Reimagining Talent, Productivity, and Growth in an AI-Driven World with Kelly Monahan

Welcome to the Edge of Work podcast. I'm your host, Al D. This is a podcast for leaders who want to make sense of workplace trends and are looking for new ideas about how to lead people and grow their business in a changing world of work. During each episode, I'll bring you the latest experts, researchers, founders and leaders to share new and unique ideas, as well as actionable advice around attracting and retaining talent, developing people, and building healthy and sustainable organizations. Welcome to the Edge of Work. Today's guest is Kelly Monahan, who is a keynote speaker, an advisor, an author, a researcher, and, and, and. But I know her as really being an expert on the intersection of the future of work and leadership. And I'm delighted to have here on the Edge of Work podcast. We were talking backstage for quite some time, so I'm finally glad to be able to hit the record button so we can chat more. But Kelly, thanks for being here today. I guess maybe just to start the conversation, who you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and the work you do each day? Yeah, Al, thank you so much for having me. So it's funny. I started off my career in HR because at a young age I grew up in Rochester, New York, and I saw a Kodak shed 45,000 jobs. And so there was like this subconscious part of me that was like, how do we fix work? Because I saw so much fear as a kid. And that led me to hr. Cause I thought this is where the human side of business happens. This is where you get to develop leaders, engage employees. And one of my very first assignments was a reduction in workforce because of a technology called robotic process automation. And so that was my very first early exposure. Seeing Kodak as a kid and then entering to my own career in 2007 and seeing how disruptive technology was continuing to be on the workforce. And so that led me to get my PhD. There was no such thing as people analytics 20 years ago. And trying to figure out how do we bring data and intelligence to talent decision making. So often it was just like, who do you want to work with the longest? And it was. It wasn't meant to be subjective, but it was. And so for the last 15 years, I've really dedicated my career from a research perspective of studying and trying to bring data to the forefront of how do we help people as technology accelerates faster than our leadership models, our talent models, and the way we design organizations. I've had amazing opportunities to do that. Deloitte, Accenture, Meta some of the world's most fascinating companies like you, but Now I've decided just we're at a moment that I think the Runway is getting shorter for organizations to get this right with AI, and I think we're at risk of job loss, of actually making decisions that actually harm our future and not help with this technology. So I'm now on my own and consulting and helping leaders figure out this moment right now. I think there's a lot that I want to dig into there. But I guess as a starting point, when I get to talk to folks like you who are out talking to and advising folks of a diverse set of different companies, one of the things I always love to find out are what are the types of questions people are asking you or what are the types of conversations that you're having? So if you think about just I know you're out there, you're on the road, you've been talking with a lot of companies over the, we'll just call it the past month and we're recording this towards the beginning of the summer 2026. What are the types of conversations you're having lately or what are the types of questions that are coming your way? Yes. Let's give you some hot takes of what's actually happening behind closed doors. One of the number one questions I get from more C Suite CEO board members is we've invested $800 million in AI and I'm not quite sure the ROI that we have. How do we actually think about productivity? How do we think about whether or not all this investment is actually making a difference in how we work? So number one is a lot around AI and whether or not they're actually getting any sort of roi. Second thing, and this is more on the personal perspective, leaders often I always get this question and when I give a keynote, which is I have a son or daughter who went and got a computer science degree and now they can't find a job. How do help me get them out of my basement? How do I help my college educated 23, 24 year old actually enter the workforce today? And so we can kind of pack that a little bit too. So it's funny, I feel like right now organizational leaders are very much at the enterprise level thinking about AI, not really quite sure if they're really getting the ROI that they were promised. And then at a personal level, thinking through how do I actually help my child, what does the future career look like? Because now it's becoming very personal for them, if that makes sense. Okay, so a lot to dig in there. Let's start first on the Board and executive conversations about return on investment on AI initiatives. Yeah, so a lot of stuff being said about this and it's really running the gamut. I would love to know from you, when they say they're not sure about that they're getting the return on the investment from what they have spent on it, what do you think that they're anchoring to? I mean obvious answers would