Dynamics Corner
About Dynamics Corner Podcast "Unraveling the World of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Beyond" Welcome to the Dynamics Corner Podcast, where we explore the fascinating world of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and related technologies. Co-hosted by industry veterans Kris Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast, this engaging podcast keeps you updated on the latest trends, innovations, and best practices in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. We dive deep into various topics in each episode, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Power Platform, Azure, and more. Our conversations aim to provide valuable insights, practical tips, and expert advice to help users of businesses of all sizes unlock their full potential through the power of technology. The podcast features in-depth discussions, interviews with thought leaders, real-world case studies, and helpful tips and tricks, providing a unique blend of perspectives and experiences. Join us on this exciting journey as we uncover the secrets to digital transformation, operational efficiency, and seamless system integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and beyond. Whether you're a business owner, IT professional, consultant, or just curious about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 world, the Dynamics Corner Podcast is the perfect platform to stay informed and inspired.
Dynamics Corner
Episode 433: The Human Touch: Why Soft Skills Matter in the Age of AI
In this episode of Dynamics Corner, hosts Kris and Brad team up with Microsoft MVP Andy Wingate and the insightful Phil Berrill to discuss the heart of human connection in today’s digital world. They discuss how technology is reshaping the way we communicate, exploring why soft skills like trust, empathy, and relationship-building are more critical than ever in an AI-driven and digital age. Why do these human-centric skills remain the backbone of meaningful interactions? How can empathy and trust thrive in a world dominated by screens and algorithms? Tune in for a discussion packed with fresh perspectives on staying connected in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
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Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner. What can AI do for you? I'm your co-host, Chris.
Speaker 2:And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on September 11th 2025. Chris, chris, chris, ai what can AI do for you? Ai can do a lot of things. It can take notes, it can summarize things, it can create code, it can generate pictures, presentations I can go through an entire list, but one thing that I'm wondering about is what can AI do for your social skills, or how does AI impact your social skills With us today? We had the opportunity to speak with two guests about that. We had the opportunity to speak with Andy Wingate and Phil Barrow.
Speaker 1:Andy, hello, hello, hello hey.
Speaker 2:Phil, good afternoon, andy, hello, hello, hey Phil, good afternoon. Oh, hey, phil, hey, phil, phil Good afternoon. You almost have the same backgrounds.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this is real, mine isn't.
Speaker 1:One of us is real. I was confused for a moment.
Speaker 2:You were both next to each other on my screen, so for a split second.
Speaker 3:I thought the two were together. If I put it like that, it's like you know.
Speaker 2:Yes, if you do it like that, it looks like you two are in the same room Together.
Speaker 3:I need to like. You know I've got here's the ball. Phil Ready Catch. Yeah, you can tell this one is a man, he's far too neat and tidy. I got this. I rearranged my room. I mean, I'll tell you about it another time.
Speaker 4:No, don't tell us Well, it's like the beautiful background.
Speaker 3:Beautiful background like the sales director guy at my place. He redid his background and it's like he's got like you know nice things and he's a seller right. So it's all about maybe someone sees something and they're like and it sparks up a conversation. He gets a connection right. That's part of the reason it just looks really well. I'm gonna do the same. So I rearranged my desks. They used to be here and now they're here for the shelves and and then it's like now I've got to tidy my shelves. It's on the list, I'll get it one day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think with the background it's very difficult, and now with everybody being remote, which is an important topic.
Speaker 1:It's important for the topic we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3:It is very important.
Speaker 2:With everyone being remote, I think a lot of people spend time on trying to, like you said, tidy up their backgrounds, when sometimes it's like let's just see how you really work yeah.
Speaker 4:Some people in garden, sheds and garages and all sorts. Exactly.
Speaker 3:There's some amazing backgrounds out there, I think like top of the tree is Soran from the Microsoft oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh, yeah, and then sometimes he's shared a picture of his desk layout and he's got the widest screen I have ever seen in my life. It's wider than my desk.
Speaker 1:I got one of those.
Speaker 3:I got one of those too.
Speaker 4:I have one of those too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, brad too, I used one once when I was working from home at my brother-in-law's house and he had a giant one, and you know what I prefer two separate screens. It was like when you maximize a screen, it's like bosh, it's so huge that was my hesitation for going to it, because Chris has that big it's concaved, it's not flat.
Speaker 2:I had three individual high-def like 27 inch 5k monitors and then everyone was telling me get this one, you'll love it, you'll love it.
Speaker 2:I'm like okay, well, how much viewing screen do you have? Because I have the three screens, like you said, because I would snap them up and do things. Now I'm used to this and I use the mac and what I started doing was that monitor. You can have half a display and half a display, sure, so that if you do the maximize, then it will just do one half. That's good. But I've graduated to now having just one big screen and I positioned the windows that I want and I was even looking at something today and I maximized it and you have this entire big real estate of all these screens.
Speaker 3:How many cute tiles can you get, like on the business central landing page on one of the big, big ones, eh?
Speaker 4:it's great. It's great for data migration, though, because you can see the whole package.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a good point actually yeah, 100 columns yes, uh, so it's tough but you get used to it. I I vowed I'd never get used to using the screen because I was. I was cursing at everybody. You know after afterwards.
Speaker 4:Oh, you are keeping it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am.
Speaker 4:Oh, good, well, chris knows the story, because I was cursing everybody.
Speaker 2:I'm like, why did you guys make me buy this? And I ended up ordering it and now I'm sticking with it. I like it. I like it a lot.
Speaker 3:I think in the problem definition there's like wicked problems, difficult problems, and then there's, you know, first world problems. Right, this is definitely yes, yes this one isn't. You don't club this one together with climate change, or you know, like, what's the best political system to run a country or whatever do I go with a 49 inch concave monitor, or whatever the size it is, or do I go with three 27 inch monitors?
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's a tough choice it is a tough problem, but uh, no, it's a great conversation. Uh, appreciate you both joining with us today and I enjoyed the conversation we're having and it's nice to be able to have that conversation. It's nice to be able to talk with people, but with everybody working remote and now with AI, I noticed a big change in conversation with individuals. But before we start talking about that, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourselves, andy?
Speaker 3:Sure thing. Hi, I'm Andy Wingate. Thanks very much for having us on the podcast again. I'm a Business Central MVP. I've been working on partner side for about three years, and before that I was an end user. So I was involved in more on the IT side for about three years and before that I was an end user, so I kind of was involved more on the IT side and had a lot of fun deploying nav on-prem. But yeah, I haven't looked back since going over to the partner side. We get to have a lot of fun and work with a lot of different interesting people.
Speaker 2:Excellent Phil.
Speaker 4:Thanks. Yeah, my name's Phil. I'm a business central consultant and I've worked on the partner side for about 12 years now, and before that I was an end user and a qualified accountant.
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent. That end user to partner, partner to end user before we jump into it is. I think that's a good sweet spot, because I think being an end-user or being a partner helps you understand an implementation from a different point of view, because you understand from a user's point of view what it takes to go through an implementation or what is required for an implementation. And if you're a partner and as if you're a user and haven't worked with a partner before or haven't been a partner before I see I'm all tongue-tied today I'm all excited the you have a good perspective of what a partner has to manage and go through from implementation.
Speaker 3:so I think you get a nice blend of uh perspective there yeah, and which one is the gamekeeper and which one is the the poacher?
Speaker 4:I don't know that's.
Speaker 3:I mean I don't know if that's a bit of a british expression turn of phrase we say. We say like put game poacher turned gamekeeper. So you previously you were like robbing from the estate, whatever you know, stealing the deer or pheasants or whatever and then you become. You work for the estate stopping the other poachers. So I think I don't know. It's a bit of a joke really, but I mean obviously I like that.
