Jon Younger Why Keep Working at 73? On Talent, Wisdom, and Interesting Questions

Nigel Rawlins: John, welcome to the Wisepreneurs Podcast. Last episode you came on, was fantastic, was episode 12, which was in May 2023. So welcome back to the Wisepreneurs podcast.

Jon Younger: Thank you, sir. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back.

Nigel Rawlins: So John, can you tell us where you are and something a little bit about yourself?

Jon Younger: Absolutely, well, I'm in New York City. And uh, and as I walk around for just a minute, I want to show you what I look at in the beginning, you'll see a bunch of art, and I think you'll see this. This is, I wonder if I've gotten that right.

Nigel Rawlins: I can see something

Jon Younger: I'll walk you back. That's a wonderful painting by Thomas Pender, who was a convict in the Australian prison system and who produced this magnificent painting and that it was the beginning of my love affair with australia. Yeah, it is in the place of greatest honor and Carolyn, my wife of 52 years is really angry, she didn't get to go with

me.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, we do have nice weather because we are coming into summer, now. I should say that this is audio. It was a lovely painting. A lot of people seem to be going for video nowadays, but, I can't be bothered watching videos and, and to edit it all really is, it's a lot of work.

Now some people are fantastic and they'll do all that work, but I think most people like me, well, I dunno if I'm like most, most people, I go for a walk and I listen to a podcast

Jon Younger: There you go.

Nigel Rawlins: And, and when I've had enough I go for a walk and don't listen to anything. So. So Jon, let's talk a little bit about freelancing, 'cause that's one of your expert areas, but I think you are doing a bit more, and freelancing, well, since 2023, AI has now just, how would you say, exploded So what's happening in terms of freelancing in an age of AI?

Jon Younger: You, you know, it's a wonderful question and I'll try to describe it as best I can as a series of several themes. First theme is we don't know what's gonna happen as a result of AI, but we're incredibly optimistic and also kind of a little nervous and the optimism is what's producing that tremendous curiosity that all organizations and individuals have. I mean, I read a recent report that 80% of executives are now using the generative stuff at least weekly, I believe they're probably using it two or three times daily, but we'll move into that. So one of the consequences of that first theme, which is it looks fantastic, it's the biggest ice cream cake in the history of the world, and we're all a little nervous that we're gonna get sick from eating it.

The second theme is, we're afraid to hire because we don't know what we'll need. We're also afraid to fire unless we know we're gonna need less. And organizations that have been doing experiments or really testing stuff out or using basic automation, and I know we'll talk about that later, have identified some big changes, and I'll give you one example if I can, Nigel. One is that if you look at Amazon right now, they've just made two announcements within two days. The first announcement they made is that they're gonna hire a seasonal workforce of 250,000 people. The second announcement made the second day was, and they're gonna fire 14,000 white collar professionals and managers.

Wow. I mean, it's, it's an example of the, kind of, the craziness that organizations are going through. The third thing is that, from a more specific freelancer's perspective, it's both extraordinarily good news and extraordinarily confusing news. The good news, is that there are tons and tons and tons of opportunities on a part-time basis to be a trainer or a learner, or a teacher or involved in some administrative way feeding the large language models. Turing, which was a very large, traditional freelancing organization, has turned itself almost entirely to focus on supporting the LLMs. Brain Trust has done something quite similar.

Many organizations have done something similar and there's a whole new crop, of freelance platforms or SaaS platforms serving these organizations, these large language model builders. And here are the names that people may know. It's not just Brain Trust and AWS. Scale AI is now outlier. You have Surge AI, Kaklachra, Mercor went from 17 months from zero to $500 million in revenue.

Nigel Rawlins: So what do these companies do?

Jon Younger: They provide individuals who train the large language models by making sure that the stuff that's being fed in is fed in correctly and is correct in its own right. I happen to be at an advisory meeting before joining the podcast. If you go to an organization called Outlier, Outlier is owned by Scale AI. An outlier is a SaaS platform, an internal platform, for Scale AI providing individuals who help them train their LLMs, right? So these are administrative jobs that range from $15 an hour, if you have a basic college degree and you're just doing grammar and stuff like that to $50 an hour or even $150 an hour, if you bring in unique capability in different areas, for example, chemistry, physics biology bioethics and biochemistry. So what we've seen is a whole new freelance world created in parallel, which has a singular purpose, and that is feeding the large language models and the smaller language models, of AI

producers essentially.

Nigel Rawlins: So basically what you're saying there is if, for example, if you were a teacher and you've retired and you've taught physics or mathematics or something like that, you can have this little part-time career.

Jon Younger: You can, and, and here's what you gotta do. You've gotta find out how to be part of it because, you know, once you find out the right door, it opens, but you have to find the right door. And you can't go to a place like Upwork or Fiverr or Freelancer.com and say, you know, sort of feed me. It's just a different, different kind of a notion.

I think that you're absolutely right that this represents very good part-time work for people who wanna be freelancers. Also understand that they are less and less likely to find all of their work in a small group of clients, and so they've gotta expand a little bit. Many people are hoping that remote work will continue, but what we know is that it's shrinking more and more.

Some for good reasons, some for bad, but the consequence of all of this is that if you're my age, I'm 73, you're not dead yet. The challenge is how do you find something you're good at that you like doing and can make the time for it without sacrificing the time that you've tried to give to the rest of your life.

That's what we're gonna talk a little bit about you know, uh, uh, older, um, I don't even like that word anymore 'cause I'm 70 next year, but I don't feel old. for those who are listening but can't see, he doesn't look old either.

