The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition cuts through the noise in the crowded world of recruitment marketing, employer branding, workforce intelligence, and AI.
Hosted by Graham Thornton, President of Consulting & Growth at Talivity, this podcast brings you unfiltered conversations with industry founders, practitioners, and the occasional contrarian who's actually doing the work – not just selling you on it.
We're not here to hype the next big thing. We're here to help you separate signal from noise, understand what's actually working (and what's just well-marketed), and make smarter, data-backed decisions about your talent strategy.
You'll hear from TA leaders navigating real hiring challenges, founders building solutions worth paying attention to, and experts who see around corners before the rest of us catch up.
Whether you're navigating the AI arms race, trying to figure out your tech stack, or just trying to hire better people faster – this is the podcast for people who care more about ROI than buzzwords.
The Changing State of Talent Acquisition
#65: The Future of Work: How AI, Gig Economy, and Fractional Employment Are Redefining Careers
In this episode of The Changing State of Talent Acquisition, we sit down with Rishad Tobaccowala—author, speaker, and strategist with 37 years of leadership experience at Leo Burnett and Publicis Groupe—to explore the shifting dynamics of work in the age of AI and digital transformation.
Rishad shares insights from his books Rethinking Work and Restoring the Soul of Business, diving into the rise of task-based employment, the growing trend of fractional roles, and how both individuals and companies must adapt. We discuss:
- Why the traditional full-time job is evolving into a modular, task-based system
- The "Company of One" mindset and how fractional employment creates flexibility for both companies and workers
- How companies can foster strong cultures without relying on physical office presence
- The six essential skills individuals need to stay relevant in the AI-driven future of work
If you've ever wondered what the future of employment looks like—and how to prepare—this episode is a must-listen.
Connect with Rishad Tobaccowala:
- Books: Rethinking Work & Restoring the Soul of Business
- Newsletter: rishad.substack.com
- Podcast: What Next?
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent Acquisition, where your hosts, graham Thornton and Martin Cred, share their unfiltered takes on what's happening in the world of talent acquisition today. Each week brings new guests who share their stories on the tools, trends and technologies currently impacting the changing state of talent acquisition. Have feedback or want to join the show? Head on over to changestateio. And now on to this week's episode.
Speaker 2:All right and we're back with another episode of the Changing State of Talent Acquisition Podcast. Super excited for our next guest, rashad Tabakawala. Rashad has an incredible background as an author, speaker, teacher, advisor with many decades of experience helping companies through really an incredible transformation. So you know, rashad, super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. So I'm going to start with an easy question. I think you've had a pretty incredible career journey. I'd love it if you can just set the stage for our audience, maybe talk a little bit more about your early days in Bombay to your leadership roles in HooblaSys Group, you know. Maybe just explain briefly how those experiences have shaped your perspective on work today.
Speaker 3:Fantastic. So I grew up in the city of Bombay, india, which is now known as Mumbai. I got a degree in advanced mathematics. I then came to the University of Chicago to get an MBA. It was then called the Graduate School of Business. It's now called the Boot School of Business and in 1982, I joined what was then the largest advertising agency in the United States, but it was unique in the fact that it was the largest but it was based in Chicago, it had no other offices, it was privately held and it only had 32 clients. That was called Leo Burnett and I thought I'd spend two, three years there and the reason I joined them in addition to the fact that I was interested in where strategy and culture intersected and that tended to happen in the world of marketing broadly, and I thought a company like Leo Burnett would expose me to a lot of different marketing companies because they had and still have clients like a McDonald's and a Kellogg's and various others. One thing led to another and I ended up spending my entire career full-time working career at what was Leo Burnett, or what eventually ended up being the Publicis Group, which is what bought Leo Burnett. So 1982 to 2019 was my full-time career, which is 37 years Now.
Speaker 3:What is particularly interesting is the last time my business card said Leo Burnett was in about 1994. Leo Burnett was in about 1994. So between 1982 and 1994, I worked for Leo Burnett and then I spun out a section of Leo Burnett and we called it Giant Step. It was a new agency focused on interactive and digital. We even left the Leo Burnett building, took the name off the door and I helped grow that from about three employees to 100, no revenue to about 10 million, and then came back. I didn't leave Leo Burnett as an employee, I remained a Leo Burnett employee. I was just everybody else was a giant step employee. I built that company. It was majority owned by Leo Burnett. Then I was asked to come back to help Leo Burnett Media become Starcom and I at that particular stage also launched a unit called Starcom IP, which was a digital unit, and Starcom eventually merged with another company called MediaVest. We then got bought by the Publicis Group in 2002. So this is 20 years into my career.
