Your Work Friends
Edgy Work Talk. Fresh Insights. We Break It Down So You Stay Ahead.
Its not just you - work is bonkers. You get hit from all sides. Your boss. Your team. Your clients. Another org change. A layoff. Which makes you want to chuck it all and live off the grid.
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Your Work Friends
How to Fuel Your Org With Soul and Talent w/Author and Talent Executive Mike Ohata
There are a lot of reasons why you'd want to talk to Mike Ohata about talent.
First, he's got the chops: Fortune 15 Talent Leader (KPMG, Microsoft), Founding Board Member at Ezra Coaching and the Author of "The Talent Fueled Enterprise". He's knows how to put major points on the board the biggest and most complex orgs. In Talent circles, we like to call him, a badass.
Another reason why you'd want to listen to Mike about work? About people?
Because he cares. There is a people-profit win, win. Mike's made a career of it. Plus, he gives that 'big care' energy which we love.
Mike shares his expert insights on maximizing talent and creating a soulful workplace, balancing the fine line between caring for employees and maintaining profitability. We challenge traditional notions of human capital and delve into the importance of psychological safety and genuine connections between leaders and their teams.
Next, we explore holistic employee development and the impact of AI on the workforce. Learn why transparency, empathy, and adding 'soul' to corporate practices are more critical than ever. We question the scarcity mentality around talent, emphasize the importance of simplicity and focus in leadership, and reflect on balancing capitalism with people-centric strategies.
This is a thought-provoking conversation on aligning personal and organizational values, and discover how genuine employee investment can transform your organization.
About Mike Ohata:
Mike Ohata brings a career-long history of transforming Big Four and Fortune 15 organizations through talent frameworks, comprehensive people development, and workforce solutions. During his 26-year executive career, he strategically navigated Microsoft Corporation and KPMG through disruption and challenges, building the operational pillars needed to scale national and international markets. His thought leadership has enhanced the growth, diversity, and capabilities of workforces of up to 200K. In 2023, he was honored with the LearningElite Gold Award for pioneering exemplary learning and development strategies at KPMG.
Outside his corporate roles, Mike is committed to community service. He serves as Vice Chair of Thrive Counseling Center and Founding Advisory Board Member of EZRA, a virtual coaching and learning provider. He is also an Advisor to startups such as BigSpring and Modal.
Mike holds a Master of Education from Columbia University, a Master of Arts in Linguistics and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Hawaii. His recent book, The Talent-Fueled Enterprise - A Powerful Approach to Build Tomorrow’s Workforce, released in June 2024, offers insights for business leade
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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It just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO kept saying the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come. We'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could feel it. He knew in his soul what the values were. He knew in his spirit what he was after and what he saw. And you go like, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2:What's going on, Mel?
Speaker 3:Not much. I feel super energized. I belong to this community, through Culture First, that hosts co-working days in the city. I just love it so much. Not to speak for you, but like me, we kind of thrive on like hive togetherness of collaborating and brainstorming. So I just get a lot of energy out of just leaving my house and sitting in a space with other people who are getting shit done and then being able to connect and ask questions. So it felt good today I did that in the city. What about you? Nice?
Speaker 2:And by the city you mean New.
Speaker 3:York, I mean New York. Yeah, yeah, sorry everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got to say I don't think I have prepared myself as a parent around sports. I did not grow up playing sports Like we were in like ceramics camp and dance and piano. That's what I did. I didn't really play sports, yeah. But my son is super into sports. My husband played soccer in college. Like they're into sports. I was not prepared for the amount of practices and such like. Just for soccer, just for soccer. And he's in first grade. They have practices on Monday, games on Saturday and then this weekend there was a jamboree like a fundraiser.
Speaker 2:I'm like this is three days three days, three days out of the week, dedicated to soccer wait until he gets into middle school and high school.
Speaker 3:That'd be five days a week, and then you'll have a pasta dinner to raise money. I was not prepared. Oh, I know what to get you now as a gift I have lawn chairs, I do have not a lawn, not a lawn chair, not a lawn chair like one of those pop-up tents.
Speaker 2:What do we do? What do you hell?
Speaker 3:yeah, the pop-up tent for outside, so. So when it starts raining, you could just zip yourself in.
