Ep 120: Inventing the Future of Work with Meg Bear

[00:00:09] Hey everyone, welcome back to Elevate Your AIQ, your go-to source for insightful conversations on human-centric AI readiness, talent transformation, responsible innovation, and the future of work. My distinguished guest today is Meg Bear. She's a globally recognized technology executive, innovator, and operator.

[00:00:28] She's the former president of SAP SuccessFactors, a board advisor at NovaWorks and Papaya Global, and co-host of the The Megan Amy Show on the Work Defined Podcast Network, of which this show is a proud member as well. Meg and I cover a lot of ground in our conversation from the intellectual humility that separates sustainable leadership from the, quote, founder mode hype,

[00:00:50] to the power of recognizing human potential in the AI era, to the challenges of total workforce visibility, and what a future of fluid, individualized work could actually look like. Meg is one of the sharpest, most thoughtful voices in the talent and HR technology space. This conversation did not disappoint. Stick around for a great one, and thank you, as always, for listening to the show.

[00:01:13] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Elevate Your AIQ. I am your host, Bob Pulver, and with me today, I have a special guest, the legendary Meg Bear. How are you today, Meg? I am so good. I'm delighted to finally get a chance to talk with you on air. Likewise, likewise. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. I have been trying to keep up with all the places where you've got your fingers and toes and everything going on within that talent space and the AI space,

[00:01:41] and you've got your own podcast. We're sort of cousins on the Work Defined Podcast Network with your partner in crime, Amy. Yeah, it's been great. So before we get into quite a few topics that I want to cover with you, just thought folks would like to hear about your distinguished career and your background and some of the current projects that you're working on. Yeah, so I am an innovator and an operator. I have mostly been in the technology business and primarily,

[00:02:11] in the people technology business for a good portion of that. Most recently, in the operator function, I was president of SAP SuccessFactors, so bringing technology to global businesses around the world. And when I stepped out of that role, I decided to do a few more kind of independent side quests, if you will.

[00:02:33] I, since then, have convinced my best friend Amy Wilson to create a podcast with me called The Megan Amy Show that you just mentioned. I have been doing a lot of research, some advisory, some board work, and I've been sort of giving myself permission to think about where the future is going to be.

[00:02:55] And I have this belief that this is a moment of opportunity, and I have anchored that belief into my mission, which is to invent the future.

[00:03:08] And my thinking around inventing the future is a future that creates better opportunities for humans and a future that embraces the, you know, real unlock that comes from technology, but does it in a way with a ton of curiosity to imagine a world that is different than today and to just lean into that all the way.

[00:03:36] Well, that's fantastic because it aligns so well with, you know, the, you know, themes of this show and some of the things that I'm aspiring to do. So definitely inspirational, all the work that you're doing. And at some point in this conversation, I do want to ask you about one of your new board advisory assignments with our mutual friend Kelly, who I'm hoping to have on the show. Oh, you should, yes. But yeah, she's, she's great. And she's done some amazing things in the space as well.

[00:04:02] And we have high expectations for her and Melanie and the NovaWorks team. So we will definitely get into that. But one of the things that was caught my attention that you've been, I think, writing about, I think it was in your, your and Amy's latest newsletter, talk about this founder mode versus growth mode and how organizations really need to think about the types of environment and culture that they're, that they're setting as they're scaling up a startup

[00:04:32] or as they're thinking about, you know, a certain transformation and the sort of, the attitude that, you know, key leaders need to have to, to foster the kind of climate for, for growth. And so just thought we could unpack that for starters. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a tremendous amount there.

[00:04:51] So most of you guys may remember that this whole like founder mode versus manager mode conversation, I, I attribute it to a, you know, to Brian Chesney and the, the conversations that were probably like a year and a half, two years ago,

[00:05:10] where they began this kind of energy around, we need to get out of manager mode, the, the belief that, you know, professional managers are incrementalists and maybe don't understand first principles and instead get into founder mode where you have leadership's responsibility to go deep in the business, to go deep with the customers and to find innovation to move that forward. That's a dramatic summarization of that.

[00:05:39] And Amy had a beautiful retort to that where she described our thinking as grower mode, which is not to throw out the need for innovation and for thinking from first principles, but to make sure not to underestimate the importance of true leadership characteristics that include, you know, sort of human, galvanizing humans to do big things.

[00:06:09] And building cultures so that people are part of it. And so this is where we're about maybe a year and a half, two years ago.

[00:06:19] And we've kind of come around again in this SaaS apocalypse, you know, AI doomsday kind of thing where you then have Jack Dorsey coming in and going with an extreme founder mode approach or Brian Allen, Hal Ann is calling it Dorsey mode, which is get rid of all the middle management,

[00:06:45] get back to the middle management, get back to the middle management, get back to the middle management, get back to sort of small teams, build a technology layer that does the majority of your thinking for you. And really give up on managers, but only invest in directly responsible individuals, people that manage projects and people that are coaches, player coaches that, you know, sort of focus on growth.

[00:07:10] And this really struck a chord with me, probably even more than Amy in that. But I feel that I feel that there is, you know, just like any of these sort of big provocative things, there is a element of something really important inside there.

[00:07:29] And this was, in my opinion, wrapped in a ton of hubris where the kind of natural extension was, well, Jack's belief that eventually everybody just reports to him because between him and the AI context layer, everybody will just be doing really great work. And, you know, there is kind of no need for other brains in the conversation.

[00:07:57] And so while I agree that AI can create amazing insights and it can create amazing thought partners, you know, the whole, you know, a country of geniuses available to you to help you make decisions, that's all great. But to me, it is missing some really important elements of what it means to run successful businesses.

[00:08:27] And if I were to distill what I think is missing into, you know, sort of a single concept, it would be intellectual humility. I believe that what is missing in this idea is not that we shouldn't rethink how technology plays a part. And it's not even that we shouldn't rethink how organizations are built and operating models work.

[00:08:51] But the belief that a single person is going to make everything happen to me is the wrong kind of culture to build a sustainable future. To me, where innovation really happens in amazing ways is when you have a deep set of expertise. So that's where I do believe in the sort of founder mode thing.

