Navigating the Gray: Insights from Carmen Santiago Keenon

Integrating Human-Centric Solutions with Carmen Santiago Keenon

In this episode of The Human Code, host Don Finley welcomes Carmen Santiago Keenon, a seasoned technical advisor with over 20 years of experience in IT services and sales. The discussion explores the intersection of technology and humanity, focusing on design thinking principles, automation, and AI. Carmen shares her unique approach to leveraging technology for personal growth and professional efficiency, emphasizing the importance of keeping humans in the loop. The conversation also addresses the role of technology in fostering inclusivity, particularly for underserved populations and those with disabilities. Carmen highlights the need for continuous investment in human skills alongside technological advancements to create meaningful, accessible solutions.

00:00 Introduction to The Human Code Podcast 
00:49 Meet Carmen Santiago Keenon 
01:18 Design Thinking and Personal Growth 
02:33 Navigating Life's Gray Areas 
06:59 Automation and Reducing Stress 
09:35 The Role of Technology in Business 
18:01 AI and Customer Service 
23:56 AI in Autism Care and Accessibility 
29:49 Conclusion and Sponsor Message

Sponsored by FINdustries
Hosted by Don Finley

Transcript

Don Finley: 0:00

Welcome to the Human Code, the podcast where technology meets humanity, and the future is shaped by the leaders and innovators of today. I'm your host, Don Finley, inviting you on a journey through the fascinating world of tech, leadership, and personal growth. Here, we delve into the stories of visionary minds, Who are not only driving technological advancement, but also embodying the personal journeys and insights that inspire us all. Each episode, we explore the intersections where human ingenuity meets the cutting edge of technology, unpacking the experiences, challenges, and triumphs that define our era. So, whether you are a tech enthusiast, an inspiring entrepreneur, or simply curious about the human narratives behind the digital revolution, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Human Code.

0:50

Today, we're thrilled to welcome Carmen Santiago Keenon, a trusted technical advisor and a leader in leveraging technology to create meaningful human centric solutions. With over 20 years of experience in it services and sales Carmen specializes in bridging the gap between complex technical solutions and real-world business needs her expertise spans AI machine learning, automation and enterprise software. And her approach emphasizes transparency, trust and accessibility. In this episode, Carmen shares her unique perspective on using design thinking principles to navigate uncertainty and create growth. We'll explore how she applies automation and AI to streamline processes and reduce stress. The importance of keeping humans in the loop in an increasingly automated world. And how technology it can be a powerful tool for inclusion, particularly for underserved populations. Join us on this thought provoking conversation about the balance between humanity and technology. And how we can design solutions that truly make a difference in our personal and professional lives.

Don Finley: 1:53

I'm here with Carmen Santiago Keenon. I love that Carmen just gave me a nice little laugh. one very beautiful person sitting here with me, and she's got an amazing story to share. but at the same time, Carmen, I just want to ask you, what got you interested in the intersection of humanity and technology?

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 2:11

First, thank you for the compliment and thank you for having me on your show. you have amazing guests and amazing and interesting topics. So thank you for the invite. hi, that is a great question. I, Love the idea of using technology and humanity together. And this is what I mean by that. And we touched on this a little bit briefly before in conversation as I, grew in technology and different technology tools and solutions, and modalities, I fell in love with, business process automation, workflow, and, design thinking principles, design thinking. And I started noticing that I could use these same principles. in my life. They were applicable with making my life better, streamlining my life, right? Creating my own life workflow. and there are two doctors out of Stanford that also felt the same way. So they have a book called Designing Your Life. highly recommend it, and it's something that has been helpful for me. And it's something that I use when I do my public speaking. I just delivered, a talk track called Navigating the Gray, where I use design thinking principles to really talk through, maybe a problem we're thinking through, and to really work through solutions and goals. sitting with it, ideating on it, coming up with really structured solutions on how we want to try to solve the certain, X, Y, and Z, or maybe even just thinking through, the space of where we're sitting at, for me navigating the gray is that gray zone where we don't think that we're necessarily growing and life might seem a little hard and pressured, We always bring it to the seed. A seed when you plant it doesn't worry about what it's going to become, right? It's underneath though. It's in the darkness and in the darkness in that gray area is where we get the nutrients that we need to grow. It's uncomfortable. We don't necessarily know what we're going to sprout but we know we're doing this intense work if we choose to, And that doesn't necessarily have to be a life shattering situation that brings us to navigating the gray. It could be something as, trying to understand what your next season holds, Am I still resonating with corporate America? Am I still resonating with this job? Am I still resonating with this business, Or with this hobby or with the way that I'm eating, whatever it is for you, or it could be as deep as, I have this sickness, what does that mean for my life? What do I want my life to look like now that I've been given a second chance at living? We're navigating this season of growth. We're navigating this season of uncertainty. But that's also the best season, right? If we allow it, if we choose it. And that's where like design thinking principles can come in handy to really navigate these seasons.