Speaker 2:It has a little window Like a little drive-thru window Like what here's your snacks. Yeah, it has a little window that you can look through, you're nice and cozy. Throw Clif Bars out of it. Yes, please get me that. That's funny, that's funny Okay. That's funny, that's funny Okay.
Speaker 3:Oh man, yeah, you're going to be busy, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, we had a pretty rad discussion with Mike Ohata, didn't we?
Speaker 3:We did. Yeah, yeah, mike Ohata joined us. He's a talent executive and strategic advisor. He's worked for organizations like Microsoft and KPMG and he's the author of the Talent-Fueled Enterprise. We read the book. It was awesome, and then we got to talk to him about it.
Speaker 2:And we think there's a lot of good knowledge nuggets for folks to take away from this conversation. The book is written and geared towards. If you're the head of HR, the head of learning and development, if you're a CEO, right, it's looking at strategically what do you want to do to make sure that your enterprise is really garnering the full potential of everybody that works there? Right? Listen, if you are in those roles, it's a must read, absolutely, but that's not really why we wanted to have Mike on. It feels like there's this conversation happening in the ether, especially around anything HR or people related that it's very polarized.
Speaker 3:Oh, it is right now. I read something yesterday around you're not strategic. If you're a bleeding heart HR person, take some issue with these types of comments, because I think something that you and I talk about often, and something that Mike emphasized, was this need for balance, the balance of caring for people and your bottom line and how you can bring those two things together in a really effective way.
Speaker 2:Where work and where goodness really gets done is in trying to find the common ground, is in trying to figure out what is the balance between to your very good points, profit and being really good to your people, or really understanding how you can maximize the potential of your people, and we highly recommend Mike's book With us. He walked through how can anybody, whether you're a manager, a leader of an organization, really fuel your organization with not only talent but with soul as well, and gave some really really practical advice, and it was just a fun conversation.
Speaker 3:And, side note, there's a lot of great movie quotes and tiebacks in this book, but this is a great conversation and with that, here's Mike Ohata. Mike, we are so excited to have you with your work, friends, today, and you've written the talent-fueled enterprise, which is focusing on how businesses can thrive by really focusing in on their talent, and we'd love to start off with what inspires you to write this book having me.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited and I'm looking forward to our conversation. I've had the fortune in coming out of professional services and the firm I work is. There's this age where you time out and you're asked to retire. In that, just this notion of being able to be liberated from your organization, the stepping back, stepping away, getting out of the organization, has allowed to really share all the things that you'd like to work on. But you don't always have the opportunity to work on and also just get up all those kind of pent up feelings and thoughts around what could have been, could be and why can't we get to them in your careers.
Speaker 1:It's really hard sometimes to get things done because we're constrained in these systems and these are of these organizations. The other part of the inspiration it sounds super corny, but it really is the people you work with right. It's the employees in our particular firm and the partners as well. But the people are really inspiring because, at the end of the day, they are the potential right and they are the engine of the organization. And you got to step back and go. I love that we do the work that we do in HR and talent and learning, because we love the people and we want to see what we can do for them and see what they become.
Speaker 3:So that was my starting point on how I got inspired love of people and the value of them in the workplace, and how we can make it better. Why is talent such a crucial element in a company's success? Can you explain it to our listeners, like they're five? Why?
Speaker 1:is that the case? Talent is just one of those words we use to talk about the people in our businesses, in our organizations, and it is the word of the day. It's become a little bit of the slogan of the day too, but it also shows the recognition that people really do matter for businesses. The broader question, though, that really comes up from that is so what do you do about it? We're talking about talent because we're trying to find a better way to talk about employees, about employees. There is this kind of deep felt in our values and so forth and our feelings that people really do matter Really. They are the heart and soul of the organization, but then the organization keeps churning on doing what it's always done, and so I think it's really important for all of us to understand is that, collectively, we're all here at this place around really needing to understand how to think about talent differently?
Speaker 1:And the other thought that goes through my mind and why it's so important, is for the last 23 plus years we've had this notion around talent as a scarce thing. We have this mindset of scarcity and we talk about the war for talent all the time. There's a lot of relevance to those models around like looking at sort of high potential, high performance, et cetera, but it's an incomplete view, and so the challenge that I've kept coming across is that if we're all looking for the same people, the same resource, the same talent, that just doesn't compute, because we're surrounded by all these people and you know this story right Like we've hired the best people and then you wind forward and go, we can't find the right talent. And I'm just how does that even work? What happened along the way? It really begins to speak to this condition around, this philosophy or this point of view that says there's only a handful of good people out there, and I'm just like that's not really a way to live, it's not a sustainable way to live.
