You know, there are 5.6 million people in this country earning over $100,000 a year as independent operators. And most of them have more experience than the person that you hired last quarter to lead your transformation. Your organization is routing them through procurement.

Hey there, senior leader, and welcome to the Talent Sherpa Podcast. This is where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. I'm your host, Jackson Lynch, and today I'm joined by my friend, my co-host, Scott Morris. He's a former CHRO with all the playbooks and the scar tissue to prove it. He's reportedly the only person in recorded history to open a workforce redesign session by asking which headcount numbers to update in the spreadsheet first. And he's the founder of Propulsion AI. Scott, today we are bringing in — I love that opening bit. It's my favorite of the whole thing. Yeah, I don't know where you come up with this, but I do. But yeah, you don't want to know. Trust me. You cannot handle the truth. But today we're going to be bringing in someone who sits at the center of the conversation that we're about to have. And I'm very excited about it. That is a tease. And we've talked on the show recently about AI and role design and what organizations actually need versus what they default to hiring for. But today we're going to go into something a little bit more structural, and that's the way organizations think about talent composition. And I'm going to make the argument that it's fundamentally broken. The fix is a different question that is asked before the job description ever gets written and long before you call procurement.

Yeah, I'm excited about this too. You know, she's been a friend of yours, she's a new friend of mine. But before we get into it, I think it's fair to say that when you and I were mapping out this episode, I kept catching myself reaching for some old language: headcount, FTE, contractor, right? And I don't think that's vastly different than a lot of us think about it. But those words carry a model inside of them. And the model is what's causing the problem, I think, largely. So even the language that we're using today to think about problems that are associated with this has to shift. And I think we should name that up front. But before we get into it, let's take a quick second, Jackson, and let's do a thank you and a quick shout-out. And this week's shout-out is to Carlos from Madrid. Carlos, thank you so much for being a part of this community. It means something real that you're here, and we both genuinely appreciate it. And to everybody who's tuning in, whether you are in Nagano, Japan, or in Mount Holly, North Carolina, we are really glad you showed up today.

Yeah, and just to throw out a special thank you to Carlos. He actually is one of the few folks that I gave my first draft of my upcoming book to provide comments on. And he took that opportunity and gave me some really great feedback. And so I just really, really appreciate the community that we've been building. And that community is one of the best parts about doing this work. When we hear that senior leaders are actually replaying episodes to take notes, that makes the preparation worth every hour that we put in. So, Carlos and everyone else that's listening, really want to say thank you. This one's for you.

Yeah, Carlos, you and I are going to have to talk, man, because I don't know how you superseded me in the book distribution, but apparently you have. So kudos to you.

Every major technology shift in the last 40 years was adopted around the existing workforce model. New tools, updated processes, the same org chart underneath, everything gets built one on top of the next. And this one that we're in now, this AI stuff, is not really designed to work that way. What AI and elastic talent together do is they're forcing a genuine redesign of the work itself. Not only AI, but in how we apply the labor model to it. And most organizations, I think, are approaching it exactly the same way that they approached every previous technology change.

They're going to miss the entire — and you know, the question that reveals whether an organization is getting that right or not isn't "how do we deploy AI?", right? I run a company that deploys AI, and I hear that question a lot. The right question is: when you map work at the task level, which tasks should a human not be doing at all? That's the right question. High-value work comes from human judgment and decisions, insights, instincts, pattern recognition — those things come from being inside rooms where things happen over time and recognizing them. That work belongs with people. But a significant portion of what currently sits inside human roles is really narrowly defined, rules-based, and fully describable. And that's just not human work anymore.

Yeah, Scott, the second category is, I think, where the redesign actually begins. When there's a task that has clear outcomes, a known decision framework, and boundaries that can be articulated, you now have something better positioned to handle it than a person. The role that gets rebuilt above that layer — not even inside the layer, but like the orchestration layer — I think it looks fundamentally different from the role that existed before. It operates in the loop, or even above the loop. It's anchored to judgment calls, not the tasks that feed them.

Yeah, let me be honest about something. You know, two years ago, I think I was thinking about AI as a productivity layer. I think a lot like people are still continuing to think, right? You take the existing function and you add tools on top and you get more output. And what I've learned is that that framing is just wrong. It treats the existing work design as fixed and asks how you just do it faster. The right question is whether the work design itself should survive a redesign at all.

And think about the talent implication of that redesign. I think that's where the conversation gets really interesting. MBO Partners reported 5.6 million independent workers in the United States that are all earning over 100 grand. Senior executives, former CHROs, people who have led functions and run transformations who now work independently. And when an organization has done that redesign work and knows exactly what human expertise it needs for a defined period, I think that class can now become the answer. And we never even thought about it before. The problem is that most organizations are still trying to figure out the headcount before they've actually done the redesign, and that's a mistake.

Yeah, and that's the sequence error that's at the center of almost every transformation that stalls. You know, the headcount model gets invoked before the task-level question even gets asked. You end up with a new full-time hire trying to run a function and redesign it simultaneously without a clear picture of what the redesigned version should even look like. The job description was written for the old model.