Nigel Rawlins: uh, no, I I, you, you can't see the wrinkles and all that. I mean, I don't have many wrinkles on the face. I'm fairly lucky. But the other areas, you know, around your neck and your hands are just old plus, you know, other things. So you were on a podcast recently, where you were talking about knowledge and wisdom, in terms of freelance, well, the way I see it, it's, it's very obvious, um, that we've become very quickly post-industrial. We, in, in terms of a lot of people now doing knowledge work, which means they're dealing with information and doing something with it. Simple terms is, they're processing it, they're mastering it, and they've gotta apply it.

So in, in terms of knowledge work, and wisdom, what's happening there? 'Cause AI can do a lot of this stuff.

Jon Younger: It's a wonderful question. May I take a minute or two, it's really more like four or five to start by describing a model of talent, performance, and career that served us very well for years, but now needs a tuneup. My background for those of your audience that are familiar with HR.

My old partners are Norm Smallwood and Dave Ulrich. And Dave in particular is known as sort of the father of, modern HR management. He was the guy that created the basic model that says there's some very important things that we've gotta do right in certain areas, but there's a lot of stuff that we don't have to do that can be outsourced, et cetera.

As part of that, another group working at the Harvard Business School came up with what they called the career stages. Career stages are kind of this, when we start the first stage in a typical organization in the old world where we'd get a job in a big company or some sort of company, and we'd be a newbie. And what was expected of us for the first year or two was to earn trust. We had to demonstrate a conversance and a skill at the basics. We had to be on time, we had to understand the culture. We had to ask good questions, we needed to get things done on time. But basically it was a period of a year or two when the organization was trying to decide whether you were worth a long-term keep and you were trying to decide whether you wanted to be kept long term by them. In my particular case, Nigel, I had a PhD in, psychology. I taught for a couple of years at the University of Toronto as an instructor, while I was getting my degree, and post-degree I got a job at Exxon. Exxon at that time before ExxonMobil was a wonderful place to have a career if you wanted to be in that industry, because they took care of you.

They fed you in terms of education. They were interested in your wellbeing, et cetera, et cetera. Now, if you've been good for a couple of years at demonstrating the basics at earning the trust. The next expectation is that you'll become good at something.

And, and may I say Nigel, good at something that the organization values, because it's not all that helpful to be good at something that the organization doesn't need.

Being a great chef is a wonderful skill, but Exxon didn't need great chefs. So in those areas, your obligation is to find a career interest, find a career specialty that you can build, that you can demonstrate that knowledge, you can demonstrate the expertise that can't be gained through experience yet because you're still young, but you can learn the words, you can learn the principles, you can learn the models, and you can begin to develop a reputation for getting things done well in that area. The problem in that stage, which is called stage two, and it's the stage of the independent contributor, is that the half-life of that contribution is only so long. And we know in AI it's even shorter than ever. And so you've gotta transition, you've gotta transform from somebody who's good at something themselves, to somebody who's good at helping other people be good at something.

And that's the stage of mentor, the stage of coach. But the notion there is helping others to know what they're good at, helping others to perform well, helping others to see the bigger picture and making sure that they have career opportunities that support that. And the problem with that stage is that it's still based on relationships and at some point, nigel in your career, certainly in my career, I had more people working for me than I could remember their names. And it wasn't because there was anything wrong with them, it was because I was limited in terms of that stuff. And, and so I've gotta produce in a different way. I can't mentor any longer except a smaller group.

What I've really gotta do is to create a culture, create a work environment, create a way of operating in the organization or reinforce it so that other people can get good at something. Learn the skills, learn the basics, et cetera, and carry on. AI blows this up and we're all wondering what happens in the future.

And I, I can guess a few things. So one of those things, by the way, did, was that a reasonably cogent explanation of the old

of

career?

Nigel Rawlins: I, I think, Well, there's another way of calling it a three stage career. Go to school. Go to work, and then you retire.

Jon Younger: And We have four stages within the middle third. Now here's here's the dilemma of AI and that is in, in stage two, we were expected to know a lot, but we weren't expected to have the experience of 20 years. And that's the AI problem and that it shortens it.

And so the expectation more and more is that you need fewer people, but they need to be broader, both horizontally in terms of the range of experiences they've had and deeper in terms of the depths of experience they've had. And that just doesn't meet with physics.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, it's an interesting thing you're saying there to to be experienced like that you have to have a career. What happens to the young ones? Where are they gonna pick it up?

Jon Younger: So we're struggling with exactly that. Now. Let me talk about the young ones for a minute because I, I, I was very excited. I was I was very worried about that, that whole topic. And I I, I sat down with my friend Norm Smallwood. the Co- CEO of the RBL, Group, Robert Baker, Lawrence Group. And, and we wrote an article a few months ago and I'll, I'll, I'll send it to you that you can send it to the readers. And basically what it said is we haven't been watching the young people, 'cause there are a whole lot more interesting than they used to be.

And I I happen to use US data, but I bet the Australian data isn't very different. 40% of the kids graduating from university have have either had significant professional experience through internships, or they've built their own startup. 25% of these kids have a pretty good idea of the startup that they want.

But one of the things that's implicit in that is they don't wanna work for anybody else. They wanna work for themselves because they see how how fraught it is these days and how quickly things change. But, but my response to that is, what an extraordinary opportunity we have to begin to use these young people who have experiences, Nigel, that you and I didn't have when I graduated from college, I didn't, as the expression goes, I still didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground.

I mean, I truly didn't. And my first job, God bless, was graduate school 'cause I had no idea. But now these kids are graduating from college with work experience, with startup experience. uh, uh, having, having built something, having gone to classes where they worked in teams, I mean, all of the things that are so helpful these days. So I am, I am very excited about these young people, but I don't know how to turn that excitement into career experiences that help them to get the most out of it. Because it feels, and this is my last point around this, it feels like we're in a meantime. I don't like this bossism crap. I don't like the idea that people are saying, let's, let's only hire the minimum number and make people work 9, 9, 7 or 80 hours a week.

