April 3, 2025 • 55 mins
Visionary author and thought leader Rishad Tobaccowala joins Possible Now to explore how artificial intelligence empowers small businesses to compete with giants. Discover why AI is not just a tool for efficiency but an existential opportunity, reshaping industries and redefining work itself. This eye-opening conversation will change how you see the future of business.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to possible Now. Some people predict the future, others
shape it. My today's guest has spent his career doing
both and is someone I not only deeply respect, but
also genuinely enjoy talking to, because every conversation with him
leaves you thinking in new ways. Richard Tobakowala has spent
(00:24):
decades shaping how we understand business, marketing, and the future
of work. He became a global key leader at Publicis
Group and lived through the massive transformation and the area
of mergers, consolidation and disruption of the ad industry firsthand.
But to call him an ad executive would be like
calling Da Vinci a painter. It barely scratches the surface.
(00:49):
What I love most about Richard is that he never
stops evolving, always questioning, always rethinking. Since twenty nineteen, he
has embraced a new role as the thought leader, advisor,
guide and author, helping companies and individuals and navigate change.
His books Restoring the Soul of Business and Rethinking Work
(01:10):
offer deep insights. While his sub stack The Future does
not fit into the containers of the past and podcast
What Next are Must Follows. Risha has a rare ability
to make complex shifts in business and society feel clear,
even inevitable. He doesn't just talk about the future. He
helps us see it, understand it, and most importantly, navigate
(01:33):
this And today we get to tap into that wisdom. Risha,
my friend, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Christian, thank you for that amazing introduction. Now hopefully we'll
have a conversation that tries to make that introduction somewhat
sane and not insane. I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm pretty sure, Risha, and we always kick off this
podcast with a personal question and hopefully information to share
with our audience. In your case, you worked with some
of the biggest names in business, You advise leaders, you
wrote books that challenge how we think about work and life.
But I'm couriers and I'm sure everybody else as well.
What's something small, maybe even ordinary, that brings you joy
(02:14):
every day?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, there are many, many things, And in fact, today
I was listening to a podcast that basically said, there
are three reasons people are happy. One of them happens
to be Oh, what a good life is, And it's
a combination of happiness, meaning, and new experiences, which is
kind of interesting. But in the happiness phase, which is
(02:37):
the question you have. Yeah, they basically say, there are
big things that make you happy, like when you get married,
you get promoted, But the things that really make you
happy on long term basis is not the intensity of
the happiness but the frequency. So if you can have
fine happiness in small things, which is very much what
you basically mention at any given day, I have a
(02:57):
lot of small things, but the ones that seem to
be every day is I love working out, so I
either swim or run or you know, do some weights.
It's become a daily habit. It's almost an addiction, but
it gives me, you know, great joy. I also, interestingly
(03:18):
love reading, and I set aside an hour every day
to read regardless, I call it my reading hour. And
the other thing that gives me a lot of joy is,
you know, spending time with my family. So right now
I'm in New York. My wife is in India visiting
her mom, and I'm hanging out with our two daughters
(03:39):
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And so those things, which is you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Know, family, a little bit of keeping myself mentally sane
and physically saying so I basically talk about those three
as the physical, mental, and emotional operating systems, and I
try to basically utilize or experience them daily, and that
makes everything else, even when things don't go right. When
(04:04):
I was like in real business and you had tough clients, etc.
It made you do okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And you can also follow those kind of routines when
you're traveling because you travel a lot, you do for decades.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I travel a lot. I keep track of my flights,
and as someone who is self employed and not working
for a company, last year, I did ninety five flights.
These are flight segments, not ninety five trips. And this year,
which is you know, we're five or six weeks, six
weeks into the year, I've already.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Done fifteen, oh man.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And so I have a feeling that I might track
and break my record, which was Publicist. My record when
a particular year at Publicist was one hundred and twenty five,
and I think I will break it this year with
what I can see, assuming health stays okay.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, obviously this there's a good reason behind and quite
often I know from our previous talks, you know, you
try to combine business with some good private reasons, you know,
like you said, visiting your daughters in New York, or
do some troops as your wife. But mainly it's about business.
And I always interviewed once and I said, receiving so
many miles or points or whatever it's called, depending on
(05:20):
the airline, that's not an award because it means normally
you spend a lot of time on your own, yes,
sitting in airplanes and launches and hotel rooms, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, and people know that I like dragging, like adding
stuff to every place I go, and I usually go
with one of usually with my wife, and so sometimes,
like recently, someone wanted me to come to Panama City
and they basically said, hey, we will fly you and
your wife. Will you come if we fly you and
(05:48):
your wife? So I said, okay, that's interesting, of course
I will. So I'm going at the end of this
month for three days to Patama City with her. So,
you know, it's kind of interesting, which is my whole
stuff is talk about sort of work life balance, and
it's really work life integration more than work life balance.
And in my particular case, it's become sort of a
(06:10):
passion about making things happen. And then you know, with
people I'm passionate about, and that doesn't have to be
my family. It's basically friends and lots of people. You
and I have known each other, and so I like
spending time with people, which you can also do and
meet lots of different people as you go around the world.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, thank you for sharing this, Richard. People Also, as
I described in my introduction, people call you a consultant,
call you a futurist, a strategist, and of course more
than that, and all of those fit. That's my impression.
But if you had to choose just one title that
describes what you're currently doing, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So it's actually a sentence versus a word, and the
sentence is I help people see, think and feel differently
about how to grow themselves, their team and their business
or some combination of those. So the idea really is
it's about growth, but to help either an individual or
(07:08):
a team or a company grow. But the value I
add is I leave them feeling different about how they
were thinking about things, but not different in a way
that they're oh, I didn't think about it completely correct.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
What am I going to do?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's just say, if you look at it from this
particular angle, you might find a new type of solution.
And so what I try to basically do is sort
of give people a gift if that's what it is
of forty two years of my experience, and try to
do it in every interaction. And usually what that leaves
(07:49):
them with is I feel I have grown. So usually
when I talk to a company or a person or
a team, you know, my idea whether I have been
productive and successful is if they think they have grown
due to that interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right right, And obviously quite often this is just a
hidden kind of you know, issued solve or solution to find,
but you're definitely one who digs it out for them
in their individual case.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And if there was a word, if there was a
single word, yeah, you know I've had been forced a
single word, not a sentence, it would be reinventing, reinventing.
I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I like that. So we definitely come to your recent
books and your key messages along with that in a second.
But you also spent decades in the ad industry, especially
with agencies. In the nineties and early two thousands, the
ad industry saw massive consolidations, mergers, acquisitions, everything shrinking into
a few players and it's history repeating itself right now?
(08:54):
Or do you see significant differences? I mean, especially when
we think about the agency world, the consultant the world.
You are self employed, you run your own business. Now,
is this so different compared to what you've seen years ago?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Well, what it is is consolidation has always happened, and
in some cases consolidation has happened and then there's been deconsolidation.
There were these big, massive conclomerations of like General Electric, right,
which then deconsolidated. There was the original Travelers, which included
(09:29):
City and a few other places, and they deconsolidated. On
the other hand, because of global markets, because of the
cost of technology, because of the importance of data, the
need for the buyer to have scale based pricing cost advantages,
(09:50):
there has been, I think, definitely in the marketing services industry,
a major drive to consolidation. And I was just reading
a statement which I believe is true because I not
only read the statement, but the option to speak to
this gentleman in person when we were together about two
three weeks ago. And in the advertising business in the
(10:18):
I think a lot of twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
ninety percent of all the pitches were won by the
top four companies, and in the last quarter, and I
don't define, I don't exactly what the last quarter is.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Maybe it was a fourth quarter of twenty twenty four,
one hundred percent were won by the top four. I'm
talking about the bigger pitches, not like you know, the
local store, et cetera. And now those four are becoming three.
And you used to even remember among big holding companies
used to have. There used to be like seven and
(10:54):
you would have names like Havas and then so and
now look like it's going to be an omnicopg WPP
and publicists world. But that's one way of looking at it.
But at the same time, because marketing services has become
very broad, I would say it's also an Accentia world
(11:15):
and a Deloittte world, right, And on the edges you
might say it's a Google and Meta world too.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So we're back to the seven.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But the seven are no longer necessarily the agencies holding companies.
Three of them are agency holding companies that have survived, right,
And there are four other providers who work and deliver
a whole bunch of marketing services to clients.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Okay, my impression was similar. But at the same time
I also felt that the independents, which the bigger independent
agencies stag Wold for example, Yeah, Horzon and many more,
are more visible than ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yes, So what basically happens is the way I defied
them is you have these and it's a chapter in
my book, not specifically to the advertising industry, but where
things are going to go. I basically say that what
we're going to have is the ecosystem of most industries
is going to be whales and plankton, and then occasionally
(12:16):
there's going to be a squid. So the way I
describe a whale in a plankton is YouTube is a whale.
If you think about it, the creator who makes money
and uses YouTube is a plankton, and the ecosystem feeds
off each other. The wheel takes thirty percent of the
(12:38):
revenue of the plankton. The plankton could not be global
without the whale. And then once in a while there are,
like is a squid. So while there is this consolidation
at the top, to your point, there also happens to
be a little bit different. But what happens is the
reason I call it a squid, and I don't. It's
(13:00):
something in between a wheel and a plankton, like a
half wheel half blankton is Being in the middle without
differentiation is death, okay, because you neither have the scale
based advantages of the large players nor the agility and
expertise of the two three ten person company. So if
(13:21):
you see it today, Stagwell s for bran Tech, those
are three companies, right, so off the three from outside.
And again I'm no longer in the industry, so I'm
not one hundred percent sure what I'm saying. Sometimes I
don't pay that much attention. It appears that S four
(13:43):
try to be a scale based player without scale and
has suffered deeply because of it, and Stagwell has tried
to be more like a squid and has done okay
because of it. And I'm not sure exactly where bran
Tech is. But what you're basically seeing is often what
a client might ask.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Is or in any particular company, can I get.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The smart people who are available in small places at
independent and can I then bundle them with these large players?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
And so then if you're a middle player.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You have to explain what you're doing in the movie, right,
and so I think what you're going to have is, yes,
there will be continued there will be the middle level.
But everywhere, including in the world of Germany, and Germany's
industrial base was really built on the middle, the middle
stat is having big problems because you have to be
(14:42):
big or you have to be small. Anything in between
doesn't seem to work. And I think that's what you're
basically seeing is one of the reasons, by the way,
that you're seeing a lot of middle sized companies being acquired. Okay,
so just in the last year, among many things, you know,
Public has acquired firms like Mars and Influential, and each
(15:05):
of those were not small companies. There were five hundred
plus companies, five hundred employees, two thousand employee companies. I mean,
Mars was very big. And so what happens is people
are beginning to realize that they have to be stay connected.
