What Will Workday Careers Look Like in 2027? | Keith Bitikofer

[00:00:00] Speaker A: You have to be advisor and you have to be an architect. [00:00:02] Speaker B: If somebody's role is a list of if thens that's going to get automated billing by the hour is dead. You have to shift to billing for value. [00:00:12] Speaker A: We're celebrating one year of wavemakers and what a year it's been. We've had guests challenge our thinking, bring completely different perspectives to what's happening in the workday ecosystem and raise questions we probably wouldn't have gotten to on our own. If you missed any of those episodes, definitely go back and check them out. For this anniversary, we wanted to change things up a little, so we invited our first guest, Keith Bitticofer, back. And when we went through that first episode, it was pretty amazing to hear how much has changed in just 12 months. Some of the things we were talking about as possibilities are already happening. So this time we're looking back, looking ahead and actually putting a few predictions on the record. Well, we are celebrating our one year anniversary with wave makers and of course we asked Keith Bittercover, who was our first guest, to come back and join us as we kind of look at what has happened in this first year. Keith, so good to have you back. We always love your insights and everything that you share. So thank you for helping us get kicked off and thank you for celebrating with us. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah, congratulations. It's exciting that it's been a year already. It's hard to believe. And time moves fast, as we all know. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Yes, it does, absolutely. And there have been a ton of changes that have gone on. Actually. Congratulations to you. So EMD getting acquired by glue. There's a change just right out of the gate there. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been three or four months now, so yeah, it's fun. Lots of new stuff. [00:01:46] Speaker A: So we thought for this episode we would approach the podcast a little differently. We actually have five questions that we have all gone through separately and answered and we are going to have the big reveal on the podcast and discuss our answers. So a little bit of a different approach here again. You know, when we had keep a year ago, there were a lot of predictions being made, a lot of assumptions, so we're going to look at a little bit of those. But we're also going to look at the future a little bit. Let's go ahead and get started with our first one. [00:02:16] Speaker C: All right, well, I'm going to take that and I do have a little cheat sheet here, so. All right, first question. So if you were starting from scratch today, would you still build your career around workday? [00:02:27] Speaker B: It's interesting to say build your career around workday. Cause I don't know that I ever intended to build my career around workday. I've been at this in the system space for 30 plus years. And so I think that's the key thing is that what I learned about business process, about how businesses operate, in my case, a lot of nonprofits operate. It applies regardless of the system. And so I still think workday is an amazing system and has a huge impact for lots of people and has even with, you know, there's lots of questions about AI and the sas Acopolis or whatever that word is that I can't say right now. But. But just going to happen with sas. And yeah, I think there's going to be changes, but we're going to need strong HR finance systems that a system of record, regardless of kind of all the other changes is still going to be critical and I still think it's a great opportunity for people to support that for a long time to come. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Yep. [00:03:22] Speaker C: Carla, are you going to answer that one? [00:03:24] Speaker A: I mean, obviously it looks drastically different than it did, you know, five years ago. So if someone's coming in and just thinking they can and we'll talk about this, but you know, learn it, get in the system and I'm just going to do that. No, you can't build around that. That's not going to be there that long. All of our jobs have changed and that is not going to do that. So I guess it's kind of a two part. Yes, there are opportunities, but it's going to look different than I'm just coming in and doing system stuff. [00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:53] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean I've been recruiting now for. I don't even want to count them, show my age, but recruiting in workday for 14 and. Absolutely. I still love it. I still love the people. Things have definitely changed and shifted with, you know, recruiting and going through that. Like Carlos said, we'll jump into it, but absolutely. I still love this ecosystem and all the people in it. So I would continue. [00:04:17] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:18] Speaker A: So let's kind of talk about this. So Keith, you know, our first episode with you was, I can still remember when you said it, it was like you get to choose. So do they get to choose? [00:04:29] Speaker B: I would say we all get to choose. And what I mean by that is in my career, I've done six major career pivots where I mean a totally different thing that I would do and done it successfully. And you know, was it easy? No. Was it worth it? Absolutely. And so I do think there's options. I do think with AI and the changes coming with