in a particular way, our ability to connect around the sub-table, our ability to be able to dialogue, to have conversation, to connect through my experiences of the day, I’ve been able to do this, explain it to your child. I think technology, as much as it’s been an amazing thing, it has really become a little bit of an impediment when it comes to that ability for effective communication. So I think if we can start to find the tools to help us to be a lot more explicit in our experiences, articulate that in a particular way for people to understand, I think that is gonna be quite significant. And I’ve started to see that dramatically when trying to get entry level, you know, into jobs. They are falling short in the fact that their ability to communicate successfully is completely flawed at the moment. So I see it in, you know, we’re all guilty of it because we have these little things in our pockets, you know, we’re all guilty of it, but I think that intentional, you know, focus on how we can actually extract our experiences and talk about them and share them, I think that’s something that we’re losing. So I really relate to what you’re saying.
[08:42:24:14 – 08:43:01:00]
Christiaan Brink
So I think one, you know, sometimes you get favorable unwanted consequences of things. So when the pandemic set in, we had the, in the first sort of phase of it, the first few weeks of it, we had the customer support team work remotely. But we very soon realized because these are individuals who are very much at the start of their careers, their living circumstances were such that they didn’t have, you know, good internet infrastructure and a space in line where they can work in a non-destructive way. So we moved them all back very quickly to the office.
[08:43:02:13 – 08:43:22:22]
Christiaan Brink
And so that’s been really the way we’ve been running things. So they had to be there at eight when our support hours opened and so forth. But one of the interesting things, and given we are in February and it was just Valentine’s Day, we’re one of the girls in the team at a very tragic circumstance.
[08:43:23:23 – 08:44:17:10]
Christiaan Brink
She unfortunately lost a child and her partner in quick succession two years ago. And obviously this Valentine’s Day, she is still sort of, you know, kind of finding her feet out of that old personal situation. What happened in the office is all the young men in the office were kind of at the scenes of, “Okay, it’s Valentine’s Day, this is her situation. “They did something special for her.” And that wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t have these people together every day building a sense of camaraderie. So they were at the office with 18 leaders. And like I said, it’s a favorable consequence of something that just was trying to solve a practical problem. And it’s very different for these individuals. But at the same time, they all live on these screens too.
[08:44:18:14 – 08:44:20:19]
Christiaan Brink
So solving for that’s also something that I think
[08:44:21:20 – 08:44:41:23]
Christiaan Brink
living on the screens is the problem of young people. It’s a problem for us. Not so young people as well. But I just kind of think about that a lot. It’s at least from the feeding ground that we have in the business, we have people at the office and it was something that we didn’t necessarily intentionally plan for we would just be pragmatic.
[08:44:43:15 – 08:44:46:17]
Carien Human
So when you spoke about the art and you spoke about connection,
[08:44:48:22 – 08:44:56:01]
Carien Human
I thought of my son, he’s five now, and he learned to ride a bike last week.
[08:44:58:04 – 08:45:29:15]
Carien Human
And yesterday when we arrived at school, a random friend came and said hi to me. And he had out of the blue, he’s like, “I can ride a bike now.” You know? And in the example you mentioned about making a form of art of one problem you solved, it almost made me thought that part of how we connect with people, especially in the workplace, is when we can share that sense of mastery, that thing that I got right.
[08:45:30:16 – 08:45:39:10]
Carien Human
And that almost gives meaning. That gives meaning and knowing something about people’s stories gives us meaning.
[08:45:40:14 – 08:45:42:21]
Carien Human
And so I think what I’m wondering,
[08:45:43:22 – 08:46:10:16]
Carien Human
you guys working with Take and the development of that, is like how does that change if AI and systems replace that? So suddenly the computer can do stuff better than you can. I don’t know if that’s the thing, but I feel that way when I use AI, that it can do stuff better than I can do it. And suddenly I don’t know how to say, “This is what I’ve mastered. This is what I’ve been able to do.”