And that is exactly why we brought in someone way, way smarter than us today. And I wanted Jamie to join us — Jamie Jacobs. She's built the infrastructure on the supply side of what we're describing: the talent network that makes it possible to access experienced operators on a variable basis. Once the redesign work is defined, what you actually need — and maybe even help you figure out what that definition might need to look like. And I've had the privilege of being on her podcast. It's called The Gig's Choice. It's awesome. You should totally listen to it. She's also been a practitioner, she's been a builder, and she's been a leader at companies, including Four Seasons Hotels and Fortune 50 organizations like TELUS International and Renovate America. She's the co-founder of Gig Talent and someone that I'm very blessed to consider a friend. Jamie Jacobs, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jackson. Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. And this conversation is like what I'm thinking about every day. So I can't wait to join in with you guys.

I think this is going to be awesome. So let's maybe get your expertise early. From the supply side, you see organizations at various stages of this. What tells you the CHRO has actually done the work-redesign thinking before they pick up the phone, versus the ones that are maybe still stuck in that historical operating model?

Absolutely. It's a telltale sign when they start talking about outcomes. They know that they want to get X, Y, and Z done. They see the value of getting someone in who can help deliver those outcomes quickly. And they're not necessarily bringing up legacy headcount or job descriptions and structures that really indicate they're thinking with that legacy system thinking. And so it's interesting because they're sometimes on a journey. Some, when they think about elastic talent, they're thinking about just kind of gig workers and traditional hires. And now, obviously, as you started to talk about, there's the agentic piece, which is a third layer. But really, I think the CHROs who are starting to do that work, they have built into their system within their own department this thinking about: how does this work need to get done? Should we even do it internally? Should we outsource and have a partner that's expert in that? Should we bring in a gig resource because we can get this done really quickly? They look at the core part of their team as something that's the fixed part. And then they are really smart about how they use those variable resources, which has an impact on cost and budget.

But every organization isn't executing that model that you just described super well. So let's pull apart some of the assumptions that keep organizations from getting into that redesign conversation in the first place.

Yeah, I think there are two faulty assumptions that I keep running into when I'm talking with people I'm coaching in my advisory practice and talking with external companies. I think they both are, you guessed it, structural. And they feel completely logical from the inside of the room where those decisions are getting made, which is what I think can make it hard to surface. So, the first one I hear a lot is: gig workers are just contractor 2.0 with better marketing. They're cheaper, they might be more flexible, but they're fundamentally the same category as a traditional contractor. And look, I totally understand why that belief exists. The phrase "gig economy" conjures up a very specific image, and that image is not a senior executive. It's a junior, transactional, project-based worker that maybe doesn't want to work very hard and is kind of sitting out in the mountains and probably has a unique haircut. So when the CHRO hears "gig," they hear a workaround and not a strategy.

It's fascinating. So I actually call them — I've coined it — executive entrepreneurs. And I think that it's a really different thing than someone who is in between jobs and is willing to take a gig. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just different. These are people who were so successful in whatever they were doing. In our case, they were all former executives. They were so good that they were confident enough that they could go out and build a practice doing whatever it is that they're great at. And they wanted to do that because they want to have impact in different ways. They want to have experience across different companies, they want to do the things that they're uniquely great at and are their superpower, rather than some of the other things that these traditional job descriptions saddle us with. And you made a post on this recently, which was about some of the noise and waste that working inside organizations somehow forces you to deal with. But we want to solve that, right? So I think that these executive entrepreneurs are really a new class of talent. And so it's an opportunity for organizations and CHROs to think about talent differently — not think about the old version of a contractor who's maybe using a 20-year-old playbook, or who needs to get every kind of deliverable on a piece of paper because otherwise they're not going to get you what you need and you're going to waste money. I actually had a CHRO ask me — they said, "Well, why would somebody want to do that?" Right? They couldn't understand why someone like me, who was very successful, loved my corporate career, loved being part of a team, loved the benefits and compensation that comes along with that — why would you choose to do that? And I think that's what people need to understand: there is a reason that people would want to do that. They love the work, they want to apply it in a different way. They have an entrepreneurial mindset where they can build and innovate and have impact in different ways, partner with people in different ways. And then COVID was an accelerator, right? It caused everyone to just reevaluate how they spend their time. And this is an opportunity for these people with great judgment, great experience, huge knowledge to come in and solve problems that they love to solve and make a career out of it. And so it's something new. And I think people don't understand it, but those who do are really being able to engineer how they use their team, how they build internal capabilities, and how they navigate the changes that you've both started alluding to that every organization is going through right now. They're leveraging this in really smart ways, which is pretty exciting.

Yeah, it's so funny — "why would someone want to do that?" Obviously, they've never done that. I have a long list of ways that my life was better as I was playing in those spaces. It's specifically around: you have a much clearer definition of what winning looks like. And you don't have to put up with a lot of the nonsense, politically and otherwise, that can ultimately keep people from making the decisions that they know are the right ones to make. But I want to stay on this for a second, Jamie, because I think the person on your side of this is not just being underutilized. They are today oftentimes receiving a signal about how they're seen before they even walk in the door. So, what is it today — if I'm trying to bring somebody in, I tend to go the contractor route, which gets procurement involved and a lot of back and forth. And I just wrapped up doing this, and we went six times back and forth on something that honestly mattered nothing. But once you have lawyers involved, you've got to get involved in it. What does it cost the engagement before the first deliverable is produced if you treat it the way you've always treated it?

