Rethinking Work: Adapt, Grow & Succeed with Rishad Tobaccowala

Frank Cottle [00:00:41  ]:
Rishad, thank you for joining us on the Future Work podcast today. We’re really excited to have you here with us.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:00:48 ]:
Frank, thank you for having me.

Frank Cottle [00:00:50  ]:
You have just an amazing background. I am in awe. One of the 300 people since 1948 to be in the advertising hall of fame with publicists with razorfish. My goodness, just amazing companies that you’ve worked with and chaired and really driven to their successes. Digitas in all of your work that you’ve seen. We’re talking about the future of work here, as you know. What do you think is driving the future of work? We know the future is always tomorrow, that’s obvious. But what do you think the drivers are the major components that you think are important?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:01:36  ]:
I would say there are three components that are very important. One of them that drives the future of work is technology. A second one that drives the future of work is the evolving mindsets of talent or people. And they evolve over time with expectations. And the third is a societal backdrop constantly as to the hierarchy of and the meaning of work.

Frank Cottle [00:02:10  ]:
If you were to look at that as a Venn diagram, would those be in equal parts or would something be weighted, particularly these days?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:02:19  ]:
I would say the weighting would basically today be more towards talent and technology than anything else. And it would be sort of equally at intersection of talent and technology because they seem to be feeding off each other. In very simply, the technology is enabling talent and talent then uses technology to create more technology.

Frank Cottle [00:02:46  ]:
So you’re saying it’s not really a chicken and egg issue. It’s really a parallel issue of it’s parallel.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:02:51  ]:
It’s almost like synergistic. It’s synergistic. And then the societal implications of that. I try to explain to people that technology started with the discovery of fire. And then of course we had the wheel and each time there was a technological change, people behaved in different ways, use it in different ways and then that changed Society, Correct, Correct.

Frank Cottle [00:03:15  ]:
I think that’s true. The societal change that we’re seeing, I think when it relates to technology or whether that technology is fire, wheel, steam power, regardless of what it is, is always there’s a certain period of fear.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:03:34  ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:03:35  ]:
An adjustment point of view, a certain period of early adoption denial, all. All variety of emotional reactions to that type of change. How do you think that separates the early adapters from the non believers, if you will? And the early adopters really benefit that much? Or did society as a whole benefit equally as the group moves forward?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:04:06  ]:
So what tends to basically happen is there are three things that happen. The first is early adopters, if they are not too, too early and are resilient, tend to basically gain significant part of the financial advantages of new technologies. The middle group gets the benefits of the technology when it comes to living and their business. They may not get it as much as being an early investor or early mover. And then the late stage people need and often come on when there is no choice. So for instance, during COVID whether you liked it or not, you had to basically move to E Commerce.

Frank Cottle [00:04:56  ]:
Yes, Agreed.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:04:58  ]:
Right. Everybody had to move to E Commerce.

Frank Cottle [00:05:01  ]:
Everybody had to go to flexible work.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:05:03  ]:
Everybody had to go to flexible work. So what tends to happen is there’s almost these three waves. The first wave, there are obviously risks, but the benefits are if you move early, you can establish not only companies, brands early, but you can also have some financial advantages, but you could also lose all your money and lose your business. And in the second one, they get the benefits as human beings more than anybody else because they’ve not had to make the investment, but they’re early enough so they’re utilizing it. And then the latter group, as I said, only comes on because they don’t have a choice. And these groups change depending on what the technology tends to be. But for instance, in mobile technology, there was almost no laggards. There are very few people who say, I refuse to use mobile phones. That was only simply a question of is it cost effective enough for me to buy one.

Frank Cottle [00:05:56 ]:
Well, that’s. They were already using a phone.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:05:59  ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:06:00  ]:
The fact that it became mobile was irrelevant.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:06:02  ]:
Almost exactly. Exactly. So it’s only when they do something completely new behavior. And then often in many of these cases, as we might discuss, once you do a new behavior and it sort of sits well with you, it’s what I say is like a champagne cork, when you take it out of a.