[08:46:12:05 – 08:46:21:13]
Carien Human
And now I’m somewhere remotely, I’m not connecting. I don’t know. So are we losing meaning in our change to adapt more?
[08:46:21:13 – 08:46:22:17]
Ursula Fear
I think is my question.
[08:46:24:10 – 08:46:47:16]
Ursula Fear
I think the irony is we’re saying the most unbelievable things happening from an artificial intelligence point of view, from seeing the changing static org structure into different types of organisational architecture.
[08:46:51:04 – 08:47:06:09]
Ursula Fear
It’s really, really interesting. But also what we’re finding as well is that the humanness is almost, and has to be, elevated. So what I think becomes really important is this ability for us to be psychologically safe.
[08:47:08:02 – 08:47:25:20]
Ursula Fear
Yes, technology is moving so quickly, and it is completely enhancing, changing. We’re seeing where technology is using the AI as we are today. We’re seeing between a 30 to 50% increase in productivity.
[08:47:26:21 – 08:47:53:18]
Ursula Fear
We’re also seeing other sort of models where you’ve got the humans, which are now managing between 50 to 100 agents, but the problem you lose there is a little bit of the governance around it. Then we’ve also got these other very fluid mechanisms, which is where work flows like water, as we call it. And everything’s happening, but the biggest risk you’ve got there is your culture. People, human beings, need a sense of belonging.
[08:47:54:19 – 08:49:01:08]
Ursula Fear
So I think we’re finding our way in this new space, and it’s a given. Technology, artificial intelligence is changing. It’s a revolutionary time that we’re living in. But I think what we can as a robot or AI is never going to be able to manage that humanness. So I think that ability for us to create environments where we can thrive and be psychologically safe. So can I come and have the conversation about, I’m fearful of what artificial intelligence is doing into my day-to-day job. What is it that we need to do to be evolving? So I don’t think it’s a kind of a static… I think we’ve got to understand that we are living in this beautiful fluidity that’s radically moving around us. But we’ve got to be able to hold onto that humanness, and most importantly, as leaders in our organisations, what does that space of psychological safety look like? And what does the conditions for our people to thrive in? Meaning, how do I deal with my fear, my insecurities? How do we manage that?
[08:49:03:02 – 08:49:03:10]
Ursula Fear
Gozaimi.
[08:49:05:08 – 08:49:15:03]
Christiaan Brink
I would agree, I mean, the world of work is going to change dramatically over the next few years, and anybody claiming to predict and explain exactly how…
[08:49:17:07 – 08:49:20:01]
Christiaan Brink
It’s unknowable exactly at this stage.
[08:49:21:07 – 08:50:12:12]
Christiaan Brink
But the story of human development is always one of improvement, and it likely will continue to do so. And it’s baffling to think that we will move into a world of humanoid robots where if they have the right software, they can perform any form of surgery. And if you can imagine, delivering healthcare services at scale, what that’s going to mean and at what cost and so on. So there’s a lot of that. But if you take how people spend their time and their day, a lot of people spend time on what they would call adulting or admin. And what would people do with that time if that’s not in their life? Maybe we will see a massive increase in creative expression to what you said earlier.
[08:50:15:03 – 08:51:01:19]
Christiaan Brink
I don’t quite buy into this all doom and gloom thing. A lot of people are focused on that. Work will certainly change and what people do will change. But ultimately, in the end, people have problems to solve every day of things in their life, and the technology will support that. What will be an interesting challenge is adapting and changing as fast as the technology is going to change. Because usually, technology leads and the people think change along with it to have a slower course in time. But now the technology is changing a lot faster than it’s ever. And that’s a big challenge for us as leaders to make sure we continue developing people in that. But we will have to see what happens. I don’t think anybody knows.
[08:51:02:20 – 08:51:20:19]
Lochner Eksteen
I was not too worried about it. What I see is that even the young people joining our team can leverage the AI, creating a lot of productivity, and they find a meaning in that. Like, I can do the work that 10 people used to do.
