Links
Website of Udo Gast: GAST-REDNER – Business Coach – Trainer – Speaker
Interview
Introduction
Nice to have you with us again for another episode of Digital for Productivity and today another interview episode with dear Udo Gast, who has also written a great book on the subject of corporate responsibility that I can highly recommend. In this interview, we mainly talk about meaningful digitalization and let’s jump right in.
Udo guest
We always have this FOM, Fear of Missing Out. It could be that we miss something, that there is something. That’s why we keep all emails, even if they’re ten years old. That’s why we keep all the books, even if they’re even older. Thorsten, what’s the problem and what can we do about it?
Thorsten Jekel
You’ve already described the whole thing beautifully, FOMO, Fear of missing out. And I’m not exactly apologetic about this topic either. I also have to discipline myself. There are even studies that say that when this red number lights up on the smartphone, the same regions of the brain are triggered as if the sabre-toothed tiger were coming out of the bus. In other words, we are in alert mode. The very specific tip is to turn off all notifications. For me, the first thing I always do when I set up Outlook somewhere on a new system is to switch off all notifications, for example. And even when I’m writing an email, I say it’s in my signature: I read my emails once at the end of the day after my customer appointment in urgent cases I can be reached on my SMS number. And in the age of WhatsApp, nobody writes text messages anymore. I get maybe two text messages a year and you know, I’m the one with the two clocks, the analog and the digital world. And on the digital watch, I get a notification on my watch face when I receive a text message.
Thorsten Jekel
I have that twice a year and if at all. And what I always notice is that when I ask myself how many of these messages that you read first thing in the morning are really things that you need to resolve immediately and urgently? It’s a single-digit percentage, if that. So, as you wrote, success requires responsibility. You also wrote about the Alpine method in your book, for example. It’s also about focusing on good old-fashioned time management. And many of the things I hear again and again: Yes, these are, let me say, old things that I’ve heard for 30, 40 years, to say: Only when I look again: Yes, what have you known for 30, 40 years and what do you really implement so consistently every day And there is a big discrepancy. And my perception is that most people in the digital world are even less organized than in the analogue world. And I’ll illustrate this with a very simple example: when listeners come home tonight, I assume that they have a letterbox, whether it’s made of metal or wood or whatever.
So, if you open it now, 3,528 letters will fly at you and half of them will be opened, the other half not. I guess not. Take out two letters, one has already been opened, the other hasn’t, put them back in, 3,524, stuff them back in. So if you did that at home, your neighbor would rightly ask you what kind of weed you smoked and where you got it. And when I look at my digital mailbox from time to time, there are somehow 18,000 or more unread emails in there. And the former boss of the telephone operators once said that if you have digitized a shitty analogue process, you have a shitty digital process. And I’ll go one better and say that it’s usually even worse. So technology is often not the solution, but often even the root or another cause of the problem.
Udo guest
I often talk to company managers and CEOs and they say: I simply don’t have any more time for the whole thing. I say: Okay, what’s that like? What are you doing? Yes, here. And during the conversation, he checks his Outlook twice and says: Excuse me? Yes, in the emails. I say: That’s a funny question. Tell me, don’t you have a specific mailbox at home? Yes, of course. I say: how often do you go there? what kind of question is that? i mean once in the afternoon. okay, you look in your mailbox once a day. Why do you check this mailbox every five minutes? Absolutely. What happens there? oh, yes, you’re actually right again. I think it’s always the case that we think: I have to react immediately. No, we don’t have to react immediately. I used to work in the emergency services. I know the difference between having to respond immediately and having a little more time. And in most cases, we have time for all this information and we just have to structure it properly. And how you can do that is what you do with companies. How do you proceed when a company approaches you and says: “Mr Jekel, we need to do something about digitalization here? How do you get started?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, the first thing I always ask is: Why? Because digitization in itself is not an end in itself. Digitization for the sake of digitization is something I often see, and it’s completely nonsensical. So let me be very specific: the paperless office is not a goal for me. If I leave aside the issue of sustainability and using less wood as a resource for a moment, then I say: what do you want? For example, I regularly produce paper. On Monday, for example, I present at a conference: Hey, I have a lot of paper here that I print out, that I take with me, where I have a paper folder with me, where I can make clear notes and go back and forth quickly. The only thing I don’t do is file this paper afterwards. In other words, I have a paper-poor office. I don’t have a paper filing system because I say that I always have digital access to my things on all my devices, no matter where I am. In other words, if I myself as a person or others need to access information, then it makes sense to find digital ways of doing so. And for me, that’s the first step, saying: Why? Do you want to be more customer-oriented? Do you want to be faster? And what are your stomach aches?