Speaker 3:And so, in this current framework around you know leaders talking about talent and it's super important for us to realize is that there's a vast wealth of potential in the organization. That starts with understanding all employees and creating sort of opportunities for all of us. I like the shift in the mindset right, Because every employee that you hire, you hired them because you believed that they have this high potential. So where does that change? There's a real opportunity here to support them and their continued growth and potential.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:In the book there was a theme that really resonated with me throughout. You mentioned that the talent strategy mindset that inherently values the human and the concept of I see you is super important. How can leaders and orgs show their talent, that they truly see them?
Speaker 1:That's tough. I say it's tough because it's really easy to say do this and do that, but it's really kind of a set of practices that we all pick up every day. It's the simple things from around. You spend time regularly with your teams, with your people. You stop to say hello. It doesn't have to be super formal, but do you actually have a way, a practice, to understand what do people really want to get out of work? What do they want to get out of the job? What do they really desire a year from now, two years from now? Is it the model of performance that drives the business outcomes that drives those questions, or is it a real interest and curiosity in the manager or leader that's going to say I just want to know what's going on, but a lot of it's just connecting and building community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it makes me think of the real need to build psychological safety. So if a senior leader is asking what you're up to, the initial response isn't oh, am I in trouble? But more of they're coming from a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a telling statement when people say, well, am I in trouble? Because they feel like they're not safe or they may be at risk.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you also talk about how orgs often refer to employees as resources and the workforce as human capital, which is ultimately dehumanizing right, because it's not seeing people for who they are as humans. What changes would you recommend orgs make in regards to how they refer to their talent to bring back that humanity in the workplace?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in general, there's nothing really wrong with the words right and selves. They're just words, and they're just words. Come and go. Really, what's going on here from a theory perspective, is just around. People are watching all day long what leaders are doing. They're watching all day long what the practices, the lived experience of the organization is, and so I think what's really important is you can use words like workforce or human capital, but really the fundamental thing is, what do people see you do? So like, for example, the really common one in which is tough and there's no easy solution or answer around this.
Speaker 1:We have this need for a business outcome, but we're not making our plan, and I think I've heard you folks talk about this and then but you're, so what do you do when you have too many people? So the typical thing that often happens is we downsize the workforce or we right-size it, so to speak. Right, and we go through that riffing process. And I love the story that you folks talked about on taking that long view, that long game with people, that behavior and set of actions around. Taking that long view communicates so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter, so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter.
Speaker 1:Now, at the end of the day, people get it. If we're run, like during the great recession, if we're not making it like we've got to make a choice here, but the point there is just in like how transparently clear about it. Leaders often spend so much time getting all spun up over the right words and they lost the opportunity to connect with people and I've had so many employees over the years. Someone was like I want to appreciate it. You just tell me how it is. It doesn't have to be pretty, but at least I don't have to guess what you actually need.
Speaker 1:And I think that's what's at stake here. Now, the flip side of it, since we're HR professionals, is that there's this whole kind of HR label thing that we have to go through to make sure we say the right things. I think you can still do that. You just can't get too spun up with ourselves.
Speaker 3:A couple of our other guests in line, I think, with this collective thinking of it's okay to be transparent. Even if you're following all the compliance, you can still connect on a human to human level. One of our guests had mentioned, for example, his approach was hey, you're not going to like this, I absolutely don't like it, and it's okay to acknowledge like for lack of a better word, so I apologize the turd in the room, so let's acknowledge it together and get through it together, but to your good point, making sure we're continuing to connect on a humanity level that these are people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One of the stories I remember is that I did have to reduce the number of people, and there's one particular team that got impacted and I just broke down crying, talking to them. The director like called me up after just said but I really appreciate it, but you also got to do your job and it was really just an amazing moment where you know she and the team appreciated the humanity, but you got a job to do, so Get on with it too. Back to the balance, right.
