Unlocking Workplace Innovation: How AI is Shaping the Future at Zalando

Lutz Enders, Senior Tech Consultant in the Workplace Innovation and Product Team at Zalando, joins Janine in the studio to discuss the transformative role of AI tools for modern careers.

First up, Lutz explains that carefully tailoring the right AI solutions for different job functions is key to significantly boost productivity within organisations.

His insights are crucial for anyone looking to understand the evolving work landscape and AI innovation.

Lutz and Janine delve into his unique career journey, from studying art history and the history of the Middle Ages and then moving to the fast-paced startup culture at Zalando.

Lutz’s “Pieces of Me” reflect on a diverse career including, AI, Medieval Art and car mechanics to the all-important family pizza. 

To find out more about careers like Lutz's at Zalando, visit jobs.zalando.com

Transcript

JANINE MATOS

Hello and welcome to Piece of Me, the podcast by Zalando. I am Janine Matos, your host and Senior Portfolio Manager for Zalando Technology Foundation here at Zalando. In each episode, I welcome an inspirational expert from Zalando to take a deep dive into the fashion and tech retail industry. They also share lots of practical tips and what you should dare to do more to help you on your own career and work journey. By the way, if you're interested in careers at Zalando, click the link to our job page in the show notes.

Each guest brings in three items as they reveal their motivation, stories, and what they've learned along the way. A piece that is close to their heart, one from their career, and one from their time at Zalando. So let's get started by meeting my guest for today, Lutz Enders, Senior Tech Consultant in the Workplace Innovation and Product Team. Hi, Lutz. How are you? 

LUTZ ENDERS

Hi, Janine. I'm fine, thank you. 

JANINE

I'm really glad that you're here. I'm really looking forward to learning more about what your team does, especially all the new stuff you've been looking into lately with chat GPT on how we can improve our workplace and work day. So, but before you let us know what your team actually does, can you just list the three items that you brought? What is the close to your heart item? 

LUTZ

My close to the heart item is a picture of my family. Like we are sitting on a playground, having some pizza. was a crazy hot day. Dinner outside with my little ones and my girlfriend. 

JANINE

And what is the item you brought that is your career item? 

LUTZ

My career items are actually two. Two certificates. Number one is a certificate for an apprenticeship that I did after I finished school. I started to learn becoming a car mechanic and afterwards I decided, hey, that was nice, but I think I can do more and I can also use my head, my brain a little bit more. Then I went to university to study art history and history of the middle ages, actually. 

JANINE

So what's your Zalando piece? 

LUTZ

My Zalando piece is also a picture showing the dance floor of a Christmas party that we celebrated

JANINE

Let's go into this later on. Before that, I would really like to know more about your current position. What does a senior tech consultant do, especially for Workplace Innovation and Product? What is your focus? 

LUTZ

Maybe let me start to answer this with an anecdote. In one of my last meetings with Meg Greenhouse, our senior vice president of Zalandoi Technology Foundation, she started a meeting with, hey Lutz, how is it actually to be the most liked and disliked colleague at the moment? pointing out to the bandwidth that we deal with in our team. So on the one hand, we look into use cases where we try to find new software. So we do a software evaluations and we do also the implementation of new tools. 

For example, Gen AI tools for the average Zalando colleagues. And of course, everyone is excited about it, right? Everyone is, yeah, let's do that. Great. And then on the other hand, there is the area where we have to be very focused on that we make the most out of the software and application portfolio that we have. That means that we try to avoid redundancies, do not have different software applications for the same use case. 

We have this in this software for collaboration and productivity purposes. But on the other hand, we have also this software, why we have bot? And this could also mean that we have to take away one of the solutions to say, hey, let's rather focus on that one because it's more efficient. We don't have information silos by having two tools and we do not pay twice for the same. 

I understand people may get frustrated and having to implement a new tool into your daily work where you maybe already have your systems in place, your ways of working. But I can understand how there's both sides, people super excited to having new tools. And then the other hand, when you change things. there's Gemini and Gemini is in Gen AI from Google and Chat  GTP is another one. And we are now at Zalando trying to see how we can implement it in our daily tasks or ways of working. So it supports us.

