Managerial Sabotage

Your Work Friends Podcast: Managerial Sabotage with Davide Rice, People Managing People

Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.

Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

The thing that disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, essentially, at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged. It's almost a betrayal in some ways.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We're breaking down work, so you get ahead, Mel. You and I talk a lot about the state of the workplace. Actually, every single day we're talking about what's happening with work, what's happening with jobs, and one of the things that we just keep coming back to is what the hell is going on with the manager and the manager role.

Speaker 3: 0:51

We've covered it several times in New Week New Headlines First of all. Managers are in the sandwich, the classic corporate sandwich between executive leadership and then their employees, and they're getting dumped on every which way. We covered an article several months back talking about this is the crisis year of the manager, because we see orgs ripping them out, which we both have expressed as a dumb move for many reasons. And the other piece there is the younger people don't want the gig because it's a thinkless job right now being a manager.

Speaker 2: 1:28

It's hard, right, it's hard and to your very good point, that's getting attacked from all sides and we wanted to bring in somebody that hears about what the hell is really going on Real street conversation with the manager. So we brought in David Rice. David is the executive editor of People Managing People, where he's looking at the stories that are happening in the workplace specifically around management, and he's really trying to get at, with people managing people, the heart of the issues that are faced not only by HR professionals but by employees too. So we thought, because he's getting this great overview of what's going on in the ether, he can be a very good person to get the very real street, very raw, very honest perspective on what's going on with managers.

Speaker 3: 2:12

Yeah, a lot of insightful conversation. I also, side note, love all of his videos, so if you're not following David on LinkedIn, you should be and check out his weekly videos.

Speaker 2: 2:23

David is very dry, he is very no bullshit, but he's spot on, so we hope you enjoy this conversation with that. Here's David.

Speaker 3: 2:44

David, it's so good to see you. All right, David.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Again, thanks so much for joining us today. We're super stoked to talk about the state of managers In our part of the world. Mel and I are hearing from managers. We're reading the news about managers. They're getting it from all sides. We're flattening, we're taking managers out. Apparently, ai is now coming for your job all this good jazz. Like it's a. It's a crazy time to be a manager, and especially in your role as the executive editor at People Managing People. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is the world of the manager looking like right now? And I'm curious what's keeping you up at night?

Speaker 1: 3:20

as it relates to managers these days, I think the thing that, like disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, like, essentially at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged, right, like it's almost a betrayal in some ways, like if you think about the fact that 82% of managers received no formal training. So it's just here, go do this really difficult thing. I'm not going to help you do it. And even the whole way that you were successful, you got into this because you were, in theory, good at something. So is this how we're going to reward success and high performance? Is here's this new challenge that I'm just not going to help you with. And I don't care. I guess I don't care if you're good at it or not.

Speaker 1: 4:09

As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about leadership and how to create success and how to innovate and inspire people to do new things, how can we do that to managers? It's just disturbing, right? It would be like trying to train your pets to go to the bathroom outside but never open the door. What do you want them to do? I don't understand. So what are we doing? There's a lot in this world that I'm like what are we doing? But when I think about business, that's the thing that I just. It blows my mind and makes me want to pull my hair out.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah I mean to your point is we're not setting them up for success at all. If there's a development piece, 82% of people aren't even getting trained. Mel and I absolutely know that to be true. Very few organizations are doing that and even if they are, it's not necessarily that they're developing them the right way, because managing is a very different skill than individual contributor. It's a completely different turn. We know it's one of the hardest roles to step into. If you ask most people in their career ladder, that flip up into manager was way harder than that flip up into executive.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Because it's just so different and I love your analogy. So we're basically saying, yeah, this is what you need to do, but we're not allowing you to do it or we're not setting you up for success to do it, ie opening the door. Is there anything that gives you hope? Because we absolutely agree on that reality. But is there anything where you're like? But this is interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is there's a lot of people coming together around common experiences right now, common goals, desires. I think 2025, when we look back on it in a couple of years will be like a pivotal year for community building. That's my hope, that's one of the things that I really wanted to see from this year and for changing the way we think about traditional dynamics. So, whether that's how we use something like LinkedIn or how we approach going to a conference or interacting with each other online which obviously I think could use an overhaul but I'm seeing a lot of people agree on what they see Like we all agree that this is happening to managers, right, and we know what we want to change.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I think there's not as much difference in philosophy or the spectrum of thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build community around this, and that's a skill that we need to learn in and of itself, and so I think it's going to be good for us to come together on that stuff and identify the things that we want. We've all been sold a lot of well, I'll say this bullshit narratives about either management or what it means to be a leader. There's a lot of this like alpha talk and I have no time for it, but it's one of those things that like pervades the leadership space. I just think it's going to be short-lived and we're all going to come together and identify some things. The need for managers maybe we'll get into this as we go, but I don't think that the need for managers is going to disappear.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I want to talk about that community piece real quick. Community Are you seeing community inside organizations or are you seeing people actually going outside organizations to find that community because it's the only place they're getting it?

Speaker 1: 7:24

I think both. I think it's cool to see community within organizations because people are. We talk about, we always talk about like peer-to-peer learning, but I think more and more people are realizing like I can go to this person and get some kind of value, especially around AI, right, I think that people are seeing the things that their coworkers are doing with it and they're going whoa, I didn't know you could do that. Teach me how to do that. So they're learning a lot of things from each other and that, in and of itself, is building internal community.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But I also think, with all these layoffs and the things that you see, trust is low. In some ways there's loyalty, but in other ways people are like whoa, they ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? They ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? And they want to go out and build their communities outside of it. So they're going to the thing they're trying to build their networks. They're going to people that they have common visions with and engaging more.

Speaker 1: 8:13

We're seeing that activity that even you see in slack communities, right, there's more and more of that popping up and there's a lot more groups out there identifying that and going, hey, I think we can create this community. The facilitation of that is increasing as well, so there's more options and there's more desire to take advantage of it. It just gets infused into sort of the culture and the way that we all think I've got to be part of one of these things so that I can continue to grow, because the organization's not going to help me do it necessarily. I think that is a thing that's coming out now, but I ultimately think that it's a good thing. It's something that we all need to do anyways.

Speaker 2: 8:51

There's this overall sentiment for managers right now that, like I'm on my own and so I gotta figure this out, either through community or internally or externally, because my faith that my company is gonna be doing it for me or my leader is going to be doing it for me is nil. Am I reading that right? Is that what you're hearing and feeling?

Speaker 1: 9:25

who's above you to help you. It's generally like either director, like VPs or executives who have no time or desire to help you figure out your challenges and problems right. They're just not going to step in and help you. And so who are you going to turn? Yeah, you have to go to other people that are having a common experience and build some sort of rapport or understanding. You have to find out what tools are you using to understand these problems better. Where are you getting your advice from that kind of thing? And that's one of the things that we see, partially because we seek to be the thing that you would go to. Naturally, when we are successful, we find that people are gaining value from what we're doing. That is part of what's driving. It is like amongst managers. And then you see, like the flattening of organizations right, they're firing managers left and right, so it's. I don't even think they care if I succeed or not.

Speaker 2: 10:11

If I don't, they'll just use it as a reason to cut my salary from the books and, I guess, get ai to do it yeah, yeah, which is funny the deloitte human capital trends just came out, which a lot of times is thought of as one of the key indicators for where human performance, human capital consulting, is going right in all these organizations. And they just were like psych should be on, you shouldn't be taking this manager layer and I'm like no shit Sherlock.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Let's not, yeah, so it's figure.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Yeah, having 67 direct reports as a VP didn't work. I'm shocked.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I'm sure.

Speaker 3: 10:49

Yeah, it's painful, we just covered a few weeks back that, like Gen Z, has no interest in even moving into the management role, and there's obviously a much better way that people can be preparing people to be in this role. Ideally, from the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you. From the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you even make it to that step. Right, so it isn't this big surprise or big shift. You cover so many different organizations, so you see excellent use cases and really bad use cases. What do you see being done really well?

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's tough to say, because I'd probably say so-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now they flatten half the thing. So-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now, they flattened half the.

Speaker 3: 11:26

Thing.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Yeah, it's tough to say who's getting it right and who's getting it wrong. If you're looking at it like okay, no-transcript, and you're actually giving them tools to do that, then you're doing it right. One thing I've always said is, from the pandemic time, nobody ever adjusted. Nobody ever adjusted what they were doing to manage differently. Right, we went to remote. They didn't know how to do that. That's part of the reasons why there's a lot of reasons why they want to force people back into offices that are not great, but one of them is they never learned how to do this any other way, still doing things by the idea of butts in seats. And then you realize, oh, the increase in things like employee monitoring software. We talk about that all the time because it's one of the things we do reviews on our website but you see the increase in that and you're like, is that healthy? Is that any better than just looking at butts in seats? No, it's not a gauge of productivity. They got these like mouse jigglers and all these weird gadgets you can buy to fake productivity, if that's how you're going to measure productivity.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And so the ones that are doing it right, I think, are like look, you got to shift to like measuring output reasonably, measuring outcomes responsibly. Those are like two of the key things. Don't get lost on a goal. You can create this really big inflated expectation and think that's reasonable or responsible. It's not. It's about figuring out. Okay, what does productivity actually look like? Meaningful productivity, not just like completing tasks or creating a huge volume of work, because you can create a huge volume of work. But if it all sucks, what's the difference? It's not going to move the needle. We've got all these traditional quotas and traditional ways of thinking about things like productivity, things like business impact. We've got to get away from it being so role-specific, it being quota specific. I would say in a lot of cases, a lot of it is like volume of what people are doing rather than the velocity or the value of what they're doing. So the ones that are thinking ahead and trying to change that are doing it right.

Speaker 3: 13:35

Yeah, thinking about more meaningful impact than just like checking the box. And we hear it all the time, francesca and I get people reaching out to us. They're feeling the squeeze at the top from the executives that they're reporting up to, or they're a manager, their senior manager, who's getting it from the executive right.

Speaker 3: 13:53

And then they're also dealing with the emotions of their own team and the things that they're experiencing in the day to day. So they're just what's that song Stuck in the Middle with you? They're just really all stuck in this kind of hellish landscape of the middle being pulled in a million directions but also not feeling cared for in either way. If someone's in that space right now, what advice do you have for them if they're in the squeeze?

Speaker 1: 14:19

Yeah, it's tough right, because we're in this period where executive demands are just so out of touch with the experience and the reality of the lives people are living. They could use this moment to gain trust and instead they've used it to put in RTO orders and talk about 60-hour work weeks. A lot of what we're seeing, especially when they start yapping in the media, just erodes people's image of what leadership is right. So if you're in that space, I think the thing that you got to do is basically do whatever you can to increase transparency about what's going on in the org, what's going on with roles and I know transparency is one of those words that gets overused to the point that it means something different to everybody but just try to be real with people about what's happening. Respect them as adults. Okay, what's going on with their roles? What skills do they need? Just be human about it. Be real.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Everybody's terrified that a layoff is coming all the time. Now they're responding to what they see out in the world and what they want to see is you being a human being with them. They can't trust you more than the AI. If you feel like some soulless corporate suit, right, they might as well just listen to the all-knowing robot overlord that's going to own their future. That's why Gen Z wants to go to the AI instead of their manager. So you've got to find a way to establish good faith. You've got an find a way to establish like good faith. You've got an employee population right now that has no faith in leadership, and then you end up, if you don't do this right, you end up looking like a shill for people who are out there saying all these things in the media, or people who are just maybe not understanding the basics of their existence essentially, and it damages your ability to establish a relationship or trust with them.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Why do you think people don't do this? Mel and I, in our research, we talk a lot about the boss-employee-boss relationship, because it is a relationship I'm curious about. Why don't you think managers show up as a human? What's going on there?

Speaker 1: 16:22

I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the manager is expected to deliver certain things from the business, certain outcomes, and so it gets a little bit like it's not like they have any shortage of meetings and work to do themselves, so they're already bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results. On top of that, you're talking about a couple of generations that have been, I would say, systematically weaponized against each other by media narratives. Right, everything is Gen Z this, but for a long time it was millennials and their damn avocado toast. Right, everything's just.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Oh, this group is awful, awful, and what you end up with is like a group of people. They kind of look at each other weird to begin with, and then you've got really big shifts that happen because of technology. Right, like millennials and gen z, they don't like phone calls, they don't even want to go to meetings. Yeah, we were talking about somebody on the phone. Just text me, or couldn't this meeting have been an email? How many times have you heard that? But it's an old fashioned way to get together. Talk about it, just settle it, and so you're not communicating to people how they want to be communicated to.

Speaker 1: 17:34

In a lot of cases, you're not understanding their culture, essentially because there's age differences or different ways of doing things that you grew up with. Because when you grew up, that didn't exist, like when I entered the workforce, slack wasn't a thing, it just didn't exist. We did everything by email. But you combine all that together and you've got a place where people just don't understand each other.

Speaker 1: 17:57

I feel like and managers, if they are typically a little bit more advanced in their career right now you're probably talking about somebody in their mid-30s to late-40s, let's say, a 24-year-old those experiences are wildly different, right, and their expectations are wildly different. You interpret things at work differently, and now they're being polarized by everything. Oh, I don't understand them and their pronouns and those like that. It's constantly one thing after another to highlight our differences, never our commonalities. We never talk about the things that we experience the same way. We never talk about the things that affect us in the same way. So that's why there is no trust For managers. It's going to have to be a conscious effort on your part to sit down, make a lot of eye contact.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Really, you know what I mean Not an awkward amount, but be present with somebody, be in the room with them, see them as a person, learn about things like energy and body language and personal dynamics, what it is that might be sitting between you and somebody that you're finding it difficult to connect with. Those are the things like as a manager. This job is going to become less and less about technical skills, I'm convinced, because a lot of all the technical stuff you'll just be able to do it with AI. The thing that's going to differentiate you as a manager is your ability to connect to another human being and to see within them what it is you can do to help them achieve that. But it's not easy to do and it's inherently awkward for groups that are different like that, I would say.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Easy, but it's simple it doesn't actually require too much technical thought.

Speaker 2: 19:44

It doesn't, and it's so fun because to point out, like commonalities right, there's way more that we have in common.

Speaker 3: 19:48

humans really don't need a lot, they really don't there seems to be a huge missed opportunity we've reported on, like the silver tsunami that's coming in 2030 and all the the knowledge that we should be learning, but is there a huge missed opportunity happening right now for organizations to have more intergenerational connections and community building to help bridge that gap and have that conversation, especially as we're going through these major transitions? Is that a space where companies should really be focusing?

Speaker 1: 20:21

I would say yes. Here's the challenge, though. We're basically like conditioned to distrust each other, right? So, like older folks, they don't want to trust Gen Z because they're entitled or lazy or whatever the stereotypes they peddle about them. And you've got like the OK boomer side to it where it's just oh, here they go, and we spend all this time thinking about our differences. There's not a lot of motivation to go. Okay, maybe he doesn't get this AI thing, but he was in the workforce when the internet came about and that must've been a huge shift. What lessons did he learn from that? They're not motivated to ask that question because inherently, you'd have to be interested in them or see their value, see their humanity, and everything that we do is meant to polarize and tear us apart, but it's hard to create something totally different within the walls of your organization when the broader culture is constantly peppering people with this narrative of difference. It makes it difficult for us to learn from each other unless there's some other connector.

Speaker 1: 21:24

We did a thing at work. We were just messing around with Sora when it came out, and my team and I we were like, what if we did this with it? I said, well, have it, make me the Pope. And then it did and I was like, oh my God, that's hilarious. That looks ridiculous. Now make it, make all of you my cardinals. So I did that and it was ridiculous. And then we were like, okay, now give all the cardinals blowout hairstyles. And the images were so funny. We were all laughing so hard. I can't remember the last time we all laughed this hard together, but it was lovely. It was like we had a great bonding moment out of it that I ended up making this video.

Speaker 1: 22:06

But I thought to myself you could use that, though In terms of management. You can use that to create all kinds of experiences, to change people's narratives about each other. If you got somebody from Gen Z guiding somebody from Gen X or a baby boomer through that experience and they're joking around and working through it together to make the funniest, goofiest, stupidest thing they can make, well, all of a sudden, in that moment, you are just like two human beings having a good time, and that should be okay. At work, us learn from each other and figure out. Okay, I don't agree with them on everything, but maybe Tom over there, maybe he has an idea about how this could work. That's what we need. We need that institutional knowledge to transfer somehow, and it can't just be through SOPs and internal documentation.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Right, like it's going to have to be that conversation.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, it has to be. That's the only way. That's really the only way people are going to remember it or actually apply it.

Speaker 3: 23:12

We talked a little bit about, organizations are ripping out the middle, and now we also see there's definitely well, let's not do that and it's just a turmoil across the board. What does all of this mean for someone who maybe has invested years of their life so far just to reach the manager level, and now they've made it, and this is the year they're experiencing? What does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place?

Speaker 1: 23:41

does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place? It's difficult, right? Like you spent 10 years trying to climb the ladder and then now the ladder has been abandoned and about to fall over, with you on it, right?

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah, it's like the top rungs are gone, the bottom that you were on are gone and now you're just hanging on.

Speaker 1: 23:57

You're like the whole thing rotted out from under me, yeah, but it does mean that you're going to have to be as flexible as you can when it comes to things like upskilling, showing your skills differently, finding ways to play the game in a different way, showcasing your impact essentially on any project or whatever it is that you're working on, ascend in an organization. I'm looking really hard at how I can showcase my outcomes and basically build narratives about how I've been a driving force behind whatever it is we were trying to do and how I integrate tech into my skillset. So you want to be really flexible around that. I work in an editorial space. Right, we are, I would say, in general, we are, I would say, in general, a curmudgeonly bunch. Anyways, editors are not lighthearted and high-spirited people.

Speaker 1: 24:49

most of the time there's always a lot of resistance to anything.

Speaker 2: 24:52

You guys don't have a fun committee there's no fun committee.

Speaker 1: 25:00

The fun committee is occasionally get together, have a few drinks and have a big bitch session. You're constantly trying to understand things in a different way or look at it in a different way, and a lot of this AI stuff does make you go oh, what is this? Oh God. But one of the things that's been tough for everybody is that, essentially, the job as it was five years ago doesn't exist anymore. The term editor is actually starting to mean something different, and you've got to be comfortable with that. You got to be prepared to integrate tech into it. However, you're going to do it, and this is not just our roles. This is across the spectrum of roles within the workforce, whether it's marketing or you're doing coding. The things that you thought were going to be central or core to your work aren't necessarily that anymore, and you're going to have to figure out how you're going to be flexible and adaptable and learn to use this stuff to do it better, quicker, in different ways than you've ever done it before.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Francesca I think I used to say this to you a long time ago where I was, like everyone needs to start to tap into their inner Madonna, who has painted herself like a million times over the last 40 years Got to tap into that right Reinvention.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, don't be attached to your title. Be attached to things that matter. Your salary matters, it's how you pay your bills. Your title is not how you pay your bills. I've always said you can call me the head schmuck in charge, I don't care. Call me whatever you want. This is what I want to make. This is what I want my benefits package to look like those concrete things that make my life possible. That's what I'm after. You can call me whatever you want, I don't care.

Speaker 3: 26:38

And don't let work define your self-worth.

Speaker 1: 26:40

You shouldn't even really connect it to your worth at all, like at all. One of the things that we did recently was we did a survey about the TV show Severance. We did a survey asking would you get the procedure?

Speaker 2: 26:54

What is Severance about for those that don't?

