Rishad Tobaccowala's Blog, page 3

The Future Fits on One Page.

This is the 250th edition of “The Future Does Not Fit in The Containers of the Past”

Published every single Sunday morning for 250 weeks at around 8 am Chicago time.

The first edition of this thought letter was published on August 16, 2020 began like this…

Welcome to my first issue of “The Future Does Not Fit in The Containers of the Past” newsletter. Thank you for subscribing.

What I hope you will get from this newsletter

The idea behind this newsletter is that of a gift.

Like a gift it is free (no subscription fee, no up-charges to access special content, no advertising, no affiliate links, your email will not be shared or sold, and no algorithm is running in the background mining your behavior)

Like a gift I hope it will be of some value in helping you see, feel and think differently about how to grow yourself, your team and/or your company in the future.

Like a gift, I hope it will generate goodwill for the giver. Your attention and time which is so valuable. Good karma. Stronger relationships.

This newsletter will be bohemian and eclectic in that it will mix art and science, it will have a certain wanderlust and will roam into different areas…

Today nearly five years later more than 350,000 words or nearly 7 books of content have been written and shared. Subscribers have grown from 500 to nearly 30,000. The thought letter has remained completely free of monetization. And the range of topics have wandered far and wide with the writing steering away from only from politics and news.

In keeping with the gifting orientation that drives this thought letter I have curated the best 100 pieces of writing and organized them into 12 areas which are now all accessible from a single page here or at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100

I provide an overview of the sections and the best pieces below. But first here are the five most popular pieces over the past five years listed in order which indicate the range of the writing.

Re-thinking Presentations. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 55.

Read on Substack

Small Things. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 195.

Read on Substack

A Company of One. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 155.

Read on Substack

Re-Invented Marketing: 5 Shifts. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 241.

Read on Substack

Avoiding Career Irrelevance. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 223.

Read on Substack The 12 Areas of Writing

1. The Future: Here are articles on The Four Shifts that are driving the future, a series of pieces on Why AI is Under-hyped, How to remain relevant in an AI age and How to Upgrade our AI quotient as well as Ten Forecasts for the Next Decade and how to avoid Strategic Myopia.

2. Managing Change: To manage change in ways that suck less we need to follow the 6 Keys to Change while curing ourselves of Inner Dinosaur Disease and learn to Think Like an Immigrant.

3. Upgrading our Mental Operating Systems: Our phones have upgraded their operating systems in the last 18 years how many time have we? This section shares how to be better at Learning to Learn, How to Think Better, and how it is key to think from Both Sides Now.

4. Enhancing Effectiveness: So much of our lives our spent attending meetings. What if everything we have been told about how to be effective in these areas are wrong? Rethinking Meetings shows how we do not attend meetings but stare-a-thons and most of given advice on how to run meetings are wrong! Understand the importance of Tattoo Moments and why Fewer is better.

5. Becoming A Leader: In an Age of De-bossification here are Four Keys to Leading Today and 8 Management Lessons from some great leaders.

6. Rethinking Media, Marketing and Creativity: In a single graphic the last four decades of change in marketing and where it is going are shared in Re-Invented Marketing: Five Shifts. A very popular piece was on why the Future of Marketing is People and how we are entering an Age of Creativity.

7. Selling Better: To close more sales it is key to understand the 8 Things Customers Want, why one must spend time Rethinking Presentations and how Small Things matter and every time one wants to sell one must frame and filter using S.A.V.E.

8. The Future of Work: A series of articles which foresaw the world we live in today including why we are living in Career Bending Times and how most companies could get Returning to the Office right.

9. Creating Great Cultures and Future Forward Organizations: What are the key components of Cultures. Why it is important to call out The Turd on the Table, to combine Roots and Wings and recognize that Generosity is a Strategy.

10. Managing Careers: How do we thrive in a world of Fifty Year Careers where we are going to see the Decline of Jobs. The Rise of Work. The key exercise for Career Turbocharging and all the lessons of a Career Revisited and why everyone must learn to work like a Company of One.

11. Personal Growth: We become who we are through Chances, Changes and Choices, learning the importance of Repairing Ourselves, finding times to go Vagabonding and learning the limits of things in On Stuff

12. Wisdom: We chase after it but what can we learn about Architecting Joy, find Grace, the importance of Appreciation and how life is about Loss, Love and Learning.

You can find all these pieces and much more available completely free to use and leverage as you like all accessible from a single page here or at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100

Thank you for being a reader.

Your time is rare and therefore your attention is a gift.

If you ever wanted to introduce this writing to others this might be the ideal post to share.

...

This is the 250th edition of “The Future Does Not Fit in The Containers of the Past”

Published every single Sunday morning for 250 weeks at around 8 am Chicago time.

