Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / The Evolution of Employee Experience in the Age of AI (w/ Bill Schaninger)

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The Evolution of Employee Experience in the Age of AI (w/ Bill Schaninger) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGrath.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers, Welcome to the Deck
0:11
Show. Now I'm going to get to our guest momentarily, but I want
0:17
to welcome Tim as ever to the show. And congratulations Tim, big week,
0:22
big week for your son right here, graduated. Tell me if I
0:25
got this right from Mit? Is that correct? Yeah? And the congrats
0:28
is all his. You know, I always say parents can do a hell
0:30
of a job messing up a kid. All you got to do is stand
0:32
back and let him go. So credits all his. But yeah, he
0:36
just finished up seven years at got his doctorate and there was an awesome ceremony
0:40
on Wednesday. And congrats to Cameron's he's off and running. Listen. I
0:44
like you giving him of a credit. But I think, you know,
0:47
I think that's winning apparenting Tim. I'm super impressed personally. Until my kids
0:52
have grown up, I'm holding fire on the nature nurture debate. But let
0:56
me let me assure you. I'm going to go hard one way or the
0:59
other now how it turns out. But no, that's absolutely fantastic, and
1:03
I'm really really delighted and excited to welcome our guest of this show. He's
1:08
Bill Shanginger. Sorry, Shannon shann Bill, I'm butchering your name. You
1:14
practiced as well. This is the problem. We're here now, you got
1:18
it. I got it, Come on right, international speaker, all for
1:23
researcher, Forbes, contributor and an advisor to senior executives. Bill, I
1:27
have to say you and our co producer Ella, I'm sorry myself and our
1:32
co producer Eler I think we both fell down like a YouTube wormhole. Enjoying
1:36
your talks and stuff. A real pleasure to have you on this show.
1:40
Welcome, Thank you for having me. There's no shortage of video of my
1:42
very large credium. Well here's a little more of a world Bill, and
1:48
an audio too. But we were we were just discussing before we started recording.
1:53
You were just showing us your desk set up, Bill, and I
1:56
think, like Tim, you're a bit of a lego. Buff is right
2:00
very much. So I'm just finishing. Let's see if I can grab it
2:04
here. I'm just finishing now the bond, the full size bond dB and
2:08
so I keep this, I keep this nearby my setup because as a kid
2:15
as a kid in school, I would be a doodler and that's what helped
2:17
me focus. And then as an adult I just kept Lego around and started
2:22
just building. And then as a thing I do for me to help keep
2:25
me focused. And it's I mean, when I'm speaking, okay, it's
2:29
one thing, right, I like actually have to speak, but there are
2:31
times, when you know, large groups, I need it just to be
2:35
locked in on what's going on. There's a problem though, build The drawings
2:38
fit nicely in a book, but where do you put all the legos?
2:40
We have bins and bins and bins of Lego pieces. What are you doing
2:44
with them? It's a great question. So my house and PA, and
2:46
there in my office I have two big books shelves that are basically degrees and
2:52
Lego and one of Star Wars. The other side as cars. Here in
2:54
the flat in Brooklyn, I have just cars, including the Sena, the
3:00
Senate F one car, which is wonderful. I'll take those back to PA
3:02
and put them up there. Cool. And you like a bit of Lego
3:07
as well, don't you. Tim. You know it's been a while since
3:09
I've done it. My son was more. The more the Officionado. We've
3:13
got we got all kinds of little exhibits and half built and some that fell
3:16
on the floor and broke, and then we just they're all over the place.
3:21
But isn't Bill so as I say, we really really enjoy your stuff
3:27
here. But for the audience who don't already know you, not familiar with
3:30
your work, give yourself a little introduction, if you would make sure.
3:34
Well, I'm Bill Shanniger. I'm from eastern Pennsylvania, a place called the
3:38
Lee High Valley, so Allentown, Bethalem, Easton, And you know,
3:43
I mean, I was like, I mean, I'm straight gen X,
3:45
right, So I'm fifty four. I'll be fifty five at the end of
3:46
the summer. And my mom and dad were teen parents. Nobody in my
3:51
family had gone to college, and so I had. And then I I
3:54
might have run a little bit long on undergraduate in terms of running out of
3:58
athletic eligibility before I was done to the school. And so I wrestled and
4:02
played football, you know, through college. And I was forced with this
4:06
situation where my pop had died when I was between my sophomore and junior year,
4:11
and so I was twenty just about to be twenty one and I needed
4:14
to work, and so I started working at this place called Kids Piece,
4:15
National Centers for kids in crisis. So I was working there part time,
4:19
and think of it as kids all the way up to eighteen or twenty depending
4:23
on the jurisdiction they're from, who are sent there, probably because they're duly
4:27
diagnosed, usually some MR or MH kind of problem. Rather than putting them
4:31
in in juvie, you know, they gave them another crack to to try
4:34
to help them. And so when I graduated from Ravian which is then Raving
4:40
College now Maraven University, they had said to me, don't go on the
4:43
market. We're going to give you a unit. And so it was you
4:45
only twenty twenty two to twenty five bad unit, the biggest for a twenty
4:48
three year old. That was remarkable right in fact, in hindsight, almost
4:51
kind of crazy. You know. I'd worked for a guy, Rick Kroudhammel,
4:55
who was just spectacular but a really really early formative leader for me.
4:59
But you know, they walk me out on the hill and go see the
5:00
house up there. It's yours, all the kids in there at yours,
5:02
all the workers in their yours. Everything that happens there, even when you're
5:05
not here, yours. Do you get it? That's what it means.
5:10
And you know, I was just so hell bent on the idea of delivering
5:15
on what my commitment was that I didn't take stock at all that I didn't
5:17
know what I was doing. And so as soon as I got there,
5:20
I mean, yeah, we were doing it. But then I figured out,
5:23
I have no idea how to run this place. So I went back
5:26
to school at night full time to get an MBA, and that's when I
5:30
really started making this connection between, hey, you can explain why people behave
5:34
the way they do. That's not just psychology for the purposes of a clinical
5:38
setting. Actually it's a really big deal at work, because you know,
5:41
a strategic plan is just a plan until someone does something different, marketing plan,
5:45
operating plan, whatever you have it only it only matters when the person
5:49
picks it up and wants to do something different. And so that I got
5:53
really turned on by that this idea that I could continue trying to explain why
5:57
people behave when they do, what motivates them, and what they're values are,
6:00
what their worldviews are, and how that impacts their daily behavior, but
6:03
I could do it in the context of business, and so I stopped working
6:05
all together. In ninety six enrolled at Auburn in their pH d program,
6:11
and then there was a real split them between IO programs and management programs.
