Introduction
Nice to have you back for another episode of Digital for Productivity. Don’t worry about the background noise. I’m on the road right now. Another interview episode this week, this time with leadership expert Niels Brabant. For those of you who don’t know him yet, I really appreciate him because he’s someone who definitely doesn’t talk in plain language and always asks himself the question of how digitalization can be integrated into leadership and management work in companies in a sensible way. And it is precisely at this point in time and on this topic that we once again conducted an exciting interview, which I hope you enjoy and find inspiring.
Niels Brabandt
Digital tools. Some will now be thinking, God’s sake, not next time featureitis and a list of supposedly ten tools that the whole world needs. What does that actually look like? And many will now say: Yes, we have tools in the company. Many will also say: Yes, we have a lot of tools in the company. And enough people will also say: Yes, there are a lot of tools on my computer. Sometimes I don’t even know what they actually do, but somehow they’re all there. And it has to be better somehow. And that’s why we have an author of an excellent book here today, namely the author of Set digital tools effectively. Welcome, Thorsten Jekel.
Thorsten Jekel
Thank you very much for the invitation, dear Niels.
Niels Brabandt
With pleasure. Your book says that you should move into the fast lane with the new technologies. The question now, of course: How do I do it and why isn’t your book just another tech book?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, I think it ties in very, very nicely with the last episode, which you titled wonderfully with the topic of leadership is getting worse and worse. I’ll add the topic of digital productivity is getting worse. I notice that digitalization doesn’t necessarily make people and organizations more productive, but that the exact opposite usually happens, namely that complexity increases, costs rise, but employees don’t become more productive. And that almost causes me physical pain. And staying with the image of the fast lane, I imagine that most people use technology as if they were driving their new 11-series Porsche at 60 km/h in first gear in the right-hand lane.
Niels Brabandt
Great. Yes, that certainly happens. If people now say they want to use it more effectively, many will of course say that there’s somehow a lot there now. You get the feeling that there’s an app for everything and a program for everything. How do I make the right decision? Especially when people now say that their own technical affinity may not be at IT department level.
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, and to be honest, I sometimes even prefer users who are not so IT-savvy, because they are often a bit better at organization. I don’t know, you probably don’t know what a Time System is anymore, do you?
Niels Brabandt
Do you remember something like that? Of course I remember it.
Thorsten Jekel
So when I mention that, people always say: “But you’ve been young for a long time.
Niels Brabandt
I just caught it. Yes, you did. I also had an HP journal and something like that, if you remember them.
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, I know it too. I did, of course. So from that point of view … Well, when I look at those who have been young for a while, they’ve had the experience of organizing themselves with paper and pencil. And that’s not necessarily always a bad thing in this area. And for me, I always like to have pictures that say what I wouldn’t do in the analog world, you shouldn’t do in the digital world either. And the second thing I always say is that we should take a look at production from time to time. And I’ll give you two examples of what I mean by that: When you come home now, dear listeners, and you are at your private home, I suspect you will go to the letterbox and empty it. Yes. And it will be made of wood, tin or something else. And I’m guessing that at least some of you will have 2,568 letters flying at you when you open it and half of them are open and half are not. Then you take one or two of the open ones, look in there again, say: Oh, I’ll have to take care of that now, put it in, tear one open, say: Oh, I can’t get to it now, and put 2,500 and 66 letters back in.
Niels Brabandt
I don’t think – I don’t think, above all, that anyone would go to the letterbox 27 times a day to check whether there is anything in there.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly, that’s absolutely right. That’s exactly what you keep talking about, saying that if you somehow had 2,500 emails or mails in your letterbox and stuffed them back in, then at some point your neighbor would ask what kind of weed you smoke and where you get it from. And also the question, exactly what you say: if we were sitting in the office, nobody would think of allowing someone to come in every two minutes and slam mail on my desk and say: here, you have to take care of this now. And if I take a look now, we let the red number – one of Blackberry’s most productivity-killing inventions, by the way – this red number, we let the red number, we let it constantly slam mail on our desk. And with the issue of WhatsApp and other messaging services and Teams, it’s not that other communication services are being replaced, they’re being added on top. So you may remember the people who called and said: Let’s say, Nils, I’ve sent you an e-mail. Have you read it yet? Yes. You’re probably familiar with that.
Niels Brabandt
Did you get my text message?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, and now it’s whether they got the email.
Niels Brabandt
Exactly.
Thorsten Jekel
Now you’ll get another WhatsApp and then I’ll call in. Now you have it on three channels. That means we have more and more channels that we bring in. And that’s why I always say that you don’t have to do everything just because it’s digital, for one thing. And to say: Would I do that in the analog world? And the second analogy, if you imagine now, dear listeners, that there is someone at Audi in Ingolstadt, for example, who is fitting the left front tire on the assembly line and across from him is a colleague who is fitting the right one. The car keeps running as if it’s binging and then you run into the foreman’s office at the back for a moment because an e-mail comes in. Yes, then you run back again. After you’ve answered the e-mail, you have to go 20 meters further because the car has already moved on. Then it bangs again, then you have to run back again. By the third time at the latest, the colleague would justifiably ask you if you’ve got the wheel off. In the truest sense of the word, the wheel is at least not on. Exactly, and that is precisely the issue. In other words, I’m saying that we would never think of simply switching between communication and production all the time.