[00:09:15] A deep understanding of your customer and a really good foundation of first principles. And the capture and collection of collective intelligence brought forward with a ton of intellectual humility so that we can learn from each other and that we can maximize our collective strengths. And so that's the part I think is missing. And that's where it, you know, strikes a chord with me.

[00:09:44] Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack there. And so I, that was pretty impressive. I didn't know you were going to string a couple of those topics together like that. So, so let me try to, you know, crash in on a couple of key points there. First of all, I love the phrase intellectual humility. And I think the connection to collective intelligence in terms of cognitive diversity is, is apt.

[00:10:13] And I spent a lot of time at IBM on that exact topic and understanding that, you know, we don't have all, each of us individually don't have all the answers. We can't possibly have all the answers. Even the smartest person won't necessarily be thinking tangentially about all the ways the dots can be connected and where opportunities maybe exist or where risk may exist.

[00:10:39] And so in general, you know, that, you know, Steve Jobs is an exception because normally, you know, you don't have the, you know, the cliched, you know, startup garage kind of scenario. You have teams that come together and in aggregate, you know, they, they innovate.

[00:10:59] And so I think being able to recognize that you don't have all the answers is just one of the keys to, to success because you're gathering, you know, information on what would otherwise be, you know, blind spots in, in your thinking and your approach.

[00:11:17] And I'm not saying every, everyone has to solve everything, every, every challenge that exists all at once, but just recognizing that you can't possibly do it all, I think is important. So you've got to sort of deputize people and that's part of being a leader instead of a manager is making sure that others are aligned to that vision that you've created and can help execute against it.

[00:11:47] Otherwise, that vision is in most cases kind of a pipe dream. Well, and it's very lonely, right? Like, like if your entire path to success is expecting you to know everything for stuff, we all know that's impossible. And especially now it's, you know, quite literally impossible. Nobody knows what the future is going to bring, but why set yourself up for that, you know, emotional drain on what is already a real life?

[00:12:17] Really complex and hard moment to be alive. You know, why wouldn't you harness the energy that comes collectively with problem solving? It's just, it's just really hard for me to understand why anybody would see that as a better route because it's just, you know, setting yourself up for, for a lot of emotional burden. That is probably more than any one person could really handle well. Yeah, for sure.

[00:12:45] One of the other things that came to mind, just as you're talking about how people need to sort of think about, you know, how they contribute to, to organizations and leaning into the human centricity kind of piece of that, which can go in many different directions.

[00:13:03] But one of them, when I think about the durable sort of human skills and attributes that people bring to an organization, no matter how much technology is thrown at it, no matter how much autonomy you've added through, you know, agentic workflows and things like that.

[00:13:18] There are still very important, really vital ways that people are still going to be needed and form what I, I guess, generally describe as the sort of connected tissue that, that actually makes decisions. We both know humans are still supposed to be making decisions, especially when it comes to talent and people's lives and livelihoods.

[00:13:42] And then all the ways, you know, not even just the formerly soft skills like empathy and curiosity and things like that, but just all the, all the exception processing, all the ways in which we bring context and prior experience to decisions.

[00:13:59] I just gave a presentation last week to, you know, you know, a tenured community of, of, of, of workers, mostly knowledge workers, but I was really trying to emphasize that take everything that you know and everything that you're capable of, and then also add some of these AI, you know, capabilities, AI, your AI fluency, readiness, et cetera, because then you've really got this, you're really sort of standing out in terms of

[00:14:29] you know, top talent, you know, top talent, having the desirable and future ready skills. And something, a phrase that you used in one of your posts really caught my attention in that regard, which is find new pathways of excellence. I thought that was really, really well stated in terms of how people can find potentially their new path, whether that's through upskilling or reskilling, career pivots, you know, whatever you need to do, don't discount your ability to succeed.

[00:14:59] Going forward, but you've got to maintain your agency. You've got to maintain your self-confidence that even if it's not where you currently are employed, your, your skills, your expertise, your experience, and, and all of those human, you know, attributes are very much needed. Yeah, one of the things that I spent a lot of time on in past cycles was really the observation of sort of two things.

[00:15:27] Most of us do not spend enough time appreciating our strengths. There's a lot of reasons for this, but I would distill it to if it's a strength for you, it comes pretty easily. It's probably hard for you to break it down for someone else because it becomes a sort of an intuitive, natural thing. And you tend to underappreciate how differentiated it is. And that can be a challenge for a lot of different reasons.

[00:15:54] But the other side of it is, you know, one of the big responsibilities of leadership from my point of view is actually recognizing potential. Being able to see the strengths in others and help them not only recognize what they're good at, but think creatively about where they might best be applied. And for me, this has always been something that I did naturally.

[00:16:23] Again, I didn't realize this was an unusual thing and an actual strength. I just thought this is what anybody would do. You have a certain set of people you're working with. You want to do big things. You kind of figure out who you can trust to do which kinds of things. And then if you're me, you go around selling people on why this is their idea and why they want to take it on.

[00:16:44] And I realized that the early stage of my career was built almost entirely on this set of strengths is just figuring out what people were passionate about, what they were good at, what they did better than anyone else. And then just figure out how I could apply that to the problem to hand. The thing about leaning on these sort of what we're starting to think about as context layers. And again, I want us to be really clear.

[00:17:12] I'm not against context layers. I just want us to be a little bit aware of what a context layer will and will not provide for you. And I'm pushing back really hard that people are believing that a technology layer is going to do all of your human optimization. So I tend to talk about that as, you know, the context layer becoming Dunning-Kruger as a service because you get people that are overconfident about what it's going to tell them.

[00:17:41] And they're going to just try to turn that into activation. What that misses is what we really need in this moment, which is helping to recognize potential because none of us has the full battery of skills in the AI era. It's impossible to have because, you know, everything is changing so quickly and nothing is in its final state. Everybody kind of can feel that.

