Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Casova today teaching people to be better bosses.
Speaker 1: H are getting You have a good one. Excuse me?
Speaker 1: Do you have a second today? So I got to
Speaker 1: get back to work. Our producers, Rebecca Chasson and Sama
Speaker 1: Bauer asked people on their way to work in Manhattan
Speaker 1: how they feel about their boss. Well, my manages are dope.
Speaker 1: They get things done. If I come from they handle
Speaker 1: it asap, Like I really have no issues. Whatever I need,
Speaker 1: They'll get it done for me. So I appreciate them
Speaker 1: a lot. They're really a big hope. If you want
Speaker 1: to talk about management, you want to talk about all
Speaker 1: those things I got royally screw. I have never been
Speaker 1: treated well for hazard pay. I've never had help insurance
Speaker 1: provided by any of my employers, and even now I
Speaker 1: have to go jump from practice to practice to practice
Speaker 1: in order for me to get a minor pay. Bob,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about your boss? But I like them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'm treated well on record, off record, I
Speaker 1: don't know. A good boss can make the difference between
Speaker 1: a job where you want to do your best and
Speaker 1: one you daydream about. Leaving. When jobs are scarcer, bosses
Speaker 1: can get away with the old my way or the
Speaker 1: highway school of management. But the pandemic and a tight
Speaker 1: labor market where workers have more choices have exposed a
Speaker 1: lot of discontent in workplaces where employees don't feel valued
Speaker 1: or respected. Many workers are either rising up, trying to
Speaker 1: unionize like an Apple and Starbucks we talked about the
Speaker 1: other day, or just playing up and quitting. One place
Speaker 1: taken notice of this upheaval. America's top business schools. They've
Speaker 1: started adding glasses on how to be a better boss.
Speaker 1: Here to talk about all this is Matthew Boyle. He's
Speaker 1: a senior business reporter with Bloomberg's Workshift. That's a new
Speaker 1: area of our news coverage. That's all about the future
Speaker 1: of work. Matt, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. So you have been writing about
Speaker 1: really interesting new course of study in business schools, which
Speaker 1: is training new managers for MBAs in everything that's changing
Speaker 1: in the workplace and how to deal with it exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a slow recognition, certainly, but they are
Speaker 1: finally recognizing it. I mean they know that tomorrow's leaders
Speaker 1: are not going to succeed without understanding the impact their
Speaker 1: decisions have one day on their workers, whether they're you know,
Speaker 1: Wall Street dealmakers or Walmart shelf stokers. And ten years ago,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago in NBA curricula, the hot courses were
Speaker 1: leadership strategy and then of course the basics marketing, accounting
Speaker 1: and all that. Nary a thought given to workplace issue,
Speaker 1: you know. But as you say, this whole disconnect between
Speaker 1: managers and workers and the balance of power. If managers
Speaker 1: don't know how to handle this right now in the workplace,
Speaker 1: whether they are a future CEO or just a future
Speaker 1: you know, regional vice president for you know, for dunder
Speaker 1: Mifflin or something like that, you have to be training
Speaker 1: these managers about the different dynamics and whether it is
Speaker 1: having difficult conversations about diversity to inclusion, or whether it
Speaker 1: is you know, wait a minute, what are we gonna
Speaker 1: do with all these remote workers? How are we going
Speaker 1: to pay them? And there's so many facets to the
Speaker 1: future of work that are just brand new ground for
Speaker 1: companies to cover. There's no playbook for this. Now. You
Speaker 1: wrote in a recent story all about this, how business
Speaker 1: schools are really starting to take up these courses and
Speaker 1: how NBA students are coming to them because they can
Speaker 1: see these changes. They don't want to walk into the
Speaker 1: workplace ill equipped. But within business schools, this was something
Speaker 1: that business school professors were preaching for a long time
Speaker 1: and kind of like no one was listening. Yeah, no
Speaker 1: one was really listening, or they just weren't as popular.
