Speaker 1: The whole focus at emphasis on return to the office
Speaker 1: is a total lack of him. It's got nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the future of work, nothing, And that's what
Speaker 1: Business Insider and all these people are writing about it,
Speaker 1: like who in the world even understands where this is going?
Speaker 2: Which is why I hope my book is going to
Speaker 2: basically either wake people up or they got to think
Speaker 2: I'm coming I've become totally demented and delusional, which is
Speaker 2: also very likely.
Speaker 3: Well, welcome to this episode of Taking a Walk on Buzznight.
Speaker 3: And if you like this podcast or you like our
Speaker 3: companion podcast which is called Music Save Me, one of
Speaker 3: the best things you can do is tell your friends
Speaker 3: about it. And I so appreciate your support. Today I
Speaker 3: welcome one of the supreme best human beings on the planet,
Speaker 3: Rashad Tobakawala. He is a teacher, advisor, author, Buddha in
Speaker 3: my opinion, named by BusinessWeek, is one of the top
Speaker 3: pioneering in the business world. Time magazine also has dubbed
Speaker 3: him one of the US marketing innovators. Two books Restoring
Speaker 3: the Soul of Business and a new book that we're
Speaker 3: going to be talking about as well, called Rethinking work.
Speaker 3: He's a returning guest on taking a walk. So welcome back,
Speaker 3: Rishad to Bakawalla.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Buzz, and thank you for your
Speaker 2: kind words and for inviting me back.
Speaker 3: It's always great to see you. So you recently, like
Speaker 3: I attended the Consumer Electronics Show and other than some
Speaker 3: sore feet from fifteen to twenty thousand steps a day,
Speaker 3: are there any particular takeaways that you can bring to
Speaker 3: this conversation from your visit to CEES twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I would say that there are three big takeaways.
Speaker 2: The first one clearly is not surprisingly, everything had AI
Speaker 2: in it on it and even if it wasn't, uh,
Speaker 2: it was going to be AI. So you know, very
Speaker 2: much like you know your bus your website will now
Speaker 2: be called Busnight dot ai. So everything was going to
Speaker 2: basically be AI. But this AI was actually increasingly real.
Speaker 2: And the first thing really is that AI continues to
Speaker 2: spread everywhere, and we're actually now moving from generative AI,
Speaker 2: which obviously continues to exist, which is used obviously in
Speaker 2: the creative and other forms, whether it's chagpt et cetera,
Speaker 2: to two different kinds of AI, one which you're beginning
Speaker 2: to see, which is agentic AI, where AI does some
Speaker 2: work for you. Was to just provide you know, some writing.
Speaker 2: And then what we beginning to see is physical AI
Speaker 2: with robots and other kinds of things. So one was
Speaker 2: the spread of AI. The second one, I think is
Speaker 2: it'll continued to basically see every industry is now increasingly
Speaker 2: starting to become a technology industry, and you have everything
Speaker 2: from I believe it was one of the Japanese I
Speaker 2: don't know whether Burbsecurity or Saporo that actually had a
Speaker 2: product that used electric used some form of technology to
Speaker 2: make you feel that you were eating salt when you
Speaker 2: were not eating salt, you know, across the board. My
Speaker 2: sense what's beginning to happen is and these are forwards
Speaker 2: that I use which are not my own, but it's
Speaker 2: basically from Brian Cooley who works at CNAD, that technology
Speaker 2: is that is really good is in't technology. It's increasingly
Speaker 2: just what works, and what works is something that is one.
Speaker 2: It is intensely transparent, where you don't think about the technology,
Speaker 2: you just get the benefits of it. It's very intimate,
Speaker 2: so it knows you. It's a better way of seeing personalized,
Speaker 2: it's very intuitive, so you know how to use it,
Speaker 2: and it is constant, so it's always there, and more
Speaker 2: and more it's becoming like that, you know, everything from
Speaker 2: bearable objects to obviously the phone. That's the second thing,
Speaker 2: And the third, which is also happening is our entire
Speaker 2: industry has been built increasingly on two ways of interfacing
Speaker 2: with people. One is through search, so increasingly you know
Speaker 2: whether it's search and including you know, chatchipts search. And
Speaker 2: then the other one is through streams, so we see
Speaker 2: streams when know it's TikTok streams, Facebook, streams, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I think we're going to have a third one which
Speaker 2: we began to see, which is conversation. And so we're
Speaker 2: going to increasingly converse very much like Scarlett you and
Speaker 2: as her doesn't the movie her in a sort of
Speaker 2: a voice, so it's a conversation. So your media of podcasting,
Speaker 2: right is actually going to be the next way people
Speaker 2: are sort of interacting. So you're going to search with
Speaker 2: the stuff stuff is going to be streamed, and then
Speaker 2: the stuff that's going to be conversational, and I think
Speaker 2: AI and a lot of modern technology is going to
Speaker 2: be conversational because I can't think of something more intimate, intuitive, transparent,
Speaker 2: and constant than conversation.
