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Jeff Frick

Hello, Sophie Wade. Great to see you today.

Sophie Wade

Hi, Jeff. How are you?

Jeff Frick: I'm terrific. And I'm so excited for this conversation. I've been digging into your media library, and it is quite extensive, like 90 episodes, I think on the podcast (Transforming Work with Sophie Wade), two books (Empathy Works: The Key to Competitive Advantage in the New Era of Work), five LinkedIn Learning classes (Engaging and Retaining Gen Z with a Skills-First Approach), a couple of little intro videos. You have been one busy lady keeping track of this whole future of work thing.

Sophie Wade: Trying, trying. You know, it's, it keeps moving. So I got to keep moving with it. I mean it is there is, and it doesn't slow down as we know. So keeps me busy.

Jeff Frick: Host: Right. Well, it's kind of serendipitous, right? Your first episode, I noticed on the podcast was February 27th, 2020, literally not even two weeks before the shutdown. You were doing the Flexcel Network back in 2011. So you're a little bit ahead of the curve there. But wow, what a difference when suddenly, and there's a lot of kind of future of work advocates like Kate Lister and Adrienne Rowe who've been fighting this battle for a long time, and then suddenly it's like the market came to you in not the greatest of circumstances, but certainly one you could never have anticipated.

Sophie Wade: Right. Yeah, I mean I started in this space in 2011 when I was, it was for my kids. I was, you know, coming out of a long-standing job which I always had full-time jobs wherever I was working, start-up or big company. And then suddenly I, you know, with technology, was looking at this thing called workplace flexibility. And what that could be beneficial for all types of people. And I really thought, well, you know, yes, obviously women will benefit, but everybody will benefit. And of course, then fast forward many years to the pandemic. Yes, just was launching my podcast in February 2020. And then yeah, then everything shut down and many more people were therefore available to do the interviews.

Jeff Frick: Right. So that was nice. You didn't have to travel. It certainly makes things a lot interesting. You know, I was in the events business and you had to schlep the gear and get there and scheduling, you know, such a nightmare. And then we transitioned the company to Zoom calls basically on demand. And it's so much easier. And then once it got normalized, you know, it just makes the whole world suddenly available to you without necessarily having to get on that plane. But you just got back from an exciting conference. So let's fast forward to today. I think you just got back from Web Summit. So what were some of the things going on as we, you know, we fast forward to the end of 2023, which is kind of hard to imagine.

Sophie Wade: Yes. Well, it was. What was really interesting. Well, the particular presentations that I was really keen to look at were about AI and not just, I mean at any of these conferences I'm not just listening to the presentation. I’m listening to the questions that people ask and the conversations that people are sort of having off, you know, away from the from, you know, walking around the halls from, you know, walking around the halls and, you know, with 60, 70,000 people or whatever Web Summit is, and in the environs of Lisbon, which is a fabulous environment to be circulating in, and there's so much going on there, it was really interesting to me, 1) the vibe, 2) the excitement about because there's a lot of pitch summits, it's a lot of startups and ventures and, you know, pitching competitions and it obviously endless new startups focused on AI. So that was what was really fascinating to me to see. And I watched a whole bunch of pitches. Each person at one point had like 2 minutes to give their pitch. And it really struck me how much everything that we're going to be doing is changing a bit to you know, from a small amount to a large amount. But but everything and, and augmenting what we're doing. There was one guy who was presenting about how... How extraordinary some of the hallucinations are. I mean, you know, I understand their between 10% and 20%, but some of them are really, really quite drastic and could be life-changing or game-changing. So, you know, the challenge that I was very interested in when we sort of thinking about this, Jeff, is really how do we? What is the truth mean? You know, if we think about observer-based reality, what, how are we going to discern what truth is and what truth means? And what facts are? Facts are often interpretable, Right.

Jeff Frick: Oh, they're absolutely interpretable, right. Is, you know, is 60 old or young? Well, ask an 8 year old or ask an 80 year old. You're going to get two very different answers, right. And they're both completely correct.

I think the deepfakes thing is fascinating and scary. And, you know, even now, I continue to be impressed at kind of the creativity and the sophistication of some of the phishing techniques and, you know, as they kind of evolve their language. And then you think once they have, you know, almost perfect information that it's, you know, your child and, you know, they're on, you know, vacation in Southern California and, you know, they're going to Disneyland and they send you a note from Disneyland in their voice and their head with Mickey Mouse in the background saying they need an extra $100 bucks because somebody just stole their wallet or whatever it is, I think it's going to be I think it's going to be really challenging. It's definitely going to be difficult.

Sophie Wade: Yes, and this is what's sort of fascinating to me because it goes to the core of the creation. I mean, we are needing to be I mean, just as you went you know, you took your show from, you know, being in a studio, having everybody else do things for you and you had your particular role, then you take it home during the pandemic and you're needing to do a lot more. And the sophistication of your setup just in all the recommendations you were giving me. And I'm trying to up my setup as well. So thank you very much for that, Jeff.

We are all becoming that much more, you know, we're being up leveled. Being upskilled in terms of how much more we can do individually. And as we're creating more content and as we are, we're becoming you know, that's that's the role that each one is putting ourselves through at the center of the node and what we're creating and doing with that, whether it's real or fake or in our voice or with our own opinion on it, you know, it really changes how we each need to be thinking about what we're putting out there, what, you know the lens that we're you know, the opinion that we're putting behind it and and how we're communicating with other people and, you know, what their backgrounds are and how they're going to be to be sort of receiving it. I mean, it really changes the dynamics of all these different interactions, whether it's sort of broadcast or 1 to 1 or one to many.

Jeff Frick: Yeah. And you've got your empathy book there over your shoulder. And I know you've written about it and you speak about it. And empathy is ultimately, you know, as you know better than I, is putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and feeling what they feel. And it seems like that, you know, there's some there's some potential conflict with being your whole self and bringing your opinions to work and risk-taking and at the same time, you know, you've got kind of cancel culture and you know, there's this, this kind of landmines. It's easy to step, Speaker 2: you know, either accidentally, intentionally or when the context changes. If something is taken out of context and it's this really  kind of interesting time where you want to be forthright and be the whole self, that we want to value the whole self. At the same time, you know, people have disagreements and there are things that can get really hot really, really fast. So I think the communication challenges are not simple these days  and the stuff lasts forever.

