The Future of Work and Meaning

Speaker A: Hey, Dave. I've come to the realization that I totally now understand people who want to, like, take their kids and live and homeschool in the woods.

Speaker B: What the hell?

Speaker A: Why? What? It's everything from, like, I'm the kids in pre K4, and they're making them, like, do, like, standardized testing, and I'm like, what happened to play in kindergarten? Yeah, you know, like, uh, yeah, you're supposed to, like, play, you know, an exploratory. And I cannot find a school except, like, this, like, wisdom school that's, like, in the trees, you know, somewhere.

Speaker B: Go to the wisdom school.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So I was like, okay, I gotta go, but it requires, like, a parent to be there in the woods with. So this is basically, I'm quitting to homeschool my child.

Speaker B: You're taking Luca and.

Speaker A: And Andy, and we're all gonna go to the woods.

Speaker B: Y' all gonna go to the woods.

Speaker A: This is just too intense. Between this and climate change and AI and like, I'm just like, all right, we're going away now.

Speaker B: Michelle, have you ever been to the woods?

Speaker A: Well, I.

Speaker B: The woods is not a shopping mall. Uh, it's actually a place. There's just trees.

Speaker A: I went foraging once in California.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Okay, so you. You and Andy and Luca are gonna go off and live in the woods?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And who's gonna bring Princess her espresso? Room service.

Speaker A: I think I'm adaptable, don't you? Uh-huh. Think that's the rep, Dave.

Speaker B: I'm Dave Pitnayak.

Speaker A: And I'm Michelle Aretamola.

Speaker B: And you're listening to the Jump Podcast, the conversation for future focused leaders.

Speaker A: And today we're going to be working through the anxiety about AI and what that means for the future of work.

Speaker B: Unless Michelle heads off to the woods in the middle of this podcast.

Speaker A: And later, we'll be going into some headlines from the future. You ready, Dave?

Speaker B: Let's go. So, Michelle, I'm giving a talk to a pharmaceutical company a couple of weeks back, and it's all about the importance of being future focused. And in the Q and A section, which is like, half of our time together, the discussion immediately turns to artificial intelligence.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Uh, of course. And this was, like, a large swath of folks across the company. So a lot of 20 somethings and a lot of 30 somethings, and some of their questions were like, know, Dave, what do you think is going to happen with AI? And of course, I'm always saying, uh, you know, preparing, over predicting. Don't, you know, just bet on one thing, but really their questions were much more personal about how do I prepare myself for this. Like, the sense of anxiety in the room about I'm going to lose my job or I'm not going to have a career was so palpable. And these were not Luddites. These are like technologists. These are people in R and D at a pharma company. Right. And I just think we're reaching a point of just self questioning. Is this the path that we want to go down?

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. It feels like a year ago you could have said, you know, the conversation was like, you just need to learn how to use AI. Right. Like we can all just get better at prompting. Yeah, yeah, get better at prompting. Right. And now I feel like you're right. We're getting to this point where it's like, oh no, it's feeling very existential. You know, what AI will do to all of us as workers. And I think we saw this the most. You're right. This anxiety. Right. Over the last few weeks. Have you seen those commencement speeches?

Speaker B: I saw that Eric Schmidt of Google got booed when he started talking about AI. Uh, right, but there's a few of these.

Speaker A: Yeah. He was at the University of Arizona and he does talk about like the question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. Right. And of course he got a ton of boos. He tried to understand but didn't work. Right.

Speaker B: Kids are not having it.

Speaker A: They're not having it, they're not taking it. Similarly, at Middle, uh, Tennessee State University, Scar Borchetta, who's the CEO of Big Machine Label Group, you remember he got in a big fight with Taylor Swift.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Taylor Swift's old label.

Speaker A: Yeah, Taylor Swift's old label. Well, you can get a sense of his attitude here. You know, he talks about AI is rewriting production as we sit here. And even as he kept getting booed, he just kept doubling down and saying, like, make it work for you guys. Like, it's just a tool. All right, okay, so he's really popular. And Gloria Caulfield is kind of the other example here in my home state at UCF School of Humanities and Communications. So, you know, context matters here seems to have been very blindsided after getting booed for saying the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. She was very confused about how she struck a chord and just.

Speaker B: Why? Because people just started booing and she was just surprised.

Speaker A: She was just surprised, you know, when she was there to talk about the, the exciting future of AI this Is really interesting.

Speaker B: Right. Which is that in whenever there's a new technology, often it is younger people who are the first people who play video games who are the first people.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, look for, try to get

Speaker A: a mobile, usually an advantage. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. Or to you know, sign up for the Internet. But, but no, like I, I think uh, you know, you have an entire generation of people who kind of bought into the basic bargain this thing like you know, work hard, do well in school, you'll get a job and you'll succeed. And they just feel like at the moment where they're crossing the threshold into society to now, you know, like start their careers. We've decided eh, maybe we don't, we don't need those kind of people anymore.

