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The Future of HR: Developing the Next Generation of HR Leaders w/ JP Elliott

• Francesca Ranieri • Season 2 • Episode 79

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The future of HR isn’t just about people, it’s about how business, technology, and strategy come together.

In this episode of Your Work Friends, we sit down with JP Elliott, host of The Future of HR Podcast and creator of the Next Gen HR Accelerator, to talk about how HR is evolving inside the world’s biggest companies. JP has partnered with leaders at Amazon, American Express, Verizon, and more, and he brings a clear perspective on what it takes to build HR functions that win.

We cover:

  • Why the best HR leaders think like business leaders first
  • The rise of AI in HR—and why bolting it on isn’t enough
  • The case for splitting HR into compliance vs. business enablement
  • How companies like Moderna and ServiceNow are building AI-first HR functions
  • The biggest mistake organizations make when it comes to HR strategy and execution
  • The advice every CHRO stepping into the role needs right now

If you’re serious about the future of work, HR transformation, or building HR as a true business driver, this episode will push your thinking forward.

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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Speaker 1:

HR's role is to ensure the organization has the talent and capabilities to win.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to your Work, friends, where we're breaking down the now and next of work so you get ahead. I'm Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 3:

And I'm Mel Platt. Mel, we just had a conversation with JP Elliott. We did yeah, we love JP. Over here at your Work Friends. He is a friend of the pod and we are a friend of his the Future of HR podcast, and Francesca and I, week after week, we're talking about the now and next of work. We're very interested in what work is going to look like, what it looks like, where it's going. Jp is very focused on setting up HR organizations, which are the base of every successful place. Right To be prepared for that as well, like helping develop that next generation of HR leaders, and we thought this was prime time for us to connect and talk about what's happening with work. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

If you don't know, JP Elliott hosts the Future of HR podcast where he's talking to executives and CHROs from folks like Amazon, American Express, Verizon. He also runs the NextGen HR Accelerator which, to Mel's very good point, builds those NextGen HR skills of the folks that are running HR. If you're wanting to learn from somebody that is talking with people, learning from people upskilling people in HR all day, every day, you want to talk to JP. We're stoked to have him on this week. We were also very stoked to talk to him on his podcast. We're doing a little pod swap this week, friends, so go over to the Future of HR and you can hear Mel and I talk about our latest research on reciprocal work, the boss-employer relationship, and talking about the strategy work that we do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, with that folks. Here's our friend JP, from the outside. You're a host of the Future of HR podcast. You're an advisor to a number of organizations. What's your story? What caused you to launch the Future of HR?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for me it's always been about impact, and it was about 2022 when I started getting to podcasts, which was super late in the game. They've been around for a while. My wife and I started listening to podcasts and I was like, let me check out these HR podcasts, because first we're listening to SmartList and other ones that are more popular and probably better than mine, of course. But I listened to the HR podcast and I was like, huh, there's a gap in the market. I don't think we really are leading the story. I feel like we had an opportunity to do two things. One, how amazing it would be if I was 25 years old and early in my career, I could listen to some of these amazing people that I've worked with and learned from throughout my years, whether it's a Mark Efron, chros like Holly Tyson or whoever and I've had a really good network. And so I was like, gosh, what if I did a podcast? And it was really about what I wanted to hear when I was 25 years old and starting my career, and that was it. And so I bought a microphone same microphone I'm talking to you right now. On it arrived through Amazon, my wife said what is this and why did you buy a microphone? And I said, oh, that's my accountability partner. I'm starting a podcast called the Future of HR and I've owned thefutureofhrcom probably for 15, 20 years and never done anything with it, done anything with it. And so it just became the time to do it. And when I committed to launching it, I said you guys know there's something called Podfade.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people quit after a while because actually podcasting is actually harder than it looks to produce a good podcast. And I said I'm going to do 52 podcasts, one a week, to see if this gets traction. And it did. It took off. And I think it took off because the mission is sincere and, truthfully, there wasn't a lot of podcasts for more Fortune 500 companies that had been there that could bring that practitioner point of view but also had the same mission of trying to really bring this back to helping people's careers. And so now we've had over 250,000 downloads, 150 podcasts. This week will be 151.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's what I do every weekend. I don't know it's weird, but I do podcasting like you guys do. So I love it, and that allowed me to leave a private chief people officer in private equity, a job that I didn't love. That really just felt wasn't what best used my skills long-term and where I wanted to be. And I left and I built something called the NextGen HR Accelerator Program and that is a four-week leadership development program helping HR business partners mostly directors and senior managers be more business-focused. We teach how to read a P&L, how to be strategic, how to influence executives and how to take business strategy to HR strategy. And I sold 22 seats for a pilot to Verizon, cardinal Health, prudential, abbvie and I said, if I could do that, maybe I'd just do my own thing and not go get a job. And that's what I've done since May of 2024.