obviously be they're looking at the number. Like you mentioned, Maybe they had 100 million, but do you think they would know what success looked like if they saw it? Oh, I think that is the billion dollar question. I think I have not seen a technology rollout where it has been so much on the employees to figure out. And what I mean by that is when we actually work with executives, there is oftentimes lacking a true AI strategy. To your point, what is our North Star? What is the actual problem we're solving for? What I fear is too often it's we need to cut cost, we need to take costs out of the business, we need to operate more efficiently. Not here's where there's a value, here's where we can actually create something new and great value creation. So to me, I think that's the big disconnect is the North Star for this is taking cost out of the business as opposed to here's something new we can do and reimagine work. And what that translates to, what I've seen in my research is, and I've cut this slide when I give keynotes of as we think about AI, executive leaders are like, yes, this is going to save the day. This is, we're operating a low to no growth environment. This, this is the lever I desperately need to pull in order to get my company back into growth mode. You talk to the workforce and they're saying there's too much blind adoption going on. There's no development, there's no training, we don't need to have a new skills ontology. I'm being told I need AI skills. I have no idea what that means. If that doesn't mean I'm logging in and using Copilot to send more emails. And so I've never seen a disconnect occur between the C suite as well as workforce around what we're actually trying to achieve with this tool. What's the end game? And it's just Change Management 101 has not taken place, I think many times. And to answer your question, so no, I don't think leaders would know what good looks like because I actually think we're shooting for the wrong target. I saw a recent post, Aaron Levy, CEO of Box, who has been one of the more thought I would, in my view, one of the more thoughtful CEOs who sharing his thoughts and perspectives about what he's seeing in his line of work, given that they're at a company that is ushering in this new way of work. And one of the points that he made recently in this post was that he thought that there was going to be is going to be really hard for a lot of executives to actually see the value in some of these investments because they are just too far removed from actually what happens in the last mile of work. And the idea behind this is that turning a tool on is one thing, getting people to use it is a whole other thing. But actually getting to the granularity and specificity of how are the workflows we use different as a result of how we are using these tools and different and better. That takes a level of granularity that most execs, quite frankly, just don't have. And not because they're not smart, not because they aren't talented, but because that's just not where they're, it's not where they sit each and every day. And the invitation was like, if you actually want to get some of these results, that is ultimately what it takes. And there's a lot of ways you can go about in terms of thinking about how you would get that. But I think the provocation felt fair in terms of until you actually, number one, have an objective of a strategy of some kind and thinking out about how AI could support that. But then number two, actually getting down to, okay, what does this tactically look like for the people who are having to carry out these workflows or do these things, how can you actually get to a better result? Right. And so anyway, like, I thought that was a really thoughtful insight that he shared. Oh, I totally agree. And I think one of the other things that's going to be interesting too, and I was just having this actually on a client site last week, is how do we move from thinking about this as an individual productivity unlock? Because there's only so much Runway that you have there when it comes to actually individuals becoming more productive versus a team level and then ultimately an enterprise level unlock where you truly are collaborating differently, you're working differently, you're sharing intelligence differently. And I do worry right now it's all about the individual productivity and either having coders write more code or marketers create more marketing assets as opposed to how does this actually change the way that we interact as teams? How do we surface more insights? That's what AI should be doing is actually making us more intelligent about how we work and almost becoming a mirror. And so I think that's going to be the other thing along with what you just said with a box CEO is not just getting CEOs focused on the individual and the productivity lock, but actually beginning to look at across their teams and the way the organization functions to figure out have we actually unlocked value? What is a productivity gain here? And that's harder, we both know like that is harder to measure, that's harder to assess but. But I think that's where the real value comes right now with this AI moment. I'm wondering if you'll just do a thought exercise with me for a second. But I just thought a little bit about this. So in a lot of the work that I do and I think it's you do similar work. You know, I think part of what you're trying