EP103: The Workplace Is Disrupted. Here's How To Navigate It

Interview with Nate Thompson and Alex Schwartz / Fathers and Workplace Thinkers

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

People want to work differently. We know this. So why are some companies so behind in adaptaing - not to mention those companies putting a stake in the ground for return to office? Nate and Alex, both dads, had traditional office-based careers pre-pandemic. But after work shut down they began to think strategically about what the workforce of the future would look like. Listen to their story - and learn from their future of work mindset model.

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Transcript

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;25;07
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, silly, strange and sublime aspects of being a lead dad in a world where men who are the go to parent aren't always accepted at work among their friends, for the community, for what they're doing. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan. Our podcast is just one of the many things you produce each week at the Company of Dads.

00;00;25;07 - 00;00;51;27
Paul Sullivan
We have various features, including the lead dad of the week. We have our community, both online and in person with the new resource library for all fathers. Call the the Dad Library the one stop shop for all of this is our newsletter, The dad. So sign up today at the Company of dads.com backslash the dad. My guests for this episode are Alex Schwartz and Nate Thompson, the dad duo behind the disrupted Work Force podcast.

00;00;51;29 - 00;01;14;09
Paul Sullivan
In a pre-pandemic life, Alex was a growth and marketing strategist at giant companies like Publicis, which in turn worked with equally giant companies like Marriott, Ralph Lauren and InBev. These are some of the greatest beer we've all consumed. Nate, on the other hand, was running leadership and development teams at companies like Comcast and Oppenheimer Funds when it merged with Invesco.

00;01;14;14 - 00;01;37;18
Paul Sullivan
What I instantly liked about them was their willingness to wear the company of dad's lead dad uniform. If you don't know what this is, check it out on the disrupted Work Force Apple Music page. And I gotta say, like, you know, I think I wear it pretty well, but these guys may wear it even better. Nate has three kids, a daughter and two son.

00;01;37;21 - 00;01;50;12
Paul Sullivan
Alex has one son. I have three daughters. Not that it's a competition. But they are better dressers than me, so I thought I'd just throw that in. Welcome, Alex and Nate, to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;50;15 - 00;02;10;15
Alex Schwartz
Paul, it is such a pleasure to be here. And yes, business up top, pajamas on the bottom. I like the way that you did it though, with the Hawaiian shorts and the really fantastic, girl doll that you had in your hand. That was clearly it was not a Barbie. It almost looked like it had troll hair. Like from to that it was.

00;02;10;15 - 00;02;12;22
Alex Schwartz
It was, it was. And dangling down.

00;02;12;23 - 00;02;17;00
Nate Thompson
It's hanging upside down. I mean, yeah, epic photo.

00;02;17;01 - 00;02;42;12
Paul Sullivan
I got to clarify something here. It is not a girl doll that is, an American girl doll boy. And his name is Kevin. And American Girl makes for boy dolls. They all look, pretty much the same, except different hairstyles and complexions, but they only sell, like, two outfits. And so my youngest daughter, Astrid, wanted me to get a doll, several years ago.

00;02;42;15 - 00;02;52;27
Paul Sullivan
So we did. And she named him Kevin after her favorite nursery school teacher. So, that's, that is Kevin.

00;02;53;00 - 00;03;08;17
Nate Thompson
There's just. So you know, Paul, I will be using the picture of you in your business on top. Pajamas on bottom, like us when we market this. I'm going to pair our shot with your shot as the the LinkedIn.

00;03;08;17 - 00;03;14;07
Paul Sullivan
And I love it, I love it. We got a lot. We were showing off our legs, so it's good.

00;03;14;09 - 00;03;28;06
Nate Thompson
So we've done speaking engagements like that. And so it's been very popular. Yeah. But I have been in some environments where it was not accepted. People were like, what is happening right now? So it's not always all good.

00;03;28;08 - 00;03;55;19
Paul Sullivan
I showed up at, very prestigious private school in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the head of school is a very droll guy. And he walked up and saw me waiting, outside. Yeah. Trying to get in the car just as advertised. Easy to find me. All right, guys, which one of you has the most brag worthy? The dad skills?

00;03;55;22 - 00;03;57;19
Paul Sullivan
Oh.

00;03;57;22 - 00;03;59;11
Alex Schwartz
They they differ.

00;03;59;18 - 00;04;01;12
Paul Sullivan
They differ diplomatic.

00;04;01;12 - 00;04;02;19
Alex Schwartz
And so.

00;04;02;19 - 00;04;03;05
Paul Sullivan
The first.

00;04;03;12 - 00;04;27;26
Alex Schwartz
So I want to give I want to give props to Nate because part of his lead dating is being out in the wilderness with his boys and doing all these crazy wilderness activities, which I think is fantastic. Now I'm on the sunny shores of Miami Beach, so we don't have a lot of wilderness, but we can jet ski the hell out of the bay.

00;04;27;26 - 00;04;57;03
Alex Schwartz
I'm going to tell you that that does happen. We do a lot of running. We do a lot of biking. We do soccer. But I think where I really, really help my son is that I walk the tightrope between being a trusted advisor and being his best friend. We have a lot of fun together, and we have serious moments.