Frank Cottle [00:06:19  ]:
Champagne bottle, doesn’t go back in, and.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:06:22  ]:
It doesn’t go back in. Again. And so in some cases you might be doing something in one way and then suddenly you’re forced to do it another way and you begin to say, why was I doing it the other way?

Frank Cottle [00:06:32  ]:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. It’s funny, when talking about early adapters in our own business, we’re in the flexible workspace business. As you know, I’ve been there for 45 years. Back in 1979, 80, early 80s, we were doing video conferencing and we were doing simultaneous voice and Data Transmission over 4 Pair twisted with touch screens on desk, things of that nature. Nobody even had a PC.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:07:04  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:07:05  ]:
And so nobody appreciated the technology tools that we had prepared for our customer base. And you probably heard the old saying that the pioneers get stuck full of arrows and the guys that make the money are the railroads.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:07:22  ]:
Exactly.

Frank Cottle [00:07:23  ]:
Lasers do not make the money. But you develop that, an understanding and what we understood, and this might relate to what you’re saying a little bit. The difference between the cutting edge and the demand edge.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:07:40  ]:
Yes. And it tends to basically happen is, you know, there’s the bleeding edge. And the bleeding edge usually is the people on the bleeding edge who end up bleeding. Right.

Frank Cottle [00:07:51  ]:
Death sometimes. Bleeding to death sometimes.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:07:54  ]:
So that being immediately after that, you begin to have, as you say, the leading edge. They tend to sometimes benefit and the early adopters after that tend to benefit. So usually being, as I always say, being the point of the arrow gets you bent. Just being behind the point of the arrow allows you to lead and see the future.

Frank Cottle [00:08:14  ]:
How do you see that in technology today? AI is the point of the arrow in technology today?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:08:21  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:08:24  ]:
Content creators versus people using AI as a data source as opposed to a creation source. Where do you see the bulk of benefit from AI coming? Because that is a future of work. That is a future of life.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:08:41  ]:
It’s future of life. So I have three approaches of this. The first is, I believe even today, with everything we read about it, AI is significantly underhyped.

Frank Cottle [00:08:52  ]:
Agreed. I agree with that.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:08:53  ]:
Right. And that’s because the rate of change, exponential rate of change, but also it’s going to make knowledge free. And about 50 to 60% of all workers in America are knowledge workers, white collar workers. And if it makes knowledge free and it enables amazing technological capability of the talent, it’s going to be very, very dramatic.

Frank Cottle [00:09:15  ]:
Can I interrupt you there for a second?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:09:18  ]:
Sure.

Frank Cottle [00:09:18  ]:
Because you just said in America, 80 or 90% are knowledge workers. When we look at AI though, isn’t it a global issue?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:09:30  ]:
AI is a global issue.

Frank Cottle [00:09:32  ]:
How do we balance the benefit on a global basis or do you believe that certain cultures, economic structures, like the United States is a good example, are at that just behind the point of the spear position and will benefit exponentially over others.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:09:58  ]:
So what will happen is there’ll be two sets of benefits. I think countries like the United States and China for sure are today, I would say, the leading AI, AI countries in the world.

Frank Cottle [00:10:10  ]:
AI competitors and AI competitors.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:10:13  ]:
And in many ways, AI requires certain parts of AI, requires a certain scale of data, spending and resources that only these two countries are large enough with enough money to make those happen. And unfortunately, or fortunately, those two countries are also going to use AI, particularly as a form of weaponry.