6:15
We were all being trained the same way in quant and I'd already had a
6:17
clinical stutting experience, but if I went to the business school, I was
6:20
going to make like a third more as a faculty, which is why I
6:24
did it, you know, at that time, and I did two tracks
6:26
organalysis and change in HR because I wanted to put numbers to the soft stuff,
6:30
you know, in air quotes. I did that. I loved it.
6:32
I had a great time, got to write a lot, you know,
6:34
with amazing faculty. There's a there's a book on selection called Gate wooden
6:39
Field. I studied under Junior Field. You know. My chair's chair was
6:42
an old tissue, you know, and Steve Kerr, things like that.
6:44
Just amazing group of faculty I was studying under. And then I thought I
6:48
was going to go and you know, ninety nine I was the Academy of
6:51
Management was in Boston. I thought I was just going to go get it.
6:54
I had an offer from Saint Joe's actually to come back, but they
6:57
would discounting me because I was abd and I thought well, and I ended
7:00
up joining McKenzie in London, and I thought, this will be two years
7:03
on mckensey's dime in London and then I'll high til it back to academics,
7:09
think big thoughts, did not work very hard, but watch exceptional football.
7:13
So that didn't work. I just retired from McKenzie last May, so like
7:16
literally a year almost to the day. And you know that run at mackenzie,
7:21
though was pretty darn formative, right, I mean I got to They
7:25
have a tool called the Organizational Health Index. I wrote that with a colleague,
7:28
Matt Guthridge, you know, all the way back in two thousand and
7:30
two we worked on large skill change, doing the influence model what became the
7:34
five frames, and then all the Beyond performance thinking around organizational health. The
7:38
second book, Beyond Performance two point zero was Scott Keller, and I started
7:42
people analytics for McKenzie, ran Global Talent, eventually was the global knowledge leader
7:46
for mackenzie and looked after all of our stuff in the last seven to ten
7:49
years around future work and or great attrition, great attraction was either me and
7:54
a small team or my good good friend and colleague Aaron des Smett and I,
7:58
you know, leading and that, and then we ended up with a
8:01
book last year called Power to the Middle, which is around the importance of
8:03
middle managers to organizations. That was Brian Hancock and Emily Field and I.
8:07
Brian and I did the podcast McKenzie Talks Talent for a couple of years with
8:11
Lucia Rowley. So you know, that's how I got to heat. I
8:15
got to the point where I retired. I was just going to do the
8:16
speaking circuit and tour the book and frankly not worked very hard. Right,
8:20
it had a long run. I was tired. I made it four months
8:26
and then I got introduced to these folks at Modern Executive Solutions, and that
8:33
was that was really eye opening because you know, it's like whoever heard of
8:37
Modern? It was a search firm that had some advisory, assessment and coaching.
8:41
But then I discovered, you know, there was a woman named Christy
8:43
Smith who was trained formerly at Deloyd. She was there for a seventeen eighteen
8:48
years under Barbara Dacci. Then she went to Apple set up their DEE and
8:50
I and their talent shop and then went to a censure and ran their ort
8:54
practice globally and ran the West coast. She was thinking about joining as well.
8:58
We agreed we joined together another colleague named Scott MacFarlane who ran a big
9:01
chunk of corn Ferry for a long time leading the search. Larry Emon from
9:05
Gallup, who I had done the org Science initiative with ten years earlier.
9:09
We even served a couple of clients together. He had joined, and then
9:11
most recently we have Dean Carter, you know from Patagonia and Guild has joined
9:15
us. So in a relatively short period of time you've gotten this group that
9:18
people said, you know, we all felt like we had a little something
9:20
undone. And the gist of it really was why would companies want to separate
9:26
out the conversation around how a place is going to be run and who runs
9:30
the place. And most consultancies will not get involved in assessment and selection or
9:35
search because of the risk. I mean I ran that up at McKenzie many
9:39
times and just appropriately it was a different risk profile than a consultancy was willing
9:43
to take on. But on the flip side, the search firms trying to
9:46
do advisory it just doesn't work right. It's sold as would you like fries
9:50
with that right, and the comp structure, in particular for search partners is
9:54
such that it's very much your sum, very much hunger games, and very
9:58
difficult to sell across the firm. So we were just determined we could do
10:01
it differently, and we think do it better by bringing really good iopsychology to
10:07
really good assessment under the guise of how you're going to make money first and
10:09
foremost right, So start with a management consulting principle of we're here to understand
10:15
how you make money and how you run the place. Then we're going to
10:16
nail who runs the place and tell you that's worked. Okay, I've been
10:22
surprised. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like leaving a brand
10:24
like McKinsey. I mean, it is the number one consulting firm of the
10:26
world, you know, recent publicity notwithstanding, it's still the number one consulting
10:30
firm in the world. And I wasn't sure how it's going to work out.
10:33
And it's been great, and you know, it's really real excitement from
10:35
clients who are excited to combine those two things. Very cool I have to
10:41
say a couple of things I really really particularly enjoy about your work, and
10:45
we'll get to the other one a little later in the discussion, I think.
