Sidecar Sync

AI Tacos & Amazon’s Return to Office Mandate | 72

• Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias • Episode 72

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In this episode of Sidecar Sync, hosts Amith and Mallory explore AI’s surprising role in fast food, focusing on Byte by Yum, an AI-powered platform transforming operations at Taco Bell, KFC, and beyond. What can associations learn from Yum Brands’ AI strategy? Then, they tackle Amazon’s return-to-office policy and what it means for workplace culture, collaboration, and AI’s growing influence on job structures. Plus, a shocking revelation—Amith has never had a Crunchwrap Supreme?! Join us for a fun and insightful conversation at the crossroads of AI, associations, and tacos.

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Chapters:
00:00 - Welcome to Sidecar Sync
03:21 - AI Tacos? Yum Brands’ Big Tech Play
08:47 - Can AMS Vendors Drive AI Innovation in Associations?
15:01 - Why Data is the Foundation for AI Success
27:05 - Amazon’s Return-to-Office Mandate: What’s Happening?
32:20 - Remote vs. In-Person Work: What’s Best for Innovation?
38:09 - What Associations Can Learn About Workplace Flexibility
41:05 - Closing: The Crunchwrap Supreme Challenge—Will Amith Try One?

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More about Your Hosts:

Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

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Mallory Mejias is the Manager at Sidecar, and she's passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.

📣 Follow Mallory on Linkedin:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias

Amith:

Time is your friend when it comes to waiting on an AMS replacement. Time is not your friend when it comes to sitting on the sidelines and waiting for yourself to somehow figure out AI. Welcome to Sidecar Sync, your weekly dose of innovation. If you're looking for the latest news, insights and developments in the association world, especially those driven by artificial intelligence, you're in the right place. We cut through the noise to bring you the most relevant updates, with a keen focus on how AI and other emerging technologies are shaping the future. No fluff, just facts and informed discussions. I'm Amit Nagarajan, Chairman of Blue Cypress, and I'm your host. Greetings and welcome to the Sidecar Sync, your home for content at the intersection of AI and associations. My name is Amit Nagarajan.

Mallory:

And my name is Mallory Mejiaz.

Amith:

And we are your hosts. And before we get into two topics today, at the intersection of AI and associations, we're going to hear a quick word from our sponsor.

Mallory:

If you're listening to this podcast right now, you're already thinking differently about AI than many of your peers, don't you wish there was a way to showcase your commitment to innovation and learning? The Association AI Professional, or AAIP, certification is exactly that. The AAIP certification is awarded to those who have achieved outstanding theoretical and practical AI knowledge. As it pertains to associations, earning your AAIP certification proves that you're at the forefront of AI in your organization and in the greater association space, giving you a competitive edge in an increasingly AI-driven job market. Join the growing group of professionals who've earned their AAIP certification and secure your professional future by heading to learnsidecarai. Amit, I feel like you have had a crazy few days, few weeks. Honestly, how are you feeling? How are you doing?

Amith:

I'm doing great, you know, with kind of like the pace of AI. Progress is kind of the way my brain works right now. I feel like a ping pong ball or you know, feel like a ball inside a you know some kind of machine that's relentless and so it's good. That's what I thrive on, but I'm ready for a little bit of break. I'm going skiing. By the time this pod drops, I'll be out skiing somewhere.

Mallory:

So Awesome, awesome. And today you were doing some business planning, right.

Amith:

Yeah. Yeah, we're all about releasing AI agents that can help associations with their business, and agents are quickly turning into a new term called digital labor, which I think is perhaps a little more approachable, but that's essentially what agents are. So we have several new ones that we're planning for this year and continue to grow the ones that we already have in the market. So we had a team of people in New Orleans focused on that.

Mallory:

Awesome, awesome. Any secrets, sneak peeks that you can offer from what might be to come.

Amith:

Just stay tuned. There's a lot going on in Blue Cypress's crazy AI factory.

Mallory:

Speaking of AI factory. You all are not going to believe this today, but we are talking about AI tacos. Yep, that is true, that's our first topic for the day, and then we will be having an interesting conversation around Amazon's return to office and, amit, I'm really excited to get your take on that. So, first and foremost, ai tacos to get your take on that. So, first and foremost, ai tacos.

