The Generational Shift in Leadership and Its Implications w/ Stacia Garr of RedThread

[00:00:00] What's happening? Like maybe there's a good reason for that, or maybe there's not, but tech can kind of in an unbiased fashion, raise up our awareness in critical decision-making moments. And that's what a lot of that, that technology was about was heightening

[00:00:15] awareness and then ultimately people have to make different decisions. Hey, this is William Finkel, Ryan Leary, and you are listening and watching the You Should Know podcast. We have Stacia Garon from a Red Thread Research. You have to actually really, really concentrate when you say that.

[00:00:35] I've known Stacia for forever. We won't say years because I'd be embarrassed and we've been in a lot of analyst rooms together and I think she's been embarrassed for a lot of the things that I've said in those rooms, but that's okay.

[00:00:49] I'm embarrassed for a lot of the things you said. Don't just laugh. No embarrassment. That's my job. That's my job at an analyst event is to be entertainment for everyone else. I used to be terrified of what William was going to say as we were either on

[00:01:06] calls or next to each other anywhere. And I just got used to it that people actually don't care what he says. They just take it to heart and if I say it, I'm getting booted from the event.

[00:01:18] You gotta live that life for a long time and you gotta be able to understand that people are, there's a shock value to it, but also after a while they expect that's what you're going to say. You're going to say whatever that's any help.

[00:01:32] That's like me telling me I can pull off the salt and pepper hair look in a board. It just ain't going to happen. Fair enough. Well, you could get a cap or something like that. I did try shaker hair at one point. Bad idea. How are you?

[00:01:49] First of all, what we wanted to start with is, and you and I went back and forth on email and what we could talk about because we could talk about anything, but we decided to kind of talk about mega trends, meaning some of

[00:02:03] the stuff you've seen in the first kind of two quarters and where do you think things are going to go in the second half of the year, et cetera. So why don't we turn things over? First of all, introduce yourself and pronounce your name in a way that

[00:02:15] you'd like for it to be pronounced. And also tell us about what's going on at Redthread. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I'm Stacia Gar. Stacia, like Anastasia, no Anna for those who need to. Just send them an email. They'll get it. Yeah, no, exactly.

[00:02:37] And I'm co-founder of Redthread. We started Redthread about six years ago with really a pretty clear mission, which was to provide high quality, unbiased insights in our market and to help both practitioners as well as vendors understand kind of what's

[00:02:54] there there, if you will, cut through the hype, understand from a research and data perspective what they should be paying attention to, and then help ideally accelerate ideas to the marketplace in an effort to make people's lives better. So that's what we do at the highest level.

[00:03:11] Would you analyst an advisory? An analyst, yes. Research, yes. Advisory, yes. Consulting, not really, which we get asked a lot. On occasion, we do consulting projects, but we are very much so a research house. That's where we get our energy from.

[00:03:32] And if you're going to start something on your own and you take that risk, you may as well do something you like to do. 100%. And research, I've read a lot of what y'all put out and y'all were very early into DEI before the market was really.

[00:03:50] Y'all were talking about DEI technologies. I remember looking at a lot of those reports going, they are so far ahead, they're killing it because you're looking at stuff that will eventually be important for other people and are important to other people. But I really like your research.

[00:04:07] I can't say that I read everything. I like pictures. I do appreciate it. I do appreciate it. This is one of those moments, William. I read all your research. I don't really read it. So don't ask me about it.

[00:04:29] If it had pictures, trust me, I looked at it. I can do the executive summary. And photos. That's about it. It's interesting how much our readership has both changed and not changed. I've been doing this, I was with Berson for eight years before this

[00:04:54] and then with CEB now and Gartner before that. We would both have the visual and the presentations. There was this idea that the visuals were always for the most senior audience because they're time compressed, blah, blah, blah. Now it's kind of for everyone-ish.

[00:05:14] But the reason I put an ish on there is I still have folks who come to me and who literally will pull out the dog-eared thing that I wrote 10 years ago. 100%. I'm not joking. 10 years ago. And they'll show it to me and they're like, here's all the things.

[00:05:31] Or I was talking to somebody, we were talking about this Tal Reyes event that I was at. And I had someone who was like, oh, when I left such and such company and we had access to what you'd written about people analytics

[00:05:44] or with some other folks at Deloitte, I printed everything you wrote for my next company because this is how I understand the world. And so you hear that stuff and that's so cool. But there are those people who read the whole thing and who dog-ear it

[00:06:03] and who highlight it and like, God bless them. I love it. They make me feel whole. I'm a mix. Yeah, I'm a mix there. I love images, but I sometimes have trouble deciphering what the actual analysis is behind.