[08:51:22:02 – 08:51:25:03]
Lochner Eksteen
You know, that changes the way we work.
[08:51:26:06 – 08:51:31:00]
Lochner Eksteen
My only worry is that those people that I’m talking about now do have a background in graduate.
[08:51:32:12 – 08:51:45:17]
Lochner Eksteen
They do, they did at some point in their career, sit and do the foundational human-routine work. So they understand, they’ve got a base understanding of how things work.
[08:51:46:21 – 08:52:02:04]
Lochner Eksteen
My worry is that if we, in one of the rules in my business, are not allowed to use AI to build anything for the first six months, we have to do everything yourself. Because they have to figure it out. They have to go and Google it, like in the whole days.
[08:52:03:15 – 08:52:09:08]
Lochner Eksteen
And really, because I indeed have foundation, and I think that’s something that I try and encourage our customers as well.
[08:52:11:09 – 08:52:17:02]
Lochner Eksteen
Allow the grad work. You know, your business and I, I think I mentioned it earlier,
[08:52:19:04 – 08:52:39:20]
Lochner Eksteen
back to your child, are we building business and systems for today, or are we building them for generations to come? I’m getting rid of survival matters, difficult to think generations from now, but we should be thinking if I want to help this country and employ more people, then at least prosperity, I’m not going to really try and automate it.
[08:52:40:23 – 08:52:49:04]
Lochner Eksteen
Or am I going to potentially keep certain parts of my business for humans to develop them into the future?
[08:52:50:06 – 08:52:55:16]
Ursula Fear
That’s a good, I mean, those are the kind of questions that we’ve got to be asking ourselves, is, you know,
[08:52:56:17 – 08:53:07:05]
Ursula Fear
we’ve just seen what the impact of artificial intelligence is on developers. I mean, literally, that game has completely changed, you know?
[08:53:08:18 – 08:53:09:02]
Ursula Fear
So,
[08:53:10:04 – 08:53:12:00]
Ursula Fear
for me, it goes back to…
[08:53:12:00 – 08:53:13:09]
Lochner Eksteen
They’ve looked themselves out of a job.
[08:53:14:17 – 08:53:29:16]
Ursula Fear
I mean, it’s… So we’re creating new jobs, which means we have to teach different to what we’ve been teaching, we have to learn applications different to what we’ve been doing, and so, you know, it’s…
[08:53:31:10 – 08:53:57:11]
Ursula Fear
moving with the times in terms of who or how, what, where, when all of those key questions of what we are trying to teach so that we can get people to enter the workplace and can be valuable and employable, I think what we are doing and what we are… How are we structuring it from a learning perspective to the type of job, to the type of work that we’re needing to do?
[08:53:58:19 – 08:55:25:22]
Ursula Fear
I think it really needs to be… It needs to draw on that collective intelligence, you know what I’m saying? We are in a revolutionary space. We’re in a day and age that we’ve never, ever been in. It’s impossible to say, you know, not just you working out in your organisation of how you need to be. I’m saying, so where’s our dialogue? Where’s our conversation? Because I do worry about the 31.4% unemployment. It is a problem. We can forget about all the AI we want to forget about, but if you have a hungry child, it’s a problem. So, you know, yes, you’re going to have mechanisms of what we do with people we bring into our organisations, but what are we doing to create that AI, sort of literacy, that ability from a cognitive development perspective, from a language perspective, from a business frame of reference? What are we doing to influence what this pipeline needs to look like? And I worry tremendously about everybody else, you know what I’m saying? It’s so hard, as we know, inside our own doors as it is, but I don’t think there’s enough urgency that’s going into what does fit for purpose of a pipeline actually look like. And I think that’s why I talk about the collective intelligence. It’s no individual party. It’s about coming together to really dialogue, to really come together and to really codify what this thing needs to now look like.
