This Podcast Will Help You Flourish At Work

Pete Mockaitis
Asheesh, welcome.

Asheesh Advani
It’s great to be on the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to hear about your wisdom. Can you kick us off by sharing a particularly surprising or fascinating or counterintuitive bit you discovered while putting together your book, Modern Achievement?

Asheesh Advani
So, I’ve been at this, trying to make this a high-quality, very readable book for several months now, and I really thought I was writing it for a younger audience, aspiring leaders, people in their 20s and early 30s who are at the beginning of their career.

What I’ve learned, now that people have started to read the book, is when you write a book for a certain audience and another audience reads it, they actually find it less threatening or direct. So, like lessons that you read written for somebody else, you’re actually more likely to take them in. That was very counterintuitive. People who are like 50 and 60, and people who are even high school kids are coming up to me and said, “Oh, my God, I love this lesson” even though it was written for somebody who’s from a different age group, and that’s very counterintuitive.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is fascinating. And you know what, I’ve lived that with my, I’ve got young kids, six, five, and one, and when we’re watching a show like, I don’t know, “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” or “Bluey” or something, it’s like, “This lesson isn’t for me, it’s for the kids, and yet that’s really pretty good.” It happens over and over again.

Asheesh Advani
And I’ll tell you, I’ve got twin boys who just graduated high school and just started university, and one of my motivations for writing this book, which is all about life lessons for aspiring leaders, is they don’t listen to me at all. My kids do not listen to me. So, I figured this is a way for me to convey all the things I want them to know, and they can read it at a time that makes sense for them, not make sense for me. And you are a parent too so I think you know what I’m talking about.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so tell us, what’s sort of the big idea or core of thesis in your book, Modern Achievement?

Asheesh Advani
Well, most achievement books, historically, have been just written for a different age and different time. A young person graduating from high school or university today is, on average, going to have 20 different jobs at least, and potentially as many as seven different careers over the course of their working lives. That amount of change means the idea of achievement is also different.

So, most achievement books are written where you set a long-term goal, you write it down, you visualize it, and the universe helps it happen because you’ve been clear about it. But if you’re going to have that many jobs and that many different careers, the idea of achievement has to be not just about long-term goal attainment, but also about the process and the journey to achievement.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you give us an example of someone who’s perhaps made the switch or picked up this philosophy that’s more modern to their enrichment?

Asheesh Advani
Well, I think most young people are already starting to think this way. You know, one of the lessons in the book, for example, one of my favorites, actually, is make friends who are five to ten years older than you, and most young people tend to hang out with their peers who are their same age. So, you’ve got to be somewhat intentional.

If many of your career transitions are going to involve sort of networking, you have to be much more intentional about building these networks of people who will be one step ahead of you in your career, who can either promote you or help you, advise you, be mentors and role models, and that’s just an example of something which, at least, I’ve seen, there are young people already doing, and we share some of the stories because Junior Achievement, I don’t know if you know too much about JA but…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I volunteered back in the day at Bain, and I just gave someone like the World of Work, or World at Work chart to help them think through career stuff, so I’m a fan. I’m on board.

Asheesh Advani
Oh, my God. You’re a fan. I love it. I love it. I didn’t know that when we agreed to do this. That’s awesome. So, yeah, so Junior Achievement has been around for over 100 years now, it’s an amazing organization. I’ve been in my role as CEO of JA Worldwide now for about nine years, and I’ve seen us become more global, really spread this way of thinking, being optimistic and being intentional about your career development to parts of the world where young people are hungry for this, really hungry for this knowledge.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And that point about high-achieving folks hanging out with folks who are older than them is really resonating. I was just chatting yesterday with my buddy, Justin, who’s fantastic, and he is in our men’s group, and he is the youngest and all of us are five to ten, maybe a little more, years older than him. And yet, it is totally working for him because, sure enough, he is finding himself in career situations where he is widely recognized as a high performer. He’s doing great.

And part of that is he is just internalizing the wisdom and pro tips of people working in their jobs who have been working there longer, and they just share all the little tidbits they’ve learned and how they think about things, and he’s just getting those quicker and faster than others who are only hanging out with people their age.

Asheesh Advani
Well, when I wrote that lesson in the book, and I should mention the book is co-authored with Marshall Goldsmith, so we really collaborated on this, and Marshall is a celebrated leadership thinker and knows much more than me. He came back and said, “Asheesh, it’s not just about young people having these role models and friends that they can learn from, but it’s also people older looking sort of back and saying, ‘Other people five to ten years younger than me, who can help me with my next phase,’” because people are just living longer and having longer working lives. So, we adapted the life lesson to actually be both five to ten years older and five to ten years younger. And I’m not sure if you felt that you’ve learned from your friend, Justin, you said his name is?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely, I sure have.

Asheesh Advani
So, I think it really works. It works both ways. It really does.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. Well, so then, I’m curious, you had a little tidbit in your book copy, “Classic books on achievement, like those by Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, and Stephen Covey, were written for a much different world. Today’s young leaders need a fresh approach for achieving success in their lives and careers.”

And so, I hear you in terms of we’ve got a different environment associated with, hey, more job switches, etc. I’m curious, if you think anything, let’s just pick on Stephen Covey, shall we? I’m curious if there’s any particular messages from Stephen Covey, like maybe there’s one of them seven habits that needs to be revamped or thought about differently in our environment today?

Asheesh Advani

Well, to be honest, I don’t remember all of the seven habits from Stephen Covey and which one I would adapt or change. I will say that in Napoleon Hill, particularly, at that moment in time, there was clearly the beginning of this idea of a job for life, right? The idea of the college you get into and the first job that you have will determine your path.

And, certainly, when I went to university, now well over 20 years ago, it really did feel that way. Like, everybody wanted that job in investment banking or consulting, which would give them a career path, which would then lead to the next good thing, which led to the next good thing, and getting into that one college got you the job in investment banking or consulting or law or medicine or whatever you were going to do.

And the reality is, today, that is just no longer the case. So, I don’t know, to answer your question, if Stephen Covey had anything that was directly as linear as what I saw in Napoleon Hill’s books. But the job market of today, and I really say this for all the parents, obsessing over what college your kid gets into and obsessing over the first job that they have is just no longer as needed as maybe 20 years ago when that’s where everyone’s head was.

Pete Mockaitis

You know, it’s funny, Asheesh, you mentioned your first job out of college having huge impact. I remember that was the exact thought process I went through when I thought, “Okay, what job do I want out of college? I want to have some skills and some network to do any number of things.” So, strategy consulting is what I want, and it worked out. I was at Bain for some time right out of college, and I thought that it has served me well.

And so, I guess back in the day, that was 2006 that I graduated from college and did that, and it seems like that was swell for me. Are you thinking now it makes less of an impact if we get that start at a top consulting firm or bank or Google or wherever is hot, fresh out of college now? And can you share the underlying evidence for that?