10:48
But the first one is that as vigorously as you sort of consider the
10:54
modern workplace and modern work, you really ground your analysis in your historical and
11:01
scientific interests and it really comes off, makes it very compelling. And I'd
11:07
really like to start them with a big, big question, right, I
11:09
mean, this is a this is a show that predominantly focused on focuses on
11:13
digital employee experience, but we like to expand our remit to think about employee
11:18
experience more generally because digital is a part of that. And we'll get onto
11:22
digital specifically shortly too, I think. But i'd love to hear what your
11:26
reflections are on the history and significance of employee experience at large as a term,
11:33
in its origin and its broader meaning for work in general. Well,
11:39
look, it's a great question, and believe it or not, I do
11:43
prep for these things, so I'm like, I had some time to think
11:46
about it. So I have a Christy and I are working on a book
11:50
right now, and the working title and you can beat me here in a
11:54
second. But the working title is stupid shit. We've told you along the
11:56
way. That's okay, we keep that in builder, okay. But the
12:01
premise of that, the premise of that was the front end of power to
12:05
the Middle was my attempt at doing a historical look at from nineteen ninety around
12:09
when I started paying attention to it, through to COVID and broadly you had
12:13
three decades ninety to the dot com crash, dot com crash to the financial
12:18
crisis, financial prices to COVID, and each of those tranches had things that
12:22
were thematic, but when you go back and look at it didn't make a
12:26
lot of sense. For instance, re engineering, the idea of taking a
12:31
process view about the major processes of companies and looking at it and getting less
12:35
hands involved and leaning it out makes sense. Taking to the extreme of re
12:39
engineering the whole company and reengineering management, of course, oh we don't need
12:43
all those people in the middle kind of stupid made no sense, right,
12:46
And so you know, that was one where it was grounded in something that
12:50
was an okay idea. Plus, the process based organization had been around for
12:52
twenty years prior to that, it wasn't like it was new. It was
12:56
just taking a view at it saying this is a good idea taken to the
12:58
extreme bad idea. Similar decade, during the TQM movement moment, we had
13:03
quality Member Quality is job one Ford sting that was really good for employees who
13:07
loved thinking, hey, we're building good vehicles. You know, we're building
13:11
good equipment. But two things came at the same time. Lean and six
13:18
lean right really good for batch work. Where do our tools go? How
13:22
do we eradicate waste? Find these things? Really lean it out. Unfortunately
13:26
for employees that lean it out went first to working capital, notably parts,
13:31
inventories, and supplies, and then was turned to human capital, where we
13:35
started running down compliment because boyd we didn't need one hundred and ten percent of
13:37
the employees. God forbid, someone gets sick, takes vacation, gets married,
13:41
or wants to do a rotation. And so in all cases, initial
13:46
idea good in application, not great. I'm belaboring this just because there's a
13:50
thread here. Lean then six sigma six sigma really good for continuous processes.
13:54
Look at the data, find your ten best days, your ten worst days,
13:58
right, constantly looking to narrow in and get yourself within a better banded
14:01
performance. Move the meat. Then somewhere along the line, someone from a
14:05
management consultancy consultancy decided to combine them and call it Lean six. On the
14:09
surface, oxymoronic makes no sense. And so that's just the first decade.
14:16
Right then you had the run towards the end of the decade around the fixation
14:20
on a talent propagated by McKinsey and others. Right post ge post PEPSI,
14:24
a talent, commercial general managers are all that mattered? Well, what about
14:28
the fifty percent of the people who are good, solid performers sitting right there
14:31
in the middle wanting to deliver the business for you every day? Oh,
14:33
they don't matter again, absurd, Right, the heightenbid right after dot Com
14:39
and the run up and startups and the run up in options to change in
14:43
accounting for options, then going to grants, and what that meant the fall
14:46
of the American expatriate because of how expensive it got to be. Right,
14:50
so, all these like academy companies as of hold on, we don't want
14:54
to move people around every two years, let's keep them in roll longer.
14:56
Okay, Well, what did that mean? That mean you had to generate
15:00
to leaders who didn't have P and L experience, right, and you hit
15:03
the financial crisis because for a lower for longer meant that most employees, as
15:09
people were treating their houses as an ATM. We've fully switched to the consumption
15:13
economy, and we had people thinking that everything had become cheap. What did
15:18
that coincide with the globalization of the global economy right where we were constantly playing
15:22
arbitrage on labor? What did that mean? Downward suppression on labor prices,
15:28
downward suppression on salaries, constantly chasing cheap. What's the problem when you chase
15:31
cheap, that place after about ten years starts making money and they'd actually like
15:35
to start living like the middle class, which means you pull up stakes,
15:37
leave a gaping hole in that country's employments, and go to the next place.
15:43
So we've created these things where like it was always going to collapse undo
15:46
itself. And then we had the last ten years or so in the run
15:50
up to COVID, we came up with yet you know, first it was
15:54
automation, then it was analytics, you know, then it became robotic processing,
16:00
you know, then it became AI, right, it's the next technological
16:03
dystopia where you are going to have financial or technological capital replaced human capital.
16:10
So we created the perfect storm of fear and fear and pushing you towards the
16:15
economic exchange where it's just about the t's and c's just about the terms and
16:18
conditions and so all the things I studied, you know as a grad student
16:22
around you know, social exchange, and why would anyone go above and beyond
16:26
out the window because we were trying to sell people on you should be like
16:29
an uber driver or a Lyft driver, have your own agency. That's garbage.
16:33
No one wants to work three jobs. No one wants to wonder what's
16:36
going to happen if one of their family members get sick. No one wants
16:38
to sit there and flit about by themselves in fantastic right. It's nonsense.
16:44
So the reason COVID mattered so much in that period was it took a bazooka
16:49
to the power dynamic that had been asymmetrically positioned to the company and put the
16:56
worker on the back foot. Now, while it was enabled by digital tools,
17:00
while it was enabled by tech, it did also say we've got a
17:03
problem. Houston and it's employees aren't just going to accept that the rules are
17:08
dictated by the other side. It actually needs to look more like an exchange.
17:12
Right, So if you run that course, so you think about what
17:15
does it mean now for employee engagement one, it's got to start with it's
17:19
got to line up with their purpose or it's not going to work stop right.
17:26
You know. I wrote something with Nanadingra a few years ago called help
17:27
your employees Find their purpose or watch them leave? And the whole thing was,
17:32
we arrogantly have talked about organizational purpose as if that was prime. It's
17:36
the exact opposite. Individual purpose is prime, then the amount you're willing to
17:40
give the vocation is second, and inside that is the bit that the company
17:44
is actually fulfilling. We had it completely reversed out of arrogance. So that
17:48
just means, look, all you can do is hope to fill up with
17:51
the person's willing to give vocation and maybe if you do an amazing job with
17:53
it, it'll expanded a little bit. But what COVID showed everyone was if
17:57
you've got to go home, and particularly women and people of color, you
18:00
got to go home. You got to be the teacher because the schools are
18:03
closed, you got to be the daycare person. Because the daycare is closed.
18:06
You probably have a sick mom, sick dad, or sick aunt or
18:08
uncle who are or exposed. You got to look after them. By the
18:11
way, you're probably in a long term relationship, either married or otherwise.
