Henrik Jarleskog: AI Squad, BarCeptionist, Full Stack Hospitality | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick Ep50
English Transcript
© Copyright 2025 Menlo Creek Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Cold Open
[Laughter]
All right
I’ll count us down
in three,  two, one.

Jeff Frick:
Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here coming to you for another episode  of Work 20XX. And we're going across the pond  to Stockholm today for our next guest. That’s the beauty, One of the  great things that came out of Covid is everyone is pretty used to doing these types of calls and it's not that strange to have calls with people all over the world. So thankfully through the magic of the internet all the way  from Stockholm he's Henrik Jarleskog, the  Head of Future of Work at Sodexo. Henrik, great  to see you.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Great to  see you, Jeff. And I'm happy  to be here. And you know, we are in this new type of global work, right?

Jeff Frick:
Right, right,  And we our paths have crossed many many times online. So it's great to finally get to I don’t know meet in person almost in person virtual in person, whatever we whatever we describe this, but it certainly feels good.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, I think,  you know, you are and  this podcast is one of the OGs in this area the future of work  you know, it was one of  the first podcasts I really started listening to in the beginning you know, when, when the pandemic and everything hit and I always used to have your sessions in my headphones, walking to work suddenly because I used to take a train, but, many memories of past sessions with you Jeff and listening to it on my way to work walking.

Jeff Frick:
So that's great.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Happy to be here.

Jeff Frick:
Well thank you again.  Thankfully Darren Murph was gracious enough to accept my invitation for episode number one. So I knew if I could get Darren that the that the seas  would part for me and everyone else  would be Okay, that's  legitimate. So Sodexo Big giant company. Not everybody  knows about it certainly here  in the States. So give a quick  overview of Sodexo because I think it's  a big behemoth that maybe not  everyone is aware of.

Henrik Jarleskog:
I think you are absolutely right, Jeff. You know, we are I think we are still the 18th largest company in the world. When you look at the  amount of employees we exist in pretty much every country in the world where, you know, we do a lot of food business and we also do facilities management. We do kind of the full workplace spectrum. We do it for corporates and we do it  for the likes of hospitals, schools,  offshore, remote. We ran the Olympics  games this summer. and Roland-Garros and in the NFL  stadiums where we also take care of a lot of services,
including food  and beverage.

Jeff Frick:
So just I'm going to put a number on it because you're very gracious. It's over 400,000  employees. I mean that is  a lot of people. And over €20 billion euros  of revenues or north of that  in revenue. So that is a significant, a significant company.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. It's huge.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, It’s huge

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. It's a really big  it's a behemoth as you say and it's a  B2B one. Therefore, most people  haven't heard the company because we  don't make a big fuss around who we are you know to people but B2B we're really big.

Jeff Frick:
So you've had this position Head of Future Work for a little while and I've heard getting  ready for this. You tell a story about a sit down with the CEO and I wonder if you  could share this because for  such a company that's been around a long time a very big specialty in food and facility services and tangential  to that to have a person focused on the future of work talk about that conversation because I think it shows some really progressive thinking in the minds of the boss.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. I really have  a vivid memory of sitting down  with the CEO just when the pandemic had hit, right. Because we are  a B2B company. And we did do a lot of and still do of course transactional business. So, and that business bills on
people being in the office serving them with either food or certainly receptionist  services or taking care of the buildings cleaning the offices or the trains or the airplanes you know everything  altered a bit when people wasn't in the offices anymore. So I sat down with the CEO at the time and at the time, I was heading up strategy for Europe. Where he said,  Henrik our industry or kind of the workplace industry will never become what it was before the  pandemic again. It will  change. It will irreversibly change. But we don't  know how. So I want you to take the lead  of understanding that I want you  to analyze do surveys, write whitepapers educate yourself, us and the market because I believe he said if you own the  problem statement you can also become a market maker. This was  five years ago. So I got that task of really figuring out the  future of work five years ago but as a part time or a double hat with my strategy job at the time.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, that's  pretty progressive because as you know my one and only  all time favorite business book ‘Innovator's Dilemma’ by Clayton Christiansen I know even know  how old it is now it's probably I don't know 40 years old 30 years old. The whole idea that you know mature  businesses with smart executives making sound  business decisions based on marginal improvements that their customers are asking for will always miss  discontinuous change because their customers aren't asking for it. They're asking for better, faster, or smarter of the things you're already selling them. So to a minute and  to pluck somebody out and say really start to think about how this is going to  change our world forever. And own the problem statement that's pretty progressive.