Asheesh Advani

Well, I will say that it’s always important to surround yourself with people who push you. It’s always important to surround yourself with opportunities that are sort of focused on giving you expansive knowledge, not just narrow and deep knowledge, particularly early in your career. So, I think consulting jobs are great. I started my career in strategy consulting as well so I know exactly what the motivation was for that job and exactly what some of the things, at least, I got out of it.

I will say today the linear path of, “Okay, I’m going to go to a top consulting firm, then go get a top MBA, then go into either an industry or a related field,” that path is fundamentally different today. Just to give you one data point, which I think drives this home. If you believe the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs data analysis, over 40% of our skills every five years will need to be re-learned or re-skilled, partly because of AI.

So, 40%, and even if you believe that number is too high, because the way they got that data was through surveys, so it’s possible that when you ask people, particularly during the hype of AI, they may over-exaggerate that number. So, let’s assume it’s half that number. Let’s assume that one-fifth of our skills, 20% of our skills, have to be re-learned or re-skilled in a different way every five years. That is a shockingly high number.

That means that you’re going to have to effectively reinvent yourself many times over the course of your career. So, the job to really have is one which encourages you to always be curious and be willing to learn new things.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so then, here and now, let’s say we’ve got listeners, they’re in the middle of their careers, maybe the early side, maybe right in the middle, what are some of the top strategies and tactics that are implied by this new environment and your perspective on modern achievement?

Asheesh Advani

Well, so we’ve structured the book to have 30 lessons, and the lessons are organized into three sections: fixed, flexible, and freestyle. Some fixed lessons, like, for example, writing down your intentions and goals, have been around ever since the Stephen Covey and Napoleon Hill days, and we put that in the classic fixed section. So, these are things that don’t change based on time and place.

Flexible are things that do change based on time and place. So, for example, when you’re in your 30s or whether you work in a different type of organization versus small versus large, one of those might be how to manage your burn rate. So, one of the points I make in the book is to keep your burn rate low because it gives you lots of optionality. In a world of this much change, there may be times that you actually want to, for example, pursue an entrepreneurial path.

I’ll tell you one story. I’m a tech entrepreneur by background before I joined Junior Achievement, and I remember interviewing a senior executive for a role at one of the tech companies that I ran, and he really wanted to work with us, he really wanted to work with us, but he built up a cost structure that required him to not be able to take a job for less than $350,000 base salary.

Because he had, like, kids in private school, he was paying for his country club memberships, and other things that were really hard for him to let go of, and that dramatically limited his options for what he could do next. So, it made it impossible for him to accept, or actually we didn’t make him the offer because we said it’s just unsustainable over the long run.

So, I tell you that story because I think a lot of mid-career professionals are just surrounding themselves with peers that increase their burn rate through peer pressure, and that limits your options in an age where you’re going to have 20 jobs and seven careers.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And so, just to be clear, we’re talking about burn rate. This is the rate at which we burn through our own personal cash to live our life in terms of the food we eat, and the house we live in, and our recurring expenses.

Asheesh Advani

It’s entrepreneur speak for recurring expenses. I tell the story in the book as well of when I was in college, we did a magazine article asking recent graduates about their expenses and their salary and their bonus. It was, I think, one of the most popular articles we ever wrote…

Pete Mockaitis

Sounds good, people’s money.

Asheesh Advani

…because nobody knew anything about this. Everybody was aspiring for these jobs because of vague reputational goals, and they had no idea what it actually meant with regards to salary, bonus, and expenses. And the top, top graduates we interviewed had these amazing jobs at all the best banks and consulting firms, but they were not saving any money because they basically built up an expense side to keep up with the Joneses and were spending a lot on apartments and entertainment and travel.

So, it’s important to think about that in terms of the choices you make and the environments you surround yourself with.

Pete Mockaitis

You know, Asheesh, it’s funny, you’re bringing me, we’re talking about the back in the day, I’m thinking about my consulting time. I remember one time I was taking a bus to a party and my colleagues at Bain were kind of teasing me, they said, “You know we make a lot of money, right?” And I said, “Yes, thank you. I’m aware that for a 23-year-old, this salary is great. But I also have some plans associated with perhaps starting my own business in a couple of years, so I would like to have that flexibility, those options.”

And it’s so funny how that happens little by little, things get locked in, and then you do, you have fewer options. And it’s funny, when you said he couldn’t take that job, I guess I think about maybe words rather literally, it’s like, “Well, he could,” but he has to say, “Hey, honey, we’re pulling the kids out of private school and going to public school. We’re selling this house and getting a much smaller, not as nice house.”

And so, it might be impractical, but it’s sort of like, “Well, how badly do you want it?” And in practice, we’re rarely able to turn on a dime. Like, “Let’s change all the circumstances of our life quite quickly because of a cool opportunity. And the children and the family as a whole has gotten rather accustomed to how things have been, and they will probably not appreciate it being yanked away from them.”

Asheesh Advani

It feels like you’re going backwards at times, when, in reality, you’re just creating more options for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a great tip right there. Very practical, “Watch your burn rate. What are your recurring expenses?” And, hopefully, you’ve got a nice healthy buffer with some savings and some growing savings so you’ve got more options to do cool things, as you’re making career choices. Any other top strategies, tactics that are super handy for modern leaders?

Asheesh Advani

Well, one thing, is this idea of going meta. Going meta means stepping back and looking at yourself as if somebody else were looking at you. And in education theory now, teachers tell students to actually reflect on what they’ve learned, to write down, literally write down at the end of a lecture, what they learned.

We didn’t do that when we were in school. We didn’t take a step back and actually have to reflect on what we’d learned, and applying that to your life, I think, is very powerful. Things like mindfulness, in many ways, allow you to have a step back, and a lot of people don’t do it.

A lot of people do it at milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and maybe when you write your annual resolutions. But regularly, being reflective, it’s actually very empowering to say, “Hey, I just went through this, this project was just done, or this initiative was just started and finished,” and taking a step back for a second and saying, “Okay, what did I actually learn from this?” and writing it down.

Pete Mockaitis

I love that. And so, now I’m thinking about our episode with B.J. Fogg with habits and sort of triggers or prompts. It sounds like, in this context, the trigger or the prompt is whenever you finish a thing, “Let’s reflect about that thing and be finished.”

Asheesh Advani

Well, I love Marshall’s book, Triggers. I know that’s a little bit of a different concept, but you’re absolutely right, this idea of pausing, reflecting at the end of a project. What Marshall tends to put in his books, particularly the Triggers book, is the way you ask a question is so important. So, he, for example, had me participate in a group which he calls LPR, Life Plan Review Group, where the way we asked ourselves questions had such an impact on our mindset.

So, for example, we asked ourselves questions every week over the course of a summer, “Have I done my best to …?” dot, dot, dot. And it changes the accountability from, “Geez, I’m trying to do this project,” “I want to be better at tennis,” “I want to be a better father,” “I want to be better at work,” from, “Oh, did this go right?” “Did I win the game in tennis?” “Did I do well at work on the project?” to, “Have I done my best to become good at tennis this week?” “Have I done my best to be a good father this week?” So powerful to just change the framing, it makes it all about your own personal efforts, not what the results are.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Well, so I’m also curious, are there some things that you recommend we stop doing? Is there stuff that’s outdated that we should just forget about and stop doing because it’s no good anymore?