18:15
You've got to look after them. And you're expected to be an employee.
18:19
That moment of reckoning for many people led to a bunch of people leave the
18:22
workforce all together or start their own side hustle. But those that continue to
18:26
do it said, well, hold on a minute, let's challenge a few
18:29
things. One, I don't want to do garbage that doesn't line up anymore.
18:32
I don't want to be embarrassed by the company that I work for so
18:36
purpose pride. I want to be okay wearing the badge. Second flex sorry,
18:41
Third flexibility. Flexibility now in the fullest sense. What I work on,
18:47
how I work on it, with whom I work on it, where
18:48
I work on it, and when I work on when when is a big
18:52
deal. The non linear work day was propagated by COVID because you had it,
19:00
like I mean, I remember in early days of COVID saying, hey,
19:03
for the first time since I got divorced in twenty thirteen. I have
19:06
my daughter halftime. I'm prepping dinner. If you want to do a call,
19:08
great, We're going to flip up FaceTime. But I'm prepping. And
19:11
you got to know that. Now that's just me and my own little really
19:15
privileged, really affluent knowledge worker world. There's lots of people who are doing
19:18
other stuff, but I think that really came about. So when we talk
19:22
about engagement now, I think a huge portion of it is what do the
19:26
experience of you just as a company before you're even an employer. Does what
19:30
you do line up with their purpose? And it has to lamp with their
19:33
purpose not your purpose? Right? Do they really feel like there's pride in
19:37
association and belonging? Do they have flexibility? Okay, so now you're moving
19:42
in closer to the person. Right, this is a distal of the proximal
19:45
kind of thing. And you say, well, what's the boss. I
19:48
work for the tolerance of the ahole, right, I mean old school Bob
19:52
Sutton, no asshole rule. Yeah, now more than ever, man,
19:56
Right, you do not need to work for a jerk because we are still
20:00
massively, massively long opportunities. At the height of the discontinuity and COVID,
20:06
we we were out by about nine million people, meaning there was nine million
20:10
more jobs and the work people. To put that in context, we lost
20:12
just under nine million jobs in the financial crisis. You'd have to lose every
20:18
job again to get to parody. That's the issue we have, right and
20:23
that's gone over three years of three years of records, small business starts and
20:29
the Small Business Association. So it's a long way of getting around EX now
20:33
means something more than it used. The ex started back in the day.
20:36
It's satisfaction right, right, and then the nuanced version of satisfaction was satisfaction
20:41
with self, with others, with pay, with the job right whatever.
20:45
Then it went a little bit into like oh the boss, right, oh,
20:48
on the team, and we tried to do a better job with the
20:49
inclusive environment that got caught up in the malstrom of d n I stuff,
20:53
which you know we can talk about a bit later. I mean, now
20:56
I think it is singularly. If it doesn't work for me, it doesn't
20:59
work period, right. And so then when you get to the boss,
21:03
the last thing you get to is the people you work with. Every day,
21:04
your team, are they supportive? Right? Can you actually be an
21:08
again interesting language we were talking about, Well, we want you to bring
21:11
your whole self to work. What if the person doesn't want to share that
21:14
with you? Right, it's not an obligation show you know, hey,
21:17
at night I get a little bit crazy. Right, But oh yeah,
21:22
nonsense, Yeah, you know what, You're not firing your family members,
21:26
but so you know. And then the last part is just the nature of
21:30
the work itself, and that is does the person feel like they're challenged,
21:36
like they have to, like they're learning? For many people, yes,
21:38
does anyone want to make more money? Sure, sure, but the composition
21:42
of the work has to be enough of the good stuff that the ministryvia and
21:47
the bureaucracy kept to a minimum so they can do more of the good stuff.
21:51
Right. You always think about it. It's put and takes, right.
21:52
So that's what exchange relationships are. You put some credits in because you
21:56
know you're going to draw them down e X. Now my belief, it's
22:00
all of those things. It's the total experience, starting from the moment they're
22:03
thinking about you as a company, then as an employer, through recruiting,
22:07
through a selection onboarding, the actual experience, and even to how you leave.
22:11
Leaving well should always allow for the possibility of a rebound. Many companies
22:18
do not handle leaving well well, and you just end up further hurting the
22:21
brand. I don't know that was a long answer, but I'm trying to
22:23
give you maybe a more fulsome view of the X. No, it's absolutely
22:29
great, Tome. I feel like Bill just answered every single question we had
22:30
teed up. We'll try a few more, but that was incredibly expansive.
22:36
You can tell, you can tell while you're a doctor of philosophy. It's
22:38
awesome. And what I really like is the kind of the nuances of,
22:45
you know, looking back between events in time versus looking at decades, what
22:49
happened in the nineties, what happened in the teens, but chopping it up
22:52
in between major events that are more impactful to us, I think is insightful,
22:57
you know, and we can't help but continue to look behind us over
23:02
our shoulder, especially with the new bird flu coming around. I'm interested in
23:06
how you feel. The last three years really exacerbated that change in the power
23:11
dynamic, the workplace relationship between employee employer, did COVID accelerate kind of did
23:18
accelerate that remote work and tip things into the employee's favor. Where are we
23:21
now, do you think? Yeah? Okay, so this is a little
23:26
complicated because it's multifaceted for sure. The rise let me tease that one.
23:30
The rise of tech. Tech has always been super interesting in the tech employees
23:34
because in many parts they've been told their special their entire lives, right that
23:38
usually have a computer science or some step back way, which means they're clever,
23:42
which means they were probably in a homogeneously grouped school or class, right,
23:47
which is okay, always around the other smart kids, you're smarter than
23:48
the others. That's one they've been told they're special always two, By and
23:52
large, there's for the really good coders in particular and some of the hardware
23:56
people who are designing hardware. There's an element of creative in there, which
24:00
is they like they like doing it the way they like to do it right,
24:03
which also means they resent control and they resent leadership. So you'll see
24:08
in a lot of the tech companies, one most saying we don't need middle
24:11
managers. You know, you show me something like that and I'll I'll show
24:15
you someone who's playing with somebody else's capital. It's easy to be oh,
24:19
just let us go. Well, okay, what happens when you scale?