to do is to help people understand that in order to thrive in this next era of how work is going to happen, it does require you to think as well as to work differently and to with whether it's in the role that you're in or whether it's transitioning to a new role, whatever it is. And I am wondering about how much that also applies for that matter to the CEO and the board. And where I'm going with this is that I spent a lot of time in the parts of the organization where this is absolutely necessary in terms of actually getting value out of the tool itself. Right. And really trying to think and work differently more than just copy paste AI in terms of doing what you did and throwing it to a chapter actually really reorienting around the world role. But I'm wondering if there's a almost a limit on that in terms of if your hot leaders of your highest level of the org are not also reorienting and doing the same thing. I wonder if you're just. If we're just cap potentially like you there there could be some gains. But unless people at the top really also start to think and work differently about this. Like I'm wondering if they'll hit just like a threshold where they will not be able to get beyond because you can only go as far as your leader. I don't know if that resonates at all, but it's just something I thought oh, totally resonates. And like just an example I'll give you. We've seen in the data that when I was at Upwork, we've ran a lot of surveys and we always saw, quite frankly, the C suite was lagging behind an actual real adoption. And oftentimes when you think about a C suite job, it is much more around influencing and communication and a lot more of that social capital that's hard to actually outsource to AI. But I got into a room with a group of executives a couple months ago and was trying to unpack. These were all leaders, VP plus, trying to unpack why their AI adoption rates were so low, especially in comparison. The whole purpose was like trying to drive AI adoption in the workforce. But when I got the leadership AI adoption rates, I was quite frankly horrified of how low they were. And what was fascinating was as leaders began to actually speak up around this one person was actually in tears and was like, I'm actually afraid to use this technology because what if it can do 30%, 40% of my job? What does that look like for me as a leader? And if AI is actually democratizing intelligence and expertise, that feels like a threat to me, not an add on or an advantage. And so I think in some ways we're all human beings. And I think it really resonated to me as much as the workforce feels, hey, is this going to automate me out of a job? Am I going to lose my job? I actually feel that same sense of fear up top and I think almost a little bit of a resistance of I want my organization to be more efficient, I want my workers to adopt this. But I'm not sure I want this coming for me and nor do I necessarily want my job to change that dramatically. Right. You've been working the same way for 30, 40 years to get to where you are. And now we're asking to turn the world upside down on a leadership level too. So I think it just at a very human level, no matter where you are in the organization, there is definitely deep fear of change and job loss. Yeah. And I think you're right. And I think the whole point of calling out the identity piece, I think is something that doesn't necessarily get talked about as much, but I think is so core to an element of fear that is either implicit or in some cases explicit for any worker. But, and that goes, I think, even for the executives. And what really got me thinking about this was I've been spending a little bit of time recently with talking to some folks who are at AI native companies and in many cases, Interesting. Okay. Smaller companies, but also they've been on meteoric rise, fast growth, but they are fundamentally different. They just are in terms of how they work, how they operate, how they think about things. But I think the one observation I made or of the many that is different from how they are versus the rest of the organizations is that their CEO and their leaders are not hold it, the ones being held back. If anything they are supportive and full throttle because they that was the ethos of how the company was formed. And so it just made me think and reflect upon with part of why some of these AI native companies are going so fast is because they have leadership. That is a tailwind versus a headwind. It made me think of the opposite could also be true in terms of for these non AI native companies where they just were born in a different time and didn't have the luxury of thinking or operating in this way of could they be getting the headwind versus the tailwind which is what these AI native companies are facing. And so anywho, that was just a thought. Oh Al, I'm just gonna pick up a nerd out for you here, one sec. I think that's actually you're spot on with this because as we think about my advanced career is in organizational behavior. So I'm always thinking through what is the right design for an organization to maximize value, both for employees, customers, all that. And I think what's so fascinating is your big organizations are now at a disadvantage. Where before as the world became globalized, as we became more connected, complexity actually abounded within organizations. And so we built layers and different functions