A (5:55)

Excited to be here, Rob?

B (5:57)

Absolutely. Well, I always like to start each episode giving my guests an opportunity to talk a little bit about their story, their own journey, whatever you want to share. Kind of leading up to the point where we're definitely going to talk about Workquake, a lot of your work with both businesses and nonprofit organizations. But just tell us a bit of your journey. How did you get to where you are today?

A (6:15)

Sure, just a bit of my background. Born in America, raised in South Africa, and then at the age of seven, we were sort of told by the South African government, you need to leave. So we went back to America, sort of grew up from there in Connecticut on the east coast, went to high school, went to college there, moved to California as soon as I graduated. For really clear a lot of reasons, we made big decisions in life. I was in love with someone who was in California, so followed that to the West Coast. And California's pretty much been my home for the last 40 years or so, except I had two years in Singapore and four years in Western Canada as part of my career journey. I've been in the whole universe of talent, people, human resources. I Love it. I think it's the greatest art form in the world trying to figure out how to get people to do something greater together. I just love it. I think my love stems from my joy of sports. I love watching sports right now as we're, as we're recording this. It's the middle of, you know, what I call just heaven. March Madness.

B (7:13)

March Madness.

A (7:14)

Basketball. I mean, you're a basketball fan and super fun for me, but I love seeing how people handle circumstances and different circumstances. Playing from behind, winning, losing, being the focal point of the offense, moving to not being the focal point of the offense. And how do people respond to that? And that's. That joy is really parlayed well into the working world. And so my last regular full time job, I was the first chief HR officer for LinkedIn for a period of massive growth. We'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. And then I left there after four years, that felt like 20, and started doing my own thing. You know, I started to help businesses, leaders, companies, boards, industries, and in some cases countries build what I call more compelling talent strategies. And that's what I do today. Published a book right after the pandemic called Workquake and really trying to build a better future work for employers and employees. So it's a little bit of my story. Yeah.

B (8:10)

Well, thanks for sharing that story. Always fun just to get a little bit of background on people and love. I share that love for March Madness and basketball. And you've. I know you've got a lot of good stories now. When UConn beat Duke, they were pretty much out of that game and they still won at the very end. So I'm sure that's one of those. You're going to share that story because what an incredible story of never giving up. Right?

A (8:29)

Yeah.

B (8:30)

Good stuff. Well, okay, let's talk about that. Yeah. Because I love the fact you've got a lot of experience and that LinkedIn experience. Certainly want to hear about that. Just massive growth in a short amount of time. But I also want to talk about Workquake because I think you're right. In your book, you really touched on some things that now is shaping businesses, maybe even countries, just in terms of how people view work, how they experience work, issues with retention, recruitment. All of those things are kind of weaved in there. So talk a bit about your book for my listeners who maybe haven't read it yet or not familiar. How do you define workquake and what does it primarily refer to? Like what prompted you to write the book, Sure.

A (9:06)

I think the book really came from a career of seeing so much that seemed to be broken in the world of work that increasingly, I saw employers and employees be increasingly dissatisfied with how things were going. And I think the real genesis for me was that the architecture of work, I was increasingly becoming aware was just not built for the pace of change that we're seeing right now. For example, some of the biggest things that we're seeing are the need for new skills faster than any time in history. We're seeing an increase in turnover. People are staying in companies for shorter periods than ever before. And what's interesting is companies were not built to upskill people fast. Companies were built to keep people a long time, and neither of those are being delivered upon right now. And nobody thinks that we're going to bridge the skill gap anytime soon because technology and new technologies are outpacing our capacity to build the skills to allow people to leverage that. And nobody believes that, oh, in five years, people are going to stay in their jobs a lot longer. Everyone believes that in a more transparent marketplace for opportunity, people are going to continue to move at the pace we're seeing. Right on the best cases, we plateau. And right now in the United States, we have in the demographic 20 to 35 years old, the median tenure in a company is 2 1/2 years. Think about that. Oh, wow. And most. Think about this. Most benefit plans in every company are built around the longer you stay, more vacation you get. The longer you stay, more promotion opportunities. And none of that stuff is believed to be achievable anymore. So why do we have all these broken models? So that was really the genesis for me to say, hey, I don't have all the answers, but I know the model's broken. Let's start with acknowledging we've got a problem and work together to try to fix it.

B (10:48)

Yeah, boy. So right on that. Two and a half years. Yeah, that's. Think about, like, I was thinking about a lot of things, like benefit packages. I think about, like, people investing in your team. So they're here for five, maybe ten years or more. Two and a half years. That goes fast. That goes really, really quickly. So, okay, so you talk a lot about doing. The old way of working was wiped out by this workquake. What should leaders be doing now? Not just to rebuild, but to fundamentally reinvent how we approach talent and coaching them.

