This episode is not to be missed, truly. If you’re in business right now, you need to hear this. Today’s guest, Laurel Rutledge breaks down two of the biggest challenges in business at the moment, as well as how to navigate them best.
In this episode, we are joined by Chief Navigation Officer™, Laurel Rutledge who talks to us about two of the biggest challenges in business today – figuring out what to do with AI and creating a healthy, sustainable workplace culture (HR folks and managers, this one’s for you… what she says might surprise you, it’s likely not what you think).
Join us as we get into:
- What you really need to know and be mindful of when it comes to AI
- How we regulate the bad and exploit the good (embracing the tool as opposed to being fearful of it)
- The current problem with HR/management and how we swing the pendulum back
- How to have hard conversations and why it’s not unkind to be clear
- Plus, so much more
This conversation, as my favorite ones do, will leave you with lots to think about and, hopefully, implement (to your benefit).
—
Laurel K. Rutledge, your Chief Navigation Officer™, guides 7-figure female business owners in their move from Founder to CEO. Her corporate experience in accounting, consulting, enterprise risk management, and HR enable her to support these incredible, successful business owners as they continue to lead with their heart but learn to act with their head.
Laurel helps her clients navigate rejecting “big C” corporate bureaucracy while harnessing the power of “little c” corporate processes through clear business strategies supported by aligned people strategies.
When not working with clients, Laurel hosts a radio show and two podcasts focusing on heart-led, mind-driven, aligned leadership. You can learn more about her and her work at https://laurelrutledge.com/ and connect with her on the following social networks:
LinkedIn (@laurel-k-rutledge/)
Instagram (@laurel.k.rutledge)
Facebook and YouTube (@therutledgeperspective)
- I am Céline Williams, and welcome to the Leading Through Crisis podcast, a conversation series, exploring resiliency and leadership in challenging times. So my guest today is a familiar face around here. It's Laurel Rutledge, who's the Chief Navigation Officer, host of the Rutledge Perspective Radio show, and transformation business advisor to female founders. And someone that I like to think of as, of as a friend. I can't speak today, welcome, Laurel.
- Thank you so much. I'm so excited for us to have this conversation again. It's been way too long.
- I know it's, I feel like every time we get on any kind of call or we record anything, it's like, let's just do this all the time. Can we just do this all the time, it's always so fun.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I'm really happy to have you back and excited to get into this conversation.
- Yes.
- Even just like chatting before we hit record, I was like, "We should have just been recording this. We could just-
- I know.
- Use all of this.
- Right, right.
- Always the way. So, it's been a while since you've been on the show, so I'm gonna ask the same question I always start with, which is podcast is called Leading Through Crisis. What comes up for you when you hear that now at this point in time in life and world?
- Oh, you know, the big thing, because this is something we've been talking about a lot with a lot of people, is the crisis now is this whole AI ChatGPT, that's like the new crisis, right, the new... And an article, so there's creative people who are saying, "Oh, my gosh, you know, you're going to take my job away from me. There's the doomsday of not understanding that the positive piece of these kind of things is getting rid of kind of real menial repetitive stuff.
- Mm-hmm.
- And then there's the dark side, right, of deep fake. And how do we, as people who tend to swing pendulums, how do we regulate the bad and exploit the good?
- Yeah.
- And so people are all, quite frankly, tied up in their underwear about what we do, about this thing that's moving faster than we can fathom, you know, so that feels to me like, how do we lead people through this new crisis? The new crisis is AI and what does that mean for all of us?
- Yeah.
- I love that you brought that up because I think it's so, it is everywhere right now, and it feels like in the past, I don't know, five, six months, it's just maybe slightly longer than that, no sense of time, but it's explode like it's nonstop. And there are so many people and so many conversations I've been having, I'm sure you as well, that are really focused on the catastrophizing side of it. Like this is, you know, and even the taking over menial tasks gets catastrophized because it becomes the, like, we're gonna have no jobs. There's gonna be no opportunities, What's it?
- Yes.
- And that, to me, is so even inside of the ups, positive possible upsides, the catastrophizing is so predominant.
