Latest / Mork Unfiltered / AI Isn’t Making You Lazy. You Already Were.

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AI Isn’t Making You Lazy. You Already Were. · Mork Unfiltered

• speaker-0: I happen to think I'm the least interesting part of what I have to offer. speaker-1: So are you saying that potentially AI hurts collaboration? speaker-0: The uncomfortable truth is that it's not that AI is gonna make people intellectually lazy. It's that most people are already intellectual. speaker-1: You can't not talk about teams without talking about leaders. speaker-0: Don't just make a career change 'cause you're d angry and bored at your job. speaker-1: I'm always interested by why people make the decisions that they make. speaker-0: If you can unautomate a factory and pull out the robots and teach the humans how to do it again, what you can't unautomate is a talent pipeline. speaker-1: How does that work with people who are already so bandwidth constrained? Welcome back to Mork Unfiltered, folks. My guest today has spent 20 years chasing a question most leaders never really answer. Why do some teams do the impossible while others with the same talent, the same budget, and the same pedigree sometimes just quietly fall apart? David Burgess is an organizational psychologist and a thinkers 50 ranked business leader and thinker. He's written six books, teaches at Columbia, and his TED Talk has been watched by over two million people. But before any of that, he was going in a slightly direction, different direction, career-wise. And then for about 10 years was a business school professor until then all of a sudden he wasn't. We're gonna get into how all of that happened. We're gonna get into how he sees AI and how that's moving into teams and organizations and leadership. And then maybe we'll get into a few things where he's changed his mind along the way. This is Mork Unfiltered, and this is David Furkas. David, welcome to the show. speaker-0: Thank you so much for having me. speaker-1: So starting off, you know, one of the things I always love to ask people, you know, especially people who have been, you know, in the spotlight and and and you know are are very visible and do the kind of work that you do, when you were heading off to college, what did you want to be? speaker-0: I mean d this, but totally different, if that makes sense at all. So when I was in high school, I was that like literary newspaper, anything with words was my extracurricular, right? And so I knew at eighteen years old like I wanted to be the great American novelist. So I went to undergrad for English and creative writing, thinking that's what I was gonna do, right? My grand existential crisis was like, do I wanna be Jack Kerouac or do I wanna be James Patterson? Right. Like which which one? Right. And and then when I was in university, I found a couple of different things. First of all, the program that I was in forced me to take courses in like narrative journalism, long form narrative journalism, like your ten thousand word, you know, are the Atlantic pieces and that sort of stuff, which was really cool. And then also I fred I found a I I this was the beginning of like really good science writing. Like Malcolm Gladwell was writing for the New Yorker. Not a book yet, but writing for the New Yorker. And there's this book, there's an antho anthology that comes out every year. I think it still comes out called the The Great American Science Writing. It's actually the Great American, there's great American short stories, great American poetry. But one of the anthologies they put out is great American science writing. And I remember reading that and just thinking, like, okay, this is fascinating because The authors are using every bit of storytelling that I'm was learning, sort of thinking I wanted to write fiction, but they're writing about new and cutting edge discoveries. They're writing about stuff that helps people. Like the really coolest thing was reading in the social sciences and organizational behavior and motivation and all of these things that are like these are actually helping people improve their lives or their work or what have you. This is really, really interesting. So I ended up adding a second major in kind of organizational psychology and communication, not enough time to make a full-on pivot. But like graduated double major and then decided, hey, this is what I want to do. So went on to graduate school to to study all of that. Thinking I was just gonna well here, okay, so here's the weird part about it. Thinking I was just gonna do a master's program and then figure something out, I ended up getting getting married shortly after graduating, undergrad, which is, you know, early-ish depending on what part of the United States you live in. And my wife was in medical school, still not saying it was was weird. I guess she graduated medical, still my wife, but I mean she's like an actual doctor now. speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: But when you when you when you're married to a med student, all you have are study dates. And so when in the master's program was finished, I was like, Well, I guess I need to keep studying. So I ended up enrolling in a doctoral program. That led into taking the whole academic path. Never actually thought I was gonna be a full on tenure track professor for like a decade. I just wanted her write cool books about social science. speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: But Went that track, started writing almost as quickly as possible for practitioners as well. and when the first book came out in twenty thirteen, I started to get invitations to speak, twenty fourteen. And now I was like, this is really cool. This is it. Like this is the thing. Right. So very sort of a weird windy path. Like I simultaneously fell into this and always wanted to do a version of it at the same time, which is why I said that earlier. Like it's doing exactly this, but totally different. speaker-1: But when you look back on it, you know, all those years ago, right, it's clear that you had this pull towards writing. But this was the speaking part of it any consideration or or not or is or not? speaker-0: Not so much, right? And in fact, I actually remember early in my career somebody asked me, I think it was after the first book came out. Somebody was like, you know, if you could sell a million copies and only live off of writing or make a million dollars a year of a speaker, but nobody knows about your books, what have you, which one would you pick? I actually remember then saying writer, right? But the truth is the the truth is to be totally candid, the world's changed. Like I'm actually having way more fun making shorter, more timely videos on YouTube. right now than I am writing another book. Right. So I've sort of not that I don't write, but I've full sort of fall in love with the idea of like, well, let's write a script and then let's film it and then let's think about the ways we can make that more engaging, the b roll and the graphics and all that sort of stuff. It's sort of a new thing to play with. And all of that feeds into to speaking a little bit better. Right. So I think speaker-1: So it yeah. Okay, sorry. No, no, no, finish your finish your thoughts. speaker-0: I would just say so the sort of still writing, right? I'm just not writing books. I'm writing scripts. I'm writing speeches. I'm writing that sort of stuff, if that makes sense. speaker-1: Yeah, so it's it's kinda like you started off with this idea of becoming a writer. And then how did you go from writing into academia? Because then you you ended up as an academic and you spent like the better part of ten years, that was that was your career. speaker-0: Yeah, no, 'cause it's young and dumb and just figured if I wanted to write about social sciences, I should probably get a degree in it. So I started a a master's program. And I was I was working full time. It was a part-time master's program, but it was sort of that like I should I didn't get enough time to study this. I only had some time to add a second major and it would have you. When you're especially when you're like twenty-two years old, you think that means I need a degree in it, not just I could teach myself how to write an academic journal. I like, I look up to people like David Epstein, who wrote Range as one of my favorite authors of all time. And I'm like, wait, you were just a journalist and you just learned all of this science stuff? I didn't know you could do that outside of an academic program when I had to choose, right? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So it started on that path. And then again, like I said, it kind of led into okay, well, more school and more school. And then what ended up happening is my my own sort of alma mater that it's it's a very weird story. So my wife was married to a college professor because you know, you always marry somebody like your dad. That's what they say, right? and through him, we sort of were still showing up at like faculty and family events and all that sort of stuff. So they knew me. And and then there was sort of a surprise retirement. Like there was a f a professor who was signed a contract. I'm coming back next year, please keep my classes open, all that sort of stuff. And then for some health reasons in the summer was like, I can't teach. And so through that kind of friend of a friend, father in law lead connection, everybody's came to me and just said, like, we need somebody who can teach classes. You just happen to be A B D already because you've been doing all this study thing. Would you teach these classes? And I was like, okay. Could be fun. Right. So I I tried to fit them out. They did a very nice job and s moved the schedule around my existing work schedule and all that sort of stuff. And I was like, This is a ton of fun. Like this is actually a lot of fun. Not only 'cause I'm dealing with all these concepts that I thought were fascinating, I'm also testing a ton of different material and different ways to explain certain concepts and all that sort of stuff. and so then it was like it basically it became obvious that he's never coming back. And so they offered me the position. Like I had to do the formal interview process and all that sort of stuff. But Like they like, Do you want to apply for it? And you would be our primary candidate from the get go. I was like, sure, let's do it. And then that that turned into a decade. speaker-1: Yeah, it turned into a decade. speaker-0: I have to tell you, I was a I was a terrible tenure track professor, right? Because I was far more interested in writing articles for Harvard Business Review or writing a book for practitioners or going getting doing a TED talk than I was in like writing for the Academy of Management journal that's gonna be read by 17 people, my mom being one of them, right? Like I was not interested. in writing pure academic articles. I was always much more interested in translating great ideas that are evidence based and giving them over to the people who could actually make a difference in their organization. So it's sort of what I do now primarily makes perfect sense because even when I had the chance to do it full on the academic side, I was still like, I need to get this information in the hands of people who could use it. speaker-1: So you spend you spend ten years teaching, even if it was like as you said, you you know, you you you were not kind of like the ideal material for a tenured professor, but you you still spent ten years. right. It's a significant part of your life teaching. At what point did you realize that this was no longer the right thing for you? What what changed? speaker-0: I mean, I I'm one of those weird ones where I th I I I'm probably the only person who turned pro as a speaker during COVID. And mo a lot of them got regular jobs because events canceled and what have you. But I had done some writing and done some research on remote teams. That obviously became very, very popular. So I was still teaching, but the demand for, you know, previously speaking gigs all during my time as a professor were like I used to joke I used to jokingly call the manna from heaven, right? Like if you remember the story in the Exodus, like the mana just shows up in the morning and you better collect it because it's going to disappear the next time. And so, you know, it'd be six or seven events a year. Ha, that's funny. I just did the six, seven meme. It'd be six or seven events a year. Invitation, cool place. Let's say yes to it and and we'll figure it out. But it wasn't like this is a business model, this is a career path, et cetera. It was just sort of like a fun add-on to be. speaker-1: Yeah. Something you do on the side. Yeah. speaker-0: Right. And then and then during COVID, everything went remote. So I'm teaching remotely. I'm running workshops for clients remotely. And the demand on on both is a is a ton, but the client one is going up and up and up and up. And then when can't when colleges opened up and events opened up and everything went back to in person, it was like, okay, you gotta choose, right? It was like It's like that scene in The Mandalorian where Grogu has to pick between, you know, is he going with the Mandalorian or the lightsaber? What's he doing here? And in the end, I think the candidly the flexibility element was a ton of fun. It's I love teaching, but having to be at the same place every day is can be monotonous. I also I have two, one's a high school, one's a middle school age kids. They were a little bit younger then, but we were getting into like activity season where there's soccer games and football games and my ones in bands, so like band parades to go to and that sort of stuff. And I was like, I Greater flexibility sounds great here. So I what I love about now is like this the school bus drops them off at four ten and I get to be there and that's the end of my day instead of I have to teach this class and attend this committee meeting and do this sort of thing, et cetera. So nothing against teaching. It just I I had to make a choice because of the demand on both sides and chose the one that optimized for flexibility. speaker-1: Was there a forcing function? Was there a particular event that triggered the need to make that change? It it speaker-0: Teaching back on campus, right? I was doing virtual you know, most universities spent two, some three semesters teaching entirely virtually and then they decided to come back on campus and I was like, That doesn't that doesn't work for me. I can't I can't because I had clients at the time who also wanted to do events in person. So I'm like, I can't teach a class on Monday and I mean, I guess I could teach a class on Monday and fly somewhere on Tuesday, but what happens if they want an event on Wednesday and I have a class and it just doesn't doesn't work anymore? When it was virtual, it was really easy to keep both balls in the air the whole time when It came to no we need you physically there, hmm now now we gotta make a choice. speaker-1: You have to when you have to all of a sudden make that shift, right? I I talk to a lot of people who are like in between jobs and people who have been like extraordinarily successful in one thing and then all of a sudden they, you know, either they lose steam or they get bored or they feel like some inerexorable pull to something new. How do you deal with like the shift in identities? Like, you know, putting to bed that identity of the professor and all of a sudden being like, Okay, I'm I'm actually gonna go down this new path and embrace this new identity, which is, I don't know, speaker or content creator. Yeah, I mean I'm not sure how do you how did you deal with that? speaker-0: Candidly, I'm not sure I'm doing well with it at all. You know, so I stopped I stopped teaching, walked away from the full time gig entirely in 2021. But then by the beginning of 2026, Columbia reached out to me and was like, We have this other class. We read one of your books. It's the basis for elements of this class. We just thought we'd reach out and say, Would you want to teach this class? And I was like, Well, sure, but it's gotta either be low residency or or virtual, what have you. I need to sort of do that flexibility. And so You know, I t technically I only made it like two years without a professor title before I picked a different one. speaker-1: Right. Right. speaker-0: So I'm not sure I did it well. I think the candidly, if I may, the the harder thing for me would be even before that shift, would be that for the beginning part of my career professor and writer who happened to speak, and then the business model pivoted. Like now speaking. Getting paid to speak either on a association stage or more most of my work is like an internal leadership summit where we bring the hot top two hundred folks from the global company all together. That's the primary business model. And so it's a little bit weird because a lot of my external branding and external identity for a long time was like a writer in the in the in the not in the league of because these people are way over my league, but like in the Daniel Pink, the way people describe Daniel Pink as a writer. I mean, he speaks a ton, makes more money speaking, arguably. But it's writer first. Right. It's been a little weird thinking about what does it look like if it's speaker or content creator first. And candidly, I don't I don't know that I ever fully kind of completed that. I luckily always had this sort of multi hyphenate life where it was writer, academic, speaker, all this other stuff. So yeah, that's a long way of saying I don't know that I manage it a lot well because I've always been that sort of multi hyphenate. speaker-1: No, it it's it's just really interesting because, you know, on top of that you published a piece not too long ago on LinkedIn where you talked about career change. And the interesting thing I noticed when I read that piece is you didn't really talk about your own transition. Yeah. Any particular reason. speaker-0: No, actually. I I mean, but I I guess the particular reason is I happen to think I'm the least interesting part of what I have to offer. Right. Like I've I've spent my entire career reading and interviewing some of the most fascinating academics and their research, running and talking to like I've been privileged to spend time with people like Alan Malale, who turned around Ford Motor Company and Gary Ridge, who turned around WD forty and Coach Val, who led the UCLA women's gymnastics team for years and years and years to a c tremendous success. Like They're so much more fascinating than me. And I feel like my role in the universe is just to help tell a better version of their stories, help get the academics research that's that's true and useful out into the world where people need it. I feel like me is the least interesting part of me. Even when I'm on stage, I don't usually tell personal stories. I tell little anecdotes, right? Like I might say a random thing about how I was on a road trip with my family and this crazy thing happened. But it's not a story beginning, middle, and end. It's more like an aside to be self-deprecating, right? And so speaker-1: Why but why is that though? speaker-0: Because I think I'm the least interesting part of what I have to offer. Like I said, I I I mean I'm I'm flattered that you're interested in me enough to ask, but yeah, I just feel like there's so many other more interesting people in the world and their stories are are so much more fascinating. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, it's look, it's it's it's all relative. Yeah. Obviously there's no right or wrong answer. I I I I I'm always interested by why people make the decisions that they make, right? And and what leads people down a particular path. And I think your story of, you know, having had that kind of like fascination with writing and with studying and then becoming a professor and then becoming a keynote speaker and a content creator, yeah, that is not a usual story. That that is not a usual career path for people, you know, who have been in that. You know, they might do some speaking, but to really kinda like to embrace speaking and do stage work and create content on YouTube. I mean like, yeah, it it's it it it's I don't know. To me it's not obvious and it and it it begs the curiosity, right? speaker-0: And you I mean, you bring up a really interesting point too, which is that the thing that I remember most, my I think my biggest, weightiest piece of advice in that piece that we're talking about was that make sure you're not leaving something, you're saying yes to something else. Like it's time to make it don't just make a career change because you're angry and bored at your job, right? Because it might just be you don't like that company. It might not be you like that job, but the company's great. It might be a lot of things. And so one of my biggest pieces there was like always make sure you're stepping Towards something. You're saying you're making a change because you're saying yes to something and just instead of saying no more of something else. And to some extent, I've always done that. I don't know that I've ever I've I have only once in my life quit a job because I was like, no. And it doesn't really count because it was right when I was out of school and I was while I was trying to find like the real job, I started working for a temp firm. And for a day, I worked for one day at a box making company. And I showed up in the offices and it was everything you've ever seen in the office. Like I felt like I was in Scranton, super boring, outdated computers, people just dry like I literally was like, this isn't for me. I bet the temp agency can find you somebody better. Right. So that was the only, but that's it. That's one. Every other time I've made a shift, it's in order to say yes to something else. And it just demanded that saying yes meant leaving something else behind. As we covered earlier, I'm terrible at leaving those things behind. So now I'm a multi hyphenate. But it was always to say yes to something else. So you're right, I probably could have included that element of my own story in that piece. I just didn't think to. speaker-1: It's it's it's just it's curious, right? Because the other thing is that you write so much about teams, right? It's like I I get your newsletter, which I love. I think I think there's so much good content in your newsletter. that and I encourage people, you know, who are interested in into the dynamics of teams and leadership to read it. But you know, when I when I look at somebody who's writing so much about teams, whose latest book was on teams, a lot of your speaking is around teams, you know, your your keynote click, you know, is all about that as well, if I understand correctly. It like when I saw the article on LinkedIn. It made me question kinda like, I wonder what was going through his head when he decided to write this article. Like, why write this article? Yeah. speaker-0: Well, so all of I mean I'll t I'll I'll answer that question for you. And then and then if we want to get more personal on Teams and me and that sort of stuff, we can do it. Everything, every piece of content I put out, I sort of have this like content ideas flywheel, right? Which is like I put out a piece of content or I go give a speech or I do something with the world. And then inevitably that leads to certain questions that I didn't anticipate. So I go give a speech and somebody comes up to me afterwards and asks a question, or I go do this and somebody comes to that. And so every what I do then is I either like if I If I have a great answer for them, I answer it. If I don't, I think long and hard on it. But usually like that happens a QA after a speech like you always have. I'm always sort of taking notes on what did I get asked? What did I like my answers to? What am I getting asked a lot? And if I'm getting asked a question more than once, right, that's an indication that, hey, maybe there's something there. And so then we think on it and go, okay, let's make some content around that. Right. And so this sort of this flywheel where putting out content generates questions, questions generate more content, right? Or more ideas for content. And so in that particular case on the on the career change wise. I think I I think timing w I mean I I taught business school for ten years. So I'm always getting emails from former students about it. But in particular, like we had this sort of great resignation and then we had this sort of hiring everyone's on a hiring freeze and nobody wants to leave because nobody knows if they can get a new job, what have you. And then that's sort of thawing out. And so I've just I noticed in the in the sort of zeitgeist the the middle part of this year, like, okay, there's a lot of people who are thinking about it. So maybe we would make sure they're actually making the right decision. Instead of running out of stuff. And so it literally just came from, hey, these are some questions we're getting asked often. This is another one. You know, we last week's video was around how do you get a new team to collaborate fast? Cause I noticed I got three inquiries in the for speaking in the last month or so. And all of them were these either these people lead project teams, which come together for a short period of time, which by the way are my favorite type of teams, come together for a short period of time and then have to disband. Or we just had a restructuring and these are leaders who are just now meeting their newly formed team. And I was like, okay, well, if I'm going to write and deliver three workshops or three keynotes for these different clients, we might as well put some content out of that as well. So it was again that flywheel of what are the questions we're getting asked. And anything we're getting asked often, it's kind of an indication that, hey, maybe there's some benefit here. Interesting. speaker-1: And if you think of I mean, so obviously you get asked a lot of questions and you do a fair amount of of speaking and and when you look at kind of artificial intelligence and how that's starting to play in the workforce and how that's starting to influence team dynamics and leadership, I'm just curious, what's the question people are not asking you, which they should be asking you? speaker-0: Yeah, I think most people are asking about AI from the perspective of individual productivity, right? And how can I ship more work, right? Or or this or more work in the same amount of time or the same amount of work with fewer people or all of those sort of individual productivity questions. And I don't think they're paying enough attention to how do I how how does AI enter the conversation as another teammate who needs to help me collaborate with other humans, not just do my own work. And you see, you I'm even seeing now a couple different memes online floating around about how like, isn't this great? AI can write all my reports for me. And now I'm dumping them on somebody else. There was even a term of like slop dumping or something. I forget what it was called. I literally just saw this the other day of like people are just using AI to do all their work and then shipping it off to some other human. And then that human has to decipher through all of the crap because you checked all your boxes. So you did your work, but the collaboration sort of suffered. Right. So I'm far more interested in where can we use these certain tools? Like everybody's recording, every everyone has seven different note-taking apps plugged into their Zoom or their Teams or their whatever now. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: How do we actually use that? Right. Like, how do we actually create either a workflow or a template or something where it's like, here's what we need that AI note taker to give to everyone after we've had this meeting. Here's what we need that AI token to note. As a leader of a team, I need that AI note taker to notice, hey, Three people asked three different questions that I didn't actually address. So I need to go follow up with them. Like these are the tools, these are the things I actually need it for, right? To be a member of the team. And I don't think enough people are asking that question. I think they're just asking, how do I get it to do certain parts of my job for me? speaker-1: What's the danger in terms of the effectiveness of teams? What's the danger when you start to rely and use some of these AI tools a lot? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, so one of the things I'm just I was just reading a paper about this like two days ago. One of the interesting dangers we're seeing a ton is that people are not going to cross functional collaborations as often now that they have AI. Yeah. In other words, like, I don't need to ask marketing. I'll just ask co pilot what a marketing profess you know, like person professional would say to help me understand marketing. And so you're actually shortchanging where the most genius in an organization lies, which is when people from two different departments have to come together and bring the diversity of their ideas into a problem. Like that's the best thing, but people are shortchanging that and just going, help me do this, right? I'm I'm a huge fan of using AI to help you decode how like after a meeting, how somebody from engineering is thinking. Huge fan of that. Not a big fan of going, Well, I don't even want to meet with them. So what if I just jam with copilot for a bit and I call that good? And that's speaker-1: So so are you saying that potentially AI hurts collaboration? speaker-0: If if you again, if you're t overly focused on it for individual productivity and then you're starting to see it as, hey, wait a minute, rather than sit in another boring meeting, let me just have a meeting with my AI, right? You can actually see how it hurts collaboration, right? And then the same thing we talked about earlier. If I'm just focused on shipping my work and I'm dropping AI slop on somebody else, that also hurts that collaboration. So you know, it's the poisons in the dose. It's like anything else. How are we going to use this tool, right? So I've seen it help collaboration tremendously and I've also seen people use it as a as an excuse to not collaborate because I can pull up a virtual version of that same person and interact with them instead. speaker-1: Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, Google published some stuff on this last year, you know, in December, I think like Project Dora. I don't know if you saw that. I mean they were speaker-0: But it's been a it's been a while in my war, this world moves so fast. speaker-1: Yeah, no, I mean December last year is like ages away. But it it was it was the conclusions of that project were very interesting, how they were saying that basically, you know, high performance, really well managed teams were like AI was exponentially helping them do even better work. And then they were talking how like, you know, medium performing teams were actually getting more of a boost because of course they were farther behind than the super high performers. Right. And then I think one of the other findings was that, you know, teams that were using AI to make to actually make decisions. We're actually making more mistakes because of course AI is kind of a support tool. It's not necessarily it does it lacks the judgment and the context to make decisions for us. speaker-0: Well, and sometimes it's downright sycophantic and whatever decision you hint at, it'll just make for you and then praise you for your genius. So yeah, that that doesn't doesn't surprise me either. Yeah. speaker-1: So so so it's interesting because like you know, I was reading through through some of your some of your things and I was very curious because on the one hand, you know, and you just said that now you said kinda AI could be sycophantic and tell you what you want to hear. I've definitely had that experience as well. And and I've had to like, you know, put in the instructions of my clot projects, you know, do not kinda like kiss my ass and tell me all the wonderful things about how smart and brilliant I am 'cause because I'm not. But But then on the other hand, I thought, you know, a couple of months ago you had another you had another poster article where you talked about, you know, how how it can really help us and how it's gonna like change the world and how it's it it's actually a tool to challenge us. Where is your thinking on this now? Like is it a is it a combination of both? Is it too sycophantic? Well yeah, I mean how do you see it? speaker-0: I think I I think it's default. I think I think unfortunately most people use a technology at its defaults, right? Like they still use the same ringtone that defaults on the iPhone, right? They don't ever change it, right? And so if you're just using it for its defaults, you run into that issue that it's not pushing back enough. It's just agreeing with you, et cetera. You said something super hopeful, which is in your instructions in your cloud projects, right? You tell it to push back in you. I think that's brilliant. I think I think it's a I think it's an amazing tool for doing things like Premortems, hey, we're gonna launch this project. Here's the project plan. Tell me all the ways it could fall apart. Hey, like instructing it to push back on your ideas. I think it's great because that's like the single hardest thing for teams to do. Conflict is a huge benefit. Creative conflict is a huge benefit to a team, but it's really hard not to take it personally. speaker-1: That's a sort of speaker-0: That can be hugely beneficial and can make you think about stuff. you hadn't thought about. But you have to give it those instructions. Just like you have to switch you have to switch your Mac from light mode to dark mode, right? Like you have to physically do it. Unfortunately, I don't think most people do. I think most companies, their AI rollout was congratulations, you all have a copilot license. Or we were already using G Suite. You have Gemini. Exactly, exactly. And so unfortunately, they're just defaulting to to w what it gives you. Just like any other like social media site, like the dirty little secret of all the algorithms is They're just giving you what you default and linger on a little too long. If you don't if you don't take intentional action on what you want to see, it's gonna give you more of what you didn't what you say you don't want, but what you're defaulting to. speaker-1: And you know, when you talk about teams, you can't not talk about teams without talking about leadership, right? They they go hand in hand. Mm-hmm. How do you see the nature of leading teams change because of artificial intelligence? speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. And by the that's a that's a great distinction I normally throw out earlier that I I like to say I get I get hired to speak to a lot of leaders, but I always tell them like I'm not a leadership speaker. I'm an expert on teams and team dynamics, and that just happens to be most useful to team leaders. Yeah, I'm I mean I think a a a few different things. Number one, I I think we're at the point as as leaders where some level of AI fluency is a requirement because it can undermine your own I don't want to say executive presence here, but your own sort of reputation. There's a number of studies going back to like the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s, that show that people judge the competency of their leader, even in unrelated domains to technology, based on their tech savviness. You know, we make fun of the I we had I had a faculty when I was teaching, I had this faculty member and he was like 85 years old, right? And just had nothing else going on in his life. So I might as well keep teaching. Because what is retirement, et cetera. And he would literally, if you send him an email, it didn't actually go to him, it forwarded to the department secretary who printed it out and put it on his desk. And then he would read it. And then he would write, hand write his response to it, and then he would give it back to the department. For some reason, she would type it out and send it back. And like everybody made fun of that guy, right? He was a sweet, super nice guy. But like there is at a certain you there's a base level of tech savviness that we expect from our leaders. They don't have to be. better than us at all technologies. But if they're fumbling around going, what's I don't know the difference between you. Right. Exactly. That's gonna that's gonna look. So some level of AI fluency is is required, number one. Right. I think number two, some level of instructing your team what what are the goes and no-go's here, right? Like I think I am actually not the the biggest fan of companies that go make their own kind of custom guardrailed version of like a co-pilot or a Gemini because it usually puts out crap and then everybody blames the tool and they don't use it. I think instead having a broader conversation about these are positive uses and negative uses of these tools, et cetera, that's incumbent on that's usually