Mallory:

Bite by Yum is an AI-driven software-as-a-service or SaaS platform introduced by Yum brands to enhance operational efficiency and customer experience across its global restaurant brands, which include KFC, taco Bell, pizza Hut and Habit Burger and Grill. So here is a breakdown of what Bite by Yum actually does. The platform allows for customers to place orders through online and mobile applications, which streamlines the ordering process. Bite by Yum also integrates advanced point-of-sale or POS systems that facilitate transactions, which improve speed and accuracy at checkout. The platform includes tools designed to optimize kitchen operations, enhancing workflow efficiency and reducing wait times for customers. It also provides features that improve delivery logistics, which ensures timely service and better tracking of orders. It helps restaurants manage inventory more effectively, allowing for better forecasting and reduced waste. It also offers tools for managing staff schedules and productivity, which helps to reduce turnover and improve team member satisfaction. And finally, restaurants can easily update and manage menus through the platform, allowing for quick adaptations to customer preferences or seasonal changes.

Mallory:

So what are the strategic benefits here? Well, one Bite by Yum integrates various operational tools into a single platform, simplifying management for franchisees and reducing the complexity of using multiple vendors. Also, of course, the use of artificial intelligence allows for enhanced predictive analytics, enabling restaurants to anticipate customer demand more accurately and make data-driven decisions. And then, of course, by streamlining operations and enhancing order accuracy, bite by Yum aims to provide a better overall experience for customers. So, as of now, over 25,000 Yum restaurants globally are utilizing at least one component of Bite by Yum, marking a significant step in the company's digital transformation efforts. So the next time you're eating a Crunchwrap Supreme at Taco Bell, you might be able to thank AI, at least in part, for that. So, amit, you sent me this article, maybe last week, and you were the one I've got to give you credit that came up with the phrase AI tacos. What are your thoughts here with AI-driven fast food?

Amith:

Well, my question first of all what is a Crunchwrap Supreme?

Mallory:

You're joking.

Amith:

Yeah, I'm serious, I don't know that.

Mallory:

I can't believe we're having this moment live on the podcast. I know we have listeners that know what this is. Have you been to Taco Bell?

Amith:

Oh yeah, I grew up at Taco Bell, it seems, and high school was like my like, but I never got to a Crunchwrap Supreme. But I ordered the same things I ordered in high school, but that was a long time ago.

Mallory:

Okay, Well, I don't know how long Crunchwrap Supremes have been around, but it's basically a tortilla, a big one, and then inside you've got like your meat cheese, beans, sour cream, lettuce, tomato, whatever you want, and then there's a crunchy like a tostada crunchy tortilla inside, and then the whole thing is wrapped in like it kind of looks like a little quesadilla sandwich and they are so good. I'm not a big Taco Bell person, but I've actually tried to make those at home because I like them that much. So I think you're going to have to go get a crunch wrap after this, Amit.

Amith:

I might have to go try one in honor of this podcast. And no, I had never heard of that before, but I thought I knew their menu relatively well, but I haven't paid attention in 40 years. I think what they're doing is really cool, so it caught my eye and I think AI tacos are going to be a thing. And if you think about, like, what does the customer experience look like? That's the part I think we probably need to think about for just a minute. So this is a big company. They've got a lot of restaurants, a lot of employees, they got a lot of revenue and a lot of capital in play.

Amith:

But the customer experience at Taco Bell is being improved to the extent that you can order your tacos and the AI in the application is helping you pick out the Crunchwrap Supreme, because maybe I had never heard of that taco, or I don't know if it's technically a taco, but I've never heard of that item and maybe I'd like it and maybe the app knows that I might like it based on my prior ordering history, right, and all these other things. That's a basic recommendation engine. So if Taco Bell is able to give me a great experience that way through a digital technology enhanced by AI, that means people are going to expect that type of customer service from everyone. And even though Taco Bell is a big company by virtue of being part of Yum, by itself it's big, but Yum is, of course, enormous and they have a lot of resources.

Amith:

Consumers don't think about that or care about it. It's their daily experience going through the drive-through or ordering ahead through the app and having that experience because we've lowered their friction, because it's simpler, smoother, easier, save them time, probably and we've increased the value that they receive, both through the lower friction, but also because maybe they got a product that they really enjoy, right. So the point I would make would be there's a lot to talk about here. Actually, we need to unpack the crunch wrap, but ultimately there's something very simple here that needs to be thought about is if the consumer expectation is evolving, to expect this experience from Taco freaking Bell. They're going to expect it from you, freaking bell, they're going to expect it from you, full stop.