Speaker 3:And then we formed what was known as the Publicis Media Company, which was Zenith OptiMedia and Stockholm MediaVest at that time, and I was the chief strategy and innovation officer of that company. So now it's 20 years into my career and I've worked at, you know, leo Burnett, giant, step Stockholm and Publicis Media. And now it gets really exciting because at that particular stage, working with the CEO at that time of Publicis, a gentleman called Maurice Levy on the board I suggested we needed to be more digital than we were, and so we ended up acquiring companies like Digitas and Razorfish, which were very large companies at that time and still are, and we formed a unit that connected both Digitas, razorfish and Publicis Media, which we call Viviki, and I ended up being the strategy and innovation officer of that. And then Maurice asked me to be the chairman of Digitas and Razorfish and then about you know, it was in 2012, he asked me to have a new role, working with him across the group globally, to be the chief strategist and growth officer of the group, and at that stage we built the strategy which you see today, which is very data-driven oriented.
Speaker 3:We bought companies like Epsilon and companies like Sapient and in 2019, after 37 years there and two years after Maurice stepped up to become the chairman, I started my second career, which was a career where I helped people see, think and feel differently about growing themselves, their teams and their business. But I moved from being one of the senior people in then 86,000 person company and now 106,000 person company to being the only employee of a one person company, which is me. And so today what I do is I do this thing about helping people see, think and feel differently about growing themselves, their talent or their teams or their company, by doing it in three ways One to many, which is a fancy way of saying I have a podcast, a sub stack, and I've written two books, one of which is called Rethinking Work, which I'm sure we'll touch on, and the first one, which we may also touch on, is called Restoring the Soul of Business to Human in the Age of Data. So that's my one-to-many One-to-some is a fancy way of saying I do keynotes, executive offsites and workshops or panels, which is where we met at HR Brew.
Speaker 3:And then, last one is advisory, which is one-to-one and it's not consulting, it's more advisory. And one of the people I continue to advise six years after I have left is the publicist group. So that's what I do today and it's now 43 years into a career and I am still keeping busy. As you know, yesterday I was in Austin. Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrow I'm in Chicago. Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrow I'm in Chicago, where I'm based, and tomorrow the flight will be number 24 this year, and we're not yet halfway through March.
Speaker 4:Wow, wow. Your backstory sort of speaks for itself, rashad, it's really a treat to have you here. I think we were talking before the podcast about some natural connections between the three of us, chicago being the sort of locus of it. But I started a business 20 years ago with my business partner. It was a market research firm and she kind of cut her teeth at Leo Burnett. Her name is Carol Phillips. I don't know if you crossed paths, it might not have been your time.
Speaker 3:I know Carol Phillips very well. I mean I've lost touch with her recently, but Carol and I worked on the Heinz business. She was the supervisor on Heinz SketchUp and I was the supervisor on what was then called Heinz Pet Products. So that's how we knew each other.
Speaker 4:Wow, well, I'll have to tell her later. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to know that we connected in this fortuitous way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, tell her. I'd love to reconnect and give her my email.
Speaker 4:Well, people didn't tune in to hear us wax about our personal connections, but that is a really special one. So I thank you for making that connection. You're welcome. I would love it if you could tell us a little bit more about this idea of you. Know we're in this well. We've been in this digital transformation you could call it for probably decades.
Speaker 4:At this point we're at an inflection point right now, it seems, where AI is sort of the next iteration of that. It might be a sea change, but these are not new ideas and you've been thinking about them for a while. And I'm just wondering, reflecting on the 37 years or however long you said it was of your career so far. I mean you have to have seen dramatic change. Even talking to my colleague, carol, you know she started at a time where you had everything on paper, you know, before email existed, and now we're in a world where we're afraid computers might do all the knowledge work. So why don't you get interested in this idea of human connection in an increasingly data-driven world? Maybe it would be a place to start.
Speaker 3:Sure. So you know I got interested in this particular world in just before I started Giant Step. I was working for Leo Burnett Direct Marketing and I began to realize the logic of direct marketing made sense. But the economics of direct marketing for many marketers did not make sense Because in those days you had to find an audience by buying mailing lists or catalog lists. You then had to cut trees to create paper or some sort of samples which you'd mail out and you needed to buy postage. And eventually I showed using my mathematics that for most brands it was cheaper to reach everybody through television than find the 5%, 6% who were their audience through direct marketing. So even though you wasted 94%, supposedly, of your dollars, it was more cost effective and that I proved. But at the other stage it kind of convinced me that something was off, because I could understand the logic. And that's when I discovered things like CompuServe, prodigy and America Online and I said here's a way of finding an audience without having to buy a catalog list, here's a way of mailing something without having to have paper and here's a way of getting to somebody without postage. And so I started the interactive marketing group and that's how my digital career began.