And that's one of the things I've sort of learned.
Even me, who I works like, I'm a one person
quote unquote company, if that's me, But if you see
(15:26):
who I work with and how I work, I'm a
plank and I stay very close to the whales, including
the clients who are whales, because by myself I wouldn't
be able to survive.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And the fun part is that we know that the
next wave, the next development, the next change, is ahead
of us. So maybe just the beginning of this wave
with this type of consolidation, but it will change again
in a couple of years time. This is what we know,
but maybe not know exactly how it will look like then.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah. And in fact, if I were to basically say
where the advantage is going to go, yeah, I think
the advantage is going to go to the small players.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Sometimes, would you agree shifts just shifting priorities and shifting opportunities.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Well, there's a reason, and the reason basically is is
because the small players. And it's one of the things
in my book that between twenty twenty March and twenty
twenty three March in the United States, all the net
employment growth was in companies with less than a thousand people,
(16:25):
all of it okay, And today apparently in a matter
is going to lay off five percent of its non
productive players. The demand for software engineers has fallen, and
so what you're basically beginning to see is AI is
now the stone that allows David to bring down Goliath.
And what people don't realize is AI is actually an
(16:50):
advantage to the small versus the large. Yes, you need
the large scale en videos and Taiwan Semiconductor, but I
can prove to any com company that I have better
AI than a Fortune five hundred company. Who is it,
you know, either Google or someone like that. And that's
primarily because it's only cost twenty dollars a month two
(17:10):
hundred dollars a month to access world class technology.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So you've mentioned AI, You've mentioned the potential benefits for
the smaller and not just the bigger. So let's talk
about this. In your first book, which I think you
published during COVID, Restoring the Soul of Business, you argue
that companies thrive when they balance data and technology with
human intuition, creativity, and empathy to create meaningful growth and innovation.
(17:35):
In today's AI driven world, do you think businesses are
getting better or worse at striking that balance?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So I believe what will happen is businesses were getting
better at striking that balance and then recently have sort
of gone backwards for a variety of reasons. But they
are now waking up in one of the reasons they
went backward is because a they believed that they could
use AI to replace people. They began to believe that
(18:10):
the labor capital or labor to people who hire employee
to company balance of power was going back to the company.
And they basically began to believe that for a variety
of reasons. Even before the recent elections in the United States,
it's pretty prevalent all over the world that DEI was
(18:32):
a bad word. Okay, So the whole idea was power
is coming back to me. AI will let me replace you.
DEI is a bad word, and so there was this
tendency to go back to the bad ways or old ways.
It may not be bad ways, I ins them bad
ways when we're old ways. I think every single company
(18:55):
who's doing that is going to get the shock of
their lives in twenty twenty five. I'm not even saying
twenty six, twenty twenty seven. They are going to get
a shock because almost no senior management, no very few
senior management know what's about a hit him, okay, in
the world of work, and including in the world of AI. So,
for instance, here are three things that they say which
(19:16):
are absolute crap crap, Okay, and they go around saying
it and my whole stuff is like, someone's going to
stop you. So Number one, I am going to have
an AI strategy to succeed. That's number one. Number Two,
I am going to use AI as a differentiator. Number three,
everybody come back to the office five days a week
or you're fired. So okay, thank you very much. Now
(19:39):
let me understand this simple questions.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Simple thing.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
You as a company go running around saying your personalization
agile and flexible, and now what you've just basically done
is you've forced everybody with a one size fits all
model to come back to the office regardless of the
client needs. It's regardless of the seniority, regardless of their
(20:03):
life issues, regardless of what actually it is. So the
fact you're basically saying you're going to be agile, flexible,
and personalized, but you're not going to do it for
the people who actually create all those agile, personal and
flexible that's BS, which meant you don't know what agile,
flexible and personalization is. Number two is this whole idea
(20:23):
of I'm king and my whole thing or queen, my
old stuff is, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, the issue is
not that people don't want to come back to the office.
I'm a big believer and in person interaction. It doesn't
have to be in the office, says I remind people.
When I was in the company, when we wanted to
creative brainstorming, we'd go to off sites. When we wanted
(20:44):
to learn and network. We've got to things like possible
or bars and network and restaurants. So none of the things.
And by the way, there's no water coolers. Also at
these places. This whole idea of people running around to
a water cooler, those also don't exist. So this is
total bs, total bs. Right, So my old stuff is
that that isn't happening. So that's the other the city
(21:05):
thing that doesn't matter. But here's a problem. It's not
the place that they're not coming back to. They don't
want to come back to you, lady and gentlemen, because
we've entered an age of de bossification.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Nobody wants you.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
That's your issue if you're if you're not in the office,
people will come back, right, which is which is one
of the interesting things.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So obviously, boss, how do you describe is not the
best thing in the world. Being a typical boss. So,
but let's talk about leaders. I've heard recently a great
interview where do you make the point between those two
groups of people and a boss and a leader and
senior executives. That's called it like this, So please explain
this in a way that everybody really understands.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Okay, So here's what happens.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So a boss is somebody who at the core operates
through a zone of control. And by a zone of control,
they basically monitor, measure, allocate, delegate and check it. That's
what they do. And by the way, you need every
leader needs to have some of those boss like tendencies.
(22:08):
You can't operate a company without some of those. But
many of these things, people who are bosses spend seventy
eighty ninety percent of their time doing that. What does
the leader do? Yes, the leader needs to do some
of that, maybe twenty five to thirty percent of their time.
A leader bills, creates, solves, sells, inspires, guides. Okay, So
(22:33):
my basic belief is if we had a few more leaders,
people would go to where the leaders are, whether they're
in an office or in a cave. But you can
basically be a boss, give free food in an exotic
office somewhere and people won't come. The problem simply is,
and that's one of the examples I give is the
animals have left the cage. Regardless of what meat you
(22:55):
put in there, they're not coming back.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Okay, so get over get over it.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
The whole idea is it's a rejection of the old way,
So just get over it.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And then you're saying it's independent from the size of
a company, you know, with more reporting and controlling.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Its incompletely independent of the size of a company.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And by the way, I've done so much research with
so much data, including modern what's going on? So let
me give you three pieces of information which everyone's hiding
from everybody.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Number one, many of these companies who are forcing people
back five days into the office really aren't expecting that
to happen. They're using it to do severance lay off
without severans. That's what they're doing. That's what Amazon was doing,
That's what everybody was doing. Okay. Now let me give
you another thing. According to analysis that I've seen, Omnicom
(23:47):
and IPG and maybe WPP grew about twenty percent since
COVID to now in headcount and basically got rid of
between twenty and thirty percent of their real life state. Okay, okay, So,
by the way, if everybody comes into the office, they
don't fit. That's already happening at Amazon. So there's a
(24:07):
bullshit like your physical infrastructure doesn't defend it. You're trying
to get people. But here's the other one that most
people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Probe.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I went to all these people and said, are you
really making one size fits model for everybody?
Speaker 3 (24:21):
And they said not really.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
In most companies, about thirty percent of the teams are
allowed to do whatever they want. Okay, and so in fact,
this is not a one size fits model, right, it's
completely ps what they're saying about. Unfortunately, the way they're
doing it is they're alienating people for no reason because
they're not actually following such draconian things. There's almost no
(24:45):
company that's following such a draconian thing that their announcement.
This is the first time I've heard of companies putting
out a PR statement that's worse than their product. Usually
you put out a PR statement that's better than your product.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yep, right, None of.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
These leaders are doing anything like five days a week
for everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
None of them.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
And I remind also the leaders because I used to
be one.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Remember I told you.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
One hundred and forty four flights a year, or one
hundred and twenty five flights. Where do you think I was.
I wasn't in the office when I was flying around.
I wasn't flying into our offices. Yeah, once in a
while I might flew into Paris because my boss was there.
But I wasn't flying around. I was flying to see
people and clients. Never in the office, right. I was
going to conferences to learn things.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I was doing all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So the reality of it is most of the leaders
don't operate out of the office that they're forcing people
back into. So when you actually listen to them, you
begin to realize how craddy the thinking is. And then
the other stuff that's really important is I don't even
care where somebody works. My basic belief is if I
was starting a company tomorrow, I do two things. Number One,
(25:53):
I probably pull my team together all together for maybe
twenty five thirty days every day besides the weekends ease.
I wanted to build relationships, understand culture, etc. And then
I say, okay, we'll get together maybe one week every quarter,
let's go forth and prosper right, But the other one
is this. This is the other thing that's important. Ask
any C level executive with everything they know today, including
(26:18):
the rise of AI, four generations at work, modern technology marketplaces,
would any company start being located in one place by
expensive real estate, limiting their talent to people who can
move into that real estate. Zero And that's the companies
they're going to be competing with in the future. So
(26:41):
my whole thing is strategically you're wrong, Emotionally you're wrong.
Talent whyse you're wrong, And by the way, where you
work is irrelevant to the future of work anyway, So
you don't even understand what that is going on. And
now you're saying you want to be a leader.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
This is great to hear in many ways because I
one hundred percent agree with you. And also because as
we started possible at the company behind during COVID and
of COVID, it was exactly the situation described. We had
no office. We technically still don't have our office. I
mean now we got acquiet last year, so now, of
(27:14):
course the company can provide an office, but my people
are not going back three, four or five days a week.
We are still a remote team as we started and
we started and make this created this business without any
physical office, and we met maybe once a quarter in person.
And this is exactly how you described it, right.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And by the way, the two other things that are
very interesting because because of my graduate degree advanced mathematics,
everything I do remember a story and spreadsheet. I have
the story, but I got better spreadsheets than anybody with data, yes,
three pieces of data. I just read the most recent
McKinsey study. Across the United States, the average number of
(27:54):
people white collar workers go to work is three point
two out of five days. After all this noise, it's
still only three point two or of five. That's number one.
Number two is a majority of the fast growing companies
and small companies tend to have zero to one day.
