Rolando Rosas 4:09
We love this story is true from corporate America. It should be like a Netflix miniseries with all the stresses got going on in there, Dave?
Dave Kelly 4:17
Hey, let’s welcome back to the show. Corporate culture guru, Steve Cadigan.
Rolando Rosas 4:24
Yay. Nice. Hey, good to be back. Awesome. Steve. We’re so glad to see you again. Dave is not lying. I do consume those corporate America stories. Love the one where you were talking about the guy you were trying to recruit from Google. Yeah. And basically one of the top level guys flew him out on one of the corporate jets and said, Hey, we’re gonna give you essentially a work for life contract, increase your pay and give you whatever you want. And you said this guy made the right choice for his family. You know, and you had a lot more to Say but it was one of those things like, even though you were at LinkedIn at that moment, you were growing your name, just this upstart company. And we’re going to do all this and the guy liked what you guys were doing. He’s sorry, Charlie. I’m getting paid over here.
Steve Cadigan 5:15
Yeah, incredible story. And a lot of people think that I’m embellishing that one, I was probably rounding the numbers down in talking about the kind of money they put in front of him. I was trying to talk him into shoehorning him from 300 and or $400,000, a year to 300,000 a year. And he got a counter of 3 million a year. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the funny funny thing is, I see him all the time around town because he lives in Menlo Park where I do I see him, and I’m happy for him. He’s a really great guy. But that was one of those moments where you looked at the world, you’re competing for talent and said, Wow, this is just not this is not a easy environment to recruit in, if people were making $3 million camera first
Rolando Rosas 6:02
off, I mean, that’s, that’s hard to
Steve Cadigan 6:04
imagine harm’s way, you know, in a way, you know,
Rolando Rosas 6:08
we’ll file that one away, I’m sure for the memory, you have some other awesome stories in there about your adventures going abroad and working abroad. So I love it, because it just gives us a window into what happens in the real world, being an HR, and having your interactions with people coming into the organization as well within, it’s so enlightening, because if you’re not in HR, you probably don’t know, all the backstory is on this stuff.
Steve Cadigan 6:33
True. I was trying to explain that to a friend of mine once how hard the pandemic was for a lot of human resource leaders. And HR is not a profession that usually people feel sorry, for, it’s usually one they get all frustrated with. But that being what it may, I was trying to explain when I was in my HR leader roles. When you go into the cafeteria, the break room, and you see a group of people, I know so many backstories on every single one of those people, that person is going to be offered a promotion tomorrow, they’re going to be above over the moon, that person’s request for salary increases gonna get rejected tomorrow, they’re not gonna be sloppy, this person is going to quit and let their boss know in three weeks, the boss doesn’t know that they’re going to quit and the boss is going to freak out or that team is going to ask to relocate in a few weeks. And it’s all the stuff going on. And it can be it’s really interesting. But it can also be a lot of challenge to absorb all the fact that you know everything that’s happening.
Rolando Rosas 7:33
You brought it up and put because I would think specially today, in the environment we’re in right now super challenging mental health is getting a little bit more elevated than in the past years. If you’ve been in corporate America 2030 years, people did not talk about mental health at all. It’s starting to be in the mix much, much more how to somebody that is a professional that’s in the HR field, like you said, they know what’s going on, especially in a large organization where there’s a lot more pieces flying around. How does somebody stay mentally healthy with what’s going on right now?
Steve Cadigan 8:08
I don’t have the right answer to that one. Definitely cannot say that I solve that what I can offer is, I think one of the most powerful skills that we can all work on improving for ourselves, particularly in any role, but particularly one that is filled with some things that are probably more emotionally charged human resources than other professions is the capacity to be self aware and to be able to talk about really hard stuff. And whether that’s through years of therapy that I’ve had in my own life for various reasons. I feel like that’s served me really well to be able to recognize some of the feelings, challenges, frustrations that I’m feeling or I’m perceiving and others and being able to talk about that in constructive ways. Rather than, hey, suck it up, be the man don’t show any weakness, which is a real dangerous, slippery slope for some folks. So that’s number one. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to avoid pitfalls, challenges, frustrations, issues that are gonna hit you, they’re just gonna hate you. That’s part of the life’s journey. So what can we do about it is prepare ourselves to be able to work through that and have a network of people and confidants and therapists around you to be able to have safe places to talk about it and work it through. That’s one. The second thing is I do really feel that this has been bubbling for a long time, the necessity for us to start as organizations helping set up guardrails for our employees so that they’re not on all the time. And we have to make sure that they’re not harming themselves unwittingly and unknowingly. In a world where you used to be able to turn off when I started my career, at the end of the day, you go home, there’s no internet, there’s no cell phone, if you are walking out maybe have a few files you’re going to look at later, but no one’s going to be tracking you down or something or sending you a three page email asking you to look at it. And now, that’s always on, always on. And that’s we haven’t reconciled the world of work and expectations. To account for this always on possibility.