And when I look at it, it’s often the case that it’s driven by the owners, by the managing directors, by the managers. And one of the most important things is to get the employees on board. And how do you do that? You do that by asking them: “Tell me, what’s getting on your nerves in the way we work together today? And then I get them, I collect them right at the start. I keep getting the issue: thousands of CC e-mails. We have a planning file, Excel, there are eight versions. Then someone changes something again and so on. And these are things that come up again and again, of course, but I keep a very low profile in the first stage and ask first of all: What’s getting on your nerves? And once we’ve collected all that, I ask the employees: Gee, what do you think if we somehow solve the problems you have today? And when they say: That would be kind of cool, then I come up with ideas and suggestions on how to do it. It’s very different from saying: We’re now working with Microsoft 365, we’re now working with Teams and so on.
And then there’s always the resistance, where people say: so after that and, oh, it’s another new system, I have to get used to it and so on. In other words, it’s important to start with the annoying factors. Experience has shown that this is the most important issue for employees. With managers, the thing is to say: What do you want to get away from and where do you want to go? And then you have to look together to see what makes the most sense for this company, because there is no one-size-fits-all solution, you simply have to look at what makes sense. So right up to this whole topic of AI, where I always say: Well, before we start with artificial intelligence, let’s start with common sense. So I’m always someone who says, first switch on the brain and then the technology and not the other way around.
Udo guest
Yes, exactly. I think that’s absolutely right, because I often observe the following: It’s as if we collect lots of tools. And I’ll take an example from a craftsman, a painter for example. When I ask the painter: What do you need, he says: I have five different brushes. This wide one, this wide one, this wide one. He says: What do you need them for? I want to paint a wall. Sometimes we don’t think about it beforehand, we need this. And then someone says to me: Hey, have you heard about the new tool? Well, I’ve tried it out. It’s really cool. I say: How often do you use it? I’m just at the beginning. It can do a thousand things. I say: What do you need it for? I’ve already downloaded it because it can do this and that. do you do that too? not yet. Most people collect tools. Most people collect software that they never use and sometimes they don’t even know what it’s good for. Or how do you see it, Thorsten, under the?
Thorsten Jekel
That is absolute. A fool with the tool is still a fool. And I’ll add to that in times of artificial intelligence: A fool with artificial intelligence makes the disaster faster. So it’s not necessarily getting better and better. And I always think it’s very important that you correctly cite McKinsey’s 7S framework in your book, for example. I’m also a big fan of dealing with structures, systems and things like that. And I also like a framework that has been around for a long time, the balanced scorecard, the strategy map from Kaplan-Norton, where you simply say: Okay, to achieve my goals, to say: What customer goals do I need to achieve? Which processes do I need to adapt for this? And how do I need to develop my employees and my systems to achieve this? And that’s exactly the question, and I’ll give you a concrete example: Coca-Cola had a pretty visionary CEO in Germany at the time, Ulrich Nehmer, and he stood in front of the team and said: “Guys, we have a problem. And then they looked at him expectantly and then he said: “If someone wants a fridge as a kiosk owner today, it will take us four weeks on average to get one to the customer.
