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Kelly Monahan: Work Changed. Leadership Didn’t.
57 Plays12 days ago
In this episode, Eric talks with Kelly Monahan, organizational psychologist and author of Essential: How Distributed Teams, Generative AI, and Global Shifts Are Creating a New Human-Powered Leadership, about a reality many organizations are still struggling to face: the workplace changed faster than leadership practices did.
For decades, leadership relied on proximity. You could see who was working, overhear conversations, and step in when problems emerged. Then remote and distributed work arrived at scale, followed quickly by artificial intelligence. The structures that once made leadership feel intuitive suddenly stopped working. Visibility disappeared. Informal feedback loops broke down. And many leaders discovered they did not actually know how to lead without physical presence.
The conversation explores what distributed work reveals about human behavior. When distance increases, trust becomes more intentional. Communication becomes more deliberate. Culture becomes less about slogans and more about daily decisions. Technology can connect people instantly, yet it cannot replace clarity, accountability, or shared purpose.
They also discuss the growing role of AI in shaping work. Generative tools can accelerate output and reduce friction, but they can also create new risks. When systems become more capable, leaders must become more thoughtful about judgment, ethics, and responsibility. The challenge is not learning new tools. The challenge is redesigning leadership for a world where work is no longer tied to a single place.
At its core, this is a conversation about adaptation. About humility. And about the discipline of learning to lead in conditions that no longer resemble the past.
Topics Covered
- Why distributed work exposes hidden weaknesses in leadership
- The difference between managing presence and managing outcomes
- How trust changes when teams are no longer co-located
- Why culture becomes more fragile as distance increases
- The leadership skills that matter more in remote environments
- The role of intentional communication in distributed teams
- How generative AI is reshaping expectations about productivity
- The risk of confusing efficiency with effectiveness
- Why leaders must redesign systems rather than rely on habits
- The importance of psychological safety in virtual environments
- What organizations lose when informal interaction disappears
- How leaders can create connection without physical proximity
- The shift from supervising work to enabling performance
Episode Links
- Learn more about Kelly’s work: https://beyondthedesk.com
- Visit Kelly’s personal website: https://drkellymonahan.com
- Buy her book, Essential: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Distributed-Generative-Human-Powered-Leadership/dp/1394276583/
- Watch Kelly’s TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23SYB8ZFEEI
For more episodes: https://unfoldingthought.com
Questions or guest ideas: eric@inboundandagile.com
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Transcript
Career Influenced by Kodak's Decline
00:00:02
Speaker
Kelly, thank you for joining me. Where does today's recording find you? Eric, I'm based in Orlando, Florida, and I'm coming to you feeling pretty energized and optimistic at the moment. I have read your book and we talked for, you know, 15, 20 minutes before we got going. So I know a little bit about you, but if you would indulge me, would you mind telling me a bit about yourself, Kelly?
00:00:25
Speaker
Yes. So I'm originally from Rochester, New York, which in hindsight has really, I think, been a strong correlation of where I've ended up to where I am today. And the reason why I say that, if anyone you know is familiar with Rochester, it's most associated with Kodak.
00:00:39
Speaker
And when I was in high school, this like strange thing was happening around me where all of a sudden students were disappearing from class. And that was because at the time, Kodak was shedding over 45,000 workers.
00:00:50
Speaker
And so there was like this mass exodus out of Rochester and or just going into other industries and jobs. And so at a young age and probably at somewhat of a formative age, as I'm trying figure out, what am I going to major with in college?
HR Challenges and Workforce Reduction
00:01:02
Speaker
The anxiety and fear of job loss was profound. Like even in my house, even though my dad was able to retain his job, it was still this constant anxiety. And so used to do that at a very young age of, OK, working for a corporation does not mean lifelong employment because it did back in the day for Kodak.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I need to figure out something to stabilize my career. And so I became what I would probably call that typical elder millennial and decided I'm not going to stick with one corporation. The best strategy here is to hop around. So I did a little bit of that as I was trying to find my footing and ended up in ah HR because I thought and was told, you know, I want to connect with the humans. I want to engage employees. I want to develop leaders. That's the human side of the business HR.
00:01:45
Speaker
And Eric, my number one, Simon, I'm like in my mid to late twenty s And I'm meeting with the CFO. was at the Hartford at the time. And he said to me, you need to go do a reduction in workforce. We actually installed this new technology called robotic process automation, which I kind of call like baby AI at the time.
00:02:03
Speaker
And you need to go and meet with 200 people and let them know that works now in the office. They no longer have a job. And so that became a a turning point in my career because one, I realized ah HR is really there for the business and and trying to help the mo business move forward.
Research Focus on Job Stability and AI
00:02:19
Speaker
And number two, a job is so much more than just a paycheck. And so one of the stories that haunt me that I'll just quickly share is one of the women actually came back the next day and was sitting at her terminal on computer and IT forgot to show off her badge.
00:02:34
Speaker
And I went to her and I was like, you know, I'm sorry, you you no longer, you know, need to be it actually because security concern being here. and she just started of crying. And she said, but I'm not ready to hand off my job. I've been here for 20 years. Like there's documents that need to be tidied up. I need to finish this. I want to finish well. You didn't give me the opportunity to finish well.
00:02:52
Speaker
And another lady had told me during the time of, if you knew about this robotic process automation, why didn't you say anything to us? You're sitting back into a market now that there's now this technology that's a threat.
00:03:02
Speaker
And i don't know anything about it. And so to fast forward to where I am now, almost 15 years later, I've dedicated my entire career as a researcher to really understand the intersection of how do we bring more job
Transition to Future of Work at Deloitte
00:03:15
Speaker
stability? How do we help people get prepared for what's happening?
00:03:19
Speaker
And my sense is right now that I think what I saw with RPA, technology and financial services really pales comparison to about what's coming with generative AI, artificial intelligence. And so the question is my my whole heartbeat of what I do is how do we prepare leaders to make the right human decisions in the midst of a lot of technology transformation and complexity. I've had the fortunate opportunity to explore that at Accenture, Deloitte, Meta, and most recently Upwork, and and really working alongside is some of the most interesting companies and executives to understand this, which is why now I'm on my own at a company I formed with a business partner called Beyond the Desk to go really deep right now to help leaders get this moment right.
00:03:58
Speaker
How did you, if I'm characterizing this correctly, Kelly, how did you move from h r and HR analytics and, and all of the work that is involved in HR to what sounds like more future of work?
00:04:15
Speaker
And, and I'm going to throw in the word research here because I know you've done some research. How'd you move from one to to the other? So I realized it was funny as I was doing the RIFT, um I was looking around and I realized at the time, was like before people analytics was really a thing. We had such little data on the ah HR. We had employee engagement surveys, course, is really where we're making a lot of decisions. And of course, you've got the basic demographic information.
00:04:39
Speaker
And it just felt like there was this opportunity to use data to better make decisions about people. And it actually would be more humane if we had data to help guide some of the decisions as opposed to some of the bias right that creeps in when it comes to leaders making decisions about people without data. And so that's actually what led me to go get my PhD.
00:04:57
Speaker
And I studied organizational behavior and leadership because my dissertation was actually, you know, what do values and responsibility have to do with it? Because I wanted to understand underlying, like, why are some employees more resilient than others in the face of this technology disruption? How do values help guide the way that leaders make these decisions?
00:05:15
Speaker
And I had the most awesome opportunity coming out of that PhD program. Again, this is coming 15 years ago Deloitte. Deloitte came and recruited me and said, hey, we're getting ready to start this thing called Future of Work.
00:05:26
Speaker
Clients are asking, what
Educational Journey and Leadership Studies
00:05:28
Speaker
is the future of work? Would you be interested in coming working alongside our research team to create the framework and the research credibility that would actually help us enter this conversation? And so I'm so thankful for that opportunity to go from, a again, thinking 15 years ago. The framework was where people are working is shifting. we were predicting a ah big rise in distributed remote work. Work could be removed from the physical location.