24:22
You have a thousand flowers bloom? You know, there was a company forty
24:25
years ago called park palowl to research center. They did that. They came
24:30
up with some really cool stuff. Not a single thing of it they could
24:32
monetize. They end up giving things away like the guy, right, I
24:36
mean, like you know, I mean it's like clever people do still need
24:41
leadership. They just need leadership in a way that allows enough room for their
24:45
own brilliance and their own agency to come through. But it's not the absence
24:49
of leadership. Right. So one, when you put all these people home,
24:52
why am I belieboring Tech first? Because Tech's been treated as a unicorn
24:56
for the better part of two decades and in particular unbridled hiring. So what
25:00
should have been pool roles where there was no negotiation. They allowed every person,
25:04
no matter how mediocre, to negotiate catches catch can't get what you can.
25:10
When they sent them home to work, now it became well, I'm
25:12
going to bring my dog to work. I'm going to walk around in my
25:15
flip flops, I'm going to know whatever it liked. It made the environment
25:18
at work seem like, you know, trite, right, because now they
25:21
could do it at home, so even less constraints, the tie that bind
25:26
really started coming to me. You give me a platform, you give me
25:27
engines to work on. I'm gonna do my job, but I'm gonna do
25:30
it when I want to do it. That was tech for the bulk of
25:34
the US workforce. And this is important. It's the other end of the
25:37
extreme tech over here on the knowledge work. The bulk of the US workforce,
25:40
which is either direct service delivery or hands on work logistics, construction,
25:44
things like that, they didn't get a break. The vast majority of employees
25:48
in the world did not go remote. They had to keep going to work.
25:52
But what we did manage to do was piss all of them off by
25:56
constantly talking about the small portion of the work that was working promote like another
26:00
example of we're just we're those of the grindstone and we don't really matter.
26:06
Right. So you have this and you have this group in the middle.
26:08
That group in the middle in some form of leadership, and for those folks,
26:12
let's say people my age, right, So just Mark at fifty four,
26:17
what was the first important leadership movie or entertainment experience? I saw Wall
26:22
Street Gordon Gecko. Gordon Gecko was supposed to be the bad guy. He
26:30
was not in that movie. He was the hero. Right, Greed is
26:34
good. Greed is good, right, and for all the reasons greed is
26:37
good, right, you know, and that kind of stuff might makes right.
26:41
At the height of trickle down economics, right, born a generation of
26:45
people like you had Alex P. Keaton on TV, and you had Gordon
26:49
Deco here, right, none of the bost caricatures, but this idea of
26:52
a rather staunchly republican conservative trickle down view where the liberation of capital and autonomy
27:02
was what you pursued. So that meant for these folks, it's if you
27:06
have power, both the acquisition of that power and the usage of that power
27:11
is what dominated the workforce. Right, Well, he's the boss, notably,
27:14
he right, often the white guy, he right is the boss.
27:19
So that there, when you look at it, I mean that's just a
27:22
case. Then you say, okay, well why did it change so dramatically?
27:26
Because this group of people always had people showing up. Their identity was
27:30
driving to work in a slightly better BMW. It's slightly better out, it's
27:33
slightly better Mercedes, slightly better Porsche. Now they're not there. But what
27:37
do you do if your identity is walking out of your office looking at a
27:40
sea of cubes where your people are supposed to be and empty. I mean
27:45
the emotional tumult that I think a lot of leaders faced from their identity having
27:48
a gaping hole blown in. It was a real problem that I don't think
27:52
we really appreciated, or maybe we did appreciate it and didn't care because it's
27:55
like those guys have been in charge long enough they can get over it.
27:57
So I think just a social fabric was torn. I think irreparably torn myself.
28:06
Now, Okay, that's nice. That's the painting of what it is.
28:07
Now, what about the people coming in? So, my son's twenty
28:11
four. He works at you at a big four firm, consulting firm.
28:14
Is very good. He's been basically raised since he was six. You know,
28:18
whether it was like the at night and on the weekend McKinsey problem solving
28:22
golf while we were driving to hockey and lacrosse and football. He's been problem
28:25
solving since he was six, right, he's probably better at it than I
28:27
am now in his mind, Well, of course you want to be in
28:30
the office. So when he suffered, he went to the office every day,
28:34
wanted to see partners. And so there's this weird mix, right of
28:38
people who are thirsty for coaching, thirsty for apprenticeship. But who are those
28:44
people? Those people had high school and college devastated by COVID. All the
28:49
social things that you would do, think about, all the normative things we
28:52
learned in high school when you asked them when to go on a date,
28:56
when you ask them to go out, how you behave in class, how
28:59
you behave on two All those things were obliterated. So we already have a
29:02
group that buy and large was over reliant on digital tools to communicate in the
29:07
absence of social cues. The normative effect of behavioral cues from other people has
29:14
been lost on this generation. So in many respects that how do you behave
29:18
as an employee, we almost have to finish cooking them, you know what
29:21
I mean? For them. They desperately need to come in right, So
29:25
but what we do we on board them remotely? No way, you actually
29:30
have to bring them back like if we don't find a way to start getting
29:32
the hooks back into what does it mean to be us? Starting with how
29:36
do we behave here? Like how would you know where people go in what
29:40
time they go to lunch, or what the norms are about people. You
29:42
wouldn't because you don't get any of it. So I just think this is
29:45
one of those we have the tech which is dominant, gets a lot of
29:48
the tech, the old dudes who are in charge, and then this group
29:52
in the middle who never left anyway, and now the youngster's coming in,
29:56
going please help me attach because I don't really want to be as free flung
29:59
as uber driver. Does that make sense? It's really interesting because I think
30:04
in a lot of our conversations we talk about the power dynamic shifting to the
30:08
employee because now I have flexibility, I can work from anywhere. Now it
30:12
opens up all kinds of worldwide opportunities for my work and not just the employer
30:17
in my city. But the opposite effect is where you're at, is these
30:22
the new hires. The new generation doesn't know how to socialize, doesn't know
30:26
how to interact, doesn't know how to engage the same way that we did,
30:29
and how we learned in the office. So that's an interesting That's an
30:33
interesting dynamic. I'm curious if you throw now JENAI into it, does it
30:37
change the dynamic? Does it bring things back? Does it Here's the thing.