Don Finley: 5:11

So what are some of the design thinking principles that you've been able to apply or that could be helpful for someone going through this gray

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 5:18

Oh, that's a great question. All right. So a lot of, design thinking, is around mapping out solutions, right? You see what your might be or what you think it might be, and mapping out possible solutions around, very pointed questions, and so we think of things like ideation, how do we ideate through a problem? What are we thinking through a problem? What does that mean for us? we really want to think through designing it. how are we, growing through it? Are we ideating? Are we, design thinking? Are we designing the problem? I think for me, ideation was the one that I really like to get stuck on because it really makes you have to think, And it really makes you have to delve a little bit deeper through just through the feeling of something. and starting to get to the root cause of something, And once we work through this, or we can incorporate other things, So let's say if you use a workflow map, a workflow tool, I work with IBM wheelhouse a lot. business process management, BPM, They have a Blueworks Live tool, which helps you, you can download this tool for free, and it helps you map out, different things within the organization, different problems, different, bottlenecks that you might have within a process, really. But you can use it, like, I've used it to create something as small as, a grocery list or something as big as mapping out my next five month strategy, I have this role. The end of the month is here. What are the steps that are going to take to get me there? so really using different tools that technology has automation, when we talk about RPA, and, how we can infuse some of that into what we do, automating, redundant. things that we do. Redundant processes. What, get with yourself. What are redundant processes that I have that I can automate, so what are things that are stressors to me that I can automate? Is it sending out emails for personal emails? Do I need to get some sort of assistant, AI assistant? Do I need to get and leverage, some sort of grocery, tool to help me pick up my groceries? What can I automate in my life and streamline to help relieve stress,

Don Finley: 7:42

Okay, so some of the areas of basically saying hey what's bringing joy into my life What's taking away

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 7:48

bringing joy to my life?

Don Finley: 7:50

is a good yeah some place to start and then from there hey Is this I think it goes back to that the Eisenhower matrix as well, is it Important. Is it not important? Is it urgent or not urgent? And like you get, depending on the quadrant that it falls in, we're able to then say, I should be doing this or this shouldn't even be being done. And until we sit back and say, take that inventory of life, we really don't know, or we're probably not as aware as we'd like to think we are around some of the things that are, those little nags that

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 8:27

And you realize that you're on autopilot, but not necessarily in automation, if that makes sense. So you're really robotic, So you might have your process. Like I'm very process specific. Like I tell people all the time, if I would be very kidnappable, and that's why I've learned to try and switch up my thing. But if I walk a certain way, I might work out or my jogging or whatever. It's a, it's a very specific route, I know what to expect. That's just the way that I take, but it's so just Like you just get up and you do your thing. But those are the times where you have to stop and pause, And say, what is going on in my process? Is this process even working for me? There's times where I'm like, I'm working so hard. I'm running a million miles a minute, but I'm running in the wrong direction, or I'm running around in circles. And we're not necessarily reaching our goal because we're stuck in this bottleneck of our own process, our own, whether it's our own mindset around something, or whether it's the fact that we're just used to being a robot in that process, That we realize it's not even not working because we're just used to doing it.

Don Finley: 9:35

you see the role of technology playing out in that path? Because here, I'll take a step back and maybe give a little bit of context. I think we're walking down a path where businesses, it's becoming easier for us to earn Considerable amounts of money with less people in the organization. And we saw back in the 80s in order for us to generate 10 million, we needed like 50 people. You had to man, the whole gamut of services inside of one organization. But then SaaS and cloud computing and technology advancements have really driven that down to even the point where Google, when they IPO'd, they were making a million dollars per head. in the company, And today, actually even WhatsApp, sold for what? 13 billion or 18 billion and they had 50 people in the organization. so technology has really allowed us to scale revenue while keeping teams rather small. And it seems a natural progression of that is to getting down to teams of one. And I know that Sam Altman has a bet going with other CEOs as far as when they're going to see the first billion dollar. Single person business. but I think that brings up one kind of like challenge, if we're creating these businesses that are one person, it really needs to be aligned with that like thing that you really want to bring to this world. Because if I'm the one person running an organization that is something that I just hate doing, then it's not going to be an enjoyable experience no matter what the amount of money is. Like, how do you see technology helping us to fill in that purpose gap?