Thorsten Jekel
Four weeks where the customer doesn’t make any sales, where we don’t make any sales, where Red Bull or Pepsi can come in. So it’s no fun. And then came the magic question and everyone was probably expecting a question, but it didn’t come. And Ulrich Nehmer stood at the front and didn’t say: “How can we do it a bit faster?” Instead, he said: “What do we have to do to go from four weeks to 24 hours? In other words, he asked the right question and then said: “We can discuss what you need to do, what processes we need to change, what we need to invest. We can’t discuss the goal. The most we can discuss is whether we can achieve it this financial year or next. Incidentally, it was in the middle of the financial year, so he was relatively generous and said: Okay, we’ll get it done. And then they just said: Okay, that’s the target. So now we have to … What customer targets do we want to achieve so that they have this within 24 hours? How do we have to adapt the processes in logistics, administration and so on? How do we have to adapt our systems and our employees to achieve this?
Thorsten Jekel
That means approaching the goal from the strategic side. But the other way around, and that’s why both are important, so I’m 98% with you. Trying out new tools is not a good idea. But every now and then it’s good to take a look at what new tools and technologies are coming in and ask yourself what you can do with them. Coca-Cola, for example, has recognized that augmented reality can be very useful, especially in the area of iPads, because what have they often had? They often had the issue that they ordered a refrigerator and then it was two centimetres too wide. So I say, you know that from Wending, you have a nice vending machine. Yes, not only that.
Udo guest
I used to work in the kitchen office. I know what it means when the kitchen is delivered and doesn’t fit because someone has made a mistake.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly, because you measure it. Not 100% in principle. The great thing is that Coca-Cola has recognized the potential of augmented reality and this LiDAR scanner in these iPads, which has the ability to measure things to within a centimeter. In other words, if the customer looks at the fridge, which can be superimposed over the camera image, and then the customer says: I’d like that fridge, then the iPad says: Uh, uh, it’s two centimetres too wide. And that means he goes to the new technology: How can we use this process to take out the refrigerator, which was delivered incorrectly and was of course a major time and cost issue. So I would say that 90% of the time you should always be concerned with saying: What are the corresponding strategic goals? How can IT help me to implement them? And 10% the other way around, so let’s take a concrete example from another company, Porsche, which is not entirely unknown, for example, they have just discovered this Apple Vision Pro topic for themselves, not just in theory, but in practice. In other words, they have said: Okay, these are virtual augmented reality glasses that are so good in terms of quality that when I have someone standing in front of the new 911 Porsche and says: “Facelift has just come out.
Thorsten Jekel
I think to myself: What color should I choose? Then Porsche doesn’t have to display them in all colors in the showroom, but the salesperson puts on his glasses and can say on his iPhone: I’m going to switch to racing yellow or I’m going to switch to black and which color do you like better? And the quality is now so good that you can no longer tell the difference between the two colors. In other words, companies like Porsche have recognized that you can use such technologies to enhance the customer experience and sales. That’s technology, just use it. So in both directions, as I said, for the most part I’m with you in saying not to start with a tool and to have monitoring in place from time to time: What new technologies are there? That’s also my role to a certain extent, that I simply point this out to managers: Hey, look, there are new How could you use this somewhere? And on the other hand, I say to myself: Man, what are your goals?
Thorsten Jekel
And then I look at what technologies are available. So both are always important.
Udo guest
I have understood that first and foremost it is about the objective. What do I want to achieve? And on the way there, the appropriate technology comes into play. So that means it can not only lead to process simplification, but also simply to sales promotion, in that I can show the customer very early on, as here at Porsche: These are your options. We don’t have to order a new car for it. Take a look at it and of course you can increase sales enormously. But now I’m often asked: Mr. Guest, what do you actually need? In your opinion, what are the most important principles or the most important tools for achieving goals in a company?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, the most important thing is that data is the new gold, as they always say, and you don’t need to start with the topic of AI if you don’t have any data. So you realize that even players like OpenAI, the provider of ChatGPT or Google or other players, are already reaching the limits of the available data to train their models. If I want to work there in a company, I experience time and again – as you know from your own experience – that the master data is simply not clean. That sounds super unsexy, but it’s the basis for everything that I have clean master data there. So that’s why data hygiene and data maintenance are so important. And that’s also something I tell many companies: if you’re not getting started with artificial intelligence today, make sure you already have a clean database. So a good idea, as much as I am someone who always says: delete what you don’t need, i.e. things from which you can generate keys afterwards, a good idea to have data, point number one.