[00:18:09] Then the more you're involved, the more it's really clear to you. No one has any idea what they're doing. The most experienced people with AI will tell you that. And so if we think that we're just going to sort of magically let technology figure everything out without recognizing that we ourselves don't totally understand how to apply ourselves and organizations don't know how to best optimize.

[00:18:37] So what I'm trying to encourage us all to do is to invest more for ourselves and for teams that we're responsible for. Invest more in sort of the two things that I described was kind of an early pattern for my own success. Get more clear about what the strengths are for yourself and for the people that are working with you.

[00:19:03] Not what they do and not their past achievements, but their actual strengths they've leaned on to be successful. And then start to recognize that as potential to be applied to a new set of tasks and opportunities. And I really think that is where we should be spending our time for ourselves and for our teams.

[00:19:28] Because the more we spend our time there, the more we're going to activate that curiosity possibilities mindset, the more we're going to open up our own learning agility.

[00:19:40] And the more we're going to let go of the anxiety and fear, because once we have this sort of curious approach, we can take some risks and try some things out and not hold ourselves to expertise that isn't available to us anyway.

[00:19:58] And so I think it's really, this is why I say it's like it's something that we have to also build within ourselves in this resilience, in this awareness that our value is not our past jobs. It is not our career titles. It's none of those things. Our value is inherent to us because we are human.

[00:20:19] Our strengths are given to us either because, you know, because we were born with them or because we started developing them early based on things that interested us or whatever. And we have all of the raw materials to thrive in this future state. But it's not going to work if we only want to bring our knowing selves. We have to bring our learning selves to this problem.

[00:20:47] I think that's why we've both been harping on, you know, the fact that people need to be hiring for skills and potential and not based on, oh, why are you even bothering with the resume at this point?

[00:21:01] And so without going too off on a tangent on that subject, I mean, I guess I wonder how effective you think AI can be in helping us with that discovery process, either from the organizational side, you know, L&D's perhaps expanded role to be monitoring, to see how your skills are developing.

[00:21:28] In context, you know, in different scenarios, in different interactions and relationships and things like that, as much as that is sort of documented and interrogated, I suppose, within privacy constraints, of course. But versus a person trying to figure that out themselves, right?

[00:21:48] Because one of my thoughts has been people are, I mean, you alluded to this just before, people are not aware of their own potential because they haven't flexed certain muscles or they haven't been given certain, you know, assignments. Maybe they've been sort of typecast because they're good at a certain set of activities or handling a certain type of customer or, you know, whatever it is.

[00:22:14] And they've never actually been exposed to certain things that actually they may, that may be this serendipitous discovery for them. Like, not only am I good at this, but I think I would really like doing this. Yeah, I think, I think the thing that I, there was a way that I like to look at this is. Have you ever wondered what really makes a generation tick? Who gets to pick the name and why the slang keeps changing? Don't worry. I can help. My name's Dr. Megan Grace.

[00:22:42] On Hashtag Gen Z, I show the voices and experiences of Generation Z, how they're different from other generations, what moves them and why they do what they do. In each episode, we go beyond the buzzwords and the stereotypes to dive into real conversations and the insights that matter to making intergenerational collaboration a reality. You can catch Hashtag Gen Z on the Work Defined Podcast Network and wherever you listen to podcasts. There's, there's a real neuroscience element to this.

[00:23:10] We tend to talk a lot about like psychological safety and the importance of that. And I, I do agree. And, and, you know, there's a little bit of a narrative going on in the tech world that winning teams, you know, don't need psychological safety. They all should be spared and they should just be, you know, browbeaten into working really hard and, you know, figuring it out as they go and all of that.

[00:23:35] And, and, and okay, sure, there are certain types of things where a coaching strategy of pushing you really hard can be beneficial. And sometimes you really do have to just be like pushed off the edge of the diving board to realize what you're capable of. And, and so, sure, I guess I can leave some space for that.

[00:23:59] But in my experience, what works for most people is that somebody has a belief in them that they are capable. And, and I think it starts from that. It doesn't, it doesn't go the other way around.

[00:24:16] You know, like I really do think you have to be the one to have the trust and the insight first on behalf of someone when you're trying to get them to do something really different or, you know, maybe with higher risk. And I think it's twofold. I think, you know, when someone else believes in you, it gives you a perspective that you can't have on your own.

[00:24:40] And so I think that's one reason that this is such an important time in how we, we direct and support talent. But I also think the other side of it is, it gives you more backstop for what is the obvious risk, which is you're probably going to fail at least at some path, right?

[00:25:00] Or, and, and, you know, what I'm learning right now with even my own AI journeys and watching, you know, so many others is that the, you know, the need to rework a lot of these AI solutions is, is pretty high. Like they don't, that their lifespan is not very long right now because there's a new innovation or a new foundation model or a new something that creates obsolescence in the solution.

[00:25:26] And so even if you're successful, the time span of your success is probably only long enough for you to do like a half a victory lap and then you got to get back in to discovery mode. The second thing that's really important in believing in someone is really the backstop for that failure because the failure will happen. The failure condition will happen.

[00:25:51] And so you need to know that you have the support of the people around you and the leadership so that when these solutions become obsolete, when these learnings are no longer applicable, instead of that being a failure, that is an opportunity on the path to optimizing towards the future. Because again, what we're seeing is the second round is magical, right?

[00:26:18] The first round is messy and, you know, maybe not even successful, but the second round, the rebuild, the redo, that cycle is faster and it's so much better. So culturally, emotionally, individually, this idea of a very important kind of psychological safety is what we need to be building right now for ourselves and for our teams.

[00:26:43] The kind that recognizes that the kind of workers that have not only a specific kind of skill, but reproducible kind of skill that is able to adapt as the innovations change. And that's what we need. We need those adaptive skills more than we need the very specific ones.

[00:27:12] So when we ask about, like, can AI help us in evaluating skill, it can. But we just need to recognize what skills we're actually trying to evaluate for. It's not just a specific hard skill. It is a human skill of self-improvement.

[00:27:32] One of the things I was going to ask you is you were at SAP when you had, I forget if this was an SAP term, but you had this sort of evolution from human capital management to human experience management, right? And you were one of the first vendors to have an opportunity marketplace. So an internal talent marketplace where people could explore other opportunities across the organization.