Speaker 1: It was something certainly not part of the core NBA
Speaker 1: curricula at a lot of the big schools. So I
Speaker 1: literally just started calling them up. After a ton of calls,
Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, there are some places that
Speaker 1: are really devoting some time and energy to this. But again,
Speaker 1: what really struck me was how diverse the approaches were. Like,
Speaker 1: for example, at the Kellogg School of Management, and that's
Speaker 1: at Northwestern At Northwestern University, their Future of Work course
Speaker 1: is all about AI. What is AI? How does it
Speaker 1: make decisions? And you know, what are the flaws and
Speaker 1: those decisions. Of course, there's a huge issue going on
Speaker 1: and hiring right now that these AI, these artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: algorithms that are determining hiring decisions are biased themselves. M
Speaker 1: i T. Massachusetts Institute Technology, their Sloan School of Business
Speaker 1: is looking at sort of the tradeoffs between people and
Speaker 1: profits and businesses and its workers. And the professor there
Speaker 1: had a really interesting approach. Rather than just bringing in,
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of high shot business leaders or
Speaker 1: ceo s, she told the students, you have to go
Speaker 1: out and interview two frontline workers as part of the curriculum.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting because one of the things that these
Speaker 1: courses teach is how managers have to take employees much
Speaker 1: more into consideration as kind of people and their lives.
Speaker 1: And you know you talked about say AI. Sometimes in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, scheduling is done by AI and
Speaker 1: people are just informed by a robot where their work
Speaker 1: schedule is, and the kind of computer doesn't really care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing how many managers still operate with
Speaker 1: what we call proximity bias. You know, if I don't
Speaker 1: see you, if you're not near me in the office,
Speaker 1: well I'm not really sure what you're up to. Are
Speaker 1: you being that productive? I mean, these courses are getting
Speaker 1: at some of the ways to debunking a lot of
Speaker 1: those old myths, which unfortunately, you know, I have been
Speaker 1: kicking around for far too long. So it is hopefully
Speaker 1: bringing future managers a new level of appreciation also for
Speaker 1: the softer skills of management, things like empathy, for example.
Speaker 1: And empathy is not something that often taught at Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School. They might say they have sort of a
Speaker 1: course in it, but it's a heck of a lot
Speaker 1: harder to teach empathy, uh, you know than it is
Speaker 1: supply chain for example. So what do they teach? What
Speaker 1: is a course in the future of work at one
Speaker 1: of these top business schools, look like one of the
Speaker 1: earliest ones that I noticed was one that was a
Speaker 1: Cornell University and there Johnson School of Business, and it
Speaker 1: actually was invented by a workplace consulted this guy, Jeffrey Schwartz,
Speaker 1: and he came up with a class which is sort
Speaker 1: of fairly basic in its title, Um, it's just the
Speaker 1: future of work. But actually it did so well that
Speaker 1: he actually was able to then take it over to Columbia.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that courses could just hop from one
Speaker 1: school to another, but apparently they can. And he teaches
Speaker 1: it alongside a management professor. One of their top management
Speaker 1: professors is teaching empathy. Of course not. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot more to leading than just empathy, you know. How
Speaker 1: is a business leader going to approach the fact that
Speaker 1: CEOs are now almost expected to speak out. That's what
Speaker 1: a lot of these courses are teaching figuring out, how
Speaker 1: are you also going to have these difficult conversations around
Speaker 1: the workplace, whether it's about generational differences the boomers and
Speaker 1: gen z are not getting along, or there are people
Speaker 1: who don't want to come back to the office because
Speaker 1: they're tired of all the affronts that they were facing.
Speaker 1: This is usually within underrepresented minority employees who are just saying,
Speaker 1: why should I go back to the office and be
Speaker 1: subject to those microaggressions that I had to deal with?
Speaker 1: So so many issues that leaders didn't spend a heck
Speaker 1: of a lot of time before on. But again, squeezing
Speaker 1: that into a business school curricula easier said than done.
Speaker 1: Are these manatory classes as part of the basic core curricular?
Speaker 1: Are these things that are electives that some students say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want this, but it isn't really required, which would
Speaker 1: tell you what business schools really value. Among the schools
Speaker 1: I talked to, and I did talk to a lot
Speaker 1: of the top twenty Stanford, m I T, Columbia, Cornell, Kellogg, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: The only one where the future of Work course was
Speaker 1: in the core and a curriculum was u C. Berkeley's
Speaker 1: Hoss School of Business UM And that might be because
Speaker 1: it really hits hard on the diversity, equity and inclusion.