Speaker 2:Are you a poacher or what A poacher?
Speaker 3:There's a. It's an English, it's a British expression. I guess it's called poacher turned gamekeeper. It's kind of like you've changed sides.
Speaker 2:I got it. So if you went from a partner to an end user, you're saying you went from being a poacher to a gatekeeper.
Speaker 3:And if you went from a user to a?
Speaker 2:partner, gamekeeper.
Speaker 3:Gamekeeper. Gamekeeper, because it's the game, the deer or the pheasants on the lord's estate is his game and he might hunt his game, and the poachers are trying to get the game.
Speaker 2:So just so everybody knows. Andy went on record today saying partners are poachers.
Speaker 3:The joke is which way round is it? And it's better not to say one or the other.
Speaker 2:Right, I understand what you're saying, but you know wink, wink.
Speaker 3:I mean, phil, let's hear what you have to say. But you know, since me and Phil are both end users to gone to partners, I think we'll probably provide a strong, united front on. It's a fantastic journey because you get that industry knowledge, you get that, you get the language, you get, you know, you learn a lot of nuances and then when you go on the partner side and you're talking to another company that's in that industry, you've got like the secret sauce and they, the people you can build that trust. So that's, you know, building trust. That's an important soft skill and there's nothing better than. I mean, phil, you know, if you're talking to a construction company, what's the kind of stuff you tell them that a regular consultant just wouldn't know.
Speaker 4:Yes, I suppose having that industry knowledge is super important. It's kind of, we say, speaking their language, and it's true, and I think it's the common problems that face the industry or kind of specific use cases. So in construction it's things like the cost reporting on projects specifically, kind of cost valuation reports, contracting sides, subcontractors. But I think above that, as well as having been through the implementation as a user, seeing the highs and the lows, you've also had that opportunity to actually use the system in anger as well, and that counts for a lot. When you're talking to customers, you're able to tell them what made the difference to you as using it, what are the best shortcuts, what are the things to avoid.
Speaker 2:We'll get to this topic soon, but I think this is all related. So do you feel that, with the conversations that you're having with a user as a partner, you can build sort of a stronger relationship with them or a trust or a level of understanding, because they feel that you understand them more, because you, in fact, had been in their shoes before?
Speaker 4:that's a great question, um, I think from my side um putting erp systems and naturally you're dealing with finance teams, uh, more often than not, and um, it certainly counts for a lot kind of having that accounting background. Um, I think that goes a long way to helping to build that trust. Um, I suppose it's difficult to say if, if I wouldn't have that not having been an end user, um, not having been in those shoes, but uh, yeah, I think it's just having that, that sort of general business experience, rather than just being a pure techie, um, who's maybe just learned the system? You've kind of got, you've got those soft skills, that kind of andy and I have been talking about there and you've, you've been there, you've done it um, and you've kind of walked in their shoes and I think that shows um just naturally in conversation sometimes I think it helps with the conversations too because, like I know, there's times where you're you know now that you're in a partner side.
Speaker 1:When you're speaking to a prospect, you know you introduce yourself and sometimes, sometimes I throw it in there and it's like, hey look, I've been in that industry specifically as an end user, and so it kind of creates that kind of bond relationship. It's like, oh, he's going to get what I'm trying to say. So it kind of builds that relationship at the very beginning relationship.
Speaker 3:It's like, oh, he's going to get what I'm trying to say. So it kind of builds that relationship at the very beginning. So it does help. I think it's. You know, the soft skill is the building.
Speaker 3:Trust is kind of a generic, like a general soft skill, something that's incredibly important on projects because there'll always be bumps and if the people, if you've built up that trust, you've got a bit of you, of you know like collateral to spend, hopefully you don't go in overdraft on the trust, right, um, you do still need to deliver the results at the end of the day, but if you with the in, with the industry connection, I think it really you know, you you can shortcut, can you shortcut it? I mean, you can just build that trust a fair bit quicker. And sometimes it's just the practical. You know I used to work in like transport. So if someone wants to come talk to me about lorries or way bridges, I kind of know all the crazy detail and I can and they're like, oh okay, he knows his stuff, they kind of lays the fears early on perhaps yeah, I, I read a book.
Speaker 1:I read a book, uh, recently, ward. It's called wired for love by stephanie kacioppo. She's like a newer scientist and she talks about how we're, how we create connections. So, come, come on. Common interest when you have a relationship tends to have a quicker um trust at the very beginning. So as long as you keep that and maintain that commonality, um, it's a lot easier to stay connected with somebody.
Speaker 2:So it's always that's very helpful when you're, I can see that you sort of build a bond, whether that common interest is something you like, a scenario that you're in or a situation that you're in, it can tend to, I think, build that bond. I've heard a phrase several times in this conversation and the phrase I've heard is soft skills, that's right. What are soft skills? And I think, think, as I hear it so much, I think it must be something that's rather important. So, what are soft skills and, um, what's the importance of them?
Speaker 3:phil, do you want to open up and are you open up andy? Okay, fair enough. Um, so soft soft skills. I guess the the simplest definition of soft skills is everything that's not a hard skill. And a hard skill is like technical knowledge of a system. Maybe it's BC, maybe it's SQL, maybe it's M365 administration, right. It's like there's a system out there, there's a technical thing out there, and you either know it or you don't know it right.
Speaker 3:That's the kind of traditional hard skills, and soft skills are usually the kind of skills that are a little bit more difficult to put in a neat little box. Very often it usually relates to interpersonal relationships, interpersonal skills, and so they're the kind of skills you know communication, empathy, problem solving, creative thinking, things. Where it's not, you know, if you want to configure I don't know that submission process in Business Central, there's an exact process you follow and if you do it slightly wrong, it maybe doesn't work right. That's the hard skill. Whereas, let's say, I wanted to convince Brad to go on a trip to Vegas with me, you know like there's no, no, like definitive way that I can do that. I don't know how keen he would be. I'd have to like suss out and find out, like what's going to what? How can I press his buttons, how can I convince, how can I entice him? You kind of got to, you've got to dig and you've got to be creative and you've got, and you know it's a like, it's a real kind of complicated area.
Speaker 1:It's like a professional personal right, Like it's more of an emotional aspect of it, like a personal connection versus like professional. I'm just here to do some work, that's kind of like. I mean, that's a hard skill, but I think there are some professional soft skills as well.
Speaker 3:So in a professional, like you know, kind of our area we're really interested in is at the minute is you know what's changed about soft skills and the need for soft skills in the age of AI? So, with all the different AI tools that you've got, what impact does that have? Like, were soft skills important before? Obviously, yeah, I think they are, and you know and how important are they are. Maybe they're more important now. And why is that?
Speaker 4:Like what does ai do to that? So I don't know, phil, do you agree? What's? Uh? Yeah, I think that's um, that's a good way of describing it, and I think it is the, the sort of people side of what we do. So it's interacting with other human beings, I suppose. Um, as opposed to the, the hard technical skills, as you say, andy, um, so it is. It's things, things like being able to listen, being able to converse, being able to sometimes lead a room and lead difficult conversations, and it's kind of the. I guess it's the people side of what we do as consultants. So I always like to think it's kind of 50% technical knowledge of the product and 50% being able to implement that, and that involves kind of working with other teams and progressing that project.
Speaker 2:So many things come to mind with everything all three of you had said. I'm always getting the chills thinking about this with these soft skills, and so we go with the soft skills more, as could be some communication type and emotional type interactions?