[00:27:59] I like to assume that the organization was supportive of that and it had some reasonable success where, you know, managers weren't hoarding talent, but they looked at what is in the best interest of the company, of the person that we're trying to develop. So were you having these types of conversations, you know, back then? And this is just the latest iteration because it's really not, really doesn't have anything to do with AI.

[00:28:29] I mean, indirectly, it can relate to AI, but I mean, it could have been having this conversation, you know, five years ago before generative AI, certainly. Oh, absolutely. So a couple of things. SAP already had an interesting infrastructure for these talent marketplaces. They called them fellowships and I think they really evolved out of the cultural norms within Germany for things like apprenticeships.

[00:28:58] And so there really was already an affordance in the organization culture, back to your point about like managers letting people try to go off and do these different types of fellowships.

[00:29:12] So that was probably one of the germinating ideas that helped us into this concept of opportunity talent marketplaces and the concept of dynamic teams and against our overall belief for the vision of human experience management as the next evolution of human capital management. I completely agree with you.

[00:30:04] I'm not going to be involved to kind of catch up with where I had been thinking even from the beginning. But as I look at what the future holds, I just can't help but believe we're just not going fast enough. We're still sort of held back with a very incremental mindset, a very sort of demming kind of let's just improve along the edges kind of mindset as opposed to Clayton Christensen disruption

[00:30:33] kind of a kind of a mindset.

[00:31:03] And it's a very important amount of energy to reduce workers. And it is on us to turn that into something that makes sense because left to its devices, it will become, you know, sort of upside down in the representation of what people are doing.

[00:31:24] So people are thinking they're protecting their jobs by saying, hey, this stuff isn't going to really happen and we'll only just like, you know, automate this little task over here or this little task over here and save a little money and that'll be that'll be sufficient. They think that's protecting something. But in my mind, I think that's actually putting a bigger risk on their work. And so I'm now of the belief that, yes, jobs will go away. Yes, entire, you know, definitions of jobs will be disrupted.

[00:31:54] Roles will collapse. Organizations will want to do more with less people. Teams will get smaller. All of those things are going to happen. And so my new point of view is if you're not disrupting your own job and figuring out how you apply and make sense in the future, then you should not be surprised when your job goes away.

[00:32:18] Like the only way to save your status as a worker is to make your own job obsolete and show that you're thinking about how to do a job that's relevant in the future.

[00:32:30] And so this is scary, but it's also like I think it's unkind to not point this out to people because now is when you can have a really impactful change by jumping in and putting your cognitive energy to figuring out how to optimize the entire business and the entire workflow, not just a few things that are in your job description. Like that's that's just not a winning math right now.

[00:33:00] I was talking to Paul Rubenstein recently and we were talking about, you know, being a driver instead of a passenger. All right. I think he was I forget what the other analogy was. I think it was like captain or co-captain or first mate or whatever it is. But but you've got to you've got to be in the driver's seat. And so, you know, at a minimum, just be proactive about how you see your job evolving.

[00:33:28] If you don't if you can't handle the evolution of your job and you haven't figured out, you know, where to to pivot to, then you've got to do some soul searching about, you know, what going back to your earlier point around what what your strengths truly are and where your passions lie. And where can you continue to to, you know, contribute and add value to an organization or, you know, do something on your own. I mean, it's not easy.

[00:33:58] I can tell you firsthand, but but sometimes it's at the end of the day, you know, the better, you know, positioning for you and and your life and your lifestyle and your family, what have you. But but you've got to recognize this. You can't stick your head in the sand and say, well, I'm just not going to believe the hype.

[00:34:17] You've got to look past the hype, just like you've got to if you're interacting with A.I., you've got to have the critical, you know, thinking and discernment to know whether it's completely bullshitting you or not. And so so that's I mean, that's a skill in itself that people need to continue to. And I would just remind us all like the beauty of where we are now is everybody's learnings. You don't have to do this on your own.

[00:34:46] You can lean on friends. You can lean on podcasts. You can lean on coworkers. You can lean on, you know, collaborate with another part of your organization. The beauty of where we are right now is there's a tremendous amount of learning going on. And and unlike I think this is the most pro social learning environment I've ever seen in this kind of collective ideation.

[00:35:13] There are so many people eager to share tips, ideas, things they've done, productivity hacks, like all of these things. Like this is a moment where everybody's learning together and so eager to share what they're learned. And you can see very clearly that some of it is really messy and it's OK.

[00:35:33] So there's never been a better time to be a learner because there's it's almost like, you know, when you started college or whatever, everybody's lost. But you're all lost in a cohort like like we're in a global cohort right now. I am in a member of far too many communities, but I will say the theme that's consistent across all of them is they are not self-promotional. They are there to help each other.

[00:36:03] And when the, you know, the official facilitator or instructor is is not available. The people who are a little bit ahead are, you know, reaching out and saying, you know, let me know how I can help. You are absolutely not, you know, in this alone. And everyone's at technically at a different, you know, starting point, which is why I get into this, you know, AIQ kind of concept. Everyone has has their own and then your team may have an AIQ and your organization may have an AIQ.

[00:36:32] But I always focus it on the human centric aspects, like forget about your infrastructure. And yes, obviously, the maturity and the quality of your data is vital from an organizational standpoint. And you've got to have the capacity to have, you know, to invest here. But you've got to you've got to recognize that some of your AI investment needs to go to the people who are going to help you, you know, innovate responsibly.

[00:36:59] They're going to help you, you know, find those new, you know, areas of growth, help you cut costs and help you redesign the very processes that they are involved with on the front lines. And so I just think people need to just keep their head up and look around and you will find, you know, change agents and people that want to make sure that everyone is is moving forward and making progress.

[00:37:24] Yeah, I really think maybe outside of COVID, right? Because when we all got like stuck at home, everybody had to figure out mostly the same thing. So there was a lot of knowledge sharing there. But the only other time I've seen something similar was, you know, if I rewind the tape back to when I was at PeopleSoft and we were acquired by Oracle.