Asheesh Advani

Well, I’d say you are certainly well aware of the debate right now about technology and social media. One thing I recommend in the book is to connect beyond the screen. We spend so much of our time on Zoom calls. In fact, there’s all this great research now about how white-collar workers end up spending more time in meetings than ever in history, partly because Zoom calls have made that so easy.

And I recommend, in one of the chapters and one of the lessons, to connect with people beyond the screen and really be intentional about that. Another thing which I think is a big change is, I mentioned fixed and flexible. The third section of the book is freestyle. So, the framework is fixed, flexible, freestyle. I mentioned fixed are classic lessons, flexible change based on time and place. Freestyle are lessons and your reaction to rules are created by you based on your own unique strengths.

And at JA, we’ve introduced this framework to the organization, where there are fixed things that are global, flexible things that vary based on time and place, such as in Europe versus Africa, and freestyle things, which are truly determined by the organizations and staff on the ground in every geography that we operate in because we’re in 118 countries. And I do think there’s something very empowering and powerful about creating your own rules and having much more agency in some of the choices that you make.

And when we asked the young people to tell us about some of these rules, some people, like some young people talked about the importance of embracing your inexperience and cluelessness, or the importance of really experiencing a different path relative to what your friends are doing. So, we got some really good insights from young people who shared their own story with us.

Pete Mockaitis

And I think that’s a pretty handy framework in general as you think about your policies, your rules, “Is this fixed? Is it flexible? Is it freestyle? Is this always everywhere for everyone? Is it under these sorts of circumstances? Or is it totally individualized?” That’s useful in and of itself in terms of, as you think about a rule, a guideline, a policy, how ironclad and locked in is it. It’s just a useful way to think about stuff?

To follow up on your point with regard to social media, and meetings, and Zoom, is your suggestion that we do less of it and how?

Asheesh Advani

So, the how gets complicated because it depends on which organization you are part of and what role you have. If you’re a leader and you’ve got some degree of control over these or if you’re not yet a leader and you really have to participate because of where you are in your career. One recommendation I would have is to create protected time for yourself.

And I think that no matter what role you have, whether you have a leadership role or whether you don’t have full control over your calendar, I think you have the ability to protect time, and you can use that time for in-person meetings, you can use that time to actually get writing done if you’ve got the kind of role that it involves writing or producing.

But a lot of, I think, particularly young leaders are scared to block off time on their calendar for things that matter to them, and I do think in the world of 20 jobs and seven careers, where you’ve got to really invest in your own personal development, that’s important.

Pete Mockaitis

Now when you say scared to block off time, what are some of the underlying concerns there?

Asheesh Advani

Well, I think there’s this general feeling when you’re early in your career that you want to be in the meeting, that being in the meeting allows you to get knowledge, allows you to build relationships, keeps you connected. And they’re definitely, I would say, particularly for aspiring leader personalities, a desire to be in the action.

But that comes with some trade-offs, and you have to realize that it’s sometimes okay to not be in every meeting, and it’s okay to really own the project that you own, and make sure it goes well and spend that other time you’d otherwise be in these meetings where you get to hear and learn, really investing in your personal development and investing in other things that are important to you.

Pete Mockaitis

And when we do that investing in personal development, what do you find to be some of the most high-yield possible activities that we can do?

Asheesh Advani

Well, I mean, there’s such a wide range. Right now, I would say there’s both skillset things where you learn new skills, everything from obviously all the AI things that are coming out, through to mindset-oriented activities. And the mindset-oriented activities, I think, are very powerful. I’ll give you one example.

So, I asked somebody on one of our boards if I could job-shadow him for a day, and everyone can do this because almost everybody says yes if asked. It’s such a compliment to be asked to have somebody, basically, follow you around for a day and learn from you.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m imagining saying, “If you want, it’s going to be super boring, dude.”

Asheesh Advani

Well, because we’re all on Zoom calls that’s why it feels super boring. But I will say, certainly, and I did this before the pandemic, so, yes, the world has changed on this dimension. But, in fact, this particular person still goes in the office every day, so I guess it hasn’t changed for him. And I learned so much from spending the day with him.

I learned how he interacts with people, I learned new frameworks, he’s a CEO of a large organization, so I learned how he communicates and I really got to see the nuance of how he manages different types of people. I still talk about it because it’s happened, what, seven years ago now but it’s so powerful that I did that. We actually have a program at JA where we do job shadows where young people are allowed to shadow executives for a day and encouraged to do it as a career development exercise.

And we even have this amazing program called “Leaders for a Day” where some of the top students get to actually follow, like, world leaders for a day. And we get them in front of either politicians or CEOs or people who are very, very prominent who agree to do it, and it’s transformational because it allows, it opens up your mind to things you just didn’t know existed that you could achieve.

For a person who’s looking for a way to invest in their personal development beyond just reading great books and listening to great podcasts, I do think doing something experiential, like a job shadow, is transformational.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, and it’s so intriguing, this job shadow is one version is a job that you think you might want to do, or someone who’s more senior than you to get a sense for “What does that look like? Or what do those skills look like?” I’m also thinking it might be interesting even to pick a job of something that it would just be good for you to learn even though it might not be super senior.

For example, I’m thinking if you feel uncomfortable with conflict, it might be interesting to shadow a police officer as he’s doing a day of evictions, or a collections agency, like something, like, “What would be one of the most contentious, unpleasant, conflict-driven things, jobs? Let’s go shadow that.” And that may well be a harrowing experience that could also give you some real growth.

Asheesh Advani

I love that idea. I mean, we think of job shadow very much about mindset shift, exposing people to things they didn’t know existed, but you could absolutely apply it to skillsets as well, conflict resolution skillsets. We’ve got amazing lawyers, for example, who, all day, spend their time negotiating, and negotiation skills are sorely lacking for a lot of young people who haven’t had to do it. So, I love your idea of applying job shadows to skillsets. I might steal that wonderful idea.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, steal away. Tell me if it’s any good. This is just theoretical off the top of my head. That’s great. And so, when you say, when you ask, most people say yes. I would say, first, I guess I’m a little surprised by that. I think some people might say that that feels kind of intrusive, or “I kind of need my quiet, alone, introvert time, please.” How do you recommend framing this request?

Asheesh Advani

I mean, obviously, if you ask for a full day of somebody’s time, they may immediately go to one or two meetings which are personal in nature or confidential in nature, and they may decline based on knowing those are in their calendar. So, you need to phrase it based on, “And of course, if there’s any part of the day you don’t want me to shadow you, I’m happy to step away and do my own work.” So, really, it’s picking the two or three meetings that they feel very comfortable including you in.