This is not sustainable and it's not even human. So I think that the countervailing force on all of this, because there's lots of wonderful opportunity coming up for these young people. Is that unless you know, Australia provide a good experience for them or unless we in the US provide a good experience for them, they're going somewhere else. And that worries me. If, if you were to ask me what's the biggest worry I have around the state of innovation in the US, we seem not to love them anymore.

Nigel Rawlins: You're talking about talent? That's why when I come across somebody that I go, wow, that's the talent you recognize in them and yeah, you wanna see them do well. Um, and I think in the past, you know, if they did have have talent, they'd go forward. But you're only talking about 25% there. What about the other 75%? What's happening to them?

Jon Younger: You are Absolutely right. Absolutely right. Absolutely right. It is a very scary thing. We couldn't know what the internet had created for us. I asked myself the question, you know, has the internet been good for employment or bad for employment?

And the answer is, we have 97 million net new jobs as best we can calculate from the internet. We know that the same thing is gonna happen in AI, but how it takes shape becomes really interesting. Really interesting. And I, I wish I had more visibility on some of that stuff.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I, I think we're able to observe it, but I, I think in terms of hearing you, I I think you are able to see it or recognize it, whereas I'd say, the average person in the street's got no idea, you know, that that's happening. But you think about some of the things that occurred over our career. I, I, my mother used to be a typist, used to type,

Jon Younger: Yep.

Nigel Rawlins: And then, you know, that was, um, merged into your own job.

You had to do your own typing. And well, and, and we will talk about it because it gets rather interesting when you are running a freelance business, you are the, uh, what are they called? Chief cook and bottle washer and things like that. But we, we'll come into that. So, John, in, in, in terms of, well, you must have retired at some point to do what you do now. Would let, let's talk a little bit about your career and how that's changed and the the nature of a portfolio career, 'cause from the sounds of it, you are doing several things. So

tell us about that.

Jon Younger: Sure. So my background is, I had hoped to be an academic sociologist and organization psychologist, so went to school, um, went to graduate school at the University of Toronto. Um, I I was a US citizen, but left the statesto, to go to Canada. Uh, I didn't like the politics.

I was one of the few folks in Canada from the states that, that, that wasn't evading the draft, which was very embarrassing because most of my US friends were expats who were doing that All that got sorted out. We, we, uh, we graduated from the University of Toronto. I taught for a a little while as an instructor, uh, and and basically lived off of grants and scholarships.

I went to school at a time when, uh, school still had plenty of money. And Carolyn, Carolyn, my wife of 52 years was a sociologist. I was, I was a social and organization psychologist. I, I got a job at Exxon and I spent the next 10 years. I had eight different jobs, eight or nine different jobs, and I learned two things that may be helpful to other people. One of them was, um, three things. One was I wanted to understand the entirety of that industry. If I was gonna be helpful in the energy industry, I needed to know what it looked like from an exploration, how you find the oil, what it looked like from production, what the technology involved looked like, what management was involved.

And I was lucky, they thought I was clever and they gave me all those opportunities. At some point they asked me did I want to go on the management track or stay in the specialist track, 'cause at that time there was a two track system as there is for many organizations, some, somehow or another. And, and it was an interesting moment that the guy that asked me was the Exxon executive development head.

I said I wanted to stay on the professional track. I really liked organization change. I liked it more than running a business, and thanks very much. I think the second thing that I learned from that was that, um, there was a point at which I needed to leave because I'd gotten all that I could get from it, and I really had given them most of what I had to give.

And I was starting to get impatient with my career. And that was a moment to leave. The, the third thing that I learned was that you have a choice to make your boss, your boss or your colleague. And it's all about what's in your head, not all about what's in theirs. And I had the wonderful experience Nigel, of making good friends of people that until very recently, you're still good friends, but were my my bosses. I left and ended up joining two guys, if I may put it that way. And, uh, and we built a couple of businesses, um, two businesses that went public and that was great. And what that gave me was a chance to, I guess, take a deep breath and say, I know we're gonna be okay.

We'll have a roof over our head. And food at the table. Doesn't make you less ambitious. It doesn't make you less impatient. It's, it's just good to know that you, you're okay. You're okay. Became very interested in the freelance world. Over the next 10 years invested in it. I've sat on a bunch of advisory boards, built a company, uh, had the privilege of working with the Matt Mottola of Human Cloud.

He's a wonderful guy, and I hope you guys know each other. And if you don't, you should. You, you're both climbing the same tree. Uh, and then I guess most recently, uh, it it became clear to me that all of my career I've been interested in talent and that the first quadrant, if I may call it that, of talent was internal talent, the development of careers, et cetera, et cetera. It was the Exxon experience who was writing a bunch of stuff. The second was talent from the outside, and that was the freelancing world. And now what's exciting to me, at least conceptually, is understanding how AI is changing everything. It's the third leg of the workforce. And I think you need to think if, if you divide generative AI and put that over here and then you say agentic or agents over here, I, I think what you gotta do is say that agents are are are a new and extraordinarily interesting third leg of our organizations and we really need to understand over the next several years how that comports with humans and, and are we just replacing crappy jobs or are we also augmenting human capabilities beyond replacing those crappy jobs?

Nigel Rawlins: Listening to you

Jon Younger: Lot of stuff.

Sorry

to

Nigel Rawlins: No, no, no. But listening to what you're saying is you can see where the human element comes in.

Jon Younger: Yes,

Nigel Rawlins: Because basically, uh, an AI is a machine. Um, it's, it's not human. And you can see the aspect of human, but for a lot of dumb jobs, it can replace them. So what does the human do now? It's interesting you went into HR because with the change in work, surely, if you were for example, if you were pulled into a job to, to do change management thing, would you come in with a formula that maybe you've used in the past? Or would you come in with a, or would you need to come in? This is where we're talking about the wisdom, or, you know, in the past you said, well, this is the way we do it, but does that work anymore?