Speaker 1: 26:56

know. So, essentially, severance is a dystopian workplace drama, in which this company called Lumen Industries, I think it is has created a way so that you can sever your personality between work and your private life, so when you're at work, you don't remember anything about your private life, and when you're in your private life, you don't remember anything about work. It's called your innie and your outie, right, and so you live these two completely separate lives, not knowing, and you just know that you have to go like here at this time kind of thing. So I asked people would you do it? I had been asked by a UK journalist in response to a UK survey that found that 12% of the UK population would do it. So I was like let's see if we can find out a little bit more about the US and Canada. So we did our own version of it, and, for us, 20% said either definitely or they probably would 20%. Wow, 20%.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Here's the really disturbing part, though. We asked people what would be the amount of money that you would need to consider, and almost 70 gave a price only 30. I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. Almost 70 had an amount in which they were like yeah, I'll do it for that I was like oh man, what does that say say about us, when we're at with work, how we're connected to it? People aren't seeing value between what they learn at work and applying it into their life. Every experience I've had informs who I am as a person. That includes what happened at work, not just the stuff that was outside of it. But I think other people aren't maybe seeing the connection or aren't seeing the value of the connection, and that's a little disturbing and sad, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Let's extrapolate that to the US population that 20% of the population wants to hasa dollar amount figure that they would go for to sever their work. Mind it's actually almost a benefit, yeah, To cause yourself a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 1: 28:57

It's actually almost a benefit, yeah, to cause yourself a traumatic brain injury. That's essentially what it is, if you think about it.

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah, it brings a really interesting question around what's the biggest thing that needs to change? If you could change one thing that would make the role of a manager more palatable right now, or at least not want to have to sever some sort of autonomy. Basically, what would need to change?

Speaker 1: 29:26

This isn't just a workplace thing. This is how we all serve, and I'm not to get too political here, but too much of our lives is now dedicated to serving capitalism. Essentially, that's really what it is. This idea that labor unions are bad was the beginning of the end for reasonable behavior about work. And you think about the way Europe constructs work and what their expectations are for people. It's very pretty reasonable.

Speaker 1: 29:59

But in the United States your life is work. Your value to the society is tied to whether or not you have a job and what you do within that job, how much money you make, how much you consume. All of our lives is essentially in some service to capitalism when you really break it down and that would have to change culturally in order for this to get totally better. Because what people are really trying to block out when they answer that question is the way in which they serve it, and they'd almost rather just not remember it than have to deal with all the demands of it and trying to make it match their personal values, Because that's hard. A lot of organizations really don't. How often are you going to find a job that matches your personal values? If you I don't know care about the planet. It's hard Culturally. We just have to shift away from your purpose is to serve the machine, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 30:57

I think these Gen B kids are gonna do it.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I have a lot of faith in them. I do? I have a lot they've had a real I'm not gonna put up with this shit kind of attitude and I'm like good for you guys. You know children are our future, yeah we'll see how alpha does when they get there.

Speaker 3: 31:28

We do this thing called wrap it round, where we'll ask you a question. You can respond yes, no or elaborate if you feel so. How do you?

Speaker 1: 31:36

feel All right. Yeah, I'm going to ask anybody I work with. I'm super long-winded all the time, so I'm always going to elaborate.

Speaker 3: 31:43

Let's do that. This is where the juice comes, so we love it. So it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 31:52

What's work going to look like? Well, haven't you heard? We're all going to be wandering around trying to figure out what our purpose is in life. Least you listen to bill gates, right? I do think it'll be very mechanical, like in all respects, like robots will be in the workplace. They've made it to agi the white collar jobs. I don't know if they'll exist or not.

Speaker 1: 32:09

There's this cool thing going around. It's called like ai 2027.com, and somebody ran like a simulation based on all current events and everything, and it was very, I don't know to say, enlightening or disturbing, but it was interesting. Let's just put it that way. I don't know, will white collar jobs exist in five years? Maybe, but this goes all the way up to the ceo, right, because strategy is a skill like it'll do that better, it'll do decision making better, supposedly. Yeah, creative tasks you go right down the list, and they may even do some of the blue collar stuff too, better too. I was saying to somebody recently that old saying plumbers rule the world. They do, I don't, I do, they do. And I don't know if it'll do plumbing as well.

Speaker 3: 32:51

So maybe plumbing is the thing to get into someone who lives in an old house in new england. I don't know if AI is going to be able to navigate it like Joe.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Yeah, because Joe has just been rigging that thing for years.

Speaker 3: 33:06

He's been in every janky house. He knows how to navigate around here. It's so interesting you say that as you respond about Shopify's CEO, who is asking everyone to justify hiring for humans and to showcase what they consider to use AI first before they put in human bodies.

Speaker 2: 33:24

We're always trying to see that. I read that same memo.

Speaker 3: 33:27

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on to something a little more fun, a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's hyping you up?

Speaker 1: 33:36

It's spring and I'm going through this like reliving of my college music listening, and I'm listening to a lot of like early to mid 2000s indie hip hop at the moment Indie hip hop. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2: 33:47

consider indie hip hop.

Speaker 1: 33:49

Oh God, jedi mind tricks and yeah, like stuff that was like not on the radio at the time, so it was like very, we used to call it underground. Now they just label it indie, same thing as they do with rock music.

Speaker 3: 34:04

What are you reading or listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 34:08

I started this book called the Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It's about American history. They present it as seasons it's like 80 to 100 year cycles, and it presents the idea that we are currently in a historical winter, which is a very difficult time, and spring will eventually come. But it breaks down the last hundred years as like examples of these seasons. I can't speak too much about it. I've only just started it.

Speaker 3: 34:34

It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to see the patterns and maybe what to look out for.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:40

Now I'm curious did you get to the part where are we in winter, Because it feels like we're like Minnesota January.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I think we're all just to that point where it's like the post-Christmas depression.

Speaker 3: 34:54

Like I got bills and I'm on a holiday hangover.

Speaker 1: 34:58

You're just like I don't know. At least the football playoffs are on. I can just eat chicken wings whenever I want.

Speaker 3: 35:07

Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 35:09

Former Liverpool FC manager, jurgen Klopp, is one of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him a great deal, not just because I'm a big supporter of the football club itself, but because he's an incredible example of what a leader could be, and he's just an example of how to transform culture and, honestly, just a lovely human being.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Okay, what's a piece of advice you wish everyone knew?

Speaker 1: 35:35

I was once given a really valuable piece of advice that I think is great for leaders and really anyone working with other human beings to remember, and it's that you can't expect something you've learned through experience to be common sense for somebody else. And it's just one of those things like you think why wouldn't they do that? So you didn't know how to do that. Always, like, eventually, you learn that because you broke the thing or you made the mistake, and so don't expect anybody else to just know that because you think it's a thing that you're supposed to know.

Speaker 2: 36:16

All right, David, so awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't ramble, too much. No, it's awesome?

Speaker 3: 36:22

Not at all, not at all. And hey, how can our listeners best connect with you Of?

Speaker 1: 36:26

course, you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy enough to find on there. Be sure to check out to the People Managing People podcast. I'm the host on there. If you come over to peoplemanagingpeoplecom, you can get signed up for the newsletter and I'm always sending on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, different messages from us, and then come to one of our events. That's what I really recommend. Our next one is dedicated to RTO mandates. It's on April 24th, but, yeah, give me a follow and don't hesitate to reach out. Awesome, all right, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Thank you to reach out Awesome.

Speaker 1: 36:56

All right, thanks for being here, thank you.

Speaker 3: 36:59

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

Overcoming the Broken Rung

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Broken Rung with Lareina Yee

The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.

We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived big law, big four and more than a few broken org charts. I'm Francesca.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit.

Speaker 1: 0:11

We host your work, friends. The podcast that breaks work down, so you stay ahead.

Speaker 2: 0:15

We talk work stuff, the human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening stuff. Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight up advice. Hit play. We've got you Ahas and ahas and, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two. We had a really interesting conversation, we did.

Speaker 1: 0:48

We were able to speak with Lorena Yee, one of the co-authors of the Broken Rung. Lorena is a senior partner at McKinsey Company and she advises companies on growth technology and transformation. She also co-founded the Women in the Workplace Study with leaninorg. That's what made us reach out to her, as we were fascinated. We covered that a few months ago in New Week New Headlines and then, obviously, the Broken Rung book came out and in that report they're highlighting all of the challenges that women are facing in corporate America.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Lorena also chairs McKinsey's Technology Council and hosts the podcast At the Edge, where she talks about technology trends. And then, beyond her professional role, she's a mom of three and she serves on the board of San Francisco's Ballet. But this was an awesome episode. She is talking about one of the earliest career barriers that women face, which is this broken rung and ways that we can overcome it together. In this book I think you and I both said it was covered cover to cover with yellow highlighter from all of the stats that we were reading- yeah, I ran out of highlighter while I was reading this book.

Speaker 2: 1:56

The thing for me is we've had the glass ceiling. We know pay parity is not there yet and probably won't be for our lifetime, and what was so interesting was this early career issue that they have really nailed on. Even if you're not early career, even if you're not a woman, the thing about this book is it is a playbook for how to get ahead in your career If you're a woman, if you're a man, if you're gender non-binary. This book is absolutely packed with how do you get ahead when you have everything against you, and it is a must read for anybody, especially in corporate America. We love talking with her. We focus a lot about women here, but I think it can apply to anybody.

Speaker 1: 2:42

One of the things that really stood out to me is this isn't just a playbook. If you're in your early career, it's identifying when this starts, but it is. It does give you information, no matter where you are, whether you're just starting out, you're in the messy middle or if you're like towards the end of in thinking about your next move. She gives you ways that you can think about how to level up. The other thing for me that was so interesting was the concept of if we were able to fix this broken rung at the start of a woman's career, then we could have parity in a generation versus 150 plus years. So that, to me, was super powerful. I'm just going to read a quote from the book Lorena mentioned was this is not just a women's issue, as you point out. It's an issue for our whole society and the global economy. So read the book, listen to the episode. Here's Lorena.

Speaker 2: 3:46

All right, loretta. For those of us that haven't heard about this concept of the broken run, I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners, like a five-year-old. What?

Speaker 3: 3:55

is the broken run. You start work, you landed the job and you find that pretty much men and women are pretty equal. When you look around the room, right, 48% women entering the corporate pipeline in the United States, for example, and similarly globally. But guess what? Time for the first promotion. And here's the rub For every 100 men who have the odds of getting that promotion, only 81 women see those same odds of advancement. And that's the broken rung. That very first step on the career ladder is broken and it comes up fast.

Speaker 2: 4:33

What was so interesting to me so much of the time we're thinking about women, advancement, we're thinking about it manager on up, how do we get people to a C-suite or a VP? Because it's happening at this manager level. We're not getting people into these upper echelons. And I thought what's so interesting about your research is that this is happening very early and if you don't nail it early or don't look at it early, it has this kind of compounding effect on your career. What about that keeps you up at night?

Speaker 3: 5:05

your career. What about that keeps you up at night? All of it. By focusing on the broken rung, I wouldn't want to take attention away from the fact that people will call that middle layer, francesca, like the messy middle, the frozen middle, that piece of it or the glass ceiling. Let's be clear that still exists, and whilst we've made progress in corporate America, as an example, when I founded Women in the Workplace, we were 19% women reporting to CEOs at the C-suite. Now we're at 29%, so we're really close to 30. So that's great, but we're all really good at math. That's not parity, that's not 50%, that doesn't represent the population. So we've got challenges across the whole talent pipeline or ladder, however you want to visualize it.

Speaker 3: 5:49

I think the challenge with the middle, though the math, is that you've already lost a lot of women, or they've gotten stuck or they're stalled. It's not entirely clear exactly what happens to all those women, because some of them don't leave the workforce altogether, but let's just say largely stalled and stuck. So you are already in the middle, dealing with probably something around 37% women. You're already dealing with a smaller population, trying to put it in slates, so you're just so many steps behind, and I do think to the early broken rung.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I do think it catches women by surprise and it may even happen and they didn't even realize it, because it's not like an exam where they publish the results. You don't know where you are on the curve and it may have been a delay by a year, six months, two years, or maybe you decided to go somewhere else and so some of these types of things may not be completely perceptible, but I think when you talk to women over the course of 20, 30 years in work and they think back, they're like huh. And when we look at the data year over year, it shows that same phenomenon. Maybe it's 84 women, maybe it's 81, maybe 79. It's bouncing around a little bit, but it's nowhere near parity.

Speaker 2: 7:06

I want to dive into that. Why that first promotion? Why is that so critical for people to really focus on?

Speaker 3: 7:15

There are a lot of things. One, if you just think of a merit-based view, you want to actually be rewarded for the work you do. So there's a simple thing. There's also financially. You're not just working to work for the benefit of society and you may feel very mission oriented, you may feel very purpose filled and you may feel incredible pride for what you do, but you're also there for your economic earnings. And to earn less through differences in promotion is another type of tax on top of a general phenomenon we see in terms of a wage disparity between women and men. It's another form. But the other thing is let's just think about a talented woman who, by and large women graduate at higher rates than men for undergraduate degrees and by and large, with higher GPAs. And so you've got a talented woman. She's doing all the right things and missing maybe by a year, maybe two or three years, that first promotion is missing her ability to reach her full professional potential, and careers in life are long and those delays have almost compound effects over time.

Speaker 2: 8:32

And we haven't even hit motherhood yet. This is the thing that I read in the book the idea of the motherhood tax, where we'll talk about it a little bit longer. But for every kid that someone has, they get taxed. More and more Theirathers get a bonus for having kids. It's phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 3: 8:50

I mean, we've all been in the meeting where the mom is rushing to go to the soccer game and everyone's like okay, fine, maybe even non-event, not even like eyebrow raising. And then the guy is I've got to go. Same thing, I've got to go, I've got to get to the soccer game at 430. And people are like high five, you're amazing. And, by the way, do I think it's amazing that dad is leaving for the soccer game, a hundred percent, I'm just saying that. I equally think it's a high five moment for the woman to leave as well.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, it is. Eye roll for the woman oh, gotta go again. And then for the guy it's good for you, you're such a good dad. Yeah, you're a leader. You're a leader. I want to talk about experience capital. That was one of my favorite parts of the book because I agree it's totally needed. But can you share with our listeners what is experience capital?

Speaker 3: 9:40

What's that concept?

Speaker 3: 9:41

So the punchline is 50% of your lifetime earnings come from what you gain on the job, and the reason this is important is you look at many women and, as I mentioned earlier, women outperform in school, they graduate at higher rates, particularly in the United States, and oftentimes they're graduating with higher GPAs and so they have done the first part really well.

Speaker 3: 10:06

But when we just look at representation nevermind how the experience feels, which we have a lot of data on as well, it's women are not succeeding to their potential in the workplace, at least if you look at representation, right, and so the idea of experience capital is if you were really great at school, how do you apply what helped you be wonderful at school to managing intentionally your portfolio of experiences that drive both the economic outcomes for you, your livelihood, but also your professional opportunities, and so you think about choosing your major, choosing your classes, getting an A. How do you be purposeful in making those decisions, in accumulating the experiences that matter, not just the job in front of you, which certainly is important, but what is the accumulation of experience over time, and can you get it earlier? Because it pays to get it earlier often, and bigger.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Can you do that in a way that sets you up really well for a lifetime of work? One of the things that you called out that I really love too was, as part of gaining that experience capital, was making sure you gain some of that experience capital, unlike the P&L side of the house and like really being deep into the business. So for anyone listening, p&l, profit and loss, that's one example. But what are some of those examples of like business side? So, say you're, I have a very strong HR background, by the way, but to be in strategic HR, I had to get that experience pretty early. So how can folks who aren't traditionally like on that business side, how can they gain that very important business experience capital and what does that mean? How is it different when you think about the experience capital you do gain? How does that differently set them up financially down the road?

Speaker 3: 12:00

Sure, Well, let's take your career as an example, and I might be getting parts of that wrong, but you have a passion for HR and a lot of women will connect with work to where they feel purpose, where they feel talent and being an aspiring alley, which is a P&L role maybe sales, maybe product, maybe in a business unit. That experience GM. But it is to say that having that experience short long at some point will make you better at whatever you want to do. The other thing is if you aspire to be a CEO to the chip tracker idea, the pink chip one year we looked at it, 95% of the CEOs that year we looked at it all came from P&L. So like virtually impossible, very unlikely, that if you haven't had P&L experience and you realize, understandably, halfway through your career that you aspire to be a CEO, this is going to be a central part. So that's one experience. Another piece of experience capital is entrepreneurship and people think that's just being a founder and yes, that's amazing. Both of you have founded this. That's entrepreneurship. But I bet both of you also were entrepreneurs in the companies that you were in before and it's a huge skill that makes a difference. How do you take initiative, how do you lead? How do you invent Versus? Here's the thing that I was given and I've checked all the boxes, so entrepreneurship is a huge piece.

Speaker 3: 13:50

The other thing that we talk about is skill differentiation. We call that bold moves, and so if you look at one job to a next job and it could be within the same company right, You're doing different roles. Bold moves are where you do a 25% or more skill difference between your former job and your new job, and women who take two, three big bold moves over their career have outsized impact, both economically as well as their ability to progress. So there are more, but just maybe to pause, take a deep breath. There are a lot of things we can do that are super concrete that help us build experience capital. And if you're young in your career gosh, you got to build that early and often. And if you're a little older in your career you know me, or like middle age, think about the experience capital you need to maybe pivot or do something new or to expand even more opportunities. It's a huge piece.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I appreciate that because I think a lot of folks forget that you can have an entrepreneurial experience while you're in an organization. It's like looking for those project opportunities where you can gain that skill set. For somebody who might be more of an introvert I'm an ambivert right, so it takes a lot of effort to reach out for those experiences and that sort of thing. Maybe they don't have a flashy or visible role. What's a way that they can start to advocate for themselves, to begin to build that experience capital?

Speaker 3: 15:19

I think, first of all, you've got to play to your strengths. So you may see someone who's an extrovert, very charismatic, maybe an athlete, so she happens to play golf which tends to be helpful in a male world and you're not in all cases. She's out in the golf course and you're just like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all those strengths. But you're like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all the strengths, right. But you're like how do I meet other people if I'm different? So I think there's one thing which is to know yourself and build off your strengths.

Speaker 3: 15:54

I remember early in my career being in consulting. My strength was the data and the analysis that I was doing and part of the credibility was really just the work itself. But the work is a basis to have a conversation with others and a basis to build trust. And then you start maybe building a relationship and entrepreneurship is following up. I remember meeting just this amazing executive and I was like you're just so like you're a role model, and I didn't say that. But then I remember just keeping in touch with her over time. Not a ton, I was whatever, maybe 10 levels more junior to her, but I remember when I was leaving Asia, moving back to the US, she was the last person that I had kind of coffee with who was a client, before I left. You've got to do it in your own style, but I think you do need to be purposeful and, for those who are analytic, write it down. Write down who do you work with, who you have a connection and network with, who have you worked with before that you could rekindle. If you're kind of customer or client facing, or if you're supply chain facing, who's outside of your organization and also maybe people from school. So how do you think about building those networks? And just make sure that we know that women tend to have more narrow, more junior networks. Just make sure that over time it's not going to happen overnight, but over time you invest in building some more senior networks.

Speaker 3: 17:28

I know one guy that I talked to joined this nonprofit board and I invested my personal time and I spent time and had lunch with every single board member, all of which were at least a decade more advanced in their career than me, and I built this local network. He said so when you join a board, you join a nonprofit board. This is what you should do, and I was like I didn't even think about that. I'm so busy just trying to get through my day. It didn't occur to me to like schedule lunch with each person on the board, get to know them, build a relationship. And it was true. I looked at the list and I was like I am the most junior person from a professional person on this board, so there are lots of ways you can do it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I think it's. Yeah, finding your little avenue is going to be the most important. What works for you. I think folks sometimes can equate being outgoing as the folks who get the opportunity, but you don't have to fit that niche to get the same kind of experience capital you're talking about.

Speaker 3: 18:24

And some really senior people are quite introverted themselves, right? So that's not, you would find a connection.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, you'll find some kinsmanship in that, for sure. I wanted to talk about the sponsorship versus mentorship because something that really stood out to me in the Women in the Workplace report was that women are overly mentored and we're undersponsored significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah. So one thing is maybe just to define the difference, because sometimes I just feel like we don't have the facts to make the decision. So mentorship is Francesca, you're my mentor, I identify with you. You go to coffee. If I have a bad day or something didn't happen quite right on a project, you empathize and you give me some suggestions on how to think about it. But, mel, if you're my sponsor, you do everything Francesca does. But you also open windows and doors for me and that may be as explicit as you are actually putting me up for promotion, but it could be more everyday actions. Like Mel, you say Lorena, I know you've been working really hard on this. Why don't you come to the meeting and why don't you present? And I remember there's this really amazing sponsor we do a sponsor award at McKinsey and one of the winners.