Speaker 1: It maybe because the professor who teaches it is very
Speaker 1: esteem there and has been there for a long time,
Speaker 1: so maybe was able to shoehorn it into it. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just at Berkeley, they know, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve here, how are these schools teaching
Speaker 1: expectations about remote work as opposed to getting people back
Speaker 1: to the office. Where management schools coming down on this
Speaker 1: question of does the future look like everybody's ultimately back
Speaker 1: to work or there's going to be some kind of combination. Well,
Speaker 1: let's remember these students have been remote students for the
Speaker 1: past two years, so they are totally used to this.
Speaker 1: Now the challenge for them is figuring out how to
Speaker 1: operate in an office. So it's a really interesting time
Speaker 1: where you have this mix, almost a clash I think
Speaker 1: at times of new managers new employees coming into the
Speaker 1: workforce who are very used to virtual environments, older managers,
Speaker 1: middle managers who are still sort of you know, maybe
Speaker 1: getting used to it or maybe biased against virtual just
Speaker 1: by nature of what they learned, and then the CEO
Speaker 1: at the top trying to figure out, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how am I going to figure all this out at
Speaker 1: a time when a recession is looming, inflations at eight percent,
Speaker 1: They've got a lot of bigger issues to deal with
Speaker 1: right now. So let's remember, I mean, everyone's focused on
Speaker 1: the workplace, but there are still a lot of macroeconomic
Speaker 1: concerns that are really hitting hard right now. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you are so focused on inflation and you're losing
Speaker 1: the fact that your employees are quitting left and right
Speaker 1: and you're not sure why, um, I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: future of business, in my opinion, And if you don't
Speaker 1: figure that out, you know you're in real trouble. A
Speaker 1: lot of the real friction between employees and management right
Speaker 1: now is happening in the service industry, and so are
Speaker 1: these schools taking into account companies that are managing a
Speaker 1: workforce of people who must be there and often who
Speaker 1: are low paid for hard work, long hours, and yet
Speaker 1: feeling like this CEOs are making a ton of money
Speaker 1: and the corporation is making blockbuster profits, and yet they're
Speaker 1: seeing their wages rise pretty slowly by comparison. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're taking into account enough West certainly, And
Speaker 1: that's why we're seeing a lot of the one of
Speaker 1: the many reasons we're seeing a lot of these nascents
Speaker 1: not nascent anymore. These are, you know, more developed labor
Speaker 1: movements happening at places like where you'd never think they
Speaker 1: would have happened ten years ago, Starbucks, even Trader Joe's,
Speaker 1: which you know I covered retail for years. They were
Speaker 1: the happiest employees in their Hawaiian shirts. But even Trader
Speaker 1: Joe's supermarket employees are organizing now. So you're right, these
Speaker 1: nba s, if they go into a managerial track, they're
Speaker 1: not just going to be managing software engineers or consultants
Speaker 1: and sort of the white collar workforce. They have to
Speaker 1: have a better appreciation for not only what frontline workers
Speaker 1: have always gone through, you know, lower pay, less respect um,
Speaker 1: not much of a career ladder. Let's remember Amazon is
Speaker 1: doing things like paying its workers more, certainly, especially the
Speaker 1: warehouse workers. But then you still see bottles of urine
Speaker 1: on the side of the road from Amazon drivers, you know,
Speaker 1: So how can they overall make this experience better. Um,
Speaker 1: that's something again. I mean, I don't think business schools
Speaker 1: are going to solve that overnight. I don't think certainly Amazon,
Speaker 1: even Amazon, it's certainly not solving that overnight, Right, Matt,
Speaker 1: Please stick around. We'll keep talking after the break. When
Speaker 1: you look down the road, having kind of identified this
Speaker 1: growing curriculum inside business schools, do you think five years
Speaker 1: from now, you know, decade from now, this is just
Speaker 1: gonna be standard teaching. Or do you think this is
Speaker 1: sort of a passing thing for now and eventually it
Speaker 1: moves on. It can't be a passing thing, or else
Speaker 1: they're really failing their students and they're failing, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of their mission here. Um. I mean, we were
Speaker 1: already seeing at the corporate level executives who are being
Speaker 1: have the title future of Work or senior vice president
Speaker 1: Future of Work. So if they can devote an entire
Speaker 1: depart ment to figuring out the future of work, I
Speaker 1: think business schools should certainly, you know, have an entire
Speaker 1: future of work department. Have you know, tenured professors have
Speaker 1: a full curricular rather than just the one off courses
Speaker 1: and really commit to it. But we know, you know
Speaker 1: this is academia. You know, the wheels move slowly here.