00:05:51
Speaker
um who was working. We saw the rise of like 1099 freelancers, really the alternative workforce become a bigger share of the labor markets. And then finally, technology, what people were working at. So even 15 years ago, we were starting to study AI and the way it was going to be disruptive to knowledge workers.
00:06:07
Speaker
So you got your PhD. I am sure that I came across this in some of my research, but I forget. Did you get a master's degree before that I did. So i my bachelor's degree is in business. um I was going to go get an MBA, but a wise professor pulled me aside and said, you know what, Kelly, I think you've you've got a little bit different lens here.
00:06:28
Speaker
What if you were to actually go pursue more strategy and leadership? And so I really doubled down on a master's in strategy and leadership. which is a very MBA adjacent, except it brings in a little bit more of, you know, ah forecasting and a little bit more of the human side to like with psychology from a leadership perspective. So I'm really thankful to have had that education in between my bachelor's and then eventually PhD.
00:06:50
Speaker
And as far as timeline goes, but also motivations, did, you know, one degree come right behind another?
00:07:01
Speaker
And were you working at the time that you were doing these? Yes. So, you know, I think Carl Jung refers to this as a dark shadow. I can't realize the time. um But, you know, i I was pretty ambitious at a young age. Again, I think part of it was driven by a fear of job loss and wanting to make sure that I didn't have that financial insecurity that I saw from everyone around me. and So I graduated actually college a semester early. i was at RIT, which was great. And I went right into the job market.
00:07:33
Speaker
Now, it was kind of mimics the time that we're in today. Wasn't a great job market. Had a friend of a friend who was able to get me into the marketing agency that was in town. And that's where got into the analytics side and statistics side.
00:07:45
Speaker
um And then after a year working in my first like real job, I was looking around and like, This can't be real. Like I was watching The Office at the time, you know, with Steve Carell. And I felt like I was constantly walking into an episode of The Office. And I'm like, I spent all this time and money and energy to like, this is what the corporate world is all about. And it it was just so fascinating to me. And so I said, you know what, instead of like really getting good in marketing analytics and statistics,
00:08:11
Speaker
I actually wanted to study more of the human behavior side and the dynamics of what I was observing and between, you know, toxic leadership, team dysfunction, but also the goodness, you know, of how, why were people willing to work over, you know, long weekends, all-nighters to get a campaign done. um So that's, I think, where I became most fascinating in the more of that human dynamics side of business.
00:08:31
Speaker
So I went and got my master's pretty quickly um after my bachelor's degree. And then I went right into a PhD program. And this is probably not the most traditional way, but I worked um most of the time as well, only because I had a, I don't know, is this is kind of maybe, i don't know why I have this, but I was so frustrated with the business professors who had never done business um and were teaching leadership and yet never led a team. And that was just something that I did not want to to be. So yeah.
00:08:58
Speaker
I mean, I'm not sure was great for my mental health or my you know health in general, but being able to work in the real world while learning all of the theoretical principles of management was profound because I was able to say like this, I get it.
AI's Rapid Advancement and Leadership Focus
00:09:11
Speaker
This looks great in a textbook. There is no way this happens in the real world. And i think that's been a little bit of my secret sauce ever since is living in that dual reality.
00:09:19
Speaker
Having done research on the future of work and you talked about remote and freelance work, what are some of the things that you've seen that have changed over time, you know, in the, it let's say in the time that you have been working in your adult life?
00:09:43
Speaker
You know, I wish more has changed. But yeah, sometimes it feels a little bit like Groundhog's Day. um And I think there's still a lot of hype in the future work. I mean, a lot of what we were still grappling with 15, 20 years ago is very similar conversation today. But here's what I have seen changed.
00:09:59
Speaker
One, i mean, I'm like, you know, I did a TEDx talk in 2019 and, you know, i was like, oh, AI is never going to be able to do, you know, basically context switching. you know it's really good at algorithms to doing one thing. Well, that's obviously completely changed.
00:10:12
Speaker
You know, we're now entering into more of generalized intelligence. And so I think the speed in which AI has developed in the last five years has been profound. I mean, it's been around since the nineteen fifty s It's been through many cycles and winters.
00:10:26
Speaker
But the really the acceleration of what AI can now do is beginning to start to live up to its promise. And so I think that reality is very new. The second thing is from a leadership behavior.
00:10:37
Speaker
i have never seen so much panic and fear at the very top of our leadership. And I think a lot of that is coming out of the pandemic. People are exhausted. Leaders, again, coming from an MBA program, are not trained in life and death situations with the pandemic actually forced for many leaders.
00:10:54
Speaker
It was still a very traumatic time that like I know everyone wants to move on and not talk about. But I think coming out of that and spearheading into this world that now is really upside down and that there's more political and instability, there's more global instability, um our macroeconomic models are no longer making sense. It's really hard to even forecast the job market.
00:11:16
Speaker
And so dealing with that level of uncertainty and complexity, i think, has taken a toll on leadership, especially coming after you know two to three years of pandemic mindset. So I worry that what I'm seeing for the first time is we're almost addicted to this pace of acceleration and speed and chaos.
00:11:35
Speaker
And what I really am hopeful for is we can begin to actually see a slowdown in many ways. We can actually make sense of what's happening around us. really regained the plot of what work is all about.
00:11:46
Speaker
and And that's where I see a big shift. And so i and and I think it's based on our human behavior and the way that we're wired. But I'm not sure leaders are as aware of that chaotic cycle
Core Values in Technological Disruption
00:11:56
Speaker
they're operating in. It was not the case before the pandemic.
00:11:59
Speaker
It's almost like, it seems to me like there's just this new normal that you forget that not just that things didn't used to be this way. I mean, I think lots of people remember that things didn't used to be this way, but they also can't see through the haze ye to understand how do I get back to the way that I want things to be and not just in a nostalgic way or in you know, in with some romanticized view of the past, but rather i think to do what some people recommend. And I think this is talked about in a way, if I recall it in your book, and like how to
00:12:45
Speaker
how do I get back to or understand what are my values? What's really important to me? What do I want out of my work day or my life? What makes me feel fulfilled? And maybe not just me, but what's the mission, vision, values of my organization?
00:13:01
Speaker
And i think that because there's been, there've been so many pressures that have been put on individuals, but leaders, I'm going to put it that way at the moment,
00:13:13
Speaker
over so long that... you, you're just constantly reacting. And whether there's this FOMO of like, oh, we have to do AI. What does do AI mean? i don't know, but we're going to do it. We don't know, but we want it. Yeah. or it's that your stakeholders, you know, your shareholders are pushing you. How do, how do you cut costs and still, you know, raise the stock price or whatever else?
00:13:44
Speaker
I think that a lot of people have either lost the ability to um to understand what their values are and what's really important to them yeah or even if that ability exists those muscles have sort of atrophied and they're way over emphasizing other muscles like the adapt to change muscles just constant adaptation so it's not as much of a question i suppose but i'm as you're talking Yeah.
00:14:12
Speaker
Some of this is coming to mind and I'd be interested to get your perspective. Yeah, Eric, I think it's a great mirror of just like reflecting, you know, of probably the outcome of a lot of what my research has shown. And I think it's so hard when when I meet with executives.
00:14:28
Speaker
The answer is actually not complex here. And I think that's almost the challenge in some ways, to your point. Like one example, one of the words you used and that I'm using with executives right now is wisdom.
00:14:39
Speaker
Um, where are you building wisdom as a muscle right now in your leadership team? Because again, logically and rationally, if you believe AI is going to continue to automate routine transactional tasks, and we all say we want people to be innovative and creative.
00:14:55
Speaker
And we also, by the way, know AI tends to hallucinate some of the time and that there's a risk of deep fakes and intellectual property concerns. I would actually argue the most important skill in the future of work right now is wisdom.
00:15:08
Speaker
And I don't think that's necessarily something that we teach and that we train. And to your point, that muscle has certainly gone out of style and practice over the last several years. And so, yeah, how do you become wise?
00:15:20
Speaker
It's quiet. How do you begin to slow down? And to your point, your question of, you know, what are your values? 42% of Americans, according to Gallup research, don't know why their company exists and can't even name their company's value proposition.