Henrik Jarleskog:
It is. And I just  loved it because this is exactly how to motivate somebody like me because I've been doing these kind of heavy lifts few times before doing the new things  or trying to infuse new type of innovations in markets. Same time at my time at Ernst and Young where we  introduced invest in  partnerships instead of transactional outsourcing kind of a  win-win model. I was, the same way of looking at a market. How can we really  change it forever? And it's really I would say energizing to figure out how to to change for an industry to make it better. To build back better for everyone who works. I think that's something that motivates at least me.

Jeff Frick:
[Jeff] Yeah.  That's great. So seems like one of the big themes in terms of the the change well we know  that is right  in the change  in the role of what the office is and what the role of facilities is has changed dramatically. And in terms of the facilities  people and what you measure it's not so much  about SGA anymore. Nobody wants to be  a cost center. It has to be in support of the people doing the  main business. So it feels like the the focus has really  shifted from attendance which is  stupid in the first place to experience, right. And how you deliver that experience.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Frick:
And coming from  a food background. I think that's pretty unique position to come from. One of my favorite shows on the internet is Hot Ones  with Sean Evans and one of the magic  formulas of that show is breaking bread  over shared pain. When you break bread  with somebody you create  an intimacy and you create a  type of relationship that, you know, kind of  goes back deep into our roots of the power of hospitality and community. So you guys are in a pretty unique place starting from food and food as a base and what that  means to people to start to  help build out some of these  experience capabilities in these facilities.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Absolutely. And, you know, there are a few really large companies that we compete with. All of them come  from different, angles. You have the real estate companies who, you know, comes from the  transactional business of selling and  buying real estate. You have a few of them coming from the  cleaning business a couple of them coming from the food business or safety and security business. But over time they kind of widen the  portfolio at least over the last 21 years I've been in this industry or the workplace industry it has evolved over time. It has been growing I would say widening the scope from 3 or 4 services. You kind of started with maybe  cleaning, reception services and lighter  building maintenance. Then you're building up more and more services, outdoor maintenance, grounds and landscaping, concierge services. And now lately, you know, it's everything is just, around experiences as you say. How can  we create offices and  workplaces to places where people actually want to go where it's meaningful  to travel in not being forced to it. And as you say  for us we are more relevant  than ever because breaking bread  is number one, right? On the list why people want to meet with their peers. They get into the office sit down have a  Swedish fika share a little piece of bread have some coffee. That's really what  brings relationship to a stronger and better level.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah. It’s a, as our mutual friend Brian Elliott loves to say, right. Distributed doesn't mean  never together. And it's really about intentional which was my great  word that Darren you know, turned me on to  years ago and so You know, I was just at the Atlassian show. And they talk about their facilities and really trying to make them attractive places for people to come. And also to think about things that you can't do at home or you can't necessarily do at a remote location that the main office or an office is really, really suited for. And the framework that I, that I found coming out of Covid that helps people think about it is ‘off-sites.’ Everybody knows what  an off-site is, right. What makes an off-site work? An off-site is intentional. You've got objectives. Everybody's  focused who is there  for a day or two days on whatever the problem is. You have a variety of different activities over the course  of your off site and you do  some work but you do some fun and you break some bread. And then you leave it and you have objectives and you have goals and you've accomplished stuff so. I always tell people ‘on-site’ is the new ‘off-site’. What are the things that you can do to your  on site to make it appealing for people to come in and do that type of work? Really intense, high value, great delivery, community. And it really  begs for almost this hospitality like  point of view because you do off sites often  at really nice resorts or really nice places. Well why? Because they have all  of the great resources from a hospitality point of view. To deliver that experience so people go home energized, productive, and you accomplish some things.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Exactly you know, it's all coming back to ‘Full-Stack Hospitality’ in a way. If you look at what  happens in building today kind of a multi-tenant building given, you know, in any city. A lot of the time you get into kind of an entrance hall, with a high loft and high ceilings. And maybe if you’re lucky there is a logo  on the wall. Maybe a sofa and behind the glass walls, you have a couple of  security guards and they may say hello to you. That's pretty common experience when you get into multi-tenant building,  right? So what I am doing and what we are doing is completely rethink these areas because what you can do is to open these areas up in your multi-tenant building, for example create an  experience through a great  dining experience. It could be breakfast it could be lunch, dinner It could be the Swedish fika again. We can combine it with podcast studios or pubs for meetings where pretty much anyone can go in. You can combine that with a community host that really creates a vibe in that space day by day. You can launch hybrid town hall meetings which are seamless from a food and  beverage perspective with the audio video just working without hassle. That type of experience is something that any company  really wants to have as  part of a lease. And that's also why I think the dialogs I have with real estate  executives right now is just completely new type of dialog where we as an outsourcing provider of workplace services, food and F.M. we can start working directly with the real estate owners unlocking that value for the tenants in that building because they would  share that space they would  share that vibe.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Henrik Jarleskog:
No longer does any you know, all of  the companies create their  own vibe because they can take part of something bigger. And I think that is part of this full stack hospitality movement that I see. It's a  great thing.