Speaker 1: It's not the easiest thing in the world to create
Speaker 1: even one new course, much less an entire new department
Speaker 1: or curriculum. So whether it's going to require donations money
Speaker 1: on on one side, or an acknowledgement by some of
Speaker 1: these business school deans, I'm not sure. It's also going
Speaker 1: to require business school faculty to be a heck of
Speaker 1: a lot more diverse. So how in the world are
Speaker 1: you going to get a diverse student body if your
Speaker 1: business school faculty is completely lily white. It's a big
Speaker 1: problem that they still have an addressed. So hopefully as
Speaker 1: those things you know, slowly wheels change and turn, we
Speaker 1: might see a deeper commitment to the future of work.
Speaker 1: But again, as I said, oh along here, what's going
Speaker 1: to be super interesting is how they define the future
Speaker 1: of work. Is it through technology and skills? Is it
Speaker 1: through you know, front ways of working? Is it through
Speaker 1: different ways of leading and managing? And that's what's really
Speaker 1: going to make it interesting, I think, and something we've
Speaker 1: got to keep our eyes on. Matt, Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for being here. This is fascinating. I'm sure we're going
Speaker 1: to have you back on again because these issues are
Speaker 1: front and center and will be for a long time.
Speaker 1: I would love it awesome, Thanks so much. What are
Speaker 1: these future of work classes really like? To answer that question,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by two recent NBA grads. Catherine Baird graduated
Speaker 1: from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management in one she is
Speaker 1: Associate builder at a I Fund, and Tony Douglas graduated
Speaker 1: from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This year. He
Speaker 1: is co founder in chief d A O Officer at
Speaker 1: Convex Labs. I really want to talk about your experiences
Speaker 1: in business school and especially the focus on classes that
Speaker 1: you took about the future of work. But first let
Speaker 1: me just ask you, Katherine, what does a I Fund do.
Speaker 1: AI Fund is a venture studio that's based in Palo
Speaker 1: Alto's founded by Andrew ng. When we work with entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: and builders to build AI focused companies rapidly and increase
Speaker 1: their odds of success. Alright, So it's artificial intelligence focused
Speaker 1: and company. Yes, completely, okay. And Tony, so you're the
Speaker 1: chief now officer, the d A officer and exactly what
Speaker 1: is that? Um? Yeah, a question I get quite a bit.
Speaker 1: So it's a term specific to the crypto industry. But
Speaker 1: in short, it means on the head of HR and
Speaker 1: operations for a blockchain company, and d a O stands
Speaker 1: for the centralized autonomous organization. Al Right, so I'm kind
Speaker 1: of curious, captain. Let's start with you. Why did you
Speaker 1: decide to go back to business school because you had
Speaker 1: already left school, you were already in the working world
Speaker 1: for a while and decided to go back. What was
Speaker 1: it that drew you back there? I think a couple
Speaker 1: of things drew me back. In my pretty business school job,
Speaker 1: I was serving really a big entrepreneur function where I
Speaker 1: was starting and built up a lot of new programs,
Speaker 1: and every single one I was building from scratch. I
Speaker 1: was reinventing the wheel, and I thought to myself, there
Speaker 1: has to be a toolbox out there. There are you know,
Speaker 1: there are people who know how to do this better.