Speaker 3:

So it's been a crazy journey that's so good One. We're inspired by what you've done and what you continue to do, and love your podcast, so thank you for building it. What would surprise people most about how you actually think about HR? What's your X factor, your differentiator there?

Speaker 1:

It's interesting because I think we bring a lot of HR. We bring a lot of who we are to what we do. It's an interesting craft. It's not finance, where everyone knows what a good CFO looks like. We know we expect gap and non-gap and there's rules around accounting. There's not really rules for HR. It's more about art and science.

Speaker 1:

And so, for me, what I think has become more and more clear as I try to find my voice over the last 18 months or so is that I'm really focused on the business and I think HR is a business driver and I bring a much more business-focused perspective. That doesn't mean you leave the people side, it's just we should think about this like a CEO would think about it. We should approach the business like a business person would, with a people mindset, and so I really believe the best HR leaders are business leaders with HR expertise, and that's what I really try to bring and teach. What do I talk about online or my newsletter, etc. But when I bring that, that's me in some ways, and I think that, frankly, is what makes HR leaders really successful in the role is having that point of view.

Speaker 2:

I want to talk about the state of HR. Right now, especially on LinkedIn, I see a lot of dogging of HR. They are not business-centric, they don't understand the business. They need a full rebrand when you see posts like that, that dog HR. They're too soft, they don't understand the business.

Speaker 1:

What's your reaction to that? I think it's the William Gibson quote the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. And that's for HR as well. And I'll give you a story around this. When I was at a global tech company as a director, the CHR there. She'd never been a CHR before. And she said, hey, I want to have the best executive coach. And she handed me a book and it was Dave Ulrich and it was HR, human Resources Champions. And she said I want Dave Ulrich to be my coach. And so I reached out to Dave Ulrich and got him to be her coach. At the time there wasn't Uber. So I said I'm picking Dave Ulrich up from the airport because I want to get to know him and have a conversation with him. Obviously he's a luminary in the field. Literally, I'm driving to the hotel from the airport probably a 15-minute drive.

Speaker 1:

I'm like so, dave, you wrote this book 10 years ago and nothing's really changed. Why isn't HR more strategic and business-focused? And Dave said to me JP, that's a great question, but it's really. 20% are really strategic and business-focused. 20% are never going to be strategic and business-focused. And then everyone in the middle is trying to figure it out and I'm like so you basically just gave me the overall print. They would have gone JP. I was like, all right, what are you explaining to me here? This makes a lot of sense. So you're seeing, 20% is good strategic, 20% are not, and the rest of the mill are like the show me state. Missouri figure it out. And I think he's right.

Speaker 1:

The point of this is, francesca, your question is that there are organizations that are not business focused. They are only thinking about people. They're still smiles and files and doing things that is much more personnel than what we do today, which is strategic, hr and having an impact in the business and the biggest companies. So I think that disparity is why this doesn't go away. I think, if you look at the organizations today, we have three big groups.