senior leaders and then on down. But again, you can't have that conversation with your team unless you know what you're actually talking about. Right. And then I think the last thing I I think a lot of leaders need to be doing, there's still a lot of leaders that are in the, let's call it the AI stigma phase, right? Where we still We still accuse everything that's generated by AI as being crap. And it's it's not true. It's crap because it was prompted to put out crap. Right. Right. but there's still like a, you know, ooh, did you did did AI make this? Instead of like, I I think at some level, if we're prompting these tools properly, we kind of have an an obligation. Like the favorite thing that I that I think about is my my I'll go hey, I'll tell a personal story for you, Patrick. You asked me one earlier. My my wife is a is an ER physician and we were talking about Chat GPT and Claud, whatever. And I Well, just you wait. Like I know they're already working on medic medicine specific chatbots. And when they roll out, like and and the thing I said, I remember it kind of took her by surprise. And I said, It's like we're we're like two to three years away from it being considered malpractice not to check one of those tools before you finalize a diagnosis. and this sort of took her by surprise. And then about four or five months later, her hospital said we bought everybody an open evidence license. And now every single physician has on their phone a second opinion that they can call up at any time. Very interesting. And like, how long before it's considered sort of malpractice? I don't see that in most organizations. What I see from most leaders is a pushback on like, are you using AI to do this instead of you doing it? I don't think that's the question. Like I would think it should be, are you doing the work and are using AI Check the work and make it better because you're not doing the highest quality work unless you're not using it. We see the same thing in in like authorum and author dum. That's a weird way to say the publishing industry. Yeah, speaker-1: That's a first. I hadn't heard that one before, but speaker-0: there you go. We see the same thing now with you know major pushback on AI written books and all that sort of stuff. And and while I don't think anybody should pass off a 200-page novel that was completely written by ChatGPT as their own, I I also think you're doing the reader a disservice if you're not running the whole manuscript through AI and going, Tell me where I'm confusing, tell me where I got my facts wrong, tell me where I'm this and that, right? So I think we need a lot more leaders who have that na the opposite of an AI stigma, who have an AI should be involved at some step in this process in order to make the quality work better. But unfortunately, too many of them are still in that like AI means you're cheating kind of stigma. Yeah. speaker-1: in a weird space. It's like, you know, you're kind of doomed if you do it and you're doomed if you're not, if you're not doing it. And then, you know, the flip side is I I was I was reading an article about a university professor who was having so many issues with his students using, you know, Chat GPT or Claude that he basically, you know, encouraged them. He's like, okay, the new instruction from here on out is solve the problem first yourself. Then you can take your solution and run it through Chat GPT or Claude. Mm-hmm. And it and it it really got me thinking because I think the worry of a lot of people is that people are gonna become intellectually lazy, right? How we're we're we're we're gonna start defaulting so much of our decisions just to chat T P T because it's easier to do that than to think. Well what what's your what's your take on that? Yeah. speaker-0: I mean the the uncomfortable truth is that it's not that AI is gonna make people intellectually lazy, it's that most people are already intellectually lazy, right? And AI gives them a tool. I'm j I I'm just like I'm just being groundbreakingly honest. Well, even before AI was invented, what the stats in America are what? Like the average American reads one book a year. And by the way, that's average, not median. A I I'm on I'm on my thirty third book for the year so far. So that means there are thirty two people who haven't read a book that I offset, right? So speaker-1: You're not a liar though. You're not liar too. speaker-0: That's what I'm saying, right? So to some extent, like I that's this is really mean. This all comes off as very, very mean, but it's not inaccurate, right? To some level, they already were. I taught undergrads for 10 years. Like it's that professor story does not surprise me. We ran into the same thing when I was teaching, we ran into the same thing not with not with AI, but with paper mills. You used to have to pay money to have somebody else write your essay for you. Now ChatGPT can do it for you, right? But you used to, students used to literally, like their midterm paper or their final term paper, used to Pay money, $100, to someone in, you know, in the developing world to write their paper on the Peloponnesian War for them. Right. And everybody was, what do we do about that? How do we solve this? Like, this is easy. Like, I like, are you thinking? This is super easy, right? You just say you're going to deliver the paper, and then after you deliver the paper, you're going to give a five-minute presentation where I'm going to ask you questions afterwards to gauge your understanding. I'm going to read your paper and then I'm going to ask you questions to gauge how well. You understand your paper. And then I never forget this. The number one pushback I got from the faculty in my department were, well, what happens if they still buy someone, if they pay someone to buy the paper? And then they just read the paper. I'm like, great. If they want to pay extra money for tuition, like I would have taught them anyway throughout the year. But if they want to pay even more money for someone to write the paper and then they read and memorize the paper and now they know it, great. Right. So I'm I'm even in favor of like not even like AI to check your work, et cetera. Like, I kind of feel like it's like if AI informs you of it. Great. I just want to make sure it's still got from whatever you're submitting into your brain. Right. And I think it's the same thing. I have used, since it came out, I have used these tools to learn about all sorts of stuff I never would have known about, right? In a variety of different domains. The other day I got into a random conversation with Chad GBT in voice mode about biomimicry and engineering. This is where engineers study like natural human structures. No idea if it'll be useful. But it was it was interesting to me. So same tool, two different uses. You can use it to feed your already existing intellectual laziness or You can use it to enhance your intellectual curiosity. And the problem with a lot of rule structures, that professor sort of included, is that if you just default to thinking everyone's using this tool to be lazy, then even if the majority are, then you end up setting rules that ban the tool. And now you're hampering the people that could have used the tool to do even better. speaker-1: Exactly. I think I think it it's it's almost you know, contingent on the leaders and the professors, you know, to push students or team members to be more intellectually curious and to want to know the answer themselves, right? Rather than just relying on a tool to do that. But but you know, it it it goes back ultimately to kinda like how we lead in teams, right? It's like leadership is, you know, you're setting the example for the teams if you're defaulting to Chat GPT to do everything and and not just to be productive, but you know, you're getting lazy and and and defaulting on decision making through some of these tools, then the chances are higher that your teams are gonna do that, right? So speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. And you have to you you you can't you have to have AI fluency to be able to f walk that fine line with your team. Right. You can't just rely on whatever the IT department sets as their new rules for the whole company to be able to walk that line. speaker-1: But so that's that's the realistic challenge, right? Is you look at people. I I you know, I was just in Panama last week and I gave a keynote to, you know, seven hundred odd folks on on HR, on on on you know, AI adoption. And when I w when I was researching the statistics, at least for Latin America, I I I don't know the statistics in this country. I you you probably know this much better than I do, but I was noticing that, you know 60% of respondents were saying that, you know, they felt that now with all these new AI tools, they were actually working more and working longer hours. Right. And so therefore, you know, we we're talking to people who are already swamped in some cases, especially mid-level management. And now we're adding onto the mountain of work by telling them you've got to understand AI because your teams need to implement it and you need to lead. So how How d how does that work with people who are already so bandwidth constrained? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. You know, I think I I think that's a fair I think that's a fair sort of criticism, especially in a lot of the organizations that are thinking, A AI is here. That means we can reduce our headcount through natural attrition, right? Or that means it will outright lay people off, which by the way, I don't think I I'm really very skeptical of any of the major announcements, you know, the this was probably six, nine months ago now, which again feels like an eternity. But when they were all saying, because of AI we're we're laying off all these people. you were Bad financial managers and then the infinite money train that got us out of the COVID recession stopped and now you're stuck. Let's just call it what it is. You're just you're using AI as an excuse. So I I think that's that's kind of an issue, right? I worked with an organization this summer where they were committed to the idea that we are going to grow as an organization in revenue and in business without growing our headcount. And think that's probably the only philosophy of adoption that prevents people from feeling sort of overworked. Right. I think what's happening now, unfortunately, is we're just saying, well, the AI can do it. And so when somebody leaves, we're like, well, let's just give it to Sarah and Sarah plus copilot, they'll they'll sort of figure out how to do it. So I think it I think it's a I think it's a totally fair criticism. I think it speaks to some of our kind of always-on mentality and it speaks to one of the things that you can never replace to AI as a manager, which is monitoring your team's capacity and monitoring their load and and making sure they're not sort of overwhelmed and you're not adding stuff. This is where th those are human things that Okay, maybe if we had massive invasions of privacy and we hooked every we bought everyone in like an Apple Watch or a Whoop and then we hooked it up to AI and the managers could judge the stress levels of all of the people via an AI algorithm or whatever. Forget that. It's probably better to be checking in on your people every once in a while and making sure they're sort of not necessarily overloaded. And but I think the systems that we're we're adopting for AI are kind of determining whether or not people are overloaded based on our reaction. Do we reduce headcount? Do we let for natural attrition, et cetera, or do we just think about this as scaling without growing? speaker-1: You know, I mean you study teams, right? Like you're you're an expert, you spent like two decades on this stuff. I mean, what are the basic things to have high performance teams that leaders that most leaders that you see are not doing, which they should be doing, which should be made even easier now that we have artificial intelligence? speaker-0: That's an interesting question. So it's a so not just what should they be doing that they aren't doing. Okay. I would say that the big ones that come up in in my most recent book are around developing a sense of shared understanding on the team. Does everybody know what everybody is doing and how it all fits together? Which is really sort of a another level of role clarity. And then the other is a sense of psychological safety. And I think done well, AI can kind of help with both of those. Right. Number one, like I joked earlier about everybody's got seventeen different AI note takers on there, but are we actually using them? That's a perfect role for AIs. When we actually come together and do the sync up, the the sta the daily stand-up, the the weekly all hands meeting, whatever, are we actually really actually documenting what everybody says and where there are and having that updated and creating something that that we can look at visually to just see where everybody is, right? Or are we doing that meeting and then just somebody mails out the automatically generated notes, which are always terrible because it's trying to be all things to all meetings, right? So what are we doing there? But that's a really easy way that AI can keep us much better aligned by. Because it does not tune out. It does not get a notification in teams and suddenly not pay attention for the last two minutes. It does not think, my gosh, I'm really, really hungry. When is this meeting gonna be in? It pays attention to every detail. So we should use it to collect every detail and foster that sort of greater alignment. Right. So that's that's use number two inside that area. Use number one inside that area of like shared understanding. On the psychological safety side, right, I think the interesting thing here is one of the biggest barriers I see. Most leaders, like thank God for Amy Edmondson. She's done a great job. It took her 30 years to get this into the popular lexicon, but most leaders now know I need to build a culture where people feel like they can speak up, where they can point out when things are wrong, where they can come to me with problems, et cetera. Right. I think the thing is a lot of times it gets missed. Go back to that same all hands meeting. Lots of people are sharing lots of different stuff. And when somebody like looks like they disagree or even starts the seeds of disagreement and then backs off, like it can be really easy to miss that. And so again, I think there's a a huge opportunity to to use AI number one to show that you're open to feedback by doing what we were talking about earlier. Hey, we had this project plan and then I asked co-pilot to push back on it a little bit and look what it came up with, which shows the whole team that you're open to push back, but it can also help you catch the little bits of the little tests of trust, the little tests of safety that people make that you may not have caught at. I used to tell leaders, I used to tell leaders pick the person on your team who you trust the most. And ask them to observe you like an executive coach. In the next meeting, just watch how I facilitate the meeting and keep track of who I accidentally speak over and who wanted to r ask a question and I completely missed it and who gave some pushback and I defended it way too long and I shut them down. Like pay attention to how I facilitate a meeting, not what happens in the meeting. I used to ask, tell leaders to take their most trusted teammate and ask them to do that. Well, now we can do that. Like we have the tools to go back through the transcripts and and notice that sort of stuff. But I don't see a lot of leaders checking the tape, right? Tape speaker-1: Great. speaker-0: all the time. I don't see a lot of great leaders checking the tape all that often. speaker-1: Yeah, that's that that's, you know, that was what I was gonna say as well as, you know, how many of those leaders are actually taking five to ten minutes after the meeting to actually review the transcript and look at the sentiment and ask questions by putting the transcript into Claude and say, Hey, you know, what are you noticing about Matt's behavior during this meeting? What are you noticing during the last three meetings? Right. It's like we're if people are in back to back meetings one after another, they don't even have time to check the transcript. So if it's speaker-0: Have time? Claude has time, right? Like this time. The the amazing that so like I have I'll I'll give you an example. So I use obviously with permission when I when I have clients, whatever, I use otter because I'm old school, built speaker-1: Yeah, no, yeah. speaker-0: into anything. But I have very, very specific templates, right? And so right when a meeting is done, I go over and I click what was this? Was it a sales call? Was it a pre-event planning call? Was it a feedback call? Like, and I have different templates. And based on that template, It knows this is the type of summary he actually wants. Not a vague generic whatever, but here's the thing he actually wants from that. You could build those very, very easily. This is where that base level of AI fluency comes in, right? You can't just resort to the defaults because they're terrible, but with a little bit of fluency, you can build that. You could literally just like everybody watching this, you could literally open up this thing that we just talked about. Let's say you use Microsoft Teams. Great. Open up Copilot. Create a I think they just started cause they used to be called custom pilots, which was a terrible name. And I think now they call them agents, which is even more confusing for reasons I won't get into. But go open and just say, I'd like to create an agent where you give me feedback on how I ran a meeting after every meeting based on the transcript. Ask me questions one at a time about what I want until you have enough information to write some instructions for me. Boom. I just did it. Right. And I know you don't have a ton of time, but if you got ten minutes to build that right now, it'll save you a lot of time after every meeting. speaker-1: Yeah, no, it's crazy. I mean, like to me, it's been mind blowing what you can do with this technology, but you have to be curious and you have to invest a certain amount of time. I mean, I remember like for six months, I would have breakfast and watch YouTube videos on Claude every single morning. I'd be having my breakfast and I'm watching YouTube videos on Claude because I'm trying to stay on top of the features and functionalities and learn more about it. Then I'm implementing it in my workflows or with my team and we're kind of learning together as we do it. Speaking of which, when you when you think of going back to the idea of teams, going back to AI, and going back a little bit to the conversation we had before about career transitions, if we're now in a stage where AI is potentially going to force people to transition to a role that they didn't plan for or change the way they work in a way that they didn't plan for, how do we help the people that are about to go through that when they know that the current way of doing their work is going to end, but they don't know what's on the other side. Yeah. What speaker-0: How do we train speaker-1: does a leader do? speaker-0: How do we train junior associate lawyers for a world where Harvey can find the right case law far before they can? Yeah. speaker-1: Basically. Basically. Yeah. 