30:40
Does it give the employer the upper hand because I can do things without
30:42
employees, or does it give the employees the upper hand because now I can
30:45
do my job better with some help. I think both. I think both
30:49
for sure. I mean, you know, one of the last things I
30:52
did at Mackensey just before I left was Brian and I with Lorena lead looking
30:56
at JENAI and talent to the extent as an assign just because I have to.
31:03
We used to have Monty Carlo, then we have machine learning, then
31:06
we had neural networks, that we had AI. Generative AI is just the
31:11
next in Soon's AGI, right. But the lump of a large language model
31:17
that you're filling either with your own proprietary stuff or you're filling with open stuff,
31:19
right just under that confluence, well, what might you fill a large
31:22
language model with? How about everything you know? But that's forty years old.
31:27
Knowledge management systems, particularly for engineering firms and others, pretty well known.
31:33
Right. We used to have corporate librarians for a reason. I think
31:36
the extent to which we're using jen Ai for knowing what we know and the
31:40
rapid access and synthesis of what we know, we might actually have to bring
31:45
some corporate librarians back because of the refresh rate. You know, I'm not
31:49
saying we're bringing back the Dewey decimal system, but you need some way of
31:53
cataloging this stuff, probably onto logical, It's probably referenced across a couple tags.
31:59
METATAG might actually have their day now in terms of being used properly so
32:02
people can get access to cool information, so for just in time training,
32:07
just in time knowledge, and probably more curated onboarding. I believe in all
32:10
of that making the employee better the extent to which it is things like deck
32:15
production by pulling existing slides, model production by reusing like remember when OL was
32:22
a thing. The object library, we're supposed to make people faster at building
32:27
models. I think this just might end up being the object library as strings
32:30
of code, not bits of code that you can get access to it.
32:34
What is it not doing? I'm not sure it's going to be as good
32:37
as the artisanal way of how efficient and how novel can I be in the
32:40
way I structure the code, the way I structure the model that I think
32:44
maybe we're not quite there. So I think the answer is both the extent
32:46
to which you're doing stuff by rote, you should probably be looking for something
32:51
else. However, your ability to get up to speed quickly and know what
32:57
we know also in the employee's favor. I do think that the underbelly of
33:00
all of this is all of those things rely on people who are pretty darn
33:05
good at problem solving, right, pretty good at critical reasoning. And you
33:08
know, even with even with a gentle eye, we're having a really hard
33:14
time producing kids out of K through twelve who can do that. And even
33:17
that problem solving relies on things that I've already learned, things that I already
33:22
know. There's something to be said about a GENAI model, a large language
33:27
model, or or or any kind of large database that avoids me having to
33:31
relearn things, or the new generation having to learn something that was learned twenty
33:36
years ago. Right, So even that cleanup, you've got to make sure
33:39
you're not throwing away the baby with the bathwater. It's a complicated problem of
33:45
what's what's true. I like the concept. You know, I know what
33:47
I know. How do we make sure that it's still valid down the road
33:52
and what's valid and what's not. It's interesting validation. This validation assumptions are
33:57
really yeah, is what was going to be? And you know I think
34:00
that, I mean right, yeah, I mean I'm about to say this
34:02
to you. And as you can see, you're going to see my arm
34:04
shrinking to where I look more, look at t rex. Okay, we're
34:06
gonna be like this. So I studied under a woman named Lorraine Gardner for
34:10
a multivariate regression at all, and then she ended up going to Arizona State.
34:15
She was wonderful. She studied under a god named John Nieder, who
34:17
wrote all the textbooks for this. It's only because those people who know regression
34:21
will instantly start getting a twitch when I say it. But we were forced
34:23
to learn matrix algebra by hand before we were allowed to start using SPSS or
34:30
SaaS, right, I mean, I still have the syntax for my dissertation
34:34
where I wrote it down and I wrote myself little notes about what it was.
34:36
Now does that suggest that everyone should have to learn matrix algebra in by
34:38
hand? I don't think so should they know what the hell is going on
34:43
when they push a button? I think so, yeah, you know,
34:45
I mean I do think. I think sometimes we have confused experience for expertise.
34:52
So if you've had an experience of something, you replicate the experience and
34:54
say, well, this is how I did it, whereas expertise is you
34:58
know why you did it that way, you know why why what was happening
35:00
was happening, So you have a chance in hell of explaining it to others
35:04
and engaging in challenging constraints, challenging assumptions. And I worry that the extent
35:09
to which we become so reliant on digital or statistical tools and I separate them
35:15
out, we don't know why we're doing it right. And then I think
35:20
we have a real challenge. I actually think we're at a deficit of thoughts,
35:23
you know. I mean, you could argue the two things we have
35:25
going on right now is we've lost the ability to have civil discourse when we're
35:29
disagreeing. Then we have lost the ability to critically reason. And I think
35:32
in both cases we're at the worst for it. Yeah, you're almost taking
35:37
it on faith that when I push that button, I know what it's going
35:38
to do. I know that it's going to give me the oulcome I need.
35:42
But I look back at my career and some of the most valuable education
35:45
that I still rely on is my technical education that I got thirty forty years
35:50
ago, because it gave me the underlying how to code at the logic and
35:53
even the creativity that goes into coding. Right, that critical thinking and experimentation.
36:00
You can't you can't discount that. But then the other side, I'm
36:05
curious on your thoughts about the changing requirements of those leaders, whether they're frontline
36:09
or middle managers. As all of this, as our environment changes, both
36:15
in where workers are, what they know, how they're coming into the workforce,
36:19
those leaders have to evolve as well. Where are they remoter in the
36:22
office. How do I manage that leader that walks out into the office amongst
36:25
the sea of empty cubes. They have to manage that staff differently. Now,
36:29
So what are your thoughts that talk a bit about how those leaders need
36:32
to change and what happens when they don't, Whether they need to be changed,
36:38
right, I mean, there is there is probably you know, whether
36:43
you were looking at the old gallop work or this ender work, or the
36:46
McKinsey work, and others have done it over time, but the consensus a
36:50
right that the synthesis of this is and any given time, a third of
36:53
people in leadership roles are not up to it, never will be, a
36:58
third probably need help, and a third of probably okay but probably underdeveloped.
