Latest / Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews) / John Winsor’s Open Talent Playbook: Leveraging AI, Driving Innovation, and Building a Global Talent Network

Transcript

John Winsor’s Open Talent Playbook: Leveraging AI, Driving Innovation, and Building a Global Talent Network · Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews)

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I think that's the issue. Somehow, big companies
0:03
especially in the bureaucratic part of the organization.
0:05
It's not focused on outcomes. It's focused on
0:08
jobs and roles. What do I need? Oh
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I need an Sv of Ai kinda putting
0:12
it off instead of saying, this is the
0:15
outcome, what tasks do I need, what skills
0:17
do I need? How do I match that?
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Welcome to activation your host, Peter Hi. My
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guest today is John Windsor. John is the
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executive in residence at Harvard Business schools laboratory
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for innovation science, which studies, artificial intelligence and
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workforce transformation strategies. He's also founder and chief
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executive officer of open assembly, a company that
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provides content, community, and strategic advising to organizations,
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people and platforms
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to c create the future of work. John
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is also an advisor to the digital initiative
0:48
at Harvard Business School. John Author of several
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books, including beyond the brand, Spark, flipped, and
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the best selling baked in. His most recent
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book is Open talent, leveraging the global crowd
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to solve your biggest challenges. And previously, John
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was the chief innovation officer of the French
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global media
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agency, H, which fired his open advertising agency
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Victories and spoils in 20 15. John welcome
1:11
to techno. It's great to speak with you
1:12
today. Thanks. Thanks for having me. That's a
1:15
great pleasure. Well, let's begin with the... I've
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got a copy of your book here, open
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talent.
1:20
Congratulations on on Thanks. Your latest work. Why
1:23
don't we begin? What what you mean by
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open talent to find that for us if
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you would. Yeah. I mean, I think, you
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know, it it essentially, we tried to come
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up with a a term that really
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really took its seeds from open source software
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that seemed to be, you know, a really
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great place start and and, you know, hands
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open talent. I mean, these strategies have been
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going around for a long time, whether it
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was freelancing
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or it was crowds or the gig economy
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1 of the things we've seen emerge is
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we think, you know, language is really important
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and trying to create a common language and
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common process,
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especially for enterprises to adopt. Right? And and
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1 of the things when we looked around,
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and we've studied this at Harbor for a
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while. 1 of the things that's happened is
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the gig economy really gotten coop opted by,
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you know, B2c services where algorithms are really
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controlling people when they work and how they
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work. And so, you know, I'm a driver
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for Uber. I'm told by an algorithm where
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to go to do my work, and I'm
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told who to work with, so who to
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pick up. And so,
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whereas you know, we look at open talent.
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As really 3 prong. 1 is building an
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external talent cloud, which includes freelancers,
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and and that really, you know, freelancers are
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really higher end, folks that are kind of
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subject matter experts that can really launch in
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and help companies.
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And then building internal talent clouds which are
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how do you kind of capture the cognitive
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surplus of your of your employees and then
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open innovation contests, which is something we've have
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a lot of experience at the labs we
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build all the stuff at Nasa.
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Oh, well, I wanna get into each of
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those and have you kind of provide an
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overview of each. But before we I do,
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I wanna just from a context setting perspective,
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the whole notion of an open talent company
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is something you have a lot of experience
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with. You founded your first version of that,
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I think dating back in the nineties. But
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I should add, you know, wasn't, like, your
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first company, you had worked in traditional settings
3:12
prior to that. So
3:14
at at at a point where the term
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probably was not even coined. It was something
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that occurred to you as a model to
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employ, and I wanna understand what the inspiration
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was for starting your your first open talent
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company.
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I come to the whole study of this
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practice not as somebody trying to figure out
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how to help companies use labor, but how
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do I build an organization with a new
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business model?
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And and think about what does that mean?
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So, you know, it was back when I
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I... My wife was a professional triathlete in
3:41
bolder, and,
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this magazine that Billie Jean King started in
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in the seventies called women's sports and fitness
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was on the market timing kit bought it,
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and they were in the middle of bankrupt
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and they had 40 editors and writers. They
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just couldn't make it good economically. And so
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I had the opportunity to buy that. And
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all these... All my friends, the women athletes
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in Boulder were pushing me to do I
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flew to Nike and Mark Parker at the
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time was a mid level guy and and
4:05
Tinker Hat field. And, you know, I... My
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question was, like, hey. If I'm gonna do
4:09
this, I gotta put all my assets on
4:11
the line. Right? I got mortgage in my
4:12
house. I gotta do all this crazy stuff.
4:14
You think Wim do sports. This is back
4:16
in, like, 86, 87 and Parker was, like,
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yeah. Women are definitely gonna do sports we'll
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support you with a couple ads.
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And so, you know, it's was a huge
4:24
risk for us. And so, you know, it's
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as anybody, And and I always suggest innovation
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always comes from when your back the. Right?
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You have no other course. You've gotta figure
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it out. And so it was obvious before
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I met and, you know, purchase the magazine
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that the paradigm in the publishing industry. There
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were 2 big shifts. 1 was, you know,
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how do I just reduce the number of
4:44
readers to just a core readers leadership. And
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then the other thing was is, how do
4:48
I
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flip the panel. I couldn't afford 40 people
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editorial stuff. So I flipped the paradigm by
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saying, you know, instead of the paradigm of
4:56
a writer from New York who may be
4:59
real in into Yoga, but it never rock
5:00
climb coming to boulder and interviewing Lynn Hill,
5:03
who is 1 of the most prominent, you
5:05
know, rock climber, female rock climber in the
5:07
world. And trying to go back to New
5:09
York and get the story straight. There's just
5:10
this
5:11
propensity to get the story wrong because they
5:13
don't know the Nuances is of what Lin
5:15
talking about. And sometimes Lynn you know, how
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it is if you're subject matter x expert
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you talk in a very ob 2 language
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because you're used to your audience understanding a
5:23
lot of the new nuances. And so we
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flipped the paradigm. I got rid of the
5:27
40 editors and writers, and I hired 2
5:29
former New York editors put them in boulder,
5:32
but I had Lynn write her own story
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and that had editors edit it for the
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audience. Well, that kinda shift from 40 to
5:38
02:38
5:39
people out of the out of the system
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that that cost saved up money that we
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were profitable right away. And so that was
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kind of the first an inkling of that.
5:47
And then 1 of the things that I
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found really interesting after the woman sports and
5:50
Fitness, I sold that to Condo. And so
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I... But 1 of the things that was
5:53
frustrating when I was in the magazine publishing
5:56
businesses is that we worked with these early
5:58
adoptive consumers and is you know in your
6:00
work and innovation and and technology. They're are
6:02
always these kind of early adopters. You know,
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there's
6:04
traditional... Diffusion curve Right? You've got these early
6:06
adoptive consumers that are doing really great stuff,
6:09
and they could really influence the rest of
6:10
the market. And so we put a group
6:13
the women in our readers leadership, not at
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the bottom of the marketing funnel at top
6:18
and charge companies for strategy and product design.