But I think the power of it, honestly, is people feeling like you’re learning from them. And, of course, this is what happens. Actually, this is something I should definitely share. When we do these job shadows, we do it at scale, we do it in over 80 countries around the world, of course, the young people who shadow the executives get so much out of it, but the executives almost universally say they learned two things.

One, they learn from looking at their own job through somebody else’s eyes, so they love that. And the second is they actually learn almost like in a reverse mentoring way from the perspective of somebody who’s just has a different set of life experiences. So, when you’re asking the person who you want to shadow, I would encourage you to use a language which just makes them feel it truly is mutual, not just completely one way.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I guess I’m thinking some of the most powerful job-shadowing action, as I imagine the day, would be right after the meeting in terms of like, “Hey, I noticed you said this in that moment. What were you thinking about there?”

Asheesh Advani

Oh, I love that.

Pete Mockaitis

And they say, “Oh, yeah, well, I noticed that person felt seemed really concerned so I wanted to proactively make sure that we address their concerns by blah blah blah blah blah,” you know, whatever. So, that’s my intuition about how that would be most amazing.

Asheesh Advani

No, your intuition is spot on. In fact, we actually have this exercise called “I noticed.” We do it occasionally at work. We do it really often in a learning group I’m part of through the Young Presidents Organization, YPO. And in our YPO forum, we do an “I noticed” round after somebody has presented, and we all go around and literally just talk about what we noticed. It’s very powerful.

I’ve used it at work now and then. You can’t use it after every meeting. That takes up too long. But for certain types of meetings, people who are the presenters love getting the kind of input, and it doesn’t have to be, “Geez, I noticed you messed up the slide.” It’s usually, actually, “I noticed a connection to something you said three weeks ago,” or, “I noticed something I’m working on, that ties into something that you’re working on.” And it’s very powerful to make time for the “I noticed” for the right setting.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s great. Well, Asheesh, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Asheesh Advani

Well, there’s another lesson which I’m very proud of, which is learn to balance simplicity and complexity. I think for aspiring leaders, it’s a nuance, but it’s so important, which is if you become really great at taking complex things and making them simple, it is such a powerful skill. And I know this from at least my job because I ran two technology companies, and to be able to take things that are otherwise actually pretty hard to do and not brag about the fact that they were hard to do, but talk about how simple they are in terms of the benefit they create for whoever the user is, that’s where the power comes. So, we made it a life lesson and put it in this book as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that’s super. And I think, often people don’t care, it sounds harsh, but they don’t, about sort of the underlying complexity and all that you had to go through, unless it’s really a caring mentor type figure who’s invested in your career and your development and your process. But for the most part, I’m thinking about customers or senior executives just sort of want to know, “So what’s the benefit? And how is this new and different and better now? Okay, understood. Thank you.”

Asheesh Advani

Well, we’re so busy showing the world how smart we are, we sometimes forget that that’s really not what it’s about. It’s about genuinely creating value for other people. And so, how do we become better, particularly, certainly when you’re communicating with boards and customers and stakeholders, where they, as you said, they don’t really care about the how, they just care about the true benefit, how do we put our ego aside a little bit and leave it for somebody else to learn, frankly, about all the hard work that was behind what we created? And that’s really hard for a lot of people.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Asheesh Advani

So, one of my favorite quotes, I’ve reframed in the book, is, “Success is moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Pete Mockaitis

I like it. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Asheesh Advani

So, we put in the book, “Life is moving from mess to mess with no loss of confidence.”

Asheesh Advani

So, the Minnesota Twin Study is one of the classic studies. I’ve got identical twins, so I’ve got a particular interest in nature versus nurture. And I think we, particularly in America, feel so strongly that so much of what is possible, comes down to our own efforts. It’s kind of humbling to actually read the Twin Study and see so much of what happens is actually nature and not nurture, which I think you can interpret as disempowering, but I don’t view it that way at all. I view it as something which is the reality of what science tells us, and we’ve got to work with what science tells us.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Asheesh Advani

It’s called The Magic of Thinking Big, and David Schwartz. And one of the nice things about this book is it tells you that the amount of effort it takes to add a zero or two on any goal is so little compared to the amount of effort you’re going to do without the zeroes. So, you may as well have the zeroes because you can just make a bigger impact.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate; you hear folks quote back to you often?

Asheesh Advani

Well, the sad truth of it is I’ve now use the word “double-click” so often people tease me about it.

Pete Mockaitis

I think there was just an article about that in, was it the New York Times or Wall Street Journal?

Asheesh Advani

Yes, I know, it’s awful. Let’s be appropriately self-deprecating here and take the blame. I’ve fallen into the abyss of using double-click and I can’t get out of the habit.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, while we’re here, when you say double-click, do you specifically mean to go deeper upon and expand on a topic or matter?

Asheesh Advani

Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, I actually kind of like that in terms of I’m imagining the window is expanding, and so in some ways, my visual brain responds nicely to that, it’s like, “Okay, I’m actually imagining a program expanding with the whole animation.” So, I’m there.

Asheesh Advani

Well, we both started our career in consulting, so I think we’ve fallen into the trap of agreeing with each other about phrases, but for the rest of the world, apparently double-click, for whatever reason, brings up negative metaphors.

Pete Mockaitis

As long as the synergies are highly impactful, Asheesh, I think it’s okay.

Asheesh Advani

As long as you have a good two-by-two matrix to show how to get to the top quadrant, you’re good.

Pete Mockaitis

And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Asheesh Advani

So, JAWorldwide.org is our organizational website, and ModernAchievement.com is the book’s website.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Asheesh Advani

Well, I will say one of the ways that you can make a huge impact in the world and feel really positive is to find a young person and say something positive to them to encourage them to pursue either a career or a dream that they want to. It’s so powerful for young people to hear from people in their mid-career or late career that they can be successful. So, you’ve got that power, and use it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Asheesh, thank you. I wish you much modern achievement.

Asheesh Advani

Thank you. This was awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
Matt, welcome.

Matt Beane
My pleasure. I’m delighted to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to learn how I can save human ability in an age of intelligent machines.

Matt Beane
I think we all should be, and I’ve been trying to be excited for a good long while now. So glad to be here and chat about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. Well, kick us off, you know, there’s a lot of chatter about AI all the time. Can you maybe tell us something that is surprising, counterintuitive, kind of over- or underappreciated in the field since you really know what’s going on and the rest of us are just parroting the Wall Street Journal and New York Times?

Matt Beane
So, the core, the middle third of The Skill Code, the book, talks about a threat that I discovered initially in robotic surgeries. I was studying how you learn how to do that thing and how that’s different from how you learn how to do the good old-fashioned method of surgery, one way or another, and dear listener, trust me, I’m not going to get any more graphic than that.

But the short story there that I found really, really fast, standing in operating rooms at the top teaching hospitals around the world, is that intelligent technology in that case, AI-enabled robots, the AI there was very mild compared to what we’re all dealing with now, but it was there, that that was fantastic in many ways for productivity, for quality. A surgeon said it was like bumper bowling compared to traditional surgery, and it’s really true, actually.