00;04;57;03 - 00;05;26;14
Alex Schwartz
And it's it's tricky because I think as a parent, finding that balance is a tough thing to do because you want your kids to listen to you when it's important. You want your kids to obey when it's important, and at the same time you want to create safety for them to be themselves, to be willing to make mistakes, to fail to screw up, and to know that that's okay.

00;05;26;16 - 00;05;45;28
Alex Schwartz
And I work really hard at that. My son's name is Jagger. We actually just started to outline what does next year look like. So one thing I've recently been telling him, because he can get really fussy, is I started telling him that pain is temporary and greatness lasts forever, is eight years old.

00;05;45;29 - 00;05;46;15
Paul Sullivan
Is eight years old.

00;05;46;15 - 00;06;05;11
Alex Schwartz
And he and he will repeat it back to me. And we have a big goal for next year. So I said, you know, I got up the other morning pretty early, as I normally do, and he was watching one of his morning shows as I was preparing his breakfast, and his lunch for school, and I said, you know, Jags, I'm way ahead of you today.

00;06;05;17 - 00;06;26;10
Alex Schwartz
I said, what do you mean, dad? I said, you know, I've been up, I've been listening to, a book on my Spotify. I've been learning, I've been immersing myself. I said, you're just watching TV. I'm way ahead of you today. And he kind of looked at me and he was like, you know, it got his competitive juices going.

00;06;26;12 - 00;06;55;03
Alex Schwartz
And I said to him, and this was like, I mean, this may have been selling way past the close. Paul. But I said to him, I said, I said, hey, Jagger, do you believe in God goes, yeah, I go, do you believe in heaven? He goes, yeah, I go, all right. So imagine you get to heaven and, you're standing there and you know, you're talking to God, and God's like, how is your life?

00;06;55;03 - 00;07;17;21
Alex Schwartz
You're like, oh, that's pretty good. You know, I did this. I did that too. The other thing I said, what if God were to show you a blueprint of how much more incredible your life could have been if you had applied yourself more, how would you feel about that? Then he looked really bewildered, and about a minute later we set a big goal for next year.

00;07;17;21 - 00;07;41;12
Alex Schwartz
I said, so tell me something you'd like to work on as a concrete goal, some area of your life you'd like to improve next year. So, well, I'll tell you, I would like to design hyper fast race car engines that are clean for the environment. And I was blown away. I mean, I knew he like sports cars. I knew he likes to, you know, I mean, we're in Miami.

00;07;41;12 - 00;07;57;00
Alex Schwartz
We see a lot of sports cars. It's just sort of like you just do. And but I was impressed. I was like, all right, so we're going to get into engineering. We're getting to you know, the growth mindset around sports cars and and how do we develop these things. Like we got some good goals for next year.

00;07;57;02 - 00;08;14;15
Paul Sullivan
Think so this is what you say. Well you know wow. Like I don't even know where to go with this. Like does he get like a little go kart or something to test all this out? I mean, is he, like, terrorize all the old ladies on the boardwalk at Miami Beach? Is he's, like, tearing down there, like, between their wheelchairs and pain.

00;08;14;15 - 00;08;19;25
Paul Sullivan
His temporary greatness is forever. Get out of my way, Lenny. Like I just play.

00;08;19;27 - 00;08;42;29
Alex Schwartz
I think it probably starts with some reading resources, with some YouTube videos, with trying to understand what are the components of, a combustion engine. What are the components of, an EV engine? He loves to drive go karts. We've done that several times. That's been a recent theme at some birthday parties we've gone to. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00;08;42;29 - 00;08;46;13
Alex Schwartz
But we'll I want to kick it over to Nate though.

00;08;46;16 - 00;08;55;19
Paul Sullivan
But Nate you know what it's it's how many black bears have you brought down with your bare hands I gotta I gotta give you some way to say it. Compete with this guy here.

00;08;55;22 - 00;09;23;05
Nate Thompson
We so we have an outdoor adventure lifestyle. We live in Colorado, and we're very close to the big mountains, so, I like to be in the mountains, climbing, fourteeners, hiking, snowboarding, biking. We camp, we, we adventure. And so, I think that's. But here, let me tell you why I do that. It's awesome. But I do it because there's something that's happening to kids today.

00;09;23;07 - 00;09;50;06
Nate Thompson
And I, my wife and I are very serious about this. So kids are becoming increasingly digital, just like we all are. However, we want our kids to understand that the physical world is a beautiful place. Being outside is an amazing experience and that is where real life is happening. It's very easy and it's very easy to be seduced, to go into digital land, disappear, or what we want to do is say, technology's amazing.

00;09;50;13 - 00;10;20;17
Nate Thompson
It is, I love it. I've been part of innovation for a long time. However, the real world is where relationships exist, right? The real world is where we get to experience the beauty of Mother Nature, and so we keep pulling them back into that. And we travel domestically and internationally to experience different cultures, to experience different foods and lifestyles and, and, and faiths and everything just so the kids can go, wow, I really appreciate this world and the majesty of this world.

