Corporate America Is COLLAPSING! AI, Gen Z & Boomers Are Tearing the System Apart!

RYAN: It reminded me of this scene in the Hunger Games where the guy's like, "Here, have this drink." And they're like, "What is it?" "Oh, it makes you throw up." "So you can eat more food." And you're going, okay, these people are sitting here making themselves throw up so they can eat more food, and you've got people starving. Are we somehow getting close to a dystopian society?

DANIEL: Society collapses in situations like this, where there are people who have a trillion dollars, a la Elon Musk, and then people who can't eat because there's nothing that they can do that's valuable enough to be paid for it. That's how revolutions get started. All of the metrics are moving in the wrong direction. At the same time, I'm curious as to how we've ended up in this spot.

RYAN: There are things the human brain can process that AI just can't yet. When compute power can equal the human brain, that will be a scary day. And Gen Z are just millennials 2.0. So you've got four very diverse generation groups all clashing at one time. And the real question is, are we just going to ride this out? And I know this is going to sound absolutely horrible, but at some point the older generation is going to start dying off.

DANIEL: I'm hearing from a lot of employers that Gen Z applicants don't have the EQ. They don't have the interpersonal skills, so they're not going to lead that charge. It's going to have to be more the millennials and the Gen Xers that are going to have to lead that, because the Gen Zs and the Gen Alphas, most of them have not developed the conflict management skills and communication skills they need to succeed in corporate America.

RYAN: We're at a crossroads. There's going to be a breaking point and the system is going to reset. And I think we're just at the cusp of that breaking point. I'd say we've got another five years.

DANIEL: You think so? Why do you say that?

RYAN: All right — what are some other things that people can do? If this is really going to get worse before it gets better, what advice would you have for them?

DANIEL: I don't know. Good luck.

RYAN: Good luck.

[INTRO]

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

[SEGMENT 1 — THE HOOK]

DANIEL: Ryan, I've got friends in the job market on both sides. Friends that are looking for work, friends that are looking to hire. And what I'm hearing is that everybody is miserable. That we've somehow found ourselves in a job market that is screwing everyone. Every generation — whether you're looking for work or looking for an employee — nobody's happy and everyone's screwed. How is that possible?

RYAN: So you're saying, how have we simultaneously created a job market where every generation gets screwed?

DANIEL: Yes.

RYAN: I've got a spicy take for you.

DANIEL: All right.

RYAN: The job market isn't broken. It's been deliberately demolished by CEOs who think flattening their org chart is the same as innovating, while boomers death grip their corner offices like Gollum with a ring.

DANIEL: Oh man. All right. Let's dig into this. Let's talk about who's really winning, because spoiler alert, it is no one. Business Insider has called this the great flattening, but that's kind of like calling the Titanic a boating accident. It's been company after company laying off scores of middle management, and almost all of it — at least everything that I've heard and read — is being cited as the impact of AI. Which we can talk about in a second. But you're seeing these organizations just decimate middle management roles, and yet somehow still nobody can find a job. So I'm curious as to what's actually going on.

[SEGMENT 2 — THE BIG WHY]

RYAN: How are we simultaneously trying to mass hire people and then so many people are getting laid off? It's interesting. I like this concept, the great flattening. This doesn't work. So let's talk about what's happening first, and then let's talk about why it doesn't work, because I think that's where we need to get to. Here are a couple of stats I've seen. Baby boomers still control 41% of CEO positions.

DANIEL: Are you serious?

RYAN: Yeah. I know many of them. 41% of CEO positions. They can't retire because either they don't have the finances that they need, or maybe it's just an ego thing. But boomers still have over 40% of the CEO jobs. Gen X is caught between the boomer bottleneck and the millennial tech savvy. They're this forgotten generation that's just being skipped over. The millennials are stuck in the sandwich generation, where they're having to take care of their parents and raise kids at the same time. They're going to inherit organizations that are falling apart, but they haven't been trained how to fix them. And then Gen Z is sitting on the sideline trying to get into the workforce. There's a huge unemployment rate now for Gen Z new college grads. And half of them are actively refusing management roles. They refuse to go into management. They do not want to become leaders. So you've got boomers that won't leave, Gen Xers that are getting skipped, millennials getting squeezed, and Gen Z that can't even get into the game.