Frank Cottle [00:10:38  ]:
Agreed. Or AI within their weaponry.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:10:41 ]:
Within their weaponry. And so those countries are going to basically have that particular edge on the other end. What will happen is as for a long time, I think AI is going to be over invested in because the risk is of being underinvested so very much. Like, you know, for about a decade, a lot of people, their travel and their food was underwritten by venture capital. One of the reasons Uber was so cheap or GrubHub was so cheap is basically it was underwritten by venture capital. It was below cost. So today the technology that I use and I use, you know, $80 worth of, I use $100, but I use four $20 models. I use Anthropic and I use Gemini and I use Microsoft and I use OpenAI even though they’re the same, but I use those, that’s $20 a month. So for $80 a month I get the world’s best technology. And most companies aren’t even allowed to get more than one. And most companies use the technology six months previous. So the other part of AI is AI can also be, for a lot of people, the stone or the slingshot that allows David to bring down Goliath. And there is a part of AI which I think if the usable part of AI will suddenly make things happen that are incredible. So I’ll give you an idea for this. Microsoft has a company called GitHub. And GitHub basically, as you know, has software code and a bunch of other things. So 100 million depository. But there are 100 million people who today program using GitHub. The CEO of GitHub basically said because of copilot and AI, instead of programming starting with plastic or belted plastic, you are now, because of AI, going to start programming with Lego pieces. As a result, he expects a billion people to be using GrubHub of which 750 million are going to be from Asia and Africa. Now all of a sudden you begin to have massive amounts of people who begin to have access to things. And what people don’t realize, the money may not be there, but if you go around and ask what’s the biggest market for YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and X in the world? It’s India.

Frank Cottle [00:13:09  ]:
It’s India. Yes, agreed.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:13:11  ]:
And so there’s this very bifurcated which is in certain forms of AI, China and the United States are going to dominate, but also in other forms of AI because it’s a very enabling technology. It’s going to allow a lot of other parts of the world to catch up. And, and when it does, I mean, one of the things that. One of the amazing things in India is India’s infrastructure for broadband. Right now it’s 4G. The cost of it is $0.05 on the dollar compared to the United States, the cheapest. Right. So everybody in India has not only a phone, but is constantly streaming and watching video. So it’s these very interesting things where it’s almost like in this case, the people who don’t have technology suddenly have it and can catch up. And then the people who are technologically advanced even move further and somewhat in between gets hurt. And I think in almost everything I’m seeing, being in the middle is no place to be.

Frank Cottle [00:14:18  ]:
No, I would agree, I would agree that that’s it. And it is interesting when you watch the adaptation of the changes and we talk about societal changes and cultural changes. A number of years ago, my wife and I used to spend the month of February down in Baja California, down at the tip of Baja, surfing. We’d go down there to go windsurfing primarily. And we’d stay in this little village and that in that village there was no telephone. You had to ride about 40 to 45 minutes on a mountain bike to the regional police station where there was a telephone and a telephone operator and they had three or four booths there and it was kind of cute to watch. They had an old like first generation mitel switch that was run off of a bank of batteries that they charged with a generator every night. But what went on there was that everybody went to the phone. That’s where marriages were made, that’s where business was done. That’s where families saw each other, their relatives. All of these things happened. They didn’t have the money in the region to put in the infrastructure of hardwired communication systems.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:15:39  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:15:40  ]:
Which is the same in India. And Then they put in a cell phone antenna.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:15:46  ]:
Yep. And the world changed.

Frank Cottle [00:15:48  ]:
Everybody got a cell phone. And this is early generation, even. Everybody got a cell phone. Not a smartphone at that point, but just communications. Nobody went to the police station. Families didn’t see each other. The whole society changed in that micro world.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:16:07 ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:16:07  ]:
You’re seeing in India.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:16:09  ]:
You’re seeing that. You’re seeing that in India, and you’re also seeing that again now in the United States, if you haven’t seen. It’s an amazing article that I posted on LinkedIn. It’s the COVID story this month in the Atlantic magazine called the Antisocial Century. And it basically makes the case of. There’s these statistics of how people are increasingly becoming almost like. It’s this amazing thing about everything. From 80 to 90% of most restaurants, business is now delivery or takeout. People are spending between two to three hours and kids five hours on phones. People are basically. In the old days, we used to go to the movies three to four times a month. Now we go to movies three times a year.