A (11:16)

The world's changing so fast that if you. If you go, you know, read my book from COVID to cover, I don't even know if I Mentioned the word artificial intelligence in the book, and this is 2021, you know. And so as proud as I am of the book and everything that I was calling around, what was probably going to happen has come true. And I still think it's super, super current right now and still valuable. And I have organizations that have built their whole people strategy around the principles of the book. But my advice is pretty uncomfortable for leaders right now. Listen, you need to have an AI philosophy, okay? You need to know where you stand and the company stands with AI. Are you going to use it to make people more productive and try to get them out of a job and replace them, or are you going to use it to be a superpower and to be additive for their career journey? And, you know, there's two camps that I see people mostly falling in. It's usually the let's, you know, use AI to replace people because they're, you know, I love my business, except for the people kind of approach. And I think that's a real missed opportunity, because if you can find a way to replace what someone's doing, in part, why not unleash them on something new, something bigger, something, you know, amazing, rather than, okay, we don't need them anymore. It's just such a limiting perspective, right? So that's number one. Number two, in an era of massive change and a need for new skills faster than any time in history, I think we're going to increasingly need to start hiring people based on what they can learn, not just what they know. Like, I know your job's going to change. We have a joke in human resources. Like, the value and accuracy of a job description is about as long as it takes for you to hit print and pick it up off the printer. Because now the job's already different, and yet we still are hiring for yesterday. We're not hiring for tomorrow. I know it's gonna change. So, Rob, I need to know that you can grow, that you're not stuck in your ways that you love. You're curious. And that's a big part of what I think, you know, leaders need to get ready for. Because it's uncomfortable, because I want to know you can do it. But I also know your job's gonna change. So I need to build a new profile of what I'm recruiting for. Those are probably two big ones that I'd like to suggest for leaders.

B (13:17)

Ah, that's so helpful. I love that. And you talked about more employees are more loyal to learning than to the organ. How is that reshaping the employer employee compact, if you will, or contract, if you want to call it that. And how should leaders respond? Because I think there. There's a. This new generation that's coming out is basically compensation is not always the most important thing. What they're looking for, they're looking for culture, and they're looking to grow personally. And so going back to that whole thing about organizations are not maybe as loyal to that as much as war. What are they growing? How are they growing as individuals? So how does that change how you lead them, how you recruit them, how you retain them?

A (13:56)

Yeah, I think we've been telling employees for the last couple of decades, well, first it's like digital transformation's coming for you, then it's the robots are coming for you. Now it's like AI is coming for you. So if you tell an employee today, hey, you know, don't worry about your job. We're not gonna let you go, they're gonna be like, yeah, you can't promise that. You know, I've been listening to you for the last few decades. What you can do is you can promise something bigger, which is offer career security. I'm gonna make you better for an uncertain future. And I don't know if a big customer is gonna cancel an order or whether we're gonna have a competitor really take away some of our business, promise you job security. I can promise you something bigger, Career security. And so that means I want to invest in you. Now, the good news is you want to do that as an organization because you want your people to continue to grow. And I teach in schools around the world, and I have to tell you, they're increasingly just turned off by getting ghosted, getting all these companies that are using AI to sort of filter them out. And they're like, if the first step of my career ladder is awful, what makes me think that the, you know, going in there and working is going to be better, you know, and we've got people, you know, we've got a real aware generation around. Hey, you know, I want to go and make a difference, but I can't promise you I'm going to stay there forever because there's a career candidate store for me out there, and I can see more opportunities. So I. That's why I say promise growth and that, you know, I can speak from experience. When we were building LinkedIn in the shadows of Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, they could outpay us out, benefit us out, work environment us out, perk us. All I could say was, listen, yes, you can Go there and make more money if that's important to you right now. But what we're solving is something that really matters, helping people find their dream job. And I promise you that I will do everything I can to make this the most enriching growth experience of your career. And did we hit it all the time? No, we didn't. But I can proudly say that everyone that I hired on my team who said the reason they wanted to come was because they want my job or they want to be ahead of hr, I can say every single person that said that to me is in that role today. I believe that I delivered on that. And I think that's what my peers, my fellow executives at LinkedIn, were able to do. And that's a different compact. You know, most leaders say, come here and stay here. And what we found in technology, in a very competitive landscape for talent, is, come here, I'll make you better. And if you leave, maybe you'll come back. If you leave, maybe you refer your friends that I'm creating a bigger set of angels in the universe that are going to benefit me in the long run. That makes sense.

B (16:23)

It sounds like you really. I like that approach. It sounds like you created this compelling purpose, number one. But also you're really clear that it was not just about the company. You were really committed to that person to help them grow to and wherever that leads them if, even if it's out of your company. And that seemed to really resonate with the people you hired.

