Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers

Thinking Liquid: Navigating Neverending Change w/ Geoff Livingston | Think Forward Show 144

• Steve Fisher

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Many of us are navigating a world defined by relentless change—and AI is transforming every part of it faster than we can keep up. But what if the key isn’t resisting these shifts, but mastering how to flow with them? 

Geoff (a storytelling tech veteran and AI integrator) reveals how to turn the chaos into opportunity by cultivating a mindset of fluidity and continual reinvention.

In this candid conversation, he shares how storytelling, your ability to craft an authentic narrative, is more crucial than ever in a landscape overwhelmed by content and noise. He debunks the myth of “long-term jobs” in a volatile economy and explains why roles like the “AI orchestrator” are the future of work. From navigating the ethics of AI development to understanding how your organization can adapt quickly and ethically, we explore concrete strategies for thriving amid systemic upheaval.

We chat about many things, including:
- Why “speed of slop” in marketing and design damages quality—and how to combat it
- How AI tools like Claude Coworker are reshaping collaboration and productivity without sacrificing human nuance
- Why the role of the “orchestrator” will become essential in managing complex AI-driven processes
- The importance of mindse, like staying liquid and resilien, in facing political, societal, and technological chaos
- Practical advice for future-proofing your career and business skills in a world where change is the only constant

This isn’t just a discussion about AI; it’s a blueprint for building mental resilience, embracing fluidity, and turning systemic shifts into breakthroughs. If you believe adaptability is your strongest asset, this episode is your essential guide toward navigating the future confidently—whatever it holds.

Perfect for entrepreneurs, executives, creators, and anyone feeling overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change. Tap into Jeff’s insights, leverage AI ethically, and learn how to stay ahead of the curve—without losing your human edge.

Connect with Geoff on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffliving/  and stay tuned for his upcoming book arriving this June. This is your call to embrace the ongoing journey of reinvention—because in a world where nothing stays still, the only way forward is to stay fluid.

Order Now Is Gone: Think Liquid to Navigate Neverending Change (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Now-Gone-Liquid-Navigate-Neverending-ebook/dp/B0GHNMM383/


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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

The Myth Of Stable Careers

SPEAKER_03

And that is a human problem. That is not a reality problem. And unfortunately, we have been conditioned to believe in a dream. And that dream is your white pickup fence in your house or your apartment if you're a little more modern. And, you know, kids, family, and life's going to be rosy and grand, and you're going to have a nice career. And then you'll retire and you'll go skip off to the to the beach. And that's just not that way anymore. Nobody has those types of careers. Or some people do, I should say, but most people don't, a vast majority. And really a lifelong career of one thing, you mean? Yeah, exactly. It's just we are in a constant state of change, and jobs are going to be very disrupted now by this technological change. And I think for people to walk into the door and assume that the things are going to be the same or that they can resist the change is a huge mistake. I think they should just walk in the door and assume that things may change. And if they do, I'm going to assess it and adapt accordingly, as it makes most sense for whatever my personal or my work mission might be.

Jeff’s Storytelling Through Line

SPEAKER_03

Jeff, welcome to the show. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I know everyone's listening, you're like, why are they all giggling? Oh, we know each other. We know each other. A long time. Been through a lot of booms and busts, a lot of cycles, seen a lot of things. Uh, this is being recorded on March 4th. The world's changed a lot in the last like week or two since we talked. Sure. We'll kind of touch on journeys, but I think always what I start with journeys. Uh, it's always the way to go. Some in the audience may know you, many, many may not. And you've been on quite a ride, advertising, social media, your company, your cognitive path, you know. So what's what's been your journey and kind of want to get a kind of a through line of the whole thing?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think maybe, and it's a great question. And I was thinking about this. I I definitely think like maybe the through line is that I'm a storyteller. And I mean, even today when I'm talking about AI, I'm trying to describe it and make it relatable to people through Substack and uh back with cognitive path, and we had a podcast and you know, really kind of relate and walk people through this stuff and provide analogies and help make it easier for people to use it to set down the fear. But even in the beginning, when I really came out of college, I was a journalist. My dad was a journalist, my mom was a columnist. You know, I mean, I had my great uncle was wrote books and a lot of artists in the family. So it this ability to kind of communicate, maybe not well, but to communicate has been something that's been a through line. So I kind of understand media. I've really focused a lot on digital media. Even my master's degree is in communications, culture, and technology. Um, you know, I've been in the technology trade industry since my first job, which was a long time ago, three decades ago. And so it's always been storytelling and making it relatable and usually technology related.

SPEAKER_04

I think storytelling is just more important than ever because everything, all the slop that can come out of AI, the real ability to tell narrative and make it, you know, human is just the authenticity of it is more important than ever. Just almost the analog of it all, right?