And so one of the reasons you see these large
companies bring like donkeys, okay, is because they're no longer
(28:17):
growing and they think by forcing people back is the
way they're going to grow. It's exactly the opposite, because
we are competitors are agile and fast and they're slow
and moving like I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, So we touched a bit on AI and as
(28:56):
you can imagine was possible coming up very soon in
a couple of weeks time. It is on our agenda
as well. Everybody wants that, everybody needs an opportunity to
talk about this. My impression is there's so much noise
around still telling people what the changes might be in
the future, but there is a gap of real case studies,
real learnings, especially from the last couple of years or
(29:18):
weeks or months. And you, I'm sure you ask for
you inside so many times on AI? Is there a
question which comes up over and over and what could
be a question people are not asking about AI that
they should be So maybe give us also a kind
of advice and our audience for the event in a
couple of weeks time, how we should cover this.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
I will basically say, hey, look, here are my five
points out make on AI. Number one is, despite everything
we have heard, AI is still under hyped.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It's not overhyped.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
In the forty years that I've been working here, including
seeing everything from digital to internet to mobile, this thing
is bigger than all of those things combined and moving
much f and I have a lot of data to
show that The second is AI itself is going to
be a commodity like electricity, and companies aren't going to
(30:11):
go running around saying we're differentiating ourselves because of AI.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
No company will be able to operate without AI.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
But no company will differentiate themselves with AI because I
don't go around and saying reshart to back while at
LLC is better than Christian MUKA LLC right because I
use electricity. Well, Christian also uses electricity unless he's in
a romantic dinner with his wife with candlelight. He doesn't
work through candlelight. Right. So when people say AI is
(30:41):
going to be my differentiator, I said, really, well, everybody
is going to have exactly the same AI and usually
from the same seven l N models. Okay, you put
some of your unique data. That's number two. So AI
is under hyped. Aas don't going to be a differentiator.
The third one is this that in effect what a
lot of people are rightly focusing on. And there are
(31:02):
some initial experiences by the way of AI A making
things more efficient and be making things more effective. So
for instance, it could do versioning of creative much faster,
and it could actually make much more interesting personalized messaging
(31:27):
to even have more effective So you'll be cheaper in
producing and more impactful with the customer consumer viewer. So
those are important, and there are lots of cases and
they will continue to grow, I believe. And this is
one that I was asked to run a workshop at
the ib ALM where you and I met most recently,
I mean we met me often, but most recently ten
(31:48):
twelve days ago, And my thing there to a bunch
of marketers and other leaders was just the third one
that we should be focusing on, not just the first two.
First two are important, by the way, there's the third one.
We are not focusing en half off, which is not
just effectiveness and efficiency, but existential opportunity and risk.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And what do I mean by existential opportunity and risk?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I think AI is such a huge deal that it
will allow a company to rethink its entire business, but
it will also put itself at risk with someone who
starts with a fresheet of paper. So someone who starts
with a fresheet of paper and says I've got modern marketplaces,
modern talent streams, and modern AI, I'm coming after you,
(32:37):
they might come up with some very interesting ideas to
take you on. And this is the version, This is
the equivalent, it's not the exact equivalent.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Today.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I would say there's a very good likelihood that five
years from now there will be only three significant automobile
companies in the world, and their names are going to
basically be Tesla, Uber, and Weimo from Google and maybe
some Chinese equivalent of that. Okay, but in the US
(33:09):
it would basically be those three Ten years ago, General Motors,
Ford Teyota were not thinking about any of these three companies, correct,
And all of these three companies basically said, ask the
following three questions, and these are called existential questions. So
number one is the future of cars electric or internal
(33:33):
combustion engine? Could the future of cars not be about
hardware but about software? And third is do you actually
need to buy a car? So think of people running
these companies, what were their background? Hardware engineers, salespeople, and
financial people. So somebody came around and said, I'm starting
with the sheet of paper. I'm going to come and
(33:53):
disrupt you. And today, even without the Trump bump, Tesla
was worth five hundred billion dollars more than the next
ten companies in the space, and the market has seen it.
Now that's going to happen with AI in every category.
And so the idea that I basically say is, don't
just think about efficiency. Just don't think about effectiveness, think
(34:17):
about existential opportunity to reimagine your business or existential threat.
And in the digital world, the example I gave is
very simple. In the digital world, in two thousand and two,
I gave a talk to the newspaper society of some
newspaper deal that was invited to speak to, and I
(34:38):
basically said, ladies and gentlemen, you must readvent your industry
because your real competition is this company that you're not
paying attention to called Google. And it laughed at me.
They were much bigger at that time. Okay, Google hadn't
gone public. It was just before Google had gone public.
Two years later, Google was bigger than the entire newspaper industry.
Now it's very interesting. Let's suppose you when the newspaper
(34:59):
industry and I told you about digital, and you thought
about digital like AI, Oh, that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
How do I make it more efficient and effective?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So? How do I make my printing presses work faster?
And how do I make my trucks the logistics of
my truck moves so that they can deliver newspapers faster
with less fuel. That's being efficient and effective. But the
existential risk an opportunity was you don't need trucks or
printing presses, right, And that is what most companies are
not paying attention to, which is you're making an existing
(35:30):
business model more efficient and effective. Yes, you need to
do that, but could it be that your business model
itself makes no sense in the new world.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So you also said, AI of course provides a different
level of access to knowledge, and it will be cost free.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Knowledge will be completely free, so it'll be absolutely free.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So what does it means for all type of advisors
in today's world? And we talk about the agency world,
the consultancy world, what about yourself as a kind of advisor.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
So yes, what basically happens is the good news is well,
knowledge will be free, insight, intelligence, and wisdom will not
that's number one. Yeah, But there is a real threat
and it's one of the reasons that the advising part
of my business is becoming smaller and smaller because I've
sort of decided that that might be the one that's
most under threat, and some other parts of it are
(36:19):
currently growing, but even they might come under threat. You know,
my book could be better written maybe by the next
generation of you know, CHFGPT or whatever. But I'll tell
you what the big difference is. This, what is basically
happening is if you're most senior and let's say a
consulting company and the consulting companies have three things that
(36:40):
are really really I mean, consulting companies have lots of
skill sets. But let's look at a McKenzie or a
Bane or a BCG, all of whom I know well.
And they're amazing companies with amazing talent. But what do
they actually sell. They sell three things. One is they
sell a body of knowledge and case studies through power
point techs. Second is they sell CYA cover your ass
(37:04):
the sea already knows what they want. They need to
cover your ass person, okay. And the third thing is
they sell the crystallized intelligence of their senior people who
have seen so many things that they can connect dots
and new ways. So I believe the connect dots and
new ways and cover your ass part of their business
is safe as long as there's still human beings running
(37:25):
these companies, right. But the other part of their business,
which is selling knowledge and databases and putting them all
together in interesting ways. That is a significant threat. And
to see that, and you already begin to see it.
Almost every consulting company has delayed by a year many
of the new people that they're taking in and have
(37:47):
reduced the number of partners. So you're already seeing that.
But to really see the threat to the white collar industry,
you don't have to basically go to the consulting companies.
You have to go to the law firms. Because the
law firms are completely based on knowledge that's gone before, right,
so everything is based on precedent. And what they had
(38:08):
is they had lots of young associates who came from
law school who spent five, six, seven years learning the
law and precedent, and then they became you know, junior
partner or whatever the hierarchy was. Now their whole stuff
is I got chat, GPT or more importantly, what's really
impressive for those people who haven't tried it, you know,
try right now deep research from open Air.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
I haven't tried that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
I've been playing because that came out about four five
years ago and I've been running around, but I've been
using prior to that, Google Deep Research and they can
turn out such amazing decks so fast. So in effect,
I think the law firms and the consulting firms will
still be needed, but they'll be much smaller. Okay. And
(38:51):
here's the issue, the fact that consulting firms are not
adding significant number of employees when they is a littually
a bonanza.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Of work because of AI.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So every company is asking them, the McKenzie and main
and BCG about AI. So the demand is going through
the roof, but they're not seeing the same amount of
people being hired. So you're seeing already and there's demand
for AI will not go forever through the roof.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Then what happens?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
So I would basically say, I would almost you know.
And that's that was a theme in my first book.
So my first book had a chapter called how to
upgrade your Mental Operating System. I now basically advise people
how to upgrade your mental and emotional operating system. Okay,
because the left part of our brain is going to
(39:41):
be done easier by the machine. And I have an
advanced degree in math, I know it's going to be
done easier by the machine. The part of the business
that's messy, which has to do with people and emotions
and provenance and design and feeling will be what we'll
still be at. And so it'll be how AI plus
HI work. But HI is not just human intelligence, but
it's human intuition, human imagination, human insight. So to that,
(40:05):
and then the last thing I would sell people is
because a lot of people say, how do you future
proof your career? So I said, here's what I'm trying
to future proof my career. And I haven't had a
forty two year career, but I hope to have another
ten to fifteen year career. And I'm always scared that
I'll be irrelevant tomorrow. And I said, the fact that
I'm running around scared to depth that I'll become irrelevant
tomorrow and you, who are in your mid thirties and
(40:28):
forties aren't makes me either think that I'm stupid or
you're not awake one of those two. And maybe I'm stupid, Okay,
But I said, yes, what I would do, I would
basically spend time to learn the sixties and the six
sies I tell people is cognition. Spend an hour a
day learning creativity, which is connecting dots and due ways.
What you do right Curiosity by asking new questions. And
(40:52):
the other is we're going to be working with other
people in these alien machines, so collaboration, convincing, which is
how do you sell because everyone will have the same data.
And the last thing, which is kind of very old school,
is go back to school and learn how to write
and speak because you have to be a really good
writer a very good speaker otherwise people will read the
crap that comes out of these machines.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
To be a storyteller, right, this is what we still love.
So obviously we already moved into this core area of
your new book, rethinking work for those who haven't had
a chance to bite yet or to read it yet,
tell people what is this all about? And also covering
the five forces, the five trends you came up with,
you know, which defines that huge impact to all of
(41:34):
today's work.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
So very much.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Simply, the reason I wrote the book is because I
began to realize that there are three things that.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Keep people happy.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, and the things that keep people happy tend to
be physical and mental health, quality of relationships, and meaning
and purpose at work. So if you have a good job,
you're getting paid well, you enjoy yourself you're pretty good. Relationships,
you're not pretty good life. To have a good life
is pretty high. What I also began to realize is
(42:04):
that if you have a meaningful and good job, you're
likely to live longer and you tend to have better relationships.
So work becomes very central. But work will change more
between twenty twenty and twenty thirty than it has in
the previous fifty years. And people basically are fixating on
one thing, which is the least important of the five shifts,
(42:26):
which is the impact on COVID on where you worked.
And so this book basically says, wake up and smell
the coffee. Work is changing, and even if COVID never
happened and no one thought about where you worked, work
would change dramatically this decade, more than it has before.