When I’m in the operating room, it’s pretty amazing, especially when somebody’s really good at it. And novices, residents, would show up, help set up the robot, help attach it to a patient. They get a little bit of hands-on experience, and then they just sit down and watch for a four-and-a-half-hour procedure they’d be lucky to get 15 minutes of time on task because the robot allowed that surgeon to do the whole job themselves.

And that right there, I’ve spent the next nine and a half years looking into whether or not this is a generalizable problem and, dear reader, it is. That’s the whole point of the book. This is cutting across all sectors of the economy that I could find. I’ve been across more than 30 different kinds of occupations, different technologies, organizations, and so on now.

It turns out that we are needlessly, I think in many cases, sacrificing novice involvement in the work on the altar of productivity. That’s the basic deal that we’re striking right now, whether it’s with generative AI, whether it’s with robotics, many different kinds of technology now. And the short reason as to why is that that tech allows that expert to just do more, better, faster, some combination of those things, and part of the way you get there is you need less help.

Novices are, by definition, slower and make more mistakes, and they take coordination costs, mentoring and so on. It takes effort, time, attention. And so, in the short run, organizations love that deal, experts love that deal because, even if it’s a 5%, 8% productivity increase, you’re in more control. Experts love using their expertise. So, it’s attempting short-run target, and that’s the sort of hidden problem in the economy right now.

The best analysis I’ve been able to do, I think that is literally a trillion-dollar problem for the economy, it’s just that it shows up with a lag. You’re only going to find out a little later when those novices aren’t ready for duty.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Matt, there are so many, so many ways we can go with this. First, I think it’s beautiful in that.

You’re highlighting something that I’m really not hearing anywhere else. It’s, like, we are missing out on the opportunity for novices, apprentices, to do the initial helper, low-skill work, because at the moment, that’s kind of what AI is okay at. Like, I will say, “Hey, AI, give me 20 potential titles for this podcast episode.”

Matt Beane
You got it.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re still not as good as my team, just saying. Thanks, team. You’re awesome. But it does give me a little spark. It’s like, “Okay, that’s a good phrase. I’ll take that phrase and work that into something else that we got. Okay.”

Matt Beane
Yep, and that translates into, not always, but often the default deal is a little bit less struggle for that person who is trying to give you that feedstock. A little bit less complexity they have to deal with. In the lingo of the book, this is the skill code that’s up front. There’s three basic components to healthy skill development.

One of them is challenge, “Are you working close to but not at the bounds of your ability?” You do that, you’re literally sweating, you’re not doing as well as you could, but that’s where we learn mostly. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not fun. The middle one’s complexity, which is, “Are you not just getting a task done, but are you engaging with the broader universe of tasks you’re embedded in?” The other people’s jobs around you, the other technologies, asking broader questions, not just focused. That’s going sort of broad where a challenge is more deep.

And then human connection, human relationships, warm bonds of trust and respect between human beings. Those three things, you take that subtle, small, in your case, “just help me along a little bit” deal, which by the way is a much nicer version of what’s generally going on out there. You’ll just do it yourself in many cases if you can. Then all three of those things take a hit, but not for you. It’s for that next person trying to work up the chain.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And now you say this is a trillion-dollar problem. I’m curious what industries or professions do you think it’s going to hit the most hard? And, selfishly, are there any sort of market investment opportunities we should be exploiting, Matt? That’s what it’s all about, right?

Matt Beane
Yep. I’ll give you the one I care about most, which is to say there’s a huge potential upside here, yeah. So, you can sort of short the market. There are plenty of places where you should expect things to be more readily automatable with these technologies faster. And this fits in, I’ve got a piece in Harvard Business Review coming out in two or three weeks, or maybe a month on this.

Anything that is remote work right now means you don’t have to use your body to do it. In other words, it’s “Receive some information, process that information, communicate about that process, and send a changed work product off,” but it’s all digital. That’s a lot more straightforward for these kinds of technologies to handle, especially if it doesn’t involve multimodal data, just like text.

Some folks will lose their jobs there and that’s a serious issue for those affected. We should care about it. But they’re going to see, most folks are going to see a ton of job change. Like, what it means to do my job is going to radically change for that person who could entirely be remote versus somebody who has to show up and use their body for something. So you can go looking there, and you can look in places in the economy where the exposure to these technologies and the potential upside of using them is really high and concentrated in a job. A colleague of mine, Daniel Rock, who’s at Wharton, he recently, with co-authors at OpenAI, published a paper that maps this exposure across the economy. And if you want to make a smart bet about where there’s going to be the most change, look at those places.

The upside, though, is the one that I wrote the back third of the book about, basically, which is we like to romanticize this master-apprenticeship relation as if it’s somehow the peak of what humans can do in terms of transferring and developing skill, and we’ve relied on it for literally 160,000 years, so it ain’t broke exactly, but it can suck. And could it be better?

I think I’m very convinced, I’m trying to build technology like this now, that we can use the very technology that’s part of the insult to build new systems that, in fact, make that connection richer, better, more flexible than it ever was before, so that skill development functions better and from now forward than it ever could have in all of human history.

Companies that try to figure that out, reconfigure their systems so that just by using it, you’re nudged towards healthier skill and you get your productivity, that company’s going to kill. I mean, that’s such a great story. So, anyway, I think there’s opportunities in both directions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds really cool. Could you paint a picture for what that looks like? And is that happening somewhere right now?

Matt Beane
It’s funny, you should ask, only a few folks have asked. I am now CEO of a startup called SkillBench. In about a month, we’re going to come out and put up a stealthy website or whatever. But we are building a technology that helps an organization see this joint optimization problem based on rich data from inside their own firm.

Like, think of those as two dimensions. You’ve got productivity that comes out of AI, like, “How much juice are we getting out of this stuff?” By the way, it’s going to be less than you expect. We can show you that.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s my vibe, yeah, impression.

Matt Beane
Yeah, but it’s not none, and sometimes it will be negative, but seeing what that is, is actually not trivial. But we frame it as a joint optimization problem, and we get data that will help you show, “Fine, you get plus one utils productivity-wise out of implementing AI. You’ve bought your 20,000 licenses like everybody else. What’s the simultaneous interdependent effect of that on the human capital, the people who repeatedly have to do that job that now involves AI? Are they getting up-skilled or down-skilled? Are they more or less motivated? And are they more or less connected with each other?”

You know, these kinds of things, we’re building a tool to automatically help organizations just get a live dashboard of that so that they can figure out, “Do we like the trade-off that we’re making?” In some places they will, and that’s fine, right? Sometimes it’s the right thing to do to sacrifice building human capital for sake of a giant productivity gain, if you’ve got one. But right now, you just said it, I think, earlier, maybe three, four minutes ago.

It’s not a problem you’d ever really heard of that this is a joint optimization problem. There’s this trade space between how much productivity boon are we getting out of this thing. Oh, but that’s also interrelated with what happens to the humans that are left in that job after we change that job. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s up in both territories, in both categories.