Speaker 2:You know, it strikes me, though, the idea of being seen. You talk about people being developed holistically as well, but when we look at HR, I don't think it's set up to do that. We're set up to do more of the compliance, more of the block and tackle. When you look at the amount of funding HR teams get, it's such a small percentage of the overall funding of the organization. It's not a knock on HR leaders at all, because I think HR leaders have the best intentions. They're trying to do the best they can with what they have. There's a lot going on, yeah, and part of me wonders and I'd love to get your take on it in order to really set up or operationalize being seen, holistic development, looking at talent differently, do we have to secede from the union Meaning compliance goes over here to legal and then talent becomes a different beast in and of itself, almost like the human team or the product innovation team? We need to separate in order to really do this, or can we still go the way we're going?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have like this classic mindset around either or right, we have the compliance engine, all the process-based kind of work we're like the people shoveling coal in the coal fuel engine or train and we're just heads down, we just got to keep this thing moving. We're doing that work all day long and then we think, or it'd be really great if we could be focused on the people, and the reality is they're all integrated right. So then it's a matter of how you do the process work, and that's really easy to say conceptually or theoretically, but it really is. It's around how do you combine the two? So, for example, we know empathy is one of those kind of capabilities that bring the two together right. Authenticity, transparency, and when you think about those, we're all talking about those human kind of attributes that actually make us who we are. And that's the heart of it, because people get the engine part of it. There is compliance stuff that happened. There are processes we have to run. It's just that whether or not we still feel like the processes have a soul in it.
Speaker 1:So, for example, this is one thing in one of my past jobs is I remember writing just said you know what, like it'd be really great to get transparency around what the corporation has budgeted for bonuses, because you say it's zero to 15%, but we budget it for six, right? So we're here and I'm giving a performance review and the person got 7% and they feel like they're a failure because it's not 15. 7% compared to 6% is actually pretty decent looking right In a scheme of things, I said. And then I'm talking to a professional, an employee, that's looking for $2,000 and because they're going to build a cedar deck in their backyard and they just want to buy the materials but they're going to do the labor and that money means a lot to the individual, but we don't have a way to talk about what the sort of the constraints of the system say.
Speaker 1:Wind forward, that organization actually started saying, like here's what we think your bonus is going to be based on, what we can plan for, and you're up or down from that. Now everybody goes oh, I can live with that, but that's a place where you have the constraints of the process and the system. That needs the rigor of the financial model that's, allocating a set amount of resources and a transparency approach that allows people to then understand. Now I have a better idea of where I match up right now. Different conversation. Whether or not they like the evaluation or the assessment, that takes a lot of stress out of it and takes a lot of anxiety out of the process.
Speaker 2:I love what you said about the soul. We have to put soul back into some of these processes Benefits, comps, conversation, even layoffs. Right, you can have soul, you can see people in those. When you see this done really well, how do the leaders or the organizations really truly view their people?
Speaker 1:So what I generally see in organizations is that most leaders have a good concept of what they're after in terms of goodness.
Speaker 1:They have the right concepts in place, so the messaging is right, but what they don't realize is that they themselves, the organizations, the functions, are stuck in the system of the organization and they haven't figured out how to disrupt that sort of state or to change that slowly over time.
Speaker 1:So then we're in this place of messaging over here Because it sounds really great, but operating over here all day long, and that's the part when you look at it saying, hey, we love people, you got to go right. That's the kind of stuff that creates that dissonance in the organization. So what really has to happen is we have to talk about what the constraints are. We have to talk about what we're trying to balance out in the organization, and I think that's where I think again, our professors, our employees, they get it, they understand it, they appreciate things really, really deeply. The other kind of funny thing I think about if it really created connection and community, you would know what people feel like they need to be seen and to be understood, versus kind of stalking on fishbowl to see what kind of throwing shades going on. I do think organizations understand it at some level and they have great mechanisms, councils and so forth, pulse surveys and all that. But again, are we enamored with the process and the activity or do we really want to know what's going on?
Speaker 2:The older I get, I will tell you. I think so much comes down to fundamentals like basics 25 years ago or something. Somebody wrote that book, everything I Needed to Know. I Learned in Kindergarten and it's this just idea of, yes, connect with people, talk to people, ask them what they need, ask them what they want. A lot of times people get really fearful of doing that because they don't know if someone's going to ask them for something they can't give or they don't know how to be perfect in that dialogue or conversation. But all they really need to do is start with care. People feel that when you start with care I get that from you, mike that you give care, energy, you give very big care, thank you. I want to talk about this idea of developing people holistically, especially when we're talking about AI. Mel and I were just talking about Klarna, for example, who they're going to lay off. What was that, mel? Like 85% of their business.