Rolando Rosas 10:11
I think we touched a little bit on it the last time that you came on, or even Shane, when we had him talked about how in different countries, this type, even though we have technology that still goes with us, and goes home with us, and keeps us connected to work, other cultures, they may go home with this thing. But it’s not about work. It’s about something completely different. It’s about connecting with their other friends and connecting with their family, going to a coffee shop and joining the nature that’s nearby. Here in America, we are really work focused more than any other places. And I think that the pandemic has started that like fork in the road for some other people where work isn’t one and everything else is a distant second or third.
Steve Cadigan 11:02
Yeah, sure. Hope you’re right. Rolando. I don’t disagree with your thesis around us. A lot of here in America, where you when you introduce yourself, it’s a Hi, I’m so and so. And this is what I do. It’s your definition. And I also agree that the pandemic has exposed the shallowness of that. One of the things I’ve always said is, I would love to have the lifestyle of Europe, with a work ethic of America.
Rolando Rosas 11:02
And marry the both though is it possible? I don’t think corporate America long enough to know that managers, CEO shareholders that it funnels now, right shareholders sea level, all of that funnels downward, right. And that expectation, we gotta get those numbers this quarter, or what are you doing? Yeah. And I think that the shift in the pandemic, where people say, at least I don’t want to drive an hour to work, I want to drive an hour back, I don’t want to be stuck in traffic. I like I liked being at home, or I could see my little one, my mom wasn’t feeling so well, I could take care of her. And I even heard you say I remember you said something about, I could go get a haircut when I want to, rather than only on the weekend where everybody is crowded into that barbershop.
Steve Cadigan 12:19
Yeah, and even more meaningful things for the parents who are in the audience. Being home when your kid comes home from school, which you never were before, or having more family meals and building that the closer connectivity to things that you didn’t know you were missing before. That’s really reshaped a lot of the thinking that people have. So since we last did a show, one of the interesting things that’s happened to me and I couldn’t wait to share with you guys is I have been hired by two Fortune 100 firms, middle management, you ready for this? Okay to help them learn how to convince their senior executives that they shouldn’t have to return to the office. Middle management, hiring me twice, to help them build an argument and build their case, to their leadership team. And it goes along the lines of what you think it would what you were saying earlier, Rolando, which is many senior executives are not confident they know how to build a successful, repeatable, scalable business in a completely different domain of hybrid work and remote work than they do and in-person. One, because they just don’t have the evidence and the proof and their butts on the line shoulders, just saying, show me the money. And what’s been tricky about this environment. And what I’ve tried to tell the middle management as hiring me is, I think the first thing you need to do is understand why are they resistant? Is it they’re not just dumb, they’re not just like, narrow minded. They’re fearful probably, that results won’t be achieved. So what can you do to raise their confidence level that this is repeatable and scalable because the foundation that we’ve been living within has not been stable for a while. At first it was kids are home, then it was kids hybrid school, then kids are back in school, but they’re wearing masks so they can’t play sports. So we’re still not in a normal world. Then we have a resurgence. We have hospitalizations going up again, we seem to be headed towards that, at least in California right now, the number of hospitalizations, new forms of flus are up. So we’re not in a steady state environment yet. So how organizations are responding is they’re just nervous. Like we don’t have a baseline to make a long term decision about how we’re going to create value going forward. And what I said and I think what you guys have been telling people and a lot of your guests have been sharing with people is we have to build to be able to handle adversity and making decisions for the now and for the foreseeable future, but not for forever, and it’s your ability to adapt and build the confidence and trust of your team. That’s really going to define how well you weather the inevitable ebbs and flows and ups and downs that we’re going to face Whether it’s the supply chain, whether it’s the cost of gas natural gas right now, because of the war in Ukraine, so many things.
Rolando Rosas 15:06
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that one of those pieces of evidence that speaks to how remote work and hybrid work have helped, actually to every single major corporation prior to a few months ago, when people started returning home, I’m sorry, returning to the office, all of them profited Well, during the last two years. So if the bottom line is the most important things to shareholder, the most important things to executive compensation, the most important thing to the profitability of a company, there is no other argument, we could present other facts to back that up to talk about healthy lifestyle and better workers and all that stuff. But the bottom line got better, not worse. The end of the bottom line got better. What else do we need to argue about? Right?