But it’s like driving with no rear-view mirror. Organizations are not in the habit of gathering data on that second one at all, or interrelating them two together. So just getting a window on what the heck is going on in that trade space is what we’re doing. But there are numerous firms out there trying to build technology to use AI, for instance, to make better, high-quality, briefer matches between an expert and a novice on a specific project.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Can you zoom into a particular industry, like how we’d see that in practice?

Matt Beane
A good instance is in chip design, one firm that I recently got some data on. Basically, when you’re trying to lay out a new chip, the state of the art in the last, say, 10 years or so is you’re going to use automated software to sort of do this optimization problem of mapping out where all the different components go on that chip.

And so, increasingly, over those last 10 years, basically that junior engineer, who would have been sort of sleeves rolled up over a diagram and doing math that contributes upwards to that senior engineer, who’s doing the block diagram and laying things out, they’re just going to have less opportunity to play in that interaction of designing that chip. They might do some isolated analysis, and actually, the dynamic’s very similar in investment banking.

Well, it turns out that that is not true for all chip projects, for all types of components at all phases of the game. So, in fact, if somebody is a junior engineer, and they’re working on power optimization, that part of the problem, like, “How do I make sure there’s the right amount of power going to this certain amount of the chip?” maybe the chip that they’re currently working on, they would just lose out on that opportunity.

But, in fact, there’s somebody in a fab in Jakarta right now who is working on a chip that could use a little manual help because it’s an ASIC, for instance, which is just a custom piece of silicon as opposed to something you’d produce, mass produce. Well, in the world that we inhabited before this kind of information was available, no human could know that for this one- or two-week window, there’s a senior engineer in Jakarta who could use the help of a junior engineer in upstate New York.

But now you can get that real time work data and say, “Hey, no, this is not done. The capabilities here are underbaked.” But there are firms that have realized, “Oh, this is some sort of problem I got to manage, and maybe there’s a way to make better sort of work-related matches as opposed to just matches across a hierarchy.” That’s the old school way of doing it, that many firms are still deploying, and that’s not bad, but it’s just very coarse.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. And with regard to, when you mentioned these things, like surgery, investment banking, chip making, which by the way, I read the book The Chip War. Extreme ultraviolet lithography is the most complicated thing I’ve ever heard of, and it blew my mind, which is actually a shoutout.

Matt Beane
It is pretty incredible, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Book recommendation there. But that really does paint a picture in terms of, at the at the highest level, yeah, there are some expertise that’s pretty high stakes – life or death, millions or billions of dollars, huge factory waste or safety matters – that, “Yeah, we’re going to be super careful associated with having a senior person and then a novice apprentice kind of learning under them and doing some work as they’re developing those skills.”

And, yes, it does seem kind of spooky that we could find ourselves in a place where those lesser experienced people don’t have the opportunity to do that thing anymore. And so, I’m curious, if some of us are already starting to find ourselves in that position, what should we do?

Matt Beane
First of all, in order to take effective action to address this problem, you got to know what an effective solution looks like. Like, “What would it look like if things were good for me, or the people that report to me, or the people that are in my profession, for building skill?”

There hasn’t really been a lot of proliferation of different views about what skill is, how you build it, and so on, and big theories that, sort of, “First, you do this, then you do this, then you do this, then you do that.” And I just realized this book was not going to be able to do that. Like, there are too many different ways of working now, different technologies and so on, different modalities of interacting.

But the raw ingredients, sort of like, and I use a DNA metaphor, that’s what’s on the cover of the book, if I could give you the amino acids of skill development, and they’re going to show up in different combinations in your setting, they’re going to show up in different sequences, different emphases. But for each one of those three things – the challenge, the complexity, the connection – I give you a 10-point checklist in the book.

You can immediately go look at your work scenario and say, “All right, how healthy is challenge for me? How am I doing on this, like, 10-point quiz? How healthy is complexity? How healthy is connection? And if it’s not great, then I, at least, know how and why it might change, because each one of those items is a specific set of interactions.”

For instance, in challenge, your challenge is healthiest when you have an expert nearby who can help you deal with the frustration that comes with not performing at your best. You can struggle on your own. You can get really far. A lot of autodidacts have shown us, like, you don’t really necessarily need someone to build skill but you need them to get superb progress towards skill.

And if you have an expert around who can help frame the difficulty you’re embedded in, in a broader context, like you want to be able to hit a fastball at major league speeds, well, the first goal is, “Why don’t you just try to even make contact? Like, forget about a fair ball. Get up and try to do that, and then you hit a foul ball, and instead of going, ‘Good job, dummy. That’s a foul ball,’ they can say, ‘Okay, you can hit a foul ball in the major leagues. Tomorrow we’re going to work on…’” right? They can sort of help you put that in context.

So, that’s just one tiny little micro example. That, I hope, the first three chapters can help anyone, in any role, in any job, look at that situation and say, “Is it healthy or is it not?” The next move that’s peppered throughout the book is, “Okay, assume in some cases, in some part of your life, in some part of your organization, this has been good or is currently great, what is it that is allowing for things to work well over there that’s not working well over here?”

Like, “The job I had last year, I was learning so much. Now, not so much.” What was happening back then that you could port? Or if you’re a manager in an organization, “Fine, skill development’s great over here. Why is it?” Because the job rotation program is so annoying. It turns out that rotating people through different jobs, no one likes that, and it is incredibly beneficial for your skills and career development. It gets you engaged with that complexity thing I was talking about in the middle of those three Cs.

So, lots of notes, angry notes, like, “I have to rotate through yet another function.” It’s like, “Yeah, you do.” And the job of the leader then is to say, “This is actually really critical for your career and it is no fun. So, I’m right there with you on it and we’re definitely doubling down on that,” that kind of thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. So, it’s not so much, necessarily, that the wise expert mentor person has to be pouring forth, necessarily, expert nuanced insight wisdom, so much as they just have a bit of a broad perspective associated with, “Yeah, this sucks, it’s uncomfortable, it’s unpleasant in these ways, and also it’s useful.” And just that, in and of itself, is a huge value because the learner is able to then persist through the frustrations and rock and roll.

Matt Beane
Yep. And then, you know, I mean, technologists, people who are building these technologies that are currently enabling all this new potential productivity, and in some cases actual, they have a big choice about like how do they want to design their tech, how do they want to sell it. There are ways of doing that, the default ways, that will appeal to this monetary productivity-oriented logic that’s deeply embedded in business and firms, and they can win. And yet that doesn’t have to be that way.

I have a post on my Substack called “Don’t Let AI Dumb You Down.” And in the back third of that post, there are specific changes you can make to ChatGPT through its custom settings to have it nudge you towards more skill while you’re getting productivity out of it. It’s very straightforward. The interface is available, but that takes every single user doing that for themselves. That’s no way for the human species to win.