[00:37:46] It was another moment where there was a large group of people trying to figure out like, OK, you know, I can't I can't get into this system. I don't understand how this works, etc. And so, again, it's almost like we're all starting a new job at the same time. So that should give a lot of backstop to the fear, like to say that you're not alone in any of this.

[00:38:14] And I think, again, I think the window does close because once people start learning, they, you know, they start accelerating really quickly in this AI era. And so you want to be able to catch on back when everybody is at the beginning, because otherwise they're going to be so far away from you. It's going to be very hard to catch up. Yeah, I see some similarities.

[00:38:39] Well, it was too long ago for me to remember what it was like to, you know, learning how to use a computer originally. But I do see some similarities with the advent of social media, especially in B2B, because there was a lot of I was part of this group at IBM trying to basically do reverse mentoring for executives. You know, how do I use these different tools? What's appropriate and how do I interact with these things and how do I interact with my audience and what have you?

[00:39:08] So there's some similarities there, but nothing on this scale. I do think one of the advantages with AI is that these tools that you're interacting with are also the help manual and the coach, right? If you don't know how to use Claude, just ask Claude. Right, right, right. Yeah. And you can ask that dumb question and not be embarrassed because you're just asking Claude, right? Right, right.

[00:39:38] As I was thinking about one of your earlier comments about like Jack Dorsey, you know, some of these like myopic, you know, decisions about, you know, cutting people. It's hard to get my head around doing that. You know, people have seemed like most of the companies that have gone too far, too fast into, you know, automation and agentic and things like that have sort of come back to regret it.

[00:40:06] And so, you know, Jack, you would think would know better that there would be backlash or maybe he just thought he could power through it and what have you with his founder mindset. But I still think that that is the those companies are in the minority. And, you know, if you're at an organization like that, then just make sure you're keeping your options open.

[00:40:29] But I guess when I think about some of the conversations I've had with some senior folks who are on boards, I do get concerned that the first question is, you know, how many heads is coming? You know, how many heads can we cut? I mean, you with your board seats, I mean, are you fielding those? Am I asking those awful questions? I know you're not asking, but are you are are your fellow board members asking similar questions?

[00:40:59] Because I think, you know, the premise itself is is misguided. Yes. So I do think we're starting to evolve a little bit from the OK, you know, everybody needs to say save X dollars or, you know, cut X heads to make things meet. I think we're also like it's important to remember that we're also in a really complex macro environment right now.

[00:41:25] So most industries between interest rates rising and we've been kind of seeing this happen for a bit, you know, you've got inflation, you've got energy, you've got a massive shift of capital to AI things. And that capital is coming out of something, you know, you have new pressure on certain industries that is coming maybe from tariffs, maybe from, you know.

[00:41:52] So just like this has been a really complex moment for this conversation from sitting in a boards and, you know, boards responsibilities are things like risk and compliance and all of that.

[00:42:08] And so, you know, the risk of keeping up with the competition when there is a general sort of squeeze and, you know, pressure on EBITDA that like the the reduced heads is a kind of an easy way to make the math work.

[00:42:28] So if you're if you're looking to solve math exclusively, then that can be, you know, the path you end up on naturally. I think where it's starting to get more nuanced in 2026 is, of course, you're getting a mixed set of readiness within organizations to. Finding a great career has always been a challenge.

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[00:43:54] To mobilize with AI. And you're also getting a little more clarity on cost structure. And so now you're seeing organizations try to rebalance that a little bit with expectations.

[00:44:06] What I think is a much more important set of conversations to be having around the board table is really, you know, a board's job is to help define strategy for the business. Strategy is a long-term thinking. Strategy is a long-term thinking thing. And long-term thinking in this kind of environment is very difficult, which means it's even more important.

[00:44:36] Understanding possible vectors and how you would recognize when you maybe need to shift your strategy. And understanding how your landscape is changing, you know, is the competition shifting. We've had a period for quite a bit of time, almost like 40 years, where most things were held constant.

[00:45:00] And then you maybe had just little adjustments year in and year out to your market. But these last few years, like we've had less things we can hold constant. And so we are starting to see a pretty big gap between businesses like that are AI first or AI native versus businesses that are, you know, what we would think of as incumbents. Certainly in my industry, which is technology businesses, we're kind of at the front end of that.

[00:45:30] But it's true everywhere. And so, you know, initially you get improvements and that creates competitive differentiator. But very quickly, everybody has to do those things. And then all of a sudden it's table stakes. And that's the real concern I have is not just the sort of ready fire aim of cut people and, you know, add some AI and stir.

[00:45:53] What I'm really concerned about is that if you're not thinking of it as a true strategy conversation, you're in a race to the bottom of, you know, where the bar is moving. Businesses have to get more efficient. They have to because that is like that is possible. And if it's possible, you must do it if you're going to be competitive because we we work in a sort of capitalistic society.

[00:46:22] And so figuring out how to make this a strategic benefit and a different way of capturing value is the real math that makes every other thing better. And so this is the part where I think great boards don't just stop on how do we get excellent EBITDA and high value for spend in our capital allocation.

[00:46:51] But the question is, where are the value capture opportunities that are in front of us if we look at the problem and the opportunities more holistically? And so this is this is, you know, the expertise needed to be able to have these conversations. And the risk of them is significantly higher than it's ever been. So so the job of a board is harder. The job of the C-suite is harder.

[00:47:19] The job, you know, it's it's it is a real a real challenge across the board. So I have, you know, obviously both as a board member and understanding this, I have a lot of empathy for everybody in this this storyline because it again, it just reinforces that nobody has an option to do what they did before. You know, like we all have to up our game and whether we want to or not, the bar is moving.

[00:47:45] But I think that the the real opportunity is to ask yourself, how do we marshal the collective intelligence of our customers and our market and the the landscape that we, you know, operate in to unlock new value capture in this world?

