How to Stay Ahead in the AI Era
AI is changing work faster than most people expect.
The real question isn't whether jobs will change, but whether employees and leaders are prepared to adapt. In this episode, Jacob Morgan, Best-Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Founder of Future Of Work Leaders, explains why employee experience must evolve and what organisations can do to stay ahead.
Jacob introduces the Eight Laws of Employee Experience, showing how organisations can return to the fundamentals while adapting for an AI-driven future. He explores why leaders must balance empathy with accountability, create cultures where difficult conversations drive innovation, and invest in internal mobility rather than leaving employees uncertain about what's next.
For HR and business leaders, this conversation is a reminder that AI doesn't remove the need for great leadership, it raises the standard. Whether you're redesigning employee experience, preparing your workforce for AI, or helping people take ownership of their careers, this episode offers practical ideas for building organisations that are ready for what's next.
🎓 In this episode, Jacob discusses:
Why the Eight Laws of Employee Experience matter now and how they help organisations adapt to an AI-driven workplace.
The balance between empathy and accountability and why high-performing cultures need both to succeed.
Why employees must become active owners of their careers instead of waiting for organisations to shape their future.
How leaders should prepare their workforce for AI, from internal mobility to better workforce planning.
Using AI as a competitive advantage to learn faster, build new opportunities and stay ahead of change.
What if AI agents were not just another way to create more learning content?
What if the talent you need is already inside your organisation, but hidden in skills no one has mapped yet?
That is what 365Talents helps HR teams solve with AI-driven skills intelligence.
It helps organisations see the real skills their people already have, spot gaps, and turn that insight into workforce planning, internal mobility, and better career paths.
That is why 365Talents created the 2026 HR Skills Strategy Toolkit.
14 ready-to-use templates to help HR leaders build the business case, calculate ROI, evaluate vendors, define governance, and roll out a skills strategy that actually moves.
[01:00:00:12 - 01:00:02:18]
Hey, Jacob, welcome back to the show. My friend. How are you doing?
[01:00:02:18 - 01:00:05:23]
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. It's good to see
[01:00:05:23 - 01:00:12:16]
you again. How long has it been? Like, I felt like we, we check in like once a year. Yeah.
[01:00:12:16 - 01:00:26:02]
It's been, I think the last time was when the previous book came out and I think that was 20, I don't know, 2024. It was the leading with vulnerability book, which I don't have on sitting next to me. Otherwise I'd look at the publication of that, but I feel like it's been a few
[01:00:26:02 - 01:00:27:03]
years. Yeah.
[01:00:27:03 - 01:00:50:02]
It's interesting. Obviously I feel like that book is probably now more relevant than ever. Uh, if I think at the time when you, when you published it, it was something that we kind of started to talk about. But now even in today's conversation, I have a group of see it through rows that came up as one of the key, key competencies around leadership and that developing. Are you finding that more now? Yes.
[01:00:50:02 - 01:01:11:23]
And it's 2023, by the way, I just looked because I couldn't even remember when my book was published. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's definitely very, very relevant in today's world. I mean, the idea of being able to show competence while also being to connect with your people in a human way now more than ever, especially with AI being infused everywhere. The, the human side of work has never been more important.
[01:01:11:23 - 01:01:27:07]
Yeah. So what was the inspiration behind the new book eight laws of employee experience? Obviously, you know, the topic, a topic, which is top of mind for everyone right now. What was, and I know from our conversation that this has been something that's been in the works for a while. Yeah.
[01:01:27:07 - 01:01:50:17]
And so I actually have, so this is the old version. This is the one that came out almost a decade ago. And this was the employee experience advantage. And at the time, uh, around a decade ago, it became, you know, one of the best selling employee experience books, but a lot has changed over the past decade, whether you look at, uh, geopolitics, whether you look at the DEI backlash, whether you look at technology, the changing nature of expectations at work, a lot has changed.
[01:01:50:17 - 01:01:52:01]
And so I was having a lot of
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conversations with CHROs and they were asking me if I planned on doing an update to that book. And so originally this new book wasn't supposed to be a new book. It was just meant to be like a second edition of the employee experience advantage. But as I started interviewing a lot of these CHROs, I realized that I actually have enough content here to put a whole new book together. And the whole premise was that it felt like a lot of organizations during and post pandemic completely lost their way. They, uh, they just started drifting aimlessly in the night, so to speak. And the new book is a call to action to return to basics, to return to eight things that matter most at work. And that's this one, the eight laws. So these eight, these eight laws are the, the core things that matter most inside of organizations. Both books still very relevant. The first one gives a framework for what employee experience is. And the second one, I think really looks at employee experience over the next five to 10 years and infuses AI into all those laws, but it looks like it looks at what, what are these eight things and how do we do them?
[01:02:51:24 - 01:03:29:11]
Yeah, you are right. Based on what you said, I think like the, when we talk about employee experience has changed so much, right? In the way that work, you know, how work gets done, where work gets done, the systems at all, what's the technology is changing so quickly that what it means when we talk about employee experience, it kind of changed, it's changed a lot, you know, even, even in the past couple of years, um, when I speak to HR leaders and I asked him about employee experience, I get a different answer from every single one of them. And I say, what is employee experience? Is that something you found during the research for the book?