AI, it's going to be more challenging because, you know, especially all of us as knowledge workers, knowledge work is going to look different when AI has a lot of the same knowledge that you do. And then it's going to be a matter of. There are certain aspects that, yeah, you can use AI as a thought partner and I do it all the time and it's incredibly helpful. But it's, it's not the same as a person who's been there and done that. And for those of us who've been around for a while and have been in different environments, just because AI can say, here's a recommended best practice, it doesn't necessarily say, oh, in this company we did it this way, in this company we did it this way. Here's what we learned. That's where the people side of this comes in. And so I still think we want to choose things that we enjoy doing and give us life. But I do think the next couple years, that's going to be challenging for some people because some roles are going to get automated. And so then it's going to be, are you learning the new things, the new tech, thinking about things differently? A lot of the people that I have interviewed have in the last year started their own business. And I think that's going to be a reality for a lot of people. And, and it's an opportunity because you get to do what you want to do and do what's best, but it's up to you to find the work. [00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's funny, and that's why we all, you know, kind of start our business right, where like, we, like, we can do it better than someone else or we have our unique thing that we can bring to the market. But the, the book eth, you, you know, when you start your business, there's a whole business and there's you. We start our business because we are good at something. Owning a business, completely different. And really you're in sales and this is a whole nother thing that we've talked, but there have been some really creative things that businesses that have been created out there, watching people find a gap and getting into that. [00:06:41] Speaker B: And there's a lot of things from that standpoint that you used to have to hire people to do A, B and C. And now you can use AI for certain aspects. And so, you know, if, if you're able to absorb the AI stuff and, and the tools there are, you can start a business with Fewer people now and have the same impact. And so that's a new reality, a new opportunity as well. [00:07:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. They're saying that that's the AI definitely helps small businesses. Yeah. [00:07:07] Speaker C: And that I think when you talk about choosing, a lot of people have been in the ecosystem a while and they chose to maybe bring a tool, an application, build some extend product to the market. They realized there was that need and they chose to do that. So I've seen a ton of that uptick. [00:07:30] Speaker A: So the most overhyped or actually underhyped thing that has happened in the workday ecosystem this last year. Keith, you go first. [00:07:38] Speaker B: Well, I've already talked a good bit about the deployment agent. So I think there's a lot of people with a love hate relationship with that. And so I don't know if that's overhyped or underhyped, but I think it's going to be really significant whether I think a lot of people just kind of wrote it off after the first time and it's like, no, it's getting much, much better and it's going to be a big deal. I think that there's other agents, we'll just leave it at that. There's some other agents that are turning out to be much more complicated to get them to work because of the security changes that have to be made because of a variety of things. And so the nice thing from a Flex Credit standpoint is you can test all these agents with the exception of the BP optimized one. You can test them in lower level tenants Sandbox Preview and you want to, want to, want to test them and because not just hey, did it do something, but if there's multiple skills, you want to test every single skill that you turn on. Because I've just run into multiple situations where they require security changes that, that you may not anticipate. And there's some nice reports that will allow you to double check the security as well. But it was just times where you feel like, oh, it's simple to turn this agent on because I just go into the agent management hub and turn it on like, well, that's one step. There's a bunch of other things you're going to have to do and it's going to require testing. So make sure that you don't kind of oversell it to your company before you've actually tested it and say, okay, we now know how this is going to work and we're ready to roll this out. [00:09:06] Speaker A: Makes sense. All right, Nikki, what's yours? [00:09:08] Speaker C: Well, I would Say underestimated just how much people are going to use chat to build those resumes, make their skill set, you know, come across a little bit stronger. And then of course, now a lot of resumes start looking the same. We've been hearing about that. So I would say from last year to where we are now, just how much people are using chat and AI to kind of brand themselves. That's what I'm seeing quite a bit out there more than ever. Yeah, overhyped, but underestimated. [00:09:42] Speaker A: I'll go underestimate the impact. And I'm not saying this because we're a recruiting firm and then we've been here forever. The influx of partners and how that has impacted volume, how that has impacted compensation, how that has impacted misinformation. It is prominently out there. And I don't know if, I mean, maybe everybody knew. [00:10:07] Speaker C: I. [00:10:08] Speaker A: You just didn't think that it would be as much as it is. [00:10:11] Speaker B: So can you dive into that a little more? And you're talking about misinformation. And I mean, I've. Last year was amazing in terms of the Expo because they didn't have enough space in the main expo and they had a second expo for people who didn't fit in the first one. So who knows what's going to happen this year at Rising because of how many new partners there are. So, yeah, I'd love to hear more what you're seeing and how that's impacting the recruiting process. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Well, you know me, I'm going to come out with comp first. Right. You know, I've just seen. And again, as everybody's out there using this from a marketing perspective, whether it's to be found in AI or things, you have these articles out there, they're wrong. They have, you know, posts that they're out there, they're wrong. Their job postings that they're advertising for. And I'm talking third parties, but honestly, even not third parties, even companies themselves, the compensation is so off. And so you have a lot of partners that maybe worked in a different software, let's say Epic or Cerner in the past, where those rates were lower, it was a more mature ecosystem than Orvit is. So they're coming in and advertising rates with requirements that are just that those don't exist. You're going to get what you pay for. And I've talked with, you know, contractors that have said those firms have contacted them and they don't know what they're recruiting for. So, you know, there's that you've got, oh, this is, you know, a valid career path or this is what your team should look like. No, it's not. And so you're seeing that out there. And so it's really, you know, with people like yourself, Key and Nikki, I know that you're always putting this out there, just kind of. We just have to keep beating the drum of this is the, you know, no or. And yes, do things look differently. But the expectation of I just need one person to manage my whole team or my whole tenant, that's not going to happen. You know, which we see. I'm seeing these on these orders that are coming in and WD Beacon. And it's not. I don't think it's someone being unreasonable. I think they just don't know. So that education is not happening. [00:12:08] Speaker B: But anyway, and every so often I'll do a post about no one person knows all of workday. That's always going to be one of my top posts in terms of interactions because everybody agrees and they all struggle with as a consultant, whether they're trying to find a job at a workday customer. They all understand how misunderstood the complexity of workday is. [00:12:29] Speaker A: And honestly, I don't understand why because even when I mentioned Epic and Cerner, it wasn't like this was just one part that they have. I mean this still was a lot and you didn't have one person that was an expert in everything. They even still segmented that. Now, from a Salesforce perspective, I think now that you're seeing, oh, I can get a admin cert with workday. So everyone goes, oh, well, you had Salesforce admin, that is admin, not admins. So I do think that people are kind of maybe equating it that way. I don't know, it's just really kind of interesting. And, and that's something I do like to go and look at where the changes Oracle and SAP and Salesforce did to try to predict where, you know, what's going to impact where we are. [00:13:09] Speaker C: So obviously, Keith, you know, we were talking about a year ago it was hard to break in to the ecosystem, right? And now here we are talking about all the changes, opening up community, opening up learning. Now that this is. Has increased so much, are we creating all these experts? Right, because they have the tools. You can get in there so quickly now, find answers, carve out what you need. Are we getting or how do we figure out, you know, the legitimacy of some of these workday experts? [00:13:39] Speaker B: I'd like to think that it means that the hiring Managers have a little better understanding of what they're trying to hire for. But I don't know that that's the case. I feel like that it's going two different directions. Meaning that over the next year we'll say, you know, if we're looking at this in a year from now, I would say that again, deployment agent and some of those type tools are going to make it easier to make certain changes or to find answers to, to problems that were much tougher to find a year ago if you were having to scavenge through community or something like that. And so one hand, somebody who is a bit more junior can just try what deployment agent is recommending and see if it works. And you know, at the end of the day it's not on the deployment agent to test whether it works, it's on you to say the customer wants this, I got to make sure it works. So somebody who has some technical and functional ability could answer some questions in workday by using a tool like the deployment agent. The flip side is workday still is lots of different modules, lots of complexity. There's all this AI stuff going on. We're going to have a new set of questions being asked that in terms of AI and agents and how users are using this and how do we architect multiple systems and AI interacting with multiple systems that people that have been in the workday space for a while understand the data model of workday, understand