How to Automate Without Leaving People Behind: With Jamie Sermon  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **From Intention To Long-Term Career** - Jamie Sermon joined UPS intending only to gain experience but stayed because the company invested in him and offered repeated "dream job" moments. - He progressed from project supervisor to VP by leveraging mentors, exposure, and internal growth opportunities. Transcript: Tammy Soares What's your story? How'd you get to where you are today? Jamie Sermon Yeah, to get to know me, that's it has to start a little bit before UPS. Right. And sometimes I can't believe I've been here 15 years. I just was talking with a colleague about two weeks ago, and I've always said that I'm a baby at UPS because you've met a few of my other colleagues. And sometimes you get in this company and there are people who've been here 20 years, 30 years, you name it. We just celebrated somebody over 40 years. I always call myself a baby, but they said, no, you're now a teenager. So now I'm a UPS teenager, but my success is rooted in so many parts of me. You know, people say coming from humble beginnings, I definitely embody that. I grew up in the Bahamas in a family, small island, surrounded by family and friends that instilled with me island life, instilled with me. But even though you're here in this little place that the world is truly your oyster, instilled in me hard work, but also instilled in me the dream, the dream and dream big. And that I did. Coming up from just that beginning, I didn't know if I wanted to be a doctor. I didn't know if I wanted to be a technologist. I didn't know if I wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Or I should say, I didn't know I wanted to be any one of those things. I actually wanted to be all of those things and thought I could do all of it. That's amazing. Yeah. And I carried me all the way to when it was time to decide to go to college. I narrowed it down to two. I said, I'd like to do medicine and I'd like to do technology. You know, the time where the internet was in the technology boom in that space of time. And I wanted to find a way to combine technology with medicine. So my first degree, I actually studied physical therapy. A lot of people know it. And that's because I couldn't do a major in medicine and technology at the time. Long story short, once I finished that, jumped over and started following the software engineering and technology path, still thinking I could combine the two. That's until I ran into UPS. It's funny. I do share this part. When I joined UPS 15 years ago, my intent was not to stay here. I really was thinking of jumping ship, coming in and getting a really reputable company on my resume and going off and doing something else along with those dreams. But what got me here was one, UPS saw something in me. They saw all the little details in that little story I just gave you, all the little things that formed and shaped me. They saw that and saw it was somebody that they wanted to invest in. And likewise, as I got into the organization, I found someplace where I can grow. I found someplace that I've had my dream job multiple times over. My eyes keep opening and I keep finding another place where I'm like, wow, this is it. This is it. ([Time 0:03:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6cdcc106-1ac8-4e9a-b137-36a98329a431)) - **Cuba Study Shaped Resilience** - Jamie studied physical therapy in Cuba through a unique scholarship program that broadened his cultural perspective. - That experience taught him resilience and shifted his view on what problems truly matter. Transcript: Jamie Sermon I was able to study physical therapy overseas, studied in Cuba. So an opportunity that a lot of people don't get to see. How that came across was obviously everybody's aware of the political restrictions and everything of, you know, being a U.S. Citizen and being able to enter into Cuba and things like that. But I had a very unique opportunity where Cuba and United States had this partnership at the time because of the medical programs that they had. You had to qualify for a scholarship. If you qualify for a scholarship within Cuba, that means there's no financial transaction, right? So as long as you were able to get a full ride scholarship within the medical field, then they agreed to allow you to join and participate in that. So that was how I was able to get that opportunity. That also shaped me a lot because I got to see another cultural aspect that things that I wouldn't have been able to experience otherwise. I got to interact with families. I got to see the world from a different view. So all of that also helped shape who I am today. ([Time 0:08:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/60670c70-c328-4bdb-ad18-6161a0d5e4ed)) - **Protect Teams To Encourage Risk** - Build trust by protecting teams when experiments fail and avoid public blame for mistakes. - Expect mistakes from risk-taking and focus on learning, not punishment, to sustain innovation. Transcript: Tammy Soares Like, what does that mean in practice? Jamie Sermon You cannot be great without a great team. That's how it starts. And when I first started my career, I didn't really, really understand that, you know, as you start to come up the ranks, you are that great team that people are trying to create. And if you don't stop and pay attention, you don't realize how important that was to the overall success. That's part of the partnership of working with Launch. I'll even talk specifically. I know when we first engaged, when we got to know you and your team, one of the things that I expressed was, hey, I will take risks. But if I take a risk, I have to trust you and you have to trust me. Right. And that trust comes from support. That trust comes from knowing that when we take this risk, I'll have your back. We'll go through it together and we'll figure out a way to do something great. And that message was accepted so greatly. You know, it was funny when