A (16:40)

Yeah. Think about this, Rob and listeners. We have more new industries. We have more new, therefore, career choices for people than any time in history. We have more ways that you can earn a living not working for someone else. With whether you want to drive an Uber or whether you want to publish YouTube at scale or sell on a TikTok shop, you don't have to worry. There's so many choices. So if you're an employer and you're not clear on why someone should work for you, you're in trouble because someone's telling a better story than you are or someone's delivering a better story. I mean, it is really, really important. Last week I was in Lisbon and I teach a workshop there once a quarter for entrepreneurs. And I say, well, hey, let's do an exercise. Why would someone want to work you? And usually, and this is everywhere I've ever taught this course, this is usually response, because we like people, because we're nice, because we have a good product, we're going to make a lot of money. We Got a good board, good leadership, and we have beer on Fridays. And I, I usually say, hey, you know what I just heard? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What? Everyone else says, blah, blah, beer Fridays. That's all I heard because it all sounds the same.

B (17:42)

That's awesome. Right?

A (17:43)

And you know, when you're building LinkedIn, for example, and Google's making more in a day than you make in a year, and they've got shiny objects everywhere, I gotta be really clear. Hey, the problem we're solving is helping people find their dream job. Does that resonate for you? Does that get you excited? Or do you want to go over there to Facebook and help develop children's short attention span capability and proliferate fake news? I don't know, what do you want to do? Like, I believe what we're doing. And then, and then when you really want to get aggro and we got really aggressive, we would say why we're great and what the others are offering. Oh, you want to be Google engineer number 17,000 and clean the trophies of everyone else before you or do want to come here and put your fingerprints on our code? I don't know. What do you want to do here? And what we knew is the assets we have were earlier staged in all those other companies so you can make a bigger difference and put a bigger footprint. The problem we're solving, we felt was higher and more important than all the other companies we're competing against. So we use those assets. Right. And we didn't talk about, hey, we have crappy buildings and dookie free lunch and all kinds of other stuff. There's no parking here, good luck. We didn't talk about those, but we talked about what we did have. Right. And that's what I was say to, you know, back to the, the meta point. If you don't have a real compelling reason why people should work for you, you're going to be in trouble because someone's selling something more sexy and more fancy that's going to take your employees or your candidates eyes a different direction. So really double down on that.

B (19:11)

I love that. And there's no doubt about it, having a compelling purpose, whether again, be a business or a nonprofit, nonprofits typically are already kind of driven by a mission that attracts people. Right? And often they may be willing to pay, get paid a little less than they would in the for profit world, but either way, it doesn't matter. You need to have a compelling pur. You just really described that beautifully. Okay, so another thing that we already kind of touched on this a bit. But there's no doubt that there's more opportunities that have been created because of AI, hybrid work, remote work, gig work that is becoming, you know, just commonplace now. And I think right after you wrote your book that became just really exploded in popularity. Besides kind of the obvious disruptions, what are the under the radar talent trends that you're seeing that are really defining these last five and even up to in the next five years, so 10 years in terms of that impact the AI, the gig work, all those different opportunities now for people where there's more options to have maybe multiple jobs work for multiple people. Tell us about what you found with that.

A (20:08)

Yeah, you know, this notion of the proliferation of gig economy, it resonates for me. However, there's enormous inertia that's going to block that from being realized at scale. And in America it's largely driven by the cost of health insurance and your inability to buy a home easily and get a mortgage if you don't have a corporate paycheck. Right. So the whole system and most, most first world nation is built around you have a job for an employer. Right. Show me your pay stub so that I know you're legit and you're a, you're a safe bet for me to give you a loan. And for insurance it's like it's so expensive in the United States and so that's a real limiter in other countries there's similar reasons, but the legislation's all written for you have a job working for someone else. And so I think we're going to see more people. To your point, I do believe we'll see more people have a portfolio of opportunities. But we still have a big percentage of leaders who are very concerned about intellectual property ownership and don't want your eyeballs somewhere else and don't want your attention off of me, you know what I'm saying? So I think that we're a generation or two away from that really getting unlocked. And I have no faith that our politicians are going to figure out the healthcare dilemma that we have in this country, country anytime soon. And I'll tell you, you know, as an independent business person, it's the biggest expense I have by a mile and I'm paying for like get hit by a bus insurance, you know, and that's so expensive, you know, like I don't have really, really great care. So that, that, that's a real bummer. But I, I think that the other big trend is that, listen, we have an enormous amount of new opportunities for people out there. And similar to what I was saying a few minutes ago, you really need to present new challenges for people. So if people are really wanting to grow and you want them to grow, what we're going to have to do is re engineer a job. And this is really hard for some people because it is hard to implement. We're going to have to implement a lot of growth in the job. So I'm not, when I say it's all about growth and learning, I'm not talking about bringing teachers in and having seminars and going to classes. No, I'm talking about, hey, Rob, here's a new project, here's a new assignment, here's a new virtual team. I need you to take this on because I think you're going to like it. And also I want to see if you can grow and develop. And what's really great, one of the coolest features about AI that I'm seeing start to grow is the raising awareness through AI of what you might learn fast. Like Rob, I can see your profile. I can see your pedigree, where you went to school, languages you speak, countries you've lived in, industries you've played in. And people with your profile seem to really gravitate well towards this new soft skill, this new hard skill. So I think that's something that, you know, you might really like and you might be really good at. And that I think is increasingly going to be. We're going to have more organizations need to sort of assess your anatomy of skills and what's possible for you. Because if I can do that, it takes the pressure off of me having to go recruit in the open market, which is very expensive and time consuming. Right?