Thorsten Jekel
We do it all the time in the office. And when I look at it, if we worked in production the way we work in the office, we would never get anything done. And then I say, sometimes I experience that when I present Kanban tools, for example, which can now also be used in the digital world to work more productively. Then people look at me and say: I’ve never seen that before, it’s the latest shit. Then I say: That’s right, it’s the latest shit. Toyota introduced it in production in the 50s of the last millennium. So that’s what this thing is called and I always have this motto, which remains unchanged, is first switch on the brain, then the technology. And the biggest lever is not necessarily always the tool and the technology. There’s always this popular saying: Fool with a tool is still a fool. And unfortunately, this is amplified by the topic of AI, because it’s the GIGO principle, which I’m sure you know, garbage in, garbage out. This is even more potent when it comes to AI. So the key lever is simply to start by saying: What do I generally want to achieve with digital tools?
Thorsten Jekel
And for me, there are two main objectives. One is: I become more productive, i.e. by doing less in, let’s say, the same amount of time or by being able to do more business with the same resources. This is also a response to the shortage of skilled workers in some companies, who are saying: Okay, how can I use digitalization to achieve this? And the second topic is: How can I become even more customer-oriented? A little bit about the topic: How can I make new business models possible through digitalization? And these are the two things that are often forgotten. So now I’m seeing a wonderful situation where there’s a new iPhone 15 and people are saying: I absolutely need a new iPhone. I say: I still have a 13. I didn’t get a 14, I’m not going to get a 15 because I say: I still haven’t reached the technical limits of this device. And some people prefer to wait and see before they update it themselves.
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely. And I mean, if we take a look at your book now, there’s really a lot about handling the flood of messages, how I coordinate end devices, so really very practical things, digital notes, file storage, integration of assistants, video conferencing, a bit about live streaming, flood of information, handling. And then you just mentioned AI in passing. And I would like to have that as a final question for the interview. Many people say that there is a tool here and the tool has AI. And so it is very quickly presented as the ultimate solution to everything. What is your opinion on the use of AI in practice with regard to digital tools?
Thorsten Jekel
I always like to have an image to go with it and the one that comes to mind spontaneously is Michelangelo, who was once asked how he managed to carve this David out of the stone. And he said that I didn’t have to build anything, I just chipped away what was superfluous because I had it in my head what the thing looked like. Did he have the perfect tool back then? Certainly not. I think if he had today’s tools in terms of marble, chisels, even electronic, he would probably be able to generate ten times the output more easily. Give me a super chisel like that. I would probably produce something of the quality of a dog, cat, mouse or elephant from the Montag painters. I would get a kada, I think. Yes, exactly. It’s very similar in terms of level. In other words, someone who is excellent can boost their productivity with AI because they can simply get a lot more done in less time. So I believe that AI is a tool that, if used correctly, can provide an extreme productivity boost. And for me, AI is a wonderful example of what you always see with technologies.
Thorsten Jekel
You probably know the Gartner hype cycle. And the Gartner hype cycle is the same for all technologies: technology is totally overhyped and overestimated at the beginning. People say: Yes, I can do anything with it and everything works. But then, when people start to implement it, like with ChatGPT for example, the few who even start to do the thing say: Oh, that’s where the cheese comes out, and then skip out and drop out. Those who say: Hey, wait a minute, maybe AI isn’t like Google, it’s like an intelligent assistant. So I like to turn Ki into ik, i.e. intelligent colleague, and say: It’s an intelligent colleague. And if I now have a new colleague and I give them a task. What do I have to do? I say, that brings us to the topic of leadership. I have to brief an employee properly. In other words, I have to say: Here, this is the task. Have a look here and there, use this as a guide. Then you might come up with a first version, there’s a feedback loop. And that’s exactly how you work with AI. So that’s what I always say about the images: work with AI as you would with a new trainee who already brings a lot to the table, but whom you also have to brief.
Thorsten Jekel
And if I give something to my assistant, my real assistant, and I get garbage back, then I first look at myself and say: How good was my briefing? And most of the time, my briefing wasn’t that good. And just as my assistant can’t read minds, the AI can’t read minds either. And what I find really interesting is that AI is misunderstood by most people. So I found And last week I read a very interesting interview where this topic was also discussed, won’t AI now simply flood the entire book market with junk books? And that’s what we’re unfortunately seeing in some cases, that many people are simply saying: Yes, book not written in a week, but book written in a day and book written accordingly by AI, where I say: I’m doing something wrong. I spent half a year writing the book.
