Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Gary Bolles - Transformation & The Future of Work

Speaker A: Hi and welcome to decodingaq. Helping you to learn the tools, mindsets and actions to thrive in an ever changing world.

Speaker B: Hi and welcome to the next episode of Decoding aq. Today is a first for me. It's a first where we have a guest coming back for a second go. And it is four years and one day that we spent the time together with Gary. Now he is su's long time chair of the Future of Work. Many of you might have listened to that episode back in 2021. He is an extraordinary individual. Uh, he spent his life and career in this space. Talent development. I remember the story about from 19 years old getting into this world and really through that process with 1.6 million LinkedIn learners under the belt and countless conversations, I'm sure with humans around the world. The book the Next Rules of Work we discussed and we went into the sort of three components of mindset, skill set and tool set. And what inspired me to invite Gary back was a workshop session that I was privileged to be able to experience with Gary out in Vegas a few weeks ago. Unleash. And we're going to dive a little bit more into that. So welcome back to the show Gary.

Speaker C: So great to see you again. Really looking forward to great conversation.

Speaker B: So the premise for this session, and I think you ran many sessions, I might need to remind you which one it was, uh, uh, unleash. But it was one around uh, the Skills Transformation Playbook. And I think what I've realized over the time of lots of these conversations on this, um, on this show is the shift of, and desire of people to go from interesting stories into action. What can I do? Right now I'm being inspired by these stories. I see things that are happening, I read articles, but what can I actually do? And that's what inspired me with this uh, Playbook. It's got seven core phases to it and I wonder if we can just take a little bit of time to outline some of those key elements, um, some of the insights and thoughts that you've had along the way in sharing this playbook in lots of different areas and realms. So perhaps what inspired you to create the Playbook? What was the trigger that did that? Carrie?

Speaker C: So first off, Ross, I remember our previous conversation very well because uh, it was fairly early on in uh, this global pandemic that we all endured and uh, I think many of us were just trying to understand, wrap our arms around uncertainty and uh, now five years later we would, we would have thought five years ago, oh, by then the world will have Calmed down, you know, the pandemic will be over, we won't have to worry. I mean, sure, we all want an aq, we all want to know how to be able to adapt. But you know, really, how, how much, what could the world possibly look like in five years, you know, couldn't possibly be changing as rapidly. And uh, we've all accepted, no, that's not the way it works. Uh, it's one tsunami of change after another. And obviously the AI tsunami is the most recent one. So, uh, what I've seen over and over again, because the pace and scale of change don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Certainly our friend Ray Kurzweil, co founder of Singularity University, believes that it's only going to continue to accelerate at an exponential rate. Uh, is that we need to start, uh, thinking about what it is that as humans we want to do in the context of work, how it is that our tool set, especially AI, can help us to do that. But then what is some of the structures, some of the frameworks for how humans can do that? How can we work together? And we often call that an organization. So what are organizations morphing into? And if you sort of add all those pieces together, then you realize, well, the old rules of the organization, the old rules about how we hired, about how we helped people to be able to find or create meaningful, well paid work, how we even structured work roles are all anchored in industrial era. So we need to hit a reset button and think, all right now, so what are the ways that we can build an operating system so that we can continually adapt, um, not just as individuals, but also with our organizations. And it turns out there's some fundamental building blocks. And one of the most fundamental is skills. And uh, it's why I keep saying the three legs of the stool of being able to navigate a world of exponential change are mindset, skill set, toolset. Because the skill set turns out that organizations to really embrace skills, they have to dive in to understanding what the skills for each human in the organization is, how they can hire based on skills, how they can help people develop the skills that are needed today and tomorrow, how they can construct work roles that are anchored in skills. But so many of the decision makers, the C suite, um, people in organizations around the world that I talk to keep asking me, okay, how, like, what's the playbook? Like, what are some of the major elements I need to, um, make sure I'm accomplishing? And it's not a linear roadmap, it's A playbook. It's the, you know, your sports analogies a lot, but it sort of fits here, where there's just different pieces of the puzzle you need to put in place depending upon what your priorities are and what the problems you most need to solve today and tomorrow.

Speaker B: And you had a really simple way of describing work in terms of, you know, we have these outputs, we have problems, you know, it's a new product, it's new development. And we have two things that go into that, you know, ah, tasks and human skills. And just expand a little bit more on that model, um, that breaks it down so eloquently and so simply that I think also underpins this requirement of a playbook and a transformation playbook.