6:21
Using these panels, we would call them, you
6:23
know, crowds or collect ti at the time.
6:25
It was kind of early days of market
6:27
research kind of doing crowds sourced market research.
6:30
And that worked really, really well. We worked
6:32
with Nike and h hp and Intel and,
6:35
you know, a slew of other companies. And
6:37
then I I merged that company with, agency
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called Crisp Porter Bogus, which at the time
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was about you know, there about 75 of
6:44
them, and there were about 14 of us,
6:46
and we merged companies, and we put... I've
6:49
written a few books by then, on c
6:51
creation. So
6:52
we put the idea of c creation. This
6:54
philosophy of, you know, how do we use
6:56
the power of people instead of us being
6:58
the Arrogant experts on creativity, you know, it's
7:01
the mom, you know, who knows how to
7:02
remove spots
7:04
from, you know, her kids outfits, you know,
7:07
that that is probably has a better voice
7:09
on it, What's really going on for hide,
7:11
you know, the laundry church, than we would
7:13
as a bunch of young creative.
7:15
And so we put that, you know, in
7:17
the center of what we did it worked
7:18
really well. We won 3000000000 dollars with the
7:20
business became creative global agency of the decade,
7:23
went from a hundred of us to 1200
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of us in 2 years. And just a
7:28
crazy ride, you know, 1 all these big
7:30
clients Microsoft and Domino's and and Volkswagen. And
7:33
1 of the things It was stressful was
7:35
we couldn't find enough labor to do the
7:37
work. I couldn't find enough creative labor.
7:39
There's just too much, you know, too to
7:42
turn. But what 1 the things we were
7:43
trying to focus on as being innovative, So
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we took on a new client an electric
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motorcycle company called Bra
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and literally frustrated because we can get any
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creative to do the work inside
7:53
So we were... We did the audacious move
7:55
as the newly appointed, you know, newly awarded,
7:58
credit agency of the decade. We decided to
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actually
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crowds source to creative, which pissed off the
8:04
advertising world in a huge way. But 1
8:06
of the things that we noticed
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is that holy crap. Like, the guy we
8:11
interviewed or the woman we entered... You know,
8:13
the guy we interviewed from when you Sydney
8:15
that couldn't come to boulder because of family
8:17
issues or the woman we interviewed, you know,
8:20
in London really wanted to work with us,
8:22
but she couldn't move either. And all of
8:23
a sudden, all these amazing people were doing
8:25
work for us. And it was like, they
8:27
were doing work during the hours that they
8:29
were supposed to be working for somebody else?
8:30
And I was like, this is cool. Like,
8:32
how can we capture the cognitive surplus of
8:34
this industry? Why do we need to move
8:36
people to boulder all the while we know
8:38
that they're gonna leave pretty soon as older
8:40
wasn't a creative hub.
8:42
And it Dawned on us that this whole
8:45
industry is gonna just imp because, you don't
8:47
need, you don't need to have,
8:50
kind of physical
8:51
migration to a place like boulder, you can
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digitally migrate, you know, from my anywhere in
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the world. And so I took that and
8:57
and launched my own company called Victor and
8:59
spoils.
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And
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Became... It was an agency based on crowds
9:04
sourcing principles. It became pretty
9:07
iconic for a couple things. 1 is that
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it was a big challenge to the current
9:11
paradigm.
9:12
But there were really 2 things that shifted
9:15
the industry, and that was, you know, Stuart
9:17
Elliott who wrote for the new york times
9:19
offered as this great opportunity to write an
9:21
article about us. And so he wrote an
9:23
article, but he said that stipulation was we
9:26
couldn't launch the company until the article is
9:27
written. And so in in October of 20...
9:31
The I guess it was 2009,
9:32
we were in my, you know, my garage,
9:35
3 of us who started the company.
9:37
And a little freaked out running out of
9:38
money saying, wow, It thinks is gonna work
9:40
and in that morning,
9:42
the article appeared in the New York times.
9:45
And by that night, 3000 people globally signed
9:47
up to work for us. And Dish Network
9:49
gave us their hundred and 10000000 dollar advertising
9:51
account. So we'd went from 0 to 15000000
9:54
dollars in in net revenue in, in about,
9:57
12 hours. And so that kind of put
9:59
things on app. Right? And and and from
10:01
our perspective, you know, it was really exciting.
10:03
Got to work. A couple years later, with
10:06
a lot of momentum and a lot of
10:07
notoriety, We noticed that Harley Day and was
10:10
up for review. And we you know, like
10:12
anybody else. We wanted to work for Harley,
10:14
but we knew by asking for permission to
10:16
be in the pitch.
10:18
That it wasn't gonna be able to... We
10:19
we would never get in there because it,
10:21
you know, those pitches are half million dollar
10:22
fares and they're it's all about dinners and,
10:24
you know, golf games and all these lavish
10:26
lunches.
10:28
And so my credit director evan fry, you
10:30
know, we were at the coffee when we'd
10:31
heard the news, and he was like, you
10:32
know, instead of asking for permission, Let's ask
10:34
for forgiveness. And
10:36
ran back to the office and literally in
10:38
20 minutes, we, you know, made a video
10:40
to our crowd and launched it. And just
10:41
said, hey, we're working for harley Davidson and
10:44
I'm putting 10000 dollars of my own money
10:46
up. Let's do some kick ass work and
10:47
see if we can get a meeting to
10:49
show up, you know, that this new model
10:50
works. And I wrote a blog post to
10:53
to Marco Rick a letter to Mark on
10:55
my blog. I never met before and just
10:57
saying, hey Mark, You know, I enjoy the
10:58
dinners and lunches. Super nice people, really creative,
11:01
really fun. As you're doing that, I got
11:04
10000 people working on your business. Give a
11:05
shot if you wanna see something.
11:07
And that hit Twitter, And literally, 20 minutes
11:10
later, Mark hans wrote me back, saying I'd
11:12
love to see the work tired of traditional
11:14
agencies.
11:15
And 2 weeks later, we went to Milwaukee
11:17
and won the glow billion dollar Harley Davidson
11:19
work, which blew up the industry. And so
11:22
because of that, in the notoriety,
11:24
David Jones from Boss, I saw him a
11:26
tad, and he said, he came... He approached
11:28
me and said, you know, you're you're great
11:30
at being controversial and throwing rocks at the
11:32
glass houses of the companies why don't you
11:34
come in here and help me fix 1.
11:36
And so III
11:38
decided to sell Victor Spoils to H boss
11:40
and become chief Innovation officer out of Paris.
11:43
And it was a shit show. You know,
11:45
was, like, these guys, you know, they did
11:47
not want that French did not wanna let
11:49
go of the, you know, the importance of
11:51
these amazing creative in Paris. They could not
11:54
see some, you know,
11:55
home in in in cl Cleveland doing creative
11:59
work. It was there you know, is there
12:00
identity. Right? And so
12:03
although the project didn't go well and David
12:05
lost a job that did the the Ceo
12:07
and I excited to leave. It was super
12:09
interesting and the thing I made it so
12:10
interesting was that the 3 guys,
12:12
Mike Tu,
12:13
Cream Lac connie and and and brought and
12:15
on.