[01:03:29:11 - 01:04:06:03]
I mean, I found that even doing research for the first book. Um, and this was, like I said, over, over a decade ago, everyone had a different definition, a different concept. And I think a lot of that is still probably similar today that everyone has a different way that they think about it. I mean, they all know that it has something to do with employees. It has something to do with how people experience the culture and the brand and this and that. But as far as like a very concrete and a specific definition, no, everyone just kind of has this nebulous, amorphous, broad, encompassing way that they think about it. And I would agree similar with what you've observed. Yeah.
[01:04:06:03 - 01:04:17:00]
During the research, how well do organizations really understand what motivates and matters most to their employees?
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Um,
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that's a good question. I think
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to some degree. And so I guess the big challenge that I noticed, and maybe this will give kind of some context around, around this, I feel like during and post pandemic, so over the last, you know, I have to echo, so a lot of organizations were scrambling to try to figure out how do we keep people inside of our organizations and how do we keep hiring more people. And so as a result, they over-indexed on everything. They over-indexed on empathy, on perks, on benefits. Let's just pay people more. Do whatever you need to do to keep people at
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this company. And at the
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same time, standards were eroded. And I think accountability took a back seat, responsibility took a back seat. And so what ended up happening is you have all these organizations who are investing so much in trying to keep people there, while at the same time lowering standards and accountability and responsibility so that people don't get upset and don't want to leave. And this caused, I think, a pretty bad situation for a lot of organizations. And that's why now you see so many companies out there who are reversing course on so many things, getting employees back to the office, removing perks, challenging their employees and saying, "What did you get done last year? Give me five bullets." Like, what are you getting? Like they want to move away from the performative work to try to understand what are you actually doing here? It's like that scene from office space, you know, when the two, what is it, the two bobs, they go around and they interview the employees and they say, "What exactly do you do here?" And I feel like we're getting more of that happening inside of organizations. And companies were honestly, they became very, very inclusive. And what I mean by that is that typically an organization, what makes an organization unique is that you have a specific set of values and a culture that you're trying to create. And you want to hire people who align with those values and with the vision and where you want to build a business. But during a post pandemic, all of that went out the window and companies said, "I don't care what your values are. I don't care if you believe in this company. I don't care. Just come work here if you can do the job."
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And so we became so
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inclusive of just trying to bring everybody into the company that we forgot that that's not really what makes a successful organization. So one of the other things that I argue is we need to be much more exclusive and less inclusive. Not every person has a good fit for your company and it's okay to actually say that.
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Yeah. No, I love that perspective. Have you seen any pushback on that view?
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No. No. I mean, from CHROs that I talked to, even in my CHRO group, I mean, there are a lot of things that people, they know it's true even though they don't want to say it. So even in the book, when I interviewed these CHROs, I heard from many of them that they've unintentionally created this entitlement culture in their company where they feel like they are becoming the new parents for their employees. Now it's not like they're doing it with bad intentions. They think they're doing a good job. They think they're solving all of their employees problems. They're investing in wellbeing. They're investing in food and financial. Well, I mean, you name it. And the list of things goes on and on and on that they're investing in. And they think from their mind, they're doing a good job. Inadvertently, what these companies are doing is they are becoming parents for their employees. And they're stepping in to try to solve every problem for the people who work there. And these CHROs have acknowledged this to me and why I would ask them, can I use that example in the book? Can I use your name in the book? Can I use the story? They would say, no, no, no, no. And I would say, why not? And they would say, well, we don't want to be viewed as being anti-employee. And so what I found is that the entitlement culture is very real, but nobody wants to talk about it. Yeah, of course, I'm not saying this is for everybody. There are a lot of genuinely hardworking people who are willing to do whatever it takes to be successful, but this culture of entitlement does exist and we shouldn't be scared to call it out and to talk about it. And so I don't get pushback on it. I get a lot of quiet acknowledgement. Even in our last CHRO meeting that we had, I told everybody that 2026 is going to be the year of accountability and responsibility. And literally I could see the faces of the CHROs in our meeting. They were like, yes, that's what we want. Nobody said, what are you talking about, Jacob? We don't want accountability and responsibility. But again, this is in the context of a lot of different things going on. Sure. I mean, there's AI, there's a lot of challenges for entry-level employees. There's a whole big soup that we're all floating in, but this is one of those ingredients that I think does need to be addressed. And the idea of just becoming the new parent for your employees is not it's not something that any organization should strive to do.
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Yeah. What are the risks or maybe consequences to organizations who continue down that path?
[01:09:10:00 - 01:09:35:05]
Well, you erode many things. The high performers are going to want to leave. Top talent will struggle. Decision-making gets, you know, nobody makes decisions. I mean, so to give you some context, I mean, imagine, and I use this example a lot when I share this story. I have two kids, a five-year-old and a nine-year-old. And so now imagine it's dinner time and your kids come to you and they say, hey, you know what, for dinner, we want ice cream and candy for dinner.
