The Josh Bersin Company

Linda Kirchhevel, Director, Talent & Leadership Development at Sanford Health talks with Kathi Enderes about their leadership development program. Linda discusses how the organization’s frequent mergers caused them to prioritize creating a unique leadership framework centered around the mission of the organization. (Sanford Health is the largest rural healthcare provider in the United States.) The Sanford Leader Framework (“The Sanford Leader”) is applicable to anybody in the organization, focused on developing behaviors and capabilities at scale for all 45,000 employees. Built in collaboration with FranklinCovey, the leadership development model, assessment, orientation, and development plan delivers a customized leadership program at all levels. (Leading self, leading others, leading mission.) As Linda explains, this program has driven a 13 point increase in employee engagement measured through NetPromoter.  And the program continues to drive high levels of employee engagement, retention, and alignment during a series of acquisitions. It exemplifies the “Irresistible Leadership” model we highlight in our research. Additional Information Human-Centered Leadership, Certificate Program in The Josh Bersin Academy (Join today!) Why Are Some Companies More Dynamic Than Others? The Surprising Facts About Leadership Development (podcast)

AI tools are rapidly sweeping across our companies in every job function, and most of us see them as “productivity tools.” Well, that’s a very limited view of the future. While AI may make you 15-20% more productive, the big payoff comes when we rethink work entirely and let AI systems take over as “autonomous agents,” albeit with our support. In this podcast I discuss the four levels of AI adoption, and help you think about the important job-redesign work we’ll do in 2025. And I would argue that “doing existing work faster” is going to become a commodity quickly. And at levels 3 and 4 we will be re-engineering jobs and work, developing new skills, improving pay, and empowering people to do more! You can read more about this in our upcoming 2025 Predictions report, but the best next step is get your hands on Galileo, the AI Expert Assistant for Everything HR. (And Join the Josh Bersin Academy!)

Companies have been investing in People Analytics and Industrial Psychology since the late 1800s, going back to Fredrick Taylor (time and motion studies) and Carl Jung (psychological types). The original idea was to scientifically manage work, using data to measure labor, strength, motion, and later engagement, skills, and leadership. All this effort resulted in thousands of books and tools to measure employee engagement, employee experience, productivity, and organization design. Ultimately where we landed was a new domain we call People Analytics: using people-related data to monitor, improve, and optimize business outcomes. And this journey, which I’ve been a part of for 30 years, resulted in a massive investment in HR technology platforms, engagement surveys, sentiment analysis tools, and more and more models for trust, leadership, management, wellbeing, and employee growth. All that energy, deep thinking, and investment now lands in a new world, one we call “Systemic Business Analytics.” We use this name because it’s time to stop isolating people data from business data and running this domain as “projects,” rather think about it as an integrated analytics system. In other words, as I explain in the podcast, let’s move forward and take all the people data we capture and embed it right into our existing business measurement systems. Instead of creating a “people data warehouse” to run reports and analysis on HR information, we can use that valuable information and put it right in the hands of business leaders and managers. Our new research, “The Journey to Systemic Business Analytics,” details this journey and shows you our four level maturity model. (You can view the maturity model here.) Today fewer than 10% of companies are doing this well, but that’s still a large number. And as I describe in the podcast, AI is going to light a bonfire under this space and rapidly accelerate this direction. Additional Information People Analytics, A Complex Domain, Is About To Be Transformed by AI. People Analytics Certificate Course in The Josh Bersin Academy Systemic Analytics: A New Approach Galileo, The AI Assistant for Everything HR

This week I summarize my meetings and discussions with clients in NYC and you can see we covered many topics. Here’s the AI summary, which is pretty good. In this conversation, Josh Bersin discusses the evolving landscape of AI platforms, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s positioning and the challenges of creating a universal AI agent. He delves into the complexities of government efficiency, emphasizing the institutional challenges faced in re-engineering government operations. The conversation also highlights the automation of work tasks and the need for businesses to decompose job functions for better efficiency. Bersin stresses the importance of expertise in HR, advocating for a shift towards full stack professionals who possess a broad understanding of various HR functions. Finally, he addresses the impending disruption in Learning and Development (L&D) due to AI advancements, predicting a significant transformation in how L&D professionals will manage knowledge and skills. Additional Information Inside Microsoft’s struggles with Copilot (Business Insider Exclusive) Hyper-Growth Through Efficiency: Theme For The New Era Digital Twins, Digital Employees, And Agents Everywhere Chatbot Architecture: MS Copilot, Joule, Galileo, and The Future of L&D