Niels Brabandt
My experience is above all … I once tried to summarize things from my articles in supposed book form, i.e. with a lot of effort about AI. The problem is that AI doesn’t have an opinion on anything. In the end, it’s all a bit in the middle of nowhere. It could be like this, but it could also be like that. And if people want a leadership book, they want to know, in my opinion, this is how it’s done and not: there are these seven options. Good luck from here.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly, but there are several aspects to it. For one thing, it’s great if you’ve written books and then you can tell ChatGPT: Please use this book as a guide. There is also the possibility for chatbots, for example, to say: Okay, I have a customer who has introduced Microsoft 365, for example, and they have said: We have a huge problem with IT support specialists at the moment. They are staffed completely differently. What did we do? We built a Microsoft 365 chatbot with the existing documentation that was there, with publicly available documentation. And they solved 80% of their support requests via the chatbot. Available 24/7, significantly higher employee satisfaction in this area and these things are really getting better and better. So this is another example of how we often underestimate technology. Chatbots, for example, are now excellent, all these things. They can handle many standard queries, whether in the internal support area or when someone comes to the website, for example, so I’ve just got a roadshow for Rotenstock, for example. Typical questions about opticians: What are varifocals? What types of glasses are there? Does that make sense? Why should I come to you as an optician and not order online somehow?
Thorsten Jekel
And you can do a lot with chatbots like this. So there’s a lot that can be done in this area. And coming back to this interview, what I found really exciting was to say that the idea is not necessarily that you can only produce books faster with AI, but that with AI it will be possible for a Niels Brabant to use his version of digital tools effectively and an Emmanuel Koch a different version, because you might have a completely different focus in this livestreaming chapter or perhaps a different level because you’re not yet that deep into it. An Emmanuel Koch, for example, needs bread tips. This means that with AI it will be possible – and this is a big keyword – to hyper-personalize. Let me give you another example. I have a customer who has several hundred planners. In other words, in the lighting technology sector, they somehow have 400 planners. So, what did they do? We used to do newsletters for them. Yes. And now they’ve provided 400 personalized videos for these 400 people. That means you get a video and it says: Wauw. Dear Mr. Brabant, and here we have the latest news on lighting technology for you as a planner.
Thorsten Jekel
Human-centric lighting, totally ingenious concept. Have they now shot this video 400 times? No. They produced a professional video once – for 400 planners it’s worth it, for 400 planners they produced a professional video once and then at the beginning someone said “dear name” and this dear name was replaced by the AI with the personalized names that were uploaded in a CSV file, just like in the newsletter. And the AI is now so advanced that it can say: I have a video and I can hyper-personalize it. And that’s just a typical example where we often simply use technology one-to-one. I’m writing a book, now I’m writing it with AI, to say: No, think about the possibilities of hyper-personalization, for example. In other words, I can do what wasn’t possible before, whether it’s going into quantity or you may have seen my LinkedIn post recently. AI is now so advanced that you can record a video in one language and the AI turns it into a lip-synced video in all other languages. I’ve seen that, yes.
Niels Brabandt
Yes, especially in terms of language. So I would, let’s take an example, I’m talking to you in German and the AI is now so advanced that it can translate our interview, even in our voices.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly. Absolutely. And that’s just the way it is, and before you say two things: AI is of course always the latest shit today, to say, unfortunately, our attention economy is always such that you always have to drive a new pig through the village to get a click, to get the reader. Yes, unfortunately. And a typical example is Metaverse, which was all the hype last year. Now people are saying that metaverse is out, but it’s far from being out. So if you look at what Apple has just done, for example, with the Apple iPhone 15, they now offer the possibility of shooting spatial videos that have been assembling components for years. So that means it’s important, even as a company, that you don’t always just look at what’s in the latest social media posts or what’s in the tabloids, but instead take a look behind the scenes and really look at technologies and their long-term future opportunities as a company. So that’s the one impulse I like to give, because we’re always far too short-term and say: oh, now it’s AI, now the next thing is coming.
Thorsten Jekel
And in terms of bread and butter, I’ve always been like that, I’ve been using OneNote for 25 years. So I’ll say that for me, it’s something I’m slowly yawning at, saying that it’s actually old hat. But I’m always amazed that it’s not yet a matter of course that all Office workers always have all their data synchronized on smartphones, tablets and PCs. And that’s a first step that I think is really important when it comes to using digital tools effectively, to say that the first thing you should do is make sure that you can enter not only your emails, but also your addresses, your calendar, your notes, your bookmarks and all other information on every end device and that you can have it with you on every end device. And that is the first step. The second step is to simply take advantage of the opportunities offered by Microsoft 365, not to pour old wine into new wineskins, but to really make use of the new collaboration options. And the third step is to keep looking at new technologies. And the good thing is that they are coming together, because Microsoft will be integrating the things you know today from ChatGPT into the Microsoft 365 world very soon, because Microsoft has made a significant contribution to Open AI.
Thorsten Jekel
And this is just now being rolled out, that something like this is being integrated. So from that point of view, I always say, just use technology.
Niels Brabandt
Perfect. That’s that. That’s a wonderful closing. I can only recommend it: Use digital tools effectively. Move into the fast lane with the new technologies. I’m an avid reader myself. I am sure that many listeners and future readers will be just as enthusiastic. And that leaves me with one final thing to say: Thorsten, thank you very much for your time.
Thorsten Jekel
Thank you for the invitation, dear Niels.
Also available in: Deutsch