- Yes.
- And how, you know, how do you navigate? I'm gonna ask you this, how do you navigate through that? And you are a very have, knowing you a little bit, you're a very balanced, thoughtful person.
- Yeah.
- So, not that I think you would lean really hard one way or the other, but how do you manage yourself and not leaning?
- Yeah.
- And not being like, let me spin out one way or the other.
- You know, it's hard. Oh, I do have a tendency to be really balanced. Maybe that's the Libra in me, I don't know. But I tend to be really balanced. And I've had the waffling, right. I'm like, "Oh, my gosh," because like you, I have a podcast, I have a radio show, there are things that I write that are out of my gen, they come outta my head, right. They're outta my genius.
- Yeah.
- And I'm thinking, "Oh, my gosh, I've got to be really careful." Even if I want to use one of the AI generators to say, "Give me some ideas about X, Y, Z, or do a content calendar for me on these topics." I have to be really mindful about, "Wait, Laurel, don't use your tagline all the time. Don't use the things that are your genius. Because those things are learning, it's machine learning." So if you use the things that are uniquely you all the time, they're learning those, which means it's gonna show up somewhere else, right?
- Yeah. So I'm mindful of those things. The other thing that I have a tendency to be, just because I think the way I think is I try to get ahead of it from a protective standpoint to say, are my trademarks in line? Are my copyrights in line? Do I need to start thinking about having somebody who actually watches that stuff for me? So that, what it does is it takes the worry off.
- Hmm.
- And so anything that I've copyrighted or trademarked is stuff that I really believe is IP. Everything else is freeform. So get, I have a tendency to tell people, "Get really narrow," 'cause you can't protect anything anyway. Even without AI, you can't protect everything. But if there's stuff that's truly fundamental to you, put something in place that at least gives you some level of protection, and then let the other stuff go, right, because you can't worry or fix everything. And then, the third thing I do is when I think about creators, I also try to, again, balance the pendulum, right? Artists are having a fit, and I don't blame them. They are having a fit. Oh, my gosh, what's gonna happen? The Supreme Court has already decided that something's created with AI, you can't copyright it, which I think is really weird 'cause if you had to tell AI what to do, I'm... That's a little odd to me. But what hit me was, you know, we were having the conversation around a really creative genius who's a little weird, but a creative genius.
- Yeah.
- Before this started.
- Yeah.
- When I think about artists, I'm like, "Okay, so somebody could say, 'Go look at the paintings by X, Y, Z artist and create one,'" and the bot could do that. And if I'm the artist, I could be really irritated and frustrated by that. Or I could say, "Vertical integration, here's my original art. I am now going to create my own AI-generated versions of my art, and I'm gonna sell 'em." So I'm gonna embrace the tool as opposed to being fearful of the tool, right? So to me, it's kind of three-prong. Be mindful of stuff you really need to protect, use it in really narrow ways, and then use the tool to vertically integrate what you're doing so that it becomes something that you use as opposed to something that uses you. If that makes sense.
- It totally makes sense. And it, I was listening to a podcast a sometime in the last few weeks, and it was with a, there was an actor on, and they were talking about this AI topic came up, and the strike, and the writer's guilds, you know, all of this came up and they were saying that they're also producer, and they were saying that, you know, why, to kind of what you're saying, why is there no middle ground of like, "We're gonna pay writers fairly. And if the writer, if a writer comes up with an idea, then great, we're gonna pay you for that idea." We're gonna pay you to write the script. Who cares if they put the, they say, "Here's the idea for this into an AI, you know, ChatGPT or whatever it is.
- Mm-hmm.
- Generate a script, and they just adjust that. Who cares?
- Right, right If you're paying them fairly for the idea, then does it matter if they're using it because then they're exploiting something that saves them time and effort.
- Yes.
- And whatever. You know, why is that not an option? Why is that not, you know, part and partial of the conversation? And I think, and it goes to kind of what you, that third piece of what you're talking about is how can we look at these as opportunities, not just something to be afraid of that's gonna take something away from us.