Jon Younger: You know, it depends on the formula. Let, let me give you a very specific example. I I had the great privilege, uh, and I hope all of your listeners have a similar privilege. Working with somebody at an early stage of my career that just blew my mind. His name was Herb Shepherd. He was as much as anyone, the creator of organization development and, and just an extraordinary human being and an eminently humane human being.

And he taught me, um, a few things that I have kept in my head. And one of them is a formula by a guy named David Gleicher. And the formula is a formula for change. And here's the formula. Change is a function of the following, dissatisfaction with the current state, a view of the vision of the future, and the first steps in making that real over the cost of change. It's a wonderful formula and the reason it's so wonderful is as leaders we get so excited by the vision and, and the first steps that we, we hardly ever think about the cost of change and the dissatisfaction for 90% of our organization. So imagine AI in this context, and, and I come in and I am providing your organization.

I've done my analysis and I've said 60% of the workflows in this organization do not need to be done by humans. They need to be done by smart machines, but they don't need to be done by humans. Humans need to manage and oversee and monitor, but they don't need to do all that stuff. We can't save a tremendous amount of your folks time.

They'll be happier, et cetera, et cetera. And, and the organization flips out and says, no way, Jose. And the answer is, why? Because you're shaking my world at a time when my world is already shaken. You can't do that. So if, if we don't understand the dissatisfaction, if we don't understand the individual cost of of change, if we only understand our version of the benefits, we will not be effective change managers.

And if we're not effective change managers, what the

heck are we doing?

Nigel Rawlins: Well, that's the whole point of this is that um, especially experienced professionals who know this stuff go into an organization and you know, if you're a consultant or you are freelancing, providing your expertise, at what point do you say, this is not gonna work. They're not gonna do this, they're not gonna listen to me.

Do I desperately need to do this to get the money? And then no, it's not gonna work. Or do I walk away?

Jon Younger: Yes. You know, I had a very interesting experience with that. It was last year, maybe it was two years ago, or three years ago, I was recommended to a particular consulting gig. And I I like the company, I know the company, I like some of the people in it. I like the former, uh, Chief Operating Officer. And, and and I was asked to be one of three people by the guy that was the CFO, who was likely to be the next chief Executive officer.

And this was sort of they were testing him, right? They needed to get some things done, they needed some changes made. And he said, do you wanna do you wanna do the job? And I said, who's gonna make the decision? And he said, well, it, it'll be a group, but it'll implicitly be made by the CEO.

And I said, then I don't want do it. And he goes, why? And I said, because you're not responsible. So how, how how are you going to demonstrate your ability to be the CEO in the future if you haven't been given the opportunity to choose the guy to help you? And he said, I like the logic. I hate the answer.

Nigel Rawlins: There you go.

Jon Younger: Nigel, we live in a lot of a lot of situations where we like the logic, but we hate the answer at, at, at your point about do I do this because I need the money?

Is such a good illustration of that that

dilemma. Thank goodness I didn't need the money at that moment.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, thinking about it, so you are a writer. You you write for Forbes magazines, you're still doing that?

Jon Younger: I don't, I I left that at the end of October. I had written 325 articles over nine

years, and I thought that was enough.

Nigel Rawlins: so so what do you do now? Your are basically advisory

Jon Younger: You know, I, I sit on a number of boards and that's a pleasure. And, and, and honestly, it's a pleasure because I'm not completely feckless yet. I worry about how fast the world is moving and I worry about whether or not I'm continuing to offer people. So at, at the advisory board meeting just before we got on the phone, I was very quiet and and we were talking about a tremendous opportunity for this organization.

It was gonna grow by at least 40%. And, and and for a lot of these tech organizations, 40% sounds like nothing, for me it sounds like a lot. And so the question was, John, what do you think? And I said, how does it change the executive management of this place? I mean, I know how you're gonna change the operations of this place, but but you've been doing all this stuff yourself and now all of a sudden it's growing.

How are you gonna share the executive burden? That, that was an important conversation and it was one that I could contribute to uniquely. And so I, I think I've still got a little bit of gas in the tank. We shall

see how much more.

Nigel Rawlins: well, the issue there is the complexity. I mean, if you're gonna change something, you know it's gonna change other stuff and, and you were able to see it, well, the thing there is, and you're saying, oh, you've still got something to contribute. How do you manage your energy and focus?

Jon Younger: You know, um, it's a wonderful question. I, I have the great privilege and, and I, and I understand every day how lucky I am of a wonderful family that feeds me. so I mean, so the first thing is, is Carolyn is beyond belief. I'm, I'm the most fortunate guy in the world, and I've got some grandkids that don't mind my attention, and I've got some kids that don't hate me.

So it's a good starting point. I, I'm I'm working now and, and, and an awful lot, I'm sure it's the same for you, Nigel, you know, when I talk to guys who have been in a position similar to mine or more senior to mine, everybody's starting to figure out how to give back. That's a, that's a wonderful thing.

And they're given back in all kinds of different ways They're given back, you know, working with kids, they're given back, helping governments make decisions. A lot of people are working to help their towns or villages figure out what the heck is gonna go on in the future. So they're using the same skills and, and, and that sort of stuff.

I'm doing something similar to that as, as well. and, and, um, I love the idea of being able to, to talk with colleagues like you, you know, be between us, we've got a few years of experience and, and people may find something of value in, in what we say. And if that's the case, you know, maybe, maybe it's like, uh, butterfly wings in Japan.