Why AI Content Is Breaking Marketing

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I mean, and it's funny, we're at this phase right now. I've gone into a place where I don't always talk about marketing. In fact, I don't probably talk about it enough. And I used to be a chief marketing officer, and the bulk of my career was in marketing functions. Yeah. But marketing's lost right now, in my opinion. And what I mean by that is there's so much focus on campaign and content and this whole slop dialogue and the over reliance on slop. I think from my standpoint, it's a huge enterprise failure. And what I mean by that is if you think about what really resonates with people that buy, and marketing's job is to help people to buy or to make a decision or to co-affiliate with something. This stuff doesn't relate to the customer, right? And I feel like a lot of this whole dialogue is just jump the shark with AI and marketing and about content creation. It's got to get back to the North Star, which is customers. Customers and the way they resonate. And I feel like the way AI best helps marketing isn't with content. Rather, it's understanding the customer journey. And yeah, when they can get to that, I think things will change for the better for marketing. But right now, this this is ugly.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think about the speed of slot. So like there's almost like this race to throw things up, like throwing things against a wall. Now, look, as a product designer, like someone who builds a lot of things, there's iteration is there's a power in it. Obviously, things like space satellites, you have to, you know, kind of get it right. You can't have to kind of iterate on things, but you learn from, you know, you learn from the mistakes, you improve on things, and there's almost like this speed of just I have to put it up there, and then everyone's doing the same thing. And there's no chance to have craft, there's no chance to have quality. I I worry that's disappearing a lot, you know, oh, definitely rapidly.

SPEAKER_03

And and you look at the leaders in the conversation right now, they're doing the same thing. Like I literally just have one land in my inbox. It was a top marketing influencer, uh, marketing AI influencer, and they were literally one line one-word line sentences, right? Classic tell for AI. And the thing was so long that it definitely looked like AI had generated it. Because I don't think anybody in their right mind that's a uh a marketer or communicator, even a any other kind of a technical writer that's trying to help people use something would send something that long to people. It made me wonder what they were thinking, you know? And I I don't think they did. I think they went on autopilot.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, when I write essays on like future-proof newsletter, I think for me, I've also had to shorten them. I've been told like 1800 words, because I just I like to write writing's probably my strongest skill of all the things that I I can do. And I feel like it's a thing I love.

SPEAKER_03

And uh I write long too, by the way. I write these 1500 word substacks, but at least people know it's good.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and this is where you and I talk, and we're gonna get in more of the humans plus

Using AI Without Losing Your Voice

SPEAKER_04

AI thing, right? It's like the human quality of it. Like if I have a collection of things that I've written, it knows at least my voice and my style, right? It's like, okay, if you look at something, can it help me edit it? The challenge I have sometimes is just grammar, run on sentences, you know, conciseness, you know, being pithy. We're the same helpful. Well, and I think AI can really help with that. But the thing is you also have to be careful is does it take out the essence of you? If it's just strip, is it strip out you? I think a lot of people don't recognize that the edit it might do, it might take you might take it too far. Right. And I think that that's another peril that we might have to face. We're facing now, but I think more so as time goes on and the content we create, is it learning from just already other created AI content? What's the point in which the human creation has stopped? Right.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's funny. I put up uh uh an Instagram post uh recently where I actually have AI write the caption, but I directed specifically what it wanted, which you're supposed to do, right? And then I probably spent like seven or eight iterations editing it. And I think like that's really the difference. You know, it was in my voice. I would say anybody that knows me probably knows it was more eloquent than I could be. But it got the message through and it said exactly what I wanted to say, and it was from me. And that was was m what mattered to me when I wrote the book that we're I think we're gonna talk a little bit about today, but yeah, no, we're definitely gonna talk about the book.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I used AI as a developmental editor. Like you, I I have a I have a nice vocabulary, according to Grammarly. I write a ton of words, and then from a proficiency standpoint, I'm a butcher, and I really need that kind of developmental support, you know, much more of a fix my run on sentences, fix my yeah, typos and yes, bad analogies and using the same words. Dangling participles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Dangling participle. Yeah, no, I I hear you. And I think that's been good for me in terms of language. Um, you know, I was thinking in our our conversation to prepare

The Pain Of Being Early

SPEAKER_04

for this. We talked, you uh said something that's really funny. It's like it's never good to be early. I mean, you were talking about AI and advertising. I remember you I wasn't in the AI game at all. And I remember and oh, you were probably talking about it. Yeah, I was gonna say six years ago, six yeah, six, seven, eight years ago. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you were talking about it, and it's like I always, you know, as a futurist, you know, so many people have called themselves, but you're kind of like living in the future. So, like, what's it like you know, what's that like? Painful. Painful, yeah. That's the thing. I started an air taxi company 20 years before I should have started it. That's the peril of being a futurist and being an entrepreneur at the same time it's like not a gun. So speaking of change and the never-ending change of the book, uh, this is where this has been fascinating to me because uh, you know, like super shifts talked about uh the systemic change, the age of intelligence, it talked about all those things that were coming. I so many conversations I have with people is like, you know, it used to be, and I use this analogy, and sorry for the listeners if you heard it before, is like the Windows design Windows application designer in '97, you were making a lot of money, you were doing great. If you were not doing by 2002, if you were not doing websites in like non-HTML and CSS, you were probably not gonna work hard, have a you know, find a job. So with that, it's like, but you had time to change, right? It's like UX in the design space, you had time, you saw you know, things were coming. There was time to make make the change, make the transition. Now it's so visceral, it's so fast, it it's on and and it's like, is it ever gonna stop? And your book is about dealing with this never-ending change. So I'll let you kind of like frame it. I just want to kind of frame that up, but like what triggered it to how to why you should why writing this now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Let's go back to 2018. Uh, and and why this book and not the book that I wrote then about AI, which was um, Welcome to the Machine, it never saw the light of day. I still have the draft material. I actually put it into an LLM to quarter query against Once Upon a Time when LLMs first came out, um, or first became popular thanks to the now dying Chat GPT, this week's news. I mean, like, look how quickly that happened, right? I mean, something that was being used by 400 million people is just dying on the vine. It's crazy. Um, you know, that may stop. Can you can you expand on