Speaker 3:But as my digital career expanded to Giant Step and Digitas and Razorfish, there were a few learnings that I've had which have shown up both in my first and my second book, and one of them is that technology cannot be stopped and technology, for all practical purposes, does not care about anybody or anybody's business model. So when you say this technology is difficult and it is challenging my business model, the answer is yes, it is. You have to adapt or change your business. It's not going to sit there and say, because you don't like it, you can't legislate against it, you can't vote against it, you can't disconnect computers. So as a result, the first thing was most companies were not understanding that this digital stuff was doing a few things. One, it was challenging their business models. It was not stoppable. But the third it actually changed the way things got done.
Speaker 3:So I first showed it. Like, if you looked in the newspaper industry, which has become a shell of itself, they didn't take digital seriously and when they did, they thought about digital as ways of making algorithms to make their trucks run faster or their printing presses run better. But what digital did was it basically said you don't need trucks or printing presses, right, and, at the same time, what digital convinced people, even though people were saying content is king, which is absolute BS. It is how do you point to content that is king, so? Where the money in content went to Meta and Google and not even to the content providers, and so those things made me begin to understand that the future for most organizations was not only aligning to all these digital trends, but dealing with the human leaders and the human talent who basically had to now adapt and change. Had to now adapt and change, and therefore I basically my first book basically simply the original title was called the Story and the Spreadsheet, and it was eventually called Restoring the Soul of a Business-Staying Human in the Age of Data, and so the whole idea is how do you combine human and data?
Speaker 3:Now that book continues to sell really well, and if you read it, it feels like it was written yesterday, because a book that came out five years ago has an entire closing chapter talking about AI, right, which is kind of surprising, but what it does say is this, which is we are living in an age where you need technology and talent, and how you combine them is a combination of investment in technology and investment in talent.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wow, I would love to discuss with you on this. I suppose one thing that comes to mind is, well, this idea that data and stories are both important. I think when we're focused on technology, it's great. I still remember I don't know when this was. You may remember maybe 10 years ago where big data was the hot topic Everyone was talking about. Big data is here. It's going to radically change everything, and now we don't necessarily talk about big data anymore. It doesn't mean the ideas didn't remain here, but we certainly don't talk about it in those terms, and, as a market researcher, I can shower my clients all day long with data, but what really actually makes a difference is telling a story that connects on a human level. And maybe that's what you're speaking to, because I can bury an executive in spreadsheets, but if there's not a story, then they're not going to do anything with the conclusions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I call it the story of the spreadsheet, and so the idea basically is the spreadsheet shows you how technology can be fantastic. Stories convinces people that they should change and adapt and be able to use the technology to tell a story. So one way of looking at what a story is and this is not my definition, but I love it A story is data with a soul. I do like that.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I want to talk about a few of your you know books, rashad, so I want to get back to your first book, but you know one of the topics that has come up a lot, you know to pivot slightly, you know we have had a couple economists on over the last month and you know everyone's talking about AI and the future of work. You know, and you know and what skills are going to be in demand five, 10 years from now. You know I really want to talk a little bit more about you know your perspective, though, because I think it's something that we haven't been able to discuss on the show, and that's you know this really this shift from full time roles to task based work, and I think that's a real big component of what you wrote about in Rethinking Work. So I think probably the best way to describe it is you've talked about how traditional full-time roles are really evolving into these task-based assignments and I think, maybe to set the stage, can you explain what you mean to our audience by the?
Speaker 3:separation of work Perfect.