Speaker 1:

As I see it I didn't know this until I started the podcast you have Fortune 500 companies that typically are more sophisticated and mature and are doing more cool work the HR work that we think is driving the business. Then you have more tech startup companies many of them, and they call it people operations and these folks are just under-resourced. They don't have as many resources. They're working with founders. They have very different challenges than if you are at Verizon, than if you were an astronomer.

Speaker 1:

If you have a 300 company and a founder driven, hr is just, it's just done differently. There it's like one person, it's one person or two people, maybe it's 10 people, right. And so how strategic can you be if you have to make sure that people get paid and that onboarding happens on time and there's compliance issues, there's all kinds of issues that things have to be done properly, and then you have private equity, which is across the board. They're in the middle, depending on the size, that private equity can lean more towards people, operations or more strategic HR. So I think that is why most people, when they start to rip on HR, is that we get lumped together and the reality is not. Every HR person is the same and every HR organization is the same. That's my take on it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, not every organization supports strategic HR.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

There's not.

Speaker 2:

I want to take it from the Fortune 5 angle because I agree with you. I see a lot of people. They're the chief people officer for XYZ company and they're a team of one, maybe a team of two. Versus any team that we're at, like Nike or Deloitte or any of these other companies that I've worked for, your HR team can easily be in the hundreds. What do you think isn't working about strategic HR, right?

Speaker 1:

now. For me, what we have opportunities to need to do is we've got to get the transactional work off people's plates in a way that is done properly as a good employee experience. And I call this kind of execution plus because when I talk to a lot of the CHROs, you have to execute flawlessly, we have to get paid, you have to make sure that things are happening, the trains have to run on time. If you're not doing that as an HR leader, you're in trouble because your credibility is going to be gone. You're not gonna be able to do the plus, so going to be gone. You're not going to be able to do the plus. So that's why I call it execution plus.

Speaker 1:

And I see a lot of organizations going through right now. Many organizations are going through this, trying to transform and continue to level up to be more strategic, but they still are mired down the transactional work or people are hanging on to the transactional work because they felt value in it. They felt like they were delivering some value by doing some of that transactional work, helping people to answer questions about benefits or leave of absence, when actually a chatbot could do that just as good or better or faster. So organizations are really trying to move that way. But that's the biggest challenge. Is that? And then second, it's mindset, it's the leaders in HR. Are we preparing to see our roles differently, operate differently and show up differently with our leaders?

Speaker 2:

I have a theory about this. I want to get your thoughts. I think HR needs to split into two different organizations, because I feel like you have this compliance angle of HR that is very much about protecting the organization, protecting the employee, and then you have the plus side of the organization, which is about enabling and driving the business, and those two things sometimes can side of the organization, which is about enabling and driving the business, and those two things sometimes can A be conflicting and they definitely take different mindsets. They sure as hell take different skill sets and they're both incredibly needed. To your very good point. Can't we just throw the compliance side over to legal and really focus on the plus side so we can truly enable the business, so we can truly be strategic? I think there's still strategic work to be done on the compliance side, but I feel like these are two separate organizations that have two different remits, that have two different skill sets and they will continue to as we get into AGI. So what are your thoughts on that? Out of curiosity, am.

Speaker 1:

I wrong? What if you're wrong? Actually, ram Charan had that exact point of view in an HBR article probably I'm going to guess 11 years ago.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I haven't read it. Should probably read it. Sorry about that.

Speaker 1:

Google it because it was actually. It was a big thing for a moment because that was what he was saying split HR. And of course that was a moment where everyone got upset about it hey, we can't split HR. I do think it's actually happening, I just think they're not splitting it.

