Yutaka Takagi

▶0:00IntroWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

▶0:42HostI'm excited to welcome Yutaka to the Built by People podcast. Yutaka, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:53GuestSure, Dave. Great to meet you. Great to have this opportunity to chat. Yeah, you know, my career really started several decades ago now, but it really started because, not because I knew anything about HR or payroll, to be honest, I couldn't spell it to save my life, but I, I was good with computers, right? I was good with both DOS and Windows, which was kind of a skill back at the time. That's, that's how far back this goes. And so, you know, as organizations were, were automating these solutions and putting these solutions on, computers or networked computers. They needed someone who could kind of manage the sort of the landscape of the technology, install software, things of that nature. That's kind of how I got into this, into this space of HR payroll benefits technology, right? And now what we kind of think of as sort of strategic HR technology and implemented a number of sort of different solutions, ERP systems and HR payroll systems. Moved into more of a sales and marketing type roles. Also spent a few years on the client side of this, the vendor relationship, right? I was in HRIS for a number of years helping to manage and optimize sort of the HR systems that this organization had. And so now I kind of find myself in this position of sort of being inside the vendor landscape, but also kind of having one foot out of it to kind of be looking outwards. What's happening in the marketplace in terms of technologies? What's happening in terms of trends? What's happening sort of societally, right, as we kind of welcome new generations into the workforce? What does that mean in terms of how organizations should think about their people, should think about their technology, should think about business, right? That's also being challenged now with AI. And so really kind of in that intersection, if I imagine this Venn diagram, people, business and technology, right at the center of it, I think, is, uh, is the space of HR technology. And, and, and that's kind of where I've spent 30 years of my life.

▶3:01HostItaga, can you tell us about a career-defining moment that you've had in your career?

▶3:06GuestOh boy. I'll say, I'll say very, very early on, uh, this was before even I got into this, into this business. I was still in college. I, uh, I did some volunteer work at a, at a, at a computer learning center in, in near, near, near my school. Again, this was, you know, early 1990s and it, when, you know, pre-internet sort of everyone was still coming to terms with Windows 3.1 for those who remember that, that environment. And, and so this was a, a opportunity for me to kind of recognize that I have the ability coming more from a social sciences background. I, you know, I was an econ major, wasn't an engineer or, or sort of, you know, in that technical side of the things, but coming more from that social sciences background, I had this ability to communicate technology and to involve people in technology. And so, you know, like if there's that really kind of sort of, I think felt like, I feel like now looking back on it kind of set me down this path where I'm able to sort of bring, continue to bring what is going on with technology and tie it to people's lives. I'll say another point several decades then later, uh, would have been, uh, would have been a time where, uh, I was, uh, I was implementing a HR solution and it was really centered around employee self-service back then, right? That was kind of the big thing, uh, putting, uh, employee records available through a web browser so that employees and managers can come in and manage those transactions themselves. And through one of these projects, I came across an organization where a key sort of transaction, as it turned out for this organization, was actually taking place when an office administrator from one floor took the interoffice mail down to an office administrator in the other floor, right? So like, think about like the, the paper timesheets and time-off requests that would accumulate, right? And they would every day take that folder down. And that was something that we were get— we were ready to automate that whole thing through this employee self-service, uh, tool. Uh, but then recognizing in that moment in that organization that that personal connection that the two office administrators had and that daily interaction was actually driving a lot of like important understanding of the workforce in a way that in a way that digital sort of workflows would not be able to capture. And so that was like sort of an awakening moment, so to speak, right? Where I saw this taking place and I was ready to just dive in, code the workflows to do everything, automate all that. You can stop doing this, carrying this paper back and forth. But in fact, that carrying the paper back and forth was actually an enormously important aspect of how this organization got stuff done. And that was like a switch that early in my career that kind of flipped for me to recognize, oh no, this is about people. Like technology's great and technology is awesome. It can enable a lot of things, but we have to always think about it in terms of what is it enabling for the people.