simply to manage the complexity that was required to do business. Even though we can talk a little bit about how AI is adding complexity, oftentimes at some level the ability to. When you say an AI native company, the economics of business now actually rewards small organizations. You don't need all this complexity and all these layers to scale in order to deliver global customized goods. Now AI is actually helping with that. And so to me the whole economic value of how we design organizations is also turning upside down. And to your point, large organizations have been around for a while, are going to have a much more difficult time because the economics are no longer in their favor. If that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, I think so even before when we were talking and you had mentioned some of your thoughts about big companies, I think the first thing that originally came to mind was the change management that has to happen from some of these larger companies. Just by the nature of the law numbers is just going to be far greater than perhaps ones that are a little bit smaller just off the top. But I think you're absolutely right in terms of the economics piece around this and how that really changes because of what is available and made available to these organizations today. I had a thought for a while and I still think it's true of yeah, I wonder if we've actually perhaps seen the last quote unquote big company. Sure. I just, I think the bar for having the need to just hire 10,000 employees in a year, like full time employees is just going to drop pretty significantly. Like to the fact of like what if we never see one of those again? I won't say never, but the math still holds. So right in terms of, to a point of the economics even for thinking about scale. But I also think to your point, just the ability to be agile and move fast and be nimble I think cannot be under scored. And it just again that's it's not impossible to do when you're big, but by God it's a lot easier to do when you're a little bit smaller. So you definitely need to be much more intentional as a big company and hire people like you and I to help with this because it is really hard to do at scale and making sure all the boats are rowing in the same direction at the same speed. It's definitely, it's a challenge, but certainly not impossible. And in some ways I think the exciting part for these big organizations is they have the resources. They aren't starting from scratch. They have a lot implicit knowledge, they have a lot of social capital. But it's to your point, remobilizing that so that economics of scale makes sense. Hi everyone, Al D here. Thanks so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. I hope you're enjoying today's conversation. Thanks for watching. In addition to hosting the show, I spend my time advising, coaching and partnering with leaders and organizations who are navigating a rapidly changing workplace. If you or your organization are focused on helping your employees and leaders lead through change, strengthening their human skills in an increasingly technology driven world, build greater adaptability or navigate the AI change management challenges, I'd love to connect. Whether you're looking for a keynote speaker for an upcoming leadership event, a leadership program, or just want more hands on support through workshops or coaching, I'd be excited to learn about you and your goals and explore how I can help. You can find my contact information in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. Now let's get Back to the show, I remember, I think it was Mark Cuban that was talking about this, but someone was asking him of where he saw the most innovation right now with respect to AI in terms of adoption and using AI in new ways. And he was basically making the similar point to what you're making. Just said in a different way, but he was saying it's all coming from small and medium sized businesses. And part why is while maybe they don't always have the resources that a big company does, what they also don't have is the procurement, the governance layer, the approvals, the change management that you have to put in place to get a tool approved. All of that other stuff, not to mention all the other just decades of organizational debt that sometimes appear in some of these large companies. What I think is so interesting and fascinating about that is that understandably we pay a lot of attention to the Fortune 500, but there's a lot, there are 500 companies in the Fortune 500 and far more companies that exist outside of the Fortune 500 just by the law of numbers. And so I've always just found that fascinating just in terms of like really actually trying to get a pulse of like, where are things like happening? Yes, it's important to pay attention to what these big companies are doing for a reason. That's why a brand like exists. And like just also got to think that out there in the world there are some companies out there that are probably doing some really interesting things that maybe we just don't see every day because they're not, they're not necessarily the brand name that you see on the stock ticker or that you read about on NBC. Yeah. What I find so interesting too, as we think through what used to be like professions and jobs that were like so important is the holy grail of like you've made it in life. Right. And I think back a hundred