Speaker 1:

But the organizations I've worked with are Fortune. Some Fortune 20 companies are working really hard to do that in a way with technology, with just the right people, skills and strategies to get that compliance piece off people's plates and really elevate HR business partners to where they actually have no transactional work. And that's some of the work I'm doing with helping companies to do custom HR capability training. Because what's happening is, hey, 20-30% of my job was transactional and I used to feel really valued for getting those calls and helping a business leader or any employee with some questions or whatever it happens to be. And now that work goes away and I've got 20% or 30% more of my time. What do I do with that time? Because now the focus is not thinking about an individual employee and helping them solve their individual need. It's are you doing strategic workforce planning.

Speaker 1:

Are you doing organizational design? Are you ensuring the critical roles and the bench for the future? What does that look like to be a real strategic business partner? And so I think that's the big transition that some organizations are really trying to do. They've got the scale and scope to outsource the compliance work and the technology, and so you see, some people, I think, are making some good progress there, but it's still a mindset shift for the HR leaders. That's the hardest part. Yeah, sounds like a pretty big capability shift too. Shift for the HR leaders that's the hardest part. Yeah, sounds like a pretty big capability shift too.

Speaker 2:

I think so too.

Speaker 1:

I think it's massive, because most this is what the hard about HR is that we need a lot of different skill sets to be successful. It's not as easy as it looks to be a strategic HR leader. You have to have some consulting experience, you have to have some executive coaching, you have to have different things, something I call value creators really four different areas that I'm really focusing on, but we've got a lot of work to do in that area. But it's part of that transition from personnel to HR, to whatever we end up calling ourselves, which I'm not a big fan of changing the name all the time, but I'm sure that's happening. Chro is now coming out of Vogue. It's Chief People Officer. We love to change the names, but that doesn't change the work we do.

Speaker 3:

So we'll see Speaking of change if we're to build a future HR function from scratch today how would you make it different?

Speaker 1:

What do you visualize as the perfect setup? That's a great question. It's a hard one, right? Because I think you got to start with the business. So the business model always have to start with the business model. Whether you need to do the Ulrich three-legged stool of HR, business partners, centers of excellence and then shared services, which 80% of the companies are still in that model, remains to be seen.

Speaker 1:

What I would do, though, because I think you match up to the business, is I would be thinking about being AI first, and I think the problem we're having today is that we're bolting AI on top of things and so it can help you write email faster.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it's going to review some resumes, right, but we're not doing our entire talent acquisition process with AI in the middle, and so if you start to design AI processes from scratch and your HR team from AI and think about all the transactional work we just talked about, how can you have systems in AI that would actually do that versus people, or now their AI is obviously human, is still connected in the loop, but how do you use that?

Speaker 1:

Technology is one area I would go. Second piece is the transactional work. I would try to outsource all of that as much as possible and figure out what that would look like, and I think organizations that start today, that are smaller, have an advantage because there's better tech. They can do a better job of outsourcing different pieces of it. You may have a pretty expensive tech stack at the end of it and it may be a little bit disjointed, but I think trying to start with, get rid of the transactional work, leverage AI better and then, on the people piece, I would be bringing in liberal arts degrees. I'm looking for people who have MBAs but also have done a lot of experiences. I don't want just specialists who've only done one area of HR.

Speaker 1:

I want people who are a little bit more generalists, who are more flexible, and I would really think about that talent across the team a little bit more differently. No-transcript, I don't know if it fit the business or not.

Speaker 3:

What are those core teams that you see? What is the future function for teams that are within HR that we're not maybe leveraging enough today, that you think we need to lean into more. If we're starting to take away some of the administrative pieces, if we're starting to lean into AI more, what becomes really critical to support the business?

Speaker 1:

The hard part is always like seeing the future from today, because it really changes your vantage point right. It's so hard to see these roles that will emerge, the AI, and I do think roles will emerge we have never thought of before. What I do believe will start to happen is you're going to have HR teams hiring people who are AI first and AI capable, who know how to build agents, understand how to do GPTs, who understand it, can help the other folks in the HR team to translate and actually wire AI capabilities into the workflow, to build new capabilities and new products and new things that will help managers, help leaders be more effective, etc. So I think you'll start to see that. So we need that AI capability. It's a combination of someone who's probably an AI engineer, someone who's maybe some HR work. Maybe there's an IO site component to that. I could be totally wrong. It could be a totally different background that I've not thought of Some process component, kind of unicorns but I think that'll start to become a job over the next five years that people will start to move into. I'm seeing some companies doing that now, where they've got teams, they have some AI champions, but the reality is no one's an AI expert. It's too new and you could be an AI expert tomorrow if you just spent the next six months to a year just going deep on it, and so I think some organizations will do that. Some people will start to figure that out.