[08:55:25:22 – 08:55:26:19]
Lochner Eksteen
So,
[08:55:28:02 – 08:55:53:21]
Lochner Eksteen
also another interesting thing is that the future of this country’s employment problem is not corporate, it’s medium-sized businesses, who doesn’t have capital or funding to have an ICAS or somebody from outside to come and do their human stuff. My experience, Karina, maybe just speaking to that, because I think I’ll listen to it as well, is if I do employ some of these younger people and we want to try and grow them,
[08:55:54:21 – 08:56:06:08]
Lochner Eksteen
my experience has been, I’m not a psychologist, but I do know how to try and intentionally sit and just listen. Just make sure that I’ve got the discipline to once a month or sit with each employee,
[08:56:07:08 – 08:56:11:16]
Lochner Eksteen
just have a conversation and listen. Do you think that’s lacking
[08:56:13:04 – 08:56:25:18]
Lochner Eksteen
when your patients come to you in this world? You know, because each company can employ a female psychologist. How can we, as the business people, solve for that, at least support those people?
[08:56:27:05 – 08:56:29:16]
Carien Human
Yes, I actually spoke to somebody who’s a practitioner,
[08:56:31:00 – 08:56:38:07]
Carien Human
and she’s been away from a community of other practitioners. She’s been working from home,
[08:56:39:09 – 08:56:41:12]
Carien Human
seeing patients here and there for the last six years.
[08:56:42:13 – 08:57:02:14]
Carien Human
And she said sometimes she just really needs walking down the corridor and saying hi to somebody, or just thinking, “Oh, you walk there,” and somebody says, “You look nice today.” And I think that links to what you said earlier with the Von and Einstein example. I think we really underestimate the power of knowing someone cares.
[08:57:04:11 – 08:57:15:01]
Carien Human
So you come to therapy with your words like, “Nobody cares about me. Nobody knows what I’m dealing with. This is so hard. I feel so alone.” It’s something I hear almost every session.
[08:57:17:00 – 08:57:43:10]
Carien Human
And I think you don’t need a psychologist in a business for people to not feel alone or not feel seen, but you have to cultivate the culture that we care about each other. We’re not trampling on each other to get somewhere. We’re not all irritated because I have to take up the work of somebody who didn’t do their work. But if you can build a team like you said earlier, then you might eradicate half the need for a therapist. Well, that therapist was still important.
[08:57:44:23 – 08:57:45:18]
Carien Human
There is a place.
[08:57:45:18 – 08:57:47:00]
Ursula Fear
Definitely, you know,
[08:57:48:12 – 08:57:52:14]
Ursula Fear
what I see it is, and what I’ve seen is,
[08:57:53:17 – 08:57:57:08]
Ursula Fear
I think we need to drive this ability to seek to understand.
[08:57:59:11 – 08:58:24:05]
Ursula Fear
And seeking to understand in South Africa, we have got so much beautiful cultural diversity. You know, we’re not called the rainbow nation for nothing. But when you start to look at the very enormous poverty that we see here, seeking to understand, one of the things that I’ve done practically over the years is I call it the blockage to the learning, going back to what would it take for this person to thrive?
[08:58:25:08 – 08:59:36:05]
Ursula Fear
So we all got in a car and we were fortunate enough to drive here. But what if I had to take three taxis to get here? You know, what if I’ve had situations where somebody lives in the vault triangle, it takes him three hours. So their day starts at three in the morning, you know, and then we give them a what for because you’re three minutes late. So I think there’s understanding this blockage. I live in this particular area. This is how I get to work. This is how I get home. This is the impact of no water. This is the impact of no electricity. These are the circumstances that can block me from being optimal. And I think we have to be a little more heightened in terms of understanding people’s circumstances, understanding their context, understanding their cultures and all of those things so that we can create this ability and this environment for thriving, the psychological safety, this ability to connect, this ability to be seen, see me through my eyes, you know, kind of thing. So I really think that’s something we can work on and seek to understand. Do we really understand each other?