- Exactly, exactly. And it's that human piece of it, right? So if you take that, it's one thing for them to have 'cause I think I may have been listening to the same podcast, and there were some people who were extras somewhere, I think. And they actually had them all go into a room. They took all these camera angles up, they didn't tell them what they were doing. So now they have images of these people that are AI-generated that they're using. Okay, now that's exploitation. We need to not do that, right?
- Yeah.
- If nothing else, people actually need to know what's being happened and intentionally release, right, that information.
- Yeah.
- That's one thing. But the other piece is it's our inability to flex this humans. It's a fear factor and it's a capitalism issue.
- Yeah.
- So in that scenario, you talked about, it's like, "Okay, we're gonna pay people, we're gonna pay them fairly." But here's the deal. It's now where you have taken somebody months to do a script, maybe it's taking them less time to do the script. You're going to pay them fairly. How about what you do is not only pay them fairly, but now since it took you less time, you have less expense, you actually split more of the profit with them.
- Right.
- You don't pocket all of the profit.
- Right.
- How about that part, right? It's like, now you can take the whole pie and divide it a little bit differently because there's efficiency in the creation of the thing that enables expenses to be lower, which means profit's are higher which means you can split that with people.
- Yeah.
- But we've got this mindset of, "Oh, if profits higher, that means I made more money." No, if profits are higher, that means we made more money.
- Yeah.
- And we have some issues with being able to do that.
- Yeah. And it's, I mean, we're using, we're, the examples that we're giving right now around film. But this does apply across the board anytime there's shareholders.
- Absolutely.
- I just think it's so prevalent right now in the film industry.
- Yes. Because they're really vocal about it, that it's an easy place to kind of talk about this kind of crisis and change.
- Yes, yeah.
- And it's to what you're saying, the, so there's an actor who has been very vocal about his image being used in, so he was, I cannot remember the name of the movie, but he was in like the, you know, the first series or first two movies in a series. And his image was used in the latter movies that he was never paid for and was not there. Like, does not get royalties for none of that. Because inside of the contracts, it was basically like, "We can use whatever extra footage going forward without compensation."
- Yeah.
- So the exploitation.
- Yes.
- And this happens in, not film as well. Let's just be clear.
- Yes.
- It's just the exploitation is there now.
- Yes.
- Anyways.
- Yes.
- It's already there.
- Yes.
- So this to me, it's like, How do we prevent this from becoming, air quote, "Worse?" How do we minimize it, recognizing that it already exists?
- Yeah.
- So let's maybe make sure it doesn't get worse and ideally better.
- Right, right. And how do we remember that it's not perfect, right? I was reading an article and this is gonna be really key for business. I was reading an article the other day and they were saying "How, actually my, one of my attorneys actually posted this article and it was saying how they've done some recent studies on these AI-generated things, right, And especially in the field of education and teaching. And they realized that when it first started and people were using it like for math problems, right? They were testing it against math problems. 98% of the time the AI-generated answer was right, 98% of the time. Over these last few months, in this short period of time in this article, from their testing, it was down to 2%.
- Oh, my gosh.
- 2% Accuracy, why? Because you got people that are part of the machine learning, right? So if people are inaccurate, that means the information coming out of the bot is inaccurate. So I tell people, especially in business, 'cause we've got all of these business owners that are like, "Oh, my God, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have people taking trade secrets and we're gonna have people," you know, and this is true if you don't, if you don't set up some kind of parameters, guidelines, guardrails around where you're gonna use this in your business, right, and set up some kind of security measures. Especially if you have serious IP or things that are seriously harmful or dangerous to people, right,
- Right.
- You do need to set up some guidelines and guardrails. But inside of that, understand that the reason this is not going to take over human is you still need to look at the information that you're getting out and be discerning, two plus two is still four.
- Yeah.
- If the bot says it's five, you need to be smart enough to say, "Something's wrong with that answer," right? So, I think we, especially when we start talking about business, it's like I tell people we often try to go to the lowest common denominator. We try to prevent every risk that could happen. Stop it.