years it would have been a lawyer and doctor, like going into the, that sort of advanced field to then going into Wall street investment banking, to then most recently tech. And I feel like we're on the cusp of another evolution of what's going to be the ideal career pathway. And, and I think Gen Z is starting to think rethink that. I don't know, like when I was graduating from college it was like the big four consulting firms. You're like, if I can get into one of these firms, that's going to be amazing. And then if I can get into tech, I've made it. Now we see tech completely imploding. In some ways, right from the big tech side perspective of not hiring 10,000 workers, but laying off 10,000 workers just like that. And so it will be really interesting to me as I think through like a brand value proposition from an employee side, where are the top talent going to go work in the future? And I think that very much is not going to necessarily be the big brands that we, you and I grew up with and aspiring to. And I think that's going to really change labor markets as well. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about that because I know that you've been spending some time doing some research and talking to Gen Z in particular and disclaimer I recognize that Gen Z is not a monolith and I would just love to know from your conversations and what you're seeing, I would love to have you talk a little bit more about this. What are you hearing from them, particularly as it relates to what you just talked about in terms of what does it mean to even grow your career or what it does a career even look like for this next generation, which is entering a workforce that is different than what you and I did, or for that matter, our parents? Totally. I'm a little alarmed by what I'm seeing in the data and some of the conversations I'm having. And this is why 30% of Gen Zers today aspire to leadership positions in corporations. That's the lowest number we've ever seen. And to me that signals a talent pipeline crisis in many ways of we're doing something at work that as Gen Z looks up, they don't want to be doing these jobs. And when I go and do interviews and actually get qualitative data to understand this, it's oftentimes because they don't think it's worth it. 50% of Gen Zers think that business may be causing harm, not good for society. They're very concerned whether or not the planet's going to be around in the next 50 plus years. And so what I worry about, and I think Susie Welch has summarized this very well over at nyu, is Gen Z has lost hope. And that to me is a problem that we need to solve for. And AI is not going to bring hope back to the workforce or Gen Z of anything. That's putting fuel to the fire as they begin to see leaders choose AI over apprenticeships and internships. As we begin to see that bottom rung of early career pathways begin to erode. Because at the end of the day, I've done all the research AI can do an entry level job, probably better than a human in most cases and probably cheaper. But in the long run, is that the right decision? And I think that's the crisis that we're in today. And I really think the choice that leaders need to make is we have a generation who's not overtaken baby boomers in terms of percentage in the workforce. And they're not aspiring to grow, they're not aspiring to leadership positions at large. And that to me is not because there's something wrong with them, there's something wrong with us. There's something wrong with how we're designing organizations and leadership. And, and I think in some ways, as much as that may be doom and gloom as people hear that, I also think there's just tremendous opportunity to rethink how do we make work actually work again? Because I think if we were going to be honest, most of us would report we're burned out, we're stressed, it's not working. And I think that's the real opportunity that Gen Z is asking for today is help us fix work. So we're moving in a progress that's sustainable. And I think that is what they're actually asking for. And I think that's exciting because I think it's causing us to reimagine the actual opportunity here. It's not just to cut costs, it's not just to build data centers. There's something else at hand that we can be doing and I'm excited to see what Gen Z comes up with. I appreciate that. I, Yes, I entered, I entered the workforce at a time where I remember where it was popular to tell people to follow their passion or to do what they loved. And by no means do I think that people don't do that. I absolutely do know people who do that. But if I were to give, I know if I were to give that Advice Today, in 2026, it would not land nearly in the same way for when I joined the workforce. And so I have been thinking a lot about this idea of what does a career look like and what does career development really look like. And something I land back on is this idea that I actually, I think the thing that is both exciting and challenging about right now is that what you define as a career is actually much more personalized and individual. Yeah. Than it ever has been before. And I think collectively for a long time we all thought that there was a monolithic model for it, which traditionally was up until the right. Your promotion, becoming a people leader of some kind, some formal education like sprinkled in there. And some of those elements still are valid. But I think