Speaker 1: And Tony, you two were already working just how to
Speaker 1: go back. So what drew you to business school? I'll
Speaker 1: just say, at an early age, a lot of people
Speaker 1: very close to me and my family this is like
Speaker 1: high school, even pre high school, were very depressed by work,
Speaker 1: and so I became super enamored with how do you
Speaker 1: create a freer form of work, and where to psychology
Speaker 1: player role in that? Where does technology play on a
Speaker 1: role in that? And the next five years of my
Speaker 1: career was exploring that. Stanford for me was just this
Speaker 1: kind of incubator for me to put all of those
Speaker 1: ideas together towards that end. So both of you went
Speaker 1: to two of the top business schools in the US,
Speaker 1: Northwestern and Stanford. When you went to business school, was
Speaker 1: it specifically to try to learn new ways of running
Speaker 1: a company? Were you thinking about I want future of
Speaker 1: work stories or did you just kind of discover it there?
Speaker 1: For me, it was really the way I had been
Speaker 1: working before and that I had never been in the
Speaker 1: structure that was so rigid, that was really you know
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're talking about, a lot of
Speaker 1: these systems that are ossified in place, and so it
Speaker 1: was really about discovering what was available and what was
Speaker 1: out there and what was the latest thinking. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: say for me, you know, I came in with what
Speaker 1: I would say now is a bit of a naive
Speaker 1: perspective around like, you know, I am going to completely
Speaker 1: change how work works, and I'm going to do that
Speaker 1: through technology and everything that came before me. Be damned
Speaker 1: excuse my friend, But like what I think you know
Speaker 1: to your question on did I come in hoping to
Speaker 1: change my own management style? I didn't. But like through
Speaker 1: being in school, I realized if I were to actually
Speaker 1: have that impact on the world or create that vision
Speaker 1: I had for the world, I actually had to like
Speaker 1: reevaluate how I showed up for my company for people
Speaker 1: that are under me, give me some examples of things
Speaker 1: that need to be reevaluated that sort of aren't working
Speaker 1: anymore that you think we got to change this or else. Well,
Speaker 1: so I'll say two things immediately come to mind. One
Speaker 1: is like employee activism, whereas like there was sort of
Speaker 1: this thought prior that employees you leave what's at home
Speaker 1: at home and like you come to just do your job,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And there's like a broader perspective on what
Speaker 1: does it mean for me to show up completely as
Speaker 1: myself but also towards the end of being as productive
Speaker 1: as I possibly can be. The second thing, quickly is
Speaker 1: just education. With everything moving so rapidly, you have to
Speaker 1: completely rethink what it means to like train and educate
Speaker 1: your work force. And I think what we kind of
Speaker 1: started with as in business school, is just a little
Speaker 1: bit of what you might see as more traditional management practices,
Speaker 1: but they're still so important because you're talking about humans,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of no matter what work kind of
Speaker 1: workplace you're in, you're managing humans that have needs. They
Speaker 1: have you know, different ways that they can be motivated
Speaker 1: and then also ways that they want to be thought of,
Speaker 1: they want to be treated, they want to be respected,
Speaker 1: and so as a manager, it's really about how you
Speaker 1: yea design your workplace to suit the needs of your workers,
Speaker 1: and some of that is is so basically human. So
Speaker 1: when you're trying to teach something new the future of work,
Speaker 1: were the teaching methods different, like picking me a picture
Speaker 1: of what future work class looks like as opposed to
Speaker 1: a class it you know, mba management seminar. Is it
Speaker 1: socratic method? Is it more like a participatory thing? Or
Speaker 1: do you listen to a professor telling you you must
Speaker 1: be nice to your employees? Like this is some sort
Speaker 1: of novel concept. I think one big part that is
Speaker 1: a big difference is maybe in some more traditional classes
Speaker 1: you're learning out of a textbook. In these future of
Speaker 1: work classes, the textbooks have not been written, yet there
Speaker 1: was a lot of really hands on learning and hands
Speaker 1: on discussion that was guided by us. You know, there
Speaker 1: was no answer key in the back of the textbook,
Speaker 1: but it was really a lot more how do we
Speaker 1: relate this back to some core principles and core theories
Speaker 1: that we're thinking about and how does this new technology
Speaker 1: fit in with those? So definitely a lot more discussion
Speaker 1: based a lot more hands on, Tony. What was it
Speaker 1: like in your classes in Stanford? There was one course
Speaker 1: in particular called Understanding the Trends Transforming the World of
Speaker 1: Work Lab for HR Startups. That's the full title and
Speaker 1: obviously exactly what we're talking about. And then there was
Speaker 1: a class of about twenty of us that we explored ideas,
Speaker 1: we broke into small groups, we came back, we share