Speaker 3:Yes. So I'm going to basically start with a very simple analogy, and the analogy is many, many, many, many years ago, if you wanted to listen to a piece of music, you had to go where the musician and the instrument was. Then you had the phonograph and therefore you could basically say the musician sat somewhere recording and you heard them at a different time somewhere else. The photograph was heavy, it was eventually replaced by things like the Walkman, and then what eventually happened? In a world of digital music, not only did the song or the piece of music get stripped away from the musician, from the instrument, from the album, from the device, but you now also listen to it in the way you wanted it it got disconnected from the next song. So today we listen to music in curated or algorithmically curated playlists. And what do we do that for? We do that because it's based on a mood or a need. We have a playlist for romantic, we have a playlist for running, we have a playlist for the Beatles or whatever it is. So if you think about it that way, what do you think a job is? A job is a series of tasks that have to be done, but increasingly, in the world that we're living in, why should the tasks not be broken up and then given to the people who can best do that task, either inside the company or outside the company, or in another company, or soon, by machines and AI? So I believe we're coming to the end of not employment, but we're coming to the end of jobs in many, many categories. And you might say, okay, you've become hysterical, you've drunk too much, what's wrong with you? And I'll basically say listen, there's nothing new about this.
Speaker 3:This is exactly what happens in the entertainment industry and, to a certain extent, the consulting industry. So, if you think about the entertainment industry, everybody basically goes to work on a gig. The gig is usually a movie, a television show, a concert, a play. They go there because they can do particular tasks which they do with other people. You might be a best boy, you might be a director, you might be a caterer. All of you all come together, you all come there and you're doing that particular task. The job is the movie or the show, and then you go away again to whatever the next thing is. Consultants do the same thing. They work for supposedly for a company, but they move from project to project, from city to city partnering with other people who have other skills that are necessary for that client. So we've seen this happening inside the real world already, when people offshore and near shore and do all of that.
Speaker 3:But now it's going to come down to this compartmentalization, which basically is I need somebody who is really good at this, this and this Is that person inside my company. Who are those people? I will put them on this particular task to get done, because they know how to do that task. So that's what this future is, and it's becoming easier and easier, not only because of AI, but because of things like marketplaces, where you can plug and play to anybody you want in the world. You can sell what you want, you can buy what you want and therefore my biggest concern in this future of work is most leaders and most companies are fixated on going back to 2019.
Speaker 3:They're trying to basically put the genie back in the bottle and they're trying to basically say we're going to work back in 2019, return to the office five days a week. Here's my basic belief Whether you return to the office five days a week or you have a model that has zero days a week, neither of those two actually solve for the future of work. They just basically solve for what you think your culture and your particular areas of control are. And when I explain that all this thing is just unnecessary noise, it's got nothing to do with the future of work. That's when CEOs and talent leaders wake up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think that's great and I would say to unpack that a. Well, I think that's great and I would say to unpack that a bit more. I think you even saw when COVID hit, for example, companies like a MasterCard would go investing in these big internal programs where it was. Hey, we have all of these projects that need to be done and you know what. What we really need to do is find someone that can spend 10 hours a week, you know, working on these. I think that's one of the pieces. Like you know, you saw snippets of, you know, organizations trying to do that, but I don't think anyone's been able to do it Well. I'm sure there are some companies that have, but like companies not doing it well just yet.
Speaker 3:Right, but companies are starting to do it. So I'll give you an idea. You mentioned COVID, so the company that I used to work for, which I should advise. During COVID, they saved many thousands of jobs by moving tasks using their Marcel platform around the world. So they basically found there was demand for certain things where they did not have people, or not a demand where they had people, and they basically moved the tasks around without moving the people.
Speaker 3:That make sense, yeah, and increasingly more and more companies are doing that, and if you actually think about what is happening inside even your existing company, whichever company anybody works at, we always have basically got specialists to do things right, and to a great extent. When you think about it, what is a doctor? A doctor basically does a series of tasks that they're really good at, and a dentist does a series of tasks that they're really good at, and to a great extent. When you go to a hospital, you don't go to any doctor unless it's your general practitioner. You go to a heart surgeon, you go to an oncologist, and so the reality of it is all that's basically happening is companies tended not to specialize as much, primarily because of a very famous rule by a guy called Ronald Coase because of a very famous rule by a guy called Ronald Coase. So, talking about Chicago and University of Chicago, ronald Coase was a professor at the University of Chicago and he came up with a thing which is why do firms exist?
Speaker 3:Okay, and when I read this I started asking myself yes, why do companies exist? Especially when you work in a company, you begin to realize there's bureaucracy and protocol and politics and all that kind of stuff. And he came up with a fantastic reason why companies exist. He said it's because internal friction and drama is less than external friction and drama. So if individual people were trying to get together to solve a problem in the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s, it was very hard to do so, so it was easier to work inside a firm. But today, with marketplaces, technology, ai, I think internal barriers sometimes are much greater than external barriers and companies can move much faster and much more agilely outside their circumstances than inside their circumstances, which basically means they have to rethink how they're organized.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's great and, like you know, I think there's a I'm not sure if you've ever listened to Hidden Brain podcast on NPR, but it's a great episode called Bullshit Jobs, I think is the name of the episode and it basically is you know, you know people create jobs just to you know, fill up 40 hours in the work week and like, hey, that's not the best model, but just you know, that's just the way we've been doing it Right.