Speaker 2:I don't even know. I have about 300 questions that just popped into my mind. I want to frame them. I think I'll be specific with them or try to be selective on my choice of which ones we start with. But you're talking within the AI era, where ai is doing a lot for us. But with that communication, what, uh? What has impact? What impact you think ai has had on the communication? But also, what about generationally, with communication and soft skills and crossing generations?
Speaker 1:impact on soft skills. I think impact on soft skills and I think Impact on soft skills.
Speaker 2:I think, right, Impact on soft skills and I think it's because where it's coming into play, because, as younger talents coming into our industry and the younger talents becoming professionals, as we all were younger talent to previous generations in the workforce, I think everyone grew up differently. Whereas there's a group of individuals that grew up texting, there's a group of individuals that grew up with the the they don't need. They didn't even use a lot of them, don't even have telephones or tellies. What do you call them tellies over there?
Speaker 3:they don't have like a landline. You know sort of like, yeah, okay, a landline that's I.
Speaker 2:I knew that from miami. But so they don't have a landline in their home and it's often time when you communicate with them, they prefer not to talk, they prefer that you text them, for example. Or even if you look at sometimes with the emails, the emails almost start to form to be text-based type emails where you have a couple sentences, you go back, a couple sentences back without a thought. I want to go on to this AI thing as well with that, this whole email communication with AI, which I think impacts soft skills. That's what I'm saying. Like I just have a bunch of questions about this. But that's where I'm going with generationally, with soft skills and the importance to be able to communicate across generations with your soft skills in this technical age and the impacts of AI on that as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, lots of questions there. One of the things I'll just pick up that Phil said I'm not done. Well, I think one of the small things right to Phil is you mentioned like leading the room and I'd written down. I was sort of trying to collect my thoughts before the call and one of the things I'd written down is presence. You know, no amount of AI summaries or sentiment analysis can deliver.
Speaker 3:You know, if you're going into a difficult meeting as Phil said, there's been a misunderstanding with the CFO you know you can't AI yourself out of that one, right? I suppose you can augment that meeting by using AI to prepare and so you don't miss any like emails or whatever. But you you've still got to do the delivery. You've got to get in there. You've got to be a peer sympathetic to the problem understanding. You know you've got to be.
Speaker 3:Maybe you need to give some ground. How much ground are you going to give? That's the negotiation soft skill. Um, because you ultimately want to bring them forward on the journey. So that's the. I think like there's this combination factor where, if you do it right, like you could use ai, can give you all the answers right. So it's like a loaded gun, like you've got all these answers and you just blast them at the, at the client, and be like, well, we're going to do it like this because you know, ai told me, but if you haven't used your own intelligence, judgment, creative thinking, creative thinking to like correct it, because most of the time with AI-generated stuff, it's a starting point.
Speaker 1:I think you know whether you're writing an email, whether you're writing a report.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like, oh, that's not a bad idea, but I definitely wouldn't say that thing. So the AI bit is like this loaded gun sometimes. So you know that was on the communication side.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that probably for me makes um face-to-face communication a lot more important these days, because where ai is probably making the biggest impact at the moment is in written communication, particularly emails, um, and and we see, you know, sometimes it's not always that obvious, sometimes it's very obvious, but we definitely see clients kind of emailing us, um with ai assistance on there and and we use co-pilot and tools like that as well to kind of help us writing emails, whereas when you're face to face with somebody and talking to them in a room, you kind of know you've got that sincerity there and and you were talking to them and not a machine, um, I suppose when it comes to the younger generation, I was kind of reading a study a few months ago where they're saying the prevalence of conversing over messenger apps and then kind of the generation after us have got a preference for things like chatbots as well and that impacts us implementing systems in there because they become more important as one of the communication channels that we open up to our customers and the customers of our who use our systems.
Speaker 4:So it's having an impact, I think probably the pandemic as well and more people working remotely and kind of not sitting in an office together, not having face-to-face meetings, is probably changing the way we operate, changing the soft skills that we have and we need, particularly around training as well. I know personally. I found it difficult to adapt to training large groups of people using things like Teams, because you're just not able to read the body language in the same way.
Speaker 2:That's a really good point. Actually, I've just that's a very good point and that was a question that I had on that as well as just to jump in. These are some good things to think about is the use of and also go back to the ai the use of video with this remote communication, and and that's what I often say is, a lot of people are shy or bashful. I mean, I think early on in the pandemic, when everybody was remote, everyone was a little shy about being on camera we were always like um, it was embarrassing to tell the other person they were on mute.
Speaker 3:But now it's like oh, by the way, you're on mute. You know, like that, but no, I I like that you had commented about the ai when you're on mute, you know, like that it's normal.
Speaker 2:That's the point.
Speaker 1:But no, I like that you had commented about the ai. When you're writing an email, right like you, can, you can, you can use a tool to really build out your response or your email. Um, you know conversations, but the moment that you are face to face, like you can really tell if, if you know, do you speak like that on a daily basis. And so when you get face to face, it's like, uh, you don't sound like that, right like you, that doesn't sound like what you just wrote.
Speaker 2:You can't even put sentences together properly, so the language could change, which could impact your communication or trust, since we're talking about trust with an individual, because if I've only worked with you via electronic communication, then when I meet you face to face and I speak differently that doesn't necessarily say that they speak poorly or they use, um you know, incorrect grammar or language. Maybe the word choices are different in the sentence.
Speaker 3:Maybe the co-pilot took out all the swear words and you're usually a potty mouth sort of thing.
Speaker 2:I could talk to you all the time. I want to start learning British English.
Speaker 4:The potty mouth.
Speaker 3:Just back to something that Phil said earlier. Something just occurred to me is one of the things I've been reading is the fundamental importance of soft skills and as you upskill in ai tools, whatever they may be, you need to have a similar training in soft skills. So imagine this right when we were in offices when you're around the water cooler, you're constantly exposed on social situations. You know you're naturally getting trained on soft skills because you've got to manage the, the political situation in the office, the social scene. You know you're kind of exposed to it and you you're just forced to be involved in office politics. You can't, you can't completely avoid it. You're always going to get drawn in a little bit and you know, is that like a natural training? And compare that to massively working from home over the pandemic.
Speaker 3:And yes, I'm, we're going a bit back in the office now, but it's not nine to five, monday to friday, like it used to be. The importance for training soft skills, specific training, like dedicated to soft skills, is now so much more important because you're and and it ties in with that younger generation as well but they've just they, they start work and they never met anyone for real, like they posted their laptop. We have plenty of people started our place where you know the first time they meet it might be six months, eight months down the line when we have a you know company or get together sort of thing yeah, that's interesting, it's that is and then I just said sorry, brad, just jump in really quick.
Speaker 1:I I do want to put it out there too that um, you know this ai co-pilot tools, although you can use it to formulate a response or an email, but I do want to point out that there are others that um where it doesn't translate really well because maybe english isn't their first language so we do have to really feel it, put it perfectly.
Speaker 1:it's like you have to soft skills really important, because even though my, my grammar is great, right, like my response is great, but when I'm speaking with somebody you can tell like, hey, english may not be that person's English, may not be their first language, and so you kind of have to understand like yeah, they put it properly, but when they execute that it's like okay, that's not your, that's not how you typically talk, because English is not your first language.
Speaker 2:So, to go back to andy, these are our good points. And, chris, that's one part of it. It goes with what I picked up from andy, from what you're saying is now I have to I'm selfish, I just translate it so that I can understand um, so we learn to speak as we're aging, growing up by being around people, typically early on it's going to be your parents and your siblings and your family, because that's usually who you're close with. So you learn the skills of communication, soft skills, by your environment. And then, as you progress through life I guess you could say through education, through work you pick up additional skills. And then, chris, to your point. Now you get to a point where you're not picking up the skills from communicating verbally, you're picking up skills from communicating through written word. So you can excel from that because you're learning from it. Where now, andy, you're saying that it's important to have? Essentially because we're all working remote and we have technology, we almost need classes on communication.