Mallory:

That's a mic drop moment To me, amit, talking about this Bite by Yum platform, it seems like it does everything all in one and it's AI driven, and so, as I was kind of thinking how on earth can we contextualize this for our association audience, I was thinking, well, is there something within association land that kind of is an all encompassencompassing platform that does a lot for you? And then I started thinking of AMSs, of course. Do you think there are more? There are opportunities for AMSs to be like the driving force for AI enablement, in the way that this is Like. Can you see that connection, or do you think that's not the way to think about it?

Amith:

A hundred percent. There's the opportunity. The AMS sits at the intersection of the equivalent lanes of traffic or data to what you described. Thinking about the app that Bite by Yum provides, you know, all these different functional areas the online ordering it's the customer facing experience. Kitchen optimization that's the production side, right. How do they manage inventory? That's an input into that process. How do they manage labor? And that, of course, is very dynamic in an environment with lots of part-time and full-time employees coming and going, people getting sick, all these things. And ultimately, the menu management, where they're able to quickly adapt based on customer preferences and evolutions, things that are seasonal.

Amith:

These all reflect back on the business operations of Yum, both the front office or the customer facing side, and the back office. Or, essentially, how do you make the product right? And so for an association, there's an equivalent world right, where you have your event production side, where you spend 360 days a year working like crazy in an office trying to figure out how to put on a great event, and then four or five days here you're on site actually delivering the event, which is when the customer gets to eat the taco, but you spend all year preparing and getting ready and trying to deliver the best possible experience. So, coming back to the software, you have software tools, of course, to handle registration. There probably are some software tools you use on site, like mobile apps and other things like that, but you use a lot of tools to help you plan. Now, ams is sometimes participate in that. Sometimes you use a variety of third-party software to help with that.

Amith:

But the essence of what you're describing and I think it's right on point is that this integrated software system that has provided so much value to Yum in both a customer-facing way and a back-office way, has a parallel universe, that associations should have an integrated suite of technologies that can deliver this kind of value in that way right, in this integrated way and with an AI layer. But to integrate it is hard because most of the AMSs that are out there are not based on cutting-edge tech. There's a lot of legacy systems out there and even the ones that are based on newer platforms suffer from a lot of challenges in terms of data integration, data quality. So it's definitely not a silver bullet kind of thing, but I do think it's a clue, like you said, that people in the commercial world are experiencing success through number one, getting their data all in one place. It could be one single system, or it could be a system where you put air quotes around the word system, because it's really a combination of systems, and then they're layering AI on top of it, because the AI is where you can take advantage of that data. So, in a sense, what has Yum done is they got their data house in order first and they built a series of applications. I don't know if they got some of that from commercial vendors. I suspect maybe they did for parts of that, because some of these problems are solved problems like supply chain, logistics, inventory management. I don't know that it makes sense for them to build that on their own when there's several dozen vendors that provide great software in that category. But maybe they decided for some reason there's a process area they needed to optimize that went beyond a package software. But that's not the point. The point is they've built their system, which is probably a combination of some off the shelf and some custom software, and they put an AI layer on it and the net result is more efficiency and better customer value at the same time. So your point about the AMS is dead on. I don't know which AMS vendors or how many AMS vendors might choose to participate in creating the AI native AMS, but it's a compelling concept.

Amith:

I think that part of what AMS vendors need to be thinking about, though, is that they're not the center of the universe anymore. Back when I was in that business, that was the thesis is that you're the AMS and everything is in the AMS, and that's decreasingly the case. There are still people who operate that way, but the reason for that is actually quite simple is there's lots of great software in the world. There's great software for managing very specific slivers of your business around education or events or parts of events, and so people want to have choice. They want to be able to use best of breed-breed tools and then mix them together, and that's the world we live in now. I still think the AMS has a vital role to play in many organizations, but it needs to adapt. It needs to be a participant in the digital ecosystem rather than the center of the digital ecosystem, but the AMS vendor can make that easier for their clients and also find ways to drive a great business for themselves if they provide some of that AI capability. I personally haven't seen a whole lot going on in the AMS space in this category or this line of thinking, but I think it's an opportunity.