Speaker 1: those ideas, and then we just had basically an open
Speaker 1: discussion as to like, how does this serve as the
Speaker 1: foundation for the future of work without there being a
Speaker 1: right answer. I think it's kind of interesting that you're
Speaker 1: talking about how these classes were more about asking the
Speaker 1: questions than giving you the answers. I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: like what they were teaching you was things are happening
Speaker 1: that are different. Things are changing really fast, and mostly
Speaker 1: what you need to be able to do is be
Speaker 1: flexible to think of new solutions instead of going there
Speaker 1: armored with like a certain toolkit that you're just supposed
Speaker 1: to use exactly. Instead of let me teach you the
Speaker 1: systems that are in place, it was let's learn how
Speaker 1: to build the systems. Was you keyd in on something
Speaker 1: incredibly important in terms of being taught how to ask
Speaker 1: the right questions? And I'll tell you too that we're
Speaker 1: sort of asked of us in a program called Leadership
Speaker 1: for Society Reimagining Work post COVID. I love the titles
Speaker 1: of these classes. They are like very ambitious. So there
Speaker 1: were two questions. One was like, well, what about people
Speaker 1: in unions or how to labor unions fit into like
Speaker 1: this discussion. Another one was well, what about the large
Speaker 1: numbers of people in the US without access to WiFi?
Speaker 1: Two very simple questions, but questions admittedly I had not
Speaker 1: thought of myself. I would just say, making sure that
Speaker 1: you're asking a comprehensive set of questions that helps you
Speaker 1: build a system or technology that's like inclusive for everyone
Speaker 1: is incredibly important when you talk about the future of
Speaker 1: work Catherine and Tony Polisto Cram will continue our conversation
Speaker 1: after the break. How much of those classes focused on
Speaker 1: this tension that is very present now between workers and
Speaker 1: their employers about treating workers differently. Pretty Much every course
Speaker 1: that I was in, whether it be finance or ethics
Speaker 1: or organizational behavior or touched on this topic. There are
Speaker 1: large demographics within the workforce today that now think that
Speaker 1: an organization has a responsibility to them beyond like paying
Speaker 1: their paycheck. There's no perfect answer. We need to have
Speaker 1: a discussion. We can't avoid it, and that was the
Speaker 1: spirit in each class that we kind of brought up
Speaker 1: this topic. Yeah, I think I definitely agree that this
Speaker 1: exact discussion we've through all disciplines in business school, because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, your employees are probably
Speaker 1: what you spend the most money on as a company.
Speaker 1: They're your greatest asset. A lot of the time, the
Speaker 1: discussion in business school was really about how do you
Speaker 1: think about investment. You know, as a company, you're investing
Speaker 1: in your people, you're investing in the happiness of people.
Speaker 1: If like, what are those very intentional steps that are
Speaker 1: being taken to build communities at work that make people
Speaker 1: feel like their job is not just a nine to
Speaker 1: five show up, punch out, leave, but really something more.
Speaker 1: What made this more important to me sitting in these
Speaker 1: seats in the NBA program was that it wasn't just
Speaker 1: something conjured up in my mind or my classmates minds,
Speaker 1: and we were like pressing this conversation into the class
Speaker 1: and it wasn't welcome. It was that each CEO that
Speaker 1: came in and talked to us, and your second year, especially,
Speaker 1: a lot of electives are like every class there's some
Speaker 1: CEO of a Fortune one hundred company talking to you.
Speaker 1: They were talking about how important it was for them
Speaker 1: to like think about their employees in this fashion. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I was an undergrad business school back in
Speaker 1: I don't ever remember that discussion. I remember to the
Speaker 1: extent that I thought about these things. It was me
Speaker 1: thinking about it in a bubble, and it wasn't like
Speaker 1: people that I respected and ultimately wanted to be that
Speaker 1: we're driving that discussion. I suppose it's easy for any
Speaker 1: CEO to stand up in front of a class and say,
Speaker 1: you know, where people are most important asset and everybody's
Speaker 1: got to be happy, and then it's like you look
Speaker 1: at the company and the way they run it, and
Speaker 1: sometimes those two things don't quite align. Do you get
Speaker 1: the feeling the things you're learning are starting to take hold,
Speaker 1: or that you're at the very beginning of a long road.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're the first, but I think
Speaker 1: that we're in the early waves of this. And one
Speaker 1: of the ways I think you see this play out
Speaker 1: the economy is that a lot of these emerging tech
Speaker 1: companies that are led by people who are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of trained in our school and our you know,
Speaker 1: our same time period, do manage their employees very differently
Speaker 1: than you know, some of the more traditional entrenched players.