B (23:14)

Yeah, right, exactly. Well, there's no doubt. I mean, I can only imagine how difficult that was to really scale at LinkedIn from what you said, 400 to 4,000. I'm sure there were some mistakes made along the way. But as you look back at that and also then work, sounds like you work with all different kinds of companies and organizations. What are you seeing as some of the biggest mistakes now when people are trying to scale that you've learned from the past or do you're just seeing right in front of your eyes because of this post workquake world that we live in now?

A (23:42)

Yeah, the biggest mistakes are assuming with technology I can shortcut something that, you know, probably can't be shortcut with technology. So for example, building trust, you know, or communicating, oh, I'm just going to use this new tool, slack Fill in the blank. Cool new thing to give you more impossible amounts of information to consume, you know, like. And, you know, in this era of rapid change and newness, and we've got the most disengaged workforce and the most disengaged leadership that we've ever had since Gallup's been measuring it the most. And leaders have come in. In December, Gallup published their survey on leader global leaders, not just us, the lowest score ever. You know, they're just being asked to do impossible things, you know, like make your.

B (24:24)

What's causing that in your mind know?

A (24:26)

I think it's a volume issue. It's a volume and complexity issue. You know, people aren't staying as long. The architecture of work wasn't built for that. We've got new challenges. Adopt AI, you know, figure this out. We've got more. You know, because of technology, your competition can move faster than ever before. Right. Companies can be built really quickly with really low costs compared to last week. And, you know, I remember sitting in the LinkedIn boardroom and I remember the technical founders were having a conversation. I was just part of the joy of being around really, really smart people. They're saying, you. If we built this company today, and we're about 10 years old at the time, they said if we were to build this company today, it would take a fraction of the time and a fraction of the investment. And that's, you know, when you look at what AI is capable of doing right now, that's causing a lot of fear among leaders. Right. And a lot of impossible, you know, assignments that they're being tasked to do. So. And we've got a, you know, a very weary workforce right now, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B (25:23)

No, that's really interesting. I didn't realize that the disengagement is so high, both for staff as well as the executives. Okay. You framed this idea, this shift from retain the employee to retain the relationship in response to this workquake thing that we're going through. What does that actually look like, though, in practice, that sounds good. And then what's the upside or even the risk of thinking this way?

A (25:44)