00:15:33
Speaker
And so that's how many people you just have going through the motion of just going in and transacting and, you know, checking a box. That's not going to, you know, make you joyful. It's not going to make your soul come alive. And I think that's actually what the world desperately needs is some of that joy and some of that soulful part of who we are as humans to really be at the forefront of how we work and and how we lead.
00:15:54
Speaker
But that's in something that we've really had to close off and almost protect because of all the complexity and because of all the chaos. Yeah. And I think the second thing is, and we talk about this in essential, think wisdom is really important, but to get to wisdom, you have to be curious.
00:16:09
Speaker
And we've lost our arts and even the science of becoming curious as leaders. It's probably because we're overwhelmed 24-7 with insights, news, information. Like our brain was never meant to handle the volume of insight that we receive every day. And so as part of that, we stop becoming curious because we we're cognitively overloaded.
00:16:27
Speaker
And so again, when I'm working with executives, I call this Mindset Mondays, is before you do anything to start your week, you have to take the first 15 to 20 minutes and get curious about what you don't know, about what you want to learn, and about who you are.
00:16:41
Speaker
And that's okay for that to evolve. That should not actually be a static conversation. It shouldn't be like, I'm planning, this is who I am, this is my values today.
Leadership Drift and Broader Prosperity Goals
00:16:48
Speaker
That's okay for these things to evolve with time. But I worry we're actually holding on to outdated identity and values that actually are no longer serving us. It's because we're not getting curious enough about how the world around us is changing.
00:17:00
Speaker
When you talk about holding on to certain things, one thing I wonder about is, you know, i don't i don't want to strawman too many things here, but just to put it simply, like,
00:17:17
Speaker
I think we generally know that the, you know, what you're aware of consciously, you know, it the your inner voice is often sort of like the PR person for what's going on underneath.
00:17:32
Speaker
And I'm far from an expert in this, but I believe that there have been numerous studies that have shown that, you know, you make a decision and then you become aware of the decision you've already made ah split second afterwards, but you will explain it as you consciously made the decision and you'll have this post hoc rationalization and all that.
00:17:57
Speaker
And and there are arguments for why we do this, which what I believe at the moment is that we do this so we don't feel like we're insane.
00:18:09
Speaker
You know, that we, if there's something that's me, but it doesn't feel like me that chose to be nice or to be mean to a person then it really helps if I can explain there being a reason, you know if I can give a reason for that.
00:18:32
Speaker
Otherwise, I'm just completely out of control. And so I'm using that as a little bit of an analogy, I guess, or metaphor for I think that when, when you talk about holding onto something, for example, that may very well hold onto my sense of who I am, but it's just so that I can feel like I'm not being washed away in this river of change.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I don't have to admit that I'm, you know, like a buoy that's bobbing on the surface down this river. And yet I am moving in this like river of change that of life or whatever else.
00:19:20
Speaker
And I'm, you know, as I'm moving along with it, I'm constantly getting a different perspective. I'm bobbing up and down in the water, whatever. And, but I want to claim that I've always stood in the same spot that I've always been who I was. i always had the same values, but I think a lot of people, if you ask them and a lot of organizations, if you asked, well, we we know why that organization was founded, you know, what product or market or whatever it supposed to serve.
00:19:50
Speaker
But what do you do today? They would either have some very outdated reason for why they still exist. Or they would give you something that ends up being, you know, turtles all the way down or circular that like, but that doesn't actually make any sense. And I think that when you feel like, when you say, you know, like I'm holding onto something, I think that, that thing that a lot of people are holding onto is not real.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's just an explanation to, for, uh, to, to, to, to make me feel like I'm not crazy. Yeah, it's so int interesting. I love the analogy. So I've got a ah book coming out this September called Reclaim the Plot.
00:20:34
Speaker
And it follows these three different states that really describe the water metaphor and think very well. So I think to your point, the first state I'm observing is that leaders are drifting.
00:20:44
Speaker
And maybe not just leaders, but overall. And I think when you talked about that, you know, we going up and down, that's drift. And I think there's some things. And so how do you not drift? Yeah. To me, what always has to be true is, what is you know there's what is business about?
00:20:59
Speaker
This academic came out with great riddle. And he said, justice is to law as health is to medicine as what is to business. Now, if you ask most business leaders, board members, shareholders, they're going to put in shareholder wealth maximization or investor you know return maximization.
00:21:21
Speaker
I don't actually think that's the true value or purpose of business. And that's not going to motivate the majority of your workforce. And I think because of that, we've drifted so far and we're able to justify so many of our decisions that may be not humane or leaving people behind because that we're not saying we're in service of customers. We're not saying we're in service of people. We're saying we're in service of returns.
00:21:42
Speaker
And instead, returns are a byproduct, I think, of actually focusing on what this is all about. To me, business is all about prosperity. It's about economic opportunity. And it's about how do you do that in such a way so that customers are better off, your workforce is better off after coming working through your organization. And oh, by the way, when you do those things well, you're going to maximize your older returns.
00:22:04
Speaker
So to me, I think you're absolutely right. I think there's so much a drift happening because we don't have that core value that should be evergreen, which is prosperity or economic opportunity or whatever language that people may feel comfortable with. ah And that to me is the root cause of what I've seen. Until we fix that, it's so easy to drift and get caught up because I think you're actually pursuing you know the wrong current in many ways. And it will just take you down the river and you'll end up down the river. And I work with executives all the time.
00:22:32
Speaker
How did we end up here? This is not necessarily where I thought I was going to go or I'm not. Right now, 30% of leaders um actually think they're leaving their organization better than they inherited it That means 70% don't actually think they're leaving their workforce and their organization better than when they inherited So to me, there's a real big leadership crisis here. And I think the moment is, how do we get leaders to think about their legacy and start flipping that number to say, no, I want, who doesn't want to leave the organization better than when they came?
00:23:01
Speaker
So, you know, I think that's just, you know, to kind of mirror back some of what I'm thinking as you're reflecting back, I think there's a lot of drift happening. And I think that's what we have to really start focusing on fixing.
Strategic Planning for AI's Impact
00:23:11
Speaker
I feel like you were almost saying this in...
00:23:16
Speaker
earlier in the conversation, maybe when you were talking about kind of the work that you do now and all that, but you were talking about the introduction of robotics and the reduction workforce, I think it was. And I wrote down that with the introduction of robotics or when you got that, you know, if it was 1990 or 1995 or whatever, if you were an office worker, when you came in on that Monday morning and that computer was on the desk for the first time, that, or with robotics, you know, in manufacturing or whatever, there was a visible example of change.
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, you could you could see that there was change. But now, you know, while yes, we've had some algorithm or software or whatever changes that have gone on over time.
00:24:08
Speaker
Now, whether you want to talk about processing power data centers, who knows what, or if you just want to talk about just broadly generative AI, that you actually don't see the change.
00:24:23
Speaker
And that makes it easier for people to just be worried that like we're sitting around a campfire and we see illuminated in the dark, in the woods, we see this illuminated space and we know it's in the space, but we hear the animals out in the dark. You hear the AI animal out there. We hear rumblings, you know, or growls or whatever, but we can't see it.
00:24:51
Speaker
And it's not like the desk, like the computer on the desk. It's not like the robot on the manufacturing floor. And we miss that there's all this change actually going on. And the thing that's coming at you is big.
00:25:05
Speaker
And you when you talked about the reduction in workforce, I think it was, and then also talking to leaders about, or just generally working with leaders, i was, that some of this stuff started to come to mind. And I am curious, do you,
00:25:26
Speaker
How much, when you talk to leadership, how much do you think there is the they hear the AI animal out in the dark growling or whatever, but they, they have, they have nothing but fear. You know, they have nothing but unknowns and you're trying to help them gain some clarity.
00:25:44
Speaker
or that um they are just completely unaware that there's anything going on because they can't see it. And you're trying to say, no, the change is coming.