the invitation as well as the challenge is that for a lot of different reasons, that model is starting to crack a little bit in terms of some of the structures that supported and enabled a lot of that are either making different choices or quite frankly are just not revered in the same kinds of ways in which they were used to. And so what that means, for better or worse, is that much of that onus now has been dropped on individuals. Now for people like you and me who have worked for a period of time in our career, who have learned a few things, we've made mistakes, yeah, we have some past experiences to go off of to be able to chart our own course. But for people who are entering the workplace for the first time, who don't have the luxury of having any of that, I think that can be really overwhelming and I would argue in a lot of cases unfair to leave them to fend for themselves. I don't think that is setting them up for being productive and helpful and useful contributing employees as well as for that matter, for their own individual well being. So anyway, that's just a thought that I, a thought that I had off of what you were saying. Oh yeah, no, I think it's honestly one of the reasons why I went to upwork is because trying to figure out, to your point, if corporations are no longer going to provide. Like when I think of onboarding as an example, like back in the day, onboarding can be a six to eight week process where you go into a city and meet with your colleagues, managers, go through extensive learning and development and training and then go on the job. You're lucky today if you even get an onboarding experience and, or if it lasts more than a day or two. Right. And mostly compliance training. And so I'm really bullish as we think about like how do we help solve this gap? Because I'm not necessarily as hopeful corporations are going to spend all this money again on onboarding and early career training. I do think, even if it's having a side gig, but having that entrepreneurial skill set at an early age I think is going to be so valuable. And like we saw this play out at UPWORK as well as Gen Z was actually starting to feel more comfort in building a portfolio career and starting to think through, okay, I don't know if I want to be tethered to one organization that's actually starting to feel pretty unsafe these days. How do I think about my skill sets as a portfolio and how do I start applying that? And the gen zers that I interviewed that had done that at a young age had so much more resilience and grit. Even if they went back into a W2 job or a more stable organization, they just behaved and operated differently because of their understanding of knowing how to start a business all the way to delivering customer value and having ownership of that. So I agree it feels very unfair. But I'm also hopeful that those that have the resourcing, which is huge and oftentimes a privilege, but also the ability now for platforms like an upwork, you can start to actually build some of those skill sets without needing to be tethered to an organization. On the early career jobs front, I'm wondering if you have either seen better ways of approaching this. I'm. I think we can. I think we both would probably agree that cutting those jobs is probably not the ideal solution. But I'm wondering if you've seen any other alternatives or other. Other ways in which companies are approaching this or for that matter, if you just have any prescription around what that could look like. Because one, one pushback I often get, not in the. Not pushback of cutting the jobs, but of just taking action really is like, what else would we do? And so I'm just. I'm wondering if you've seen anything that's worth where that whether you thought was interesting or show at least shows a glimmer of hope for what it could be. Yeah, I think it's so fascinating because so much of the conversation of what should we do right now in some of these choices and moments, I think there are other models where we've seen what good looks like. And I think a lot of. Like when I was at Deloitte, we did a lot of research on the apprenticeship programs that Germany was offering as an example, where being able to go learn alongside someone and shadow them in their job for oftentimes it doesn't have to be like you're not gonna get a huge amount of salary. Right. But just actually acquiring some of that skills through an apprenticeship. I went to Rochester Institute of Technology and as part of our program before we graduated with a business degree, we had to go do a job for six months at a company to learn those skill sets. And they were paid positions. But again, we're talking minimum wage here. But it allowed me to have this experience of going into an office environment at age 19, 20 to actually shadow at the time as a marketing executive, go to New York City and learn actually what this job looks like. And so I think there's an ability that we need to really think through and bringing back apprenticeship models, making that part of educational programs requirements, not just having someone sit in a classroom and say okay, great, you're ready for a job. Having on the job experience I think has to be a requirement this day. And I think again it's a pretty thorny issue where we've got to get universities and companies to agree in a line on a pipeline and all of that. But that to me is like we know how to do this, we've done