00;10;20;17 - 00;10;44;00
Nate Thompson
And I can also function inside of this digital virtual thing. And then some other things that I'm really proud of that my wife and I do is, we talk a lot to the boys about. You can decide how you want to feel at any time. You can decide the experience that you want to make meaning about in this moment.

00;10;44;01 - 00;11;04;19
Nate Thompson
One of the ways we do that is naturally kids, because their, prefrontal cortex isn't as developed. Their amygdala is controlling a lot of the responses. Right. That emotional center, one of the things we talked to them a lot about is when emotions go up, intelligence goes down, and it's really fun to work with the boys in moments that are heightened and talk about that.

00;11;04;19 - 00;11;29;26
Nate Thompson
Okay. Are you experiencing do you feel the emotions in your body or emotions starting to go up, and then have them have that moment where they can step out of the, emotional experience of the thing you violated? Whatever in in step into the wait a second, I am feeling this in my body and here's what's happening. And then this, this is going to be super nerdy, but I'm going to tell you, there's a quote that we had the boys memorize.

00;11;29;29 - 00;11;58;11
Nate Thompson
It's between the stimulus and the response. There is a space in that space lies our ability to choose. In those choices lie our freedom, happiness, and destiny. It's by Viktor Frankl, and I have the boys already memorized it. And so what we're working on with them is as we go through life and we have these experiences that you can step back and make your meeting meaning between the stimulus and the response, whatever it is.

00;11;58;13 - 00;12;20;00
Nate Thompson
And then we take that forward into school and we take it into competitive soccer, and we take it into nature, in the outdoors and in all kinds of things so that we can have a, I think, a more thoughtful experience in our parenting style with our kids and the relationship that we're building with them. I know that's super nerdy, but we're having a lot of fun with it.

00;12;20;02 - 00;12;41;16
Paul Sullivan
This is fantastic. I mean, you know, but you guys are deep thinkers on this, and you're thinking it through with your own family, with your own boys, and, you know, you're you're giving them experiences. You're challenging them intellectually. But how? When you look back, you know, the disruptive workplace came together, during Covid of I'm correct here.

00;12;41;19 - 00;13;03;07
Paul Sullivan
How did you know? Were you thinking like this in those pre-COVID years as as dads and workers or, you know, did the whole disruption that affected the entire world and Covid, did it really start to sort of stimulate, you know, different ways of thinking or different ways of doing or parenting with, with, with your families?

00;13;03;09 - 00;13;27;28
Alex Schwartz
So I had a, I had a preview to this movie because working at publicist at sapient, you know, I was selling 31 flavors of digital transformation. And what I discovered over that time is that digital transformation was, well in hand, but that people transformation was not. And I've gone through a lot of hard things in my life.

00;13;27;28 - 00;13;52;20
Alex Schwartz
I've grown through them. Personal development is a big part of my story. It's a big part of Nate's story. And coaching others through personal development is something that both of us have done a lot of as well. So in terms of the acceleration of AI, for example, or the acceleration of a more digital workplace, I think both of us were very much clued in to that.

00;13;52;23 - 00;14;14;07
Alex Schwartz
What we weren't clued into was how quickly it was going to happen through the pandemic. But I left my job in 2019 to pursue a new career in helping people to understand what were these massive disruptions and how do we unlock human skills in the age of incredible technology.

00;14;14;09 - 00;14;32;12
Paul Sullivan
And then I'll come to the second I want to have a follow up with Alex on that. And that's, you know, companies so often want to buy the thing or upgrade the thing or, okay, how do we integrate AI here? Or, you know, every so often into we we need to evolve. Would we have a crypto strategy? Should we have some of our crypto.

00;14;32;14 - 00;14;56;08
Paul Sullivan
But people aren't things. They're they're humans. And the work with the person in that professional development is, I believe, often so much more important than the upgrade, the new thing. Yet when you want companies to buy that, buy that coaching, buy that service, buy that thing that's going to make their workforce, you know, better. What are the challenges that that you've, you know, encountered?

00;14;56;12 - 00;15;11;12
Paul Sullivan
And I know I want you to answer this as well, Nate, because your experience in learning development, he got a lot of insight. But when you think about the challenges of the working on the workers and the employees versus, you know, buying the next thing, what are some that's sure.

00;15;11;12 - 00;15;38;06
Alex Schwartz
I think you've started to speak to it already, right. Which is people want shiny objects and quick fixes. They want the new next thing personal development, upskilling, reskilling, future skilling talent. That's a long tail journey. It requires a lot of work. It requires a lot of thoughtfulness. And many leaders and organizations don't have a plan for this. They're just not equipped to do it.

00;15;38;06 - 00;16;11;08
Alex Schwartz
Well, what I think is really wonderful about the moment that we're in is that you have an empowered workforce now. So prior to Covid, what we saw is that most workers were willing to some degree to suffer in silence. Then through covet. And after we saw the Great Resignation, where people started voting with their feet in droves and saying, hey, if I don't see my future or my career here, I'm not staying.