Speaker 3: When you think of the content creators who all over
Speaker 3: the place, no matter what the business, whether it's the media, entertainment,
Speaker 3: are fearful of artificial intelligence, what would you say to
Speaker 3: them as sort of a baseline opportunity for them to
Speaker 3: embrace change rather than be so fear full of it.
Speaker 2: I think there are a couple. One is there is
Speaker 2: a reason to be I would say worried. And the
Speaker 2: reason to be worried, obviously is all these machines are
Speaker 2: training on our intellectual capital without in many cases paying
Speaker 2: for it. Now, some people are making negotiations, things like
Speaker 2: the Financial Times and Access Sprinker have made negotiations, and
Speaker 2: others have decided to go to court, like the New
Speaker 2: York Times. But there are new technologies and new companies.
Speaker 2: Like a gentleman called Bill Gross, who started an ideal lab,
Speaker 2: has started something called called pro Rata, and he basically said, hey, Rishard,
Speaker 2: can I get all your content? And if I make money,
Speaker 2: we'll share it half half? Okay. So the first part
Speaker 2: of it is this is a new world order. And
Speaker 2: if I am a creative I would think of the
Speaker 2: following three tactics. Tactic number one is how do I
Speaker 2: monetize as much as possible what people are eating from
Speaker 2: me they are going to eat. The second one is
Speaker 2: try to figure out a way to put as much
Speaker 2: of your stuff out there, because, in effect, in the
Speaker 2: future of conversation, if people basically go today and ask chat,
Speaker 2: gipt vocally tell me about brashon tobacco Alla, the answer
Speaker 2: that will come back will actually make me feel pretty
Speaker 2: good because I'll let them eat my website, not my book.
Speaker 2: They will let them meet my website by a free
Speaker 2: sub stack. So I put out a lot of free
Speaker 2: stuff that they can eat on, and that allows me
Speaker 2: to appear proper. So the whole idea is how are
Speaker 2: you represented? If you're a brand. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: friend of mine, Pete black Shaw, who has a company
Speaker 2: called brand ranked dowt Ai, how does your brand show
Speaker 2: up over the in these seven different engines chat, ChiPT, etc. Lord.
Speaker 2: So second is one is monetize what you can. Second
Speaker 2: is try to understand that this is the new interface
Speaker 2: of discovery where people are going to figure out what
Speaker 2: your brand and discovery is and feed it. And the
Speaker 2: third one is think that if you came out of
Speaker 2: school today and you have these technologies, what would your
Speaker 2: career look like? So reinvent and your career because the
Speaker 2: reality of it is, every time there's been a new
Speaker 2: enhancement of technology, the really good creative people have honed
Speaker 2: and practiced aircraft, whether it was you know, the birth
Speaker 2: of radio and then television and then Adobe, Photoshop and
Speaker 2: everything else. So the idea is you can't be frozen
Speaker 2: in time. The world's worst thing is to basically a
Speaker 2: not accept that this is real, be not adapt, embrace
Speaker 2: and complement these new technologies. And three is not to
Speaker 2: spend some time at least to reimagine what you career
Speaker 2: and what you do looks like. Because what I basically
Speaker 2: told people is there are three key things to this.
Speaker 2: AI in many cases is going to save money. It's
Speaker 2: going to be efficiency. But the efficiency doesn't have to
Speaker 2: only be that the person who hires you gets you
Speaker 2: for less. It's you can do more for less. Also
Speaker 2: think about that, So there's efficiency, there's obviously effectiveness, which
Speaker 2: is you can be more impactful. But the third one
Speaker 2: is existential risk or existential opportunities. How do you re
Speaker 2: imagine your business? And a big part of my new book,
Speaker 2: or Rethinking Work, is we keep thinking about work. The
Speaker 2: weight was in twenty nineteen, but the weight was in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen was bullshit. It shouldn't have been that way
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. So why do you want to go
Speaker 2: back to twenty nineteen? Because the future doesn't fit in
Speaker 2: the containers of the past, and twenty nineteen is the past.