[00:48:10] Yeah. And I think bringing together all of that data across your ecosystem is I think it's going to reveal all kinds of insights and allow you to be much more agile and dynamic in terms of how you make some of these decisions. Because I mean, I mean, I understand on some level that you need to, you know, people are considered operating expense.

[00:48:40] And in order to make AI investments, you know, that money is not going to just come out of thin air. And so you're placing this bet that, you know, the that you're letting go of the right people if you do have to let people go, as opposed to sort of retraining them and doing a proper assessment of, you know, your, you know, workforce planning and how that all works.

[00:49:07] And so maybe it's just a matter of they don't necessarily have the people analytics and the strategic workforce planning maturity to be able to make all of those decisions. But they've got to make the investment somehow.

[00:49:22] So sometimes I think maybe they are in sort of this, this catch 22, but I also think that you need the brainpower and that collective intelligence of your people to even figure out how to make the right, you know, cuts to cost, how to find the right growth areas and do business models and, you know, target new, new markets and things like that.

[00:49:44] And so, yeah, AI can be augmenting, you know, that, that collective intelligence, but, you know, I'm not saying any of this is easy. It's just, it's frustrating knowing all the things that we've been talking about in terms of human potential and that people really want to, you know, contribute value and they want to contribute their expertise. They want to mentor others. They want to, you know, collaborate and they want to do all these things.

[00:50:11] And then they just get the rug pulled out from under them and just kind of left disoriented. Yeah. And I think we're underestimating the, the real capacity bleed that we do when we don't have clarity of what we're driving towards and we don't have clarity of what we're actually doing.

[00:50:37] So the problem with the ready, fire, aim approach of cut first and hope everything works out is not just the, the fact that you probably let really great people go and all of that, but it's also that the people that are still there, maybe you picked exactly the right people. Maybe you had like excellent insight into who was most equipped for the future versus the past, all of that.

[00:51:03] But even in that, you've, you've given a body blow to all of the people that are still working for you without helping to marshal them towards the future. And so that, you know, that the weight of that becomes material in and of itself, right? Because who is productive and does their best work when you're bummed out or worse, right?

[00:51:33] Like, like it's just, it's, you, you're putting an additional burden on your own ability to be successful.

[00:51:41] And so again, I think we absolutely have to, to recognize that as leaders, we are, our job is to manage energy and it is our job to not only identify potential in our teams, help set the cultural foundations for learning agility, but also help individuals be able to see progress in their work towards things that really matter for the business.

[00:52:09] So that you can not only be building confidence and, you know, psychological safety and, and essentially good vibes across the organization, but so that people feel clearly that their skills are developing as part of their job.

[00:52:26] One thing when I was, any team I managed, but especially when I was managing through big changes where we had to do, we had to learn how to do something we didn't know how to do to achieve the thing we had to achieve, which is to me, like always been the place that I would move my teams because that's where, that's where growth happens. That's where interesting things happen.

[00:52:45] But, you know, one of the things that I always made clear is that the value in developing these skills to achieve this thing we don't know how to do that is so important and so big is not just the value in the achievement. It's the value in who we become as part of that process.

[00:53:05] And the skill development that each person is, has the opportunity to do in service of this big goal is beneficial to them individually. And to me, like that should be the commitment that each of us as leaders, whether you're a talent leader or a manager or just an individual who is looked up to from other parts of the organization.

[00:53:31] Our job is to role model and to help our teams understand that their skill development matters to us and not just because of what they can get done for us, but because of what it will mean for their ability to, no matter what happens, have skills that are valuable in the market.

[00:53:52] So this is something that we all need to really internalize, that helping our teams get really good at this, both the learning agility and the understanding of the tooling and the understanding of first principles and how to build for the future and to reimagine what work matters. All of those skills are things that go with you to your next role, your next opportunity, or when you like venture out and do things for yourself.

[00:54:21] Like these are, these are the things that you bring with you. And so we really need to tell ourselves the story of agency in this, in this entire chaotic picture, because without it, we're just giving ourselves more emotional weight that doesn't have a good place to go. I absolutely agree. I was reading the press release for, for NovaWorks in addition to, you know, your announcement as a, as an advisor.

[00:54:46] And I was intrigued by the approach in terms of the visibility that people will gain to, I guess what I would consider like the total talent landscape. Right. So I spent just in my time at, at talent tech labs and, and elsewhere, just thinking about not just total talent intelligence and what it takes to actually pull all of that together from a bunch of disparate systems.

[00:55:16] Not to mention that a lot of companies, not to mention that a lot of companies, as you know, don't have, you know, contract labor even connected to HR. It's connected to, you know, fulfillment and supply chain and things like that, as if those people were, were cogs and other things, you know, not carbon based.

[00:55:35] And so, so I think that alone is a huge, you know, step forward to pull together all available talent, regardless of, you know, contract type relationship type is really important. So you really understand how to move the pieces around and do proper strategic workforce planning, not just for your, you know, full time employees.

[00:55:59] But, but, you know, with that sort of preamble, I was just curious to get your perspective on, you know, what, what attracted you to, you know, to this promising startup and just, you know, how that sort of fits into your, your philosophy. Yeah. So a couple of things. First off, obviously a huge fan of Kelly, a huge fan of Melanie, the rest of the team I've recently met and just really delighted.

[00:56:26] For me personally, this is my first time to be a founding independent board member. So to get to be there from like day zero is, is such a privilege. And I, obviously I work with a lot of early stage startups. I've worked with founders at various stage of inception, but I, there's just something really special about the sort of building of the, the backbone of what is the business.

[00:56:53] From the vision point of view, you could actually look at both of my board seats, my time, my papaya and my Nova works are really aligned with my belief that work in the future. It does not look like it does today. Right. Right. And so work has more flexibility of modality. So, so your point, like people will be working part-time, full-time contractor.

[00:57:21] They will be working on projects and then off again. So there, there's going to be just a lot more fluidity in the structure and the makeup of work that you can see that very clearly. And then you have the overlay of work will also be happening by agents as well. And so if you think about that and you recognize that the, you know, sort of legacy infrastructure is, is so separate today.