Like, OpenAI or Anthropic or Google, if they just made a few tweaks to that UX, anybody at the end of the day would be mildly annoyed, maybe more, by the technology because it keeps asking, “Do you know any other human beings you could connect with about this skill, rather than just me?” And it’s like, “No, I don’t want to debrief this interaction.” “No, I don’t want a harder version.” “No, I don’t want to try it myself.”

But if that’s the option, how many people, if it was turned on by default, would turn it off? Some, but a whole bunch of other folks, millions probably, would just know more about musicology at the end of the week for having used ChatGPT, or have made connections with other human beings in their local area.

This happens to me. Like, I am now connected to a rocket enthusiasts club in the Santa Barbara area because we all like to watch the rocket launches out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, and I just went into ChatGPT, asking for some code to predict when they were going to land the boosters back here in Santa Barbara. And because I had configured it that way, it said, “Is there any other human being locally you might connect with about that?” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, good one.” So, the tech, just so much power in the hands of the folks rolling this tech out, so it’s such easy changes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing, this notion of these little nudges and how just transformational their impact can be. Like, 401k savings, it’s like, “Well, the default is this much is deployed into your 401k savings.” And people say, “Okay,” which is wild. You know, it’s like, “This is your money.” It’s like, “All right, sure, 8%, cool. Oh, you said, okay, nine? All right, nine, sure.” It’s like, “Whatever.” Like, most people just sort of roll with that default, and that’s interesting.

It’s funny, I have a calorie-tracking app, and I just changed the default to like, “Just assume that I burn fewer calories naturally.” Like, the threshold at which it turns green versus red is now different. And I know, I know I set it up to do that, and yet it does nudge me, it’s like, “Okay, maybe I’ll have a healthier snack so I can stay green because I want it.”

And so, that’s really clever how if we’re engaging frequently with ChatGPT or some of these things, if we can make the default setting to be one that nudges us in positive ways, we will benefit. And it’s funny, it’s sort of like, “Yes, I know talking to other people is generally a cool thing,” but it doesn’t occur to you in the moment. Likewise, it’s like, “Yes, I know I could look at the manual to figure this out.” I was like, “But, actually, yeah, maybe I will. I’d do that.” Because it said it, I was like, “Yeah, actually, maybe I’ll learn something else if I get the whole PDF manual of this appliance that’s giving me trouble right now.”

Matt Beane
Exactly. And, in fact, to the opposite, I lay out in the book, like there’s many cases where we grab for the manual and that hurts your skill development. It turns out that with, and in the book, I cite the research on this, that reading the manuals can be hazardous to your health of your skill. Basically, folks do it too soon, too early. We front load all kinds of explicit knowledge and learning into school, into work, formal training classes, checklists, SOPs, all this kind of stuff, when it’s generally better to get the minimally sufficient amount of explicit information and then just dive in the pool.

And then, after you’ve had a good struggle and a stroke and managed to get heaving and scuffing up to the edge of the pool, then somebody could say, “You want to learn a little bit about strokes now?” Humans are better at learning that way. So, a system like this, if you asked for the PDF, it could say, “You’re a little early in trying to deal with it. How about you just try a little harder? It’d probably be better for you.” I mean, it wouldn’t do that, because people would say, “No, go to hell, give me the PDF.”

But there are ways of doing that where, if you, as the user, specify, “Here’s my trade zone between getting my productivity,” and it’s like your 401k contribution. By the way, the returns on your skill are much better than the returns you will get by putting money in a 401k. So, if you set that slider, “So today I want to be pretty darn annoyed and learn a lot,” or, “I want to be not annoyed at all and not learn anything,” that’s your choice. But the technologists can make that available to people is the point. Like, that’s just a huge missed market opportunity, from my point of view.

Pete Mockaitis
And you say we can go ahead and do it ourselves. Is there a magic copy-pasted thing you recommend we shove in there? Or how do we get it done?

Matt Beane
Yes. I boiled down the entire book into two short paragraphs that I dumped into the custom instructions in ChatGPT, and that is in the bottom third of that post on my Substack. Substack is called WildWorldofWork.org, and the post is called “Don’t Let AI Dumb You Down.” I can send the URL after we’re done. But, yeah, the literal contents of those boxes, even as of today, I keep updating it whenever I make changes, is sitting right there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, cool. And so, that’s nudged you to go meet some rocket people and has some other good impacts on your life as well?

Matt Beane
Yes, absolutely. And, you know, if I I’m perfectly candid, and most of the time, the thing says, “Hey, if you want more challenge, what about this? If you want more complexity, what about this? And how about some human connection?” And I wave it off 90% of the time, 94% of the time something. I could go get the data. And it’s always there though and I don’t not notice it.

And, by the way, what I have put together is the most basic ham-fisted, ridiculously coarse approach to this problem so it’s helped me. Yes, I have, for instance, I’ve learned a bunch more about coding because it itself suggested that I leave, you may have seen this yourself if you’re doing the sort of work where ChatGPT, or Claude, is generating code. You can turn a radio button on where you can watch that code getting written.

And it writes it at reasonable, it’s like 2x human speed or something, 2.5x, which is like listening to a podcast, you can track. And so, I’ve learned some stuff about coding just by watching, too. Like, I wasn’t ever a professional coder. I took some classes in graduate school. It had been 10 years for me or so since I’d tried to write any code to do anything, and now, kind of casually use code to solve problems. But you don’t learn anything about that if you just let the machine do its thing and take the output.

So, leaving that window open is a way where I just am like, it’s like pair coding, by the way, the best learning about how to code comes from sitting physically side-by-side with somebody where they’re coding and you’re watching and you’re chatting through the problem, that kind of thing. The best coders at Google are pair coding, side-by-side.

Anyway, this is all just one guy’s semi-random, I mean, fine, I wrote a book on the topic, and I know some stuff, but, come on, the world can do better than one guy. Like, we have to take wholesale effort. We have a huge opportunity to nudge all of humanity in a healthier direction on skill while getting crazy cool new things out of AI.

Pete Mockaitis
And it makes you wonder kind of about everything that we allow to be done for us, and like, “Is this trade-off worth it? And is it worth it every time? The dishwasher washes my dishes. Thank you, dishwasher.” But, in some ways, it can be kind of mindful, cathartic, Zen-like, just hot soapy water, physically cleaning some stuff, and sometimes that’s the right answer.

Likewise, the calculator or the GPS or anything that does anything for us, yeah, it productively accomplishes that thing faster. Cool. Thanks. But there may very well be times and places when I’d say, “No, no, autopilot. I want the control.” And it is enriching me in a skills development kind of a way and some other ways because I have wrest back control.

Matt Beane
Yes, exactly right. And it’s not obvious where you win by giving up the tech and in what ways you give it up. There are other cases, by the way, let’s be real clear, where by using the tech in its fullest capacity, you are going to build ridiculously more skill than you would have otherwise. So, in fact, there’s a win-win there where you were like just stabbing for productivity, and because you get to skip some stuff that is actually repetitive, annoying, you get to deal with the cool complex parts of the problem.