AI Ethics And The App Exodus

SPEAKER_03

that?

SPEAKER_04

Because a lot of people I think I don't think know that know this.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Yeah. So like Anthropic and got into it with the Department of War over ethics, you know, and both these companies supposedly have great ethic ethical missions. And the reality of Anthropic's decision was that they said, hey, we're not going to use our technology to allow you to engage in surveillance of the United States population. And we're also not going to allow you to automate weapons to kill people, you know, like fully automated weapons because of the whole this is the whole Terminator scenario, right? Where you have a self-autonomous AI go crazy. And OpenAI said that they support anthropic. And by the way, anthropic's a bunch of people who left OpenAI because they thought that they were unethical. And open AI include Elon.

SPEAKER_04

Elon, yeah. It was like, what's going on? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

No, so absolutely. OpenAI cut a deal with the Department of War on the backside to do exactly what they said they support Anthropic not doing. And it looks super slim shady. And over the weekend that just passed, uh GPT deletions on the iPhone went down by um were increased by 300%, and Anthropic picked up all the customers, it looks like, on Claude. And I just saw a statistic today showing Claude had now 50% saturation for downloads uh on a day-by-day basis for AI apps. It's the number one AI app in the app.

SPEAKER_04

And I've seen multiple posts on how to migrate your chat GPT memory and data over to Claude. Yep. There's a lot of people doing videos, people are doing like, here's how to, you know, you've you've invested all this time and treasure. How do you move it over into Cloud? And cloud, I I subscribe to both. I use them for they have different skills. Yeah. We could get on to a whole other show of, you know, the pros and cons of of all the different tools, right? But but what does it mean though? Right? What does it mean for companies that will be ethical, but the ones that won't are the ones that seem to be getting ahead? I just keep thinking of Google. Google used to have don't be evil on their site, and that kind of disappeared quietly into the night one, you know, I mean at one point.

SPEAKER_03

Of the three big AI companies right now, from a generative AI standpoint, Google's the gonna be the one to watch because we we're in a web with open AI, and then we know where Anthropic stands, and Google's kind of in the middle, and they're dealing with an internal revolution with their engineers who are saying don't do this. It's really fascinating to see. I suspect though, to your illusion that we're just gonna see some companies decide to do this and we'll never really know about it, like the Palantirs of the world, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

That's that's a part of me that I put this out there that I I think in the end, Palantir if OpenAI is struggling with memberships and they're struggling with like a start there that Palantir imagine Palantir buying OpenAI. Very possible. Or one of the other, right?

SPEAKER_03

Or Microsoft. I mean, they're definitely starting to look like a mercy kill, particularly with all that investment. People are gonna watch their some sort of a return.

SPEAKER_04

Right, exactly.

Change As A Permanent Condition

SPEAKER_04

Well, it's like so with the book, you know, it's this never-ending change, right?

SPEAKER_03

So how do we deal with that, right? Like look at even the news we just talked about.

SPEAKER_04

You say it's not a crisis to survive, right? It's like they everyone's like, we've got to get through this hump. Because people will talk a lot. I've talked a lot about, you know, winter period crisis, all the you know, fourth turning, all this, you know, like what is this cycle when we move through it? I mean, we are essentially like, I think we've already started World War III. That's my own opinion. We may think it started a year ago. I mean, they would technically say a world war is on three fronts. We've already got two. So it's like, okay, now if that is gonna at some point change and the world anything is like a multipolar world, you know, okay, people will think it we're done, it's gonna get quiet. I don't think it's the case. You talk you call it a permanent operating condition.