Speaker C: I try as much as possible not to oversimplify, but I try to distill. And so work is just the three things that you, you mentioned. Jobs are more complicated, but work is just three things. It's a problem to be solved. That's why people pay us and why we pay other people. How do we solve problems? We perform tasks. How do we perform tasks? We have human skills. Human skills apply to tasks to solve problems. What is very useful is to rethink what it is that we were doing when we were focusing so much in the industrial era on tasks. In a factory, you do tasks over and over again. We've unfortunately replicated that model in a lot of the job descriptions that, um, we create. But if we step back and we say, no, wait a minute, what are the problems to be solved in this work role? And then what are the human skills that can be applied to solving those problems? Sure, we'll always automate tasks. And it turns out that artificial intelligence and related tools are very good at automating certain tasks. But if we keep on focusing on needing to understand work roles in the context of the problems to be solved and the skills, then you have a much different operating system for the organization, much more flexible, much more adaptable. Uh, and then there's a couple of other pieces of the puzzle that you need to put in place. But you start to have the building blocks for being able to continually adapt as an individual and as an organization.

Speaker B: What you've just described, there is a huge shift where you talk about, even at the very beginning of new roles, the job description being focused on the tasks experience and tasks past and what's to be done, not necessarily how or why. You know, what problem is it solving and the how of what skills. So what's the first component then on this seven phase Sort of playbook that you've outlined for the skills transformation and just start to walk us through that so we can get our heads around it.

Speaker C: Uh, you mentioned that um, I've been the longtime uh, chair for the future of Work with Singularity University and I was asked um, late last year to, to expand my remit and not just focus on the future of work and the future of learning and the future of the organization, but transformation in many of its different forms. And uh, so as humans we always transform. As organizations we need to transform. We don't always do it intentionally, we uh, don't always do it smoothly. Uh, so I really believe the context of transformation gives us uh, some uh, useful thinking or a framework to be able to see this as not just a one time process, not just change management. I uh, would say my LinkedIn courses, change management is dead. All that's left is leading change. Uh, but instead we have to think of this as a catalyzing process to start the next phase of transformation of the organization. And I found with the initiatives that I've done in the past that one of the best ways to start is with um, some kind of manifesto, a statement, uh, co created statement, who are we? What are we trying to accomplish? What do we want the future to be? And if we, to find the context for that. You could do uh, an AI manifesto for your organization. But I strongly suggest you start with the human side of the equation and that's a skills manifesto. You know, what skills do we need today? What skills do we think we're going to need tomorrow? How will we get there? How will we continually adapt in that process? And that manifesto is a great exercise that tests the organization's capacity for co creation. If you can get enough stakeholders together. I often call it the coalition of the willing that want to be part of the definition of that vision and start to lay the roadmap for that process. You can use that same process over and over again with other facets of transformation.

Speaker B: So you've been involved no doubt in the observation, creation, co creation, facilitation of many of these manifestos and skills visions. How do you go about it? What are some key mistakes people make? Because often you can't see what you can't see. Right? Um, we don't know what we don't know. Um, give us some sort of headlines of where you've seen some great things happen in the way of creating that and some mistakes to avoid around that very important first phase of the vision manifesto for skills.

Speaker C: So first off it's still early days in uh, the skills transformation of organizations. Um, and um, I've got some resources I can certainly point listeners to as they want to dive deeper into this. But it's still early days. And so I wouldn't say that there's any single poster child or organization that uh, is done in ways that are very easily transferable into other uh, organizations. But I'd say here are some of the anchors that are very important. The do's and the don'ts. The do's include starting off with a simple articulated vision about the value, the benefits, the actual business value that having a skills based organization can contribute. And um, there's a number of, in the manifesto, sorry in the uh, playbook, I talk about a couple of those. But basically you want to be able to ensure that the organization will continually have the human skills that it needs today, today and tomorrow. And what happens if you don't do that? Uh, you need to make sure that you've got a reasonable set of stakeholders, um, and as much as possible line of business people, people who actually face the customer or you know, are responsible for the revenue of the organization. Because if it's just say, let's say HR and it involved, uh, but it's not the stakeholders that actually have to have the humans that are solving the problems for your customers, uh, that can be a fail. Uh, if you don't have the mindset that it is a living document that is you're never going to be done. You need to continually update, you need to continually rearticulate. The specific skills that you need today are not likely going to be many of the skills that you're going to need tomorrow. So you have to have this constant refreshing process. And the more you do that incrementally, say on a quarterly basis, uh, then you'll continually adapt. And if you make it a five year roadmap and in five years you think you can revisit it, I guarantee you by then the world will have changed very dramatically and you'll have missed a lot of opportunities to transform.

Speaker B: So what I heard there was absolutely make sure you're linking it to the business value, the business outcomes, the business benefits. Ensure you've got the right people involved in it, in that process. So from the different areas of the business and really get embedded to the idea that this is a living document. And I'm so pleased you gave us some guidance of review this every 90 days. Right. Uh, it really is that kind of pace and process. So they've got the right people in the room. They've given it their first draft, their first stab at what this looks like, and then they're going to move into sort of the inventory of key assets. What is that and why does that come next?

