Steve Odland on governing AI in an age of uncertainty

Steve Odland: Hi, Bill Kerr here. It's impossible to miss the avalanche of AI content and frankly, most of it kind of sounds the same, which is why I recommend the podcast. The Parlor Room presents hello AI. The Parlor Room presents hello AI is different. It's long form. It's deep and genuinely human. Host Chris Linnane sits down with Harvard Business School faculty and goes beyond the sound bites into real discussions about what this wave of AI means for how we work, create and lead. The conversations on this show will change the questions you ask about AI. Find the Parlor Room presents hello AI. Every Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts,

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Steve Odland: There is this question about whether do we need to have an AI expert on every board? And, and this has happened at every stage. Do we need a trade expert? Do we need an IT expert at one point, do we need a Gen Z expert? Uh, and I think a lot of studies and governance have come to the conclusion that no, you don't need that, that's really management's function, but you do need a board that's literate in all this, which means they need to be educated and they need to be involved.

Joe Fuller: Amid the hype and debate about artificial intelligence, a more immediate question confronts business leaders. What actually has to change inside organizations for those tools to create value? Many firms remain focused on targeted applications, still determining where AI belongs in existing workflows and how it should be governed. Workers are experimenting with new tools while expressing concern about job security, work quality and trust. And that comes against a background of persistent economic, geopolitical and technological uncertainty. Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I'm your host, Harvard Business School professor and non resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Fuller. I'm pleased to welcome Steve Odlund, President and CEO of the Conference Board, the century old business research organization behind the Consumer Confidence Index and other widely followed measures of economic and business performance. We'll discuss what companies are learning from early efforts to deploy AI, why governance and workflow design may matter as much as the technology itself, and how leaders can build productive and resilient organizations amid persistent uncertainty. Steve, welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast.

Steve Odland: Glad to be here. Thank you, Steve.

Joe Fuller: Um, I'm quite confident that a lot of our listeners have a sense of the conference board, its scope, but for those who don't, could you just briefly describe the conference board and then how you find yourself, uh, leading it?

Steve Odland: Yeah. Well, thank you, uh, for having us. So the conference board is over 110 years old and we were founded in New York in times of labor strife. And we worked through a series of labor practices that were voluntarily adopted, including the five day, 40 hour work week, child labor practices, safety practices, all things that were later codified into regulatory practice or law. So, uh, you know, our mission started with human capital. It, uh, evolved into economic forecasting, including our indicators program, our consumer confidence index, Leading Economic Indicators, CEO Confidence Index. So everything that we're known for publicly, we have 11 centers around the world. We are global. Those centers include economics, human capital, governance, uh, marketing, communications, and public policy. So we do a lot of different things.

Joe Fuller: Well, that's interesting. I did not know that that was the origin story of the conference board that actually started about human assets in a workforce. And I would not have known your global scope either. Well, you, uh, your organization published, uh, a white paper this year talking about the arc of the workplace, how it's changing title. Uh, of it is, uh, reimagined workplace 2026. Tell us a little bit about your findings. I was quite intrigued that you were, as you examined the adoption rate of AI, seemed to be more conservative, slower than I think a lot of our listeners would imagine.

Steve Odland: Well, you know, we've been tracking the workplace for a very long time, over 100 years, as I mentioned at the conference board. And of course the workplace has changed. And AI, of course, is the latest of technologies. I think that if you talk to the average CEO, four years ago they didn't know how to spell AI. And today, of course, um, they're throwing money at it like crazy and trying to figure out how they're going to get a return on AI. So it's accelerating, uh, people, it's a wild wild west at this point. Not different than when the PC was introduced back in the 80s and people were trying to figure out how to work that beige box and what software was and you know, how they were going to figure out how to use that. And I don't think AI is all that different. Adoption is, um, very quick in certain circles, certainly for programming and things like that. But, but people are still Trying to figure out how to adopt it and use it in the workplace.