DANIEL: I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on 41% — 41.5% of CEO positions are held by boomers. I had to Google this real fast. What's the average age of a boomer? It says between 61 and 79.

RYAN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Okay, 61, I get it. But 79? There have been so many technological advancements in the last 20 years — in just the last 10 years. How can an older generation effectively lead? Great mentors, don't get me wrong. Fantastic mentors. But then — what did you say? The great flattening, I think is the phrase you used earlier. And some of the stats say that it's the CEOs that are doing it and calling it innovation. But when you have 52% of Gen Z refusing management roles, I think you're starting to see part of the problem.

RYAN: I see multiple problems there. But which one are you talking about?

DANIEL: The people in control are trying to squeeze what they can out of their business, whereas the younger generation in the workforce refuses to be in middle management. Why are we flattening the organizations when 52% refuses those roles? So it raises a couple of interesting questions for me. One is, what do you believe about the future of work? Because in a world where your boss is ChatGPT, do you need managers, or do you just need people to do work and ChatGPT is orchestrating everything? Or is it actually the other way around? Do you end up with fewer doers and just a handful of middle managers who are orchestrating everything?

RYAN: I think the thing is, even with AI, you need a level of orchestration. So maybe that new manager role is an individual contributor. And not to railroad this into an AI conversation, but we're starting to see the brakes being put on AI. Enough generative AI has been put out there where people are starting to detect the fake. There's been a resurgence of human in the loop. Over that very short period of time in the past year — 12, 18 months — where AI was going to replace the human, the pendulum has swung, like it normally does, and now it's starting to swing back toward center. I don't think it's ever going to go all the way back the other way. But we're starting to see more value in human in the loop. We're starting to see advertising agencies and development companies go, we use real humans. And there have even been studies where they say it's clear the human brain is still the more superior computer.

DANIEL: So what does that mean? I agree, lower-level task work is 100% going to go to AI. It's what we used to pay people to do. Lower-level task work, 100%, that's going to get outsourced to AI. It just means everybody's going to evolve. You've got to evolve up the value ladder, or AI is going to take your job.

RYAN: Right. I hate to sound crude, but there are still going to be robots that take over. I don't think you're ever going to completely replace the human in, let's say, fast food or a warehouse. You can get pretty close to it. I'm sure you can replace 90%. Amazon's done it in their warehouses — the robots move all the stuff around and do a lot of the packaging. But the human does the last little component. We've taken 90% of the humans out of an Amazon warehouse.

DANIEL: I think that's where, if you don't evolve, that's where you might end up.

RYAN: But I don't think AI is going to be the long-term culprit for jobs. I think it's going to be a component. And I don't think AI is going to replace your manager. There's still the human element, the human-in-the-loop component of it. And if you want humans to work well together, you need an orchestrator. With new levels of AI, I've been working with orchestrators — getting multiple agents working on multiple projects and working together. It's absolutely phenomenal. The throughput, the work, the things that can get done, how fast it can get done. You still have to have an orchestrator. That's what the manager is for the humans. So this whole flattening of the organization and getting rid of managers — all you've actually done is, you've sped up the mundane task, but really have slowed down progress.

DANIEL: So how did we get here? How do we find ourselves in this situation?

RYAN: I think there are a lot of things at play.

DANIEL: I don't think it's too crazy to say that there are probably still some COVID hangovers, whether that's remote work or just the economic impact of it. In defense of boomers, depending on what your portfolio had in it, the last five years could have been devastating to your retirement plan. So some people might need to stay in the workforce a little bit longer because they don't have the money they were expecting to have, because of what's been going on in the markets over the last five years. I do think AI caught a lot of people off guard. And I think many people are scrambling to try to figure out how to not get left behind with that.