[00:57:50] And the rebuild of those foundation models is quite complex. And so it really does create an opportunity for new entrants to, to look at the problem from the foundational building blocks and the architecture.

[00:58:06] The other thing that I think is really special in the way that Nova works is looking at this is also, you know, sort of very, the, the ability to be much more individualized in the world of AI for workers and their needs. And so, you know, it's, again, dramatically different than it ever was in the past because you're not going to be building for personas. You're going to be able to be building for individuals.

[00:58:36] And so the idea that each individual can have an individual coach, an individual agent that understands their entire context and can help them with whatever the kind of things that they need help with from the HR function, from the talent function.

[00:58:52] Like this is, this is something that, that is very, like you can see the future being very exciting and fulfilling a lot of promise that we've always yearned for, but maybe didn't have, you know, sort of the right kind of cost structure to do that at scale effectively. And so I think this is such a special time for me.

[00:59:14] So to be able to think about, you know, what are the foundational systems of work that's Nova works, what are the, the payroll and benefits and payment side of that with papaya? Like what does it mean to really support that fluidity of work in a global way without it becoming like each thing is another, you know, layer on a layer on a layer, which is how it works today.

[00:59:44] If you try to hire employees in different countries, you know, that's the level of complexity. If you want to think about contractors, another level of complexity. What about, you know, sort of inflation rates and currencies and how you pay and all of these different things, that last mile of payment, like all of this. There's a lot of innovation underneath that, that creates rails to do some really powerful things. So it's fun to be part of, of this kind of innovation.

[01:00:12] And as I'm sure you can imagine for me, it's as much the people as anything else. And so to be in the rooms with cool people solving interesting problems is what I'm all about. So it's, I feel really blessed. Yeah. I think that's awesome. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, some of the first innovations and solutions that come out of there. And I know, you know, they've kind of got a head start with the ServiceNow platform to build upon. Which is huge.

[01:00:41] And the customer base and the, you know, the sort of clarity of how ServiceNow can solve parts of that story as well. So, yeah. So it's a, it's a velocity maximizer across a few dimensions. So really good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and Kelly went through that when she integrated her own startup, right? So, so she knew what it was like to replatform on the ServiceNow infrastructure. And, and so, yeah, I'm sure that some key learnings there.

[01:01:10] The other thing about having that all together, I've had a few conversations with people in sort of extended workforce space. And one of the things that I called out on this sort of responsible AI front, as well as the talent acquisition side is you really weren't putting, you had all these people working for an organization, but they weren't all going through the same steps and the same, you know, control mechanisms.

[01:01:36] And so you might, you know, if you hired somebody through one of these contractor, you know, platforms, a freelance marketplace or sort of anything like that, a VMS, they weren't necessarily put through the same, you know, paces from an audit standpoint where they could be contract to hire and they completely bypassed all of the solutions around talent assessment, compliance, everything.

[01:01:59] So I think that helps, you know, sort of on the sort of risk mitigation side as well, just by default and, you know, the nature of how it's all brought together. Also, just the planning and budgeting, right? Like understanding the holistic spend for what it is you're doing. I think we oftentimes think, well, okay, we have less full-time employees and that's going to change the cost structure.

[01:02:24] But if, you know, if you don't understand the full picture of what you're spending for the agents, for the contractors, for the full-time and part-time employees, et cetera, like you just aren't making a real decision based on the full picture. And I just don't think, like that might've been okay if your business was, you know, operating on steady as you go.

[01:02:51] But I think in this world where we're going to have so much changing, having line of sight to that big picture is really going to matter. Yeah, for sure. The podcast, you're in season two now. Season two, yeah. Yeah. How's it going? You know, it's just been so joyful for me. I would say I knew I was going to like it. I've been blogging for decades.

[01:03:16] I've kind of been, you know, always doing a lot of external talking about things with customers, with partners, et cetera. I think the thing that I didn't fully appreciate was just how joyful it was going to be for two things. One, being able to own the content path, you know, like what conversations do we need to have so that we can get smarter?

[01:03:43] And then, of course, doing stuff with Amy Wilson. You know, anytime you can do something with your best friend, I strongly recommend it. Anytime you can do something with someone that has skills you don't, I strongly recommend it. And while, you know, we can make each other crazy like all good best friends can, it's just like so joyful to me. So it is wonderful to have the opportunity to do a podcast is just, yeah, it's great.

[01:04:12] The last thing I wanted to ask you about is your own sort of AI journey. You've been sharing some of your experiences. Yeah, complaining about Claude timing out on me. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if that was like a recent thing, but this week Claude has been ridiculous in terms of its token usage. Like I'm like, I see it compacting the conversation to continue. I'm like, what are you talking about? We've been talking for 20 minutes.

[01:04:43] Like how could I be at 90% capacity? Yes, yes. I, it's, so I, I had been leaning primarily on ChatGPT. I had, you know, I dabble in everything, but like I'd mostly done most of my investment in, in ChatGPT up until recently when I, I migrated over to Claude.

[01:05:03] And so, yes, I, I, there's a marked difference with how tokens get burned through in Claude versus ChatGPT. But what I'm enjoying, you know, so part of it is a learning curve, like how to optimize and all of that. And the, the reason for shifting over wasn't really like a big dramatic thing. It was just more like, I really wanted to start building agents. I wanted to play with co-work.

[01:05:32] And so it was like, okay, I'm just going to take the time and invest in, and migrate over. And unlike most people who do like a lot of pre-work planning, I, I do a little bit, but mostly I just like jump in and like kind of figure it out. I'm, I don't read the manual first kind of, you know, in general. I'm just like, oh, I'll give it a try. And then if it doesn't make sense, I'll stop and read some instructions. And so, so some of it, you know, was a little bit learning curve, I would say.

[01:06:00] But what I, where I am now, I'm, I'm really starting to break through in, you know, the, the return on investment of the foundational stuff that you've done. So I'm not fully over that, that hurdle, but I can feel it. So this last week, I just decided to build a new set of agents. So everybody talks about, oh, I get a thing to send me an email and they'll tell me all this, read all my emails and tell me all the things.