Speaker 3:Well, it's something to consider right in the mix. You know, every muscle in your body or feature of your brain, if you don't practice it, it will fade away, right? So if you're depriving as an industry or as a society, we're kind of depriving, we're reducing the amount of person-to-person interaction that someone gets. That's got to have an impact, right. What's the impact of that? It's not nothing, surely, right?
Speaker 2:I don't believe so. I think that to Chris's point. I think it's visible I think I've had interactions with some that they've been uncomfortable. I've had a lot of written communication with them, whether it's via text, whether it's via email. The communication was wonderful. But with them in person they were a little more timid in communicating and speaking. But as soon as they walk away, they sit down, they're going to send you a message and I'm not saying it's anything improper or angry, you know, it's almost like they're not comfortable speaking face to face. Um, which is why, when we started talking about this, I have, like all these I taught, thoughts in my head about the importance of interpersonal communication skills or soft skills in the world but it's funny.
Speaker 3:It's funny, isn't it? Like the, but the kind of the whatsapp chat groups, you know, are they a blessing or a curse? We use them for so many different things. I mean myself and Phil, our two organisations, we're working together on a project at the minute and one of the first things I think there's multiple chat groups now from the different streams, different groups of people, and it is convenient. Right, it is is convenient. It's just when it kind of replaces or yeah, it's uh, if you, if you're not able to, ultimately you do need to. You know, you need, you need those, you need the empathy skills, you need the active listening skills. You can't get that from chatting constantly on your phone, right?
Speaker 3:yes, no, you can't, and I know all about those whatsapp groups, but it is handy to be able to send your mates a hilarious gif when you're on a really boring meeting, right?
Speaker 4:thanks, andy, is that?
Speaker 2:one of my meetings I don't know anybody who would do that, it was Nick actually.
Speaker 3:We were both working late on a PowerPoint and then suddenly he put some hilarious GIF in the PowerPoint.
Speaker 1:I was like Nick you can't be good, especially when you're having a serious meeting and someone sends you a message and you smile and people are like why is that guy smiling?
Speaker 3:Well, that can, of course, backfire and that you know, yeah, there is, of course, you know, with all these things it can. It's the tool. How to use the tool? You can, you know, like bullying in the workplace, cyber I mean my kids, you know, like crikey, like school is tough, right, my kids have just gone into year, they're 13s or whatever year that is. In in the us, in the uk it's like year nine and year nine is pretty a pretty tough year. Going to school is pretty tough. Kids can be tough and you've got all the stuff that I had to deal with when I was younger and now they've got all the cyberbullying and people taking pictures of other kids and sending it around. It's kind of like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:I am so thankful that I did not grow up having that. For the point that you just said, I think being a young child or an adolescent is extremely difficult. Because of that, we had issues when we were growing up. Issues as children have been going around, I think, since man had walked the planet. But now what happened was when we were younger, if you had a problem with one person, it was typically just isolated to your classroom, your environment or even maybe a little bit bigger, to your school, and it wasn't really you know, you could just avoid them or maybe over time progressed and settled down.
Speaker 2:But now, like you said, like you have one small thing and it's like broadcast to the entire world, where everybody now knows about things or has problems with things and even, like you said, where you can send these messages anonymously, which I think is a big point, not even anonymously, but it's behind text or behind other ways, it's not you know, and it's just hurtful and it's much easier for that type of stuff.
Speaker 2:So I'm thankful that I had the problems that I had and I feel for those that have those challenges now, because I agree that it's not easy and everyone's focus and attention onto it I think is valid, because I've seen it Not to digress from our social skill, uh, social, uh conversation here, but uh, which which leads to I'm trying, I'm trying not to go all over the place. I'm sorry, I know you have some points you wanted to bring up on this as well, but that whole person of the type of communication, the face-to-face communication versus communication behind the written word, um, in the emotions that are behind it, and you know how, when you can see someone's reaction to something you're saying versus something you're writing, yeah, definitely, and the impact on them.
Speaker 3:Phil what's your thoughts on, like the example of the meeting transcription, like it doesn't pick up the emotion right. I mean you can do sentiment analysis, but the kind of the more normal standard tools. You know. Phil, how have you kind of implemented at your place, like the meeting transcription tool? You know, capability?
Speaker 4:That's a good point really. I mean, we use it primarily to reduce the effort in taking minutes or, more frequently, not taking minutes when we should. So it's just kind of having that reference back to it, I suppose, rather than any sort of formal documentation off the back of it. It's just super useful when you're kind of writing notes up or you're doing some documentation and you're having to refer back to a meeting you were in. It allows you to kind of go back and see accurately what was spoken, which is quite handy. Does it save you time when you're having to summarize a meeting?
Speaker 1:Because I know like far, far in my experience it's helped me many times where you know a meeting that I had over a month ago and then we're circling back on it and I'm like I don't remember. So I would ask co-pilot and say, hey, did we talk about this particular topic? And it would give me and say, yeah, you talked about this topic at this time. And here's the transcript and here's a summary and I'm like, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:You know it's like it was super helpful, because I don't remember, like I had a at a meeting with a, a co-worker, that last time we had a conversation about something was like a month or two, two, two months ago, and it certainly helped me be prepared and not, you know, struggle to like okay, I gotta listen to these meetings to remember where did we say and you can even specifically ask like who said this? You know, was this even brought up? Like the, the, for example I mean, we're all consultants like we talked about, um, uh, budgets. You know, was a budget part of that conversation? Like I don't remember sure it's been like what six months. And so you look it up and it's like, yeah, this, it was talked about. You know, budget was talked about. It was this many hours, like perfect, you know. And it's like, yeah, this it was talked about.
Speaker 3:You know, budget was talked about. It was this many hours, perfect, you know. So it's very helpful. I mean, phil, were on a meeting not too long ago and the and the main sort of organizer there, senior, senior guy, he's like okay, the transcript's on, so faces up, like everyone you know can be more, be more present in the meeting. Now, I don't think I've ever heard it articulated like that before, but it's dead right actually, like you know, unless you have, unless you're in an organization where you've got a dedicated meeting note taker, which is not, I don't think you get that on most professional services things Right, there's not necessarily the luxury of having someone just taking the meeting notes.
Speaker 3:If you can let the transcript kind of do the donkey work of taking the notes and then, well, if you're in the room or if you're on a team score, you can kind of like you know you guys, you know you don't know who I'm looking at, like I might be really staring at chris or I'm really staring at brad. So the transcript, can you know there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a benefit to it there, I think. Um, and it all comes down to then how you use that, as like that example earlier, or like the ai, can give you all the information. It can give you the loaded gun if you've got some slightly bad news to tell someone like no, it's definitely not in scope. And then you've got the meeting transcripts. It's like the guy, the person who says it's definitely not in scope, the senior person, it's like there's a meeting and he said no, okay, we're fine, we'll agree, that's not in scope.
Speaker 2:You know, just sending in the transcript saying like no, you're wrong, you know, like it's necessarily best, we're doing it right, I got receipts I do like the ai transcription because it allows people to communicate and talk without having to worry about taking notes, as we were talking about, so you can focus more on the content of it. But we're talking here about how important social soft skills are. I keep calling them social skills. It's kind of how I reference them.