Speaker 3: And you just highlight Like one of certainly one of
Speaker 3: my favorite reasons for going to cees, it's really too
Speaker 3: look at the future and not be frightened by it,
Speaker 3: to be aware and then to then be prepared on
Speaker 3: how to react and adapt and learn.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And as someone who has been fortunate when I
Speaker 2: was working in my full time job and therefore I
Speaker 2: both had access and the budgets, I am somebody who's
Speaker 2: had the opportunity of going to everything from ted CS
Speaker 2: T Davos to just about everything. There is nothing like
Speaker 2: CS because it's one hundred and fifty thousand people from
Speaker 2: all over the world, small companies to large companies. People
Speaker 2: should be there and people should not be there in
Speaker 2: midst of alcohol, drinks and gambling taking a risk on
Speaker 2: the future. And I find that's really cool. And in fact,
Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to speak to one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty people from a company called Novartists, whose president had
Speaker 2: brought one hundred and forty doctors and medical practitioners and
Speaker 2: pharmacists and marketers to the Consumer Electronics Show. And his
Speaker 2: thing is here is where the future is taking place,
Speaker 2: and the companies that are most valuable were born here,
Speaker 2: and we should be here because we want to be
Speaker 2: among the most valuable companies. And if healthcare is changing,
Speaker 2: we need to be where healthcare is changing. And health
Speaker 2: care is more likely to change outside our industry than
Speaker 2: just inside the healthcare industry. It's interesting way of thinking
Speaker 2: about it, and that is I think what a lot
Speaker 2: of people don't recognize is we cling onto the past
Speaker 2: though we want to thrive in the future. And my
Speaker 2: basic belief is the past is pretty good parts of it.
Speaker 2: So I call it the roots. Figure out where the
Speaker 2: roots are, drop the rest, and then take wing.
Speaker 3: Well, we all have to dream. And the beautiful part
Speaker 3: about CEES is the dreaming part for so many people
Speaker 3: who are there who are trying to find it in
Speaker 3: their own individual businesses, and for so many who are
Speaker 3: dreamers who have created just that walk in Eureka Park
Speaker 3: is full of dreamers. So I think the absence of
Speaker 3: dreamers more regularly in our society and our businesses, it
Speaker 3: makes cees even more critical for the dreaming aspect. Would
Speaker 3: you agree with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, absolutely, And I think that is you know,
Speaker 2: something buzz you've done really well. You sort off this podcast,
Speaker 2: you dreamt about it, right. We chatted and I was
Speaker 2: fortunate to be one of your first guests, and it
Speaker 2: was you know, people could have talked to you and
Speaker 2: said what's wrong with you? Right, and now you've got
Speaker 2: two of them, you know, partnering with our Heart Radio
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and you dream now. Sometimes dreams
Speaker 2: are visions that take you in the right place. Sometimes
Speaker 2: dreams are nightmmares that take you backwards. Sometimes dreams are delusions,
Speaker 2: but you know you have to start somewhere, and sometimes
Speaker 2: dreams become reality and make a better future, which has
Speaker 2: happened for you, and it happens for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: But if you don't dream, then then you get stuck, right,
Speaker 2: And the reality of it is you do need to
Speaker 2: take these chances. And that's what I find about CS
Speaker 2: and Growking to a lot of people is you get
Speaker 2: inspired to take chances and to me the future, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to write about this. I began to realize
Speaker 2: that almost everything that we end up doing is about chance,
Speaker 2: change and choice. We need to take chances. People give
Speaker 2: us chances, sometimes good chances, bad chances. We're living in
Speaker 2: a world of change, and we've got to decide what
Speaker 2: choice are we going to make about change and what
Speaker 2: choices we select? So change, chance and choice and everything
Speaker 2: else is not part of living, as I basically say.
Speaker 2: You know, the day we stop changing is the day
Speaker 2: we die. And even then we sort of decay, but
Speaker 2: now inside a grave or inside you know, crematorial, but
Speaker 2: when we're as long as you're living. Right, to me,
Speaker 2: living is an act of change and an act of
Speaker 2: creativity and an act of chance.
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful for your touch on things that has
Speaker 3: been so instrumental in helping me see things differently, certainly
Speaker 3: for these podcasts and the way I think about them.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you, though, going back in your career,
Speaker 3: you have this gentle touch that is so welcoming and
Speaker 3: collaborative and engaging and kind. Were you ever a cattle
Speaker 3: prod push at an earlier point in your career.
Speaker 2: I wasn't, but I did have bosses who were cattle
Speaker 2: at push, I had clients who were cattle product push.
Speaker 2: And I began to understand both the benefits of cattle
Speaker 2: product push and there are some benefits of those and
Speaker 2: I also began to say, hey, can we get those
Speaker 2: benefits without some of the the bad downsides, which is
Speaker 2: leaving people feeling bad about themselves, feeling sometimes bullied, feeling
Speaker 2: sometimes inadequate. Right, And I turned it around and I
Speaker 2: basically said, what's good about them is they want a
Speaker 2: goal and they have a set of urgency, and they
Speaker 2: believe to get to their goal in a set of
Speaker 2: urgency that they have to basically do it with a threat. Right.
