Artificial Intelligence isn't changing the game - AI is creating a new playing field. With AI adoption among office workers surging from 20% to 32% in just six months (data from Slack’s Fall 2024 report), organizations, MBA students, and professors face unprecedented challenges in navigating this transformation. Drawing on decades of research in sociotechnical systems, I'll debunk AI's "silver bullet fallacy" and reveal why the human element remains crucial in our AI-augmented future.

Through real-world examples and recent research findings, I'll demonstrate how "systems savvy,” a practical mindset and skill, helps us harness AI's potential while avoiding common pitfalls. We'll explore how multiple feedback loops shape AI implementation and why thinking in "5T" (target, talent, technology, and technique---all aligned to our times) gives us a practical framework for success.

“Dr. Terri Griffith from Simon Fraser University will dive into the transformative impact of Generative AI following the call to “return to work” post-pandemic and explore how adopting AI “from the bottom up” can help us stay ahead, fostering innovation and creativity.”

The Sociotechnical Systems Roundtable is a forum for people – workers, managers, students, researchers, union reps, academics, consultants, and policymakers -- to come together to share and learn how to co-create humane, thriving organizations. In sum ... great places to work and places that work great characterized by high performance, high engagement, self-management, continuous learning and improvement, effective teams, and technology that enhances the human experience of work.

AI and the future of education

The release of ChatGPT to the public at the end of 2022 caused quite the stir in the educational community. Students and professors reacted with emotions ranging from curiosity, to skepticism, to apprehension. One thing was sure: the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the classroom promised to be significant. Will ChatGPT stifle critical thinking, or can it be used to foster it? How can we attribute and evaluate students’ work in the AI era? And what will students expect to learn from their instructors about proper uses of LLMs? In this panel, students and educators come together to share their experiences, opinions and expectations about LLMs, and how they believe they should be used in higher education.

Prof. Ethan Mollick notes that this Fall may bring the “homework apocalypse.” He’s right unless we rethink our roles as faculty and institutions of higher education. We are part of a mosaic of lifelong education.

“An extension of Conversations That Matter, Conversations Live with Stuart McNish is a monthly forum addressing the big topics of our times.”

A.I. Impacts for Local Business — With the speed of AI development, final topics will be designed the week before. Expect a discussion of available tools and techniques for increasing your value to your customers and clients via light-weight applications of AI.

Presentation and conversations on the concept of work crafting. Consideration of Thinking in 5T as a trigger for the application of STS. Examples of individually-applicable automation tools.

The future of expertise encapsulates a wide range of topics. Industry struggles to hire the adaptive talent needed to keep up with accelerating demand for offerings and to digitally transform their operations and ecosystems. Universities struggle to successfully graduate increasingly diverse individuals with needed skills, experience, and mindsets to hit-the-ground-running and succeed, even as some question the need for a university education. Governments realize more than ever that the sustainable wealth of nations depends more than ever on high-skill, high-pay, highly-engaged workers within their borders. Simultaneously, individuals are faced with a dizzying array of “opportunities” to upskill for more pay, but often are unable to decide which path might have the best return-on-investment for their careers and quality-of-life. New technologies and a host of disruptive existing and impending world events, only add to the complexity of this important topic - the future of expertise.

Suggested Themes include but are not limited to:

Stakeholder perspectives on the importance of understanding the future of expertise

The practical challenges of hiring, on-boarding, engaging, and retaining top talent

AI and the future of technology-enhanced expertise

Social networks, platforms, and future of influencer expertise

Democratizing the process of upskilling and gaining expertise

Risks and dangers, and how to responsibly build both better upskilling theory and practice

By now it is trite to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has upended many aspects of daily life — but nowhere is this statement more true than in public sector workplaces. With health and safety measures, new technologies, and remote work, the pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the world of work. Moreover, it has alerted us to the need to be prepared for future crises. What policies, practices, and collective agreement provisions are necessary to respond to these changes? In this session, expert negotiators will address this question, as well as the following, more specific concerns:

• How has the pandemic affected labour relations in the broader public sector? Has responding to numerous rapid changes fostered trust and skills that can facilitate increased cooperation or even joint decision-making, or have disagreements arising from pandemic responses poisoned union–management relations?

• Coming out of the pandemic, are workplace parties better prepared to handle emergencies or other dramatic changes affecting broader public sector workplaces, or are new procedures or contract provisions necessary to prepare for future crises?

• How has employment in the broader public sector been altered by the pandemic? Will these changes be permanent?

• Has the COVID-19 pandemic been an impetus for public sector employers to increase automation? Will technology-enabled gig work proliferate in public services?

• Have new technologies become pervasive enough to necessitate including provisions in collective agreements? How should employee privacy rights be protected in collective agreement provisions?

• To what extent are work-from-home arrangements and flexibility in hours and locations of work likely to continue following the pandemic? Are parties negotiating collective agreement language to deal with a "new reality" in public sector workplaces?