RYAN: True. I also think there's another dynamic here. We as humans, we love to control things. This was way before my time, so this is what I've read in history books and what I've gotten from the older generations. You would reach an age and you'd go to your boss and say, "I think it's time for me to retire." And your boss would say, "No, Bob, you need to work about three more years before you retire." And then: "You know what, Bob, it's your time. Let's set up the retirement party. You can get your pension. Here's your gold watch. Thank you for your service." The manager or the big boss was the one that everybody literally followed. And if it wasn't your time to retire, if your boss said you had five more years, you worked five more years. We're in control of our own destiny now. Don't you dare, asshole, tell me I need to work five more years. Fuck you. I'm retiring right now just out of spite. So when you change the dynamic — and I don't want to say the boomer generation is a greedy generation, it was a prosperity generation. We grew wealth. We had the second homes and the boats and the things. We accumulated all the things. Well, you've got to fuel that somehow. And that also came with a level of control. So there's a desire of not wanting to give up control from that generation. And I'm sorry, Gen X — every four generational cycles, there's always the left-out generation, and Gen X happens to be it. Then you bring in the dynamic of the millennials. We are the first generation to be born with technology. The first generation to teach the older generations technology. So that flips the paradigm upside down. And Gen Z are just millennials 2.0. So you've got four very diverse generation groups all clashing at one time. And the real question is, are we just going to ride this out? And I know this is going to sound absolutely horrible, but at some point the older generation is going to start dying off.

DANIEL: It's just a fact of life. But people are living longer.

RYAN: True.

DANIEL: And I do think that's another component of it. Even Social Security — we've increased Social Security. It went from 65 to 66, 67, 68. I can't remember the progression.

RYAN: That's the problem with Social Security. We weren't expected to live well into our 70s when Social Security was created. And now that's not uncommon. I had a client working in his 90s.

DANIEL: And you think about it — 70s is the new 60s, 60s is the new 50s. We just pushed everything out a decade. And I think it's not crazy to think that boomers could be in leadership roles, contributing, healthy, active well through their 70s. That's not crazy. So it's not like there's going to be some mass extinction event.

RYAN: What I looked up earlier — the average age of boomers is anywhere between 61 and 79. The ones that are 61, they've still got another 10, 12, 15 years left. Easy.

DANIEL: Yeah. Health permitting.

RYAN: The real question is, are we going to figure this out before the next decade? Or is this just going to be what it is until the pendulum starts swinging again?

DANIEL: All right, I'll reserve. Let's wait until we get to the end of the episode and then I want to hear how you think it's going to play out.

[SEGMENT 3 — BY THE NUMBERS]

DANIEL: Let's talk about this idea of corporate flattening. Is the great flattening actually making companies more competitive, more efficient? Or is this some sort of corporate anorexia — corporate suicide in slow motion?

RYAN: And I hate to stick on the older generations for a minute, but I think they're trying to retire. I think they're trying to get valuation. I deal with this group of individuals every single day. They want to sell their company. Their company is not worth what they think it's worth. And so it's, "I can't get what I want. I can't get the valuation out of it. So I'm going to try to shrink, flatten things, to move faster." It becomes a tortoise and the hare mentality. I see a lot of these business owners where they think their business is going so slow and they want it to grow faster. And if they just removed all of the management, then they could bark orders from on high and the company would just go faster. But why do we always forget the story of the tortoise and the hare?

DANIEL: And it's not just small business owners looking for an exit or a liquidity event. It's also Google and Microsoft and Meta and Amazon, that have eliminated something like 50,000 middle management jobs in the last couple of years. So it's both very large and very small, and I would imagine everything in between. Where rather than one director having two or three managers, each with two or three people, you're now seeing one leader with 10 directs, or 12 directs. So it's just a lot flatter. There are fewer steps up the ladder, which is going to make it a leadership nightmare in the coming decades, because the gap now between the leader and the doer is such a big gap. There used to be intermediary steps to learn those leadership and management skills. And those steps are gone. So how are you going to make that kind of a jump?

RYAN: I agree with you to an extent, but I also think there was a level of corporate bloat in the bigger organizations. And I think that's okay, because of the evolution of technology. I think we had more people in the mix because the older systems and methods and the way you operated businesses required more managers. Smaller groups worked in silos that needed a manager to talk to another group, and so forth and so forth. And that was the only way to make the big machine go round. As technology has evolved, in those legacy models, especially in corporate, I think we had too many people and it needed to be thinned out. Now, I think there's a difference between thinning out and flattening.