Amith:

The other concept that's again same thing that Yum did is they had to get their data house in order, so somewhere in that architecture they have the ability for data to fluidly come and go from the different subsystems you described. That's not easy. In their case. They're a very large enterprise. I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but it's important. It's really really important because the AI you're talking about, in order to do something as seemingly simple as saying, hey, amith, crunchwrap Supreme, it should be part of your life. Right, you did a great job selling it. What if the app could do that? But what if the product's not available right now? That would suck, that would be really bad. Right, I wouldn't have a great experience. It's like, oh, crunchwrap Supreme, it sounds awesome, but my local Taco Bell doesn't have that Crunchwrap Supreme. I wouldn't feel great about it. So you have to integrate your inventory side with your customer recommendation system, and that's what we're talking about here. Right, pulling it all together so that the experience side and the efficiency work well together.

Mallory:

It's a really interesting point about the AMS not necessarily being the center of the universe as it was thought to have been. Would you say there's any particular element that is the center of the association universe? Would that be this data house, this common data platform Like? Is that the thing our listeners need to be focused on right now?

Amith:

So I'm definitely biased in this area, because I spend a lot of my time thinking about AI data platforms and I also obviously spend time helping build one of these with Member Junction, but I obviously believe the answer is yes. For the last several years, I've been pushing this concept really hard and we've been building this open source AI data platform called Member Junction, which is not a system of record, it doesn't process transactions, it is not an AMS and it never will be any of those things. It's simply a place where you can very easily pull all your data together and then you can run AI workflows on top of it. You can run AI agents and you can have AI decision making on top of that data. But I would say that, yes, that's definitely part of the solution If you have really ancient infrastructure for your event software or your LMS.

Amith:

So many associations have really aging technology for core business functions. Well, the question is, do you go out and replace that first or do you try to solve the data ecosystem question first? I believe that you should really focus on the data ecosystem question first, because if you try to replace the AMS or the LMS or something similar first, you haven't figured out how you want things to connect. What you do know without question in my mind, is that there will be many systems that need to play well together. That's our reality in 2025 and in the future. We're going to have a lot of software, probably two times, three times, 10 times as much software as we have now, because these software tools are going to be more and more specialized and they're going to be really good at a few things. So we are going to need to have a flexible and dynamic adaptive way of connecting our data and making sense of it at scale, and scale isn't necessarily the number of gigabytes, terabytes or petabytes that you have your data size probably isn't that massive but it's the complexity of these different data streams and data sources coming together. So I would argue that you should figure that out first before you replace a major chunk of your infrastructure, because that major chunk of infrastructure, absent a clear vision on the data ecosystem it lives in, you're going to have to reinvent the wheel. You're going to basically do all this wiring for the new infrastructure. The new AMS, for example, is going to have a bunch of integrations with a bunch of these software tools, Whereas if you get the data ecosystem the AI data platform in this example Whereas if you get the data ecosystem the AI data platform in this example in place first, then your replacement of the AMS or the LMS or whatever it is becomes much simpler, because that just needs to plug into your future state data environment. So that's why I'm focused on that. I think it's really important.

Amith:

The other part of it that's really critical is this concept of ownership of data. So Yum, through the Byte application and really the subsystems that are in there, has a very clear data strategy. I don't know them and I don't know their application stack, but I know for a fact they have a very clear data architecture, because what they have in that system could not exist if the data wasn't able to be as fluid as I'm describing. So that, in turn, is really the key to having flexibility to grow, to add new applications and so on. So, from my perspective coming back to the beginning of the conversation and where associations need to go, the idea of AMS or LMS or replacements.

Amith:

These are projects that typically take at least a year, sometimes two or longer For many associations. As a percentage of their annual budget, an AMS replacement could be a big, big chunk of it. It could be 10, 20, 30% of the annual revenue of the association in the year that you implement it Not ongoing, obviously, going obviously, and so it's a big, big deal and it's important and it's going to have a role at some level. But I think figuring out the data pieces is incredibly critical because you don't want to reinvent the wheel and integrate the new AMS the way you just got done, like essentially undoing with the old AMS.

Mallory:

Have you ever thought about creating an AI-enabled AMS, amit Like? Has that crossed your mind?

Amith:

I have. It has not crossed my mind as something that I have any interest in doing, just to be clear, but I have been asked that question by many people, given my background. But no, it's not a category that I have an interest in personally. I think there's an incredible opportunity. I think there's plenty of companies that have the resources and the interest in serving this market well long term. That someone will do it or multiple players, hopefully, will do it where there'll be AI enabled or what I'd call, hopefully truly an AI-nated AMS at some point. But I hope to see those systems be highly compartmentalized so that people have choice and they can pick the pieces that they really want and they really need from that vendor and then pull in pieces from other vendors as well that are complementary in nature.