business processes, there's opportunities to do things that weren't even possible a year ago. And so, you know, for some people, they need to be stepping into this and really trying to figure out some of these things because there's going to be lots of customers with questions about this and lots of customers that are afraid to even play with this. And then you have the others. It's kind of all of this is your typical technology adoption curve where you've got some people in the end that are the early adopters and then you got the laggards on the other end that I'm not going to touch this for five years. And so the bigger opportunity is going to be to help people more on that cutting edge and things like that, because the laggards aren't going to touch this for years. And at that point there's going to be a lot of automations that you know, they'll just be able to run with probably if they're willing to go there. [00:15:44] Speaker A: So, you know, it's interesting when all this opened up, I was just curious and ran a poll on LinkedIn and the participation in it was one of the highest ones ever. So obviously this hit a nerve with everyone. And it was kind of talking about what are the unintended consequences of now all this being opened up, the documentation, the knowledge layer. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:16:04] Speaker A: And the number one answer was people taking the information and thinking it's correct and then coming back going, nope, this told me this was correct. And then going, no, it's not, because they don't have the perspective, they don't [00:16:20] Speaker B: have the experience, or they're right at a certain level. Layer. But there's all this additional layers. Well, if you change that, you have to change this. You have to change this. And they may have found a component of the answer, but not have the holistic solution that somebody who's been in the space understands and gets right the downstream. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Exactly. And what was funny, I mean, it wasn't even that people were concerned, oh, I'll lose my job. That was actually the smallest and maybe it was small. The response was small because, you know, you had to choose one. And so this one was really important. But I think also that the second biggest thing was experience is harder to judge. And Nikki, that may be kind of what you were talking about is, you know, if I'm a hiring manager, if I'm this new company and I don't know workday, Right. [00:17:06] Speaker C: How do I know that this person really understands it? Right. If everyone gets these answers, everyone can get the answers. I'm talking to Keith. How do I know he really understands his downstream effects or really can solve my problem? You know, that's where I think the concern has been. [00:17:22] Speaker B: And honestly, that's not a new problem. [00:17:25] Speaker A: True. [00:17:27] Speaker B: I've been trying to hire workday people for 10 years and I've struggled with that. And to the point where I actually said, okay, walk me through the exact process that you would do to make this change. And there's times where it's like I wanted to put them in a GMS tenant and walk me through it so that I could see that they actually knew what they were talking about. [00:17:46] Speaker C: Yep. It's like having those conversations, those real conversations. And walk me through this. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:51] Speaker C: Walk me through that process. I think some of that is lacking a little bit out there. [00:17:56] Speaker B: Well, and it's going to get interesting when at some point you are interviewing somebody and you say, well, what would you do if you had XYZ problem or you got XYZ error or you got xyz and the answer is going to be, oh, I go to the deployment agent and Ask. And that may actually be the fastest [00:18:14] Speaker A: answer, but, you know, that's valid. I mean, we've told people, like, if you don't know the, the answer when you're on an interview, it's fine, just say, this is how I'd go about finding solution, you know, because you're still providing value. [00:18:25] Speaker B: And it was no problem to say I'd go into community and I'd find the answer. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:18:30] Speaker B: It's just this whole thing of this mentality. And I saw a newsletter about this earlier today where somebody's like, we gotta get to a point where we're not apologizing for using AI. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:18:42] Speaker B: And this art, this newsletter was, was listing a whole bunch of phrases that presidents said over the last 30 years that we know the phrase and we know that Ronald Reagan said this or Kennedy said that. And it's like, we think that person said that and it's like they said that, but their speechwriter was the one who came up with it. And it's like, okay, so ideally you're using AI to take the knowledge you have and combine it with, with the knowledge that it's able to assimilate across more data than you can absorb in many cases to ultimately get you to the right answer. [00:19:22] Speaker C: What do you think a consultant has to be able to do in 2027, needs to do in 2027 that maybe wasn't required two, three years ago. [00:19:31] Speaker B: So I think that a lot of this is the more, the broader you understand the platform, the better. There are certain times where you need to go really deep. And a lot of, particularly people working on large projects with the large consulting