Frank Cottle [00:17:01  ]:
If that.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:17:02  ]:
If that. And so what tends to basically happen is there used to be three communities, as they say. There’s the community of the family, which teaches you love. There is the broad community of your passion groups, which are your tribes, which teach you loyalty. But there was this in between, very much like you mentioned, going to the police station to make calls. That is where you learned cooperation. And you also basically learned a lot of other things about connection that seems to be disappearing. And that is how technology and people change society.

Frank Cottle [00:17:35  ]:
No, that’s a real good illustration of that, I think, and it’s very, very true. I wonder, though, and I’ll use you and I as an example. You’re in Chicago, I’m down in Fort Worth, Texas. We’ve never met. We’ve spoken a couple of times now. And everything. Neither one of us is antisocial or approaches this conversation antisocially. And you’d probably be comfortable. And I certainly. I certainly would, if. Not a problem I was trying to figure out. I said, you know, I’m gonna call a shot. He’ll know the answer. So I’ve made a friend, even though I hope so, at least.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:18:13  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:18:13  ]:
Even though I’ve not been in your home or you’ve not been in mine. Looks like we’re both there now.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:18:20 ]:
Yes, absolutely. I give you this. This bit, I think. Yes, the stuff. Sometimes we blame stuff on technology.

Frank Cottle [00:18:28  ]:
It’s a different kind of being social, as opposed to the old social, which says we all had to gather around a table or physically meet. Today we meet using technology, but we’re still social, we’re still engaged, we still have create relationships. Yes. And you know, I’m older, so I’m 75. So I’ve been in all these iterations of technology and change that or a lot of them at least. And I used to travel a lot. I used to travel two out of every six weeks globally for 25, 30 years. And I found that I can actually sustain relationships better by not traveling once. Once the relationship is set, you’ve got to set it once it’s set by not traveling but by connecting more often through this medium than seeing somebody once a quarter or twice a year or something like that.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:19:37 ]:
Absolutely. So there are two, what you’ve just mentioned. I’ve got two pieces of both modern and ancient data to support. Since we’re seasoned individuals. I shall go back to many, many years ago I was working on the Hallmark business, the Hallmark God business and Hallmark cards said, you know, some of our card are selling less and people are being less connected. And we eventually showed research that people were who are very high users of Hallmark cards, were also very high users of electronic cards. And what was basically happening is, you know, if your personality was, you wanted to reach out and connect. All that was happening is there were new ways of reaching out and connecting. And the old people were basically saying no one’s connecting anymore because they aren’t using cards. We said, no, they’re connecting and they also use lots of cards, which is, which is a big thing to your point. And I’ve always basically believed there’s another statement which is familiarity breeds contempt. How many times do you need to be with the person before they say why are you hanging around so much?

Frank Cottle [00:20:47  ]:
Absence mixed of absence makes the heart.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:20:49  ]:
And I truly believe what we need is you need set an experience. So once I meet somebody, I mean, of course we’ve not met in person, but let’s say we do meet in person. We don’t have to meet in person all the time. Meeting in person will enhance our relationship in certain ways that in person interaction does. But it doesn’t mean you have to meet with everybody all the time.

Frank Cottle [00:21:11  ]:
No, it does. In fact, I have a meeting next week with an individual from our industry and I haven’t seen her in person for 15 years.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:21:22 ]:
Yep.

Frank Cottle [00:21:23  ]:
But we’ve stayed in touch not a lot but, but, but pretty consistently through electronic medium.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:21:32  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:21:33  ]:
And she’s going to be in, in town. And I knew it. So I said, hey, let’s have lunch. It was as if that 15 years never existed.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:21:43  ]:
Exactly the same thing happened to me yesterday. Talked to somebody I hadn’t connected with for like four or five years and it looked like it was time was not mattering at all. And that’s the key thing with, I think, where the work is going, where flexible work, which you all are flexible. I truly believe that in order to survive or to thrive, not survive, but to thrive in the world we’re sort of living in, a key word really is flexibility, adaptability and agility.