I, the reciprocation from launch was, yeah, that's exactly how we want to see it too. I believe that in practice. And I know it's funny when you say that to some people sometimes, and they truly don't believe it until it happens. And I'll give you an example of just how my mind works. People who work with me, around me, rarely see me get upset when something goes wrong. And I say rarely. Some people who've been with me for years could probably say that they've probably never seen me get upset over something not going right. Doesn't mean I don't get upset, I'll be honest with you. But they may not see that emotion. And honestly, the reason why they don't see it is sometimes I really am not upset. Because the way I look at it is, we took the risk. So we're going to make mistakes. As we make the mistakes, I go and figure out with the team. We look at it and say, what can we learn from this? All right. What can we use from this to move forward? I have your back. You have mine. Let's figure it out and move on. ([Time 0:10:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/249ab450-5d3f-49be-be73-beebb8187823)) - **Layer Risk Ownership By Experience** - Let junior employees experiment fearlessly while senior leaders manage the bigger calculations and risks. - Provide guidance and safety nets so newcomers can push boundaries without endangering the organization. Transcript: Jamie Sermon Yeah and that's the mindset that needs to be slightly shifted I don't want to say complete change because you're right you have to take calculated risks per se but here's how I look at It I like that in an organization, you have many people in many different roles, right? You have some people who just started, you know, this is their first day, first career, they're just showing up. And you have some people who are, like I mentioned before, been there 40 years. And it might not just be your tenure that ranks you, but let's just say different levels of experience and roles placed in there. I love that structure because I look at it like life, right? If you think about, you know, kids, and I talked about being a teenager, right? When you think about little kids, toddlers, or even if they're going to be teenagers, one thing is they have a little bit of a joyful ignorance and they're fearless, right? They don't really know that they can really kill themselves if they run that hard into that wall or whatever the case is. And they're just going for it. Right. But then they learn. And then sometimes you learn, you're like, OK, probably shouldn't set that thing up the way that is. Or, whoa, I didn't know you could do that. You know, so you get that experimentation from there and you get to see that. And the thing is, they need guidance. So that's why you have the layer that somebody's above them to say, well, I need to make sure they don't go too far. I need to make sure they don't jump off that cliff, or I have to make sure they're not on a roof. And you can see where I'm going with this. You keep building it up further and further. So how I look at it is, if I relate it back to how I run my operations and look at the organization with my team, is each layer above, that's who has to worry more and more about the calculations. The new, when I have interns and people who just hire it, I really don't worry about the rest. Like sometimes when we have a hackathon, especially in the age of AI, when people get concerned about, we're giving them this AI project, what about our data? I said, you guys got to go figure out how to keep that data safe. Let them go do. ([Time 0:14:12](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14917de1-604b-435e-aeed-469dda1655e3)) - **Fear From Narrative, Not Reality** - Fear of robots stems from being uninformed and sensationalized narratives, not current reality. - Robotics change how work is done and create new, often safer and higher-skill opportunities. Transcript: Jamie Sermon Say it jokingly, but the best person to put in front of a robotics revolution is a people person, right? But maybe UPS was smart when they did that part of it. But I said it with a little bit of a smile on my face, but in reality, the fear is based off of lack of education. When I say that, and I say lack of education, I don't mean that somebody isn't smart. It's just not informed. And here's what I mean by that. We're in what I call the robotics boom, right? We're in that robotics age, just like how when you had the internet boom and the internet bubble, where it's like, hey, everything's going that way. It's happening right now because we've finally made AI accessible enough that the advancements in it are moving fast because so many people are, when you came up with Gen.AI and everything, So many people are able to work with it to contribute to it, right? So that took off. Robots and robotics have been here for a while. It's many, many, many, many, many years in. If you look at some of the top biggest companies, they've been working on this for decades. But it's the combination of the two meeting in the middle that's allowing it to be something that is now shaping what our future is going to be. When you talk about the fear, the fear is now because, like I said, robots have been there for a while. We have Hollywood. We have all these different things that show you, well, robots can take over the world. Robots are going to take my job. Robots are going to do this. Robots are going to do that. That's not how it should be seen, right? Because that's not where the reality is. And this is where I talk about being informed a little bit. Take social media, take the internet, take all these different things. Yeah, there's probably jobs that are gone that you wouldn't have before, but how many jobs are being created since then that if you think about it, what's a social media influencer, Right? That's even one, but you just, you could just name it, right? You just go on and all the jobs created by the internet, right? Look at how many people, you know, Facebook or