The first edition of this thought letter was published on August 16, 2020 began like this…

Welcome to my first issue of “The Future Does Not Fit in The Containers of the Past” newsletter. Thank you for subscribing.

What I hope you will get from this newsletter

The idea behind this newsletter is that of a gift.

Like a gift it is free (no subscription fee, no up-charges to access special content, no advertising, no affiliate links, your email will not be shared or sold, and no algorithm is running in the background mining your behavior)

Like a gift I hope it will be of some value in helping you see, feel and think differently about how to grow yourself, your team and/or your company in the future.

Like a gift, I hope it will generate goodwill for the giver. Your attention and time which is so valuable. Good karma. Stronger relationships.

This newsletter will be bohemian and eclectic in that it will mix art and science, it will have a certain wanderlust and will roam into different areas…

Today nearly five years later more than 350,000 words or nearly 7 books of content have been written and shared. Subscribers have grown from 500 to nearly 30,000. The thought letter has remained completely free of monetization. And the range of topics have wandered far and wide with the writing steering away from only from politics and news.

In keeping with the gifting orientation that drives this thought letter I have curated the best 100 pieces of writing and organized them into 12 areas which are now all accessible from a single page here or at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100

I provide an overview of the sections and the best pieces below. But first here are the five most popular pieces over the past five years listed in order which indicate the range of the writing.

Re-thinking Presentations. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 55.

Read on Substack

Small Things. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 195.

Read on Substack

A Company of One. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 155.

Read on Substack

Re-Invented Marketing: 5 Shifts. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past.Edition 241.

Read on Substack

Avoiding Career Irrelevance. by Rishad Tobaccowala

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 223.

Read on Substack The 12 Areas of Writing

1. The Future: Here are articles on The Four Shifts that are driving the future, a series of pieces on Why AI is Under-hyped, How to remain relevant in an AI age and How to Upgrade our AI quotient as well as Ten Forecasts for the Next Decade and how to avoid Strategic Myopia.

2. Managing Change: To manage change in ways that suck less we need to follow the 6 Keys to Change while curing ourselves of Inner Dinosaur Disease and learn to Think Like an Immigrant.

3. Upgrading our Mental Operating Systems: Our phones have upgraded their operating systems in the last 18 years how many time have we? This section shares how to be better at Learning to Learn, How to Think Better, and how it is key to think from Both Sides Now.

4. Enhancing Effectiveness: So much of our lives our spent attending meetings. What if everything we have been told about how to be effective in these areas are wrong? Rethinking Meetings shows how we do not attend meetings but stare-a-thons and most of given advice on how to run meetings are wrong! Understand the importance of Tattoo Moments and why Fewer is better.

5. Becoming A Leader: In an Age of De-bossification here are Four Keys to Leading Today and 8 Management Lessons from some great leaders.

6. Rethinking Media, Marketing and Creativity: In a single graphic the last four decades of change in marketing and where it is going are shared in Re-Invented Marketing: Five Shifts. A very popular piece was on why the Future of Marketing is People and how we are entering an Age of Creativity.

7. Selling Better: To close more sales it is key to understand the 8 Things Customers Want, why one must spend time Rethinking Presentations and how Small Things matter and every time one wants to sell one must frame and filter using S.A.V.E.

8. The Future of Work: A series of articles which foresaw the world we live in today including why we are living in Career Bending Times and how most companies could get Returning to the Office right.

9. Creating Great Cultures and Future Forward Organizations: What are the key components of Cultures. Why it is important to call out The Turd on the Table, to combine Roots and Wings and recognize that Generosity is a Strategy.

10. Managing Careers: How do we thrive in a world of Fifty Year Careers where we are going to see the Decline of Jobs. The Rise of Work. The key exercise for Career Turbocharging and all the lessons of a Career Revisited and why everyone must learn to work like a Company of One.

11. Personal Growth: We become who we are through Chances, Changes and Choices, learning the importance of Repairing Ourselves, finding times to go Vagabonding and learning the limits of things in On Stuff

12. Wisdom: We chase after it but what can we learn about Architecting Joy, find Grace, the importance of Appreciation and how life is about Loss, Love and Learning.

You can find all these pieces and much more available completely free to use and leverage as you like all accessible from a single page here or at https://rishadtobaccowala.com/100

Thank you for being a reader.

Your time is rare and therefore your attention is a gift.

If you ever wanted to introduce this writing to others this might be the ideal post to share.

The Decline of Jobs. The Rise of Work.

This past week I had the great opportunity to speak with 60 of the most senior leaders at a major financial firm whose heads of Data and AI had bought 150 copies of my new book, Rethinking Work for their teams and asked me to do a Q and A webinar.

One of the questions was what had changed in the time since I finished writing the book ( July of 2024) and today nearly a year later?