Joe Fuller: In the paper, you stipulate five different levels at which companies are operating. And the, um, significant majority are either in early experimentation, to use your phraseology. Ah, or in some integration of AI. But it's targeted. Are you anticipating that balance to shift quickly? Or are, uh, companies really cautious, in your view, dabbling on the edges, trying to get comfortable, but not really imagining, picking up the pace and moving aggressively in the near term?

Steve Odland: The biggest fear if you talk to CEOs is they're going to get left behind and disintermediated by their competition. So they're, they're pouring a ton of money into it. There's a lot of different uses of it. I think the biggest issue is that people, um, now have the tools and are somewhat trained, but still trying to experiment with what's the best use of it.

Joe Fuller: How is your, um, organization itself adapting to AI? What are you doing internally? Uh, not just to observe what's happening, but to put it to youth to advance your productivity and your mission?

Steve Odland: Yeah, it's a good question because we are a microcosm of everything that we're learning from, uh, Fortune 1000 companies. Uh, we threw everything against the wall essentially to see what would stick. I mean, we, at one point we were playing with up to 40 or 50, I can't remember the top number, but different apps to do just about everything we can do. And like everybody else, we're trying to now winnow it down to a few that are most useful and get people trained on it. Um, in our case, we've come to the conclusion that AI just simply can't replace humans. Um, and, uh, we've made a proclamation that, uh, jobs are not at risk in any fashion. It's basically to make AI is to make their jobs easier for them, more productive, more creative, and give them time to do more stuff. Um, not everybody is saying that, but, uh, that's our approach to this thing. But our organization produces trusted insights for what's ahead. And that requires our expertise and our economists, our human capital experts, our researchers use AI as a tool, but no different than you would use PowerPoint, Word, Excel as tools. But the end, the end state of our products are certainly human derived, and that's really important for our members, our customers. And that's probably a great, you know, a great, uh, model for most companies to follow. You have to have human interaction. At the end of the day, Steve,

Joe Fuller: it strikes me that there's a little of a paradox in uh, what we've been talking about. And then some of the, the data in the study you published. As you said earlier, uh, amusingly, executives couldn't even spell AI five years ago. And you went on to say they're spending a ton of money on this. But yet it's quite interesting. In the study, 56% of the people you surveyed said that AI fluency played little or no role in promotion and succession decisions. Does that strike you as odd and was that a surprise to you?

Steve Odland: No. So it's not whether people are fluent in AI, um, that drives promotion and succession, because that's typically driven by leadership and their ability to inspire people and so forth. Uh, the use of the tools are just a means to do that kind of thing. And this brings us back to another important point in the study, which is that these tools then can be introduced, but if they're just sitting there and people don't figure out how to use them in their workflows, then they're really not that useful. You have to really understand your workflows and the work processes and how AI is going to be involved in those work processes and map them and be deliberate about the use of AI in each of these and what it's going to do differently. There's also a whole governance overlay to AI and that starts, uh, at the board level. Of course, with Enterprise Risk Management, we can protect IP to make sure that there are no hallucinations, uh, that uh, the output is actually factual, that it is tempered by human judgment along the way. All of these things are important from a governance perspective.

Joe Fuller: If senior managers are basically familiar with it, using it as a tool occasionally, are they well positioned to exercise good governance and oversight of, uh, a technology that is moving so quickly and is showing up in so many different instantiations around their organization?

Steve Odland: Yeah, I think you really have to be deliberate about it. And uh, again, at the highest level, it starts with the board and that gets delegated to senior management. There needs to be deliberate oversight in how you're going to use it and how it's, you know, and what the governance is going to be, what the rules are going to be. It is important that people understand AI enough in order to, you know, be able to lead organizations that, uh, are using the tool. I mean, just think back to, again, you know, the days when that first PC showed up in the workplace. And it wasn't until everybody was trained and you figured out how and agreed to how you were going to use these tools, um, consistently in the workplace. So there's a lot of work that still needs to be done with AI. You know, people think of AI as this sentient robot kind of stuff and you know, maybe that's down the road in the future. But at its core AI is software.