SPEAKER_03

Like, yeah, well, if you think about it, we have been in this condition anyway, it's just accelerating faster and faster. And I think AI is a big accelerant of that. If quantum computing ever becomes a reality, let's get down to the next tech trend, then it's gonna move even faster, right? And yes, here's the thing the resistance to change comes from a belief that things should be as they are or a level of comfort that things are the way they should be. And that is a human problem. That is not a reality problem. And unfortunately, we have been conditioned to believe in a dream. And that dream is your white picket fence in your house or your apartment if you're a little more modern, and you know, kids, family, and life's gonna be rosy and grand, and you're gonna have a nice career, and then you'll retire and you'll go skip off to the to the beach. And that's just not that way anymore. Nobody has those types of careers, or some people do, I should say, but most people don't, a vast majority. And really a lifelong career of one thing. You mean yeah, exactly. It's just we are in a constant state of change, and jobs are gonna be very disrupted now by this technological change. And I think for people to walk into the door and assume that the things are gonna be the same or that they can resist the change is a huge mistake. I think they should just walk in the door and assume that things may change. And if they do, I'm going to assess it and adapt accordingly as it makes most sense for whatever my personal or my work mission might be.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I talked about um in Future Proof last week, I talked about reinvention as a constant practice. It's like this conversation kind of inspired because I I talk a lot about the reinvention of especially in a in a gen X world, we're kind of the forgotten, always the forgotten generation in every cycle. It's like our nomad. We're no the nomad, we're called the nomad uh you know, generation, but it's it's that in-between kind of left. But we're the ones that fix things. We just we fix what's broken. And but I think about this time, it's like you know, you don't really fix this. You you I worry about the mental state, and I think you know, you've you're you touch upon that too in the book, is that you can have uh change and you can adapt to change, but also since COVID too, we've become much more insular, inclusive, uh insular, uh, you know, isolated, you know, self-pref preferentially they want we want to isolate, but it's like it's because of the compressed change, because of the uncertainty, you know, what

Mental Health Under Compressed Uncertainty

SPEAKER_04

is it? What do you see with the mental health dimension of this change?

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think it's related, you know, and it's related to a fixed mentality where you think things should be something. And so when it changes, it's it's disturbing. And you know, I never expected to be looking at clawed co-work, for example, this year as such a big disruptive

Why LLMs Had A Product Problem

SPEAKER_03

technology. Nobody saw that coming and it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_04

And people were like, Well, I've used a code and I've used claud code, and now it's like clawed cloud co-work. I'm like, I can build my own executive assistant, my own chief of staff. It's like it's very helpful, right?

SPEAKER_03

And I mean, you would get this as a product guy. The way I see co-work is I look at LOMs as having a product problem. And the product problem is that you slap the chat box out on this technology and said, figure it out. Yes. That that's why people struggle with AI because it doesn't have the context, e.g., the data, and it doesn't have the specificity with directions and outputs to get the results. So if you look at Cloud Cowork connectors, I got my data now and I've made it easy for you to access it. So just tell me to access it. And B, now I've got all my plugins and skills that you can actually add to if you want to, which most people won't, but you can add plugins and skills, and now I have directions to achieve what you want. So it actually resolved a lot of the user interface challenges that people were having with LLMs. I mean, to me, it was like a natural product evolution that needed to happen and finally did after two and a half years, three years.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, what's changing in design is that a lot of designers, if you think about traditionally when you design products or experiences, it's very linear, right? It's like it goes from one step to the next, right? I online, it's a mental model of like 10 steps if you do these things. Now AI becomes a probabilistic design challenge. It's not just user journeys. There's a different, there's multiple branching and pathways. The chatbot is just the open field, like you should just figure it out because it leaves it open for space. But if you have to contextually change, what's going what you're going to see, and this is that it's this is the design challenge, is that an application will actually have to redesign itself on the fly.

SPEAKER_03

Well, to me, I think it's brilliant. So so this is like where I go liquid on you, okay?

Liquid Identity And The Generalist Trap

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, no, no.

SPEAKER_03

So here's why. Like, remember when I used to rant all the time about personal branding being the stupidest thing on earth, and I still feel that way. People don't have their own and shows, and like can't be a photographer, Jeff can't be a writer, you can't be a marketer, you gotta be one, you can't be all these things. Like, come on, I'm a human being, right? I do multiple things, and to me, like to that's the problem with social networking, the way we're built, even the way these products are built, the linear that you were talking about. Look at all these wrapper companies, these companies that put a wrapper around their AI, like uh legal AI, right? Yeah, I've got the legal database here, and I know how to write a court summons and this and that and that. Okay, well, now Quadco can do that with its MCP and its uh access to the database, and then it can also do it with its legal skills set. And well, that wrapper company is dead now. And the reason why it's it's so useful, and I think it's brilliant is because it the the flexibility and of the LLM to address different skills and needs matches humanities need to move into different things and different topics. E.g., you're not a personal brand as an entrepreneur, you do different tasks. I'm sure, Steven, you do accounting work. I'm sure you never want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_04

