People Analytics Must Die, Part 2

Part 1 called for Radical Change, Workforce-Centered Analytics, Leading through Taijitu Principles.

NEW ASSUMPTION TO KEEP IT ALIVE

People Analytics must dedicate itself EQUALLY to helping the organization and its people succeed — in interdependence and balance. There is no successful data-driven future without both halves getting equal energy, effort, discipline. Both the organization and every individual within it must have enhanced agency over their ability to thrive in a disruptive future.

Under that assumption: What would you do? How would you think? What would matter most? How would you leverage AI tools and AI Agents to help make this happen?

The Biggest Challenge: Mindset Shift

Yes, getting good data, and designing the right metrics, and the right analyses are wickedly tough challenges in the AI Era. But they’re not the Big Kahuna challenge.

The biggest challenge is our mindset shift. Corporate metrics and everything you’re already working on — from LLM Tokenization to Agent Role Assignments — * do * matter. But what if you followed Taijitu principles, where every employee had greater agency over their own future because that mattered as a set of end-result metrics? Ask yourself:

• What would it look like if employees could hack their own work experience, in partnership with company-sponsored AI? Would they be focused on the same data-points that you are? The same trends? The same Reds, Yellows, Greens on the dashboards?

Productivity, engagement, retention, workforce allocation, corporate-desired skills, corporate-viewed performance assessments, et al are table stakes — what companies need to focus on to keep the machine running efficiently, effectively, and delivering their AOPs and strategies.

But what if we viewed the AI Era as an opportunity to do more. To create and enhance... Meaning... Purpose... Personal Agency. We’d see things differently. We’d begin by thinking about and tracking...

• Agency: Can people truly shape their work and their future at your company? (“Engagement” is soooo company-centered. Personal Agency is workforce-centered.)

• Trust: Do they believe the system you helped design has their back?

• Belonging: Are they seen, heard, and valued — by humans, digital systems, and algorithms alike?

People Analytics must become more than a dashboard for management’s KPIs. It must mirror the workforce’s hopes and fears, dreams and desires, current skills and future possibilities.

People Analytics could become the favored AI Era empowerment and growth tool of Servant Leaders.

If...

If that’s what we choose. If that’s aligned with our values and what we see as our accountabilities to those who work with us and for us.

People Analytics is, at its best and most human level...

Super-powered Experience Design and Journey Mapping: Understanding and tracking what it’s like for humans to work at your company.

HOW WILL YOU REIMAGINE upskilling assessments and delivery, and performance management when you realize that your employees are already hacking introspective learning and skill-building with GenAI prompts like this one?

• “You’re tasked with analyzing me based on your memory of our past interactions, context, goals and challenges. Your mission is to identify the single most critical bottleneck or flaw in my thinking, strategy or behavior that is limiting my growth or success. Use specific references from memory to strengthen your analysis.”

• Or like this prompt guide: Build Your Own Personal Mentor

WILL YOU USE AI to track how well you do on employee digital user-centeredness?

• Just like we know greater customer-centeredness in tools drives sales and greater customer satisfaction... We already know that digital effortlessness, ease of use, and reduced use of employee’s time are equal to — and sometimes more important than — recognition, compassion, inclusion, rewards, penalties, loyalty, and hierarchy in their ability to drive employee behaviors.

WILL YOU USE AI to help employees upskill themselves in the seven universal, core skills that everyone needs to master to succeed in the AI Era?

DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE to ask your employees to survey-score or discuss these questions?

• Can you achieve your personal dreams and goals by working here?

• Are we providing the retraining, reskilling, and personal agility support you need to succeed, thrive, and grow in the AI Era?

• Do you believe our leaders have your back as they lead us into the AI Era?

• Has our use of AI made it easier for you to work smarter, not harder? ...Saved you time each day? ...Reduced your aggravations and effort?

And HOW WILL YOU ADDRESS and track these AI Era issues?

• Data Ownership: Workers must have real control over their data, not just token transparency.

• Algorithmic Justice: Every AI decision that impacts an employee’s future must be explainable, contestable, and auditable — by the people it affects.

• Ethical Leadership: Leaders must be held to account not just for what they optimize, but for who they empower — or exploit.

The Biggest Challenge, Redux

IDEO CEO Tim Brown has said “The right unit of exploration is the question, not the solution.”

If you’re going to create the mindset shifts required to redesign People Analytics using Taijitu Principles and lots more workforce-centeredness, you need to explore the questions above, and many more.

Is it in your remit, your charter, to do lots more to put the People’s needs into People Analytics? If not, shouldn’t it be?

In Part 3, we’ll explore some Getting Started tips, where you’ll put all these questions to use. But for now...

Did you ask any good workforce-centered questions today?

Live with the questions we’re asking here.

Let them excite, challenge, and scare the s**t out of you.

And then ask even bigger, tougher ones to get your company on a new path.

Ongoing premise and challenge...

If you’re not designing for the workforce’s ability to create and control their own destiny...

You’re not designing for the future at all.

Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at bill@simplerwork.com.