Steve Cadigan 16:03
Yep, completely. So most of the clients that I visit, that I’ve been working with the last two years, starts off with a question, how are you guys doing? Oh, Steve, it’s been brutal. People leave and get hired people. Really hard supply chain, as I said, How’s your businessman? Oh, best year ever? I said, Isn’t that interesting? Nobody has told me. And this is a true story. David, nobody has come to me and said, Steve, you know what, during the pandemic, we’ve learned that in a crazy high velocity change environment, we’re thriving, Nobody says that. They say, Ah, it’s been really brutal. And then you have to prompt them will have your revenue and your profit margins. Oh, best year ever. And what I hear is, and they’re not saying it, so I’m having to seize it out when I’m talking to them. They’re worried about things like, Hey, we’re not together in a space, maybe that’s going to dissolve our culture, maybe the sense of trust and rapport and confidence we have in each other is going to erode the more we hire people who’ve never met each other. And this is another one of those gray areas where, how are companies doing an hybrid? Well, it kind of depends, did you start in person? And then you went hybrid? Or did you build hybrid from the start? There’s no similar approach to this. And every company did it a little bit differently. So we don’t have a clean data set. But what I do love is in the last time, we talked about this, you guys were trying to bait me with whole Jamie Dimon.
Rolando Rosas 17:26
I think he put his own words in his own mouth. You didn’t have to put it
Steve Cadigan 17:31
a few months later. days isn’t so bad. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Same for Elon Musk. He tried to pull that Twitter and it was like, Okay, so the choice is go all in and do 80 hour weeks with you or out, okay, we’re out, you know, 80%, we’re out. And the 20% we’re probably people who were either job insecure on a visa that had an issue that was going to present a problem for their family viability in the country. And so, you know, that’s interesting, right? People are voting for the freedom a lot more. That being said, there is a demographic of new entrants in the workforce from schools, or first time is they’re like, Man, this is lonely. I’m going into this job, I didn’t meet these people. And I was thinking work was going to be a lot more socially interesting for me. And it’s been hard. And companies haven’t built the muscle of how do we integrate people? And what is our culture now that we’re mostly hybrid? And how do we do that? And one of those companies that I was telling you about the middle management hired me, what I found really interesting was, we talked a little bit about this. They have some of the most beautiful buildings, on site childcare, fitness centers, restaurants. What more can you one, what the executives were afraid was? Are people going to want to work here when they don’t have that? That’s our tool. That’s our asset to get people in. And they weren’t sure they could hire people. And I was like, Whoa, you mean, the real you that they would have to get to know your real culture? You’re not sure it’s gonna stand up against that pressure. Interesting.
Rolando Rosas 19:06
And super fascinating. What do you think so Dave?
Dave Kelly 19:09
Yeah, I mean, there’s always been departments within companies wherever remote work is the norm. So I jumped into the workforce, I think it was 1999 2000. And when I started working, 90% of the sales organization was already in the field. They were already working from home. They had the technology that was available at that time to communicate, maybe not all the video, but they were always there was always like a team within the organization that was in the field. And I was an inside sales guy. I’m 21 years old, fresh out of college. And when I would see these people that were remote working in the field, that was always something that I aspire to be at wanted to graduate through the organization. Go from inside to outside, get these tools have the freedom do some traveling, but we still had access to company culture. I was on an island, but I could still meet a lot of the people in the field. What do you think is contributing to the avoidance of moving people to be remote? If they have sales organizations that are already remote and have been, can you leverage that as part of the conversation to the C suite? To say, Listen, you have people that have been working in the field for 20 years, you have a department that’s in the field? Why would they be apprehensive to allow other departments to do that?
Steve Cadigan 20:38
Yeah, Dave, it’s a great point. It’s a great question. Just thinking back on most organizations I’ve worked for, I would say, a quarter to half the company is remote salespeople, right. And that’s a good reminder, hey, we’ve proven we can do this. What we haven’t proven is, can we have product and engineering work together in a more remote domain. And just reflecting on my LinkedIn days, my operations team was led by x, Yahoo, my engineering was x Google. And the product was also x Google. And in the early days of us growing from 400, to 4000. Not only did they want everyone working in an office, they wanted everyone in the same building that was in product and engineering. They felt that when we went through, what I call organizational puberty is we’re going through all that real time problem solving in the hallway. And on one floor, not even in one building one floor, where we can see energy in the cubicle walls are low, and we can trade information real time iteration, what’s really powerful to our development, and what blocked that was available space in Mountain View, California, Google was looking at everything. So that wasn’t because they wanted to, they had to. And then we acquired a few companies, and this has happened. There’s a team in Argentina, there’s a team in India and so forth. And that’s how you go into it. And you build a confidence over time. I feel that these other functions that traditionally are in buildings, time has got to serve us the confidence and I think can generally work be done really, yes. Can departments that need to rely on one another more? Can network as well as sales? Don’t know, is what I think is what’s causing people. But I’m not saying it’s right, or wrong, but I’m just trying to help people understand. I think that’s what’s behind it, Dave.