[00:06:20] I know what my analysis would be, but I want yours. So I'll go through the text and I'll read it. But I don't comprehend a lot of it. But every so often I find something in there that's just explained at a first grade level.

[00:06:33] When I was in school, you'll like this because of your IBM experience. But I was taught by one of my professors who's an IBMer that the image, the graph, the pod, whatever has to stand on its own. Right. Exactly.

[00:06:48] So it literally has to stand on its own without context. So what am I supposed to get out of this particular image? And if it doesn't, you fail in creating the image. So and that happens. Good God, that happens everywhere.

[00:07:04] When you were at Burson, what did you study? What was your area of expertise? So at Burson, I led the talent management research. Yeah. And so that included performance, that included talent strategy. Actually, there is where I started the DEI work.

[00:07:18] So I did a maturity model and framework. I want to say we got acquired in 2014. So that was like 10 years ago, y'all. I can't believe that. That seemed so far away. Yeah. It was. But it really wasn't. Yeah, no.

[00:07:38] And I mean, and a lot of that work was good foundation, if you will. So kind of the backstory on that DEIB tech stuff is, I'd done all that research and we'd publish it 2014, 15, 16.

[00:07:53] And then actually, I was out on maternity leave in part of 2017 when the whole Me Too thing started to really come to the fore. And I remember, I'm on mat leave with this teeny tiny baby and yet my brain is still working.

[00:08:12] You're just like reading all this stuff. And I'm like, what are we going to do about this? What is all that good stuff? And so- If it's happening in Hollywood, it's happening. It's happening. Wall Street, we all know it's happening everywhere.

[00:08:26] And every company and every shape, size, it's happening everywhere. We did that before, but it was just the willingness to talk about it and the willingness to kind of hold more- Accountability. Powerful folks to account. Yeah. And that I think was the switch.

[00:08:43] And so when people of all levels were able to say, actually, this is something that people finally want to do something about, that's when we started, at least in my head, I was like, okay, well, this is a huge opportunity for the tech.

[00:08:58] Because whether it's related to Me Too or it's related to DEIB more broadly, there is just a willingness to see what before we would look away from. And that's what tech can enable, particularly in moments of critical decision making.

[00:09:13] So some of the stuff around, just highlighting, hey, on a silly two by two, or a nine box grid, hey, this person has been rated as high potential and high performance for three years, yet they have not been promoted when all these other people have. What's happening?

[00:09:32] Maybe there's a good reason for that, or maybe there's not. But tech can kind of in an unbiased fashion raise up our awareness in critical decision making moments. And that's what a lot of that technology was about, was heightening awareness.

[00:09:47] And then ultimately people have to make different decisions. Right, right. All right, let's do Megatrends. What have you seen in the first part of the year? And what's exciting you and things that are kind of going on?

[00:10:01] And then what do you see for the rest of the year? So take us through what's going on. So Megatrends is interesting. So twice a year we look at what's happening, we kind of lift up and look at what's happening.

[00:10:11] Like many others, we do it at the end of the year for sure. But then we also do it coming into kind of July and August. So this is a well-timed conversation from that perspective. When we were looking at the end of last year,

[00:10:23] I think a lot of the things that we saw then are continuing to hold. But they're different flavors if you will. They've certainly evolved. So when we were looking at the end of the last year, there were five things that we saw as Megatrends.

[00:10:37] And I should say that for us, we are not in the like, hey, we're going to talk about HR trends and, you know, like employee experiences on its way down and this is on its way up. Like, that's not like, it's a false, right?

[00:10:51] Like how odd is that? Who, I don't know. Anyway, so what we talked about. No, chat GPT prompt right there. It's a chat GPT prompt. I mean, literally like tell me what's out there and chat GPT will tell you.

[00:11:05] And, you know, we'll talk about that as a Megatrend. But I mean the point being that there are more interesting, in my opinion, more interesting ways to look at the world. And so the way that we tend to look at it is what is happening writ large

[00:11:21] in the world and how might that impact businesses and thus how might that impact HR? So the five things we were talking about, one was we said recession question mark. So, and I'll go into each of these then second was a geopolitical and social unrest.