So the trend in the last five, 10 years in North America and developed countries is people are just not staying as long. So as I said earlier, if you ask any leader, hey, do you think that's going to continue? Think we're going to hit a bottom of the parabola and people are going to start staying longer? People say no. I said, okay. So if you think you can change that curve, you go you go about you, but trying to get people to stay longer. I call is playing defense. And if you accept, people are going to stay shorter. Now you can play offense. Okay, I can't have a job that takes five years for someone to learn how to do. Let me re engineer this job. So it only takes six months. Now I may need to hire two people, but I'm going to have less downtime because I'm not going to lose someone after three years. Oh my gosh, I have to start over. And that really jacks up. Second thing is, if you know people are going to leave sooner, then you need to have a lot of cross training. You need to have a lot of knowledge sharing, more than you've ever had before. Spotify did something really amazing a few years ago when they had a high amount of turnover, particularly around Gen Z workers. As they said, we're going to mandate you can only be in your job for two years. You have to move to a different role. Now, not everyone, and that's a business that didn't require deep PhDs in most of the roles. Right. So you didn't have to have super, super deep domain experts. And you are able to move people around. And it turns out when you put someone in a new opportunity, they get energy, they get excited, a new challenge. And I put this to a lot of leaders out there, like, hey, when have you done your best work and when have you been most excited? When you've been in the same job five years or when you took on something new and different. So let's design to unlock the energy designed to make that happen. Oh, and when you do that, when you do what Spotify did, that's an insurance policy if someone leaves, hey, Rob was in that job last year. Let's ask him to pinch it while we recruit or something like that. You follow me? So, and then the third big one is a really big one, which is, you know, I'm sorry to hurt your feelings. If you went to the Tony Soprano School of hr, which is you quit, you're dead to me. Is you form alumni communities, right? Okay, keep in touch. You know how much, what? You know what the budget is for an alumni community. Zero costs you nothing. You just send out a note once a quarter, once a month, hey, we're gonna have a breakfast. We're gonna have a virtual talk. You know, Steve, you left LinkedIn and they've actually done this to me, said, hey, would you come in and host a conversation around what you did with your career after you left LinkedIn? We've got a bunch of people who are thinking of leaving. They've been here a number of years. Talk about the good, the bad, the ugly. Hey, would you mentor one, you know, executive? She's thinking of making a pivot or she's the new head of hr. Would you just be an angel for her? Like, that makes me feel wanted. That makes me feel like I want to be a value for that company for the rest of my life. And most organizations I talk to that are struggling. I talked to so many hospitals in America in the last two years and they've got massive nurse turnover. I said, so are you talking to the nurses? And they look at me like, why would we do that? They divorced us. They don't think we're sexy. You know, we don't want to call you're not sexy. We're not saying you're not sexy, you know, and so it's such a miss, you know, like maybe, maybe they've been there for a month and they don't like it. Just check in with them. They might want to come back, you know, and so that we have to do that, right? And we have to, I think. And plus, everyone's got a cell phone these days, and that is a public relations device. You know, you want people to have good experiences. And so. And turns out that alumni communities are really, really good investments. So those are things that can sort of help reframe the thinking. That's how you play offense, you know, and having played in the most competitive market for talent on the planet, Silicon Valley, I'm telling you that that stuff, it does pay dividends if you can pull it off.

B (29:09)

I mean, it makes sense. Honestly. I love the kind of the concept of creating loyalty by actually being open handed with, you know, former staff as well as current staff. Like to bring a former staff member like you in and talk to people that are thinking about leaving. That takes tremendous security in your leadership, number one. But also it's ironic because it reverses someone's logic perhaps because actually it's created more loyalty for you. And my guess is even for the people that even if, say, they leave, there's gonna be some kind of loyalty connection to LinkedIn because they allowed him, allowed their staff to kind of grow and nurture and find their own path. I think that's brilliant, actually. I think the alumni approach, Google took

A (29:49)

this to a whole nother level. I don't know if they still do it, but back when I was at LinkedIn, I remember my leader saying, hey, we want to go Hire a senior person from Google to do some big engineering job. Why don't you go talk to a search firm? So you called a friend of a friend or a friend. Find the executive recruiter from Egon Zender, who, whose desk is inside of Google, you know, and I said, hey, we, we'd love to hire some top talent from Google. And she goes, I'd love to help you. And I go, isn't that unethical? Like, they're your client, you're sitting in their campus, you're allowed to give me. She goes, no, they want me to, they want me to place their people in other organizations. I mean, that is like, whoa, so mature. And, and you know, it's like that's. We care about you and your career and if this isn't the right place. So we borrowed on that and we riffed on a little bit and we used to say in the interview at LinkedIn, what do you want to do when you leave here? And people are just shocked. They're like, you just laid it out there, right?

B (30:45)

Oh, wow.

A (30:46)

They're like, wait, you're doing my exit interview? Haven't got the job offer yet. Well, like, well, listen, Silicon Valley, you know, we know you're probably going to stay here less than two years, and that's what software engineers, it's like 1.8 years. And so we know you're not going to be here, so, so where do you want to go? So we can make sure that we're optimizing your time here to get you wherever that is. And they're just like, whoa, now we're, now we're having a real conversation. Right. And that, you know, that was really inspirational. But you're right, traditional leaders would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, why would we do that?

B (31:17)

Yeah, it goes against all that competitive spirit. Right. That often happens in these same companies. Right. So I'm really impressed, actually, and surprised in a good way. Like, that's very counterintuitive, intuitive of what I think most people think when it comes to these companies, particularly Silicon Valley. We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Well, look no further than DonorBox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations, and simplifies giving for your supporters. With DonorBox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is www.donorbox.org.

A (32:14)

Well, okay.

B (32:15)

For a lot of my listeners, I'd say the majority of what I can tell, the majority of my listeners are in some kind of nonprofit or social Internet impact organization. And so budgets are a little tighter, a little smaller typically. So you really have to be careful, you really have to make sure every hire counts. Right. Because you don't have as much margin perhaps as the for profit company across the street. What would you say to HR directors of nonprofit organizations when they, when you talk about the workquake, is there anything else maybe unique to a mission driven organization again, that has a few less resources and has to be a little bit more, more intentional with their hiring process?