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 11:16

a great question. So one, I'm going to say we need our humans. that's why, we have a human in the loop, It doesn't matter how automated something is. There's going to be a human in the loop and, whether it's the person that has to actually train The models, so you actually have to train your AI model. so that's, your LLMs, your, inputs on how you want to structure, that, so like your chat GPTs or whatever, Like you're prompting things of that nature. We're going to need a human in the loop. So I think the idea of just one person running something is a bit ridiculous just because we're going to need humans. I think what we need to start investing in and looking into is investing in our humans and training them up with the technology, Because again, they work together and yes, we can automate things, but you still need a human to hit that button to automate it, and. I think if we stray away from that, that is a really hairy gray area, if we really try to extract humanity from, business, from the enterprise, I think that's really scary. And I think then we take out completely customer service. customer service is already a dying art anyhow, which is really sad and hurts my heart. as somebody that's always been in customer service and sales and client forward. it makes me sad to see that the younger generations really lack, especially kids these days. You go anywhere and you have a young, I have young adult children and this isn't a criticism, However, I have noticed that. from the demographics of let's say maybe 18 and under, there seems to be a gap with customer service that they just don't really know how to problem solve or even talk to you or look you in the eye and just be conversational. and I feel like, you and I are in the same age group. We weren't like that in the nineties, growing up as much, I feel like I was

Don Finley: 13:31

you and I had payphones, Like I started my first business before I was 18. And so I had a cell phone at that time, but of my friends had them, Like none of my friends in undergrad, few of my friends in undergrad had text messaging at the time. our communication styles, as far as how we grew up, it's completely different than it is today.

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 13:56

I had a pay phone in my house. no, no joke. I ended up, moving into the foster home and my parents. I fostered five teenage girls and then they had my three younger siblings as well. So that's eight kids in the house. I mean we had a landline, but for the teenagers, for the girls, we had a pay phone.

Don Finley: 14:15

God, that's hilarious.

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 14:17

a pay phone in my house. so yes, very interesting. But, no, I feel you'd like it's kids will never know. And it, But that hurts my heart, It makes me sad. And that's why we have to always keep the human in the loop. What's going to happen, literally, to our children and humanity if all, right now, all they know is head down and phone and iPad and this, And video games. There isn't doing this. There isn't looking somebody in the eye, shaking their hand. I've, my kids and I've always taught them just respect, that's just out of respect. But I go to restaurants or like I had an experience at Home Depot to pick something up. that I bought from them, like a piece of furniture or whatever. And they couldn't even help me figure out how to get my stuff. It was very interesting to see that I finally was just like, okay, I got this. I just went in the back and asked the older person that was working. I was like, here's, I don't know. They can't like, can you help me figure this out? And the guy started laughing and he's yes, sorry about that. I'm like, no, it's okay. But. It's really not, Because now these kids are in the workforce, And that's the best that they can do. That's a problem because they're going to keep growing into adulthood, And if we're not teaching basic skills, we have to invest

Don Finley: 15:42

And,

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 15:43

being the technology with the basic skills. If what we're giving these kids is only technology, we're going to have to teach them. The soft skills, the IQ through technology, And we're going to have to focus on upskilling our current employees and workforce along with the education in the school system around technology. we are moving towards more automation, but I will say this being in the it space, and I was just having this conversation today, Earlier on a team meeting, AI is still a very scary thing for most organizations. And most business lines and it lines. So it's still very slow moving, Like we're still just taking little chunks and pieces and playing with automation. And that's where things like RPA and other things come into play. but full blown automation is still very scary, say digital transformation in the wrong room and forget about it. it's this curious space where everyone's AI is going to take over and AI is going to take over. AI might have to take over certain things that it makes sense to. But with that, we have to train our workforce to work with the technology because they go hand in hand. Again, bring it back. You need the human in the loop.