[01:06:30] And like, I just, I, that just never spoke to me as a use case. It never spoke to me as a use case when I actually had a chief of staff and it doesn't speak to me as an agent, as a chief of staff. It's just like, I learn by reading and I read really fast. And so I just didn't want to like, I didn't want somebody else doing that because then I have to read their summary. But then I'm, I know myself, I'll still go read all the things. And so it's like, that just seemed like a waste. But what I do realize is that I'm, you know, I'm just so wildly goal oriented. I have like long-term BHAG goals.

[01:06:59] I've got quarterly goals. I've got fitness goals. I got a goal and I track all the things, you know, like I've just, I love tracking progress on goals. That's just like a full-on hack for me. And so I, I just started deciding, all right, I want to build like more like a motivational goal alignment kind of a thing. And so I'm still playing around with it, but I, I got it to send me a text message every morning.

[01:07:29] And what it does is it takes my 10-year goals. It takes my word of the year. It takes all of my progress tracking. It looks at my calendar. And then what it does is instead of telling me, oh, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this. It tells me the things that I'm doing, how they ladder up to my long-term goals. And then I asked it to give me a stretch goal at the end for something maybe I could add if I was feeling it.

[01:07:57] And so it, it gives me like, you know, five different things of, you know, that these are things you're doing and here's why they're important, you know. And so I, I joke, I basically build an, you know, a full-on ass kissing automation. I, I acknowledge it, but like if these systems are going to kiss my ass, I feel like I should tell it exactly how to do that properly to make me do the things that I want myself to do.

[01:08:25] So, yeah, so that's my latest little thing. And now I'm building like, oh, goal trackers and scorecards and, you know, all these other sort of things. Because like once you start, it can do all those other things as just little add-ons. And so, yeah, now I'm, I'm probably going to get really obnoxious about it. No, that's great that you've, you've leaned in and you've found what, what works for you. I mean, kind of all over the place.

[01:08:49] I do mostly, most of my stuff in cloud, but I have Google Workspace, so I should be using Gemini as well. But yeah, I've, I've used it for, I use it for the podcast. I use it for some advisory work. And yeah, I mean, I try to build my second brain system, which is, I've made some progress on, but still a ways to go. And is that the same as what you and Amy were talking about? Like with Nate's open brain?

[01:09:17] Yeah, I'm pretty far along with that. But to get it finished, I'm just going to have to burn a ton of tokens. So I'm just going to decide like a weekend where I've got the overages, because it's really synchronizing all the data in that I, because I have just too much. That is just like burning a ton of tokens. And so I've sort of set it aside to finish these other things, and then I'm going to come back to it in one fell swoop.

[01:09:44] But then the other thing I just did is I just realized that the whole cloud design, you can build your design palette. Well, I already have one for my website because Madison made me a beautiful one. And so now I'm going to try to see if I can't get it to take that design system and use it for building out my goal tracker, my open brain vision, you know, user experience, etc. So that it'll like, you know, make me happy when I look at it versus.

[01:10:14] Yeah, I was just getting comfortable in Canva and Gamma. Now I got to check out. Exactly. That's my point about like none of this is the final state. It's the it's the journey of learning. So might as well pick something that that is interesting enough to you that you're going to enjoy the outcome of it. But maybe you're not so invested in it that it matters that much. Well, I think for both of us, there's things that, you know, whether it's presentations or website design and other sort of content creation, you know, activities.

[01:10:44] I mean, it is nice to have one sort of ecosystem where all of that is available. I think OpenAI may have just released. They did. They did. I'll be over trying some of that as well so I can maximize tokens properly. Trying not to like be, you know, have too much shiny object syndrome and go in all of these different places. I really do want to build competency in some of these.

[01:11:09] I've been plowing through code where I didn't think I would be comfortable. And you have a little bit more of a technical background than I do. But yeah, I mean, I'm powering through. I'm getting API keys and connecting a bunch of stuff. Totally, right? So it's working. I mean, someone may come in with an architectural, you know, vision and be like, what is this? And maybe then I'll fix it.

[01:11:36] But for now, getting some things done and, you know, sometimes it's frustrating, but sometimes I get a great sense of accomplishment and I realize, you know, this actually saved me a couple hours a week. Each of these things add up. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, I always put it in the realm of the process is as much about learning as it is about the thing that I build. So then I feel good about it.

[01:11:59] For anybody just getting started, if you're followers of Lenny's podcast, like a couple months back, he had a segment on something about like how to build product sense. And basically it was a tutorial that you used cursor for and had you like walk through all of the pieces. And I find that really helpful to getting oriented to, you know, where everything lives and what it all does and all of that sort of stuff.

[01:12:26] And understanding slightly complicated things like context rod and stuff like that, you know, so you can kind of get a sense of how these things think. I found that really helpful before I just jumped into cloud code and co-work and all of that. So, you know, if you're feeling intimidated, I would recommend that because it's very patiently walks you through it. And you do the whole thing inside cursor.

[01:12:51] So you're sort of doing, you're building something while simultaneously learning how to engage with an AI to build something. So it's very smartly done. It's not like you're just reading a separate instructions. The instructions are embedded in the cursor product. Okay. All right. Well, you've given me a few more ideas, things to check. And please keep sharing your experiences.

[01:13:15] I definitely appreciate the humor, especially the airplane sniffing glue one the other day. So funny. I said that to Amy on the podcast and she just looked at me like I was the dumbest, like, what are you talking about? And I was like, okay. Oh my God. It's hysterical. I got to rewatch that movie. I got to make my daughter watch that movie. Most of the time they don't hold up. That's the only thing I will warn you in watching it with your kids. You'll watch it and you'll be like, this doesn't really hold up the same.

[01:13:45] Yeah, you're probably right. Well, I know I'll enjoy rewatching it. It's been a while. Especially the unenviated version. Meg, thank you so much for spending so much quality time with me. This has been fantastic. And I think there's a lot of takeaways for my audience. So really, really appreciate it. My pleasure. This has been joyful. Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you. And thanks everyone for listening. We will see you next time.