My answer was that the shifts I was predicting which would require us to rethink work were happening faster, in more places and with greater impact than I anticipated. What I predicted for 2028 /2029 were likely to scale in 2026/2027 but the suggestions, ideas and blue prints on how each individual and firm could adapt remained the same.

Companies have been built around the concept of jobs as a way of getting work done but increasingly jobs will be disconnected from work.

The big transition underway is from employment that is full time and done by employees who have jobs working in an office to a world where work will be done by fewer people who will mostly be away from an office who will not have full time jobs.

Unless companies rethink everything from strategy to organizational design to financial metrics to training from the ground up for where the future of work is going they will find themselves increasingly replaced by new entrants who a) source talent from anywhere in the world in highly agile and flexible ways, b)are AI first, c) invest deeply in learning and d) have talent programs reflecting the realities that reflect the different mindsets of multiple generations and an aging and declining population.

From a recent Fortune Article

In a pilot project, McKinsey built an AI agent using Microsoft’s Copilot Studio software that can monitor an email address for incoming project proposals from potential clients. When one arrives in the inbox, the agent automatically assesses the job, estimating the staffing requirements, time to completion, and budget.

It even suggests which available consultants should do the job. A human still must check what the agent produces, of course, but the technology has cut the time required to scope out a project from 20 days on average to just two days.

What impact will AI agents have on workers? “I think it will be really disruptive,” says Craig Le Clair, an analyst at research firm Forrester and the author of Random Acts of Automation.

He knows of one Netherlands-based insurance company that had 15 contractors in Bulgaria helping to process claims-related emails. The contractors determined whether an email was about a new claim or an existing one, and made sure any information, including attachments, was uploaded to the appropriate databases. AI agents now do this work—and the company fired all the Bulgarian contractors.

Read Tobi Lutke the CEO of Shopify’s memo on why he expects no additional headcount will be approved at Shopify unless it can be proved that AI cannot do it and how the entire company is going to be rewired for a new age. Whether you are a CEO or an intern it is a must read.

Recently for an AI council for marketers which I chair I sent them this article from Ethan Mollick’s substack One Useful Thing ( an absolute must subscribe) and asked them to put in the same prompt( which is in the next paragraph) but for their category or brand.

Here is the prompt Ethan put in to ChatGPT o3 model:

“ Come up with 20 clever ideas for marketing slogans for a new mail-order cheese shop. Develop criteria and select the best one. Then build a financial and marketing plan for the shop, revising as needed and analyzing competition. Then generate an appropriate logo using image generator and build a website for the shop as a mockup, making sure to carry 5-10 cheeses that fit the marketing plan.”

Here is what Ethan found:

With that single prompt, in less than two minutes, the AI not only provided a list of slogans, but ranked and selected an option, did web research, developed a logo, built marketing and financial plans, and launched a demo website for me to react to. The fact that my instructions were vague, and that common sense was required to make decisions about how to address them, was not a barrier.

The question I then asked them is that if their CEO and CFO has done the same exercise and come to ask them to justify their head count and the way they currently work what would they say?

In the past 10 days I have been in two different meetings where the next revision of the multi-modal capabilities of the next version of Gemini by Google have been previewed and they far surpass (at least for the time being) the capabilities of Open AI models.

This is not the time for task forces but to align with the force of change with a sense of urgency and scale to reinvent companies

It is not just AI but many other things that are going to create the most dramatic shift in the loss of jobs but the rise of work.

I asked the same ChatGPT o3 Model to answer the prompt “why might we being see the decline of jobs but the rise of work? “

After 41 seconds of analysis here is what I got:

“Jobs” ≠ “Work”

Official payroll jobs are a narrow concept: a single employer, a W‑2, a slot in the BLS counts. Work is everything people do to create value, paid or not, whether it shows up on a company’s head‑count or not. Once you separate the two, the paradox becomes clearer:

Why payroll jobs can flatten or fall…

Automation & AI: Firms can keep revenue rising while head‑counts stay flat. U.S. job openings slid from 8.1 million in March 2024 to 7.2 million in March 2025 even though output kept growing. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Demographics: Retirements outpace new entrants in every rich economy; a smaller workforce limits the absolute number of jobs that can exist.

Risk off‑loading:Companies re‑label employees as contractors or outsource entire functions, removing positions from the payroll tally without killing the underlying tasks.

Capital‑first business models: Software, cloud services and robotics make it cheaper to buy capacity than hire people, so fewer traditional roles are created per dollar of GDP.