Speaker 3: 19:54

There's this story that he faked a bloody nose because he knew that the client was like, wanted him to be there. He faked a bloody nose and he wants her to go so that the woman partner who is up for senior partner would present but also be seen as like super senior. It's like he was an actor. Everybody thought he had a bloody nose, medical reason to leave, but no bloody nose. He actually was just creating truly an opportunity for her to shine. By the way, she became one of the co-leaders of the client and all these great things happen.

Speaker 3: 20:29

You can do that on a Tuesday at four, on a Friday at nine. These are not hard things and so when you think about, and if you're senior and you're listening to this, how do you open doors and windows for others? But it can be very subtle things that help and it can be really being there in the moment to say this person should be on the slate and really helping you get promoted or keeping in touch with you and offering you an opportunity somewhere else. Women are just under-sponsored and maybe also it's not as clear how to develop sponsor relationships. But I think it's like women. If you put your mind to it, you can do it.

Speaker 1: 21:07

If you realize this is something that's as important as delivering your quota or whatever your MBOs are or OKRs, and you think about it as something you do a little bit every quarter over time you'll have a really powerful senior network something that stood out to me in the book was and I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially the biggest issue with this broken rung is, once the first rung is broken, it just has this compounding sort of domino effect, right, because now there's less women at each stage to continue to sponsor other women up. But men can be sponsors too not trying to leave them out of the conversation, right? And the other powerful thing that you said in the book was that if we can repair this first rung, it'll help us repair all of the subsequent rungs, which could help us really fix this issue or bring parity within a generation, which is huge because that within one generation is 10 years versus 150 years. But how important is sponsorship, or what level of does sponsorship play, and the importance of fixing that first rung?

Speaker 3: 22:23

All of the above. So if 70% of the C-suite are men, then it's really important that men are sponsors in your network to percent women at the starting gate. And then we dropped down in the middle and the VP layers down to 38, et cetera, et cetera, and at the top for the SVP layers and the C-suite, we are at 29%. So it's almost like a math thing because you just have fewer women in the talent pool overall. So if I were to say I'd like to see equal men and women on the slate, that's actually something that is a little hard to accomplish because you actually have maybe a third, maybe 40% each level. You have fewer women. And so I think if we sometimes what we talk about for companies that are trying to work on this is you have a funnel, you need to have a pipe. So a really healthy company starts with a percentage of women and you would have that same percentage mirrored across all the talent levels. That would be really healthy.

Speaker 3: 23:47

Many years ago I met a tech company who was like it's just so hard, et cetera, et cetera. The classic we don't have engineers. But one thing we told them that really surprised them. I said you have a top beginning funnel problem. Yeah, you're at something.

Speaker 3: 24:00

I think they were maybe 38, 37% women at the entry, so that's not good, but interestingly enough, they had that pipe. I said so you're doing something right really well, which most of your peers are not, which is you're able to retain them. You do have a bit of a drop off at the top, but that's really amazing. So for you, if you actually could fix the entry level, you clearly have a culture that supports women in a very natural way. You are in great shape and they were like gosh. I thought we were going to have this meeting. You're going to be an awful report card and I said, yeah, I mean you're starting out ranks not so good, but actually there's some really good stuff there. For companies that want to change, you have to just take a look at your data and say, just as you would any kind of business problem, where would be the two or three most important interventions? Where, if I fix this, it would really change in one generation? And I think for companies who are very determined to do this, it's possible.

Speaker 1: 25:02

It's interesting too, speaking of what companies can do, because you mentioned, mckinsey has their sponsorship award, which I love to hear, and we've worked in talent forever, so you always hear about the mentorship program, but rarely do I hear about a formal sponsorship program. What have you seen work really well in terms of programs that support the sponsorship for this kind of success?

Speaker 3: 25:25

I think, a couple things. It's important to say that whilst women tend to feel over-mentored, under-sponsored, there are men who also feel this way. If you de-average it, maybe the men who don't have the classic archetypical attributes or men of color. So there can be, when you de-average, lots of people need this. So a couple of things. One is going from a spiritual agreement that sponsorship is a good idea to actually creating a program. So program means that you actually define mentorship, sponsorship. Program means that you actually track the data. For some you may actually hold them accountable, not like a quota, like you have to have X number of sponsor ease or mentors, but as part of how you think have to have X number of sponsorees or mentors, but as part of how you think of good leadership, as part of the equation. If you have the data, if you have the qualitative and what you value gets measured in some way.

Speaker 3: 26:19

So I'm not suggesting like a one for one. You only get promoted if you're a sponsor. We all know that and you all both know very well. Like when you think about leadership, there's a way that kind of goes into your reviews and potentially your compensation, your feedback, how you're viewed. I think you build it in yeah, you built it in a hundred percent and then you may have some programs that kind of activate it.

Speaker 3: 26:43

But I think you really commit to a culture of sponsorship, which the insane thing to me is it helps. It's like your classic all boats rise, everyone benefits everyone. And if there are women, as the human population will have, who are not good sponsors, it's good. They will, as leaders, learn to be good sponsors. Men will learn to be good sponsors and sometimes for men and I've seen this when they see their data and they realize they don't have a single woman that they sponsor, they will autocorrect that themselves. It's not like they woke up and said how can I not have any women as sponsors? Sometimes data is like an incredible amount of sunlight for people to do the right thing.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I want to talk about motherhood and navigating career transitions with motherhood. You mentioned in the book that motherhood could actually be a boost to your career, and it's not something we typically hear. Can you talk a little bit more about how it can boost your career?

Speaker 3: 27:58

Yeah, so that's not an easy thing. In the chapter we do really spend a bit of time on Claudia Goldman's Nobel Prize economist. We do want to make sure that a lot of the research that she's done gets proper understanding in terms of biases towards women and terms of a motherhood penalty and all of those things. With that said, it is hard. I think part of it was squeezing out and looking at stories where women can succeed inside of it and, for me, also a little bit of a search for the urban legend to see if it's true. So one of the stories that you saw was a woman.

Speaker 3: 28:38

The phrase that I've always used is make sure you pack a round trip ticket, not just to leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Part of that would be building your network and thinking about your skills, moderating your time, all these types of things. And one of the stories in the book is a woman who was a rising star lawyer. As she had her first kid, she made the decision to actually be a full-time mom. She's an amazing mom raised three boys. 14 years into that, she exercised her round trip ticket. She went back and she did a reboarding program. Some companies, not all, offer this, but LinkedIn offered it. She got back into the workforce and is a rising star lawyer at LinkedIn and I just think this concept that we measure it in very zero one ways Okay, I had the baby, I'm having the baby, I take my paid maternity or parental leave, I come back. I think there are variations to make that work for you. So that's one story that I was very inspired by.

Speaker 3: 29:45

The other thing is would you use the policies as ingredients to bake your own cake, would you say? Look, in my company there's the parental leave and I see a lot of mostly dual career couples. We see a lot more of women and men under 40 are dual career, whereas baby boomers tend to be more like a single person leading the household. Let's use the woman and the partner's parental leave to maximize it. How do we, how do we go slow, go fast across that portfolio? Like really sharing with your partner the chutes and ladders of a career? We see also like how do you use some of the part-time? How to use rotations to kickstart your next bold move, like maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I really know how to do in an excellent way and I'm going to do it at 80%, but then actually, when my littlest one is in school, hits three, I'm going to take a bold move and I'm going to do this. Or, by the way, I'm going to actually invest in a bunch of technology skills and pilots and things because I'm going to make a bold move.

Speaker 3: 30:54

And these are just like excessive examples. How do you apply really intentional thinking to that time as opposed to gosh? This is just the discount time. And also back to the network point, I think and I don't think this is as much in the book, but I think having a peer network when you're a young mom at least for me personally I see you nodding, being able to call someone who was working full time, who had kids under 10, like me, and just to say I've had the hardest week in that time. I didn't need a sponsor, I didn't need a mentor, I just needed a friend to say, yeah, it's really hard with you.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, it's tough, right. I remember this is a little bit maybe TMI, but I always go there is. I remember I was at the point where I was breastfeeding and I was still working and shipping my milk back until it was really great about that, like freezing it and shipping it back home, which is amazing and lovely. But I remember just feeling touched out, vultured because I was getting it at work and I was literally having the call with her while my pump was going and I felt totally okay with it.

Speaker 3: 32:06

But she knew both of my lives and you really do need that, that feeling of someone gets you A little grace Like I think you have to set the pace of your own career versus expect others, and both of you have done that in your careers. But there may be times where you're like I'm going 60 miles an hour and by the way I've structured it and my expectations are that, and then there are times I'm doubling down and going super fast and I'm going to do a bold move and a this and a that, and so I don't. I don't think it's a linear climb and actually when we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just. When we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just I think it's. We try. Sometimes perfection can be the enemy of progress. That phrase and maybe redefine what perfection is.

Speaker 3: 32:58

At certain moments of your career, I took a really long first parental leave and I was really fortunate to be in a dual career situation so I could afford to. But I was really young, I wasn't even 30 yet and I really I just wanted to learn how to be a mom for a while. I wanted to take nine months off and at that time paid leave was not six weeks, single digits or something like that that's also betting on yourself and taking a risk. It's saying I'm confident that when I'm ready to go back, that job will be there and I may have missed something. But I actually, as a gift not just to my child but also to myself, would like to learn how to be a mom for a bit and enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 33:47

The beautiful thing about the book, though, is it does give you the playbook, for if you're going to make those choices which are totally great to make that there are other moves you can make that won't make that choice, just like a lifelong decision to write. I feel like this idea of these are your options, these are the ways you can put it in sixth gear, pull it down to third gear, make a right turn, make a left turn and create a beautiful career for yourself and a great life too, because I feel like I'm not saying you can balance everything all the time and have everything you want, but you can sure as hell be way more intentional about it and get to where you want to go in a way that maybe was linear to your point.

Speaker 3: 34:34

And some of those basics matter. I remember we talk about negotiation. People always think negotiation is just your pay, by the way, women tend not to negotiate. So, hi, pro tip, do negotiate. But negotiation is also other types of things.

Speaker 3: 34:46

So I remember because we didn't have at the time this was 22 years ago we didn't have the type of programs and I was actually not even in the United States, and so I remember talking to the office manager and saying look, I know that this isn't the typical thing, but I'd really like to take nine months, maybe more off, but I actually am super committed to coming back and I will stay in touch. And when I came back, they were like that's hard and consulting, and you were flying out. And I said, look, just for my first thing, back for my first month, can you just help me do something local so that I just don't get straight on an airplane and whatever that is, I'll do it. Any industry, any team, that would be such a gift and that's part of negotiating how you come back. He said got it, let's do. That Turns out to the entrepreneurship we were working on something that became a huge local client and because I worked on it and worked really hard with all these other folks, some of which I didn't know already.

Speaker 3: 35:54

We actually had all these sort of. I had a year where I didn't get on the airplane, and part of it is a little bit of a little bit of luck, a little bit of negotiating, asking that's. That's a positive negotiation. I will work really hard, but could you help me not reduce travel just for a little bit, and then we'll sort it out. Just give me a sec to rebase. I'm still the person that you loved and valued before. I didn't think at the time. It takes courage to do that, but it does take some courage to have that conversation and you do need to work in an environment where that conversation would be received well, not to make too much of the example, but I do think in the book there are all these women who make it work in spite of, and so there's a lot of data, mel, as you mentioned, but for me I think the stories are just really inspirational about what are the tactical things they did to get from A to B.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, a lot of great moves. I think it's required reading, quite honestly, to think about how do you really own your career, and own your career as a woman? Just you got to read up.

Speaker 1: 37:00

You got to read up. Keeping it simple for our listeners, especially those who might be like am I already part of the broken rung? Do I need to address this? What's one thing they can do next week to get back on track?

Speaker 3: 37:16

reframe. You're not off track. You are always on track and there's always opportunity in front of you, and betting on yourself is always a good bet. So look ahead and what's your next move? Do you want to go to the power alley? Do you want to exercise entrepreneurship? Do you want to build in the skills that matter for the future, the 12 million occupations that we know will shift by 2030. Do you want to increase your network? Pick one, pick one, just pick one and get started.

Speaker 1: 37:53

I love that. I love that concept that you're never off track. You're never off track. Yeah, we're just all taking fun side quests.

Speaker 3: 38:04

How much you have already. Yeah, I, your portfolio just may look a little different than that guy next door to you, and that's okay. Really, what are you good at? What do you have? Where does that point you? And then start opening the windows and doors yourself. Go get people to help you. Yeah, I love it. You can do it.

Speaker 1: 38:28

What about leaders? If you're a leader leading a team and this is information new and for maybe it's new information for somebody listening today what's something that they can take away or start to do to analyze and make sure that they're being a good sponsor or they're recognizing that they might be holding people back. How can they support not holding them back or pushing them forward?

Speaker 3: 38:54

The first thing is to maybe just mark a couple of like a piece of data or story that that honestly struck you very authentically. Doesn't need to be many, just one or two. And I would go share that with a man and a woman on your team and just say I was reading this since stopped me in my tracks. What do you think? Do you think we have a fair workplace? Do you feel the opportunities are the same? And the man might say I feel over-mentored, under-sponsored. You're like that's good feedback, but pro tip, does any of this resonate with you? I just start with that. Just start locally, in your own community and neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Starting the conversation. Let's just have the conversation.

Speaker 3: 39:50

Yeah, and I think the other thing a leader can de-risk what feel like high stakes conversations, and opening to have the conversation, to listen, to learn, is huge. There's a story of a woman who was in the creative arts. She was in performing arts in New York and she had an underlying mindset that if you are creative it's okay to be disorganized, because that kind of comes with being creative. And she didn't even know that this was an underlying mindset. But she was super disorganized and she had her baby a couple months old and for women who remember or who have had babies in that early stage, there's very few windows. If you live in New York City, you can get that baby outside and take the baby for a walk before the baby needs to eat and nap. And so she missed the whole window because she was so disorganized. She was like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window and she was so disorganized she's like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window. And then the baby's crying and she describes and I've talked to her about this also personally she describes looking at this wonderful child's face and saying, kiddo, this isn't going to work.

Speaker 3: 40:53

So not only that's a point of deep failure, like I think for me.

Speaker 3: 40:57

I'm like, oh my god, I would have been in a ball and tears and like that just sounds awful and we've all been there.

Speaker 3: 41:04

Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because it's a very relatable moment. But from that moment, not only does she become really good at organizing, she builds a business to organize other executives, both men and women. She writes two New York Times bestseller books or more, and she has this whole career where she actually helps people with their operating models, with their leadership. But it starts with the wedge of what was a point of failure became a point of strength, became a point of building a business, became a point of giving to others and helping others not organize how they get their walks for their babies, but like thinking about how the softer skills help you be a better leader, the full set of softer skills. And she's no longer in performing arts, she's in corporate America and I just I also just wanted to share that sometimes both men and women are so afraid to make a mistake and there's a lot in the zeitgeist about that. But I do think you never know, like, how do you take that in as a pivot point to something else we'll run on.

Speaker 1: 42:26

I'm gonna start with some high-level questions. They can be one word responses, or one sentence, two sentences, whatever you feel most confident with, but the whole point is just to get your immediate reaction to the question. Okay, ready to dive in, ready? Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like? It will be AI powered. Okay, what's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good? Bias, thank you. What's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 3: 42:57

Women, young women, even better answer.

Speaker 1: 43:02

What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 3: 43:05

Oh, I really like Bruno Mars and his collaborations, many of which are women artists, but I do really love the collaborations.

Speaker 1: 43:13

I like his new stuff too. It's like fun, yeah, so good. What are you reading, and that could be physically reading or listening to an audio book right now?

Speaker 3: 43:25

I am obsessed with AI podcasts, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:29

What's your favorite AI podcast? What do you recommend?

Speaker 3: 43:32

Oh, I really like no Priors and Training Data from Sequoia and the Possible podcast. And of course, I think everyone in tech listens to Hard Fork. I'd be remiss not to mention Hard Fork, but that's kind of obvious.

Speaker 2: 43:47

Love that.

Speaker 1: 43:50

Perfect, who do?

Speaker 3: 43:54

you really admire the 11% women CEOs of the world Each and every one of them. For everything that they're doing and for being a pioneer Awesome.

Speaker 1: 44:07

We recommend all the time on this podcast that people start to follow. I'm sure you do, but the organization Pink Chip that's tracking all of the global female CEOs and their success. So, yeah, any chance I can to plug it, I like to bring it back up. Good plug. Yeah, what's a piece of advice you want everyone to know?

Speaker 3: 44:26

Build your networks make sure they're powerful networks and people who are going to be your personal board of directors. I love that.

Speaker 1: 44:34

All right. Last thing, where can listeners follow? You stay abreast of all of the goodness and new research that you have coming out on this topic. What's the what's the best? Obviously, read the book. We're going to link to that but how can they continue to stay informed beyond reading the book?

Speaker 3: 44:53

All of our gender and research. On mckinseycom, you can search under my name or just search under the topics. We have 10 years of women in the workplace, so there's a lot of data in there. And I'm on LinkedIn and I've been trying to be better at posting thoughts and sharing things that are interesting. You all can give me the feedback. You're like, nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more. But I'm focused on LinkedIn me the feedback. You're like nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more but I'm focused on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 45:26

This has been so lovely. Lorena, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you. Both Appreciate you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra, and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

The Power of Mattering

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Power of Mattering with Zach Mercurio

This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned their worth or forgotten the impact they have on others. We sat down with Zach Mercurio to explore what happens when people truly feel seen, valued, and significant. Whether you are the one needing the reminder or the one in a position to give it, this conversation unpacks why mattering is not soft, it is essential.

From how we lead and collaborate to how we show up for our families and friends, we all rise when people know they count. If you have been feeling invisible or want to create spaces where others feel seen, this is the episode to hit play.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:05

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived Big Law, big Four and more than a few broken org charts.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I'm Francesca. I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit. We host your work friends, the podcast that breaks work down so you stay ahead. We talk work stuff. The human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening, stuff Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight-up advice Hit, play. We've got you, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hey, this is your Work, friends podcast. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work, so you stay ahead, Francesca. What's going on?

Speaker 3: 0:50

Not much. Summer's full rolling Went to an airplane house.

Speaker 1: 0:53

You sent me those pictures of the airplane house and I'm intrigued. I want to see the inside. Sounds interesting.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Yeah, For those that don't know, in the Portland area there's a guy that. For those that don't know, in the Portland area, there's a guy that I think it's a 727 that he took apart and rebuilt in the woods and you can go up to this airplane that is now his house. My understanding is that he's also going to be building one in Japan as well, but it's actually really cool because he lets anybody on his property you can go and stand on the wing. Would you ever want to live in a plane?

Speaker 1: 1:27

I could see myself living in a plane. If it was gutted and you made it into something really cool, why not? Who?

Speaker 3: 1:31

cares. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a prefab home yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Yeah, why not I don't know If you could turn a school bus into a home.

Speaker 3: 1:40

There's options here Recycling.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Yes, that is the name of the game. Okay, we sat down with Zach Mercurio, who recently published his book the Power of Mattering, which just blew me away. Zach is a researcher, an author, a speaker, and he specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work and positive org psychology. He wrote the Power of Mattering how Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, and he also wrote the Invisible Leader Transforming your Life, your Work and your Org, and the Power of Authentic Purpose. And he's worked with hundreds of organizations worldwide, including teams at JP Morgan, delta, marriott International, the National Park Service, the Army and more. And his work, his research on meaningful work, has been awarded by ATD, the Academy of Management and the Academy of Human Resource Development. And I don't know about you, but this book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter right now. This book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter.