Speaker A: Right. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's a complete betrayal of that bargain.

Speaker A: Here's your ton of debt too.

Speaker B: Here's your ton, uh, of debt. Yeah. So yeah, I mean this is, this is, seems to be a larger shift for anybody who's paying attention to where the world is going. Right. That mhm. People are starting to say I don't know that I want this in a way that is leaving tech executives surprised.

Speaker A: And I think we do know. Right. It's not just tech companies, but there's, there's no shortage of companies that are trying to, you know, have you heard of token maxing? Right. It's like we're trying, we're trying to spread AI all over our, you know, our corporate companies. And so.

Speaker B: And we're going to measure, you know, how many tokens you're using and if you're not using enough of them, we're going to punish you.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so I think there's a big question of, you know, yes, it's in the 20s and 30s some things, but I think broadly among everyone working right now are going into the workforce this idea of like, what are we building? Why, you know, do we want this? Right. In a way that last year was more about like how do I deal with it here. It's like why.

Speaker B: Right, right. And uh, right at the moment when you know like all of this is happening across college campuses, the Pope releases his encyclical.

Speaker A: Yeah. And this is his first one. Right. So this is a big like opus let's call it for you know, his tenure. What does he want, you know, for the next decades of the Church to

Speaker B: kind of set the moral agenda of the Church is, is what an encyclical

Speaker A: is if I say exactly. Right. And, and so I found it fascinating that his first encyclical was titled Magnifica Humanitas and subtitled Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of AI.

Speaker B: It's so interesting that he would choose that as a thing to focus on.

Speaker A: I know.

Speaker B: And I read that, I guess Pope Leo, who he was named, who he named himself after, from the late 1800s, his big encyclical was all about industrialization and how it was going to leave aside workers. It sounds like this Pope is saying, like, AI is. That is.

Speaker A: Is exactly kind of, you know, real

Speaker B: that we have to look at now. Most people have heard that. That, you know, the Pope put out an encyclical on an AI. You actually went and read it?

Speaker A: Yes. What's that, like, 80 pages?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Good. So what, you know, what'd you learn?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I wanted to get into it because I was pretty sure. I mean, you see it in the subtitle, right. The safeguarding of the human person. That, like, everything you would expect. Right. Which is, you know, the displacement of workers is a problem. Right. It spreads inequality. That, you know, things like, you know, whether we have proper governance from states versus private companies. Right. And making sure that it's not just driven by growth and profit. He even talks about, like, you know, making sure child labor laws are, you know, because the mining of the materials that we need for these chips and all that.

Speaker B: Yep. All reasonable arguments.

Speaker A: All reasonable, important things. But I think the part that, like, really struck me was more around, you know, going back to the subtitle, but this idea of, like, it's safeguarding the human person. Not just humans, but human person. This idea of the being. The idea of, like, who are we as humans? Why are we here on this earth, which the Church concerns themselves a lot on. This idea of, like, why are we here? Right. What is our purpose? What is our meaning? And I've. And I've been really fascinated by his take, you know, when he speaks to. Addressing AI builders specifically.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And. But I apply this to, you know, all of us in some ways. But he says innovation can be human participation in the divine act of creation, but that every design choice reflects a vision of humanity.

Speaker B: I love that. Right. Which is that the things that we are building reflect a vision of who we think we are.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I think it's made us all. What I think is happening is that, I don't know that many of us have really engaged on what the vision for humanity is.

Speaker B: Yeah. Right. I. This. This is fascinating. Right. He's really. Yes. He's thinking about displacement. Yes. He's Thinking about, you know, will the gains be, you know, broadly shared, but beyond that, how will this change us as human beings?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Right. I, I think it is a, A beautiful, beautiful. In our search for future focused leaders, that one of the most future focused leaders we can find is the leader of one of civilization's most ancient institutions, uh, 2,000 years. That the Pope is actually saying, hey, where will this take us down the road? And we need to think about it. Um, it's quite profound, actually. And it is a world away from saying, you need to get good at prompt engineering and having, you know, cowork your tokens added up or we're going to let go of your job. He's saying, how will this change us as people? And it's probably worth digging into that idea.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that it's not, I mean, it's not just engineering prompting, but it's also not just, uh, no to technology. Right. Especially like, to your point, we might expect like something like the church to reject or try to preserve the past, but it really is engaging us again on that, like, how are we doing what we are doing? And it asks us questions or forces us to ask ourselves questions around. Like, I particularly like this piece on technology that is focused on fixing weaknesses.

Speaker B: You know, I think that that is interesting. And he's saying focusing on fixing weaknesses is not the goal. Right.