[00:11:40] And third is technological advances, meaning basically gen AI, but not totally, which I think is important to recognize. Power struggles. And then the last one was generational shifts. And so across all of those, I think that they hold, they all still hold, which is good because they should

[00:12:03] if they are larger factors influencing our world. They should drop off the list. They should not drop off the list. If you chose your trends right, they shouldn't drop off. But I think the way that they're playing out is different than what we thought.

[00:12:16] So like for instance with the recession question mark, I mean no one still knows what's happening, right? Like we thought honestly, I was reasonably confident that come looking into Q3, we were going to be like, yep, this is we're all going to be doing really a lot better

[00:12:34] than we were whatever last November let's say. And what's interesting is I feel like coming into the beginning of the year, people were really positive. January like, oh, this is going to be great. Even partially into February. And then just felt like it stalled in my perspective anyway.

[00:12:52] Is Wall Street trading at the highest it's ever traded. Crossed over the 40,000 mark, right? But mainstream still doesn't feel that. So there's a disconnect between those two worlds, which there's always somewhat of a disconnect, if Wall Street's trading at the highest level it is,

[00:13:11] why hasn't that filtered down in some substantive way? Which is crazy to me. And I can't help but think that this is all people are waiting for the election. And to make a decision on what we're doing. Like everyone's kind of holding back going,

[00:13:29] I don't know which way we're going, which way are we going? What's going to happen? Which is weird because I also thought that's about the midterms. But the midterms were such a, they weren't definitive. I guess I'll say it in a really nice way.

[00:13:45] I was expecting the midterms to be really definitive one way or another and they were not. And so that didn't help. But I can't help but think that in your recession box, somewhere in that recession box is people's mentality

[00:14:01] around the stability of which path we're going to go. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with you, William, but you know what's really fascinating is that when you look at historically, so I'm a historian by education. Nice. When you look at- Like history, history?

[00:14:18] Or where you got a specialization? I've got two degrees in history. Me too. These conversations hold true philosophy, humanities, history. No, me too. I have an art history and American Indian studies. Two histories but in two very nuanced things. So what's yours?

[00:14:36] My undergrad was history where I focused on American history. Cool. Primarily. Any area? Yeah, so basically exploration through civil war. Yeah. Oh, okay. And I actually taught that. I taught exploration through civil war at a community college for a number of years as well. Bless you.

[00:14:57] Yeah, that was an interesting experience. It was a good experience, but yeah. Not for you. Well, community college, you get two things. You get the people that really are excelling and they're kind of getting ahead or you get the people that failed out

[00:15:11] and now they're coming home to kind of rebuild. Or they were forced to go to 13th grade by their parents. You get the partiers that win sorority, fraternity, they come back, I got a 1.5. I got to do something about that.

[00:15:27] And I was actually teaching outside of Washington, D.C., which was really interesting because I could make them go see monuments that they lived by but they never went to. Never saw them. 100%. I think that's true. The last time I've seen the Liberty Bell, and I'm in Philadelphia,

[00:15:46] I was probably in elementary school on a field trip. Yeah. I mean, the damn thing is 30 minutes from me. Hey, Ryan, you didn't take your kids? All right, we're going to edit this out. Back off, okay? Ed, Ed. No, actually we did. They went down with school.

[00:16:03] We did go down with them but the line was too long so they saw it from the field. We went to the Constitution Museum. Isn't that good? Even my sons have seen the Alamo. Come on now. Look, over COVID we went to Williamsburg. I loved it.

[00:16:22] Talked to my kids. It was not dope. It was the worst thing we made them do. Crying, fussing. Why do we want to walk the cemetery? Why do we want to walk these battlefields? There's no battles. I'm like, right, but 400 people died right here. This is amazing. Yeah.

[00:16:39] No interest. Zero interest. I have a question. Of the four or five trends that you picked out going into the year, if you had to pick one of those, which is the one now that you're just kind of like,

[00:16:55] yeah, we hit the mark here and we really need to pay attention to this? They hit the mark on all five. Yeah, that's hard. Right? So I think, so if you... Where I was going, sorry, before and then I'll come back to your question.

[00:17:10] But we went down this history. Somehow we ended up in community college to Monterance to Williamsburg. We're going to back. The point I was trying to make was that precedent has rarely influenced the economy, right? 100%. So historically, right?

[00:17:29] So I agree with you, William, that people are holding their breath. But why? Right? Yeah. Like, I mean, there's more where one could say there, but I think it's just an interesting dichotomy. And so what it ties into, I think, is that second trend,

[00:17:44] which is this geopolitical and social unrest. Some close, I think it was 84% of the world was voting this year, is set to vote or has voted this year on their government. And that is just a major shift in terms of the underlying social structure, sense of stability, etc.