So that's where identify the five forces, and the five
forces are one is societal changes, like for instance, aging populations.
(42:51):
The only group that's growing older outside of Africa is
older people, so you know, they're twenty million people over
eighty in Japan, over three hundred million people over sixty
in China, eleven two hundred people turn sixty five every
day in the United States. The second is declining populations
outside of seven countries. This year, the population of the
(43:15):
most countries will be the same or decline. In the
United States, it takes two point one children per mother
to keep the population the same. The people who currently
live in the United States, they make one point six
children per mother. So if the United States population is
not going to decline from three thirty three to two
hundred and fifty million in the next twenty five to
(43:36):
thirty five years, you're going to have to let it immigrants.
So nobody's talking about this, which is like, hey, without immigration,
the US becomes a fast declining country. And you say,
what are you talking about? I said, go look at
Korea point eight children per mother. You look at one
point one the demographic problem of China, look at what's
happening in northern Europe, even Spain one point three. Why
(44:00):
that has to do with work is if you have
fewer and fewer workers, and you have older and older workers,
you might want to think about how you think about work.
And then there's mindset differences. So young people would like
the money and power of the old people, but they
don't want to be like the old people. So they
basically believe people who are seasoned like me, I call
(44:22):
myself seasoned versus old. May have made too many fostian
bargains to have a good life. We gave up too
much to get what we had, And there's stuff is
we can do it differently. But here's the other one.
Seventy six percent of gen Z want to work for themselves.
They don't want to work for a bus. So there's
these these changes. There's obviously technology changes, of which AI
(44:43):
just happens to be one, there's lots more. Third is marketplaces,
the ability for you and I to do things like
plug into marketplaces. You are basically utilizing a technology called riverside,
which is the same thing that I use. We're basically talking.
You know, I don't know whether you're in New zeal
in Miami or where you are. But the reality of
it is when I do my podcast, I'm anywhere in
(45:05):
the world, my guests are anywhere in the world, my
showrunner is in Costa Rica, and my studio is in London. Yeah, okay,
So this cloud based services change work. Then obviously the
rise of gig work, where people don't realize is two
out of three people who are young today who have
a full time job in America have a side gig
or side hustle with which they are making money. So
people are planning optionality. And then there's COVID. But COVID's
(45:28):
impact is not on where you work. That's the least important.
It's what we think about work. So what we're now
asking a question, which is, yes, work is important, but
so is life. So how do I integrate the two.
But I'm not going to basically lift to work, right,
I need to figure out how to fit work into
my life. I don't need to figure it out how
(45:49):
to fit life into my work. And obviously all those
are connected. You now have the ability to do basic things.
And one of the reasons why small companies are growing
so fast is because everyone has figured out that there's
a new world order that you could do pretty much
anything you want with modern technology, with modern ecosystems, with
(46:10):
modern marketplaces, with modern mindsets. And that is fundamentally what
the book says. But then what's particularly interesting. When I
was writing the book, I had twelve CEOs read the
book chapter by chapter who was writing them to get
their feedback, and at the end of it, they basically said,
you made us see things that we've never seen before, right,
(46:30):
because I don't have a screen, I said, I'm just
giving you facts like I'm not working for anybody. You
can't call me back into the office, or I can
make my own office. It doesn't matter for me. But
I'm just giving you facts as to where you're looking.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
That wasn't super description of And I'm sure everybody's super
excited to get this book and to jump right in.
And obviously with all these multi level changes, it feels
like it won't be called work anymore. Right, we talked
about the work life balance in some way at the beginning.
I don't think with doing several jobs at the same time,
especially with the younger generation, that we won't go back
(47:05):
into the office as we all knew this, et cetera,
et cetera. It won't be called works. It will become
part of life. And also this description or this term
will disappear.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
I tell you one of the things that will disappear
before work disappears, the term that will disappear is a job.
So jobs will disappear. There will be tasked to be done,
problems to be solved, opportunities to be explored. And when
we do that, some people will might call it work,
others will call it medi but you know, passion, pursue it, craft,
(47:37):
whatever it is. But that's, you know, one of those
key things. And what I find particularly interesting, and this
is for the people who are like more sedia like
I used to be, or middle management. This book is
actually very encouraging for middle management and senior people because
in effect, one of the things that basically says is
not only can we all update ourselves, but some of
(47:58):
the knowledge we have, which is this crystallized intelligence, is
very hard for the b sheets to replicate some of
the knowledge we have, which is just you know, so
our experience might be all the things we've gotten, our
expertise is what's important to be able to connect dots.
The experience is knowing all where the dots are that
the machines will have, but how to connect them in
(48:20):
a world where you have to deal with people, we will.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Have, right, So, Richard, one of the final questions I
have for today is which is really interesting for me?
What's one belief or lesson you once held strongly but
have since rethought Because we are all part of this,
you know, changes, as we said, and were evolving every
day as well. Is there anything you strongly believed in
(48:43):
recent years where you thought, okay, that needs to be revalued,
that needs to be rethought. I mean, this is no
longer you know, I can share with my audience because
it feels no longer valid or relevant.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
So there are many things.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
That I rethink, and in fact, part of what I
think to a certain extent has kept me somewhat relevant
is I've sort of rethought things. But year is one
that I think we're going to struggle with coming up
in one which I have myself rethought. The one I've
rethought is I always used to think that in order
(49:21):
to get access to people and to have a positive career,
you needed to work for a company. And what I've
discovered is you don't need to. And it isn't only
people of my seasoning, which who's already built a reputation
on a network. I see a lot of people doing that.
I'm not suggesting people leave their companies, but the opportunities
(49:45):
and options out there are far bigger than I ever
used to think. That's number one. Here's the other thing
that I think that a lot of people are going
to have to think about, which is most of us
have thought for years and years that we are marketing
to people, and then sometimes we used to think maybe
we're marketing to an algorithm through which we're going to
(50:06):
get to people. I believe we're about to see that
we're going to be marketing to agents that represent the people.
And I don't call an agent an agent. I've had
this amazing term because what I do is I have
a lot of different people around the world teaching me.
So literally, I have five hours a week set aside
for world class people to teach me. So one hour,
(50:29):
for instance, is my publicist window where top people from
publicists come and say here's why you're stupid. Okay, not
top people, they're talented people, which is maybe different than top,
but one of them the other day basically said, hey, Richard,
there are two things you want to think about. Number
one is we may not be marketing to people, will
be marketing to agents. But don't call agents agents because
(50:51):
it sounds really thing. Call them chief of staff. So
each of us are going to have a chief of staff,
which will be an agent, and people will have to
talk to our chief of staff. But our chief of
staff is deeply rational versus emotional, and I basically be
saying the one way to sell is through sell through emotion.
So I'm now big need to say, is that true anymore? Right?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
In a story and spreadsheet world?
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Could the spreadsheet overwhelm the story because I've got a
chief of staff versus a human being that I'm dealing with,
you know, sort of one of the issues.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
The other one is the following.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Most of what we've basically been thinking about in the
modern world of media has been the world of search
and the world of streams. So when you think about
how we interface with digital media, it's either through a
search thing including chat, GPT or perplexity or Google Search,
whatever it is, or through streams right TikTok, metter x
whatever it is on Netflix streams, So those are the streams.
(51:47):
What happens when the future is conversations, all marketings, conversations.
Why shouldn't I be able to ask questions, interrogate the
company or my chief of staff, interrot they get the company.
What happens in the world when we go from not
only obviously search will be there, streams will be there,
but now you've got conversations and what happens in the
(52:08):
world where instead of basically just talking to people. We're
talking to the a chief of staff, which happens to
be these alien life form machines call AI. And I'm
sitting out there and this is the only time that
I basically like the fact that I've become seasoned, which
is my whole stuff is Oh shit, that's such a
hard problem. Thank god I don't have to solve it.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
But you delivered so much advice also in this what
is it nearly an hour or so we talk about today,
and I feel it could go on and on and
there would be so much more value for leaders, young people,
everybody who is in this let's call it sil work
environment of course, that we think about their careers, doesn't
matter what age. It was an absolute masterclass this conversation.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
And thank you very.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Much, Ed, Well, thank you for inviting me, and for
the people who are listening. It'd be great if you
buy my book, you know, cos whatever, if it's in
India it's four hundred repees. In the US, it's twenty
nine dollars because they haven't still discounted it anywhere. But
let's suppose you can't afford to or you don't want to, Okay,
I think the book is great. I'm not saying this
the other stuff I'm about to tell you to replace
(53:15):
the book. It won't. But a lot of what I
truly believe, like you question and a lot of other
senior people who have been fortunate to do well, is
a lot of joy I get is from teaching people
and giving stuff away for free. So I write my
Sunday Substack, which you know, which is now read by
thirty thousand people every Sunday, and that's free. And then
I have this podcast where you were a guest and
(53:36):
I've talked to a lot of different people, which is
also free, and so you can listen to the podcast.
We learned from a lot of smart people, not me.
You can hear from my writing, and my writing is
sometimes about other people, so it's not about me either.
And then you know, maybe you'll become so successful you
can buy the book, but you don't have to buy
the book to get free stuff. That's right.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
There are so many different ways to get access to
all your insights and wisdoms, but ideally you do all
of it right. Because it's a different format, it's a
different intensity.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
People who read my book love it to people who
read my book there's the best of my thinking on
a particular topic. But there's an additional edge to it,
which is really cool. I've had world class editors, fact checkers,
aline people, so it's actually one hundred percent legal, one
hundred percent fact checked, edited because that's what HarperCollins does.
(54:28):
So you can trust everything in the book. Would you
may not able to trust something in my substack. There's
nobody fact checks it. This is one Everything is fact.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Checked, and the beauty is people have a choice, but
there is no excuse. You get access to at least
some of all your insights in different ways, and our
recommendation and my recommendation to our audience is tried out.
If you're not subscribing already, it is definitely worth so
we shall thank you so much. It's been an honor
and I can't wait for our next conversation and a
(54:57):
lot of more insights coming from you. Thank you so much,
Thank you, Thanks for tuning in everyone once again. I'm
your host, Christian More. If you have a question or
suggestion to me, reach out send me DM on LinkedIn.
If you're curious to learn more about possible sign up
for our newsletter, or if you want to join us
at the Possible Show in Miami. Visit Possible event dot com.
(55:21):
Possible Now is a co production of iHeartMedia and Possible.