Speaker 2: And my belief is urgency is important, having a goal
Speaker 2: is important, but could you do it with a instead
Speaker 2: of a thread, with instead some form of a attraction
Speaker 2: that you are not running away from something, but you're
Speaker 2: running to something. And that to me basically meant and
Speaker 2: I wrote about this is a having clarity and telling
Speaker 2: people where we're going, but at the same time giving
Speaker 2: people a sense of energy that they can actually do it,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense. And then third is being generous
Speaker 2: at providing them with resources, including training, so they can
Speaker 2: go do it. And what I found is when you
Speaker 2: are when you give people clarity or you work with
Speaker 2: them for clarity, and you give them energy, slash and
Speaker 2: then belief in generosity, two out of three people will
Speaker 2: take it, and one out of three people won't. It
Speaker 2: simply means that other one out of three people are
Speaker 2: not right for your company or for the job. Not
Speaker 2: that they're not right people, they're just not right for
Speaker 2: the company of the job. And you can discuss that
Speaker 2: without yelling and screaming at them, okay, because if you
Speaker 2: yell and scream, what might happen is one out of
Speaker 2: the three that are not that good might continue to
Speaker 2: do what they have to do because they're scared they're
Speaker 2: not that good, and one of the three who are
Speaker 2: really good are so good they don't have to take
Speaker 2: this shit and they leave right. What I've always basically
Speaker 2: told people is I've never ever, ever believed that we're
Speaker 2: in a world where companies hire talent. I've always basically
Speaker 2: believed we live in a world where talent chooses companies.
Speaker 2: And people say, you're mad, And I guess I realized
Speaker 2: why I was mad because I was thinking about talent
Speaker 2: that's very good, and I've always believed the talent that's
Speaker 2: very good has choices, and talent that isn't very good
Speaker 2: sometimes does not have choices. You can yell at those
Speaker 2: people and they'll stay because they are cattle. But the
Speaker 2: other people basically say, we're not a cow. Where if
Speaker 2: I've argue, be if we can basically sell ourselves for
Speaker 2: more and do less and make more money and be
Speaker 2: treated specially and be massaged while these clowns yell and
Speaker 2: scream and prod. And that's my whole basic belief is
Speaker 2: if you're world class, why do you have to yell
Speaker 2: and scream a proad. You should be able to just
Speaker 2: speak and people should understand. And as importantly, you should
Speaker 2: be very open when you're yelling and screaming. That then
Speaker 2: people don't yell back and scream back at you, which
Speaker 2: they want because they're so scared of you. And actually
Speaker 2: the most you learn is when people actually don't yell
Speaker 2: and scream back at you. But when people come to you,
Speaker 2: you know, buzz, You might come to me and say, Richard,
Speaker 2: I think you're wrong on the following four things. And
Speaker 2: because we haven't manage conversation all the time. You feel
Speaker 2: very free to come around and say, hey, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure these things are right right, which allows me to
Speaker 2: actually grow. But if all I'm doing is the yelling
Speaker 2: at you, one you're scared to tell me that. The
Speaker 2: other is I hope he dies and fails, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to tell him anything. That's what I always say.
Speaker 2: People who yell at scream often have not been trained well.
Speaker 2: Now that they're bad people, they've not been trained well,
Speaker 2: and in many cases they're deeply insecure. So I basically say,
Speaker 2: when someone screams, you're hearing the roar of emptiness and insecurity.
Speaker 2: That's all you're hearing. You're not hearing leadership.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back with more of the Taking a
Speaker 4: Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3: You know you believe in a multifaceted, multi media, immersive
Speaker 3: approach to things with experiences. The way you write your
Speaker 3: weekly blog is an example of that. And on display
Speaker 3: at ces and then outside of CEES is this little
Speaker 3: place called the Sphere in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've made it over there, but
Speaker 3: what's your take on the future of immersive experiences that
Speaker 3: our show so on display at the Sphere.
Speaker 2: So I've had the opportunity to be at the Sphere twice,
Speaker 2: once at this CS and once within the first three
Speaker 2: four weeks that it opened. I have not been like
Speaker 2: for like a YouTube concert or an Eagles concert. Both
Speaker 2: times I saw post Cards from the Earth, which is
Speaker 2: the current show that's going on. And the first time
Speaker 2: I went is because I heard about it, so I
Speaker 2: bought tickets for my wife and daughters and we did it.