[00:18:05] So I think it really goes at that sense of stability, like the sense of a lack of stability. And that's part of the reason that it's not filtering down and people are not as confident. Then you add inflation and high prices and all that.

[00:18:17] But what we're seeing now, I'm sure you all saw this, but like last week, Walmart and Target and Amazon are saying that they're going to start reducing prices because people are basically just fed up, right? So I think we're going to start to see some interesting shifts.

[00:18:33] But then obviously, that affects all of our businesses, right? Because if the price reduction, yes, we're going to potentially see a compression of income, net income on organizations. And are they going to be paying with those lowered percentages? Probably not. So they're going to be looking to efficiency,

[00:18:52] which is going to drive our people more. There's all these things that are cycling together. And then you add the third area, which is technology and AI and gen AI and all that. They're potentially accelerating efficiency, but there's complications. So I think those three to me, Ryan,

[00:19:20] and this very roundabout way of getting to your question, but I think those three really go together because the technology angle is also contributing to senses of instability. If I'm worried about my job and it's not just what has historically happened with new technologies,

[00:19:36] which are people who are maybe working at the lower level of skills in the grand skills hierarchy. But it's you, it's me, it's William, it's all of us who are producing knowledge work. And that is not something we have really ever had at this scale

[00:19:59] in terms of potential disruption to work. So I think those three things really to me are the big, big factors. And then you add in power struggles, which is I think a natural outcome of that because it's instability. So there's a group of people who want more stability

[00:20:16] and that's why we've seen the rise in unionization. That's why we've seen the rise in employee activism. And I think also why we've seen such a struggle between senior leaders who want people back in the office and people who are like,

[00:20:30] hey, when you had to trust me to work from home, you did, what's changed? Oh wait. Nothing. What's changed is that you want to be in power and pull me back in there. And I'll say that the thing that has just been a,

[00:20:46] honestly like a head fake for me is that leaders have been saying we want you back in the office for greater productivity and efficiency, right? Soft skills. Yeah. Right. But the thing is, is when people were in working from home, we saw the greatest boom in productivity

[00:21:04] that we've seen in a decade. And so it's like, it's literally like double speak. George Orwell, double speak. And I have no problem with people going back to the office, right? I think that there's all sorts of benefits to being in the office,

[00:21:18] but efficiency is not one of them. Who goes to the office to be efficient? Well, you're in the Bay Area and just pick a place that you'd have to drive to there's probably a 40 minute drive or an hour drive. And that's two hours of your life

[00:21:33] that you're probably going to learn Spanish, never. So you're going to waste. Oh, you tell myself. People listen to the podcast when it's like, I'm going to be productive. No, you're not. It's just a waste of your life. It sucks life out of you.

[00:21:53] I did, I want to, RTO, I want to ask you a question because one of my fears of RTO is because you'll have hybrid, you'll have some flexibility, you'll have people that are there five days a week or whatever. Do you see or do you fear

[00:22:07] as kind of a second class citizenry between those that are in the office and those that aren't? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm looking like internal mobility and promotions and stuff like that. Like the people that are in the office

[00:22:22] are going to get the first cuts of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. And that was something that we were talking about as soon as people started talking about RTO and all the rest. I think that some of the ways I've seen some organizations trying to address this

[00:22:37] is in making some of the requirements on who has to be back in the office by job type or type of work being done. And so in theory, if all the X type of people have to be in the office, then the promotions should potentially be

[00:23:00] more equally or appropriately distributed. But I think it's really... I don't know that that's really going to work. I mean, honestly, because there's always exceptions, right? The other part of this is it goes back to a fundamental... I think it goes back to the stability question, right?

[00:23:22] Like after COVID and with everything that's going to happen since with the great resignation, all the rest of that. I think people want or grasping for a sense of normality and what to treat people equitably who are in the office versus not

[00:23:42] or to understand if people are working towards their goals and et cetera without seeing them. It means you actually still have to change the way you work. You have to have different ways of setting goals, of assessing people, of giving feedback, et cetera.

[00:23:59] And I think that just the zeitgeist of right now is a grasp towards stability and what was in telling people you're going to have to do something different or continue doing something different that was uncomfortable is not what they're going to do. We have seen in the data,

[00:24:17] which I would not have anticipated this, but so we've been running these surveys. We started Red Thread in 2018. We ran kind of our first holistic survey in 2019, thankfully right before the pandemic. So we've got a starting point. And what we saw was on things like

[00:24:31] my manager supports me being autonomous, my manager respects me, all that stuff. We saw this massive spike in 2020. And at the time I was thinking, okay, this is kind of odd, but not sure what was happening under there.