Jeff Frick:
I love  that because you know, shared services  is the thing that's transformed tech in a huge way, right? In terms of cloud, what is cloud? It's a shared  computer It’s shared infrastructure. Pay by the drink. Pay for what you use. Don't have a big  piece of investment in an asset that you  don't use all the time. So are you seeing more and more then, you know kind of this  suite of shared services within a facility  that can be used by different tenants  for whatever you know for different times when they have  different demand. Is that an increasing way  to solve kind of the flexibility challenge?

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, exactly. So not everyone sits in a multi-tenant building, but a lot of companies and people do. A lot of companies over the last years they've been rightsizing actually shrinking their space because of because of hybrid work. They have  too much space. They may have utilization circling around maybe 30% so they can easily get rid of, let's say 30%, 40% without having two small, small space. But what happens then is that they also want to have access to the larger hybrid town hall meeting spaces or more I would say medium large meeting spaces. And they also  want a restaurant because maybe  they can’t have that in that smaller,  right sized office anymore. So they want  to share that. So in a way it's more sustainable as well because you use that  building for more companies and you use that space you know, to a higher utilization which is good for the environment too. Right? And it's good  for the value and the valuation of the in the actual building for the real estate owner. I think this  is a movement that we will see more and more, because nobody wants to come into an empty space where they, you know, are maybe mandated to work  from the office.

Jeff Frick:
Nothing is more deflating than an empty quiet space

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, we've all  have felt that I think most of us as  leaders at least. And, I think, a lot of companies still struggle with making hybrid work because of space that is not  designed to their new  way of working.

Jeff Frick:
Right. So I just had an  interview with Charles Corley from M Moser  and Associates from Singapore. And he, you know, he said one of their things they  push people to do is even have a dedicated  person focused on making sure that the community spaces have things going on all the time to actually make the investment so that it's not just kind of a nice space that no one really  uses or utilizes but actually have somebody focused on that from kind of a community building point of view so that not only are there a lot of things, but there's a variety of things, you know, there's there's yoga, there's lunch and learns you know, there's all these different things that that create an environment and create an opportunity for people, again, to do things and to  come there honey instead  of vinegar because they can do things and get experiences that they can't get anyplace else. But it's not  only that it's also  being seen being remembered feeling a connection to a human. Right. Because that’s not something that we have an abundance of in daily work life anymore. So just to give an example I can't really name the names here. But I can explain  what I'm what I'm  seeing is that in probably the coolest workplace in Sweden right now. It's a brand  new office it's a collective of consultancies creative companies, tech startups. They have this  fantastic workplace and they are investing in kind of a meet and greet person when you get there but it's actually  a security guard. But that person  knows your name and says,  Hello, Welcome. How are  you today? Then you can walk your way to in into that  workspace. The first thing that happens is a young lady and she is  combination of a of a barista and receptionist call it a bar-ceptionist. And she also  remembers names. Remembers what kind of coffee  you want and everything and really creates  this vibe without managing maybe those things like yoga sessions but really playing  that role of the heart of  the workplace. And so whenever you ask people what's the best with that coolest  workplace that is, you know, outfitted in really cool ways and has every thinkable great thing in that space the feedback  is always that lady who runs  the barista reception. That's what people  remember and love because they feel a connection, they seem they feel seen. I think that's a  sign of the times, Jeff.

Jeff Frick:
They feel seen. I love that you know it's funny it comes back to people, right? We're not that  complicated we’re people and  we like other people. When you see kind of really futuristic cities or really futuristic buildings and a lot of times these kind of really futuristic renderings they don’t have any  people in them, like Where are the people?

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, exactly. [Henrik] How much fun is that?

Jeff Frick:
It’s people that make it.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, buildings are boring. People are more fun.

Jeff Frick:
Yes When done right. So shifting gears  a little bit in terms of the  role of data and kind of the  technical challenges and what you  have to overcome. I mean,  I think probably one of the  hardest things not maybe one of the hardest things for people running a facility is planning food. When they don't, they're not sure how many people are going to  come in and out. And you know what a huge contrast to pre-COVID when  you pretty much knew. So I'm just curious in kind of the role of data, the role of forecasting, you know, kind of upping the game in terms of the increased dynamism of the marketplace and activity, how are, you know, your clients using technology and new ways to better manage a much more  dynamic and shifting I don’t know,  unpredictable, Maybe it feels like I can predict it. How do you manage food in 2025?