Thorsten Jekel
And to simply have an understanding. And you can get started now, even if you only start working on AI tomorrow or the day after. The second issue is that I’m a huge fan of building all systems in such a way that they work across platforms. So I’m a big fan of the iPad, for example. But I don’t know whether the iPad will still be the dominant tablet platform in the business sector in five, six or ten years’ time. If I had said five years ago that Blackberry was dead, Stork would have said: “So what kind of spacko is this? Today, they no longer have any market relevance. In other words, I’m a huge fan of making sure that all the systems you work with are ideally available not just for Windows, not just for Microsoft, not just for Apple, not just for Android, but for all systems. And the major players, such as Microsoft 365, to name just one, are available for all platforms. I would never go purely for iCloud in the business sector, for example, because I would say that you are being taken for a ride outside the Apple universe. Or I would only go to pure Google platforms to a limited extent, but would say, okay, rather to players like Microsoft, for example.
Thorsten Jekel
So to say, platform-independent. So firstly data, secondly platform-independent. Thirdly, please always build all solutions in such a way that I can always access all the data I need and enter all the data, regardless of which device I have in my hand. And for me, that goes without saying. I’ve had my Outlook data on all systems for ages with Exchange. I’ve had my notes on all systems for ages with OneNote. I’ve had a CRM system for ages, which I can maintain on all my systems. I have a bit about bookmark management that is totally synchronized and it never ceases to amaze me. Just yesterday, I gave another presentation seminar where I looked into big children’s eyes when I said that you can have notes synchronized everywhere with OneNote, even in collaboration with Teams, now with Microsoft 365, people looked at me and said: Oh, latest shit. Then I say: Yes, I’ve only been doing it for 25 years. So that really is the latest shit. So the idea here is to have data, point number two, to have a cross-platform system, point number three: to make it available to all companies that need access to data in such a way that everyone must always be able to access all the data they need and must also always be able to enter data.
Thorsten Jekel
Because if I don’t have that, I won’t be able to make a statement to the customer and then I come full circle back to the first topic of data. If I can’t enter any data anywhere, then I don’t need to expect that the data will be available again at some point, and maybe I’ll address the topic of AI in the next seb.
Udo guest
You’ve just had the last word, AI, and let’s stick with that for a while. There are a lot of companies that say: it’s coming, it’s like, well, it’s already here. And if I don’t jump on board now, then it might be a bit difficult. Then my competitive position will be different. But you need to know a bit about how to deal with this hype. So it’s not enough to open ChatGPT and type something in there. I recently had an interview with Thorsten Hafen, the mind reader. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to look up here in ChatGPT to see what you are thinking, but you have to formulate it. You have to tell this GPT what you want it to be. And it can only work with the information. What do companies need to consider when they want to start using AI, when they release it for their companies? Take, for your employees.
Thorsten Jekel
It’s important to understand what AI is, what it can do and what it can’t do. So in principle, AI is, let’s say, statistics and steroids, statistics on steroids. In other words, with statistics I have a probability machine. Let me illustrate this with a very simple example. If I say blackbird, thrush, finch and … Then you would probably say fabric. There is a second variant: blackbird, thrush, finch and white and the whole bird. Exactly, there’s that too. So, which version would ChatGPT come up with? The first, because it is much more common on the Internet. In other words, the classic systems – you just mentioned ChatGPT – that are wonderfully suited to merging texts on the one hand and generating and editing them on the other. These are probability machines. In other words, it is important to recognize the limits and the possibilities. The nice thing is that if we stay in this area, it’s simply like this: a person has somehow read an average of 700 books in their life, some more, some less. The AI has read a few more books and has read a few more websites.