'Cause that that's that's the number one thing. When one that's the number one or number two thing that I saw when I was doing my speech last week is just there's so much data out there that seems to be pointing to the fact that some people are a a lot of people over a third are just scared. Yeah. They're scared that this thing is gonna take their job, they're scared that, you know, that's gonna make the wrong decision. So what do we do? speaker-0: So I I used to I used to give leaders like a three question test for whether or not we should automate something in artificial intelligence. And now I've added a fourth question. And the three questions were really easy. They were like, you know, how long does it take a human to do it versus AI? Right? Whichever one's faster, right? How likely is AI to get it right versus a human, right? Is it gonna hallucinate and do all sorts of or is it simple routine stuff, right? And then the third was how long does it take to check the work? Does it take a human longer to check AI's work than it would for a human to just do it? Then it's not a good thing. But the thing I I added is essentially the fourth question is does a human learn anything by doing this work? Right. Because here's the here's the thing I found, right? I and I found the reason I did this, I went back through that, I found this old, I had completely forgotten about this, but I found I this is how my brain works. I found this old case, and I say old 2018 example of when Elon Musk attempted to build the Model X completely with robots, right? He completely refitted a factory in Fremont, California. And the idea was as minimal humans as possible, right? As few humans as possible. So We'll build robots. They were building robots to place floor mats in a car, something that takes a human two seconds to do, but hey, we'll do it with a robot, right? And then everything started breaking. And the problem was nobody knew how to fix anything that broke because they didn't learn how to do it to begin with. Right. And then I found this. So I was reading all about that and going down this rabbit hole. And then I found this paper from 1983, written by Lasane Bainbridge, studying engineering control rooms and oil refineries and automation. The paper's called The Irony of Automation or The Ironies of Automation. The irony of automation is that when you automate a task to remove the human, you don't remove the human entirely. What you do is you remove certain tasks from the human and you make the things the human does even more important. Because when the machine breaks, human knowledge becomes more important, not less important in solving the problem. And so now I think it's still worth like how how do law firms solve the problem of Harvey doing a better job than junior associates? You got to commit to the idea that junior associates still need to do the job because that boring work Teaches them stuff. Right. And they you can teach them how to do it alongside Harvey. I don't care about that, right? But it teaches them things. And eventually they get to the point where they know the boring routine work, the usual, usual, usual is what teaches us what looks unusual. And artificially because it's a sophisticated pattern recognition system, our current iterations of AI aren't going to know what to do in that other scenario. The human is still going to be hugely important in that scenario. And so we can remove certain tasks, right, when we're looking for what we outsource to AI. But what we can never remove is the training ground. Because there are always going to be certain tasks AI can't do. And sometimes you have to let humans do the work, even if it's not as good, so that they learn how to get ready to do the work that we cannot outspeak. speaker-1: That's fascinating. That's fascinating because, you know, at the end of the day, it's like somebody was making the the comments to me the other day where they were like, Well, how does a person then become a senior person if they haven't had the chance to be the junior person? speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: They can't make that make that leap. Yeah. speaker-0: We're seeing that right now. I I work with a lot of professional, both both law firms and accounting firms. And it's the same question, right? we're gonna, we're gonna reduce our they like they a year and a half ago, they were we could not hire have to hire as many people because AI can do all of this stuff. And now it thankfully it only took them a year and a half, right? But they're starting to realize, whoa, wait a minute, we're destroying a talent pipeline, right? Like you can like what Elon must learn is you can unautomate a factory and pull out the robots and teach the humans how to do it again. What you can't unautomate is a talent pipeline. And so there are certain things we're just always gonna have to let humans do in order to get them ready to learn the next step, which is stuff that we're not gonna be able to do with Archives. I'm a huge the Ethan Moloch has it, that that sort of jagged edges of the AI frontier thing. I'm a believer in the jagged edges. I don't believe as sophisticated as as it gets, I think there are still some things that humans are are gonna be able to do. Unless we completely change how it functions and move away from the sophisticated pattern recognition, you know, it's a giant auto complete when it comes down to it. Unless we move away from that. And there are people probably smarter than me, definitely smarter than me, working on moving away from that anyway. But until such time, there will always be some level of human creativity that doesn't see patterns, see new opportunities. And we don't know how to train an AI to do that. So we're gonna have to train people, even if it means train them to do the boring stuff we could have outsourced. So it keeps them ready or gets them ready to be trained to do that other stuff. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean, you you know, at the end of the day, you still need to train the humans because the train the the humans, I think particularly when you look at software development, the the humans still have to oversee the work of the AI. And so they can't oversee and effectively critique it unless they've done it themselves. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Right? That that's just like how how are you it's like, you know, you you can't go into the code base and make changes unless you're a software engineer and you've studied that and you've written code. Right. You just don't know. Like I I've started writing code on Claud Code. And it's awesome because I can actually as a former marketer I can actually build stuff which is freaking cool and I never thought I could do that, but I can't actually open up what Claude is doing and identify right if the project is correct or not. Yeah. speaker-0: When you have a problem, it takes a whole lot longer to solve it if you can solve it at all. Very good. Somebody who actually knows Ruby on Rails can look at it in four seconds and go, Right there. Right. So we're still gonna need to train people to do that because those problems are gonna happen. speaker-1: So you know, as as we wind down, you know, kind of like you know, the last question really that I had for you, you know, David, and you know, we can talk about this stuff for hours. so it's the last question of of of of of the show today. But you know, when you think of kind of the thing that's made many leaders successful, right, that is also what has built their sense of identity. So how do you actually help these people evolve into something new? Like you take the senior partner that, you know, is the repository of all knowledge. Right. And he knows tax law better than anybody. And all of a sudden now all of that tax law, a lot of that is available on my phone. Yeah. How do you actually then help that person evolve into a new version of themselves when their identity and their success has been so tied to the old version? speaker-0: So y you know, it's interesting because I think the example you gave I don't see happening as much as a different one. And and what I mean by that is that the thing that makes, at least in my anecdotal experience, and I bet you I can find studies that back this up if you give me enough time. But in my anecdotal experience, the thing that I find makes truly great, high performing leaders great is a willingness to be continuously learning, to