00;16;11;08 - 00;16;42;25
Alex Schwartz
If I if my work doesn't have purpose or meaning, I'm not staying. If I'm being burnt out or treated like a battery, I'm not staying. If I don't feel a sense of community or belonging, I'm not staying. And that even escalated. We can talk about this if you want, but what just happened at, OpenAI, where 95% of the employees stood up and said, yeah, you're not kicking out our CEO and leader.

00;16;42;25 - 00;17;17;23
Alex Schwartz
We're kicking you out. Bored. Forget it. And so that change is really powerful and dynamic. And so companies are recognizing, hey, we need to get a lot more empathetic or we're going to lose these workers. So where workers were somewhat of an afterthought and companies imagine that command and control leadership practices would carry the day and that companies would just fall in line and figure out, maybe even on their own time, how to understand this new technology or adapt to the direction that the company was moving in.

00;17;17;26 - 00;17;36;22
Alex Schwartz
Now they understand it's an imperative because things are changing so fast, and because this technology is so revolutionary, it's an imperative that they incentivize their workforce. The talent marketplace is more competitive than it's ever been. If you want to keep good people, you better invest in them.

00;17;36;24 - 00;17;54;03
Paul Sullivan
And need, you know, when you in your previous life, you know, in the learning development company, explain to listeners what that means. But, I mean, I think in some ways that really uniquely positioned due to sort of understand, you know, the before and after. So I love you to sort of go through, you know, I know your only dead journey, which I think is fascinating.

00;17;54;03 - 00;18;10;23
Paul Sullivan
You can touch on that. Please. But Battelle of hot like yeah that mind shift is occurring like what companies thought of as learning and development pre-pandemic and what companies are or at least the best companies are starting to think of that and function now as we consider characters and fathers and everyone.

00;18;10;26 - 00;18;30;01
Nate Thompson
I've actually had. So I'll give it a little bit of context will help explain my answer. I've been in HR proper. I've been in learning and development proper, I've been in organizational development proper, and I've been in strategy in innovation. So I launched the first Future Work program, clear back in 2016. Before that was really even a conversation.

00;18;30;01 - 00;19;04;21
Nate Thompson
You couldn't buy a future work program anywhere. And so I have a pretty, comprehensive, base in this. And the reason why that matters is because learning used to be something that your leader would tell you. So somewhere some leader would come up to you and go, hey, in the second quarter of the year, we'd really like you to take this class on negotiation or project management or emotional intelligence or whatever they would say, and people would get mad when they'd say, oh, I'm trying to get a learning class and no one will even give me one.

00;19;04;23 - 00;19;29;27
Nate Thompson
Well, in the backdrop of that completely inefficient, laughably, a poor approach to developing people, the people started to turn to the number one place to learn today, which is a Google search box. You could argue it's a YouTube search box, and it goes like this. How do I that that. Yeah, everybody just learns that way now.

00;19;30;04 - 00;19;53;06
Nate Thompson
And so we stopped learning when someone tells us to. And we've now started to learn on the fly. This is a very, very important. It's called learning in the flow of work. In a time when the world is disrupted and you can see disruption happening all around you in the markets, in your industry, in your company, internally and externally, in your role.

00;19;53;08 - 00;20;15;25
Nate Thompson
People are starting to go, okay, I'm just going to start learning on the fly because I've got to figure this out in my company. Isn't helping the company not moving fast enough? Academia is not moving fast enough. So it's really shifted. It used to be something that I waited to get, and now we're all the way over and I'm just learning on the fly.

00;20;15;27 - 00;20;35;12
Nate Thompson
And here's an interesting thing about it. People used to think, well, I've got to go spend all this money inside of a company. I've got to beg for money. Can I please have this money to get a certification or class? You can go take MIT classes, Stanford classes, Harvard classes, all kinds of classes online for free, right, are just available in these massive online courses.

00;20;35;14 - 00;20;58;12
Nate Thompson
So even if you just want the YouTube video or if you want to take some academic class, it's available to you right now is in at the lowest cost of of Udemy or anything like that. You're talking about $29, $30 to get a great course. So it's just a completely different world. Now let's tie all that to the future of work.

00;20;58;15 - 00;21;21;08
Nate Thompson
People are going through massive intersectional change, which means you're experiencing change, societal change, corporate change, professional change, tying this to you in the company of dads, the way that we perceive ourselves in how we work and who we are as parents is changing. Social constructs are changing. People are waiting longer to get married. People are having fewer kids.

00;21;21;13 - 00;21;42;15
Nate Thompson
I think this is happening all around us. And so you have to bring that into an identity level of change. This is something Alex and I are really passionate about. A lot of people think that the future of work is about new tech, and they think it's about, oh, let's roll in some new tech for the company, or, oh, the customer preferences are changing and they want a contactless experience.

00;21;42;17 - 00;22;03;18
Nate Thompson
All of that's happening and that's true. And you do need to embrace generative AI and these sort of things. But let's look at what's behind the curtain of all of that. The hardest part of change is human. It's deeply personal. And when you start changing this much this fast is starts to reshape our identity, our sense of self.

00;22;03;21 - 00;22;30;10
Nate Thompson
So the story we tell ourselves about ourselves all day long is our identity. And this gets into four major components of when someone's going through a lot of change, self-esteem, how I feel about myself and I value myself. Right. Self-image, the the, the way that I see myself in the world as a worker and as a dad. Self-efficacy what I feel I can and can't do or accomplish in the ideal self of who I want to become.