Speaker 2: And the second time I went is because I'm on
Speaker 2: the board of the company that helps created and they
Speaker 2: had some prospects and clients there. They invited me as
Speaker 2: a board director and I got a behind the scenes
Speaker 2: look at it. And I always believe enough in experiences
Speaker 2: to be on the board of a company that has
Speaker 2: created that and a lot of other things. So let
Speaker 2: me tell you a little bit about experiences. I think,
Speaker 2: you know we talk about omni channel. I think the
Speaker 2: world of marketing is moving from omnichannel to multi dimensional.
Speaker 2: We are starting to move from technology stacks to experience
Speaker 2: tax and there are all kinds of experiences of which
Speaker 2: there are four potential dimensions of experiences. One form of
Speaker 2: experience is the virtual experience. The other form of experience
Speaker 2: is a twin experience, where you think you're there and
Speaker 2: feels more real than virtual. A third form of experience
Speaker 2: is the real world. And a fourth form of experience
Speaker 2: is an immersive complete experience, as happens with unreal engine
Speaker 2: and a whole bunch of other things. You put those
Speaker 2: together and you see some of those happening at the sphere,
Speaker 2: which is a great physical experience. It's a form of
Speaker 2: an immersive experience, and it's a real world experience too.
Speaker 2: But a lot of people have, for instance, used another
Speaker 2: example and they say these things. I was at a
Speaker 2: presentation recently and someone said this stuff is for the
Speaker 2: one percent. It is in some ways and not in
Speaker 2: other ways. So if you look at the sphere where
Speaker 2: the cheapest you can get a ticket is eighty six dollars, right,
Speaker 2: this is not cheap for one ticket, And if you
Speaker 2: start doing VIP tickets and as stuff, it goes up
Speaker 2: to about two hundred dollars right next to me, and
Speaker 2: I use it a lot, so I'm clearly one of
Speaker 2: the minority. I have a Apple Vision pro which everybody
Speaker 2: basically believes is dead on arrival. It's not dead un arrival.
Speaker 2: The Apple Vision Pro is amazing because I believe it's
Speaker 2: where the future of work in the future of television
Speaker 2: is going to occur. Ah, And I use it more
Speaker 2: like the future of television, and it's a very expensive.
Speaker 2: Future of television is three thousand dollars. Actually, by the
Speaker 2: time you're done ensuring it and paying the tax is
Speaker 2: four thousand dollars. We have to ensure for twenty nine
Speaker 2: dollars a month. Because so expensive. But I use it
Speaker 2: everywhere in my travels as my form of television. It's incredible.
Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes at home and I have the luck
Speaker 2: of having an amazing eighty five inch television, sometimes I
Speaker 2: want to watch it on that versus that, which is one.
Speaker 2: But everywhere I travel and I want planes it's period.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that I do is when i'm
Speaker 2: again working and I'm on a plane or I'm outside
Speaker 2: home at home, I have you know, as I talk
Speaker 2: to you, I've an XDR displayed these amazing beautiful displays
Speaker 2: no book. But on the road I have also a
Speaker 2: great display. I have a back Pro, the top of
Speaker 2: the line back Pro with the retire display. But I
Speaker 2: put out this little fake and when I begin to
Speaker 2: have is multiple screens in front of me, it allows
Speaker 2: me to take that screen and be kind a huge
Speaker 2: screen in front of me, right, and I could do
Speaker 2: a lot of river things. I could also do this
Speaker 2: thing where I could have the multiple screeded sort of
Speaker 2: me while I have a video running, you know, watch
Speaker 2: it like CNN. So just like I'm doing today, can
Speaker 2: I basically doing this I'm talking to you. I've got,
Speaker 2: you know, the precedent thing the CNN at the back.
Speaker 2: I could do the exactly same thing. But that's part
Speaker 2: of the future of work. But the real future of
Speaker 2: work at the future of television, especially the future of work.
Speaker 2: If people don't understand it, I mentioned it in my
Speaker 2: book is I tell everybody here listen, this is expensive.
Speaker 2: It sounds very elitist. The price will come down, just
Speaker 2: like it has come down for phones and a bunch
Speaker 2: of other things. Go to an Apple store, ask for
Speaker 2: a thirty minute demo of Vision Pro. Just ask for
Speaker 2: a thirty bitter demo Vision Pro. And when you have
Speaker 2: that demo, ask them to show you the Alicia Keys
Speaker 2: rehearsal in spatial video. Once you say that, just remember
Speaker 2: what I just said that's the future of work. Right.
Speaker 2: You have absolutely no clue that you're not in the
Speaker 2: same room as with her. You're in the room with her, right,
Speaker 2: She's walking around you, she's talking to you, she's talking
Speaker 2: to her you know her sound people, etc. And you
Speaker 2: think you're right there. That today cost thirty four hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a person expensive. Okay, Once it's less than one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a person, companies will buy it for everybody
Speaker 2: because my basic belief is it's much cheaper than real estate. Right,
Speaker 2: And that is what most leaders don't understand.