Speaker C: So, as I said, it's a playbook. And different organizations are going to have different priorities, and some may already be along the road somewhere. These are elements to make sure you're doing. And uh, chances are good you're not just going to follow them necessarily linearly, although if you have got very little in place, you probably should. Um, but instead they're just elements to make sure that you've, um, you follow through on and you might be going back and revisiting them time and time again. So I often, um, In m. My book, the Next Rules of Work, I, um, when I talk about skills, whether it's for each of us as individuals or it's skills in the context of the organization, I show a picture of a pyramid, I'm sorry, a picture of an iceberg and an iceberg. Uh, there's this tiny little bit of visible skills above the waterline that each of us has. And there's a huge amount of human potential that is below the waterline. And we are often not able to see it in our own abilities and our own potential. And the organization certainly doesn't know in most cases what skills it has. So that inventory, the process of helping individuals to understand their own skills and helping the organization to build a model, um, broad understanding of the skills and human potential, the skills that could be developed, um, that is a critical deliverable. Because if you don't know what you have planning for, what you need to change to is, uh, it's basically a fairy tale. It's um, the same thing with culture, organizations, cultures. Often people say, well, we have a culture that has these five pillars and that sort of thing. So. Well, are you sure, Are you absolutely certain that people make decisions that they will take actions based on those five pillars? Have you surveyed them? Do you talk to people? Do you stop people in the hallway and ask them, you know, what are the top three things that you do to ensure that you're supporting the strategy, the organization? Or you find over and over again that we don't really know what we have. And that's especially true of skills. So that's why an inventory of skills on an ongoing basis where each person has their own North Star or Southern Cross, They've got an, um, inventory of the skills that they've done. They have a plan for where they want to go. And the more each individual has that then the organization can actually aggregate that information, have a much better view.

Speaker B: And what I found interesting when you shared that slide was for me a realization that many of us, um, that I've observed assess those assets in a thin lane and a thin slice of up, ah, looking at skills that are found inside the tasks and found inside past experiences. And that in itself hides so many other things which might be passions, interests, hobbies, physical health, mental health, family situations. All of those things put together that make up this human potential and other skills that exist are often left completely blindsided to an organization when they just look at the tasks and just look at the experience of projects that are being done in the lane of work. So I found that a really eye opening in a good way and a difficult way in terms of a task that was already big and difficult just got potentially bigger uh, and more complicated around. So I've got to assess all of these things. Um, I kind of knew what I thought it was and now it's even bigger. So what's your kind of response to that? Um, you know my lived experience when I saw that.

Speaker C: Gary, now you mentioned earlier, um, that the last time that we talked, um, uh, when I was 19 years old I was trained as a career counselor. And uh, it just so happens that my father was a recovering priest who wrote the world's career manual, a book called what Colors yous Parachute and what My Father Figured out by a lot of trial and error, but working with lots and lots of people around the world. He ended up having about 10 million copies in print of his book. And he did workshops and I was trained when I was young to help um, people in those workshops. What you find is that there's all these different facets of humans and for the most part, for most people, for many people, if you give them the opportunity to delve, to look below the waterline to understand more about those characteristics and to do that in a benevolent way, that is in a way where they are learning a process for doing that self inventory for seeing the ways they can mix and match a lot of these skills and capacities to get future value, future benefit, future work, then you actually do it on an individual level. You then can aggregate it. You have more data to be able to sift uh, for the entire organization. Um, I think I mentioned during the workshop I work regularly uh, with a um, startup out of Brazil called Akaso. And uh, we talk about two different ways to gather that data. There's the hands free version which is there's a lot of information about us that we have been putting out in the world. We've got resumes, we've got LinkedIn profiles, we've got degrees things. You know, there's an awful lot of information that's quite siftable. And it turns out that generative AI is very, very good, so long as you ensure it doesn't hallucinate at finding some of those patterns and seeing, pulling the skills out of them and that sort of thing. And then there's more of a sort of hands on process where you actually can go through self inventory. And uh, my father developed a whole bunch of different techniques for doing that. I've got a course on eparachute.com that helps people to do that self inventory. But it's a lot of information. There's all sorts of different things that you, biases, things that you've done before, kinds of people you like to work around, the kinds of working conditions that you enjoy the most. And if you can inventory all of that, that helps the organization tremendously because then it can figure out, well, what are some of the future kinds of work that this person could do? Can I show them how, if they just develop these three skills, they can do this other job? How do I assemble teams? Oh, it turns out that I can put these teams together because they're very complimentary skill sets. How can I do new products? Uh, if I'm going to do a new product, let's say I want to create an app for musicians. If I don't know every musician in my company, I've just ignored a focus group that could be extraordinarily helpful. And so all of those are ah, valid reasons and it's a valid process to do that inventory and to be as comprehensive as you can. Now initially start off with a smaller subset. Don't try to do everything, don't borrow the ocean. But you want to keep on encouraging people to provide more and more information, to learn more and more about themselves because it's beneficial to them and it's also beneficial to the organization.