companies, they're often, oh, all I do is this module. And I get nervous if you only know one module, particularly if the deployment agent can answer more complicated questions, which it may not at some point at the beginning, but over time it's going to gather more and more context and learn more and more. And so I think it's important to understand at a minimum your core module and other modules around it. But I think it's, yes, there's a configuration, but it's really leaning into your understanding of working with businesses, working with business processes. And, you know, if you're following Josh Burshan et al and his HR 2030 stuff, the way I think about this and the way I've talked to some customers about this is it's a top down and bottom up. The top part of a triangle, if you think of it, is it has to make decisions about what tools you're going to use what technologies, all that kind of good stuff. An individual HR person can't make a decision about what tools you're going to use as a corporation. You know, they can decide that I'm going to use Claude right now or I want to use something else right now. So that's one thing that we as corporations have to do. Then bottom up, we as corporations should be training our people to use AI. What's appropriate to put in AI? What tools are we supporting as a company? And what they're doing is they're looking at specific tasks within a business process and saying, this task I can automate maybe, or, you know, maybe the agent like I was talking about earlier that does that streamlines a component of that task for me. So that's kind of where we're at right now, where we're using chat and basic, I'll call them basic agents. The next step is in the center between those two layers. And that is where you're redesigning workflows. And you're saying, for the recruiting workflow, and this is quoting almost from some of Josh Burshan's stuff, where it's like, okay, so on the recruiting workflow, what are the steps only a human can do? And then look at all the other ones and say, now how do we automate those other ones? What tools do we use to automate those other ones? And he gives examples of companies that have done that. And so that middle layer is where I feel like Workday consultants can play really well because they understand how to work with the end users, they understand hr, they understand absence, they understand finance, whatever their focus is, and they understand the integrations and the touchpoints. They may not know all the deep technical stuff for some of this AI that really needs to be so that it's all governed and all those things, but they can be the in between, between the end users and those IT teams to say, all right, how do we think about in the tech stack of a given company, yes, you're using Workday. Yes, Workday has all these agents, but a lot of companies, they may or may not choose to use Workday's agents. They will use agents, but they're going to choose which ones they're going to use. And they're going to need people who can talk the business and talk the IT and help them work together. [00:22:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I see you shaking your head, Carla. I'm going to throw that question out to you. [00:22:46] Speaker A: You have to be advisor and you have to be an architect, which our industry, for whatever reason, was focused more on system implementers. Everybody's got to adjust. Not everybody, but to just implement a system and not have the broader context, the true business consulting, advisory and all of that and take it across. And that's what I mean when I say architect. You talk about, you know, Keith, when you were saying that modular specific kind of thing, roles again, that are coming in on the beacon, you're not saying where there's actually modular expertise around Pat. Sure. And with consulting companies, with partners, what you normally are seeing is. And you used to say I need advanced comp and recruiting, I need, you know, whatever. Now you're seeing HCM or benefits or absence or recruiting. They don't care. They just want you to have touched workday. [00:23:42] Speaker B: What do you think's behind that? Do you think it's because they're struggling to find somebody who knows it all and so if they can find somebody who knows one component, then they are. They feel confident they can learn the other modules to support it at that company? [00:23:57] Speaker A: I don't know. That's actually a really, really good point because I will fight all day long that you're not going to know ACMN Fins. Very few people are going to know that, especially core fins. Payroll, the same thing I've always said, payroll, you have to operationally understand payroll. Finance, you have to understand finance. The other one is, yes, it helps on anything to know the business processes outside of workday processes, but business process in those areas. But you can get up to speed on it. I don't know, maybe there's more of an emphasis, like if you could do this, you can pick this up quicker. Maybe it's. I just, I need a body in here because we're on premise and maybe I actually, I should probably look at it that way. Maybe it's a hybrid thing and I can't find anybody. And it's not, can you fog a mirror? It's just we want you to have workday experience. Part of it could be also though, that they're like, now they're pushing some of this back to the ops team. So we want you to have a little bit of workday experience. We don't really care because just, you know, you're an ops and you're not maybe