Speaker 5: You don't most of these people talk about these things
Speaker 5: like AI, and my stuff is, say, by the way,
Speaker 5: if AI really spreads, you're going to require all your employees,
Speaker 5: but they're going to actually require them to go work
Speaker 5: seventy five percent of the time to one hundred percent
Speaker 5: of the time.
Speaker 2: So have you started thinking about fractionalized employees? Okay? Where
Speaker 2: you're basically thinking about a company that starts today to
Speaker 2: compete in a modern world with modern technology and AI.
Speaker 2: Which company, outside of a dentist's office will make people
Speaker 2: come down five days a week to the office zero
Speaker 2: You would never start a company like that that includes
Speaker 2: this Jeff Bezos with Amazon day zero starting a company
Speaker 2: would never started that way where I told them and
Speaker 2: they started clapping right. So my basic belief is this
Speaker 2: return to the office thing is first or wrong question.
Speaker 2: That the question should be how do I maximize the
Speaker 2: benefits of in person interaction? The second one, to a
Speaker 2: great extent is you should basically be asking a much
Speaker 2: more important question, which is how do I reimagine my business?
Speaker 2: And is it that the reason people are not coming
Speaker 2: back to the office. There are lots of good reasons
Speaker 2: for them to come back to the office, but there's
Speaker 2: also another reason they're not coming back to the office.
Speaker 2: They are not coming back to the bosses because we've
Speaker 2: entered an age of debossification. Stop being a boss, learned
Speaker 2: to be a leader. If you don't know how to
Speaker 2: manage and inspire people over a screen, you cannot be
Speaker 2: a leader. You just cannot be a leader today. And
Speaker 2: the reality of it is, if you need to be
Speaker 2: looking over someone's physical body to be a leader, you
Speaker 2: are so old school. You should go back to basically
Speaker 2: trying to basically help people in the gay days of
Speaker 2: like cargo ships. And that's as soon as I show
Speaker 2: people what's happening with the future of everything, aging, publishing, declining,
Speaker 2: population's marketplace is technology, right, and then I say, what
Speaker 2: are we doing?
Speaker 1: The whole focus and emphasis on return to the office
Speaker 1: is a total lack of im It's got nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the future of work nothing. And that's what
Speaker 1: Business Insider and all these people are writing about. Who
Speaker 1: in the world even understands.
Speaker 2: Where this is going, Which is why I hope my
Speaker 2: book is going to basically either wake people up or
Speaker 2: they going to think I'm become totally demented and delusional,
Speaker 2: which is also very likely. But the way for the
Speaker 2: CEOs have read my books say oh ship right, because
Speaker 2: what happens is I just say you're a different ways
Speaker 2: of looking at it, you are different frameworks. But I
Speaker 2: don't say there is a way. I don't say there
Speaker 2: is one way for the future of work, right. I said, actually,
Speaker 2: if I were running a company for a certain group
Speaker 2: of people, I would ask them to come to the
Speaker 2: office five days a week for the first six months
Speaker 2: they joined the company. But that means for those people
Speaker 2: who joined the company for six months, I'd say I
Speaker 2: needed to come for these reasons. After that This is
Speaker 2: the flexibility right. And about those who tell me, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got some huge personal or health reason I can't
Speaker 2: do it, I'd make exceptions, but I'd say the standard
Speaker 2: is this for these reasons and for the at once,
Speaker 2: I've got to you trade, doctrinated, build relationships, networks, understood
Speaker 2: the company, understood our history, understood all the stuff that comes,
Speaker 2: which is easier to do that way. It's like boot
Speaker 2: gap right now you'll have be trained as by you know,
Speaker 2: mission impossible agents you've got through trading. Now you go
Speaker 2: out and do your spying and other work everywhere else, okay,
Speaker 2: and then we come back maybe once every quarter or
Speaker 2: once every month. They're figuring it out more. You know
Speaker 2: what though, that requires, It requires leaders to actually lead,
Speaker 2: to work really hard to reimagine their businesses. So you
Speaker 2: are the same company that says I want to be
Speaker 2: agile and I want to keep my casts under control,
Speaker 2: and then they say we don't like flexible work and
Speaker 2: we want to pay a lot of money in real estate.