Speaker 3: 2:45

Right now, I'll tell you, for the majority of the book, I had, like, almost felt like I was going to cry, like I was feeling so emotional about it. And it's because, at the end of the day and what Zach talks about is, even from the very first moments of your life, you want to feel like you matter. You need to know that you matter and, by the way, that does not change ever. Yet there's so many of us walking around feeling like we don't matter at all. You'll hear Zach talk about this, but just so you understand the difference also between belonging and inclusion and mattering belonging is being asked to be a part of the team, inclusion is getting to play the game, and mattering is knowing how you contribute, knowing how you're significant to the team, and that's the difference. It's the knowing of how you offer value, how you're significant and feeling. That's the difference. We've got opportunities to do that every day, all day, for everybody in your life.

Speaker 1: 3:51

For everybody. Yeah, Personally and professionally. And listen, the squishy stuff matters. People don't want to talk about the squish, but the squishy stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit. Stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit and it's different than belonging. It's actually you seeing why you matter. I love the example he also gives about NASA and laddering, and everyone from the janitor up through the astronaut knew how they contributed to getting a man on the moon and it got me thinking how are we doing that for our own teams and our people at work, Even if it's on a project? How are you letting them know how their contribution even if they're doing the design of the deck, like how does that contribute to the overall results and why? It not just how it contributes, but why it matters and why their role in this matters? I would say, on my own reflection, I wish I did more of that. It's something I definitely will be paying a lot more attention to.

Speaker 3: 4:49

Yeah, yeah, I think the I feel like I tried to do this and I feel like I should have done it even more no-transcript, no-transcript, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Okay, these can be one word answers. They could be a sentence. We could dive in further wherever it goes. All right, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 4: 45:26

There's two ways it could go. So one, the bosses are getting the power back right now because the talent market has shifted. You know it was more pro employee, Now it's more in favor of employers right now, and whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of working I, whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.

Employment is Dead

Your Work Friends Podcast: Employment is Dead with Deborah Perry Piscione & Josh Drean

In this episode, we dive into why the traditional nine-to-five no longer cuts it and explore how AI, gig economies, and decentralized organizations are reshaping work as we know it.

We sat down with futurists, innovation thought leaders, and founders of Work3 Institute’s Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean to get into the mindset shift from “I work for you, you pay me” to a future where skills and purpose matter more than a desk and a paycheck. You’ll hear bold predictions about money possibly disappearing, villages re-emerging, and why flexibility, community, and entrepreneurial thinking are now non-negotiables.

If you’re curious about what work—and your role in it—might look like in the next five to ten years, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions. Just does not serve us anymore.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hey, this is your Work Friends. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work to help you stay ahead.

Speaker 3: 0:48

We're also joined by Lucy, a 60 pound boxer, who is breathing into the mic right now.

Speaker 2: 0:53

How is that a hot breath going for you?

Speaker 3: 0:55

It's like the best dog, but her breath is just. Here's a mint. Here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like here's a mint, here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like I don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I don't want to know oh, I mean, here she is just, but this is the panting, is not francesca it?

Speaker 3: 1:12

is not. It is not. It's just like in a brand new, whole new audience base after this episode and in other news we'll do a class for only fans oh my god, a new way of working. A new way of working. Yeah, speaking of a new way of working, we had a mind-blowing conversation the other day we did we met with the authors of employment is dead.

Speaker 2: 1:38

deborah perry piscione is a globally recognized innovation thought leader. She's an architect of improvisational innovation, a New York Times bestselling author the Secrets of Silicon Valley, serial entrepreneur of six companies, a LinkedIn learning author, and she also worked on Capitol Hill. And then Josh Dreen joined us as well. He's the co-author, co-founder and director of employee experience at the Work3 Institute. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, forbes, fast Company and the Economist. They both speak globally actually to bring work and tech insights to digital first leaders, but they're very focused on human-centric workplaces as well. Very interesting concept Employment is dead. What I also took away from that conversation is it's mainly how we think about traditional employment. But work is still here to stay. It just might look a little bit different. How about you? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 2:35

One of the things in this whole AI conversation that I think we've been really missing is what could work really look like in the next five to 10 years. Both Josh and Debra brought some very mind-blowing perspectives of how work could feel decentralized and gigged and really exciting Potentially, how we don't even have money anymore. Are we going to return to villages? If you are looking for a futurist's view of what the world of work, what your life might look like, especially on this whole AI trajectory, this is the episode for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Listen, it's a thought piece for sure. Noodle on it. Let us know what you think. With that, here's Debra and Josh. All right, welcome Josh and Deborah. We're so excited to see you both. All right, we're going to set the stage and jump right in, because we're in it. The title Employment is Dead. Really bold statement. What led you both to this conclusion?

Speaker 1: 3:44

Oh yes, employment is dead. Our bold pitch is that traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment, as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions, just does not serve us anymore. And when Debra said it's dead, we do make the distinction that work and employment are two very different things, and we've just bled it together and don't think too much about it. But in the very first chapter of the book we say employment is this construct that we designed. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Work, on the other hand, individuals who want to build skills, who want to be a part of a company or a movement bigger than themselves, to belong to a community. That is what is important. So how do we reclaim some of those elements? And we talk more about this and we can get further into it, but I'm curious to have you weigh in on that, debra.

Speaker 4: 4:50

Well, I wanted to give a little bit of another additional nugget on the backstory. Josh and I really thought we'd have a multi-year run rate with this book, and we'll be lucky if we have five months, because this concept of these jobs eroding is happening so quickly. So the world really needs to wake up and, on the one hand, we're going to get back more time so that we can be better citizens, better family members, have more time to do things. We just really have been desiring this European lifestyle for so long. Now we're going to be able to get it, but we do need to look down the road, not only for ourselves, for subsistence, but how do we all collectively work together, which can look quite different from an economic model that we've known for over 150 years?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, I think everyone's pretty cozy with how it's always been right. That's always hard, but what I gained from the book was traditional jobs are gone, but work is here to stay. So the optimistic realist in me is employment might be dead, but work is here to stay. There's work that's going to happen For the time being. Yeah, for the time being.

Speaker 4: 6:00

I almost got, even though Waymo has been in San Francisco for quite some time I haven't seen it in my Silicon Valley neighborhood until recently and I was waiting to wave at the car, not realizing it was a Waymo, because I smile at people when I they're waiting for me to cross the street. I was like there's nobody in that car so soon. Just as much as AI is evolving, so are robots and humanoids, and so we are getting to, you know, that general AGI, artificial intelligence, where it can rationalize, teach itself and be in concert with robots being able to learn on their own, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well.

Speaker 3: 6:45

The evolution of work has changed. A lot of people haven't studied this so deeply, so I'm wondering if you can talk through how expectations of work have changed over the years, just to set the stage.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, I can jump in here. I spent a lot of time working with HR professionals and when you look at HR in general, that field has just shifted so much. When you look at the beginning of HR, right, it was personnel and I think that it was birthed out of this idea of we have people who work at the company. We need to pay them. They could get into trouble and we could be sued as a company for whatever they say or whatever they do after hours, and so let's get ahead of that. So the traditional model of HR was how can we do the paper things it's paying people PTO and then we got into this era of discretionary effort where it was like people work for us nine to five. It's very contractual, but how can we almost trick them into doing more work, staying later, creeping into some of their personal time? What can we do to make the workplace exciting? To be there at 6 pm, at 7 pm, come in earlier, and so there's the carrot and the stick. Your bonuses are tied to that. And there's also the look we've got snacks in the break room, We've got beer on tap, we have a lot of different things. And that birthed the employee engagement movement which was yeah, we're Apple, we're Google, we want you to have an amazing experience at our organization. So how can we engage you more? And that's where we have hot yoga, or we cater food every single day, or we'll watch your pet. We have a pet daycare on campus right, it's very much this 2000s view and that has shifted into employee experience.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I think is where we are today is how can we design experiences that employees want to have and need to have? The problem is we're still falling behind because we're unwilling to look at the deep and true needs of employees. We actually write about it in the book. We call them the 10 operating principles of work, three, the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. And, just to give you an example, employees want flexibility. That's one of our operating principles. Can we offer them flexibility? And, like we did during the pandemic, we don't really do it now, and so we see a lot of companies who are more. How do we get them back into the office? The RTO mandate over. What if we customized their schedules and individualized it so they can work according to their circadian rhythm? Yes, you can go get your kids at 3 pm, Because we know that you log back on at 7 and you work until midnight type thing, and so there's a lot of flexibility that we can be offering employees. It's just it feels like we're still stuck in that model.

Speaker 3: 9:34

Why do you think that is? Why are we still stuck?

Speaker 4: 9:39

Today's model is based on really Taylorism, which Taylor was an engineer in the early 1900s who came up with the concept and said people do not have emotions. They don't have feelings, they're just cogs on a wheel to get that widget job done. And that was really the creation around middle management as well. We became very consumed with time and for someone like myself, I never understood if I didn't eat lunch on a particular day in my Washington DC Capitol Hill office and my work was done at two o'clock, why do I have to sit there until six? Because our hours were eight to six. And then, if you pulled all-nighters in Washington DC, at least in my generation, you got like a badge of honor. Rather than looking at the output or the productivity behind work, we just got into the concept of time, and so it is really hard if you may be very innovative and I think, sitting here in Silicon Valley around companies like Google who did try to do things very differently Marissa Mayer was very famous at Google for allowing people to tap into their rhythm, as Josh mentioned and just when do you work best? It may not be within that eight to six timeframe, and I had to adopt that engineer model when I first moved to Silicon Valley, because every engineer I worked with was really extraordinary in the middle of the night and that's when they got their work done.

Speaker 4: 11:13

Technology and products and consumerism in foods. But yet our cost of living is at its highest, in part because of premium pricing. So Gen Z has like 82% less buying power than baby boomers did because of all this additional abundance and the fees around it. So if you're always trying to catch up in order to pay your rent or your mortgage, it's just hard to grow beyond. You just don't have time to think about it because you're on that treadmill.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because we know that a 30-year-old today is worse off than their parents were. To your very good point right, the buying power in the younger generation is not there, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that too. And then we're also looking at potentially jobs going away, work going away. This idea of job security non-existent definitely now doesn't exist anymore. Technology is going to drive this so much faster, right, we're going to get into these holes so much faster. My biggest concern is this economic wealth gap is going to get even bigger, from the people that have to the people that don't have.

Speaker 3: 12:37

And does technology exacerbate that or does it democratize that?

Speaker 4: 12:41

Yeah, that's such a great question because, as Josh knows, I used to always say AI is going to democratize opportunity, but really what it's coming down to is digital fluency. I sit in the middle of this stuff and trying to keep up with it day to day. I'm like, oh, you haven't heard about Manus, that's going to build out the company for you. That's Reid Hoffman's new startup and Josh and I are very much on the global speaking circuit and I'm lucky of a speech last two weeks. I'm constantly revising it. So there's exhaustion with keeping up and you cannot keep pace with the five or so AI companies. Where they're going to be the winner takes all situation. There was a venture capitalist who made a famous statement as the SaaS kind of model where you would eventually exhaust those sales. In an AI model, you can not only take all the jobs, but you can take all the salaries of the people that used to work for you. It's endless. The money is endless.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Yeah, I was just reading AI 2027, that white paper that's out there too, and it just feels like it all starts to funnel up into three big things at the end of the day, and it's just holy shit, as all the wealth and all of the abundance, if you will, going to ladder into these three conglomerates, whatever we want to call them.

Speaker 2: 14:19

It's fascinating to watch, and the3, because I and Josh. You started to talk about it a little bit, but can you both break down what Work3 is all about for our listeners?

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah. So the Work3 Institute is an HR and AI advisory where we help companies marry emerging technologies with workforce strategies. It's hey, we want to use AI. We have no idea how to get started. We want to help our people better use AI and upskill them to be able to 50x productivity, 10x productivity, whatever the promise of AI is going to be. We just don't know how to do that, and a lot of it tends to be.

Speaker 1: 14:57

These forward-thinking human-centric companies who see the change happening don't know how to get on board and we match them with some of this technology. A lot of it, to be honest, is like you've never touched a generative ai tool. Here's a few options. And generative AI tool here's a few options. Here's some homework to start using it today. Just use it in your daily life. We are big on helping reclaim human fulfillment at work and satisfaction. It's something that, especially as companies are being squeezed right now economically, how do we not lose sight of employee satisfaction? How do you continue to do well by your people? Because if you look at the stats, they're not great either. Most employees are burned out. Most employees would take a new job in a heartbeat. Most employees don't trust their companies to do right by them at this time, and so tackling those human-centric projects head on.

Speaker 2: 15:51

You talked about the principles earlier and I loved, debra, what you were saying too. Just, things are changing so quickly and Josh mentioning RTO, right, we swung all the way over here during COVID. Now we're all the way back and something about the traditional model and I know we started to touch on those barriers that actually are gonna get people to the future. Some of it has to do with, like, executive leadership still thinking in that very traditional way, right, like even some of these folks who are really tech forward are still like I need to see your face and I need to see it every day from eight to six, as you mentioned, deborah, and if you're not a butt in a seat, I don't trust you're getting the work done. How do you get them to cut through that old way of thinking to get them to the future?

Speaker 4: 16:38

So the last chapter of our book is on the work three transformation. How do you go from the traditional organization into the era of AI? And a lot of it has to do with communication and, as Josh mentioned, it's about the people. First, the human element. When we wrote this book, we really thought the adoption would come from a lot of the big organizations and the consulting firms. But what happened, with Doge coming out and the geopolitical component of this is, people were losing their jobs so much faster. And then there needed to be a proof point If you were in the hiring business, that you had to prove that AI couldn't do that job.

Speaker 4: 17:21

This book quickly shifted to the individual wanting to know what do I need to do? Because we can't call this unemployment anymore. We need an entirely new economic model in this era of AI, because moving into that next job, it's just not going to be there. But I think, mel, it's more about fear and holding on as long as they can, because they know this is happening. So I don't care if you're Accenture or you're a law firm or whatever you are. You know that AI is going to take over your business. It just is. And so let me hold on to the work element as long as I can, and Josh and I have certainly talked about it. They probably sign these long-term real estate leases. They're just holding on as long as they possibly can, and I know you want to talk about some recent articles where one of the anthropic co-founders has talked about job loss.

Speaker 4: 18:21

That's going to happen at the entry level, but CEOs, boards of directors, can all be taken out by AI, so why not hold on as long as you can and let's work together as long?

Speaker 2: 18:31

as we can. We saw it even two years ago, right when they were testing AI, taking the bar exam or the accounting exam, and they're passing with flying colors Like absolutely it's at all levels, not just entry level, For those types of business leaders or even in professional services that are kind of holding on with fear. How do you move them to the place of opportunity of the portfolio worker in those environments so that everyone can continue to feel?

Speaker 4: 18:58

whole to some degree. What's happening simultaneously is Gen Z coming up. We often talk about various kind of use cases or individuals, young people that have made a tremendous amount of money at 15 years old, generating, creating a game on Roblox, and I think the average Roblox developer, Josh teenager, makes about $65,000 a year. So you know they're not going to want to necessarily come into what traditional work offers when they've had so much control and ownership over being that gain developer. And so you are having this market. Yes, 50% of these entry-level jobs, white-collar jobs, are going to go away in the next one to five years. There's also a lot of interesting things happen on the Web3 side in the metaverse. Josh, you're really the expert here, so you should weigh in.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah, the answer is if you look at the pattern over time, companies who operate in fear, especially large companies who don't take the risks that Debra's talking about and don't push things forward, will risk obsolescence. That's just how it is. And the argument that we make again is that if we are still having the employment conversation and that's exactly what we're having right now which is oh, are you at a nine to five full-time employment with one company or unemployed? Those are the only two options. This doesn't make sense. And the younger generation to Debra's point already has abandoned traditional nine to fives. They are abandoning college right now, they are adopting AI and they are pushing forward in a way that doesn't even make sense to these aging leaders who have been doing this for so long. In a certain way, it's just outside their scope. Mel, you mentioned a DAO or a Decentralized, autonomous Organization. Some of our more progressive clients are piloting DAOs within their organization right now, which sounds like a scary word or a Web3 new thing, but really all it is like we don't need decision makers at the top of one person, a manager making all of the decisions and just telling us exactly what we need to do. You hired me because I have skills and I have a voice and I'm creative and there's a lot more that I can offer to the team. So what if we distributed tokens to them, voting power? Essentially it's you want to make a choice for the team? Get on Snapshot. It's just a Web3 tool that will allow you to vote in real time which direction the company could go, and you can make hundreds of these decisions every week together in an instant. And once the group has decided collectively which direction they need to move, then a smart contract will execute and say all right, that's the direction that we're headed.

Speaker 1: 21:55

And now you have hyper agile teams that don't. They're not bound by the same red tape, their hands aren't as tied as other teams and they're moving quickly and they're producing more results than other teams. And so there are companies that are doing it that way. What I think this large scale global DAO, like a global gig economy, is going to be more so the mainstream than an internal gig economy. Why should I work for you only when I can do my same skills for several companies and several projects? That feels better to employees. And so again, how do you attract Gen Z? A lot of companies can't even answer that question. They just label them as lazy or entitled. And then there are companies who are like oh, let's pilot some DAOs. And then there's, oh, let's operate outside of traditional employment, which feels like I don't even get the value out of the work that I contribute, so pay me more for the work that I'm doing. There's a lot to unpack there, but that's just a teaser.

Speaker 2: 22:58

We know Gen Z is already making up 30% of the workforce. Between Gen Z and millennials, I guess borderline zennials, that's 70% of the workforce already. Right, and Gen Z want to feel like they're co-creating the workplace with you, they're not just showing up and being told what to do. So I actually love that concept of the voting piece that you talked about. Where is this working really well? I know you can't share client names, understood, but where are you seeing this working really well? What are you hearing from feedback where you are testing this out Abroad, abroad, good.

Speaker 4: 23:32

Of course Switzerland, Germany I might ask them out. Josh and I do a lot of global work overall, so yeah, there's definitely forward-thinking individuals overseas.

Speaker 1: 23:52

We share case studies with them. Individuals overseas we share case studies with them.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It just feels like a couple standard deviations away from what they are willing to do, right, Even if this was working really well, like JuiceboxDAO is a great example, right?

Speaker 1: 24:05

This is a vibrant, interoperable community that doesn't employ anyone, and yet they have so many people core contributors, or bounty hunters, as you call it in the Web3 world who are contributing and adding value and getting paid based on the value that they are generating. And so, again, it's very difficult to come into a leadership place and say, hey, work is changing. And they're like give us some answers and it's yeah, but the answers aren't going to be what you're used to and they're going to challenge everything that you know and like AI added to all of that which is moving so rapidly. It's difficult, and that's part of the reason why, with AI, we see a large group of companies who are like oh yeah, AI is going to replace my expensive workforce, and people are tossing around oh yeah, we're just going to be unemployed, Everyone's going to be unemployed. It's guys like broaden your horizons, maximize the skills that you have and you will always be working.

Speaker 3: 25:10

I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? And you've mentioned, like the creator economy with Roblox, right, or, for instance, these DAOs. I find it very lazy when companies go oh, I'm just going to fire everybody, or we're just going to get efficiency gains, or we're just going to dump a bunch of money in AI and throw spaghetti at the wall to try to figure out what's happening, without really thinking about what the art of the possible could be in their organization. And we see this very commonly when technology hits. It's like tech for tech's sake, as opposed to actually enabling your business to be something better than it could be. Yep, like, how are people going to make money? And my secondary sub question of that is do companies really go away?

Speaker 4: 25:54

I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen in five years, when money goes away. Josh, why don't you do the interim step? Because that's the beauty of our collaboration is Josh is in the thick of things and I am looking more at the economic models of the future.

Speaker 3: 26:09

Can we have both, though, because I'd love to know the now and the future.