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. You're on to something really complex here Jeff. Appreciate the question, but I think I need to  back the tape a bit for for the listeners to follow on this. If you are a huge player in outsourcing generally the business builds on responding to requests for partnerships for example where you're asked to provide a lot of services on a service level  agreement, maybe 15, 20, 30  countries easily it becomes quite  a big contract volume, because you also  employ maybe 500 people in your own  organization that suddenly takes care of a lot of business for that client connected to for example food, cleaning building maintenance, whatever it can be. So I think we need to understand that first. And in 2014, for example, I was part of or actually led the negotiation between Sodexo and one of the largest life science companies in this world. So I was a consultant at  Ernst and Young at that time but everything is about  to understand and what's the  volume per service and what's it  going to cost in those 30 countries and really negotiate that. And negotiate the contract claims was easy back  then, right Because the business was similar Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,  Friday. And nowadays it's much more complex because you really have to understand the people flow into buildings. So people flow  in Hungary. Are they the same as in Spain or in Finland? Sweden, the US? You can't really guess on that because, if you guess wrong, either you're come in to cheap or come in to expensive and it will never win. So what you really  need to understand is how many people  are in a building. If you're going  to serve food How many people  will be in this building in three weeks on the Monday between half past 11 and 1:00, for example. How many will be in  two days later Wednesday,  or example. So if you don't know that, you will have a problem from a supply chain perspective of ordering ingredients, making sure that you don't produce too much waste, all of these things has become much more complex. And this is  also why everything needs to  become digitalized.

Jeff Frick:
Right

Henrik Jarleskog:
So it's a good question.

Jeff Frick:
And are the systems catching up? Are you seeing you know, are the is the sophistication of the  modeling and things adjusting now that we  you know, you've got a few years worth of data.

Henrik Jarleskog:
So it's not quite as the shock as it was before. Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
More complicated. Right.

Henrik Jarleskog:
It is more  complicated. It's catching up. But there is  no blueprint I would say  for this. Different clients and  different companies We do, and you know in certain ways for example take a if you look at our  office right sizing service that we’ve innovated  over the last year here in  Sweden it's a combination of a  meeting booking platform, co-working space usage and sensors coming from the cleaning  service that we do kind of  cross-referencing that then we can really understand exactly how the  building is utilized. And from that type of information can also  understand. Are we overstaffed on Mondays or Fridays? Because everyone  knows that we usually have it Wednesday mountain but today it’s actually the Tuesday mountain. Tuesdays are bigger than Wednesdays because we know, the movement of people in buildings suddenly. So we are catching up from a digitalization  perspective in that sense but also, of course in the platform of  running restaurants. That's also something that has to be more and more digitalized to keep up the speed.

Jeff Frick:
You have been  doing this. I think you said you've been in this for like 20 plus years.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, 21 years

Jeff Frick:
Congratulations

Henrik Jarleskog:
Thank you

Jeff Frick:
But what you haven't been doing for 21 years is playing with AI. And I knew I would  have you on eventually but why I had to  reach out to you the other day and I'm just going to pull up the post because I think  it's pretty wild. You put out a post and you talked about and I joke  I call them your your chief of staff your cabinet your dirty dozen. I don't  know what you call your little worker bees but this was  a fascinating. So you  said that I've got this great,  effective team and I'm just going to  read it real quick because I think it's pretty insightful.

You've got ChatGPT as your  Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer
Claude as your  Executive Editor-in-Residence
Perplexity as  VP Research and Insight
Gemini as your  Director of Real-Time Verification
Midjourney,  Creative Director of Visual Production
Canva,  Head of Rapid Design and Branding
Eleven Labs,  Senior Manager of Voice Experience
Notebook LM,  Chief Knowledge Curator
Gamma AI, Director of Presentation
Otter AI, Chief Meeting Historian
Ambient AI, Chief Workflow Orchestrator and
Veed The Director of Video Content.

I about fell off  my chair when you when do you dropped this? And what's  interesting is you couched  it in the that you were  actually talking to a group  of executives and asking them about  their AI engagement. And it reminds me, too, of the time I had an interview with Bill Schmarzo. So he had just  moved to Iowa and went to some like Iowa development thing. And they asked  people, you know, how AI is going to impact their worlds. And nobody, nobody raised their hand.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah.