While work is exploding (but often invisible to job statistics)

Gig & platform labor: At least 70 million Americans will freelance in 2025, on track to pass 86 million by 2027—meaning a majority of workers will earn income outside a W‑2 at least part‑time. Fortunly

The creator / micro‑entrepreneur economy: YouTube, TikTok, Substack and Shopify have spawned a $250 billion creator economy where millions earn revenue shares, sponsorships, or merch sales—none of which count as “employment.” Forbes

Solo & very‑small businesses: Record formation of 5.5 million new business applications in 2023 shows a surge of one‑person LLCs and side‑hustle ventures. These founders are working—sometimes 70 hours a week—but they don’t appear as employees. U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Unpaid but indispensable care work: Family caregivers now provide labor valued at ~$874 billion a year in the U.S.—bigger than the pharmaceutical industry—yet it is entirely off the payroll radar. Axios

Open‑source coding, online tutoring, volunteer crisis mapping, fan‑translation, DAO moderation—all productive, often time‑intensive work outside formal employment.

AI leverage: One skilled person plus copilots or low‑cost bots can do the output of a small team, so head‑counts shrink even as the task volume—and value—expands.

Its time to rethink work

6 Ways to Lead Today.

We have entered an age of De-bossification

There is a rise in the need for leaders, guides, coaches, mentors, role-models, creators, and builders who manage through a zone of influence.

Less of a clamoring for bosses, managers, monitors, evaluators, and paper pushers who manage through a zone of control.

Every one can be a leader whether we manage people or not.

Six ways to lead today:

1. Be Distinctive

Companies, brands, and individuals which succeed are ones that differentiate themselves.

Stand for something.

Have a distinct point of view.

Provide a different perspective.

Craft a culture and a way of working.

Build a network and teams of diverse and the different and let them be them and free to speak out if you want to have a truly different product or service or grow your own skills.

2. Be realistic but also a source of enlightenment and inspiration.

All businesses can be tough.

A leader must face and accept reality.

But also enlighten and inspire.

It is very easy to get down and be negative given all the challenges that come with great velocity every day having to deal with persnickety customers, technology shifts and aggressive competitors.

We can all be caught in a frenzy of urgency, twisting, and twitching with cyclonic vigor in attending to the matters at hand.

But never forget that people are looking to leaders to show the way forward.

Try to end every meeting and interaction with a sense of clarity (what to do next), belief ( the team believes in the cause and themselves) and energy ( they leave motivated and filled with gusto to tackle the challenges and opportunities)

3. Look over the horizon for what is next.

Be besotted with what lies ahead.

Tomorrow is where we and our companies will spend the rest of our lives and we need to look over the horizon.

Whenever we are surprised as leaders or companies it’s because somebody made tomorrow tangible today first while we were solving yesterday’s problems.

4. Renew. Refresh. Re-invent.

In a complicated world filled with hurly burly speed and messy things called people things often go wrong.

Snafus of communication and differences in expectations, incentives or approaches will lead to wires crossed and hurt feelings that can sever ties and relationships.

We sometimes need to renew and restore and repair relationships even if it means eating humble pie sometimes when we do not have to or want to.

We constantly change as people, and we need to see each other from time to time with new eyes.Do not put people in a box and think you have them figured out. They change.

5. Combine roots and wings.

Peoples past beats like a second heart within them just like the roots and history of brand and companies have twisted them into their current shapes.

Every successful individual, brand, and company is fed by their roots, but they aspire to change, grow, and adapt and fly with wings.

Wings without roots often get blown away.

Roots without wings wither and die.

Fusing roots and wings is the way.

6. Protect, guide and build people.

In the end as leaders our first and foremost job is to protect and guide and help grow and transform people since we scale through our people. Companies do not grow or transform, people do.

The most talented will sometimes lose their way or come to a fork in the road and begin to question themselves, where they are and where they are going.

By protecting, guiding and building not only would we do the right thing, but it is this behavior that will attract and retain talent for the long run.

...

What is strategy?

Strategy is Future Competitive Advantage.

What will the future look like? What will people need and expect? How will demographics, technology and other global shifts create new competitors or recharge current competitors and how will categories blur, blend and maybe even disappear?

Amidst these new expectations and changing competitive dynamics what advantage will your company offer? A differentiated or better product? A competitive moat of network effects, scale or some other dynamic? A better experience? Speed and value?

While Strategy firms can be amazingly helpful in guiding companies through these questions, most leaders already have a gut instinct on what needs to be done. The deep dive documents, the chanting strategists and the long march of meetings are to bring others along and to provide an intellectual and analytical framework for a decision that clearly had to be made.

If you work for a firm and you have an idea of where the future is going and how changing people’s expectations and emerging technology are going to create challenges or opportunities, you should go to your management and share your thinking.

All you need to talk about is future competitive advantage.

Why strategies often fail in implementation.

Companies often allocate large swaths of senior management time and budgets for outside specialists to help them sculpt and then move the strategy forward.