00;22;30;13 - 00;22;56;05
Nate Thompson
And so we just think that's such a critical part of when you think of parenting now in a post-pandemic world, we see ourselves differently. We talk about ourselves differently. The same is true of what's going on inside of the organization. I feel like progressive leaders and progressive organizations are getting really smart about this massive shift. And I think traditional organizations are still trying to play old run, old place, run the old playbooks.

00;22;56;08 - 00;23;13;07
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I don't want to be overly, cynical or simplify this, this too much. But, you know, I can't imagine many companies out there and saying, you know, I what is I mean, for us, hey, I, we got to figure out I, you know, they didn't even know the, the letters. I would go together, you know, six months ago, 12 months ago.

00;23;13;09 - 00;23;38;22
Paul Sullivan
But you know, you were you're talking about this this massive and I've talked a lot about to this massive sort of tectonic shift that happened from Covid to now and how we work, how we live, what we want. Why are leaders so slow to adapt to something like that? Arguably around the greatest resources was human capital, which is people, where something like I or a couple years ago crypto they're all in to try to figure that out.

00;23;38;22 - 00;23;42;23
Paul Sullivan
What? Well, what what makes them so slow to to adapt?

00;23;42;26 - 00;24;04;09
Alex Schwartz
Well, I mean, part of that is that they don't have programs for this. They don't have development or resources for this work. Right. And that's a core reason why we exist, Paul, is that we are trying to change that. We want to make sure that leaders and the professionals that they lead are not, are not left behind.

00;24;04;09 - 00;24;40;19
Alex Schwartz
You know, our our focus is to help leaders and professionals prefer prepare, navigate and thrive in the future of work. So there's several problems that exist today. And the first challenge is that this old school way of doing things, the old school command and control leadership, Nate likes to call it dino or leadership that's dead. The second thing, and I think this is really important, is vulnerability and unwillingness of leaders to start from a place of, I don't know, and I think that is the place that you have to start.

00;24;40;19 - 00;25;01;18
Alex Schwartz
You have to admit that you are not an expert in order to even begin to think about how you're going to adapt, because if you're convinced that you understand this, listen, Nate and I study this and live in this and are immersed in this all day long, and we never call ourselves experts because it is changing so fast.

00;25;01;21 - 00;25;12;21
Alex Schwartz
And, Nate, I know, you also have a a triangle of resistance leadership. That is a really cool rubric. Why don't you share that with with, with all of us?

00;25;12;26 - 00;25;36;15
Nate Thompson
There's I mean, Alex, what you said is so true. There's so much in the pot. But I want to say that it's important to give empathy, when we're not prepared to go through this much change this fast and to make a call out here. And then I'm going to come back to what Alex just said at this moment, right now, Paul is the slowest you are going to experience life for the rest of your life.

00;25;36;17 - 00;25;56;05
Nate Thompson
I'll say that differently. It's only going to get faster from here. And people keep thinking like, oh, are we going to go back to normal? Isn't this going to go back to normal? No, it's absolutely not. In fact, we just entered a new era of the most sophisticated technology we've ever seen, and it's going to fundamentally reshape the way we live and work.

00;25;56;08 - 00;26;15;23
Nate Thompson
So it no, it's not going to get slower. But what that what happens and why I have a lot of empathy is because imagine that you were a leader who grew up in a different time, and you were socialized and trained in a different way. You don't know how to lead in this new world. It's very scary to you.

00;26;15;25 - 00;26;41;27
Nate Thompson
In this same thing can be seen in parent child relationships. I'll give you a very, very easy example. There are a lot of kids who know tech better than their parents. There are a lot of kids who are significantly more sophisticated with tech than their parents. That's analogous to what's happening inside of organizations. If you're in the twilight of your career as a senior executive, there are a lot of people who know a lot more about tech than you do and where the world's going and how it's shaping.

00;26;41;27 - 00;27;11;04
Nate Thompson
So it's creating something that feels very weird. Traditional leadership is really struggling. Modern kind of progressive leadership that's trying to create the future, feels, looks and feels very different. Now. What's this triangle Alex brought up? Well, what happens is people get into the triangle of resistance. It's traditionalism, protectionism and territorial ism. They start to get off balance. And I have a lot of empathy for this, because I lead this kind of transformation all the time in big organizations.

00;27;11;06 - 00;27;27;27
Nate Thompson
Basically what happens is leaders feel out of place. They're like, well, I don't really know what to do and say here. I'm supposed to have that answer and I don't have it. So I'm going to try to go back to old ways of trying to command and control. I just use my big title and my big voice to make people do something.

00;27;27;29 - 00;27;49;29
Nate Thompson
But what happens is, you see what, happened at OpenAI, that's a very sophisticated workforce. They're probably arguably some of the most talented people in the world. When someone says something that doesn't make sense, they go, actually, no, we're not going to do that. In fact, all of you are unfit to run this company just for a second.