Jeff Frick:
It was in like the lower, lower quadrant. So clearly they weren't kind of clued in to what's going on. So many questions. First off  this is amazing. Thank you for thinking and helping people. I think yeah, I think we're at a stage in this adoption where people  really need models that we can look to  other people to, to basically pattern their behavior after if they're not naturally curious. But, you know, some basic things. How do you keep up with this stuff? Do you have an AI buddy, that helps you, you know, kind of evaluate new applications? You can't hardly keep up with it because there's  new things being introduced all the time. So share a  little bit generally. And then I want to go into some of the specifics about how you're using some of these tools to really change your, your own workflow and your own productivity.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. It's fascinating. Jeff, journey that I've  been on over the last year is  just something else. I feel today that  I'm 3x’ing myself or 3 to 4x’ing myself in many dimensions. And it's all  part actually I think that's worth  mentioning first personal journey. I do pay for these things on my own. I need to  say that first. And, some five years ago, when the pandemic started you know, I went  through a divorce, my grandmother died, my cousin died. My father died. I had two small kids. I used to travel a lot over the world managing 16 countries. It was a big  hassle actually. And before that, I was a  management consultant traveling the  world to work so from maybe  2018, I've been on a  personal journey to be more  healthy, spend more time on stuff that I love less on shit, you know, and really become a  new version of myself. And that's what I felt last spring that this train was about to leave the station. The train of AI I need to figure  this out because AI is one of the two  strongest legs in the future of  work like it’s it's AI and  distributed work and those  together kind of  will dictate how companies operating models  are built going forward. And everything connected to that. So you know, I can’t  be in the role of future of work not  knowing and really using AI on  a daily basis. So that’s  kind of the the platform for  where I am today. I joined Daan van Rossum have you met Daan any time?

Jeff Frick:
I don't think so.

Henrik Jarleskog:
He’s a fantastic guy. He's known in the global media magazines and he runs, his, FlexOS company is a media platform today, but they also do AI training for executives. I jumped on that course. That's kind  of a from Newb  to Master course in 28 days where you do self studies most of the time, but you also had meetings with Daan. And, the whole point  of that is to go in kind of naked  and then you end that course with your  own AI team. So that's responding to one of your questions. Do you have an AI buddy? How do you keep up? Because the  ingenuity with what Daan does is that he also provides a community that's for free on a life time basis. So everyone who takes that course who have their, AI team, also kind of vibes every day. Did you  see that thing on that AI? Oooh Karma just dropped another version. Grammarly came  with this, Copilot did this today. Did you see it? That thing is what is very helpful to keep up to date with what's happening, but to be honest I always  feel behind. Although I know probably I’m  at the top 5% in the world user of this.

Jeff Frick:
Share for people how important it is to have  an AI person, buddy to bounce  ideas off to share these things, to learn about new things. Cause I think that's a really important piece of the puzzle. You gotta You got to have kind of somebody with you. It's so much easier to go  on a journey with somebody versus by yourself and, you know, expose blind spots and really help you discover  new things.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. And so, just so we are super clear on this you mean like having AI as a thinking partner?

Jeff Frick:
No, I mean  a person, person, like your little group that you're  talking about.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah.  But that's. That's the way  to do it. I've understood that now, from spending a year of really digging deep into AI, the power of AI is, from the individual perspective, people getting curious. So sharing experiences as a social movement that is what's going  to really bring powerful transformation  in companies. You can't really set up AI strategy for a company and let's automate that process. Give an AI to people, figure this out. You know, it's never going to happen, because you really need to bring this power from inside out, kind of if you will.  When you get that social movement going then you know, AI is a fantastic thing because then the  skepticism disappears. You try new things and be excited when a new functionality  drops and kind of a bit of a  FOMO situation as well. Like, my buddy's been using that new version of ChatGPT-4.5 now I haven’t even tried I need to do it. That kind of feeling, is fantastic. So having a buddy is absolutely key, I would say to create this social movement.

Jeff Frick:
And it's great that you were confused by my question because Charles also, who's also way  down the AI path talks about using AI as  his thought buddy as really a  thought partner. And the other framing that he used which I thought was really powerful is think of it as a junior colleague. A smart junior colleague, but a junior colleague there still needs to have their work checked now and then before you make some kind  of big commitment. So I thought that  framing was so was so good I wonder if you can  share some of the specific little tasks that have been transformed for you, in kind of  your daily existence by using some of these tools.