Speaker 4: 26:12

if you'd be willing to share, yeah for sure, josh, you want to begin, and then I'll follow up future, if you'd be willing to share.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, for sure, Josh. You want to begin and then I'll follow up. Yeah, and just to clarify how are individual employees going to make money in kind of a gig economy, space creator economy, or how are companies going to make money knowing that employees are probably going to choose alternative work models?

Speaker 3: 26:32

Let's start with employees like individual people, because I think that's the biggest concern for a lot of folks right now is will jobs exist? Will work exist?

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, it's so funny. So many TikTokers who are like I'm unemployed. I just got laid off for the second time this year, so blow up my TikTok and collectively we can hopefully make some money. Everyone's trying to carve that space out, and I would say the reason why the creator economy has stagnated, the reason why the gig economy isn't hot right now, the reason why Airbnb and Uber is not excelling like they used to, is partially because plenty of reasons right, but from an employee's perspective, if I'm driving for Uber, you have a centralized company. They need massive amounts of cashflow in order to keep the business running, and so where are you going to get that cash? You can go to investors and you're tied down to being more and more profitable, and the employee just gets to a place where this isn't even worth it. I'm not even making enough money.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Too much of it is flowing back to a centralized organization, and so one answer could be decentralized organizations, which is we cut out the middleman. We don't need them. We have technology that exists where you can open an app and get to work. It runs peer to peer, which means I offer my skills and my services outside of an Upwork. Upwork right now is the only way. There's other platforms, sure, but if you want to be a freelancer, the only way you're going to find work is through some of these channels. Again, upwork takes a large cut of that.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So how do you make this make sense? Plus, benefits are tied up into employment. Specifically, there's a lot of challenges that have not materialized yet, and I'm just letting everyone know on this podcast today that smart people are working on this technology and the minute that it becomes viable for the masses, why would an employee work a full-time job when they could have just as much, if not more, money, working on projects that they love with, like passionate individuals, single mothers working three hours a day because that makes sense to them over other options? And Reid Hoffman he has said that traditional jobs will be dead by 2034. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that to be like AI is taking all of your jobs. You'll be done by 2034. What he's really saying is that model, that decentralized gig economy, will be viable by 2034 and everyone will be choosing that.

Speaker 4: 29:02

And Josh, he revised that year in the next two to four years.

Speaker 3: 29:06

Oh Jesus.

Speaker 4: 29:08

Yeah, if you look at his Manus AI, you'll understand why because it can create the company for you. So, francesca, your question is the question I hope that I always get asked and rarely do so in the interim. We're gonna have to be incredibly entrepreneurial, whether you're entrepreneur or not. So you could be driving for Uber right now and you also make these delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that people have been asking you to provide for parties and locally, but now you're giving it to your Uber customers and they're starting to take orders. So what I mean by that is you want multiple revenue streams and getting those revenue streams to work together.

Speaker 4: 29:50

My head is really where are we going to be when money goes away? So I'll give you an example, and this is a geopolitical issue as well we may move back towards communal living. We're seeing a lot of that pop up around the world. We may grow our own food. I think we're going to see much more of the rise of the family-run business, and I don't mean just the mom and pop small storefronts. These can be multi-billion dollar businesses, but we are going to have to be much more reliant on our families and our immediate community.

Speaker 4: 30:30

And then government is going to have to figure out an entirely new support system, a safety net, because you can't just call it unemployment anymore. If President Trump wants to pay women $8,000 to have a baby, which he's asked for because of our birth rates being in decline, then you're going to actually have to pay people to, whether it's mom or dad, to take care of that child on top of it. So you're going to have to pay for childcare or elder care Again. It is going to be so fundamentally different from what we know today, and I'm heading off to Copenhagen and a few other Scandinavian countries next week just to continue to look at some of their ways, of the way they live their life and what can be adopted around the world.

Speaker 4: 31:23

I was just in Mexico City. They certainly have the family-run multi-billion-dollar business nailed down, not that it doesn't come without its challenges, but we are going to move much more towards the village, if you will, almost back in time, because it's not about the big corporation anymore. They say the average company. Big company in the future is going to be 50 to 200 people, and then you're going to have the company of one, the big unicorn, and then you're going to have the company of one, the we going to barter? Are we going to be more providing subsistence to ourselves, our families, our communities? And that is the big unknown question at the moment.

Speaker 2: 32:27

If money goes away, how do you have a multi-billion dollar business?

Speaker 4: 32:30

There'll be a few of those people that do have the digital fluency because you are capturing, as I said earlier, the SaaS or any technological kind of innovation. There was a market that you target to. Now, in an AI economy, as jobs go away, you can capture those jobs and the salaries you are paying people. So there's still going to be services that need to be provided for, but we do have to services or functions. I used to say we'll have the barbell economy where you're either the AI engineer or you're the plumber. Now I say you've got to do both. Really, the generations of the future can have some degree of cognitive functionality before AI completely takes it over. We do need those physical skills in the interim before humanoids are fully developed.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Are you guys freaked out by this, or is this exciting to you, or is this exciting to?

Speaker 4: 33:34

you. It's exciting to me because I think we know, had it not been for COVID, we wouldn't have evolved, We'd still be in the same kind of mindset. And so when we think about the problems of the environment, right, we don't need to drive to work anymore. You go to a place like Copenhagen. Everybody is biking. Things become more localized. So I think we had this great big globalization and if anything the president is doing right now is bringing it back to the US, whatever your politics are manufacturing consumerism, and I think eventually that's going to become more and more localized.

Speaker 3: 34:25

Knowing humans' capacity for change, and this is happening so quickly that will there be in the short term a lot of pain.

Speaker 4: 34:36

No matter what your religious perspectives are, there is a belief that we're coming into the era of the feminine, and in that feminine it is more about the heart rather than the head. We've been chasing capitalism for so long, and the haves and the have-nots, the dichotomy and the spread continues to get larger and larger. And, to your point, has that made us happier, having money, or has it made us more lonely? Because we're always on the chase, even among the world's richest men. It's just a continuous battle. Who's on top? Who cares? How much money do you really need?

Speaker 4: 35:18

And so I do think we will be in a position where we will have more time to give back in ways that families need. Particularly children need. They need that love and support. And there's something very beautiful about that family farm, with those children getting up at 3 am and all working together to contribute to the family wealth. And I think it's scary because, again, we've been in this kind of world of work that we've known for 150 years now. But we will have to evolve. We don't have a choice. With or without the AI hype, it's happening. So we're not going to have a choice, but to evolve at this time.

Speaker 2: 36:02

The beauty of this. It brings us back to a place for why we're all here anyway, which is to live, because I think one thing that I heard as a common theme throughout COVID post-COVID was this mass reflection that took place because people finally had an opportunity to slow down and remove the blinders of the hamster wheel that they were just on and they're like whoa, I didn't realize how much of my life I'm missing on, and so it's interesting. It seems pretty optimistic to me, although I think there's a lot to work through and there may be a lot of scary things too, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to be just human beings and exist.

Speaker 3: 36:41

What about the people that are like freaked out? We talk to people all the time that are I'm going to lose my job, AI is going to take my job. You've got obviously anthropic guy saying you're not going to have a job. What do you say to those folks?

Speaker 1: 36:56

I would say it's not black or white. I have a job and I don't anymore. If you have skills that you want to develop, if you have things that you're passionate about, start chasing them now and don't worry about the certifications or the college degrees. That stuff is irrelevant. Just build your skills alongside AI and there will be a place for you, whether it's gig economy 3.0, whether it's in a creator economy world. Youtube has shown us that you can make a video on anything and you can find a following and make money off of that. A decentralized gig economy will be more than that. It'll be what skills do you have? Let's apply it. In these ways, ai will be able to match you on projects. You don't have to look for clients. You don't have to beg companies to hire you with your cover letter. It'll be as easy as opening an app and getting started. But definitely hone those skills. God. The death of the cover letter, please go.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I was going to say you just made every employee happy to hear that.

Speaker 4: 37:53

I don't know if you guys are of the generation. I actually had to mail it in the mail.

Speaker 3: 37:57

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:58

Oh yeah, you didn't have to go through that, but I'm a little bit more draconian.

Speaker 2: 38:12

I am wake the hell up, wrap it round, and this is to get to know you better as human beings and your personal POVs on a couple of things. It's 2030. In one word, or one sentence what's work? Going to look like Dead.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Decentralized.

Speaker 2: 38:36

What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good?

Speaker 4: 38:41

All of it.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Management.

Speaker 2: 38:46

Interesting. Okay, what's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on?

Speaker 4: 38:55

Treating their people as human.

Speaker 1: 38:59

AI.

Speaker 4: 39:01

Okay.

Speaker 2: 39:03

What music are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist Keeping you happy?

Speaker 4: 39:08

I'm going to Coldplay tomorrow night. Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 4: 39:15

song from their albums oh many.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Just love it. Yeah, okay, how about you, josh?

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah, all of my early 2000s punk rock fans. They're all putting out albums now. So we've got some All-American Rejects in there, some Jimmy World. They're keeping me happy by feeding me more music.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yeah, Listen, Gen X and the millennials and Xennials. Over here we have the best generation of music coming up. In that time Everyone's coming back.

Speaker 1: 39:43

No one can argue that.

Speaker 2: 39:44

No, what are you guys reading right now? It could be audio book too. No judgment.

Speaker 1: 39:53

I'm reading Open Talent right now. It's a book that actually came out Harvard Business Review Press about the same time as ours, very much in the same vein as the work that we wrote about, but it's very much talking about the now of work, which is how do we open up our workforces to a talent marketplace or an internal gig economy.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So it's very fascinating marketplace or an internal gig economy. So it's very fascinating. Yeah, we we had john on the pod recently. It was an awesome book and very in line with also your concepts as well in terms of that portfolio work of the future. So it's really good. Who do you?

Speaker 1: 40:39

I am a work nerd, so I all of the greats the Adam Grants, the Marcus Buckinghams come to mind. There's a lot of great work, social media individuals right now who are doing some great work. So a shout out to Chris Donnelly, there Just changing work, one TikTok at a time.

Speaker 4: 41:00

Yeah, and I hit it more from a historical perspective, of a lot of women who were the first Amelia Earhart, just somebody I admire greatly, even someone like Oprah, who understood the concept of ownership rather than just being a successful broadcaster. So people who really broke the mold and were first and likely told no quite often and just continue to persevere.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yeah, I like that. And shout out to Debra, who is a modern Amelia Earhart in my mind. She does all the value she puts on conferences in Silicon Valley of these powerful women who are making big waves in the investment space, innovation space, keeping that trend moving forward. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 41:50

So what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know? And it doesn't necessarily we're going to get to the advice you want employees to have at the end. So this could be personal or professional, but if you were talking to someone you care about, what's one piece of advice you would give them today that you'd want them to take away To?

Speaker 4: 42:06

take risks. There are no wrong answers. I was always that person and this is something I do see, quite a dichotomy between men and women, not to generalize. But men will just jump and women will come to the edge of the cliff and it's almost analysis by paralysis, by analysis. At this stage, you got to try a lot of things and figure out what sticks, and there are no wrong answers and there's nothing embarrassing or just by. I don't even want to call it failure, because you learn along the way. The worst thing is to not try.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I love that, debra. The worst thing is to not try. It's so true. I would say and this tends to be aligned with the content that we write about is prioritize skills over experience. I have a younger brother who's considering going to college right now and he's hey man, is it worth it? I'm seeing a lot of stuff about it, and when I was a kid there was no other option. It was like go to college, that's the only way to get skills. But nowadays there are so many other options to learn and grow, and so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper and learn and grow. And so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper. And, yes, college is a great experience. The community side of it is great, but you need to make sure that you are at least graduating with skills that are going to be attractive in the marketplace.

Speaker 3: 43:27

This has been an amazing conversation and super appreciate the glimpse of what's actually going on today and what will be coming and how people can get on the bus for their own benefit. You both are doing work and keeping up to date with this. As it's changing every two weeks, how can our listeners stay?

Speaker 1: 43:45

connected with you. Find us on LinkedIn Debra Perry-Pershoni or Josh Dreen. The Works for the Institute is there as well. We love to chat about any of the challenges that you are facing and love to connect Debra Josh thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 44:00

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2: 44:02

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on linkedin. We have a linkedin community page and we have the tiktoks and instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

The Work of Your Life

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Work of Your Life with Joan Burke

Culture isn’t a checkbox, it’s the secret weapon behind every high-performing organization. Join HR visionary Joan Burke as she unveils her ‘Work of Your Life’ blueprint from DocuSign to Responsys, showing you how to transform managers into master coaches, ignite engagement, and make retention your ultimate growth engine.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

So if you really care about the success of your organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome to your Work. Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we're breaking down work so you get ahead. For those of you that don't know, every year, mel and I sit down and think about what are the topics that we want to talk about, and then we think about the guests we want, and we're always looking for people that are actively in it. They're either a really deep subject matter expert, they're on the line in the seat doing the role and they're really able to think about how you get some of this stuff done. So we can always make work better, and one of the things that we were always wondering about are how do you create these cultures where people feel like they can really do their best work? And that brought us to Joan Burke.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Joan, if you don't know, her is just a real deal CHRO. She is now a board member, she's an advisor. She's been a chief people officer at places like DocuSign, marketo Responses. She's been a CHRO at small companies, major companies, in multiple different industries. She's been there, she's done that and she's been able to create these cultures where people can do the work of their lives, and we wanted to talk to her about how she did that. What did you think of this conversation, mel?

Speaker 3: 1:34

I loved it because as an HR person lifelong HR person like Joan I really appreciate the hard line that she took in every interview, which was she's human-centered and it's human first and if that doesn't align then it's not the right fit for her. And because of that alignment she's been able to go in and build these beautiful workplaces. I'm just really inspired by the legacy she leaves behind and the message it leaves for others.

Speaker 2: 1:59

It takes a whole village to create a culture where people feel like they can do the work of their lives. Joan gives you the playbook for how she did this, what needed to be in play at DocuSign, at Responsys. She's. Also gave us some tips If you're not in these types of companies, what you can do yourselves to create the work of your life and if you're interviewing, what you can look for and some questions you can ask to see if a company is going to enable you to do the work of your life. This conversation, to me, was just fantastic. Joan's the real deal, and with that, here's Joan.

Speaker 3: 2:41

At DocuSign, you really created something super special, right? It was a culture where that employee experience enabled a lot of folks to, as you call it, do the work of their lives. In today's environment, things are changing. How do you make the business case to do that today?

Speaker 1: 3:02

So the business case is the same as the business case was when we did it in DocuSign. I joined them in 2017. Even though it's an employer's market, the best talent always has options. You should never walk away from that or feel as though I have to prioritize revenue. I have to prioritize this and I don't have time or this isn't important. It is as important now as it was when we were doing it.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Now, when we were doing it hyper competitive, the market was crazy. Everybody's trying to get good talent. Now. I would say it's important to do that because you need to keep your good talent. The pendulum will swing. It will go from being an employer's market to being an employee's market at some point in time, and the companies that invest in their people now, when that happens, they're not going to see them walking out the door. They're going to have an increase in retention and I think it's a false narrative to say it's an either or. If you're going to prioritize a business, you're going to prioritize people. So it's absolutely as important now as it was seven years ago, when the market was very different than it is today.

Speaker 3: 4:07

Francesca and I often say people fuel your business. So absolutely Both are so super important right Well, at the end of the day, if you think about it, revenue happens because you've got great talent.

Speaker 1: 4:17

These things do not happen on their own. It always is people that are responsible for that success in organizations, always.

Speaker 3: 4:24

Oh, and they're the base of the business.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, so you have a very good point. I think the thing that won't change is that people want to be able to do work and do the good work and to do the work of their lives. I don't think that's going to change. I really don't that intrinsic need want desire. At DocuSign. That was what you were really striving for people to have is had some great partnerships in the leadership team there.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Certainly Dan Springer, the CEO, scott Ulrich, who was initially the CMO, became the COO. These are people who totally got it and we thought really long and hard about how do we differentiate DocuSign and so candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies. What is going to make them want to come to DocuSign? If a candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies, what is going to make them want to come to DocuSign versus go to Adobe, go to Google? How do we make sure, also, that the values that we stood for authentically DocuSign and not ones that you could go to any website and pick up the words and they're fine, but there's nothing special about it? This is where the working life came in. This is what we said. People, as you just said, francesca, people want to do great work. Employees do not come to work to do a crappy job. They don't. They don't come to work to do a boring job. They come to work because they want to succeed, they want to contribute and they want to do a great job. So we thought, looking back, when people view their career, what we hoped is that people would say donkey, sign. That's where I did the work of my life. This was a marketing thing, because Scott is a great marketer. We intentionally didn't say the best work of your life, because you don't need best. It's like the work of your life. That vacation I had the time of my life, so we had to operationalize it. We had to bring it to life and we talked about it as being actually really important and, in many ways, a personal statement. I, joe, wouldn't know what one of my employees' work of their life was until I spent time with them and we understood how we were going to help that person get there and what were the opportunities, what was the development? And then, when it came time to do our low engagement surveys, one of the questions we always ask is are you doing the work of your life? If you're not doing the work of your life, what do you need from the company? What do you need from your manager to do the work of your life? We put it into self-evaluations. We put it into feedback. It was an employment brand for us. Your recruiters are going to go to job fairs, they're going to have a booth, they're going to have a banner. It might as well be something cool that makes some sense, and it did. Our recruiters would say people would go by and say, whoa, work your Life, what's that all about?

Speaker 1: 7:18

There were a lot of components to the work of your life. We also invested very heavily in our managers in terms of developing and training them. We had a work your life management program that was based on four pillars. That were pillars that we believe were unique to DocuSign, that we want to help be our managers. So it was very real and I'll give you an example. I was on LinkedIn the other day and there's a woman who I hired, probably about six months before I left DocuSign day, and there's a woman who I hired probably about six months before I left DocuSign. She just left now. So we're talking three years ago. She was talking about going into the organization, but when she was talking about DocuSign, she said I did the work of my life. So I thought, wow, it stuck. It stuck, at least for people who were there. I think when we created that program, the work your life starts up.

Speaker 2: 8:04

That, to me, is a real test. It's one of the real tests of how do you have a brand that you know sticks, and one is just people using the language, which is huge. And what I love about the work you did, whenever I think about a brand and thinking about if you're going to say we want you to be able to do the work of your life no-transcript DocuSign stood for, which is an environment and the climate.

Speaker 1: 8:59

And we say DocuSign helps people, it saves paper, paper saves trees. So we're all about DocuSign for forests. And I would talk to candidates and I could see the excitement, enthusiasm when I would say let me tell you what we're about, let me tell you about this work you're doing, let me tell you how much we care about the environment in the world. There were a lot of really great components of the DocuSign culture that kind of came together in a way that I think made people feel really good about the organization. And one of the things you might ask is how did you know that it really delivered results for the company? And I think it's hard to take up one program and say, okay, I could connect the dots and this is the exact revenue we got from this because of that. But I can tell you that every time we did anything around this, anytime we talked about the work-year life and when we would fortunately for us get great reviews from our employees on Glassdoor, we saw an incredible spike in the number of resumes that were coming in. People want to work for a company that they feel good about.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Dan Springer is the CEO. His approval rating on Glassdoor was 98. We were always in like the top 15 companies in technology. That's how we can say it made a difference because our employees cared about writing great reviews, and those are the only reviews we cared about. Docusend was not a pay-to-play company. We were not going to ever be informed. We were never going to pay to be part of some sort of a best place to work. That's what we felt the real value was.

Speaker 2: 10:30

That's what our employees really said. Yeah, out of curiosity, the day-to-day feel like the vibe. I am very much on vibes lately, joan, when you think about the vibe at Dacusign when the work of your life was hitting on all pistons After launch.

Speaker 1: 10:50

It's embedded in the DNA. What did it feel like, just as a leader and an employee? Once they got it and that was a more from an employee communication perspective we would do mid-year feedback sessions. So it wasn't about evaluations, it was just feedback, and they were having conversations with their managers and we would really target those disingenuous about work your life, figure out whether this is working for people. So there was some excitement, enthusiasm. We went into a pandemic and the world changed overnight in March of 2020. Now, I would say, because we had built such a foundation with our employees about caring about them, about their development, about work your life, we were able to carry that through during the pandemic.