Speaker 2:And you know I don't think people are paying attention. You know as much to what you kind of just you know, talked about this whole idea of you know specialists at work and like you know, yeah, you go to a doctor and like you pay for a procedure, right, and like you know things are carved out and like, so I do think that there's a lot of you know talk around this now, but I do think you know there's probably a lot of you know this is a pretty big you know shift for organizations. You know, if you move away from a you know full-time employee to, you know, to contract-based work, so like you know talk to. You know what are, you know what are the opportunities, I suppose, or what are the risks to you know, what I think you're suggesting is a pretty massive shift in how we go to work today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the way I would look at it is the following I would say there's still going to be a lot of full-time employment, it's just the way we manage. Those employees are going to be important and different, though I believe that the most likely form of employment in the future will be what I call the fractionalized employee. So let me explain today what companies can do. Companies today, to get a job done, combine three different assets, most of them Full-time employees, freelancers and contract workers. A contract worker is a full-time employee of another company that you hire. So Google has more contract workers than full-time employees. They hire these contract people who are paid by a different company because it saves Google the need to give them both benefits, equity bonuses or stop and start and not have to pay severance. So those are the three things we have Now what I'm suggesting in this new model, which there will be a fourth type of employee that will have to be created and that is likely to be the most likely type of future employee in a company, and that is what I call a fractionalized employee.
Speaker 3:So a fractionalized employee is an employee of the firm because, in addition to getting a salary and not just gigs, they also happen to get 100% healthcare, which is extremely important. But what they do is at the end of every year just like you have these HMO PPO elections people ask their employees would you like next year to work 60, 80, or 100% of the time? I'm just giving you that as three numbers 60, 80, 100% and you can decide who you want to make that offer to. But you say 60, 80, 100, and say your selection will not mean that you are automatically approved, just let us know. So people say I want to work 100%, 60% or 80%, and if you decide, and then they see what the demand for tasks are and they see what they have, and then they basically align and off they go. Now you might say why is this interesting? Why is this different? Why is this important?
Speaker 3:So I believe that employees who are around for a long time, or at least for some time, help both build networks, build cultures, build loyalty, build allegiance and therefore having only freelancers in a company or only contractors in a company is not really a company. You need somebody. You know you need some other things besides those people. But today, with aging populations, childcare issues, healthcare issues, a lot of people might basically say you know what I'd like to do only three or four days a week, versus five days, I get a hundred percent of healthcare, and with my other two days I get 100% of healthcare, and with my other two days I can do one of three or four things A. I can spend that going back to school. I can spend that looking after my kids at this particular time, looking after aging parents or I can basically focus on my gig job, whatever that might be. I might be running an Etsy store, I might be doing something else.
Speaker 3:So the benefit to the employee is they now basically have, if they want, they have the ability to have optionality of income. They're not dependent only on one thing. They're building other skills, they're spending time with their families. The downside, obviously, is if you work 60%, you have 40% less pay. But often the choice is working full-time or not at all right, and now you have this option of having something in between. With the other time you can go and try to get other ways of getting paid.
Speaker 3:But as importantly and this is the most important thing for a company in an AI age, make no mistake, because of efficiency and effectiveness drives, companies in the near term will not need as many people as they have. You know the famous book that 50% of jobs are bullshit. Ai is going to show that. Okay, and so what's going to happen is that someone's going to come around and say you know what? We don't need 1,000 employees. We can do it with 700. But they actually need the skills of the 1,000, but they need the total workforce of 700. So how do you go from 1,000 to 700? Well, one way you go is you lay off 300 people. There's lots of costs, both real, financial, but massive emotional and cultural costs, including the 700 left behind. Plus, you lose the skills of 300 people that you have might have wanted because they were different skills. You do it this way and you basically reduce your head count, or you reduce your payroll by 20 to 25, but no one's been laid off. Does that make sense? And that is what the future is going to be. The future is going to basically be, and in my sub stack at rishadsubstackcom, one of the most popular things I've written is the series called A Company of One, and my belief is one of the reasons I think I succeeded besides luck and being surrounded by amazingly talented people was for the last decade of my career, I worked like a company of one.