Frank Cottle [00:22:14  ]:
Sure.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:22:15  ]:
Words, I guess.

Frank Cottle [00:22:16  ]:
And the definition of all of those words have to be treated the same almost. Yes, yes, I would agree with that. You know, it’s funny, a few years ago, I’ll say a decade ago, in order to succeed and you’ve been in successful companies, you know, you needed a good product and needed access to capital so you could drive the product to a large customer base.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:22:40 ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:22:42  ]:
Okay. Today if you don’t have there, you’re that same organization and you don’t have flexibility in all aspects of your model or agility as, as you were saying also in all aspects of your model, no amount of capital and no amount of, no quality of product is going to save you.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:23:01 ]:
Yes. And that is one of the biggest struggles right now in this return to office. But this office, four to five days a week, right outside of the fact that when I talk to CEOs, I said, first of all, there’s lots of flexible workspaces that people can use. I don’t understand why you have to get people five days a week to this one space. There’s a lot of third workplaces. I do believe that from time to time, especially for organizations, for younger people, etcetera, you need in person interaction. So I said it’s not the office, it’s in person interaction. You can make that happen in lots of places, including very fluid like offices and flexible space. That’s number one. But as importantly, in today’s world, if you were to start your company again, you would not design it bringing people five days a week into a fixed office that you were paying all stuff for in a major city. Right. You would never do it, would you? No, I would never do it. I said now in today’s world, you’re competing with companies who are starting today with a fresh sheet of paper, with none of that legacy class, none of that lack of flexibility. The same company that says we want to be agile basically says, but I’m going to be agile, but I’m not going to be flexible. So you can’t be agile and not be flexible. And they say we have to adapt to the future. How can you adapt to the future if you aren’t flexible? It’s one of the most enormous things. I spoke recently to people at Amazon and they started clapping because I said, hey, listen, there are three things that I’ve learned from Amazon. It’s a company I admire a lot. One is because of things like Amazon Web Services at Amazon prime and a lot of the stuff they have allowed speed to happen and they’ve allowed me to work from anywhere and get stuff from anywhere to anywhere. Yep, that’s what you’ll ever need. Web services and everything else. Second is you’re a company that has been deep into things like personalization. Okay. Third is you become a company or a company that is intensely sort of deep in not just personalization. And this whole idea of you’re providing me with flexibility, but you’ve been a data driven company to a certain extent. But then you tell stories using one page memos. Now just think about the fact that you are basically asking people to come back five days a week, work into an office. You have no data, none of your notes show data. It just says it’s a feeling. You are basically doing something that is anti what you have been providing everybody else, which is Amazon Web services and flexibility. Right? And you have one size fits all. When you are the company of personalization and you talk about this thing called day one or day zero, what if we started all again and if you started all over again and Bezos was back and not on a beat somewhere, he wouldn’t basically start it like this. And they all started clapping, right? And I said all that you’re basically doing is you want to have severance. I mean, you want to have layoffs without severance for your middle management. And this is what you’ve done, you’re not fooling anybody. And that is what most companies don’t realize and most leaders don’t realize. Human beings have godlike power. They no longer are going to basically say just because you are senior and you say this is the way. This is not the Mandalorian. There is no this is the way. We are living in Lawrence of Arabia. Nothing is written. You rewrite stuff again.