Sophie Wade: Yes. And I, Look, I think there's a difference. There is there's nuance to this. Right. Right, right.  And this is where we have to get the balance right. So coming to work within a sort of two-dimensional cutout model and we're kind of like it's all business and we're not really showing our emotions to the full everything that Sophie Wade is which is very complex. You know, there's a person that I'm showing here which is different than I show my kids or that I might with, you know, some other family members or friends. You know, we're not showing where we might be our full self, but it's not every single aspect of ourselves. So we're being much more real and much more. There's sort of more dimension to it with sort of three-dimensional people, but we're not necessarily showing every single, you know, wart and quirk.

So I think that's where that's where the empathy comes in because it's sort of like, you know, empaths can get railroaded. The point is not to let the other person have everything, have everything that they want or you have everything you want when you can manipulate them. It's really trying to get that balance, that balance of needs, that balance of understanding, you know, what is it not appropriate for me to necessarily be talking about? And it could be just, you know, something that's happened to you or, you know, something that happened to one of your family members or your dog.

So I do want to bring up my dog because that might remind you, you know, there are things that we just need to be thoughtful about, but it doesn't mean that we're being fake or being, you know, untrue and being superficial. So I think it's that learning that we need to bring in we do do that in our personal lives all the time. We just haven't been, as you know, as three dimensional in the past as we are needing to be now because we're also needing to sort of lean in to the new dynamic, the new interactions that we have, you know, need to be that much more capable of working closely together under pressure, under stress, trying to get the best ideas. You know, that's, you know, I'm sure the dynamics.

Well, I'm curious, how did that you find the dynamics change from being in a studio, having done so many in studio sessions to then using a different channel where you were separated, there was still, you know, a lot of technology involved. But how did the how did the different channels and mediums change that experience for you?

Jeff Frick: I think the thing that's underrated in live is the theater of the presence, and we focused a lot on the theater of the presence. So I used to tease my photographers that the whole thing was actually just a setup to get a great photo of the guests looking good because it was properly lit and there was an active background and they were dressed and prepared and they were engaged in the moment. And so you get a great photograph and nothing used to make me happier than when people would use those photographs for their LinkedIn profiles and stuff. So I think it's the theater and the you got to be much more intentional in picking up on clues. You got to really pay close attention to what's going on, which is much harder, you know, when you don't have those physical clues that, you know, the benefit though is you can you can reach out and touch people so much easier.

You know, there's is every coin has two sides. You know, on one hand, it's easy for people to cancel If they're not physically present in that place and it's part of their conference schedule. Maybe it's harder for them to context switch to me, one of the biggest challenges for people in these contexts is to take 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 5 minutes to just, you know, wash your face or get up and walk around your desk or get a breath of fresh air or a fresh cup of coffee. Just a context switch and get your mind right. A lot of people don't do that well, and that's maybe harder to do in a remote location because it's easier to back stuff up

Sophie Wade: They need to get a dog. I have to get up all (the time) I have to get up all the time and walk my dogs. And that always gives me that sort of ability to switch it up, change mode and then sit back down, you know, maybe with a cup of coffee or tea or something like that. But it really and therefore I'm more purposeful about what I do when I then sit down again because like, am I then starting a new something that's mentally different or is it going to be the same type of thing? And again, that will be the sort of next phase. It's sort of interesting how some of those break times can really help us design our workdays differently. How are you finding that?

Jeff Frick: Yeah, I and in fact, I reboot often. I reboot my whole machine and just kind of restart everything when I complete a project or not even a project, a post or whatever, just to get a refresh of the mind and close all the tabs and close the windows. It’s a start fresh because there's so many just, you know, you can distract yourself pretty easily by, say getting ready for this and pulling up all your podcasts and pulling up your LinkedIn Learnings and, you know, pulling up your books. and suddenly next thing you know, you've got all this stuff open. So I actually reboot the

whole thing many times a day. Instead of having 87,000 tabs open, which I know some of my fellow coworkers do

Sophie Wade: I know, I'm absolutely guilty of that. Well not even guilty of that. That is what I do. I like it like that. And I've tried. I’ve put bookmarks in it, but I like to have them there and I go between them so

Jeff Frick: Well, I have six screens. That's how I do it. I literally have more screens than you can count in front of me.

Sophie Wade: Well, there you go.

Jeff Frick: So that's how I do it.

Sophie Wade: Hey, there you go.

Jeff Frick: The other piece you cover a lot is multi-generational, right? And people are working longer and kids are coming in. So we've got the situation where we've got multigenerational people. And the thing to me and you talk about empathy and trying to put yourself in someone's shoes, the part that illustrates to me how difficult that is for people like you and me who've been around a little bit longer than the young people is this great Stanford study that came out on ‘Online Dating and Married Couples’ How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) - Social Science Data Collection, Stanford. Pre 1984 thereabouts is about when I graduated from college, met my wife shortly thereafter. There was no Internet. There was no online dating. So ‘How you met your spouse?’ was zero (for online dating in 1984) and all the rest were work, a bar, friends, church, family, blah, blah, blah.Now it's over 50%. So most people met their spouse via a digital interaction that didn't exist when their boss or their boss's bosses met their spouse. To me, I just thought that was so illustrative of how the world has changed and why it's so difficult to understand something that's now a core to how people meet their spouse. That didn't exist when I was doing the same thing.

Sophie Wade: Yes. And for me, when I sort of think about some of the things that go that are associated with that is this differentiation that are associated with that is this differentiation between real and virtual and sort of ‘In Real Life’ (IRL). I don't think of in person as being necessarily in real life because we're talking we're in real life. We're not in the same place. And so this. How we even define some of these things, like real and not real and real and virtual like they are, there are so many things that we need to be thinking and just, you know, either tweaking or changing completely.