Speaker A: Is not the goal of human. Or maybe not of humanity, but of technology. So far, yeah, it has been. And is that good? And I don't think I had ever paused to ask my m. Like, I love fixing problems. You know, I'm, you know, that sounds wonderful, but in the aggregate, right. The idea that frailty in humanity is something. Or weakness in humanity is something that we should preserve was such, such a provocative thought for me.

Speaker B: I, I think that, you know, this is. These are big philosophical ideas, but I actually think they have very practical takeaways for the rest of us. They. Takeaways for what you should do if you're a leader running a company or a function. Practical takeaways for if you are managing a team. And even if you're thinking about your own career or your kids.

Speaker A: Your children. Yeah, your children.

Speaker B: Exactly. Because I think the Pope is actually leading us to a really important place.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Which is Zach Cass, AI futurist and former OpenAI exec and friend of the podcast we've had him on before. Um, he's been talking recently about this saying, like, listen, if you're a company who believes that your big advantage was you were just smarter than everybody else.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Well, intelligence is going to be on tap right now. Right. And everybody's going to have access to it. So that competitive advantage is going to go away. And it's like, okay, well if that's going to go away, what is going to stay? Or what are the things that human beings can uniquely do? And, and we have to be more, we can't have to be more than just hand wavy as. Yeah, but we're empathic and we're creative. That's all true, but we need greater guidance than that. And maybe it takes 80 pages, uh, to explore and dig in and find that out. But I think Pope has done that.

Speaker A: I think to a degree. I mean, I do think there's a level of work. I agree with you. Where like right now, you know, if it just takes something like an operating model, right. It's like, okay, I know that I haven't been training my team the way I want to train them, that the systems and the metrics I have don't work anymore. But I don't know what to replace them with necessarily. Right. It's a two. It's like be more empathic. It's like, what does that mean from like uh, a actual what am I doing with my team? Right. Well, and I think that's particularly hard to navigate right now.

Speaker B: This is the challenge. Because there are many things that AI, at least so far, has proven worlds away from getting to. Right. That it can't really touch. Right. And those things are things that humans are exquisitely good at doing sometimes.

Speaker A: Some humans.

Speaker B: Yeah, some humans. Right. And this is the challenge. You know, I, I go back to what Cal Newport wrote about, you know, in his book Deep Work. When was that? Like 10 years ago or something. He wrote Deep Work and he was like, look, we need to get back to the idea of just like sitting and staying focused on a really, on really hard, ambiguous problems without distraction for a long time. And we need to get good at that because that's something that is much harder to replicate and that will get you to solutions of originality or non conventional thinking that we actually need. Right. And he didn't mention AI at the time because it wasn't front and century.

Speaker A: Because it was 2015 or something.

Speaker B: Yeah, 2015 like it is now. But he is exactly right. That idea of like sitting quietly and thinking about problems deeply is something that is an actual superpower. Here's the challenge with that. That thing that human beings can do so exquisitely. Most human beings today can't actually do that. Most of us are living in times of constant distraction. We're on slack channels, we're multitasking, we're going back and forth. Everything that Cal Newport says that deep work can reveal to us, most of us are currently unaccustomed to doing. Yes. And so at the, just at the moment in time where we're going to start digging and hunting for the things that human beings can do better than anybody, you find out that even human beings are not so good at those things.

Speaker A: Okay, I want to react to that, but I also have something else that's coming up for me that I just want to bring up. There's something about going back to encyclical here that the Pope said that I keep harping on. And it's like what you just said is around what can humans do? Right. And maybe AI won't get there. Maybe it will. But the search for what can we uniquely do. Right. Mhm. But I think there's something in what the Pope was saying where it's not just what can we do, but preserving the things we want to do ourselves. Right. That it's not just about what AI can and cannot do, but what should it do. Right. And I think that's something that I don't necessarily have an answer for, but I feel like just searching for where we can be, like unique versus searching for what? Defining the space that we want to inhabit. Right. And the kind of work that we want to do.

Speaker B: Well, and, and I, and I'm not saying that everybody believes this, but certainly from my perspective, many of the things that human beings can uniquely do, like feel love, like have a sense of awe in the transcendent, like create, you know, works of great beauty that express the human condition. Mhm. These things are also great, you know, and joyful things to undertake as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. I mean, I'd like to spend my time like that.

Speaker B: Right, exactly. And I mean, here's the crazy thing about it. I think that we have misunderstood what is going on with AI right now in a fundamental way. Oh, okay. Which is that, you know, we knew that like automation was going to obviate the need for a lot of physical labor. Right. And then this happened.

Speaker A: Robots are building process. Mhm.

Speaker B: But now they're saying, okay, but AI is coming for knowledge work. Right. And so that's actually going to remove the need for a lot of, you know, work that we have nowadays. I don't think AI is coming for knowledge work, but I don't think most human beings do knowledge work.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's Not a lot of knowledge works to come after.