Thorsten Jekel
The challenge, and this is not getting any better in the age of AI, is that there is simply a lot of garbage on the internet. This means, and we’re currently experiencing this effect, that the AI is contaminating itself to a certain extent. There’s a bit of an inbreeding effect when the AI says I’m going to use internet data again. In other words, to pick up on the point made earlier, it is important to say that AI can help to generate meaningful recommendations from the data that is available. If we stay in sales, for example, a typical topic is Next Best Step. So an AI can recommend relatively well: What is the next thing to offer a customer? And everyone knows that from Amazon. Amazon always says: Customers who bought this bought that. And that’s only part of the truth, because Amazon has been using AI for many years and that’s one part. But the other part is that probabilities are calculated based on your and their purchasing behavior, based on market data. That is very important to understand here: I have a probability machine here. This makes it all the more important to think about it: What data do I have myself? What data can I access?
Thorsten Jekel
If I don’t have any data, I don’t even need to start with AI. In other words, understanding data is important. It is also important to say: Where can AI help? We always have two tendencies. We have a wonderful tendency to completely overestimate technology. In other words, now we’re saying: Have we seen a Terminator and now we’re saying: Yes, the AI is perfect and is like a human being. And then you come home and somehow try to turn on the light with Alexa and it does everything but not turn on the light. So that means we have this disappointment on the other side. It’s important to have a healthy dose of realism: what can these things do? What can AI do? Ki can summarize information, AI can generate information. But always not as an autopilot, but as a co-pilot. So you always have to look over it again. I say an AI is an intelligent colleague. So I always turn it around AI is ik, is the intelligent colleague. And just as you have to brief an employee, guide them, provide them with information, you have to do the same with an AI. The better I brief, guide and support an employee, the better they will work. It’s the same with AI. And what’s important is to say: where can I use it?
Thorsten Jekel
I can just use it to bring things together, to write. I can use it for customer communication. And a huge lever, for example, is in customer service. Klarna, for example, has deployed 700 customer service agents differently, not dismissed them, but deployed them differently and replaced them with AI. And they have not only saved significant costs by using AI, but they have even achieved higher customer satisfaction because the AI doesn’t get stroppy, because it doesn’t have a bad day, because it gives a relevant answer more quickly. And that is another example of how AI can help. In other words, drawing keys from data to communicate inbound, but also to communicate outbound. So if you configure a vehicle at Tesla in the USA, for example, an AI will call you and say: “Hey, you’re configuring here with Tesla and so on. Are there any questions?” and so on. The aim is for you to book a test drive at the end. And the cool thing is that over 40% of people book a test drive, and then another person is involved. And this call happens on a Sunday, even in the middle of the night, and the AI can call hundreds of people at the same time.
Thorsten Jekel
So that means doing things like that, what I always say, yes, not doing things without reflection, but on the other hand also using these things that already exist, because there are a lot of these tools that you can already use today. There’s more than meets the eye. And the question I hear again and again: Will AI replace humans? I don’t believe that AI will replace people, but I do believe that, particularly in a business context, companies and people who use AI will displace people and companies who refuse to use AI. So I believe that there are very few areas where it is still possible to close oneself off to the topic.
Udo guest
Thorsten, I’m completely on the same wavelength as you and I always say that you formulated it differently: I always say never AI without AI. I want to say never artificial intelligence without competence intelligence. Yes, very good. I must have this competence intelligence. I need to know when to use this tool. How do I use the tool? As you said, an employee wants to be briefed. An AI wants to be briefed. It wants to know what it should do. We have to imagine that there is an insanely large, unmanageable amount of data and I have to give it an instruction: Please look at this data and not at the other data. And that’s why it’s so important. And we often think we have to do it all on our own, but we don’t have to. You have a chapter in your book that I find very exciting, because it also provides a bit of motivation. You say, please get some colleagues, Horst. Why don’t you work with an assistant? That can be an artificial assistant, but it can also be a physical assistant. Why don’t you tell us a bit about that? What does that mean? Will that perhaps put the secretary out of work?