Rolando Rosas 22:32
I remember hearing this was maybe about a year ago, Kevin O’Leary Shark Tank guy. Yeah, he at first said, Even if I give them remote work, I don’t think we’re going to have more than like 10% of the workforce actually be able to do it. And he outlined the departments that may be able to do it. Then, about nine months later, somebody asked him a follow up on any I would not have imagined that so many people in so many different departments want to stay remote. And the profitability didn’t go down for his line of companies as the rest of your MSP. Right. Yeah. Profitability didn’t go down because they started working from home. And I think that what happens is, there’s two things that are going on that you touched on that I still am baffled one bottom line is still healthy. But the muscle memory is still the old ways is still you got to show up. Come in. I see you. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I see Steve, he’s over the cubicle. Oh, I saw him leave. He’s now going home. That probably gave people a sense of assurance that something was going on. But that doesn’t mean it was the most productive thing going on. But I think the other thing that doesn’t get talked about a ton, is a lot of these companies, like you said, Google, Amazon’s another one, they went an Apple went on a shopping spree for real estate. So now, if you don’t need 60% of that space, what’s the argument that was a good investment, instead of the best investment we make is letting people work from home because our profitability is up. And you don’t hear that. But I would imagine, and especially where you live in your backyard, there’s some expensive land, expensive buildings that have gone up expensive towers that have gone up. And I just saw report 40 to 50% of downtown San Francisco is virtually empty on any given day. So I think those folks that made those investments still want to justify holding on to those versus doing the right thing, which is we let our people work remote because we make more money.
Steve Cadigan 24:41
Yeah. I really like how CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky. He said something on 60 minutes a while back that I thought was really great. He said do you believe that people were the best teams or companies that are going to win? There was a Yeah, okay. So then he said, How can anyone believe that the best teems are within a commute radius of their offices, the best people like how can you possibly believe that only exists and commute distance for offices? No, it’s just not true. And so we’re just on a continuum Rolando of confidence growth right now. And of course, there’s going to be a savings on real estate. But that raises a whole nother ripple down effect of the New York’s got a similar problem with massive, empty commercial real estate, San Francisco not only has empty real estate and 20% of the restaurants have closed in San Francisco in the last three years, they also have a shortfall of somewhere around 800 million of payroll tax that’s not being collected, because the workers are not they’re being paid there. And then public transit is not being used on a scale that we’ve never seen before. So that’s always ran into loss anyway. So now you have infrastructure, and so on and so forth. And so it used to be I don’t know if you guys saw this, but a few years ago, the big deal in San Francisco was that where the Google buses stopped in San Francisco, the real estate market was 25% higher.
Rolando Rosas 26:09
A premium for both.
Steve Cadigan 26:13
Yeah, and there were people throwing rocks at the buses, because you know, you’re warping our real estate market, boohoo, shame on you tech companies. But we are, we’re in transition, that’s the easiest way to capture we are in transition. And I think the leaders and the companies that learn this, solve this riddle of building value in more ways. If you can do that, hey, if you’ve got a lab and you’re solving cancer in petri dishes, you can’t do it as easily remote as you can. And you need the continuity of people together, doing some of this stuff until we build ways that you can do it without, but I think the businesses and organizations that can do it are gonna have a huge competitive advantage.
Rolando Rosas 26:51
Of course, no doubt. Let me paint this picture for you, Steve, let me see what you think about this. If you lived in America, prior to the highways being built, you couldn’t go from LA to New York very easily, there weren’t those highways that we have today. So basically, a lot of things stayed in a small radius and entire lifestyle work was still different. Construction, after all those highways, everything changed. Now, not everybody was on those roads, immediately. Towns changed cities change small town, small America, big America, Middle America all over, I think we’re kind of in that phase, the groundwork is there for the template of remote work in the New Way of Working versus the way we used to have it for the last 60 years, which is basically going into an office driving in probably from the suburbs for a lot of folks now. Technology has made it so that we don’t really need that for those folks that are not on a factory floor, stamping out widgets. And I think some companies are going to get on this new highway, and this new way of working early, the early adopters are gonna probably 10 years from now are going to be much better off than those that find out. Oh, my God, our town, our company is running dry on really good talent, because then these other guys have figured it out first.
Steve Cadigan 28:16
Yep, yep. Yeah, I don’t don’t disagree. We had a really good rail system here in America until the automobile manufacturers bought it out and ripped it off. To make us more dependent on cars. You go to Europe, and those trains are there. But yeah, the whole ecosystem of commerce, and living is going to change. And I might have mentioned this when we talked before but one of the things that I’ve mentioned in some of my talks in of I think I’ve done a few tiktoks is just the exposure of the American Dream being a little bit flawed. You big house big car, means big distance from work means big commute means Yeah, no, that’s unproductive time. I’ll also say that I lived in Asia for two years and in Singapore and is too expensive to have a car there. So had took a taxi or public transit every day. And man, I missed my 1520 30 minutes of solitude. For work, I missed it. It was crazy. I thought oh yeah, I think I don’t have to sit in a car. I was like, No, that was my time. And now I’m in this air freshener stinky taxi and I don’t like I control the music and all the stuff in my car which is slash locker room I can go I’m gonna go for the I’m gonna go to the fitness center whatever. Is there I don’t know what the right balance is for people but I really liked that chamber just I love being an airplane before they put phones in the airplane and internet because you couldn’t be bothered now they can find you.