- Oh, my God.
- Stop it, right? When it comes to this, what are the things that could happen that will be the most harmful to your business? Start there, right, prioritize everything. If it's protecting IP, then how about you not put any kind of option for people to use a AI-generated anything in your R&D area? Just keep it outta R&D, right?
- Yeah.
- But you might wanna put it in finance or maybe you put it in parts of HR 'cause guess what, y'all, it's been in HR for a while. The Ask ALEX for your benefits, right? All, it's been there for a while. You probably don't want it attached to employee records because then you've got HIPAA issues. But it's been there in some other places for quite a while. So, to your point, instead of getting so caught up in the catastrophe of how it's gonna take the entire world down, one, it's not unless we let it, that's number one. Number two, just be mindful and intentional about where you use it. Decide you're going to use it, and then take control over where and how you use it. Because if you don't use it, it's going to use you.
- Yeah.
- So you just gotta decide which part of that program you wanna be in. You know, it doesn't have to be a disaster.
- Right, it's that idea of discernment, right, of looking at the, I know you. That idea of discernment is, I feel like it just cannot be emphasized enough inside of this or anything when it comes to business, and-
- Yeah.
- Gotta love HR. I think they're a great example of where it is all, off. Not always, but often comes down to we're making rules for the lowest common denominator. And that way we don't have to discern things on the fly and we don't have to make these decisions. And we, it is, you know, it takes the compassion and the heart and the care out of it and just makes it this, like, this is the rule, lowest common denominator.
- Yep.
- And it's, so, I'm... For me, it's so frustrating to watch it happen where it's like, I, why do we accept this as just, and the, as just the way it is? Like, yeah, we don't, we're just gonna make, you know, it's like, it goes to the, I remember, working in an organization where at some there was like a Christmas party or something, right, and someone wore a dress or an outfit that was inappropriate. It like, you know, it was at the time it was too short or whatever they deemed it.
- Right.
- There was, I mean I have my own thoughts on that. I don't, but they then changed the dress code for everyone. For Christmas parties or holiday parties or whatever it was to be like, it has to be business-casual work. I mean.
- Come on.
- So these people who like wanted to get dressed up in whatever kind of suits, dresses, outfits, whatever, you've taken all that fun away from them. Because you've decided the lowest common denominator.
- Yeah, yes.
- Where the...
- Yeah.
- Why, Laurel, why is there so little disturbance, solve the world's problems with me here?
- Yeah, you know, I think it's so funny that you bring that up because I was just having this conversation with somebody the other night and I'm like, "Look, let's be honest about HR." I said, "And I will admit, I am not your traditional HR person," right, I was in accounting, I was an operation international business. I did, you know, consulting. So I came to HR as a business person and I was so fortunate to work with someone who's like, "Look, I need people who can think and I can teach 'em HR stuff. I need, I need business people," right, 'cause its mission first, People always.
- Yeah.
- And in my perspective, my personal opinion is the problem with HR is that it has been so compliance-focused and so much focused on pushing paper and relegated to a necessary evil. Because you only call them when you jack something up that it has now become this place of, the only thing you think about for HR is compliance. And so you've got a whole generation and a whole population of people that have compliance mindsets as opposed to business mindsets. Now I think the function is trying to change, but you got a lot of people that you all of a sudden, just flipped a switch and said, "Today, you gotta be a business partner, and today, you gotta be strategic," And one, you hired the wrong people to do that. 'cause you hired people who weren't that and then told 'em they had to become that, right? Some can flip the switch, but most cannot. So the foundation is broken. But the other piece of that is, if you think fundamentally about business, it's that whole idea of it is a business not a family. It's a business, not a family. And that means you have to be able to make tough decisions. You have to be able to release people with LOVE and help them be successful somewhere else. You have to hold people accountable and you have to set expectations that are clear and then your words need to match your actions. When you go to that Thanksgiving party with your family, you can blow off, you know, Uncle Joe and Aunt Rena for saying stupid stuff 'cause see they're family, you can just decide not to see them again.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That person's gonna keep showing up to work until you do something.