[00:24:50] But then what happened is in 21 it went down a little bit, 22 it went down more and 23 we are below 2019 levels. So it is just this incredible, we were able to do this. We were able to help people feel supported

[00:25:06] and they could perform and they had access to resources they needed, et cetera. How much do you attribute that to the over communication that was happening during the early parts of the pandemic? Like we were all on Zoom, HR, everybody was over communicating.

[00:25:29] Or let's jump on a quick call. I'm going to stop you, William. Were we over communicating or were we actually finally communicating? I'm going to say finally communicating. Yes, that is absolutely correct. I think so finally communicating and then it got old. And people wanted to go back.

[00:25:45] For the managers. Yeah, it got annoying. For those who were in charge, I think in many ways they got tired of the level of communication that was required to actually communicate and they have been pulling it back. I think that everyone's like,

[00:26:09] oh well why are people burned out? Why do we have lower well-being? Why do we have this disengagement? I think it's because people saw there was a better way and that their organizations actually could do it. They could do it and they chose and they're choosing.

[00:26:23] And they have chosen not to anymore in the age of efficiency or in the name of efficiency. Look, I went to business school. I'm a good capitalist. I get it. But I just think that people saw a better way and I think there was a better way.

[00:26:45] Look, but from a communication, from a support perspective, I think that we saw at least that's what my data show is that we saw that people were more satisfied in these ways and then now they are not. And yet we seem to be confounded as to why. Yeah.

[00:27:03] Nice generations. I have generations. And that's why it goes to generations which was the final one and it's like. Right. I've always looked at it as we were thrust into this situation. Organizations had, they didn't have a choice so they had to make it work.

[00:27:21] In their minds it was always temporary. This is a solution for now. When this passes, we will go back. And so the employees- Go back to what didn't work in 1980. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So the employees, they grew accustomed to it. They've realized that they actually have families

[00:27:37] and look I can take care of my child while I'm working and I can do this and I can do that. Organizations still thought this was a temporary solution and now they're bringing that back. But you were describing your anthropomorphizing organizations? Oh that's a fancy word.

[00:27:56] That is fancy. Yeah, that is a fancy word. Yeah, that's a fancy word. On occasion you gotta pull those out. You gotta check to see the definition. Yeah. So you are giving human life a better chance at a thing that does not have it.

[00:28:11] So an organization itself is not, leaders, let's be very clear about who we're talking about. Leaders thought they would go back. Back, yes. Leaders. Right, because I think it's really important to be clear on who is driving what here. Because when I've been talking to heads of HR,

[00:28:34] what they tell me is this is being driven from the C-suite. Oh 100%. Yeah, the leaders at the highest level. This is not HR, this is not even the head of HR saying this needs to happen. And so this is I think,

[00:28:50] and normally I'm not like quite well with our writing I'm very picky about this. Yes. But the reason is, if we don't know who's driving what, how are we going to influence them? And so this is, what are leaders influenced by?

[00:29:07] They're influenced by numbers that impact the bottom line or the top line. And so this is part of the reason that I have spent so much of my life and time and effort on people analytics is because if we have met data

[00:29:22] and measures at least that gets us towards making convincing arguments about what impacts what in an organization. And to be clear, numbers don't really convince anybody they just reinforce biases very often. But numbers combined with really compelling stories do convince people. But just stories don't.

[00:29:46] And so we have to I think be clear about what are who is making decisions? What are the factors that will influence them? And how might we particularly within HR influence those leaders to things that are better for people and better for organizations? See, I'm so jaded.

[00:30:07] Stacia that I think that really what this came down to is or comes down to is this cut into leaders golf time. So here's how jaded I am. I think they over communicate. Excuse me, I think they communicated appropriately

[00:30:28] as they always should have but it was too much work. Exhausting. And so that was cutting into whatever hobbies they might have. I would just I'm going to lean heavily into golf and say you know what all this communication stuff is not really necessary.

[00:30:45] Give them the give them the tools and resources to be successful. They don't need the communication and I can go play golf. So would you say it's kind of like a 50,000 a CEO of a 50,000 person enterprise now having to work as if they're the CEO

[00:31:01] of 100 person company and communicate individually? They're not playing golf two days a week. Right. They can't they can't get both jobs done. A little more charitable. We knew you would be. Somebody's gotta be bring me back. Just to make it real in that you know.