Rolando Rosas 29:43
In some planes. I don’t think that’s approved it I think in Europe they’ve approved 5g connectivity in some of those flights. US hasn’t been approved yet, but you’re gonna get everything in real time now. On your
Steve Cadigan 29:57
I was on a flight last week Rolando That’s experimenting with streaming and you can stream Netflix, Amazon Prime Apple TV No. And that was only meaningful to me because the 40 Niners game was on and I wasn’t, I need to see this game and I could get it streamed, which brings up a really interesting point around new people in taking on jobs for the first time and talk about a team that’s facing real adversity. They’re on the third string quarterback now. And they haven’t missed a beat. And that’s a message that all businesses should look at when are you building bench strength are young people learn this? Because now you got a kid who’s going to be doing this, doing it on a world class scale?
Rolando Rosas 30:37
stringer? Boy, I gotta tell you, I play football. And if you down to third string, you’re usually thinking the season is over, right?
Steve Cadigan 30:48
And crushed.
Dave Kelly 30:51
But they had to recruit him with a commuting distance away from the stadium, they would never have had.
Steve Cadigan 31:00
That’s right. And what’s really interesting, Dave, on that point is and I’m starting my second book right now, kind of on this topic, which is, I was listening on the radio yesterday in a sports radio talk show and one of the things they were talking about relative to this Brock party situation, for those of you not familiar with football, 40, Niners on their third string quarterback, both of their prior quarterbacks got injured and most likely out for the rest of the year, or at least deep into the playoffs if they’re still alive. And so they’ve had to take this kid who was the last person picked in the draft, they call that position, Mr. Irrelevant number 250 67, whatever the last person picked, and he is blowing minds with how well he’s performing, which, which calls into question all this stuff round, oh, they have to have the skills that have to have these experiences, they have to be over six foot four, they have to be but he’s on the shorter side. I think a 661 doesn’t have the cannon that his predecessors have. And he’s just really performing it as very, very high level. And I love that story. Because so many companies like we can’t hire the right people is how do you know you need someone with all those skills? And the talk show I was listening to yesterday said how hard it is and how obvious it’s being revealed that they don’t really know who is going to make that leap from a college environment to successful become a quarterback.
Rolando Rosas 32:27
Oh the graveyard of first round draft pick quarterbacks Ryan leaf, which is right at the top of my list of busts. You have what’s the guy that came
Steve Cadigan 32:35
up with this Russell is another one. He was one. You have the
Rolando Rosas 32:39
guy who came out I think Texas or Texas a&m that he liked doing this money sign thing. Done. There we go. Yeah.
Steve Cadigan 32:48
Who caught McCoy who is starting now for filling in. In Arizona. He was amazing with University Texas, but he never caught on then Baker Mayfield was the number one. And now he’s laughingstock of the league on his 3014 and just not delivering statistically what his draft picks should have warranted and now you’ve gotten Mr. irrelevant, crushing it. And I just love that because there’s so much more that we can learn around who could fit and how you can build value in different ways. And I love it when sports shows us the way with that.
Rolando Rosas 33:19
I agree wholeheartedly. Sometimes the smallest thing can make the biggest difference. And that leads me to one thing that I do want to take a moment to pay the bills here, talk about our sponsors, Circuitloops. If you’re still paying for slow, outdated internet, stop doing that. Thank you Jeremy, wherever you are for telling us that those internet outages are definitely costing your business. For the price of less than a cup of coffee a day, you can get the right business internet plan from day one, go to circuitloops.com for an instant quote on backup wireless and fast fiber Internet. And the best part about it is that you can get a personalized business proposal in less than 60 seconds. That’s an industry first. And it’s that easy. Go to circuitloops.com to learn more. Now back to Steve Cadigan. The corporate coach guru, I’m gonna give you that title, corporate coach, Guru breaking down what’s going on in corporate America. We got a little bit into this just prior to you coming on. We were talking about Twitter. And it is besides ChatGPT Twitter’s probably I think the second most talked about topic with what’s going on. Tell me, Steve, you’ve talked to so many organizations. Yes, there are learning lesson from the management of what we’re seeing at Twitter, but just essentially Elon Musk is about management and what’s in there for us to see in terms of what we should be doing and shouldn’t be doing. What are some of the lessons.
Steve Cadigan 35:01
First, I think what I like about this opportunity we have to watch what Elon is doing or what we think he’s doing at Twitter is, you have to recognize that leadership, there is no one ubiquitous, right leadership style or one ubiquitous, this is the way your culture should be. There’s lots of different ones. And what I like about Elon is he’s unapologetic, and no one should be surprised with how he’s leading, because we’ve seen or if you follow him, that’s he’s behaved similarly for his whole career at SpaceX and Tesla and other places. So I’m not surprised. What’s really interesting is that he all his actions seem to be flying in the face of everything we’re taught, is the right way to lead, which is build trust, be transparent in your communications, and build a psychologically safe environment. And he’s just like, going like a wrecking ball through that.