- Yep.
- Right?
- Yeah.
- So, I think what we've got is this, that because people are afraid to have deep candid conversations and because they're afraid to have them because they don't know how to have them, and if you lay on top of this such a litigious world.
- Yeah.
- What we've got is this convergence of let's just make all the rules 'cause then we don't have to think. And if we get challenged, we can just go back to the rule. Instead of let's set guidelines and guardrails and say, "You know what, This is a business, and we're gonna act like adults. And if you touch people, you can't work here. If you're nasty to people, you can't work here. If you steal from us, if you do, you can't work here." Like the new CEO of General Motors was like, our dress code is dress appropriately, the end.
- Yeah.
- Right.
- Yep.
- So that way, the HR people don't become the dress police, because I can't tell you how many times, I had somebody say, "Her shoes are too high, her dress is too short," who care. I don't care.
- Yeah.
- Can she do the job now if we're in a plant and she's wearing stilettos, sweetie, I need you to understand you're in a plant and you can't wear stilettos in the plant. That's a safety issue.
- Yes, yes, that's a-
- I know you think they're cute, but they're a safety issue, so no, ma'am, right?
- Yeah.
- So I just... Just like, the guy can't wear, you know, his flip-flops in the plant.
- Of course.
- No, sir.
- Yes.
- Right.
- Yep. So I think we've moved to where on the one hand, we wanna create these cultures where it's family and people feel comfortable and we have to add a B to DEI because Heaven forbid, we just do inclusion right, We have to add a belonging. But if you're doing inclusion right, people feel like they belong.
- Mm-hmm.
- We've put all this stuff around it to protect us from bringing grown folks. To protect us from just doing the right thing and having the right conversations. And when we screw it up, just saying, "You know what? We totally screwed that up. Let's fix it," we just... We've lost the ability to be discerning and mindful and action-oriented and focused on issues instead of people, right, 'cause it's when I have a problem with your performance, it's the performance and the behavior. I'm not passing judgment on your character 'cause see, your character is none of my business. But your behavior in my organization is, and the impact of the outcomes of your behavior, that's my business. And so if I focus on that, then I can get rid of that thing in my head that says, "If I have a hard conversation, I'm not treating people like family. It's not a safe place to be." No, it's absolutely safe 'cause people are clear, it's absolutely safe. 'Cause we are compassionate, understanding that people live a life before they walk in this building. It's absolutely compassionate 'cause we know AI is coming. We just need to find a way for people to be able to use it. That protects the business because if we protect the business, then everybody has a job, right? It's their, they're not mutually exclusive. But we cannot be so afraid to run businesses, right, that we do treat them like family and end up having no business for anybody to have a job.
- Mm-hmm.
- It's so clear to me. I don't know why it's so hard for everybody.
- I listen, look, solving the world's problems, this is what we're doing, but I, and I agree with you, and it's, I feel like, so the example you just gave around like, you know, the, I... The problem is your behavior of not passing judgment on your character. I think so often people think if you have that conversation, it's you versus them. It becomes that you versus them as opposed to us versus the problem. The problem, we can both want the problem to find a solution for the problem. Even if it's a behavior thing. It doesn't mean it's me versus you. And that is so hard for like it's, listen, it's true inside of any kind of relationship, it doesn't make a difference.
- Absolutely.
- Is that we often end up like it's me versus you as opposed to us versus a thing.
- Yes.
- And I think if we, us versus a problem if we can, if more people inside a business could see things that way, could address things that way, could set things up so that the conversation goes that way, it would be, I hope, easier to have these direct, meaningful, kind, accountable conversations.
- Yes, exactly.
- First, like first and foremost, I also think, and I don't, I... You know, when you were talking about business versus family, the thing that came to mind that is somewhat related to this is I feel like the idea of, you know, all companies are families now. And our team is our family, is almost like an overcorrection for so much of the rigidity of the rules. It's like we have all these rules that they suck for everyone. We're not gonna change those 'cause like that's, those.. They're just there.
- Right.