12:16
Started doing a much case studies on us.
12:18
Wrote 1 on pictures and spoils and what
12:20
wrote a really big 1, which is still
12:21
1 of the best selling case studies at
12:23
Harvard 10 years later on on a boss
12:25
change faster on. The ability for organizations to
12:28
adopt to new business models.
12:31
We just, in fact, went back a few
12:32
months ago, and they're gonna create a Hp
12:34
o, Harvard business school online class on the
12:37
Os case study. We did this tenth anniversary
12:39
kinda, you know, update of it. But it's
12:41
been really interesting to see, you know, how
12:44
it's great as an entrepreneur because you're like,
12:46
this is awesome. I can, you know, reduce
12:48
my cost phenomenally. Can do great work. I
12:51
can use these business models.
12:53
Yet. It's just so hard for large organizations
12:55
to adopt. So that's the stuff we've been
12:57
trying to study, and and I went went
12:59
to Harvard after the case studies and
13:02
started working with the Cream Lac county at
13:04
the laboratory for innovation Sciences.
13:07
And 1 of the things that they had
13:08
done is back in 2007,
13:11
Nasa, Jeff Davis, who was the the head
13:14
of Health human services the chief medical officer
13:16
for Nasa. Had a real problem. He had
13:18
a budget cut of 80 percent
13:20
for that... The Health and human Services division,
13:23
which meant. He only had 20 percent of
13:24
the budget to keep astronauts alive in space.
13:26
And so he went to cream
13:28
that, you know, cream had studied under von
13:31
Hip, and then that was the democrat of
13:34
innovation, which was really 1 of the foundations
13:36
of this whole body of work.
13:38
And all of a sudden, we started doing
13:39
projects together with Jeff and things accelerated. We
13:43
were getting
13:44
phenomenal results from people around the world that
13:46
wanted to do work for Nasa.
13:48
So next year, the center of excellence for
13:51
collaborative innovation, which be we bill at Nasa,
13:53
we'll have a budget of a billion dollars.
13:56
And I think there's something really instructive here
13:58
is, like, 1 of the things I point
13:59
out in the book is you can have
14:00
a mindset. Like, we can look at Nasa.
14:02
Right? And we could say, wow, innovative organization
14:04
seventeenth thousand full time employees, some of the
14:06
most innovative people in the world. Right? That
14:08
would be a traditional way of looking at
14:09
it. The way Nasa looks at the organization
14:12
is they think of themselves a network organization
14:14
working with a workforce ecosystem. So because of
14:17
C, they have
14:19
17000 full time employees, we created some software
14:22
called Nasa work that allows them to connect
14:25
to their 30000
14:28
contractors.
14:29
And then C,
14:30
the center actually uses 40 other platforms that
14:33
tap into a hundred and 10000000 people globally
14:36
that are willing to do work for Nasa.
14:37
So a network
14:39
organization an abundant mindset would be, Nasa has
14:42
the ability to work with a hundred 10047000
14:45
people to do hard work for them. And
14:48
that mindset shift in Inside Nasa's been really
14:50
explosive and and and game changing.
14:53
But I find it so ironic. Right? I
14:55
mean, I think I was on the on
14:57
a thread this morning and somebody kind of
14:59
included me something on Linkedin, and mister Guy
15:01
Ireland trying to protect,
15:04
you know, trying to say, freelancing is bad.
15:06
You know, why should individuals have the rights
15:08
to do work that our great agencies do?
15:10
And he's a guy that runs an agency.
15:12
The way I responded was, you know, I'm
15:15
sure in 2006
15:17
and 7, maybe 2008,
15:19
there were a bunch of, you know, executives
15:21
that published these things called phone books. And
15:23
they probably rail against this thing called Google
15:26
saying, oh, Google's wrong. It's not right. We
15:29
spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars
15:31
reading these phone books, and that's the most
15:34
authentic way to get the information to define,
15:36
say, a,
15:38
I don't know, like, a dry cleaners. Right?
15:40
Publish once a year. I I found it
15:42
interesting when I did some research. Do you
15:44
know how much it cost to produce the
15:47
2007
15:48
yellow pages in Boston?
15:50
Hundred million dollars. Mike goodness this. Well, a
15:52
hundred million dollars for you and I to
15:53
find a dry cleaner. And now now that's
15:55
free. Right? That's free on Google.
15:57
And and somebody's putting up, you know,
16:00
recommendations. You get the latest information. And so
16:02
my sense is is every part of every
16:04
industry has been
16:06
digitally transformed and talent is a place that's
16:08
gonna... It's that it's inevitable. Same thing's gonna
16:10
happen. You mentioned earlier in your response you
16:12
talked about challenges that large organizations have with
16:15
with this sort of a model for obvious
16:17
reasons. There's already kind of a mode of
16:19
work. There's kind of a
16:21
a means of continuing to justify the organization
16:24
that's already there as opposed to a startup
16:25
for instance, that's a couple of people in
16:27
a and looking for easy ways to find
16:30
creative people on the cheap, for example, if
16:32
I may. Overly of.
16:34
Push sure describing. You so you but you
16:36
talked about it work for Nasa because they
16:38
were a network organization. Is that is that
16:40
a
16:41
necessary ingredient for large organizations to be able
16:43
to make work or are there other
16:45
versions of large companies or other characteristics that
16:49
are put of large companies that would allow
16:50
them to do this?
16:51
I mean, I think there's a couple things.
16:53
1 is
16:54
that I think we have to always
16:57
ensure
16:58
that we have a any organization, has a
17:01
customer centric
17:02
strategic
17:03
mindset. And what I mean by that, and
17:05
I look back to my own to my
17:07
own history. Right?
17:09
Back in the day,
17:10
I was just so curious,
17:13
like, publishing companies
17:15
weren't in the business of providing information to
17:18
the audience. It wasn't, like, let's say, fast
17:20
company wasn't in the business of providing
17:23
the latest
17:24
business information.
17:26
To their audience. Essentially what transpired was the
17:29
editor,
17:30
his vision was that. But, you know, soon,
17:32
what happens and I think this happens in
17:34
every company. The biggest expenses
17:36
in this case, putting ink on paper and
17:39
distributing
17:40
magazines,
17:41
those are the things that either make you
17:42
or break you profitability from a magazine company.
17:45
And so the executives that start running the
17:47
company are focused on putting ink on paper
17:50
and distributing the magazine.
17:52
Nothing to do with satisfying the needs of
17:54
the reader that of the editors and the
17:56
founders get kinda pushed off to the side.
17:58
And I think every
18:00
organization gets stuck in that. Right? As time
18:02
goes on, there are new ways to do
18:03
the same thing.
18:05
It's unfortunate. Right? I think when the internet
18:07
started, I guess because I was a magazine
18:10
publisher and a little bit Tech savvy,
18:13
I somehow just assumed that V Magazine was
18:16
gonna be innovative and own fashion online.
18:20
Yet,
18:21
Ko, all they cared about was making an
18:23
efficient way of putting ink on paper and
18:25
and distributing a fashion magazine.