Frank Cottle [00:26:23  ]:
No, that’s very interesting. And it’s funny, the excuse that I see so many of these CEOs that say, oh, back to the office. We have to preserve our culture. And I say, man, if you have to go back to the office to preserve Your culture. You didn’t have a culture in the first place.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:26:37  ]:
You didn’t have a culture in the first place. Absolutely. There are two things, by the way, which I always remind people. First of all, culture is about excellence. It’s about connection. It’s about clear communication. It’s not about a place or chairs and tables. People don’t get, you know, I am so beautifully connected to my table. That’s not what happens. That’s the first part of it. The second part of it, to a great extent, when you sort of think about this sort of culture, I think what people are doing is they do not want to come back to the bosses. It’s not the offices, it’s really the bosses. I said, we have entered an age of debossification. People have asked, what exactly do you do as a boss? You control, you command, you monitor, you measure, you create, you need, you build. We did fine without you. And you don’t know how to manage. So I think it’s not a crisis of space, it’s a crisis of leadership.

Frank Cottle [00:27:36 ]:
I’ll buy that. I’ll buy that. I also think people just hate commuting. That’s a whole topic.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:27:44  ]:
They definitely. Here’s what basically happens. They hate commuting. And as someone basically said, if you want people to commute, you have to earn the commute.

Frank Cottle [00:27:53  ]:
Yep.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:27:53  ]:
And it’s very hard to earn the commute for five days a week or four days a week. You can basically say, I’ve always said, you know what, you can build world class cultures by having people come in one week a month and programming brilliantly for personal interaction that one week only when some. And you can do amazing stuff, but you won’t do that because it requires you to rethink your company. Be flexible, be flexible with space, be flexible with yourself. And you know, the substack I write is called the future does not fit in the containers of the past. And I think non adaptable space is container of the past.

Frank Cottle [00:28:33  ]:
I would, I would, I could not agree more. Let’s shift over to the other big issue I think facing companies today as they forge into the future work or stumble into it. That’s multi generational issue. In our company today. We have me at one age group, an advanced boomer, if you will. And we have interns. So we have basically five generations at work.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:29:03  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:29:04  ]:
People in the company. And I don’t think our company is terribly. No any established company overall. And somebody said to me, well, communicating, you know, Frank, you communicating with our interns is sort of like you dating a 22 year old. You know, you’re not going to have a lot to talk about aside from maybe one subject or two overall. And I don’t think I’m that bad. But the reality is this is an issue for companies as we go forward because my generation is working longer and millennials will work longer. Yet technology allows that in so many areas. If we embrace it, and I think that that will become more and more common and people are entering the workforce earlier with a different set of skills than a classic degree. Yes. How do you manage that?

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:30:04 ]:
Well, I think you manage that. My first, as you are being aware of the fact that there are differences and recognizing that and on all sides, not just among baby boomers or among young. Everyone has to think about it. So I’ll give you three very interesting statistics of what are different and then three things which are together. So we can start with the together versus different. So the first difference is a mindset difference and the mindset basically is uneven things is like capitalism. So you and I, 63% of us believe in capitalism, 22% of Gen Z believe in capitalism. That’s number one. Number two, and you and I basically have always believed for a long, long time that if we do well by the company, the company will do well by us. And to a great extent, young people basically believe there is no social contract. We have to have maximum optionality because we don’t know how long this company will be around or whether we can trust anybody at this company. The third one is you and I, when we had our jobs, tended to basically focus on our jobs. And if we had time, we’d of course focus on things like family, et cetera. This new generation, basically 66% of people who are working full time for a company in Monk Gen Z have a side gig or side hustle with which they make money. Those are very significant differences. And at the end of it, Gen Z doesn’t want to grow up to be like the people in the boardroom. They would like the money of the people in the boardroom, but they don’t want to be like the people in the boardroom. So that’s. But now there are some commonalities. And the commonalities is the following, which are human, forget about age and everything else, or a human. And in business, what I’ve discovered is every single person wants exactly the same nine things. Okay, we just express it differently. Everybody maybe with the exception of one or two esoteric people here and there, one, money, fame and power. So we come to work for money, fame and power of some sort. For younger people, it may be money, recognition and autonomy. Some balance, some balance of those, but that’s not enough. We also want purpose, values and connections. We want to basically believe that what we’re doing is purposeful work with good value. And we feel connected not only to our work, but to our clients and other people. What’s basically happened, and we also want the last three is we want freedom, the ability to tell our story and to grow. And what has happened over time is different groups of us have different. These nine, it’s like a portfolio of nine. Older people have tended for long line time to focus more on the first three, which is money, fame and power. And more and more people are now focusing on growth, freedom and story with a little bit of purpose and connections. And so if we understand that everybody actually wants all the same nine, but we just want it in different ways, we can have a common communication. And the common communication, I believe, is under one word, which is growth. How do we grow ourselves, grow the company, grow our futures? And if we can combine on that, then we can have a generational discussion.