[01:09:36:10 - 01:09:48:04]
And I say, no, that's not happening. And they say, oh, yes, it is happening. And I say, no, it's not. And they say, well, we have the same rights in this house as you do. This is a 50-50, you know, relationship. And
[01:09:49:06 - 01:11:29:04]
no, it's not. And so the idea for me, the balance of power was very much in the hands of employees during and post-pandemic. I would say they had maybe 80% of the power and companies had 20%. Now it's getting back to around 80-20 in the hands of organizations or 70-30. And I think that's a good thing. And it's because the organizations are the ones who make the investments. They pay for you. They pay for your perks, your benefits, the tools and resources that you use to get your job, the space in which you work, the resources you need, the training, the development, everything, the risk gets taken by the organization. And so, yes, the organization should have more power, more authority than you. Now, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel like you have a say. It doesn't mean like you shouldn't be able to speak up. The company should still give you mentorship and training and opportunity, you know, all the things that make a great organization. But the idea that you as an employee can tell your employer, I want all of these things and I don't even want to show up to work anymore is laughable. So I think the fact that the balance of power is shifting to organizations is a good thing. That's where it should be. And 20-30% again should be in the hands of employees. So the risk when you don't make this shift is what we saw. Standards went down, accountability went down, companies were spending untold amounts of money on engagement programs and perks and benefits. And you would think, and I talked about this even in the first book, that if we're making all these massive investments in employee engagement, billions and billions of dollars on engagement and training and development programs, you would think that we would see some sort
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of return. And
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collectively, if you look, you know, the Gallup numbers across the board, the engagement scores don't move.
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And when they do move, what do they move? One percentage point, two percentage
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points. Like if you look over the course of all of Gallup's since they've been doing these engagement scores, the scores have only fluctuated, I don't know, four, five, six percentage points since when they first started doing it today. So again, we're not seeing the ROI from any of these programs, from any of these initiatives. And so I think that's the danger is companies become parents for their employees.
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You struggle making decisions,
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you can't keep and retain talent because high performing talent wants the culture where they can push and challenge and compete and sacrifice and go above and beyond. And when you reduce standards and they just see that their peers are, you know, getting rewarded without having to do anything, they're not going to want to step up. And so you create innovation struggles and suffers. Again, this is why so many companies, whether you look at JPMorgan Chase, who says come back to the office, if you don't want to be back in the office, go find another company. This place isn't for you. Whether you look at the messaging that Slack is putting out or Uber, their CEO recently went on the diary of a CEO podcast and he said, look, this is a company where honestly, if you want work-life balance and you think you're going to work 32 to 40 hours a week, you probably shouldn't work here. Guy, I expect you to answer my emails on the weekends. I expect you to work, do whatever you need to do to get the job done.
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I want to outwork people. If that doesn't sound like the right company for you, you shouldn't be here. And I think that kind of messaging is fantastic because it removes, like you're not going to show up to Uber and be like, oh my God, I thought it was going to just work 30 hours a week and it was just going to be this great place. No. Right. You step into the gym, you know, you're going to be lifting weights and working hard and sweating and you're going to be in pain by the end of the day. Like, you know, that's what's happening. And I think more companies like that, you know, we should applaud their honesty. Yeah.
[01:13:40:01 - 01:15:09:14]
I agree. And I think there's now becoming an acceptance that, you know, and the willingness to talk about a public, this, this isn't going to be for everyone. Right. Like, and in the past, you companies were operating at that level, but their HR team and, and, and, uh, we're kind of not branding it that way. And companies kind of the amount of people that we all know that kind of start our job and go, this isn't what I signed up for. Right. And then, and they leave just as quickly. Whereas I love the radical candor of just sharing, this is what it means to work here. And yes, they, they might get some bad headlines and you know, they may like, you know, we saw happen with Elon when he said something similar, uh, around working at Tesla. He was very transparent about what it, what it means to work here. And he understood it's not going to be for everyone. But, um, I love that. Like, I think for me, I would want to thrive in those type of organizations to know that, that I'm not going to be, I was in the business before I started HR leaders actually, where I had a meeting with my CEO and said, wait a minute, I'm doing like five times the revenue and I'm being paid exactly the same as the other 15 members of the team. And they were like, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm like, why is my conversation the same? And I'm doing this. And I had been doing it for years and they were like, no, that's just how we work. And I was like, I don't really want to work here. And I left the business as an example. Like I just had a flashback to that meeting and I got told to leave not to come back in the last month or otherwise again. And I was like, all right, see you later guys. Um, yeah, I had
[01:15:09:14 - 01:15:42:13]
similar, similar situations, uh, right. I mean, so, um, not necessarily about the business, but I was sold these great, you know, this wonderful vision of all these different companies I was going to be a part of. And, um, that vision ended up being a lie, right? I was getting people coffee and doing PowerPoints and cold calling. And I'm like, what the hell is this? This is not what I was sold. And so like you, I quit and I ended up going off and building my own thing. I think the worst thing that a lot of people can do is just sit there and complain without trying to solve their own problems or trying to figure out alternative solutions, right? Go build something if you can.
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I'll be honest though. It took me a couple of years after that to build the courage to leave. Like I, I'm not going to pretend that I was like, see you later. Bye. Like I think the, the, from that day onwards, it was stuck in my mind and I could know. And then I was like, all right, let me build my plan of my escape plan. Uh, yeah. Same thing happened to me. Yeah. I
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had a side hustle on the side and one of them was making enough money doing that. I was like, see you later.
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Exactly. Um, let's talk about some of these laws. Uh, so what, what we're not going to go through the whole thing because people need to buy the book, but what are some of the kind of, you talk about the eight laws of employee experience. What are some of the ones that you think, especially given our CIT or audience that be most applicable to them that they could take away some insights from?