Well, yeah, I mean, it's funny. I have a degree in accounting, actually, and it's like, but I do my books or I do things that are just there. I I think when you talk about there's there's two phrases. There's the liquid attitude. Yeah, right. There's the flexibility and the change, the fluidity of of the practice of that, because who you are at the moment may be five different things. And I talk about this with foresight. I have a meta framework I call Spectra because it used to be that scenarios were very reductive. It was like everything's transformation, everything's you know, collapse. Is it people exist? There's people that are existing in a possible future where some people are experiencing collapse or some people are experiencing transformation, and it's like they have to um be adjusting to that future. And it's like, what does it look like to have this kind of fluidity in practice? What is it how what is it? You know, how do people get it, you know, where do people get it wrong when they try it? Well, it's the jack of all trades and master of none problem, right? I worked for McKinsey, that's true. It's yeah, it's the generalist, the you know, yes. Everybody's a generalist now. Everybody's a generalist.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And I think um, and you've talked about this too, what as a solopreneur or as a small business, that's really great, you know. But as a in a large enterprise, that can be very challenging. And I think the best practitioners in an area in any particular field are going to be the ones that we need in the roles of experts, basically reviewing these AI outputs because we know that they're problematic. So as a writer or as a product designer, you know, okay, thank you for that, Claude. Now let me take a look at this and see where the holes are so we can get this thing to to market and make it useful and not antagonistic to our customers. Yeah. I mean, and and so I think what happens is you could probably get away with basic tasks, but sooner or later, if like you get into real legal trouble, Claude, Claude, it's not gonna save you. You're gonna have to hire a lawyer. Well, it's funny you bring up legal my last.

SPEAKER_04

You're getting some place I worked. Yeah, no, I I worked in a place where it's you know, they do e-discovery, whereas it's bringing in all the data and they can analyze that. But the actual output of the lawyer, the attorney, needs to be there. You can request information, but you can in terms of decision making, there's you know, I always talk about you know, can uh AI do design? I mean, mid-journey or places like that learn on other artists. It's not creating something that's never been seen, it's learning from other things. And there's a level of empathy in EQ that doesn't exist in these systems, thankfully. Well, I don't know if that's maybe good or bad. Well, it never gets better. I mean, it raises the how it views humanity, right? It's like, you know, we're tribal mess and we need to, you know, we need to save them from the themselves. But you know, the change that's happening right now, it's so compressed. It's like I do wonder if things like Claude Cowork or other things are agents that are gonna do more automation work. There's this gap of just crazy transition. But again, it's gonna like it's not gonna be like reset itself for a decade like it did before. Like it's just okay, maybe you get some breathing room, but probably not. Probably

Burnout Proofing With A North Star

SPEAKER_04

not. So, how does somebody build mental muscles for this? Like, you know, burnout, because I've been feeling I feel the burnout. I'm sure a lot of people listening have have experienced this or maybe experiencing it right now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, to me, it's again getting back to that thing. Like, I have my North Star, which is my vision for what I'm supposed to be doing, either as a person or my role within a larger context, usually an organization. So rather than get vested on claw cowork being, let's use this as our continuing example.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, exactly, or threaded example.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Let's say Google releases notebook LM on steroids with plugins and connectors and then everything else. And now you can not only have claw co-work functionality, but you can also do it with your own little private LLM. And now you don't need to build a private instance anymore. And I'm well, okay, what am I am I gonna have a hard time with that or am I just gonna move my stuff over to LLM, to Google Notebook LM? I'm gonna move to Google Notebook LM and I'm not gonna think twice about it. I mean, we have to have an attitude about these tools and these methods that they're disposable. And if we have that attitude, you know, like we're not vested in them being our long-term answer. Too much of this is like around traditional procurement and decision making and you know, where you get vested and this is the answer. This is my laptop. It is my laptop for five years. Maybe so. But that doesn't have to be true of your AI software.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think it's it's interesting to watch this innovation battle because obviously it's a feature function fight to for what happens when they all go public, what happens when they all, you know, divest into certain things. But like you said, you know, we talk about the ROI of it. I think it's been a very eye-opening and not surprising to me. I I look at innovation with experiment dollars that people have just tried. You try things, you you experiment, right? You put things through a pipeline and a portfolio and they make it the way through, and sometimes they get cut off or they get canceled, and you learn from that. And and then you move it into like, okay, we've tried other things, these aren't, but let's move it into production. And I that's where we're at in a but the realization that a lot of things just don't, you know, you can cut all the people you want, but it's not really producing what you think is this, you know, transformation. You know, it can be a cost, it can be a force multiplier, which is why I'm like, why not why you why are you laying all these people off? If AI is like, do it to empower these people to be better producers, right?

Layoffs As Theater In The AI Era

SPEAKER_04

What do you think of Block laying off half of its staff? Um, I think it's short-sighted.

SPEAKER_03

I think I think it was I think it wasn't AI. What's that? I think it wasn't AI, but he blamed AI, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. You mean the AI said to lay full 4,000 people off? Or yeah, is that oh yeah. Yeah, I mean using it as an analysis. I think it's a question, you know, if you use agentic technology and you replace a lot of customer service, it's just you can't do it that way without affecting one, the morale of the people that are left, and uh they're always gonna be looking over their shoulder. I experience this at large tech companies because it's like every six months they're trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

SPEAKER_03

I've explained I've experienced that as a marketer too.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and it's like you are always looking over your shoulder. You don't have the you're like, uh maybe I just need to find another job. You're one half of your body's out the door. And I think that the companies that are like block that are doing this, I think they're gonna come back and realize they just need to rehire people. But maybe I think it's just a position for shareholders. I think it's just it's just positioning. It's really it is theater. That's it's a great phrase, it's a great way to say it. What do you think adoption looks like in you know, in the in the future of work? It's kind of that the future of work discussion, right? You've talked about and not only just like advertising space, but like what does it look like? What do you think it looks like? You talked about this temporariness, like you know, look at the disposability of that.