18:28
Instead of being in the information
18:30
industry
18:32
supplying,
18:33
you know, the greatest fashion
18:35
information to their customers
18:36
However, they decide to buy it or have
18:39
the consume it, they were only in the
18:40
Magazine business, and they got wiped out by
18:42
social media, by,
18:44
online things. And I think that's the threat
18:46
for every company that you get siloed
18:49
into
18:50
not trying to deliver, like agencies. Right?
18:54
Agencies,
18:55
at least what I see now and in
18:56
this article this morning with this this this
18:58
opinion piece this morning was spot on in
19:01
this thinking is that... He's not thinking about
19:03
like, how do I best...
19:05
Let's forget about the business model. How do
19:07
I best deliver
19:09
advertising
19:10
for the the consumer for my clients
19:13
versus
19:13
I'm gonna protect my my business model. I've
19:16
got this moat and protect this antiquated business
19:18
model. It's really hard for organizations to change
19:20
that. Very interesting, John. Had classic innovators dilemma
19:23
scenario that you're describing there. For sure. And
19:26
I wonder how do you think about the
19:28
balance between,
19:29
internal resources, employees, when to bring on people
19:32
full time versus external talents such as the
19:34
high end freelancers you were describing, earlier,
19:38
how do you think about the balance between
19:39
those? What sorts of rules are, you know,
19:42
best equipped to have as as permanent employees
19:44
versus those that are not?
19:46
Yeah.
19:47
That's a great question. So III would suggest
19:50
that, you know, every... Not just every a
19:52
company as was described
19:54
you know, becomes protective of their bureaucracy and
19:56
their way of doing things, but so did
19:58
divisions inside companies. Right? So let's lay out
20:00
a scenario
20:02
Let's just say, Peter, you were disappointed, you
20:04
know, Ceo of a Fortune 500 company. And
20:06
it's a technology company, and the board told
20:08
you first thing you need to do as
20:10
an Ai strategy.
20:11
So, you know, there 2 ways to get
20:13
that done. Right? The first way, which is
20:15
the traditional ways is to say, go to
20:17
your C,
20:19
and say, I need Of of Ai. Well,
20:22
how long do you think it's gonna take
20:23
to hire an Sv of Ai today? It's
20:25
gonna take 6 to 8 months. Right? A
20:27
good 1.
20:28
And then you hire her, and she's gonna
20:30
take 3 to 4 months to hire her
20:32
team, and then it's gonna take 2 to
20:34
3 months to set up the processes to
20:36
get the strategy done. Then you're talking about
20:38
18 months. Now the alternative, if you have
20:40
an open talent mindset, you would say,
20:44
this... My my my outcome, I need to
20:47
have a strategy. Right? And I don't have
20:49
the talent house.
20:51
So
20:52
1 strategy
20:54
could be to go to platforms and say,
20:55
who are the 10 best people in my
20:58
field that our freelance that are around the
21:00
world, that I could invite in for the
21:02
weekend experts
21:03
and sit with my team when we can
21:05
do a 2 day strategy and define what
21:06
are the a hundred tasks in order to
21:08
accomplish that strategy, like that outcome. And in
21:12
a weekend, we could say, you know, hey,
21:14
Joe manufacturing doesn't know anything about Ai, but
21:16
he knows a lot about manufacturing. So I'm
21:18
gonna pair him with somebody. And we're gonna
21:19
put together and those hundred tasks are to
21:21
be assigned.
21:23
And within a month, you can create a
21:24
pretty good strategy. Right? With that that team.
21:28
You know, it's not a great strategy, but
21:30
18 months and a great strategy
21:32
is gonna be
21:34
nonexistent today. Right? And so I I think
21:36
that's the issue is that somehow,
21:39
big companies
21:40
especially have forgotten
21:42
But you see the C suite understands it,
21:44
but below that, in the bureaucratic part of
21:46
their parts of the organization,
21:48
it's not focused on outcomes. It's not focused
21:51
on outcomes.
21:53
It's it's focused on jobs and roles. Like,
21:55
what do I need? Oh, I need a
21:57
you know, an Sv of of Ai,
22:00
let them decide what the role what the
22:03
what the what the tasks are, let them
22:05
decide what the skills are. Kinda putting it
22:06
off instead of saying,
22:08
this is the outcome, what tasks do I
22:10
need,
22:11
what skills do I need? How do I
22:13
match that?
22:14
The reality,
22:15
according to Corn Ferry is that 8... There
22:17
85000000
22:18
tech jobs that will go filled by 20
22:20
30. It's gonna cost companies 8500000000000.0
22:22
dollars.
22:23
That's gonna get it reduced a lot with
22:25
Ai, You know, the speed of which Ai
22:27
is growing, but it's still gonna have, you
22:29
know, no matter who you are. You can't
22:31
hire the best talent.
22:32
Just don't wanna work for you, you know,
22:34
they have this ability to go do things
22:35
that they where they wanna do. So in
22:37
that case, if there's this
22:39
power
22:39
between demand setting the terms to supply the
22:42
best supply setting the terms.
22:46
In my mind, if you're focused on task
22:48
and outcomes, it doesn't matter. If somebody works
22:51
for full time or part time, you want
22:53
the best talent to get the best outcomes,
22:55
and like that's gotta be the focus. Yeah.
22:57
Really interesting. I I was
23:00
I'm particularly intrigued with your chapter on how
23:02
culture matters in an open talent world. I
23:05
could say like, a fascinating topic because I
23:07
think to the uni unemployed, 1 of the
23:09
first things they might think about is what
23:11
what John's talking about here is a disaster
23:13
from a culture perspective because you know, how
23:15
do you even form a culture when you
23:17
don't have people that are,
23:18
kind of bought in enough to be a
23:20
permanent employees of of of a institution? Talk
23:23
a bit about your thoughts about culture and
23:25
and why it does indeed matter in a
23:27
in a in a scenario like what you're
23:28
describing?
23:29
Yeah. So I I would say anybody that
23:32
thinks that there is a... If if you
23:34
have more than 1 office,
23:36
the thinks that you have a specific culture,
23:38
you're being naive. Like, the idea that, you
23:41
know, you have 10 offs around the world,
23:44
you have 10 different cultures. You know, where
23:46
the people are, you know, there there's lots
23:47
of different reasons for that. Right? There's in
23:50
office culture, there's cultures that people have, you
23:52
know, and where they live and what they
23:53
do and how they interpret things.
23:56
I I believe that the best
23:58
work is always an ecosystem. I mean, you
24:00
you you represent that. Right? You work on...
24:02
You help companies solve their big, you know,
24:05
strategy problems with technology and their culture problems.
24:08
You're not unemployed full time. They hire you
24:10
because you have a unique perspective because you've
24:13
had experiences out side of that. But you
24:15
are a part of this network. Credit? You're
24:17
part of what makes organizations really great.