[01:16:30:17 - 01:18:44:21]
Um, well, there's a lot and it depends on how, uh, controversial or how, you know, let's go controversial. It depends what sort of emails you want to get from your CH group by the time we're done with this, uh, this conversation with your audience. Um, so it's not so much controversial. I'm actually, I'm a big believer in this law and it's the one of act with empathetic excellence. And so the whole idea of, of the Slav act with empathetic excellence, and I call it the, um, empathetic excellence equation. And it just goes to show that there are really only three things, you know, when you're thinking about talent and people that you should be looking at competence, merit and empathy. And so competence is a combination of things that you have to be able to do a good job. This is like your skills, your knowledge, your behaviors, your abilities, all those different types of things make up your competence. Then there's merit. Merit is essentially how the organization rewards your competence. It is the recognition or value that they put on it, whether it's compensation, whether it's bonuses, whether it's, you know, whatever it is, it's, it's how they reward the, um, competence that you bring. And then there's empathy and empathy is sort of what binds everything binds everything together. It's, uh, seeing the full person, so the challenges that they had to overcome, uh, their aspirations that they have with the organization, their growth potential. And so those three things, I think make up this idea of empathetic excellence. And the reason why this is important and in the book, I have this kind of Venn diagram where these three things overlay and you have competence and you have empathy and you have merit. So just to give you an example of what happens when you don't have one of these things, let's say you have, and this is what was existing during the pandemic. You had merit and you had empathy, but you didn't have competence. In other words, we weren't paying attention to the competence as much that people had. And we were really paying attention to the empathy that we fostered inside of our companies and we were paying attention to the merit. So in other words, we were paying people, you know, salaries, bonuses, whatever equity. And we also just want to make sure that you feel good and we empathize with you, but we're not going to focus so much on the standards and
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how
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exactly. And so what ended happening there is you got the coddled mediocrity trap. In other words, you create a culture of mediocrity and you reward it. Yeah.
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That's what happened. Now, similarly, let's say you only have merit and competence, but you don't have empathy. So in other words, you are really focused on competence and how good people are. You're really paying, you know, you're paying them well, but you have, you don't have the empathy piece. You don't have the human piece. Then you get the performance of the treadmill, where it's constantly like you're running on the treadmill, you know, at the eight incline, eight speed. And it's like, okay, now we're tomorrow, we're going to crank it up and up and up and up. And that causes a lot of people to burn out. And so it's clear why you need kind of all three things to play inside the organization. And so that I think is a very, very important law for people to understand and to focus on is that you do need merit. You do need the competence. We you know, forgetting that that is the most essential part of the work that you do. And so I think for CHROs and for business leaders and for everybody, for that matter, that is a very, very important law to have. And I have, you know, different examples in there, several novels that were written about what happens when you have pure equality in the world and certain novels that were written when you have pure merit in the world and why you need to kind of, you know, meet in the middle. But I think this is a very, very important law. And, you know, you know, sometimes people challenge it because they say, well, you know, there's a little bit of subjectivity there and this and that. And I think all those things are important. Yeah. And in the book I talk about diversity, but I say the most important type of diversity that exists is cognitive diversity. And I cite several examples in research experiments that were done where they take people who think the same but who look different. So in other words, the diversity is on the surface, whether it's skin color or gender, whatever it might be. And they have them solve puzzles or do different experiments. And then they take other people, they look the same, but they come from different backgrounds, different educations, different perspectives and values, but they look the same. So on the surface
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level, the physical diversity is identical. And they
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compare them and they say who is able to solve these puzzles and go through kind of these tests. And to no surprise, the people who have the cognitive diversity that are able to succeed and do these puzzles and do it at a much faster rate. And so again, that's one of those things where people might hear that and they say, oh, I don't want to hear that. But I mean, the reality is that that is what matters most inside of an organization. It's do you have the different perspectives and brain power and values to you so that you can contribute unique ideas and approaches to the company? So the act with empathetic excellence, I think is a very, very important one,
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especially in today's world. To your point about the diversity piece, is that also encompass like neurodiversity when you talk about that?
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Yeah, I mean, so I didn't specifically go down the neurodiversity path in the book, just because I don't know, I felt like you could go down a never ending. Yeah. Yeah. So rabbit hole with that, I really wanted to tackle the main big issue when people talk about diversity. And that was the big backlash that we saw against DEI. And so that this concept of empathetic excellence is sort of like a not a solution, but almost like a replacement to the concept of DEI. Like it's another thing that you can use to make sure that you're still focusing on on talent and on competence and also still on the whole
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person. Yeah. Typically, when you look at those three pillars, where do companies typically fall short?
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Of competence.
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Really? Wow. Yeah.
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I mean, because everybody...
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Oh, okay.
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We will, yeah, because if you think about it, everybody... But now, again, 2026, we're seeing a reversal of that. Yeah. But look at the past four or five years, what we did is we paid people, we gave them bonuses and perks and benefits, and we put so much emphasis on empathy. But
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even during hiring though, like how does that piece, how do we skip that part during the hiring process?