A cavalcade of consultants convey and communicate with countless charts and creative conjuring to the C-Suite.

A flurry of futurists frame, focus, and filter the way forward with the finesse of fortune tellers.

Masters of the Universe market M&A moves that might make multiples move upwards and mean many more millions in market-cap.

PR professionals produce and promote points of view that provoke the press to perceive with pristine perspectives.

These efforts when successful result in the first three key steps to strategy implementation

1) A simple and differentiated strategic blueprint.

2) An M&A plan to acquire skills, markets and technology.

3) A re-organization since the future does not fit in the containers of the past.

These are essential ingredients to a recipe of change and growth none of these will work without helping grow and change the people in the organization.

Because while firms are a collection of ideas, technologies, patents, brands, ecosystems and people, it is people who are the key since they create the ideas, technologies, patents, brands and eco-systems!

Michael Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face”.

Boards and leadership of firms come quickly to the realization that everything is easy until people get in the way.

Telling people that change is good, threatening them with job loss if they do not change or creating communication materials and slogans to goad them into a cult like devotion to the new dear leader or the way forward rarely works in the short run and will likely fail after the threat of flagellation fades.

Because if there is nothing in it for them, people will out-wit, out-wait, out-pretend, and out-maneuver “management”. Until then they will fill the time genuflecting and bowing and going through the monitored motions of attending the right meetings, muttering the motivational mantras and stating the slogans required.

The keys to implementing strategy.

If a strategy is to be leveraged in ways that transform an organization, it is key to remember that the only true transformation happens is when the mindsets, skillsets and behaviors of the people working for the firm transform.

If you want your organization or team to grow and change you will need to ask your team to initiate a) a three-question exercise while leadership b) delivers three clear answers to employees.

The Three Question Exercise every team should consider doing so they can both understand, get aligned with and contribute to strategy.

1) How do we expect peoples as well as our customers/consumers/members needs and expectations to change in the future?

2) What are our key strengths and weaknesses in meeting and aligning with these shifts?

3) I3) If we had no constraints except that we had to ensure that what we did was legal, that it was technologically possible and financially broke even in 3 years or less what products and services would we design? Alternatively if we gamed ourselves as a new entrant in attack mode how would we take market share away from ourselves on a particular product or customer segment?

This exercise makes people look up from their day to day and understand risks and opportunities and helps them realize the need for doing things differently. As importantly it gets them to contribute and activate the strategy in their areas of competence and expertise. It also allows leaders to go into attack mode versus thinking only defensively.

The Three Clear Answers management needs to deliver to company staff in order for them to align with and implement the strategy:

1) Why are the recommended changes good for their personal career growth?

2) What are the monetary or other incentives to change?

3) When and where will training be provided to help them learn the new skills needed?

Change does not happen because of M&A, press releases, re-organizations or a new leader, all of which undoubtedly play a role.

An organization changes and grows when the people in the organization change and grow.

Images created using Mid-Journey

Chances. Changes. Choices.

In many ways a life or a career is the aggregation and summation of choices made, chances given and taken, and changes navigated.

Chances.

Chance drives much of life, beginning at birth.

Who we are born to, and the country we are born in, drives so many of the contours of our life and what we can become.

Being born to loving parents who are financially secure in a developed or rapidly developing country is a stroke of great luck which we often do not appreciate since the opportunities are greater and obstacles far fewer than someone born to struggling parents in an impoverished or war-torn nation.

Chances then adorn all of life in the chance meeting, the people who take chances on us and the chances given.

But as importantly the chances taken whether it be moving to a new place, betting on a new job, and taking risks.

And if we are fortunate life also is about chances we give.

The helping hand, the forgiveness provided, the small investment, the life changing advice and the risky hire.

Changes.

Change is life.

Everything changes and nothing stays the same.

Economies bloom and burst. New leaders come and go. Health fluctuates. Relationships thrive and wither. Technology enables and disrupts. Great misfortune and loss are interwoven with unexpected windfalls and victories.

Navigating change is often both facing its reality and learning that how we adapt and respond to change and changing times determines its impact on our lives and the future more than the change itself.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote, “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes is so”

Choices.

“The difficulty in life is the choice” George Moore.

The choices we make are often determined by chance and change but unlike chance and change tend to be more under our control.

Because chance and change constantly offer us the option or sometime force us to make choices.

And choosing is not easy particularly since the future is unknowable and only as time unfurls will it be clear which choice among many was the ideal.

While every choice impacts us the three biggest choices tend to be a) what we do for a living, b) who we decide to spend our lives with and c) where we decide to live.

Career. Home. Partner.

These are not necessarily one-time choices which since we can change careers, where we live and who are partners are, but these seem to be the most important ones and its probably the ones we should spend the most times mulling.