Rolando Rosas 35:54
What do you think about hidden bringing that was the go back to that image? Or bringing in? Was that supposed to be the kitchen sink that he’s bringing in? Because this is very purposeful, he’s not doing something accidentally, like, what kind of message was he sending to either the world or employees at Twitter when he did this?
Steve Cadigan 36:12
If I could understand how his brain thinks I’d probably I guess, he’s just using a metaphor that when you want to change something that you think is broken, and I think he thinks Twitter was broken, and he’s gonna smash all the elephant in the room. And that was a very symbolic, like, what was is no longer and it’s a completely new day. And if you doubted that for a second, I’m going to just reinforce that, with everything that I do. And there’s some merit to that the academic research on change is if you want to change really big stuff, take really strong swings at it and break glass and be really loud and obvious in it. And I think he did a class act in terms of Oh, yeah, new sheriff in town. And there’s no mistake about it, instead of dribs and drabs, a little communications here, but I have no idea what his endgame is, I don’t think anyone else does, really. And I feel like he’s alienating a lot of his followers with how he’s been handling this, but we’ll see who might have bet against that guy. You know, I mean, look.
Rolando Rosas 37:11
You bet against them. But in the short term right now, they’re tasers are speaking, use of the platform or speaking or leaving, I should say, not speaking, because they’re not on the platform anymore. And in that space, tick tock is taking over, YouTube’s trying to write on the verge of trying to expand with shorts, and Facebook’s trying to re imagine who they are. Twitter’s trying to find that space. If they’re losing subscribers and followers and advertisers. There’s not that money to give them the runway that they need to explore new ideas. You need cash for that?
Steve Cadigan 37:46
Yeah, yeah, I feel sad on a different level, about this whole situation in that I do a lot of research and Twitter is really good for research. And just the ChatGPT, the universe of intelligence that you’re pulling from, the more people you have participating, the richer the research base becomes. And now I don’t know what it’s going to become. And I think if people had an alternative, the users had no viable alternative, I think many of them would be out. And so I don’t know how this is going to play. What I say that platform is a game changer for me in my business, absolutely not have not solved how to integrate Twitter in a way that’s commercially viable for me. It’s interesting as a research platform, and I find some incredibly bright witty people. I learned from them on Twitter from time to time, but it’s definitely less than 3% of my day looking at that versus LinkedIn is probably 30% and tiktoks, maybe 15 20% of my time. So it’s just different for me, but I know, there’s some great stuff on there. And if something happens in the world, like oh, there’s a volcano, immediately go to Twitter, and someone’s taking a picture of it live. It’s pretty incredible like that.
Dave Kelly 38:52
So, question I want to ask you, Steve. So culture starts from the top it trickles down, with Dorsey out and musk in the employees there felt that shifting culture immediately and walking through with that sink, people that everything that I was reading, there’s a lot of people that were very concerned immediately. Have you seen this happen in the past 30 years? Do you have any examples where you could tell that there would be an immediate change in culture because of the change in leadership?
Steve Cadigan 39:27
Absolutely. And you’re always going to see that and I think it would be a mistake to say Dorsey is out and Elon is in Dorsey was in and he was out and Deke Costolo was in and then he was back. And he had a part time job at square, and then they hired someone else to to be here to stay. That was a stable culture would be I think an overstatement before I just say that it was a good culture might be an overstatement to I don’t think any of us could say that business was crushing it and had a huge profitable destiny in front of it. I don’t think it was I think it was still trying to figure out How are we going to monetize this enormously millions and millions of users in a way that’s meaningful, and replicatable and can evolve. And I don’t know that they achieved that. And I just read today or yesterday that Dorsey is regretting having gone public to begin with. And then, which is an interesting thing. But your bigger point is, you’re always going to have a culture change. When someone comes in, I always say, beware the leader that says, Oh, yes, things are gonna be the same. As soon as I come in. Yeah, no, it’s never gonna be because you’re not this.
Rolando Rosas 40:33
Well, sometimes their own crew, right? You know, it’s like a new head coach of an NFL team. They don’t keep everybody they keep a couple guys just to make sure things keep some continuity. But they’ll bring in their own thing. They’ll bring in all their West Coast offense, or their time, possession offense, or whatever. They’re gonna bring in their new crew, and when they go into new organizations, and that’s one of the things if I could transition a little bit from the management style of folks like Elon and others, to what’s happening today, where companies are announcing that they’re going to be doing workforce reduction or layoffs. What is your advice to that employee or that person? What should they be doing? Oh, for example, just use metal because they’re, they’ve been public, they’re gonna lay off a bunch of 1000s of employees, what? Do I have any rights or anything that I can do? It’s scary. But what do I do besides panic, when that happens?