Speaker 2: Which one do you want? Now? The good news is
Speaker 2: buzz Because I don't have a job. I can speak
Speaker 2: like this without fear of being fired. Because I don't
Speaker 2: have a job. Okay, but once I and of course
Speaker 2: don't speak like I speak with Kinder if that makes sense,
Speaker 2: I just say, like, I don't understand why you would
Speaker 2: do it like this. I would doubt if I had
Speaker 2: a job today, and the good newser I had a
Speaker 2: job for a lot a lot of time and effect.
Speaker 2: Those are some of the things that I find really,
Speaker 2: really unusual, which is why one of the things I
Speaker 2: admire about you is a lot of people say it's
Speaker 2: too late, We've grown too old. How can we change right?
Speaker 2: And my whole thing is like, okay, Warren Buffett made
Speaker 2: ninety five percent of as wealth, ninety five percent of
Speaker 2: AS well after his sixty fifth birthday. Okay, so tell
Speaker 2: me exactly how old you are now, so ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of your potential has not been used. If you
Speaker 2: actually can re imagine things.
Speaker 3: I love it. And now, when you were out to
Speaker 3: worrying for restoring the soul of business, I call it
Speaker 3: worrying because you are a rock star.
Speaker 2: So I don't want a rock star basically, you know,
Speaker 2: I speak for my money and food. That's what I
Speaker 2: call it.
Speaker 3: A rock star. So when you were out touring as
Speaker 3: a rock star for restoring the soul of business. How
Speaker 3: early on in that process shaped the beginnings of the
Speaker 3: Rethinking Work book that you're just putting out.
Speaker 2: So Rethinking Work so the business really stay Give it
Speaker 2: to the Age of Data is really a book of
Speaker 2: essays which say that to be successful you have to
Speaker 2: combine mathod meeting story at spreadsheet. And in order to
Speaker 2: do that, a lot of the book talks about things
Speaker 2: like the importance of magic change, the importance of constantly learning,
Speaker 2: which is upgrading your mettal operating system, the importance of
Speaker 2: being able to stell truth to power while keeping your job,
Speaker 2: which was a chapter called the Total of the Table.
Speaker 2: But what was interesting is there were two chapters in
Speaker 2: the book that started to actually reveal the future of
Speaker 2: work in that book, which wasn't clear to Metal a
Speaker 2: year later when something else happened. So the second chapter
Speaker 2: in the book is called the Darker Side of Brighter Screens,
Speaker 2: and it was how do you manage teams in different
Speaker 2: places who don't actually meet in person that often, which
Speaker 2: I had to do because I was working in a
Speaker 2: global company and I had teams all over the place.
Speaker 2: So how do you manage a culture where you've got
Speaker 2: teams in five different cities and things like that. The
Speaker 2: second is the end of the book, basically had a
Speaker 2: chapter seeing prepare for the Third Connected Age, which literally
Speaker 2: has a chapter five years ago on blockchain AI and
Speaker 2: other things. And so those two chapters were like were
Speaker 2: like the seeds of what might happen for the next
Speaker 2: book without me knowing that one became clear as I
Speaker 2: was going on my tour. Is from time to time
Speaker 2: a lot of people started bringing some of that up.
Speaker 2: But what really happened was two months after my book
Speaker 2: came out, everything closed. So my book came out in
Speaker 2: jan twenty twenty, and Masch Twait twenty, everything had closed.
Speaker 2: And you know, COVID actually happened in November of twenty
Speaker 2: ninety in China. But so my book had come out
Speaker 2: when COVID had started, but we didn't know COVID had started.
Speaker 2: And so then immediately after COVID started, which is only
Speaker 2: six months after I finished my full time job, every
Speaker 2: one of us worked from home for two and a
Speaker 2: half years. And then is when this book took shit, okay,
Speaker 2: because I began to realize that as I was talking
Speaker 2: to people about my first book, the things that were
Speaker 2: coming up were issues that I started addressing in the
Speaker 2: second book, and the single biggest thing that became very
Speaker 2: clear to me is the following, which is there were
Speaker 2: five pieces who I work is changing. So my book
Speaker 2: basically says five reasons, of which COVID is the least
Speaker 2: important reason. Okay, and what people are taking away from
Speaker 2: COVID is also the wrong thing. We're three things to
Speaker 2: take away and everyone's taking only one of the three.
Speaker 2: So let me the first start with what are the
Speaker 2: five reasons why work is changing? One not surprisingly and
Speaker 2: people don't seem to understand a societal change. So the
Speaker 2: United States population is in decline. If you block immigration,
Speaker 2: it'll decline really fast. The United States population is aging
Speaker 2: eleven two hundred people turned sixty five every day. This
Speaker 2: is true aging population and declining population in every country
Speaker 2: of the world, accepting seven and the continent of Africa.
Speaker 2: So it's true everywhere. We have five generations of work,
Speaker 2: with young people and older people having completely different mindsets.