You know, we have a very old phrase, which was ‘The Camera Never Lies’ That could not be more untrue now, almost. So, you know, there are many things that we really need to be rebooting, changing, and really thinking what we know what's what's what's appropriate now and what's. I was going to say what's true now as it. But and some of these things are harder to define than others. But it is a moment, I think, that we really need to be thinking much more thoughtfully about these things. Again, we get to AI and Deepfakes and all that, and hallucinations. What responsibility puts on every single one of us to try and work out what is true, what is real, and how we're interacting with whomever we're interacting with of whatever generation. Because yes, the way somebody who is, you know, 17, 18, 19, 20, how they the facility with which they use technology and how they're sort of interacting with it and somebody who is much older, it's a very different, very different interaction, very different comfort level.

Jeff Frick: Right. Right. And how do you see development? That's the other part you talk a lot about development and employee development, you know, personal development. And, you know, I first job out of school, worked at Macy's, had a management program. I just checked in on your very first episode. That guest, I think, said he worked at Enterprise which hired more college grads than any other place. Right, and there were these formal programs that existed, and they didn’t have to change very often, very quickly because things weren't changing that quickly. And so, you know, they were kind of these big established things in a world of of skills based learning. And, you know, now college is so expensive. How do you see? How do you see development changing? And also when we have the whole world potentially at our fingertips in our phone versus, you know, kind of the ways when we were getting started in our careers and more that I don't want to say traditional, but the older ways of career development because it's, you know, Jennifer Tejada, one of my favorite CEOs. All she ever talks about is the great learning she got at Proctor and Gamble and some of these old formal training programs that just don't exist anymore.

Sophie Wade: Well, some of them do. I mean, the ones, to my understanding, the ones that still exist, these rotational programs, which are very powerful, and I'm trying to remember who I interviewed who was talking about the rotational programs. I think Pepsi does them still, Unilever and some of the banks do them.

Jeff Frick: So still a few of them out there. Getting people.

Sophie Wade: Yes, and where companies can do that very deliberately, even if the company is small and doesn't have huge divisions, that you can actually rotate people through. It's a very powerful way for generation, for let's say, the youngest generation to come in and experience different areas of the organization. And it also, therefore, facilitates talent mobility and moving within an organization what because we don't typically have these linear sort of, you know, lots and lots of incremental steps up the ladder that doesn't exist anymore because particularly our companies are much flatter. Therefore, it is much harder to move around the organization because it hasn't been set up like that. And what that means, therefore, is it's easier for and the data from LinkedIn, from 2022 was that only 20% of Gen Z’s feel that their boss or their company supports their next career move, their next career progression. So it's easier for them to leave. So what we need to be doing is really facilitating. I mean, it's just still early days in terms of talent mobility within large organizations and internal talent marketplaces. So if instead you brought people in and had already scheduled for them to be working in different areas, that's 1) going to help them connect, help them network within the organization, find out what they're good at, you can find out what this person is good at too or what they like or what they're interested in, and you get a much more well-rounded employee. So I think those that's one of the ways I love the fact that you brought that up because that is something that we can use that as a kind of ‘old model’ but really use that to great advantage these days.

And my next podcast episode, a guy called Paul Wolfe had an amazing idea that he came up with in terms of. You know, you and I, I think when we last chatted we were talking about the fact that some people just aren't great managers, right? So, you know, apparently supposedly 10% of people are really good managers. And maybe, maybe I'm not quite sure what percentage it is. Someone told me it's very low and I don't want to necessarily believe that.

Jeff Frick: Seems low to me. But yeah, so I’m just going with the normal distribution curve, you know.

Sophie Wade: Well, fair enough. So if somebody isn't a great manager and they love doing what they're doing, we there are a number of people in the technology area where they are allowed to sort of be single contributors and rise up, but a single pathway, but not necessarily have to manage people. So how about in non-technology areas doing the same type of thing? So there is a pathway not for everybody, but in some areas where people can move up, get promoted, earn more money, better title, whatever it might be, but not have to manage people. Now that's really interesting because we have all these new types of career pathways. We can go horizontally, we can go diagonally. That allows for some people to excel, not have to be doing something that they really don't want to do. They do. They love what they were doing and, you know, they got promoted as a result and then suddenly they're not doing what they enjoy doing or are good at anymore. So I think you can really start rethinking how we are moving people around the skills that they need to acquire, how we're going to do that. There are all types of ways that people can both take it on themselves and, importantly, be trained by their organization. So I think there are lots of different elements to this that are going to be fulfilled in different ways.

Jeff Frick: Yeah, a lot of those out here in tech ‘Fellows’ and you know, ways that you can be a pretty senior individual contributor without managing people. I think that's a that's a really smart thing.

But I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the role of the One-on-One (1:1). You've talked about it some in your in some of your podcast and you know, get really getting to know your people better. I had Dave Montez on. He spends two and a half hours a day plus in One-On-Ones (1:1) with his people. And he just really manages by getting to know people. Wonder if you can share, you know, some of your research and your workshops about, you know, this importance of really getting to know individuals and how that actually increases their productivity, their retention, you know, the quality of the employee.

Sophie Wade: Sure well, know if let's just say you were working for me,  I need to have a better understanding of who you are, where you work best, what really drives you, what kind of projects you're really excited by. And that comes from lots of interactions from me hearing you finish up a project, you know, ‘Oh my God, that was great!’ I really love that. I’m like, Okay, so you like that type of project, The next project kind of like, Yeah, you know, but I need to pay attention to that. I need to actually notice and maybe write it down and then days, you know, maybe you're horrible in the morning, or not horrible, but you know, you need your cup of coffee, otherwise there's no point in talking to you, you know. But that's Well, actually, you know, you get up, you get up early, but you're on the West Coast. So I need to be thinking about that. Like, what time zone is he is and when is he going to have his coffee?