00:25:57
Speaker
You better be prepared. So this is kind of how I'm framing this right now with executives. It's an antithesis to a black swan event. So, you know, we know there black swan events and it's unknown. It takes us all by surprise. You know, we could argue whether or not the pandemic was. They tend to come in 100 year cycles. But for most of us, it was a black swan event. I don't think anyone was planning on a pandemic.
00:26:18
Speaker
AI is a gray rhino, which is the opposite. And a gray rhino example is, you know, you've got a gray rhino that you can see. It looks big. It's walking towards you. And you're thinking, should I get out of the way? Where is it going? And you're just over there really ruminating on what to do.
00:26:35
Speaker
And by the time you're ready to act is usually too late because the rhino is now crashing towards you at such speed. And so there's five stages when there's a gray rhino event. And I'm going to argue that AI is a gray rhino event and not a black swan because it's been around since the 50s.
00:26:49
Speaker
But I think the challenge is number one, when you have a gray rhino, the very first thing you do is denial. Either this isn't for me, this isn't for my business. I think there was a lot of denial. And I was even in some denial early on. Like, we've seen this before. You know, this happened in the 80s. And then investment went down. We saw this in the Like, we're never going to really crack this code. So I think um in some ways denial was pretty prevalent in 2022, 2023, maybe even 2024. I don't really see leaders in denial anymore.
00:27:17
Speaker
But the second stage is, you know, muddling or ruminating. I think a lot of leaders are still stuck on this stage, which is we're talking about it. We're aware that AI is coming. We've now maybe handed out Copilot or OpenAI i or Claude License.
00:27:31
Speaker
But we have no plan. We don't really have a strategy around this, but we just know we need it. And so I think there's and is more talk. And so I think there's probably a lot of enterprise-level companies at that stage. The third stage is then actually being planful.
00:27:44
Speaker
I see that happening in 2026, and that's some of the rooms I'm in right now with executives of, What is our plan? What is our training program? What is the strategy? What is going to be the workforce impact? What is the skilling that we need? And so I think that is the stage that I see people moving towards from talking to planning. I don't think there's still enough of that happening, but I do see some progress. But starting Woodway this year.
00:28:09
Speaker
the fifth or The fourth stage is then panic of, oh, my God, either our plan isn't working or this is moving faster than we can even get ahead of or this is costing us so much money. What are we doing? And so like there's always this panic phase.
00:28:23
Speaker
I don't really see a lot of leaders there yet. I don't think we've gotten to the plan. um But I think there's probably some panic and fear of are we behind? Not even knowing what behind really means.
00:28:34
Speaker
And then finally, you know, obviously the fifth stage is executing and living in the reality of what is and, you know, getting ahead of the right before it crashes towards you. So I'm hopeful we'll walk people through that cycle.
00:28:45
Speaker
I think the goal, though, is how do you get from step one to three and bypass the panic five, you know, and go into the five as opposed to panic. um And so that's what I'm trying to help leaders do right now too is, hey, let's not get to panic mode. Let's be thoughtful. Let's plan. And the only reason why you're panicking is because you have a lack of know-how or a lack of true principles that are guiding this decision-making right now. And so that's a lot of what I'm doing is what are the principles by which you're going to lead alongside of ai Once that clicks for people, the panic tends to go away.
Critique of Outdated Leadership Models
00:29:16
Speaker
Okay. So then i think that that takes me to something that I wanted to ask you about from, believe it was in your book, essential that I think I recall that a kind of the I don't want to say the focus because then I'm going to misstate it. But a central aspect of that business was that we kind of need a new leadership model. Sure. Yeah.
00:29:41
Speaker
And so how did you decide that either generative AI or the times that we're going through require a new leadership model?
00:29:52
Speaker
So again, like going as that like elder millennial coming to the workforce, I think I observed leadership that felt broken in many ways early on in my career. And I think as millennials, we were like, okay, maybe it's just like the corporate office environment. So all of a sudden, like during my 20s and 30s, it was all of a sudden colorful office walls and we tore down the cubicles and created open office spaces. And if you were really hip and cool, you got a ping pong table and a beer keg installed somewhere in the kitchen and maybe some free snacks.
00:30:22
Speaker
And so I think we started doing some of the artificial or maybe even superficial work of like changing work to be more human, but in a way that didn't actually address the root cause, which was management and leadership.
00:30:34
Speaker
And listen, from a management leadership leadership perspective, I mean this is what I've studied my PhD. We are at the byproduct of what we wanted and what we taught for 20, 30 years in business school. So back in the 1970s, there's this theory called agency theory that actually v of our sort of the University Rochester came up with.
00:30:51
Speaker
And they said, if we believe the purpose of a business is shareholder wealth maximization, most people are not going to be motivated to do that. So we need managers who are incentivized by stock, by organization performance to make sure that they're getting their workforce in line because we believe inherently people are lazy, they don't want to work, and that managers and leaders are needed to have, you know, carousel sticks in place.
00:31:15
Speaker
And so that's what we're all working at. I mean, that's the model that we've all like as a society have said this is the best way to move forward. I think the problem is it's not working, you know, and if you look at a lot of the research and stats, E&Y came out with this.
00:31:26
Speaker
Businesses in the S&P 500 back in the 1940s were around for 67 years. That was the average lifespan. Today, that's down to 15 years. And so we're doing something wrong. Our businesses are are lasting less and less. CEO 10 years at like all time turnover rates, you know, 33% CEOs don't make it past their third year.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's creating a lot of dysfunction for an organization to where you have that level of turnover. So listen, if all the stats were saying, hey, things are great. Businesses are lasting longer. Leaders are staying longer at CEOs. I wouldn't think we need a new leadership model. It's working.
00:32:00
Speaker
I don't think it's working anymore. And so I don't actually think the whole primary purpose, i'm more of a stakeholder theory than shareholder. and i think we have to think broader than just shareholder primacy when it comes to the purpose of a business. And so if you think about from a more stakeholder theory perspective, and I believe the majority of people want to work.
00:32:19
Speaker
I actually don't think the majority of people are lazy. i think we have not created the conditions by which we actually bring that out. And so that changes everything. If you go in as a leader and say, you know what, I actually trust my people going to do the right thing on behalf of the organization.
00:32:32
Speaker
I think the majority of people actually want to do the right thing and will show up and work hard every day. The leadership paradigm completely changes in what we've been coaching and teaching towards this
AI's Role and Business Values
00:32:42
Speaker
day. So that's why we call upon it, is I'm challenging a root assumption that's been around since the 1970s that I think it's time for a refresh.
00:32:49
Speaker
It's interesting when you think about maximizing shareholder wealth and all that, that It depends on where you draw the line, of course. But if you look at these unicorn type companies, that you know they they're one in a million and they become worth billions of dollars in some cases and the CEOs make billions and all that.
00:33:17
Speaker
there there hasn't been a company that has made billions of dollars and been valued at, you know, had a market cap or whatever at billions of dollars that has also been profitable since Facebook was founded.
00:33:35
Speaker
And again, it matters where where you draw the line matters here, but we could pick out some easy examples, you know, like Amazon lost money for a long time. right? But they were founded before Facebook.
00:33:47
Speaker
Tesla is, you know, ah well, they've had challenges in recent years and really in the last two years or so. But the, it's interesting that I forget who it is, but ah Jason Fried or one one of these people, you know, from 37 Signals Basecamp, wrote Rework, all this stuff, has said something like,
00:34:10
Speaker
In no other place in the world except America can you have companies that lose billions of dollars and yet that's a good thing. And i I don't know where where that fits in exactly to the conversation, but the I think a lot of this comes from a key turning point, comes from the moral responsibility of business or management or whatever is shareholder or profit maximization.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. ah Margin Corporate is a super interesting example. Now, they are private, but they changed the model upside down and started. Actually, it was really this really interesting story of the CEO is meeting with his board, meaning they they have a research institute, meeting with his economist.
00:34:55
Speaker
And, you know, they were again, all the models were you know tuned to maximize performance. profits. i mean, again, it's like the rational thing to do. And so the CEO, though, they were having some, you know, employee engagement issues and, you know even some customer decline.