Speaker B: It makes me think of the diverge and converge of kind of the double, double diamond in terms of, you know, start with that small focus, I. E. One person, small group of people, get that full wide set. And then how do we assimilate and converge that back into a common framework, common language, common dialogue. And that leads us to the next uh, sort of phase. But before that, I don't know if you were in the session with Josh, uh, Burson and he was talking about an example of a big, um, media agency that had 60, uh, I think it was 60,000 job titles in a workforce of, let's say a hundred thousand. It's like they made these up every time they wanted to, you know, recruit somebody. And of course it's very hard to manage that volume of job titles and job roles when you're looking at trying to map out what's next, how do we restructure that organization? And they used AI in that example to converge commonalities, uh, find patterns. And the first pass took that 60,000 to 600. And then with a lot of other work they got it down to around about 60. Um, and that gave them an incredible advantage when it was thinking about how to redeploy, how to restructure, how to reorganize, when they understood, yes, there is such, uh, diversity, but we also need to know where there are similarities, uh, of things. So that was interesting. But. And um, yeah, tell us a little bit more about the next part. In terms of how do you go about an ontology, a flexible taxonomy, in terms of the framework and common language? What is that, how to go about it? Why is it important? And again, perhaps a couple of do's and don'ts.

Speaker C: So first off, uh, to the point, uh, uh, Mr. Burson and I have shared the stage many times, um, including at the Singularity University events. And uh, one of my father's favorite lines is that a job title is a poetic metaphor. What's a project manager? A project manager is probably 6,000 different jobs in 6,000 different companies, or it's probably several hundred different jobs even in the same company. And so these poetic metaphors don't actually describe what the work role is, what the problems to be solved are, or what the skills that are required are. And so I think it's always a useful exercise. And you know, we do this with, um, the company caso. You want to get this sort of inventorying process. Now some organizations have lots and lots of artifacts. They've got lots of job descriptions. They put out a whole bunch of job requirements. On Indeed.com, they've got enterprise resource planning software. And so some organizations have a lot of information already. And as you've pointed out, as Josh pointed out, then you can use some of these tools to synthesize what I would certainly, uh, urge would be a couple of things. So first off, having an enterprise wide view of the skills in the organization and the way you would talk about those skills, the labels for the skills how you think of skills, families, uh, sort of the groupings for different work roles that is especially related to the problems to be solved. That is often called an enterprise taxonomy. Um, the problem with a taxonomy is often that it's very brittle and structured, right? So the tree of life is a taxonomy and it's structured. If you find a new animal or living creature it's got to fit someplace. Uh, whereas skills are constantly changing, uh, the labels we use for skills are constantly changing. And so if you think in terms of what we often call an ontology, that is a flexible set of descriptions of jobs, skills, the work roles, the problems to be solved and that that can be continually adapted and continually changed based on new information, based on new requirements. You might have developed a taxonomy 10 years ago. And then along comes a job like large um, language model, uh, prompt engineer. That's not in your taxonomy from 10 years ago. That's not in anybody's taxonomy. And so you have to think of it as a living uh, set of a living structure, a living framework and uh, a common language and also anchored in a lot of the information about what other people in your industry do. But you have to think of it as being constantly adaptive. And I think the process that you were talking about of uh, um, the agency that try to coalesce a lot of those descriptions, uh, and labels and that sort of thing are great. You have to make sure that you're not ignoring, you're not missing a lot of the skills that are included in those work roles. But having an enterprise wide ontology, a skills framework is a great place to start. Um, and again you can pick a small part of the organization, especially what we find. One of the strong recommendations I'd have is find a part of the organization where um, um, business person is having a hard time finding certain skills if they can't fill certain work roles. That is a great pain point to start in because you can show them how the transferability of skills inside the organization could be quite useful to be able to solve some of those hiring processes. And then the thing I would definitely avoid is thinking of it again just like with your um, uh, original manifesto, thinking of it as a one and done kind of process. You must think of it as a constantly adaptive process. You're going to be dealing with a lot of ambiguity. You're going to have the same word for different skills and different words for the same skills and you're good. All of that is going to be a work in progress because uh, I've got a project called the Skills Genome Project. And what we believe is we're cracking the code on human skills just like we have with human DNA. There's, there's all a lot of it's a metaphor but there's a lot of very similar characteristics with human skills. And because it's early days we can't say what all of the basic building blocks are yet. We're getting close but it's going to keep changing and you need to be continually adapting as we learn more and

Speaker B: more that resource um, and perhaps other resources. Can you point us to a few? Because creating that ontology whilst it is personal for every organization there's a lot of heavy lifting that could be co. Elevated and collaborated with others that are doing work. Even if that does you know 70%, 80% of some of that work to start with is there some areas uh, resources, some, some things that you've got uh, that you could point people towards that maybe they are either wanting to redo it uh, and see something or never done it before and where they could start with from that.

