AI Won’t Fix What You Can’t See with Tom McCarty

[00:00:03] Welcome back to the Dont Tell Me About Yourself Podcast. We are at the Shaker booth at Unleash America and today we are sitting with Tom McCarty and I'm the CEO of OrgChart. Yeah, can you tell us about OrgChart? Yeah, absolutely. So we've been in the kind of the HR tech space for since about 2013. We do kind of three main things for HR professionals. So we automate visibility into your organization.

[00:00:27] I think, you know, you've been in HR long enough. You probably have managed people. You've manually drawn your org charts. We take the pain of that completely away. So we automate and integrate with like 50 different HRS systems and automate that. We bring in deeper insights so you can have different lenses of the organization. So maybe you have a budget chart, Hispanic control chart, tenure, different ways to look at your org. And then workforce planning.

[00:00:50] Like what's the future of your organization look like? How are you adopting for change? How are you planning for AI? Where does your org need to look like and shaped for in the future? That's, I mean, you're biting off a big piece there. Like that's important. It is. It is. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, look, it's every org needs to be doing it. And honestly, when you think about what we're doing to kind of get ready for AI, it's really not any different than what we've been doing. I mean, anytime you're thinking about making changes to your organization and people.

[00:01:18] And it really starts out with what we do first. It's like, what is the base? What's the current state of your organization? And you have like a holistic view. Do you know where you're at? Yeah. You can't really get where you're going if you don't know where you are. Right. What are some things that most companies are blind to that you help them to see? Yeah. I think first and foremost, it's going to sound terrible. It's like a lot of things. Right.

[00:01:44] And the reason is, is what I typically find is in most organizations, regardless of size, you're usually gathering data from multiple data sources and you're consolidating that into a spreadsheet to get this static snapshot of your organization. So, and look, planning exercises are not like one week exercises. Right. They're like over three or four months. So, like, if you're doing an annual exercise, maybe you take the static stat shot of your org on September 1st.

[00:02:12] Well, the problem, if you have a thousand employees, you have 150 employees, that data is wrong by tomorrow. Right. Yeah. And so what we're doing first is really helping you put all that data together in an automated way. And so that as you're doing your planning scenarios, that data is reflecting the real time situation of the organization. Cool.

[00:02:31] And then, like, let's say we're all three people managers. Well, if we have a budget for what we need to do in our organization, you know, if you're looking at these five things and I'm looking at five other things and you're looking at five other things, then you start to get inconsistencies and inequality in how you treat people and how decisions are made. So we allow organizations to better standardize those things of, like, what should I think about? What are the important things for me as a people leader or an HR partner to consider when making changes in an organization?

[00:03:01] That's really cool. You bring up data, which is one of my favorite topics. I'm like a data nerd. Yeah. So I did want to ask you, and it could be just, you know, your company or your customers. I'm curious, is there a specific metric or data point that you or your customers are focused on this year? You know, I think that, like, what a lot of customers are thinking about now is, like, what are the skills? Think about, like, job skills and job positions more. And it's really, I think, two things.

[00:03:29] It's like, well, what are the things that are most likely to or could be displaced through a Gentic, right? And, you know, what I encourage my team to think about is, like, hey, to better embrace it is, like, let's look at the things that are the mundane tasks, the things that we don't like doing. And, like, these are things that are, like, right for AI to help us do so that we can actually spend our own time and energy and brainpower on the things that have greater impact to culture, to organization, to goals and targets.

[00:03:59] And so, like, I'm seeing that more and more. It's like, I'm less thinking about, you know, individual performance metrics or things like that. I'm looking at, like, the jobs that are being done in an organization, positions and the skills. And then, like, how am I building the skills in my team for what the future of work is going to look like in a world of AI? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And thinking of what can be automated is so important and also what can't, right? Because there are so many things that also need human touch. Yes.

[00:04:29] And I think where I see a lot of people make mistakes and, like, look, this is the same mistake we make. Like, nobody wants to go through a riff, right? But we've all managed to through a riff at some point in our lives. And you're choosing kind of where those hits might happen. But sometimes we don't actually have the full picture of what somebody does. And it's like, wow, I was okay with 80%. But that last 20% they did is really hurting us. And now they're gone, right? And maybe 80% of this role could be identified.

[00:04:56] But that last 20% really needs the human touch. And that's where it's important to really look at your current state, look at the skills and the jobs before you start making those moves, before you make kind of unintended impacts into the organization. Oh, child. Yeah. Is there something from your perspective that's encouraging to you or exciting to you that's happening in your industry? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:19] I think one of the things I'm passionate about in terms of what we do, and I'm seeing this more and more, is like, look, I don't think many HR professionals got into HR to live in spreadsheets and to be administrators of things. I think when you look at the things that we're trying to do, which is automate all of this manual process of seeing your organization, of doing your planning, when you look at some of the things that AI is doing, which I think is going to take some of these administrative tasks out of HR,

[00:05:49] I think it's actually going to allow HR professionals to get back to the core of why they got into HR. I think it's going to allow us to be focused on the decisions and the conversations and of how we still make the most use out of our most expensive asset in any company, which is our people, and how to help people thrive in their roles.

[00:06:12] And I think HR is just because of all of the data, the manual tasks, the administrative work, we've gotten away from being able to lead the conversation instead of just documenting and facilitating the conversation. And that's so important. Victoria and I talk to hiring managers often about how important it is to hire somebody that has the right motivations at a line. And I can tell you that as an HR person, they are not motivated by data entry in Excel sheets. Is anybody? No.

[00:06:42] Well, there are some. There are a few. And thank goodness for them because most of us are not. You know what I mean? I agree. So it's really nice of you. I mean, it's going to talk about employee satisfaction. They're going to be able to do the things that they got into the industry to do in the first place. And there's to be people, help out with really important decisions for the company. So there's probably many HR people that are yelling at this episode right now. I'm like, thank you. That's amazing. What is one thing that talent leaders need to know in the year ahead? The year ahead. But I think we kind of just were touching on it, right?

[00:07:11] I mean, look, you know, it's we can't ignore that AI is going to transform work. Like it's not. I feel like the tipping point has gone way over the scale now at this point. And it's like, and I do think that in HR we can sometimes be slower to adopt on the technology front. Right? And so I think we have to learn and embrace that and figure out how that looks and how we can help navigate the conversations for our organization.

[00:07:37] So it's not just how's it going to look in HR, but then really helping to navigate this change management conversation that needs to be happening. Because if ever we need HR being an active voice in these planning scenarios, it's now. And really thinking about what's the future going to be for our team members? How are we doing this? And really focusing on the people element of where we can and where we can't. And so I think that's the, that's got to be the focus. Yeah. Sounds like a pivotal point for HR people. I think so.

[00:08:07] Yeah. I think so. And in most spaces, right? Like it's not just here, but for sure in HR. Yeah. Yep. Where can people find more information about you and the company? Yeah. So you could follow me on LinkedIn, Tom McCarty, org chart, and our website's theorgchart.com. And we'd be happy to help anybody out and hopefully take some of that manual painful cell work out there. So kind of you. So, yeah. So kind of you. Well, thank you so much for your time today. We hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Yeah. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.