JANINE

Chat GTP actually like createS a lot of noise, right? A lot of excitement and Zalando did the first steps with this chatbot that we have implemented on the fashion store. 

LUTZ

We also realised that a lot of colleagues started to use Gen AI for professional work, but they did not have like an AI solution provided by the company yet. And so we said, okay, it's the right point in time to look at it more holistically. And what we actually currently try to figure out is what kind of roles or specific job functions could be a project manager, could be a product manager or a software engineer. And we need to figure out for whom does it drive impact and to what extent, right?

That's what we currently try to figure out in running pilots with different Gen AI tools. And I think it's super interesting. 

JANINE

And I also like that we as employees are actually being asked to try out and be part of the pilot. 

LUTZ

Almost every part of Zalando are invited to participate. We are closely aligning also on this with our works councils, doing this journey of learning how actually artificial intelligence impacts the way we work.

What is your idea or your team's idea? How will this change our way of working? I think it really depends on the different job functions we have, right? I think it has a different impact for someone who is doing creative work than for those that are doing like project management or software engineering. Generally speaking, I truly believe that it will help us to focus on what truly matters in our day-to-day business.

To give you one example is capturing meeting minutes, right? So AI solutions that we tested come with a note taking feature to generate meeting notes. Meeting minutes are crucial to drive efficient business. But on the other hand, you need to make it structured, organised, easy to digest. Everyone knows what they have to do after the meeting. 

And just imagine like, you just run out of the meeting, hit a button, and then you get like the meeting minutes right away. It's fantastic, right? And it helps you to rather focus on the action items in these meeting minutes that your Gen AI solution provided instead of, okay, now I need to remember what did we discuss during the meeting? What are these action items, right? And instead you can actually follow up directly after the meeting on your action items.

JANINE

I imagine sometimes I'm in a meeting, I'm the note taker. I still want to be involved in the conversation. So I have to be doing multitasking. I have to be on top of the discussion and being able to participate. But then also on the other hand, make sure that I'm writing down everything in detail so I know I'm not missing a part. So with that, I can actually just participate in the meeting because I know in the end I'll get the summary from Gen AI I mean, on one hand, it's scary knowing that the entire time there's somebody listening. But on the other hand, it's just super helpful. 

LUTZ

And I think that that's what we learn together, right? So how to adequately use it to also make sure people are not afraid of using such things. Take them with us on that journey, like explaining, okay, what is the techniques actually? What is happening behind the scenes from a technical perspective? What is the biggest risk if we implement Gen AI into our workplace?

What I actually realised because I'm also like trying to get used to it in my day-to-day business, I use it on a daily basis already. What I realised at a certain point in time that I started to trust it very fast, right? So the output that I got from this artificial intelligence, I believe in that it is correct. And this is where I think we need to be very careful with because we are going to take like very important decisions based on, for example, such meeting minutes, right? So that means the risk is running into wrong decision based on wrong outputs coming from AI solution. And I think we need to think about mechanisms to make sure there is a human check always as a safeguard.

JANINE (09:38.85)

So Lutz, you are looking into GEN AI. What could actually the future look like beyond GEN AI? What is maybe even more there to come? 

LUTZ

Yeah, I think currently it's still, I would say, a bit passive, right? So we use a GEN AI tool. So we do a prompt in a tool and we ask a GEN AI solution to do something for us. Now, coming back to the example of the meeting notes, how about having done this meeting minutes, your Gen AI is asking you, hey, you committed to do this and that, why not doing now this and that, right? And then you can pick and choose from different options and you just hit the button and then it performs for you. 

I think we are not that far away from that. Like, and this is what I expect to see in the future. So it is kind of doing my job for me, which of course is that's where the scary part is. Because in the end, I just have to push a button. Actually, Gen AI will do everything that I was supposed to be doing. I would not say that because of course, like these companies that built that AI solutions really need to make sure that there's always this human verification, right? So of course you need to make sure that if you take a decision on a task, that you have considered, like, what are the consequences out of it, even though, like, the AI can already, like, point it out, but you take the decision.