Speaker C: So uh, 1, 1 uh reference for reading is my friend Robin Jsutasan has got a book called uh, the Skills Powered Organization and so that gives a little bit of some of that framing and help. And then there are uh, open uh, reasonably open uh skills ontologies that are either usable or licensable. So check out lightcast or check you know there's a variety of these different um, uh databases and with different uh, with specific, often with specific variants for different industries. So I often say it doesn't matter too much where you start because what you need is a process. You need a process for uh, understanding what you believe the universe of skills in your organization is and can be. But then the place to focus it is in defining work roles and especially new work roles rather than just taking suddenly you have an open um job requisition rather than just taking the previous job description and just slapping some paint on it and putting it out again. Uh why not step back and look at it in terms of the problems and the skills for that particular work role. Workshop that with the team others that are going to be working with that person in that work role and treat that as an opportunity to start to define the skills um ontology for your organization.

Speaker B: So another output for this would you see that it impacts those new job descriptions to be what you've just said focused on. These are the problems to be solved for this role and these are the skills that we um, are our best guesses are that will help in aiding achieving solutions to those problems. Is that what you're describing? They will look like or they should look?

Speaker C: Yes, yes. And I, uh, mentioned in the workshop there is one really, really key element that determines the success or failure of that process and that is the hiring manager. So I often don't use the word manager or supervisor. I think those are industrial era labels. Uh, I instead talk a lot in my uh, book about the team guide. Um, the person who has all the best questions, the one who is guiding the work of others, is more, more coaching rather than directing. And uh, if we don't change the training and the compensation for that team guide for the person who leads a team, most of this will fail. Because if I am told, oh, you can't just use that old job description, no, you've got to do this problems and the skill thing and you've got to, and then you have to talk, uh, to people who have skills. You, you can't just look at degrees and numbers of years of experience that, you know, we call these stars, uh, skilled through alternative routes. And so if I'm supposed to look at people just for their skills and that sort of thing and well, wait a minute, why wouldn't I just hire the guy from Harvard that I've always hired before? Because that's, that I don't have any risk. If he fails, it's Harvard's fault, it's not my fault. But if I hire this person based on this skills description thing and it doesn't work out, then, um, I screwed up. So you have to change that person's mindset and you have to give them the skill set of being able to determine what the, the actual skills are and how they could hire for that. And then you have to. The tool set is compensation. That is how you need to change the incentives so that somebody will have all of the reasons why they should make this, what may sound like a risky proposition.

Speaker B: And as we started at the beginning, tying that into those business outcomes and it takes um, bravery and courage to be the first to do that, right? To go against what's been before. So therefore focus in on an area that's struggling, as you mentioned, focus on an area where there is a current challenge in finding the right people, finding the right skills. And a lovely acronym you just uh, you know, popped in there of start, you know, skill to alternative route, uh, is a lovely, another phrase for people to be thinking about. Now one of the next uh, parts in this playbook is around governance and skills. Governance. Tell us A little bit more about that, Gary.

Speaker C: Yeah, just briefly. So if you think of uh, the way that we bring humans into an organization, the way we try to help them to match up to meaningful, well paid work, the way that changes how we can continually adapt. If you think of, think of that as an operating system, right? So think of it as an operating system that runs the computers and the phone is the digital distraction action devices that we all have. Those operating systems essentially offer a structure and set of processes that uh, when you use applications that they, they can leverage or follow. And so it's the same thing with anything that's related to people, to the talent part of the organization. You have processes for hiring. You ah, have processes, as we've discussed, for defining work roles. You've got processes for helping, uh, to train them and develop their, help them develop their skills. And all of that is governance. That's how you as an organization govern the processes related to humans. And some of those are cultural, some of those are unwritten, many of them are written. There's standards and structures, especially in government organizations. Uh, and so that governance, there's a lot of these rules that need to be made very clear, explicit. And we have to, if we do this well, we have to have the kinds of collaborators, uh, inside the organization who can continually work together to determine whether or not the existing rules, the governance that you follow are enabling this transition or they are hobbling this transition. So if you have a very structured hierarchy and you've got numbers or labels for the levels in different parts of the hierarchy and somebody who is a classification 3B one and you want them to go into the job that is forbe C2 and you don't have a pathway to do that because you're so heavily structured, then you need to rethink your governance because what ends up happening is you can't adapt. That is a tax on your aq. And so what you end up having is a bunch of friction on the organization. And so stepping back, having a lot of stakeholders all in the process of determining how do we change governance on an ongoing basis. And when you do that revisiting of your manifesto, you also need to revisit what are our hiring practices, how are we using tech tools like um, AI in those processes. How can we make sure that we are continually getting these skills into the organization, Especially if the reason we can't hire in the past is because we have so many frictions on those processes.