00:35:08
Speaker
And he said, what if we were not to maximize, but to optimize? what does What does the optimization level look like? And how do I optimize return to our investors or private you know equity firms? How do i optimize then towards the employee experience and optimize the customer experience? And And that changed everything about how they really a mindset shift from leaders of where they were spending their focus. And to your point, you know, as we have really drawing the line, i would just love a language shift of saying, like, absolutely, you have to have returns for a shareholders. Like, it makes sense to make profit. It makes sense to, you know, in terms of a stewardship perspective, making sure you're making good on, you know, what is owed to others. But but does it have to maximized? Like, is optimized a better way to go about this? And if that was optimized, would we have just a healthier share of businesses thriving today and not just have these tech companies that are loaded with cash who can burn billions of dollars and still exist? Majority of Americans and 99% of companies cannot adopt that business model.
00:36:11
Speaker
But for some reason, we are so hellbent to look to these tech companies and think, oh, my God, they must know it all. They must know the best talent practices. They must know how to run a business. I am telling you, i have been inside tech.
00:36:23
Speaker
I actually think they have the most immature organizational and talent practices I've seen. And they are doing what they're doing because of the cash flow that they have, not because it's good business practice and good leadership. That makes sense.
00:36:35
Speaker
In the speaking that you do, in the consulting that you do, obviously there's a lot going on around to AI right now. And that does relate, of course, to your first book, but how much...
00:36:54
Speaker
is what you're talking with your clients about or in your, you know, keynoting or whatever. is How much is it really about AI versus being about something like values, for example?
00:37:09
Speaker
That's a brilliant question. So I think, in and that's part of the the intersection i'm actually living in right now is it's so much more than AI. AI is, I think, oftentimes a scapegoat because it's a little bit easy to blame AI.
00:37:22
Speaker
um But, you know, when I keynote, I talk about the complexity. Now, everyone's been talking about a VUCA world for like the We thought we were living in some VUCA times before, but we really are now living a level of complexity we haven't seen.
00:37:36
Speaker
When I work with economists, you know, over the last 18 to 24 months, we've seen about five to six economic shocks, which means that changes the industry or the business model or requires some sort of actual change.
00:37:49
Speaker
Over the course of a you know leader's lifetime before, depending on industry, 20 years ago, that was about three to five shocks you you could expect for your like tenure as a leader over a course of 30 years. We're talking about that same level and, you know, 18, 24 months.
00:38:04
Speaker
That's huge. Like we just have to acknowledge that AI is coming in at a time where you're grappling with inflation, tariffs. ah We experienced the longest government shutdown. We are still partially shut down in some cases. This impacts the supply chain and businesses in profound ways.
00:38:21
Speaker
um And so I think it's really important to put AI in its context to understand this is why it's becoming so much for leaders. It's not, I don't even think that so much they fear the technology as much as I don't have the capacity to also now deal with this.
Insurance Company's AI Strategy Lessons
00:38:34
Speaker
That's now I'm pursuing as a threat to my business. Then the second thing is to your point with AI, we have to like demystify it in it in a way It's, ah you know, I call it between a tool and infrastructure. It's the new infrastructure in which your business is not going to be built.
00:38:50
Speaker
It is not necessarily, you know, it's not anything beyond that. And I think we're trying to make it more than that in many ways. And I think the reason is it's about principles, as I talked about before, is what are the principles that no matter how good AI is going to get, you're going to retain this as a human only job.
00:39:06
Speaker
We see this all the time, like, or this will be a human only task. We haven't done that messy change in management work. No one wants to lay out diagrams right now, workflow processes, but that's the work that needs to be done right now if we're going to actually see where does AI fit. not We're doing this all backwards. And like that's a change I've never seen before. If we're starting with AI, we're starting And then trying to like plug it in as opposed to actually starting with the business problem, the friction, what's the value that we're trying to create? And then where does AI actually enhance that? And I just, I think it's just because leaders don't have the time, and energy and attention to do the business process work that we all know. Like it's actually good business hygiene. We've been doing it since the eighty s That's how we did so well with the internet. That's how we did so well with cloud.
00:39:47
Speaker
But for some reason, and I think it's because the complexity, AI is not following that same good just change management process. Can you point to a story of a leader or maybe a leadership team that so far has misunderstood AI or misunderstood the impact of AI on their business?
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'll give you an example, a real life example that I was recently with. So this was an insurance company client. And so I was working with the executive team and they were really focused on becoming an AI company.
00:40:20
Speaker
They're like, we're not just, again, seeing this across was on and every industry, but this insurance client said, you know, we're going to now be an AI enabled insurance company. We're an AI company. And, you know we're kind mean know, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking to myself, it's a little bit of a stretch. Like tech companies should be building the tech. You're a consumer of the technology, not really the producer of the technology. But, you know, I went with it. I'm like, OK, let's see where they're going to go And Eric, they spent an enormous amount of money trying to build their own large language model.
00:40:46
Speaker
ah We're going to build. ah we We don't want to buy anything. We're going to build our own model. You know, we've got machine learning experts. Yeah. And they poured in so much money and they had about a 12 to 18 month roadmap before they finally called timeout and said, you know what?
00:41:00
Speaker
We are actually consumers of technology. We are not an AI company. We are an insurance company. And here's our value like our value proposition has not changed. The question now is what AI tools can we buy?
00:41:12
Speaker
And customized to actually deliver on our value to our customers. And that shift was so palpable because it was the leadership team prior to that. You felt the anxiety, like you just felt everyone was going with it because i don't know if you're familiar with the Aberlene paradox, but it was Aberlene paradox where everyone is going in the same direction, even though no one actually wants to go to the destination.
00:41:33
Speaker
Same thing that I'm seeing with AI is everyone's like marching towards this like quest to cross ai valuation bridge to become an AI company thinking they're going to become a, you know, unicorn two to three X valuation because they've proven to the street that they become AI. That's not real. I don't think that's what this moment's about. i think this moment's about understanding this amazing technology that we've never had before. It's about democratizing intelligence and it's about being able to do something different.
00:41:58
Speaker
And so the analogy that I gave to this, you know company that I'm using on my keynotes is, I think of AI a lot like the elevator. Before, you know, in the 1880s, before the elevator was created, most buildings, the highest we built was about five to six stories.
00:42:11
Speaker
It just wasn't practical. As soon as the elevator came along, architects changed and we started seeing skyscrapers and our city lines completely transformed. My fear is what I see happening with AI is individuals and leaders are so excited to move between these five floors even faster of like, OK, I now have AI, so I'm going to still stick with my floor plan. And I now can move from floor one to floor five record speed as opposed to saying, let's reimagine this entire experience. And what's a skyscraper opportunity for us? And that's what the insurance company was actually able to pivot towards because it was no longer chasing that same model, but just trying to move faster with an AI tool they built internally. It was actually how do we redesign the actual customer experience here to actually build a skyscraper moment and do something that's going to actually deliver value. And that's what I think is missing in many of the clients that I'm working with.
00:43:02
Speaker
They're chasing the wrong thing when it comes to AI. Yeah. And when you say, you know, chasing the wrong thing, or maybe more specifically like, oh, I can just go from floor one to floor five faster.
00:43:16
Speaker
It seems like that's the kind of situation where say, oh, well we can just do the same amount of work with less people, or we can do way more work with the same number of people.
00:43:30
Speaker
But maybe we lose sight of, does this fit the quality that we want? does Are we still delivering, whether it's a product or service, are we still delivering it in the way or thinking through it in the way that is appropriate?
00:43:46
Speaker
And so that, you know kind of speed thinking, or we can just do so much more volume, whatever is eroding the work that the human beings are actually doing versus other situations that are maybe easier, easy to pick out. But I'm curious if you found some, and maybe it came out of this, you know, the realization or this insurance company versus these other situations where I think AI has a real potential to enhance human work.