The first impact, no question, is delay in results. If you're going to spend six to eight weeks, or four weeks, however long it is, going back and forth through legal, wasting all this time, you're not going to get the person and the resource in there. And that's one of the benefits of leveraging the gig economy — you can get the right people in there faster. So that was actually one of the reasons that I founded Gig Talent: because we wanted to solve that. So we have one MSA that we get through procurement one time, and now you have access to the whole network of the best of the best of the independent economy. So we solve that. But what you're indicating, if you haven't done that work, is you just tell them, "Gosh, we're focused on these things. The speed isn't really that important to us. We haven't necessarily figured it out." And a lot of times, in fairness, for the legal teams, it's the first time they're seeing some of this different kind of caliber. So they're answering the questions at the detail level that they would for temp-type resources. Not that the questions aren't valid, but I think they're just not used to thinking of it applied in this slightly different way.

Jamie, the way that Jackson framed the assumption — that these really senior thinkers are just contractors 2.0 — it makes me think that when you think about a contractor, you think about, "I have this block of work that has to get done, and I'm going to get a contractor to do that work." But that's not really what you're talking about. What you're talking about is: I want somebody to help me rethink the entire situation. I want them to bring their judgment. Is that a good frame?

Oh, it's huge. I mean, judgment and experience and wisdom is what our executive entrepreneurs have, right? They can come in — and what CHROs and other senior leaders that bring in our resources recognize is that not only is there the value of the people who have sat in the seat, they've done 10,000 reps of this in organizations and navigated the complexity of organizations, but there's also value in bringing in that external lens, right? They're not part of your system. So especially when you're thinking about transformation, there's huge benefit from bringing in someone who's not part of the system. They're not walking past that box that everyone walks by because they don't see it anymore. And they have the benefit of seeing what good looks like and what other organizations are doing, and they bring that value to your company and your team. And one of our fundamental truths is: we want to build internal capabilities. So when our people come in, it's also with that lens. We can bring your team along on the journey. It's not, "hand over a strategy deck that you can't actually implement and walk away." We want to be that partner with you. And so thinking about judgment, thinking about how do we leverage that expertise that they have — it's just a huge value. And so the ones who get it really understand that it's way beyond whatever is going to be listed in that initial SOW.

Let's push forward to the second assumption. And I think this is the one that does the most damage, specifically in moments of transformation. And it's the belief that you can hire one person to run the function and redesign it at the same time. Well, look, occasionally that works.

I've seen it. It's infrequent. There are leaders who can literally do both simultaneously. You should hold on to them for dear life, especially if they can do so in a very low-maintenance way. But they are rare. And when you structure a role around the assumption that one person can do both, and then you hire for it, you're going to get one of two outcomes. Either the operations are going to win, because there's always a fire to fight, and people will go toward the urgent — that's what happens. And when that happens, the redesign gets deferred indefinitely. Or the person is going to split attention and neither work gets done well because you have a time-capacity constraint. And then six months later, you're partially redesigned and you have an operational baseline that's degraded. It's not a smart way of going down that path.

And here's what I think makes it harder — and I think you're largely right in the way you assess that. The person that's been hired, they know that this is happening and they're living that conflict every single day. But the role that was designed by the organization is structured to require both. So there's no way to cleanly raise a flag without it looking like underperformance. And the structural problem disappears inside the individual performance conversation.

Yeah.

Jamie, what does that look like as you're talking with CHROs? When the sequencing — what's different about how they frame it?

Well, I just want to add to what you were saying. I think I was one of those leaders who would do both. But the challenge is two things. Either they bring me in because they say they want transformation, and then I get in and they're like, "Oh, well, if that means we have to change, we don't actually want that." And then I'm like, "Well, you don't — I shouldn't be here," right? Or I'm there, and what I recognized over time was that my attention span was like two to three years. Once we'd get through that initial thing — and so for organizations, often you want your leaders to have longer tenure than that because you want consistency. You want to really help them build the strategy and see their way through it. But also, especially for these smaller and mid-sized organizations, the experience of someone who does that might be different than what they need in their ongoing run-the-business once they get to a more stable state. And so they might have to overpay to get that transformational leader for the long term, versus bringing them in to do the transformation and then hiring at the right level the more sustaining person who's going to be part of that ongoing team. And so just rethinking that a little bit about how they can really leverage this. Now, your points about bandwidth — those are super legit. You've got to run the business. And now there's also this point of alignment, because transformation today often is not just functional. If any of us came in to just do an HR transformation, that's one thing. But transformation now is cross-functional when you're looking at technology and AI and all these other things. And therefore, it's really hard to be leading a function and leading an enterprise-level, cross-functional transformation.

Yeah, let me nudge into that, because I think — I'm going to be very unpopular here with a segment of the people that are listening to us. So I apologize in advance. Sorry, not sorry. It is always great to invest in the development of the person. And so our natural inclination is: if I can have someone that I hire into that role and allow them to be a part of the build, that's critical experience that maybe I got — maybe I should have received earlier in my career — life is good. And the idea that you hire someone in to build it and then you hire the person to run it after it's built kind of runs afoul of that. But if you're in SMB, then you're likely in a private equity–sponsored environment. And the reality is you have a different time horizon in that world than you do in a public company. Every ounce of investment that you make in human capital has got to pay for itself within the hold period. And where the people that I've worked with over the years have really struggled is when they try to come up with a 10-year payback in a three-year remaining hold period. This actually solves that. And so there is a tension: you want to do right by the person, but you also want to maximize the value creation, because that is the primary responsibility that you're trying to go after. But let me frame this a little differently, Jamie. If you're placing an experienced operator in there to build the next version of something, what does that brief need to contain for them to actually deliver — the things that will allow that model to be successful that maybe we don't always do?