Joe Fuller: What's your sense of the degree to which companies are really investing in basic training in AI as opposed to assuming because it's a, ah, general purpose technology, it's pretty easy to use, that people are just going to learn through experience.

Steve Odland: And this varies in our study across organizations. Some people haven't even started uh, any use of it yet. But I think that people are starting to centralize on. Okay, here are the areas where it's going to be most useful to our business model, to our customers in this fashion and so forth. Another area that you read in the headlines is uh, that AI is going to be a job killer. And in fact there are some layoffs, um, as a result of AI where it's replaced some jobs. But in the aggregate at the total economy level you don't see it. And in fact there are more job gains from AI than there are job losses from AI. And I think that's because that AI is being used more as a tool and people are being reskilled and learning how to use these tools more. That's a really important thing because once AI becomes not scary, not scary but useful to you, then I think the adoption rate um, is, you know, is, is increased and people will, will be more um, you know, more interested in uh, in using it and learning more about it.

Joe Fuller: Why do you think AI is so unpopular? It has a 70% negative rating in the United States. We saw the other day at the University of Arizona, Eric Schmidt, the um, former uh, CEO and chairman at Google. Very distinguished executive who uh, runs a very innovative and generously funded philanthropy, Schmidt Futures, was booed down by the graduating students when he brought up AI. And it's likely a, uh, positive impact on their lives. What, what's driving that do you think? That fear of popularity?

Steve Odland: It's just plain fear. 100 years ago, 95, a little over 100 years ago, 95% of the population was engaged in agriculture at some phase. We've gone as a society in a very, very tiny slice of humanity. The time that humanity has been developing through many revolutions here, industrial, um, computers, the digital evolution is, is just, you know, an overlay to all of this. And it's scary. There's fear of the unknown and you know, with something coming at you that is as big as this and yeah, and you know, it sounds like science fiction at certain levels. This is why I keep coming back to the, to the analogy of, you know, when personal computers were introduced, um, because the, uh, you know, the fear was the same.

Joe Fuller: Do you think that fear is AI specific or is AI just a factor in a broader atmosphere of consternation? And this is, uh, is this a proof point that people should be worried or is the cause of people being worried?

Steve Odland: I think, you know, when you have these big kind of evolutions and they, and they don't come linearly in, in life, they come in step functions. When these things happen, they're scary because it's stuff that's coming at you that you don't understand necessarily, and, and you're worried about what's going to happen to you. And so it's really important that business leaders think through AI, like any change management process, and that they explain what it is, why it's important, why people should not fear it, how it's going to be used, be very transparent and open with people and that will help them, you know, um, ameliorate some of the fear.

Joe Fuller: Another expression of that fear is cynicism. And I was intrigued you mentioned earlier. And there's also data in the study that yes, AI has contributed on the margin to some of the job losses that we've seen announced in the last little while. But it's really the same old factors of business pressure, financial challenges for companies that are driving most of the reductions. Um, a lot of people in the press and just a lot of people, uh, that you bump into, pretty cynical about management's explanations for those things. How do you view that? And, um, when you said earlier, it's really up to leaders, the managers, to put this in context. Are we failing at that? Particularly business leaders?

Steve Odland: Well, if your employees are afraid, then yes, we have an obligation to explain things a little bit better. You know, there are different things that are happening out there. Salesforce made an announcement that AI was going, was responsible for some layoffs. Now they implemented the new AI procedures in their automatic calling call centers and. Okay, well that took some. That's real. Okay, that's a direct impact. Amazon announced that AI was responsible for a bunch of layoffs. But basically what they said is we need to make a lot of investment in AI. We overhired anyway, and so we're going to take a layer out because we're overweighted, uh, at a certain manager level and we're going to use that to invest in AI. Those are two really, really different things. And most of what you see is the latter, not the former. So organizations need to explain to their people what's going on, what their strategy is, where they're going. But by the way, this has. This practice is required whether you're talking about AI or any other change in an organization.