You know, these are the things that help us actually sort of smooth the interactions, make sure that we can have the best, you know both a One-On-One (1:1) or if we're going to bring somebody else in. What is their particular sort of profile or, you know, what's their way of operating, the basic way of operating that is going to be, you know, most effective and then try to understand when you find your flow. You know, my best time for writing is sort of between six and probably ten in the morning. And then I’ve also got a period at night with that's I know there's no other emails I can really, you know, focus and relax and gosh, do I crash at like sort of 4:00 in the afternoon? There's no point in you trying to do any writing then. I need to know the more I can understand that for you and other people on my team, the more I can help you actually organize your time.

We all because we all need to be working these out for ourselves. And if I'm managing, you know, a number of people, that's going to be helpful when I can sort that out together. And of course, we need to make compromises as a team. So it's not just, okay, well, you know, Jeff is really not great in the morning. So we're just going to do everything, you know, late morning, early afternoon, because that doesn't necessarily suit with other people who have different, you know, times and flow and, you know, whatever, depending on what the different tasks are. So we really need to be sort of thinking about individual people and then how we're going to work best as a team.

So that's where the sort of empathy is, as you know, not being kind and nice. It's really about what is going to help each one of us be most effective and then really supporting that. And that includes helping you be self-aware about what works for you. So, you know, that is, you know, we had that was one thing that the pandemic did help to understand. You know, being shut-up at home all the time. That wasn't great. Okay, now going back to the office all the time, I can see that that's not going to be great either. So let me try and work out. So we've had some experience of both of those locations and maybe third location, because actually I just don't have room at home to have a good workspace, I need to have a third space and that's going to suit me best for particular types of work.

So these are some of the things we've been finding out about ourselves when we've had more options to really try and understand. Okay, now if I'm going to design my work in the most thoughtful and effective way possible, what's it going to look like?

Sophie Wade: I'm curious. I was really interested in we were talking before this about music and the idea of using music as a way of trying to understand the way forward trying to understand the new ways that we're working, the new models that we're thinking about, the new ideas about content creation and and what are the ways that we can be leaning into that or and or sort of understanding our roles. So I'd love to you you've you both post a lot about sort of AI, but you also, you know, we were talking a lot about music, so I'd love to hear some more of your thoughts about that in terms of how you draw on different types of content, and particularly music creation in terms of understanding where we are and what's ahead.

Jeff Frick: Great. So there's kind of three legs to that stool. The first leg was a guy by the name of Bob Lefsetz and I was introduced to what’s called the ‘Lefsetz Letter’ newsletter and it's just an old school newsletter, and I think I've been getting it for over 20 years. And he writes about the music industry, and I once had a I don't know, we were pitching something to somebody from a music company and when I mentioned his name they said that they had it a jar in the middle of their table, that if anybody mentioned Bob Lefsetz’s name they had to put money in the jar. So I was like, Wow, So it must really be touching a nerve. And he writes about music. What's interesting from the business point of view is, is music was one of the first things to get digitized, to move from the physical space in the form of an LP or a CD to get digitized. It got digitized in its distribution where suddenly the lock that was that was kept, contained by the record companies and the popular deejays was broken through things like Napster. Then you had a change in the business model where a kind of technology enabled with Apple suddenly having $0.99, you know, their whole campaign carry 1,000 songs in your pocket, which for those of us used to carry cassettes, you know, that was 90, 90 minutes. And then you had Napster, which then suddenly it's given away on this peer-to-peer network. And then suddenly you have Spotify, which introduced, before that was Pandora, but you couldn't choose. So it's been this really interesting. And he writes about it way that the music business has changed. And then around that is everything from changing the business model to Do you make money on the record and do the concerts to promote it, or do you make your money on the concerts and you create the record to promote your concerts, or is it just the merch? So it's been a really interesting thing to keep track of and watch as digitization has hit other industries. You know, the music industry was way out front and had a lot of early winners and losers and continues to evolve.

The second leg of that stool is really music as in terms of trying to equate where music creativity comes from with business creativity and innovation. How do you create the conditions for people to discover things? And I think what's really driven me in doing some of my investigation is that there's no magic, right? It's just a hard a lot of hard work. And in this area, you know, I watch a lot of Bob Lefsetz, excuse me Rick Beato interviews where he's interviews a lot of musicians and he's got a great one with Sting and Sting just said, you know, he says to me, it's like fishing. You just got to go down to the river and put your put your hook in the water every day and you may get something on Monday, you might not You might get something on Tuesday might not, but you're not going to get anything on Thursday if you didn't go down and put put your fish in and so this, just kind of blowing away the concept that it's magic. There's no magic. It's just hard work. It's iteration. And then and some things will be a hit and some things won't be. So then really, stealing from Jack Conte from Patreon has a couple of great talks about great publishers, whether they're musicians or playwrights or authors, and you just don't know what's going to hit. So if you just don't worry about it knowing that you can't over-index on one particular piece of content and that the flow is your friend, so just just go with the flow. Some stuff will hit, some stuff won't. But what you know that won't hit is the thing that you think is gonna gonna hit. So really don't worry about it. So really it's just about this constant flow of communication within the social channels to do that.

And then the last thing for me, to your point is how do you find your own flow state? How do you help yourself get in a place where you can create productive work and like writing or, you know, heads down two or 3 hours of dedicated time. And for me, the magic there is music. You know, it's that find the right piece of music and it changes. That gets you into a state where you can kind of get almost hypnotic a little bit and get into that flow state and just go you know, you're there when you lose track of time. Speaker 1: It is a very different place to go. So if you can help teach yourself how to get there, I think that helps a ton, and a big piece is turning off the distractions.

Sophie Wade: Yes. And it's so interesting because I see people who have music playing when they're with lyrics and when and they're working and I simply cannot work under those kind of conditions. And so it's something that I'm saying that that can be for extroverts who they need that buzz and then they can really focus. So it was very interesting to me because I absolutely like classical music I could do, like very like some of the great on Spotify has sort of, you know, the sort of focus playlists, which I find helpful.