Well, really thinking about how you're going to onboard, right? And how you're setting this person up for success. So the ones that we have seen most successful — there's some level of, we call it a diagnostic, but it might just be them meeting with the key stakeholders, which often need to be the executive team if you're really thinking about transformation. Because even if you're the decision-maker — and I don't care what function you're in — but you're bringing someone in to lead a transformation and you think you have alignment, you may or may not actually have alignment. That is one of the biggest things. So really that initial period of allowing this person to come in and get that assessment and flush out where there is or is not alignment, and then build real alignment around the path forward — that's one of the keys to success. So allowing them that access, providing time in the engagement, and then being available to be a partner as that evolves. Because sometimes, if you think you know all the deliverables up front, but the work is actually going to be iterative and you want the findings to inform smarter deliverables, there has to be a process for that. So it's really about how do you partner, how do we have those touchpoints, and setting that expectation that you want them to be leveraging the wisdom that they have and the experience and judgment and informing that into even driving better outcomes of the deliverables. Certainly there are certain things that you're agreeing to in the work, but I think you're just going to get better-informed because their experience is going to add value as the work unfolds.

You know, a lot of our audience is heads of HR and CEOs — a growing part of our audience. But we're talking about something beyond HR transformation here. There's lots of transformation that takes place across the enterprise. And I think what you're talking about is valid for any of the functions that we're talking about transforming. I'll tell you, if I'm a CEO today, I find somebody who is a transformer. If I truly want a transformation, I bring that person in on a gig basis, and then I hire to fill that role once the transformation is done. But that kind of discipline is exactly what the structured mechanism underneath demands. So, Jackson, let's push in and talk about the mechanics of this thing.

Yeah, and you're exactly right. It strikes a memory from my way-back machine. One of the things that I did at the Pepsi organization inside of Frito-Lay that was great is I ended up one of five people that ended up leading the transformation and strategy team. And the whole reason that team was put together — Irene Rosenfeld, who later went on to run Kraft Foods and Mondelez, one of my favorite executives ever — she, when I asked her why she was putting this team together, she answered very simply: "If I have people that are worried about today and people that are worried about tomorrow working for the same person, I will only get, in moments of crisis, people thinking about today. And part of my role as a CEO is to help us look at the day after tomorrow. And after years of having people that keep getting sucked into the gravity of the moment, I need to actually have an organization that is outside and separate from that, that is looking at: what is the right supply chain footprint, what is the right sales compensation model, what is the right zone of the future, what is the right picking strategy in our warehouses. Because if I give those things to people worried about today, then all my resources are going to solve today's problem."

And sometimes hard to see with current eyes, and that's why the outside eyes that Jamie was referring to are helpful.

1,000%. And look, I think there is a structural thing that runs underneath that, right? And we tend to — we talk about this a lot — but we tend to treat the symptoms, not the loop that's producing them. So, Scott, when you were inside organizations, what was actually running underneath the default behavior? Because I don't think this is a matter of people not knowing it. I think it's a matter, to your point, that they don't see it.

Look, if things were about knowledge, we wouldn't have marriage therapists that get divorced or physicians who smoke, right? It's not a knowledge problem. I'd be fit if that were the case. It's an infrastructure problem. Every talent process that I've seen inside of a typical organization was designed for a full-employment job. And we're not living in that world anymore. Job grades, comp bands, the requisition workflows and onboarding sequences and — God forbid — performance review cycles. All of it assumes that the end state is a set of permanent employees. So when a leader walks into the HR process looking for a different kind of answer, the process tends to route them back to the job posting. Not because anybody made a bad decision, but the infrastructure produces the output it was designed to produce.

Yeah, and the loop becomes absolutely self-confirming. The assumption that transformation and operations live in one hire gets confirmed every time the role is written that way and someone accepts it. But it then falters as you move down.

The structure is absolutely creating constraint, right? They're working within a budget, they're working within headcount numbers, and so they have to basically work within the game that they're playing. And so the challenge is: when you look at that system, how can you disrupt that enough for people to understand that we can actually have better control over our cost and have a smaller fixed-cost model, greater variability, but we're going to use it smarter? Now, that comes with responsibility and accountability. That might be scary to some, but that's how it should work. And there are these really cool things that are available. I think this is a moment for people who used to have to answer the question in an interview: "So, why did you leave that last organization? And why did you leave that other organization after three years?" Now this is their moment, because "I had done the work. I had accomplished this goal and I was ready for the next challenge." And those are the people that now organizations have access to, to help them through this time and through creating these changes and getting to that next level of whatever challenge or opportunity that they're creating for their business. And so I think it's a moment all the way around, but it does require courage and systemic shifts, which is kind of what you're talking about. That structure, our legacy thinking — whether it's anything in the HR model and employee experience — really thinking through how we incentivize people, that needs to shift. The way that we work — even the power plays between departments, and "my headcount and your headcount," and who's doing this work, and the conversation of who owns this thing. I think those are where we need to press, because the organizations that are coming up behind us in the competitive landscape aren't wasting time on that noise. And so we need to get through it.