24:21
For me,
24:22
I'm a, you know, climber and and surfer,
24:24
and I've spent a lifetime doing that. And
24:26
so I've worked a lot over the years
24:27
with Pat. And I was on the Board
24:29
of Directors of black diamond equipment, and
24:32
all of those organizations are network organizations and
24:35
network cultures. And 1 of the things we
24:36
used to do Black Diamond,
24:39
Peter Met, the Ceo,
24:41
you know, implemented the system that we would
24:42
build equipment all week Monday to Friday, and
24:45
on Friday and I would have a pizza
24:46
party,
24:47
and we'd take that all the equipment the
24:49
prototypes and we handed it out not just
24:51
employees but talk Anybody would show up in
24:53
the in Salt lake
24:55
to go test equipment, and that weekend can
24:57
everybody go out and they would break the
24:58
equipment, they would try it. And then Sunday
25:01
we'd have a beer party and everybody come
25:02
back together and mention like things. So it
25:05
was building a community that was much bigger
25:07
than call culture. I I think this idea
25:10
of there's an internal culture is just wrong.
25:13
Like, the the great cultures in the world
25:15
are ones that their customers are involved in
25:17
the culture, and their are suppliers and there's
25:19
this
25:20
ecosystem of culture. So for me, and we
25:23
call it the book, the network... A network
25:25
culture, But I think that's super important to
25:27
rethink
25:28
what your culture is and bring in outsiders
25:30
not just
25:31
great freelance talent or
25:34
using open innovation tools like contests, but also,
25:38
you know, how do we dis fill it
25:39
down so that other people can buy in
25:41
I mean, Nasa is a great example. Right?
25:43
Like, every...
25:44
I'm sure you see it too. Every 5
25:45
years you're walking through
25:47
some fashion, you know, district and some brand
25:51
has started to produce Nasa t shirts. And
25:54
you're like, wow, the stickiness of the Nasa
25:56
logo, the stickiness of the culture like, everybody
25:59
wants to be part of that? And and
26:01
I would encourage
26:02
brands and companies, no matter if they're ABB
26:04
or B company. Like, how do you do
26:06
that? How do you get customers
26:08
to tattoo themselves with your brand, not just
26:11
the giveaway away polo shirt. Right? But but
26:14
actually say, I love this brand. This represents
26:17
me to me, that's a strong culture.
26:20
And you've noted the
26:22
necessity to focus on outcomes, which I think
26:25
again is not the turkey For sure. It
26:27
it makes so much sense, of course. But
26:29
it it isn't the way the traditional work
26:30
is done. I mean, we, we you know,
26:32
most people think about you arrive at the
26:33
office at a certain time. I would granted
26:35
the pandemic has changed a lot of this.
26:37
For sure. So the world is actually many
26:38
ways moving towards the insights you've you've been
26:41
familiar with decades now. But talk a bit
26:44
about, you know, the necessary ingredients to be
26:47
able to be outcome oriented and and some
26:49
of the frankly, cultural shifts that are necessary
26:52
in order to to foster that.
26:54
Yeah. I I think it starts... You know,
26:56
there's a balance. Right? There's a balance between...
26:58
First of all,
27:00
it... It's a it's a bottom up and
27:02
a top down solution. Right? So the first
27:04
thing is, and and you you've probably seen
27:05
this and I... I'm sure that we're aligned
27:08
on this. It's like the current, you know,
27:10
argument about Ai. Like, you know, like, yeah.
27:13
Ceos can say, no Ai can be used
27:15
in the company. But that just isn't reality.
27:18
Right? Like, in in a open talent, 1
27:20
of the things that we studied at Harvard,
27:21
which I thought was super interesting is that
27:23
the free freelancer dot com, which is a
27:25
platform.
27:26
Has only a couple dozen Fortune 500 clients,
27:29
yet 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies
27:33
have an active corporate email that works weekly
27:36
on freelancer dot com. And so, you know,
27:39
you can put your head and sand as
27:40
a leader and say, you know, these are
27:42
my day mandates. This is not gonna happen
27:44
all the while. The reality is is your
27:47
workers are gonna try to find really good
27:49
and efficient ways to make their their jobs
27:51
easier.
27:52
And so, first of all, it's admitting that.
27:54
Right? It's admitting that this is gonna happen.
27:56
Like, these innovations happen whether we like it
27:58
or not. And we have to be a
28:00
part of it. So how are we gonna
28:02
adapt to that? And and I I think
28:04
that's the the first recognition. The second recognition
28:06
is just to start experimenting
28:08
I never would recommend whether it's ai or
28:12
or it's, you know, open talent to bet
28:14
the farm on, you know, let's you know,
28:17
let's get rid of everybody and use Ai
28:19
tools or let's, you know, get rid of
28:21
everybody and use freelancers.
28:22
But trying to find small
28:25
experiments that are non
28:27
risky that are that are kinda not threatening
28:30
to get work done. 1 of 1 of
28:32
our clients,
28:33
Us
28:34
who worked with for a long time, You
28:36
know, But not Cars got really interested in
28:38
the space and was really stoked. And he
28:40
found this really interesting place where, you know,
28:42
his Hr team
28:44
was supposed to put all us data into
28:47
the Oracle system.
28:48
But over a a couple of years, they've
28:50
been just using an excel
28:52
spreadsheet. And so there all this data that
28:54
was outside their system.
28:55
Well, they're trying to figure out what to
28:57
do. First of all, you know, V not
28:58
kinda mandated that the Hr department do it,
29:00
but they're so busy doing their day to
29:02
day job that they couldn't get to it.
29:04
So Hr department recommended that they use a
29:06
consulting firm, and v not got a bid
29:08
from the consulting firm for 3 months and
29:11
250000
29:12
dollars. You know, the reality I I've ever
29:13
written a couple states case studies on deloitte
29:15
and deloitte, you know, is super upfront. They
29:17
charge 5 times their employees salary, and that
29:20
pays for the Deloitte brand and the deloitte
29:22
offices, and all those things, it's not about
29:24
the work. It's about the deloitte brand. Right?
29:28
So now there are new matching ways. So
29:30
But not went out to great platforms like
29:33
graphite,
29:34
found 4 people to do the work bid
29:36
that out to those 4 people, and they
29:38
they put together a bid for 25000 dollars
29:41
and 5 days to do the work. So
29:43
So you're seeing this, like, can't get it
29:45
done with the team,
29:47
the the external use of external tools is
29:49
it's really expensive and slow.
29:51
And you can do it much faster using
29:53
freelancers. Now there's a responsibility for fin not.
29:56
Right? You can't just hand it over to...
29:58
You hand it over to deloitte. You know
29:59
that it's gonna get done that they have
30:01
your systems, but the not now has a
30:03
responsibility to understand what needs to be done,
30:06
to understand and, you know, the outcomes to
30:08
to own those outcomes. You can't blame, you
30:11
know, deloitte
30:13
the nets and that's 1 of the things
30:14
I think stopped this innovation. Right? A lot
30:16
of people wanna a neck to choke to
30:18
say, oh, Mckinsey, Those numbers might have been
30:21
right, But, you know, I wasn't successful because
30:23
they gave us a bad strategy.