DANIEL: Okay. How would you describe the difference?

RYAN: I would say thinning is removing an appropriate amount of the game of telephone. The fewer people in the chain, the more clear the communication becomes. If the chain's 15 people long, the message is screwed up by the end. If the chain is about six people long, the probability of it maintaining integrity, or at least getting close enough, is exponentially higher. So if you can remove the number of people between the work and the decision-making, then you can have a more fluid product or service or offering or throughput. But if you go from 15 to two — okay, now you're just pedaling really, really, really fast. Communication is flattened, but now there's not enough bandwidth to get stuff done.

DANIEL: Yeah. I think there's a risk here for organizations that are pursuing short-term results at the expense of long-term organizational health. One, you put yourself in an unhealthy situation. But two, the world is changing so fast, and if you're super streamlined, I think you sacrifice agility. Your ability to pivot and go do something else is severely limited, because you just don't have the organizational bandwidth to innovate, to try new things, to explore new markets, new products, new ideas. I think there's a lot of danger in downsizing or flattening too quickly.

s Deloitte found that through: 2026

DANIEL: TED talk.

RYAN: There you go. Downsizing with the TED talk. How many one-on-one calls have you been on where you weren't being a manager in terms of people development, but it was, "Hey, where's that task at? Hey, I need you to stay on top of this. Hey, let's look at your to-do list, you're not doing it." That stuff can be automated with AI. The more we use systems and tools, there's a level of accountability that can be maintained where AI can be looking for the anomalies, tasking out work, and so on. And I agree, that level of management where you're just shuffling papers for people, that can go away.

DANIEL: And in a large organization like Deloitte, if they could use AI to eliminate the paper shuffling, and the managers that remain are legitimately going, "How you doing today, Bob? You seem stressed. What do we need to do? Do you need to go on some PTO? You haven't taken a vacation, you're overworked, maybe we need to move a project around" — that's the human element of management, right?

RYAN: Right. And I think what we're going to see is the evolution of management. I think it's fake. We've had too many fake managers that are task managers. And I think what we're going to see is a rise in EQ. We've already been seeing this for — I mean, it started over a decade ago, and I'm sure people have talked about it for multiple decades. But as we evolved from less technology to more technology, EQ has been going down. We're so aware of it now, but society, it's like the battleship that's going 30 knots and you kill the power to the engines. It's not stopping for a while. It's going to keep going through the water until it finally gets some distance down the path and then it'll slow down. I think that's where we're at right now. There's just been so much momentum of the old legacy way. We know EQ is a problem. We know we need people management. We know we need employee success. But the solutions are more IQ. More IQ, pedal faster, pedal faster, build a faster horse. Use AI. I think we're about to start to see the toppling effect, and I think AI is going to be the driver of that.

DANIEL: Which is interesting, because I'm hearing from a lot of employers that Gen Z applicants don't have the EQ. They don't have the interpersonal skills, so they're not going to lead that charge. It's going to have to be more the millennials and the Gen Xers that are going to have to lead that, because the Gen Zs and the Gen Alphas, most of them have not developed the conflict management skills and communication skills they need to succeed in corporate America.

RYAN: If you believe such a thing in this generational theory, okay — the millennials will be the next greatest generation, producing the next wave of the greatest leaders in history.

DANIEL: I think you're just saying that because you were born in the 80s.

RYAN: I am. But I also have a book on my bookshelf that says it, and I really like the author.

DANIEL: All right. Is he a buddy of yours or something?

RYAN: I'd say a friend of a friend, sure.

DANIEL: Friend of a friend. Okay. So you've got return to office. You've got decreasing engagement scores. Employee burnout's on the rise. Layoffs are on the rise. Employee satisfaction scores are dropping. Turnover's rising. All of the metrics are moving in the wrong direction at the same time. And so I'm curious as to how we've ended up in this spot.

RYAN: Some would say welcome to capitalism. That's how the system goes. I think we're at a crossroads. There's going to be a breaking point and the system is going to reset. And I think we're just at the cusp of that breaking point.