Mallory:

Yep, and I don't know if I touched on this in my summary, but this system as well Byte is also modular, like you're describing, so you can kind of like implement it piece by piece or choose which pieces you need first, which I think is essential.

Amith:

Absolutely, and you know the concept of using AI. You know we talk about this in our courseware for the AI Learning Hub, mallory, but we talk about data a lot. There's actually a whole course on data and in the data course we used the term that a lot of people refer to, which is that data is essentially the fuel for the AI machine or the AI engine, and so absent data, you know you can't do that much with AI. Now you can use consumer-grade applications like a chat GPT and get quite a bit of value just talking to it. In that sense, you're providing data and then answer them fluidly. You need your data, you have to have your data. So a lot of times people look at that and go, oh, you know, I really don't want to talk about that. It's been such a pain point. It's not a particularly interesting topic. There's not a lot of sizzle to the data conversation. You know it's not like the thing. People get up and go, oh, this is gonna be awesome, I'm going to have like a full day meeting on data. You know people typically feel that way because data has been beating them up for a long time. You know their data has been very difficult to maintain, and the problem really also is that the scale of data even in a small association is going to be too big, even for the staff of a large association to manually deal with. You know, like duplicate management or correct addresses or just simple, simple things like that, and the simple has to be in air quotes for that one too, because it's really actually quite complex and there are great AI solutions for these problems. Now, unfortunately, most associations still haven't touched any of this. So I think that. But again, do you solve that by injecting these things into archaic old tools that you're using? Do you try to replace those tools, or do you do some of this workload in a place that's agnostic and will work with both the old tools and the new tools? So, clearly, the third category is what we talk about with AI data platform and what I suggest people consider.

Amith:

It's also about time. If you spend the next year to two years replacing an AMS, the question you should ask yourself is do you think it's going to really reinvent your business or is it more of an incremental improvement? And most people will look at me and say no, it's an incremental improvement. We want to solve a lot of our kind of past ills in terms of how bad our current system is, and we want to make ourselves more efficient and have some improved tooling in various areas, but ultimately, nobody really thinks a new AMS is going to revolutionize their business model or radically change their efficiency. It's an incremental improvement. So then my question would be why focus on that right now? You have the next year, two years. In that time period, you're going to have two, three, four, five doublings of AI power is very likely, and in that time, if you focus most of your organizational resources on an incremental improvement, even if you achieve that incremental improvement, it's not really that interesting. In the meantime, ai is experiencing these radical improvements and you're clearly not doing much with it because you don't have the bandwidth to do an AMS replacement and also do meaningful AI innovation. So my argument, of course, is do the AI stuff, at least for this year it's 2025. Let's focus on AI, and the AMS replacement is still going to be important. In the future, you might have a different perspective.

Amith:

The other reason to wait on this AMS replacement conversation is let's give the vendors a little bit of time to figure AI out. Most of them are not AI experts. I know a lot of these people I know a lot of them are looking at it saying, hey, it's our responsibility to do something for our clients, and I love hearing that. I think if we give the AMS vendors a little bit more time, they might surprise us and give us some really exciting capabilities. I mean, there's so many opportunities in those kinds of systems to make AI incredibly powerful. So my thought process is you know, time is your friend when it comes to waiting on an AMS replacement. Time is not your friend when it comes to sitting on the sidelines and waiting for yourself to somehow figure out AI. It doesn't happen unless you put the effort into it. So that's my point of view on the whole thing.

Amith:

When I see an article like this one about something totally different from associations, like restaurants or the scale of this business, I always think about it and say, okay, how can we apply this and think about it in the association context, both from a customer perspective, because we're all consumers at the end of the day how do we feel when we deal with the brand? And one of the ways to think about it is this you can ask the question of any technology whether it's truly valuable is hypothetically, how would the person feel if you took it away from them? So if I took away something like an AMS, actually you might laugh and say, oh, people wouldn't miss it at all, but in reality they would, because their whole business would completely stop. And that's why people pay a lot of money for AMSs and why there's so much energy spent on it. But think about the Taco Bell example.