Frank Cottle [00:33:18  ]:
Do you think that what you’ve just said, money, fame and power versus work, life balance, we’ll call it, to simplify it. Is that a U.S. thing? Is that a U S centric comment that. No.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:33:37  ]:
So what I’m really surprised is I, in my book, I did some research and it’s actually global.

Frank Cottle [00:33:42  ]:
Okay. Because, because that, that’s like when I look at Africa and the development of Africa and everything, I see a lot of money, fame and power.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:33:48  ]:
Yeah, but, but the reason, the reason is capitalism.

Frank Cottle [00:33:51  ]:
I, I see a lot of sacrifice to achieve. I see a lot of that.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:33:56  ]:
Yeah, but it’s very global because I’m finding, for instance in China there’s this 25% of people who are called the lying down generation. In Singapore and South Korea, 82% of young people want to do their own stuff because they don’t believe in their structure. So obviously there are differences from country to country. So it’s not exactly the same.

Frank Cottle [00:34:21  ]:
Singapore is not China either.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:34:22  ]:
Singapore is not China. So Singapore is different than China. Very different. And Korea is different. But there’s this human condition that is somewhat similar and then just a little bit different based on where the country is, if that makes sense. I don’t have any African numbers, but I have Asian and European or US Numbers. But that is. Your point is right, which is the generational thing is just to a recognize the generations are different, find A discussion the commonalities, and then from there discuss what the differences are. And also recognize that this can be very much like the Judy Collins song. Right? Both sides now.

Frank Cottle [00:35:04 ]:
Okay, I can buy that. I can buy that. I think too, that the learning curve, the things that you learned or I learned as we gained our experience in business, are really what has helped us to achieve what we have.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:35:21  ]:
Yes, they do.

Frank Cottle [00:35:23  ]:
And I wonder if without the diligence and effort to achieve those things, if the generation of you’ve described, it will progress, if you want to call it progress, in the same way that other generations have.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:35:45  ]:
So what’s very. The answer will be told in time, I guess. But I will give you a perspective. The opposite of what you and I are. Okay. Which is we grew up in a particular way. But I think what we did is we went through the school of hard knocks when we could have learned much faster with the school of Hard Hoffner. Hard Hoff knocks. Right. There were lots of things that we did which was just pain with no actual result. And a lot of that people are now questioning, like, why did you have to do that for this? That’s number one.

Frank Cottle [00:36:19  ]:
Well, they have different tools. They do have different tools.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:36:23  ]:
They have different tools. And the big thing is now is very many different tools. And people are not willing for good reason to say, let’s bide our time, let’s pay our dues. So I’ll give you a very simple answer today, in the future of work, which is like driving consulting and law firms crazy. Okay? If you think about consulting and law firms, which are amazing companies, a lot of their expertise is based on two types of expertise. One is crystallized expertise of people like us who are older, who can see patterns and recognize. Another large part of expertise is basically simply case studies, precedents, all of those other kinds of stuff. And what you did is you spent the first 10, 12 years of your career thing while working your way up to partner, learning about the case studies, how to utilize them, the precedence, the data. All of that is now ChatGPT.