And we humans even if we make the right choices we wonder if we did.

The job not taken, the person not pursued, the place not moved to. We often think life might have been even better if we had made other choices often forgetting it might have been much worse.

A good exercise in self-reflection is to think about the biggest changes, chances and choices we have had to deal with or had to make and what we have learned from those.

Since as long as we live, we will have to deal with chances, changes and choices.

Exit.

Exits are as important as entrances.

We are told first impressions are important.

They are, but so are are endings.

Here is a perspective on three types of exits. 

Exiting Careers. Exit Economics. Exiting Existence.

1. Exiting Careers.

“Every career has a midnight hour. The smart people exit at five to twelve” Sanjay Khosla ( Executive Coach and Advisor. Former President of Kraft Developing Markets.)

Elegant exits particularly at senior levels are unfortunately too rare, leaving both the Individual and the Company diminished.

The individual loses since a career transition not handled well can stain a reputation and leave a residue of ill will towards an institution where many years of one’s life has been dedicated.

The company loses because instead of having advocates among an influential diaspora of senior talent one may end up with hecklers and detractors. Also, senior colleagues and direct reports of the departed employee can feel less loyal to the company.

It behooves both the individual and the firm to anticipate, plan and manage for the midnight hour whenever possible.

Done correctly it can provide significant advantages to both sides. The company can often retain access to the wisdom and knowledge and good will of the departing employee and the individual benefits from a positive departure, continued access to their friends and network and often Career 2.0 opportunities and support.

Every company should develop a plan to ensure that Exits are done right particularly given both aging demographics and the increasing flexibility that companies need to to connect and leverage a diaspora of talent without carrying heavy fixed costs.

2. Exit Economics.

Every year you should call your cable company and telecommunications provider and ask if they can give you a better deal. You do not need to threaten to leave but just ask politely. Chances are you will get a combination of higher speeds, removal of data caps, free channels, upgraded modems and cable boxes and other goodies usually at the same or lower cost.

You rarely have to use the three magic phrases:

a) “Considering cutting the cord”

b) “Read about a T-Mobile offer…”

c) “Why am I paying so much to rent this old equipment?”

Then call your financial institutions and you will enjoy eradication of some fees, lower rates of interest, higher multiples on loyalty rewards and other garnishments.

And for anybody you do business with if you need to find yourself not needing to find the right support or service person (automated and hidden contact numbers anyone?) just press the option that says you want to exit. And presto you have a Manager on the line!

Why do so many companies that wax poetic about customer lifetime value and the importance of retention rarely reach out to reward their most loyal customers?

Why do so many service businesses not surprise and reward their best clients with ideas, insights and imagination every six months but only do this when clients threaten an exit or in attracting new clients?

As more and more companies are trying to move from a transaction to membership model focusing on recurring revenue it will grow more important to focus on the happy bird in the hand than the one in the bush or the one wishing to fly away.

We should take a little time off from cross-selling, up-selling and treating each customer as a cow whose udder we squeeze to maximize a bottom line while whispering rote love and loyalty messages into their ears.

How about feeding them some hay instead once in a while?

Every six months (in some cases more often and in some cases less often but at least once a year) surprise your best customers with gifts, offers, insights and rewards without them asking.

This is the economics that prevent their exit rather than spending millions getting them to change their minds once they have determined to exit!

3. Exiting Existence.

Franz Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it stops”

And most of us can calculate the robust and healthy days left if we are lucky by subtracting our age from 80 (around which much begins to go wrong physically and sometimes also one may see a diminishment in mental faculties leading to a much more constrained life) and multiplying it by 365 days.

If you are 60 you have less than 7500 days. If you are 40 you have 15,000 days.

So, when someone asks you to do things without some form of fair compensation (it does not have to be money but could be learning, experience or the joy of helping) or does not respect your time, do remember you are the one paying for their dis-respect and their cheap valuation of your life!

Once you incorporate the reality of your and everybody else’s finiteness into your thinking, you are much less likely to take crap from those who dole it out and much more likely to appreciate those who are kind and respectful.

And notice the wonder of everyday life around you.

As the Philosophers and Songwriters remind us:

It is essential to know what is important before it is too late.

The Garden Inside.

Art by Uta Barth

The World Is Too Much With Us.

The opening lines of “The World is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Today we are buffeted by a tsunami of external drama which keeps us unmoored.

This in addition to an algorithmically optimized drip drip drug flow of attention hungry engagement orifices seek to bend us to look here, look there, feel this and feel that.

The outside world is often too much with us.

But it is in internal changes where the meaning lies.

Looking is not the same as seeing.

A few years ago an exhibit at The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago featured the work of a Los Angles artist named Uta Barth.