Instagram or X employees, right? Those are things that wouldn't have been fostered without that. So now let's flip it to robotics and let me answer it head on. We're not taking away any jobs. We're changing the way work is done. And what that means is trying to make it safer, trying to make it more lucrative, trying to make it happier. We're trying to enhance everything that you do in your daily life. I know I've had philosophical discussions with friends that look at me and say, no, you don't truly believe that. And I say, I absolutely believe it. Right. One of the things that we look at is how do you focus on minimizing injuries? How do you focus on giving people skills that when they go home to their families, they go home the same way that they left home, right, to start out with. And that's the honest to God truth. There are also some other aspects when you talk about, there is a reality where some people will say, well, you just admitted that the internet just got rid of some people's jobs, so why Wouldn't robots do the same? Yes, there will be some things that will be obsolete. Technology does that. It has nothing to do with robots, right? But the one thing I do like to see that's happening is there's a lot of opportunity, again, being created. ([Time 0:21:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/306e373c-5bf3-4788-8a2c-fac3f999212e)) - **Design Automation With Workers** - Involve workers in designing human–machine collaboration by asking which tasks robots could handle. - Use employees' domain expertise to shape automation that complements, not replaces, people. Transcript: Jamie Sermon Even here with what I do, we're creating opportunities to give people a chance to say, well, yes, we have this new role. Here's a role we can train you for to work along with that. So I would say we just need to be responsible and continuing to take away people's fears of things that they assume or things that narratives that have been created that are not necessarily Rooted in reality. Tammy Soares Yeah. And I think that your point around bringing them into the conversation as well, because it's going to be just a different kind of human to machine collaboration. ([Time 0:24:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e882e49-9802-479a-9a18-66deac0f5b97)) - **Tools Become Part Of Learning** - Technological shifts follow education and tool adoption cycles, from calculators to computers to AI in schools. - Embracing tools early lets learners do more advanced work rather than falling behind. Transcript: Jamie Sermon It's new because, again, we're inventing and we're creating something that seems threatening. And I keep using these really simplistic examples for people all the time so they can start to just get comfortable with the way we see it. But if you go back, each generation of education with kids, there was a time where there were no calculators in the schools. Then there was a time where there were no computers in the school. There was a time where there's no AI, which is coming now. There was no AI in the school. Right now, schools and colleges are wrestling. Well, how do we manage chat GPT, right? Everybody is going on to some online services, so many different providers. How do we make sure that they're learning? Well, that's the disruption, right? 15 years from now, or it might even be quicker, it's going to be a place that's within the school. But now you're teaching even more advanced skills about how do we let them use the technology to make sure that now they can do more advanced learning, just like what we were able to do More advanced learning once we had a calculator, once we had a computer. ([Time 0:29:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a28ff9d8-8327-4fd6-b3c5-3f5742441c7a)) - **Schedule Daily Learning Time** - Carve daily time to learn new AI tools and stay current with emerging capabilities. - Treat continuous hands-on exploration as essential to avoid becoming a technology 'dinosaur.' Transcript: Jamie Sermon Yeah. You know, for me, I'm trying to carve out, here's one of the things I'm doing for myself right now. So when it talks about exciting and it's exciting and also self-building to share. I have now made it a point to ensure carve out 30 minutes for myself every day. And here's why I'm carving out this 30 minutes. I was doing almost like an impromptu mentoring and coaching session at this recruiting event. And as I was there, we got into a good conversation about the different AI tools that are available. And I'm somebody that stays up to date, but there are about four or five different tools that I just heard about that day that some, well, I should say even more than that. There were four or five of them that I never heard about. Then there were another handful of them that I heard about, but I never used. And sitting there talking to some of these college students and, you know, up and comers and to hear how many of them they interact with each day and how they're thinking, how they approach Life and things like that. Right. And I'm like, man, it would be so much. I don't want to miss this boat. Right. This is a lot of cool things that's, you know, allowing them to catch up. Like we're having a conversation and they're right on pace with me for that conversation, for something they just picked up that year or those couple of weeks where I'm like, that was A whole life learning for me. So what excites me is the fact that we have all these tools that are available to us today, that's coupled with other technologies, right? These, you know, having mobile devices that are becoming more and more advanced that can power and allow these things to just be at our fingertips, right? So it excites me on the ability to continue to grow and not feel like a dinosaur as I move in a technology space, right? Before I used to say technology is for the kids, but technology is for all of us now. ([Time 0:32:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4c0445c3-0877-45a6-a6e6-97c38479f1e3))