Speaker 1: And so the willingness to try and the willingness to
Speaker 1: experiment and kind of throw out some of the entrenched
Speaker 1: shareholder value is the ultimate and only goal for any company.
Speaker 1: I agree with Katherine, we're probably not the very first,
Speaker 1: but I would say like we are growing up in
Speaker 1: a time where there's like a confluence of a lot
Speaker 1: of forces that I don't think we're present prior. That
Speaker 1: now makes this priority for organizations. If talent is now
Speaker 1: requiring a completely different set of things from their employers,
Speaker 1: like it's not something you can now ignore where maybe
Speaker 1: in the past it was an option. You have to
Speaker 1: try new things, and so like, I think what's exciting
Speaker 1: about that um is we're experimenting because we have to,
Speaker 1: and hopefully out of that comes progress in some form
Speaker 1: or fashion. And then there's a feedback loop, right like
Speaker 1: when our generation comes back to business schools, we can
Speaker 1: say that, well, this worked for these reasons and this
Speaker 1: other set of sort of ideas didn't work for another
Speaker 1: set of reasons, and like that group can then iterate
Speaker 1: on it. So you're spelling out a version of the future.
Speaker 1: When you look down the road, what do you see
Speaker 1: when it comes to the way managing companies is going
Speaker 1: to change? I think increasingly the power of how people organize, collaborate,
Speaker 1: get rewarded and paid and sustain their life to do
Speaker 1: that type of effort will be put in their hands
Speaker 1: or otherwise into systems that they like have more control
Speaker 1: and then they did prior. For me, this is a
Speaker 1: question I think about every day and it's kind of
Speaker 1: what processes can be taken over by machines and lifting
Speaker 1: that burden from people at work And you know what,
Speaker 1: do we really need to just rely on old school connection,
Speaker 1: old school, you know, management practices and old school work life.
Speaker 1: And I got to ask you though, Katherine, you know
Speaker 1: when people start hearing what can machines take over, they
Speaker 1: don't exactly see that all of them as you know,
Speaker 1: the bright future. So what is it that you're talking
Speaker 1: about the machines doing that? Don't mean people lose their jobs.
Speaker 1: The way that I think about this a lot is
Speaker 1: the way that email replaced mail. Yes, there was a
Speaker 1: huge step change in the way that we did business,
Speaker 1: but ultimately this was a huge positive driver for us,
Speaker 1: and you know, saved a lot of time and saved
Speaker 1: a lot of paper cuts. I think one place that
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence can make a huge change is just in
Speaker 1: the world of compensation data and pay transparency. So this
Speaker 1: is typically super fractured data set. Companies keep it completely private,
Speaker 1: only advertising when they have to. I mean, like people
Speaker 1: don't know what their colleagues are making, and employers don't
Speaker 1: want them to talk about pay, and so you're not
Speaker 1: quite sure if you're getting fairly paid exactly. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: only are our companies hiding it from other companies, but
Speaker 1: they're encouraging their employees to to not tell each other.
Speaker 1: And I think opening up that pay transparency process can
Speaker 1: really change the way that people understand their jobs and
Speaker 1: understand what progress looks like, and understanding who they are
Speaker 1: in comparison to their peers, and so pay fairness, you know,
Speaker 1: across employees within an organization, pay fairness across employees at
Speaker 1: different companies in the same industry. I think that this
Speaker 1: is a huge place where artificial intelligence can make a
Speaker 1: really big step change in the way that we do work.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Katherine Baird and Tony Douglas for coming on
Speaker 1: the show, and you can read Matthew Blow's workshift coverage
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for listening to us here
Speaker 1: at The Big Take, the daily podcast from Bloomberg and
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