Speaker B: And you talked about how perhaps in the old way these were things to get A predictable outcome in a predictable environment. So we would have a method, a process, an sop. All of these things that now are becoming the friction, are becoming the barrier for internal mobility, becoming the barrier for those transitions that need to take place place. Now of course, with that change is a perceived risk, a perceived risk of coloring outside the lines, of requiring a maverick that says, um, this is broken. And whether that's a burning ambition or a burning platform, uh, depending on the business pillar, business division that needs to shift. So in each one of these areas we need the courage and bravery of who is going to lead this charge to reimagine, to reorder the operating system of those things. And you talk a lot about the, the coalition of the willing. And I think that's not to be underestimated. You know, with governance, it's kind of this word that makes me cringe just in its word because to me my biases are about control, not necessarily freedom. And so I think that fundamental rewiring of that, these methods can have freedom, that we, that we think in principles more than hard and fast, you know, methods. What's your sort of tips for right now? Organizations that will have legacy, they'll have legacy, uh, particularly in this area that is like swimming through treacle. And we have come across these mavericks that are trying to do their best with one hand behind their back, someone else holding, uh, a, uh, you know, blocker over one eye and two or three people holding onto their ankles that are, ah, the processes, the world ways of doing things and they're trying to work through and they get tired, they get exhausted and often they give up. When there is a person who says, sorry, we can't do that. How do they break through in that situation? Because I have, you know, clients and partners dealing with this right now, where the friction point is between the processes and ways they've done things and what they see as a better way. But they're still not able to overcome that. If you've got any tips for that, Gary.

Speaker C: Absolutely. So, uh, there's, there's, I'm going to give you two, um, uh, opportunities and, and you get to decide so in your, you know, in your own organizations. Um, so, uh, there's two schools of thought. One school of thought says it is impossible to change the core of the organization and you must go to the edge. And that was championed by my great friends John, uh, Hagel and John Sealy Brown, who ran Deloitte's center for the Edge and their methodology, their process was, if you try to do it in the light of day. You try to do it in the core of the organization. All the enemies of the future are the just going to delay. So you go to the edge and you do it in a new division, a new department, a new acquisition of a company, launching a new startup, anything that is new or is not in the core. Uh, so that's one strategy. Another strategy is no, no, no, you need to change the core. That is the only way you're going to get really scaled and sustainable change. And I always point to the book, and I do this in my own book, point to uh, the book called Culture Transformation by the Institute for Corporate Performance because they uh, did a study, i4CP did a study. Hundreds of organizations that tried to do these kinds of transformations. Bad uh, news, 85% fail. For all the reasons that we're talking about is there's, there's all these existing processes that are almost impossible to overcome. 15% succeed. And I actually model these 18 different components. Again it's a playbook in my book. But, but the basic premise is you need to have uh, courageous people leading the organization that are going to just push on through. It often helps if there is some existential threat. So a global pandemic was a pretty good opportunity to test this thing called remote and distributed work. Uh, it helps if there is something that is really effective affecting the organization. And then it helps if there is a new technology or some new opportunity to hit the reset button. Um, and so we saw this with the Internet. I started a magazine called Interactive week back in 1994, the Internet's first newspaper. And we had uh, so many similar characteristics to this AI tsunami. And we're seeing it now with AI is you can the potential to leverage these new technologies that help you to go through these transformations because you can help the organization to see if we do this, we get all these business benefits and if we don't, we will potentially be left behind.

Speaker B: That's really valuable and helpful. And just that uh, insight of you know, picking the right time and the right area to go for this, you know, a existential threat or external threat, whether that's tariff changes, whether that's augury structure or one in itself of the underlying accelerant of AI that equally could be considered the existential threat in duality. And we got three other core areas I want to cover before we um, we wrap up and you know a second go and we're still just scratching the surface, aren't we Gary? So the next part really is, is looking at the cycle, um, and designing that skills based talent cycle. And maybe if you, you could link that to the next one as well in terms of the skills inventory and the continuous skills inventory.