Speaker 3:They just laid off a bunch of folks, got down to half their workforce and I believe they're hoping to get down further within the next year.
Speaker 2:Yes, there's two energies that are happening in the world. I'm getting very woo-woo, forgive me, but right, there's this one energy of scarcity. Oh my gosh, ai is going to take jobs. We're going to start seeing a lot of organizations making big moves around completely replace humans with AI, and then you even wrote about this in the book too. Then we're looking at people who want to augment. What does that look like when this AI conversation is happening, where we can look at it as scarcity or we can look at it as augmentation? If I'm a Jane Doe employee, what does it look like in an AI world to be developed holistically?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is, when it comes to AI in particular, I get the sense that a lot of business leaders feel like there's one really good question to ask around how do we adopt AI? And I think that's a question. I think it's not even the best question. I think it's a starting question and I think the exercise that we all need to take is what are the next 5, 10, 17 questions to ask around AI and the implications for the organization.
Speaker 1:When I think about it and I step back, we've been surrounded by computer technology, computing technology, innovation for a long time. We keep talking about the speed and the disruption for decades now, and there's a point that says we're not really talking about anything new here. So what's really going on here? So the part of it says to me we should get over it in some way and then start thinking what is the intersection of AI and humans? That's one of the really key questions.
Speaker 1:Holistically, it's going to be really around coming back again to these fundamentalists around what does it mean to actually see the employee as a person? And I actually think the answer for that really depends on the organization. That it is because different organizations are doing different things right and there's different kinds of labor and different kinds of work, and holistically might mean that we need to do things that are fun. That celebration is actually a really key part of our culture, so we may do that. Other things may be. I need the latest science, I need the latest technical knowledge and I need you to help me to get there, because that's super valuable to me as the profession that I'm in.
Speaker 3:That's one of it.
Speaker 1:There's a number of levers that we can use to think about seeing people holistically, but one of them is going to come down to is what are we trying to achieve with our people? And just having clarity about that. You don't have to be all things to all people, but having clarity about what we're trying to accomplish, I think, is super, super important. For example, if we think that it's really important to have a really great hiring process, let's say, focus on skills, understand really what skills you need and what the skills are in the marketplace. If you really think it's important for your organization to train and to develop those skills, then train them. If you think that retaining people is important to the organization and you want your people to understand that, then create some kind of mobility, not because you have to react to their need, but because it's really important to be thoughtful around how they're engaged across the whole organization.
Speaker 1:The other thing in convincing people holistically is we often start off with the most basic set of needs. So where do we go when we want to make sure that you know your value? We start off with benefits and compensation, right, and you take math instead of hierarchy of needs. We're talking about things that address our abilities to make sure we have health care, that we can buy food, that we can buy shelter, rent an apartment, buy a home, and then we understand but miss sort of those kind of self-actualization things.
Speaker 1:The things that people desire more and this gets back to the holistic thing is that people want to develop. They want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills. But there's this other appetite or other need, so to develop, they want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills, but there's this other appetite or other need, so to speak, that actually goes beyond that. And that's where I think the opportunity is to see people holistically is really understand well, what are you after Beyond kind of the work gig you got and the pay you get? What do you want out of life? Right, and the answer is going to really vary depending on the organization and the people who go into that organization. But I think the truism that we see in the research shows this and Gardner talks about this, right, and they talk about the human deal is that people are looking for a very different set of things than what people were looking at 20 years ago, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think about this a lot. What does the future organization need to look like in order to do this? What are some of the big ticket structural changes that would need to happen in order for this to be the employee experience?
