3 quotes that tell the story of UNLEASH World 2024

UNLEASH World 2024 was a truly inspirational show.

Over the two-day event in Paris, the UNLEASH team had over 200 top tier speakers take to the stage to discuss the latest challenges in the world of HR and technology.

AI was, of course, on everyone’s lips at the show – in fact, we had a whole stage dedicated to this technology.

However, the futurists, HR leaders, analysts, academics and vendors taking to the stage really emphasized the human side of this technology.

At the end of the day, you invest in all the AI you want, but if your people don’t use it, then what is the point?

The point of AI is to make people’s lives easier, help them do their jobs even better, and ultimately better serve customers.

That’s my top line takeaway from this year’s Paris show, which marks my sixth as a journalist at UNLEASH.

Let’s dig into some of the content specifics – here are some standout quotes that tell the story of our 2024 Paris event.

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Amy Webb: ‘Failure to plan is planning to fail’

Whether or not we want it to, the future always shows up.

Our natural human response to uncertainty is fight or flight – we are “wired to fight against change, to try and preserve the status quo at all costs”.

Rather than taking an “know it all” approach, Futurist Amy Webb called on organizations and individuals to embrace the unknown and have a “what if” attitude.

That was the underlying theme of her closing keynote on Day One of UNLEASH World 2024.

Webb split companies into two categories bystanders and pathfinders – the latter lean into uncertainty because they see it as helping “them explore risk and opportunities in new ways in order to unlock possibilities for growth”.

Pathfinders are also “all in” – “they are always developing their people, they are always transforming, it is not a one and one deal”. HR leaders always have a seat at the C-Suite table, and they play a central role in strategic decision-making.

Amy Webb during her UNLEASH World 2024 keynote.

Peter Hinssen also talked about uncertainty in his Day One opening keynote when he talked about the ‘never normal’.

To thrive in this era, Hinssen wants HR leaders and organizations to break out of a mindset of the ‘new normal’, and instead embrace the idea that the world is constantly changing and “more and more, we live in a world of ‘unknown unknowns’”.

Speaking directly to the HR leaders in the audience, Hinssen asks them “How often in your company do you see yesterday’s logic being used in a world that’s changing faster than ever before?”

Instead, HR teams need to “innovate when you can, not when you need”. They need to “think about the old things you shouldn’t be doing”, and get rid of them, don’t just build on top.

Rather than being puzzle solvers, the never normal requires leaders to be “missed solvers”, to assess how to move forward, “even when you don’t have all the pieces right in front of you”.

Webb’s closing statement at UNLEASH World is that HR leaders and organizations must remember “the future hasn’t happened yet, it is something we write with the choices that we make today”.

So, employers need to “plan for the future you want”; at the end of the day, “failure to plan is planning to fail”.

Josh Bersin: ‘We are in the most disruptive period of time in HR’

HR industry analyst and Founder & CEO of The Josh Bersin Company Josh Bersin opened his Day Two keynote by declaring “I’ve been doing this for 20 odd years”, and “I am pretty convinced we are in the most disruptive period of time in HR”.

AI and technology is going to play a huge role in helping HR solve the labor and business challenges organizations face.

The key is figuring out which tools to buy – Bersin is clear that “we’re now in a world where smaller companies will outperform bigger companies if they’re managed well, and if they use technology effectively”.

But there is just so much choice, and Bersin predicts the number will increase, not decline, in the near future, and that only makes HR’s job “even harder”.

This only gets more complex in this age of AI – agents – which lots of vendors, whether that’s Workday, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft or SAP, are pioneering.

“You’re going to spend a lot of time as a buyer, as a HR organization, deciding how many agents you want, which one are going to be used by which constituencies in your company. That’s a big change in the market as well.

The agent is basically a representative of your company – and this is really, to me, going to be absolutely spectacular for the productivity of employees.”

The UNLEASH team was thrilled to welcome Google’s Ola Fadipe to talk about AI at UNLEASH World.

Fadipe shared Google’s people-first approach to AI: “While we’re committed to making AI even more helpful, it’s for people, it’s for businesses, it’s for communities. It’s for everyone; that is our mission”.

In Google’s view, for organizations and individuals to get the most of AI, employees to embrace a new mindset, one of “adaptability, of experimentation, of openness, and, I dare say, even welcoming change”, noted Fadipe.

They also need to be equipped with skills “to remain current and competitive in the face of rapid technological advances”, she concluded.

Chanel CPO: ‘Leadership means leading from a place of heart’

Alongside AI and preparing talent for the future of work, authentic and courageous leadership was a core theme of UNLEASH World 2024.

Chanel’s Chief People & Organization Officer Claire Isnard picked up on this thread during her Day Two session at UNLEASH World.

Isnard shared that “for me, leadership means leading from a place of heart”. “We talk a lot about the notion how can we bring our heart into business?”

Claire Isnard, Chief People & Organization Officer, Chanel speaking at UNLEASH World 2024.

Balancing leading with head and heart was the core topic of Dr Kirstin Ferguson’s closing keynote of UNLEASH World 2024, as well as Cardinal Group’s CPO Peter Lynch’s session.

He called on organizations to see vulnerability not as a weakness, but a strength, and for leaders to “lean into the ugly”.

Ugly is an acronym for “unique, gutsy, likeable and yoked”. It is not about being nice to people all the time, it is about being truthful and building trust.

He is very clear that the organizations that do this best are the ones where HR does not just have a seat at the table, instead HR owns the table.

Stay tuned for more insights from the UNLEASH World 2024 show from myself and my Editorial colleagues – we’ve got interviews with Josh Bersin, Kirstin Ferguson, PepsiCo’s Dannii Portsmouth, Chanel’s Claire Isnard, Zurich Insurance’s Jolanda Grob and many more in the coming weeks!