SPEAKER_03

How does that mean like yeah? I mean, the real value of AI has always been pattern recognition, right? And yeah, and even when you look at what we're we've been discussing with images, for example, in mid-journey, it's good to a point because it recognizes a pattern of what somebody that's bald with glasses is supposed to look like, right? So it can produce a bald guy with glasses pretty easily, but there's gonna come a point where it doesn't feel like it has a soul. Pattern recognition is what we need throughout work so that we can look at probabilistic decision making and also to eliminate tasks that are basically zero-sum yes-no actions, you know, like for example, importing your receipts for accounting, right? Like things that are very road and painful. So to me, it's about oper operationalizing, I can speak English, I swear, AI into our work. And so I think the real failures that I've seen is this hey, we're gonna buy everybody Gemini, use it, good luck, as opposed to, hey, we have to really look at our customer journey and see how we're analyzing it, where where the data sources are, how we can unify that, or how we can get it into a place where at least something can start looking at the drop points and the consistencies of failures and looking at that pattern and improving our journey. And to me, that that's the type of dialogue that impacts sales, it impacts product design, it impacts marketing, it impacts customer service, impacts legal and finance, because they have to conduct a transition, a transaction, and also maintain the relationship within a safe bound for the customer and for the company. So there's so many aspects of the business or any organization that touches that journey, and yet we just continue to miss that point where this is where this type of technology can really help us be better organizations. That's the future.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, no, it's that's

The Orchestrator Role For New Workers

SPEAKER_04

great. And I think about it, it makes you think about uh like my nephews are in their mid-20s, like trying to get a job has been like really hard. And I think about those who have been born, they're say they're 25 years old right now. They were born after 9-11. They've known nothing but just disruptive, crazy change, just this chaos for the last 25 years. Like, you know, and it's like they say there's no more entry-level jobs. I just think the entry-level framing is just changed. Yeah, I agree. You have to redefine it's like we're not hiring abacus users, we're hiring, you know, people that are digital, you know, you know, financial analysts. It's like it's just the it's the the nature of it. I think saying that, like that the entry-level jobs are gone, it's just maybe the kids have trained for certain things for the last couple of years, or they're just like, I'm just gonna be a influencer or content creator, the influencer thing.

SPEAKER_03

God help us just like I want to be famous on Instagram, shoot me now. Yeah, I know, I know.

SPEAKER_04

So I'm a content creator. Look, I'm creating content audience, right? I'm you know, I'm but you know, you and I have the benefit of more decades seeing other cycles or patterns. Like, what do you think people that are going through this? Like someone's 25, like what skills should they really kind of you know? I don't know. Future, I I think about future proof, but there's it's like the change is so visceral. What would you what advice would you give somebody?

SPEAKER_03

Well, I look at somebody that's coming out of school now, and like instead of learning how to code, I would learn how to manage these these tools and how to help organizations move data seamlessly through them and like to understand when they're underperforming, to understand when there's a security challenge. I mean, to me, that's that's the fail from the technology sector side where they haven't really come up with this new new role. And that role is like I have a name for it. I have the name for it.

SPEAKER_04

It's operation, right? Well, I call it I call it orchestrator. It's an orchestrator job because you're like the conductor, right? Right. If you move all these things to get like the forget the prompt engineer, this or that, that's a piece of it. But it's like it's it's like the design director, right? You've got to have your visual people, your researchers, your friend, your interact, you've got to have all these different people to come together at different points to do different things. The same thing with the tools or the people. To me, it's like if you told somebody 30 years ago, like, okay, what's a web designer? You know, what's a mobile, you know, like there's roles. I agree. I think it's an orchestrator job.

SPEAKER_03

Right. It's not a chief AI officer either, right? Like that's also a fail. Like, that's like, come on, that's your CTO that's not doing his job.

SPEAKER_04

Exactly. Because that's the person that's looking at the edge, they're looking at edge technology, they're looking at integration into the innovation process, right?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, talk about a fail. Like, look at the CTOs and CIOs are completely missing this thing. It's like, my God, what are you doing? Sorry.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Little mini.

SPEAKER_04

I don't know. It's but yeah, but yeah, the advice of that, I think it's great.

Marathon Mindset For Tech Whiplash

SPEAKER_04

I think the thing that uh when you know, knowing you all these years, I think the thing that always brings me to mind is I see photos like, is your you're a marathoner, right? You've you've also kind of when you talk about being that storyteller, going back to the beginning of this conversation, I see you as kind of a journeyman. Like you take long, these are all things you have to continually, you'll never finish, or you have to continually go on this. And you know, you you you said marathons, they teach you to endure. They do.

SPEAKER_03

I actually just did ultra marathon this weekend. It's crazy. God bless you, man.

SPEAKER_04

I'm going for the half this year. I did for the 10K. I'm going for the half this year.

SPEAKER_03

So I love it. You run five minutes, you're a runner, my man.

