Igniting Change Season 6 - AI Meets Humanity: A Bold Tech Vision for Human Connection

Working in the social impact sector, Smita’s role involves the cross-functionality of marketing, data and technology.

And most importantly it allows Smita to put her passion into action – Bringing people together for a common purpose.

But that’s not all!

Aside from Smita’s various experiences over her career (and her own restaurant!), she is also the Founder of Linkloop.ai, an AI-based platform which provides mentee and mentor connections!

We don’t know how Smita manages to fit all of that into her schedule – she sure is incredible and awe-inspiring.

The top myth about digital transformation? It’s all about tools and technology.

Smita explains how, although tools and technology are a part of it, the focus should actually be on the people. The team needs to be comfortable with exploring, failing, trying something new on a platform, not just simply using it.

How are they supposed to embrace the transformation if they haven’t been given the opportunity to understand it?

Thankfully, Smita tells us that she is seeing leadership support this – wahoo!

Digital first is the way the sector is progressing. Utilising data and embracing digital developments, rather than being completely responsive to these transformations.

However, that doesn’t mean that we can ignore human oversight and intuition.

Working in the social impact sector, a human touch is extremely important.

It is so human centred, and authentic storytelling is a key driver for fundraising and volunteering.

Technology has accelerated at an unprecedented pace.

We’re now using AI and ChatGPT for many tasks (including for this very podcast!)

With all this change, there has to be some sort of management to implement it.

Smita sums it up very well with “People like people”.

We don’t want to hear stories retold by technology, we want to hear stories from the people who experienced it, who understand it on a deeper level.

Drawing from her experience, Smita delves into how organisations need to be business led and tech powered, rather than purely tech driven.

First, understand what value the organisation is going to add, or what issue is going to be solved.

Then, what business capabilities are needed? With people at the core, organisations have to consider their product and platform.

Change is always going to be hard.

Whether it’s for better or worse, there will always be an element of resistance and friction, because we don’t know what we don’t know.

But there will also always be ways to reduce the resistance and friction. 

From champion teams to recognising smaller increments of achievement, Smita tells us how she has utilised seeing and feeling the impact in her change management methods.

Many sectors have seen a change in consumer behaviour, and the social impact sector is no different.

Consumers are asking for more transparency and more real-time impact.

How can we ensure social impact organisations cater to personalisation? Provide timely experiences? Remain contextually relevant?

Smita thinks it’s all about creating opportunities to learn, to experiment, to understand the best use cases of emerging tools and technologies so organisations can satisfy these consumer behaviours.

But we’ll let Smita talk to you in this episode about what she sees in her crystal ball!

Listen to the full episode below, to hear more from Smita about changing human behaviour with technology, human-centred design thinking, as well as exploring the future!

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