Ms Barth leverages photography in a novel way to get you to both see what you may not have seen but as importantly to make you forget what you are looking at but be aware of the resultant feeling.

Her work which can be simple as conveying the feeling of light on a curtain or a shadow on a kitchen wall is inspired by a line from Robert Irwin which goes…“Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees”.

We often look but do we see?

The Garden Inside

Have always enjoyed parks and gardens and am lucky to live by the lakefront in Chicago which is adorned with parks. These are great spaces to reflect, refresh and repair, particularly in these drama filled times.

One of the parks in Chicago—Lurie Garden in Millenium Park— has been designed by Pier Oudolf who is considered among the greatest Landscape Designers in the World (he also landscape designed the High Line in New York). His books are filled with breathtaking foliage that integrate and blend into nature likes works of art.

But there is one garden that may stand above them all

In the Charlevoix region of Quebec there lies a private garden which covers more than 20 acres and is called Les Quatre Vents ( The Four Winds). It is considered amongst the finest private gardens in the world ( it is opened a few times a year to the public).

The garden was created by one person, Francis Cabot, as his life work that blends creativity and passion and it is simply the most breathtaking places one can imagine.

Francis Cabot believed that Gardens are like art and have the power to change you. And unlike other art, which may affect you differently over time, because you have changed over time, a garden is itself always changing. Francis designed his Garden to lift the soul of people who walked through it.

He wanted you to come out different after the experience.

Cabot has sculpted, designed and tended a variety of different types of structures and styles —a total of 24 different experiences—including a Japanese garden, a French Pigeonnier – pigeonnier is French for both pigeon coop and pigeonhole – and integrated water ways and a variety of bridges all using natural materials from place of origin. The Japanese tea house was built by Japanese artists using wood from Japan that was aged for years.

Here is a peek at Les Quatre Vents…

There is an amazing book called “The Greater Perfection” filled with pictures and Francis Cabot explaining his life’s work, which I would recommend to everyone if it were affordable and easily available.

Doctors would prescribe it would for the soul.

However, there is a wonderful movie on Francis Cabot called “The Gardener” which is available for free on Amazon if you are a prime member. Take a look at this two minute trailer and it alone should lift you and calm you down.

One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden.

Regardless, it is key to remind ourselves of Francis Cabot’s belief that every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can bloom…

4 Keys to Leading Today.

Companies with a disproportionate share of talent passionately aligned against a common goal usually are the ones that grows faster, create great economic value and attract and retain customers and clients for the long run.

This alchemy of wealth, value and alignment is often created by the wizardry of leaders.

Leadership has never been as important today in a world in midst of great transformation.

In the end great leadership come down these four components:

Leaders acknowledge, face and communicate reality.

People admire and respect people and not titles since titles are bestowed while leadership is earned.

The five characteristics of great leaders are capability, integrity, empathy, vulnerability and inspiration.

Great leaders scale their talents by creating a fabric of great culture.

1. Reality.

A key to leadership is to solve challenges and address problems. This requires confronting issues versus looking away or hoping some form of magical thinking will make them go away.

One cannot hope to get people to follow us if they suspect we are not addressing real issues and challenges however difficult they may be.

Great leaders ensure they never set themselves for self-defeat.

They do this by constantly taking temperature of the marketplace, anticipating opposing points of view and paying close attention to underdogs and outliers who might change the rules of the game.

They focus on future competitive advantage and not yesterday’s game.

2. Respectful Admiration.

Without the hearts and minds of one’s team one is not a leader but a ruler.

Rulers leverage fear, project power and exploit insecurity.

Employees genuflect, fall in line, salute and pander to the hollow and bloated boss, while they silently seethe, plot insurrection or practice defection.

All rulers fall and increasingly they are failing and falling faster as they flail and rail with great cacophony.

But facts are stubborn things.

Reality has a habit of breaking in.

Gravity does not care if you tweet that it is fake.

It kills those who step off cliffs and tall buildings.

Leaders on the other hand are respected and admired both for their operating and strategic skills but they earn the most important currency of the time that allows them to buy time and alignment in changing times.

The currency of trust.

3. Five Characteristic of Leaders.

a) Capability: To be a leader you have to be capable in your field of work or craft. You have to know your shit. You have to keep improving your skill. Doctors will not listen doctors who are not great at medicine. A creative will not respect someone whose body of work they do not admire.

b) Integrity: Can one be trusted? Are we transparent about the ingredients of our decision making. Does one look for opposing evidence and use real facts ?

c) Empathy: Leaders can see from other points of view and they understand that employees are people and work is but a sliver of their being. They understand and they listen. They care. They do this both for employees and for customers.

d) Vulnerability: Great leaders acknowledge mistakes. They know they do not have all the answers. This means they are open to criticism and correction and they surround themselves with skill sets that offset and balance their areas of weakness.

e) Inspiration: How do leaders face and acknowledge reality and hard truth but still get people to unite, align and take the challenges head on? They do so by recognizing that people choose with their hearts and not their minds. They inspire through a combination of personal example and storytelling.