Speaker B: Exactly. Right. I mean like, if you think about it like what was, you know, education in the 1800s was basically, you know, designed to make you a good worker. Be in a factor.

Speaker A: Sure, yeah. Punch in, punch out, punch in, punch

Speaker B: out, show up on time, stand in line, follow orders, do what you're supposed to and you know, hand it, submit your work on time. All the things that are like basic elementary school education was designed to make you a good industrial worker.

Speaker A: Okay. Right.

Speaker B: Uh, and then somewhere along the way we've, we've thought that like, okay, now we're actually all about knowledge work. I would say since 1945 on higher education. High schools, universities are actually not teaching you how to be a knowledge worker. They're teaching you how to be an effective cog in the managerial class.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: How to fill out your TPS reports, how to go to meetings after meetings, how to, you know, like, okay, come to a consensus decision and move forward with actions and manage KPIs, 0KRs, whatever stuff you got going on. Right. I don't know that that's knowledge work. That's. Let's call that information work.

Speaker A: M. Right.

Speaker B: But it's not like higher education is pumping out, you know, armies of Hemingways and Picassos.

Speaker A: Exactly. Right.

Speaker B: That's an entirely different thing. And so we've gotten really good at information work. We've gotten really good at, you know, filling out our TPS reports and going to meetings. Right. And AI is really good at, you know, taking over the, the um, the functions of the managerial class. Mhm. Right. I don't know that it's taking over all of the creativity at the level of the actual knowledge work, not just the information work that we're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. Cause there's, I mean I definitely feel in my own like I totally get the anxiety for my kids part. Right. Because I, I feel that way even looking at like elementary schools for my kid is man, the uh, he's in kindergarten. Okay. Uh, and the amount, no, not even pre K4. And the amount of already like multiple choice questions that he has to do. Supposedly I've never done it because I refuse to do it, but like on the iPad, to the amount of multiple choice to practice for the standardized test that's coming in first grade. Yeah, Right. And it's just this memorization. There's just this practice of taking the test and I'm like, this kid isn't learning any. Like he's learning stuff, memorizing stuff.

Speaker B: But yeah, I'm like learning how to be an information bot.

Speaker A: And I was like, the ChatGPT is going to know, you know, all of this stuff like. That's right. But the idea of like play and creativity. And I think what comes up for me is. And again, going back, I'm like, come back to the Pope again. But I think there is something that in our search for optimization or search for be able to measure things. Right, right. In a unbiased, uh, sort of everyone can see a dashboard way.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I think that's for, you know, and we're trying to make, optimize things and make them better and better and better. The whole idea of ambiguity, like what is, you know, poetry and art and all of those things. Right. Is they're highly ambiguous, highly judgment based.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And I think we have always been uncomfortable with that, have tried to find definitions, have, you know, scoreboards.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now we don't, uh, we really don't know how to deal with that ambiguity of sitting in creativity and exploration.

Speaker B: Yeah. Look, we've seen this movie before, right. For about 400 years.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, painting in Western society was all about how accurately you could make something look photorealistic. Can we get like perspective? Right. And can we get lighting? And we, can we, can we model what human skin or fabrics or cloth looked like? Right. And it was all about that until about, you know, the middle of, of the 1800s when we invented the, the camera. Right. And photography. And suddenly artists were thrown into, you know, to, to a question of self questioning, like, oh my God, maybe we don't need painters anymore. Hm. But it also sparked a huge amount of creativity for, you know, saying, okay, you know, it's, it launched impressionism and abstract expressionism and Cubism and art didn't die.

Speaker A: No. Yeah.

Speaker B: Now here's the tough part. Art didn't die, but the local painter that you would go to to get a family portrait done.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: That guy was out of work. Right?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Right. And so I think we're going to see exactly those kind of changes, you know, happening where like there's, there are a lot of functions of the managerial class that are going away and we haven't necessarily replaced them with other things. But, you know, so I'm kind of saying something that sounds like a little bit of a contradiction, which is like, number one, yes, AI is coming for people's jobs, but number two, do not be complicit in having a reduced definition of what humanity is. Right. By assuming that that's all that you are and that's all that you are capable of.

Speaker A: Yes. I think that's such a big thing is. What is it replacing.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Are we using the right term? Like, you know, knowledge workers? It's like, okay, if we can shift that, then we can see ourselves in this place of creativity, exploration, ambiguity. Right. Like if you take the artist metaphor, right. As something we're living through. I think to your point, the question is, can you have, you know, got 9 billion people on earth? Can you have whatever adult population? Are we all artists? Are we all creators? Are we all. What does that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so what other roles do we need? And what other things, you know, places do we have where human beings, you know, can contribute in great ways?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: I might be fine with an AI helping me to renew my driver's license through the DMV website.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, do I. Do I want an AI couples counselor? Maybe not yet.