Amith:

If your AI taco app went away and you got used to using it and you're like this is cool. I had discovered the Crunchwrap Supreme through the AI taco app and that has fundamentally changed my existence as a human on planet earth. I am so in love with the taco Crunchwrap thing and then all of a sudden, the app goes away. That's a problem for you, right? You're going to be pissed. Or, at a simpler level, I buy a lot of smoothies from Smoothie King, right, and so their app is actually kind of hard to use, but it's a hell of a lot easier than waiting till I drive to the store, ordering there and waiting five minutes. So I use that app all the time.

Amith:

If they took that app away, I'd buy a lot less from them. It's a convenience thing, right? It doesn't cost anything. It just saves me a few minutes because I can put the order in before I drive there and then it's sitting there waiting for me and I like that. So it would be painful to me personally if that app just went away. So I think that's a key way to think about these tools. Is that, if they go away, how do people feel? No-transcript, and they find these content assets. They're going to be real happy. And again, if you did that for a while and people got used to it and then you yanked it away from them, they'd miss it right. So that's one of the ways to think about if a technology is worth investigating is if it worked, would people miss it if it was gone? That's a very simple kind of rubric to apply to any kind of new technology investment.

Mallory:

I would miss Crunchwrap Supremes if they were no longer here. And I can tell you, Amit, I would have never guessed on the Sidecar Sync podcast we'd be talking about Crunchwrap Supremes this much. But you never know what to get with us. It's always a surprise.

Amith:

I like food.

Mallory:

You should go get Crunchwrap Supremes for the family this evening, I think you might do that.

Amith:

Yeah, I might just do that All right.

Mallory:

Moving to topic two today, amazon's return to office. Amazon has implemented a change in its return to office policy, marking a shift from its previous hybrid work model. The company announced that, starting January 2nd of this year, most corporate employees would be required to return to the office full time five days a week, days a week. Ceo Andy Jassy cited several reasons for this change, including strengthening Amazon's culture, improving collaboration and brainstorming, enhancing learning and teaching among employees and better connecting teams. There are some exceptions that will be made for situations like caring for a sick child and needing isolated environments for specific tasks like coding, and needing isolated environments for specific tasks like coding. Despite the initial January 2025 deadline, amazon has faced a few hurdles in implementing this policy. Namely, they don't have enough office space in cities like Atlanta, austin, houston, nashville, new York and Phoenix, so that's kind of an essential if you're asking everybody to return to office Among employees.

Mallory:

There are various reactions, as you can imagine. Some view it positively, seeing it as a way to revitalize downtown areas and improve work dynamics. Others have expressed concerns about accommodations for disabilities, child care and elder care. And, of course, there are worries that the policy might be an indirect method for reducing the workforce. Amazon's decisions align with some other major companies reverting to full-time office policies, like JPMorgan Chase. However, it contrasts with the broader trend in the tech industry where many companies continue to offer flexible work arrangements post-pandemic.

Mallory:

This marks a shift from the company's pandemic-era policies and sets Amazon apart as one of the largest private employers to fully roll back work from home arrangements. So, amit, I'm not sure when you and I discussed this, but once, I think, I asked your perspective on this and I remember thinking well, we're all remote, so surely Amit prefers a remote environment. And you actually surprised me by saying that you think especially younger employees in the workforce are kind of missing out on opportunities by not having that in-person element. So what's your take on this, and do you prefer remote work or in-person work?

Amith:

I think it's an incredibly important and interesting topic, so I'm glad we're featuring it in the pod. I do think it's actually deeply related to AI, even though the way we introduced the topic is about people coming to the office or not coming to the office. But it's very much an AI conversation, because AI is both an enabling technology and a displacement, because AI can do a lot of jobs now right. So I think for me personally, there's a couple of things I would share. Number one is I do think that when you're not in the office at all, you don't see your colleagues face to face at all, you're missing out on a lot. It is not possible to build relationships with people, in my opinion, that are like deep, deep, like types of work relationships over purely video and audio. It just doesn't work the same way. So, for example, with all the money you're saving on office space, you can get people together from time to time in person and have summits or meetings or hackathons or retreats or whatever you want to call it. So I think there's ways to address that, but I like doing those things on top of having an in-person environment back in the day. So I grew up in an office environment. I built offices for all my companies in the past. I was a big proponent of office culture and collaboration and all that. But I also think at the same time, the flip side of it is is what we've learned Essentially we were forced to learn this through the pandemic that there's a lot of advantages to the remote work thing. So if you take away the obvious part and say, okay, there's a lot of cost savings because office space is a very expensive thing to provide your employees, you also have the ability to hire people basically anywhere within the time zones that you work in, you have the ability to potentially provide people who don't have the ability to commute for whatever reason, a more flexible work environment where you can get access to amazing talent who otherwise would not be available, based on their commute distance from the office you happen to choose, or things like that. Right, and then I think you know, from my perspective, perhaps maybe there's a way to blend that, maybe there's a creative way to combine it. So I personally think you know for small to medium-sized businesses, there might be ways to be flexible. For a large company like that that's looking at hundreds of thousands of office workers you know, across the country and globally. It's an interesting shift.