Speaker 2: We basically have the rise of the freelance economy, with
Speaker 2: seventy five million people next year will work freelance, which
Speaker 2: is orsus seventy four million people who work full time
Speaker 2: So you had these societal changes that were happening. We
Speaker 2: had technology changes, of which Air happens to be just one.
Speaker 2: We have the rise of market took places, which is
Speaker 2: the ability for us to do plug and play, which
Speaker 2: is in effect, a market place could be like Amazon
Speaker 2: Web Services. A Mac marketplace could be like Shopify. A
Speaker 2: marketplace could be like upwork and freelancer. So marketplaces where
Speaker 2: we can both get resources as a small company that
Speaker 2: allows us to scale and find places to sell, which
Speaker 2: is particularly interesting sixty six percent of Asia. And the
Speaker 2: last thing really is COVID and the three things you
Speaker 2: take away from COVID. What people have taken away from
Speaker 2: COVID is changed where we work. Yeah, but that's the
Speaker 2: least important. You're the two most important. What COVID did
Speaker 2: is it changed what we thought about work. Okay, we
Speaker 2: begin to ask life is too short? Maybe instead of
Speaker 2: asking how do I fit life into my work, I
Speaker 2: have to figure out how do I fit work into
Speaker 2: my life? So it's not where we work, but what
Speaker 2: we think about work. But the other one that it
Speaker 2: basically did is it made us wake up and realized
Speaker 2: that in twenteen nineteen we were using two thousand and
Speaker 2: two we had twenty nineteen technologies in twenty nineteen, but
Speaker 2: we were using them as two thousand and two technologies,
Speaker 2: and in June of twenty twenty, by Juno twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: we were all working using twenty nineteen technologies or twenty
Speaker 2: twenty technologies. So it accelerated. Changed. What COVID did is
Speaker 2: it fast forward right behind us into the future. Changed
Speaker 2: what we thought about work, and also having to change
Speaker 2: where we work, which is the least important of those three.
Speaker 2: And so if you think about it, there are these
Speaker 2: five factors, of which COVID happens to be one of
Speaker 2: three factors. And the thing we fixate is on one
Speaker 2: of the three of the least important parts of COVID.
Speaker 2: And if that's the way you're going to plan your future,
Speaker 2: any executive, for any individual, or any talent, you are
Speaker 2: not going to succeed. Right. These are seismic changes. You
Speaker 2: have to rethink work.
Speaker 3: Congratulations on book two, Rashad rethinking work available everywhere under
Speaker 3: the sun. I'm thinking Amazon, Rashad, Tobakawaala dot com and
Speaker 3: wherever a book is you can get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if people want to know more about it,
Speaker 2: including the first twenty five pages of the book for free.
Speaker 2: Just go to Rethinkingwork dot io. So if you've got
Speaker 2: to Rethinking work dot io, you've got all of it
Speaker 2: and also way to buy it if you want to
Speaker 2: buy it for your company's scale based buying discounts, etc.
Speaker 2: But do buy it because I do believe that you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like I'm going to make a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of money if you buy it. I get three dollars
Speaker 2: every time you buy a book. So I set that
Speaker 2: I like helping people, and I do believe that this
Speaker 2: is a manual. But anybody who works, whether you're a
Speaker 2: leader or you just joined a company, or experience, because
Speaker 2: everybody's a leader. But if you're very experienced or less experience,
Speaker 2: regardless of your country and regardless of your industry. I've
Speaker 2: written it in such a way it's basically a manual.
Speaker 2: So think about it. Is if you want to be
Speaker 2: a great writer, you know you read or you sometimes
Speaker 2: have a tosaurus and you know will and Strong and
Speaker 2: other kinds of books. This one is that it's one
Speaker 2: of the books that people are going to sort of use.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit different, and I hope it'll be
Speaker 2: like and I've talked to the gentleman whose father wrote
Speaker 2: the book What Color Is Your Parachute, which is the
Speaker 2: biggest book in the world of work, that was really
Speaker 2: about who are you and how to get a job?
Speaker 2: This one is really it's not as good as that,
Speaker 2: because that's amazing. I've read the book. This a legendary book,
Speaker 2: but it's sort of like this generations like What Color
Speaker 2: is Your Parachute, which is how you saw in the
Speaker 2: future as an individual and as a leader as a company.
Speaker 3: Thanks for your generosity, Rishad, your inspiration and your friendship.
Speaker 3: So I'm grateful for it, and thank you. I appreciate
Speaker 3: you being on. Thank you for listening to this episode
Speaker 3: of Taking a Walk. You could find Taking a Walk
Speaker 3: at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: And Taking a Walk and our music Save Me Podcasts
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