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Well, I'm not saying you skip it. No,
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skip it. But I mean, like, I mean... Yeah, I'm
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not saying you skip it. And even during the hiring process, it's one thing, but when employees actually start working there, it becomes a very different environment. Then it becomes, you know, I mean, look at all the conversations that we had about things like microaggressions, for example, creating safe spaces, and this drove me nuts because you don't have a right to not be offended at work. When you show up to work, you should be offended. You should argue with people, you should debate with people, you should not be comfortable every day when you show up, you should have some bad days. We're not trying to create this utopia. And so when you go so hard on only the empathy piece, and you forget about everything else, you create this environment that is not realistic. And in the book, I have different scenarios that I outline several potential scenarios. And two of them, one is the cult of purpose, and another one is called the empathy paradox. And there's several in, you know, I won't go through all of them. But these are different futures that could emerge when you over index on some of these things and not on the others. So for example, the empathy paradox is one where, again, the organization goes very, very hard on empathy. And it becomes sort of part of the core values, it becomes something that the organization over index is on, we teach it, we go through empathy training, it's everywhere.
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And on the
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surface, it kind of sounds like a good idea, right? On the surface, it sounds like, okay, well, we're not going to have arguments here, we're not going to really be debating, everyone is going to be treated well. And you seem, I mean, it feels like you're creating this nice vibe. But if you look a little bit deeper, you start to especially over the long run, in the quest to avoid any form of discomfort, you become what I talked about the new parents for your employees, you start avoiding growth, the standards inside of your organization will go down. The feedback that leaders are giving and it becomes diluted. Yeah. Teams start avoiding having any form of difficult conversations. I don't want to upset anybody, I hope you're okay. So that's what happens when you go full down the empathy path. And so you feel better, but you're doing less great work and the organization as a whole suffers, not because people are lazy, but because the whole culture and the whole community is just become risk averse. We want to avoid difficult things. Think about in your personal life, right? If you avoided difficult things, you would have never started HR leaders, you'd never go to the gym, you'd be in your comfortable blanket. It's actually
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the opposite, right? Like I love everything you're saying. And I think
[01:25:56:11 - 01:27:29:12]
it's such a big, for example, me and Shane, my co-founder, we always, there's a joke that we have a running joke between us that our biggest steps forward as a business, as an organization is during our arguments, let's say. Yeah. Right. And every time we have a good, a real good heated conversation, the magic comes out on the other end. And people are like, what do you mean? I'm like the biggest, the best innovation, the biggest problems we've solved. Like all of those come out of real tough conversations. And a lot of times to your point, most people would have avoided for a long time, which actually creates a ripple effect of even more issues. That it happens. And the difference is, is that Shane and I have an understanding that when we go into those conversations, I know some people may call it radical candor, that I know that he's giving me this feedback because he wants the best for me, for the business. And there's positive intent, right? So always talk about assume positive intent. But I always say that to the team, right? Because when I'm giving you feedback, right, you need to assume positive intent in this, right? I don't, and that's where the empathy comes in. And we can have a conversation with, we may not leave this meeting feeling great about it, but like assume positive intent. And I want you to share how you're feeling. And I may not like it, but I'd rather you tell me rather than you sit in frustration and continue doing something, which is driving you crazy. Right. But that's not a friendly one. Sorry. Go on. Yeah. Did you ever
[01:27:29:12 - 01:27:40:04]
see the movie equilibrium with Christian Bale? That movie. Exactly. The Gun Cotta. It kind of reminds me of that, right? Where you try to remove all
[01:27:40:04 - 01:27:42:02]
the, of course the whole, right?
[01:27:42:02 - 01:27:45:20]
And so for people not familiar with the movie, you kind of take the, I forgot what the,
[01:27:45:20 - 01:27:50:09]
the, the emotion away, the drug. Yeah. They forgot the name of the drug you take,
[01:27:50:09 - 01:28:28:16]
but you basically take this drug and nobody has any emotion. It's this perfect utopian society. Nobody's fighting. Nobody's arguing. Nobody's happy. Nobody's sad. It's just emotion. And then you see what happens to the society. It becomes gray and bleak. There's no books. There's no mirrors. It's just kind of, you know, we don't want to upset anybody. We don't want to trigger anybody. And I'll end the whole premise is what happens when all of a sudden people or somebody Christian Bale stops taking that drug and I won't spoil the movie for people, but in a world where nobody has emotion, when one person has emotion, what happens? Another movie actually just came out fairly recently on Apple TV. Um, Pluribus. I don't know if you saw that.
[01:28:28:16 - 01:28:30:03]
I haven't seen that one. No.
[01:28:30:03 - 01:30:00:02]
Same concept as well. And it's the idea where, um, you know, sort of an alien virus comes down to earth and it impacts pretty much everybody on planet earth and everybody on planet earth is now happy and smiling and you want to, you know, help people, but there are a couple of people on planet earth who didn't get the virus and they're still normal humans. And so the idea is that all of these other people who got the virus, billions of people are not just trying to do everything to placate these now human people. And again, the human people get, or some of them get frustrated because you, you can't get angry at somebody at any of these like other beings. They just say, hi, how are you? What can I do for you? And they're like, do you ever get mad? Do you have any emotion? Like what? So you see that it sounds utopian, but it actually is a very dystopian science fiction type world. And so I always caution companies, don't try to create a company where your goal is happiness. Don't try to create an environment where you feel that the company's responsibility is to make your people happy. And this is also a little bit of a, you know, philosophical concept as well, but I believe that happiness is your responsibility, not somebody else's. And so I hate when companies measure happiness as a, as a metric. It's not the company's job to solve your problems, to be your friend, to make you happy, to give you purpose. It
[01:30:00:02 - 01:30:10:09]
can play a role in those areas. And it can contribute certain elements to make your life more purposeful, but you can't turn to your company and assume
[01:30:10:09 - 01:30:24:00]
that it's going to solve your problems. That's the whole parent analogy. Like even my kids, sometimes they'll come to me and I, I learned this from Dennis Prager, actually. He used to say this to his kids, like the other day, my five-year-old son is like, daddy, I'm bored. And I would say, you're not bored. You're just boring.