Speaker 1: 11:32

For any sheep people officer, I will tell you that in that 47-year career I had the hardest work I ever did was running a people organization during the pandemic. Yeah, trying to figure out how do we best support our employees through their mental health, through daycare. Hiring managers get comfortable around hiring people over Zoom, where they're like I never hired somebody I didn't meet in person. You better do it because somebody else is going to hire them. So I think we took the same level of care during that period.

Speaker 1: 12:04

It looked a little different. It was around support. There was a lot of different things we did to help our employees be successful and it paid off, I would say, in states. So the work shifted a bit and I used to say the companies that are win when this pandemic is over are the companies where the employees feel really good and felt very taken care of during that period. And DocuSign did it. And the reason why DocuSign did it it was a leadership team that actually believed that this was ultimately what's good for the employees. It's going to be good for the company.

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yeah, it sounds like, even in, I would say, a crisis situation, which COVID, especially in HR it was. I'm just going to say bonkers, absolutely bonkers. Right, but I love the fact that lens to enable people to do the work of your life, to truly care for people. It sounds like you're making decisions through that lens. It didn't change just because we were going through a very traumatic time.

Speaker 1: 13:00

You feel like you turned the volume up on that care during that time turned it up and we saw the feedback that we got in our employee engagement surveys, which we did at least two a year or more. The last survey that we did, we got 6,000 comments in that survey 6,000 comments and Dan and I would read every single one of those comments. He'd read them. I was going to read them. There was no way I was not going to be a patient animal reading those comments. But they actually produce so much more richness than really just the raw data and we heard people talk about how well they felt supported by their manager, and not just from a corporate perspective, and not just the programs and the benefits that we put in place, which were all new.

Speaker 1: 13:47

During that period we were able to really pressure test that the work we were doing and the decisions we were making and the investments we were making in again these benefits and trying to make it easy for people to take care of their kids and work from home and have Zoom and parents who were ill, and it was thank you, Francesca. It was a bonkers period, there's no other word for it. And then, if you think about it, we went from that to the great resignation right which can I say something that lasted about 15 minutes, Like really that was done and now the pendulum has swollen completely the other way. So one of the things I would say is think about the time you're in and what you need to do, but know that things change and can change very quickly. You don't abandon all the things that matter to you, that are important to your organization, just because you can and you can.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Out of curiosity, how important is it to have your peer group, the CMO, the CTO, any of the C's your CEO or your board? How important is it to have them on board when you're trying to make these kind of decisions and, probably more importantly, stick to the plan when shit's hitting the fan? How important is that so?

Speaker 1: 15:05

well, I critical. If the only people who are enthused about these programs that are willing to keep them alive, as the HR team, that's doomed, it's just never going to work. But having that consistency when the shit hits the fan, you're still not going to walk away from your principles and your values as an organization. You're still going to invest in employees, you're still going to care about the development, you're still going to give them feedback. You cannot do that without the leadership involved. The reason why I think we were so successful at DocuSign is because Dan was so authentic in both belief in these programs and talked about it. We did all hands meetings every quarter and during COVID we did a lot more of them just to make sure we stayed connected to people. He never abandoned the things that were like the pillars of who we were as an organization.

Speaker 3: 16:04

You've done this several times over now DocuSign. You did this at Responsys. What was the secret sauce? You have to have the CEO.

Speaker 1: 16:11

If you don't have the CEO, then it's going to be lips of risk, because that's who people look to, that's their coming to door, that's where they're getting their insight and their messaging. And it has to be authentic. It cannot be lips of risk because people see through falsehoods and I always say the most important leadership is authentic leadership. It's be who you are and with all those organizations I've had really authentic leaders who would speak to the programs, who would talk about the importance of employees in the team and helping them be successful. It worked. But if you don't have that, I would say it's running uphill Everything dies If HR is running it.

Speaker 3: 16:49

you have to have that buy-in. Let's say your CEO is a skeptic. How do you fight through that skepticism?

Speaker 1: 16:57

You kind of build a business case right and the business case is talent drives success. It just does. And even in a bad job market, which we're in right now, the best talent always has options, always has options, how bad it is, they always do. So if you really care about the successful organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer in some ways. And here's what I am excited about.

Speaker 1: 17:25

I feel like in many organizations and particularly I'm working with some VCs they get it, they totally get it, and where a lot in the past you might say, oh VCs, I don't want their portfolio companies to spend a lot of money on marketing and HR, I'm seeing VCs actually pushing their portfolio companies and these are companies of maybe $30 to $50 million of revenue to hire that cheap people officer sooner than a lot of founders are ready to do, because founders, by the most part, they don't want to spend money. So I am extremely encouraged about that. I'm also seeing a lot of enthusiasm for people going to these smaller private companies and not so much like the big companies the Googles, the Metas that people went to. They're feeling like they're getting an opportunity to really be very hands-on, to be part of a successful organization, to see where their contribution is actually making a difference on a daily basis, with less bureaucracy, maybe less politics. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity for people to seek out these smaller private organizations.

Speaker 3: 18:34

I coach a lot of folks who are being impacted by layoffs right now, so I'm seeing that trend as well. Even if they came from these big megas, they're looking at smaller orgs where they can actually feel the impact that they have. So that's tracking. When you think of pushback on budgets, we hear a lot around. Budgets are tightening up with everything that's happening with AI. Leadership's very focused on short-term results. Someone making the business case. What advice would you give to them?

Speaker 1: 18:59

I would say that the Work of your Life program at DocSign it was not a heavy investment at all. These were things we were already doing. We're already doing performance reviews. We were already doing employee engagement surveys. We already cared about what people felt on Glassdoor. We were already going to job fairs. It's not true that these things cost a lot of money. Get that off the table. Just say it's bullshit. Right here there is investment, for sure is when you're investing in developing people and particularly leaders. So when we created the Work your Life Management Program, that was an investment. We again decided that it was really extremely important to us to have great managers in the company. We needed to put together programs, we needed to design them, we needed to facilitate them. So there were certain places where you may be able to say, okay, I'm going to cut back a little bit on this one and maybe use some different approaches where I don't spend quite the same money, but caring about your corporate culture, being articulate about your corporate culture and reinforcing your corporate culture it doesn't cost money.

Speaker 3: 20:02

Those human components, those day-to-day interactions. That's free. You can change that tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 20:09

One of the things that we did at DocuSign is we had a mentor program and everybody wanted mentors, right. So we're like, all right, how are we going to make this, operationalize this and make this make sense? And we realized, when you ask somebody to be your mentor, it's a big deal right, and it's time this is going to take. But one of the things that we did, which is like a skinny version of a mentor program, is we said anybody will go and have a cup of coffee with you Half hour Well, great. So if somebody called me up and said, john, I was watching the all-hands meeting last month, I think you did a great job with the presentation. I'm really trying to work out skills. Can we have a cup of coffee in half hour and just talk about that? It's like absolutely so. There are ways to just skivvy back certain programs and things that are less intense or maybe not so time consuming and not so expensive. You just gotta be a little bit thoughtful and creative about it.

Speaker 3: 20:59

If your budget's tight, what are the three areas? You'd say? This is where you double down.

Speaker 1: 21:05

It's really about helping grow people. Managers we always cared about how we help individual contributors grow and succeed too. But at the end of the day, if I had a dollar of investment, I'm going to put 75 cents of it against managers and 25 cents against the individual contributors, because I know that ultimately the value that those individual contributors are going to get is because they've got a better manager who cares about their development, who cares about their career, who thinks about not just job opportunities but actually assignments that are going to help them grow and develop. And I always say that the most powerful thing we can do to help people grow is put them, give them on-job assignments to see how they stretch, see how they grow. The investment you make on the individual contributor side pays off by really overinvesting, maybe in the managers.

Speaker 3: 21:51

I love to hear it because I was just at a conference where a room full of people, when we asked how many people invested in their manager's training and development, maybe 5% of the room raised their hand, which was really disheartening to see. So you heard it here, folks 75 cents for your managers.

Speaker 2: 22:09

It's nuts to me. I'm going to make a Catholic Italian reference here, but you can cut this. So in Italian cooking, a lot of dishes start with the trinity, which is the onion, the carrot and the celery. It is the substance that makes everything right, it's the base, mirepoix, if you will. And I always think the trinity of talent development is onboarding, manager development and coaching. If you had to pick three and manager development, you're very good. Point, joan, 75 cents of that, right. The biggest onion little bit of carrot, little bit of celery. The onion is the manager development. The data's there, the results are there. You could do absolutely no formal training whatsoever, but if you had an amazing manager, you're set.

Speaker 1: 22:54

I love that. I've never heard about the Trinity Battalion cooking. I'm going to use that. Seriously, no gosh, God, really no. We grew up Irish. My mother was Italian. That's great.

Speaker 2: 23:04

There you go, there you go. We're big fans. We're big fans. Let's say you're an employee, you don't have this. What can somebody do as an individual contributor, no matter what their circumstance? Create the work of their life for themselves.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Oh man, that's a tough one. Yeah, I know they're not in a powerful position to be able to do that, which many people are not. Sometimes I say find it elsewhere, and I'm not saying leave your job right. For some people it might be leave your job, but for many others that's unrealistic. It just is not the right market for people to do that.

Speaker 1: 23:39

But find your tribe right. Find the people who are like-minded, who have the same sets of values. Find that network where, through connection and through conversations and through learnings about how people are dealing with those challenges inside their organizations, that you can take back for yourself to be able to say I'm not getting from my company, but I am getting what I need from this group of people up there. One of the things that's difficult is developing a network is hard, it takes a lot of work, but it can be so rewarding. I remember during the pandemic I had this network of about 20 chief people officers and we met every week for like just an hour and it was the good, bad and the ugly advice in terms of the thing that was working, the things that weren't working. It was so important, it was so powerful that if you don't have that if you can find a way to create that, I'm just, I have just always thought that could be incredibly rewarding to just have whatever mind appears.

Speaker 2: 24:44

It's interesting to see what other people are doing commiserate on the good, bad and ugly, because that's every job. There's always things. There's something so important about being part of a community. Just like, you're not alone in this, no matter what stage you are in your career, because there's a lot of human messy feelings that go along with every single stage in your career.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Absolutely. I could go into depth with DiWalt on this call about those crappy jobs I had and how hard they were and the lesson I learned and how I hoped during that period. And that's like experiences, right. The other thing I would say is you can create a network of people who have similar values at you but are at different stages of their career, so have seen the work and experienced it and can look back and say, all right, let me tell you, when I was in my 30s, the world was different, but a lot of the experiences and the challenges that you have there's definitely similarities. So here's how I cultivate people for all different generations and I think you'll find it very worthwhile. Best advice.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Curious about. On the flip of this, where you're interviewing for a company, what are the tells? What are the tells that say this is a great culture, this is a culture that's going to support you in doing the work of your life? Are there tells people can see from the outside?

Speaker 1: 26:02

There are. You want to make sure that it's not just the recruiters who are telling you that story. Their job is to serve a certain organization. You need to drill down. So when you're talking to an organization and hopefully having a number of different interviews with people so you get a good sense of that company and some of them would be peers, some of them would be a manager is that you're paying very good attention to what they're saying and you're actually teasing out from them whether or not what you're hearing from these recruiters if in fact they're real McCoy.

Speaker 1: 26:30

And then you check out Glassdoor, you check out Blind, you look at what people are saying inside the organization to know whether it's for real or whether it is just give talk. So you got to do your own homework and it does help, as I said, if you know your why and you can actually articulate your why, to have the people sitting across from you, from the company, explain why your why is either going to work or not work in this company. You should put them on the spot a little bit in a nice kind of way. That's how you tease this out, right.

Speaker 3: 27:02

What were some of your go-to questions? To tease it out.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Well, I think the biggest thing would be to say tell me what people three layers down this organization are saying about this company. Tell me what you're hearing from your teams. And if I was to just go around right now and go from desk to desk and just kind of casually stop and ask people questions what is it like to work here? What would they tell me? Would they tell it to? What would they say? And ask those questions and say what are your employee engagement scores? What are people saying about the employee experience here? Have you seen progress or are things going backwards? So it's just doing a lot of due diligence and interviewing the people in the company as much as they're interviewing you with you.

Speaker 3: 27:53

There's what you ask in the interview, but then there's what really happened when you get there on day one, your first 90 days in a company. How do you further tease this out? Like, how do you figure out who are the secret decision makers? What are the things that are going to make it a better experience? What are your questions in those first 90 to help you?

Speaker 1: 28:08

Who are the savvy insiders? You got to figure them out and some of that is asking. Again, it's asking a lot of people, a lot of questions and owning your own onboarding right. So it isn't just I'm the manager, here's the playbook, you have the free people to talk to. It's like all right. I got to drill down even more. I want to speak with these four people over here. I want to know more about what's going on in the IT department, not relying on a routine onboarding process, but create something for yourself that's robust.

Speaker 1: 28:43

And I would also say, as an insider from Chief People Officer perspective, onboarding is so important. Those first 90 days, those first six months, it's how you show up, because you want to know what's going on, but you want people to know you. My mother used to say it's not who you know, it's who knows you that matters. And that's really right, mom, that's what I would do. I would be really thoughtful about who I wanted to meet with and just make it happen. Just make it happen. And people don't say no, they really don't, you're new to the organization, they want to meet the new person.

Speaker 2: 29:17

I'll tell you I have a few regrets looking back on my career, A few. There's times where I'm like I should not have handled that the way I did I did. Life goes on. You learn right, you live, you learn. But one of the red thread regrets or if I could do it over again is I wish I would have done what you just suggested, which was get out there and meet people, Ask for the coffee, Get a habit of just asking for the coffee. Even when I was an individual contributor, I wish I would have done that, because it makes it so much more easy and enjoyable to get work done.

Speaker 1: 29:50

Absolutely, absolutely. That is part of working your life right. It's just feeling like you're part of an organization that you're connected to. Connections are so important. At the end of the day, we look back and say, did I feel like I made a difference here and who are the people that I can look and say, oh my God, look at the tribe. I was able to be part of that built up, part of something. Completely agree with you, francesca. Very important.

Speaker 3: 30:11

What you created super valuable and, I think, unfortunately a lot of ways, unique, and I hope you get to a place where this is more the standard and not the exception. How can we get there?

Speaker 1: 30:23

Back to what I was saying earlier about the pendulum swinging.

Speaker 1: 30:26

People and leaders could be mindful of the fact that things are going to change and the companies that continue to be committed throughout a sluggish job market and challenging competitive environment, they stay true to who they are. They're the ones who are going to win at the end of the day. They're the ones who are not going to lose their talent. Let's think about this. On the other side, all of those law firms that capitulated to the administration and actually in many ways destroyed their brand, hurt their culture and their values, and they've had some of their top lawyers who are walking out the door saying I'm not going to be part of this Law students who got out of law school. They don't want to interview with those organizations. So there's a big price to pay for abandoning what managed you as an organization just because you can or because the times are tough. In fact, when the times are tough is when you really need to double down and just be even more vigilant about what matters to you and how you want to run your organization.

Speaker 3: 31:41

Joan, are you up for some rapid round questions?

Speaker 1: 31:46

I am ready.

Speaker 3: 31:48

This can be one word answers. This can be as long as you'd like to take it, but really quick. Whatever comes to top of mind, Okay jumping in. It's 2030. What's your prediction about what work looks like?

Speaker 1: 32:03

One exciting thing is, I think we're all going to have AI agents who are going to be reading our emails for us and making our travel plans and maybe scheduling our doctor's appointments. So those are things I'm super excited about. But I want to answer that question by saying here's what I hope. I hope that by 2030, the human-centered jobs are more valued and are higher compensated, and by that I mean the teachers, the EMTs, the caregivers, the therapists. I hope that AI will have helped automate so much of the roles that can be automated that we will really see the need for these people to be doing the great job that they do. That's my hope. I like that.

Speaker 3: 32:46

That's a good one. What is one?

Speaker 1: 32:51

thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already. Personality assessments, color, myers-briggs Dis I like to see them all go far away. I believe that they label people, and I have seen them do more damage inside an organization than them.

Speaker 3: 33:08

I agree with you. I think they're fun and it's interesting if it's like personal introspection. But too often they can be weaponized and people make them their whole personality when that's not the intent.

Speaker 1: 33:19

Let me just tell you I was talking to somebody who was leaving the organization and they were looking for their next role. We were talking and they said they did colors in their organization. This person said every single person on the HR leadership team was a red. So that kind of said you're not a red, you're probably not going to be on the HR leadership team. Anyway, that is a bugaboo of mine which I've actually had for some time.

Speaker 3: 33:39

Okay, what is the greatest opportunity that orgs are actually missing out on?

Speaker 1: 33:45

So I think it's cross-functional data. Data exists in silos inside organizations. First of all, we know it's not pristine and I think part of this whole going to AI is going to be like cleaning up data and making it good. But if companies can use the power of cross-functional information, they're going to be able to streamline decision-making, become way more efficient as organizations.

Speaker 3: 34:12

How many times have we all worked in an organization and found out three other departments are working on a similar project Exactly? A little more personal. What's on your playlist right now? What music are you listening to?

Speaker 1: 34:24

So I'm listening to a guy named Leif Volderweck Okay, check him out. One of his songs I really like Transatlantic Flight. I also love Kim Petraeus. She does a version of the old Kate Bush song Running Up that Hill, and if you like that song and there's many different versions of it I would say check out her version of it and her video of doing it at Outside Lands in San Francisco in 2022. She's so cool and it's just completely joyful. And then I'm a big fan of Florence, yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:57

I love her. You did a really beautiful collaboration. Do you know the artist Blood Orange? Yes, have you heard her collaboration with him? I have not. So this is a great tip. Very good, put that in your as Francesca says, be in your bonnet for this weekend. Go look it up, it's really good. What are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 35:16

It could be audiobook or old school pages, so I'm an old school pages person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. I stopped on the Pulitzer, I think, in 2020. But I would say that the book that I've loved the most that I've read in the last eight months has been James by Percival Everett, and I would highly recommend that book.

Speaker 3: 35:36

What do you really admire? Could be personal, professional.

Speaker 1: 35:40

There's so many people in my life and historically I admire, but I'm going to pick one person Right now. I'm going to pick Laura Steinem. We need to stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us talking about and reporting on women's issues, on reproductive rights, on equal pay, on health care. And the thing I love about her, she's 91 years old. She's still with us. She absolutely never sold out. She's my shout out, she's my hero right now.

Speaker 3: 36:15

What's one piece of advice that you've received, or just something that's your personal piece of advice that you want someone to know you would give everybody today?

Speaker 1: 36:24

If I could pick a couple, because there's career and then there's personal. So if I think about career advice, I want to say careers are long. Mine was very long, was 47 years long, and that means that you're going to have some jobs that are crappy jobs, and, rather than running away from them, a lot of those crappy jobs are incredibly important and meaningful. They're either the lessons you needed to learn, they're people you needed to know, or, in one case, it was a ticket I needed to punch. It was experience. I needed to get that next job, which was my goal, and so embrace the crappy jobs. They're going to happen the way of life.

Speaker 1: 37:07

The other thing I would say, though, from a career perspective, is know your brand and who you are. Know your why, know what is important to you. So let me give you an example. When I would meet with CEOs and I was doing job interviews for chief people officer roles, I would always say to them I believe the best human resources, I believe my job as the head of human resources is to help managers be the best managers they can be. Only people who work for me at HR is my team, the rest of the people who work for managers and how they feel about the organization is oftentimes how they feel about their managers. Do they feel like they're getting feedback and they're being coached and they're being developed? So I would say, if you don't agree with that, perfectly fine, but that means I'm not the right person for you, I'm not right for the role. Go hire somebody else. So that's just an example of a philosophy that I developed early on that stayed true for me throughout my career and I would use it as an evaluation tool as I was deciding where I was going to go next. And then the personal advice and this is not profound. Everybody on this who's listening to this has probably heard this, but it's a lesson that we don't always take to heart, and I can even give you a recent example that I did not, and I regret it. Make sure you tell the people in your life who have been meaningful to you, who you've learned from, what they've done and how they've helped you, and be specific.