Amith:

I think the power dynamic is definitely shifting back to the employer, because yet right now, employment's extremely low, but at the same time, employers are looking at things pragmatically and saying, well, what can I do with AI? And so you have a bullet point in part of what you said that is this an indirect way of doing a reduction in force? And 100% is, and it's actually not that indirect. It's pretty damn obvious that some people will opt out, either because they cannot return to office or they just refuse to, and there are alternatives. There's plenty of companies hiring that are 100% remote or mostly remote. So I think it's all those things. So I don't have an opinion about Amazon's decision, other than to say I think it's obviously going to be influential on the workforce in terms of the number of people we're talking about, and a lot of companies will follow suit when you have big, big businesses like this making this kind of decision and that the collective mind is often more powerful than the individual.

Mallory:

I would also say collaboration is easier in person. With that, I would say we're a very innovative family of companies and we're all fully remote, so it's definitely possible to cultivate that. But would you say, cultivating a culture of innovation is perhaps easier when you have that in-person element or that hybrid element 100% because you don't always have to have a specific agenda.

Amith:

So I just got done with two days of meetings where we had team members from all over the country come together to have a planning session for one of our businesses and it was great. We spent a lot of time, quality time, together. We had a nice dinner last night. It was good quality time, solved a lot of problems, came up with a lot of ideas. It was cool.

Amith:

But we have to do it that way because we have people all over the place and so we cannot get everyone together on a high frequency basis. So we do these things where we fly people in regularly Like we're traveling, probably a fair bit more than we would otherwise, and you know we rotate these meetings around. We try to also make them little fun, which is cool. Put them in different cities. I can't imagine running a company without any of that. I know there's some companies that are truly 100% remote and they don't ever get together. I don't know how you do that.

Amith:

So for me, part of that is again the way I grew up. Building companies and growing teams is you get to know people face to face and maybe at some point people work remotely part of the time or whatever, but that's all that's once they have experience and once the relationships have been formed. Clearly we live in a different world today than what I grew up in, but I guess what I'd say is you know, you mentioned a point earlier that I think is worth unpacking a little bit, which is by experience level, it might be interesting to think about. So someone who's been doing their job for five years, 10 years or longer, versus someone right out of college Like, how do we train people that are coming in from college, graduation or earlier how to be professionals Forget about the domain of your job or your association or your organization, but just how to be professionals. Like what does it mean to come to work and do your job? How do you interact with people professionally?

Amith:

In my experience, people that are in their early 20s, coming out of college, rarely have a great skill set when it comes to those basics. And that's not a dig on younger people. It's like that's just what it is. You haven't you definitionally don't know how to do those things because you haven't done them yet. So part of what I'm saying when I say younger people really are, I think, suffering from this in terms of their career development is they're not getting that and, as a result, also where you see younger people earlier in their career potentially showing some signs of amazing potential, people who work with them that have been around a little bit longer have a harder time picking up on that because you don't see it as obviously as when you're in front of people a lot and you can have conversations that aren't on the agenda right.

Amith:

What people want to say is the water cooler conversation where you just have these unplanned interactions with people at all levels of an organization. It's amazing, it's powerful, and so I think younger people are limited in terms of what they might explore or discover. The creativity and curiosity might be limited, so I think that's a real challenge. You know I've got kids that are going to be entering the workforce in not the immediate future, but in the next, say, five, seven years, and I think about them a lot in terms of what's their experience going to be like. I likely will recommend to them that they find a company that they can go to work for, where they're in the office at least three or four days a week, at least for the first few years of their career, because I want them to have that experience and have those opportunities. But I also realize there's people that are entering the workforce for us right now, for example, who are fully remote from the start, and hopefully there's a good path for that as well. But I do love the fact that when you have a workforce that's geographically diverse, you can give people more flexibility to weave their life in in a way that makes sense for them, and that's an incredible quality of life thing where you spend less time behind the wheel or in a bus or in a subway commuting and more time either working or with your family, or both. Right, I don't think anyone's ever missed the commute, so I'm sure there's somebody out there who's missed the commute, but I never have. I've been pretty fortunate in that respect. I've never had super long our species having a future from a work productivity perspective in a world of artificial superintelligence which is on the horizon, which is that.