SPEAKER_04

I love right. I'm as much as I love the mountains and snowboarding, I am definitely ready for like streets to be cleared so I could run outside. I miss that. So I mean, think about that. Like, you know, you the discipline, you know, how is that kind of discipline shaped the way you nav like you look at disruption, you navigate, you know, you can navigate things like this because it's uh it's a mindset. I mean, being a marathoner is definitely, I think, more mindset sometimes than physical.

SPEAKER_03

So yeah, it's funny because I was going through uh this this race this past weekend and um yeah, just thinking about your question and applying it to that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So we're talking about these changes that are happening this week, and I'm sure you're reading some of the same stuff. Very dramatic, very dramatic. And the marathoner and me looks at that and says, okay, I'm not gonna overreact either. You know, I'm gonna be liquid about this. I personally deleted ChatGPT off my phone and Sora off my phone. I didn't, it was my third LLM anyway. I have obviously a lot of these because of the nature of my business, but it wasn't a big deal deleting it because my systems were everywhere else. So to me, I'm like, okay, and then there's the content creator side of it as an AI advisor. Do I put out anything about ChatGPT and removing it off your phone? And I and I thought to myself, I don't think this is a big story in the long term. I think this is just, you know, basically, I like black cars instead of white cars or gray cars instead of blue cars. Because when you look at these LLMs, they've all gotten to a point where they're pretty good, right? And they've all kind of hit a certain level of performance, particularly the big three. So if you're going from Chat GPT to Gemini, I I don't think what I'm going to teach you is going to change that much. So to me, I I don't, it doesn't matter. I need to be tool agnostic. So no, I'm not going to write about this.

SPEAKER_04

I think it's going to be branding because it's just what popped into my head was like, think about fast food, right? It's like McDonald's, Burger King, all these different brands. It's like they all have cheeseburgers. Yeah. But why do you go? Because it's it's uh, you know, grilled or it's you know, taste if it's got the diff cheese, like, you know, or you don't even want that, you want Chick-fil-A, you want, you know, I just want a chicken sandwich. Um, but it's like it's the branding of like what makes these things unique. I think we're I see them, and for me, I like Claude. Claude's a better writer. Claude's got definitely building itself a suite with co-work code, you know, it's building itself into a tool. It needs to fix its context window. Yeah. Because it's like, I can't, I need to load more stuff. Like, I need if you really want me to make this powerful, you need to give me more like I need to uh don't limit me to 20 files or this or that. Like, I have to build. I think the ones eventually they keep it. That's double book right now, right? I mean, to me, double. That's a doubtbook. Right. That's right. Exactly. And it's like you look, Gemini's got a monster context window and can really crank on stuff. And it's like eventually they find parity, then it's always that what next. But I think you're right. I think there'll be brand affinity. They'll be like, I just want to use it because it uses with all my things together, and I think that'll happen. But again, in the end, like it'll be a constant, like like you said, the disposability. But I think young people just need to understand that it's just things I continually learn, I continually add, and I just I have to have fluency.

SPEAKER_03

And from a think fliquid standpoint, if you think about what we just went through, okay, so this is this is the change this month, right? This is the big move, right? Okay. So then we'll move our stuff because we want to protect our security, or we won't. Um, and maybe we don't care if they're working with DOD. I mean, I guarantee you there's a or DOW. Um, I guarantee you there are a ton of people around Washington, DC right now where I live, they don't care. And they're just gonna keep doing what they're doing, and that's fine too. You know, I mean it's less of an issue if you have this view that, yeah, things do change, and so this is a change. And I, you know, I don't have to overreact to it. It just is.

Social Media Peaks And Analog Returns

SPEAKER_04

Well, and it makes me think about whether this end of cycle of global change or AI change, like let's let's put it, let's put the futures hats on. Let's this kind of as we kind of connect to the kind of closing things out, like what's a bold and uh, you know, as futurists we don't predict, right? We look at the possible futures, but if there's like a thing that's gonna for you in the next five years, like what should people be really preparing for? Like if they have it, they're like, Okay, here I am, what do I do? Help me prepare. What do what would you recommend?

SPEAKER_03

With AI or just generally? Generally, yeah. Yeah, I really think social networking's in its zenith. And you do? I do. I really feel like uh, you know, you're starting to see these apps starting to pop up, like the BRIC app and the Be Present app, and people complaining about the toxicity of them, the lawsuits, the challenges. So I I do see like that there has to be some sort of a next evolution in this if it's gonna keep going. And so I do suspect we're probably looking at some sort of a big change with uh humanity and the way we interact with each other. Um, I also think that in the same context or the same topic, it's created a lot of societal fabric issues that we're experiencing without getting into it. And I don't think people are happy about it. So I just think that there's enough negative equity building up that there's a dam that's gonna break. And that's really where I see a futurist movement happening. I do think um the other big change that we kind of dance around is that there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be out of work in the next couple of years, and we have a problem that's going to really force us to think about how we treat each other and how we want to support each other. And I think that's a societal fabric issue that's gonna impact us as well. That's well said.