Speaker C: So when we talked about governance we said okay, so there's all these processes related to talent and uh, to humans inside the organization. And we know that every time there's a new technology, especially one that automates a lot of tasks, that, that is an opportunity. You're very likely going to be resetting a lot of work. And so uh, the, the, one of the ways to leverage that opportunity is to be thinking about ah, the, the cycle is what's the experience of somebody that is not yet working for your organization and what would be their journey, um, into the organization. And then think about how all of different steps along the way could be talent, it could be skills based on what, what would that model look like? And then how could you start to experiment to try that out and, and use that. Think of that as a cycle because eventually humans are going to leave your organization. At least some humans are going to leave your organization. So you think of that as a cycle. But even when they're outside of your organization, they're still part of the cycle because they had skills they learned in the organization. And ideally you would want them to take that information with them so they could use it in their future work. That, that would be ideal. So think of that as a cycle design for a cycle and again experiment, try it out in places where there's high demand and low supply. At least you're not able to find the, be able to hire the talent that you really need. Uh, and then you can expand. Um, but it must be paired with thinking of not just the journey through the organization but the journey through the individual's career. So what is a career? A career is essentially your relationship with the world of work. And when you start out as a little bitty human, you have zero relationship with the world of work. Or at least I hope you do. And hopefully at some future point in your life far advanced, you might have again very little relationship to the world of work. And in between you're probably going to have a lot of relationship with the world of work. So what are the ways you can help the process, Everything we were talking about in terms of helping people to look below the waterline and the iceberg, understanding more about their skills. How do you bake that into the experience of each worker through their, in their journey through the organization? They, they need to have a North Star or Southern Cross they need to have a continuous process of being able to inventory their skills. They need to see the market signals from the organization about what the skills, what the work opportunities are and what skills are needed for those. In an ideal world you have implemented uh, as part of your talent cycle, you've got a platform where you are leveraging the skills throughout the organization. You don't see the skills of one human as the wholly owned subsidiary of one manager. Those skills are available to other projects, other people throughout the organization. And you have this very flexible operating system that allows people to, to continually connect to the kind of work that can be of most value to the organization. And if you put all those pieces in place and everybody feels that they do have that North Star or Southern Cross that is constantly pulling them forward and it's linked to the market signals, the skills that the organization wants to develop. Now you have a self renewing adaptive

Speaker B: process and so that ongoing inventory, skills inventory and that view of this as a cycle. One of the things when we um, created our AQ assessment back in sort of 2018, 2019 was uh, one of the indexes, a predictive index was a reskill index. So we have a change readiness and a reskill index. And um, the premise and the hypothesis at that time was the speed of change is going to accelerate, the types of skills is going to emerge, change, evolve. And therefore can we predict rather than it's this skill, it's called basket weaving, it's this skill called prompt engineering. It's this skill called this. How might we predict from upskilling, further mastery, professional development on a line item of something we already have to reskilling based on speed of learning, unlearning, you know, mindset these other aspects to work on that as a skill, I. E. The skill to acquire new skills. What does that look like? Well it is unlearning, um, it is speed of learning. It is all of those components as an individual and team sport. So I think what's interesting in this in talent cycle is the view. What I had for me was not only to view it as the individual, but as the collective and the collective of teams that get, you know, that solve problems. Because often it's a collection that solve a problem in an organization. That it's a group of individuals with diverse skills that are then doing a range of different tasks. Some AI doing that task, some human doing that task, some something else doing that task. But fundamentally it's a joined up and I think that links us a lot to your final piece that talks about pilots assessing, redesigning and expanding as this common thread we've had throughout our conversation of that. This is a continual process, Gary.

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely. So, uh, now you hit on some very, very key points. Um, and a lot of it is that um, you want to uh, encourage some of the underpinnings of lifelong learning, of continually unlearning what doesn't need to be done anymore. Um, you mentioned my, I've got 1.6 million learners on LinkedIn. Um, I updated two courses, learning mindset in the age of AI and learning agility in the age of AI. And learning agility has all the characteristics you were just talking about. And so the, the process of having each individual feel that they're continually trying to achieve their full human potential, that the organization is actually, actually the platform on which they can, that can happen. It's a tremendous amount of power for the organization. And the more it can be anchored in teams, what we call skill building networks, how it is they can each help each other to solve problems and to develop skills, the more effective it can be. And uh, if you want this kind of process to be successful in most organizations, you do need to start somewhere, you need to start small. Don't try to build an enterprise wide taxonomy that takes you years and years to develop. Don't try to find the perfect place to be able to experiment with this. Find where there's pain in either inability to hire or high cost hiring or in not being able to just have the skills within the organization that are needed to solve certain problems for certain customers. Test that out. Have a constant process of assessment and inventory and understanding how are you doing based on the business value. Know that there's a propagation delay often for the business value that gets delivered. Um, you can invest in developing skills now and it can take some time before those skills are actually applicable. But if you don't start today, if you don't start this pilot piloting loop, you will not have the skills that you need tomorrow.

Speaker B: And essentially you'll become irrelevant. You know, and that speed of irrelevancy, that's the risk. Now historically the speed of irrelevancy was after I've gone. So therefore this burning platform to make a difference was, well, I'll just see it out. I'm retiring, I'm. Whatever it may be, because it'll be many years, it might be a, uh, generation or two if I don't solve it now before the consequence, I think what we're facing now is the consequence will be in your lifetime, it will be Maybe even in your tenure at that organization, when tenures are shortening in themselves, you know, a couple of years, two to three years, that you will see the consequences of inaction. And I think that is the uh, burning platform. We're now at the, at the point at which we're going to feel the pain. Uh, I, I, uh, uh, that's my hunch.