Speaker 1:

I still think talent management will still matter. I still think having a very strategic kind of HR consulting and strategic mindset around that will be really important. I think people analytics will be important. I've always been a big fan of people analytics. I think it's underutilized. But then HR business partners will also be hugely important and maybe even more important. We already demand so much of them and I think that's not going to go down. I think expectations for them will continue to rise. So they're going to have to be like HR business partners on steroids have new capabilities, do, like we just talked about, a lot more than they're even doing today on the strategic front.

Speaker 3:

Who's doing this really well? Like you, work with a lot of organizations, as you mentioned the Fortune 20. You're in there. You're seeing things in your own program. You're likely hearing who's on the cutting edge of thinking about this differently. Who do you think's leading in this space and moving in the right direction?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think this one's pretty widely known, moderna. I think it's one of the first AI first companies. That's why they reported that Tracy Franklin became the CHRO and then they gave her IT, so she has IT and HR, which I think has been a really big test case. We're going to find out. I think something just happened pretty similar. It's serviced neither clients, by the way, but I've got friends in both companies and Moderna, I think is really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I know Molly Nagler pretty well. There They've built the capability across the company to build GPTs and the number of GPTs that have been built across the company, I'm not sure it's public, but it's a lot. It's a lot more than most of us have ever built. So people are building GPTs for everything across HR and using that to supercharge their work, and I think that culture of innovation, where people are then feeling the opportunity to go create something for their specific need, is where AI can really be innovative and exciting and that's where I see the next five years, people building their own tools to do things that they need that matches their business case and what they do on a day-to-day basis to add more value and be faster. I think that'll start to happen more.

Speaker 1:

Other organizations I won't say the name, but they have built out a 50-person AI champion team. They're all working across the organization to learn. They're investing in the development of that team and so they're really saying hey, you're on the forefront of thinking about use cases and how we start to build this out. Ibm is also on the forefront of this. Salesforce has talked about this. They've got agents. There's a lot of that stuff happening but frankly, most organizations are not doing that much. They put a chatbot in and they're just now starting to maybe use that chatbot and people are just starting to figure out. I can really help them to supercharge my productivity, but I haven't figured out how to transform TA or other areas. We'll see.

Speaker 3:

We are AI optimists over here as well, like just thinking about the power of possibility and how that helps us be more strategic and support the business. But then you're also hearing some of those headlines right when you're thinking about new role creation in HR, like some of the problems that are popping up. We had a guest on a year ago, dwena Blondstrom, who talks about the concept of human debt with new technology and thinking about strategically with new technology what new problems might be created if you're not thoughtful in how you're building these things. So what advice would you give to a CHRO who's considering implementing AI and how to evaluate things so that you're being strategic but you're also making sure you're not creating new long-term issues that might pop up down the road? One example of that the class action lawsuit coming up for workday. So what advice would you give to a CHRO trying to lead in that space but also navigating some of the new issues that might pop up as a result?

Speaker 1:

It's a really great question. I think it's more than just the CHRO's challenge. It's the CEO's challenge, the board's challenge of how do you think about AI and use it responsibly and ethically. From an HR perspective, though, as we start to implement this, we should be at the forefront with the CEO and the team, the full C-suite team, not IT leading. This is fundamentally AI's work redesign, it's task redesign. It will change organizational structures and power potentially over time, because it can really empower you to have information across the organization you haven't had before. So I think the unintended consequences of AI if an organization wants to move really fast on this is it will probably break down more silos and actually probably shake up the power structure.