SPEAKER_04

I actually would be grateful if I didn't have to deal with my child being on social media in the next few years. Like if I could let it die on the vine, and I think it's would be wonderful. I I actually think that the my quote unquote prediction, I would just I think people are gonna be more analog. People, cassettes are coming back, there's a there's a physical touch. People just want to have an iPad. I think people just want a phone that dials numbers. Like got an original one on the shelf. If you want to buy it, you're gonna build your own museum. I love it. So yeah, I think people are I mean, we just gotta turn to I'm going, I'm I have a my parents have a huge record collection. They're like, take it. I'm like, cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I got, you know, I think a lot of that, like you said, like it's almost like after the pandemic, people were like, we've still kept ourselves flit, but isolated. I think people are gonna be more like, let's go outside and touch the grass and uh you know, talk to each other. I I really I hope that for us all. I think it's a great thing you brought up.

SPEAKER_03

Um you know, these guys these are like my earbuds when I when I run. I don't wear them anymore. Oh, you don't? I don't wear them anymore when I run just for that disconnected feeling you're talking about. I I prefer the analog.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and that's even being outside, you know, the those those are the the bone ones, right? Yeah, the bone conductors, yeah. Yeah, so you can still hear the world, right? If you're listening to something, and that's that's it's pretty awesome. So, you know, you've kind of covered a lot of ground here. Like what's a good conversation. It's a great conversation. Yeah, I've really enjoyed this. And it's like, you know, for when I always ask people like the unexpected places you find inspiration.

Real World Wins From AI Training

SPEAKER_04

Like, what's what's an unexpected, what's because it's uh it's the usual suspects, things we've talked about. What's a what's an unusual place that you found uh found something?

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's funny. I'm doing an AI training this week and about like uh it's a taking it or giving it.

SPEAKER_04

You're taking it or giving it. Giving it. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah. And it's an executive group, and um it's eight to nine a.m. I get a WhatsApp message from one of the students at 2 30, basically about how they're going to reignite their entire RFP process using the method we talked about, which frankly I had no intention of pointing them in that direction. I don't know what made it pop in their head, probably just their big problem right now. But they took what we had and they innovated with it and brought it into their own context to create a really good idea and a really smart solution that's been validated by other people and their use cases. And they're gonna change the way they're doing business as a result of it. And it'll probably be impactful within two weeks. And I that, and she was so happy. And I was so happy because I was like, this is exactly why I'm in this. This is exactly why I want to be here. Because I believe this stuff can help us if we can just, you know, kind of remove a few of these barriers and just look at how it can make our lives a bit easier and bring it into our own North Star and our own mission. And if we can do that, we're gonna go into a lot of really cool places. I think AI can be really helpful. I I think of nonprofits, for example. Oh my God, the ability to be a force multiplier for nonprofits are terminally terminally unable to hire enough resources to do the work they need to do.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Because it's if you think about the last 25 years when you had to have such brick and mortar and such places and limited amount of the print advertising and things you had to do. And then the internet came, you could be virtual, you could raise money. It's just I just even it's just the transformation of that. And that leads me to my favorite thing is the legacy

Legacy, The Book, And Where To Find Jeff

SPEAKER_04

question. So it's all said and done. I'm not talking about like epitaph on your on your on a tombstone. It's just more about just kind of like sitting on the beach, life reflecting on things like the books, all the consulting, the marathons. Like, how do you how do you want the kind of you know, in to be remembered, like the things to be remembered, your work your your work, your life?

SPEAKER_03

I think if I could say that I inspired a lot of people to become the best version of themselves that they could be, then I've been successful.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I think that's all we can we can ask. So people want to find you. Because I know there's many places where can uh people get to get to connect with you and uh get to know more about your work, what you're doing, and and especially the book and when is it coming out?

SPEAKER_03

So I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place. Yeah, my handle on LinkedIn is Jeff Living, G-E-O-F-F-L-I-V-I-N-G. It'll lead you to all roads. And then uh I think I think the book's out in May at this point. I need to really push hard on the chapter by chapter edit that I'm in right now. But it's okay. I actually yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So I have two phones. One one's my real phone, and then the ones with all the social media stuff and all the fun apps. I actually gave uh my partner Caitlin, I gave her the phone today, the fun app phone. The second one I said, don't give this to me until I finish this draft.

SPEAKER_04

You know, take it away. That's wild. Yeah, it's like you can just put it away, just kind of put it over there and you know, don't touch it. But uh, we'll put the links to pre-order or like to find out about the book. And I think it's I think it's such an important conversation you're having with people and the things you can share. And I think letting people know that you're not feeling weird, but it is a it is a a change state that we've got to, you know, address and navigate. So I just want to say, you know, thank you for being a great friend these years, and just I'm so glad to have you on and get to share this with the with the world. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. So uh all right. Well, we'll sign off for now. Thanks. I appreciate you, sir. Thanks for doing that.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for listening

Closing And Where To Listen

SPEAKER_00

to the Think Forward Podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.thinkforward.com as well as on YouTube under ThinkForward Show. See you next time.

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Steve Fisher

Host