Speaker A: Yes, I think that's true. So I think, you know, we have to figure out what to do more in our organizations. But I do love the idea that this is pushing us to ask ourselves questions about what is our vision of humanity? What does it mean to be human? What's our purpose on this earth? What does it mean to create? Right. Like, things that maybe we were fooling ourselves as going into knowledge workers, that we were engaging in that by going into our higher education, our master's degrees or the work that we were doing, that we were operating in that kind of sphere of concern, let's call it. But we weren't. Right? And I think one of my favorite things I saw recently was, did, you know, I didn't realize Anthropic's head of security quit recently in, like, in February. And one of the things that they were talking about was quitting, particularly saying the world is in peril from AI and other things. But then he announces that he wants to truly explore the questions that feel truly essential. The questions that David White would say have no right to go away. The questions that real. Implores us to live. Right? Like this idea of, like, now he's spending his time on poetry, huh? That's what the. The former head of security of Anthropic is doing.

Speaker B: He's spending his time on poetry.

Speaker A: And I just find that as a great example of. Of, you know, again, we're. We're in our cubism m era, right?

Speaker B: Of.

Speaker A: Of humanity. And. And what is that? How do we engage with that?

Speaker B: And how do we engage with that? And more importantly, are we ready for. To engage with that.

Speaker A: How do we get ready for that?

Speaker B: How do we get ready for that? Right. This, my, my friends at the pharma company, they were asking, what are the things that we should be doing to prepare for this? And I said, get good at deep work. Okay, well, how do I do that?

Speaker A: What does that mean?

Speaker B: Yeah, pick up a book. How many, how many people can actually sit down and read a book cover to cover?

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: Because, you know, it's a atrophied skill for many people to actually sit down and focus and read. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And oh, by the way, audiobooks don't count because an audiobook keeps on talking whether you stop thinking or not.

Speaker A: Whether you're in gay. Yeah, you could be doing something else too.

Speaker B: You could be doing the laundry and the thing's just talking at you. And you just tune in and out like you're listening to the radio, but actually sit there, crack a book, stare at it, read it, stop and think along the way. Okay. God forbid, maybe even scribble some notes in the margins and engage, um, with it.

Speaker A: Oh my God, you just made me think about how TV is also. I mean, one thing you might have noticed is that with TV and movies, now that they know everyone's second screens, right. Is on their phone or doing something else, they've made it. Writers know that they have to write much more expository writing. Yeah.

Speaker B: I gotta tell you what's going on because you tuned out, uh, because you were.

Speaker A: Cause you tuned out, so every five minutes you'll have a character like, telling you everything again. And I was just like, oh, my God, what you just said. I was like, it's making us so much dumber. Right. Like we can't engage with a story that isn't spoon fed to us every five minutes.

Speaker B: Well, exactly. And so, you know, engaging with deep work at that level, you know, I, I write this letter every Saturday. I send it out to people who are interested in strategy and innovation. And you know what you find is, fortunately, our crowd, the people who hang out with jump, tend to be a fairly brainy bunch. They tend to be fairly curious. So I don't mind writing 1800 words of long prose where I'm not telling you exactly where I'm going at the very beginning. And we're kind of going on an intellectual journey. And some people are into that. Right. There's a lot of people who've been trained that anything more than 500 words and that doesn't have bullets at the

Speaker A: top at the beginning style. Right.

Speaker B: Or like even the New York Times has now, you know, got a thing that says this is a four minute read.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like we're, we are designing ourselves into dumminess.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. And right at the moment when we're supposed to be capturing our greater humanity.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So, you know, this is when we need to reclaim all the things that human beings can do uniquely.

Speaker A: Well, there's some great books too. Uh, so how do you, from a personal perspective, I feel this anxiety. I think myself is, I mean, you know, I'm like now a clawed like geek just all day in there. But I also love reading and I love my movies and my tv. But you do feel this anxiety. It's like, I'm a mom, I gotta do my job. Right. Like there's all the present stuff we always talk about. And on top of it, I am trying to get good at AI because I feel like I have to. But then now I'm also like. And I gotta go to the gym. Because that's also like, you know, and. Right. It's like. And now we're saying, and the deep work too. And so you're like in. If I had to dedicate my time, maybe it's a false choice, but it's like, do I move fast to learn AI or do I slow down to read a book?