4. Culture.

It has been said that “culture eats strategy” and often when companies decay (Boeing) or resurrect ( Microsoft) or have distinctly different outcomes in the same industry ( Delta vs most other airlines) a key determinant is the culture. What it is like, how it is improving or how it is getting worse.

The culture of an organization is revealed in how people behave when no one is looking or monitoring their behavior.

Culture is about the relationships, mindsets and goals of people and not a place, a program or an operating manual. It is something leaders set, correct and support, but culture is how leaders treat people and how people feel about themselves, their company and their colleagues.

Companies with great cultures tend to have employees who feel most of the following about their jobs and companies:

Fair/ Good Compensation: If people are not paid adequately or fairly it really hard to have a good culture.

Recognition: Great cultures recognize contributors and leaders do not step into their teams video stealing credit.

Autonomy: People are trusted to deliver with limited monitoring and can access resources to do so.

Purpose: They believe in the purpose and values of the company and see the role of their company beyond that of just profit but doing good for society or community.

Growth: The company is growing, has a plan for growth or even if static, the individual is growing and teams are growing by being given opportunities to learn and build new skills. The focus is on multiplying versus dividing.

Connectedness: People feel connected to each other and to their leadership. They feel free to speak up and share and even joke.

While some leaders today may disappoint there are many many amazing leaders across all aspects of business, education and government who we can all learn from by paying as much attention to those who lift us up versus those who bring us down.

Think like an Immigrant.

On March 19, during a closing keynote of the Adtech Economic Forum at the Times Center in New York, I was asked to summarize and build on the thoughts of all of the other speakers from the Angel Investing, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Corporate Strategics and Hedge Fund businesses who invest in Advertising and Marketing Technologies.

Every speaker mentioned the dramatic changes taking place in the marketing and investing eco-system driven by marketplace, financial, political and technological disruptions and the challenges and opportunities of operating in such an environment.

It seems to be a revolutionary time and many existing business models and past assumptions are at risk and the speed of change seems to be accelerating.

Summarizing their thinking, I suggested that in order to thrive we all learn to…

Think like an Immigrant.

World class leaders and companies rarely get defeated.

They decide to defeat themselves by a) not taking emerging competitors with new models seriously, b) paying scant attention to underdogs with fewer resource and different approaches, and/or c) by refusing to align with the forces of the future.

We can all learn from immigrants.

a) Immigrants often think like outsiders.

Individuals and companies that thrive over the long run view their business from external perspectives and not just internal perspectives.

They understand the viewpoints of future competitors, changing consumer and customer needs and they realize the biggest threats and opportunities come from outside their categories ( eg. Tesla and Uber came from outside the traditional Auto Industry, Google and Meta changed the content industry more than any newspaper, magazine or television conglomerate).

But many leaders and businesses benchmark against existing competitors, go to the same conferences, and stay in the lane of well trodden paths of thinking.

Maybe its time to think like an outsider.

b) Immigrants often think like underdogs.

Underdogs use technology, drive, and ingenuity to find ways to leverage what they have or what others have to change the rules of the game.

They do not view the moat surrounding the castle as a something to navigate but a source of material to flood the castle with by changing the rules of the game!

Even Meta was surprised that what they thought was a moat which was their social graph was used against them. TikTok practiced asymmetric warfare by eschewing the social graph and replacing it with an interest graph. Its algorithm and learning loops allowed individuals to be exposed to a spectrum of great content without having to bring any friends or create any content!

c) Immigrants think with an emphasis on the future

Short or mid term sacrifices and pain is endured to build a future for themselves and families just like great companies think beyond the quarter and the year but in long time periods.

These firms and leaders focus on compound improvement, constant iteration and experimentation and an enduring long term vision whether it be Amazon or Microsoft or Netflix or recently Delta who by taking the long view became the most valuable and biggest airline.

We are all immigrants in a way.

While 27 percent of the United States population is first or second generation immigrant are we not all immigrants in a way that we are all immigrating to a new land called the future?

Margaret Mead wrote “After all, we are all immigrants to the future; none of us is a native in that land.”

And Mohsin Hamid wrote “We are all migrants through time”

Think like an Immigrant.

Rob Beeler and Tom Triscari who co-founded the Adtech Forum had so much interest and resonance from their audience about the “Think like an Immigrant” idea that they have designed and produced men and women’s t-shirts in a range of colors and sizes which are available here. ( I have no economic interest in the sale of the t-shirts)