Speaker C: Well, absolutely. And I think, um, one of the ways that, you know, just coming at it from the mindset of, of a Hume, one of the ways you can know is if people who lead in the organization are frustrated, they're frustrated that people are not adapting fast enough. They're frustrated that people are not seeing the opportunity, they're frustrating. People are not adapting new tool sets like AI fast enough. They're not identifying who their next customer is and meeting that person's needs. And it's wherever that friction exists in the goals, especially the strategic goals of the organization, and you simply don't have the human capacity to be able to meet those goals. That's where you've got the lever point to be able to put these kinds of programs in place.

Speaker B: And if we think about AI as the tool set of the moment, it does blend into other areas. Yes, of an organization, any one of these big waves of transformation and change, it's still underpinned by the adaptability of the individuals and the team. And so it's why we've been talking recently a lot more now about AQ before AI and the adaptability of individuals, teams and organizations will make the difference to the adoption leveraging, going from irrelevant to relevant in each of those phases. So as we come to the witching hour of, uh, our conversation, Gary, um, as you know, I, I ask every guest at the end of an episode, uh, a relay a question around, when was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it? But just before I get you to answer that, what are you excited about, Gary? If you look forward of this year, Perhaps the next 12 months, what's really exciting you?

Speaker C: So I, I think of myself as a cautious optimist. I don't think of myself as, as thinking, uh, that uh, everything just inevitably works out okay. That's not the way our world works. But I do believe one, uh, of the key deliverables my father always talked about, for any, um, uh, intention for the future, whether it was on an individual basis or for an organization, is, is hope. You have to believe that you do have the capacity to be able to solve problems today and tomorrow. So in the coming year. I believe that we are at a very important inflection point. Um, we can say this in every era. Uh, but in a post pandemic world, we can bungee cord back to the old practices that you and I talked about five years ago that organizations were trying to get their arms around at the beginning of the pandemic. Um, and many organizations have done that. Or we can take the step forward and we can see all the opportunity that exists for us to be able to double down on human skills, to be able to double down on leveraging this tool set to help people to understand those skills, develop new skills, to be able to solve new problems. And I believe that it's a very, very hopeful era where we actually do have that capacity. We can develop the mindset and the skill set to leverage that tool set. And, uh, that's. I would love to see more and more organizations in the coming year and to be able to help more and more organizations in the coming year to be able to embrace those opportunities.

Speaker B: For sure. More tools are coming, right? More tools are coming because the barrier, uh, of entry for creation is now only imagination. And that will unlock a tsunami of tools. And we will have a new condition of toolitis, um, that everyone will suffer from. And therefore, it is our, ah, mindset and skill set that will make the difference to leverage those right tools, to discern the noise and the signal from them when to deploy, how to deploy. And it is that pilot, assess, redesign, expand through that process. Let's finish off Gary with. When was the last time you did something for the first time? And what was it?

Speaker C: So, uh, just. I'll anchor this in AQ. So, uh, I had spent more than 50 years of my life in San Francisco. I grew up there, uh, love the city. And my wife and I went through a process a year ago of trying to determine, well, so how adaptable are we? I mean, could we do something really new? Can we move to a new place? So we did that. We, we downsized, you know, by half to a condo. And we're now living in Washington, D.C. quiet little town, nothing happening much nowadays. Um, you probably don't see any news from here. Whole new group of friends, whole new group of organizations, uh, that we're collaborating with. That ability to pivot to test our own aq. That was something I, I couldn't remember last time I, I did that intentionally. And, uh, and it's been marvelous. It's been all of the, all the reasons that we'd hoped it was a good decision has Ended up being a marvelous result. So, um, I think whenever, I would certainly say to listeners, whenever you can envision something where you can test your own AQ with some kind of life pivot like that, if that's possible for you, I think that is a marvelous, uh, uh, way to expand your skill set and to test your own adaptability.

Speaker B: That's beautiful. And it does really allow us to see the world with new eyes when we shift out of the familiar. Um, it's hard to do that when every day is familiar. That's a skill in itself, is to use new eyes in the familiar. But a great, um, let's say injection into the new eyes is change the environment. And uh, what Gary's just done, and many, I'm sure you can, our listeners will know of somebody who's done something similar. A lot of people I know are, uh, you know, moving countries, lots to do by at the moment. All sorts of different things that are going on. A shift in that environment can really push us to see with new eyes and acquire those new skills that will help us in uncertainty. It's been an absolute glorious pleasure over the years, Gary, for our conversations. To have key moments, uh, of what's going on and uh, to get to hang out in person again was a lovely experience. I feel very blessed to have done that with you and I look forward to seeing what does the next four or five years bring, uh, and how we might start each day with a smile and finish it with a smile as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to the next conversation, uh, in the next five years.

Speaker B: Thank you all. Uh, right.

Speaker C: Be well.

Speaker A: Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ. Visit AQ AI to gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability. AQAI transforming the way people, teams and organizations navigate change. Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding aq. Please make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast directory and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Speaker B: Feedback, Please do leave a review and

Speaker A: be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.