Speaker 1: 38:36

When I was starting my career many years ago, I was at a large financial services company in Boston and as a very junior person, I had the opportunity to work with the CEO of that company, and it was remarkable that I had that opportunity because he was here and I was like and I got to know him and we worked on a few projects and I learned so much from him and I had so many great stories about this person as a human, as a leader. Two months ago he died at 98 years old and I wrote his wife a note and I said I want to tell you stories about your husband that come from a young professional. And I told her these stories. She wrote back to me and she said it was very profound for her to hear these and she said they were so jizzing with Jim.

Speaker 1: 39:22

The stories were so Jim and she said I wish he could have read this. And I'm like I wish I could have written it. I wish I had written it. So don't wait till that person's gone and you're telling their spouse. It's great to tell their spouse, but let them know when you have the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 39:37

What a gift to give someone to bring the spirit of their loved one back through the story. That's a really beautiful gift to give someone. Joan, it's been awesome to chat with you today. Tell us where people can find you.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I'm on LinkedIn Also. I'm part of the Chief People Officer Forum, so if there's anybody who is a Chief People Officer and wants to join a network, to build community and wants to quarter, have topics of interest and experts who are going to be able to talk about topics, we've got one coming up next week and it's all like AI. What is this going to mean for you people, officers?

Speaker 2: 40:10

We will link to your LinkedIn and the CPO forum. There's nothing stronger than community, so definitely check that out, joan. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, joan.

Speaker 3: 40:19

It was great to be with you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesco Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care friends. Bye friends. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.

More Human in the Age of AI

Your Work Friends Podcast: More Human in the Age of AI with Jacqueline Carter

We’re all being told to master AI, but what if the real secret to thriving at work is doubling down on what makes us human?

In this episode, we talk with Jacqueline Carter, author of More Human, about how leaders can build their edge through awareness, wisdom, and compassion.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by tech changes or unsure how to lead right now, this one’s for you. It’s not either/or. It’s not about keeping up. It’s about choosing to start with human.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

It's like a lot of organizations right now. It's like they're rolling out high-end Ferraris but not teaching anybody how to drive, and that's just a waste of money.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We are breaking down work, so you get ahead, mel. What's the good word?

Speaker 3: 0:31

I'm heading to Rhode Island and excited for that. How about you? Very nice, pretty chill over here, pretty chill over here. I showed Robbie the picture of Enzo on the first day of first grade and the last day of first grade of Enzo on the first day of first grade and the last day of first grade.

Speaker 2: 0:46

For those of you who don't know, I have a seven-year-old. He started first grade with a shaved head. He ended first grade with this mop of curls, a gold chain. Dressed in all black, he either looks like he's a sophomore in college, at USC, or is going to start really getting into creed sometime soon. I don't know. It's all over the map.

Speaker 3: 1:03

I love his style evolution.

Speaker 2: 1:05

We let him dress the way he wants to. He picks out all of that. He asks for a chain. We got it from TJ Maxx or something. It's not like he has a real gold chain or anything like that, but it's interesting watching your kid make choices.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, it's just fun to watch their personalities evolve. I don't know, I think it's really cool, but I do too.

Speaker 2: 1:24

I will allow him to wear anything but sketchers. My child will not be wearing sketchers. What's your beef with sketchers? I just I cannot, I like cannot stand that brand. I don't know what it is it's like a joke it's like a joke.

Speaker 2: 1:42

I don't like a joke. I don't appreciate it. I don't. It's not real, I need it to be. Oh my God, every once in a while, especially when he was younger, he'd pick some up and some of them had. They would light up underneath and I'm like, absolutely not Like. I will let my kid wear the craziest shit, except for Skechers. Absolutely not.

Speaker 3: 2:03

No, I love it Speaking shit except for Skechers? Absolutely not. No, I love it Speaking of style. We launched some merch on our website. We are independent and we want to keep it that way, but if you feel so inclined, check out some of the merch that we put up there. We thought there's some pretty cool designs over there. To check Any purchase that you make helps us stay operational, so appreciate your support and you get a cool hat or sweatshirt or something.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Good hats for summer sunscreen. That all works out. It's all good stuff.

Speaker 3: 2:31

We had such a great conversation earlier this week with Jacqueline Carter. She's an author, speaker, a senior partner and a director for the North America Potential Project. She's an expert in leadership, development, mindsets and corporate culture and she just came out with this book More Human. This is an opportunity right for us to lean into our humanity in the workplace and really see AI as a partner, but also taking some precaution as we go through this evolution. What did you take away from this conversation?

Speaker 2: 3:07

We've been talking about the future of work and AI and even things like oh, we have to lean into our deeply human skills for the last 10 years. This is not something that's new. What I think is so different about what Jacqueline and More Human, the book and the potential project are talking about is they're making it really easy to lean into those more human skills that you really need to. In this conversation and also in the book, jacqueline outlines this trifecta of how to make yourself a more human leader. As technology takes on more and more of work. How do you lean into that humanity, that trifecta being awareness, wisdom and compassion, and I love that, because you and I have both seen this these deeply human skills as a laundry list of 30, 40, 50. And you're just like Jesus Christ. How many do I have? These are the top three. If you're going to do any, do these?

Speaker 3: 4:00

Yeah, I really liked that. I also liked the concept of moving away from either or. You could either have AI or humans. You can't have both, but this is a both and conversation. There's just a lot of power in that. Everybody's going through this shift. I don't think I get any news alerts that don't involve AI in the title these days, but if you and your team are moving through, this is a definite book to check out With that. We think you should check this conversation out. So here's Jacqueline.

Speaker 2: 4:50

So I think every day, maybe multiple times a day, I'm asking somebody, sometimes jokingly what timeline are we living in? Because it just feels like some fascinating times for various reasons, but really amazing times for opportunity. And I'm looking at this moment in time around AI, this moment in time around humanity. What made you see this as a moment in time, as like a fork in the road, especially for leadership?

Speaker 1: 5:17

So, as you guys know, I'm part of an organization that's a potential project.

Speaker 1: 5:21

We are a research and leadership development organization.

Speaker 1: 5:24

We've been focusing on researching and supporting leaders and global companies to be able to enhance their potential for the past 15 years, and what we're really excited about is we really do see this is an amazing moment in time in terms of human leadership and when we look at it, we really see that with artificial intelligence and, specifically, of course, generative AI, we have the opportunity to really make this major shift from management, which none of us really liked to be able to lift, into leadership, which is really about elevating our ability to be able to enable other people to realize more of their potential.

Speaker 1: 6:02

And if and I think that's the big if we're able to navigate this, we really see a potential opportunity for a future of work that is really quite inspiring and, I think, one that could be really quite hopeful and flush with possibilities. At the same time, we also see a lot of darkness, and I think that's really why it's never been more important to be a leader, and it's never been more important, as a leader, to be able to lean into the kind of choices that we need to make about the future of leadership.

Speaker 2: 6:32

One of the things I'm curious about is you mentioned these more human kind of aspects of things. Like we have this opportunity to really reach this different level of leadership potential. How do you define more human in an AI-powered world? What does that look like?

Speaker 1: 6:47

We come at it very much from a research and data perspective. So what we've done, like I said, over the past 15 years has really distilled what we see as being three core qualities of leadership excellence in terms of being able to bring the best of our human potential. And they're going to sound simple but simple is not easy. And they're going to sound like common sense, but common sense is not always common practice. So, fundamentally, a first core quality is awareness being able to be aware of what's going on internally and also aware of what's going on around.

Speaker 1: 7:16

The second core quality is wisdom, and this is very different than knowledge, but wisdom is basically the discerning capacity of mind, to be able to discern what's happening so that I can make wise choices.

Speaker 1: 7:27

And the third core quality is compassion, and compassion the way we define it is to be able to do the really hard things that we need to do as leaders, but to be able to do them in a human way.

Speaker 1: 7:37

So when I operate with compassion, say, I'm able to give really tough feedback, but do it in a way that helps you to be able to hear it, so that it supports you in your development journey, as opposed to you feeling degraded and depressed, and what we see from a data perspective is that only 16% of leaders are really ready to be able to lean into these core skills that we believe are critical in the age of AI. 60% have potential, but 24% probably really shouldn't be leaders. I think we've all seen leaders that have been promoted because they had great technical skills, but they really don't have these human skills that we know are critical for the future not only be able to leverage the benefits of AI and overcome the risks, but we know there's going to be massive transformation in the world of work in the coming years and we need leaders who can really lean into those human elements to be able to guide the workforce and create the work context of the future.

Speaker 2: 8:33

First of all, those data points resonate. I think all of us that have worked especially in corporate you're like, yeah, that tracks, that tracks. Maybe you haven't had a leader that leads with awareness, wisdom and compassion, or maybe you had one and you remember them for the rest of your life. Right, they just make or break your work experience. We're not seeing a lot of organizations invest in what we will call these deeply human skills. Yet, to your very good point, only a small percentage of people are ready. Most people aren't getting trained in those. I'm curious about that moment in time where the mindset shifts, where people start to pull in that direction. What does that look like? What's that mindset shift that separates someone that has that AI augmented leader trifecta of awareness, wisdom and compassion? What is that shift that people are making?

Speaker 1: 9:24

Yeah, I do love that you point out that not enough organizations are investing in it, and that's one of the things that we feel very privileged is we, of course, work with many global companies that are actually prioritizing the human development aspect in parallel with the AI advancements, and I think when we see organizations that say, yes, we've got to be able to roll out the technology, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we emphasize the human, the way that we see that, it's like a lot of organizations right now.

Speaker 1: 9:51

It's like they're rolling out high-end Ferraris but not teaching anybody how to drive, and that's just dumb, that's just a waste of money. And so the light bulb for us really goes on for leaders is when you know these aspects of awareness, wisdom and compassion and that's why I said they're common sense is because, when you dive into them, we all innately have these capabilities it's whether we have the permission to be able to develop them, the permission to be able to see the benefit and we again look at it very much from a research and data perspective Leaders that have these high awareness, wisdom and compassion are able to create the conditions where people feel more empowered, where greater trust, greater performance, greater job engagement, when you create the conditions where people know that there's a prize at the end and, at the same time, you give them a path to be able to support them in that development.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Oh, I can develop compassion. Yeah, I may have a set point where I'm good or not good, but there's a journey and I can see how to be able to take that journey and to be able to be supported along the way.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yeah, yeah, I really love to. By the way, that it's three. Having been in talent development my entire career and we've been seeing this deeply human skills that you're going to need. It's a laundry list. It's typically a laundry list of at least 10. And to be able to have this distilled down into a framework of look, this is the three that will reap the most benefits that you really need to be focusing on Huge One question that might be a little controversial. I'm going to just ask it. Here we go. All these organizations are investing heavily in tech but not in the human aspect of it. Buying a Ferrari and not having someone know how to drive, would you say. People need to invest in the human first, or they are better suited to invest in teaching people how to drive first before they buy the car?

Speaker 1: 11:39

I love the question because one of the other things that we found in our research and it was a little bit surprising to us was that if you just like and we call them human purists so let's say, if you just invest in the human, which we were like, yay, this would be so great.

Speaker 1: 11:54

Imagine an organization that just invested in the human and we're like this would be awesome. But the reality is that the smartest human being is a little bit smarter when they leverage AI, so it really does have to be a both and and. That was, I think, one of the key insights that we came is this paradox. So the journey, we believe you need to start with the human, because if the human, like great tools in unskilled hands are not great tools, like you can do a lot of damage with a hammer or you can build a house with a hammer, so you need to be able to have the right skills. So you need to invest in the human development. But the opportunity now is to augment these great human capacities that we have. But we can augment them with AI. My awareness enhances when I leverage AI. My wisdom enhances when I leverage AI. My compassion even enhances when I leverage AI. So it's really a both and from our perspective.

Speaker 3: 13:10

I'd love to drill down further into what each of these look like in practice, alongside AI, because in the book there were some really good case studies, if that's okay. Yeah, awareness, when you think about that skill set, that human capability what does that look like daily, alongside the use of AI tools?

Speaker 1: 13:28

Absolutely. Definitions are always important, because awareness can sound like a really big word, but the way that we look at awareness is the ability to, like I said, be aware of what's going on internally and, at the same time, be aware, to the extent that I can, of what's going on externally, and we know. Let's just take a simple example situational awareness. Right, it's been for many leaders for a long time. We've been told that not everybody is the same and so we need to be able to be situational. And Mel, what you like is different, francesca, than what you like, but that's really hard. Like, how can I, as a mere human, be able to really keep track of oh? Can I, as a mere human, be able to really keep track of? Oh, when I communicate to Mel, it's a little bit different than when I communicate to other members of my team. And these are the kinds of things that AI is really good at. Ai is really good at being able to track what Mel is, what's important to you, what kind of messages resonate with you as opposed to what would be useful for other employees, and so again, and that's why that awareness of being able to be more aware of what's happening with my employees what's important to them can really then enhance me. My awareness is lifted. And these are just some examples.

Speaker 1: 14:33

But we also see, like sentiment analysis. I sent out an email to my organization. Ai tools can let me know was it opened, did anybody read it, how long did they read it for when they responded? If they responded, what was the? Did anybody read it? How long did they read it for when they responded? If they responded, what was the sentiment associated with that response? And this is gold, because this can then enable me to be able to enhance my ability to communicate more effectively. And I think these are just some examples. But that's again from an external perspective. But then from an internal perspective, ai can help to be able to challenge me on maybe my biases, on my limitations, on my blind spots, to be able to support me in a development journey if I'm open to that. So these are just again some of the ways, but we just see it's a really an amazing tool to be able to support enhancing my awareness.

Speaker 3: 15:19

Awareness and wisdom and compassion are all critically important right For the future for this to be successful. But it stood out to me. It felt like compassion might be more of the linchpin here, because I think you had mentioned it's the one thing that AI can't replicate. What crystallized that for you from your research?

Speaker 1: 15:39

Yeah, and I would say the way that we see awareness, wisdom, compassion, they're all linked right. It's how, neurologically, how the theory of mind, how the mind works, like we perceive, then we discern and then we respond, and so very much that responsive capacity of mind in an ideal world for leaders that want to be effective, is compassion right To do those hard things and do it in a human way. And what's super interesting is that we really have been with great interest following the advances of AI. We know that right now, people actually prefer and sometimes feel like an AI chatbot is more empathetic than a busy leader, right, which is not surprising, because an AI chatbot has all the time in the world to say oh Mel, I'm so sorry that you're having that problem, how can I help? It isn't rushed to be able to get to the next meeting.

Speaker 1: 16:30

But the key thing and I think the reason why, mel, to your question, why it's the most important is because, even as AI gets better and better at being able to mimic human emotions, it's programmed, of course, with all the intelligence that we know around emotional intelligence, around human psychology, human behavior. Fundamentally, human beings were social beings. We feel each other, we thrive based on each other and fundamentally, even though and this was so interesting what the research shows is, even though people found that the AI chatbot was more engaging, they felt empty inside, they felt fooled when they found out that it was an AI chatbot, because, fundamentally, human beings prefer messy but authentic other human beings than perfect, programmatic, empathetic AI.

Speaker 3: 17:17

Yeah, of course, in the news, just like when video games were villainized, right, you think of some of the horror stories that are also coming out as well, because AI is essentially acting as a mirror of the person who's using it. It's interesting. I'm curious about these three pillars, because you mentioned what was it? 16% have these skills and 60% can use some training on it. That's a pretty big gap, and then 24%, who are never going to get there. Of these three pillars, which do you feel people struggle with the most?

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yeah, I love that question and maybe I'll just say this, and I hope it's okay but what we did find is, within that 16% one, in four women, only one in 10 men.

Speaker 1: 17:58

That's a whole nother podcast. I just wanted to say, yeah, exactly, very interesting data. It's really interesting around that 60%. A couple of things that surprised us. Sometimes a non-result is as interesting as a result.

Speaker 1: 18:12

One of the things that was surprised us is we were surprised that there wasn't more differential around level, so we expected to see a real difference in seniority and, specifically, around wisdom. We just made the assumption that people that were and, by the way, I should say that data that I shared that's not based on leaders rating themselves, that is, employees rating their leaders. So this is in the eyes of the employees. So, based on 360 data, do I see you, as a leader, as being able to demonstrate these qualities of awareness, wisdom and compassion, which is quite different than when leaders rate themselves? So what's interesting is that. I would say, though, that still, our experience working with leaders is that most more senior leaders have figured out how to manage their mind, how to manage their time, which is a lot around the importance of awareness. Do I know what to focus on? When am I able to read the tea leaves, to be able to say this is most important and I can let this go. Most of them have a good North Star, which is really around that wisdom capacity, and that's why it is the one that we emphasize.

Speaker 1: 19:15

I do think especially more senior leaders struggle with the compassion piece, and oftentimes what we do see, and what's really interesting, is that we see, as leaders rise in ranks, their ability to engage in a compassionate way in the eyes of their employees goes lower, and that we find really interesting.

Speaker 1: 19:33

And it makes sense because, of course, as you rise in ranks, you're making bigger decisions that affect more people, you have a bigger span of control and you don't necessarily have those same touch points, and so it makes sense that a leader might be seen as being less compassionate. But the key thing is that we also see leaders that use that as an excuse, and what we see is there's a real opportunity because we know, just because you have a big span of control, we know that doesn't mean that you can't show up with compassion. That compassion piece is probably the one that all leaders can develop and I would say, at more lower levels of leaders, we do see a lot of that awareness. Right, it is that starting point, because you can't really dive into wisdom and compassion if you don't have good awareness about what might be getting in your way, if you can't manage your mind and manage your time. We were surprised that there wasn't more differential by seniority, but that is our experience working with many leaders over the past decade.

Speaker 3: 20:27

It's really interesting to see that, but I could also see why it's probably the lowest with compassion just given when you grow, If your organization isn't going to give you opportunities to nurture these things while we're going through this massive technological shift at work. What are simple ways people can start to nurture these things while we're going through this massive technological shift?

Speaker 1: 20:50

of work. What are simple ways people can start to nurture these three qualities in themselves today? Yeah, yeah, I love that question and I've always been inspired by the quote be the change you want to be in the world If you want to be a good human being, which is really around. What these skills are? Be present, be wise, be caring and those are, I think, key things in terms of your own brand. And, of course, there's a lot of resources. Of course, our book is one resource to be able to provide some practical tools around it.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Probably the starting point is really around the intentionality, and we oftentimes, when we work with leaders, we look to be able to have simple brain hacks to be able to help you In this moment. Like, what's your intention? And right now? My intention is to be of service. That's my intention. If you ask me a question, I'm going to try to be of best service, and just those simple things can really help us as leaders. When I show up for my team, it's like I just want to be present and I want to be able to be able to support everybody in the best way possible. I'm just going to be a good listener. Whatever it is, the starting point for all of us is really around setting our intentions and using that as our North Star, because we know being a leader today is really hard. Let's be real, yeah.

Speaker 3: 21:56

I think if that's all you can do is set the intention and always go in with that's always a good starting point.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Then afterwards have opportunities for reflection, say how did I do? And then you get that learning cycle. So these were my intentions, this is how I wanted to show up in this meeting and then to give myself the space and the grace to be able to say, okay, how did I do, what did I learn? What do I want to implement for tomorrow?

Speaker 2: 22:19

I want to talk a little bit more about the both end, the both end because I feel like there is this reality, especially with folks right now.

Speaker 2: 22:28

their companies are probably like get to know AI, understand AI, your job's not going to go away. The person who knows how to use AI is going to take your job. We're hearing all of the tropes and we know that those folks that lean into these really more human skills are the ones that are really going to thrive, not only for themselves, but, honestly, for their team. Who wouldn't want to work with a leader like that? I'm curious about how people can start to tiptoe into this, especially that both end thinking and really make the power of AI and our human capabilities work.