[08:59:36:05 – 08:59:37:16]
Lochner Eksteen
Actually care.
[08:59:39:07 – 08:59:41:18]
Lochner Eksteen
Yeah. Christian, what do you do in your business too?
[08:59:43:13 – 09:00:33:17]
Christiaan Brink
Well, I think maybe I’ll come back to the thing I said earlier. It’s amazing what can happen if you pretend everybody that works for you is a real person, right? Just like you. Because some of the stuff that she just touched on earlier, what’s fundamental to people is having a sense of purpose. I get up every day, there’s stuff I have to do, there’s people that rely on me. You probably see a lot of people who’ve lost a sense of purpose and then they think, “All I do is I just go through the currents of life and nobody will mess me when I’m gone,” type of thing, which obviously is very misplaced, but being in danger of creating purpose for people. And I recently listened to something that’s really resonated with me with the interview, saying, you know, pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
[09:00:34:18 – 09:01:01:20]
Christiaan Brink
Because if you… And in a country like South Africa, the problem’s about. So if you try and understand and listen to every single problem then you’ll be completely overwhelmed. And you might think they are so abundant that we’re never going to change anything. But the reason pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy is because if you think there’s nothing you can do, you do nothing and then nothing changes and then you say, “Oh, you see nothing happen.”
[09:01:03:06 – 09:01:16:20]
Christiaan Brink
Whereas if you think, “OK, I have this sphere of influence every day where I am, I have this group of people I can work with.” If I can make this thing or that thing better, understand the situation, like you mentioned, on the transport or whatever the situation…
[09:01:17:23 – 09:01:37:04]
Christiaan Brink
If I can just identify two or three things I can make an impact on, let me do that. And it’s amazing what happens if you focus on that and you try and work with everybody that can do that in your sphere of influence, what actually happens. Because that’s really the stories that inspire people.
[09:01:38:04 – 09:01:47:16]
Carien Human
And people forget. We live in a culture where there’s a problem, so I have to solve it, then it’s better. I’m assuming very much so in the stakeholders.
[09:01:49:06 – 09:02:17:13]
Carien Human
So we have this idea that if I suffer, I have to solve my problem, and then life’s going to be easy and I won’t suffer anymore, which is not true. Pain and suffering is a part of our lives. But if you look at the work of Victor Franco, who says you can deal with suffering if you have meaning. Yes. So then having things that create meaning in my life doesn’t make it pain-free, but it enables me to almost tolerate the pain
[09:02:18:21 – 09:02:20:09]
Carien Human
that’s going to come with life.
[09:02:20:09 – 09:02:23:20]
Christiaan Brink
You as a wife and a dear almost in hell. Exactly that.
[09:02:26:02 – 09:02:26:13]
Speaker 6
That’s it.
[09:02:28:02 – 09:02:30:00]
Lochner Eksteen
I just want to quickly go back to…
[09:02:31:02 – 09:02:36:09]
Lochner Eksteen
Because I think, again, I’m going to make sure we try and get as low in this principle as possible.
[09:02:38:00 – 09:02:49:03]
Lochner Eksteen
And speak to the actual individual who’s out there who’s thinking, “I want to get into the tech scene “because I see they’re not making a lot of money.” Or whatever. They might be even if they’re still true.
[09:02:52:02 – 09:03:07:16]
Lochner Eksteen
What do they do? Where do they go? Do they go and study? Do they not go and study? Do they go to short courses? How do you prepare yourself for email to me? And I look at open email. Quite one last week, actually. And the guys had a bunch of attachments,
[09:03:09:13 – 09:03:28:06]
Lochner Eksteen
certifications, a raise of money. There was a degree, but I almost didn’t spend time on it because what I was looking at is how we was writing the email. What I was trying to figure out was a game or chat to be to you, write this email. That’s what I’m currently looking at. What do these people need to do?