Don Finley: 17:00

You need the human in the loop. And I I had a guest on a while ago. he's operations, but he's also, he's coaching college students now. So in retirement, he was like, I want to help that generation out. And the one thing that he said, he's AI is going to change the skills necessary for the workforce. And the one thing that he's recommending the students that he mentors is to actually get more managerial experience. earlier on because you're both going to be taking advice from the AI, Like it's going to provide you with insights and possibly direction in how you go. But additionally, how you work with it isn't so much from the standpoint of being an individual contributor anymore, but you're now managing something that can create, specifically talking about like LLMs and generative AI. The other side of that I find really fascinating for how like people will end up being using the tools is that dynamic of how they learn how to use it. one of the challenges that we see when going into organizations and saying that dirty word of digital transformation is Also saying that the first project that you end up doing isn't going to have a positive ROI. because we recommend that because it's a digital transformation that you need to get people comfortable with using the tools and using it in a way that is non threatening to them. because once you can have them understand how to use it, then you go and find the use cases. that you actually want to implement. And one area that we're seeing, positive success is in customer service, where human stays on the phone with the person, but the AI is listening to the call. And like in a help desk scenario, the AI is pulling up solutions. for the problem that's being described, whereas the human is forming the relationship and being the helper that they can be and being that emotional aspect that is rather helpful. And so we're seeing that there's a 40 percent increase in first time

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 19:09

I love that.

Don Finley: 19:10

as well as a 25 percent increase in customer satisfaction

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 19:14

and that's great because it allows the human to be great at what it does, which is being human and building the relationship. Because it really sucks having to be bogged down, part of the bottleneck in that situation and part of the reason why. Sometimes, customers get frustrated is because as you're researching and trying to solve the problem as a customer service rep or what have you, is you're doing this while you're listening and you're trying to figure it out and then you're waiting and God forbid, you're having technical difficulties and, it's going to take. Whatever. And it's thinking and it's thinking. And you have to figure out that delicate balance between keeping the customer still engaged and happy while you're trying to click away and type away and solve their problem. So I do think that's, that is the perfect example of how AI and tech and humans work together. And that's what I'm hoping will continue to be the trend.

Don Finley: 20:08

want to say that I'm hopeful that's the trend, but also that's the only place that we're actually applying ourselves. So like when we engage with customers, we want to make sure that it actually, the AI in an agentic type of flow is used to support. The humans that are doing the job. And so we look at it more as augmented intelligence than the straight up artificial side of it. And additionally, that just leaves us with the opportunity to say Hey, you're now creating a workforce of people that will understand how to interact with AI and they can help you in the future to create more. use cases for it. one of our partner companies, their chief data science officer we were just on a call together and he was going over one of their solutions that they've been working on. And it is a chat component in which you can basically chat with the entire company. So all systems are integrated in, and then they have it broken down into different functions. But the different functions are basically like, Hey, you're a sale, an account executive, The primary data source for this is past projects, industry research, and it will go in and say, and this is a company that does about a thousand projects a year. And so there's no way that one single account executive can stay. abreast and updated on all the things that are going on. But when they have an opportunity, let's say in logistics and transportation, they just type in saying, Hey, here's the company that I'm looking at to create a pitch for. Can you give me projects that are similar to this or related? And it would be beneficial if they were on this tech stack it just, it pulls all the information together for them. So the next step on top of that. is that's, query back and forth, Take that next idea is I have an RFP, take all the information from the different departments and at least give me my first draft and then tell me who needs to, verify this and create that task list and let that go. And so coordination aspect is no longer a person going and trying to find all the right people. The first draft is provided to somebody for review and editing as well. And then also all the source material is linked in it. So you understand that it's not just hallucinating based on, what it's trying. So I

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 22:33

I wonder how they

Don Finley: 22:34

there's a lot of

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 22:34

how did they train that to get that? That's so interesting to me.

Don Finley: 22:39

So the solution is. I wouldn't call it training. Training is an interesting word in this space, right? Because you're talking about like the foundational models of chat GPT, or any of these large language models, whether it's Llama, GPT, Mistral, they're trained on basically the internet. And no company has that amount of data to be able to train it on that. And additionally, training is more of a one time exercise, Like you train the model, you release the model, and it knows what this system is doing is in real time, it knows what's happening. That process is done under a framework called RAG. It's retrieval augmented generation, And so that basically gives you like the long term memory of a system. And the whole premise is just on, the answer lies in the question. And so if you semantically embed the question, you're likely going to end up in a similar latent space to the actual answer, and then you can pass the source material into your, larger language model, and have it synthesize what the actual response is based on all the source material.

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 23:51

very interesting.

Don Finley: 23:53

it's, they're really cool solutions that are coming out. Now, I know we've touched on some of this, but one thing that I want to come to is, you talked about the Autism Care Project. How do you see the AI being, helpful in that space or like how we can apply technology to, the ones that we love that are in a different state. Yeah.