Yeah. Maybe the way I'd frame it is: the root cause of all of this is that the world changed and the talent operating model didn't. It wasn't updated. It wasn't updated when there was this elastic model, and now it's not getting updated when there's a third piece to it with the agentic piece. And look, processes, budget constraints, categories, approval chains — none of them were designed for what I think Scott says when he's trying to sound fancy: a "tripartite" view of the operating model. So you end up with companies that are operating from 2005 infrastructure in a 2026 talent market. And Scott, I'd love your thoughts on it, and then I think we should move forward to the mandate.

Well, I'll give you a quick thought. I think the way that you break the loop is you recognize that the business is changing quickly, that you have to bring in thinking from the outside more frequently than you did before, and you build a parallel pathway that's intentionally designed for that talent class, right? It's got its own budget category, its own approval process, its own engagement model. You don't run the old playbook — you run the new playbook on it.

So I know I said "mandate" earlier. We need to move toward the mandate. I have mandate on the brain. Don't forget to check out mytalentsherpa.com, where we have the Mandate Protocol. What I meant to say was the structural shift. Because I think the old model asks, "Who do I need for this role?" And it starts, candidly, with a headcount assumption. It searches for a person, and then defines success as a filled position. The new model has a different question. It starts with: "What outcome do I need to deliver in the next 90 days? And what's the right composition of talent types that will produce it?" And when you lead with the outcome — which you may have heard on this podcast roughly 144 times — you stop shopping from one shelf, and you can actually make a composition decision. And that composition has three layers. And because we like fancy titles, I'd like to call this the Elastic Talent Stack.

Oh my God, another fancy title. We're going to walk those layers in a second, but Jamie, let's get your read on the model itself for one quick second. Why is this time different from every previous time that somebody proposed using independent talent more strategically?

It's different now because the amount of people — almost 50% of the workforce — is engaging in the gig economy. I know you had a great statistic earlier about the knowledge workers and the senior leaders who are choosing to work this way. So the access to the caliber of talent now that is working this way is different. And it doesn't mean you have to go to Deloitte or McKinsey. I'm not knocking them, but now you can have a really high caliber of principal-level talent who have sat in the seat, who have actually navigated organizational complexity. They understand the realities of building the plane while you're flying it. They're not just going to give you a fancy deck. So you have access to talent that we just didn't before, right? And so it doesn't just have to be the consultant that the board member knows who happened to mention HR and you think they're going to answer all your solutions. You can actually get somebody who — we know who's good at what — and get someone who's going to come in and solve the right problems. It's different.

You know, when I'm thinking about what we're doing with our company, my thought is: who is the very best thought leader about this particular disciplinary area? And can I get a week of their time? And then once I have that — okay, how can I design agents that will deliver the kind of work that is based on their judgment? And then I'm thinking about: where do we put the humans? And I personally think that's — it's yet to be proven for us — but I think that's the right way to think about it these days.

Yeah, Scott, I think you're right. I think layer one is agentic. And before you deploy any human talent, you should ask, "What in this workflow can be handled by AI today?" Actually, let me check that. The first one is: are there things that we are doing that are not tied to the outcome that we've defined, and I should just stop doing that rather than building on that as the foundation? The second layer is — yeah, exactly — then what can we do today? Not eventually, right? Strip that work out first, and what remains is, I think, the human work. And within the human work, there might be two more layers.

You know, I think the instinct when you hear "AI first" is to assume that it means replacing people. And I just think that's a bad assumption. Running layer one is about defining exactly where human judgment adds something. And that's like when I said I'd get the foremost expert first to bring the judgment. Then I would think about the agentic piece. Then I would think about where humans fill in. Because if you pull all of that agentic work — or work that can be done by agents — out, and you say that's not judgment work, then what remains must be judgment work. And now that's a complete bucket for your people.

People do — yeah.

Layer two then becomes full-time, right? After you've stripped out the agentic layer, you should ask, "What's the remaining work that needs to get permanently embedded inside the organization? What requires institutional knowledge, ongoing relationships, the trade-offs, the deep contextual understanding that only really comes from being inside the business over time?" And maybe someday the agents will figure that part out too. But that's not where we are today or in the immediate future. What we're talking about here is, I think, the FTE core. And it's usually smaller than the default model assumes, because a significant portion of what current full-time employees do can either be automated or handled with variable expertise — or at least get them out of the meetings where they don't provide incremental value. That can free up a lot of time on your calendar, too.

Important work doesn't automatically require permanent employment either. And conflating work that feels important with work that must be done by a full-time employee — I think that's a misattribution. Jamie, I interrupted you.