30:26
Right. Yeah. Very interesting. Very interesting. I wanna
30:29
get into you You've mentioned a few different
30:32
recommendations you have in your book open talents.
30:34
First among them was was building an ink
30:36
external talent cloud. Can you just describe what
30:39
do you mean by that and the steps
30:40
to do so? Yeah. So we start with
30:42
the idea of building
30:44
building a a center of excellence. And that
30:46
could be 1 person that's passionate about it.
30:47
That understands the platforms. And I think sorting
30:50
out
30:51
what platforms
30:52
can help you do a great job, you
30:55
know, of of solving a problem. A couple
30:57
of really interesting places that I'm intrigued with
31:00
right now is in a couple platforms.
31:02
You know, 1 1 platform that's really interesting
31:04
to me is, you know, everybody's looking for
31:06
New talent. So that that
31:08
everybody's building
31:10
their own offices and call center, not call
31:12
centers, but but, you know,
31:14
workflow centers.
31:15
Latin America because there's a lot of good
31:17
tech talent down there. Right? And so a
31:19
lot of platforms are building, you know, big
31:22
big crowds from Latin America, and it's been
31:24
really, really successful. But 1 of the companies
31:26
that we work with called Mandela, you know,
31:29
started. Actually, it's such an interesting story. They
31:31
started,
31:32
They noticed that there was a a propensity
31:35
for African talent to be over indexing on
31:38
the ability to learn
31:39
computer science skills, software engineering skills. So pre
31:42
pandemic, they worked with Soft bank and a
31:44
few other large investors and built place based
31:48
education center, and they've trained a third of
31:49
the African tech talent.
31:51
Now coming out of the out of the
31:53
pandemic,
31:54
they have, you know,
31:56
really unique things to to really unique people
31:59
to be involved with your business. And have
32:01
really become a an open talent platform with
32:04
a hundred and 30
32:05
countries, but really created a great process. So
32:08
when you're looking for talent and not everybody
32:10
else is used or, you know, in, you
32:11
know, interesting points of view. They're really interesting.
32:15
Another probably
32:16
more interesting case study right now is there's
32:19
a platform called invisible. And invisible launched
32:22
a bit ago, maybe 7 years ago, but
32:24
in 20 20. They had an interesting insight.
32:26
They said, you know, What what would happen
32:28
if we aggregated
32:29
all the freelance talent for Ai software engineers.
32:34
Put together a crowd of 2500 software engineers
32:37
that had Ai specific, you know, experience
32:40
and sure enough in 20 21, Open, I
32:42
called them and then Meta and then and
32:45
then Google and then, you know, and then
32:47
ant all of the guys,
32:49
and it's scaled radically.
32:51
They're just growing, you know, doubling every every
32:54
couple months. But 1 of the things that's
32:56
happened is that invisible has been in building
32:58
those Ll m's
33:00
and they know that stuff. So they've decided
33:02
to create a, a new
33:04
process called the process orchestration platform.
33:08
And what they'll do, they they work with
33:09
large enterprises to go in and to say,
33:12
here the task need to be done, let's
33:14
atom those tasks. And decide which tests are
33:17
best for humans and which tasks are are
33:19
best for Ai
33:21
to really make you efficient. They've increased the
33:23
the, you know, the launch of chat Gp
33:26
by 6 months. So they're really into this.
33:28
But that's not stuff that any company can
33:31
get experience at. Just like, you know, no
33:33
company, we just had this Ai conference at
33:36
Harvard at d cubed
33:38
our big... You know, at the business school,
33:40
but our our big initiative called digital design
33:42
and data.
33:43
And the this president of Wealth Management for
33:45
Jpmorgan, you know, she said, hey, we've got
33:47
75000
33:48
data scientists.
33:50
We can't compete with Ll. We're not even
33:52
gonna try to do like that. What we're
33:53
gonna do is match each 1 of our
33:55
data scientists with a with the senior executive
33:58
or an executive,
34:00
and every executive will sit with a Ai
34:03
software engineer all day long, and Ai engineers
34:06
is only there to help make them more
34:08
efficient. And so, you know, Jamie Diamonds is
34:10
not gonna be Jamie Dim anymore. Is gonna
34:12
be super Jamie Dim with all these Ai
34:14
tools that are gonna be connected.
34:16
But I think those are areas
34:19
that no matter who we are as a
34:20
company, we can't
34:22
be fast enough in this area. We can't
34:24
get the knowledge. We can't get the people.
34:26
We have to use outside resources.
34:28
People that have done this a lot. And
34:30
so, you know, freelance is certainly a really
34:32
important thing. So building an external tale cloud
34:35
would start with connecting with a few really
34:38
good platform right? Either invisible or in other
34:40
cases, Mandela
34:42
and being able to tap into kind of
34:43
this higher end, you know, subject matter expert
34:46
to really accelerate things.
34:48
Recently,
34:49
a couple weeks ago Ron stat bought torque,
34:51
and 1 of the things they've noticed, so
34:53
to a a technical,
34:55
you know, crowd,
34:57
freelance platform.
34:58
And the president of of Ron was really
35:00
clear the Us president of Ron set. He
35:02
said, you know, the reason we're doing it
35:04
is that our margins and staffing industry really
35:06
shitty and we expect we're gonna put everybody.
35:09
We're gonna change radically change our organization and
35:11
put everybody in Ron digital
35:13
onto the torque platform.
35:15
And currently,
35:17
when we have a client call, it takes
35:19
60 days
35:21
to go through the process
35:23
and to be able to deploy talent to
35:25
somebody with all the analog process. You have,
35:27
you know,
35:28
Here's the brief. It goes out to a
35:30
hundred recruiters, A hundred recruiters compete against each
35:33
other to find the right talents.
35:34
It takes a while.
35:36
Torque can do that same work in 2
35:38
hours because they have this crowd of people
35:40
ready to go ready to work, digitally defined
35:43
ability to interview. And so those are the
35:44
kind of the radical shifts that you need
35:46
to do. But you can't get from here
35:47
to there
35:48
without employing either acquiring those companies or crime
35:52
acquiring those kind of relationships. Yeah. Super interesting.
35:56
And,
35:56
a complement to that, which you alluded to
35:58
is, building an internal talent marketplace.
36:01
To talk talk a bit about how those
36:03
work together.
36:04
I think that's really critical. Right? In our
36:06
in our work with Nasa, 1 of my
36:07
favorite
36:08
examples
36:10
in our Nasa work platform was that A
36:13
guy had just gotten commissioned or AAAA
36:17
budget for 5000000 dollars, 1 of the engineers
36:20
inside Nasa,
36:21
And the project that he got the budget
36:23
on was to figure out how do
36:27
detect
36:28
dehydration inside a space suit So it's gotta
36:31
be... You know, you got somebody out outside
36:33
of the space station, they, you know, whatever
36:35
they they they they pee in their system.
36:38
But is he dehydrated easy he not. Nobody
36:40
ever knew. Right? Nobody could could analyze that.
36:43
And so that was the project he was
36:44
working on. The idea of how do we
36:46
digitally separate these kinds of 2 different liquids.