Maybe it becomes transformational for the world and we can lean back with a beer and

enjoy our lives.

Nigel Rawlins: Mm. So what would you suggest to say somebody who is retiring, who wants to continue on? Do they have to change?I mean, if they've been working in an organization in in Australia, probably can work for 20 or 30 years in an organization and then

retire,

Jon Younger: yeah,

Nigel Rawlins: is there a mindset shift that they'll need?

Jon Younger: Sure there is, and that's a wonderful question. My, my dad, retired at 62 and never looked back and, uh, and, and got involved in all kinds of things. None of those things led to business. None of those things led to profitability. None of those things led to a greater reputation.

He was just a good man in the neighborhood, and that was plenty for, for him. Uh, as we were getting started, people may not know about you. The one of the things that you do is you take a nice walk in the in the mornings, kind of around the village and up and around the bay, et cetera, as you were mentioning.

You know, that's a wonderful time to to to refill your head and your soul just a little bit. Carolyn and I say that you gotta do something for your head, your heart, and your body every day. I exercise in the morning and I, I try to to be helpful on these advisory boards. And, and then the third thing is I just, you know, I, I, I think I'm the most ambitious, uh, grandfather. Just for time to, you know, spend spend with them.

Nigel Rawlins: I hate traveling. I don't, I rarely go to Melbourne, which is a hundred kilometers north of me. Um, I, I hate getting on airplanes, but I spoke to my son who lives in Whistler and, I haven't seen him for a few years.

Jon Younger: And Whistler

and bc

Nigel Rawlins: in Canada, he works on the mountain, electrician. he he is one of the, um, maintenance electricians with the lifts. And, he got married eight years ago and I haven't seen him for two or three years, and I said, I'm not gonna travel on planes anymore. I'm sick of going to airports and sitting on airplanes. And he got really upset. He said, dad, I want you to come over.

And he broke my heart. So I'm going next year.

Jon Younger: Good for you.

Nigel Rawlins: I've just had to find the fastest way to get there so I don't have to sit on a plane for too long.

Jon Younger: And from there you need to spend some time in Victoria and you need to spend some time going north a little bit. You don't have to take a plane to do it. And there's some wonderful

fishing

Nigel Rawlins: He lives right on the mountains, so he's apparently that's surrounded by forest and he's got a dog and, and a wife, of course. Um, no, I think he's gonna take some time and take me around, but all I'm gonna do is get to Vancouver, take the bus straight to him and spend the whole two weeks with him.

'cause you know, and this is the thing you're saying, ambitious grandfather, we love, I love my kids. Um, you know, I just wanna see them. But they've all grown up and they live in different

places

Jon Younger: We have 2, one son and his family live in Brooklyn, just very close. The other son lives outside of Denver. With the second son, the younger son in Denver we created a business together, an AI business. I can't tell you what a wonderful experience it was. And not always, you know, you know, people yell and scream and do all of the things that people do, but I, I can't tell you what what an extraordinary experience it was watching Aaron Younger, demonstrate how good an executive he is, how how good a strategist he is, and how little I had to offer him. 'Cause 'causehe really had his, had it together. So I hope you all, I hope you and everybody else has a similar kind of experience, which is just, you know, with each of our sons, sort of, sort of watching them launch and then being immensely impressed with the fact that they've launched. And then being sad that we

can't help them quite as much

anymore.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, that, well, I think that's part of being, you know, having family and, and kids like I, I know well, many, many, many years ago, I was an elementary or primary school teacher. That was, I, I quit 30 years ago. But one thing I did notice and, I encourage people to think about this, is, in the working bees where parents used to come along and help clean up the school and do things like that,

the tradies, the trades, people

would come in, they'd have equipment, they'd work hard all day, whereas the normal parents would come for a bit and then disappear.

The tradies just kept working. They were happy. So I encouraged both my boys to be tradies and both of them are tradies and they've done really well. They're happy, they can work anywhere. For example, my son in in Whistler and my other son's headed off north up into the hot weather in Queensland. At the moment he's doing roofing, but he's a carpenter.

He did cabinet making and he also did chefing. So he can cook really well on his barbecues. I'm very proud of them.

they tell you, I, I'd love to meet those fellas. They

Jon Younger: sound pretty good.

Nigel Rawlins: They're practical. They do stuff. Whereas my daughter, I hope she doesn't listen to this, did a sociology degree. She's still working in hospitality.

Jon Younger: Oh my,

Nigel Rawlins: That's the difficulty and that's a very hard intellectual degree to do because of the reading and the writing.

Um, I think there used to be policy work for them in government, but I don't think that's there anymore. Alright, let, let's move on to AI and, and talk about use of  AI . It's one hell of a tool for what I call cognitive productivity, and dealing with information and, and I think making us smarter.

But, what's your take on it?

Jon Younger: You know, it, it's, um, it's gonna change the world in extraordinary ways, very few of which we know now. But we can guess. I mean, I think that if we take the the sort of the three parts, right? So there's a part which is generative. There's a part which can it be smarter than people? And there's a part which is very practical, similar to your son's.

AI agents are not about the new innovative, amazing discoveries. They're about getting stuff done.

In the area of getting stuff done. Here's what we, what we know. If you think about the types of work in organizations, there's three categories of work. There's, there's the work of strategy, right?

There's the work of really the fundamental strategic bit of, of any organization, what we call the unit of competitive advantage, there's a whole bunch of activities that support that, but don't need to be part of it. So if you think about, if you think about the unit of competitive advantage in McDonald's, it's the store or it's the district, or it's the region.

And, and then they've got some folks that help them out in, in finance. They've got some folks in HR they've got some folks in partnerships or in marketing, et cetera, et cetera. But, but they support that core. They're not part of it. And then there's a lot of other stuff that is called essential support.