[09:03:28:06 – 09:03:41:10]
Ursula Fear
I think the most important thing, and it actually is not just the individuals, it includes each and every one of us that’s listening and sitting around this table, we have got to find a new relationship with learning.
[09:03:42:17 – 09:04:29:09]
Ursula Fear
And we come from an education system that said, “Learn this, learn this, test you on that.” And you got 80%. We said, “You’re going to be brilliant at that.” But you come into the world of work and it doesn’t. It’s a completely new system. It’s a new system. Any new person, youngster coming into the world of work, it takes him six months just to be a little bit comfortable with this new system. Forget about teaching them the job and all of those kind of things. So for me, their ability to become a lifelong learner, that curiosity that I’m looking, I’m seeking, I’m watching YouTube, I don’t need to have money. Actually, education in South Africa is solved by connectivity and a device.
[09:04:30:16 – 09:05:21:00]
Ursula Fear
The rest is out there for people to access. But we have got to be able to teach everybody to have a new relationship with how you learn. And learning is not the norm that we have all been accustomed to. It’s a completely new world. So literally, a degree or a qualification, really, like I mentioned, it’s not that it’s not important. Of course not. But by the time you come to the workplace, what you’ve been learning is really not very relevant here. But what we do love is the fact that you’ve got a little bit more life skills, you’ve got a little bit more emotional intelligence, you’ve got a little bit more savvy, and that’s what we’re honing on. And say, OK, come into the workplace, we’re going to start with a blank piece of paper anyway.
[09:05:22:01 – 09:06:23:15]
Ursula Fear
And yes, maybe I’ll put you into that space or into that function, even though I can take a finance person and put them into HR. But I think a new level of learning, a new way to be curious, a new way to problem solve, to all of those things, those people are going to be far more successful. And we’re going to see a lot more of looking at the skills that without work experience, where you… Did you start the choir? Did you… What did you do that required you to do different that’s going to talk to me about you’ve created certain habits or the ability to navigate this space in a particular way? So I think the guardrails or the rules that we’ve been looking at are starting to shift. We’ve been using this piece of paper as a sifting mechanism. But level of learning and micro-credentials on top of your qualifications is actually what’s needed today.
[09:06:23:15 – 09:06:24:07]
Christiaan Brink
Kazam?
[09:06:25:22 – 09:07:15:11]
Christiaan Brink
Look, I would echo that I’m an ultimate… Up until this point, before you could write codes of fasted AI, when you’re hiring programmers, when you ask me, “Show me what you’ve written,” like, now it’s a bit more difficult than we’re still figuring out an interview process now that we get them in a day and they do it the old-fashioned way, I guess is what it’s going to be called. But I think, to your point as well, do people have a pro-activeness or a hunger about them and so on? Because acquiring talent is one of the most interesting problems to solve because you… How much can you know about a person in 45 minutes? And if you’re interviewing people who, by temperament, would be introverts, you’ve got to figure out what are they not saying. You’re trying to spot the unpolished diamonds, where are they?
[09:07:16:16 – 09:07:59:19]
Christiaan Brink
And that… I think that will always be… Like certain things will remind you of universal, like, “Where are the unpolished diamonds and how do I find them?” South Africa is the dichotomy of high unemployment but high skill shortage. People are trying to find talent, but yet there’s a lot of people around and how do we develop that? But, I think ultimately, we must all see ourselves as educators and teachers and teach and educate with what you have to work with and the sphere of influence that you have. And it’s not just the people who work for you in the workplace, it’s everybody you interact with, with everyday young people, people, whatever, like where you are, trying and left for folder.
[09:07:59:19 – 09:08:03:16]
Lochner Eksteen
And I appreciate that and I read the other day
[09:08:04:22 – 09:08:18:06]
Lochner Eksteen
that before you spread around the world really quickly, if you lived in late… in the free state, in the 1940s or wherever else,
[09:08:19:16 – 09:08:27:03]
Lochner Eksteen
you don’t know about all the world problems. You only knew about your neighbour’s problem, that problem, so it looked solvable.