Thorsten Jekel
I’m against the abolition of assistants and secretariats. It’s been a trend for years now for managers to book their own plane tickets and hotel rooms. And I’m often asked, along the lines of: what do you think of the management model, what do you think of the management model that’s being driven through the village at the moment? And I say: I’ll be honest, I would be very grateful if managers would also lead for a change. I notice very few managers who lead. I see overpaid administrative staff who perform administrative tasks as completely overpaid managers. And my father used to be a top manager, he’s now retired and I can still remember him telling me very well: Thorsten, you need about 10% of your capacity, you need about 10% per employee you manage if you take that seriously. In other words, if I look at it now, if I have a management span of 50 or 60 people, which I can also see in part through this reduction in management layers: How much time can I really have with one person in management? And if the assistant then leaves, I have even less capacity to manage employees.
Thorsten Jekel
That’s why I’m a big opponent of it and I’m a big fan of three types of assistance. On the one hand, I’m a friend of rule-based assistants. For example, I have rules in my Outlook inbox so that emails that arrive via CC are automatically subsorted. I have a newsletter subfolder where things are already sorted down and so on. These are automated rules. Then I’m a big fan of personal assistance. I’ve had an assistant for 14 years, Dr. Miroslav Sunder, and I’d be dead without him. He books all my trips, he does a lot of things for me. Incidentally, he also pre-processes my e-mails. In the past, no manager would have thought of opening the mail themselves. Nowadays, all the managers are digital mail hogs, where I say: So, guys, does it make any sense what you’re doing here? Wouldn’t you do it in the paper world? Just like you said earlier, how often do they run to the post office? Nobody would have done that now, nobody does it more than once a day. We do this stuff in digital form. And my assistant then also asked: Tell me, am I now becoming superfluous due to the topic of AI?
Thorsten Jekel
And then I said: No, but I expect them to reproduce six times. And that is possible. In other words, if you do it sensibly, and of course I have to support him in the same way, so if you’re in one of my online training courses on AI, for example, will you always have my assistant with you? Because I’m also just getting him fit on this topic of AI, where I say, okay, where he may have written back an answer as a human so far, he’s just training the AI so that it can answer faster and things like that. So I also think the topic of assistance, if someone is listening here, watching, who is an assistant. I believe that a poor, unproductive assistant will be replaced, but one who says: boss, I can do it … It doesn’t have to be six times as much, but I’d say at least twice as much. And many studies show that it is clearly possible to become more productive in all areas. Then it becomes a shoe. And that’s always the case: I find that very few people really understand and use new technologies. And let me give you a simple example.
Thorsten Jekel
So when I watch a series today or a movie in American, I just watched a series the day before yesterday that totally irritated me, Madam Secretary, a very good series on Amazon Prime. And the actress who plays the American Secretary of State was advised by three predecessors. And that was Madeleine Albright, it was Hillary Clinton and it was Colin Powell. And it was dubbed into German. And that totally irritated me, because I knew the voices of all three of them, because you’ve heard them all on TV in the original. The voices were different and it wasn’t lip-synced at all. So it didn’t fit at all. It totally bothered me. So now, with Hey, Jenn, for example, there are dubbing tools where I say I can lip-sync in the same voice, in the same tonality and do things like that. So I think that if someone listens to me now and says that they would recommend a career as a classic voice actor to their daughter or son. For me, that wouldn’t be a career that I would suggest in the classical form. But if someone says: “Wow, the subject of voice acting is very interesting for me.