And essentially what it is that if you could get rid of it, you would, if you could do it cheaper, you would, if you could do it in a better, faster way, you would. But as long as you've got it, it has to be done. And it could be something as simple as sending out checks or making sure that people get paid.

I mean, that kind of stuff. What we know based on some really interesting work done by the RBL group, that, that group that I mentioned earlier, but also by a Hamburg based HR firm, about 65% of the work of big companies is essential support. So imagine what happens as we begin to automate more and more of that essential support.

Nigel Rawlins: One very small example is that many years ago I was the head of, I was the head of HR services and the chief learning officer for National City Corp, a very large bank in the US. We had 300 people in payroll. I don't think there's anybody in payroll anymore. So, you're in a situation where a tremendous amount of work is going to be changed enormously. That's one. And then the other side of it, Nigel, is that the people that helped us in the other areas, all the consultants, all the accountants, all the lawyers, et cetera, are being impacted by the ability of AI, generative AI, to teach us how to do things an awful lot easier and cheaper. So an example of that is, when we were incorporating, our AI business Mensch work, we paid for lawyers to do the the basic work. But since then we've been going to AI for for contracts. You know, I mean, a lawyer hasn't touched those contracts. The first time we had them look. But nowadays what you're finding is there's a tremendous amount of change in the work that organizations were buying freelancers or from professional services firms of various kinds. So it's, it's kind of a, got it at both ends going on, and and for an executive, it, it, it's tough to figure out how, where, when, who, what, getting the priority, getting the budget for it and really understanding the difference between what looks good and what'll be actually helpful to you.A couple of things I noticed, when you were talking about the nature of the organization. I'm thinking about Charles Handy wrote about a cloverleaf organsation.

and you know, the management, it's, it's where the intellectual part of the organization is, but the rest is support in many ways.

But another interesting one is this use of AI. Now I'm finding, 'cause I run a marketing services company. So basically I manage, I create and manage websites and obviously, um, this is my old work. My new work is a bit more consultative, uh, with clients to do that and what they can do with their talent. But.

There's a stupid use of AI too, and there's a good use, for example, I haven't had to employ too many technical specialists in the past. I might outsource, how do I do this technical thing? Well, now AI will help me. But the other other day I was so frustrated with, um, AI because as part of a website, to help it work better with Google, you use a, something called a schema.

So I was getting AI to do it, and then I'd test it and it wouldn't work. And I'd say, well, this is not working. You gotta do better. And, and so I was spending hours and hours trying to improve the the SEO of these websites. And I was getting frustrated because it wasn't working. I was wasting my time.

I found a $100 plugin that does it. And that's the stupidity. I mean, I was thinking, yeah, AI's gonna do it and spending hours and hours, you know? 'cause I'm trying to help my clients wasting my time. And this is the danger when

there might be a simple tool that costs you a hundred bucks. It's a plugin and it works perfectly.

And I don't have this bloody frustration of going backwards and forwards. Why aren't you doing your job properly?

Jon Younger: There's a variation on this, which is kind of fun. And that is, I forgot who did this study? It could have been the Boston Consulting Group, it could have been IBM one of those guys. And what they found was that the biggest problem in AI at that moment, this was in May or June or such, let's say it was done a couple of months earlier, was that organizations were choosing to focus on uses of AI that actually weren't helpful for their organization, but seemed really

cool. And so they did a they did a survey and went to the people in their organization said, what would you like AI to work on? and and the answers were quite different. So clearly one of the things that we've gotta do is we've gotta continuously help people to understand, as you pointed out a minute ago, where AI can actually make a difference and, and where it can make a difference, that's a difference.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, that's where I'm thinking about, you know, us older people who, who've had an analog life, you know, where we read books and where life was probably not so stressful and AI comes along and kicks out some stuff and you look at it and you can tell it's rubbish or it's not quite right.

Whereas. I think, and my big worry is especially where when we've gotta market ourselves nowadays or, or promote ourselves

kicking out content.

Jon Younger: Mm-hmm.

Nigel Rawlins: Now, if you just let AI kick out some content, it, it's getting better.

But if you can't look at it and assess it and evaluate it and put your knowledge into it, then it's gonna create a whole lot of rubbish that everyone else is creating.

And this is a concern, but this is where I think seniors have got a competitive advantage in, their work that they do.

Jon Younger: Yep.

Nigel Rawlins: What do you think of that?

Jon Younger: I think the challenge is, is that AI scares us and the older we are, the less familiar we are with how to use it, the more worried we are about making efforts. I love what you described earlier, because so many people wouldn't have jumped into it with the, the energy that you have to really understand what that AI is doing. So what we're experiencing right now is, is people doing sort of basic generative kinds of stuff. Should I buy this car or that? Where can I go to the supermarket to get the best deal on this? I mean, so it's almost becoming, in fact, it's not just almost, it's now becoming the next generation of search more than anything else. I, I I think that there's tons and tons and tons of programs free or cheap that help you to learn the basics of this stuff. But I don't know. And here's a project for, for for you or the two of us, I don't know that there's an introductory educational activity that seems to welcome older people.

And so when I when I look at that stuff and I'm an older guy, I go, ah, gee, do I really wanna spend the next five hours learning how to program this stuff?

So I duck and, and it's a shame that I'm ducking because if if something were to pop up in my feed that said, I know that you don't wanna spend the amount of time, but I can show you pretty quickly. And for an old guy, I am sure you can learn well, I might go for it. So maybe there'll be a Khan Academy for the rest of us, not just for the kids in the

future.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, well look, I think that's a really good point because one of the problems of working for yourself, especially if you've had a career and you're coming out, and we probably need to start talking about the nature of running a, a freelance type

business, is there is a learning curve. Um, you know how, for example, one of my big issues is I used to take notes. I'd read a book, and I've read lots and lots of books, and I take notes and they're written down, and then I got a Kindle. And now you can do highlights and you can send them off to Readwise.