Joe Fuller: The business world is moving faster than ever and when change hits, we need to learn in real time on Rapid Response. You'll hear candid conversations with CEOs and leaders making top tough calls about AI, human talent, responsibility and the bottom line. How they navigate uncertainty, pressure and high stakes moments. I'm Bob Safian, former editor in chief of Fast Company and I'll be your host as each episode breaks down what you need to know right now. You can find Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts. Mhm. The Wired newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. Steve, you've been um, uh, executive, but you've also been a director of several of America's most distinguished, well known companies. As we bring a director's perspective, what would be the type of issues you'd be asking management? Uh, um, keep the board informed on and what would be questions you'd be expecting um, or issued, you'd be, you were expecting to have on the board agenda during this transition period?

Steve Odland: Well, like any change and, or like any big investment, you know, the board would expect, you know, regular reports on what's going on with AI, how are we using it, how are we compared to our competition, how are we distinguishing ourselves, what's the risk involved with this, how are we protecting our IP and um, you know, how are we training our people, how are we taking care of the culture around AI, you know, all of these things. So it goes from, you know, the oversight, uh, related to risk and I mentioned erm, um, enterprise risk management and your heat maps and all of that which you need to have. But it goes, you know, layer by layer because here again it's, you know, is the investment paying out? What are we using the investment for? Is it hardware? Is it software, Is it training? Okay, now that we have the investment how are we using it? Are we risking any of our, um, key skill sets by turning it over to AI? All of these things are important for boards to understand and ask management. Now there is this question about whether, do we need to have an AI expert on every board? And this has happened at every stage. Do we need a trade expert? Do we need an IT expert at one point? Do we need a gen, you know, a Gen Z expert? Uh, you know, and I think, you know, a lot of studies and governance have come to the conclusion that no, you don't need that, that's really management's function. But you do need a board that's literate in all this, which means they need to be educated and they need to be involved.

Joe Fuller: Your research goes beyond um, AI. You indicated your research that over half of organizations, just over half, 51%, still have a hybrid workplace model, um, operating, uh, uh, uh, and that, that was very, very important to a lot of workers, that some kind of flexibility around the nature of work, um, was highly valued as a criterion for working someplace or staying in an appointment situation. Is that now is hybrid the new normal, at least for certain industries? Obvious. And for um, blue collar construction workers, how do you see a, uh, convergence, the confluence of AI and hybrid? Is that ultimately going to make hybrid more accessible? Less accessible? Will it uh, oblige people to rethink this model fundamentally when you've got agentic teammates?

Steve Odland: It's a very good question. And um, you know, the conference board was at the forefront of hybrid well before COVID Our research at the conference board says hybrid is here to stay. You have to then be deliberate about the work. So if you have a job where you want to put your head down and you want to work well, that needs to be happening on the days when you are remote. But the collaboration and the interaction cross functionally needs to happen when you're together. And what, where it messes up is, you know, in a straight office environment you can mix and match, you know, hour to hour, day to day. You can't do that in a hybrid situation. So managers, leaders need to be very deliberate about how they plan work and structure work and where the work gets done and how it gets done. Now you overlay AI on top of this. Well, it's a tool, as I've said, and it can actually facilitate hybrid work. But we have to be very careful about depending on it too much because again, quality control is absolutely important.

Joe Fuller: One of the, uh, phrases that's been coined recently and gotten a lot of attention is this notion of work swap, where AI generates material that is actually deceptively, uh, compelling superficially, but when you start reading it more carefully and thinking about it, it's actually um, an empty vessel if you will, not really substantial. And that um, a lot of workers are relying on AI in waves that generates this low value added output and that that is in some ways polluting the system, creating work for colleagues, superior subordinates. That is either rectifying the shortcomings of this poorly executed AI supported work or undoing negative consequences based on superficial analysis or hallucination. Is that something you're hearing a lot about? Is that something that, that. And do you have any idea if there's any correlation between a hybrid position, uh, and specifically working outside the workplace and more or less effective use of AI?