Speaker 1:

And there's a really great article where they took AI and they put it on to look at systems across and data across an organization. That was business data. It's like supply chain sales marketing. Initially it was like they were trying to figure out a supply chain problem, so they just gave the data to supply chain. Then they said, well, actually let's give data to marketing, let's put the revenue data in there, et cetera, and the solutions it was coming up with and basically the gaps it was finding was really across the organization, and so what happened was no one really knew who owned and who should make the decision, because it wasn't supply chain anymore, it wasn't marketing decision. The insights were hitting all the way up to a CEO and breaking down some of that org structure.

Speaker 1:

We're going to start to see AI getting out of people's sandbox and I think there'll be a lot of hey, this is my data, my protection. That's probably one of the things that will slow us down From an ethical standpoint and legal standpoint I'm not a legal expert. I think you've got to be really thoughtful. I think all of the good sound industrial organizational psychology of principles of adverse impact and job analysis all that stuff still applies Efficacy, validity you should be able to get in that sandbox and be able to understand that. But I think when you think about generative AI, the hallucinations are a feature, not a bug, and so we're really talking about LLMs and other types of things that are a little bit more structured. But to use generative AI for some of the stuff you're going to get, I think bias in some things. You don't want out of that, because that's not. That's really what it's designed for. When you get into the details of it.

Speaker 2:

I want to go a little philosophical for a second, and you might be asking, Francesca, why are you asking me this now? But I'm genuinely curious. Your answer, which is what is HR in the next three years? What is it? What is it going to be?

Speaker 1:

We anticipate a lot of change in the world. The world changes a lot. People change slower and have changed slower than we would expect. The world is changing very quickly, but human nature and people don't change.

Speaker 1:

Fundamentally, I see HR's role, which is very different than finance, marketing, supply chain. We all know what we can expect and what they're supposed to deliver. What HR has to deliver is harder. It's more philosophical.

Speaker 1:

So I would define this and I learned this from Lucien Alzari, who is a former CHR credential. He said this that HR's role is to ensure the organization has the talent and capabilities to win, and I thought it was the most brilliant and smartest way to talk about HR. That's our job ensuring we have the talent and capabilities to win. How do we do? That is the hard part. That's where this idea of the art and capabilities to win how do we do? That is the hard part. That's where this idea of the art and science and who you are as an HR leader and how we show up is really what makes the job so hard and why we see high turnover.

Speaker 1:

Because you would approach it differently than I would approach it and it starts to become not just are we using the same tools. We might use critical roles and define that the same way, or talent acquisition or talent management, whatever that stuff is the same. It's how we would approach the business, how we frame it, how we then get people behind the mission of what we're doing right and how we can get that support to drive things from behind the scenes, because we're never actually in front. And so I think for HR leaders and what HR is, we are there to unlock that human potential into actual capital and true value and innovation that shareholders and everyone can feel and experience in terms of monetization. So we have careers and we have jobs that could pay our bills and send our kids to college and all those things. But how we do that is very challenging and that's probably why, honestly, the idea of building HR capability is an evergreen concept that's been around for a while, because it's just so hard to do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's ever evolving too. When you think about the talent and the capabilities to win, the conversation now becomes a combination of human and agenic or human and AGI. Right, Talent and capabilities goes synthetic and goes human. It builds this fascinating conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think a couple of things I've seen recently, when there's so many good platitudes that we should put on coffee mugs or t-shirts or on LinkedIn, right, this is the last generation that will manage just a human workforce to just a human workforce Fair, probably, but I guess we could say is our SaaS system? Is that also a tool? Is it my email a tool? I know it's not thinking for itself. However, we've used technology for a long time and HR's job is not to deploy technology, it's to solve business problems.