Henrik Jarleskog:
I think we need to go by example actually because, I do  use it so much in all of these different  tools or AI tech day by day now so you know,  if I say ‘Oh I use all the tools every day.’ Yeah, nobody understands what it means. So exactly let's, put it  like this then. I was  asked last autumn, sometime  in November, to present at a conference on the future work. From IFMA. [International Facility Management Association] Can you please kind of come here and talk about how distributed work and  AI is developing? So I was like, yeah, of course I can do that. Ex-consultant.  Right. How do you do your presentation? How do you  go about it? You start, you know, sit down. You do your straw man on the PowerPoint, you can start putting in headlines, maybe you find, some presentations that  you've been using before and you try to  order them and they don't really  get there. You start writing bullet points on the slides and it  takes forever to create such a you know powerful presentation that you’re really satisfied with. It could easily take a week you know if you do  it part time. That's how I did it, at least as a  management consultant for many years. But nowadays to give that example is that I download the relevant reports that I have. Think kind of the  Gensler report, McKinsey,  Boston Consulting Group whatever. That is up to date and quite new, into Notebook LM  for example. It's a  Notebook LM It's a  Google product, where you can  kind of summarizes, let's say 3,000 PDF pages and a couple of podcasts in a few minutes, and I get that brief document on exactly what these  are about. Suddenly I have a  pretty good source for information  where the world of work  is going. Take that and I lift it in maybe to ChatGPT. This time I would not  probably choose the 0.3 model because it digs so deep. If I'm going  to do a presentation it's good enough with  4.5 or 4.0, and I ask it to help me create that presentation. And it really digs deep on all of that data that I found in those reports. And I can download maybe earlier presentations as well that  I've been doing, I ask it to prepare  for PowerPoint. Please do it on a  15-page PowerPoint and it should take around 20 minutes to present. Then does that in a couple of seconds. And just because ChatGPT is  not that good with words, I may take it to Claude. Because Claude, it's much  better with language can instruct what kind of tone? In, I want the  presentation to have. Should it sound like the  Monocle magazine? Or should we should  like the Financial Times or Bloomberg or,  you know, should we use  Henrik's voice and tone? and can choose that. And then when  we've done that it's important to just  bring it into Gamma For example, the PowerPoint producer. o lift that prepared content of 15 page with that specific content into Gamma ask it to preserve what I'm going to present with the content that I've been developing hit generate when  you’ve kind of decided the color scheme and fonts Then in  one minute or so I have that 15 minute  presentation done and ready. So having done that maybe took around let's say 30 minutes  of work, everything We are at draft level 80% done and good Because the pictures might be AI generated I want to shift them out with real pictures probably, maybe add a few  corporate logos. Because I don't want to use that in these things. I want to be  mindful and ethical about the AI  I'm using and here's the  cool stuff Jeff We come down from  maybe a week of work to maybe  an hour to come to 80%  of the presentation.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Henrik Jarleskog:
If you  go back. If you remember, the first step I did here was the notebook LLM thing If you have tried that you can also pick studio, the audio file. Presentation  of that of those 3,000 pages  of reports. And you get a 17 minute sound file where you have two podcast host talking about most important things. What you  can do then is that you  save that sound file and you bring that into  your video production AI tool and say, can you  build me a video from that soundbite they're talking about from what they  are talking about and then  it does that. So suddenly  you sit there with an  intro video oh, let's say a minute or so, with that  audio sound file narrating the video that  the AI has developed based on the data that  I provided Notebook LM. So, in two  hours, maybe you have an intro video of your presentation. You have the  presentation content PowerPoint and the  outro video done. That's pretty much the process because you learn how to kind of work in a different way. Andd I really like what you said. It's like being a  partner at McKinsey.

Jeff Frick:
Right

Henrik Jarleskog:
You have  that hat on and you have  these fantastic people around you that are really upbeat and really want  to do a good job, and they overdeliver all the time. You give them tasks and you are always in the loop as a human. But, you know, you save so much time, you get so much  deeper into detail much more creative and different thoughts that I’ve never thought about  myself, of course

Jeff Frick
That is a great example. I mean, it's so  it's so funny because when you do start making  a stupid PowerPoint and thankfully I try not to  make them at all anymore if I can avoid it. But you always  get stuck in the colors  and the fonts and you know the simple things that ChatGPT or these tools are so good at will as you just said like make it 15 pages and 20 minutes. That is like the  hardest thing to do as an author of your own stuff. At least for me. I always have 10x  what I need and so when you you know even just to have an assistant to take your garbage and and condense it  and clean it up and give me something  nice and clean is a huge  value. I love that example.

Henrik Jarleskog:
And you know,  even more. Jeff. So, as you learn, I'm a quite open transparent guy. I am completely  okay with saying that I have challenges with procrastination, because

Jeff Frick:
Just you You’re the only one Henrik in the whole world that has problems with procrastination

Henrik Jarleskog:
I admit it.

Jeff Frick:
I think you have a few  compadres out there that you could  shuttle with.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah. This is  the more the more  complex questions that you have to deal with in your everyday work. Probably the more personal procrastination you have as a human because you really  need to progress your really need to figure out, find the dots, the patterns in this, in this complexity to turn it into something simple. This is probably  top two at least on what I feel the power of AI is  on the individual level. I never get  stuck anymore because I can come easily just pick up the phone and start talking to my thinking buddy ChatGPT  for example in advanced voice  mode and say this challenge  we have with employee engagement  in that area. Said I don't know what to do it, with it. Can we just talk  about it for a while? And maybe I do that on my way to work or from work. And suddenly, you know, the aha moment comes immediately because it helps you  slice the elephant in a way that you  never get stuck if you use it in the right way. So I think that's the thinking buddy in the AI which is the most  powerful thing.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah, it's  pretty wild. So just to steal another great line from from Brian Elliott, which I think is really impactful. You know his focus has always been on the future of work and distributed work. And he was  at Slack and, and Future Forum and all these things. But he made a really impactful statement that the same  management attributes that make a manager and a team successful, moving to  distributed work, are the same things that will enable that same manager to basically help his team be successful in AI, because it's about experimentation and  empowerment and trial and error and support  and you know not being afraid  to make mistakes a couple here and there along the way.  