But then what do you do with them? Well, there's, um, programs out there now that you can feed them into and interrogate them.

And so when I do my writing now, I have got lots of, lots of information that I use that I can pull out and feed into the AI and help me sort it out and put it into some sort of order. And then again, this is where, you know, you, this is why I do a lot of exercise to keep my brain fresh.

There's a lot of cognitive work to, to make sure that's saying what you want it to say.

Uh, and it's not just saying rubbish or, or wasting space. And, and that's, that's quite a cognitive demand.

Jon Younger: Teaching people to write prompts is very important.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, well, I'm finding two or three hours a day and that's it. That's, that's why I get outside, go for my walks, get on my bike. Um, you've just gotta take a break. You can't do, keep doing it.

Jon Younger: Yes. I agree with that. And I also think that as we, as we start thinking sort of about people who have had a few years experience like us, but also learning AI, the third piece is for, for those folks, how can we advise them to use AI? Easily well, and help if they do wish to continue to work over time, how they can continue to do so. You know, I I I had a lot of fun when we started our little AI business, and of course I said, Aaron is taking it in a different direction. But at the very beginning, I thought to myself, gee whiz, I'm gonna take the most obvious and plain businesses, and I'm gonna write about how AI can make the difference. so I chose, uh, a funeral home and I chose a florist and I chose an accounting firm, and I chose, you know, a a legal firm and all these little things where you're thinking you're, you've got three lawyers or four insurance specialists, or, you know, whatever that is. And, and very quickly it became really easy to imagine some of the outbound opportunities, some of the ways to connect.

So we all knew when we started in business that we needed a list of people that we were gonna contact to weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, just to keep those relationships were. And how else do you do it? Right? Uh, well, AI makes that possible. AI allows you to do that almost automatically and just keep doing what you would ordinarily forget about doing or maybe avoid doing or maybe not do so well.

So in the area of outbound tremendous opportunities, the area of internal, if your business is collecting and organizing information as you just described it, wow. I mean, it's, it's just beautiful. So for for for not very much time and effort, learning just basic prompts, learning some basic workflows, it can really help you. I, I don't I don't know myself sort of where the cut line is between the simple things that I'm describing and when it gets a lot more complicated and when you've gotta start to pay money and stuff like that. But there are so many things, a freelancer of any age, and certainly a freelancer with a few years of experience can do to stay in touch with clients more regularly, to do their work more, uh, routinely and more efficiently. It's, it's made for us more than anybody else. As Pat Pettiti, the head of Catalent said, it puts a firm in your pocket.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I think so. it definitely makes you far more productive if you're not getting lost in it. And when you're talking about prompting, basically we're giving instructions, but it can also give you feedback in those instructions, 'cause if it kicks out something that's not quite right, you can talk with it. And, and so in other words, you work backwards and forwards with it. Now you were just talking about a very important part of being a freelancer, which was outbound. In other words, seeking work. So let's talk about the business of being a freelancer. 'cause think that's, that's something that you, you think is very important. it's

Jon Younger: sure.

Nigel Rawlins: just a hobby, is

Jon Younger: No, it is not.

It is

Nigel Rawlins: So let's talk about business. The business of being a freelancer.

Jon Younger: Well, you've gotta treat it as a business, not a hobby. You've gotta understand what you're selling. You've gotta know where you stand versus other people that are competing for the, the, the the market that there is.

You need to understand what market there is and what market there's going to be. I mean, there are an awful lot of people that are trying to be in the translation business. It's not a good freelance business to be in anymore. So you've gotta be able to look ahead now now in the translation business, you can't, if we go back to the career stages, if I may do that, it, it makes no sense to be a stage one sort of learning the ropes or stage two, becoming an expert. But if you are truly expert in the area of of translation, then it's the way you say things happen, not just the words that you use. It's conveying a cultural spirit as well as an articulate statement. I'll give you a very small e example. I did an experiment, I I hope it's not a rude experiment, but I did an experiment a and that is, I said hello to Hispanic workers on the street, people selling tacos, people selling other things. And for half of those people, I just said, hello, and, uh, may I have this. For the other half I said, hello, and then I said, how are you, how is your family? Knowing that those are important words to use to establish a relationship in, in some Hispanic countries?

The difference was extraordinary. It's just extraordinary. In the first case, they treated me like, eh, and the second case, they treated me like I was a wonderful person. That's, that's what AI can help you to do at the senior levels, but at the junior levels, it's gonna kill you. So implicit in that is understanding what allows you to rise above the crowd.

What capabilities or what uniqueness allows you to do that. And that's something that requires experience, but it also requires research. You have to do the test as I did the test in that particular

case. So I, I'm very excited about the future of freelancing and the future of AI in freelancing and the future of outbound stuff, as well as the the inbound stuff. but we can't do it in the same way because expectations have increased. And if we don't meet those expectations, we're, we're not going to be as successful as we hope to be.

Nigel Rawlins: So what sort of consultants or freelancers do you think, well, at the moment, because it will change, I think

Jon Younger: It sure will.

Nigel Rawlins: Probably in most demand at the moment?

Jon Younger: Yes. You know, right now, if I knew, and, and I'm, I'm guessing along with you, 'cause I've seen the research, but I don't trust the research, everybody asks the survey, what do you think is going to be next? Nobody knows what's gonna be next. I have a hypothesis. One of my hypothesis is that there is no well established consulting expertise that accelerates the scaling of organizations.

It's, it's, it's still in the area of magic. It's still in the area of an individual genius as opposed to methodology. So you know that people have tried to write that book, but the fact of the matter is there are some guys, well, in the, in one of the advisory boards that I said that they're, they're gonna grow the organization from 10 to a hundred million in three years.