Speaker 1:

And so we have to continue to come back to that with our leaders and be like hey look, we're not more agentic AI, if you want, or agents or whatever people want to say. These are because there's a lot of definitions that aren't very clear on that area. We'll start to see that more, but is that any different than I don't know running a script in Workday? I'm much more optimistic about the future, but it does require HR leaders and all of us to step back and say how do I create value? And the way I used to create value is no longer valid and I have to find a new way to create value. And that is going to be challenging because that requires us to change more than the AI is going to change, and so some people will be left behind because they can't adapt to it. But that's my thesis of where we go next.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, love it, love it. Jp. What is keeping you excited about this work right now For?

Speaker 1:

me, I feel incredibly blessed that I've had the support I've had launching my own company, be able to build it and be able to keep the lights on and keep the kids fed and everything like that and really help the industry. And when people say to me hey, I love your podcast, it's made a difference, or the program that you put together has made a difference and you're doing good things for our field, that is incredibly valuable. So that keeps me excited. It keeps me working the 60 plus hours a week, probably closer to 70. A lot of times actually, it's been pretty crazy, but that keeps me excited about going and trying to build a future that we can have big impact.

Speaker 3:

What's one piece of advice you'd give to a CHRO who's stepping into the role this year?

Speaker 1:

I'd say three things. I'm going to go block and tackling, Build and manage relationships at the board and CEO and C-suite level. That is your number one job. Number two learn that business cold right, Get in there. Number three deliver a win for that CEO in the first 90 days to get on their good side. And number four is figure out how AI is going to help you elevate and continue to get closer to that. That's for every HR leader, but those are the three things that matter the most.

Speaker 3:

JP, we like to wrap it around where you can respond with one word or a statement. Sometimes these go longer than that, and that's totally fine. But are you game a little rapid round?

Speaker 1:

Let's do it.

Speaker 3:

Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, 2030. Guess what the work's going to look. A lot the same. What's not changing that much in five years? Sorry, it hasn't changed in a long time. We've been using an office for probably 50 years or so, and we still think that's really great technology. It's outdated, but we still use the office right, and we're returning to work, so I think it will be the same, as politics, power, return to office and hybrid will still be a debate, because that's the new performance management.

Speaker 1:

What will be new, though, is I think there'll be more innovation happening. I think innovation in terms of AI. I think they'll have to really find more innovative workers. People will have an opportunity to do more and create more with AI that we haven't in the past, and so I think it's going to have creative uprising, if you will. I think there'll be a lot more gig workers. I think more and more people will go on their own, start their own companies and provide service to other larger companies, so I think the ecosystem of work will shift a little bit that way, but five years, it's just not far enough out to predict. I don't know, maybe 15, 20 years it could be radically different, but it's hard to say. Five feels like it'll still be closer to today than the Jetsons.

Speaker 3:

Okay, it's fair. It's fair, so people don't need to run for the hills just yet. With all the flashy headlines going on, all right. What's one thing about corporate culture? You'd like to just see die already.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I'd love for us to get rid of pseudo productivity, the idea that my job is showing up on meetings but not producing any work. Yeah, I think we need to get back to where I'm responsible for delivering something, a real work product, instead of showing up on calls to talk about the work that we're not actually doing or responding to emails about the work that we're going to do, and that's really. This is a Cal Newport concept, but I think pseudo productivity is actually what holds back real productivity in organizations, and so, unfortunately, it's a hard one to get rid of. But I really wish we could get to that point, because I think it can be pretty powerful for actually all delivering the work we expect and understand how we create value.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, get rid of the meeting for the meeting for the other meeting and then the debrief after the meeting. What do you think the greatest opportunity is that most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 1:

I think it's more that individuals are missing out on a big opportunity and that is your current job is the most overlooked career opportunity in the world. Most people, when we think about their next job and their career, they look externally I want this new role, I want to go here and be promoted. What they fail to see is they're actually in a company and have an opportunity and truly a laboratory for growth. You have relationships, you know the business, you have a role and now the opportunity is to make and design a job that you love. And so go to your manager, go to your leaders and say I see an opportunity to make a difference and make that difference and design and build the capabilities you want to build internally. We just too often look other places. The grass is not always greener. There's a huge opportunity to make a bigger difference where you're at.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 1:

I'm listening to the Weeknd. We're going to go to the Weeknd concert here in September, so that's been on the family playlist, so that's cool.