00;27;49;29 - 00;28;02;25
Nate Thompson
That is not normal for an employee body to have that much power to flip a board and kick them out in five days, like, whoa.

00;28;02;27 - 00;28;23;22
Paul Sullivan
I mean, that's a great example, but but let's frame it like OpenAI is a new company. It is, you know, at the cutting edge of a new technology. And you're absolutely right. They did something with a board that you could never imagine an established company doing, a four year old company, a six year old company, 100 year old company.

00;28;23;24 - 00;28;44;21
Paul Sullivan
It's hard enough to get one person, you know, off the board. You have these proxies, all this. What do you say? You know, when it's a company that, has been doing things a certain way for a much longer time, and there's such a disconnect between their, you know, 30 something early 40 something. There's emerging leaders in the company that see things have changed.

00;28;44;24 - 00;29;06;14
Paul Sullivan
And, you know, the tippity top and an example that comes to mind and not to pick on them in particular, but is, you know, what Jamie Diamond is doing is a CEO of JPMorgan Chase, been the CEO for, I don't know, 15, 16 more years. He has a board, that is stocked with people who were wildly successful in their own careers but are even older, as old or older than he is.

00;29;06;14 - 00;29;33;08
Paul Sullivan
And look at this certain way. And then, you know, when you look a walk down Park Avenue, New York City. I live outside of New York City. They're building this $4 billion, $4 billion new headquarters, and they're building it like it's 1993, not like it's 2023, with no sort of nod as to how we might work differently. How like, let's project out not just, you know, when it opens next year or the year after, but ten years, 20 years, how people might, you know, look at it, but there's nobody there to sort of correct him.

00;29;33;08 - 00;30;03;11
Paul Sullivan
There's no sort of insurrection like mentality as it was at OpenAI. What do you do with companies like that that are very profitable, providing a service, employing a lot of people. They need it for the economy. How do you help them adapt when it comes, you know, not just around the workplace in general, but how it comes to, like thinking differently about fathers and mothers and caregiving and how Covid has changed the way we parent and live and work.

00;30;03;14 - 00;30;31;12
Nate Thompson
I can jump in first, Alex, and you can you can follow. So, one of the most important things about a new time is awareness and understanding. To create shared meaning and shared purpose. Awareness leads to understanding, to create shared meaning and shared purpose. This is vital in any kind of transformation. So something new begins. We've gotta get people exposed to this.

00;30;31;15 - 00;30;51;05
Nate Thompson
So, I'll take a story from financial services. Financial services. I used to spend a lot of time in that industry, and I was leading transformation in that industry. What became very clear, clear back in 2015, 2016 is that industry would never be the same again. But the problem is, everyone in that industry is used to a traditional way.

00;30;51;07 - 00;31;13;23
Nate Thompson
And so my job began to be, how can I make everyone aware that there are macro forces that are going to change the face of this whole industry, and everyone's a great worker in that industry. They're good people doing good things, but their heads down looking at day to day work, and I needed to pull the heads up and go, hey, there's a lot on the horizon here.

00;31;13;23 - 00;31;42;23
Nate Thompson
We need to be talking about this. I'm not talking about change overnight, but this awareness has to go up 100 acts. And so we started creating a conversation called the Future Work. And then we started running pilots with different groups. And then we started having conversations inside of business units with leaders and then across business units with. And then we're bringing in speakers and we're bringing in book clubs, and we're bringing in the whole intention behind it was take awareness and turn it into understanding.

00;31;42;25 - 00;32;01;29
Nate Thompson
Then as you start to talk more as human beings, which is the language of our lives, we start to go, well, how do I connect the old story of us to this new story, which is what we call a strategic narrative, and we started building that into the fabric of this is who we were, this is where we are now.

00;32;01;29 - 00;32;38;20
Nate Thompson
This is where we're going. This is the strategic narrative. Us in the context of what's happening. So if you look back at it, if awareness is up, understanding is up. And now people are starting to go, oh, we have shared meaning about what's happening now. We have a new shared purpose. It it. I know that's a lot to think about, but that's literally like me pulling back the curtain and going, this is how you lead massive transformational work on a cultural identity level, identity of an organization, identity, the business leaders, identity of the teams, identity, the people.

00;32;38;22 - 00;33;04;28
Nate Thompson
You have to be able to work with it like this. So when Alec says people aren't ready for this, that's because inside of organizations, they're not they're not a lot of people who know how to lead this kind of work. There are a lot of gifted, operational, technical or business type experts, but there aren't a lot of people who know how to lead a a huge transformation like that at the human level.

00;33;05;00 - 00;33;05;19
Nate Thompson
You know, Alex, I.

00;33;05;19 - 00;33;22;19
Paul Sullivan
Want you to pick up on that because I think, you know what they did in a previous I've worked at a giant investment company, managing billions and billions and billions of dollars. And so you could fall back on those confirmation biases like, we've always done it this way. So we should keep doing it this way or look, we just got more money.

00;33;22;19 - 00;33;37;22
Paul Sullivan
And what do we do? You change could be more iterative. I mean, maybe simplify it, but but you you know, Alex, when you're a publicist and you think, I think about a company like Marriott, you can't have a hotel be what it was 50 years ago. You can't have a hotel even be what it is. You know, ten years ago.