00:44:21
Speaker
But I don't think a lot of us are doing that very well right now because we just don't even know what to do. I think that's really fair. I mean, I would be curious to, you know, with you being an entrepreneur, I'm not sure I could have built my business the way I am and be where I am without AI in many ways. like I think being able to democratize access to legal information, not saying i replace my you know lawyer, I have a retainer, but being able to to create marketing materials at the amount that I'm able to do at the cost savings, I'm able to do that is what has made me able to take this leap. And I think actually scale a growing keynote advisory business faster than I would have otherwise.
00:45:06
Speaker
Um, but I'm very aware that if I were to do this five years ago, I would be hiring people, but I'm not sure I had the capital to actually hire the people. And so it's like, we're caught a little bit in this game.
00:45:17
Speaker
So to me, I think there's tremendous opportunity where I see the opportunity right now is an entrepreneurship. small businesses, areas where people literally would not have access to that resource or that revenue stream.
00:45:31
Speaker
The ability to really begin to customize and personalize from a research perspective before even get on the phone with people is tremendous. So like my intelligence about the people i'm connecting with is really elevating my human connection when I get into a room to do advisor, do a keynote.
AI's Potential for Entrepreneurs
00:45:47
Speaker
So that to me is when I feel like I'm operating in the promise of AI, where it does feel like it's augmenting and it's allowing me to deliver more value and ultimately connect deeper with humans and increase my human capacity to do what I need to do in this world. So I just worry, though, I'm seeing that in more of like entrepreneur, small businesses.
00:46:05
Speaker
as opposed to the big corporations right now who are like, hey, we're sending a lot more emails. And guess what? They're all starting to sound the same because I was now using the pre-installed chatbot that's there. So that's, again, I think going back to like the skyscraper versus elevator example, I think it's gonna a lot harder for organizations with 100,000 plus people to figure out what does this actually look like? And I think that roadmap is much longer than some of these low-hanging fruit that people you and I can take advantage of that otherwise wouldn't.
00:46:35
Speaker
When you have a hundred thousand person organization, you know, the, it's a, just an extension of the Pareto principle that it's, what is it? It's like 1% of your people produce 50% of the work.
00:46:48
Speaker
And, and of course we could apply that and test it in numerous areas, whether we talk about not just work, but work volume, profit, revenue, problems. You probably have 1% of the people who you know produce 50% of the problems as well.
00:47:07
Speaker
And same thing in your client base and so on. But I think when you have 100,000 people, you have 50 people, even when you have fifty people that you have a lot of different personalities that even if you have a really strong organizational culture where the the you know there's a strong influence over people's behavior you know just as strong as there is with the you know some identity that you have from the town you grew up in or your family or whatever even if you have a really strong culture in your organization
00:47:40
Speaker
getting 50 people to experiment with Jajupiti whatever it is and deal with all the frustrations that you have to deal with when it hallucinates or when the, what you get is just garbage because you're not willing to spend multiple rounds saying, no, that's not what I want. No, that's bad. No, that's whatever.
00:48:02
Speaker
Then it becomes hard to turn that ship. And with an individual, you know, you or I can found a business and yeah, we don't have all the capital in the world, but we also don't have standards that we have to hold to. We don't have employees that we have to continue employing or, you know, maybe you have one or two or three, but you don't have 50 or a hundred thousand.
00:48:29
Speaker
And so it seems to me, I've used this phrase numerous times as it relates to this, like there's a rich get richer, poor get poorer aspect to this that is, I think, more dependent upon things like your personality or behavioral traits.
00:48:46
Speaker
And also what are yourre the realistic pressures that you are under? Like if you, Kelly, have to have a paycheck today,
00:48:57
Speaker
then you just cannot take as many risks as somebody who says, well, I have 12 months of emergency fund or something like that. Absolutely. But then somebody who has 12 months of an emergency fund, they also have to have the personality to say, either I am curious and I really want to play with this new toy and figure out what it can do,
00:49:23
Speaker
or I'm not curious at all. I just know that I have to do it. It's like eating right and exercising. I just have to do it. And if you don't have that reality of having time, space, financial, you know, lack of financial pressures, and also the willingness or desire to play with this thing,
00:49:42
Speaker
then the, as this wave crests, you're left on the backside of it and everybody else, the few people that are on the front side of it are getting pushed further and further away from
Human-Centered Leadership and AI
00:49:55
Speaker
you.
00:49:55
Speaker
And it's not just individuals though, I think to bring it back to a hundred thousand person organization, yeah you may very well have plenty of people in that organization who want to move forward, but you just can't change enough if you're one person or a hundred people or whatever.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the two things is absolutely, there's so much more risk, you know, especially depending on the industry too. We're talking about a hundred thousand people. That's a lot of IPs. That's a lot of, you know personal identifying information.
00:50:27
Speaker
i think just seeing from a compliance perspective, it's much harder to actually get this moment right. And the second thing, i think you're so spot on about the trade-offs um you know when it comes to being innovative right now. I did some work when I was at Accenture with Amazon. And Amazon has been very loud of like, we are trying to have a fully automated warehouse. We are trying to automate as many people out of a job. Like they have not shied away from that.
00:50:51
Speaker
And that has been a reality for a long time. However, have also put a lot of money and effort into upskilling programs and education reimbursement to make sure that people have a different alternative career pathway. And so I had like one of the best research projects I've ever done was with Amazon and figuring out in the U.S. what was the likelihood to move people into different careers. So ironically, this is like 2016, 2017.
00:51:16
Speaker
The idea was to move people in the warehouse to software engineers, coders. Now, in hindsight, now with AI, AI is most likely to take over coding jobs. But, you know, at the time, that seemed to be the most rational sense.
00:51:27
Speaker
But when we actually started to lay out the pathway, most warehouse workers did not have child care. They did not. um a lot of them were either maybe a single parent. They did not have enough you know emergency funds. They were unable to have transportation. Most of them were taking buses. And so when you start to actually lay out, what is the realistic reality of that person then going and sitting after working hours into a classroom to go learn a brand new skill, to your point?
00:51:54
Speaker
Really tough luck, right? And that is the reality of the people that we actually need to start upskilling and to start actually investing in do not have the luxury of people like you and i who might say, hey because of you know our privilege, because of the color of our skin, because of our education, because of maybe where we live, all of these things,
00:52:12
Speaker
we're able to do these things. I do want to acknowledge not everyone is able because AI is here or to go take that leap. And I think addressing those trade-off costs, spot on, i think is really just wise that you brought that up because I do think there's so many more human factors that go into this than just there's a tool available. Why are you not learning this? Why are you not motivated to do this? Well, because there's a laundry list of reasons that are happening in the background. Yeah, I agree with you. And there are so many examples that I can think of, you know, you can take it just into your own household and think of common conversations that spouses or partners have. Well, I, I find time to fold the laundry or whatever. Why don't you? and it's like,
00:52:56
Speaker
It's so hard to have empathy or even somebody who lives in your own house, right? Not to mention somebody who's on the accounting team or on the manufacturing floor that I know exists, but maybe I've never seen. It's like, well, why don't you just try using AI?
00:53:14
Speaker
They have their own challenges. Yes. And this to bring a full circle is why curiosity is so important right now is we have to get curious as opposed to saying or assuming they're lazy or they don't have the skill set or they're just not intelligent.
00:53:27
Speaker
It's to get curious of what's really happening at the surface. and Because again, if you come at the assumption, most people are going to want to get this moment right. If they're not, there's we got to get curious on why that's happening. What I recall about essential is that kind of the first third of the book or so you talk a lot about ai and then it's about the next two thirds as, at least as I recall it, you're talking a lot about.
00:53:53
Speaker
culture and leadership and not so much about not so much of a focus on AI, let's say. And so I forget if you said it or not, but there's this sort of human centered leadership kind of feeling to it, whether again, whether you say it or not.
00:54:10
Speaker
So you said curiosity and it was said before in the conversation, we've also talked about leadership. How do you identify, how have you identified what are really key elements that leaders, behaviors, you know, traits, whatever that leaders need to have nowadays?