• Should workplaces permanently adopt certain health and safety policies and practices developed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. new standards for personal protective equipment, sick leave provisions)? Are new approaches to psychological health and safety necessary to respond to the pandemic's effect on mental health and workplace attachment/engagement?

• Will the precarity that was revealed in many sectors prompt a desire to limit the use of part-time/precarious workers? Has experience during the pandemic given employers and unions a shared interest in negotiating improved working conditions and prioritizing full-time employment?

Most organizations will emerge from the pandemic with a new attitude toward remote work but few will adopt an all in-office or all remote strategy. In this session, Kate Lister, President of Global Workplace Analytics will explore the possibilities and pitfalls of a mixed remote/in-office work model with Dr. Sally Augustin, Principal at Design With Science, and Terri Griffith, the Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business and Vice President of ISSIP.

What will you learn from this webinar recording?

Tonkean took a comprehensive survey of 500 IT and operations professionals to understand emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities in business operations, and we wanted to give you an exclusive analysis findings in this webinar.

The growing excitement around the potential of innovative technology is evident from survey results. For example, the report yielded that a whopping 95% of respondents say business operations are becoming MORE important to their organization.

In addition to analyzing survey results, Terri Griffith, Keith Beedie Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University, joins Tonkean to share her deep research on bottom-up applications of automation in work and its potential to impact business operations.

2020 has challenged individuals, organizations and businesses to start doing things differently and many have had to explore new ways of getting things done. On May 13, join fellow alumni for a 45 min immersive online discussion answering the question: Is your new way of working working for you?

Come prepared to work in groups, engage with one another, ask questions and challenge yourself. This event is open to all SFU alumni and is limited to 50 attendees.

CANCELED #COVID-19: Most discussions of automation (everything from using macros to artificial intelligence) and organizational design focus on top-down situations. There are some great books on this (e.g., Reinventing Jobs), but we also need to be supporting people to work from the bottom-up. Think about how computers were used when they were mainframes bought by the company. Then think about what happened when we all got personal computers. We all were able to think up new ways of using these powerful tools.

The trouble is, most people aren’t organizational design professionals and today’s automation isn’t as easy to see as a personal computer. Research shows that most people don’t make adjustments to their work practices, and even if they do, they don’t do a good job. We can help. We can help trigger more “work crafting” and help people make good decisions about how they apply automation, crowdsourcing, and the like, in their work. My hypothesis is that the “doom and gloom” scenarios around automation, for example, are more likely if we only work from the top-down. Where we have seen work crafting, we also see people performing better and having better employment options.

DisrupTV is a weekly Web series with hosts R "Ray" Wang and Vala Afshar. The show airs live at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET every Friday. The audience can expect A-list guests, the latest enterprise news, hot startups, insight from influencers, and much more. Tweet questions to #DisrupTV or @DisrupTVShow. We broadcast live on Zoom. 

Artificial intelligence and analytics in general are shifting the focus and tools of audit. The Digital University participants are offering product and process innovations based on weaving together their professional expertise and new analytics skills. Yet, however strong these ideas are, these projects cannot succeed without leadership support. As the Digital University participants present their projects and consider next steps, your leadership begins to play an even greater role in the success of these ideas.  Sponsors, champions, and innovation strategy leaders are all part of the broader innovation ecosystem. This is an opportunity to consider your role for these and future projects.

With this week’s presentations, you’re ready to take your projects into their next phase: Implementation. Decades of research finds that only 25% of organizational change efforts hit the targets that were used to justify their adoption. Your projects can be in that 25% if you practice negotiated change.

Your projects need the support of a variety of stakeholders to find success. Preparing for this literal or figurative negotiation is best done by Thinking in 5T. (We see in 3D, we need to think in 5T: Target, Talent, Technology, Technique, and Times.) There are no silver bullets. Your projects must draw on all your resources to find a stable home.

 The goal of this working session is to give you the opportunity to prepare for discussions with your clients, leaders, or other stakeholders after your presentations

Workshop on modern organizational design including crowds, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. Part of a program for ESADE's Executive Masters program. 

Innovation and Design Thinking — Thinking in 5T

Some people say robots will take our jobs. Others say the Fourth Industrial Revolution will bring prosperity through more and better jobs. Smart people have done extensive analysis and still disagree. There is vast unlocked potential if those closest to the work are part of the process rather than it being solely top down. If we also work from the bottom up as we augment jobs, the fit is likely to be better as are the human outcomes.

Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s work on System 1 and System 2 Thinking (Thinking, Fast and Slow) is an effective approach to thinking about how we augment work with automation. I will offer strategies to enable individuals of any technical sophistication to engage with automation. Future research will come from a variety of organizations using a variety of automation approaches (e.g., Automation Anywhere, IBM, etc.) Effectiveness and retention are key outcomes.