37:00
You know, maybe they're more preternatural, but they could be better. In
37:06
so many cases, the hierarchical nature of how companies are set up, largely
37:12
by the hay point system and the old school militaristic view of the table of
37:15
the organization. You collect stuff, you do land grab. It's like you
37:20
bring in customers people. That's how you justify getting a hired title that tired
37:24
kingdom building exactly. But the assumption that all that stuff from yesterday is going
37:30
to translate going forward. It's amazing how we have all these stories and decks
37:35
around now more than ever, right, and they're like, oh tomorrow it's
37:38
going to be different, but the same old white dudes are going to be
37:40
in charge. Trust us. It's as if we wanted to be inoculated from
37:45
the change that was being foisted on everyone else. It makes no sense.
37:50
So I would say that it's right to be suspicious that the people who were
37:54
in charge yesterday should be in charge tomorrow. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be.
38:00
It just means can you take what you've experienced, distill it down into
38:04
basic assumptions and worldviews, models, ways of thinking, and saying does that
38:07
still hold? And the most importantly underneath that, do they still have enough
38:13
curiosity to continue learning? I mean, if I were to say, one
38:15
thing that I think has benefited me from my Mackensey experience was because I had
38:20
functional expertise. I never needed to learn about organization stuff. I was always
38:24
going to be doctor Shannecker right on that. But I got to learn about
38:29
refineries, chemical plants, fossil power plants, nuclear power plants, above ground
38:34
mining, below ground mining, shift building, airplane building, banks, insurance
38:37
companies like video game makers. Underlying all that was a curiosity of As soon
38:44
as I was introduced into it, I was like, oh my god,
38:45
how does this work? Where does risk come from? What's the economic model
38:49
here? Right? And so when you talk about the modern leader, I
38:53
got to tell you I think one of them is stop stop looking to repeat
38:57
yesterday, take what you can from it, and dump the rest and just
39:00
be remain curious right about tomorrow, both in terms of the problem, you
39:04
know, the where the value comes from in the risk. I would say,
39:07
by and large, the leaders who want to continue to think of this
39:09
as a power dynamic between just employer and the employee is missing the point.
39:15
R esg By any other name is here, whether we like it or not.
39:19
Multi stakeholder is here, right, you are going to be crushed now.
39:22
Of course, we are seeing a lot of companies remaining private or going
39:25
private because they don't want to deal with a lot of this stuff. But
39:29
even that's on borrow time because the workforce is voting with their feet. But
39:32
where you are, so i'd say curiosity really grounding in assumed constraints, you
39:37
know, and assumptions risk around value for sure, embracing the idea that multi
39:43
stakeholder is here. You cannot just solve for the company anymore. I mean
39:45
that might make right stuff that we were doing for long as well, I'm
39:49
doing it for shareholders actually just being a scompany. You know, as you
39:52
can charge thirty five hundred percent more for a drug that someone needs, doesn't
39:58
mean you should It makes your scompany right? I mean this idea of pricing
40:01
power what you make, whom you sell it to. If the regulatory environment
40:07
is the only bar you hit, you are almost certainly going to be on
40:08
the wrong side of history for sure. And I think the last part is,
40:15
you know they used to label at servant leadership. I often thought that
40:17
that label didn't help. But this idea is it's much more about them than
40:22
it is you. There's something to that, right in terms of like your
40:25
your job as a leader cannot possibly be about the maintenance and protection of you
40:31
and has to be about the propagation of them, you know. And I
40:36
think if you don't buy into that, you're probably not going to be a
40:37
vergant leader. How about specifically an IT We've got a lot of as a
40:42
technology show, We've got a lot of IT leaders and managers. Anything specific
40:46
that an IT leader should take away right now, what would you encourage them
40:51
to embrace and changes to consider specific to leading technology teams? Well, like
40:57
most so if you think about HR finance, it kind of group together in
41:01
terms to get cashed to people and the tools I need to do the job.
41:05
And then regulatory risk compliance kind of like keep us away from the third
41:07
rails Oft, say you bucket those two support functions your groups of the different
41:12
I think for you know it, much like HR has often struggled with folks
41:16
who wanted to play at business but didn't get the business. You know,
41:21
they got the hardware, they got the software, they got the GDPR was
41:23
a boom to them safe Hartmar right, because they could play the holier than
41:28
now pseudo lawyer almost card. I think the people who are best at it
41:32
embrace the idea of why does this classic performance context, why does this thing
41:37
exist? What's our strategy is that different going forward? What's the culture we'd
41:44
like around here and that we have to play into. How are the boxes
41:47
actually drawn? How do the boxes work together? A good IT leader is
41:52
an officer first, an IT leader second. Right, they really have to
41:58
be interchangeable as an officer first. Now they may have the most amazing domain
42:01
expertise and the most amazing technical expertise, but the ability, the ability for
42:07
you to be a good colleague first. And I'm not saying you know,
42:09
by the way, you'll never hear me say, oh, serve your colleagues.
42:13
I also think that's a mistake. This idea of internal internal customers.
42:16
That puts the power dynamic in the hand of the general list of the salespeople.
42:21
Why you're all paid by the same company. There's only one group of
42:24
people writing you a check. It's outside you, right, So I think
42:29
here, I mean, I just think the power dynamic has forced many,
42:31
particularly of HR and IT into the dynamic. Whether it's like, oh,
42:35
well there are internal customers. No they're not. They're your colleagues, right,
42:38
You're there to each bring your own gifts and your own passions to bear
42:42
collaboratively. So sometimes power dynamics start inside first before they even get to who
42:46
you're serving it. Folks. I think they should lead with business knowledge fast
42:52
follow with technical knowledge. That would be my encouragement. And I think the
42:55
ones that get that are pretty good, right, and they get it,
43:00
and I also think they make better leaders the extent to which that you're you're
43:02
growing people around technical expertise, but will often overlook behavior also a mistake,
43:08
right, I mean, right, you know you'll see people you like the
43:12
radar is just not on from what the world is giving them, right,
43:15
Like, just tune in a little bit, you know that makes sense?
43:20
No? Absolutely, Yeah, that's all good stuff. So Bill, if
43:22
you were going to we've spoken a lot about advice, primarily, I guess
43:27
for leaders in this in this climate, if we were going to focus momentarily
43:31
on the employees themselves. We've spoken about the influence and potential impact of AI
43:37
a bit already. What advice, considering we are entering the era of AI,
43:42
I would say, technologically, what advice do you give to the employees
43:46
young or middle aged or whatnot, relatively early in their career for making a
43:52
success, for being successful in this technological era. It's a great question.