00:54:31
Speaker
So one of the first things that we talk about when we talk about the essential leadership flywheel, it actually so starts with suspending your self-interest. And I think that's probably the hardest, but that is the starting point if if we're going to get leadership right. I mean, the whole purpose of leadership is not about you. It's about the people you're serving. And I think, I mean, have to go on a side trial, but I think like servant leadership has hijacked that a little bit. Like if I go to one more meeting and someone starts off like, I'm a servant leader. I'm like, okay, you're not. Because no one would, who is a servant leader, would identify, acknowledge themselves like that at their opening. um So I do feel like servant leadership has kind of hijacked a whole conversation a bit in a way that's, I think we've lost, again, lost the plot with that. But I think the reality is is really understanding becoming very self-aware of what your why is. Of course, like have taken a Hogan assessment. I am very motivated by power and commerce. and money So like, I know that's no surprise. I've gone into where I am
00:55:23
Speaker
um But I also know how to keep those things in check and balance that with leadership is so much more than just having power or making money. it is about bringing value and the value that I want to bring. Like at the end of the day, I identify as more of a professor and wanted to bring education and really educate um around this moment and and kind of bring that human perspective back at the forefront. Just again, reminding leaders like this, this is what this is about. It's not just about increasing your balance sheet to a perspective that you can't even spend. It's really about what's the legacy and impact that you're going to make. And I think that's the heart that we all identify to a degree with. So number one, it's, it's about having a level of self-awareness and being able to spend yourself in trust.
00:56:05
Speaker
It then really deals with getting curious. But I think the other thing that we've talked a lot about right now is the skill of adaptability and doing being able to adapt both with the times, both with the shift in culture that's happening and doing able to do so, though, with kindness and grace.
00:56:24
Speaker
And I think that is where we're losing um our sense of you know humanity a bit in the workplace is we're all moving with such speed. We're making so many assumptions about the other person working alongside of us that sure we're adapting, but I don't know many of us would say we're adapting with grace and kindness.
00:56:40
Speaker
And those are like really core values for me. When I was leading teams of, and I, cause I got this feedback very early on in my career. and Someone said to me, you know what, Kelly, it's better to be kind than right.
00:56:51
Speaker
Because i before was leading out of like, no, this is the right thing to do. And I'm right, you know, and this is like, you know, the path forward. And so having that shift right now, I think of being able to have that kindness and grace is a lost art in our organizations.
00:57:06
Speaker
And then finally is what we've talked about um a little bit too is wisdom. And what I mean by wisdom is really knowing not every decision is going to be easy. Not every decision a win-win. Like, forget about that. Many decisions right now that leaders are facing are lose-lose.
00:57:20
Speaker
And I think for wisdom is how do we account for the human cost of our decision-making? And how do we make sure that we're making good decisions on that account and even you know qualifying that?
00:57:30
Speaker
As economists, we tend just to write it off and call it an externality. Oh, we're including the environment. We've done all these layoffs. No big deal. It's an externality and we move on. I think with wisdom is actually bringing that back to the forefront and saying, how do we account for these human consequences and how do we consider that and actually move forward in the most human way possible?
Social Dynamics and Remote Work
00:57:49
Speaker
So plenty people know Robert Putnam because of his book Bowling Alone. And then i think one of his other popular books was Our Children or something like that. And, you know, he's he's done plenty of research. But, you know, the basic idea behind Bowling Alone or the, you know, titular example is that in the ninety s even as the total number of people that were bowling was going up, groups of bowlers were shrinking.
00:58:17
Speaker
In large part because of the example that he gives in the book is people going bowling alone as a form of relaxation during their lunch break from work rather than, you know, like sitting and eating lunch with their coworkers or doing something else with other people and or waiting to bowl.
00:58:35
Speaker
after work. And, but not long after he published Bowling Alone, it was a couple of years later, he published this research and they found that, and this was really controversial at the time, that in the most heterogeneous communities, the most diverse communities, essentially trust of one's neighbor was essentially half that of what it was in the most homogeneous communities.
00:59:09
Speaker
And he and his collaborators spent years researching this. Like, why is this actually the case? And why is it like this? Because a very surface level read of it is, see, diversity failed.
00:59:23
Speaker
You know, you can't, you can't get people together that are different because they don't trust one another. They won't work together. And, you know, they found things like in the most diverse communities, as compared to the least diverse communities, on average, people vote less, they volunteer less, they give to community charities, whatever else, less, they're there less involved.
00:59:48
Speaker
And What they ended up finding really the the driver of this is that it's not just getting people who are different from one another together that, you know, tears down the walls or um improves empathy for a different person. You have to actually give them a reason to be together.
01:00:10
Speaker
They have to have something to work on that's important to them. So if you and I, let's just say that, you know, we came from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, right? Like it doesn't matter that our skin color is essentially the same here, but we're very different and we can tell that we're different. You know, we can see it or we can hear it in your accent, my accent.
01:00:34
Speaker
Well, if we just live next to each other, but we don't feel like we're a part of the same community, but when somebody, you know, litters out in front of our houses, we don't feel like there's a reason to pick up a litter.
01:00:50
Speaker
Then we will never break down the, or, or will never dispel the assumptions that we have yeah about one another.
01:01:01
Speaker
But as soon as we feel like, no, we're actually a part of this together, then you start to learn that, oh, those things that used to divide us, they're not that important. You know, what's more important that we're a part of something, you know, we're, we are a part of this neighborhood, community, church, company, whatever it is.
01:01:19
Speaker
And i I do think that one thing that concerns me about, you know, i think was it, was it Reed Hoffman who talked about the tour of duty and you know, that like he is, I think that it was an essay or something that he wrote decade or more ago. And he said, you know,
01:01:45
Speaker
Companies are not families that, you know, you, everyone should think of their career as you're being hired basically to work on a specific project and you're going to be in that role and likely that company only for a year or two, and then you're going to move on.
01:02:01
Speaker
And that's actually okay. And it can be empowering, but the, you know, continual like job hopping or not being loyal and loyalty goes both directions, you know, from the company to the employee and and back.
01:02:16
Speaker
And so something that concerns me about that, something that concerns me about only freelancing or even if you're part of a company but remote work where you're connected to everyone in the company over Slack or Teams or whatever you're using, right but you're not really having deep interactions with people that who are often different from you because that's one thing that's actually sort of unique about work is we're forced to work with people who we wouldn't otherwise choose to work with
01:02:50
Speaker
And when we're a part of something together that we actually feel like is important, we get repeated interactions and we go, oh, you know what? The color of their skin, their sex, their whatever.
01:03:00
Speaker
Turns out it doesn't matter, right? One thing that concerns me about you or I being able to do more work as a solo entrepreneur because of AI is not being a part of something bigger than ourselves and how that may make it harder to have empathy for other people.
01:03:22
Speaker
And I don't want to throw this out there like the big bad, like AI, scary thing, like I was saying out there in the dark and, or just, you know, it's easy to present a problem. It's hard to find a solution, but it it does concern me when we talk about having curiosity, you know, or, um, that being really focused on, I agree with you on the whole servant leadership. yeah I don't want to be a cynic, but I am Kelly. know
01:03:54
Speaker
ah yeah like we It's easy to to claim to have empathy or integrity or curiosity when I don't actually have to deal with anyone else.
01:04:08
Speaker
And we are we can move so much faster when we are alone. But we, what's, that what's that statement? It's like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yep.
01:04:22
Speaker
And, and i think that there's just a lot of this stuff of like job hopping of or remote work is awesome. I mean, I've worked remotely or I can't even remember now 13 of the last 14 years or something like that.
01:04:39
Speaker
Um, solo entrepreneurship, whatever that, does make it harder to feel like we're all part of ah country or a company or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think you're spot on with that. I think it's, it's probably one of the unintended consequences of all this convenience and all this intelligence that we have, that we are very wide and not very deep on almost many things, including relationships I actually think, to your point, we have a crisis of human relating today a variety of reasons. I mean, this I think a byproduct of that, we see that with the polarized workforce and our inability to even have conversations that somehow meet somewhat in the middle of you know being able to listen to one another. um And we can blame social media. We can blame AI. We can blame all these other reasons. But the end of the day, as humans, we have a state accountability that it is ultimately our behavior.