Speaker 3:I was working in a large company, but a company of one is. I was honing and building specific skills that I was well known for future change, innovation, right. I built a reputation for being very easy to work with and generous to work with, so people wanted to work with me and I basically built a collaborative mindset which basically helped other people too. And so if you build this thing for collaboration, reputation and skillset, you become an amazing company of one and a company of 25,000 or 10,000 or 200. That's the mindset people have to take and that new way of 25,000 or 10,000 or 200. That's the mindset people have to take and that new way of thinking we have to adapt to, because I truly believe that most companies will have fewer employees, full-time employees by the end of this decade and both from a company perspective and from an employee perspective, we should prepare for it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I like this idea of fractional employees. I think much of our audience will have at least heard of it in the C-suite. You know you talk about fractional CMOs, but so it's a helpful bridge to get us to a future of work where maybe that model is true for people across the organization and not just at the top. I guess what I'd ask you, ashad, is you're talking about a fractional employment situation in the future? I'm still hearing you talk about time as the main dimension of this. How much of your time are you going to be contributing? 40% or 60%? One thing I've been wondering about is is that accurate, or do you think we're going to be poised for a future where it's much more about tasks and value and not about how many hours it?
Speaker 3:took you. It's going to be either or and both. Let me explain why. Okay, which is what tends to basically happen is from a company perspective. You obviously want tasks done, but the company wants to make sure that you are available to get the tasks done.
Speaker 3:So here's my basic belief. You're running a large company, your client needs stuff done, all your people are contracted and freelance and you can't find them at the right time or when you do, because of demand they're so expensive. You can't actually run a company anymore. Which is the reality of it is you eventually are going to have to reserve people's time, because if you don't reserve anybody's time, you don't even have a company. What the hell do you have? Right? And yes, not everybody's time, some people's time, because you need some people who are constantly, or then you know that they're there when your client has a project need. It might not be that exact individual, but if you have like 100 people who you basically bought some of their time.
Speaker 3:Now the reality of it is you monitor over the course of the year how these people are doing what they're doing. These people obviously are seeing the value they're creating, and then they basically then you sort of decide, hey, these people are not actually doing too many tasks. We don't want them. People are doing tasks. They are doing them so effectively. I want to increase my compensation or I can do the same thing with less time. So there'll always be a time element, and the time element is not because I want to build for time, but it's the only way that I can actually reserve talent, because I don't know if we're going to be in a model where companies not in every industry where companies can basically run everything on an auction basis, like some bidding of ad media. Right, and if the whole thing was completely bid by an auction basis, then is there a company at all? Why should even a company exist?
Speaker 4:basis, then is there a company at all? Why should even a company exist? So is this like, is it a proper analogy?
Speaker 3:like what we see in healthcare, with people being on call in a way. Yes, yes, it's basically you got to have people on call and you have these different skill sets on call. And the reason is this, which is coming back to this whole idea of storytelling and humans and soul. Humans basically change much slower than technology does. That's number one and number two humans basically have certain needs that don't allow them to be in a market where they have absolutely no visibility of income.
Speaker 3:Some people might be okay with it, but imagine, I remind people your bills are constant, your mortgage is constant, your rent is constant, your food bills are constant, right?
Speaker 3:Yes, you can decide to move to eat less or eat, you know, cheaper food, move to a new town, move to a smaller apartment, but there's always this bill that's due. And if you basically have bills that are due but you have no idea next month what your income is going to be, you're going to freak out, right? You're going to absolutely freak out unless you've got lots of savings and everything else. So what I'm trying to figure out is how do we get to this model where the math says we have to modularize but human beings say I can't operate just as a task person sitting around like an Uber driver. Right? Because, remember, one of the big things like with, you know, with even Uber drivers is they always, sometimes wonder there won't be enough tasks and in many cases, outside of a few Uber drivers, most Uber drivers do that, do their Uber driving as a way to supplement an income, not as their only source of income supplement an income, not as their only source of income.
Speaker 2:So you know, I want to double click into, you know this, this, you know idea of a future where it is more task-based. It is, you know, companies that you know have smaller employees, maybe they work remote and you're on, you know, on sort of on call, to use that analogy, you know, to complete certain tasks. You know what, what skills, rashad, do you think are essential in in this new work model. But you know, like, maybe you know equally related or important is like when you talk about you know, companies maintaining a culture and like, hey, our company is going to be, you know, even exist in the future. Like, you know, how can companies maintain a culture? You know, drive innovation, when teams really are more dispersed, fluid, you know on call and on call and we're not sitting in the office 40 hours a week. What does that future look like to you?