36:49
He put that question up after he got
36:51
the budget, he put that question up on
36:53
the internal talent marketplace.
36:55
And loan behold, somebody else in Nasa had
36:57
been doing a project for a few years
36:58
of separating digitally separating 2 different kinds of
37:01
liquids and analyzing their content.
37:04
And using those principles, he was able to
37:06
accelerate 3 or 4 years worth of research
37:08
and 5000000 dollars of budget. He didn't need
37:10
to use a budget budget. He could solve
37:12
that problem.
37:13
I would suggest that this points to the
37:15
fact that most large organizations have probably somewhere
37:19
in your organization have probably figured out a
37:21
problem or a solution to the problem you're
37:23
working on. Yet because of bad communications of
37:26
relying on email or even Slack,
37:28
it's really hard to get that. And so
37:30
The question is, how do we capture the
37:32
cognitive surplus
37:34
of an organization? I would say, let's forget
37:36
about the external tale clouds for now. Right?
37:39
Like, where are the people in there that
37:41
maybe, you know, maybe he's a marketing guy
37:43
or she's a marketing person?
37:45
And and at night, she's gotten certified on
37:47
Google Ai training, and she's gotten, you know,
37:50
she's had 2 or 3 months of that.
37:52
Yet, there's no opportunity inside the organization for
37:56
most organizations to actually cross poll.
37:59
Gl a great example of a platform that
38:01
allows, you know, that not only ups skill
38:03
to be able to get new skills, but
38:05
also that idea that, you know,
38:07
you, Peter could say, I wanna, you know,
38:09
be in the Ai space. That's what I
38:11
wanna do with my career. Oh, look, there's
38:12
are some projects with my marketing experience that
38:15
I can kinda help out.
38:16
On my off hours to be able to
38:17
do that. I think that's a huge
38:19
acceleration.
38:20
Really great overview of that as well. And
38:22
then you, finally noted open innovation contests as
38:26
an important ingredient as well. Again, talk about
38:28
those if you would. I mean, I think
38:30
for a lot of companies that's terrifying. Right?
38:31
The idea that we built our identity on
38:34
the quality of our work or expertise and
38:37
my career built on it.
38:39
I mean, 1 of the more fascinating things
38:41
that happened at at Lyft
38:43
was that the Harvard Medical school called us,
38:44
and they had been doing a thing with
38:46
Broad Institute,
38:47
to think about new ways to sequence
38:50
some Dna.
38:51
And a abroad had spent a couple decades,
38:54
over a hundred million dollars to get this
38:56
kind of you know, ability to sequence this
38:59
Dna in 5 and a half minutes. Huge
39:01
success. Right? The guys who did it are
39:03
world famous
39:05
amazing. And so
39:06
came to us and we just... We're curious
39:08
We were say, wow. What happens if we
39:10
just did an open contest
39:12
in 1 month. Right? Put the prize money
39:14
at 35000
39:15
dollars. Let's do it in a collaborative way
39:17
where we invite people in, they get into
39:20
the contest by actually
39:22
proposing an algorithm
39:24
that tested to a certain level
39:26
And then once they're in, a certain level
39:29
compared to the standard.
39:31
Once they're in, then then everybody gets to
39:33
see the algorithms and it's a collaborative
39:36
project with 80 people across the globe to
39:38
see how fast they can build on each
39:39
other. Right? Well, the guys have probe were,
39:41
like, theirs is no way, and we spent
39:43
a hundred million dollars and 3 decades doing
39:44
where the smartest guys in There's no way
39:46
this will lower happen. Well, you know, their
39:48
standard was... Not only does it have to
39:49
beat the benchmark of their algorithm it had
39:52
to be 10 percent better to get in
39:53
the contest.
39:54
How long do you think it took for
39:56
somebody outside to beat their algorithm? Very rapidly.
39:59
24 hours. 24 hours. Yeah. But the crazy
40:02
thing was is the 80 folks that that
40:04
they gone in the contest
40:05
by iterating and and and being, you know,
40:08
psyche to do it And what we find
40:09
in the Nasa work. Right? There's 3 reasons
40:11
that people play open innovation platforms. 1 is
40:14
for the for the money. Right? But also
40:16
for the glory, like, I solved an algorithm
40:18
for broad.
40:20
And also for the for the guts, like
40:22
can I compete
40:23
with this?
40:25
And so over the next 3 weeks, this
40:27
crowd did the did the work guess how
40:30
fast the the the sequencing happened by a
40:33
guy out of Poland. Minutes
40:36
14 seconds. From 5 and a half minutes
40:38
14 seconds and the top 25 algorithms were
40:41
all under 30 seconds. My goodness. And so
40:43
if you're looking to solve really hard problems,
40:46
Unfortunately,
40:48
what I've seen And III bet you've seen
40:50
the same thing, it is that when companies
40:52
run into really hard problems,
40:55
they tend to start putting them on the
40:56
back burner. Oh, spent tens of millions of
40:58
dollars on that. We can't figure it out.
41:00
We've got more pressing things. That's not a
41:02
big deal.
41:03
Our suggestion always is to let... Let's pull
41:05
those out of the warehouse or out of
41:07
the closet and start giving those over to
41:09
contest to see if people can't kinda push
41:11
them along. And what we find is it's
41:12
it's not the fact that there are smarter
41:15
people outside your company. It's the fact that
41:17
a lot of those folks have adjacent knowledge
41:19
that your experts didn't even know existed because
41:22
it's not what they do.
41:24
The guy that solved the Rodents institute problem.
41:27
He is
41:28
he is a mathematician. He solved a lot
41:30
of problems for us.
41:32
Made a lot of money. But he's never
41:34
done a Dna sequencing or any biological
41:38
problem at all. It's just they had such
41:39
a different perspective on how to look at
41:41
the problem. He's able to solve it, and
41:43
I would suggest that every company has
41:45
intra problems that they cannot solve and they
41:48
need that adjacent knowledge and open innovation capabilities
41:52
allow you to think about things in a
41:53
in a new way.
41:55
Or are there, like, platforms that you would
41:57
recommend using or what? Yeah. Yeah. So W
42:00
is a really amazing platform. They focus on
42:03
the
42:04
innovation space.
42:05
So do innovation consulting, but they bought a
42:07
platform called innocent, which is 1 of the
42:10
grand daddy's of the space, and they... It's...
42:12
And it's in incentives done more work than
42:14
new anybody. A few others, but those guys
42:16
are, you know, the best. The problem with
42:18
these open innovation platforms that we've seen are
42:21
great platforms come along like C,
42:23
and then C gets bought by Google and
42:26
Google takes up a hundred percent of their
42:28
capacity. So C still round,
42:31
they still do amazing work. They have an
42:33
amazing community that does that work. It's just
42:35
a hundred percent of their capacity taken up
42:37
by Google. That makes sense. So we've talked
42:39
about Ai in for variety of different ways.