Henrik Jarleskog:
Oh yeah,

Jeff Frick:
I think it's a really interesting kind of progression,  as you said, distributed work is the thing going forward. And distributed teams, excuse me really more  importantly. Work’s always  been distributed. But now within this AI, overlay it happens to be it's the  same management skills, it’s about risk taking and  empowerment and trial and error and encouraging people to, to embrace these new things.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yeah, yeah, and really  enthuse people to do it, you know. Can you make your  job more fun? Can it  suck less? Can you get  more creative? Can you be faster? You know, can you  end earlier on Friday? Try, try to  make it happen. You may have to  lead like that. I think that's the  right way to do it and fun you mentioned Brian,  because Brian is in the same AI community that  I am in and It actually today and yesterday I was talking to to Dave Cairns I know you know  Dave pretty well, because he had been  following my journey with AI as well  for a while and I kind of have been telling him you need to you need to  get into this and today, I get these  messages from Dave saying Wow! This is the wildest thing for the creative  process. You can utilize AI  to really think deeper challenge your  own thinking find your  own blind spots get deeper because you can you can talk  to the tech forever on any topic, and it will bring down the most ingenious things if you know how to use it.

Jeff Frick:
Right.

Henrik Jarleskog:
So again, proof of the social movement to creating curiosity and really sharing, how you do stuff. I think that's the zeitgeist as well.

Jeff Frick:
And I want to double down on something you said. Charles said most people  who are having some success  on this journey in terms of the conversational interface and the fact that just  start asking it questions I think there's a you know we're seeing  on the posts where these people put out these huge poster things with, you know, six point font on prompt engineering. And it's I don't even know how many words and lines and sections you can't even read the stupid thing which is so the  wrong approach and probably intimidates the hell out of people because they're trying to engineer the perfect prompt. But that's not how it works at all.

Henrik Jarleskog:
No it isn't. It's, it's more like  having a conversation knowing how to be clear  when you talk how to kind  of program the tech early on in a new chat. Take the role as my world class economic analyst on the food supply chain because I really  want to know what the bottlenecks in Poland are. How do I  procure meat? You know that's the type  of discussions you can  run into and really spend  hours on. And the thing is  Jeff that it's not, compared, it The big thing is not comparing it for example to how to how to search for information internet But the  thing is that you think  when you write you think when you talk to this AI. And just a  year ago I did not think  when I wrote or think when  I spoke to an AI. But today I may be  spending one hour maybe spending two hours  of writing or talking to that AI meaning that I'm thinking two hours more per day. So this is also  part of it right? It’s a  big thing. To spend more time thinking yes, you will be probably better off whatever you're doing.

Jeff Frick:
I love that. So we're getting towards the end of our time. 2025. You've been in workspace  for 20 plus years. You've been  in this role for the better part of a year. As you  look forward. What are some  of your priorities? What are you excited about? Are we making Are we making  the right moves? Are you seeing the right stuff in the marketplace, or what is still some of your frustrations? What’s kind of  your plan for 2025? What's your priorities?

Henrik Jarleskog:
Yes, I think It's difficult to  sound smart, right, in these  times when on that question because there's so many things happening in the world

Jeff Frick:
That’s why I didn't say 3 to 5 years. I would never  do that to you

Henrik Jarleskog:
Even though we’ve got a macroeconomic climate and everything but I'm really excited  about the exactly those two  societal shifts of distributed work and AI. You know, we have  never seen companies doing so much  with fewer resources. At the  same time they are  laying off people. Right? And that's  a sad story. And AI is really  coming in now really changing the game. Many companies, are trying to figure out the  next generation operating model This is what I'm thinking is the most interesting topic for me How do we create and  design corporate bodies? How will  they work? How will it govern this mechanism when people have maybe 20, 30 agents each every member of your  30 people strong CFO team have  30 agents. Every member of your marketing team may have  30 agents. Just imagining. Imagine how fast things can be done or how deep or how many things we are able to accomplish. Can be scary but also really fascinating to think about. So if you can take my  perspective as a former head of strategy for Europe, for example, usually we could spend a couple of months or three months a year

Henrik Jarleskog:
to really figure out these strategic analysis. In 16 countries and 100 services, calculating compound aggregated growth rate, in every country, in every service for three years ahead. Now, you know, you can do that within a week if you wanted to. But the thing is that most companies, they aren't there yet, but it's fascinating to see the speed  of development and how you design these organizations. And what you need what kind of skills you need. And I think people  should ask themselves exactly that question. What kind of skills do I need  in my role going forward? Because if I do not  invest in, for example AI or creating this team someone else will and I will probably  not be able to get that next  real cool job.