And so, we don’t pay a price at all. In fact, you learn a whole bunch more, “Oh, but maybe I’m sacrificing that novice’s involvement. Gosh, darn it, there’s no free lunches there.” So, it’s not just an optimization problem for me, Matt Beane, or you, Pete. It’s like, “I’m winning, but what about the people around me? What about the people who want to come up the ranks?”

It’s really, that’s a tall order to ask any one expert to be looking out for their own results and seeing that, in fact, if they don’t actively do something to support that novice, that person is out to sea. Whereas, in the past, to cycle, I skipped way past it in the beginning, like the traditional mode of doing surgery is a lot like doing lots of kind of work, which is, if you and I were doing it and you’re my mentor, there are four hands required for that job.

Like, somebody’s holding that patient open while the other person is doing something inside of them and that takes four hands. So, I can be at the shallow end of the pool, so to speak, if you decide I’m not really ready, but I’m not doing nothing. I’m on task the whole time. And so, that radical shift is the difference.

Like, that kind of shift as we’ve used new technologies to automate small parts of the work, the calculator for instance in accounting, that wasn’t such an extensive chunk of the work that the junior accountant was left hung out to dry. In minor ways, but that they were making up for by other forms of involvement. That’s the intensity and the pace of the change is really the main thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, if we could maybe think outside of AI entirely, when it comes to acquiring skills, we’ve laid out some of these fundamentals, the challenge, the complexity of the human connection, are there any particularly underrated do’s and don’ts you think that make a world of difference as we’re trying to develop skills?

Matt Beane
So, number one, when you are not performing at your best, when you are not having fun, and you are struggling to the point where you might be sweating and really can’t hear if somebody’s talking to you, like, you’re totally focused, that’s the domain where you’re appropriately challenged and will be learning the most.

So, it’s not a space that, you know, the minute you tell this to anybody, you’re like, “Yeah, there was that time where I kind of got a years’ worth of learning in four hours because everything was riding on me doing a good job. I did not do a great job, but, hey, I did it, and now I know how I can handle that situation, right?”

So that challenge, we, in many ways, have unintentionally created a sort of, the world of work has become a bit of a padded playground a little bit on this front. Like, being uncomfortable and real struggle is a status threat, like, you don’t look like you’re doing so hot, and so maybe you’re going to avoid doing that in front of people when you want to maintain an impression kind of thing. Or there are policies that will literally keep you away from challenge and so on.

Anyway, challenge is no fun, and it is absolutely necessary, and an expert, by the way, can really help you eat a lot more challenge than you could on your own. So having somebody there who can, if you can throw a flag to ask for help, or who can give you some key guidance at key points, there’s ways of amplifying, you know, eating even more of it. That’s one.

The second sort of counterintuitive one has to do with the complexity bit, which is getting your job done faster because of technology allows you, unintentionally, to skip by a whole bunch of collateral work and understanding that’s necessary for you to not have fragile or brittle skill. So, I did some research in warehousing, for instance, recently, and the people who really were good managers of their area were good because they knew about things like seasonality in the business. They knew about different vendors that they were using for staffing.

They knew about the technology, like the taping machine, and why that thing is rickety and how to shim it so that it doesn’t shake the packages too much as they go through. These are not things that you should be paying attention to in your job, but these people not only tried to get good at being a manager of a small group, but they wanted to understand more and more of the different jobs, different work, other skills that were connected to it so that when a shock came, for them, it was like, “Oh yeah, it’s wintertime, big jackets come through the building. We got this. Here’s what we do.”

And, usually, the way to do that is do not, first, go to the rulebook, do not, first, try to explain to a newbie in detail everything to expect. Give them the least information they need to get out on the field and try. So that’s kind of the opposite. Corporate training is show up. What’s the first thing you do? New employee orientation and training.

And that just front loads a bunch of concepts and knowledge into people’s heads that usually is just going to melt away, and then, at worst, they’re going to be clutching the rulebook while they’re out there for the first week trying to do whatever, instead of just trying to pay attention, do a good job and learn.

And the last one is that we write off human relationships as if they are somehow unconnected to how we build skill, and in particular, like trust and respect between human beings, when, in fact, it’s the main event. Like, number one, nobody’s going to give you a chance to build skill unless they trust and respect you, at least a little bit. So, if you’re not earning that, you don’t get to play. So, there’s an access bit.

But the other part is motivation. Like, I can point to the places in my career, but, also, it’s clear in the research. The reason you’re motivated to build that skill is because usually there’s somebody around whose trust and respect you want to earn, like you have a manager or an expert you work with, and you want to do a good job and you want them to recognize and see it, and say, “Hey, that was good.” Or, you know, “That was good, chef, and don’t do that again,” right?

You’re getting real feedback from somebody and you want a better chance to do something cooler next time, and so you’re going to work extra hard. You’re going to get up early in the morning to do a good job because of that human connection, not because of some, like, “I want to be competent,” abstract goal. Those are things that are important, of course, but like, un-divorce human relationships from your skill, like, they’re bound together.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Matt Beane
I’ll go for one that has been oriented my career for a long time, which is “The future’s already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” People attribute that to William Gibson, a famous sci-fi writer, and he, it turns out, fun cocktail party fact, does not remember saying that, and thinks he never said it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Matt Beane
The Milgram experiments with people’s willingness to obey an authority figure and administer potentially lethal shocks to somebody across a divide.

Obviously, that study has been debunked in a number of ways and so on. But seeing that as a 12-year-old kid, the video, I was just shown that in a class, woke me up to you can do research about this stuff, and, “Dear, God, people will do what for what reason?” Like, that just really just woke me up intellectually in a way that few pieces of research since have done.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Matt Beane
Well, the one I tend to go off about still, a couple years after reading about it, is one called There Is No Antimemetics Division by an author with no vowels in it, QNTM. They prefer to remain anonymous. I’ll leave it at that, because that book will, if you are into sci-fi at all, that will literally melt the head off your body. It is incredibly creative. It’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Matt Beane
That’s got to be sitting in the morning, almost every single morning, with my wife having coffee before the day starts. That’s sort of a sacrosanct thing that she and I have established over the last, like, 15 years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Matt Beane
Yeah, “We’re sacrificing learning on the altar of productivity.” It’s one that I came out with for my TED Talk, and that’s one that I hear back a fair number of times, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Matt Beane
MattBeane.com. M-A-T-T-B-E-A-N-E.com. That will get you access to the book. It’ll also get you access to the Substack that I mentioned before. If you want the latest rulings coming out of my brain, that’ll take you to Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, but it’s all there, sort of a central hub.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Matt Beane
Yeah. So, just figure out for yourself what kind of deal you’re making with AI around productivity, and what it might be costing you or others around you in terms of skill. It could be great, bully for you, and then your job is to help other people figure that out, but it probably isn’t. Go take a second look.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Matt, thank you. I wish you all the best.

Matt Beane
Thank you very much. I appreciated the opportunity.