Speaker 3:Sure. So I'll give it from two perspectives. One is from the perspective of the talent and one is from the perspective of leaders who are trying to ensure that they have cultures, and culture is important. So let me start with culture. Culture is important, but too many companies mistake culture with a spa and with a cult. Okay, what I mean? A spa. So a lot of companies. It's a little less prevalent now, but two years ago, you know, you'll feel good here, you'll feel loved, you'll feel safe, you'll be able to play music and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3:And my old stuff is hey, listen, when I go to a spa, I pay them. They don't pay me, right? Have you been to a spa where you basically go to the spa and say I want a massage, but you're going to pay me for the treatment of that? It's going to happen. So when somebody says I'm running, I'm running this lovely spa-like thing, right, my whole stuff is like that's bullshit. This is a company, I have to do stuff, there's a marketplace and obviously you got to treat me well and everything else, but not like this.
Speaker 3:The other is a cult. We have a way. It's like the Mandalorian. This is the way right. It's sort of like. For those of you who see Severance, it's like Lumen, the company. Right, you have cult, but, by the way, google's a cult, meta is a cult and they have a compound. The compound is where people can go, which is their campuses, and you need a compound for a cult so that people can drink the Kool-Aid right. Without Jonestown, there was no Kool-Aid. So you know, and so this I need a space because it's a spa-like thing. I need a space because I need to have everyone together. That's bullshit, come on. Okay, that is nonsense. Okay, so that is a total lack of imagination.
Speaker 3:Culture is not those two things at all. Let me tell you what culture is. Culture is four things, and I've studied this in so much detail. It's so obvious I don't understand why people don't get it. Once I tell you what it is, you'll say oh my God, it's so obvious.
Speaker 3:The first and most important for a culture is excellence. You need people who strive for excellent products and services, excellent talent and excellent financial results, and if you don't have at least two of those three at a given time and touch on at least one of those three every three years, you're out of business. So excellence. Number two you need a growth mindset where everybody's constantly learning and upgrading their skills, and a growth mindset versus a mindset where you blame everybody else. The third thing you need is collaboration, and this collaboration could be happening anywhere. And the fourth and most important is you need communication which is open and honest communication.
Speaker 3:So a chapter in my book my first book basically, it's called the Turd on the Table. In too many companies people sit around the table. There's something brown and moist in the center. Everybody knows it's a piece of shit, but everybody pretends it's a brownie. Right, and my whole stuff is that's not a culture.
Speaker 3:A culture is truths to power. It says we got a problem here. Right Now. You give me that. You give me open, honest. You give me open, honest communication, collaboration, a quest for excellence and a growth mindset. I'll show you world-class cultures.
Speaker 3:Nothing to do with the space. Okay, now, when you need a space because I do believe in many industries, for many levels, when you're coming in young, when you're new, when you're coming in, you might require in-person interaction. But in-person interaction can happen at bars, restaurants, hotels, events, lots of other places. So, in effect, for most companies, I basically say you need in-person interaction. Sometimes it can vary by level and type of job that needs to be done. It doesn't all have to be in the office, because when people come to the office they don't do in-person interaction. They sit in cubicles with their headphones doing the stuff they were doing at home. So unless you program this in the office, you will never earn the commute. If you don't earn the commute, you will eventually not lose people. So that's the thing.
Speaker 3:On talent, what basically happens is for culture, think about growth, mindset, think about collaboration, communication and think about excellence. Now for talent themselves, that's, individuals. How do we future-proof ourselves? So I believe there's a six-pack and I tried it myself. I had it doing with other people and one of the things that people you know you mentioned, carol, when I began my career, there were no computers, and today I am on Medicare, so I'm 65. I'm older than God, I'm everybody and I go around. I went to Google, I'm going to other places and I'm talking to them about AI and marketing and AI in the future, and a lot of people ask me how the hell do you fool people like this? Which is, how did you stay relevant? And I say I'll tell you why. How, and this is exactly what you have to do, because I said this is what I do, right, and the people who I've had given this advice to, when they've done it, it's worked. And, by the way, in many cases I've stolen this from other people when I saw how they remained relevant.
Speaker 3:So what are the six Cs? The three Cs are what each of us have to do Cognition, curiosity and creativity. If you don't spend an hour every day learning, you're becoming irrelevant, regardless of what bullshit you're talking about. Okay, you don't learn, you burn. That's number one.