Speaker 1:Philosophically, the first thing that's going to happen is a mindset shift in leaders Leaders Okay, Because actually I think the structural shift will follow this ability to imagine what things could look like. So, for example, people talk a lot about workforce planning and that can mean a lot of different things. For a lot of organizations it just means resource management. But what has it happened? Or what needs to happen if you want to get structural changes around how you recruit, how you create opportunities for people is you actually have to imagine. There is a model out there, for example is that if we get people that have the right attributes and we can develop those attributes and then we can develop the skills, we can actually create a workforce that has greater agility, for example. But today's practice is keeping most of us grounded in buying today's skills and then getting all kind of worked up around tomorrow's skills. So then we get into this hyper motion around that we need to do training and rapid upskilling and we got a whole set of terms for those kinds of activities and they're all OK. They're all the OK responses and good responses. But can you imagine a system where everybody believes in the ecosystem of work? It says I may only have it for a year to three years and then you're going to move on, because people do. We know there's a lot of research that shows this, but that actually has huge implications for how we develop people.
Speaker 1:The question for all of us is can we actually develop people in a way knowing that they're going to leave? Because if we do that, there's a whole bunch of structural changes have to happen. Like we have to rethink the work. What does it mean to have work that's being operated or executed by people who aren't there all for a long time? And we know there are certain industries, say like logistics, call centers, where, like they know what turnover looks like and so they actually have had to come up with a work model. So the work gets structured in a way that kind of fits that demographic pattern. But that's the kind of structure thing I think could potentially take place much more broadly in corporate America. It's hard to move because there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of day-to-day operating results that we need to deliver, and I think you can do both. You can find those areas where you can begin to slowly shift.
Speaker 2:It's interesting I think this was in Ashley's book. This idea of an organization would be a state, a team would be a neighborhood.
Speaker 1:It did.
Speaker 2:And that you're much more likely to make change at the neighborhood level. And there's responsibility I would say responsibility to your very good point around the neighborhood level and I know that Mel and I wanted to talk about. What are some things that we can do at the enterprise level, at the team level, at the individual level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a great analogy. I'll start because if you take that notion it goes right back to that idea around is the team, is the learning unit. It is also where community and connection is most tangible. So one of the things that has to happen is how do you bring that level of tangible community and connection as you go up the organization? It's what has to happen.
Speaker 1:It's a really tough thing to say do this and it all magically happened. The really basic question that the executive team has to ask is what do we want to accomplish with our people that's going to make us a better organization tomorrow and it integrates well with the business outcomes that we're accountable for. That sounds tactical, but I would tell you that is a really hard thing to answer. When leaders can answer that and get it down to one or two things and you know what happens when one or two things comes like to seven to 13. No, really, what's like the one or two things you're going to do that actually moves your people In what direction do you want to move in?
Speaker 2:I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of simplicity, because when I've seen organizations do this really well, they're not doing 15 things in shallow depth. They're doing one, two, maybe three things and they're going really hard on them in terms of yes, campaign and strat and funding them, but also in process, in the way that we build workflows, the way that we talk and the language that we use, all around these things to the point where their employees can talk about it and they know it and they feel it. It's very hard to do with 10 things.
Speaker 1:This is going to sound harsh, and it's not meant to be harsh, but it feels more like an observation. But we tend to not focus on the one or two things because I think it actually takes a lot of courage to do. It does, and it doesn't mean that leaders are feeling less powerful or sinful, it just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO who just said we kept saying and to your point is the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come Like we'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could, just you could feel it Like he, just he knew in his soul what the values were, he knew in his spirit, like what he was after and what he saw. And you, just you go. Yeah, I get it, you didn't get spun up on what are we on now? Like 7A of the nine point strategy, on the five year plan that gets revised every six months. It wasn't known sounding like that. It was just like this really simple view of the world.
Speaker 3:I have a question.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:How do we crack this nut? Because I feel like we hear this story consistently, that there's a need even for the CEO, to have courage. But if you're leading the organization, why do you need to have courage? You can say, no, this is how we want to do it. So what's preventing leaders from taking that stand as a collective and saying, yeah, we're all in on this, we don't need to have courage because this is what we believe, so it's not. Again. I keep feeling this, even at the leadership level, the C-suite level, this lack of psychological safety to say this is what we need and this is what we should focus on. What makes it so challenging for people to take a hard stance.
Speaker 1:My theory around this is that organizations as systems have different or varying permissions.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So some organization will give a lot of permission to its leaders to have courage around how they want to drive and how they want to lead, and other organizations don't.