Steve Odland: Yeah, I mean uh, what you're talking about is garbage output and people blame it on hallucination. As if AI is a sentient human being and it's hallucinating. It's why you have to really think about the workflows and how you're going to use AI. You can't use AI as the last, as the last piece before it touches a customer. You know, however your customer is defined, a reader or you know, you know, an end consumer, you know, however it has to be. You have to use AI along with human beings along the way. There has to be judgment, there has to be interaction, um, there have to be insights developed. This is why I keep coming back to you have to view AI as a piece of the workflow, but it's got to be in the right order, in the right places and constantly checked by human beings.

Joe Fuller: Steve, I thought one of the most interesting parts of the paper was your comparison of how employees in companies evaluate their work situation versus how their m. Managers believe the workers are experiencing the workplace. And could you speak a little bit about that? You also noted that the self reported satisfaction with work, um, among the worker surveys was at an all time high. Um, did that surprise you?

Steve Odland: Yeah, it actually did. I mean we found that 69% of US workers are satisfied with their jobs overall and yet their managers think predicted that their employees would be less satisfied than that. I think part of this is just where we are in time, you know. And you know, coming out of COVID people were pent up and they, you know, they moved and then they found, okay, the grass wasn't greener. A whole generation now learned that the grass, grass wasn't greener. And so therefore, gee, maybe this isn't as, you know, this isn't bad. Maybe managers finally are doing a little bit better job of communicating. All of these things have, uh, come together. And so I think you see now fairly high satisfaction level. The question is, what are leaders going to do with it and what is it in your organization that they like so that, you know, do more of that, um, you know, where are still some of the opportunity areas and so forth. So I think, I think this is good. Satisfaction is high. Uh, we're nearing, you know, statistical or we're at statistical full employment. You know, all of that is a positive thing, but I don't think leaders should take comfort in that. I think they should, you know, really test, you know, what's underneath that.

Joe Fuller: I'm curious, uh, on the full employment observation, because we are on the technical definition at close to full employment, but we have this phenomenon now of a large number of, particularly men, uh, probably on the order of 9 million in the United States who are still working age, but they're not employed, they're not in education, they're not in training, they're so called NEETs. If we've got all these happy workers, what do you think explains this pretty large population of people who are on the sidelines?

Steve Odland: Yeah, this is an interesting phenomenon. Women are more educated than men where they are making. When they're in a dual career situation or dual male, uh, female household situation, women are making more than men. This is a big thing thing. Um, it's something to be contended with in the workplace as well, because still the traditional roles, uh, that fall to women are still there with elder care, younger care. And so therefore you have more women in the workplace. Um, they're more educated, but yet they still have these other demands on them, hence the need for flexibility, hence the need for hybrid and, and why it seems to be sticking all of these things. Every company is different, but if we're going to leverage our human capital, we've got to be careful and curate that males are being disaffected. And, um, it's in the education system, it's in the workforce and so forth. It's a bigger question than we can tackle here, but it is clearly, ah, an important one.

Joe Fuller: I'm curious about how that might relate to one of the findings you had in the study where you very interestingly looked at, uh, how both employers and employees rated issues like well being, sense of belonging, mental health, and how easy it was or difficult it was for management to, um, assess the state of their workforce on these variables and the factor they rated, um, the characteristic that they Rated as the most difficult to assess was the mental health of their workforce.

Steve Odland: It seems to be at a very high level compared to historical levels. And it is, um, affecting the workplace more than ever before. And you know, in the past, when you would say to people, you know, look, the, you know, your people, the mental healthier people is, is strained, let's just say leaders would take it personally. Of course, the workplace is a microcosm of greater society and these stresses exist in society. You know, I've seen numbers that suggest that 20% of the population suffers from some sort of mental, uh, illness or strain. All of that's coming into the workplace. Um, and then you have the overlay of geo, what's happening geopolitically and the strain of that and uh, you know, the overlay of course, of a divided society and the stress that puts on it. All this walks through your door every single day. And it's not that business leaders can solve societal issues, but they do need to understand that that soup ends up in the workplace. And they need to be sensitive to that and provide outlets for that. And our research has shown that the companies that have been most successful are the ones that just are open about it and have discussions about it and have mental health days and resources for people who are, who are, who are not, who are struggling and they're sensitive to it. You know, it's not that they're stupid or that they're lazy or that they're underperforming, they're struggling. You know, I just go around, you know, the people that I work with. Everybody's dealing with something, whether it's their own health or uh, their parents, elder care issues or their children. I mean, everybody's got something and we need to be, need to be kind in the workplace and care for our work family, as I call it.