Speaker 2:Same thing. Yeah, it's the importance of soft skills, which, again, it's more than just vocabulary, as you alluded to or even mentioned, not alluded to, but it's your emotional, it's your empathy, self-awareness, all the points that you had mentioned emotional empathy, self-awareness, all the points that you had mentioned. And, chris, Phil, andy, you were talking about how you use AI transcription for meetings. You use AI transcription to craft emails. You use AI to generate PowerPoint presentations. We use AI to generate documentation.
Speaker 2:We're all saying that there's the importance of soft skills today because we want to have that interpersonal communication with each other. And we're talking about now how, with technology, there's a lot of electronic communication, whatsapp groups, text messaging, emails. Do you feel that soft skills will be important in the future or going? There'll be a point where the nod is important because everything will be delivered by AI. Whereas, again, I write an email to Chris, crafted with AI, nice, wonderful, beautiful email. I send it to Chris. Chris says co-pilot. What does this email say? The classic yeah, write, write back. Respond to brad that I don't like it. Copilot will create an email. Yeah, send it back to me. Where now the exchange is? When we're using ai, we're being guided and, with it being electronic. How impactful or important will these soft skills? I'm sorry I know you had a lot you wanted to talk about, but I told you my mind I have to try to keep focused but how important will the soft skills be in the future?
Speaker 4:I think they will always be crucial. I mean, you call them social skills there, and I think that's probably a much better way of phrasing it, because where AI comms in particular are useful and used the most, they're in a professional setting, really, and I think if they could make our working lives much more efficient and, to be honest, automate the boring bits things like documentation or summarising meetings and writing minutes then great. I'm all for that, because it does free up more time for you to have the water cooler chats with your colleagues or social events and things like that. You know, ai doesn't seem to have been encroached too much in that area, so you're still going to need those social skills. I suppose whether the impact of ai will, um, impede the development of them because you're using them so much, uh, you're not building those communication skills in the same way. I'm not sure. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3:Here's here's a good one for you, and by the way I got chat gpt to prepare this for me. I was like I'm going on a podcast about soft you and, by the way, I got chat gpt to prepare this for me I was like I'm going on a podcast about soft skills.
Speaker 3:May I give you some really great sound bites. So disclaimer, I totally cheated, but this one I like it. Ai gives you the answers. But you know the empathy soft skill helps you ask the right questions, because if you're not, if you're not asking the right questions, no amount of knowledge done, you know is the right knowledge that that is right, spot on because, yeah, that that's spot on, because you do have to know and understand the emotion, emotion to know how to prompt a response, how to create a response.
Speaker 1:And you're right, though I mean, it's so hard to read and uh, read the room when you're just all you see yourself, right, um?
Speaker 1:yeah, in a fake background and all that stuff. So you know, it kind of leads me to the. And I do have a question, though when you are in office and, uh, you're meeting face to face, everyone's a conference room, you know. Do you still use teams to record that meeting in the conference room just so you can get that transcript and summary for co-pilot, or do you just rely on everybody else to take notes?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean depends on the like. If it's a workshop or something like that, I'd try to, yes, do that. The downside is that I know, I think sort of maybe depending on the license you've got with Teams like if you're all on one speakerphone then it's you doing all the talking, you're the one asking all the questions and you're the one giving all the responses. So when you try to do the transcript, you know summary, who said what it's like. We said everything. But I think maybe that's a technology thing. Maybe I think in teams, you know, if you've got premium teams, you can like do that the voice recognition, so it recognizes your own voice. Perhaps I don't know, I'd need to up my hard skills to know the answer to that question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'd have to go someplace where I'm having a meeting Again. Thankfully, in 2025, the need to go to an office has been minimized significantly, depending upon the organization. I know some organizations well. I don't want to say depending on the organization, I think depending upon the type of output that you produce for your work, output that you produce for your, your work, um, you know some things you need to be in person for. Some things you don't need to be in person for. You know a lot of the technical type stuff, but the does that change, though?
Speaker 1:like, does that change? I know, brad, like we we're fully remote, right? Maybe I see you like three, four times a year? Um, yes, you know that. Does that change in terms of camaraderie, um, and better respect, because you see each other daily? You're in the office. One of the things that I miss, honestly, is that you know it's Friday afternoon, let's go to a pub, right, like, let's just hang out after. Or it's a weekend, hey man, I'm going to be over here, you want to come meet me over there, and so forth. That you can't have in a full remote setting. So then, does that change now in the way the workforce nowadays, because you can't do that, does that change the way you work together entirely?
Speaker 4:I think it does, um, and I think you, I didn't really notice until I went back into the office more, and and one thing I realized, and it's I think it's to the individual, but when I work from home and on teams meetings all day, it's it's really quite draining emotionally and and you feel back to back. Teams meetings um, you do feel tired at the end of it, whereas it's kind of the opposite in the office you can sit in in meetings, face to face all day and and you tend to find you feel a bit more energized from that. Um for sure, and and we're quite lucky in the fact we live in a small island, um, so it's very easy to go in the office, and our team uh kind of has the in the office day, uh, where everybody's together on a friday. So we do, um, you know, go for a drinking bar, um, at the end of the day and we sit there and just socialize together and we're quite lucky and we've we've actually got a bar in the office, as Andy knows.
Speaker 3:So it's um, it's quite easy to this guy when Phil said he's on a small island, he's not talking about the UK, he's talking about the island of Jersey. So yeah, it's a really beautiful place and yeah, I mean you know, I once got a WhatsApp message from Phil. Oh yeah, friday drinks. Today, andy, they've taken the boats over to France to go for some wine. What I had, a couple of ribs in there to sail over to France.
Speaker 3:But you know, the generation thing. I think a couple of you mentioned the generation thing earlier. Interestingly, at my organisation we're looking to, you know we're opening up some more offices and things like that and really the driving force for that was more the younger generation and they're, you know, like in the kind of the um. You know the kind of the performance feedback and all that kind of you know stuff you do to make sure people are on track with their learning and how they're feeling and all the rest of it.
Speaker 3:And you know like it was more the younger generation that were like missing that social interaction and they wanted to. They want to get into the office, you know on a on a wednesday or thursday, and then go out for drinks afterwards, that sort of stuff. Because they, you know, if you're yeah, if you're in the younger generation and you're still, you know you don't have like maybe you know like got married and kids and all the rest of it. You know you don't have all the luggage, you're free and single, right, you know you like you want to go and have fun, you don't want to be working remotely and just hang up at whatever time in the evening and that's it. That's's your five-minute commute to the living room.
Speaker 1:You know that's a bit dull, right. I do want to throw something out there, though not just from the age category or the generational category, and Brad and I talked about this that we tend to forget the culture aspect of it too. Because even though you're categorized as a this generation but it depends on the culture, uh, that you're, you've grown up with, you know, and, and so that can play a big role where you think, like you know, look, I'm a old millennial, right, like that's how I'm categorized, but I don't act like that at all. I'm raised differently, that my culture is very, very different, which is kind of frustrating because you forget the cultural aspect of it. If you speak to someone in Japan or Philippines, they work hard, they want to be present and so forth, but people forget that To your point.
Speaker 1:Andy, you just said, surprisingly, the younger generations that you're interacting with are point andy. You just said like, hey, surprisingly, the younger generations that you're interacted with are the ones that wants to go out and, um, you know, get together and socialize, while some of us, uh, here, they don't want to do that, you know, they just have close, specific friends and sometimes the majority of the conversation is going to be via text or, you know, chat app.
Speaker 2:I think I do miss that. Well, I don't miss going to the office because of all the wasted. I call it wasted commute time. Yeah, but I do recall having the times where we would go out and go back to some points. It's all about the points.