[01:30:24:00 - 01:30:25:18]
Meaning
[01:30:25:18 - 01:30:56:16]
that it's not my job as your dad to entertain you. Right. Go play outside. You have books, you have toys, you have lots of things you could do or at a party. Your friends are here. Don't tell me that you're bored. It just means that you're a boring person and you're not willing to kind of go out there. So I'm a big fan of the tough love approach. I'm a big fan of giving and telling people that more accountability and responsibility should rest with them and not with the company.
[01:30:56:16 - 01:31:22:04]
Yeah. I think it's a balance. I agree with you, but there needs to be a balance, right? We need, we need, obviously need to create an environment where people can, you know, be successful, can thrive and feel, you know, psychologically safe. But I think we can't go too far. And I think to your point, and I agree where people's happiness is needs to be owned by themselves, right? Not like, I agree with those points as well. And, yep. And
[01:31:22:04 - 01:31:54:06]
companies should, to your point, right? Give employees training programs, let them develop, give them leaders and managers who can coach you and who support you and who have your back, give them the right amount of psychological safety where they can speak up and share ideas. If they're doing a good job, give them a path to progress and grow inside the company. All of those things are a hundred percent I'm aligned with. Yeah. All right. So I don't want, I don't want people to hear this and misinterpret my comments as saying, treat people like, like dirt and assume that they're just going to want to be there.
[01:31:54:06 - 01:31:55:24]
The organization
[01:31:55:24 - 01:31:59:06]
does have its own accountabilities and responsibilities as well. Yeah.
[01:31:59:06 - 01:34:16:01]
You can't, I mean, it's like you can't have it both ways, right? I think that like they over index in on one direction, but then by doing that, you are removing, like we just said, the emotion, the creativity, the innovation, the diversity of perspectives and thought. And in order to do that, you have to be challenged and you have to be able to share your thoughts and give feedback even when it's uncomfortable and avoiding those uncomfortable conversations is just like creates so much more work. Like we had some, you know, I've had a few employees join over the last couple of months that from other businesses and I had one recently, which I think you'd appreciate their feedback. They gave me that during our Monday meeting, the whole team comes in and someone basically I was sharing kind of my view on a particular project and strategy and someone in the team completely disagreed with me in front of the whole room and said, they said, I think you're wrong and Chris, this is what we should do, et cetera. And the new hire pulled me in a meeting and said, oh my God, I can't believe so and so just spoke to you that way. And I was like, what do you mean? That was great. And they were like, they were like, but you're the CEO. How can they tell you that? And I'm like, what do you mean? This is like why I hired you for your thoughts and perspectives. And they were like, in the company I worked in, we would never have a conversation like that. Oh, same. We would never challenge the CEO or like give them, I would never give my feedback. Right. And I was like, and then I could see them in their own thoughts. I was like, why do you think I hired you for? And they were like, I could see it was a bit of a shock, a culture shock for them that the CEO was just told that he's wrong and I agreed with the person and said, sure. Oh, actually, no, we didn't even agree. I said, I don't, I disagree, but I'm going to let you go and do it anyway. And then, you know, let's, let's see, you know, I'll support you in, in, in, in it, but I still disagree. And that's okay. There's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's no, no right or wrong answer. Like we'll figure it out. And if, if it doesn't work out, we'll have a conversation about it. But I could see the shock on their face that someone beat will challenge. So to your point, I think they came from an organization where it was very much, you know, everyone's kind of treading on ice the entire time. Yeah. And
[01:34:16:01 - 01:34:36:02]
we, we also forget that the reality for any business that is in the business to make money is that as soon as it doesn't, the first thing that it's going to do is it's going to look at headcount. And especially with AI, you know, you can talk a big game about we love you and this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, block, just like, oh, my
[01:34:36:02 - 01:34:37:15]
God. Oh, my God. I was just
[01:34:37:15 - 01:36:18:22]
like, oh, 40% of their workers as a result of AI. And many, many other organizations followed suit me to Morgan Stanley's been letting go of employees, you know, lots of companies are letting go of employees. Aston Martin let go of employees, they didn't say it was a result of AI. So, you know, don't don't make the mistake of understanding the relationship that you're in with a company. Any company can say anything it wants to say to you. But the truth of the matter is that when a company is going to either struggle, or when it sees a way that it can save money for shareholders or stakeholders or improve productivity, it will. And if that means that you end up getting let go because the work that you can do is being replaced by AI, that's what's going to happen. But it also means that you as an employee need to have more accountability and responsibility over that. And so if you're worried about AI, you should be having conversations with your leaders and managers and saying, Hey, look, I know that I'm in a job like customer service, which is very susceptible to AI. I really like working here. And I want to figure out a way that I can get into another role. Help me figure out what I need to do to make sure that in the next six to 12 months, I won't get automated, but I'll be able to pivot to another part of the company. Like what should I do? What should I learn? Were the openings here? Go talk to those hiring managers. You need to be more of an active participant in shaping your career path. And so the problem is that a lot of employees are just kind of sitting there. They're just the way it's almost like, you know, that carnival game where you have the ducks that go on the row and people throw the ball at them and just, you knock down the ducks. I feel like that's how a lot of employees view themselves. They're just ducks going on the top row and they're just hoping they don't get hit with the ball.