DANIEL: Yeah, I think you're right. Because I can see organizations continuing to lean heavier and heavier into AI, cutting humans in favor of the algorithms, and maybe winning for a little while, even. But I think eventually you get the counter movement, where teams of people who want to work together, that are motivated and committed and creative and energized by the problem that they're going to solve — they're going to create new opportunities, create new markets, create new companies that AI can't replicate. And that starts the cycle all over again. I'm hopeful that that's coming soon, because this is getting pretty painful.

RYAN: I'd say we've got another five years.

DANIEL: You think so? Why do you say that?

look at the advancements from: 2020

DANIEL: For what? Why is that?

RYAN: Nobody adopted it. So I think that's where I say it's going to be at least another five years before companies really catch on to how do you leverage the technology.

[SEGMENT 4 — SPICY TAKES]

DANIEL: All right. Let's talk improvement strategies. If everything's broken, what would actually work? How do we begin to fix this? The one that's not popular, but I think needs to be talked about, is the idea of a universal basic income. I did a talk on this several years ago, and this was before AI had really started getting traction. It was just playing out Moore's law for a group of people that were not necessarily technically oriented. There is a day coming where, if you're talking about physicality, there is nothing that you could do that a robot can't do better. Now, that's maybe not today, but that day is not that far ahead. And that robot gets twice as good every 18 months, if Moore's law still applies. So every 18 months you get a performance boost and it gets 10 times cheaper. In a world like that, almost all physical labor — you just can't do anything that a robot can't do better. And I think there are going to need to be some safety nets in society for people who were never going to be doctors and engineers and computer science majors. They were going to have more of a blue collar career. Some of those, I think, will still exist, but I do think there are a lot that are going to disappear, because it's honestly cheaper to get a robot to do it. And in that situation, I think there needs to be something for those people to do. They need to be taken care of.

RYAN: Okay. So what was the phrase you said? Universal basic income? So they've explored this in certain parts of Europe, where they basically just said, you don't have to work — whether you work, go to school, or just sit on your butt all day, here's X amount of dollars just for being alive. Don't we kind of have that, in a broken, jacked-up way?

DANIEL: We kind of do, but there's a lot of...

RYAN: Well, ours is have six children and live on food stamps.

DANIEL: Yeah. There are a lot of hoops and bureaucracy. This is just a flat, if you're here and you're alive, here's your money.

RYAN: Yeah. Okay.

DANIEL: Because I do think that society collapses in situations like this, where there are people who have a trillion dollars, a la Elon Musk, and then people who can't eat because there's nothing that they can do that's valuable enough to be paid for it. That's how revolutions get started. I don't think anybody likes that outcome, and we need to do something. So I do think that's a conversation that, from a legislation standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint, those are conversations that are going to need to be had in the next 10 years.

RYAN: Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Sorry — when you were in the middle of saying that, it reminded me of this scene in the Hunger Games. I think it's the second movie, where the guy's like, "Here, have this drink." And they're like, "What is it?" "Oh, it makes you throw up, so you can eat more food." And you're going, okay, these people are sitting here making themselves throw up so they can eat more food, and then you've got people starving.

DANIEL: Right. And we know the outcome of that movie.

RYAN: Yes. The Rebellion wins.

DANIEL: Yeah. It seems like we're really set on trying to repeat that in real life.

RYAN: I know this is a bit of a rabbit trail. Are we somehow getting close to a dystopian society?

DANIEL: There are a lot of people who would say we're already there. And I'm not saying they're wrong, but I'm not taking a stance on that one, because there are places here in America that definitely look third world. And then there are places that are just unfathomable in terms of the wealth and resources.

RYAN: Oh yeah. I think we're starting to get very borderline dystopian as a global society. And as the world is "shrinking" because of technology — think about the global workforce now. Think about 20 years ago. If you were going to have a call center in Mexico or a technical center in India, that was a huge investment. Versus now?

DANIEL: Stand it up over a weekend.

RYAN: Right. So going back to this one, yeah, I'm with you. There's going to have to be some regulation that goes along with it. But again, I think it's going to come too late. I think if anything we do now, it's going to be too little too late. And it's not going to be until there's some level of mass collapse that any real change happens.