this before. We have models across other countries that continue to do this and do this well. And as we think about, especially in the age of AI, more and more work, I think the share of knowledge work may end up shrinking as we think of the labor pool, the demand anyways for that. And so if we have excess supply, we need to rebalance the labor markets and, and that means looking outside of maybe the knowledge industry, maybe that is looking into again more of trades apprenticeship programs. And I just think there's a lot more opportunity in there. I just worry we've so over rotated on STEM and thinking of this linear pathway of here's how this works and to your point, it's not fair and the bottom rung is certainly eroding. And so how do we actually reimagine what that looks like? And I think universities could actually be a pretty big play here as well. I do want you mentioned labor markets. I would love to talk a little bit about that because I know it's something that you've done a lot of research on. You like talking about. I think if you look at the headlines can look pretty gloomy at times in terms of just what possibly could happen, particularly with as you mentioned, knowledge work, white collar work, a lot of things that can be done at a computer, which for a long time we really valued and prioritized. Sure. And just looking forward, there are some predictions that the demand for those types of jobs will not necessarily be at the levels that we once thought they would be. Or for that matter the premium that we ascribe to those kinds of roles will not just get the premium that it once did. I'm wondering where you kind of sit on some of this or what even you're seeing or what you are prescribing could happen knowing that it's still very uncertain and not very clear. Yeah, and I think that's such a wise question you're asking because the way I see just the markets working and just human Behavior as a whole is cyclical and not linear. And so like we continue to go through cycles of technology disruption. And I think the last time we've seen this level of disruption was probably back in the 80s with manufacturing, where that was a combination of outsourcing as well as robotics. And I hope we can learn maybe from the people that we left behind during that age, because now it's coming for white collar work. And I think that cycle is about ready to hit again and both creative destruction, but also creative opportunity. And so where does a premium begin to lie? I think anyone who is building AI is certainly going to still command a premium. So being able to work alongside this new technology and really rethink how you're delivering value will always, I think, command a premium. Now the interesting thing that's maybe the more uncomfortable thing to talk about as we think about the shift in labor markets is we have an unbalanced labor market, meaning we have more demand in healthcare, education, manufacturing, construction than we have supply. Traditionally, we have not encouraged people with STEM degrees as an example to go there because the premium wage was actually held in tech. And so what does this begin to look like as we see it happening in real time? Tech doing massive layoffs to highly paid, highly educated individuals. How do we rebalance them so they're actually going into healthcare and applying their analytics and coding into healthcare systems? How do we get some of that to go into more blue collar type industries and functions, still take their same skill set, but apply it in different ways? I would love to see that because at the end of the day, as excited as I am about technology and all the great things we can do in a digital environment, I'm even more excited about the opportunity that we need to still solve some really heady issues. Healthcare as an example, curing cancer, doing some really amazing things. And I just worry for so long we've took all of our best talent, we made these great social media apps, but at the end of the day, I think a lot of us looked back and thought, is that meaningful? Did that add value? And I think there's a question mark in a lot of people's heads now. Whether that is, you don't have to ask whether or not something's meaningful if you're in education, health care, those sort of industries. So I would love to see a rebalance from an industry perspective of where some of our best and brightest go. And again, that's where Gen Z gives me hope because they want to solve the big thorny issues and we know that there's plenty of opportunity to do so. The question, though, is do those roles command a premium? Oftentimes they do not. And I think that's something we're going to have to figure out just as people and as a society is how do we make sure we don't continue to have gross inequity around people who have these AI jobs and everyone else. And I think that's a real big risk right now, if we're going to be honest. I agree. One of the things I've reflected on recently is that I really do think that if you want to know where things head, you should just figure out what companies value. But yes, and to work backwards from there, because one thing you can rely on companies to do, particularly those who have shareholders, is that they will always work in the best interest of themselves, because that's how the system is designed. But what made me think about this recently is that part of what drives companies to respond to what is