▶6:31HostHitaka, can you tell us about a challenge you've faced in your career and how you've overcome it?

▶6:37GuestBoy, I'll say, I mean, this actually speaks to sort of the other aspect, I'll say, of my job, and I think of a lot of people's jobs, is doing presentations, right? And, you know, sort of a big challenge, I mean, this was like a, just a kind of a moment in time, but something that really kind of stuck with me was doing a presentation important customer meeting, the importance of which was sort of, you know, very put forth very loudly and clearly by, by my leadership team. And I felt pretty good going into it, but the technology failed me, right? Uh, there's always some challenge, right? Internet or something. Laptop wasn't working. And at that moment, I couldn't proceed. I just, I froze up, right? In that moment, because I was so reliant again, just so reliant on the technology that I forgot that at the end of the day, I need to be able to communicate. I need to, I need to be able to tell the message regardless of what's happening on the screen or what not happening on the screen. And so that's, uh, you know, I'll say that's a point in time challenge, right? A single kind of event that took place that really changed the way I, I thought about what it takes to prepare every day for opportunities to communicate, opportunities to what, you know, even if it's, if it's a, a chat like this, or if it's, you know, if it's a more formal presentation in front of 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, sort of the, the, the level of preparation is the ability to, to tell the story no matter what. Uh, right. I have to be able to do that regardless of the technical situations, the lighting in the room, the web, web, when webcast cam is working or not working. Uh, gotta be able to, to tell the story, communicate at the end of the day What I want to be able to communicate. Uh, that was a, that, you know, that's a, you know, it was a painful event because, you know, we ended up, you know, that was not a great meeting obviously, and we didn't get the result we wanted out of that, uh, out of that meeting. Uh, but, um, but yeah, one of those things that I think those painful events that, that, that, yeah, teach us something.

▶8:46HostItaka, what's a legacy that you hope to leave as a leader and why?

▶8:54GuestWow. A legacy. Yeah, I guess I've been doing this for 30 years, so I guess it's time to start thinking in those terms. I would love to be able to think that even as we continue to automate, as we continue to bring in digital workers or AI bots, however we want to speak of them, as we continue down that path, we always remember at the end of the day who we're serving, you know, and that's gonna be true regardless of where we are, right? It's certainly from an HR perspective, we are, you know, human resources. Um, but also like even as a business, right? As a business, your end consumers are typically at some point, right? There's, it is to serve people. Um, and so if we would just walk that back, walk that chain back, if it's not, if it's to serve people, we need to look at the decisions we make from a human lens, the processes we create from a human lens. And so as we continue to automate things or rely on AI and the digital workforce agents, et cetera, to help us out, again, at the end of the day, it is to help us, right, in some fashion. And so I would love for my legacy to be to always bring the person into those technologies. Technology conversations and to be, you know, thought of as, as sort of someone who was always sort of empathetic to that perspective of, of the human effect of technology.

▶10:30HostYou talk about what parting advice would you like to share with our HR community?

▶10:34GuestYeah, you know, I, I think, and I'm not the sort of the original person to say this, uh, but you know, the, the human superpower is, I think, still to this day Communication and empathy, right? To be able to communicate, whether it's again, one-on-one, one-on-a-hundred, one-on-a-thousand, one-on-a-million, to be able to communicate empathetically. And, you know, I think we can, we can ask AI to simulate what that is, but to truly, truly, you know, feel what the other person's feeling, understand the situation, and communicate empathetically. I think if we, from a parting thought perspective, I would love for us to always keep that in mind. That's one part of the equation we cannot automate or we cannot allow, say, the AI and the chatbots to to do for us. We may rely on them to help us craft, say, communications, help us, say, answer repetitive questions, things of that nature, but always to keep in mind the human effect of what we're doing, what we do every day. So that critical point of communication has to be human to human.

▶12:07HostYutaka, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶12:12GuestThanks, Dave.