Steve Cadigan 41:32
I think the best thing to do and I talked about this fair amount in the book that I published last year at Workquake, is if you start looking for a job, when you lost your job, it’s too late. What you need to do is build a foundation of always keeping your network warm and vital. And I used to work with Rolando a few years ago, he’s a great guy, he’s got a great network. Let me just have a burger with him once a quarter or just give him a call, Hey, what’s up, man? What’s going on? Keep that network warm. Always benchmarking, I tell people, you should always be looking not to leave. But you should always be looking, see what’s going on. So that if something great does come, you’re ready, but also that you’re on the top of mind of people that you care about. So don’t look at this tech layoff as oh, I need to do something different. Nope, from now on. Or if you haven’t been doing it, you should always be keeping that a network that you have a life and that’s just not out there. Cold calling people. It’s the people used to work with the people, you went to school with the people who are part of your church. For me, it’s going to my kids sports games, there’s interesting dozens of parents who work in interesting places. One of my kids friends, moms is a senior executive in HR at HP. And that’s super interesting, huge organization going through all kinds of twists and turns. And when I’m sitting there in the stands, it’s timeouts. Hey, how’s it going? And that’s just interesting. And so networking, I think, in its purest form is just like helping people. You ask them for help from people that you know, that is the ultimate for building a, I think a career resilient future, I put pay to answer your question or legal if you ever think you’ve been legally wronged, go seek advice from an employment lawyer. They’re not hard to find, just go ask around ask your friends. But that’s not the path. I tell people if you feel you’ve been wronged. One way you can do is if you feel you’ve been really wronged, you need to stand up for yourself. But a lot of times, it’s too late.
Rolando Rosas 41:39
Is it too late when the manager says, Hey, I got to talk to you and bring you Is it too late at that point to just save your job, Steve, and you have to accept that’s what’s going to happen. Or there’s something that you can do at that point where you’re being told you’re being laid off.
Steve Cadigan 43:40
No, think if your managers pretty clear that you’re on the list, you might win a legal challenge to that. But now you’re going to be living a I’ve got a target on my back existence, which is not comforting. It’s like, alright, I blocked it this time. But they’re going to try to shrivel my responsibilities, try to possibly minimize my ability to make an impact here, do I really want to be here. And what you want is to try to buy time for you to make a better choice. And that’s what severance is built for is to here’s the money so that you can cover your bills for several months while you conduct a search. And the higher your level. And the more you’ve had to relocate or something like that, the more money hopefully, the firm is giving you as a cushion to do that. But to play this out, Rolando, I’ve worked for companies where have you sue us because we thought about our decisions before we made them if you sue us and we’re gonna fight, and we’ve got deeper pockets than you do. So that’s what you want to do. And maybe you’ll win, but it’s not going to be comfortable. It’s not gonna be easy and your future employers are going to know if we take this in a public forum, that you’re someone who’s going to potentially Sue if things don’t go well. And that may not serve you and also you may be just miserable. I’ve had to counsel a lot of my friends have Philip is wrong, this and that of that. Yeah, but you’re going to be swimming in that negative ocean for a long time before you see it. Any money and they’re going to challenge the ruling, they’re going to keep dragging this thing out and they’ve got more pockets than you do. So do you want to do that, and then potentially alienate a good possible reference, I don’t know, there’s a lot of things to consider. And that’s really hard. Because when people feel they’ve been wronged that they get really righteous. And they stop thinking about the long term ramifications of what could play out if something goes really sideways. And that’s just hard and having family members who’ve gone through this, and I’m like, okay, we can go this route, and I can give you the pit bull lawyer who’s going to just attack tech, but you’re gonna have to see stuff that they’re going to print all your performance reviews, and they’re gonna manufacture some stuff, probably it’s not true, and you’re gonna have feelings, you’re gonna be hurt. And that’s not gonna put you in a good frame of mind to look for another job. You see what I’m saying?
Rolando Rosas 45:45
Yeah, no, that’s exactly I wanted you to bring these up. Because there’s so many people that are in transition with jobs. We’re in a place where we haven’t been in a while. And there are people that feel what you just said, there. Hey, wait a minute, I’ve been putting in good work, or, Hey, wait a minute, you may want to think about that. Even though you’ve been putting in good work. These guys play dirty sometimes. And they’ll release all that stuff we have on you just to prove a point. So you don’t you don’t go to court or you don’t go to trial.
Steve Cadigan 46:13
Yeah, it doesn’t feel good, doesn’t feel good. And that negativity will really make it harder, I think for you to get excited and be focused on doing something different. And it’s, everyone’s situation is different, right? Everyone’s situation is different. And I’ve got friends getting laid off to right now. It’s hard. So you just tried to, okay, this company’s hiring. Let’s go over here. Let’s look over here, try to focus on that.