42:42
I I wanna kind of more squarely talk
42:44
about artificial intelligence and the role, you see
42:46
it playing. It sounds as though you're you're
42:49
largely an opt optimistic relative to the to
42:51
the the topic. You certainly see the necessity
42:54
for companies to delve into it. Rather than
42:56
to,
42:57
stick their heads in the sand as you
42:59
noted. Talk about how your own experience with
43:02
it has informed what you think the future
43:04
of these these work models are with, enhanced
43:08
with artificial intelligence.
43:10
It's interesting. Right? I I so I played
43:13
just like you, you know, played a lot
43:14
with it. I'm, 1 the things that I
43:16
I found pretty profound was that I took
43:18
all my my manuscript, all my writing
43:21
and put into its own Gp.
43:23
And then when somebody asks me a question
43:25
of, like, what are the 3 ways to
43:26
build an external tale cloud, I just go
43:29
to my tool and it builds that for
43:31
me. And so, and, it's based on my
43:33
information. And I can do that. I I've
43:34
actually written a few articles
43:36
or B not telling Hp that I've used
43:39
the Ai to build it and it's slid
43:41
right through and they're like. This is amazing.
43:43
What a great article.
43:44
And so I think that that's just the
43:46
reality. Like, it it to me,
43:49
you know, I I love this image that
43:51
you probably saw on the book. There's in
43:52
in 1900,
43:53
there was a picture of, you know, fifth
43:56
Avenue
43:57
across way, on Fifth Avenue. An intersection, and
44:00
there were all horses, you know, just jammed
44:03
packed with horses in 1 car.
44:05
And literally, 13 years later, that same intersection
44:07
was packed with cars and 1 horse.
44:10
And I think that's what we're talking about
44:11
here. Right? If you were a buggy with
44:13
manufacturer,
44:14
you could rail all day long off on
44:16
the fact that, you know, cars are unsafe.
44:18
They're dangerous. They're horrible. In fact, if you
44:21
look back in history, 1 the things that
44:22
I find super interesting.
44:25
Is theirs
44:26
there were some laws in Massachusetts that I
44:29
found, you know, crazy. 1 was if you
44:32
owned an automobile, and you came to an
44:33
intersection. You had to get out of the
44:34
car as a driver with flags,
44:37
get all of the animals to stop, and
44:38
then you could proceed through. That was the
44:40
first 1. The crazier 1 was if you
44:43
see an animal, and you're driving on the
44:44
road, you have to stop and dis assemble
44:47
your automobile hide it behind a tree. And
44:49
then when the coat is clear, you could
44:51
come back on the road and re assemble
44:52
it. I think that's a little bit what's
44:54
happening. Right? Is I think that there's a
44:55
lot of Ais in reality. It's gonna happen.
44:59
Either we engage with it and decide what's
45:01
good and bad. How do we put some
45:03
guard rails on it, or we can stand
45:05
on the sidelines and complain about it, but
45:08
that's not gonna get us anywhere. And I
45:09
think it's gonna be an incredibly powerful tool.
45:12
Who knows what the outcome gonna be. I
45:13
think we have to figure out
45:16
who should we follow and 1 of the
45:18
people I follow a lot is Ethan Male,
45:19
who's, you know, wrote a book on c
45:21
intelligence and, you know is right at the
45:23
top of the game. And it's it's super
45:25
fascinating name space. I think it's gonna be
45:26
profound Right? And I think that it's gonna
45:28
cause a lot of big cultural shifts.
45:31
My sense is is that even the sense
45:33
of what work is and our identities as
45:37
do... You know, our our work identities are
45:39
gonna be radically shifted and probably ding to
45:42
buy a lot of this stuff. Right? How
45:43
how soon, you know, it's gonna be my
45:45
age... My Ai agent talking to your Ai
45:48
agent coming up with some copy for an
45:50
article
45:51
that we can approve. Right? That's the way
45:53
it's gonna work.
45:55
So who knows know if that's good answer
45:57
or not, but
45:59
it's it's up in the air. Yeah. Sure...
46:02
I... John, Here at the close of the
46:04
conversation. I I'd love to have you diagnose
46:06
what the secrets to your success have been?
46:07
You've had such an interesting and varied career?
46:10
You've been able to draw
46:13
insights and inspiration from across very different experiences.
46:17
You seem to maintain great curiosity,
46:19
as your as your career in life has
46:22
unfolded.
46:22
What what do you attribute some of the
46:25
routes to your success. What are some of
46:26
the ingredients to that?
46:28
I mean, yeah, that's a great question. I
46:30
I would say
46:32
my success
46:33
has
46:35
been
46:36
built on my failures. You know, I'm not
46:38
a detailed guy. I can't
46:41
you know, Like, I can't plan out things
46:43
a long time in advance. I've tried to,
46:45
you know, I've I have been a ceo
46:47
6 times and and successfully, but
46:49
I'm just super curious. Right? I'm not
46:52
I'm not a guy. I'm I've did a
46:55
great example.
46:56
You know, my my buddy, Jim call so
46:58
I climbed with a bunch. He's a here
46:59
and boulder.
47:00
When he was riding before he wrote, you
47:02
know, built the last. He he had this
47:04
rock climb project and Aldo that's right down
47:06
the road from us.
47:07
He spent
47:08
3 years working on a rock climb that
47:12
was about a hundred feet long. Like, he
47:14
documented every
47:15
move. He
47:17
analyzed that he figured it out. And he
47:19
was super successful at it. I I can't
47:21
do that. I... I'm more interested in, like,
47:23
you know, asking why not kind of, you
47:26
know, exploring around the corner, you know, over
47:29
the horizon.
47:30
I think that's some of it. I think
47:32
that, you know, It's not... It it it's
47:34
some of its curiosity, but some of its
47:36
resilience. I've had a, a few tragedies have
47:38
happened in my my life, and it's,
47:41
you know, You just have to keep moving
47:43
forward. Right? Yeah. 1 step at a time
47:45
and and figure out what's next. I I
47:48
think we're in for a real
47:50
difficult time, especially for large companies, and especially
47:52
for Ge rh age
47:54
that have been running those companies. Their identities
47:56
tied up in, you know, having
47:59
big company and having
48:01
a bunch of employees. And I think those
48:03
days are gonna be gone. Right? I... Unfortunately,
48:06
the unit of
48:07
organization is gonna be much smaller. And with
48:09
the Sam Alt question of, like, you know,
48:11
it's gonna be in within the year, there's
48:13
gonna be a billion dollar public company with
48:15
the 1 employee.
48:17
I think that's gonna be true. Right? These
48:18
tools are super powerful, but it's not just
48:21
the radical shifts of organization. It's the radical
48:24
shifts for the identity of who people are.
48:26
Like, what does that mean? Right? If I
48:28
don't have my office to go to and
48:30
don't have my employees to report to and
48:32
So we've gotta rethink that. I think that's
48:35
the coming crisis. How do we deal with
48:36
that?
48:37
Well John, thank you so much for an
48:39
interesting conversation, and and
48:41
Congratulations again on your book. Is open talent,
48:43
leveraging the global crowd to solve your biggest
48:45
challenges. Thank you for sharing your insights through
48:47
this conversation. I really enjoyed it.
48:50
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. It's
48:52
really great to get to know you and
48:53
like to learn more about your work.