[01:36:18:22 - 01:36:20:01]
And so the
[01:36:20:01 - 01:36:43:15]
message is, you know, get off of that row and go talk to the person throwing the ball and be like, Hey, what do I got to do to make sure I don't get hit with this freaking ball? Yeah. And I think that that, you know, it's a, it's a different way for employees to think inside of their organizations, right? That you are the director of, of your career path and you need to act like it. Do
[01:36:43:15 - 01:36:48:07]
you think that there's a responsibility on the business though, to, um,
[01:36:49:10 - 01:36:54:00]
to, to communicate with those employees that those roles are at risk?
[01:36:55:05 - 01:37:39:22]
Yes, but they don't know how and they don't know what, what roles are at risk. They don't know. So you're, you're relying on a company to give you information about something that it doesn't know yet. And I think that's what makes this very interesting and unique. Like a lot of the CHOs that I talk to, for example, I asked them, are you doing skills mapping? Are you looking backwards over the next three to five years to identifying roles and skills? And a lot of them are kind of like, well, we're, we're trying, we're starting, we're doing some focus groups and this and that it's going to be a 12 month process. So even the companies themselves don't know, like from a, from a data and analytical perspective, they don't have a clear map or picture even today, right? Depending on the studies that you look at,
[01:37:41:03 - 01:38:46:16]
most people say that AI is not having any form of measurable ROI inside their organizations. Like what Klarna did, they let go of 700, uh, not employees, team members and customer service, and then they hired a lot of them back. So even companies themselves, they're not sure what impact is AI going to have? How should they be using it? Um, when is all this going to happen? They don't know, but if you talk to your leaders directly on an individual level, they have, I think a much better sense and they can help you figure out like where roles might be growing, where are their openings that where the company is, you know, seeing more opportunity. What is the direction of the business over the next, you know, 12 months or two years? So you have to kind of be a little bit more of a detective in some way to try to learn about the direction of the business without, because again, the companies themselves, they don't have answers for you specifically in that area, but you can, you know, do your best to try to understand like customer service. If you're in customer service, you know that AI is going to impact your role. Do
[01:38:46:16 - 01:39:13:14]
you, you know, like, do you think though the vast majority of those people actually know that we're so close, we're so close to this. I'm just kind of playing devil's advocate for a second, but like, do you think, let me give you an example. So I'm currently hiring for an EA right now and I do have agents to do a lot of the work that a traditional EA would do, but there's some more strategic work that I need someone that I want to, you know, have involved in the team and that's not a outsourced to an agent as well.
[01:39:15:06 - 01:39:15:10]
I
[01:39:15:10 - 01:39:49:15]
mean, I've been interviewing for a few weeks. Nearly every single one of them that was laid off was because of AI. Right. Interesting. Right. Like, and by the way, one of them I just interviewed from block, literally, literally from block was part of the people that let go. Most of the people I spoke to, which may be shocking to you, none of them saw it coming, which for me, it seems obvious, right? Like, but I can tell you because I asked a question because I was generally interested. The vast majority of them did not see it coming.
[01:39:51:10 - 01:40:04:08]
Well, not seeing it coming and not being aware, I think are two different things. So I think that a lot of people are aware of AI, but I don't think a lot of people are aware of the time horizon in which AI is going to impact their roles.
[01:40:04:08 - 01:40:04:23]
Okay.
[01:40:04:23 - 01:40:10:14]
So I find, and I think even in a lot of the studies that were done and somebody can fact check me on this, was it
[01:40:12:08 - 01:42:09:04]
Gallup or somebody said that 45% of employees are using AI already several times a year. And I think it was more like, if you're on the front line, you're less kind of in tune. Sure. That makes sense. I think it was also Gallup. Yeah. So it was like individual contributors, I think were 26% more likely than managers to say that they didn't know whether their organization implemented AI or not. So to your point, yeah, I get that there's still plenty of people out there who are not familiar with a lot of the tools that are out there. But I think a lot of employees, especially on the knowledge work side, they are because their companies are implementing them and making the investments. So they're aware that the tools are there, but they're not clear on the time horizon. So some of them might think, okay, my company's using AI. Well, it will probably be two, three, four, five years before it kind of impacts my role. And then three, four months later, you're kind of like, okay, well, you know, AI is doing your job now. So this is why I think it's more imperative than ever for employees to have these conversations and to explore these internal opportunities with their leaders. And I think for companies too, your responsibility, so on the employee side, we can talk about your responsibility, be the detective. Talk to your leaders, talk to your managers, use these AI tools, and really make a concerted effort to figure out where you can potentially grow. On the organization, the leader side, I think you, all of you leaders listening you need to be investing much more heavily in things like internal talent, marketplaces, and mobility to give employees the opportunity to move within the organization. You need to do a much better job of storytelling, telling employees how is AI going to impact roles and skills inside the organization? Where do we see opportunities? What should you be doing?