Speaker 2:Just to go back to Chris, to your point, I think the video conferencing is great because you can see someone's interactions with you, you can see their emotions. I can talk with you and I can see if you're paying attention, I can see if you're losing and you don't have a comprehension of what I'm saying. But also, I think relationships and Quran rebuild more once you meet in person, because there's many, many people that I had the opportunity to speak with for long periods of time. And then, once you meet them in person, the relationship changes because now you have that something I don't even know how to classify, where you have a significant change to it.
Speaker 2:And I think what opens up with that is another challenge for those that are all remote that you may miss is it takes effort now to have those conversations of oh, let's go to the pub. Oh, let's go do this, because instead of yelling over a cube wall or maybe bumping into Andy or Phil or you in the dining area to pick up a drink or something to talk to you. You would now have to call somebody. I have to check are they available, are they red, Are they green, are they yellow, are they out of office? So now it takes effort versus just a natural interaction. I think that is a big change in this technology world. Maybe with AI we can get to a point where it doesn't feel that way. It just sort of forces us to talk to each other. I don't know like you think of the future somehow.
Speaker 4:yeah, maybe because I completely agree there. Actually because I think when I go into the office, speak you know quite freely with with anybody who might be in, and there's a lot of people you know in our office who I wouldn't work with directly. So if I was just working remotely I wouldn't interact at all probably with them um, whereas when you're in the office you do have those chats and you just catch up with people and you build those relationships and kind of working fully remotely you do risk missing out on that for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think to have a successful like if we kind of move the topic on to a successful partner organisation, like we're all delivering microsoft products, right, um, having you know, having your colleagues, you know people join, join companies and they leave companies. Some people stay longer, some people stay shorter, right, but generally speaking, you know, if you can build a connection with someone, you know there's always like it's kind of like going through the thick the whole, like going through the thick and thin thing. Right, you kind of want you, you want people to when times are tough. You know you, there's always like it's kind of like going through the thick the whole, like going through the thick and thin thing. Right, you kind of want you, you want people to when times are tough. You know you want to get together. You need that preexisting relationship. You need that trust built up with your teammates to it gives you strength, gives you resilience to, like, you know, whenever there's difficult projects or difficult situations, it's always coming up from time to time, right, it's uh, I think that you know that that personal connection makes a massive difference than you know if you'd only ever just spoke to everyone through teams and you didn't really kind of, you didn't get a chance to um, build that slight, slightly different relationship that you get when you, you know, occasionally like you know has to be every week, but occasionally it's like go out for a meal or go to the pub but have a chat about things, get to know people on a non-work setting which, unless you kind of do a forced organized team school like that, like I mean, it's no longer the pandemic, so we're no longer doing.
Speaker 3:We did it, you know, pub quizzes over over zoom or whatever, when it was the pandemic and stuff, and uh, friday drinks, that kind of thing's falling away now. Right, I think there's another work there's another component to that, though.
Speaker 1:Like, for example, if you want to bounce ideas, right Right, brad had mentioned you know he requires a little bit of work, and now you've got to look to see okay, is Brad red, is he yellow? Is he even in his desk? Is he working on something in the middle of something? Clearly, he's not going to show up on his calendar, but he could definitely be working on something. But if you're in an office, I can just walk by and say, ah, brad's right there. Hey, I'm going to bounce some ideas with you. Man, you got time. It's so easy you can't do that.
Speaker 3:I just thought of another, an old finance controller I worked with, not old, a while ago. I worked when I was on the end user side. There was a financial controller there, head of finance, and she said you know, she would walk around the office and she'd be like how are people's desks looking? And it was like the piles of paper. She kind of knew because some people like just suffer in silence, right, and other people are very vocal about when things are difficult, not everyone's the same and she would be that in office situation. You know she likes to know like how, how are people's workloads? By looking at, by wandering around and seeing you know they're slamming the phone down and huffing and puffing, you kind of. You know you don't, if you're all on teams you miss all of that, right, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. You don't get up that body language that we spoke about, where you're learning from your environment as well. So in this world of AI, the soft skills it's more than just AI, I think. We talk about the world of AI, but it's also the world of technology, I think, as well. Ai has a big impact on the communication with it, but technology, which AI is a form of, also is impacting how we communicate with each other and the stuff that we've been talking about as well.
Speaker 3:I guess we've spoken a lot about AI around the large language models, text summary, that kind of stuff. But another major area of AI is the ability to write code. So what difference is AI? What's the importance of soft skills? Major area of ai is the ability to write code. All right. So if you're, you know what's. What difference is ai? What's the importance of soft skills? What's the difference on the ai is made.
Speaker 3:So now you've got the ability for a you know, like a, let's say, a seasoned developer. So they know what's right, they know what's wrong. They're using, they're using ai to generate code really quickly. Um, you know, if you, if you the understanding, the requirements, the communication that you have with the client, with the, with the end users, to understand, understand what you know, what you're building. If, if the competitive landscape is now that the writing of the code is so much shortened, you know, like I'd say it's more, it's, there's less time that you're having meetings with the clients as you're like maybe doing sprints or whatever, and you've built this much or that much you can. You can you know how quickly can you build an app now brad with with uh, you know github in in vs code with sorry, you know the agent, it depends it depends, I think.
Speaker 2:Uh, I've been, you know they have the tools. Now you can track the percentage. I think it depends on what you're working on. Some things it does really well, some things it does marginally well, some things it doesn't do well at all with yet Okay. So I think you have to take a look at that. But I think from a productivity point of view, I would definitely say you're talking about 30% to 40%, and again I'm throwing out an average based upon a wide range of tasks. I have been tracking it and, like I said, some things it will do very, very well, or 80%, 90% of it on the first shot. Even if you're looking at co-pilot review, when you request a reviewer for a pull request, the co-pilot for that has even gotten much better, and I know for certain cases when you're doing code reviews, copilot caught some things or made suggestions that somebody else should have caught but was overlooked, or maybe they didn't think it was significant or was nitpicking and they didn't mention it.
Speaker 3:So it's greatly helped. Does the ability to generate the you know generate an application faster? Does it mean you need less communication skills? Because, because you know you can just throw it, throw out lots of apps? See what sticks, as opposed to spending a lot more time crafting, understand deeply, understanding the requirements and, you know, building the right outcomes with the app, if you can put something together very quickly.
Speaker 2:They're crossing into the whole vibe coding conversation where you're just generating stuff. I think it depends on what you're generating and for why Me wanting to write something at home to use for a utility. You're going to send me down the spiral for the future applications, but we'll refrain, we'll save this for another conversation. Okay, but I think you still, if you're publishing an app for a customer to use or an end user to use, I think you need to definitely have some code review skills and understanding of what copilot generates for you. Um, I don't think, yeah, I think you still need to have some uh skills to properly review the code and validate the code and adjust the code as necessary.
Speaker 2:Uh, but it still can do some amazing things. I'm not saying it can't, uh, because it does write some code and in some cases it probably wrote it better than I would have, and I'll be one of the ones to admit it. Um, that you know anybody will tell you that it's not doing well. Uh isn't being totally honest, but again, like I said, there's a range of it is there?
Speaker 3:is there a parallel there between um? You know, I've tried, I've sort of done a little bit on umilot, you know, for GitHub inside VS Code, but the problem is I'm not a developer to start with, so like you've got to have those development skills to review what it's giving you, and so let's translate what's the parallel for, like meetings and workshops and all the rest of it? You know, if you're really good at delivering workshops and if you're really good at producing output from workshops that you feed back to the client, if you've already got that skill and you look at what Copilot gave you and you're like, okay, yeah, tweak it a little bit, then send it. You know, I guess it's similar. Is that a similar situation to the whole vibe coding thing?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it depends on the language as well, and I think you know if you're referring to Business Central and AL. I think it's improving, it's getting better, I think, depending upon the models that you use. My only fear with that is now we have a lot of individuals who understand the language, so that you do have a wide group of talent that can review the code. But just as we talked about with communication skills and as you listen to some of the other episodes, I mention this often I think the coding skills would decrease, because I think the need for coding will change.