So going to the business model aspect is very interesting to me because of where where we are now and how things are evolving. And I watched the episode that you sent me from Rick Beato about Björn (Ulvaeus - ABBA) and that the session studio (Why Musicians Are Broke and How to Fix It) which is only now after all this time helping you know musical artists actually track all the licensing, all the residuals from their music. And it, it's fascinated me, after all, it has taken this long to actually have some kind of mechanism to go down to an individual level. And I sort of think about that in terms of what that means really. I'm thinking about sort of employees and workers as being creators. And in fact, in France, if you're working for a company, depending on what you're doing, if you're really working on the company's business you know that whatever IP you come up with belongs to the company. But if I think, we're thinking of each person as being a creator and this, you know, the Hollywood strike’s on that right now should we be thinking about what we're doing in more of an individual way and how we're contributing, you know, as a musician, as an artist, as a one person employee within the team, within a company who may be, who might be an employee, but also might well be a contract worker, should we be really sort of stepping back and looking at all of this in a more fractional way as though we're individual creators, like artists? Like musicians?

Jeff Frick: It feels like it. It feels like we should, it feels like it for a bunch of different reasons. One is we know that the lifetime employment, you know, at the single place is not happening anymore. I think in one of your podcasts you talk about plan for five careers and in the same sentence you also said plan for multiple revenue streams. So as soon as you say plan for multiple revenue streams, the gig economy, that tells you that kind of the traditional single income stream is just not cutting it anymore. It’s either just not cutting it anymore.

Sophie: And it’s not the end.

Jeff Frick: I mean, look what's happening with the OpenAI. It's one calendar year, and it went from being nothing to everything, to suddenly the whole world is changing under its feet like so fast. So I think if you can somehow find a way and, to your point, all the tools now are digital and relatively inexpensive, and you can potentially have access to some small slice of the 8 billion people in the world. I think it's a little bit more pressure. But if you think back to historical societies, you know, everyone was kind of their own little solopreneur before the industrial revolution.

Sophie Wade: So there's a little bit Exactly. Yes. And I think if we can think about it like that, it is going back. We just have much better tools, and they are getting fantastic. We have amazing capabilities now, but the same things still become true. You know, it's not that, you know, now there are so many there are more DJs, more people can have a DJ board, so there definitely are a lot more DJs, but there aren't, it's not that they're that with more capabilities and more access to music and that there are so many more musicians and artists because it still takes that amazing song and you know that particular voice or whatever it might be. What's interesting in some of the evolution of the music business to me and I'm very interested, to sort of think how you see that evolution in terms of what the record companies were doing, or I interviewed JR Richards, and it was sort of interesting, the dynamics which the the musician had no the artist had no control and no say and no transparency and no ability to audit. And, you know, there, you know, the budgets and, you know, the incoming revenues and whatever that might be. And now we're getting to a place where we have a very different different dynamics and an evolution where there there is more transparency, I think, and very different dynamics about.

All the different types of revenue streams that musicians can generate and lean into. And he's been very interested in, very interested in how he's been exploring that and how he's connecting with his fans. So do you see some of these dynamics, you know, in terms of the music industry, how much more that some of these may be ones that we see growing and and using these examples in the workplace?

Jeff Frick:Well, the two things I wanted to respond to, one is, is the power of distribution. And you know, in that kind of wanes and waxes, and before back in the day, there was only one source of distribution for your music and that was through the labels. And there was no other way to get your music out to people. And then the DJs had big influence on what hit the Billboard 100 and what was on the end-cap at Tower Records. Now you have many, you have many forms of distribution to the difficulty, as you said, by the same token, so does everyone else. So it's, it's now it's way more competitive but at the same time you do have your shot. And I think what's interesting is, is it's still, I think can reward artists who are authentic and authenticity pays and I think trying to play to the crowd, which I think you see a lot more pretenders trying to follow along, doesn't work, but you continue to have new people that kind of pop through and do that. The other thing I think that's so much different is the micro segmentation of consumption around whatever it is your interest is. I mean, there used to only be like four/five TV stations. You know, there was the three big ones, there was your local one, and there was your PBS here in the States.

I mean, now you have all these these are these these people that have built huge audiences around particular topics. I introduced you to three or four that I watched most every day. You had never heard of them. It happens all the time. So we're all listening to our own thing.

And the other piece that's even crazier is there's a day you wake up and you figure out that everybody's Facebook feed is different. Right, it's not this linear flow of people that you follow. Right? And we've all watched the Netflix 'Social Dilemma' right? It's what they think is going to keep you on the platform. What's even more interesting is our own even as we walk down the street together, we're actually seeing different things, even though we're seeing the same things based on our own biases, based on what we're focused on, based on what we're distracted by. My wife and I can go to the farmer's market. We've been married for 30 years, come home together and have seen a completely different farmer's market, you know, I mean, like literally seeing different booths, seeing different foods, noticing different noticing different things. It's like we didn't go to the same place. So once you understand that everyone actually sees a different world, even if you're sitting next to one another at the same time. It's kind of kind of wild.

Sophie Wade: It is kind of wild. And so, You know, I think trying to understand some of the things that are the same, that are similar, that do connect us when so much is changing. Because I think, you know, one of the things that was so powerful about the experience as tragic and so many terrible things that happened in the pandemic, but we were connected. We were amazingly connected, and we all felt raw and vulnerable. And it allows us to both see into, you know, each other's homes, understanding, you know, the stress and the terrible situations that the frontline workers were in. But there was an amazing sense of connection, and I think, trying to use some of that understanding that of now as we understand how challenging people are all finding it and you know just watching the Rick Beato also with the guy from ABBA (Björn Ulvaeus) and they're trying to like what's AI going to do, we have a Hollywood strike Like what, you know, What does AI mean there? We're all in the same boat trying to work out What is this going to do and how is this going to change our lives and change our work and how we're going to get paid? And what does this mean?

So, you know, that is something that does unite us and trying to sort of be both collaborative, you know, sort of collaborating and trying to understand and sharing and that comes down to also reliable sources of truth. If I'm sort of thinking about it. It’s not only kind of going, you know, Jeff, thanks for these different, you know, the newsletter, there was some great stuff about music there. And I learned a lot about, you know, different elements at the same time when I, when I trust you, then and you send me something or you share something, you know, a news article or some other stuff that you post, I'm going to trust it. I'm going to use you as a reliable source of my truth going forward. And these are going to become more and more relevant.