01:05:29
Speaker
And, you know, I think one of the things that I'm doing right now is purposely seeking out, especially diverse communities, because it is very easy to, especially as a remote worker, building a business, having a business partner that looks and sounds like me, to your point, it's it's easy But that's not going to be, I know from research and data, the most innovative ideas, the most ability for us to expand is by widening that circle. And not just widening it, being able to do point to go deep. And so we have to reprioritize instead of bowling alone, to use the example, to go have lunch in the cafeteria or go call up a colleague or a neighbor and go out and grab a cup of coffee like
01:06:06
Speaker
This is part of that muscle that we, I think, to your point, especially COVID did us no favors here whatsoever at all of isolating us. um I think we've got to really go back to socialization and being able to get out. And that's hard when you when you are a remote worker and you have been home or commuting five days a week. the last thing you want to then go do is go out. But. I do think we have to be so unintentional right now to seek community. Like whenever there's a problem, community is the answer.
01:06:33
Speaker
And community right now is what's lacking. And it's not going to come through Slack channels or a Zoom happy hour. Like that is not community. Community is about doing hard things together. And I think there's so many problems we can actually solve. And that's one of the things that when I work with executive teams of, you know, everyone's, I want more cross-functional collaboration. I want my people to actually work together.
01:06:52
Speaker
Well, what's the problem they're solving together? And I think because we're not problem solving together, we're not in the trenches together, we create artificial community. And my big fear, too, is, again, not to, you know, weaponize ai but you see the shift of finding that community in AI. And that's in the research i when I was at Upwork we found is that AI super users were more likely to trust AI than their human colleagues. They were more likely to use it as an empathy and coaching tool than they were their leadership teams. They were more more likely to think, say, that AI was polite back to them than their human co-workers.
01:07:25
Speaker
That, to me, signals we have a human relating problem. And if I'm a CEO of a company right now, not only is it about adapting AI I'm worried about, I'm also figuring out how do I fix the human relating program or a problem that we now have?
01:07:37
Speaker
It's not necessarily bringing everyone back together five days a week. That might be part of it for some organizations, but there's something more profound there that I think the true unlock needs to recur. And I think when you've worked in those companies, you know it. And I think it's how do we actually do that in a way that doesn't manufacture crisis, but actually gets a diverse group of people working together.
Challenges in Remote Work Implementation
01:07:55
Speaker
That is when like this community is formed. And I think that's when problems actually become solved.
01:08:00
Speaker
I'm curious about your perspective on whether it's return to office mandates or if it's just the trajectory of work with, you know, having a lot more remote workers now, I'm curious about, you know, when you think that remote work or distributed work has strengthened or weakened organizations or,
01:08:26
Speaker
I think we are still in an influx, to be honest with you. I think both pathways are being executed pretty poorly at the moment. And I think, again, it's it's really it's hard to get this right. or We're not going to I mean, distributed remote work really became mainstream during the pandemic. So it's not like we've had this like 10 year playbook that we can now say, OK, well, this is how we build a culture in a remote environment.
01:08:46
Speaker
This is how you build community. and And this is how you can mimic that same emotional and psychological connection. over a two by two screen. Like that's, that's something I think we're still honestly trying to figure out. um And so I think what I've seen go right companies that are, let's say fully distributed or partially distributed,
01:09:05
Speaker
Bringing together intentional on-site moments that matter. And so like what I found in my research when I was at Facebook Meta, the times that matter most are during like a product launch or product kickoff. When you have a big project, bringing that team together for a couple days to kick that project off, so much faster results and so much better success than going back and working in a distributed environment and then coming back together to celebrate the success. And or failure and doing a postmortem to figure out like those two were key moments in any project lifecycle that we prioritize to bring people together.
01:09:36
Speaker
Another really important thing is an early career. Having early career people in office working with managers is actually super important because at the end of the day, we're social learners. I mean, I was in an an office worker for the first 15 years of my career. Like that's I can now work remote because I had all that institutional knowledge and understanding like, oh, this is how politics work.
01:09:55
Speaker
um And so that's really important is having that early careers coming together, obviously for onboarding. And so I think there's the companies that are getting this right are those that are intentionally designing, putting budget towards those moments that matter.
01:10:09
Speaker
And I come from the HR space. So moments that matter are not just your typical onboarding, you know, promotion, alt performance management. I think it's different now. And I think it's actually about the work itself. And i think when it comes to office, you know, coming back from the office, I am seeing hybrid, even though the research early on, you know, hybrid was getting the best results. It's behind closed doors. A lot of executives are telling me, Kelly, people are not badging it or they're gaming the system and badging it for coffee or even badging it at midnight. And you start to play this really weird game.
01:10:38
Speaker
And so to me, In office, if you're going to go in office, I was actually just with ah Stephen Bartlett last week at a conference and he has a true belief in that kind of share it with him of like either go all in or go all out. I think like this in between is really struggling for people because it's a gray area.
01:10:55
Speaker
It's now becoming more compliance oriented. People are feeling inequity. And so I think in some ways, I think leaders have to be courageous and bold to make a choice. I still strongly believe the future of work is distributed. i think you're in it like the reason why Meta started to recruit remotely before the pandemic was because there wasn't enough talent in the Bay Area to do what needed to be done.
01:11:13
Speaker
And so if you want to globalize talent, I think you have to have distributed work. And I think you have to be really intentional when you bring people back in.
Beyond the Desk: Leadership Philosophy
01:11:21
Speaker
But likewise, if your culture is about being in person, that's OK. I think we'd be transparent about that. But I also think you have to go all in on that and not kind of have this great in between, you know, unknown zone, which I see a lot companies still operating. under I would love to hear, even if it's obvious and I'm just dense, Kelly, what the name of your business signifies or what it's related to and then where do I go to learn more and whether we've talked about it or not, is there anything you would want me to be thinking about or words of wisdom after this conversation?
01:11:56
Speaker
Beyond the Desk came from trying to get leaders to think differently. So also it's not just about remote work or flexible work. It's actually about leaving your desk to go get curious about the people you work with. So what does leadership look like beyond the desk?
01:12:11
Speaker
So that's where that name came from. and And we exist to help leaders move beyond their desk. And all those activities like culture, like engaging your employees, like making hard decisions that aren't easily done in a spreadsheet, that's where Beyond the Desk actually comes in to help you with that.
01:12:26
Speaker
To go learn about it, it's beyondthedesk.com. um To learn about me, it's also, you can go drkellymonahan.com. So drkellymonahan.com. And then words of wisdom.
01:12:40
Speaker
You know, I think where I'd love people to be thinking about after listening to this podcast, which Eric, want to thank you so much for asking all these great questions and time flew by. I really want us to, one, recognize the moment that we're in. And I think the hardest thing for leaders to do right now is to look at reality.
01:12:57
Speaker
And so that's actually my challenge to all of us is how do we get comfortable looking at reality? Because then we can actually go do something about We can have the agency and go be empowered to actually make better decisions.
01:13:08
Speaker
And I think that's really what Essential is about. The book I have coming out this fall is called Reclaim the Plot. And a lot of that is helping leaders to really look at reality, all the changes that are going before them today, and actually have the agency and power to do something about that. Because I think more than anything right now, we need more humanity back in the workplace. And that's going to only come from leaders who are courageous to actually look about what's happening, get curious about what's happening, and be able to make a different decision than maybe they would other few years ago.
01:13:35
Speaker
I appreciate you being here, Kelly. I've really enjoyed talking to you. And, you know, I think you mentioned having a TEDx talk or something earlier. I have watched it and i felt i found what you have been working on over years now to be very interesting. So it's it's been great to have you here.
01:13:52
Speaker
Thank you so much, Eric. I wish you all the best of luck too. And and hopefully just we'll make it a small dent in making the work world of work just a little bit better. Well, thank you.