Rolando Rosas 46:35
I want to ask you about something a little happier. Okay, great. Portugal, going on with our friend, Shane Howard over there. And living the digital nomadic life. Can you shed a little light on that?
Steve Cadigan 46:46
Yeah, I was on a call with Shane earlier today, six month into the family journey in Portugal, they’re absolutely more excited about their choice now than they were when they got there. And that’s even with winter and rainstorm setting in all that stuff. Kids are just really feeling energized by new experiences, new languages and new schools and things like that. And I think it’s a credit to the parenting that their kids are as excited about being there versus you ripping me away from my friends. Why are you doing this to me, there’s so there. They I think they set up and manage it really well. And he’s starting to really build community over there. I was there. There. There twice since he’s been there. I think it was there in July. And then I had a big project in October, with Nova school in Lisbon, which has been great. And yet, we’re looking to partner on some very exciting projects with with not only the government, but also the city of Lisbon and some other businesses out there, which is really exciting. So I think I’ll let him tell you next time he talked about I think it’s beyond his wildest dreams. And he’s vacationing in Italy right now for the friends that they made in Portugal. Yeah, it’s really great.
Rolando Rosas 47:58
I’m glad to hear that things are going well out there and Lisbon. I know that it’s keep hearing other folks that are saying, yeah, it’s on my radar screen. And I’ve been thinking about that, or I know of two other couples that are moved out there when he’s definitely getting out where it is out more and more about that area being a hotbed or quality of life improvement if you can keep working or work on new stuff like you guys are doing and not have the some of the stresses that you were talking about. I’m sure Shane’s Is he on all the time. When he was here,
Steve Cadigan 48:30
he is Shane’s is on more than more than he probably wouldn’t even want to. Here’s the thing about Shane and Portugal that I think is really salient for your show. That country has gone all in on leveraging the pandemic for their benefit all in. And we’ve seen more legislative change there on immigration laws, tax laws, to take advantage of this moment in time, where people are a little loose in terms of where they could live, to benefit long term their country. And that is not something we’ve seen before country’s really fighting to take on knowledge workers at a scale we’ve never and that’s I was on a call earlier today with a prospective client saying, oh, people aren’t staying our industry. People don’t like your industry. But what are you talking about? Everyone’s feeling that about their industry now. And we’ve got countries competing for talent at a scale we’ve never seen before lowering the bars for immigration of knowledge workers, like we’ve never seen, and we don’t know how that’s gonna play out. And we all have friends, like you had said, Rolando who are like Shane are moving to a new place, whether it’s I’ve know some bunch of people in Costa Rica, Greece and Portugal. Wow. That’s really, that’s fascinating.
Rolando Rosas 49:45
How long is that funny layout, but
Steve Cadigan 49:46
I don’t know how it plays out. But I know it’s going to be different than it is now.
Rolando Rosas 49:50
Yeah, I think it’s fascinating. I think that for those folks that have the ability to do that it’s the son with somebody yesterday that they moved their family and the their friends, their neighbors moved out to Puerto Rico. And they’re very happy that they made that move. I guess people are looking for something new. Like you said, your work is totally different. Your book Workquake talked about that. There’s a different way of thinking about work and about people and culture and how you manage that. And I’m sure some of that’s going to carry over into your new book. Now that there’s a whole lot more things going on since when you started writing that book. And I really look forward to that. Yeah, maybe you sneak us an advanced copy here. We can talk about it. Done. Steve, it’s been a pleasure. As always, if folks want to follow you, and follow your adventures, or bring you on and get our C suite straightened out, what should they do? You can
Steve Cadigan 50:44
find me on LinkedIn, it’s easiest way to do it. So my Tiktok Stevecadigan, or my email Steve@cadiganventures.com. I’m very responsive to increase or even if you’re in a weird spot at work, and you’ve want to get a second opinion. I’m happy to do that. Yeah, I look forward to hearing from anyone who’s interested in reaching out.
Rolando Rosas 51:03
Wonderful, wonderful. Steve is always a pleasure. Man. I wish I could have virtual Steve here because I have so many questions. I want to continue, maybe chat, but ChatGPT Steve, there’s a version of that somewhere that I can talk to and just bring him on all the time and stuff keeps coming up. But Steve Cadigan. We have enjoyed having you here on the show. And if you enjoyed today’s episode of Steve, I want to invite you to go to our earlier podcast where we did do some Smackdowns with Jamie Dimon, we gave him a clap back, so to speak. And you want to check that out and see what Steve Cadigan had to say I had to probe him a little bit to get the real Steve out a little bit. I still remember that. If you said if you want to get aggro and throw off the gloves a little bit to give you a preview then you can watch that whole episode on circuitloops.com where Steve and several other other past guests have been on the drop a lot of knowledge. So Dave, and I will see you in those episodes.
Outro 52:05
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