valued is what customers value. And so when you actually do the math on that, the people that are customers are you and I. And so in this weird world actually maps back to all of us and the choices that I think we make about what we choose to value. And so, yes, and the choices you make about your value can be all sorts of ways in terms of what you choose to actually buy, how you choose to vote, the organizations you choose to support a failure with. Oh, there's all sorts of different ways to do this. But I was having this thought experiment recently where I just came to that realization and I was like, wait a second. It actually does start with us a little bit in this weird kind of way, because in theory, like, a company wouldn't exist if it didn't have customers. Thousand percent. I think that's again, like, profound and wise because. And I think that's oftentimes people feel like they don't have agency right now because the world feels so chaotic. These AI things are going to get built no matter what. But at the end of the day, you're exactly right. You have the most agency of where you're spending your dollar at the end of the day. And I think we have to reclaim a bit of that as customers and get clear on our value sets of like, here's what we value, here's what we know. And I think for too long, if I'm going to be honest, I'll pick on myself. I have been too much about convenience. Convenience has become a very high value, but maybe at the expense of how companies are treating their workers or whether or not I'm actually aligned to where this company's going with AI. And I think there's going to hopefully be a little bit of a, to your point, a customer driven revolution as part of this too, of where customers choose to spend their dollars. And I think time will tell with that. So last question here before we wrap up for the day. One of the questions I love to ask people, and I'm going to ask you this question is what do you think that we are not talking about that we should be talking about? And we'll put this at the intersection of AI, the workplace and leadership. But obviously you read a lot. I read a lot. You see what's in the zeitgeist and there's a lot of topics and there's a lot of conversations. I am wondering from your perspective, if we remove that for a second, what is not being said that we should be talking about that you think is interesting, compelling, important for people to think about or know. Al I'm going to hit this one pretty hard. Okay. I think we need to go back to 2019 because if we go back to 2019, there was this thing called the Business Roundtables associated with the World Economic Forum in Davos where we had almost 200 CEOs sign a document that declared we are going to rethink about business to be more than shareholder wealth maximization, that we are going to put people first, we are going to consider the impact that our business has to climate and planet. And whether or not that was lip service or not, I'm not sure. But in 2019, there was this movement and moment where business executives from Fortune 100 companies were really rethinking what is the purpose of business right now. We have to do better delivering value across stakeholders and not just shareholders. And then the pandemic hit and I have never heard a word about that, that again. And I think that is something we're not talking about enough about is what is the purpose of business? Because if it's shareholder wealth maximization at all cost, we will end up destroying jobs, we will end up destroying the planet. We will make really bad decisions around how we utilize our finite resources around energy. And that to me is actually the number one thing that we should be talking about. If I can just plug. I have a new book coming out this fall called Reclaim the Plot. How Leaders Rewrite the Story When AI Rewrites Work. And that is the number one thing I hit on that. Because if we don't answer that question right I worry everything else doesn't matter. To your point, the system's designed for organizations to act in their best interest, and that has devastating consequences to us as consumers even too. And so that, to me is I'm just surprised we're not talking enough about what is the purpose of business, what is value creation today, and how do we reimagine not just maximizing shareholder wealth, but optimizing it so we can make better decisions on behalf of our stakeholders. And if everyone goes back in 2019, this is one of the biggest business headlines that was hitting back then. Yeah, I I think that's a really great one and a really great place to end this conversation. Kelly Monahan thank you so much for coming on the Edge Work Podcast. If people want to find out more about your work or what you're up to, where can we point them towards? Yes, I am pretty active on LinkedIn so come find me on LinkedIn and then my website is Dr. Kellymonahan.com so come find me. Connect with me on there as well. Hi everyone, Al D Here. Thank you so much for listening to the Edge of Work podcast. If you like what you heard, encourage you to share the episode with a friend as well as to head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and let us know what you think. I would be forever grateful if you did that. I would also love to hear directly from you about what episodes you're listening to or any suggestions you have for how we can make it better. You can find me on LinkedIn. It.