00;33;37;25 - 00;34;01;06
Paul Sullivan
How did you know a brand like that? That is an established brand, but is always looking to sort of branch out and attract more people because, you know, if you've got capital, if you have real estate, you can you can open hotel. How did they adjust back then? And then as you, you know, what lessons did you learn from some of those companies that were the best at adapting pre pandemic to companies that are you're trying to help adapt post-pandemic?

00;34;01;08 - 00;34;29;15
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. Great question. I mean Marriott really had very strong leadership. One of our key stakeholders was a gentleman by the name of Andy Kaufman, who was leading a lot of their digital transformation efforts. And what I loved about Andy is he was so curious. He was so enthusiastic and so optimistic that they could architect a better future and a different way of working.

00;34;29;15 - 00;34;55;14
Alex Schwartz
At the same time, they were also paying really close attention to anyone that was trying to eat their lunch. For example, Airbnb. What is Airbnb doing? How are they doing it? What's different? How is their user experience different? How are they using digital? And of course, you know, digital is a really complicated thing for a high touch business like hospitality, right?

00;34;55;16 - 00;35;15;10
Alex Schwartz
I mean, you're seeing a lot of hospitality companies nowadays do away with, the concierge or the front desk person, and now you have keyless entry and all these other options to, you know, create quote unquote, less friction. But if you're trying to create a high touch experience that goes away. So where does the human side come in?

00;35;15;16 - 00;35;40;10
Alex Schwartz
Where does the technology side come in? I think that's why hospitality is such an interesting breeding ground for establishing new best practices of where we go. Can thinking about tech as a teammate, right. That's how Nate and I like to think about AI. It's not I mean, everybody of course, is naturally having some trepidation around, is I going to take my job?

00;35;40;17 - 00;36;04;28
Alex Schwartz
And I think the common mantra and we're certainly not taking credit for this, most everybody that's paying attention is saying AI is not going to take your job. Somebody who knows how to use AI is going to take your job, and you're hearing that again and again. So I think Marriott had some really good foresight that they continued to bring to bear through the pandemic.

00;36;04;28 - 00;36;27;26
Alex Schwartz
And of course, when you're a hospitality business and you're having, you know, a full on shut down in quarantine and your business effectively stops in the same way that, you know, restaurants stop now, that gives you plenty of time to to think about how you're going to architect the future as well. You know, there's an immediacy there. There's a there's a there's a pain narrative there of, of, of, of what happens to the business.

00;36;27;26 - 00;36;48;26
Alex Schwartz
And that's, that's the one thing I would add to what Nate shared is that when you're in your comfort zone as a company, that's when change is the hardest. You have to be willing to look at those early indicators of pain and say, do I want to, you know, do I want to react now when I have a stubbed toe?

00;36;48;28 - 00;37;17;18
Alex Schwartz
Or do I want to wait to react until when I'm in a wheelchair? When am I going to do this? Can I take these? Insights that I'm getting? Can I really listen to my organization and listen to what's happening in my industry and pay attention and get curious and use that as a driver to adapt now? So I'm not the last person left without a chair when the music stops playing.

00;37;17;21 - 00;37;32;14
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. This has been a good time for, for for two more questions I love you know you pick who gets the this one and who gets the last one. But I want to sort of talk about a couple of the offerings that you have. One is called the Future of Work Mindset Model. And it was it the action plan.

00;37;32;21 - 00;37;38;19
Paul Sullivan
What are those mean and how to company? How do you help companies, implement those jobs.

00;37;38;22 - 00;38;00;18
Alex Schwartz
Sure. So I'll, I'll kick it off and I'll let, Nate jump in. So the Future of Work mindset was created because a lot of people were asking what we felt was the wrong question. People were looking for Band-Aids instead of a painkiller. And by Band-Aids, I mean people would say, hey, Alex. Hey, Nate. What's that next skill that I need to learn?

00;38;00;20 - 00;38;24;04
Alex Schwartz
Or which chat bot should I be using? Or which industry is rising, which is falling? Which companies are going to do better? Now, those are all rational and normal questions, but if you really understand the thrust of what we've been saying throughout this conversation with you, Paul, it's that we are in an era of unprecedented and rapid change.

00;38;24;07 - 00;38;57;01
Alex Schwartz
Personal development and professional development are converging in a way that they never have before. This isn't just go take that corporate development training. This requires a whole new way of being and thinking. So Nate and I have both been historically impressed by Carol. Carol Dweck work on a growth mindset. And a growth mindset essentially says the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is if you have a fixed mindset, when you encounter obstacles, you say, I can't.

00;38;57;01 - 00;39;21;16
Alex Schwartz
You're limited by limiting beliefs. If you have a growth mindset, you say, I can't yet and you understand that effort and application can lead you to a better outcome, a higher degree of knowledge, a higher degree of proficiency. So we said, how could we reimagine a growth mindset for the future of work? How do we build on this?