Our executive producers are Ryan Martz and Yasmin Melandez. Our
supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special thanks to Colleen Lawrence
Mack from our programming team. Our theme music is composed
by Anthony Kellacoli. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
(55:41):
iHeart app Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to possible Now. Some people predict the future, others
shape it. My today's guest has spent his career doing
both and is someone I not only deeply respect, but
also genuinely enjoy talking to, because every conversation with him
leaves you thinking in new ways. Richard Tobakowala has spent
(00:24):
decades shaping how we understand business, marketing, and the future
of work. He became a global key leader at Publicis
Group and lived through the massive transformation and the area
of mergers, consolidation and disruption of the ad industry firsthand.
But to call him an ad executive would be like
calling Da Vinci a painter. It barely scratches the surface.
(00:49):
What I love most about Richard is that he never
stops evolving, always questioning, always rethinking. Since twenty nineteen, he
has embraced a new role as the thought leader, advisor,
guide and author, helping companies and individuals and navigate change.
His books Restoring the Soul of Business and Rethinking Work
(01:10):
offer deep insights. While his sub stack The Future does
not fit into the containers of the past and podcast
What Next are Must Follows. Risha has a rare ability
to make complex shifts in business and society feel clear,
even inevitable. He doesn't just talk about the future. He
helps us see it, understand it, and most importantly, navigate
(01:33):
this And today we get to tap into that wisdom. Risha,
my friend, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Christian, thank you for that amazing introduction. Now hopefully we'll
have a conversation that tries to make that introduction somewhat
sane and not insane. I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm pretty sure, Risha, and we always kick off this
podcast with a personal question and hopefully information to share
with our audience. In your case, you worked with some
of the biggest names in business, You advise leaders, you
wrote books that challenge how we think about work and life.
But I'm couriers and I'm sure everybody else as well.
What's something small, maybe even ordinary, that brings you joy
(02:14):
every day?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, there are many, many things, And in fact, today
I was listening to a podcast that basically said, there
are three reasons people are happy. One of them happens
to be Oh, what a good life is, And it's
a combination of happiness, meaning, and new experiences, which is
kind of interesting. But in the happiness phase, which is
(02:37):
the question you have. Yeah, they basically say, there are
big things that make you happy, like when you get married,
you get promoted, But the things that really make you
happy on long term basis is not the intensity of
the happiness but the frequency. So if you can have
fine happiness in small things, which is very much what
you basically mention at any given day, I have a
(02:57):
lot of small things, but the ones that seem to
be every day is I love working out, so I
either swim or run or you know, do some weights.
It's become a daily habit. It's almost an addiction, but
it gives me, you know, great joy. I also, interestingly
(03:18):
love reading, and I set aside an hour every day
to read regardless, I call it my reading hour. And
the other thing that gives me a lot of joy is,
you know, spending time with my family. So right now
I'm in New York. My wife is in India visiting
her mom, and I'm hanging out with our two daughters
(03:39):
in New York City.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
And so those things, which is you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Know, family, a little bit of keeping myself mentally sane
and physically saying so I basically talk about those three
as the physical, mental, and emotional operating systems, and I
try to basically utilize or experience them daily, and that
makes everything else, even when things don't go right. When
(04:04):
I was like in real business and you had tough clients, etc.
It made you do okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And you can also follow those kind of routines when
you're traveling because you travel a lot, you do for decades.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I travel a lot. I keep track of my flights,
and as someone who is self employed and not working
for a company, last year, I did ninety five flights.
These are flight segments, not ninety five trips. And this year,
which is you know, we're five or six weeks, six
weeks into the year, I've already.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Done fifteen, oh man.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And so I have a feeling that I might track
and break my record, which was Publicist. My record when
a particular year at Publicist was one hundred and twenty five,
and I think I will break it this year with
what I can see, assuming health stays okay.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah, obviously this there's a good reason behind and quite
often I know from our previous talks, you know, you
try to combine business with some good private reasons, you know,
like you said, visiting your daughters in New York, or
do some troops as your wife. But mainly it's about business.
And I always interviewed once and I said, receiving so
many miles or points or whatever it's called, depending on
(05:20):
the airline, that's not an award because it means normally
you spend a lot of time on your own, yes,
sitting in airplanes and launches and hotel rooms, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, and people know that I like dragging, like adding
stuff to every place I go, and I usually go
with one of usually with my wife, and so sometimes,
like recently, someone wanted me to come to Panama City
and they basically said, hey, we will fly you and
your wife. Will you come if we fly you and
(05:48):
your wife? So I said, okay, that's interesting, of course
I will. So I'm going at the end of this
month for three days to Patama City with her. So,
you know, it's kind of interesting, which is my whole
stuff is talk about sort of work life balance, and
it's really work life integration more than work life balance.
And in my particular case, it's become sort of a
(06:10):
passion about making things happen. And then you know, with
people I'm passionate about, and that doesn't have to be
my family. It's basically friends and lots of people. You
and I have known each other, and so I like
spending time with people, which you can also do and
meet lots of different people as you go around the world.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, thank you for sharing this, Richard. People Also, as
I described in my introduction, people call you a consultant,
call you a futurist, a strategist, and of course more
than that, and all of those fit. That's my impression.
But if you had to choose just one title that
describes what you're currently doing, what would it be.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So it's actually a sentence versus a word, and the
sentence is I help people see, think and feel differently
about how to grow themselves, their team and their business
or some combination of those. So the idea really is
it's about growth, but to help either an individual or
(07:08):
a team or a company grow. But the value I
add is I leave them feeling different about how they
were thinking about things, but not different in a way
that they're oh, I didn't think about it completely correct.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
What am I going to do?
Speaker 2 (07:26):
It's just say, if you look at it from this
particular angle, you might find a new type of solution.
And so what I try to basically do is sort
of give people a gift if that's what it is
of forty two years of my experience, and try to
do it in every interaction. And usually what that leaves
(07:49):
them with is I feel I have grown. So usually
when I talk to a company or a person or
a team, you know, my idea whether I have been
productive and successful is if they think they have grown
due to that interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right right, And obviously quite often this is just a
hidden kind of you know, issued solve or solution to find,
but you're definitely one who digs it out for them
in their individual case.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And if there was a word, if there was a
single word, yeah, you know I've had been forced a
single word, not a sentence, it would be reinventing, reinventing.
I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I like that. So we definitely come to your recent
books and your key messages along with that in a second.
But you also spent decades in the ad industry, especially
with agencies. In the nineties and early two thousands, the
ad industry saw massive consolidations, mergers, acquisitions, everything shrinking into
a few players and it's history repeating itself right now?
(08:54):
Or do you see significant differences? I mean, especially when
we think about the agency world, the consultant the world.
You are self employed, you run your own business. Now,
is this so different compared to what you've seen years ago?
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Well, what it is is consolidation has always happened, and
in some cases consolidation has happened and then there's been deconsolidation.
There were these big, massive conclomerations of like General Electric, right,
which then deconsolidated. There was the original Travelers, which included
(09:29):
City and a few other places, and they deconsolidated. On
the other hand, because of global markets, because of the
cost of technology, because of the importance of data, the
need for the buyer to have scale based pricing cost advantages,
(09:50):
there has been, I think, definitely in the marketing services industry,
a major drive to consolidation. And I was just reading
a statement which I believe is true because I not
only read the statement, but the option to speak to
this gentleman in person when we were together about two
three weeks ago. And in the advertising business in the
(10:18):
I think a lot of twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
ninety percent of all the pitches were won by the
top four companies, and in the last quarter, and I
don't define, I don't exactly what the last quarter is.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Maybe it was a fourth quarter of twenty twenty four,
one hundred percent were won by the top four. I'm
talking about the bigger pitches, not like you know, the
local store, et cetera. And now those four are becoming three.
And you used to even remember among big holding companies
used to have. There used to be like seven and
(10:54):
you would have names like Havas and then so and
now look like it's going to be an omnicopg WPP
and publicists world. But that's one way of looking at it.
But at the same time, because marketing services has become
very broad, I would say it's also an Accentia world
(11:15):
and a Deloittte world, right, And on the edges you
might say it's a Google and Meta world too.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So we're back to the seven.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
But the seven are no longer necessarily the agencies holding companies.
Three of them are agency holding companies that have survived, right,
And there are four other providers who work and deliver
a whole bunch of marketing services to clients.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Okay, my impression was similar. But at the same time
I also felt that the independents, which the bigger independent
agencies stag Wold for example, Yeah, Horzon and many more,
are more visible than ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yes, So what basically happens is the way I defied
them is you have these and it's a chapter in
my book, not specifically to the advertising industry, but where
things are going to go. I basically say that what
we're going to have is the ecosystem of most industries
is going to be whales and plankton, and then occasionally
(12:16):
there's going to be a squid. So the way I
describe a whale in a plankton is YouTube is a whale.
If you think about it, the creator who makes money
and uses YouTube is a plankton, and the ecosystem feeds
off each other. The wheel takes thirty percent of the
(12:38):
revenue of the plankton. The plankton could not be global
without the whale. And then once in a while there are,
like is a squid. So while there is this consolidation
at the top, to your point, there also happens to
be a little bit different. But what happens is the
reason I call it a squid, and I don't. It's
(13:00):
something in between a wheel and a plankton, like a
half wheel half blankton is Being in the middle without
differentiation is death, okay, because you neither have the scale
based advantages of the large players nor the agility and
expertise of the two three ten person company. So if
(13:21):
you see it today, Stagwell s for bran Tech, those
are three companies, right, so off the three from outside.
And again I'm no longer in the industry, so I'm
not one hundred percent sure what I'm saying. Sometimes I
don't pay that much attention. It appears that S four
(13:43):
try to be a scale based player without scale and
has suffered deeply because of it, and Stagwell has tried
to be more like a squid and has done okay
because of it. And I'm not sure exactly where bran
Tech is. But what you're basically seeing is often what
a client might ask.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Is or in any particular company, can I get.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The smart people who are available in small places at
independent and can I then bundle them with these large players?
Speaker 3 (14:18):
And so then if you're a middle player.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You have to explain what you're doing in the movie, right,
and so I think what you're going to have is, yes,
there will be continued there will be the middle level.
But everywhere, including in the world of Germany, and Germany's
industrial base was really built on the middle, the middle
stat is having big problems because you have to be
(14:42):
big or you have to be small. Anything in between
doesn't seem to work. And I think that's what you're
basically seeing is one of the reasons, by the way,
that you're seeing a lot of middle sized companies being acquired. Okay,
so just in the last year, among many things, you know,
Public has acquired firms like Mars and Influential, and each
(15:05):
of those were not small companies. There were five hundred
plus companies, five hundred employees, two thousand employee companies. I mean,
Mars was very big. And so what happens is people
are beginning to realize that they have to be stay connected.