DANIEL: It's unfortunate, but I think you're right. I think with regulation probably needs to come some sort of job upskilling. People had this job, that job no longer exists because the AI or the robots do it. But we need this new thing now, and nobody knows how to do it, and we can't get an AI or a robot to do it. So how do we train all of these people to go do this new job? I think those kinds of programs are going to need to be implemented and stood up quickly, because the transitions are going to be painful.

RYAN: And I'm curious for you — how much has remote work caused some of this? Versus when you get the return to office, just having everybody in the same building eliminates a number of pressure points. So I'm wondering how much the return to office at scale is going to reverse some of this in general. Some people say it is going backwards. It's not progressing forward, it's regressing backwards. But how much would that impact overall improvement? Because if a lot of people are making decisions in this post-COVID environment where middle managers are useless and work from home is not working — and so let's fire the middle managers and go straight to people doing the work — and then you institute return to office, aren't you going to find your middle management gap?

DANIEL: My personal take on return to office is that it's an accelerant. It exposes what's really going on in your culture. I think healthy cultures, when brought back to the office, thrive, because they were thriving remotely. I think toxic cultures, when they come back to the office, just start circling the drain, because they were toxic to begin with. They just maybe didn't have the metrics or the measurement systems in place to figure it out. But I think it just exposes what you've always been. And it's why there isn't a single narrative on return to office, because good companies do great with it and bad companies suck at it.

RYAN: Well, I'm going to challenge you a little bit, because I know some companies that had phenomenal cultures pre-COVID, and going remote destroyed their culture.

DANIEL: Okay.

RYAN: And now they're going back to the office and they're struggling with rebuilding the culture, because it crumbled. But it's because the business was not built to be a remote business. It was built to be an in-person business. And when it went fully remote, the culture changed.

DANIEL: Yeah. So here's a question for you. Companies with higher manager-to-employee ratios show increased productivity, according to Gallup's research. Yet everyone's doing the opposite. It's like we found out vegetables are healthy and decided to ban them.

RYAN: So I think this goes right along with return to office. It's results over the journey. It's a red line move.

DANIEL: You think return to office is results?

RYAN: No, I think flattening the org chart is a red line move.

DANIEL: Oh, okay. Yes, I agree with you. Well, I think what it comes down to is the stat here. It says companies with higher manager-to-employee ratios. Let's think about that for a second. That means there are more managers per employee. Fewer directs. You're getting more attention as the employee because your manager has more time to give to you.

RYAN: Okay. That's what I took it as, but then I read it again and I was like, wait a minute. So I think the reason people are going the opposite direction is, again, it's that nuance, especially in the remote environment. They don't know what's going on. They want the result. So they cut out what they think is slowing it down and go straight for the results. And like you said, it's the red line.

[SEGMENT 5 — WORK RECEIPT]

DANIEL: Other improvement ideas for organizations?

RYAN: I think the blind cutting is a bad move.

DANIEL: I think people need to think more intentionally. Leaders need to think more intentionally about how their organization is going to evolve with AI, and design their future org chart, not just hack off limbs. It might boost the bottom line in the short term. I think it's going to come back to bite them in the long run.

RYAN: I definitely agree with that. I've never been for just hacksawing the business. I've never seen it work well in the long run. This goes back into — I mean, I guess it still happens — but the private equity days, where the investor looks at the spreadsheet and says everything below this line has got to go, and make it happen tomorrow. And it's like, yeah, you can't make decisions on a spreadsheet. You can start the conversation with decisions on the spreadsheet. But as soon as it involves humans and actually making things happen, you have to engage the human.

DANIEL: Did I ever tell you the story about the time I was in a situation like that, where we were told by corporate we had to lay off a certain number of employees, and were told directly who we were supposed to lay off? So we ended up laying off all these people. And the next week, we realized that there were only two guys who worked on this one system. And we laid both of them off. So there was nobody left in the company who knew how to work on that system. And so we hired them both back as contractors for twice the rate. We all just sat there looking at it going, we're a Dilbert comic. Oh my gosh. We hated ourselves. But we were forced to do it. And then we realized the consequence and ended up paying twice as much for the same work.