Thorsten Jekel
I have an idea, I have a feeling for it. Someone like that, if they use services like Hey, Jan or other tools wisely, will get much better results than someone like me who has no idea about the subject. So it’s just like advertising tours, graphic designers for example. There are many graphic designers who totally reject the idea of AI because they say it’s the death of our industry. There are now solopreneurs in the USA who make seven-figure sales a month because they have a business model where they say: you pay me 10,000 dollars a month as a company and for this 10,000 flat fee you get all your graphic jobs, be it stationery, business cards, logos, presentations, delivered within 24 hours in top quality. And as much as you want, you can send me a job every day and you’ll get the result within one working day. Because they do this with AI, they can do it in a fraction of the time otherwise. So it’s an example of how business models are changing completely and, of course, if I don’t adapt, then it’s like the coachmen. The emperor’s last coachman decided for himself that he wasn’t going to start driving anymore because he was already old enough.
Thorsten Jekel
If he had been in his 20s now, it would probably have made sense for him to retrain to drive.
Udo guest
Dear listeners, I have to say that a talk with Thorsten Jegel harbors an incredible danger. The danger is that you completely lose track of time. I can confirm that at the last meeting of the regional group, an evening has never lasted as long as with Thorsten Jegel, because he always has something to tell. Dear Thorsten, before we get to Where we can find you everywhere and what you can be booked for, let’s take a very brief look ahead in two, three, four, five sentences: What can we expect from digitalization in companies over the next few years? What can we not miss out on so that we don’t fall behind?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, I think the most important thing is that managers also understand that a certain understanding of IT is extremely important. Unfortunately, I still hear people say far too often: “Oh, I’ve got my IT department for that”, which means that managers are simply unable to judge what IT managers are suggesting and doing. So the issue of fear is important and also this issue of fear, if you’re afraid of something, then it’s often due to a lack of knowledge and you can take away your own fear and that of others and, fortunately, I think managers are getting fitter and fitter. So that’s point number one. Point number two is that we are currently seeing in the field of AI that things that were previously only possible for large corporations with seven-figure budgets can now be done easily and very cheaply by anyone at home. This example of synchronizing videos, for example, is something I have a customer who has made value videos for their managers and employees. You may know Microspültechnik from the industry. And they’re also in Japan, they’re in Spain and so on. In the past, such things would never have been translated. It would have been far too time-consuming, far too expensive.
Thorsten Jekel
With AI, you can translate this wonderfully and reach the entire company. This means that things that were previously only possible for large corporations can now be done by anyone. That’s trend number two for me. Trend number three is to say that I think we really need to do a bit of homework in many areas. So when you always read articles from the 70s that say: “Computers will replace us” and so on. Unfortunately, we have never generated the productivity gains that we could have generated from technology. Other countries are showing us how. And I believe that if you look at the overall economic development internationally, we can no longer afford to remain in this position. So that’s why I’m also appealing to you to really say: people, get smart, to say: make use of the things that are there now and do your homework and get started, because if we don’t do it, others will. And what only a large corporation could do in the past, small players with AI can do much faster today.
Udo guest
Wonderful, that was a bit more than seven sentences, I think. Maybe a sentence or two more. So I’ll keep it short now. If you think Thorsten Jeke is someone who can help me in my business, you should definitely read this book again, which you are now holding up again, because this book is not just a book.
Thorsten Jekel
Of course, yes, that too.
Udo guest
But there is a wealth of videos, instructions and the like in there. Please, the price is absolutely ridiculous. Don’t miss out on this. And if you google Thorsten Jekel, if you google Apple and iPad, Thorsten Jekel will come up anyway. It’s remarkable how your score, your ranking in terms of your expertise still comes up. Just google Thorsten Jekel, digitalization. You’ll find everything you need. This is the man who can really help. Thank you, dear Thorsten, for this wonderful conversation.
Thorsten Jekel
Thank you very much for your hospitality in the truest sense of the word, dear Udo Gast. That was another episode of Digital4Productivity with what I hope will be another exciting interview for you. I look forward to having you back next week.
Until then, all the best, Thorsten Jekel.
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