[01:42:10:10 - 01:42:39:23]
Do a better job with workforce planning, right? Looking out three to five years and mapping there's a lot that companies can do and a lot that employees can do. The problem is that neither one of them are really doing it at the level that they should be. And so when push comes to shove though, it's really going to lie more in the hands of employees than it will with organizations because the employees are the ones who are potentially going to get let go, not the company. So the impetus is more on the employee hand than the organizational side.
[01:42:41:01 - 01:42:55:03]
What would you say? I mean, there's so much we've shared. I'm sure everyone listening right now is got a lot of work to do. But if there's one thing you really want people to take away from the book, what would that be? Because there's just so much, right?
[01:42:55:03 - 01:42:59:24]
There's a lot in there, yes. So I think probably
[01:42:59:24 - 01:44:22:11]
the most important element for me from the book is to tell people that the type of experience that you have at your organization, don't assume that these trends are going to impact you. Assume that you are the one who's going to shape the employee experience at your company. In other words, move from being more of a reactive participant to being a proactive designer of what these things are going to be. So in other words, if you decide and look at what Walmart did, for example, they have 1.6 million employees and they made a very conscious decision. They saw obviously what a company like Block is doing, letting go of 40% of the workforce. Walmart came forward and said, "Look, we have 1.6 million employees. We're not going to go down that path. We're not going to be letting go thousands or hundreds of thousands of our people. Instead, we're going to invest more in them and we're going to reinforce kind of the human elements. We're going to train everybody how to use AI and we want our people to be here. IBM, they're tripling down on their Gen Z hiring." And so you see organizations, and there's so different paths that are emerging. And I think what's really important for leaders even for employees is to decide what kind of a company do you want to be a part of and what kind of a company do you want to build and create? Because just because we talk about AI doesn't mean that AI is going to have impact X on your company. You get to pick the impact that these tools will have. You get to pick the type of business that you're going to create
[01:44:22:11 - 01:44:34:05]
and the type of organization that you're going to be a part of and the experience that you have. So I think it's very important to be more of a proactive
[01:44:34:05 - 01:45:54:01]
shaper and designer of these things. And I think one piece of advice for employees, we always talk about AI. Well, we don't. We should talk about AI as a double-edged sword. There are also some benefits to it that I don't think we talk about. And so if you're an entry-level employee or you're somebody who's looking for a job, yes, you hear the doom and gloom scenarios that AI is taking over entry-level college jobs and the career ladder is going to collapse. But what we don't talk about is how you as an employee looking for a job can use AI. So think about the things that you can actually do. If you have ideas now for a product or service, you can now use AI to create mock-ups, to build ideas, to show plans, to visualize. I call this showing and telling instead of just giving somebody a resume. Think about how you can do a job search using AI. You can find all the top companies that are hiring within a 20-mile radius, pull up all the job postings, find out who the hiring managers are, draft, customize, cover letters. And you can do things at a scale and speed and personalization that you couldn't do before. So you have sort of the pros and cons of all of these tools. And I think the smart people out there, yes, they acknowledge the cons, but they're also really, really emphasizing on what those pros are. I think that's a really important message for people to think about too.
[01:45:54:01 - 01:46:04:03]
I love that. I think it's empowering, right, to be the architect of future, right, while I'm waiting for the tap on the shoulder and just kind of take it. Yeah,
[01:46:04:03 - 01:46:15:06]
I think we'll see more entrepreneurs. Yeah, more entrepreneurs, more businesses getting created, you know, think about the things that you could do with like RePlit and Cursor and Lovable and these AI tools. When I look
[01:46:15:06 - 01:46:40:08]
at it now, I'm like, "Oh man, when I started this business, if I had these tools, the route that we have now, like, it's actually an incredibly exciting time, right? There's never been more, like, information is completely democratized. Like, you've got, like, again, you mentioned tools like Lovable and others, you could only dream of having these tools at our fingertips to build organizations, right? It's kind of
[01:46:40:08 - 01:46:44:17]
wild. You can literally build a company, I mean, realistically, in a week.
[01:46:44:17 - 01:46:59:22]
Yeah, the website, the platform, the app. Yeah. Well, it's a matter of talk to you forever. Before I let you go, where can people grab a copy of the book, where's the best place? Also, please give a shout out to your podcast and the other great places where people can follow you as well.
[01:46:59:22 - 01:47:26:02]
Sure. So, the book is the number 8, EXLAWS.com. My newsletter is Future of Work newsletter. The small and intimate CHRO group that I have is called Future of Work Leaders. And my email for people if they want to get in touch with me is jacobatthefutureorganization.com. And the podcast is called Future Ready Leadership. You can find it on Apple and Spotify and any place you listen to a podcast.
[01:47:26:02 - 01:47:52:05]
Amazing. And I can attest that all of those things, your group, your community plus the podcast, something I follow very closely as well. And anyone listening right now, wherever you're listening or watching, I'll put all the links below in the description to follow there. Also, follow Jacob on LinkedIn. I'll also have that link below there. But it's always a pleasure, my friend. I appreciate your work and I appreciate your candor, everything you do for the community. And I look forward to chatting again soon.
[01:47:52:05 - 01:47:56:11]
Yeah. Thank you very much. Next time you're in LA, we'll have to grab coffee or dinner. We'll make it
[01:47:56:11 - 01:47:57:17]
happen, my friend. Thanks a lot.
[01:47:57:17 - 01:47:58:24]
Thank you.
Jacob Morgan, Best-Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Founder of Future of Work Leaders.