Amith:

I think the creativity that comes from what we do, when we do it together, is enormously powerful. And, by the way, tying this back is what we just talked about for the last few minutes is generic to any entity. Right, it could be a nonprofit, it could be a commercial organization, it could be government, it could be whatever, but associations, right. If you took away the annual meeting, if you took away the in-person conference whatever that is or the conferences, the entire feel of the culture of that association changes. The entire feel of the culture of that association changes.

Amith:

And what we learned during the pandemic was that people craved those in-person, face-to-face opportunities because we, as a species, connect. We're like biologically wired to want to connect in groups, right, and so it's very difficult to take that away and still have the same experience. And associations know that deeply because they organize these events. And so I would simply say like, I think we need to find ways to get more creative about that and find opportunities to do that, and obviously there's things like cost concerns and so forth, but I think you have to make investments in building relationships like that. At the end of the day, and.

Amith:

I think associations are extremely well positioned to help with that.

Mallory:

by the way, Indeed, and I was saying we were fully remote, I think. But yes, we do have these in-person quarterly sessions. We also, I would say, from like March to November, at least once a month. Normally I'm traveling to some of our events or industry events where I can connect with colleagues. So we're not hybrid quite, but we do have a lot of opportunities to connect with one another in person, which is really helpful. I know there are some remote, like fully remote, associations out there. I don't know that that's necessarily the norm, but do you have, amit, any advice for fully remote associations that are trying to be innovative, that are trying to create a culture of collaboration, like just things that you've learned in the past few years from running a remote organization?

Amith:

Well, I know that many associations were fully remote, fully remote on a temporary basis, you know, during the pandemic, and for some period of time after. Most associations I talked to are back in the office the majority of the time, maybe not 100 percent, but three days a week, two days a week, five days a week in some cases. It'd be great to study if people have. I'm sure there's many associations out there, many tens of thousands of associations, just the United States. I'm sure some have stayed fully remote and maybe there's some that were born that way. You know, maybe there's an association called the Remote Work Association and they themselves have awesome office space, but they probably are remote as well. But you know, in reality I'm sure there are examples and if you're listening or if you know someone that is in that category, please write to us and share your feedback. We'd love to have more input on this that we can share in our content with our listeners and our readers. But my main advice is don't forget that we're human. We, at the end of the day, thrive on connections, we thrive on being together. So invest some dollars in connectivity, especially when people are onboarding. Bring people together.

Amith:

You know, we have a program here where we hire a lot of people right out of college, but we have a particular program that's a form of a fellowship where we bring people in, and it's a fully remote thing right now. But we are thinking about, well, how do we organize that? Maybe there's a way where, in the first three months, or maybe even just the first 30 days of a new person's employment, that they're in a location where we have a lot of people so that they can be onboarded and kind of nurtured in a way where, hey, like this is what work is like, this is what it's like to be a professional, these are the people you get to know. So it's an interesting thing.

Amith:

A long time ago I started an operation offshore with a former company and when we did that, we brought a number of the people from the new offshore business to live in the United States with their colleagues working in an office in this case Chicago for, I think, three months, which was a big imposition, big request. But it worked beautifully because those people had these relationships when they went back to their home country and they were able to collaborate in an incredible way. If we hadn't done that, it wouldn't have worked so well, so I think you just have to be creative. I guess is the way I'm describing it.

Mallory:

Well, everyone, thanks for tuning in to the end of this episode. I think you all have earned yourself a Crunchwrap Supreme. So if you go out and get one, post a pic on LinkedIn and tag us in it. We will see you all next week.

Amith:

Thanks for tuning in to Sidecar Sync this week. Looking to dive deeper? Download your free copy of our new book Ascend Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations at ascendbookorg. It's packed with insights to power your association's journey with AI. And remember Sidecar is here with more resources, from webinars to boot camps, to help you stay ahead in the association world. We'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, keep learning, keep growing and keep disrupting.