Speaker 2:It's be more human language right about for development, because it's no longer going to be. Even if you look at back the the evolution of programming or development, you know you started with assembly language. I I'm. I took assembly language in college, by the way, I took the class we're doing the pop and all that other stuff and the registers. And then you progress to having languages like COBOL, pascal, c, where you have written in code. It still all takes it, it compiles it down to the machine level for language.
Speaker 2:But I think, as we're progressing now with Copilot, you're now prompting for applications to be developed. So I think there will be a change to where you no longer need to code as we think about it today, because I think you're going to tell a system what it wants. The system's going to translate it into a form that can be used by the computer. I think we're going to take out that middle piece. See, right now everybody's saying GitHub. This is my imagination. You see you're going to get me on a tangent on this stuff. I'm sorry. You have GitHub Copilot right now that's going to draft code in a language such as AL. Yeah, why does it need to be AL? Why can't GitHub Copilot generate code that does what you want, based upon how you articulate that within your prompt. Again, would that be a social skill, you know, being able to to articulate what you want, to co-pilot then it can generate an application for you, right?
Speaker 2:so this is where I'm saying today we're you follow my progression that we're basing everything based upon what we know today, whereas same individuals with the horse and buggy when the automobile was invented right, they start comparing the horse and buggy to the automobile. But look at the progressions as the automobile had come around, where it's not even the same anymore yeah, you had a good point of like you know what would be the future language.
Speaker 1:You know you had a good point of like you know what would be the future language. You had mentioned English or a good structure. There's going to be some sort of if you look at a prompt, how proper prompt, right, there's a structure. In the best way you can instruct chat GPT, you know, choose whatever AI you have. So you're right, brad, you have to understand a proper structure of articulating of what you, what you want, and, and I think first is like you, you know what kind of tasks, what's the instruction, and you got to put the context, you know what kind of a persona of that chat GPT should they take, and then what the expectation of a result. Those are the typical structure of, I guess, in this sense, a syntax of what a prompt should be. So you have to learn those things.
Speaker 3:Do you think it's prompting? I guess it's a hard. Is it a soft skill or a hard skill? Talking, talking to the llms? Oh, I think it's both, because you got to be nice.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you gotta be, nice to this, that's a good question just just just on one tail end, just to finish the thing. I won't go for an attention on that, but I think, I think we will lose that development ability because individuals aren't going to have that learning period in the middle Right, right you have the senior developers now who understand the languages today.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm emphasizing the languages today. It doesn't mean, you know, everyone has the question of what's going to happen with senior developers if you don't have the opportunity to learn as a junior developer, because Copilot's a bunch of junior can simulate junior developers and you need a senior to go through it. After giving us some thought, I was like wow, we're not going to have senior developers. But I think what's going to happen is I think development's going to change. It's going to adapt to developing with copilot, versus learning a language and being able to process the language. Again, how many COBOL programmers do you know today? There's not many.
Speaker 1:So I think that will go with that, unless you work for the government. Go back.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to jump in, I just want to throw that last thing in there.
Speaker 1:No, I think you're right. I mean, andy, you said it requires soft skills. So, brad, yeah, you kind of have to be nice sometimes. You know you said it requires soft skills. Sorry, brad, yeah, you kind of have to be nice sometimes. You know you got to structure it properly and you got to be like you are this agent and you are instructed to do this. So there's a syntax you follow and at the same time, you know you got to be nice to it. You can't just say do this properly, they'll remember you if you're nice to them.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly the Microsoft. They're like the dev guy from Microsoft whose name has just escaped me from the minute. He always talks about tacos and he does a lot of. He says like maybe if you're like, the LLMs have sourced from the internet right and in the internet there's the nice side of the internet and there's also the slightly shady side. From the internet right and in the internet there's the nice side of the internet and there's also the slightly shady side of the internet. Where people are, there's flame wars and trolls and all the rest of it. His comment is you know, if you're nice to the AI, maybe you tap it into the nicer side of all that training that it's done. That gives you better answers.
Speaker 2:I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1:You know, someone asked me this past weekend you know it was another parent. They're not in the, in our space, they're not in a tech space, they're in a veterinarian, and she was asking me of my opinion. And I'm going to ask you guys the same thing. Hey, my kids are in their teens, they're about ready to go to college. You know what I see. She was like what I remember. You know you go into tech. The question that she had was should my kids go to computer science? Should they learn how to program, should they learn how to code? And that was an answer that was very difficult for me to give, because if you asked me three, four, five years ago, it's like yeah, absolutely. You know there's a lot of that opportunity, but because of Copilot, ai, chatgpt what a grok does that change? You know, can you learn how to code by just working with a co-pilot, slash, grok, chat, chat, gp or whatever? Can they learn it just as much than in a class setting? That?
Speaker 2:is a whole different episode.
Speaker 1:And I was like I don't know how to answer that.
Speaker 2:That is I wish. I don't have a pen with me, but we need to. Chris, jot that down. We'll do a future of development conversation.
Speaker 1:I couldn't answer that man. I don't know, You'll have to get some developers in for that one.
Speaker 3:I'm not qualified to answer that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just what you're talking about there, Chris, should you go into that? And what we're talking about.
Speaker 3:But what you're talking?
Speaker 4:about there, chris, should you go into that and what we're talking about? So it's uh. But what you said earlier, brad, about assembly I'm sorry, phil, you're saying yeah, it kind of leads in we talk about how tech more than just ai, how technology is kind of changing our soft skills, our social skills, and I think the style of learning actually and the tools we use to learn has changed massively. Because what we see now, um, particularly in the younger generation, brad, is like short form media is king right everywhere you go. It's tiktok, it's instagram, it's kind of short snippets and I think the way people learn has changed and we kind of have to adapt our styles as well to do that.
Speaker 4:And, um, we find, you know, back in the day, where you'd have huge day-long training sessions with a user that were draining actually and always thought after a couple of hours people kind of switch off anyway. But now it's especially online and remote. You can afford to do much shorter but more frequent kind of sessions on there. That's probably more akin to how naturally people learn in bite-sized chunks. So we can kind of use technology, use AI, to support that, make it easier to learn, feed in and see your point there, chris, and I think AI is one of the tools we use now to learn things, rather than just go to Google and find blogs. We're asking ChatGPT, we're asking.
Speaker 4:Copilot and it's finding those materials on our behalf.
Speaker 3:It's wild, so Phil back to the original original question yes, in the age of AI, are soft skills more important or less important, or the same? Ai has not made any difference to the necessity for them I think they're a differentiator.
Speaker 4:So so why do people hire business central consultants to come and deliver their projects? It's it's always been because because they know the product and they understand kind of how to implement it. But in theory, you could go to chat gpt and ask it how to implement business central and what you need. You could go to chat GPT and ask it how to implement Business Central and what you need to do and take it step by step and if you followed it you'd probably get there as an end user. So the soft skills really differentiate us and AI, I think.
