280. Stay Relevant: Future Proof Your Career in an AI World

Hi, Matt here. Excited to share some prize winners, an update, and a reminder. Our April newsletter is now available on LinkedIn or Fastersmartr.io under resources. You'll learn how to handle blanking out when speaking. Also, please take a few minutes to complete our listener-viewer survey. Your input helps us plan and better serve your needs. Go to Fastersmartr.io. For completing our survey, Karan, Adriana, and Ryan are each receiving Think Fast Talk Smart Gifts. You can get your gift by completing our survey and being randomly selected. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and thank you for listening. Go to Fastersmartr.io. Now, here's a message from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you our show. Hi, Matt here. Career coaching often comes through our workplaces, which can be a great starting point. But sometimes you want space to focus on your priorities, not your organization. That's where Strawberry.me comes in. It's career coaching you choose for yourself. You answer a few quick questions, get matched with a vetted coach, and in many cases, you can start within 24 hours. You choose the coach, you decide the goal, and you get to talk honestly about what actually matters, whether that's a promotion, a pivot, burnout, or even leaving. There's no HR involved, no performance review lens, and if it's not the right fit, you can switch coaches. What I appreciate is the sense of agency. When you're feeling stuck, waiting rarely helps. If you've been thinking something needs to change, you don't need permission to explore that. Go to Strawberry.me slash TFTS. It's coaching focused on you. Think of it as therapy for your career. Your career is more like a climbing wall than a ladder, and your ability to communicate that clearly is critical to your success. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast. Talk smart, the podcast. Today I look forward to speaking with Anish Ramon. Anish currently serves as the chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, where he leads global initiatives to navigate the future of work and expand economic mobility. Before this, Anish was an award-winning CNN International War correspondent and a presidential speechwriter for Barack Obama. His latest book, written with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, is open to work, How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI. Well welcome, Anish. I have to share with you, you have the most diverse background of any guest we've ever had, and I want to explore that in a moment. But I'm really excited to learn from you today. Thanks for being here. Well, I'm so excited to be here, and I'm grateful for the work you do to help everyone be able to tell their story and to impact the world in new ways with their story. Well, thank you. Shall we get started? Yeah, let's do it. So your career path is fascinating. You've been a war correspondent, a presidential speechwriter, a corporate executive among many roles. Communication looms large in all of them. I'd love for you to share just some lessons learned, best practices you bring to your communication. You know, it's funny as you phrase it, my mind is immediately recalling, for a long period of time, I ran away from communications as a term that I wanted to be defined by, wanted to job around. I thought it was limiting, confining. As you say, my career is interesting, but makes no sense by job title. It's not a one plus one equals two. And a lot of it was me starting as a reporter and then leaving reporting because I wanted to do more than report the story. I wanted to shape action around it. So I go into government, and then it was more than just writing and speaking. How do we get action going into growth and policy campaigns? When I joined LinkedIn, a couple of months in, someone came up to me and said, you're a really good storyteller. And that was this like really important moment because at first, again, this reflexiveness against being like pigeon-held and storytelling was like campfire, children's book. But I started thinking about it and I said, yeah, that is actually something that I really enjoy doing in service of a bunch of other goals. And I started researching storytelling and falling in love with it as a thing that people can do and get better at and really change the world around. I mean, Sapiens, that book talks about storytelling is as important to our growth and progress as a species, as tools. And as I thought about it more into your question, sort of what has carried me through, it's really been explanatory storytelling. It's like the best I can define the longest serving skill set that I have had and honed. And to me, the key things about that, first of all, you just have to be endlessly curious. And if you aren't, put yourself in a space where you are. Shift into a sphere where the work itself is feeding it. Find a way to find ways into that topic. But I'm just like endlessly curious. And in that curiosity, I am compulsively trying to connect dots because for my own sake, I'm trying to make it simple so I understand it. And that has just developed into a communication style that is really maybe not as descriptive as others, maybe not as gripping as a story to others. But it's really the intent is to help you understand something better and more and more in a way that gives you a better sense of self and a better sense of belief about what's possible. It's interesting how you answer the question you talked about yourself internally. The curiosity is the engine for the storytelling. And then the connection of ideas is really important. And what I have enjoyed in getting to know your work through your writing and through the other ways you communicate, I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity. You will soon find out at the end of our show, I'm going to ask you three questions. One of the questions is, who's a communicator you admire most? And at the top of that list is always Barack Obama. Actually he's beaten by Michelle Obama. More people refer to her than him, but you had the job of helping write speeches for him. I'm just curious if you can share some insight that others can benefit from about his approach to communication and perhaps your approach in helping enable that communication that we could all benefit from. The first thing I say is to be one of his speech writers is an extremely humbling act because you know he's always going to be better than