A (32:49)

Yeah, first, and I should have said this up front, Rob, I am the product of two nonprofit leaders. My dad's a minister. My mom ran low, low income childcare centers in my hometown in Danbury, Connecticut for years. And they, and they, they've been, they've been givers and, and, and nonprofit leaders for, for their whole lives. And so it's in my DNA, it's in my bones. In fact, I have a whole chapter of workwake around. I, I think there's an enormous, if I'm sitting at the, you know, in a fireside chat with a bunch of HR leaders and nonprofits, say, listen, you've never had a better opportun. Right now you got so many people in career transitions that are looking for something different to plug into, meaning to plug into making a difference than ever before. And what I think the way I think you can get some of these great people is not get a commitment of 2, 3, 5 years. Get a commitment of like a tour duty. Like hey, you come in here for a period of time and you crush it for a year or two. Then you help us hire your replacement, some a superstar just like you and then you can catapult back into do you know, some big corporate job if that's where you want to go or you're going to be drinking the Kool Aid and say it's what I want to do for the rest of my life. Good friend of mine who is One of the CFOs at Electronic Arts, Brian Nider, went into basically second tour of duty nonprofit helping people really do career pivots in the last phases of their lives and also people with disabilities. And he's loving it. He's loving and he's so, so he's so well connected in his network of, you know, bringing in speakers Bringing in teachers, bringing in people to raise funds. I think there's a lot of people looking for something different who are waiting on the sidelines. We've also got a really interesting thing happening in America right now, which is more people over the age of 65 who are saying they're retired, but they're not drawing Social Security yet, suggesting they're waiting for something interesting to happen or be presented to them. So I would say don't count yourself out. Like, swing big. Go get some people and. But sell a tour of duty. Don't sell. Oh, you have to commit for a long time because if it's new, they're going to hesitate to a long commitment. Make them, get them to come in and taste it for a while, you know, and then see if they really like. And they want to say, that's, that's what I think about. I think it's a great opportunity right now. In the chapter of my book, I talk about, you know, especially people who are career pivoting. So another really interesting stat, more people are changing careers, not just jobs, than any time in history. Right, I've heard this.

B (35:11)

Right, exactly. Yeah.

A (35:12)

So what's a good place? Let's say I'm in HR and I want to get into pr. I want to get into fundraising. Well, nonprofit would be a great place for me to go learn those traits. And so if you can supply a little bit of onboarding, a little bit of coaching, a little bit of mentoring, you can get some really phenomenal talent in there that has a really big network to help your organization.

B (35:31)

Nice. You know, I had another guest on this show not too long ago that talked about this really cool concept, and I wonder if you've run across it, because I feel like the way you're answering a lot of these questions, questions, it'd be within your mindset of how to do this. But he talked about how particular with this younger generation coming through, not only are they just expecting right off the bat, this may be a short tenure, but because of that, they thought, let's make sure people coming onto your job site or you're coming onto your team, that you almost have a little bit of a reverse mentoring going on. In other words, there's mentoring that happens to them, of course, or for them, but that these younger people, particularly when it comes to technology, AI tools, that they may just be more native to them. They could train some of the people that are in a nonprofit or a for profit organization that maybe are in the C suite, because sometimes generationally, the folks that are coming in that are younger, just know it better and actually can train the people that are older than them. So there's this reverse mentoring happening. Are you seeing that? And the reason I ask it because this gentleman who also is similar to you as a coach and consultant, what they're finding is when a younger person comes onto a job, if they have an opportunity in a sense, to have an impact not just in their role, but to actually train and have a kind of leave their mark on the C suite, they stay longer because they see more of a purpose for them to be there because now they're actually being honored for the, the gifts and the talents they have when it comes to AI or technology. Are you seeing things like that?

A (36:50)

Yeah, I mean, I, I want you, you know, hopefully the audience is paying attention to what you just riffed on, because that was just perfect. Yes, I'm seeing that. And particularly in the domain of understanding technology. Technology. I mean, just think about those of you who are sort of in that Gen Z zone or in that zone of. I had to teach my parents how to use zoom during the pandemic, you know, like, okay, there you go, your camera's off. There's a little icon lower left and it goes that, you know. And so here's a generation that taught their teachers how to zoom remotely. They taught their parents, their grandparents. You know, they are so well equipped and versed into to digital fluency and AI fluency. That opportunity to mentor, reverse mentor is phenomenal. And I think I 100% agree with you. That's very filling for them to be in a position where they can contribute. And it's probably going to want. Make them want to stay longer, contribute more. You tap into that X factor of contribution. What Simon Sinek says, it's no longer a job, it's something bigger. I think it's pretty cool. I am seeing it a lot more. I saw actually a couple articles this week. I was reading about organizations doing more. Erickson is been doing that a lot with their young talent with great results. Yeah.