No, sorry. I don't know, Scott, if this is what you're seeing with your clients, but the clients that we see doing this well — it's really at a department or functional level, because they can really start to assess this and identify where the agentic opportunities are, kind of the low-hanging fruit. And then they're really thoughtful about that overlay of whether it's human-in-the-loop or the human judgment component, because that's the differentiator, right? I always say we don't want our organizations to look like a Gamma deck, right? Where everybody looks the same as everybody else. What's special about your organization, what's unique about your company, what are your values, how do you want to operate, what are the outcomes? The people make that secret sauce. But the possibility and the way that that happens now is what's so different. And so helping people — it's a mindset shift. It's almost a futurist type of approach to imagine the possibilities of what can be. And what they would build today is going to evolve, right? I can only imagine what I can imagine today. That's our biggest limitation — what we can imagine. And then there are other realities, like the cost of AI increasing and all these other things. So people do have to be thoughtful, but where we're seeing huge impact is just that reframe and pushing the awareness and the mindset, so that HR leaders and their teams can interrupt that muscle — that organizational legacy muscle that knee-jerks to "here's the job description and a headcount request." And so that we can think differently and start to innovate and then, through a coordinated fashion — I'd imagine this is what your team does — help organizations re-engineer at a core or root level.

You know what I think is interesting is: if you ask your mid-career professionals what is the stuff that they wish they didn't have to do in their job, most of those are really good agentic opportunities. And so I think your people can give you some interesting content if you ask them.

Yeah, and let me complete the model, and then we can talk about how to apply it. We talked about figuring out what an agentic layer should be able to handle. We talked about where human-in-the-loop, or increasingly above-the-loop, judgment comes in. And then that brings in layer three, which is: okay, there's some stuff that needs to get done, but it doesn't happen all the time. It's lumpy in terms of the demand, or it's stuff that honestly I don't want to pay a senior player full-time to do, but I really need that senior expertise today. And that's where the executive entrepreneur — in your lingo, Jamie — plays. It's variable capacity, specialized skill, outcome-defined engagement. They come in with a really clear brief, they can produce the outcome, and they can move on. Before I understood this, I had a long-standing rule that I wouldn't hire instructional designers onto my team. Not because I don't like instructional designers — I love them. So does God. Like, the divine is filled with wonderful instructional designers. My problem is structural. Sometimes I want to build two things at once. And sometimes I don't have anything to build. I just don't understand why I would want a full-time employee doing that. Because when I need two people to get stuff done, I'm now constrained. And when I don't need anyone, I have a cost burden. So think about that in terms of the broader episodic work that we do. And it seems really clear that a full-time employee is not always the answer, and neither is the agentic. And so I think, Jamie, this is the layer that your firm is built to make real. What makes that different than what most CHROs have in mind when they hear the word "contractor"?

Yeah, I love your example. So if you have to hire someone full-time and you have a limited budget, sometimes you compromise the level of experience to fit the budget, right? So that could be a compromise that's unnecessary. Or, like you said, if you don't compromise, then the amount that you're potentially wasting when you don't have something for that designer to build is even larger. So one of the things that I saw was: how do we create this opportunity to identify who's good and what they're good at, do the work for calibration and all the compliance things that have to happen, so that CHROs can really think about, "What is the work, and how do I get the best person to come in and do that work right now, have the impact, and not have to make these either compromises or overspend?" And that's where they have to disrupt the existing system, right? Because the system right now doesn't necessarily incentivize creativity in the approach, because it's just structured: "this is your headcount, this is your budget, maybe you have a consulting line item." And so disrupting that takes some courage. But I think that as CHROs start to understand now what's available, they're like, "Oh, I need somebody to design this leadership development program. I need somebody to set up structured interviews, or have focus groups on these things. We want to bring in that outside person" — or whatever the use case is: facilitating an off-site. There are all kinds of examples. But the other part is — I've done it, and you probably have too — you create the job description, and then you go to your recruiter, internal or external, and you say, "So, there's a little bit of a unicorn here, but I want to find X, Y, and Z," right? And we all hope that that person comes. And the truth is, there are only so many of those. So you probably don't find it, and you're compromising somewhere on that job description. What if you didn't have to do that? What if you could find the person who is excellent at this, and the person who is excellent at this, and the person who is excellent at this, and use them — picture pulling the levers — use them when you need them, don't when you don't. But they learn your team, they understand your culture, they really are driving your vision forward and your outcomes forward. That's what you can do now. This isn't a pipe dream. It's real.

You know, there's something about sequencing inside of that stack, Jamie. And when I hear you talk about it that way, it goes to a subject that I think Jackson and I have talked about a lot on this show, and that's removing constraints. Because that's really what you're talking about, right? At the very senior layer, what's the constraint? It's the salary. I can't get that kind of thought for that kind of price. Well, take that constraint out with somebody who is an executive entrepreneur, and then move one layer down and take that constraint out, take that constraint out. That's kind of what it sounds like to me.

Absolutely. Yeah, we don't have to have those constraints. You use it when you need it, you get the immediate value. The ROI is huge. And it's just a new way of thinking.

Yeah. So just to be really clear on the sequence: you run the agentic audit, you define the FTE core against what remains, you identify the elastic layer for everything in between. And most organizations that I've come across, they tend to run it backwards. They hire the FTE and then they start asking, "What can AI do to help?" And then they wonder, "Okay, how do I handle this other work when everyone's already super busy and we can't get to it?"