[09:08:28:11 – 09:08:35:18]
Lochner Eksteen
Because like you said earlier, if I see all these problems, especially it’s all available on my phone, America’s problems, Africa’s problems,
[09:08:37:18 – 09:08:56:01]
Lochner Eksteen
it just looks like it’s too many problems to solve and you don’t even know where to start to solve your own problems. One of the problems I’ve seen is, especially with our labour laws, complexity and so on, is maybe something we can start landing the plane on, from your world and from your world and from our world.
[09:08:58:08 – 09:09:15:13]
Lochner Eksteen
Which parts of your system business do you employ, do you take the risk to employ? Which parts of it do you outsource, rather by premium, but not take the complexity or the soft stuff that comes with it? With it, how do you manage that?
[09:09:17:16 – 09:09:18:18]
Ursula Fear
I think with difficulty,
[09:09:20:11 – 09:09:32:09]
Ursula Fear
because everything is governed by the labour laws. I mean in our world, we’re multinational. You know, if I look at the laws in France and I look at the laws in South Africa and the laws in America,
[09:09:34:06 – 09:10:00:17]
Ursula Fear
very different circumstances that happen when it comes to labour. I think going back to my comments around collective intelligence is that part of the conversations we need to have around collective intelligence, especially when you look at who’s employing people and the policies that govern how and what we do with employed people, is, you know,
[09:10:01:18 – 09:11:06:13]
Ursula Fear
I’m not the authority on this and it’s, you know, I’m just thinking aloud of trying a solution. But, you know, how do we make, how do the labour laws become conducive to this fluidity that we find ourselves in? And, you know, contingent workers and your full-time employees or your outsourcing or your, how is it possible to get all of this working together without you being chained by labour laws that actually don’t allow you to be creative and, you know, explore when it comes to trying or, you know, is it not better to give somebody a job for a month than, you know, sort of because I can’t take you on employee or full-time or, you know, I don’t know, these are the kind of questions that we do need to ask ourselves. And as much as, you know, obviously labour law is important, you know, that’s, it goes without saying that, is there the opportunity around this collective intelligence for us to think about this new world that we’re in? Is there a thing that we can now influence to make this a little bit more conducive to employability?
[09:11:09:02 – 09:11:38:06]
Christiaan Brink
I think it’s not good, but she said it is with difficulty. I mean, I think most things in business is not as people always portray it as people come up with the perfect strategy they execute and then it works. You have a high-level goal of objectives of what you work towards and in the process of pursuing that, it’s a creative aspect and you navigate the fluidity of what you work with and the environment that you are in and that changes all the time.
[09:11:39:14 – 09:13:18:07]
Christiaan Brink
So, I guess it’s navigating those things, but if we track it back, you know, fundamentally, like if we take what are we doing as businesses every day, we are trying to deliver meaningful goods and services to customers that solve a problem for them that they are willing to pay for. That’s the underlying principle and in the world that we’re moving into, how we do that will most certainly change, but that’s the why we do it and if we don’t do that well, we will stop existing as a business. That’s the dynamic that we have. So, the way I try and think about it is, what am I doing for what are we and I and my team doing for our customers and are we doing it better, different or whatever? Like if you take the evolution of where we are now, historically that you can open a web page, you type in something you want to know about and you wait 10 seconds then you get a Google page and you read it. Then it becomes like if I don’t get the response within 0.1 seconds, I’m using something else because this is too slow. Now people are going to an LLM where they get a much richer answer, but they’re waiting a few seconds to get it and they’re okay with it. So, I think just that kind of thing to understand expectations change the whole time and what you’re trying to do, as she says, with difficulties navigating that with the people you have, the environment you work in, the legislation framework you need to deal with. So, but I think ultimately it’s answering the question, how do I write, how do I do the best for my customers? How do I do right by my people? How do I drive on being successful for the organization and the capacity I’m involved in?