Joe Fuller: Steve, you've had a quite interesting career in so much as you started at a great American company, Quaker Oats, and then you were Sara Lee and gradually found yourself uh, being a CEO and subsequently, uh, you've gotten into um, more of the not for profit, uh, really think tank intellectual space being at uh, the Committee on Economic Development and now as president, CEO. Tell us a little bit about, about how that all unfolded. And, and looking back, is this kind of what you expected your career would look like when you, when you left, graduated from the Kellogg School at Northwestern.

Steve Odland: When you look back, it looks more logical than it was. It, it, you know, doors open and you go through them and you take risks. And you know, I was always of the mindset that you say yes when you're presented with an opportunity. Um, and you move, you know we moved our family, we lived in 10 different states and you know there's, there are sacrifices around that. But yeah, I grew up in the food industry and then uh, you know, evolved to food retail which then led to CEO of autozone and then CEO of Office Depot. And you know having been and started my CEO role at the age of 39, I was able to have a great corporate uh, career and still have time to do this which is give back in, in the not for profit world. And and so I've really enjoyed being CEO of, of uh, the Conference Board. I've also had the opportunity to serve on many boards. I was also a presidential appointee on various commissions. Uh, so I've done, I, I've done a lot of different things and uh, and chaired various community uh, organizations and been able to give back so uh, you know really, really a full career and uh, and I've enjoyed every minute

Joe Fuller: of it and still at it. Well, certainly one thing I stress to my students here at Harvard uh, Business school is try to get to the next place you're going as soon as possible as soon as you're competent for it. And uh, that does. If you can shave one year off, two years off, three years off the cycle here and then another 18 months off there, suddenly you find yourself really being able to have more than one full career. You can have a full second career and um, uh, pursue ambitions that you thought might be mutually exclusive.

Steve Odland: Yeah, it's really true. Um, and I think people should, should not fear moving to different things. You have to take risks in life and you know, you have to be willing to do different assignments and do different things.

Joe Fuller: You've been tracking the phenomena of skills um based hiring at the Conference Board. It's certainly something. We've done quite a bit of research here in our project. I think our findings have been that quite a lot of companies have taken steps to shift towards skills based hiring. But the actual outcomes in terms of uh, really changing the composition of the workforce, the composition of the applicant pool are pretty modest. What do you think accounts for a lot of what seem to be good intentions but very modest results?

Steve Odland: I think the objective of skills based hiring is really important and it's good. Which is that you want to hire people who have the capability to do the job, um, or fill the position but do the job and have a future with the organization. Unfortunately it's very hard to measure um, and people are starting to rely on AI for that, which is very faulty and leads to all sorts of other issues, but including discrimination. But, um, I think people have defaulted over time to looking at resumes and various experiences and degrees, college degrees. And it's too bad because I, uh, think it's driving over education in a lot of places. Underutilization of very smart people who maybe didn't have the economic resources to get a college degree. Um, and this is, you know, it's bifurcated our society. I mean the income levels of people who have college or post doctorate postgraduate, uh, education are quite a bit higher. So it really has become the entry point for our society. But yet it doesn't necessarily line up with people's capabilities. And that can be wasteful. Uh, in the end of the day, I think we as a business community need to figure this out. We need to rethink education and I think businesses need to partner with universities, um, uh, and educational institutions in order to figure this out.

Joe Fuller: What are your thoughts about the whole worth what paid for debate? You have now, uh, multiple polls that indicate that Americans have never been more skeptical about the value of college education. Are we misdirecting too many societal resources toward higher education? Um, the whole narrative that you have to go to college to make it in America, uh, isn't true. What would be your response?