B (38:03)

Okay. Yeah. Note to those who are listening. Yeah. Start putting that into practice. I think that there was a brilliant idea and a brilliant concept. In fact, you're seeing it too, and you get to work with a lot of different organizations. I think there's a trend going on here, right. If you want that next generation, particularly Gen Z, to stay and really see this as more than just a job, that reverse mentoring is a great way to do that. Okay, so there's another big issue. And then particularly I think it did land after Covid, was that this return to the actual physical office. There's this big controversy, right? And the biggest well known is with some of these large tech companies, right, have finally reversed some of their policies of, hey, you can work remote now. You got to work, you know, 50% now, some. It's 100% back into the office. Because proximity, there's something about proximity when it comes to a staff environment, a culture you're trying to build. But where do you find that balance? What have you seen with this, again, kind of post workquake world we live in? Do employers need to be a little bit more flexible, find a balance? Is it based on. On region? Or what are you finding when it comes to remote work versus working in the physical office? Yeah.

A (39:04)

Well, let's step back and talk about this from a real macro perspective from biologists who study, you know, biological creatures have found since they've been studying this, if you take a creature and you put it in a new environment for an extended period, Covid, the creature will no longer go back to doing things the way they did before. They'll build new patterns. They'll see new things that they didn't see before. Like, hey, I was never home when my kids came home from school. Holy smoke, that's. That's a magic moment. I don't want to miss that anymore. Or, oh, my gosh, my commute was my inner sanctum of peace. I don't have the commute anymore. I need the commute. Because that was my meditation, my preparation to go to work. And it was also me making sense of the day after. So, so many new. So many new things have happened that I think it's really shifted a lot of perspectives. The big rub for me, many large organizations is that were centrally focused and then went remote and then said, hey, come back. Is that a lot of the fear that was driving that decision was, hey, what does it mean to our culture if we're more dispersed? Like, I don't know how to lead a more physically dispersed team, and I don't know how to, you know, feel confident that the teamwork is better or that the culture's better in a more remote world. And most of us were taught how to lead people in person, not remotely, remotely, Right. And so that's been a big fear. And that's why you've seen a lot of this flip flopping. My personal take is when people say, which one's better? You know, hybrid, remote, in person, I usually say, yes. And they go, no, no, no. I said, they go, oh, all of them. I go, yeah, you're gonna have to experiment. Listen, I truly believe what the, the CEO Aaron Levy said of Airbnb. He said, listen, how can anyone believe that the best talent in the world for their company is within a 30 mile radius of their headquarters? Like, how can you possibly believe that? Like, it's, it's just, it's impossible. So if you're in a business where we want to hire great people, you're likely to have a bigger pool to choose from if you're more flexible in what you offer. Next point, if you ask any executive recruiter, and I know a ton of them, hey, what's the first question candidates ask you when you give them a call about an opportunity? Can I do this job remotely? Okay. And I've had to broker like, literally fights between middle management and senior management management about this issue. Like, like an embarrassing, you know, Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 50 companies. And I usually tell the people who want to stay home, like, and the people at the top, like, listen, you need to look at it from the other side's perspective. And what management's saying is, well, you're more productive when you're here. And people are saying, no, no, no, I'm way more productive when I'm home. But I think what employees are saying is, my life is more productive when I'm home. Not just my job, my life is, I can go get a hairdresser appointment when I want to. I can shop off hours, I can commute to doctor appointments. You know, against those, you know, heavy congestion times, I can, my life is more productive when I, when I do it that way. You know, just think about it. Those of you who have kids, you know, it's like some of these daycare Centers close at 3 o'. Clock. Like, who works at 3 o'? Clock? Or some of these doctor's offices close. Like, what's going on here? I'm working, I can't go see you. I can't take time off. And so a lot of the COVID exposed how broken some stuff is. And so I still think we're in this making the sausage moment, and we need a little bit more time to figure this out. If I'm leading a company right now, I'm going to try to be as flexible as I can be. The one size fits all people strategy, I think doesn't work anymore today. But we still, we need more examples, right? Like, no company wants to be. Well, we'll be the first ones to do this, you know, Massively. And I say, no, you can tell your employees, listen, we're going to try this work from home thing for a quarter and then we're going to see how you like it, how the customers like it, how the board likes it, how the shareholders like it. And we'll all reevaluate, we'll get smarter. And it may be something we continue. You may not want to continue. I do a lot of work in Europe. The homes in Europe are not as big as the homes in the U.S. generally speaking, people go there to sleep. They don't go there to live and binge watch shows for hours on end. They want to. I want to go outside, be with my friends in a cafe. And so our infrastructure is a little bit different than some other countries. So people, you know, and sometimes people don't. They don't want. They don't want to work at home. This is one of the really interesting trends that surprised me during the pandemic. Like real estate market, like, blows up during the pandemic. I'm like, wait a second, Everyone should be economically sort of conservative right now. Like, why would you want to spend money? And then I talked to my Realtor and I said, what's going on? She says, people are working from home. They need more space. I was like, oh, right. You know, it was such an obvious.