accept feedback, to pivot based on those learnings, to never feel like I know it all, right? And so they're gonna be fine. Right. Yeah. Because they've they've been using that skill their whole life. They'll just keep using that skill. I think the harder problem is candidly those folks in the middle, right? Your sort of mediocre managers, senior senior partners who do know a ton, but have that sort of very, very fixed mindset. Right. And my my hope, right, is that in teaching them some level of AI fluency, you give them something to be bad at again. I don't candidly, I don't know. Like I'll I'll tell you an example. I have practiced this really esoteric martial art for the last twenty three years, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I did it this morning. That's where I got the really terrible shot. If you've been watching this the whole time going, Is he wearing eyeliner? Nope, I got kneed in the face. speaker-1: We usually do not we disclaimer we do not beat up our guests on Morgan filters. speaker-0: And about about three years ago, my wife decided she wanted to start playing pickleball. Right. And so I had to learn pickleball from first principals. And I'm was terrible at it for a very, very long time. But my response was like, it's kind of fun to suck at something again, right? It's kind of fun to be learning to I I don't know how you teach that. I don't. I think you can give leaders in that middle who have been subject matter experts for a decade or more and are in love with the idea that they have all the answers. I think you can give them opportunities. AI developing AI fluency is a great one. You can give them opportunities to be bad at something again as they learn how to be good at it. But I I don't know how you can change their mind. Right. I I've d I've done as much diving into Carol Dweck's growth and fixed mindset research as I can. And I just even if you look at it, especially what replicated and what didn't, yeah, I don't really see a a great sustainable way to prime somebody for a growth mindset. Right. And so I think you just have to the the thing we have gotta do now is make decisions on who do we filter in and filter out in our organization based on who has that mindset, because only one of those mindsets Is going to be the adaptable one. Spoiler alert, is that mindset just happened to be in the pre AI world, what made great leaders great anyway? speaker-1: No, I think that's I think that's a wonderful way to to to close. And I I don't have the answer either. I'm I'm really, really curious because unfortunately, I think that the leaders that you're talking about, those like super high performers, those people that have the growth mindset are constantly reading, you know, thirty-three books in a year. Those people are the minority, David. I mean, that that is not, you know, the average person, right? And in in the US, we have like this fixation and admiration, which I think is super healthy about, you know, high performers and w everybody's always struggling to be a high performers, but a lot of part of the world You don't necessarily have that. People don't necessarily feel the same way. And you'll have that older manager that's been like twenty or thirty years in the firm and all of a sudden he's terrified or she's terrified because they don't know how to they don't know how to do their job any other way. So it it's a great question. I don't know the answer either. You know, I I think all those people have the ability to make the transition if they so desire. But I think maybe there are other variables, you know, that's that we'll have to talk about on on another version of the show. speaker-0: Age old joke in psychology, right? That somebody walks up to a therapist and says, how many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? And the therapist says, Well, only one, but the light bulb has to want to change. speaker-1: That's so true. I love that, man. I love that. Well listen, we have you know, a tradition on the show, which is at the end of every show we have what we call the lightning round of questions. Three quick questions, three quick answers, then we'll close us out. So are you ready for the lightning round? All right, speaker-0: I guess. Yeah, let's do this. speaker-1: let's go. Lightning round quite question number one is if you could have any superpower, what would you choose? speaker-0: I would save so much money if I could fly. Like not to not have to do airports and be able to get to places faster. Like that part of Superman, highly appealing. Don't know what I'm gonna do about the bugs, but I'm sure I can solve that problem. speaker-1: Wear a face mask. Yeah. Flight flight flight is a cool one. Flight is a cool one. Question number two. If you could have dinner with anyone in history, alive or dead, who would you choose? Milton Hershey. speaker-0: Founder Hershey, Hershey Foods. What a lot of people don't know is that Milton and his wife started a school for orphans when they were, because they were childless. And then when she died, and as he prepared his own estate, et cetera, he gifted the controlling interest in the Hershey Company to that school. The school still exists today. It's an amazing school. And the school, the trust that funds the school, owns Hershey Foods. I think he's the original social entrepreneur and a captain of industry that is somebody we still look back on and go, wow, when everybody else was building empires out of greed and what have you, he was doing something totally different. And I'd love the chance to talk to him. speaker-1: That's very, very cool. And last question in our lightning round is if you could give a piece of advice to a young person looking for a career of meaning and purpose, what would you tell them? speaker-0: Right, interesting. Young person looking for career, meaning, purpose. I think I I think the biggest thing would be once you we we're wired to feel meaning and purpose based on our individual impact on the world. I call them the sort of answering the who. Some incident called it why, but I think the better question is who. And I think for the first, for a lot of your career, you're gonna be judged on metrics and performance evaluations, all this stuff that takes that who out of it. So that would be the thing I remember. Right. Remember to be constantly looking and collecting those examples of evidence that when you do a good job, it helps other people because you're gonna have times where you can't see that by the nature of the system. And it'd be really useful if you've got ways to keep that at the forefront of your mind. It'll help you, whatever you do, right? It's not about what job you choose. It's about choosing to keep track of who you doing your great work impacts. And if you do that, you're gonna find meaning and purpose just about everywhere. speaker-1: Fantastic. Well that's that's that's amazing insight. If people want to know more about you, your work, your books, what's the best way to to reach out and get in touch with you or find out more about what you do and your work? speaker-0: Well, I mean if they if they have made it this far, then they're already probably familiar with the show notes and all that. So that's gonna be the best, right? Scroll down or over or look in the description, whatever you're watching this on, there's a way to do that. If you're driving, please don't do any of that. Right. and see instead, David Right? speaker-1: Drop the right now. speaker-0: Yeah. David Burkus, B U R K U S is a really unique name. There's only two in the world that I've found, and the other is a twenty four year old Hungarian filmmaker. So if you type that into your search engine of choice, you're gonna find both of us. You're gonna know which one's me. It'll be pretty obvious. So speaker-1: Show I think you are probably performed better on SEO than he's speaker-0: He he sends direct messages to me on social media every once in a while that's like why do you have to Yeah, yeah. He's a little mad that he's losing. Yeah. speaker-1: All right, well, David, thank you so much, folks. You know, if if you've taken any w anything away from this conversation, make sure to subscribe to the channel, like the episode, throw in a couple of comments and questions for us. Always love to have your your questions and comments. this has been an amazing episode. David, thank you so much for the time. You know, thank you for all the wonderful work that you do. I think you know the importance of teams, team dynamics, a lot of the work that you do has never been more important than it is today. And if people want to get in touch with you, there's your LinkedIn, there's DavidBurkis.com, you know, and there's of course all your books on Amazon or anywhere else. That you guys get your favorite books because you got thirty two books to catch up to David. So and I gotta catch up too. I'm behind. January Yeah. speaker-0: One starts a new year. You can start then if you want. speaker-1: Absolutely. There you go. There you go. But why wait? Why wait? Time is short. So thanks again for for being on the show today, David. You know, it's been really great. And you know, as soon as you start to get an inkling of what that next book is, we'd love to have you back. That's speaker-0: thanks. speaker-1: it for today. Thanks a lot, man.