Speaker 1:And I think the leaders who prosper in whatever organization they are, I think they figured out right one way or the other, either consciously, with lots of self-awareness, or they just found what was comfortable and found a way to prosper in the environment they're in. But what I would say to any leader at any level that if you're not feeling that sort of integration of yourself and your values with the organization's values, then it's something to question and to think about. Dear colleague john blumberg writes about this around the return on integrity and he talks a lot about personal values actually have to really align with the organizational values and that's a journey. But I would say sometimes what happens is that leaders are like all of us, get caught up in the systems that we're in and so they only have, or feel like they only have, certain permission to go a certain way. The transformational leader not meaning about creating transformation organization, but the leader who's transforming themselves will find a path. They'll find a way to rise above that, to transcend them.
Speaker 3:It's just so interesting even to hear that there are certain organizations that still don't value that perspective in this day and age, with all of the research that shows when you commit to your people, you will see business results. I think I ask every guest why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value?
Speaker 1:Why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value? It comes down again to this view around what matters most. Right in its simplest terms. And if you're someone who's wired by power and you're wired by money, and that's what gets you excited and energized, that's what gets you energized and you're going to operate that way. If you're wired a little bit differently, then you have different set of priorities and actions. And here's the thing that I think we know theoretically in all our leadership development, research and so forth is that it takes a diversity of leaders to make it happen, but most organizations tend to put in place a leader who looks just like everybody else, because that is the ethos of the system. That is what we value in the system is that we value making money, we value power, we value the political game or what have you. And again, not all organizations are wired that way. That's one pattern.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what advice would you give to that leader that has a mismatch with their organization but they want to try to make a dent in a positive direction? What advice would you give to that person?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love American landscape portrait, like just because there's this notion that humans are really small and the landscape of kind of the continent was just so daunting. And without getting into sort of the historical politics around, who was here first? Because I appreciate that discussion very much but built into the psyche, I think, of what we do sometimes is around this notion around that it could be lonely, right, you could be out there foraging your way. But what's so exciting about it, I think, for the leader who's up for this, is that you can be in the worst set of circumstances and have the best time of your life Because you have this authority to tell the story that you want to tell, to cram the path or kind of create the path that you have.
Speaker 1:And I think what the irony of this statement is that there are a whole lot of people watching, taking notes and maybe following along at the same time and I think every organization, as homogenous as it might feel, there's this huge diversity of potential in people that actually see this and want something more. That's what's so amazing is that you could be in a really tough situation, but the arc and the joy is freeing out a path through all of that, even if you don't get to the change that you would like to have gotten to. Is the change the goal or is the journey? It's the destination of the journey more important, but I would say the journey is more important Totally makes me wonder.
Speaker 2:Just an offshoot point I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I'm on a journey myself. This idea of work because so much of work has been around quarter by quarter results, revenue, shareholder return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's profit driven. Yeah, point blank Done. One of the things that I'm excited about AI is that it's going to force conversations around. How do we view people, how do we think about augmenting people and enable them to do their best work? Because all the other administrative schmutz could be taken care of. There's so many opportunities for those discussions. I'm optimistic about it. With what's happening in the ether, can we swing the pendulum from everything has to be around profit and rev a little bit over to people and balance it more?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but again, we're not on either end of the pole right.
Speaker 2:We can't be, we shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:We're somewhere that we're trying to figure out what the balance is of both of these things, and we all live and benefit from being in a capitalist society. So, whether or not people want to admit it, we're all capitalists at some level, and that's an okay thing. The question you're on is then again, like where you're getting to is what is the balance for that, for how we think about people? So back to the ai. The question is how do we redesign work? What's tomorrow's work? Because we know tomorrow's work isn't going to be today's work. But if we only think about replacing today's work with ai and automation, we can miss the question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we do that and we should be asking okay, what are we doing tomorrow? It's not today. And that part's really exciting because, look, if you look back around for these analogies, if you look back around when you had horse-drawn carriages moving people around, just think of all the technology changes that are taking place we're going to find a way. And I think, through all of this, what's really exciting is this talent discussion has come to the foreground, because we all recognize that people are really a critical part of the equation and while we think that there's slogans or initiatives to talk about workforce planning or kind of talent and culture and different things like that. And all those things indicate is that we understand there's a new equation, that we have. That part gives me a lot of hope.
Speaker 3:This is our favorite part, Mike.