Speaker 3:

Okay, okay, what are you reading? Audiobooks count, by the way.

Speaker 1:

The book I most recently have read is the Lean Product Playbook, and so I've been reading a lot more about product management recently and getting into that.

Speaker 3:

Okay, who do you really admire?

Speaker 1:

Oh man, that's a good one. I think about my dad a lot recently because I've been writing some posts about him and, for whatever reason, he's come back up, and so my dad is just someone who I've really thought a lot about. He passed when I was 30. So it's been many years since he's passed, but he's someone I admired for helping me to become who I am today and the impact he had on just who I am overall.

Speaker 2:

He was a gumball.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we saw that. Yeah, so that did pretty well on LinkedIn. Yeah, so he ran the gumball machine business. He was a really interesting and collected guy. He had a PhD in economics and had done sales and actually was a pilot for an airline at one point.

Speaker 1:

It was in the Air Force and then got into the gumball machine business and he liked building the gumball machines and tinkering and so he taught me how to locate gumball machines when I was 15 years old and the conversation the dad comment that he taught me back then was I was like I'm never going to be able to buy this truck and I wanted to buy a truck at 15. So my dad said look, you want this truck, we'll buy it for you, but you have to now pay us back. It was $4,000 at the time. And he said pay us back and I'll teach you how to locate gun machines, but you have to pay the entire truck off to drive it.

Speaker 1:

So my truck actually sat there for a year and a half while I drove a really bad truck that was like a beat up old work truck to go do and put these vending machines out. And I remember saying to him I'm never going to make enough money. And I was like, how am I going to do this? And he basically was like JP, you'll make money how we make money, which is one gumball at a time, which is one quarter at a time, and that was just a statement that he would say to me all the time. It was probably a little bit over the top, but it got beat into my head around that and so it just stuck with me, this idea of one gumball at a time.

Speaker 2:

I like it.

Speaker 3:

What's a piece of advice that you've received that you wish everyone had?

Speaker 1:

In the age of everyone having opinions, including myself and all of us I think number one is consider the source. So when you think about taking advice from somebody, have they done it? Have they been there? Have they sat in the seat? And so for me, I really want to know if I'm taking advice. You at least have been similar situation to my shoes Too often. There's a lot of advice now that is almost pseudo advice that someone actually hasn't been in the seat, they don't know what it's like and we're pontificating, but the reality is it depends always matters on advice. So my best advice is just consider the source, be thoughtful and think about how it really applies to you and whether or not that advice actually is relevant or not.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's sound right. We talk about that all the time. Francesca and I were even saying don't take advice from, don't take criticism even from someone you want to take advice from, and being in the seat is so critically important. There's a lot out there where people haven't experienced it at all or haven't experienced it at the scale Right yeah.

Speaker 1:

The criticism one's really good because someone could throw a dagger at us and give us feedback. Yeah, but really does it matter? Is that really the feedback I should listen to? Is it going to be helpful for me or not? I think that's a good point, at least a good lens to put on, not just take every piece of feedback you get.

Speaker 3:

Where can people follow you and where can they sign up for your program?

Speaker 1:

Thanks for asking. Linkedin, of course, probably where I think a lot of us spend our time. So LinkedIn. And then, if you want to go to futureofhrcom, you can find out about my newsletter, the NextGen HR Accelerator program, et cetera, and check out the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thanks, JP. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1:

Thank you both.

Speaker 3:

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Rennery. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you like this, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends, bye friends, bye friends.

People on this episode

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Francesca Ranieri

Co-host
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Mel Plett

Co-host