So, you know, that is something that does unite us and trying to sort of be both collaborative, you know, sort of collaborating and trying to understand and sharing and that comes down to also reliable sources of truth. If I'm sort of thinking about it. It’s not only kind of going, you know, Jeff, thanks for these different, you know, the newsletter, there was some great stuff about music there. And I learned a lot about, you know, different elements at the same time when I, when I trust you, then and you send me something or you share something, you know, a news article or some other stuff that you post, I'm going to trust it. I'm going to use you as a reliable source of my truth going forward. And these are going to become more and more relevant.

And these are going to become more and more relevant sort of leaping into the sort of whole idea of hallucinations where some people are kind of like, Oh, this is fantastic, and I can tell because I know enough about that area to know whether it's you know, whether it's true and maybe there isn’t, you know, there aren't so many untruths in it that are sort of game changing, that are that are really important. It's just, but there are other areas where it thing, something can come back after a question and a prompt which is absolutely and completely false and problematic if I were to believe that. So we need to be have much stronger sort of trust networks that we can rely on both at work and in our personal lives in order to make sure that we're moving forward in the right direction when we're trying to sort of in a very in a sort of very uncertain world where lots of things we suddenly we're not quite sure which direction we're going in.

And so that's actually comes full circle in a way to some of the conversations we were talking about like checking in, understanding, and having these conversations.

These very regular chats with people. There's so much course correcting. There's so much that we need to be connecting with people so that we can have those trust-based conversations to make sure we're moving forward step by step, incrementally in the right direction.

Jeff Frick: Yeah, And I think to your point, the empathy is the key thing. And I think communication is the least valued aspect of management, of leadership to be conscious in how you communicate, to listen actively, to validate that you heard what you think that you heard because you probably didn't hear what you think. And I think so much now about mission and purpose and making sure people understand what's the mission and the purpose and do you tie—you know, do they know how their role, their job, their contribution somehow ties through multiple steps back to this bigger thing, which I think you said is more important to young people than ever. So I and you can't do it enough. You can't practice it enough. You can't say it enough. So I think I think that is a good thing, that the communication. I think one of your podcasts, you said, you know, the young people, you can't just tell them, just do it, you know, that’s not viable anymore, right? That doesn't really work. You're not in a military situation where it's life and death. If you don't go right now, right.

Sophie Wade: Well, I think it is also there's such a different construct. Let's just say, you know, with the 50s, 60s, not as much in the 70s, but I think a lot of people did think so. but If the organization is giving you a job and it's a job for life, then there's a sort of that's the social contract. I do work for you, you pay me. And that's the sort of I have security and I will do some, you know, probably really boring grunt work and I might work late hours, but that's the dynamic. And then I get to retire at the end and sort of, you know, that's the full equation.

Well, none of that exists anymore right. And so how am I going to trust this organization? Why? What's going to persuade me to do the work that seems boring or endless or, you know, pointless, whatever. Like I need to have a reason or I need to know why I'm doing this matters because all the other elements that were might have persuaded me before that I was going to get a pension from this company that there was, you know, I would incrementally go up the ladder. That's not happening, there's none of those dynamics are there. Therefore, what the company's doing or how I'm connecting with it. So why I come in every single day, if there's no meaning for me in terms of, you know, what it ultimately is going to get me in my life, then I need to you know, And it's so much more valuable really to be connected with something bigger than than you know, my particular, you know, life.

Jeff Frick: I want to get your take on, There’s so many little paradoxes. One is, you know, this whole focus and shift, which I think is great, to basically create an environment for people to do their best work.  So it's a very different kind of mindset versus telling them what to do. It's kind of creating this environment, creating the space for them to get in a flow state, to make the contributions in the area that they want. At the same token, again, we hear most of our best learning comes from difficult times and getting through difficult moments. And those are the things when you look back, it's often the things that were the most memorable or the things that made the biggest impression or the most lasting impression. Mårten Mickos, the CEO of HackerOne’s got a great line. He's like, ‘Yeah, we want to help people learn and put them in a good situation to learn. But the best way to learn not to touch a stove is to touch a stove. But you know, you can't like, put the kid's hand on the stove at the same time. You know, that that's the way they're going to learn. And, you know, you want to put people in challenging, challenging assignments to push them and cause them some angst knowing that when they pop out the other side and you may have more confidence in it than they do, that they're going to be good for it at the same time, that's kind of and in contrast to, you know, coaching him up and putting him in the position where they're going to have the most chance to succeed, how do those things kind of get balanced out as a manager? How do you think about kind of parsing those things to get the most and help people kind of grow?

Sophie Wade: So I would say that the bar has been raised so high right now that we, we are in that challenging situation almost every day in terms of what is in front of us. You may laugh but it's not that funny, but really, I think we know part of this is, is that we, there is so much uncertainty things are so unpredictable and that was before ChatGPT came along and really sort of through another spanner in the works, We were already moving at a pace. We were already having to adapt. And you know, the nature of work has been changing. We're doing much more teamwork. non-routine work has had evolved, I think 40 fold over the last 20 years. Collaborative work had gone up has gone up 50% over the last 20 years. So we work in very, very different ways, which has been challenging us because if you're doing non-routine work, because already automation had already been taking away some of the boring work, we were already, we already had more interesting, more challenging work to be doing. Now step that up a bit. So when we're sort of thinking about how we're going to be organizing our work and what we're going to be doing, we need to take the stress down and actually create a more an environment where people feel more safe and more able to take risks because there is so much risk in the environment, there is so much stress in the environment already. So I think we have a little bit of a flip of that. We are all learning an extraordinary amount already right now. And yes, we do learn from the most challenging situations. Those are sort of epiphany moments. So I think what we can do is try to identify where there are whether it's sort of more stability in the ongoing changes that we are recognizing. There is, even though things keep changing, there is some direction and understanding and we can get familiar with that because human beings are not hugely comfortable with change all the time. And then try and anticipate where and how and what to focus on, which is going to create some of the bigger changes that are happening. You know, one of the things we're asking people to do, I mean, there are some companies that are banning, that have banned for now ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bard and some of these other you know, these other Gen AI programs.