JANINE

I would like now to actually move into your pieces, what you brought, to discuss the one that is close to your heart. You mentioned it's a family picture where you're sitting in the park and eating pizza. Is that a specific special day or did you just want to bring a really nice picture of your family? 

LUTZ

It's just a really nice picture of my family, but it's actually a typical situation for us, like coming together for dinner.

It's one of the best times during the day, because then we can talk about our day and like coming together during the work week. When you wrap up the day, you have time all to be together and just looks like what was the day was like. 

JANINE

So you said it's your kids and your partner, right? You try always to have this family time in the evening and wrap up the day together, let's say. So let's talk about your second piece, the one that is your career item. If I understood correctly, you brought your apprenticeship certificate and then in Germany we have this really nice, they're like this high school for adults where you can actually can then go back and do your high school diploma. And then you went to university and studied ancient history. 

LUTZ

It was art history and history of the middle ages. I'm really about reading books. And while I did my apprenticeship, I really dig into history and art history and it really got me and I really want to dig deeper into it. And I liked the way of learning about how you can think, how you can actually verify information like more systematically. And that's what really like is still helping me a lot.

Yeah, it helped me to develop. So what I really like is the connection of art and Middle Age history. 

JANINE

But in the end, you're now working with the future. So how did this connection come from studying the past and now working with the future? 

LUTZ

So on the one hand, I think when I decided to do studying art history and history of the Middle Ages, it was a decision by heart. I really invested a lot. But what I also realised is, Back then it was very challenging for me to pay the rent for my flat. And on the other hand, I was missing some time to really dive deeper and deeper into the subject matters. 

So at the end of my studies, I had to decide whether to go in this inconvenient economical area of the university where you have to look, okay, how do I actually get money to carry on with studying and doing a PhD or like start to earn some money. Because at a certain point in time, I also realised, I also want to arrive with a family. Of course, I really love that subject, but I need to move ahead. Once I arrived at Zalando, I found it very interesting and maybe like it points out to my third piece, which shows like the Zalando startup culture, it just grabbed me and turned my life up and down like, yeah, I liked it.

JANINE

But looking into again also Zalando and your third piece, which was a picture of one of the most memorable Christmas parties. Tell me why you decided to bring a picture of that Christmas or was it overall the weights of working at Zalando? 

LUTZ

It is actually this different kind of culture, right, that I experienced like, like really being in this formal environment of university, talking to your professors, talking to your students and then actually switching to Zalando where you have like this startup culture, which is the complete opposite of it. Right. So in this, this is what this picture stands for for me. Like it's work hard, play hard mentality that you could find in the early days of Zalando, which was interesting. And it also had some advantages and disadvantages, but it was a whole lot of new world.

Like after waking up from the middle ages and arriving in the now. Back then Zalando was still a startup. I mean, I like we still kept a little bit of the startup mentality as in like sometimes just try out things or even we still have this culture of trying to be more easy going with each other. 

JANINE

Yeah, exactly. Really well said. And before we wrap up, what would you tell our listeners what they should maybe dare to do more in their career or personal life?

LUTZ

I would actually point out to one of our OFM principles, our founding mindset, is solve things that matter, that we start from an experience worth creating it and then working backwards to achieve it. That's actually what I like and what is a constant compass for my daily work because I trying to look, okay, this is the vision. This is where we want to go. How can we get there?

Right. Because in day -to -day business, you sometimes lose the North Star where you need to head because everything is so hectic. Everything is too stressful. And I think it's always important to step back, choose in the right steps to reach the vision that we are heading for. 

JANINE

Those are really nice closing words and it's a really nice tip for everyone. So thank you so much for being my guest today, Lutz. 

LUTZ

Glad to be here with you, for everyone listening. Bye bye

JANINE

Thank you all so much for listening. If you'd like to know more about careers at Zalando, go to jobs.zalando.de. You'll find that link in the show notes or check out our Instagram page, Inside Zalando. Our next episode is coming in two weeks and I'll be talking to another guest from Zalando about life inside the fashion and tech retail industry. And of course, their three pieces of me.