I believe they will do it. I believe that there's a whole bunch of different things that they must do to make that right, and that the, the, the person who's gonna run it really knows how to do it. But I don't think anybody else in the organization knows how to do it. And I don't think we could find 20 people on the streets of Manhattan right now that know how to do it.

So that's one area where organizations need to know how to grow fast, but sustainably, I mean sustainably in terms of maintaining performance and they need tremendous help around that. Second, uh, this bossism stuff and the, and the stuff let's not hire people. Let's, let's lay off people, et cetera.

That's gonna backfire. We know it's gonna backfire. You and I, Nigel, have seen it backfire five to 10 different times. We know that values, culture, talent, treating people with greater respect. I mean, I I read this thing about the 1400 people at at Amazon where, where people are getting laid off by text, don't bother coming into the office, we will send your stuff to you. I mean, why would anybody ever work for that organization again? Why would anybody ever recommend that organization? So I think that's all gonna backfire. we're gonna have to we're gonna have to fix a lot of that stuff. I think that the third thing that's gonna happen is we're gonna have to figure out new ways of funding all of this. VCs are not the right way to fund it. I mean, it's just crazy. And the private equity guys are having trouble. We're gonna need a very different funding model. Those are my three guesses. Now. Now, am I gonna be able to play a big role in that? Maybe if it was 10 years ago, but it's nice to see.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, thinking about that, you know, in terms of careers and getting work, all that, are you better off being a specialist or a generalist? You know what's gonna work, do you reckon?

Jon Younger: You, I think you've gotta be both. I think it's as simple as that. So if you were to ask me in my career, and I I don't, I don't think I'm very hot stuff, so please understand. Um, I know enough about internal talent development and career. I know enough about external talent and how you build living and breathing and effective systems of deployment and scaling. And and I know enough about AI to know that it will have a big impact. And I've got some basic conversants around how you deploy. Is that a specialist or a generalist? You know, I mean, I I think what we've gotta do is we've gotta evolve as the tech driving our work evolves and, and build capability around that stuff. I, I think that we're gonna have more and more people will change careers more often either because they're they're pursuing something larger, grand or whatever, or because, you know, the stuff behind 'em keeps getting whacked.

Nigel Rawlins: Yeah, it's, it's one thing I'm noticing well have noticed over the last 10 years is people jump onto something and they become the guru of it. Then something else comes along and they jump onto that. So there's a lot of people bouncing around. But my, my concern with that is what, what are they actually learning and what are they then capable of using? But it it sounds very much like you do need a human being who's able to see differently and, pull all these things together, uh, because AI will form part of an organization. I think we had an example here recently where I think one of our banks might have sacked a whole lot of their people, and a week later they had to bring them all back in.

Jon Younger: Yes, exactly. Exactly,

Nigel Rawlins: They thought AI do it and it didn't. And, and that's what's happening. I know that they've gotta work, work fast because things are a bit scary, but you can just blow it by not not being sensible. And that's where I think we are looking for people who can come in and say, whoa, slow down, let's just work around this and figure it out properly.

And, but the, the problem with that is it's not a quick fix.

And, and if people want a quick fix, you you know, it's not gonna work.

Jon Younger: You know there's a book by Danny Kahneman, and, he he recently died. He was extraordinary. They won the Nobel Prize, he and Amos Tversky for their behavioral economics. And the last book that he wrote is Thinking Fast and Slow. And I don't know whether you've read the book, but I think you understand implicitly all that that he was talking about. And it's the difference between how we deal with routine stuff, where we kind of know the solution. And the question is how do we get at it fast enough? And the non-routine stuff where we don't know the solution, we're not sure how to put it together, and we've gotta be smart enough to not fire everybody before we find out whether the

damn thing works.

Nigel Rawlins: Surprisingly, that's why podcast number 78 going out about a young Japanese lady's, not young. She's probably in her forties and fifties, running forest therapy, taking people outta forest just to slow down and not, not keep on this treadmill. Well, I've got one last question.

Jon Younger: Sure.

Nigel Rawlins: Why would we do all this?

What's the purpose? Why would we wanna keep working in our sixties or seventies even?

Jon Younger: You know, it's a wonderful question. One of my sons is a recovering astrophysicist who's now a hedge fund portfolio manager. And Josh, Josh asked a long time ago, he said, what's the secret of success In In graduate school. And I said it's two things. One is obviously the hard work, but the second is the choice of the problem you're trying to solve. And there's a wonderful story of what's called the habit hamming question. Do you know about the hamming question? Does that ring a bell?Hamming was a, a scientist at Bell Labs, one of the great research organizations of all time, and he'd go into the labs and say, what are you working on?

And they'd say, B and C. And he said, if you could work on anything and you had infinite resources, what would you work on? And they would say, E, F, G. And he would say, well, why aren't you starting work on EFG for heaven's sakes? I mean, why are you working the lesser issue? And, I think in our sixties, our challenge, like like a good researcher is, is is to is to continue to look for interesting questions that help us to live a little better, learn a little more, and contribute a bit to a better world. And I think if we do that and if we keep those interesting questions in our head, we've gotta have a better life.

Nigel Rawlins: Sounds perfect. I couldn't finish better. Any better than that? I think

Jon Younger: I am so pleased, Nigel.

Thanks so much for inviting me.

Nigel Rawlins: So, Jon do, do you want people to find you?

Jon Younger: Yeah, sure. I guess, jon Younger, JC younger@mac.com. I I don't have a website. I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. I've got a bunch of people that, that, uh, that seem to be interested in what I have to say. And yes, I, I'd love for you to find me.

Nigel Rawlins: That's fantastic.