But if we're saying use that in your job, we're saying, I'm asking you to disrupt your own job. Now, for some people, they find that very exciting. I love change, that’d be kind of like, ‘Oh, you know, let me try this’ for other people. That in and of itself is a hugely challenging proposition. And I'm going to be scared, you know, that I think I just posted something yesterday. The number of people who are FOBO, ‘Fear Of Becoming Obsolete’. I think it, I think I was it was like 40% or 40% ?! I hope not a big number. Yes. I mean, I actually forget what the number was. I just posted it yesterday but the we need to be helping people do their best work in a challenging, changing environment. And so I think that is where we can sort of bring some of the stress down and get people to sort of focus in on some of these changes which are going to be very meaningful and helping people, you know, excel and find out a lot more about themselves and when also asking people to find out to identify their skills, and Okay, Jeff, I'm going to ask you, what are your top three skills? I'm not going to ask for five, just three.

Jeff Frick: I’ll tell you the one I need to work on is (Adobe) Audition research probably is one of my best skills, my top skills? making people feel comfortable to tell a good story. I think I'm pretty good at that. I'm actually pretty good, I'll get myself since I’m lacking in Audition I'll give myself credit for (Adobe) Premiere, which not a lot of people can wrestle that one so I’ll give myself ‘Adobe Premiere’ skills. But it's interesting on the reskill because we don't even know the skills that we're going to need tomorrow, right? That's just so bizarre. And then where does that fit with higher education? I could There's a big one.

Sophie Wade: Yes. And I mean, and I ask people quite often, you know, what are your top three or five skills? And most people don't know. But we need to be thinking about ourselves in terms of our skills. And when we're talking about our skills, then be asking, you know, and talking to our kids in terms of what, you know, What are you good at? and how to discover their top skills and then they can sort of look and try and find and explore other skills as well. And when they're coming into, you know, new working environments and sort of be exploring what they're doing, you will find that Gen Zs are typically really, really eager to learn. That is one of the ways that they can stay competitive, that they can have the most financial stability. But we really do need to be starting to talk about ourselves in terms of a job title but our internal instead in terms of our skills and what we can do, because those are what we can use in all different types of ways depending on what, what technology evolves and what that means that we're going to be doing. And what this technology OK, that's going to take. I don't have to be doing that. What can I do instead over here, instead.

Jeff Frick: That probably confuses people, right? They probably say, I have my title I have my role, I have my sheepskin. But they, and none of the skills that I mentioned were ones that were taught in any of the expensive schooling that I've had. Right.

Sophie Wade: I mean the great thing is in the future is that AI and GenAI, from what I understand, is really going to enable one-on-one absolutely dedicated education. So it's like, ‘Oh, so I want to learn French’ Okay, Sophie, well what I can hear is that you’re great at the future tense, but you're not very good on the past tense. Let me, you know, tweak, here we go here’s you know I'm delivering this lesson for you so that's going to be incredibly powerful going to help me learn French very quickly or math or whatever. Understanding the strategies that work for me, the strategies that don't work for me, that's going to be fantastic. We're not, obviously we're not there yet, but those are some of the individualized sort of the powerful capabilities that AI will be able to give us on an individualized basis. So that I think is incredibly when education has been has not been updated for a long time. And it has there's a, there's a lot of there’s a huge gap between, you know, as they say, some of the public education systems and private that this will, this kind of technology will be able to change the game and give us some of the skills that give students some of the skills that they need going into and with that, I think there’s going to be a lot more collaboration between corporations and colleges and high schools to make sure that the skills are aligned with teaching some of the things that people need to know. I mean, the fact that we've never taught people like budgeting and how to use a spreadsheet right You know, is kind of crazy.

Jeff Frick: Well, the other piece, again, the opposite of that that you've talked about in a number of your shows is the kind of the rise of the generalist because as the skills are changing so fast from beneath us and the skills you learned today might not be worth much tomorrow because that technology might go away or be surpassed. The role of generalist thinking, the role of critical thinking, the role of decision making, being a little bit more thoughtful and checking references and looking for patterns is now actually turning out to be a more valued skill than it was before. It's kind of this super generalist, if you will.

Sophie Wade: Yeah, I think the T people that people talk about, the T like, you know, having a lot of generalists and then being able to go deep in one area, or maybe a few areas or related areas, because I think the transferable skill thing is going to be very, is going to be very important and specialists are also going to be important, which goes to the individual contributor aspect that we were talking about in terms of enabling people to go, to be go very deep and really get specialized without sort of limiting their ability to advance and also trying to make sure that they then don't become completely obsolete, but trying to understand what their skills are that can be applicable elsewhere. Corporations really need to be thinking about what the skills it's called, the ‘automation potential’ for different people's jobs. When we're coming to sort of like a machinist, a machine operator, I think it has a 71% automation potential. However, there are other jobs like a lab technician, which I think there was something like a 58% match with a machine operator. But that job has a much, much lower automation potential. So how can we identify what skills people have, what the automation potential is for their job, and what other jobs at that organization or in other organizations might they be able to move to and have sort of, you know, a more secure future and have a sort of game plan to move them from one place to the one job to another?

Jeff Frick: Although most of those jobs don't exist today. I mean, Web developer didn't exist 20 years ago. There wasn't such a thing, right. And an SEO Expert, you know, there wasn't such a thing, and a data broker. You know, there wasn't such a thing. Well, I guess those have always been around.

Sophie Wade: There aren't, but there are. There are ones that we do know that are there now. That people can transition to and then, yes, that's not necessarily going to be static and there's going to be another one after that.