Speaker 1:Yep, okay, I'm prepared. The fun part is.
Speaker 3:You hopefully don't need to be so it's just a group of questions. Yes, no one word answers or a longer answer. If you're like this needs a longer response, that's totally fine. That's some of our best conversation, but we'll just go through the series and the point is first thing that pops in mind. If that sounds good, sure, okay, what are you currently reading, or I'll say listening, in case you're a fan of audiobooks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am a reader because I just I absorb it sticks a little bit better. There's two things I'm currently reading. One is it's the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory by Tim Alberta. I don't know if you know this book, but it's about the Christian nationalist movement and how it's taking place. It's a long read about halfway through but it's a really fascinating bit of journalism that he's done. The other one is by a friend and colleague. It's called Leading to Greatness, by Jim Reed, who was the CHRO of Rogers in Toronto.
Speaker 3:What song is on repeat for you? Oh?
Speaker 1:I got two. One is a young artist named Jalen Nwunda, it's called I think it's called Come Around and Love Me, and the other one is an older one. It's a jazz tune. It's by Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson. It's called Tour's End.
Speaker 3:Many people feel their companies don't care about their growth. From your experience, what are the top two signs that a company genuinely invests in its employees? So, like you're interviewing, you're researching, you're talking to people, what are the two big giveaways that they're truly investing in their employees?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the way I think about this or feel about this is twofold. One is you'll hear and see an excitement and that the employees see a connection around what they're doing in their day job with who they are. The subtext of that is, or the vision that you may get a sense of is and who they're becoming Right, one which is related to excitement word, but you have this real sort of palpable sense of energy around that they're actually learning and growing, that their job is not just a job but it's actually a building block along those lines around where they want to get to. It could be career and it could be beyond career.
Speaker 3:I love that. The thought of like their face lights up, because we've all seen that right, when you've had an interview and you ask someone about their experience, you can really you see the shift, someone who truly loves it. Okay, ai, the big elephant in the room. Ai and how it's going to impact people. What's the one thing an employee can do today to avoid being left in the dust and stay relevant? What's one thing they should just do if nothing else.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there's a tactical thing If you're organizing, or two tactical things. If your organization's got like LinkedIn Learning, for example, or you could go on the web or what have you, you need to learn fundamentals about AI. Go and do that, it's great. The other thing, what I would do, is it's available, but use Copilot, use ChatGPT and integrate it into what you do in your day-to-day and you'll soon find out, at least in this kind of the large language model stuff. There's just so much opportunity for how it can enhance your work process and how you use your time and energy to get work done. And there's this whole thing around that. Microsoft puts out research around work, and one of the things he said, one of the skills to learn, is how you do delegation, ai delegation, which is basically how you prompt AI right, and especially in this sort of co-pilot context, and I thought that was so interesting, because they're learning how to get the answer that they feel like they're looking for by getting the right prompt.
Speaker 3:Microsoft does offer really cool ongoing education for folks on AI, so highly recommend it for anyone. There, you go, yeah, okay. What's one thing that's giving you a lot of joy these days?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, wow. There's a lot of things, but I'm a little bit of a fitness kind of person. I have this routine every morning that I do core exercises for 30 to 40 minutes and while it's not always comfortable for me, it brings me a lot of joy because I see the reward of the habit that I've worked on. So that's probably one thing that's top of mind.
Speaker 3:Nice, I like it. Who's a leader you really admire?
Speaker 1:Okay. So I don't know if I have a leader that I really admire, and the reason being is that I think leaders are situational. The qualities of leaders depend on the situation they're in. That said, I'll give you an example of a leader that I do admire in the situation that he's in, and that's President Volodymyr Zelensky and what he's doing to keep Ukraine together and fight the war. Would I ask President Zelensky to run the transformation around our AI strategy for an organization? Don't know, don't know. It's a different set of capabilities, different situations. For me it's like a multiple answer, but I think there's a lot of leaders in a lot of levels. They have really fantastic qualities.
Speaker 2:Mike, it was so great to talk with you today.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited and I enjoyed the privilege of being able to share my thoughts and feelings with you.
Speaker 3:Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, mel Plett.
Speaker 2:This episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.
Speaker 3:Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, joined us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend at your work, friendscom, or visit us on your work, friendscom. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two. Thanks friends, thanks friends.