Speaker 3:Second, creativity, which means connecting dots in new ways. That's very, very important. And third is curiosity asking what, if, why not questions, then both question the business model and question what you're doing. The other three are because we work with other people. One is collaboration. The other is convincing. When knowledge is free, how you basically tell a story becomes very important Field skills convincing. And third and very importantly, the sixth, one of the three of the collaborate or the working with other people is communication skills, great writing skills and presentation skills. So my whole stuff is you want to future-proof yourself? You have three, four things you can do yourself without needing anybody. Spend an hour learning. Own your writing and communication skills, learn how to be collaborative, and then obviously, have curiosity and creativity and upgrade your selling skills, regardless of your industry, country or technology. That'll carry you much faster than learning Mandarin and coding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, there's a lot there. I guess we're short on time, maybe to close Vishad. I would like to zoom out a bit and talk about this idea of meaning and purpose for individuals, the human side of this. Historically, jobs have been a source of meaning and purpose for people, or at least that's the theory and I think what we've seen, and we've talked about it earlier, is that, as we see, with the rise of bullshit jobs you gave an example earlier you could fire 300 people we are, regardless of how we do it, we're going to reduce the amount of time and effort that people need to be spending doing work compared to 50 years ago, most likely. Do you anticipate that the workplace will remain dominant as a place for purpose and meaning in people's lives, or do you think that, as a culture and as a society, we will need to look elsewhere for that?
Speaker 3:So here's what I believe. I believe that meaningful, purposeful, rewarding work is central to the human experience, that the quality of your connections and relationships and your health are the other two which are critical. And the third is meaningful, rewarding work. And if you have meaningful, rewarding, purposeful work, you live longer and you don't kick the dog at home, so it also helps your life and your relationships. But remember what I just said purposeful, meaningful, rewarding work. I did not say meaningful, purposeful, rewarding jobs. Okay, that's the big difference. So the reality of it is today.
Speaker 3:I'm going to give you a very simple example. I do not have a job. I don't have a job. I'm unemployed. Under that circumstances, I don't have a job. I don't have a job. I'm unemployed. Under that circumstances, I don't have a job.
Speaker 3:I work a lot and I do amazing stuff. That makes me really happy, and it just so happens that it's even more lucrative than my most senior position in my last job, which is what I wasn't even trying to do, right? And what do I do? I basically do things which I just told you I speak, I write, I do a podcast, I advise companies, I mentor students, I mentor people who are in career transitions. In some cases, I get rewarded just through goodwill.
Speaker 3:In other cases, I practice a skill. In other cases, I get rewarded just through goodwill. In other cases I practice a skill. In other cases I get rewarded through money and lo and behold, I'm connected, I go everywhere, I don't feel alone and I've got purposeful, meaningful, rewarding work without a job. What's going to happen is, when I say career of one, everybody is going to be a gig worker and what's likely to happen is you're going to have, hopefully, one of your gigs will be a quote, unquote one of your pieces. Places of work will give you all of these like things to do and they'll basically pay you 50, 60% of your. You know what you need and you'll do other things. That's the key thing. The big confusion that people have basically done is that work meaningful, purposeful work is the same as a job.
Speaker 2:I think that's great, rashad, I'll tell you, I think this has certainly been one of my favorite episodes, so I wish we didn't have to end it. I'm going to end it with probably the easiest question. We'll obviously link everything in the show notes, but you know where can our listeners learn a little bit more about your work, your books? You know like rethinking work. You know restoring the solar business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. Let me first give you the free version of everything, since people like that. If you go to rishadsubstackcom, you will basically find a free sub stack, free of advertising, free of subscription, where this Sunday, I'll write my 240th Sunday in a row. So there's 240 articles on a whole bunch of different things and all of them are evergreen. None of them have dated. Even better than that if you just want to listen to stuff, there's not better than that. Different than if you want to listen to stuff. I host a podcast called what Next. You can type what Next, publicist Group. And then, even better than that, because it's highly curated, very well written, edited, fact-checked, are my two books Rethinking Work, which came out a month ago, and Restoring the Soul of Business Stay Human in the Age of Data.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, we will link everything in the show notes again.
Speaker 3:Really appreciate you fitting us in, because we know that you have a lot of people tagging you in to share your perspectives and expertise. So really, no, no, no that's what I pretend. I have nobody calling me. So I love spending time with you but thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for your thanks, rashad. All right, thanks for tuning in as head on over to changestateio or shoot us a note on all the social media. We'd love to hear from you and we'll check you guys next week.