Steve Odland: Yeah, I think, you know, it comes, you know, it's a very complex question because, and I don't want to, uh, you know, I don't want to uh, upset those people who, you know, feel very strongly about the value of a liberal arts education, which I, which I feel strongly about as well. Um, but at the end of the day, you do have a lot of people running up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt and they're coming out with majors or degrees that are not useful in the workplace. They're useful to get into graduate school and do other things, but they're not productive in the workplace. And then they're ended up working in a restaurant. And then their conclusion is that college is wasteful and maybe for them it has been. So this is where I think we need to do a better job in our education system of helping people understand, uh, the capabilities, understand what, you know, what, what education, uh, is appropriate for them, what their goals are. You almost need to go to, you know, fast forward to the end, you know, and figure out where do you want to be, what do you want to do, and then work your way backwards to therefore what's, what level of education is, is appropriate. To that, um, you know, but just churning people out with useless degrees, that and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt may, it may be good for the, you know, for the institution. It, it's not necessarily right for the student.

Joe Fuller: Well, certainly higher ed is going to get disrupted by um, two different forces acting in tandem. One is AI, which we've been talking about. The second is demographics, simply that there are fewer students to um, recruit now and awful, uh, lot of fixed cost capacity out there in the form of uh, dormitories and commissaries and classroom buildings that, that are going to be harder and harder to fill. So Steve, the conference board works to uh, create knowledge and data for leaders in business and I'm sure the public sector as well about issues of pertinence, whether it's AI, which we've been talking about, employment things in your most recent report, but other issues really around the world. What are you focusing on? Many of the executives I talk about, talk them about, uh, the uh, Uber crisis, not as in the car service, uh, company, but this is an all enveloping crisis. You hear the acronym vuca, uh, a lot about uh, uncertainty, you know, uh, um, ambiguity is it. How, what role are you hoping to play? How do we get a better basis of a common understanding what's actually going on to perhaps get more effective decision making?

Steve Odland: Yeah. The mission of the conference board is to provide trusted insights for what's ahead. We've been doing it for over 110 years. It requires us to think through what's going on in the uh, external environment and what are the needs of companies. If you talk to CEOs today, what the biggest issue is, the levels of uncertainty in the environment is higher than ever before. There's uncertainty about, you know, your customer, your employees, your owners. But the geopolitical overlay to this in a global environment where your supply chains are, you know, linked all the way around the world and are dependent on players that may be geopolitical foes, you know, you know, allies one minute, foes the next. I mean, it's an overlay of, um, you know, that we've never seen before. Um, you know, we talk about it in terms of black swans and gray swans. You know, black swans are those events that are so rare that it's very hard to forecast. Right. So, you know, before 1980 there were four Black Swan events essentially, you know, in the first 80 years that they were tracking it, uh, World War I, the Spanish Flu of 1918, Great Depression and World War II. So that's about once a generation, you would expect something to happen that just comes out of the blue. Poof. You know, since 1980, there have been 13 Black Swan events. And there, you know, it's everything from, uh, you know, good things like the invention of the PC and the Internet, but also Black Monday or the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dot com crash, the September 11, uh, attacks and so forth. But they seem to be happening with increasing frequency. So the Conference Board is focused on helping our, our members helping C suites around the world understand what the possible gray swans could be, uh, even though they're low probability, how to plan for them, how to create contingency plans and, uh, you know, how to build that into their expectations going forward so that they're not surprised and the companies can manage their way through these things.

Joe Fuller: Well, Steve Odlin, President and CEO of the Conference Board, it's been such a pleasure to have you with us on our Managing the Future of Work podcast, and we'll keep looking forward to more great research coming out of your organization.

Steve Odland: Thanks. Glad to have been here and, uh, really appreciate all the discussion.

Joe Fuller: We hope you enjoy the Managing the Future of Work podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe. Subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find out more about the Managing the Future of Work project at our website, hbs.edu. managing the future of Work while you're there, Sign up for our newsletter.