[09:13:18:07 – 09:13:22:22]
Lochner Eksteen
And I think I always want to start laying the blame there now is,
[09:13:24:04 – 09:13:30:10]
Lochner Eksteen
can I remember exactly the word your metron of influence?
[09:13:31:16 – 09:14:01:16]
Lochner Eksteen
Like I want to suggest exactly like you say, when people go back to work is that just worry about what is in your circle of engines. Just solve for that. Don’t stop looking on the phone and everything around it because it seems to me like people are just disabled by this because there’s problems to solve and there’s creative ways of solving them even between all the legislation and so on. It is solvable. It’s unsolvable if you’ve got the old world’s problems in your mind.
[09:14:01:16 – 09:14:13:14]
Ursula Fear
I think a good way to just maybe just hold it is, you know, we’ve been talking, there’s so many angles to this, but I think also if you put dignity,
[09:14:14:23 – 09:14:55:04]
Ursula Fear
human dignity is central to everything that we do and hold that in its place. I think a lot of things will find its way easily, but when we take the human dignity out of the equation, irrespective of what that equation is trying to solve, we find ourselves wanting. So I think, you know, you made me just think about it with the labor law. Why is the laws there? It’s because we’re not protecting the dignity of people. So if we can bring dignity into this artificial intelligence space and world and use that as the central theme to solve it, I think we’ll find ourselves in a better place.
[09:14:57:04 – 09:15:20:09]
Christiaan Brink
Yeah, I think I would just say like one of the most transformative things to do is to change the life of somebody else. We can all reflect back on those moments in our own life where a great teacher or a great mentor or a great boss gave us these moments of epiphanies that really transformed the way that we look at life, the world, how we conduct ourselves and how that translated into our own personal lives.
[09:15:22:01 – 09:15:32:16]
Christiaan Brink
Doing that every day for other people, I don’t think there’s any other more rewarding thing that you can do. This country is full of people doing it everywhere we can look as we speak. Awesome.
[09:15:33:23 – 09:15:41:04]
Lochner Eksteen
Thank you guys, I appreciate it. We can land a day. We always do definitely get through and we really appreciate your time.
[09:15:42:05 – 09:15:44:07]
Lochner Eksteen
And take it further from there.
[09:15:45:14 – 09:15:48:17]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
You can just keep on talking for a bit. I just want to orientate.
[09:15:50:00 – 09:15:51:12]
Ursula Fear
Ours
[09:15:51:12 – 09:15:53:05]
Lochner Eksteen
was good post.
[09:15:53:05 – 09:16:09:01]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
It’s like that. And it was such amazing. Such good nuggets. Really, really, really… I don’t want to use the word “provider” from the wrong word. Engaging. Thought provoking.
[09:16:10:02 – 09:16:12:05]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
Very nice.
[09:16:15:00 – 09:16:23:20]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
Please don’t disappear. Just take a bit. I need to get shots.
[09:16:23:20 – 09:16:24:13]
Lochner Eksteen
I have to.
[09:16:26:19 – 09:16:44:17]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
I have to. I’m not so worried about him, but I just want to… If I can just get a few individuals I’ll grab. Then I’m happy. You don’t want a group picture? I do. Yeah. I do. So do you want to do tagline? I’m just going to let him sit up so long. They’re going to just sit up for me so long. Hey, Mafika? So I can just get a group…
[09:16:44:17 – 09:16:46:09]
Lochner Eksteen
I just want your laptop. I don’t know.
[09:16:46:09 – 09:16:49:17]
Lizelle Pike (Producer)
You know, I just want your laptop and I’m going to show you. But then, if I’m happy.
[09:16:49:17 – 09:16:50:11]
Lochner Eksteen
Yeah.