Frank Cottle [00:37:17  ]:
Yeah, it’s all. Well, you said knowledge.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:37:21  ]:
And so what basically is happening is people are saying, I’m not going to spend 12 years to be a partner. I could basically get there in four years or five years. And that is now crushing. Like, if you see most of these consulting companies, they’re hiring fewer people, they’re getting rid of partners. And because part of it is the crystallized intelligence is very important. A lot of the other stuff we did, we don’t need to do. And often the senior people don’t recognize there’s a new tools and new technologies and people are not going to adapt and basically say, just because you learned by candlelight, I’m going to still learn by electricity.

Frank Cottle [00:37:54  ]:
God, we could go on for hours with this. And it’s very, very valuable. I hope it’s very valuable to our listeners as well. Tell us a little bit about your latest book and then let’s see if we can reschedule it another time.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:38:07  ]:
Perfect. So thank you again for inviting me. So my book really is based on three thoughts. The first thought really is that work is going to change more between 2019 and 2029 than it has in the previous 50 years easily. And that is because of a combination of societal changes that we’ve talked about, technology, the rise of gig work, the impact of COVID and new marketplaces that we can connect, including marketplaces for space and a whole bunch of other things. As a result of that, we’re going to basically have to rethink every part of an organization, from the strategy to the way the organization is shaped, to the way talent is trained and leadership. What the book basically does is it sets out the first five shifts that are going on, why the world is changing, four things we need to do, including what I call the unbundling of the office to different spaces, which is very much in aligned with your business, and then the last five and things like retraining the workforce and how AI or humans and machines will coexist. And the last five chapters really are about what we need to do to prepare for the future. And CEOs and young people who have read the book while I’ve been writing it have basically said what they like about it is it sets up a framework to think, provides us with a lot of different perspectives, but doesn’t give you the answer. It says the answer depends on your culture, your company and your needs. Which is the answer is flexible.

Frank Cottle [00:39:35  ]:
No, that’s. That’s good. I have the privilege of reading the preview of it. I haven’t read the full book reading the preview of it. And what my simple version of is, it gives you the information and sets you on a path.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:39:48  ]:
Yes.

Frank Cottle [00:39:50 ]:
It has to be your own path, though.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:39:52  ]:
It has to be your own path. And it basically from time to time asks you to think as if you were starting all over again or from an opposite point of view to get you on the path. That’s the one that I sort of provoke. People say, what if the opposite of what you think was true? And what have you started again?

Frank Cottle [00:40:11  ]:
You know, it’s funny, I don’t know if everybody will understand this or get this or not, but somebody told me once, he says, yeah, if you’re going to succeed in business today, you’ve got to be able to reinvent yourself. Like Madonna.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:40:25  ]:
Yeah.

Frank Cottle [00:40:26  ]:
So how many Madonnas were there or are there? 5, 6, 7, 8. Complete agility, complete flexibility. Looking at the marketplace and adapting a basic product, entertainment, in our case, to a marketplace by reinventing ourselves. And I think we all have to do that without denying who we are.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:40:52  ]:
Right. I think it’s a combination of we have to be true to our roots while taking wings.

Frank Cottle [00:40:57  ]:
Yeah.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:40:59  ]:
And I think Madonna is absolutely right. And we have to practice two things. Reinvention is very, very important. Two other things. One is rethinking. But the other one, which is one thing that you and I have learned and which everyone needs to learn, we’re going to get knocked down to the floor from time to time. The third art is resurrection. So, you know, reinvent, rethink, and resurrect, and we’ll get to the future.

Frank Cottle [00:41:25  ]:
I agree. Well, thank you very much.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:41:28  ]:
Thank you, Frank, very much.

Frank Cottle [00:41:29  ]:
I really appreciate your time. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, and I look forward to the next time with chat.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:41:37  ]:
Absolutely.

Frank Cottle [00:41:39  ]:
Take care.

Rishad Tobaccowala [00:41:40  ]:
Thank you.