00;39;21;19 - 00;39;50;25
Alex Schwartz
And we came up with a model that is rooted in three core principle goals, which are explore, expand, and evolve. Now, explore is very much about the learning piece that Nate was talking about earlier that, you know, the old ways of learning are no longer effective. People's skills and degrees are going to get stale, and we must all stay really curious and think about learning as an adventure.

00;39;50;25 - 00;40;12;01
Alex Schwartz
Now everybody talks about, oh, you know, continuous learning or lifelong learning. Those are kind of boring terms. How do you make this an adventure? How do you make learning as a journey something that you do on a daily basis to understand, how is my industry being disrupted? How are my skills being disrupted? What are these new innovations and how do you make it?

00;40;12;06 - 00;40;36;25
Alex Schwartz
How do you approach learning from a place of passion? Expand is about expanding your sense of self. So Nate was talking about, you know, identity earlier and this idea of how do we have a broader identity, how do we go beyond the labels of when people say to you, you know, what do you do? You just have one answer and you measure yourself on how well you do that or how much money you make in a given moment.

00;40;36;25 - 00;41;05;25
Alex Schwartz
We really need to expand our labels because our skills are being radically disrupted. The things that are valuable in the marketplace are changing on a monthly, sometimes even on a weekly basis. If you're just paying attention to the new technologies that are rolling out and evolve is really about how do we evolve not only our relationship with technology, but also more importantly, perhaps, how do we evolve our humanity?

00;41;05;25 - 00;41;41;23
Alex Schwartz
What do we think of as our uniquely human skills in this age of AI, we call it human intelligence. So it was actually, coined by Saul Khan originally at Khan Academy, but we've taken it we've run with it in this idea of what is human intelligence in the age of AI. So what we've done is looked at these is the three core principles through which people can learn and create a new way to adapt and evolve and really be able to put their surfboard on this massive wave of transformation and disruption that we're all experiencing.

00;41;41;26 - 00;41;57;16
Paul Sullivan
That's fantastic. Nate, I'm going to give you the, the, the last question. And I'm so grateful that you guys came on the Company Does podcast today. But the last question is, you know, people are listening to this. They they made it this far along their managers in like, okay, this is a lot of heady stuff. It's really important.

00;41;57;16 - 00;42;08;09
Paul Sullivan
But, you know, what's the simplest workplace problem that leaders could solve that would have the biggest impact? Yeah.

00;42;08;14 - 00;42;28;14
Nate Thompson
This is such a great question. And the answer is not going to be profound. In fact, it's going to be the opposite. It's going to be the easiest thing you could do that would make the biggest difference. And that is spend time with your people, the leaders who go sit with their people, who reach out to their people.

00;42;28;14 - 00;42;50;20
Nate Thompson
How are you doing? I'm thinking of you today. What's getting in your way? How can I support you? What do you need from me right now? They do it as individuals and they do it together. When you see leaders who do that, they're. People feel I'm safe, I belong, I have my future here. My leader listens to me.

00;42;50;20 - 00;43;34;10
Nate Thompson
My leader cares about me. That creates what are called weak and strong bonds or ties. The more of those you have, the more connected someone feels to a culture. So the best leaders and know how simple this sounds. Spend time being thoughtful with their people. Now the gift that it gives is this massive reciprocal generative thing. And it's when you listen, you get the insights that you need to make the right decisions and make this really simple to leader who doesn't do that gets further and further away from their people, and then they start making decisions in isolation.

00;43;34;13 - 00;43;58;13
Nate Thompson
And there's a there's a Grand Canyon between them. And they're people. They're over here in their ivory tower. The best leaders are with their people a lot in their listening. What do you need? What are you concerned about? What are you hearing? What are you noticing? You're closer to the work. What do you think we should do? And now those leaders have this Intel, these insights that are invaluable for making the right decision.

00;43;58;15 - 00;44;20;06
Nate Thompson
But they do something. A final thing that's really powerful. Instead of taking the credit for all of that, they give it away. So they're close to their people. They're caring deeply about them, and then they give the credit back to their people. And they become beloved because of the way they're being with their people.

00;44;20;08 - 00;44;35;25
Paul Sullivan
Nate Thompson Alec Schwartz, the dad duo behind the disrupted workforce. Listen to the podcast, find these guys on LinkedIn. Connect with them. They're fantastic. Thank you guys for joining me today on the Company Dads podcast.

00;44;35;28 - 00;44;37;13
Nate Thompson
Thank you for having us.

00;44;37;15 - 00;44;40;07
Alex Schwartz
It's been lovely to be here.

00;44;40;10 - 00;44;58;04
Paul Sullivan
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Company Dads podcast. I really appreciate you tuning in week after week, trying to use this moment here to thank the people who make it possible. Number one of course held are mirror, who is our podcast editor. We also have Skip Terry home to many of you know from lead Diaries.

00;44;58;04 - 00;45;21;10
Paul Sullivan
He's taken over our social media. Terry Brennan is helping us with our audience development. And Emily Servant is there, each and every day helping with the web development and can do any of this without, an amazing board, of advisors. So I just want to say thank you to all of you who help. And I want to say thank you to everyone who listens.

00;45;21;10 - 00;45;24;21

And, hopefully you'll tune in again next week. Thanks so much.