And that's one of the things I've sort of learned.
Even me, who I works like, I'm a one person
quote unquote company, if that's me, But if you see
(15:26):
who I work with and how I work, I'm a
plank and I stay very close to the whales, including
the clients who are whales, because by myself I wouldn't
be able to survive.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And the fun part is that we know that the
next wave, the next development, the next change, is ahead
of us. So maybe just the beginning of this wave
with this type of consolidation, but it will change again
in a couple of years time. This is what we know,
but maybe not know exactly how it will look like then.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah. And in fact, if I were to basically say
where the advantage is going to go, yeah, I think
the advantage is going to go to the small players.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Sometimes, would you agree shifts just shifting priorities and shifting opportunities.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Well, there's a reason, and the reason basically is is
because the small players. And it's one of the things
in my book that between twenty twenty March and twenty
twenty three March in the United States, all the net
employment growth was in companies with less than a thousand people,
(16:25):
all of it okay, And today apparently in a matter
is going to lay off five percent of its non
productive players. The demand for software engineers has fallen, and
so what you're basically beginning to see is AI is
now the stone that allows David to bring down Goliath.
And what people don't realize is AI is actually an
(16:50):
advantage to the small versus the large. Yes, you need
the large scale en videos and Taiwan Semiconductor, but I
can prove to any com company that I have better
AI than a Fortune five hundred company. Who is it,
you know, either Google or someone like that. And that's
primarily because it's only cost twenty dollars a month two
(17:10):
hundred dollars a month to access world class technology.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So you've mentioned AI, You've mentioned the potential benefits for
the smaller and not just the bigger. So let's talk
about this. In your first book, which I think you
published during COVID, Restoring the Soul of Business, you argue
that companies thrive when they balance data and technology with
human intuition, creativity, and empathy to create meaningful growth and innovation.
(17:35):
In today's AI driven world, do you think businesses are
getting better or worse at striking that balance?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So I believe what will happen is businesses were getting
better at striking that balance and then recently have sort
of gone backwards for a variety of reasons. But they
are now waking up in one of the reasons they
went backward is because a they believed that they could
use AI to replace people. They began to believe that
(18:10):
the labor capital or labor to people who hire employee
to company balance of power was going back to the company.
And they basically began to believe that for a variety
of reasons. Even before the recent elections in the United States,
it's pretty prevalent all over the world that DEI was
(18:32):
a bad word. Okay, So the whole idea was power
is coming back to me. AI will let me replace you.
DEI is a bad word, and so there was this
tendency to go back to the bad ways or old ways.
It may not be bad ways, I ins them bad
ways when we're old ways. I think every single company
(18:55):
who's doing that is going to get the shock of
their lives in twenty twenty five. I'm not even saying
twenty six, twenty twenty seven. They are going to get
a shock because almost no senior management, no very few
senior management know what's about a hit him, okay, in
the world of work, and including in the world of AI. So,
for instance, here are three things that they say which
(19:16):
are absolute crap crap, Okay, and they go around saying
it and my whole stuff is like, someone's going to
stop you. So Number one, I am going to have
an AI strategy to succeed. That's number one. Number Two,
I am going to use AI as a differentiator. Number three,
everybody come back to the office five days a week
or you're fired. So okay, thank you very much. Now
(19:39):
let me understand this simple questions.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Simple thing.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
You as a company go running around saying your personalization
agile and flexible, and now what you've just basically done
is you've forced everybody with a one size fits all
model to come back to the office regardless of the
client needs. It's regardless of the seniority, regardless of their
(20:03):
life issues, regardless of what actually it is. So the
fact you're basically saying you're going to be agile, flexible,
and personalized, but you're not going to do it for
the people who actually create all those agile, personal and
flexible that's BS, which meant you don't know what agile,
flexible and personalization is. Number two is this whole idea
(20:23):
of I'm king and my whole thing or queen, my
old stuff is, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, the issue is
not that people don't want to come back to the office.
I'm a big believer and in person interaction. It doesn't
have to be in the office, says I remind people.
When I was in the company, when we wanted to
creative brainstorming, we'd go to off sites. When we wanted
(20:44):
to learn and network. We've got to things like possible
or bars and network and restaurants. So none of the things.
And by the way, there's no water coolers. Also at
these places. This whole idea of people running around to
a water cooler, those also don't exist. So this is
total bs, total bs. Right, So my old stuff is
that that isn't happening. So that's the other the city
(21:05):
thing that doesn't matter. But here's a problem. It's not
the place that they're not coming back to. They don't
want to come back to you, lady and gentlemen, because
we've entered an age of de bossification.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Nobody wants you.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
That's your issue if you're if you're not in the office,
people will come back, right, which is which is one
of the interesting things.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So obviously, boss, how do you describe is not the
best thing in the world. Being a typical boss. So,
but let's talk about leaders. I've heard recently a great
interview where do you make the point between those two
groups of people and a boss and a leader and
senior executives. That's called it like this, So please explain
this in a way that everybody really understands.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Okay, So here's what happens.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
So a boss is somebody who at the core operates
through a zone of control. And by a zone of control,
they basically monitor, measure, allocate, delegate and check it. That's
what they do. And by the way, you need every
leader needs to have some of those boss like tendencies.
(22:08):
You can't operate a company without some of those. But
many of these things, people who are bosses spend seventy
eighty ninety percent of their time doing that. What does
the leader do? Yes, the leader needs to do some
of that, maybe twenty five to thirty percent of their time.
A leader bills, creates, solves, sells, inspires, guides. Okay, So
(22:33):
my basic belief is if we had a few more leaders,
people would go to where the leaders are, whether they're
in an office or in a cave. But you can
basically be a boss, give free food in an exotic
office somewhere and people won't come. The problem simply is,
and that's one of the examples I give is the
animals have left the cage. Regardless of what meat you
(22:55):
put in there, they're not coming back.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Okay, so get over get over it.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
The whole idea is it's a rejection of the old way,
So just get over it.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And then you're saying it's independent from the size of
a company, you know, with more reporting and controlling.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Its incompletely independent of the size of a company.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And by the way, I've done so much research with
so much data, including modern what's going on? So let
me give you three pieces of information which everyone's hiding
from everybody.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Number one, many of these companies who are forcing people
back five days into the office really aren't expecting that
to happen. They're using it to do severance lay off
without severans. That's what they're doing. That's what Amazon was doing,
That's what everybody was doing. Okay. Now let me give
you another thing. According to analysis that I've seen, Omnicom
(23:47):
and IPG and maybe WPP grew about twenty percent since
COVID to now in headcount and basically got rid of
between twenty and thirty percent of their real life state. Okay, okay, So,
by the way, if everybody comes into the office, they
don't fit. That's already happening at Amazon. So there's a
(24:07):
bullshit like your physical infrastructure doesn't defend it. You're trying
to get people. But here's the other one that most
people don't realize.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Probe.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I went to all these people and said, are you
really making one size fits model for everybody?
Speaker 3 (24:21):
And they said not really.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
In most companies, about thirty percent of the teams are
allowed to do whatever they want. Okay, and so in fact,
this is not a one size fits model, right, it's
completely ps what they're saying about. Unfortunately, the way they're
doing it is they're alienating people for no reason because
they're not actually following such draconian things. There's almost no
(24:45):
company that's following such a draconian thing that their announcement.
This is the first time I've heard of companies putting
out a PR statement that's worse than their product. Usually
you put out a PR statement that's better than your product.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yep, right, None of.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
These leaders are doing anything like five days a week
for everybody.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
None of them.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
And I remind also the leaders because I used to
be one.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Remember I told you.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
One hundred and forty four flights a year, or one
hundred and twenty five flights. Where do you think I was.
I wasn't in the office when I was flying around.
I wasn't flying into our offices. Yeah, once in a
while I might flew into Paris because my boss was there.
But I wasn't flying around. I was flying to see
people and clients. Never in the office, right. I was
going to conferences to learn things.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
I was doing all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
So the reality of it is most of the leaders
don't operate out of the office that they're forcing people
back into. So when you actually listen to them, you
begin to realize how craddy the thinking is. And then
the other stuff that's really important is I don't even
care where somebody works. My basic belief is if I
was starting a company tomorrow, I do two things. Number One,
(25:53):
I probably pull my team together all together for maybe
twenty five thirty days every day besides the weekends ease.
I wanted to build relationships, understand culture, etc. And then
I say, okay, we'll get together maybe one week every quarter,
let's go forth and prosper right, But the other one
is this. This is the other thing that's important. Ask
any C level executive with everything they know today, including
(26:18):
the rise of AI, four generations at work, modern technology marketplaces,
would any company start being located in one place by
expensive real estate, limiting their talent to people who can
move into that real estate. Zero And that's the companies
they're going to be competing with in the future. So
(26:41):
my whole thing is strategically you're wrong, Emotionally you're wrong.
Talent whyse you're wrong, And by the way, where you
work is irrelevant to the future of work anyway, So
you don't even understand what that is going on. And
now you're saying you want to be a leader.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
This is great to hear in many ways because I
one hundred percent agree with you. And also because as
we started possible at the company behind during COVID and
of COVID, it was exactly the situation described. We had
no office. We technically still don't have our office. I
mean now we got acquiet last year, so now, of
(27:14):
course the company can provide an office, but my people
are not going back three, four or five days a week.
We are still a remote team as we started and
we started and make this created this business without any
physical office, and we met maybe once a quarter in person.
And this is exactly how you described it, right.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
And by the way, the two other things that are
very interesting because because of my graduate degree advanced mathematics,
everything I do remember a story and spreadsheet. I have
the story, but I got better spreadsheets than anybody with data, yes,
three pieces of data. I just read the most recent
McKinsey study. Across the United States, the average number of
(27:54):
people white collar workers go to work is three point
two out of five days. After all this noise, it's
still only three point two or of five. That's number one.
Number two is a majority of the fast growing companies
and small companies tend to have zero to one day.
And so one of the reasons you see these large
companies bring like donkeys, okay, is because they're no longer
(28:17):
growing and they think by forcing people back is the
way they're going to grow. It's exactly the opposite, because
we are competitors are agile and fast and they're slow
and moving like I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, So we touched a bit on AI and as
(28:56):
you can imagine was possible coming up very soon in
a couple of weeks time. It is on our agenda
as well. Everybody wants that, everybody needs an opportunity to
talk about this. My impression is there's so much noise
around still telling people what the changes might be in
the future, but there is a gap of real case studies,
real learnings, especially from the last couple of years or
(29:18):
weeks or months. And you, I'm sure you ask for
you inside so many times on AI? Is there a
question which comes up over and over and what could
be a question people are not asking about AI that
they should be So maybe give us also a kind
of advice and our audience for the event in a
couple of weeks time, how we should cover this.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
I will basically say, hey, look, here are my five
points out make on AI. Number one is, despite everything
we have heard, AI is still under hyped.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
It's not overhyped.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
In the forty years that I've been working here, including
seeing everything from digital to internet to mobile, this thing
is bigger than all of those things combined and moving
much f and I have a lot of data to
show that The second is AI itself is going to
be a commodity like electricity, and companies aren't going to
(30:11):
go running around saying we're differentiating ourselves because of AI.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
No company will be able to operate without AI.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
But no company will differentiate themselves with AI because I
don't go around and saying reshart to back while at
LLC is better than Christian MUKA LLC right because I
use electricity. Well, Christian also uses electricity unless he's in
a romantic dinner with his wife with candlelight. He doesn't
work through candlelight. Right. So when people say AI is
(30:41):
going to be my differentiator, I said, really, well, everybody
is going to have exactly the same AI and usually
from the same seven l N models. Okay, you put
some of your unique data. That's number two. So AI
is under hyped. Aas don't going to be a differentiator.
The third one is this that in effect what a
lot of people are rightly focusing on. And there are
(31:02):
some initial experiences by the way of AI A making
things more efficient and be making things more effective. So
for instance, it could do versioning of creative much faster,
and it could actually make much more interesting personalized messaging
(31:27):
to even have more effective So you'll be cheaper in
producing and more impactful with the customer consumer viewer. So
those are important, and there are lots of cases and
they will continue to grow, I believe. And this is
one that I was asked to run a workshop at
the ib ALM where you and I met most recently,
I mean we met me often, but most recently ten
(31:48):
twelve days ago, And my thing there to a bunch
of marketers and other leaders was just the third one
that we should be focusing on, not just the first two.
First two are important, by the way, there's the third one.
We are not focusing en half off, which is not
just effectiveness and efficiency, but existential opportunity and risk.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And what do I mean by existential opportunity and risk?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I think AI is such a huge deal that it
will allow a company to rethink its entire business, but
it will also put itself at risk with someone who
starts with a fresheet of paper. So someone who starts
with a fresheet of paper and says I've got modern marketplaces,
modern talent streams, and modern AI, I'm coming after you,
(32:37):
they might come up with some very interesting ideas to
take you on. And this is the version, This is
the equivalent, it's not the exact equivalent.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Today.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I would say there's a very good likelihood that five
years from now there will be only three significant automobile
companies in the world, and their names are going to
basically be Tesla, Uber, and Weimo from Google and maybe
some Chinese equivalent of that. Okay, but in the US
(33:09):
it would basically be those three Ten years ago, General Motors,
Ford Teyota were not thinking about any of these three companies, correct,
And all of these three companies basically said, ask the
following three questions, and these are called existential questions. So
number one is the future of cars electric or internal
(33:33):
combustion engine? Could the future of cars not be about
hardware but about software? And third is do you actually
need to buy a car? So think of people running
these companies, what were their background? Hardware engineers, salespeople, and
financial people. So somebody came around and said, I'm starting
with the sheet of paper. I'm going to come and
(33:53):
disrupt you. And today, even without the Trump bump, Tesla
was worth five hundred billion dollars more than the next
ten companies in the space, and the market has seen it.
Now that's going to happen with AI in every category.
And so the idea that I basically say is, don't
just think about efficiency. Just don't think about effectiveness, think
(34:17):
about existential opportunity to reimagine your business or existential threat.
And in the digital world, the example I gave is
very simple. In the digital world, in two thousand and two,
I gave a talk to the newspaper society of some
newspaper deal that was invited to speak to, and I
(34:38):
basically said, ladies and gentlemen, you must readvent your industry
because your real competition is this company that you're not
paying attention to called Google. And it laughed at me.
They were much bigger at that time. Okay, Google hadn't
gone public. It was just before Google had gone public.
Two years later, Google was bigger than the entire newspaper industry.
Now it's very interesting. Let's suppose you when the newspaper
(34:59):
industry and I told you about digital, and you thought
about digital like AI, Oh, that's really cool.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
How do I make it more efficient and effective?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So? How do I make my printing presses work faster?
And how do I make my trucks the logistics of
my truck moves so that they can deliver newspapers faster
with less fuel. That's being efficient and effective. But the
existential risk an opportunity was you don't need trucks or
printing presses, right, And that is what most companies are
not paying attention to, which is you're making an existing
(35:30):
business model more efficient and effective. Yes, you need to
do that, but could it be that your business model
itself makes no sense in the new world.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
So you also said, AI of course provides a different
level of access to knowledge, and it will be cost free.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Knowledge will be completely free, so it'll be absolutely free.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
So what does it means for all type of advisors
in today's world? And we talk about the agency world,
the consultancy world, what about yourself as a kind of advisor.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
So yes, what basically happens is the good news is well,
knowledge will be free, insight, intelligence, and wisdom will not
that's number one. Yeah, But there is a real threat
and it's one of the reasons that the advising part
of my business is becoming smaller and smaller because I've
sort of decided that that might be the one that's
most under threat, and some other parts of it are
(36:19):
currently growing, but even they might come under threat. You know,
my book could be better written maybe by the next
generation of you know, CHFGPT or whatever. But I'll tell
you what the big difference is. This, what is basically
happening is if you're most senior and let's say a
consulting company and the consulting companies have three things that
(36:40):
are really really I mean, consulting companies have lots of
skill sets. But let's look at a McKenzie or a
Bane or a BCG, all of whom I know well.
And they're amazing companies with amazing talent. But what do
they actually sell. They sell three things. One is they
sell a body of knowledge and case studies through power
point techs. Second is they sell CYA cover your ass
(37:04):
the sea already knows what they want. They need to
cover your ass person, okay. And the third thing is
they sell the crystallized intelligence of their senior people who
have seen so many things that they can connect dots
and new ways. So I believe the connect dots and
new ways and cover your ass part of their business
is safe as long as there's still human beings running
(37:25):
these companies, right. But the other part of their business,
which is selling knowledge and databases and putting them all
together in interesting ways. That is a significant threat. And
to see that, and you already begin to see it.
Almost every consulting company has delayed by a year many
of the new people that they're taking in and have
(37:47):
reduced the number of partners. So you're already seeing that.
But to really see the threat to the white collar industry,
you don't have to basically go to the consulting companies.
You have to go to the law firms. Because the
law firms are completely based on knowledge that's gone before, right,
so everything is based on precedent. And what they had
(38:08):
is they had lots of young associates who came from
law school who spent five, six, seven years learning the
law and precedent, and then they became you know, junior
partner or whatever the hierarchy was. Now their whole stuff
is I got chat, GPT or more importantly, what's really
impressive for those people who haven't tried it, you know,
try right now deep research from open Air.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
I haven't tried that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
I've been playing because that came out about four five
years ago and I've been running around, but I've been
using prior to that, Google Deep Research and they can
turn out such amazing decks so fast. So in effect,
I think the law firms and the consulting firms will
still be needed, but they'll be much smaller. Okay. And
(38:51):
here's the issue, the fact that consulting firms are not
adding significant number of employees when they is a littually
a bonanza.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Of work because of AI.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So every company is asking them, the McKenzie and main
and BCG about AI. So the demand is going through
the roof, but they're not seeing the same amount of
people being hired. So you're seeing already and there's demand
for AI will not go forever through the roof.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Then what happens?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
So I would basically say, I would almost you know.
And that's that was a theme in my first book.
So my first book had a chapter called how to
upgrade your Mental Operating System. I now basically advise people
how to upgrade your mental and emotional operating system. Okay,
because the left part of our brain is going to
(39:41):
be done easier by the machine. And I have an
advanced degree in math, I know it's going to be
done easier by the machine. The part of the business
that's messy, which has to do with people and emotions
and provenance and design and feeling will be what we'll
still be at. And so it'll be how AI plus
HI work. But HI is not just human intelligence, but
it's human intuition, human imagination, human insight. So to that,
(40:05):
and then the last thing I would sell people is
because a lot of people say, how do you future
proof your career? So I said, here's what I'm trying
to future proof my career. And I haven't had a
forty two year career, but I hope to have another
ten to fifteen year career. And I'm always scared that
I'll be irrelevant tomorrow. And I said, the fact that
I'm running around scared to depth that I'll become irrelevant
tomorrow and you, who are in your mid thirties and
(40:28):
forties aren't makes me either think that I'm stupid or
you're not awake one of those two. And maybe I'm stupid, Okay,
But I said, yes, what I would do, I would
basically spend time to learn the sixties and the six
sies I tell people is cognition. Spend an hour a
day learning creativity, which is connecting dots and due ways.
What you do right Curiosity by asking new questions. And
(40:52):
the other is we're going to be working with other
people in these alien machines, so collaboration, convincing, which is
how do you sell because everyone will have the same data.
And the last thing, which is kind of very old school,
is go back to school and learn how to write
and speak because you have to be a really good
writer a very good speaker otherwise people will read the
crap that comes out of these machines.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
To be a storyteller, right, this is what we still love.
So obviously we already moved into this core area of
your new book, rethinking work for those who haven't had
a chance to bite yet or to read it yet,
tell people what is this all about? And also covering
the five forces, the five trends you came up with,
you know, which defines that huge impact to all of
(41:34):
today's work.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
So very much.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Simply, the reason I wrote the book is because I
began to realize that there are three things that.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Keep people happy.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, and the things that keep people happy tend to
be physical and mental health, quality of relationships, and meaning
and purpose at work. So if you have a good job,
you're getting paid well, you enjoy yourself you're pretty good. Relationships,
you're not pretty good life. To have a good life
is pretty high. What I also began to realize is
(42:04):
that if you have a meaningful and good job, you're
likely to live longer and you tend to have better relationships.
So work becomes very central. But work will change more
between twenty twenty and twenty thirty than it has in
the previous fifty years. And people basically are fixating on
one thing, which is the least important of the five shifts,
(42:26):
which is the impact on COVID on where you worked.
And so this book basically says, wake up and smell
the coffee. Work is changing, and even if COVID never
happened and no one thought about where you worked, work
would change dramatically this decade, more than it has before.
So that's where identify the five forces, and the five
forces are one is societal changes, like for instance, aging populations.
(42:51):
The only group that's growing older outside of Africa is
older people, so you know, they're twenty million people over
eighty in Japan, over three hundred million people over sixty
in China, eleven two hundred people turn sixty five every
day in the United States. The second is declining populations
outside of seven countries. This year, the population of the
(43:15):
most countries will be the same or decline. In the
United States, it takes two point one children per mother
to keep the population the same. The people who currently
live in the United States, they make one point six
children per mother. So if the United States population is
not going to decline from three thirty three to two
hundred and fifty million in the next twenty five to
(43:36):
thirty five years, you're going to have to let it immigrants.
So nobody's talking about this, which is like, hey, without immigration,
the US becomes a fast declining country. And you say,
what are you talking about? I said, go look at
Korea point eight children per mother. You look at one
point one the demographic problem of China, look at what's
happening in northern Europe, even Spain one point three. Why
(44:00):
that has to do with work is if you have
fewer and fewer workers, and you have older and older workers,
you might want to think about how you think about work.
And then there's mindset differences. So young people would like
the money and power of the old people, but they
don't want to be like the old people. So they
basically believe people who are seasoned like me, I call
(44:22):
myself seasoned versus old. May have made too many fostian
bargains to have a good life. We gave up too
much to get what we had, And there's stuff is
we can do it differently. But here's the other one.
Seventy six percent of gen Z want to work for themselves.
They don't want to work for a bus. So there's
these these changes. There's obviously technology changes, of which AI
(44:43):
just happens to be one, there's lots more. Third is marketplaces,
the ability for you and I to do things like
plug into marketplaces. You are basically utilizing a technology called riverside,
which is the same thing that I use. We're basically talking.
You know, I don't know whether you're in New zeal
in Miami or where you are. But the reality of
it is when I do my podcast, I'm anywhere in
(45:05):
the world, my guests are anywhere in the world, my
showrunner is in Costa Rica, and my studio is in London. Yeah, okay,
So this cloud based services change work. Then obviously the
rise of gig work, where people don't realize is two
out of three people who are young today who have
a full time job in America have a side gig
or side hustle with which they are making money. So
people are planning optionality. And then there's COVID. But COVID's
(45:28):
impact is not on where you work. That's the least important.
It's what we think about work. So what we're now
asking a question, which is, yes, work is important, but
so is life. So how do I integrate the two.
But I'm not going to basically lift to work, right,
I need to figure out how to fit work into
my life. I don't need to figure it out how
(45:49):
to fit life into my work. And obviously all those
are connected. You now have the ability to do basic things.
And one of the reasons why small companies are growing
so fast is because everyone has figured out that there's
a new world order that you could do pretty much
anything you want with modern technology, with modern ecosystems, with
(46:10):
modern marketplaces, with modern mindsets. And that is fundamentally what
the book says. But then what's particularly interesting. When I
was writing the book, I had twelve CEOs read the
book chapter by chapter who was writing them to get
their feedback, and at the end of it, they basically said,
you made us see things that we've never seen before, right,
(46:30):
because I don't have a screen, I said, I'm just
giving you facts like I'm not working for anybody. You
can't call me back into the office, or I can
make my own office. It doesn't matter for me. But
I'm just giving you facts as to where you're looking.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
That wasn't super description of And I'm sure everybody's super
excited to get this book and to jump right in.
And obviously with all these multi level changes, it feels
like it won't be called work anymore. Right, we talked
about the work life balance in some way at the beginning.
I don't think with doing several jobs at the same time,
especially with the younger generation, that we won't go back
(47:05):
into the office as we all knew this, et cetera,
et cetera. It won't be called works. It will become
part of life. And also this description or this term
will disappear.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
I tell you one of the things that will disappear
before work disappears, the term that will disappear is a job.
So jobs will disappear. There will be tasked to be done,
problems to be solved, opportunities to be explored. And when
we do that, some people will might call it work,
others will call it medi but you know, passion, pursue it, craft,
(47:37):
whatever it is. But that's, you know, one of those
key things. And what I find particularly interesting, and this
is for the people who are like more sedia like
I used to be, or middle management. This book is
actually very encouraging for middle management and senior people because
in effect, one of the things that basically says is
not only can we all update ourselves, but some of
(47:58):
the knowledge we have, which is this crystallized intelligence, is
very hard for the b sheets to replicate some of
the knowledge we have, which is just you know, so
our experience might be all the things we've gotten, our
expertise is what's important to be able to connect dots.
The experience is knowing all where the dots are that
the machines will have, but how to connect them in
(48:20):
a world where you have to deal with people, we will.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Have, right, So, Richard, one of the final questions I
have for today is which is really interesting for me?
What's one belief or lesson you once held strongly but
have since rethought Because we are all part of this,
you know, changes, as we said, and were evolving every
day as well. Is there anything you strongly believed in
(48:43):
recent years where you thought, okay, that needs to be revalued,
that needs to be rethought. I mean, this is no
longer you know, I can share with my audience because
it feels no longer valid or relevant.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
So there are many things.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
That I rethink, and in fact, part of what I
think to a certain extent has kept me somewhat relevant
is I've sort of rethought things. But year is one
that I think we're going to struggle with coming up
in one which I have myself rethought. The one I've
rethought is I always used to think that in order
(49:21):
to get access to people and to have a positive career,
you needed to work for a company. And what I've
discovered is you don't need to. And it isn't only
people of my seasoning, which who's already built a reputation
on a network. I see a lot of people doing that.
I'm not suggesting people leave their companies, but the opportunities
(49:45):
and options out there are far bigger than I ever
used to think. That's number one. Here's the other thing
that I think that a lot of people are going
to have to think about, which is most of us
have thought for years and years that we are marketing
to people, and then sometimes we used to think maybe
we're marketing to an algorithm through which we're going to
(50:06):
get to people. I believe we're about to see that
we're going to be marketing to agents that represent the people.
And I don't call an agent an agent. I've had
this amazing term because what I do is I have
a lot of different people around the world teaching me.
So literally, I have five hours a week set aside
for world class people to teach me. So one hour,
(50:29):
for instance, is my publicist window where top people from
publicists come and say here's why you're stupid. Okay, not
top people, they're talented people, which is maybe different than top,
but one of them the other day basically said, hey, Richard,
there are two things you want to think about. Number
one is we may not be marketing to people, will
be marketing to agents. But don't call agents agents because
(50:51):
it sounds really thing. Call them chief of staff. So
each of us are going to have a chief of staff,
which will be an agent, and people will have to
talk to our chief of staff. But our chief of
staff is deeply rational versus emotional, and I basically be
saying the one way to sell is through sell through emotion.
So I'm now big need to say, is that true anymore? Right?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
In a story and spreadsheet world?
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Could the spreadsheet overwhelm the story because I've got a
chief of staff versus a human being that I'm dealing with,
you know, sort of one of the issues.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
The other one is the following.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Most of what we've basically been thinking about in the
modern world of media has been the world of search
and the world of streams. So when you think about
how we interface with digital media, it's either through a
search thing including chat, GPT or perplexity or Google Search,
whatever it is, or through streams right TikTok, metter x
whatever it is on Netflix streams, So those are the streams.
(51:47):
What happens when the future is conversations, all marketings, conversations.
Why shouldn't I be able to ask questions, interrogate the
company or my chief of staff, interrot they get the company.
What happens in the world when we go from not
only obviously search will be there, streams will be there,
but now you've got conversations and what happens in the
(52:08):
world where instead of basically just talking to people. We're
talking to the a chief of staff, which happens to
be these alien life form machines call AI. And I'm
sitting out there and this is the only time that
I basically like the fact that I've become seasoned, which
is my whole stuff is Oh shit, that's such a
hard problem. Thank god I don't have to solve it.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
But you delivered so much advice also in this what
is it nearly an hour or so we talk about today,
and I feel it could go on and on and
there would be so much more value for leaders, young people,
everybody who is in this let's call it sil work
environment of course, that we think about their careers, doesn't
matter what age. It was an absolute masterclass this conversation.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
And thank you very.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
Much, Ed, Well, thank you for inviting me, and for
the people who are listening. It'd be great if you
buy my book, you know, cos whatever, if it's in
India it's four hundred repees. In the US, it's twenty
nine dollars because they haven't still discounted it anywhere. But
let's suppose you can't afford to or you don't want to, Okay,
I think the book is great. I'm not saying this
the other stuff I'm about to tell you to replace
(53:15):
the book. It won't. But a lot of what I
truly believe, like you question and a lot of other
senior people who have been fortunate to do well, is
a lot of joy I get is from teaching people
and giving stuff away for free. So I write my
Sunday Substack, which you know, which is now read by
thirty thousand people every Sunday, and that's free. And then
I have this podcast where you were a guest and
(53:36):
I've talked to a lot of different people, which is
also free, and so you can listen to the podcast.
We learned from a lot of smart people, not me.
You can hear from my writing, and my writing is
sometimes about other people, so it's not about me either.
And then you know, maybe you'll become so successful you
can buy the book, but you don't have to buy
the book to get free stuff. That's right.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
There are so many different ways to get access to
all your insights and wisdoms, but ideally you do all
of it right. Because it's a different format, it's a
different intensity.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
People who read my book love it to people who
read my book there's the best of my thinking on
a particular topic. But there's an additional edge to it,
which is really cool. I've had world class editors, fact checkers,
aline people, so it's actually one hundred percent legal, one
hundred percent fact checked, edited because that's what HarperCollins does.
(54:28):
So you can trust everything in the book. Would you
may not able to trust something in my substack. There's
nobody fact checks it. This is one Everything is fact.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Checked, and the beauty is people have a choice, but
there is no excuse. You get access to at least
some of all your insights in different ways, and our
recommendation and my recommendation to our audience is tried out.
If you're not subscribing already, it is definitely worth so
we shall thank you so much. It's been an honor
and I can't wait for our next conversation and a
(54:57):
lot of more insights coming from you. Thank you so much,
Thank you, Thanks for tuning in everyone once again. I'm
your host, Christian More. If you have a question or
suggestion to me, reach out send me DM on LinkedIn.
If you're curious to learn more about possible sign up
for our newsletter, or if you want to join us
at the Possible Show in Miami. Visit Possible event dot com.
(55:21):
Possible Now is a co production of iHeartMedia and Possible.
Our executive producers are Ryan Martz and Yasmin Melandez. Our
supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special thanks to Colleen Lawrence
Mack from our programming team. Our theme music is composed
by Anthony Kellacoli. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
(55:41):
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