solely responsible for the config and maintenance and that kind of stuff. And so it's kind of that tier one type stuff that's actually really good something to look at. [00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And the other thing that I have to constantly remind myself of is, is that I'm wired to be looking at the edge. I'm wired to always be looking. I mean, I've spent the last 10 years playing with every new module I could get my hands on with Workday and then trying it out and giving them feedback. That's just how I'm wired. And so there. And I hear other people in the AI space saying the same thing where it's like we all feel behind. So if you feel behind, you're in good company because we're all behind. [00:25:34] Speaker A: We all behind. All right, we have two more questions. Let's go to this one. Three years from now, are customers going to need third party help? Are they going to be able to do this all in house? [00:25:44] Speaker B: So I think it's the same as it always was in the sense that every company gets to choose their support model. And so that support model is a combination of your own staff, independent consultants, if you have access or want to use them, or vendors that are doing ams, post production support. So I think what those people are doing in three years is going to be very different than what they're doing now, but they will still need people to help them. Think about how are we using Workday in the context of the way our businesses run and what is the balance in the sense of how many people do we need internally to staff this vs. Externally? It's the same conversation that we have today, but I think they're going to be doing different work in three years because it will be looking at your entire tech stack and how do we redefine positions and how do we redefine whole workflows? And Workday is already going to be talking at Rising this fall about having agents on your org chart. You know, I have a payroll person and I have these two payroll agents that will be doing these tasks as a part of our weekly payroll run or whatever. I'm just making that up. But I mean, it's that type of thing and so that feels really weird right now. Three years from now it may not feel weird. [00:27:02] Speaker A: That's true. Nikki, what was your answer? [00:27:04] Speaker C: As Keith was saying, I think the role will change, but I do think you're still going to need people to teach, to train, to help with change management, help with the communication. There's only so much AI can do with that. I think that human part is still going to be needed and craved with some organizations. So yeah, so I definitely think you're going to need people for that. People still want to interact with people. So I think that the change management piece, the training piece, the coaching piece, how to use the tool, how to prompt, how to do this. I think those roles will be needed. [00:27:37] Speaker B: In the early 90s, I went to a production plant. I spent 10 years doing systems in manufacturing and one of the plants that I went into did injection molding, which is, it's kind of like Legos, but it was a different company where they had just have all these machines and they're just pumping out parts and there's, you know, bins of BBs flowing down from silos or whatever else. And that was a lights out facility. What that means is, you know, somebody goes in and checks the machines each shift and then they could turn the lights out and walk out and those machines are just going to keep running. And if a machine jams or something, it sets off an alarm and somebody comes in and takes a look at it. And I heard somebody make a comment earlier this year about lights out finance. And I don't know if that's going to happen, what that looks like. I know that there's a lot of things that happen the same every month and the same questions get asked every month. And so I think there are going to be parts of the organization that over the next three to five years become more and more automated because it's a deterministic flow. You hear about probabilistic, which is gen AI, and you hear about deterministic. Over the years we've built studio integrations to streamline deterministic flows. If this happens, do this. If this happens, do this. If somebody's role is a list of if thens that's going to get automated, right? And then if something flows through that process that falls out at the bottom because it doesn't fit any of the if thens, then that's like a machine that got jammed in manufacturing and it's going to get routed to a human to figure out what to do about it. I do think there's a lot of things today. Well, let me just give you another example. We had a scenario where we had a client that needed two studio integrations. They were very similar, but there was enough variance that he had to do them as two separate integrations. The first integration he did using it the traditional way and it took him like 70 hours. The next integration he used Claude code and the client was like, well, let me see if I can Claude code this. And they didn't know Studio. And what Claude code came up with and what they tried to use was not at all helpful. We'll just put it that way. But because he knew Studio. He said, I need you to create the code to do A, B and C. And then he could look at it and say, yeah, that's close, I need you to change this, I need you to change this. He then did the second one in 25 hours. [00:30:05] Speaker A: Wow, that's huge. [00:30:07] Speaker B: And that's. With a studio now orchestrate, you can develop faster. But my point is there are things that there's a lot of things that we do in the workday space that take a certain amount of time today that in the future will take less time. And so whether that means we're going to now make more changes and do more using workday, or if we will just say, oh, it used to take us, you know, two people to support it, but because we just want to do the same amount of work or the end result of the same amount of tickets or whatever, however you name it, we want to do that same about next year. Well, it may take less hours to do that and therefore they may just say, you know, we're not going to use both those roles anymore. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Well, and you actually hit on something. I mean, if you think about it, if it's going to take less hours, I mean, look at how third parties are built. You know, it's utilization to cover all that. If your hours go down, that's going to be interesting. And along those lines, I've really been thinking about with contractors, they're used to charging this range of fee. Now, if the perception is you can do that faster, or if they can do it faster, or the premium that you placed on your knowledge now is no longer considered a premium with the way that it's being packaged, then what changes? [00:31:22] Speaker B: And the challenge is that the workday ecosystem is very used to paying hourly and not doing fixed fee. And so, you know, I've gone through some AI training that was about change management around AI and particularly within the professional services area. And they point blanks that. And this wasn't about workday, this was just professional services. You know, whether you're marketing, whether you're legal, whatever you're doing, they're like billing by the hour is dead. You have to shift to billing for value. Because if it took you 10 hours to get this valuable output before and now you can do it at three hours, well, that output still has value. So theoretically the value of that output has not dropped, even though you got it done faster. Yeah, but if, you know, at some point, if you're just doing hourly billing, which is kind of the world we're in, it becomes a Race to the bottom. And it's a struggle as a partner, as a consultant, even from the standpoint of, you know, I'm talking about deployment agent all the time and how it can be helpful. But at some level, as a partner that sells consulting services, I'm cannibalizing my own billable market by promoting a tool that's going to mean you don't need me as much. [00:32:35] Speaker A: I mean, it feels that way. It's going to be really interesting to see how, how people, even on the recruiting side, it's not. Even though we don't charge by the hour, it is still different. I know we're putting some things in place, but there are things that I'm seeing outside of our industry that people have been doing, you know, so again, everybody's kind of having to adjust and. [00:32:54] Speaker B: And you're gonna have pendulum swings as well. [00:32:58] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:32:58] Speaker B: Meaning that. So we talked about coaching. Well, I have not had near as many people ask for coaching in the workday space in the last year. And I think that is because a lot of people are using AI to help them think about their career and all of that and even using it to prepare for meetings or whatever else. Well, the challenge is. And when you're using it as a coach, unless you tell it to do that, it's wired to be very encouraging to you and basically saying, you're right. Well, what if you're not right? What if the other person, the way you're treating the other person is not appropriate? Well, when I'm coaching somebody and they're saying, I'm talking to my executive and he just doesn't get it, you know, trying to get a funding approval or something. My first thing is, if you were in his role, what would you want? Look at this the way he's looking at this. He or she and the problems they're trying to solve. And does what you're promoting help solve one of their problems? Well, I don't know that AI helps you unless you're asking it to play devil's advocate, basically. And I did that recently in an interaction I was having where I'm strategically trying to play with this. And I'm like, okay, so what if the people on the other side say X, Y, Z, or act like you're the other person and point holes in what I'm doing. And it said, you're not going to like this, but okay, here's the list. [00:34:25] Speaker A: It's helping you prepare. Prepare for the objections. The one caveat being it still only has the context that you gave it and so. And we're all going to have our own context, but it still is better than nothing. I loved how you flipped that. I thought that was a great example of doing that from the other perspective. [00:34:43] Speaker C: That's why I think that human quality, that human it's going to have to stay there as a leader. You know, you can't have AI chime in when somebody is not producing like they used to. And so I think that EQ is going to be even more valuable. Leaders that can hone in on that and continue to have those check ins and development that is going to be valued I think even more. That's where I was kind of coming in that you're always going to have that human part and I'm hoping people will lean in even more on that. Especially when, when it comes to really knowing your team, knowing your people using EQ even more in the workplace as AI rises, I think EQ has to rise. [00:35:23] Speaker A: All right, our last question. So complete this sentence. By September 2027 the Workday ecosystem will blink. I feel like match game. Yeah. [00:35:35] Speaker C: So I think that we're going to have a need or see more fractional PMs. I think we're going to have more trainers. I think folks are going to want some of the that experience, you know, can jump in and take charge around change management around training, having those tough conversations. So I think those folks are going to be wanted and needed even more. More fractional PMs and strategic visionaries coming in to help out companies. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Good, good. [00:36:05] Speaker B: How about you? [00:36:06] Speaker A: I've got two now that are competing with each other. I'm going to, I'll just do them both. I think it's going to contract from a. We talk about it being an influx of people. I don't think there's a shortage of talent, perceived talent. So and then you are already seeing people leaving the ecosystem. You're seeing people leave workday. I mean there's been more people leave workday than I've ever seen since I'm 13, 14 years I've been doing this. So I think there's that. I do think that there is going to be a new models of support and service implemented that we've never seen before. So there, I'll hang my hat on that. [00:36:40] Speaker B: If people can get more done in less amount of time, if nothing else changes, that means you don't need as many people. So the thing that changes is if there's new work that gets introduced in the sense of all right, how do we do things that We've never been able to do before, such as a single interface that I can chat with all the systems in my organization and potentially have it. Have access to all the transcripts and all my email and my schedule. You know, that's a new world that none of us have been a part of before. And so it's new opportunities as well as Big Brother looking over your shoulder at times, feeling like. But I had done a poll on LinkedIn a couple months ago and I said, how do you feel about all your meetings being recorded? And most of the people said that they were fine with it. And I had a couple people remark in the notes, the people that are not fine with the meetings being recorded are the people who don't want to be held accountable for what they said in those meetings. [00:37:41] Speaker A: I forgotten how to take notes. We had actually someone that we were talking with recently and it's a company policy that they don't allow it. And I was like, well, I'm not going to be able to look you in the eye and have a conversation and also absorb everything because they're going to actually have to write this down. And if you listen to all these changes that we've talked about, you would think that we're talking about years and literally we're talking about one year. [00:38:02] Speaker B: So, I mean, and everybody is feeling [00:38:06] Speaker A: that as well, because think about how since I entered the workforce. Key. Since you entered the workforce, Nikki, you know, and look at how many different pivots we've all had and what all we've lived through. And this will also, you know, everybody adjusts. And I agree. I think that everyone will also adjust. But how fast it's happening is just amazing. [00:38:25] Speaker C: Like, a year ago we were talking about AI, and now we're all talking about AI agents and all the different agents that come under the agent. So just a year since Keith was on our show last. Holy cow. This is the whole, you know, things have changed so quickly. [00:38:40] Speaker A: I don't even know if we know how to end this without doing Barrel Rush. Well, Keith, thanks so much for. For being on here with us. And as always, you really bring some just amazing insights and just ways of thinking about things and perspectives. And we will definitely put your information for those who don't already know how to get in touch with you so they can and reach out to you. But thanks for celebrating with us. [00:39:06] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for letting me be a part of it. I appreciate the opportunity and love all the stuff that you guys are doing and enjoy being able to be a part of it. [00:39:12] Speaker C: Who knows, maybe the second year anniversary make this a tradition. [00:39:17] Speaker A: What do you mean, who knows? [00:39:20] Speaker C: One year in. And I think the biggest thing we've learned is that there's no shortage of things worth talking about in this ecosystem and they seem to be changing fast, faster, all the time. We're looking forward to a lot more conversations like this, and if there's a topic you want us to dive into, a change you're seeing or someone you think we should bring into the conversation, tell us. Some of our best episode ideas have come from what people in the ecosystem are already talking about. And if you haven't checked out WD Beacon yet, that's where we're bringing all of this together. Wavemakers, workday career insights, compensation data, jobs and other resources built for the ecosystem. And speaking of that, we just launched two new things on WD Beacon. Now workday professionals can create their own candidate dashboard to save jobs, set job alerts, and so much more. And hiring managers, you can start posting those workday jobs with several options, depending on what works best for you. So again, sending you all a big thank you for being part of our first year of Waymakers. We're looking forward to seeing where the next one takes us.