Speaker B: I think you have to do both.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And I also think some of it is just changing how you're showing up in the time that you're spending. Right. So for example, you know, there's a lot of people who are on zoom calls or teams calls for half of their day or all of their day in unfortunate circumstances. So how are you showing up in those zoom calls? You can show up to a zoom call, have your camera off, multitask, uh, surf the web, read Facebook while you're like, you know, doing your zoom calls.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: M. Or you can say like, no, I need to show up with intention. I'm going to have my camera on. I'm going to lean forward, bring a notebook with you, take notes by hand on every meeting that you're in and think about what is truly unique and different here. And then when you speak in the meeting, try to say something really thoughtful that moves the conversation forward. Yeah, right. How many people are, you know, showing up with that level of presence and attention to what would otherwise be a boring and lame meeting? Yeah, right.

Speaker A: I love it as advice because it's like, it's uh, it's almost like going to the gym. It's like you can't be a hundred percent on it all the time and everything. But you can be better at uh, choosing. Right. Like certain moments where you can say, like, I'm going to intentionally practice deep work here. Like I'm going to either set aside three hours to read this Saturday or I'm going to this meeting, make sure that I come in with like, like this meeting I'm going to do without anything else. Right. And again, sometimes that's hard in every single meeting. But viewing it as a practice to get better and better at, ah. Certain types of work can bring that intentionality, I think.

Speaker B: Right. I mean here's like, what are we saying? It's, it's both. How do I Prepare for an AI world?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh hm. Get better at prompting.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: LLMs get better at using things like cloud code and cowork and being more adept at using the tools. Yeah. And read a book and take notes in meetings and leave time to meditate when even daydream.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like meditation, daydreaming and prayer look very similar and they're all different. And leave time for all three.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So remind me, Rick Rubin's book, what is that? The Creative Act.

Speaker B: I think the Creative act. Because Rick Rubin understands creativity.

Speaker A: Mhm. And I think we need to bring a lot of that back, I think to ourselves. And it will make us better at the work.

Speaker B: I think it's really telling that one of the guys that got booed. Right. You know, at a commencement speech was a guy who runs Big Machine, the label that Taylor Swift broke her deal with, rebelled against. And the reason why she, you know, created, you know, Taylor's versions of all of her albums is because she thought Big Machine was a horrible place.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So why are you taking advice on your life from that guy? Right.

Speaker A: Okay. So. But that's us as leaders. I think there's another thing, like we talked a lot in this conversation about like 20s and 30s, some things with their anxiety. But I think you and I have had plenty of conversations where it's not just anxieties for ourselves, but most of the folks we talk to are leading thousands of people in their organizations. And so when we think about our teams, like I think about this, I mean we have a smaller organization, but I think about this for all our associates. Right. Where we're like, experiment with AI, do this. Right. But there's also the like, how do we, I mean, I feel lucky at jump that we have always prized ambiguous exploratory work, but making sure that they continue to develop in that as well. And I think that, yeah.

Speaker B: I mean it's so it's. But we've structured the company so we don't have a whole lot of meetings.

Speaker A: That's true.

Speaker B: Like actually structured meetings. Two or three a week I think on my calendar that I have to show up at. And then we have a couple of like standing check ins that are no more than 10 minutes long.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Right. And then a lot of the time is cut out for people to think because like that's our biggest value. Right. So I think that leaders, you know, will have, you know, start to say I need to carve out time. Like this team is like a slow thinking team and I want to free them M from all of the slack channels and all of the teams meetings and all of the zoom stuff so they can, you know, create beautiful things and get to beautiful thoughts. The number of marketers who will tell you that it's all about great storytelling but are inept at telling a great story. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Just not giving themselves the time, the

Speaker B: time to get good at it. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so in some ways it's, it's put up or shut up time.

Speaker A: Yeah. It does feel like it changes a little bit the role of the leader within teams where I'm not exactly sure from what exactly, but I think too that sort of feels, I mean I have this image of like the protector. It's like, you know, like go to your, go to your silo and I'll protect you. You know, I'll block the walls and everything so that you can have the time but block you also from, you know, whether it's budget concerns or the metrics that need to be put up this quarter or all the things that I can go back to that optimization that is killing the creativity and exploration.

Speaker B: I think that's, that's true. You know, for, for a long time Jeff Jones was the chief, uh, marketing M Officer of Target before he went on to be a CEO at a couple of different places. And a brilliant leader. And, and his chief creative officer while he was at Target made a comment about Jeff and he said Jeff Jones makes it safe to do dangerous things. M. Right. And this, that is a very different thing than. Did you fill out your TPS report?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. And how do you make it safe? I think a lot of that is to your point, our operating models, our organizational structures, our habits, uh, have all been built for completely opposite type of work. Right. And so you gotta look at that.

Speaker B: They've been, they've been created for information work with the, you know, with the, that was actually knowledge work when most of it wasn't.