B (43:43)

I didn't get it.

A (43:44)

And she explained, sure, yeah.

B (43:46)

And a little bit more. More room. Right. So they can all have their corner if they're on Zoom or whatever. Yeah, that makes total sense, actually. Yeah. Okay. Well, for nonprofit organizations, boards are such critical pieces of the success of any nonprofit. It really is this board. So let's talk about boards real quick. When it comes to this post workquake world, what kind of questions should boards be asking their nonprofit leaders and their staff in order to really be competitive and to address this issues or address the issues we've been talking about? Are there some things you would recommend if you were to consult with the board on what they should be really doing with their current staff and nonprofit organizations where they serve on a board?

A (44:26)

I mean, the first thing is if you're hiring someone who's never been on a board before, a nonprofit board better be clear about what your expectations are. The nonprofit boards that I've been a part of, you've. There's an expectation, if you're on the board, you're raising money for us. Okay. Some people don't like that. And so I would be really explicit with around. Here's what we're expecting okay. Before I start looking and say who might fit that profile really well, you know, I would. I want to be looking for someone who's got a really big network, who's really, well networked. I'd want to be looking for someone who fills a niche that I don't have. Okay. Who feels like, I don't know whether it's, you know, whether it's fundraising, whether it's some domain expertise that I'm looking for, whether we're going to have some big real estate issues coming up in our, you know, I need someone who's a real estate expert or what? Or we say see some big legal contract stuff coming down the pipe. I want to get a lawyer or law firm, you know, to sort of sit on the board. So I think it kind of depends on the holes that you have. When, when, when I helped build the board at LinkedIn, we didn't know. We didn't have anyone that knew anything about subscriptions. So what do we do? Knock, knock. Who's there? Netflix. Yeah. Hey, you got someone that can help us out on our board? Yeah, because you guys are world class, you know, and so, you know, I would look for that. And then I would also try to be explicitly around what that person's going to get out of doing this. Okay. What the return is. And I would use this sort of Exhibit A, a study that a Harvard professor did a number of years ago around joy and happiness and the components of that. You know, things are sorted at home, things are sorted professionally, and I'm giving back to the community. Okay. And that is a big empty hole for most executives, you know.

B (46:01)

Yeah, good point.

A (46:03)

And, you know, it's like, you know, hey, it just so happens research finds out that people who are, you know, giving back to tend to have more full and fulfilled lives. And so I would use that as a big recruiting hook.

B (46:13)

Okay, well, there's so much here. Thank you so much. There's so many great insights you've shared with us. If my listeners want to get to know a little bit more about you or find out about your book Workquake, where would you send them?

A (46:23)

I would send them my website, Steve. Cadigan.com It's Cadigan. C A D I G A N. It's probably be in your show notes. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. If there's something that you have a question this conversation generates, please reach out to me. I hear the LinkedIn things pretty good, so I use it a lot. But I'm. So if you have a Question I'll get back to real quick.

B (46:42)

Perfect. Well, it is fascinating that you, because you did work at LinkedIn, I've just seen this, I mean this is now, I'd say for a good solid two years. Most of my colleagues would say they spend more time now on LinkedIn when it comes to social media for business related things than any other social media site because there's so much that happens there. So LinkedIn, whatever they've done, they've really moved the discussion when it comes to your business, anything professionally driven, it's not Facebook, it's not TikTok. It's really LinkedIn. It was what I found anyway. And again, that's across the board with almost all of my colleagues and friends. So interesting that you were a part of that. With that massive growth and that mission of helping people find their dream job. I would say that worked really well because it seems like that now the results are showing. So.

A (47:24)

Yeah, indeed, indeed. They've done a great job. You know, I still, I've, I left the company 12 years ago. I still get reminded by anyone who wants, you know, who thinks that I still work there of everything that's wrong with the, with the site. So I appreciate, of course, yeah, I appreciate hearing some good things. Rob.

B (47:39)

Yeah, I was gonna say no company's perfect, but I do think that they've done a really good job with that piece anyway. So I don't know, what about the inner workings? Well, again, Steve, thanks so much for being on the show today. And for my listeners, there's gonna be some great show note links, so make sure you click on those because this is a really interesting conversation. And if you're a leader of any organization and you're struggling with number one recruiting, particularly gen zers and but specifically retaining your staff, listen to this episode episode and go find out more what Steve is doing because this is something he's been doing for years. And again Steve, thanks for being on the show today.

A (48:10)

My pleasure.

B (48:12)

Hey friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to like subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep making your world better. This podcast is sponsored by Donorbox Donor Box helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.