Jeff Frick:
Yeah. Feels like curiosity is moving up the list in terms of skills and attributes.

Henrik Jarleskog:
What do  you think Jeff? If you, had a kid today who was around ten years old you were figuring out kind of what will  that kid need when it enters the workforce, in let's say, ten  years from now? It's difficult

Jeff Frick:
Yeah I think it is, it’s Curiosity because we have no idea. Right? You have to be  open to change it’s curiosity and  agility and resilience. It has zero to do  with any actual tangible skill that you  would learn from an apprenticeship. It's about those. Really more your attributes, your characteristics to deal with the  crazy change that is coming each and every day.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Creativity. And really  being able to start on a fresh every time you  run into a challenge. What kind of technology can I use to get towards this challenge and  really solve it in a fast way? I've been  playing around with the likes of Lovable for example. Because, you know what Lovable is?

Jeff Frick:
No.

Henrik Jarleskog:
It's another AI where you can create  a home page or kind of a business ready platform within a couple of hours. So let's say you start with looking for How can I make a cheese delivery company in Washington? What do I need? What do I need?  Different types of cheese?  How will I can solve the food  supply chain for it? And when you've done that within maybe half a day you can put all of that content for that business plan that strategy, that campaign into Lovable and Lovable turns it into a home page ready business for you. You know, that type of creativity or as you say, curiosity will be golden for any professional going forward.

Jeff Frick:
Well Henrik, we're at the end of our time. And I really appreciate. I love the fact that you are just  pushing on edges pushing on edges, pushing on edges. And, you know, you mentioned the word governance. We didn't get  into that. We'll have to save that for next time. And I think we're going to have to rely on our friends on  that side of the Atlantic because, you know, based on our lack of success around any type of governance in social media we still struggle on the privacy side. You guys came up with GDPR we can't even get a national breach notification policy. And it doesn't make me feel very confident about what's  going to happen on these technologies that are moving even faster, so We'll save the governance for another day. But certainly it's exciting. And people like you who are both embracing it with jumping in  with both feet but also sharing  the journey so other people, you know, like Dave, even yesterday, you know,  can benefit I think is really, really, really important and a huge benefit to a lot of people.

Henrik Jarleskog:
Thank you  very much, Jeff, and it has been a real pleasure to be part of this fantastic podcast. Thank you.

Jeff Frick:
I really appreciate  you coming on and have a great day. He's Henrik, I'm Jeff you're watching  Work 20XX. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening on the podcast. We'll see you  next time. Take care.

Cold Close
Cool
That was great. Man.

Yeah it was good and good  flow and you’re, you know you have that magic that most podcast hosts don’t.
Oh, that’s  nice to say.
And take that  with you because  it is a it is still black magic for most people. Good podcasts  don’t grow on trees as we say  in Sweden.
Well thank you  very much. Talk to you.
Bye bye.
bye now.

Bonus
Hey, Jeff Frick here. If you've made it this far, thank you  very much. I really  appreciate your ongoing support as we celebrate Work 20XX  Episode 50  with Hendrick really talking about  the future that, that future of  work’s evolved from talking about  days of the week to talking about how do you  build your own AI team behind you to help you 3x yourself, as Hendrick said. But one of the  questions he asked me, what advice would  you give someone, say, a ten year old who's going to be entering  the workforce in ten years? What do you think  it’s going to be? A skill. And we talked about some really attributes, but I said incorrectly probably or definitely that,  you know there's no skill that you could  learn in an apprenticeship that would protect you from this onslaught. And the more I think about it, and I've actually  seen some quotes, where people say, you know,  be a plumber. It’s going to be a long time before the robots. And I've done a  lot of work in robots are in people's  homes repairing clogged toilets and, doing complex  remodels and just all the things that plumbers do. So plumbers, electricians, those are  probably going to become more and more valuable, as maybe they're one of the latter ones to,  to get automated. We'll see. We'll see how  it shakes out. But again, thank you  for listening. If you got this far, I really appreciate it. Take care. Share with a friend. Like subscribe and smash that notification bell. Leave a review. Thanks. Take care. Bye bye.

Henrik Jarleskog: AI Squad, BarCeptionist, Full Stack Hospitality | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick Ep50
English Transcript
© Copyright 2025 Menlo Creek Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved

‍