[00:31:21] You can just say look William you're full of shit. You can do that. I don't have to you did Ryan. I was feeling the vibe. I was feeling the vibe. But I think I think because the communication just sticking on communication there's lots of other things.

[00:31:45] I think because it's soft it's hard to measure. It's hard to measure with the impact of this. Whereas it and also honestly as a senior leader it's in some ways less fun right? Like deciding to go buy a company or go in the strategic direction

[00:32:01] or drive sales like that has all the exciting things that you're taught in business school that you should really be doing as a senior leader. Spending a lot of time communicating and caring building and caring. No I mean yeah it's. Having empathy caring.

[00:32:19] I think that's you know those are things that are hard to do and hard to feel satisfied by. And I think that makes it hard. You know the other thing I think is really interesting and this is going to kind of bleed over

[00:32:35] into this generational topic is I think we are coming. I think we're about to see a major leadership change right? So we have a whole bunch just and generationally I will put my standard caveat. I do not believe that generations have individual characteristics they're just groups of people

[00:32:54] who were born between certain years. But they're the you know the baby boomers who have historically had one model of leadership one or not they've had a similar traits of leadership. Are moving off they are they have been they will continue but what's interesting

[00:33:16] is just from a demographic perspective Gen X was a lot smaller right? And so you almost have this this pull over if you will of millennials who are you know roughly early 40s to you know whatever early 30s. Are going to start who are starting

[00:33:34] to come into leadership and they have I think a different set of values broadly speaking. They were raised in different types of families family structure is one of the few things I think actually holds up in a generational lens. But I think we're about to see

[00:33:51] a pretty major shift in leadership and that this historical approach is probably in its ending days. Yeah and so that gives me hope right back to your cynicism. Yeah but I'm gonna give you more cynicism on top of that.

[00:34:05] I've said for years that when women are in control they're going to make this they're going to make not the same mistakes but they will make equal mistakes as men did historically. So they might not it might not be sexual harassment

[00:34:21] as category of mistakes but they're gonna make mistakes. Oh yeah and I'm not talking about women here I'm talking about Gen X. But the generation that comes next it's going to be different mistakes but they're gonna make a whole shitload of mistakes. Of course.

[00:34:38] To be human is to make a mistake. Yeah yeah true. That's what we do. That's what we do. But see that gets to the okay what mistakes are they going to make? What is that what's the what's the I don't know what's the rainbow of mistakes

[00:34:52] that they're gonna make. Yeah it might be different than X or than boomers but they're still gonna make mistakes. Yeah yeah for sure. But they'll be modern mistakes. I think they will be I don't think they will be the same mistakes of Karen

[00:35:05] and empathy in the same way. Good point good point. That's what I'm seeing is potentially different. I know we're getting close in time but I just want to comment on that generational one because I think it's relevant here. We for the first time this year

[00:35:20] are crossing over having more Gen Zers in the workforce than baby boomers and that is a major you know it is a major shift and you know one of the things that I think is really interesting has been you know the rise of all these

[00:35:37] terrible TikTok names of you know quiet quitting or you know yeah whatever and people like to say oh well that's just a younger generation not working hard enough you know that's what they always say. What I think is interesting

[00:35:51] and we is at the same time that we have that when you look at studies of how this you know people who were let's call it you know 28 and younger feel about retirement compared to people who are now older felt about retirement at that same age

[00:36:10] they are far less confident that they will have enough money to retire which means that from an economic perspective these folks are feeling I am going to work forever. I'm gonna work my entire life like I'm not gonna retire and like go you know

[00:36:26] toodle around my RV when I'm 65. If that is the case it is economically smarter not to kill yourself 25. It is an economically... Your retirement is in the front end. There's no need to... Well I wouldn't see your retirement in the front end

[00:36:47] but it's a marathon not a sprint because you are never going to end. That's right. Yeah and with healthcare getting better medical care you're living a lot longer. Right and so you're gonna work a lot longer and so that is why I think that

[00:37:03] we need to be aware of these shifts and these mega trends and changes because it is changing the nature of work itself. Jobs Mike walks off stage says you are Red Thread Research please go to their website sign up for their newsletter and join the membership.

[00:37:21] Join the membership come on. Join the membership now. Wow thank you so much for coming on the show. Yes. We absolutely appreciate your brilliance and have a wonderful day. Thank you. You too. Thanks for having me.