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 24:15

question. So I sit on the board of the Autism Hero Project, and what we do is we provide, we do a lot of things, but what we're best known for is providing insurance policies for families that are uninsured or uninsured that also covers their autism treatments, which are very expensive. but we also do community engagements. We train police officers on how to handle autistics and vice versa. And, a lot of inclusive events, theater, sports events, things that are really inclusive that you can bring your kids and families to and feel comfortable. so it's very interesting. Again, I work with, RWS group and they're a translation and localization company. but they are also. a big AI tech company as well. and they have many solutions and they've been in the AI automation tech space for 30 years before AI was even a thing. And what was interesting and curious for me to work, why I wanted to work with them is because I do a lot around accessibility and inclusivity, especially leaning in on workforce inclusivity and accessibility. being somebody that was diagnosed later on in life with being on the spectrum. My son, whose son, we're still working through all of his, things. And, it, is very important to me to understand the human brain, but also equip employers with the tools to make things accessible. my girlfriend who is the VP of the Autism Hero Project, she just got back from, Lockworld. and she was telling me yesterday, actually, about this tool that she just came across. that works with helping people that are nonverbal, that can't speak, whether it's because, of an injury or because of, being nonverbal, autism, it helps them communicate. and, she was saying that it was very progressive and, she had told them, she's you should try and embed this into, some of the tools that the kids with autism, like her son, who's nonverbal uses. it'll help us, it might be something that'll help them communicate in real time quicker. and so we are constantly seeing how tools are becoming more accessible for not just autism, but for disabilities in general. and that is a beautiful thing. I find that, autism, they call it a spectrum, but there's a lot of comorbid things, So a lot of us also have ADHD. and that's, not on the spectrum yet. I do feel like it might be down the line. They might add that one there, but it is what they call comorbid with it. So people that have ADHD are, the brain's also worked similarly sometimes to people with autism. But some of the behaviors and learning behaviors are similar. and so that's why people get misdiagnosed a lot with one or the other, but we're finding that there are now tools and solutions that help create things to make them accessible. And that's why having, these conversations within your learning and development teams is important. Are we truly accessible? if our customers and our employees, are they able to truly engage with us? Whether, what, outreach right now. there is a big push in Europe. they have their WCAG compliance, which is coming up in 2025. Any business that is doing business in Europe has to have, their compliance around accessibility. I'm helping a lot of clients, we're helping them become, WCAG compliant and accessible for people with disabilities and learning abilities, different learning abilities because everybody has the right to be equipped with information, And that's really at the core of this, It's equipping other humans with information that they need. and so that's, what's exciting, is seeing these. language models, these tools really leaning in on trying to create solutions for people, and understanding that there's a need,

Don Finley: 28:08

I think that's a beautiful point that you're bringing up, that we can utilize this technology to service a population of people that need personalization because that, their mind just works differently than, others. And like you described it, it's a spectrum. So we all possibly a little bit on that spectrum. I know I have ADHD as well, and I haven't been tested for autism, but it's possible. To, but in building technology for that population and allowing for that personalization that's necessary, I think we'll see benefits across the board for everybody as well to learn people's individual learning styles, to know how to communicate with them, to be able to present information in a way that is easier for people to digest or additionally understand where they're at. And was talking to a guest the other day and they were saying that, looking at just even like MBTI, Like you have people who are thinkers and feelers. And so you approach, addressing a problem or an opportunity in different ways based on how that person processes.

Carmen Santiago Keenon: 29:09

IQ, And leadership IQ is a big thing. I feel having the right leaders that understand the importance of accessibility, Because it's also customer service, And, and we're seeing it more and more, you're seeing it more on websites. My, city, my town where I live in, I just went on to pay a utility bill and I was like, oh, I hit the accessibility thing because they just did a new website and I was like, wow, they have options for people with dyslexia. I was like, chick, what does that look like? but I was like, this is very cool to see what you really are trying to think through. Most human needs, and it's a beautiful thing.

Don Finley: 29:48

Oh, that's fantastic. Carmen, thank you again for being on the show today. Like I really appreciated spending the time with you this Thank you for tuning into The Human Code, sponsored by Findustries, where we harness AI to elevate your business. By improving operational efficiency and accelerating growth, we turn opportunities into reality. Let Findustries be your guide to AI mastery, making success inevitable. Explore how at Findustries. co.