43:59
I really thought you were going to go with the Barbara Walters version of if
44:00
you could be a tree, what kind of tree would you be? But
44:04
there we go. Look, I think, for you know, workers of
44:07
this era, I think three things. One, know what matters to you
44:10
and be unwavering on it, so classic purpose what really matters to you.
44:14
Two, I think it's incredibly important to recognize your own agency and that you
44:20
always have choice, even if choice leads you to something that may feel a
44:23
little scary. But three, remember you do have an obligation as a member
44:29
of something bigger than you to contribute back to that. It is not one
44:31
way, so i'd say, what matters where your agency lies, and then
44:36
your obligation, and I think if you can manage all three of those,
44:38
you likely are able to thrive. Wonderful Bill, I said at the top
44:43
of a discussion. And so there are two things I like most about your
44:47
analysis, and we touched upon one of them, which was, of course,
44:52
you know, the expansiveness of it. The other one is your I
44:55
would say contempt, but your cynicism at times towards business jargon. I enjoy
45:00
it. I ironically you've already you've already kind of taken apart indirectly one of
45:07
my least favorite bits of contemporary business jargon, which they call the democratization of
45:12
work, which is like a really cuddly way of saying, no one's going
45:15
to have a proper job anymore, and you're going to have to just wing
45:17
it from task to task. So we've done we've already done this one.
45:21
But I was wondering if there are any other just to finish things off management
45:27
or leadership buzz phrase is your most skeptical of present, so many and so
45:32
little time, you know, so the things I hear now that I love
45:36
to I love to like poke on. So people will say, you know
45:40
agile, Well, which part about angele? You know? I mean agila
45:45
dy as a phrase means there's a backbone, and there's then a speed of
45:50
application, deploy and redeploy. Okay, is that what you mean? I
45:53
don't think you mean turn the company on its side, use a language that
45:57
no one knows what the hell you're talking about. In chapter Skills Tribes,
46:00
right, why does it? Why does a way of working have to come
46:04
with a new language. I'll tell you why it has to have a new
46:06
language because then nobody understands it. When nobody understands it that it's religion,
46:08
that's power, because there's the people, there's the in group, and there's
46:12
the outer group. Most of these acronyms are power plays, right around saying
46:16
oh, you don't know that. I'll give me a break. Kars versus
46:20
KPIs. Here's something. How about you have a goal. You have a
46:23
goal that for the company. That turns down to the goal for the person.
46:25
The goal for the person is measured a certain way. We call it
46:28
a metric. You've got to agree on a target on what's good and what's
46:30
not good. How about plain language? Right? Not this nonsense, plain
46:37
language. Just bring it back. Yeah, you know what we used to
46:39
We used to joke I have when on my leaving party. One of them
46:43
is called beat it with the simple stick. My unwavering, unwavering desire is
46:49
to just mock people when they when you know. I feel like if you
46:52
know something well enough, you can distill it down to your mum or your
46:55
or your fifth grader can understand what you're saying. If you don't, you
47:00
are doomed to repeat acronyms and buzzwords that you don't actually understand. We used
47:06
to turn it into a contest. We'd pick out the silliest acronym or buzzword
47:09
that we could and see whoever could work it into a conference call the most
47:14
times in a meaningless way got the most point. Absolutely right. Well,
47:19
I don't get it, I really don't. I mean it's kind of like
47:22
I think it's a form of affinity and belonging, like in group and out
47:23
group. You know we're in because I get it, But the actual impact
47:28
of that, like I do this thing with leaders, I say, hey,
47:30
just forget it, just for giggles. A simple word like accountability,
47:34
What does it mean to you? But you can't use the word accountability.
47:37
First, at least half the room will reuse the word accountability. Some of
47:40
that will be like obligation, goals, targets, consequences, reward or whatever.
47:46
I mean, you get a full range. I go, well,
47:49
this is the issue with what we're talking about. A simple word means incredibly
47:53
different things. Yep. If we said hey, we're going to go work
47:57
on accountability and we never bothered to say what you're going to do, they'd
48:01
be working across purposes immediately. So so much of this is why wouldn't we
48:07
just say, okay, great, we're gonna work accounta be like, let's
48:09
just take a moment to say what we're going to do and make sure that
48:13
works for all of us, the willingness to sit and pause for it,
48:15
just clutch for a second and just agree on the action that we're going to
48:21
take in the assumptions we're making, we'd be a whole lot better off.
48:24
A lot of times it gets simplified to its most basic form too. The
48:28
accountability is who do I need to blame when it goes wrong? Whose fault
48:30
is it? And accountability is not for our fault? Right? Think about
48:36
that? Oh, I one throat the joke, right, yeah, I
48:43
think I have nightmares tonight Bill, my corporate days well, you know,
48:50
speaking of acronyms. Thank you Bill for coming on deck sho. It's been
48:54
an absolute pleasure and really lived up to our expectations of this conversation. Before
49:00
you go, do tell our listeners where anywhere you want them to go to
49:02
find you, your your your books, et cetera. Any any plugs you
49:06
want to give them here, sir, well, thank you for the plug.
49:09
So listen. There's a website Bill Shanninger dot com Shanninger's s C H
49:14
A N I N G E R. That's the website I built when I
49:16
thought I was retiring, but it's kept up to date, super active on
49:21
LinkedIn right and then or you can go to the company, the firm's website,
49:24
you know, modern executive solutions. But certainly for sure, between LinkedIn
49:30
or others, we can connect, right and I do actually respond the most.
49:32
The last book out was from this out just under a year. It
49:36
was just Power to the Middle, about the importance of the middle manager.
49:38
There's an audiobook to that, by the way, where I'm actually I'm the
49:42
narrator. And so that was one of the deals we did with HBr was
49:46
that I wanted I wanted the ability to narrate the book because I so hated
49:50
the voice of the narrator on beyond performance. So you know, and now
49:53
that you've listened to me through the podcast, you will never have a sleeping
49:58
problem, I assure you, just not at all, not at all.
50:02
Thank you so much, Bill being an absolute pleasure. Thank you guys,
50:06
this is great, really appreciate it. To make sure that you never miss
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50:29
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