Jeff Frick: Yeah, pretty, pretty interesting. But what is your take on higher education? I mean, higher education, I had a great interview one time, was, you know, the original colleges were put together at a time when all the information on any topic could be contained in a single building. Like literally, you know, all the books that were written and all the top brains could literally be in a place in Cambridge somewhere. And that's how they were designed. And that's, you know, clearly not the case anymore. Nobody gets the libraries for books anymore. They get it for the Internet because then they can get all the world's information. Do you see some movements? Do you see, you know, kind of how education can start to move to become less of, you know, kind of the traditional patterns and more of kind of continuous learning and supporting continuous learning and, you know, kind of rethinking the way that we need to always be. We need to be curious. We need to stay learning and and maybe that, you know, taking an 18 year old kid who's not quite ready and then sticking them in there for four years. Yeah, I think there's some new models that need to get tried.

Sophie Wade: You know, my son just finished university. And so it's not that I am not for actually it was a three years he's at university in Italy, but the it is tough to have anything any education that's going to be still be valid three years on or four years on. And so I think it you know it really depends how that is being taught and what is being taught. And if we're talking about critical reasoning and, you know, problem solving and those the essence of that I mean, in England, you know, you get very, very focused on one subject. But the point about that University in England or what they say is you are learning how to think. I learned Chinese, you know, so you were way ahead of your time. I mean, and very, very interesting poetry, philosophy, history, culture. And but what it was really doing is teaching me how to think. And so now I think college may well be two years with maybe a third year, which is a sort of work-study program. I think there's going to be a lot more collaboration, as I said earlier with corporations not in a way that sort of over-influencing what's being taught. But I think the relevance and really trying helping people understand when we’re moving so fast what technologies are going to be important and what skills are going to be important because it is hard for academia, it’s a very different type of system to stay on top of it and be really able to provide the types of skills that are needed. At the same time, you have things like edX you have Udemy, you have these big MOOCs, these big Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which allow people to be doing the courses that they need to have certifications. I know the edX I interviewed the CEO of that a couple of years ago (Anant Agarwal, Founder, then CEO now CPO of edX). And he was talking about the fact they have these micro masters so you could do a master's program in four pieces. Each one took, I think three months. So you could or you could take longer and by the end of it, you could have a master's program that you could do that whilst you’re whilst you were working on many, many, many different things. So I think there are so many more options for people to be able to to be upskilling. That's in addition, obviously, to much more training that needs to be happening in the workplace. But I do see that we are really needing to try and prepare people better when it comes to high school and the types of things that we're thinking about and how self-directed and self-guided people need to that you know, young students need to be, they're not going to be going into a job and be ready for the type of ongoing changes and and the different things they need to be thinking about and all these jobs that haven't existed yet. I mean, that you could, you know, one, you could come out of college and be sort of done with your education, so to speak. You learn on the job slowly and you you knew what the pathways were. There was a set number of pathways and that was it. Now, when people are coming in a few years into their their first, you know, or second jobs, there's an extraordinary number of jobs that they know are going to be popping up out of nowhere over the next few years. So should they make a choice about their career? How do they decide what next? Best build up some skills and then see what's going on, you know, in two years time with a few more skills? I mean, it's a very different environment. I find it very exciting, but it's I think what I find is also, you know, many, many young sort of career employees can find it very confusing. It’s like, I don't know. How do I? How do I choose?

Jeff Frick: Right, right.

And especially when their bosses or their bosses’ bosses had a more complete picture and a more kind of formulaic road to follow. Go do this, then go do this and go do this, and you know Jeff - in 25 years you'll be a partner, right

Sophie Wade: And their parents and their parents before them?

Jeff Frick: Yeah, absolutely. It's a completely different thing. I think it's important to tie it up for the listeners that, you know, it's so important in such a hyper-competitive world that you need to get the contributions from everyone. And the only way to get contributions from everyone is them to have that psychological safety to take risks. And that's where you find the innovation. And by rule, by rule, they all won’t work, right? If you're not pushing the envelope, if everything's working, then you're not pushing the envelope very hard. You're not really taking risks. So I think that's really the big lesson because you can't just operate with your top 10% of your talent anymore. It's just a way too competitive of a world.

Sophie Wade: Yes, exactly. And I think, and that I think, makes it challenging for companies because for the longest time they have been set up to really focus on that top 10%. And then the bulk, the sort of the biggest the majority of talent didn't need to be sort of guided in their careers because they keep going up that sort of vertical ladder that doesn't exist anymore. So now you have, you know, enormous number of people, particularly obviously in a large organization who are going to have these different career paths. And how do you manage that? And companies aren't set up for that yet. So we're in a there are so many things that are changing at the moment that it's a sometimes I feel like sort of not only blowing my own mind, but but overwhelming people. But there is a lot of change. This is a period of enormous change. And so the more that we can work together at the organization, not pretend that we have all the answers, but really be collaborating, be leaning in, be empathizing to all try and work out what the best road forward is for the particular business, whatever that means, and noticing that our customers' behaviors are changing and the products and services or how we have to deliver them or distribute them. And I think there are there was a lot at play here. And we yes, if we relied just on our top 10% of talent. It would be very difficult.

Jeff Frick: Well, Sophie you're doing your part, writing books, teaching LinkedIn Lessons, doing podcasts, doing lectures, my goodness, you're doing a great job of educating.  And again, back to our distribution discussion you couldn’t do that before, right? You couldn’t just throw on a YouTube video and do a podcast, you know, so it's really exciting and scary, which I guess is always the case, kind of regardless of the topic that you're talking about. If it's got one, it's usually got the other.

Sophie Wade: Yeah, I think so. I think I mean somebody put it very it was a really nice talk, said like, I'm scared, but if I'm scared it tells me that I'm doing something new and that's kind of exciting. So.

Jeff Frick: And you're awake and alive. Well Sophie, this has been a great conversation. I'm so glad that we got connected. And I look forward to more after this, I’m sure.

Sophie Wade: Definitely Jeff, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great conversation. Really appreciate it.

Jeff Frick: Thank you. All right, She’s Sophie, I’m Jeff, thanks for listening to another episode of Work 20XX. See you next time. Take care.

Cold Close

That was great.

I'm very, very glad to hear that.