Speaker A: Yeah. And we're even investing more in that. Uh, just, I mean, I keep reading about the amount of AI startups started by, uh, teenagers who are like, you know, Coca Cola is my biggest client because everyone wants this speed to market of like innovation and products. And so they're like, great, we have synthetic data. You know, there are a couple like 17, 18 year olds who built synthetic data, now have like some of the biggest clients in the world to come up with products faster. Right. More things to market quicker. And this is what like is called innovation and creativity today.

Speaker B: This might be the big reason to be optimistic about what's going to happen going forward. Right? Yes. This is going to change what you do as a, as a company at the level of strategy and, and you know, just saying that, you know, we're smarter than everybody. El is no longer going to cut it. Right. Uh, and so you got to come up with some creative new ways to do it at the level of teams. Actually, you know, being a leader who helps your teams to step into their humanity. Mhm is going to help. And then, but just as a, as an individual, just getting ready for it by starting a journaling practice, cracking a book, taking notes and actually being present in conversations that you're having. Right. I love that, the title of the Pope's encyclical, Magnificent Humanity. Love it.

Speaker A: All right, it's our favorite time of the podcast. Headlines from the future.

Speaker B: This is when you tell all sorts of interesting headlines of what's happening in 2035, but it's actually happening right now. Huh huh.

Speaker A: Right now.

Speaker B: All right, give it to us. What do you got?

Speaker A: Starting with headline number one, the world has now has a rulebook for crewless cargo ships.

Speaker B: Crewless cargo ships. Okay. Seems like that was inevitably going to happen that, you know, we were having autonomous cars. It seems like, you know, being, being on the water would be a little bit more easier to navigate on some level, whether or not withstanding. But now we have rules around it.

Speaker A: Now we have rules. So the International Maritime Organization has put out their first like, official code to a global safety framework for remotely operating, uh, AI enabled commercial vessels.

Speaker B: See, and okay, so on the one hand, this is great, right, because, you know, some rules, uh, it is great to have some rules on it. But also think about the displacement of, you know, the merchant marine, right. In the United States, we don't think of that as like a, a big job, but in many parts of the developing world, right. In South America, in India, Pakistan, South Asia. A successful middle class job for many people was that your parents would go off and be on a ship in India. They'd call them shippies. And your job is you're sailing with a cargo ship around the world for

Speaker A: a few months a year.

Speaker B: For a few months a year. And it was a great step up into prosperity. And if all those jobs are going away, it's not unlike what we're talking about with long haul trucking in the United States where it is a lucrative job. It is a super hard job. It's hard on the body, right.

Speaker A: To see lots of addictions with some addictions really tough.

Speaker B: But this is coming, right? And it's going to mean huge amounts of worker displacement.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I always, I'm used to seeing regulation or frameworks like this come like way later, you know, when something's uh. And so I find it very interesting. It's either a sign of how much this is happening that I'm not as aware of or interestingly getting ahead of something that's clearly coming down the pipeline.

Speaker B: Uh, it's absolutely coming in and I think just having some rules of engagement around it, uh, are incredibly important.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: To think about. This is where, you know, AI autonomous vehicles plus Strait of Hormuz equals.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Imagine the autonomy there. All right, but headline number two, uh, all right. Three quarters of Gen Z now says a fulfilling life doesn't need kids.

Speaker B: Really? Three quarters of Gen Z says a fulfilling life does not keep. That's interesting.

Speaker A: And it's the highest share of any living generation globally or the United States. We're talking about America.

Speaker B: America. Okay. Mhm. American kids just don't want to have kids.

Speaker A: So we've had some data on like I don't need kids or things like that. But this is the first one I've seen more around. Again, what is the meaning of life? Right. Is like that fulfillment for a long time it's like, well I have kids and that's like the, the meaning. Right. It's like the next generation. A lot of us uh, have like thought or a lot of people have thought that then the adulthood just meant having kids.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now we're seeing, you know, 75% of our youngest adults in the US are saying that like I feel perfectly like I can live a fulfilling life without kids.

Speaker B: You know, for years we've known that as a, ah, as a society gets richer, what happens is that birth rates decline. One of the biggest reasons is because you give rights to women and then suddenly we're not seeing them as just, you know, vehicles for pumping out babies. God forbid women have hopes and dreams. This is like the next phase of that. Which is interesting. It's just like, okay, yes. And we've gotten to the point where, you know, people have choices with their life and now they're realizing that, no, maybe having kids is not a fundamental requirement for happiness. How is it? And this is something we've been tracking for a while. Huh? Huh?

Speaker A: Yeah. And that and our views on marriage. So only 67% still see marriage as essential to raising kids in a stable home. The lowest. So 67%, it's still the majority, right? A big majority.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But you know, you've got a decent percentage there that says that for raising kids, I don't need to be married to have raising kids in a stable home.