- But if we talk about it being a family, we're gonna not pay full attention to it. And it's like this overcorrection, which then, I think, is why these conversations where it is about behavior, whatever, they are so contentious because the idea of the family is not real. It's really about the rules. It comes out in conversations like that. We don't know how to position it So it's us against a problem and it just compounds and reinforces this entire cycle.
- Yes, I agree. And what people don't recognize is if you write it down and put it in a rule, you have to follow it too.
- Yeah. Oh my God.
- So you have to have, if you have 1,400 pages of rules, you are actually giving people more ammunition to say, "You didn't do that, right, You treated me different. Here's what the rules say, but this is what you did." Stop. Stop. Here's the expectations, here's the guardrails. If there's something that's truly compliance or safety-related, absolutely write that down. Everything else, we want you to be an adult. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's the expectations we're gonna set. It is not unkind to be clear. Be clear.
- Nope. Yep. Yep.
- And then just operate, right, Just operate, and if someone is not doing what they're supposed to do, you call it out in the moment. You don't wait three months from now. It's like, and this is gonna sound so bad, but this is why you don't get a new puppy that you're trying to house-train. Leave them at home all day uncrated, and then stick their nose in the poop on the floor that was there when you got back eight hours later. They don't know why you're sticking their nose in the poop. They're not connecting those two events.
- Nope.
- They're just not. Don't wait three months to tell somebody about something they did that really irritated you or that was detrimental to the process you're trying to create. Stop it in the moment and focus on the issue. The issue.
- Yeah.
- I, for people who have a hard time having those conversations, I always say, "Do your best to avoid the word you." Do your best to avoid the word you.
- Yep.
- This behavior, these goals, this outcome, this impact was unacceptable, or was not supported, or whatever.
- Yep. The minute there's a you, that's the confrontation. That's the, "You don't like me, you're being mean to me." I don't know, stop.
- Just-
- Yep.
- Stop.
- Yep.
- Stop, right, so, yeah, I think it's, when I look at HR people now, I'm like, "I need, one, I need you guys to have courage." If you can't speak truth to power, I need to get outta HR. I need you to just get out because these are the things you need to be talking to them about. If you have more than about 10, 15 rules, depending on the side of your company, it's too many. What are you doing? And you need to be challenging that, right, you need to be challenging. When they say one thing, and they act differently. You need to be able to stand up for that. If you cannot, then you don't need to be in HR. And that means standing up to the company and to employees. You have to work that balance between, look mission first, people always 'cause if we don't have a company, nobody's got a job. So, you need to be able to stand up and speak the truth to all sides because you're walking that line in the middle. right, and so if you can't do that, I honestly need you to find something else to do because the companies need you and the people that are in those companies need you. And if you can't do that, love you, mean it, find something else. Find something else.
- I love talking to you in a way that I can't even describe. I, there's so much that we've spoken about here that I think is super valuable and I would like you to come back sooner rather than later. Yes, yay.
- And keep talking because I feel like I'm always like, here's the problem. We could talk for three hours, and then there would be so much information that I wouldn't even know where to start with it. You are just-
- Yeah, thank you.
- A font of knowledge and I really appreciate you coming and sharing all this. I think it's so incredibly important and I would just like to always talk to you, Laurel.
- Hey, the feeling is mutual. We have got to do it again, so see what we do, we come and do an episode on yours. You come to mine, we do part two.
- Deal.
- That's what we do.
- Deal.
- We just keep tag-teaming it.
- Yeah, I love it.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I love it. Thank you so much for coming and chatting and sharing all this. I think it's incredibly important, and I think it's so relevant, especially right now. I love that you started with AI because every single person, business owner, leader, executive, it doesn't make a difference. Organization size is dealing with this and talking about this right now. So thank you for starting at with such an important topic right off the bat. I really appreciate you.
- Sure, thank you. Thank you for having me on again. It is always, it just lights me up to come and spend time with you. So thank you for having me.
- It is always my pleasure. Thanks for joining me today on the Leading Through Crisis podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast app. If you're interested in learning more about any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca.