March 19, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of The Changing State of Talent Acquisition, we sit down with Rishad Tobaccowala—author, speaker, and strategist with 37 years of leadership experience at Leo Burnett and Publicis Groupe—to explore the shifting dynamics of work in the age of AI and digital transformation.
Rishad shares insights from his books Rethinking Work and Restoring the Soul of Business, diving into the rise of task-based employment, the growing trend of fractional roles, and how both individuals and companies must adapt. We discuss:
- Why the traditional full-time job is evolving into a modular, task-based system
- The "Company of One" mindset and how fractional employment creates flexibility for both companies and workers
- How companies can foster strong cultures without relying on physical office presence
- The six essential skills individuals need to stay relevant in the AI-driven future of work
If you've ever wondered what the future of employment looks like—and how to prepare—this episode is a must-listen.
Connect with Rishad Tobaccowala:
- Books: Rethinking Work & Restoring the Soul of Business
- Newsletter: rishad.substack.com
- Podcast: What Next?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent
Acquisition, where your hosts,graham Thornton and Martin Cred,
share their unfiltered takes onwhat's happening in the world
of talent acquisition today.
Each week brings new guests whoshare their stories on the
tools, trends and technologiescurrently impacting the changing
state of talent acquisition.
Have feedback or want to jointhe show?
(00:21):
Head on over to changestateio.
And now on to this week'sepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right and we're back with another episode of the
Changing State of TalentAcquisition Podcast.
Super excited for our nextguest, rashad Tabakawala.
Rashad has an incrediblebackground as an author, speaker
, teacher, advisor with manydecades of experience helping
companies through really anincredible transformation.
So you know, rashad, superexcited to have you on the show.
(00:47):
Thank you for having me.
So I'm going to start with aneasy question.
I think you've had a prettyincredible career journey.
I'd love it if you can just setthe stage for our audience,
maybe talk a little bit moreabout your early days in Bombay
to your leadership roles inHooblaSys Group, you know.
Maybe just explain briefly howthose experiences have shaped
your perspective on work today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Fantastic.
So I grew up in the city ofBombay, india, which is now
known as Mumbai.
I got a degree in advancedmathematics.
I then came to the Universityof Chicago to get an MBA.
It was then called the GraduateSchool of Business.
It's now called the Boot Schoolof Business and in 1982, I
joined what was then the largestadvertising agency in the
(01:33):
United States, but it was uniquein the fact that it was the
largest but it was based inChicago, it had no other offices
, it was privately held and itonly had 32 clients.
That was called Leo Burnett andI thought I'd spend two, three
years there and the reason Ijoined them in addition to the
fact that I was interested inwhere strategy and culture
(01:54):
intersected and that tended tohappen in the world of marketing
broadly, and I thought acompany like Leo Burnett would
expose me to a lot of differentmarketing companies because they
had and still have clients likea McDonald's and a Kellogg's
and various others.
One thing led to another and Iended up spending my entire
(02:17):
career full-time working careerat what was Leo Burnett, or what
eventually ended up being thePublicis Group, which is what
bought Leo Burnett.
So 1982 to 2019 was myfull-time career, which is 37
years Now.
What is particularly interestingis the last time my business
(02:39):
card said Leo Burnett was inabout 1994.
Leo Burnett was in about 1994.
So between 1982 and 1994, Iworked for Leo Burnett and then
I spun out a section of LeoBurnett and we called it Giant
Step.
It was a new agency focused oninteractive and digital.
(02:59):
We even left the Leo Burnettbuilding, took the name off the
door and I helped grow that fromabout three employees to 100,
no revenue to about 10 million,and then came back.
I didn't leave Leo Burnett asan employee, I remained a Leo
Burnett employee.
I was just everybody else was agiant step employee.
I built that company.
It was majority owned by LeoBurnett.
(03:20):
Then I was asked to come backto help Leo Burnett Media become
Starcom and I at thatparticular stage also launched a
unit called Starcom IP, whichwas a digital unit, and Starcom
eventually merged with anothercompany called MediaVest.
We then got bought by thePublicis Group in 2002.
So this is 20 years into mycareer.
(03:41):
And then we formed what wasknown as the Publicis Media
Company, which was ZenithOptiMedia and Stockholm
MediaVest at that time, and Iwas the chief strategy and
innovation officer of thatcompany.
So now it's 20 years into mycareer and I've worked at, you
know, leo Burnett, giant, stepStockholm and Publicis Media.
(04:02):
And now it gets really excitingbecause at that particular
stage, working with the CEO atthat time of Publicis, a
gentleman called Maurice Levy onthe board I suggested we needed
to be more digital than we were, and so we ended up acquiring
companies like Digitas andRazorfish, which were very large
(04:24):
companies at that time andstill are, and we formed a unit
that connected both Digitas,razorfish and Publicis Media,
which we call Viviki, and Iended up being the strategy and
innovation officer of that.
And then Maurice asked me to bethe chairman of Digitas and
Razorfish and then about youknow, it was in 2012, he asked
(04:52):
me to have a new role, workingwith him across the group
globally, to be the chiefstrategist and growth officer of
the group, and at that stage webuilt the strategy which you
see today, which is verydata-driven oriented.
We bought companies like Epsilonand companies like Sapient and
in 2019, after 37 years thereand two years after Maurice
(05:16):
stepped up to become thechairman, I started my second
career, which was a career whereI helped people see, think and
feel differently about growingthemselves, their teams and
their business.
But I moved from being one ofthe senior people in then 86,000
person company and now 106,000person company to being the only
(05:38):
employee of a one personcompany, which is me.
And so today what I do is I dothis thing about helping people
see, think and feel differentlyabout growing themselves, their
talent or their teams or theircompany, by doing it in three
ways One to many, which is afancy way of saying I have a
podcast, a sub stack, and I'vewritten two books, one of which
(06:01):
is called Rethinking Work, whichI'm sure we'll touch on, and
the first one, which we may alsotouch on, is called Restoring
the Soul of Business to Human inthe Age of Data.
So that's my one-to-manyOne-to-some is a fancy way of
saying I do keynotes, executiveoffsites and workshops or panels
, which is where we met at HRBrew.
And then, last one is advisory,which is one-to-one and it's not
(06:24):
consulting, it's more advisory.
And one of the people Icontinue to advise six years
after I have left is thepublicist group.
So that's what I do today andit's now 43 years into a career
and I am still keeping busy.
As you know, yesterday I was inAustin.
Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrowI'm in Chicago.
(06:45):
Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrowI'm in Chicago, where I'm based,
and tomorrow the flight will benumber 24 this year, and we're
not yet halfway through March.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Wow, wow.
Your backstory sort of speaksfor itself, rashad, it's really
a treat to have you here.
I think we were talking beforethe podcast about some natural
connections between the three ofus, chicago being the sort of
locus of it.
But I started a business 20years ago with my business
partner.
It was a market research firmand she kind of cut her teeth at
(07:14):
Leo Burnett.
Her name is Carol Phillips.
I don't know if you crossedpaths, it might not have been
your time.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I know Carol Phillips very well.
I mean I've lost touch with herrecently, but Carol and I
worked on the Heinz business.
She was the supervisor on HeinzSketchUp and I was the
supervisor on what was thencalled Heinz Pet Products.
So that's how we knew eachother.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Wow, well, I'll have to tell her later.
I'm sure she'll be thrilled toknow that we connected in this
fortuitous way.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, tell her.
I'd love to reconnect and giveher my email.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Well, people didn't tune in to hear us wax about our
personal connections, but thatis a really special one.
So I thank you for making thatconnection.
You're welcome.
I would love it if you couldtell us a little bit more about
this idea of you.
Know we're in this well.
We've been in this digitaltransformation you could call it
for probably decades.
At this point we're at aninflection point right now, it
(08:05):
seems, where AI is sort of thenext iteration of that.
It might be a sea change, butthese are not new ideas and
you've been thinking about themfor a while.
And I'm just wondering,reflecting on the 37 years or
however long you said it was ofyour career so far.
I mean you have to have seendramatic change.
Even talking to my colleague,carol, you know she started at a
time where you had everythingon paper, you know, before email
(08:27):
existed, and now we're in aworld where we're afraid
computers might do all theknowledge work.
So why don't you get interestedin this idea of human
connection in an increasinglydata-driven world?
Maybe it would be a place tostart.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Sure.
So you know I got interested inthis particular world in just
before I started Giant Step.
I was working for Leo BurnettDirect Marketing and I began to
realize the logic of directmarketing made sense.
But the economics of directmarketing for many marketers did
not make sense Because in thosedays you had to find an
(09:02):
audience by buying mailing listsor catalog lists.
You then had to cut trees tocreate paper or some sort of
samples which you'd mail out andyou needed to buy postage.
And eventually I showed usingmy mathematics that for most
brands it was cheaper to reacheverybody through television
(09:25):
than find the 5%, 6% who weretheir audience through direct
marketing.
So even though you wasted 94%,supposedly, of your dollars, it
was more cost effective and thatI proved.
But at the other stage it kindof convinced me that something
was off, because I couldunderstand the logic.
And that's when I discoveredthings like CompuServe, prodigy
(09:46):
and America Online and I saidhere's a way of finding an
audience without having to buy acatalog list, here's a way of
mailing something without havingto have paper and here's a way
of getting to somebody withoutpostage.
And so I started theinteractive marketing group and
that's how my digital careerbegan.
(10:08):
But as my digital careerexpanded to Giant Step and
Digitas and Razorfish, therewere a few learnings that I've
had which have shown up both inmy first and my second book, and
one of them is that technologycannot be stopped and technology
, for all practical purposes,does not care about anybody or
(10:30):
anybody's business model.
So when you say this technologyis difficult and it is
challenging my business model,the answer is yes, it is.
You have to adapt or changeyour business.
It's not going to sit there andsay, because you don't like it,
you can't legislate against it,you can't vote against it, you
can't disconnect computers.
So as a result, the first thingwas most companies were not
(10:56):
understanding that this digitalstuff was doing a few things.
One, it was challenging theirbusiness models.
It was not stoppable.
But the third it actuallychanged the way things got done.
So I first showed it.
Like, if you looked in thenewspaper industry, which has
become a shell of itself, theydidn't take digital seriously
(11:17):
and when they did, they thoughtabout digital as ways of making
algorithms to make their trucksrun faster or their printing
presses run better.
But what digital did was itbasically said you don't need
trucks or printing presses,right, and, at the same time,
what digital convinced people,even though people were saying
content is king, which isabsolute BS.
It is how do you point tocontent that is king, so?
(11:43):
Where the money in content wentto Meta and Google and not even
to the content providers, andso those things made me begin to
understand that the future formost organizations was not only
aligning to all these digitaltrends, but dealing with the
human leaders and the humantalent who basically had to now
adapt and change.
Had to now adapt and change,and therefore I basically my
(12:09):
first book basically simply theoriginal title was called the
Story and the Spreadsheet, andit was eventually called
Restoring the Soul of aBusiness-Staying Human in the
Age of Data, and so the wholeidea is how do you combine human
and data?
Now that book continues to sellreally well, and if you read it,
it feels like it was writtenyesterday, because a book that
came out five years ago has anentire closing chapter talking
(12:29):
about AI, right, which is kindof surprising, but what it does
say is this, which is we areliving in an age where you need
technology and talent, and howyou combine them is a
combination of investment intechnology and investment in
talent.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, wow, I would love to discuss with you on this
.
I suppose one thing that comesto mind is, well, this idea that
data and stories are bothimportant.
I think when we're focused ontechnology, it's great.
I still remember I don't knowwhen this was.
You may remember maybe 10 yearsago where big data was the hot
topic Everyone was talking about.
(13:08):
Big data is here.
It's going to radically changeeverything, and now we don't
necessarily talk about big dataanymore.
It doesn't mean the ideasdidn't remain here, but we
certainly don't talk about it inthose terms, and, as a market
researcher, I can shower myclients all day long with data,
but what really actually makes adifference is telling a story
(13:32):
that connects on a human level.
And maybe that's what you'respeaking to, because I can bury
an executive in spreadsheets,but if there's not a story, then
they're not going to doanything with the conclusions.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, that's why I call it the story of the
spreadsheet, and so the ideabasically is the spreadsheet
shows you how technology can befantastic.
Stories convinces people thatthey should change and adapt and
be able to use the technologyto tell a story.
So one way of looking at what astory is and this is not my
(14:02):
definition, but I love it Astory is data with a soul.
I do like that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
No, I think that's fantastic.
Well, you know I want to talkabout a few of your you know
books, rashad, so I want to getback to your first book, but you
know one of the topics that hascome up a lot, you know to
pivot slightly, you know we havehad a couple economists on over
the last month and you knoweveryone's talking about AI and
the future of work.
You know, and you know and whatskills are going to be in
demand five, 10 years from now.
(14:30):
You know I really want to talka little bit more about you know
your perspective, though,because I think it's something
that we haven't been able todiscuss on the show, and that's
you know this really this shiftfrom full time roles to task
based work, and I think that's areal big component of what you
wrote about in Rethinking Work.
So I think probably the bestway to describe it is you've
(14:50):
talked about how traditionalfull-time roles are really
evolving into these task-basedassignments and I think, maybe
to set the stage, can youexplain what you mean to our
audience by the?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
separation of work Perfect.
Yes.
So I'm going to basically startwith a very simple analogy, and
the analogy is many, many, many, many years ago, if you wanted
to listen to a piece of music,you had to go where the musician
and the instrument was.
Then you had the phonograph andtherefore you could basically
say the musician sat somewhererecording and you heard them at
(15:26):
a different time somewhere else.
The photograph was heavy, itwas eventually replaced by
things like the Walkman, andthen what eventually happened?
In a world of digital music,not only did the song or the
piece of music get stripped awayfrom the musician, from the
instrument, from the album, fromthe device, but you now also
(15:50):
listen to it in the way youwanted it it got disconnected
from the next song.
So today we listen to music incurated or algorithmically
curated playlists.
And what do we do that for?
We do that because it's basedon a mood or a need.
We have a playlist for romantic, we have a playlist for running
(16:11):
, we have a playlist for theBeatles or whatever it is.
So if you think about it thatway, what do you think a job is?
A job is a series of tasks thathave to be done, but
increasingly, in the world thatwe're living in, why should the
tasks not be broken up and thengiven to the people who can best
(16:32):
do that task, either inside thecompany or outside the company,
or in another company, or soon,by machines and AI?
So I believe we're coming tothe end of not employment, but
we're coming to the end of jobsin many, many categories.
(16:53):
And you might say, okay, you'vebecome hysterical, you've drunk
too much, what's wrong with you?
And I'll basically say listen,there's nothing new about this.
This is exactly what happens inthe entertainment industry and,
to a certain extent, theconsulting industry.
So, if you think about theentertainment industry,
everybody basically goes to workon a gig.
(17:16):
The gig is usually a movie, atelevision show, a concert, a
play.
They go there because they cando particular tasks which they
do with other people.
You might be a best boy, youmight be a director, you might
be a caterer.
All of you all come together,you all come there and you're
(17:40):
doing that particular task.
The job is the movie or theshow, and then you go away again
to whatever the next thing is.
Consultants do the same thing.
They work for supposedly for acompany, but they move from
project to project, from city tocity partnering with other
people who have other skillsthat are necessary for that
(18:01):
client.
So we've seen this happeninginside the real world already,
when people offshore and nearshore and do all of that.
But now it's going to come downto this compartmentalization,
which basically is I needsomebody who is really good at
this, this and this Is thatperson inside my company.
(18:22):
Who are those people?
I will put them on thisparticular task to get done,
because they know how to do thattask.
So that's what this future is,and it's becoming easier and
easier, not only because of AI,but because of things like
marketplaces, where you can plugand play to anybody you want in
the world.
You can sell what you want, youcan buy what you want and
(18:43):
therefore my biggest concern inthis future of work is most
leaders and most companies arefixated on going back to 2019.
They're trying to basically putthe genie back in the bottle and
they're trying to basically saywe're going to work back in
2019, return to the office fivedays a week.
Here's my basic belief Whetheryou return to the office five
(19:06):
days a week or you have a modelthat has zero days a week,
neither of those two actuallysolve for the future of work.
They just basically solve forwhat you think your culture and
your particular areas of controlare.
And when I explain that allthis thing is just unnecessary
noise, it's got nothing to dowith the future of work.
That's when CEOs and talentleaders wake up.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, well, I think that's great and I would say to
unpack that a.
Well, I think that's great andI would say to unpack that a bit
more.
I think you even saw when COVIDhit, for example, companies
like a MasterCard would goinvesting in these big internal
programs where it was.
Hey, we have all of theseprojects that need to be done
and you know what.
What we really need to do isfind someone that can spend 10
(19:52):
hours a week, you know, workingon these.
I think that's one of thepieces.
Like you know, you saw snippetsof, you know, organizations
trying to do that, but I don'tthink anyone's been able to do
it Well.
I'm sure there are somecompanies that have, but like
companies not doing it well justyet.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Right, but companies are starting to do it.
So I'll give you an idea.
You mentioned COVID, so thecompany that I used to work for,
which I should advise.
During COVID, they saved manythousands of jobs by moving
tasks using their Marcelplatform around the world.
So they basically found therewas demand for certain things
(20:26):
where they did not have people,or not a demand where they had
people, and they basically movedthe tasks around without moving
the people.
That make sense, yeah, andincreasingly more and more
companies are doing that, and ifyou actually think about what
is happening inside even yourexisting company, whichever
company anybody works at, wealways have basically got
(20:49):
specialists to do things right,and to a great extent.
When you think about it, whatis a doctor?
A doctor basically does aseries of tasks that they're
really good at, and a dentistdoes a series of tasks that
they're really good at, and to agreat extent.
When you go to a hospital, youdon't go to any doctor unless
(21:12):
it's your general practitioner.
You go to a heart surgeon, yougo to an oncologist, and so the
reality of it is all that'sbasically happening is companies
tended not to specialize asmuch, primarily because of a
very famous rule by a guy calledRonald Coase because of a very
famous rule by a guy calledRonald Coase.
So, talking about Chicago andUniversity of Chicago, ronald
(21:35):
Coase was a professor at theUniversity of Chicago and he
came up with a thing which iswhy do firms exist?
Okay, and when I read this Istarted asking myself yes, why
do companies exist?
Especially when you work in acompany, you begin to realize
there's bureaucracy and protocoland politics and all that kind
of stuff.
And he came up with a fantasticreason why companies exist.
(21:58):
He said it's because internalfriction and drama is less than
external friction and drama.
So if individual people weretrying to get together to solve
a problem in the 1930s, 40s, 50sand 60s, it was very hard to do
so, so it was easier to workinside a firm.
But today, with marketplaces,technology, ai, I think internal
(22:24):
barriers sometimes are muchgreater than external barriers
and companies can move muchfaster and much more agilely
outside their circumstances thaninside their circumstances,
which basically means they haveto rethink how they're organized
.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Well, I think that's great and, like you know, I
think there's a I'm not sure ifyou've ever listened to Hidden
Brain podcast on NPR, but it's agreat episode called Bullshit
Jobs, I think is the name of theepisode and it basically is you
know, you know people createjobs just to you know, fill up
40 hours in the work week andlike, hey, that's not the best
(22:59):
model, but just you know, that'sjust the way we've been doing
it Right.
And you know I don't thinkpeople are paying attention.
You know as much to what youkind of just you know, talked
about this whole idea of youknow specialists at work and
like you know, yeah, you go to adoctor and like you pay for a
procedure, right, and like youknow things are carved out and
like, so I do think that there'sa lot of you know talk around
(23:21):
this now, but I do think youknow there's probably a lot of
you know this is a pretty bigyou know shift for organizations
.
You know, if you move away froma you know full-time employee
to, you know, to contract-basedwork, so like you know talk to.
You know what are, you knowwhat are the opportunities, I
suppose, or what are the risksto you know, what I think you're
suggesting is a pretty massiveshift in how we go to work today
(23:43):
.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah.
So the way I would look at itis the following I would say
there's still going to be a lotof full-time employment, it's
just the way we manage.
Those employees are going to beimportant and different, though
I believe that the most likelyform of employment in the future
will be what I call thefractionalized employee.
So let me explain today whatcompanies can do.
Companies today, to get a jobdone, combine three different
(24:08):
assets, most of them Full-timeemployees, freelancers and
contract workers.
A contract worker is afull-time employee of another
company that you hire.
So Google has more contractworkers than full-time employees
.
They hire these contract peoplewho are paid by a different
company because it saves Googlethe need to give them both
(24:30):
benefits, equity bonuses or stopand start and not have to pay
severance.
So those are the three thingswe have Now what I'm suggesting
in this new model, which therewill be a fourth type of
employee that will have to becreated and that is likely to be
the most likely type of futureemployee in a company, and that
(24:51):
is what I call a fractionalizedemployee.
So a fractionalized employee isan employee of the firm because,
in addition to getting a salaryand not just gigs, they also
happen to get 100% healthcare,which is extremely important.
But what they do is at the endof every year just like you have
these HMO PPO elections peopleask their employees would you
(25:15):
like next year to work 60, 80,or 100% of the time?
I'm just giving you that asthree numbers 60, 80, 100% and
you can decide who you want tomake that offer to.
But you say 60, 80, 100, andsay your selection will not mean
that you are automaticallyapproved, just let us know.
So people say I want to work100%, 60% or 80%, and if you
(25:37):
decide, and then they see whatthe demand for tasks are and
they see what they have, andthen they basically align and
off they go.
Now you might say why is thisinteresting?
Why is this different?
Why is this important?
So I believe that employees whoare around for a long time, or
at least for some time, helpboth build networks, build
(25:59):
cultures, build loyalty, buildallegiance and therefore having
only freelancers in a company oronly contractors in a company
is not really a company.
You need somebody.
You know you need some otherthings besides those people.
But today, with agingpopulations, childcare issues,
healthcare issues, a lot ofpeople might basically say you
(26:21):
know what I'd like to do onlythree or four days a week,
versus five days, I get ahundred percent of healthcare,
and with my other two days I get100% of healthcare, and with my
other two days I can do one ofthree or four things A.
I can spend that going back toschool.
I can spend that looking aftermy kids at this particular time,
(26:41):
looking after aging parents orI can basically focus on my gig
job, whatever that might be.
I might be running an Etsystore, I might be doing
something else.
So the benefit to the employeeis they now basically have, if
they want, they have the abilityto have optionality of income.
They're not dependent only onone thing.
They're building other skills,they're spending time with their
(27:04):
families.
The downside, obviously, is ifyou work 60%, you have 40% less
pay.
But often the choice is workingfull-time or not at all right,
and now you have this option ofhaving something in between.
With the other time you can goand try to get other ways of
getting paid.
But as importantly and this isthe most important thing for a
(27:25):
company in an AI age, make nomistake, because of efficiency
and effectiveness drives,companies in the near term will
not need as many people as theyhave.
You know the famous book that50% of jobs are bullshit.
Ai is going to show that.
Okay, and so what's going tohappen is that someone's going
(27:48):
to come around and say you knowwhat?
We don't need 1,000 employees.
We can do it with 700.
But they actually need theskills of the 1,000, but they
need the total workforce of 700.
So how do you go from 1,000 to700?
Well, one way you go is you layoff 300 people.
There's lots of costs, bothreal, financial, but massive
(28:09):
emotional and cultural costs,including the 700 left behind.
Plus, you lose the skills of300 people that you have might
have wanted because they weredifferent skills.
You do it this way and youbasically reduce your head count
, or you reduce your payroll by20 to 25, but no one's been laid
off.
Does that make sense?
And that is what the future isgoing to be.
(28:32):
The future is going tobasically be, and in my sub
stack at rishadsubstackcom, oneof the most popular things I've
written is the series called ACompany of One, and my belief is
one of the reasons I think Isucceeded besides luck and being
surrounded by amazinglytalented people was for the last
(28:52):
decade of my career, I workedlike a company of one.
I was working in a large company, but a company of one is.
I was honing and buildingspecific skills that I was well
known for future change,innovation, right.
I built a reputation for beingvery easy to work with and
generous to work with, so peoplewanted to work with me and I
(29:14):
basically built a collaborativemindset which basically helped
other people too.
And so if you build this thingfor collaboration, reputation
and skillset, you become anamazing company of one and a
company of 25,000 or 10,000 or200.
That's the mindset people haveto take and that new way of
25,000 or 10,000 or 200.
That's the mindset people haveto take and that new way of
thinking we have to adapt to,because I truly believe that
(29:38):
most companies will have feweremployees, full-time employees
by the end of this decade andboth from a company perspective
and from an employee perspective, we should prepare for it.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I like this idea offractional employees.
I think much of our audiencewill have at least heard of it
in the C-suite.
You know you talk aboutfractional CMOs, but so it's a
helpful bridge to get us to afuture of work where maybe that
model is true for people acrossthe organization and not just at
the top.
I guess what I'd ask you, ashad, is you're talking about a
(30:11):
fractional employment situationin the future?
I'm still hearing you talkabout time as the main dimension
of this.
How much of your time are yougoing to be contributing?
40% or 60%?
One thing I've been wonderingabout is is that accurate, or do
you think we're going to bepoised for a future where it's
much more about tasks and valueand not about how many hours it?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
took you.
It's going to be either or andboth.
Let me explain why.
Okay, which is what tends tobasically happen is from a
company perspective.
You obviously want tasks done,but the company wants to make
sure that you are available toget the tasks done.
So here's my basic belief.
You're running a large company,your client needs stuff done,
(30:58):
all your people are contractedand freelance and you can't find
them at the right time or whenyou do, because of demand
they're so expensive.
You can't actually run acompany anymore.
Which is the reality of it isyou eventually are going to have
to reserve people's time,because if you don't reserve
anybody's time, you don't evenhave a company.
What the hell do you have?
(31:19):
Right?
And yes, not everybody's time,some people's time, because you
need some people who areconstantly, or then you know
that they're there when yourclient has a project need.
It might not be that exactindividual, but if you have like
100 people who you basicallybought some of their time.
Now the reality of it is youmonitor over the course of the
(31:42):
year how these people are doingwhat they're doing.
These people obviously areseeing the value they're
creating, and then theybasically then you sort of
decide, hey, these people arenot actually doing too many
tasks.
We don't want them.
People are doing tasks.
They are doing them soeffectively.
I want to increase mycompensation or I can do the
same thing with less time.
So there'll always be a timeelement, and the time element is
(32:02):
not because I want to build fortime, but it's the only way
that I can actually reservetalent, because I don't know if
we're going to be in a modelwhere companies not in every
industry where companies canbasically run everything on an
auction basis, like some biddingof ad media.
(32:23):
Right, and if the whole thingwas completely bid by an auction
basis, then is there a companyat all?
Why should even a company exist?
Speaker 4 (32:32):
basis, then is there a company at all?
Why should even a company exist?
So is this like, is it a properanalogy?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
like what we see in healthcare, with people being on
call in a way.
Yes, yes, it's basically yougot to have people on call and
you have these different skillsets on call.
And the reason is this, whichis coming back to this whole
idea of storytelling and humansand soul.
Humans basically change muchslower than technology does.
That's number one and numbertwo humans basically have
(33:03):
certain needs that don't allowthem to be in a market where
they have absolutely novisibility of income.
Some people might be okay withit, but imagine, I remind people
your bills are constant, yourmortgage is constant, your rent
is constant, your food bills areconstant, right?
(33:27):
Yes, you can decide to move toeat less or eat, you know,
cheaper food, move to a new town, move to a smaller apartment,
but there's always this billthat's due.
And if you basically have billsthat are due but you have no
idea next month what your incomeis going to be, you're going to
freak out, right?
(33:48):
You're going to absolutelyfreak out unless you've got lots
of savings and everything else.
So what I'm trying to figureout is how do we get to this
model where the math says wehave to modularize but human
beings say I can't operate justas a task person sitting around
like an Uber driver.
Right?
Because, remember, one of thebig things like with, you know,
(34:12):
with even Uber drivers is theyalways, sometimes wonder there
won't be enough tasks and inmany cases, outside of a few
Uber drivers, most Uber driversdo that, do their Uber driving
as a way to supplement an income, not as their only source of
income supplement an income, notas their only source of income.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So you know, I want to double click into, you know
this, this, you know idea of afuture where it is more
task-based.
It is, you know, companies thatyou know have smaller employees
, maybe they work remote andyou're on, you know, on sort of
on call, to use that analogy,you know, to complete certain
tasks.
You know what, what skills,rashad, do you think are
essential in in this new workmodel.
But you know, like, maybe youknow equally related or
important is like when you talkabout you know, companies
(34:57):
maintaining a culture and like,hey, our company is going to be,
you know, even exist in thefuture.
Like, you know, how cancompanies maintain a culture?
You know, drive innovation,when teams really are more
dispersed, fluid, you know oncall and on call and we're not
sitting in the office 40 hours aweek.
What does that future look liketo you?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Sure.
So I'll give it from twoperspectives.
One is from the perspective ofthe talent and one is from the
perspective of leaders who aretrying to ensure that they have
cultures, and culture isimportant.
So let me start with culture.
Culture is important, but toomany companies mistake culture
with a spa and with a cult.
(35:37):
Okay, what I mean?
A spa.
So a lot of companies.
It's a little less prevalentnow, but two years ago, you know
, you'll feel good here, you'llfeel loved, you'll feel safe,
you'll be able to play music andall of that stuff.
And my old stuff is hey, listen,when I go to a spa, I pay them.
They don't pay me, right?
(35:57):
Have you been to a spa whereyou basically go to the spa and
say I want a massage, but you'regoing to pay me for the
treatment of that?
It's going to happen.
So when somebody says I'mrunning, I'm running this lovely
spa-like thing, right, my wholestuff is like that's bullshit.
This is a company, I have to dostuff, there's a marketplace
and obviously you got to treatme well and everything else, but
(36:19):
not like this.
The other is a cult.
We have a way.
It's like the Mandalorian.
This is the way right.
It's sort of like.
For those of you who seeSeverance, it's like Lumen, the
company.
Right, you have cult, but, bythe way, google's a cult, meta
is a cult and they have acompound.
The compound is where peoplecan go, which is their campuses,
(36:40):
and you need a compound for acult so that people can drink
the Kool-Aid right.
Without Jonestown, there was noKool-Aid.
So you know, and so this I needa space because it's a spa-like
thing.
I need a space because I needto have everyone together.
That's bullshit, come on.
Okay, that is nonsense.
Okay, so that is a total lackof imagination.
(37:03):
Culture is not those two thingsat all.
Let me tell you what culture is.
Culture is four things, andI've studied this in so much
detail.
It's so obvious I don'tunderstand why people don't get
it.
Once I tell you what it is,you'll say oh my God, it's so
obvious.
The first and most important fora culture is excellence.
You need people who strive forexcellent products and services,
(37:23):
excellent talent and excellentfinancial results, and if you
don't have at least two of thosethree at a given time and touch
on at least one of those threeevery three years, you're out of
business.
So excellence.
Number two you need a growthmindset where everybody's
constantly learning andupgrading their skills, and a
growth mindset versus a mindsetwhere you blame everybody else.
(37:46):
The third thing you need iscollaboration, and this
collaboration could be happeninganywhere.
And the fourth and mostimportant is you need
communication which is open andhonest communication.
So a chapter in my book my firstbook basically, it's called the
Turd on the Table.
In too many companies peoplesit around the table.
There's something brown andmoist in the center.
(38:07):
Everybody knows it's a piece ofshit, but everybody pretends
it's a brownie.
Right, and my whole stuff isthat's not a culture.
A culture is truths to power.
It says we got a problem here.
Right Now.
You give me that.
You give me open, honest.
You give me open, honestcommunication, collaboration, a
quest for excellence and agrowth mindset.
I'll show you world-classcultures.
(38:28):
Nothing to do with the space.
Okay, now, when you need aspace because I do believe in
many industries, for many levels, when you're coming in young,
when you're new, when you'recoming in, you might require
in-person interaction.
But in-person interaction canhappen at bars, restaurants,
hotels, events, lots of otherplaces.
(38:50):
So, in effect, for mostcompanies, I basically say you
need in-person interaction.
Sometimes it can vary by leveland type of job that needs to be
done.
It doesn't all have to be inthe office, because when people
come to the office they don't doin-person interaction.
They sit in cubicles with theirheadphones doing the stuff they
were doing at home.
So unless you program this inthe office, you will never earn
(39:14):
the commute.
If you don't earn the commute,you will eventually not lose
people.
So that's the thing.
On talent, what basicallyhappens is for culture, think
about growth, mindset, thinkabout collaboration,
communication and think aboutexcellence.
Now for talent themselves,that's, individuals.
How do we future-proofourselves?
So I believe there's a six-packand I tried it myself.
(39:38):
I had it doing with otherpeople and one of the things
that people you know youmentioned, carol, when I began
my career, there were nocomputers, and today I am on
Medicare, so I'm 65.
I'm older than God, I'meverybody and I go around.
I went to Google, I'm going toother places and I'm talking to
them about AI and marketing andAI in the future, and a lot of
(40:02):
people ask me how the hell doyou fool people like this?
Which is, how did you stayrelevant?
And I say I'll tell you why.
How, and this is exactly whatyou have to do, because I said
this is what I do, right, andthe people who I've had given
this advice to, when they'vedone it, it's worked.
And, by the way, in many casesI've stolen this from other
(40:27):
people when I saw how theyremained relevant.
So what are the six Cs?
The three Cs are what each ofus have to do Cognition,
curiosity and creativity.
If you don't spend an hourevery day learning, you're
becoming irrelevant, regardlessof what bullshit you're talking
about.
Okay, you don't learn, you burn.
That's number one.
Second, creativity, which meansconnecting dots in new ways.
That's very, very important.
And third is curiosity askingwhat, if, why not questions,
(40:51):
then both question the businessmodel and question what you're
doing.
The other three are because wework with other people.
One is collaboration.
The other is convincing.
When knowledge is free, how youbasically tell a story becomes
very important Field skillsconvincing.
And third and very importantly,the sixth, one of the three of
(41:11):
the collaborate or the workingwith other people is
communication skills, greatwriting skills and presentation
skills.
So my whole stuff is you wantto future-proof yourself?
You have three, four things youcan do yourself without needing
anybody.
Spend an hour learning.
Own your writing andcommunication skills, learn how
to be collaborative, and thenobviously, have curiosity and
(41:34):
creativity and upgrade yourselling skills, regardless of
your industry, country ortechnology.
That'll carry you much fasterthan learning Mandarin and
coding.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, well, there's a lot there.
I guess we're short on time,maybe to close Vishad.
I would like to zoom out a bitand talk about this idea of
meaning and purpose forindividuals, the human side of
this.
Historically, jobs have been asource of meaning and purpose
for people, or at least that'sthe theory and I think what
we've seen, and we've talkedabout it earlier, is that, as we
(42:04):
see, with the rise of bullshitjobs you gave an example earlier
you could fire 300 people weare, regardless of how we do it,
we're going to reduce theamount of time and effort that
people need to be spending doingwork compared to 50 years ago,
most likely.
Do you anticipate that theworkplace will remain dominant
(42:25):
as a place for purpose andmeaning in people's lives, or do
you think that, as a cultureand as a society, we will need
to look elsewhere for that?
Speaker 3 (42:30):
So here's what I believe.
I believe that meaningful,purposeful, rewarding work is
central to the human experience,that the quality of your
connections and relationshipsand your health are the other
two which are critical.
And the third is meaningful,rewarding work.
And if you have meaningful,rewarding, purposeful work, you
(42:52):
live longer and you don't kickthe dog at home, so it also
helps your life and yourrelationships.
But remember what I just saidpurposeful, meaningful,
rewarding work.
I did not say meaningful,purposeful, rewarding jobs.
Okay, that's the big difference.
So the reality of it is today.
(43:15):
I'm going to give you a verysimple example.
I do not have a job.
I don't have a job.
I'm unemployed.
Under that circumstances, Idon't have a job.
I don't have a job.
I'm unemployed.
Under that circumstances, Idon't have a job.
I work a lot and I do amazingstuff.
That makes me really happy, andit just so happens that it's
even more lucrative than my mostsenior position in my last job,
which is what I wasn't eventrying to do, right?
(43:38):
And what do I do?
I basically do things which Ijust told you I speak, I write,
I do a podcast, I advisecompanies, I mentor students, I
mentor people who are in careertransitions.
In some cases, I get rewardedjust through goodwill.
(43:59):
In other cases, I practice askill.
In other cases, I get rewardedjust through goodwill.
In other cases I practice askill.
In other cases I get rewardedthrough money and lo and behold,
I'm connected, I go everywhere,I don't feel alone and I've got
purposeful, meaningful,rewarding work without a job.
What's going to happen is, whenI say career of one, everybody
is going to be a gig worker andwhat's likely to happen is
(44:22):
you're going to have, hopefully,one of your gigs will be a
quote, unquote one of yourpieces.
Places of work will give youall of these like things to do
and they'll basically pay you 50, 60% of your.
You know what you need andyou'll do other things.
That's the key thing.
The big confusion that peoplehave basically done is that work
(44:43):
meaningful, purposeful work isthe same as a job.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think that's great, rashad, I'll tell you, I think
this has certainly been one ofmy favorite episodes, so I wish
we didn't have to end it.
I'm going to end it withprobably the easiest question.
We'll obviously link everythingin the show notes, but you know
where can our listeners learn alittle bit more about your work
, your books?
You know like rethinking work.
You know restoring the solarbusiness.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Absolutely so.
Let me first give you the freeversion of everything, since
people like that.
If you go to rishadsubstackcom,you will basically find a free
sub stack, free of advertising,free of subscription, where this
Sunday, I'll write my 240thSunday in a row.
So there's 240 articles on awhole bunch of different things
(45:32):
and all of them are evergreen.
None of them have dated.
Even better than that if youjust want to listen to stuff,
there's not better than that.
Different than if you want tolisten to stuff.
I host a podcast called whatNext.
You can type what Next,publicist Group.
And then, even better than that, because it's highly curated,
very well written, edited,fact-checked, are my two books
(45:53):
Rethinking Work, which came outa month ago, and Restoring the
Soul of Business Stay Human inthe Age of Data.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Awesome.
Well, we will link everythingin the show notes again.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Really appreciate you fitting us in, because we know
that you have a lot of peopletagging you in to share your
perspectives and expertise.
So really, no, no, no that'swhat I pretend.
I have nobody calling me.
So I love spending time withyou but thank you.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thank you for your thanks, rashad.
All right, thanks for tuning inas head on over to
changestateio or shoot us a noteon all the social media.
We'd love to hear from you andwe'll check you guys next week.
Welcome to the Changing State of Talent
Acquisition, where your hosts,graham Thornton and Martin Cred,
share their unfiltered takes onwhat's happening in the world
of talent acquisition today.
Each week brings new guests whoshare their stories on the
tools, trends and technologiescurrently impacting the changing
state of talent acquisition.
Have feedback or want to jointhe show?
(00:21):
Head on over to changestateio.
And now on to this week'sepisode.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right and we're back with another episode of the
Changing State of TalentAcquisition Podcast.
Super excited for our nextguest, rashad Tabakawala.
Rashad has an incrediblebackground as an author, speaker
, teacher, advisor with manydecades of experience helping
companies through really anincredible transformation.
So you know, rashad, superexcited to have you on the show.
(00:47):
Thank you for having me.
So I'm going to start with aneasy question.
I think you've had a prettyincredible career journey.
I'd love it if you can just setthe stage for our audience,
maybe talk a little bit moreabout your early days in Bombay
to your leadership roles inHooblaSys Group, you know.
Maybe just explain briefly howthose experiences have shaped
your perspective on work today.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Fantastic.
So I grew up in the city ofBombay, india, which is now
known as Mumbai.
I got a degree in advancedmathematics.
I then came to the Universityof Chicago to get an MBA.
It was then called the GraduateSchool of Business.
It's now called the Boot Schoolof Business and in 1982, I
joined what was then the largestadvertising agency in the
(01:33):
United States, but it was uniquein the fact that it was the
largest but it was based inChicago, it had no other offices
, it was privately held and itonly had 32 clients.
That was called Leo Burnett andI thought I'd spend two, three
years there and the reason Ijoined them in addition to the
fact that I was interested inwhere strategy and culture
(01:54):
intersected and that tended tohappen in the world of marketing
broadly, and I thought acompany like Leo Burnett would
expose me to a lot of differentmarketing companies because they
had and still have clients likea McDonald's and a Kellogg's
and various others.
One thing led to another and Iended up spending my entire
(02:17):
career full-time working careerat what was Leo Burnett, or what
eventually ended up being thePublicis Group, which is what
bought Leo Burnett.
So 1982 to 2019 was myfull-time career, which is 37
years Now.
What is particularly interestingis the last time my business
(02:39):
card said Leo Burnett was inabout 1994.
Leo Burnett was in about 1994.
So between 1982 and 1994, Iworked for Leo Burnett and then
I spun out a section of LeoBurnett and we called it Giant
Step.
It was a new agency focused oninteractive and digital.
(02:59):
We even left the Leo Burnettbuilding, took the name off the
door and I helped grow that fromabout three employees to 100,
no revenue to about 10 million,and then came back.
I didn't leave Leo Burnett asan employee, I remained a Leo
Burnett employee.
I was just everybody else was agiant step employee.
I built that company.
It was majority owned by LeoBurnett.
(03:20):
Then I was asked to come backto help Leo Burnett Media become
Starcom and I at thatparticular stage also launched a
unit called Starcom IP, whichwas a digital unit, and Starcom
eventually merged with anothercompany called MediaVest.
We then got bought by thePublicis Group in 2002.
So this is 20 years into mycareer.
(03:41):
And then we formed what wasknown as the Publicis Media
Company, which was ZenithOptiMedia and Stockholm
MediaVest at that time, and Iwas the chief strategy and
innovation officer of thatcompany.
So now it's 20 years into mycareer and I've worked at, you
know, leo Burnett, giant, stepStockholm and Publicis Media.
(04:02):
And now it gets really excitingbecause at that particular
stage, working with the CEO atthat time of Publicis, a
gentleman called Maurice Levy onthe board I suggested we needed
to be more digital than we were, and so we ended up acquiring
companies like Digitas andRazorfish, which were very large
(04:24):
companies at that time andstill are, and we formed a unit
that connected both Digitas,razorfish and Publicis Media,
which we call Viviki, and Iended up being the strategy and
innovation officer of that.
And then Maurice asked me to bethe chairman of Digitas and
Razorfish and then about youknow, it was in 2012, he asked
(04:52):
me to have a new role, workingwith him across the group
globally, to be the chiefstrategist and growth officer of
the group, and at that stage webuilt the strategy which you
see today, which is verydata-driven oriented.
We bought companies like Epsilonand companies like Sapient and
in 2019, after 37 years thereand two years after Maurice
(05:16):
stepped up to become thechairman, I started my second
career, which was a career whereI helped people see, think and
feel differently about growingthemselves, their teams and
their business.
But I moved from being one ofthe senior people in then 86,000
person company and now 106,000person company to being the only
(05:38):
employee of a one personcompany, which is me.
And so today what I do is I dothis thing about helping people
see, think and feel differentlyabout growing themselves, their
talent or their teams or theircompany, by doing it in three
ways One to many, which is afancy way of saying I have a
podcast, a sub stack, and I'vewritten two books, one of which
(06:01):
is called Rethinking Work, whichI'm sure we'll touch on, and
the first one, which we may alsotouch on, is called Restoring
the Soul of Business to Human inthe Age of Data.
So that's my one-to-manyOne-to-some is a fancy way of
saying I do keynotes, executiveoffsites and workshops or panels
, which is where we met at HRBrew.
And then, last one is advisory,which is one-to-one and it's not
(06:24):
consulting, it's more advisory.
And one of the people Icontinue to advise six years
after I have left is thepublicist group.
So that's what I do today andit's now 43 years into a career
and I am still keeping busy.
As you know, yesterday I was inAustin.
Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrowI'm in Chicago.
(06:45):
Today I'm in Atlanta, tomorrowI'm in Chicago, where I'm based,
and tomorrow the flight will benumber 24 this year, and we're
not yet halfway through March.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Wow, wow.
Your backstory sort of speaksfor itself, rashad, it's really
a treat to have you here.
I think we were talking beforethe podcast about some natural
connections between the three ofus, chicago being the sort of
locus of it.
But I started a business 20years ago with my business
partner.
It was a market research firmand she kind of cut her teeth at
(07:14):
Leo Burnett.
Her name is Carol Phillips.
I don't know if you crossedpaths, it might not have been
your time.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I know Carol Phillips very well.
I mean I've lost touch with herrecently, but Carol and I
worked on the Heinz business.
She was the supervisor on HeinzSketchUp and I was the
supervisor on what was thencalled Heinz Pet Products.
So that's how we knew eachother.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Wow, well, I'll have to tell her later.
I'm sure she'll be thrilled toknow that we connected in this
fortuitous way.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, tell her.
I'd love to reconnect and giveher my email.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Well, people didn't tune in to hear us wax about our
personal connections, but thatis a really special one.
So I thank you for making thatconnection.
You're welcome.
I would love it if you couldtell us a little bit more about
this idea of you.
Know we're in this well.
We've been in this digitaltransformation you could call it
for probably decades.
At this point we're at aninflection point right now, it
(08:05):
seems, where AI is sort of thenext iteration of that.
It might be a sea change, butthese are not new ideas and
you've been thinking about themfor a while.
And I'm just wondering,reflecting on the 37 years or
however long you said it was ofyour career so far.
I mean you have to have seendramatic change.
Even talking to my colleague,carol, you know she started at a
time where you had everythingon paper, you know, before email
(08:27):
existed, and now we're in aworld where we're afraid
computers might do all theknowledge work.
So why don't you get interestedin this idea of human
connection in an increasinglydata-driven world?
Maybe it would be a place tostart.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Sure.
So you know I got interested inthis particular world in just
before I started Giant Step.
I was working for Leo BurnettDirect Marketing and I began to
realize the logic of directmarketing made sense.
But the economics of directmarketing for many marketers did
not make sense Because in thosedays you had to find an
(09:02):
audience by buying mailing listsor catalog lists.
You then had to cut trees tocreate paper or some sort of
samples which you'd mail out andyou needed to buy postage.
And eventually I showed usingmy mathematics that for most
brands it was cheaper to reacheverybody through television
(09:25):
than find the 5%, 6% who weretheir audience through direct
marketing.
So even though you wasted 94%,supposedly, of your dollars, it
was more cost effective and thatI proved.
But at the other stage it kindof convinced me that something
was off, because I couldunderstand the logic.
And that's when I discoveredthings like CompuServe, prodigy
(09:46):
and America Online and I saidhere's a way of finding an
audience without having to buy acatalog list, here's a way of
mailing something without havingto have paper and here's a way
of getting to somebody withoutpostage.
And so I started theinteractive marketing group and
that's how my digital careerbegan.
(10:08):
But as my digital careerexpanded to Giant Step and
Digitas and Razorfish, therewere a few learnings that I've
had which have shown up both inmy first and my second book, and
one of them is that technologycannot be stopped and technology
, for all practical purposes,does not care about anybody or
(10:30):
anybody's business model.
So when you say this technologyis difficult and it is
challenging my business model,the answer is yes, it is.
You have to adapt or changeyour business.
It's not going to sit there andsay, because you don't like it,
you can't legislate against it,you can't vote against it, you
can't disconnect computers.
So as a result, the first thingwas most companies were not
(10:56):
understanding that this digitalstuff was doing a few things.
One, it was challenging theirbusiness models.
It was not stoppable.
But the third it actuallychanged the way things got done.
So I first showed it.
Like, if you looked in thenewspaper industry, which has
become a shell of itself, theydidn't take digital seriously
(11:17):
and when they did, they thoughtabout digital as ways of making
algorithms to make their trucksrun faster or their printing
presses run better.
But what digital did was itbasically said you don't need
trucks or printing presses,right, and, at the same time,
what digital convinced people,even though people were saying
content is king, which isabsolute BS.
It is how do you point tocontent that is king, so?
(11:43):
Where the money in content wentto Meta and Google and not even
to the content providers, andso those things made me begin to
understand that the future formost organizations was not only
aligning to all these digitaltrends, but dealing with the
human leaders and the humantalent who basically had to now
adapt and change.
Had to now adapt and change,and therefore I basically my
(12:09):
first book basically simply theoriginal title was called the
Story and the Spreadsheet, andit was eventually called
Restoring the Soul of aBusiness-Staying Human in the
Age of Data, and so the wholeidea is how do you combine human
and data?
Now that book continues to sellreally well, and if you read it,
it feels like it was writtenyesterday, because a book that
came out five years ago has anentire closing chapter talking
(12:29):
about AI, right, which is kindof surprising, but what it does
say is this, which is we areliving in an age where you need
technology and talent, and howyou combine them is a
combination of investment intechnology and investment in
talent.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yeah, wow, I would love to discuss with you on this
.
I suppose one thing that comesto mind is, well, this idea that
data and stories are bothimportant.
I think when we're focused ontechnology, it's great.
I still remember I don't knowwhen this was.
You may remember maybe 10 yearsago where big data was the hot
topic Everyone was talking about.
(13:08):
Big data is here.
It's going to radically changeeverything, and now we don't
necessarily talk about big dataanymore.
It doesn't mean the ideasdidn't remain here, but we
certainly don't talk about it inthose terms, and, as a market
researcher, I can shower myclients all day long with data,
but what really actually makes adifference is telling a story
(13:32):
that connects on a human level.
And maybe that's what you'respeaking to, because I can bury
an executive in spreadsheets,but if there's not a story, then
they're not going to doanything with the conclusions.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, that's why I call it the story of the
spreadsheet, and so the ideabasically is the spreadsheet
shows you how technology can befantastic.
Stories convinces people thatthey should change and adapt and
be able to use the technologyto tell a story.
So one way of looking at what astory is and this is not my
(14:02):
definition, but I love it Astory is data with a soul.
I do like that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
No, I think that's fantastic.
Well, you know I want to talkabout a few of your you know
books, rashad, so I want to getback to your first book, but you
know one of the topics that hascome up a lot, you know to
pivot slightly, you know we havehad a couple economists on over
the last month and you knoweveryone's talking about AI and
the future of work.
You know, and you know and whatskills are going to be in
demand five, 10 years from now.
(14:30):
You know I really want to talka little bit more about you know
your perspective, though,because I think it's something
that we haven't been able todiscuss on the show, and that's
you know this really this shiftfrom full time roles to task
based work, and I think that's areal big component of what you
wrote about in Rethinking Work.
So I think probably the bestway to describe it is you've
(14:50):
talked about how traditionalfull-time roles are really
evolving into these task-basedassignments and I think, maybe
to set the stage, can youexplain what you mean to our
audience by the?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
separation of work Perfect.
Yes.
So I'm going to basically startwith a very simple analogy, and
the analogy is many, many, many, many years ago, if you wanted
to listen to a piece of music,you had to go where the musician
and the instrument was.
Then you had the phonograph andtherefore you could basically
say the musician sat somewhererecording and you heard them at
(15:26):
a different time somewhere else.
The photograph was heavy, itwas eventually replaced by
things like the Walkman, andthen what eventually happened?
In a world of digital music,not only did the song or the
piece of music get stripped awayfrom the musician, from the
instrument, from the album, fromthe device, but you now also
(15:50):
listen to it in the way youwanted it it got disconnected
from the next song.
So today we listen to music incurated or algorithmically
curated playlists.
And what do we do that for?
We do that because it's basedon a mood or a need.
We have a playlist for romantic, we have a playlist for running
(16:11):
, we have a playlist for theBeatles or whatever it is.
So if you think about it thatway, what do you think a job is?
A job is a series of tasks thathave to be done, but
increasingly, in the world thatwe're living in, why should the
tasks not be broken up and thengiven to the people who can best
(16:32):
do that task, either inside thecompany or outside the company,
or in another company, or soon,by machines and AI?
So I believe we're coming tothe end of not employment, but
we're coming to the end of jobsin many, many categories.
(16:53):
And you might say, okay, you'vebecome hysterical, you've drunk
too much, what's wrong with you?
And I'll basically say listen,there's nothing new about this.
This is exactly what happens inthe entertainment industry and,
to a certain extent, theconsulting industry.
So, if you think about theentertainment industry,
everybody basically goes to workon a gig.
(17:16):
The gig is usually a movie, atelevision show, a concert, a
play.
They go there because they cando particular tasks which they
do with other people.
You might be a best boy, youmight be a director, you might
be a caterer.
All of you all come together,you all come there and you're
(17:40):
doing that particular task.
The job is the movie or theshow, and then you go away again
to whatever the next thing is.
Consultants do the same thing.
They work for supposedly for acompany, but they move from
project to project, from city tocity partnering with other
people who have other skillsthat are necessary for that
(18:01):
client.
So we've seen this happeninginside the real world already,
when people offshore and nearshore and do all of that.
But now it's going to come downto this compartmentalization,
which basically is I needsomebody who is really good at
this, this and this Is thatperson inside my company.
(18:22):
Who are those people?
I will put them on thisparticular task to get done,
because they know how to do thattask.
So that's what this future is,and it's becoming easier and
easier, not only because of AI,but because of things like
marketplaces, where you can plugand play to anybody you want in
the world.
You can sell what you want, youcan buy what you want and
(18:43):
therefore my biggest concern inthis future of work is most
leaders and most companies arefixated on going back to 2019.
They're trying to basically putthe genie back in the bottle and
they're trying to basically saywe're going to work back in
2019, return to the office fivedays a week.
Here's my basic belief Whetheryou return to the office five
(19:06):
days a week or you have a modelthat has zero days a week,
neither of those two actuallysolve for the future of work.
They just basically solve forwhat you think your culture and
your particular areas of controlare.
And when I explain that allthis thing is just unnecessary
noise, it's got nothing to dowith the future of work.
That's when CEOs and talentleaders wake up.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, well, I think that's great and I would say to
unpack that a.
Well, I think that's great andI would say to unpack that a bit
more.
I think you even saw when COVIDhit, for example, companies
like a MasterCard would goinvesting in these big internal
programs where it was.
Hey, we have all of theseprojects that need to be done
and you know what.
What we really need to do isfind someone that can spend 10
(19:52):
hours a week, you know, workingon these.
I think that's one of thepieces.
Like you know, you saw snippetsof, you know, organizations
trying to do that, but I don'tthink anyone's been able to do
it Well.
I'm sure there are somecompanies that have, but like
companies not doing it well justyet.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Right, but companies are starting to do it.
So I'll give you an idea.
You mentioned COVID, so thecompany that I used to work for,
which I should advise.
During COVID, they saved manythousands of jobs by moving
tasks using their Marcelplatform around the world.
So they basically found therewas demand for certain things
(20:26):
where they did not have people,or not a demand where they had
people, and they basically movedthe tasks around without moving
the people.
That make sense, yeah, andincreasingly more and more
companies are doing that, and ifyou actually think about what
is happening inside even yourexisting company, whichever
company anybody works at, wealways have basically got
(20:49):
specialists to do things right,and to a great extent.
When you think about it, whatis a doctor?
A doctor basically does aseries of tasks that they're
really good at, and a dentistdoes a series of tasks that
they're really good at, and to agreat extent.
When you go to a hospital, youdon't go to any doctor unless
(21:12):
it's your general practitioner.
You go to a heart surgeon, yougo to an oncologist, and so the
reality of it is all that'sbasically happening is companies
tended not to specialize asmuch, primarily because of a
very famous rule by a guy calledRonald Coase because of a very
famous rule by a guy calledRonald Coase.
So, talking about Chicago andUniversity of Chicago, ronald
(21:35):
Coase was a professor at theUniversity of Chicago and he
came up with a thing which iswhy do firms exist?
Okay, and when I read this Istarted asking myself yes, why
do companies exist?
Especially when you work in acompany, you begin to realize
there's bureaucracy and protocoland politics and all that kind
of stuff.
And he came up with a fantasticreason why companies exist.
(21:58):
He said it's because internalfriction and drama is less than
external friction and drama.
So if individual people weretrying to get together to solve
a problem in the 1930s, 40s, 50sand 60s, it was very hard to do
so, so it was easier to workinside a firm.
But today, with marketplaces,technology, ai, I think internal
(22:24):
barriers sometimes are muchgreater than external barriers
and companies can move muchfaster and much more agilely
outside their circumstances thaninside their circumstances,
which basically means they haveto rethink how they're organized
.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Well, I think that's great and, like you know, I
think there's a I'm not sure ifyou've ever listened to Hidden
Brain podcast on NPR, but it's agreat episode called Bullshit
Jobs, I think is the name of theepisode and it basically is you
know, you know people createjobs just to you know, fill up
40 hours in the work week andlike, hey, that's not the best
(22:59):
model, but just you know, that'sjust the way we've been doing
it Right.
And you know I don't thinkpeople are paying attention.
You know as much to what youkind of just you know, talked
about this whole idea of youknow specialists at work and
like you know, yeah, you go to adoctor and like you pay for a
procedure, right, and like youknow things are carved out and
like, so I do think that there'sa lot of you know talk around
(23:21):
this now, but I do think youknow there's probably a lot of
you know this is a pretty bigyou know shift for organizations
.
You know, if you move away froma you know full-time employee
to, you know, to contract-basedwork, so like you know talk to.
You know what are, you knowwhat are the opportunities, I
suppose, or what are the risksto you know, what I think you're
suggesting is a pretty massiveshift in how we go to work today
(23:43):
.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah.
So the way I would look at itis the following I would say
there's still going to be a lotof full-time employment, it's
just the way we manage.
Those employees are going to beimportant and different, though
I believe that the most likelyform of employment in the future
will be what I call thefractionalized employee.
So let me explain today whatcompanies can do.
Companies today, to get a jobdone, combine three different
(24:08):
assets, most of them Full-timeemployees, freelancers and
contract workers.
A contract worker is afull-time employee of another
company that you hire.
So Google has more contractworkers than full-time employees
.
They hire these contract peoplewho are paid by a different
company because it saves Googlethe need to give them both
(24:30):
benefits, equity bonuses or stopand start and not have to pay
severance.
So those are the three thingswe have Now what I'm suggesting
in this new model, which therewill be a fourth type of
employee that will have to becreated and that is likely to be
the most likely type of futureemployee in a company, and that
(24:51):
is what I call a fractionalizedemployee.
So a fractionalized employee isan employee of the firm because,
in addition to getting a salaryand not just gigs, they also
happen to get 100% healthcare,which is extremely important.
But what they do is at the endof every year just like you have
these HMO PPO elections peopleask their employees would you
(25:15):
like next year to work 60, 80,or 100% of the time?
I'm just giving you that asthree numbers 60, 80, 100% and
you can decide who you want tomake that offer to.
But you say 60, 80, 100, andsay your selection will not mean
that you are automaticallyapproved, just let us know.
So people say I want to work100%, 60% or 80%, and if you
(25:37):
decide, and then they see whatthe demand for tasks are and
they see what they have, andthen they basically align and
off they go.
Now you might say why is thisinteresting?
Why is this different?
Why is this important?
So I believe that employees whoare around for a long time, or
at least for some time, helpboth build networks, build
(25:59):
cultures, build loyalty, buildallegiance and therefore having
only freelancers in a company oronly contractors in a company
is not really a company.
You need somebody.
You know you need some otherthings besides those people.
But today, with agingpopulations, childcare issues,
healthcare issues, a lot ofpeople might basically say you
(26:21):
know what I'd like to do onlythree or four days a week,
versus five days, I get ahundred percent of healthcare,
and with my other two days I get100% of healthcare, and with my
other two days I can do one ofthree or four things A.
I can spend that going back toschool.
I can spend that looking aftermy kids at this particular time,
(26:41):
looking after aging parents orI can basically focus on my gig
job, whatever that might be.
I might be running an Etsystore, I might be doing
something else.
So the benefit to the employeeis they now basically have, if
they want, they have the abilityto have optionality of income.
They're not dependent only onone thing.
They're building other skills,they're spending time with their
(27:04):
families.
The downside, obviously, is ifyou work 60%, you have 40% less
pay.
But often the choice is workingfull-time or not at all right,
and now you have this option ofhaving something in between.
With the other time you can goand try to get other ways of
getting paid.
But as importantly and this isthe most important thing for a
(27:25):
company in an AI age, make nomistake, because of efficiency
and effectiveness drives,companies in the near term will
not need as many people as theyhave.
You know the famous book that50% of jobs are bullshit.
Ai is going to show that.
Okay, and so what's going tohappen is that someone's going
(27:48):
to come around and say you knowwhat?
We don't need 1,000 employees.
We can do it with 700.
But they actually need theskills of the 1,000, but they
need the total workforce of 700.
So how do you go from 1,000 to700?
Well, one way you go is you layoff 300 people.
There's lots of costs, bothreal, financial, but massive
(28:09):
emotional and cultural costs,including the 700 left behind.
Plus, you lose the skills of300 people that you have might
have wanted because they weredifferent skills.
You do it this way and youbasically reduce your head count
, or you reduce your payroll by20 to 25, but no one's been laid
off.
Does that make sense?
And that is what the future isgoing to be.
(28:32):
The future is going tobasically be, and in my sub
stack at rishadsubstackcom, oneof the most popular things I've
written is the series called ACompany of One, and my belief is
one of the reasons I think Isucceeded besides luck and being
surrounded by amazinglytalented people was for the last
(28:52):
decade of my career, I workedlike a company of one.
I was working in a large company, but a company of one is.
I was honing and buildingspecific skills that I was well
known for future change,innovation, right.
I built a reputation for beingvery easy to work with and
generous to work with, so peoplewanted to work with me and I
(29:14):
basically built a collaborativemindset which basically helped
other people too.
And so if you build this thingfor collaboration, reputation
and skillset, you become anamazing company of one and a
company of 25,000 or 10,000 or200.
That's the mindset people haveto take and that new way of
25,000 or 10,000 or 200.
That's the mindset people haveto take and that new way of
thinking we have to adapt to,because I truly believe that
(29:38):
most companies will have feweremployees, full-time employees
by the end of this decade andboth from a company perspective
and from an employee perspective, we should prepare for it.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I like this idea offractional employees.
I think much of our audiencewill have at least heard of it
in the C-suite.
You know you talk aboutfractional CMOs, but so it's a
helpful bridge to get us to afuture of work where maybe that
model is true for people acrossthe organization and not just at
the top.
I guess what I'd ask you, ashad, is you're talking about a
(30:11):
fractional employment situationin the future?
I'm still hearing you talkabout time as the main dimension
of this.
How much of your time are yougoing to be contributing?
40% or 60%?
One thing I've been wonderingabout is is that accurate, or do
you think we're going to bepoised for a future where it's
much more about tasks and valueand not about how many hours it?
Speaker 3 (30:34):
took you.
It's going to be either or andboth.
Let me explain why.
Okay, which is what tends tobasically happen is from a
company perspective.
You obviously want tasks done,but the company wants to make
sure that you are available toget the tasks done.
So here's my basic belief.
You're running a large company,your client needs stuff done,
(30:58):
all your people are contractedand freelance and you can't find
them at the right time or whenyou do, because of demand
they're so expensive.
You can't actually run acompany anymore.
Which is the reality of it isyou eventually are going to have
to reserve people's time,because if you don't reserve
anybody's time, you don't evenhave a company.
What the hell do you have?
(31:19):
Right?
And yes, not everybody's time,some people's time, because you
need some people who areconstantly, or then you know
that they're there when yourclient has a project need.
It might not be that exactindividual, but if you have like
100 people who you basicallybought some of their time.
Now the reality of it is youmonitor over the course of the
(31:42):
year how these people are doingwhat they're doing.
These people obviously areseeing the value they're
creating, and then theybasically then you sort of
decide, hey, these people arenot actually doing too many
tasks.
We don't want them.
People are doing tasks.
They are doing them soeffectively.
I want to increase mycompensation or I can do the
same thing with less time.
So there'll always be a timeelement, and the time element is
(32:02):
not because I want to build fortime, but it's the only way
that I can actually reservetalent, because I don't know if
we're going to be in a modelwhere companies not in every
industry where companies canbasically run everything on an
auction basis, like some biddingof ad media.
(32:23):
Right, and if the whole thingwas completely bid by an auction
basis, then is there a companyat all?
Why should even a company exist?
Speaker 4 (32:32):
basis, then is there a company at all?
Why should even a company exist?
So is this like, is it a properanalogy?
Speaker 3 (32:38):
like what we see in healthcare, with people being on
call in a way.
Yes, yes, it's basically yougot to have people on call and
you have these different skillsets on call.
And the reason is this, whichis coming back to this whole
idea of storytelling and humansand soul.
Humans basically change muchslower than technology does.
That's number one and numbertwo humans basically have
(33:03):
certain needs that don't allowthem to be in a market where
they have absolutely novisibility of income.
Some people might be okay withit, but imagine, I remind people
your bills are constant, yourmortgage is constant, your rent
is constant, your food bills areconstant, right?
(33:27):
Yes, you can decide to move toeat less or eat, you know,
cheaper food, move to a new town, move to a smaller apartment,
but there's always this billthat's due.
And if you basically have billsthat are due but you have no
idea next month what your incomeis going to be, you're going to
freak out, right?
(33:48):
You're going to absolutelyfreak out unless you've got lots
of savings and everything else.
So what I'm trying to figureout is how do we get to this
model where the math says wehave to modularize but human
beings say I can't operate justas a task person sitting around
like an Uber driver.
Right?
Because, remember, one of thebig things like with, you know,
(34:12):
with even Uber drivers is theyalways, sometimes wonder there
won't be enough tasks and inmany cases, outside of a few
Uber drivers, most Uber driversdo that, do their Uber driving
as a way to supplement an income, not as their only source of
income supplement an income, notas their only source of income.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So you know, I want to double click into, you know
this, this, you know idea of afuture where it is more
task-based.
It is, you know, companies thatyou know have smaller employees
, maybe they work remote andyou're on, you know, on sort of
on call, to use that analogy,you know, to complete certain
tasks.
You know what, what skills,rashad, do you think are
essential in in this new workmodel.
But you know, like, maybe youknow equally related or
important is like when you talkabout you know, companies
(34:57):
maintaining a culture and like,hey, our company is going to be,
you know, even exist in thefuture.
Like, you know, how cancompanies maintain a culture?
You know, drive innovation,when teams really are more
dispersed, fluid, you know oncall and on call and we're not
sitting in the office 40 hours aweek.
What does that future look liketo you?
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Sure.
So I'll give it from twoperspectives.
One is from the perspective ofthe talent and one is from the
perspective of leaders who aretrying to ensure that they have
cultures, and culture isimportant.
So let me start with culture.
Culture is important, but toomany companies mistake culture
with a spa and with a cult.
(35:37):
Okay, what I mean?
A spa.
So a lot of companies.
It's a little less prevalentnow, but two years ago, you know
, you'll feel good here, you'llfeel loved, you'll feel safe,
you'll be able to play music andall of that stuff.
And my old stuff is hey, listen,when I go to a spa, I pay them.
They don't pay me, right?
(35:57):
Have you been to a spa whereyou basically go to the spa and
say I want a massage, but you'regoing to pay me for the
treatment of that?
It's going to happen.
So when somebody says I'mrunning, I'm running this lovely
spa-like thing, right, my wholestuff is like that's bullshit.
This is a company, I have to dostuff, there's a marketplace
and obviously you got to treatme well and everything else, but
(36:19):
not like this.
The other is a cult.
We have a way.
It's like the Mandalorian.
This is the way right.
It's sort of like.
For those of you who seeSeverance, it's like Lumen, the
company.
Right, you have cult, but, bythe way, google's a cult, meta
is a cult and they have acompound.
The compound is where peoplecan go, which is their campuses,
(36:40):
and you need a compound for acult so that people can drink
the Kool-Aid right.
Without Jonestown, there was noKool-Aid.
So you know, and so this I needa space because it's a spa-like
thing.
I need a space because I needto have everyone together.
That's bullshit, come on.
Okay, that is nonsense.
Okay, so that is a total lackof imagination.
(37:03):
Culture is not those two thingsat all.
Let me tell you what culture is.
Culture is four things, andI've studied this in so much
detail.
It's so obvious I don'tunderstand why people don't get
it.
Once I tell you what it is,you'll say oh my God, it's so
obvious.
The first and most important fora culture is excellence.
You need people who strive forexcellent products and services,
(37:23):
excellent talent and excellentfinancial results, and if you
don't have at least two of thosethree at a given time and touch
on at least one of those threeevery three years, you're out of
business.
So excellence.
Number two you need a growthmindset where everybody's
constantly learning andupgrading their skills, and a
growth mindset versus a mindsetwhere you blame everybody else.
(37:46):
The third thing you need iscollaboration, and this
collaboration could be happeninganywhere.
And the fourth and mostimportant is you need
communication which is open andhonest communication.
So a chapter in my book my firstbook basically, it's called the
Turd on the Table.
In too many companies peoplesit around the table.
There's something brown andmoist in the center.
(38:07):
Everybody knows it's a piece ofshit, but everybody pretends
it's a brownie.
Right, and my whole stuff isthat's not a culture.
A culture is truths to power.
It says we got a problem here.
Right Now.
You give me that.
You give me open, honest.
You give me open, honestcommunication, collaboration, a
quest for excellence and agrowth mindset.
I'll show you world-classcultures.
(38:28):
Nothing to do with the space.
Okay, now, when you need aspace because I do believe in
many industries, for many levels, when you're coming in young,
when you're new, when you'recoming in, you might require
in-person interaction.
But in-person interaction canhappen at bars, restaurants,
hotels, events, lots of otherplaces.
(38:50):
So, in effect, for mostcompanies, I basically say you
need in-person interaction.
Sometimes it can vary by leveland type of job that needs to be
done.
It doesn't all have to be inthe office, because when people
come to the office they don't doin-person interaction.
They sit in cubicles with theirheadphones doing the stuff they
were doing at home.
So unless you program this inthe office, you will never earn
(39:14):
the commute.
If you don't earn the commute,you will eventually not lose
people.
So that's the thing.
On talent, what basicallyhappens is for culture, think
about growth, mindset, thinkabout collaboration,
communication and think aboutexcellence.
Now for talent themselves,that's, individuals.
How do we future-proofourselves?
So I believe there's a six-packand I tried it myself.
(39:38):
I had it doing with otherpeople and one of the things
that people you know youmentioned, carol, when I began
my career, there were nocomputers, and today I am on
Medicare, so I'm 65.
I'm older than God, I'meverybody and I go around.
I went to Google, I'm going toother places and I'm talking to
them about AI and marketing andAI in the future, and a lot of
(40:02):
people ask me how the hell doyou fool people like this?
Which is, how did you stayrelevant?
And I say I'll tell you why.
How, and this is exactly whatyou have to do, because I said
this is what I do, right, andthe people who I've had given
this advice to, when they'vedone it, it's worked.
And, by the way, in many casesI've stolen this from other
(40:27):
people when I saw how theyremained relevant.
So what are the six Cs?
The three Cs are what each ofus have to do Cognition,
curiosity and creativity.
If you don't spend an hourevery day learning, you're
becoming irrelevant, regardlessof what bullshit you're talking
about.
Okay, you don't learn, you burn.
That's number one.
Second, creativity, which meansconnecting dots in new ways.
That's very, very important.
And third is curiosity askingwhat, if, why not questions,
(40:51):
then both question the businessmodel and question what you're
doing.
The other three are because wework with other people.
One is collaboration.
The other is convincing.
When knowledge is free, how youbasically tell a story becomes
very important Field skillsconvincing.
And third and very importantly,the sixth, one of the three of
(41:11):
the collaborate or the workingwith other people is
communication skills, greatwriting skills and presentation
skills.
So my whole stuff is you wantto future-proof yourself?
You have three, four things youcan do yourself without needing
anybody.
Spend an hour learning.
Own your writing andcommunication skills, learn how
to be collaborative, and thenobviously, have curiosity and
(41:34):
creativity and upgrade yourselling skills, regardless of
your industry, country ortechnology.
That'll carry you much fasterthan learning Mandarin and
coding.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, well, there's a lot there.
I guess we're short on time,maybe to close Vishad.
I would like to zoom out a bitand talk about this idea of
meaning and purpose forindividuals, the human side of
this.
Historically, jobs have been asource of meaning and purpose
for people, or at least that'sthe theory and I think what
we've seen, and we've talkedabout it earlier, is that, as we
(42:04):
see, with the rise of bullshitjobs you gave an example earlier
you could fire 300 people weare, regardless of how we do it,
we're going to reduce theamount of time and effort that
people need to be spending doingwork compared to 50 years ago,
most likely.
Do you anticipate that theworkplace will remain dominant
(42:25):
as a place for purpose andmeaning in people's lives, or do
you think that, as a cultureand as a society, we will need
to look elsewhere for that?
Speaker 3 (42:30):
So here's what I believe.
I believe that meaningful,purposeful, rewarding work is
central to the human experience,that the quality of your
connections and relationshipsand your health are the other
two which are critical.
And the third is meaningful,rewarding work.
And if you have meaningful,rewarding, purposeful work, you
(42:52):
live longer and you don't kickthe dog at home, so it also
helps your life and yourrelationships.
But remember what I just saidpurposeful, meaningful,
rewarding work.
I did not say meaningful,purposeful, rewarding jobs.
Okay, that's the big difference.
So the reality of it is today.
(43:15):
I'm going to give you a verysimple example.
I do not have a job.
I don't have a job.
I'm unemployed.
Under that circumstances, Idon't have a job.
I don't have a job.
I'm unemployed.
Under that circumstances, Idon't have a job.
I work a lot and I do amazingstuff.
That makes me really happy, andit just so happens that it's
even more lucrative than my mostsenior position in my last job,
which is what I wasn't eventrying to do, right?
(43:38):
And what do I do?
I basically do things which Ijust told you I speak, I write,
I do a podcast, I advisecompanies, I mentor students, I
mentor people who are in careertransitions.
In some cases, I get rewardedjust through goodwill.
(43:59):
In other cases, I practice askill.
In other cases, I get rewardedjust through goodwill.
In other cases I practice askill.
In other cases I get rewardedthrough money and lo and behold,
I'm connected, I go everywhere,I don't feel alone and I've got
purposeful, meaningful,rewarding work without a job.
What's going to happen is, whenI say career of one, everybody
is going to be a gig worker andwhat's likely to happen is
(44:22):
you're going to have, hopefully,one of your gigs will be a
quote, unquote one of yourpieces.
Places of work will give youall of these like things to do
and they'll basically pay you 50, 60% of your.
You know what you need andyou'll do other things.
That's the key thing.
The big confusion that peoplehave basically done is that work
(44:43):
meaningful, purposeful work isthe same as a job.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
I think that's great, rashad, I'll tell you, I think
this has certainly been one ofmy favorite episodes, so I wish
we didn't have to end it.
I'm going to end it withprobably the easiest question.
We'll obviously link everythingin the show notes, but you know
where can our listeners learn alittle bit more about your work
, your books?
You know like rethinking work.
You know restoring the solarbusiness.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Absolutely so.
Let me first give you the freeversion of everything, since
people like that.
If you go to rishadsubstackcom,you will basically find a free
sub stack, free of advertising,free of subscription, where this
Sunday, I'll write my 240thSunday in a row.
So there's 240 articles on awhole bunch of different things
(45:32):
and all of them are evergreen.
None of them have dated.
Even better than that if youjust want to listen to stuff,
there's not better than that.
Different than if you want tolisten to stuff.
I host a podcast called whatNext.
You can type what Next,publicist Group.
And then, even better than that, because it's highly curated,
very well written, edited,fact-checked, are my two books
(45:53):
Rethinking Work, which came outa month ago, and Restoring the
Soul of Business Stay Human inthe Age of Data.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Awesome.
Well, we will link everythingin the show notes again.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Really appreciate you fitting us in, because we know
that you have a lot of peopletagging you in to share your
perspectives and expertise.
So really, no, no, no that'swhat I pretend.
I have nobody calling me.
So I love spending time withyou but thank you.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Thank you for your thanks, rashad.
All right, thanks for tuning inas head on over to
changestateio or shoot us a noteon all the social media.
We'd love to hear from you andwe'll check you guys next week.
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