Speaker B: You know, this is the idea of actually, you know, having depopulation is a. Is actually a terrible thing for an economy. Right. And it's a terrible thing when everybody's old and there's no young people to take care of them. The secret that America has had for decades that has saved us from the fate of Europe or Japan was immigration.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And we've decided that like, uh, we don't like immigrants anymore. To the point where immigrants are like, well, I'm not sure we like you guys anymore. It's breaking a fundamental secret sauce. We had to avoid depopulation, which is just a brutal thing. Once that happens, you go to Japan and as much as one third of houses depending on the region are empty, just vacant, abandoned.

Speaker A: Yeah. Whole towns.

Speaker B: Whole towns are abandoned in rural Japan. And, um, we may be getting to that point as well in the United States if we don't turn things around. Our secret was immigration avoidance. Mhm.

Speaker A: Well, and like I said, it just seems like the kids are feeling even less likely to have kids.

Speaker B: So why would you. Right now with the use. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Change.

Speaker A: So interesting.

Speaker B: All right, you're bumming me out.

Speaker A: I know. Okay. But let's hope, let's bring. Bring.

Speaker B: But you're not grossing me out like you do sometimes.

Speaker A: I try. Yeah. This one, I tried this one.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: This one feels like, you know, hopefully good. It's interesting. Headline number three. Commercial drug making is moving into space.

Speaker B: Commercial drug making is moving into space. Okay. Not drug research, drug manufacturing, drug actually making.

Speaker A: So I thought this was really fascinating. So this is a company called Varda Space Industries.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: They have signed their first contract with United Therapeutics Pharma company to test pharmaceuticals in outer space.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: So the Whole idea is that they're sending the. Well, part of it is this idea that we can maybe produce novel molecules, things that we can't produce at all on Earth in microgravity. Mhm. So there's been some testing of this in the International Space Station, but never, never in like privatized manufacturing of drugs. And so like, just imagine something like water, for example, will hang together in a wiggly sphere, since without gravity, surface tension is the strongest force present.

Speaker B: Oh, okay.

Speaker A: So you could create whole new. Like if we can like destructure the molecule, have them, um, like be in a weird state because of the lack of gravity, what could we do with them? Right.

Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker A: Like, very interesting. And so they plan to launch several versions of this, of several of United Therapeutics drugs into orbit where they're going to allow them to create, to form solid crystals.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And then they'll take on atomic arrangements not seen on Earth, possibly leading to new versions with improved stability or other valuable properties. Right. So we're going to just see what happens.

Speaker B: So fascinating. You know, we've seen this over and over again, which is you have a development of a fundamental technology, a fundamental technology like the Internet or, you know, cellular phone technology, or, you know, cracking the human genome and crispr. Right. And we're going to see a lot more of the kind of headlines that you're describing here, just because the cost of launching vehicles into space has gone way down. And you can say what you want about Elon Musk, I'm not a huge fan of him, but. But kudos to him and to SpaceX for bringing down the cost of putting things in space to a fraction of what it was exactly on, you know, just, you know, the U.S. uh, NASA or the Russkies. So this is a.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, and there's this idea we should like take everything that's like pollution, all of it, and just like do it in space. Yeah, like it's like, let's take. But you're totally right. Yes, the cost has come down, but it's still quite expensive. About $7,000 to launch a single kilogram of payload into orbit.

Speaker B: Yeah, but it's only $7,000. Think about that. Right. I mean, that's like, that's that's compared to what it was during the Apollo, you know.

Speaker A: Exactly. But it still makes it impractical for certain. Like, I don't know if you wanted to send cotton in space to be dyed there. Right. Like it doesn't make sense, however, to that the commercialization and opportunity with drugs is that. I mean, sending molecules to space is. Is tiny.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. But with huge repercussions. And so the economics of it is just much more attractive at this point to send things.

Speaker B: But high value.

Speaker A: Low weight, but high value. And drugs, molecules are a good place to do that with.

Speaker B: Okay, good. I'm encouraged. Maybe something good will come with this. Yay, all. Ah, Right. You didn't.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: You didn't freak me out at this time. Thank you.

Speaker A: You're welcome. Um, always here for you, bud.

Speaker B: All right, all fascinating headlines, but we gotta go. We'll see you next time.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for spending time with us. And remember, the conversation doesn't end here. Every Saturday, you can hear from Dave in your inbox with his future focused letter for clients and friends. And if you like hanging out with us, we'd love it if you drop us a comment or share this with a friend.

Speaker B: Your hosts are Dave Bniak and Michelle Lorettimola. This episode was produced by Peyton Gleason and Katie Atkinson. Research was done by Christina Esquajadillo, artwork was created by Sierra o', Kerry, and music was composed by Avi.

Speaker A: Uh, the JUMP Podcast is brought to you by JUMP association, the strategy firm for future focused leaders.

Speaker B: Stay focused on the future because it'll be here before you know it.