RYAN: That sounds like corporate America, doesn't it?

DANIEL: That does. That does.

[SEGMENT 6 — MONDAY MORNING FIX]

RYAN: All right. What are some other things that people can do if this is really going to get worse before it gets better? If you're leading an organization, or even just an individual who's concerned about their own career, what advice would you have for them?

DANIEL: Oh. I don't know. Good luck.

RYAN: Good luck. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but it's really: learn AI. Learn how to leverage AI. And upskill. Build the network. Keep options.

DANIEL: I'm going to go a totally different angle. I'm going to say leadership. Because I'm seeing in organizations, even ones embracing AI, there's just such a lack of leadership in most organizations. The people that are truly leading change, leading people, helping them become better versions of themselves, have a vision for the future, motivating people to achieve it — I think people are starving for that. And it's hard to find, especially in larger corporate organizations. I get the systemic reasons why. It's just that it's hard. So what was your question — what can people do to weather this?

RYAN: No, I would say, what can organizations do?

DANIEL: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you asked about individuals. You're asking what can organizations do? I was going to go both. But for organizations, I think this applies to both. For organizations, I think they need to find who the real leaders are. And not just put somebody in a management role because they've been there for 10 years, or because they know the code base better than anybody. Find the real leaders and put them in leadership roles. Because when real leaders are in leadership roles, everybody under them gets better.

RYAN: I agree with that. But here's one — not everybody's a leader.

DANIEL: Oh, no, they're not. That's why you've got to filter for it.

RYAN: Very, very few people are actually true leaders. Now, don't get me wrong, there are a number of people that are great managers. But a manager is not a leader. And I think that's where leadership development comes in, and leadership programs. Too often people get put in the role because they're either a great executor or they've got good ideas. A visionary is not a leader. A visionary is just a guy with great ideas, or a gal with great ideas. So I agree with you, but I'm going to put that extra caveat on there: you've got to give or provide leadership development so that you can get the right leaders in. Because I guarantee you, if you give somebody that is not a qualified leader — or doesn't have the desire to learn to be a leader — maybe a great conversationalist, maybe has a million and one great ideas, but that will implode the organization.

DANIEL: Oh yeah. That department.

RYAN: If you put people that are not leaders in leadership roles — and too many times, I'm sure you and I both, too many times we've seen people that are not truly leaders put in leadership roles — and they're wondering why the business is stagnant. Then they start firing the people underneath them and go, "Well, we just put them in that leadership role, and they've got all these great ideas, but the people underneath them don't know how to execute."

DANIEL: Yeah, that's not your problem.

RYAN: That's not your problem.

DANIEL: I think leadership becomes more valuable in a world of AI. Because the doing becomes more of a commodity, but the ability to lead and influence and make others better is a rare skill. And if you find people that have that, you need to keep them, and you need to put people under them, because they are going to make your organization better.

RYAN: Absolutely.

DANIEL: So I think that's both to the individuals and the organizations. Organizations: find leaders, develop leaders. Individuals: develop leadership skills. Volunteer. That's a great way to build leadership skills. If you're not getting the opportunities at work, go find some sort of nonprofit or community organization and cut your teeth on some leadership skills in a volunteer space. Because if you can lead volunteers, you can lead employees.

RYAN: I agree with what you're saying. I'm going to throw some caveats out there.

DANIEL: All right.

RYAN: If you're not prepared to be a leader — and remember, being a leader is not having a lot of friends. There's a reason why they say leadership is lonely at the top.

DANIEL: Yes.

RYAN: But if that motivates you, I absolutely agree. Volunteer where you can, develop your skills, get experience. If that doesn't sound appealing, then go back to what I said earlier: develop your career. Look at your career lattice. Look at your career portfolio. Figure out how to make yourself more valuable, expand your skill sets, embrace AI. And I will say this. We are seeing more and more, especially in the more recent weeks, human in the loop. There are things the human brain can process that AI just can't yet. Don't get me wrong — when compute power can equal the human brain, that will be a scary day.

DANIEL: Right.

RYAN: Until then, everybody still has a job.