Speaker 1: 23:00

It's really the best marriage of mind and machine and the way that we look at it, and this was really based on hundreds of interviews that we did and also our data collection but when we looked at each of these different qualities, there's a really nice kind of both and aspect of looking well, what's the best of tech and what's the best of human, and so, for awareness, the way that we framed it is in terms of AI is amazing at content, like more content than any of us could ever grasp, but human beings are amazing at context. Why am I here? What's important? What are my intentions, what else is going on, what else is relevant? And that ability to be able to marry that context setting with then leveraging content is a way to be able to get the best of both.

Speaker 1: 23:44

On the wisdom side, ai is amazing. Any question that you have, it'll give you an answer. And what humans, though, are really good at if we have the time and space is really good at being curious, beginner's mind like to being able to think outside the box and our critical thinking to be able to. When we get an answer from AI, I'm not really sure that's a good answer. What would be another question.

Speaker 1: 24:04

So this marriage of questions and answers is a way to again really have that both and thinking. And then, on the compassion side, the way that we looked at the both and was really human beings fundamentally are able to connect with their ability to care, their ability to create trust, their ability to look at you and say I care about you, you're important to me, and to be able to lead with heart. And AI, like I said, it's programmed with all of the best knowledge of human behavior, emotional intelligence, and so another both end is to be able to say okay, I care about you guys, and how can I be able to use that care and leverage AI to be able to help me? Because we have to have a difficult conversation or we need to move an agenda forward and I don't know where to start, but I want to be able to engage us in that process, and so those are some of the key things that we really see as being a way to be able to marriage the best of both minds and the best of both technology.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Do you see that changing as AI gets more eugenic and gets smarter? Do you see this changing or do you see these are evergreen?

Speaker 1: 25:06

It was one of the questions that we asked and that we continue to ask in our research, and so far we do see that these are evergreen, and that's why I think it's so interesting is that even though AI is getting better at, let's say, context, it still doesn't have the amazing wealth of understanding and experience that a human does.

Speaker 1: 25:27

And I think that even when we look at agentic AI like it still is at this point in time and again we're looking at a horizon of the next three to five years it still needs to be told what to do, it still needs to have ground rules and it still is limited in terms of what it can do. And even though it's got a really big box, still is limited in terms of what it can do. And even though it's about a really big box, thinking outside that box is still something that is in the realm really of still of us mere mortals. So, at least for the next three to five years, we see these as evergreen and hopefully that, leading with heart, our aspiration, our hope is that will always be augment with AI, but something that is evergreen in terms of bringing out the best of our human leadership.

Speaker 2: 26:08

I also am really taken with your finding about even though AI can communicate with emotion, if you will people. When they found out that the bot or the chatbot was a chatbot, they were left feeling empty. I'm very taken with the fact that people still innately want a human right and I wonder if that's never going to change, even when AI becomes like minority report and singularity and all this good jazz. I wonder if there's some sort of magic, juju, that we're always going to want a human, no matter what, and these things are always going to be the case.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, I deeply hope so, and I do think that is the case. The problem, though, is that these are at risk Our human connectivity. We know that there's an epidemic of loneliness and this was before Gen AI came out and we know that organizations that are heavily AI dependent people feel even less connected and more lonely. Why? For a number of reasons. One, because people overuse the technology. Right, they use the technology to be able to send a message that really should be a conversation, but we also know that because, when an organization that's heavily embedded with AI, people aren't asking each other questions. They're using AI to be able to ask the questions, so they're not turning to their neighbors.

Speaker 1: 27:21

And the other thing, critical thinking. We know that 74, the recent study this wasn't ours, but a recent study showed 74% of leaders are so overwhelmed that they would prefer to have a chatbot make their decisions, and that's scary, but real right, and so I think that the problem right now is that our awareness, our wisdom and compassion is under threat because of AI it's creating. We're more distracted. We have the risk of, I will say, instead of being wiser, actually being dumber if we delegate our decisions to AI, and being more disconnected and what we really need to do, and I think that's why conversations like this are so important. We need to be really intentional about overcoming these real risks of artificial intelligence, so that we were able to leverage the benefits and not get sucked into kind of the dark side of where the future of work could be going if we're not careful.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Yeah, yeah, I wonder what you'd recommend. Let's say somebody is I'll take myself, for example, and I know a lot of people I talk to are the same way right, they have a large language model. They're using gpt, cloud perplexity, whatever doesn't matter, they're using that. It's their little assistant on this side. They're using it more and more each day.

Speaker 2: 28:34

they're reaping the benefits of the efficiency of it and maybe, slowly, they're talking to humans less and less by 30 minutes yeah, how do they like break that cycle potentially and or make sure that they're like carving out space for more of the more human attributes? Like you know how people have phone addictions, it's just put it away.

Speaker 1: 28:55

You walk away from it.

Speaker 2: 28:56

What what do people need to be really thinking about, so they don't get into the trap of only using their large language model?

Speaker 1: 29:04

First of all, I love the question because I do agree. We do know that people are addicted to their phones Many programs actually that we do with leaders. One of the most simplest intervention that we do is we take away their devices and you should see the looks on their faces Like it's just we've taken out their heart, like how could you like what? I'm going to be disconnected. And it's so interesting that they actually do go through withdrawal symptoms because they're not like, oh my gosh, what if somebody needs me? And it's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 29:31

Many of us are addicted to our technology and I do think that with these tools, because they are the large language models, as you said, they talk to us really nicely, they're designed to please, they're really engaging, to be able to have conversations with, and they never get mad at us like real human beings, real colleagues do, and they're designed to suck us in. These are money, these are not altruistic devices that have been created for the best of intentions, and so they're designed to suck us in all different kinds of ways. So what I love about your question is that we need to be able to make sure that we stay in the driver's seat. Back to the Ferrari analogy, we need to be able to make sure that we stay in the driver's seat. Back to the Ferrari analogy we need to be able to make sure that we're in the driver's seat of our technology and that we recognize, because many of us think we're smarter than our smartphones and we're not Like.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Our smartphones are designed to be addictive and until we wake up to that fact, we'll say, oh, I'm not addicted to my phone. It's like all right, let me take it away. Oh, wait a minute. So I think that we need to be aware that these tools are designed to be able to suck us in and really promote use, which, again, is wonderful because they're really useful to be able to help support us in our daily activities. We need to be really practical. Like you say put the device away, get up, go for a walk, put the device away, have a conversation, put the device away, have a conversation, put the device away, take some time for reflection in terms of your to enhance your creativity, enhance your ability to be able to think outside the box. So I think that you need brain hacks to be able to help you to not get sucked into the technology, because they're designed to be addictive. They put us in echo chambers, and that's another risk that we need to be intentional about to overcome.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Yeah, yeah. It's a very odd feeling when you realize you are addicted to your phone, even the muscle memory of reaching for your phone the other day. I have Claude and I have chat GPT and I have found I have started going straight there as opposed to wait. What do I really think? What do I really need to be researching? And so it's almost not getting rid of the muscle or not making sure I have atrophy or like human atrophy or addiction, and it is a job that is a very intentional practice, but I think it's needed, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:41

What I loved about what you said is exactly that it's got to be a practice. Exactly, it's so easy, let's say, I've got to brainstorm, I need to write a new article, and it's so easy to go into whatever tool that you're using and say, all right, write an article for me in the style of HBR. I could even write an article that Jacqueline Carter would write in HBR, because it does have access to the web and it's so tempting to the web and it's so tempting. What I loved about what you said is no, I've got to force myself. It's like going to the gym. I've got to force myself to make sure I continue to go to the gym.

Speaker 1: 32:11

And that's the other analogy that we use oftentimes when we're talking about AI and how it can augment. It's like looking at it like an exoskeleton, right, so an exoskeleton. We know that it helps us to be able to enhance our strength. And AI can be like an exoskeleton that can really help us to augment our mind and augment our heart. But if we don't, at the same time, develop our mind and our heart, it's going to atrophy. If we just let that exoskeleton do all the work, our muscles will atrophy.

Speaker 1: 32:41

And I think what you said is exactly. It's a practice to be wait a minute. What do I think? How would I write this article? Wait a minute, what do I know before I go to my tool? What would be a good way to be able to create this presentation or to be able to have this conversation and then augment with the tool to be able to help you but don't lose the muscle? And I think that's exactly it. We're really at risk of losing some of these core, fundamental muscles, like critical thinking, like emotional intelligence, because we're over relying on our technology.

Speaker 3: 33:12

The addiction to your phone is so real. I don't know if I don't remember where I saw this, but someone mentioned if you start to have this little indent on your pinky finger where you hold your phone, that means like you forever have changed like the bone structure of your finger from where you hold your cell phone and like you forever have changed like the bone structure of your finger from where you hold your cell phone. And I looked down and I was like, is that a dent? And I started to slowly back away. For anyone listening, check your pinky when you think about getting into some of those ethical guardrails, as we're talking about not letting these muscles atrophy. We're introducing this to teams. Francesca and I are trying to advise folks on, like how to introduce this to your team without fear, like testing and learning in a safe way. Given everything that you've researched, what's like a one sentence AI policy for a leadership?

Speaker 1: 34:01

team. Oh, I love that One sentence. Policy I would say is human in the driver's seat is do not, do not allow these tools to overcome your human judgment, your human responsibility, your human accountability, and be aware of the seductive nature of these technologies to be able to to delegate decisions. If I was going to have one word policy, it would be always human in the driver's seat. And then, of course, you said just one. But I do think we are deeply concerned about considerations about using these technologies in terms of the environmental impact. We are concerned about data security and privacy, which is already a concern. It was a concern before artificial intelligence and now all of this information. And who's storing this information? How is it being used? So there's a long list, but the one is the human in the driver's seat.

Speaker 3: 34:53

By the way, the smartest policy possible when you're looking at that workday class action lawsuit, exactly, yeah, okay, I love to hear it when you think about the case studies, because you had multiple that were highlighted in the book, case studies that during your research that kept you up at night could be good or bad, but was there one case study in particular that kept you up at night?

Speaker 1: 35:14

There was one. We didn't put it in the book. So we had the privilege of being able to talk to chief people officers, chief learning officers, ceos as well as tech leaders, chief learning officers, ceos as well as tech leaders. And probably the story that scared us the most and we were shocked by this and I will not say the name of the company, but it was a story we were sitting down with the chief human resource officer of a global technology company and she told us a story about a senior executive in the organization that had been basically deep faked by somebody posing as the CEO of that company and was about to transfer millions of dollars and it scared the bejeebies out of us and this was actually like a year and a half ago and I think it gets back to.

Speaker 1: 36:02

We all think that we're smarter than our smartphones, we think we're smarter than our devices, but this it was just. It was unbelievable because I would think, oh, that would never happen to me. And when and when she talked about this case, like the guy had emails from his CEO, he had text messages, he had video little snippets telling him he was on a secret project and not to tell anybody about it and it had been an extensive scam that had been over multiple months, and this guy had absolutely no idea and he had been completely hoodwinked by it and it was just like whoa, that was yeah. So that was really scary.

Speaker 3: 36:39

Yeah, as the video continues to get better and better On TikTok right. Has anyone seen the fake Tom Cruise? Oh, fake, Tom Cruise is crazy.

Speaker 1: 36:49

What is this? And I think it's great. Yeah, it is really scary, and I do think that we are so susceptible to, if we see something, even if somebody says that it's created by artificial intelligence, we have a tough time unseeing it. It's part of our neurology, right, like we trust what we see and that is how our brain has been designed and wired over so many centuries, and so, even if somebody says, oh yeah, that was fake, it's no, it still sticks with us because we saw it, so it's real. And so I think one of the bigger, larger concerns that we have is just around the continued what's real, what's not real, fact versus fiction, but not only that like how we are so influenced by our quote, unquote peers, our tribes and how. Again, social media and I think that's one of the things that we focused a lot on.

Speaker 1: 37:37

Human beings have always had an amazing history of introducing new technologies without necessarily looking at the negative potential consequences.

Speaker 1: 37:45

Social media was designed to make us better connected, and how's that working out?

Speaker 1: 37:50

Email was supposed to save us a ton of time, I don't know, and so I think that's for us. One of the big things is that really started to scare us when we started to look at this technology is how fast it's moving, how fast it's being pushed, like every organization right now and if they're not, they should be is pushing adoption of AI, and they should right, because they got to get ahead all their competitors, so every organization is pushing adoption, but I don't think we're spending enough time thinking about wait a minute like what are the potential consequences of this adoption and are we taking the time to pause and say what are we potentially at risk? And that's really a lot of the work that we do with leaders is we talk about the adoption and how to be able to embrace it and we talk about I think, francesca, to your point like how to have the brain hacks that you say, put away the device. Let's just make sure I'm still using that muscle that I have as a good leader, as a good human being.

Speaker 3: 39:04

Okay, Jacqueline, are you up for some rapid round?

Speaker 1: 39:07

I am. I'm a little bit scared, honestly, Mel, because I don't know what's coming. But bring it on, I love it.

Speaker 3: 39:12

I promise these are harmless and fun, and hopefully you will have fun with them too. Okay, it is 2030, not far off, by the way. What's work going?

Speaker 1: 39:22

to look like no idea. Very simple Anybody that tells you that they know what the future of work looks like is making things up. I can tell you two things, though, that I know for sure about the future of work in 2030. The first thing is it is fundamentally AI enabled and it doesn't look anything like what we see it as today. And the second thing and this is both my prediction and also my aspiration, so there's a little bit of hopefulness is that those of us that are able to double down on the best of our humanity will be the ones that are thriving in the world of work in 2030.

Speaker 3: 39:57

I love to hear that. What's one thing about corporate culture? You're ready to see die already. You're actually excited it might be gone by 2030.

Speaker 1: 40:07

I do think that there are so many.

Speaker 1: 40:09

You guys, of course, have been around the halls of corporate, of the corporate world, for so long.

Speaker 1: 40:14

There are so many bureaucratic tendencies box checking, ticking, activities reports that nobody reads, emails that are just out of control, activities reports that nobody reads, emails that are just out of control. And I guess I am really excited about the opportunity for us to rethink work so that what work really becomes is the opportunity for us to really thrive in terms of human connection, ultimately, the opportunity for us to be able to inspire each other, to be able to connect with each other. That's the way we get great ideas, that's the way we build trust, that's the way we engage our customers in a way that makes them feel, wow, these are awesome people to work with, and I just think there are still so many bureaucratic elements of work today that we've been talking about for years to be able to let go of. So I hope to see those shift, and probably I'll say one thing is meetings where nobody knows why they're there and there's no agenda and everybody thinks it's a waste of time. Any time we can do that, let's do it now.

Speaker 3: 41:12

There was a tool that was out a few years ago. Francesca and I were like how do we tap into this? That used to tell people. I forget who is using it, but I read this article where one organization, anytime they set up a meeting, it told you the potential cost of that meeting based on who was in the room.

Speaker 1: 41:28

And I'm like genius we all need that Nice and of course, it's something we can get into. But a lot of AI tools, if we use them well, like they, can give us a summary. Was this a good use of time? Did everybody contribute what?

Speaker 1: 41:40

were some things that could this. There's a great tool right now that you can say could this meeting have been an email? Ai can really help us to be able to look at the quality of our human interaction and help us to be able to lean more into that. If we use it well, if we use it that's the key word.

Speaker 3: 41:59

You might have already answered this, but I want to ask just in case you have a different response but what is the greatest opportunity most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 1: 42:08

Yeah, human potential. I think that right now, there is so much focus on AI and, of course, we just wrote a book and we're doing research on it and I think there's so much focus on the technology and organizations are missing out on and they're investing and organizations I get it like they're investing so much money on the technology they're missing out on the opportunity to really develop and support and leverage the best of our human capabilities, and that is what's gonna enable us to be able to use these tools well and be able to get the return on investment of these amazing technologies.

Speaker 3: 42:43

Yeah, okay, it's getting a little personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist?

Speaker 1: 42:50

Oh my gosh. Okay, that was a real I. It's so funny. I have to say that I was just with a girlfriend over the weekend and we were laughing about like eighties music that we still love to be able to go back to as a go-to, and so I have to say I'd love to try to pretend that I'm hip and current, but people would laugh at me if I tried to pretend that yeah, 80s, 90s, those are my go-to. But I love, actually I love Pink these days. I don't know why. She just really is inspiring to me and I guess she's current. So maybe that would be my lead into modern music tech in this age, my lead into modern music tech in this age Perfect.

Speaker 3: 43:26

I'm not going to judge your 80s and 90s because I'm right along with you. I was listening to Cyndi Lauper yesterday on my drive Girls just want to have fun.

Speaker 1: 43:31

How can you go wrong with?

Speaker 3: 43:32

that no judgment. What are you reading right now? It could be an audio book. It could be like the old school turn the page. What's on your reading docket?

Speaker 1: 43:43

I'll tell you what book I just finished which I just loved. I just finished Nexus and I am old school, I have tried, I travel all the time and I tried to use audiobooks and I just I love actually. I'm a tactile reader, I just love being able to like actually, and so Nexus is a really thick book, and so carrying it around has been a real chore, but that means every time I open it up and I just loved it.

Speaker 1: 44:05

I think that he that I think that he provides such a fantastic, interesting insight on democracy and information technology and and just recognizing some real risks that we're facing with these new technologies and and, of course, the state of the world. And so I love books like that, so it's a great read. Okay, who do you really admire? Love books like that? So it's a great read. Okay, who do you really admire? Oh my gosh, there's so many people that I admire.

Speaker 1: 44:31

As soon as you said that, I guess that's what Rapid Fire is all about the first person that came to mind is Michelle Obama she just came to mind but I also, I guess, in my work I've been so privileged to work with senior leaders and I could name so many of them but particularly chief people officers right now that are really in a challenging position where they know the future of work, as we've talked about, is going to radically change and they need to hold that space where there's so much fear and, at the same time, and they need to be honest, because there are changes coming in terms of workforce transformation and anyway so I just I really admire a lot of the chief people officers, so a big shout out to all of them that are standing in this space of, at this major inflection point, work and being able to lead with courage, with care, but also with clarity and with integrity and with integrity.

Speaker 3: 45:26

Yeah, I know HR always has the tough job right. Because, you're in the sandwich between the board and the employees and what that looks like. You're always in the middle, but always with the best intentions, hopefully, and if they read your book, for sure they'll have some good guidance there. What's a piece of advice that you want everyone to know?

Speaker 1: 45:50

I think that was such a good question. I think lean in. I think that it is at least in my career and my life, I've always trusted my gut, even when I was afraid, and I always liked the definition of courage is to step into places that scare you, and I think that there is a lot for us to be fearful of, whether it's fearful of social rejection right, there's so much tension in terms of having a tough conversation or whether it's concerns about will I have the skills that I need in the future, and I guess, just yeah, leaning into the places that scare you and recognizing that you're not alone and being willing to have courage and take risks and I'm not saying I always do that, but that's advice I try to give myself and hopefully maybe that'll be helpful for others.

Speaker 3: 46:32

Yeah, I think it's good advice, right Like we're in a time where we're all learning, so now's a good time to have that courage. Where can listeners stay in touch with you? Stay in touch with what you're doing? What's the best way to stay connected?

Speaker 1: 46:45

Yeah, absolutely. You can follow me and find me on LinkedIn and please feel free to reach out. But also, as I said, I represent an amazing organization, potential Project, wwwpotentialprojectcom and a lot of the research that I shared is freely available. So if you don't want to buy the book, that's okay, but a lot of the research we post on our website and we love to, and you can also follow us on Potential Project, where we share, because this is an ongoing research and insights and, yeah, a great way just to be able to keep in touch and reach out.

Speaker 3: 47:15

Perfect, and we'll link to all of that in our show notes too, so folks can get easy access to that. Thanks for joining us today, jacqueline.

Speaker 1: 47:29

Thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 47:29

I just love this conversation and thank you so much for both being intentional and also really future focused in our discussion today. Appreciate it. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plutt and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.