Well, so the agentic piece is new, in all candor, right? So I think companies are just starting to really figure that part out right now. But we have great examples. We have a situation where a tech company in the San Francisco area brought in one of our consultants to help lead a global business partner transformation. They came in, they actually led the team — which I know is crazy — but they helped really raise the bar. They assessed the team, they made changes, they hired the right people, they upskilled the existing team, they created partnerships with the other internal functions and COEs. They got the whole function set — they set the vision, they hired to it, they got the skills, they got it working, they hired their replacement, the ongoing VP of Global Business Partners, and exited. And it was about 18 months-ish. And now that leader is still there. It's been about three years since this happened. They can call on that consultant when they have specific team things that they want to build or other things. And they're used to that person being the one who asks the question that might be uncomfortable for the people in the room. They know their organization and their culture well enough to be able to connect the dots and not just come out of the blue, but they're also not starting from scratch. So not only did they get a huge ROI on that change within the function, they hired a great leader and had a really seamless transition on their onboarding. They didn't lose anything in that transition. And now they have this external resource that can be a thought partner as needed as their business continues to evolve. So that was a really great example of a CHRO thinking outside the box and recognizing that the business needed something different than they were getting from that team at the time. And they brought in the right resource who helped them achieve it. And it's a win-win, really, for all the stakeholders. The team feels like they're hitting the mark better. They feel aligned, they know what their mission is, they feel competent enough to do it. They have a great leader now who's part of it. And they still are in touch with the person who was part of that journey, and they just feel another level of support. So I love that story, because really my vision was always to create something that creates value for all stakeholders, and that's an example of where it did that.

I could spend like a week asking you questions just about that one example. We're going to have to bring you back for another one. We've got to land this plane. And Jamie, we do this thing, Jackson and I, every week called the playbook. And it's really the moves that the CHRO can start making right now that start to deliver value out of what we've been talking about.

Yeah.

So, Jamie, why don't you go first? What's the first thing — if you were giving counsel to a sitting CHRO — to do something starting next week? What would it be?

I think the first thing is to do an internal scan. If you're looking at your team and you're saying, "Okay, if I didn't have the actual constraints of either time or capability, what would be most impactful for me to solve for my organization?" And then imagine, "Okay, how can I solve it?" Whether that's agentic, or it's bringing in an expert, or even if it's bringing in an expert to help you figure that out — do that. Because maintaining status quo and just accepting the constraints — after you hear this, now you know. So you can't un-know. Now you know. And what are we going to do about it? Let's be honest. Let's assess how you can really drive the impact that your organization needs. There's an opportunity here for CHROs to really be leading by example. There's a whole bunch of conversation — we don't need to go there — around ownership of AI and transformation and those things. But even if you're just a functional leader, which many of us are, as well as wearing your enterprise-level leadership hat, think about how do I drive it forward. So starting — just do an initial scan, imagine what's possible. Now you know a bunch of different ways that you can skin that. And then think about who the partner is that can help you put action behind that intention to have immediate impact for your organization.

Yeah, let me build on that for play two. I think if you look broadly at "where should I be playing" — number two is, in that very specific place that you decide to play, I think you run a work-redesign audit. One workflow. Not a function, not a headcount plan. Just find something very narrow, start small, and take any workflow with an open need or a capability gap, and run these three questions against it: What in this workflow can be handled agentically today? What requires permanent organizational embedding? And what needs senior expertise for a defined outcome, but not an ongoing relationship? And then map out the answers. And if you do that, it's rather quick, and you have a draft architecture for that workflow. It's a composition decision. So just start with one, run through it, see what surfaces before you scale the approach, and then build the organizational trust associated with doing more things by starting small. Scott, what do you got?

Well, I'm going to go a different direction with play number three, and it's specifically for rebuild moments. There are people that break eggs and there are people that make omelets, and they're not always the same chef. When you have a function that needs transformation, and at the same time you need to keep operations running simultaneously, I think about skinnying down to what the minimum viable operating structure is first. God, I couldn't say it, but that is the point, right? Get clear on the bare minimum that needs to keep the operation running, and then staff that conservatively. And then don't hire the person that's going to come in and transform, because they're also going to have to run. Go get an executive entrepreneur — somebody who's built it before, somebody who has the vision, somebody who is a senior, really strategic thinker — and bring them in to do your transformation. Give them a defined timeline, give them a defined outcome, give them the access that they need. And when they deliver, they leave. Then you backfill, then you hire the person that's going to operate your organization.

Yeah, you reassess — because what you need might be even different than what you thought you needed previously.

Yeah.

And if they've done their job well, it absolutely will be the case.

I want to just put a note on that, Jackson. When I was a CHRO, sometimes I felt like I was failing if I needed to bring in an expert, right? Like, "Oh, I should be able to do this." And I just want to put a note that you're actually doing your job if you identify the need and you identify the solve, right? You don't have to be the solve. That is the job. So I don't want CHROs or any other leaders to be threatened by the idea of bringing these people in. They don't want your job, right? They've created practices doing these things, and they just want to be part of your team, help you accomplish the things, and then lead. So it's really a unique moment for HR professionals and leaders to recognize: you own the strategy, you own the business, you own those relationships, and you can design the work in a really creative way that's going to lead to incredible results. And that is your role — to think about how you do that in the best way.

Jamie, I'm so glad you said that. And I'm going to go off on a little TED Talk here for a second, because I think what you just said is so important that everyone should hit the back button for the last 90 seconds and listen to it five or six times. HR people, as a general rule, have an esteem issue that we need to get past. And part of that is: I have got to show that I can do everything all by myself without help. So I'm going to go get a coach for the CFO, but I don't need one. If I do need one, I'm going to pay for it myself. I'm not going to ask the organization to go do it. If I need help on shepherding how we're going to design something to the point that you just described — that is the right approach. And we've got to keep the same lens for our function that we keep on every other function that we might advise. If we are giving different answers depending on what function it is — mine or anybody else's — that's a tell that we've got to lean forward a little bit into that discomfort and say, "We're going to do the right thing for the organization." And if the right thing for that organization is we skinny down to the minimum viable operational level that Scott talked about, and we bring people in who can move us there faster and then move them out — and I need to go have a conversation with the CEO and CFO on that, because it's the highest-ROI work that I can do. "Hey, gang, I've seen the problem. It is ourselves." And as my long line of alcoholics in my family would say, the first step is to admit you have a problem, and I think we have a problem. So thank you for listening to my TED Talk. Jamie, you hit one of my buttons, so thank you for allowing me to do that. But now is the time in the podcast where it's — I know it's your favorite part. It is, in fact — Jamie was saying this is her favorite part, because she gets to hear all these things that Scott says. And one of the things that Scott always says is the complete work-redesign playbook. It goes like this: identify what tasks should go to an AI agent, assign them instead to a brand-new full-time hire, task that person with transforming while keeping the lights on, and then hold them to a six-month retrospective where everyone agrees that the problem is change management. Scott, can you give us our summary?

Here's the summary. One: it's not a technology adoption problem, right? It's a work-redesign effort. The first question you should ask is not how to add AI tools to your model. The first question is: what work should be human at all? Two: the faulty assumptions are structural. Gig workers seem to get routed through procurement because we think about them as contractors, and we've got to think about that differently. Transformation roles seem to get grouped into hires who also have to run the organization. Both assumptions feel logical, but both are costing organizations. Three: the Elastic Talent Stack that we were talking about runs in sequence. Layer one: strip out the work that AI can deliver before any human deployment decision. Layer two: define the permanent core that remains, and look for where humans are adding value there. Layer three: fill the gap with the executive entrepreneurs — deploy against a clear outcome with a defined timeline, and then hire your backfill. And four: the plays are practical. Run the work-redesign audit on one workflow this week. In rebuild moments, skinny down first, then bring in elastic talent to build the next version, and then backfill to run your redesigned environment. Jamie, how do you think I did? What would you add? What did I miss?

I think it's excellent, Scott. I think the biggest thing, too, is don't make any assumptions when you do that workflow assessment. I think that sometimes we assume we know what we're doing, and there are tools that we have and others have to help you make sure you actually know what's happening and how work is getting done in your organization. I think sometimes we skip that step because we just assume that we're optimized, and we probably aren't. So that's the only thing I'd add to your stack as you're looking at that workflow. But I love the actions and can't wait to hear some examples of some of your listeners who take steps in the next weeks to come.

A few months back, we had Dave Foley from Vendi. And if you're looking for someone who can help you figure out those workflows and where the real friction points are, I think it's at getvendi.com. Continue to support Dave's work over there. And here's what I want everyone to carry from today's episode. The organizations that win on talent in the next three years are not going to be the ones with the biggest headcount or the biggest budget, or any of that stuff that we've historically considered to be the scoreboard for success. They are going to be the ones that figure out that workforce composition is a design decision, not a default. And that design decision starts with a task-level question that, candidly, we need to ask more frequently. Start with one workflow, ask what should be agentic, what should be full-time, what should be elastic, see what the architecture tells you — and then I think you're going to be surprised by the answer. So thank you so much for tuning into the Talent Sherpa Podcast. This is, as you know, where senior leaders come to rethink how human capital really works. And this has been so much fun to do with y'all. And I want to talk just a minute about Scott's company, Propulsion AI. It is a company that's focused on workforce intelligence for private equity. They have AI teammates, they surface workforce risk before close, and they even help leadership teams drive execution after. They translate strategy into individual accountability. They can help coach managers to define roles by outcomes, and they give every employee a clear line of sight as to what actually matters. And if you believe, as I do, that clarity is the organizational wonder drug, then I think you'd agree this is all really good stuff — all done through artificial intelligence, a very efficient way of doing it. And you can learn more at the very cleverly named getpropulsion.ai.

And not surprisingly, we built our teammates around the same questions we've been talking about in this episode: what needs human judgment and what doesn't? And that's what we're trying to help with.

Thank you, Scott. And before we close, I just want to thank our guest today, Jamie Jacobs, co-founder of Gig Talent. Jamie, thank you for being here. And where can people find you and learn more about what Gig Talent is building for the community?

Well, thank you so much, Scott and Jackson. It's a pleasure. And we would love to hear from anyone. We are at gigtalentagency.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn — Jamie Jacobs. We'd love to continue the conversation or help anyone who's really trying to start those initial steps in thinking through it. Just a side note, because many of our CHRO friends might be thinking about their next steps — I know as they start getting into our age groups, they start thinking about that. And for many people, that work ends up being in those executive entrepreneurs. So if somebody's thinking about their own journey, we can also help them in those conversations and would be happy to engage those conversations. So thanks again for having me. Such a pleasure. And you guys are certainly fun. Scott, I'll listen to your summary anytime.

Yeah, and thank you to everybody. And until next time, keep raising the bar, keep designing the work before you deploy the talent, and keep on playing the top.