DANIEL: Yep. Here's a great quote from LinkedIn's head economist, who predicts that as workforces shrink, employers will have to do more to attract employees. The individuals who prepare for that power shift now will be the ones who benefit when the pendulum swings back. I think there are going to be a lot of new jobs. There are going to be a lot of jobs destroyed by AI. There are going to be a lot of new jobs created by AI. The people who are agile enough and prepared to move into those roles — laterally, up, down, whatever — they're going to be the winners over the next 10 years.

RYAN: This is just like companies that set up websites and adopted the internet versus companies that only advertised in the yellow pages.

DANIEL: Yeah.

RYAN: And when the yellow pages distribution shrunk, they wondered why their business dried up. Gee, I wonder why. We're just in the next evolution of it. This is just the next evolution of technology.

DANIEL: All right. So be ahead of it.

RYAN: Or a victim of it.

DANIEL: Or a victim of it.

RYAN: Yep.

DANIEL: Well said.

[SEGMENT 7 — THE LAST WORD]

DANIEL: So what do you think? Are we headed toward total collapse and rebuilding the system from the ground up, or a soft landing of transformation?

RYAN: I think it's somewhere in the middle, Bob.

DANIEL: Okay.

RYAN: I think at some point there is going to be an economic collapse that forces the reset button on all of this.

DANIEL: That's a little bit dark, but okay.

massive stock market crash in: 2029

e next two to three years —: 2027

RYAN: Yeah. I think there's a point in the very near future where, especially the boomers that are in charge of these organizations, especially on the smaller business side, they're just going to take the pennies on the dollar to get out. And you're going to have a new wave of problems to solve.

DANIEL: A new opportunity, right? You buy a company for pennies on the dollar, that's a lot of opportunity for somebody else.

RYAN: Yeah, it is.

DANIEL: When every generation is losing, who is winning?

RYAN: The syndicate. The syndicate is behind this.

DANIEL: The syndicate is behind it. I would say fortune favors the prepared. Learn AI, learn leadership skills, improve your EQ as an individual — those are your action items. As an organization, don't chase results over healthy organizational function, and realize that it's going to be a bumpy five to 10 years. I do think there is a future, a scenario, where goods and services are so cheap that we don't necessarily need to work. Elon Musk is, I think, an advocate for this thought, or this potential future. And I do think it changes the nature of work, because I think people need to work to be happy. We need to contribute something to feel like productive members of society. People that don't work are not generally happy people. And so I wonder if there's an opportunity for us to rethink what work means, and make work not suck, because it's a totally different paradigm.

RYAN: I agree. And I do think there's a point where — what did you call it again? The universal base income?

DANIEL: Basic income.

RYAN: Yeah. I think there's a point where that kicks in. And don't get me wrong, there are whole dystopian issues with that potential. But you said goods where they're just so cheap that they don't really cost much. I think we have a fundamental problem that's going counter to that. If you go pretty much anywhere else in the world — Japan, somewhere in Europe — you can get good, healthy food for a very reasonable price. You come to the US, and let's just say you walk into the grocery store and spend 15 bucks getting some good healthy food. To do that in the United States, it's 80 dollars. For 15 bucks you can get ramen and processed food. And the problem is, our cheap goods are unhealthy, which then drives all the health problems and healthcare skyrocketing through the roof. So I think there's a whole series of other problems that have to be solved before that can happen. But that's a different episode.

DANIEL: That is a different episode.

RYAN: Going back to this one. I think in the short term, we've got an older generation that is trying to get out of their business. They want a premium for it so they can do all the luxury things for the rest of their days. Good on them for wanting it. I think we've got four generations that are vastly different and have different career goals, different progressions. And I think there is a collision there. And that's where the lack of alignment is coming from. You've got AI and technology that are fueling change even faster than the average person can keep up with. And I think the best thing you can do to weather the storm, if you're an organization, is to be forward looking. Look at the early indicators. Ride the wave. If you're an individual, the same exact thing. Learn what you can, diversify your career, and stay ahead of the curve. And remember, until AI can beat the human brain, you still have a job — as long as you're on the forward side of that curve.

[OUTRO]

ANNOUNCER: Make Work Not Suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that: our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode, and make work not suck.

[END OF EPISODE]