Speaker 3:Totally, that's exactly what I'd written down there. The soft skills they become as AI takes over some of the burden of some work. It kind of AI takes over some of the burden of some work. It kind of concentrates the, the difference of the delivery that you make and the feeling you know that that that ability to do good delivery, I think you know it's the someone with excellent soft skills, really fantastic soft skills. Maybe their project is going through bumps but at the end of it the consumer, the customer's still happy because you took them on the journey, you took them through the bumps, okay, versus someone with not so good soft skills. You know that it's more difficult to to do a good delivery because the you know the difference becomes. You know, knowing business central becomes the hygiene factor. Right, and the ability to bring people with you on the journey is is always been important, but it becomes more important.
Speaker 1:That is true. I think the confidence goes out the door when you don't have that soft people skills. You know when you, when you're, especially when you're communicating you can only go far with the email responses using copilot, but when it comes to, like, calming the room, you know you're going to need that soft soft skills because you're right. I mean when, when, when things goes in chaos, when you have the proper soft skills, you calm the room right. It's like okay, this guy is, he knows what he's talking about, he's, he's translating it, he understands us that's.
Speaker 2:That goes back to a few things. They said presence, I think, phil you, you had mentioned that early on his presence and what it also ties back to, for what I'm hearing is all what we've been talking about is it's not just the interpersonal or the the social skills, it's the connection, it's you're building, the relationship between individuals that you can't get if you're doing that through AI or using technology. I think, after all, we are a communal species. We'd like to be with people as much as even myself. I like to be alone 99% of the time. Occasionally I like to be alone 99% of the time. Occasionally like to be around people.
Speaker 2:So I think what you're saying, or what I hear you're saying, is that relationship building is important part of an implementation to keep it into the space that we're all in today. The application use and function and how to. That consultant may not be. Again, they have experiences. I'm not trying to devalue anything, but the information's easier or more readily available, right, easier to access, more readily available on how to use business central. You need someone with that relationship, with that experience, that you can build a relationship with, build trust in. I think we talk about that as well to help give you that comfort as you're going through a journey. Right, it's almost like being like I think Chris you talked about before like being on a plane. Are you going to be comfortable being on a plane if it's on autopilot?
Speaker 2:even though there's no pilot in the seat on a plane, if it's on autopilot, even though there's no pilot in the seat, even though a pilot probably flies a very small portion of the time at this point, or would you feel more comfortable if a pilot was sitting in the seat?
Speaker 4:yeah, depends on the pilot I guess yeah, but uh, yeah, you, you make some good points there because I think it's the experience that you bring, because the number of times I've been asked by a customer, what do other people do? Yeah, we've got the same problem and you bring that experience of other implementations and how common problems are solved by other organizations. And I'm sure AI could do that, but but there's a high value, I think, by people placed on lived experience, uh, and, and someone who's personally been through it, that's.
Speaker 3:That's a really good point. The. If you look at all the documentation of the official of how business central does a particular process, that is not the same as how a real world company deals with the day in, day out mad world that we have to deal with. Vendors don't send you perfect invoices with the PO quoted on it every time. Right, you have to deal with the nonsense of nothing matches and how are you going to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get a good analogy for this one, because soft skills and, uh, experience help in situations like that. Like if you ever, if you ever, climb a mountain, pick whatever mountain, and there's their sherpas. You guys heard about sherpas. Right, the sherpas are really the people like hey, I've been up there many, many times. I know what to do in situations that are crazy or different. Do you need them? No, you could probably ask AI. It's like how do I prepare? Show me the map where I need to stop. That's fine, you could probably try it, but it's going to be rough for you. But if you have a Sherpa, it's a lot easier because then you have someone that you can rely on and say, hey, I'm with a situation. This map says we should be here, but the Sherpa's like no, the weather's changed, you've got to be at this area Because AI's not going to know what the variables of what life throws at you.
Speaker 3:It might get it wrong right. An experienced person has gone through the process before. Yeah, that's the whole thing with AI. It's not always accurate. You've got to check it. So if you're just relying on AI for answers, sometimes it's a concern.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm kind of like staring into space, because what is it going to be next week?
Speaker 3:That's the other thing right the models change in the background.
Speaker 3:I mean just talking on models, the transition on ChatGPT from 4.0 to 5.0, massive backlash on Reddit and various other internet forums because they're saying that they've dumbed it down and people were using. You got used to a certain type of response from the prompt you developed, because developing complicated prompts is a skill, like skill, like you were saying earlier. And then suddenly the models changed in the background and that prompt that worked yesterday today doesn't work. Yeah oh it gives you a different answer that's what I think about, even this.
Speaker 2:I think by the time this is released, this conversation may be dated on some things. I say that jokingly, but the world is moving at a rapid rate and I think that, as we all talked about, technology, and specifically technologies that start and now into the AI world, does affect and impact soft skills and I think that it's still and today it's an important part of someone's abilities, capabilities and aptitude and input on any classification to be able to have those soft skills and that's a differentiator.
Speaker 1:Right, Right, Like, I feel like that's going to be a future differentiator, because you can anybody can use Copilot to implement things. Now, right, Like, it's pretty straightforward. Everyone has a structured template, whatever. But I think the differentiator of people you work with is going to be that soft people skills, and how are they going to guide you and how are they going to be there for you and once you're done, are they're still going to be there for you? You know what I mean. Are they're going to check in with you? And you know how's it going with Business Central. Here's a few things you could do. I mean that relationship. It's going to be important. Ai is not going to check in with you. It only checks in with you when you ask for it.
Speaker 2:I think that's the key word relationship, I think what we've all talked about. I think to me the common denominator to all of this, whether it's from an implementation or the inner office working relationships. So I think it's good. Andy Phil, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us this afternoon.
Speaker 3:Lots of interesting pointers there. Me and Phil have got to write our directions. Talk on soft skills and AI.
Speaker 2:We can have a follow-up with this if you want, or even if you want, to talk on the top. On my mind, these conversations sometimes it's tough for me to hold on because we can go down so many different paths, so many different roads with it, and staying on point is extremely important, but I would do truly value the time that you spent to speak with us today because, like I always say, time's the currency of life. Once you spend it, you can't get it back. So, anytime anybody spends any time with us, we greatly appreciate that. Um so, if anyone would like to talk to you more about soft skills and AI in the workplace, what's the best way for someone to get in contact with you, andy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, Andy Wingate, or I think you can get off. You go to my blog, blogwingate365.com. There are links to all the socials and whatnot there. But yeah, you'll definitely be able to find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:How about yourself, Phil?
Speaker 4:Yeah, LinkedIn's good for me as well.
Speaker 2:Uh, phil barrel. Uh, or the blog site is uh, barrelnet. Great, thank you, and I will have to say I'm embarrassed to say, when you were talking about your blog just now, I just realized that wingate365 is your last name All these years of this.
Speaker 1:Wingate is his last name, not 365.
Speaker 4:No, that's what I'm saying Like sometimes, because I have to pause there for a minute.
Speaker 1:Wait, I didn't know he was 365. That would be amazing, wouldn't it?
Speaker 2:That right there. I'm embarrassed to say that I looked at, like you see, some of these domain names that there's. There's many of us that blog or communicate have websites and a lot of them will use some variation of something and I sometimes I wonder where did they get that?
Speaker 1:he loves windows. So much he changed his last name.
Speaker 2:I thought it had to be with something like that, with like a Windows 365. You're being catchy.
Speaker 3:There is an application. There was an application Windows Gateway which had wingatecom or whatever. That one was gone, so I had to dream up something else.
Speaker 2:So you know, like I said, I bring this stuff over and I have it, but it just clicked with me, so again thank you both and we look forward to speaking with you both again soon.
Speaker 3:Thanks very much for having us on.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having us on Brad Nice to meet you both.
Speaker 2:Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E. Via Twitter, d-v-l-p-r-l-i-f-e. You can also find me at matalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot I-O, and my Twitter handle is matalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.