you. And that if he had the time and space to write the speech you were working on on his own, it would be so much better than anything you were going to offer up. So it was a unique experience to not just be a speech writer, but be a speech writer for him. I think with him it was always audience first. That was something that was very clear. Who's in front of him? What's the story of the folks who are in that audience? We would always end with a story of someone in the audience. Most of what I take from him is actually as a spouse and a father. He has become this role model for me of like feminist husband, feminist dad. He has two girls, I have two girls. So when I think about him, like most of what I think about is how I'm trying to model myself as a man. But the memory I go back to a lot with him is I was writing a speech and it was after Second Inaugural and we were going to talk about how in that Second Inaugural he has put his hand on the Bibles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. And I had written some section there about when they turned to faith, what those moments must have felt like, must have been like Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, walking through just fields of fallen soldiers, king in the depths of bombings and other things that the Civil Rights Movement had provoked. And so I had written something and it was the only time I ever got a call from him at my desk because other speech writers who were more in the mix would be interacting with him more. I came late into the speech writing group and I remember picking up and thinking, oh, it's just one of his aides who was saying, we've got edits or something. Some casually picking it up and suddenly he's on the other end. And his call was about that part of the speech and really just pushing me to recognize the human experience of that. And so he just stayed human. I think that's probably the summary statement. And he was able to speak human, think human, be human in ways that most people who get to a job like that no longer retain. And he fought to keep it throughout and I think keeps it to this day and Michelle too. And so that to me is like a role model too. It goes to the authenticity of communication. It sounds to me like part of what was important in that job for you and for him was understanding your audience, bringing in managing the emotion and really respecting the impact that you can have and that the words have on people. And I think all of us can think about how do we bring our authentic self? How do we think about our audience and how do we think about emotion and how we can connect? I appreciate that. I want to turn to your book. In your book, you argue that careers are no longer predictable ladders, but they're dynamic climbing walls. As somebody who likes to climb, I love this analogy. Can you share what you mean by this and what advice do you give to people who then need to explain or pitch their career climbing wall? There'll be a theme. It starts with self is the most important thing I would tell everyone. We are living through what I think is the greatest disruption of work in human history. What work is going to look like in five, definitely 10 years is going to look very different, if not nothing like what work has looked like for the past 300 years. As we've been in the industrial age, work had a certain predictability, clarity, stability to it. The industrial age was entirely about efficiency. It was the speed and scale of production of goods and services. So since the steam engine to now, all of us humans at work have just been about efficiency, supporting these machines in doing more, better, faster. And that doesn't matter whether you were on the factory floor on an assembly line or in a cubicle on your laptop. It was more, better, faster, more, better, faster. We now have this technology that's going to do more, better, faster, more, better, faster. It will out efficiency us. And at first, I think a lot of people are really freaked out about that. But when you recognize that humans aren't meant to be machine like and that machines will eventually out machine us, our brain existed far longer than the industrial age. I mean, the brain that we have is about 40,000 years old, at least in terms of not just shape and size, which is like 300,000 years old, but ability of complex thought. We created nation states. We created the monetary order, the beginnings of all these things before the steam engine showed up. So we're going to go back to that. It's going to be a more entrepreneurial era where we're going to rely on our unique ability to imagine, to invent, to create. So what does that mean for your career? Well, in that efficiency age or predictability reigned, you had a career ladder and you knew what to do. If you could get on one with the right degree or get into the right job at the right company, you're just climbing to the next run. You're trying to get your boss's job, your boss's boss's job. And I know that sort of clarity has been comforting for people, even as it's been limiting for so many people who didn't have the right pedigree signals of the right degree or the right zip code they grew up on to actually get on that ladder. But that ladder is done because organizations now cannot build around stability, predictability, efficiency. Companies are going to have to build around innovation, agility, dynamism. And so we use the wall as something you're climbing to signal that. The chapter opens with the story of Moe Beck, who's a one-handed climber. And Moe talks about how she climbs routes. And if you're a climber like you, you know, you don't just go up. You sometimes go down, you go sideways, all to go up. But there's multiple ways that you can get there. And if you're Moe Beck and you only have one hand, there are a bunch of ways only you can go. There's some ways you can't go, but there are ways only you can go. And we talk about how she used that reality to her advantage, to climb climbs that only she could climb. So we're all going to have to do that now. And that can be really stressful at first if you feel like the role you had to build your career was to check the tickets and get on the ladder to now you get to decide, but you get to decide. And so we talk in the book about, and we have different frameworks for people to use, but you know, it starts at the core with why do you work? And for most of us, that's a paycheck to earn a living. But as you do that or beyond that, is it about the impact you want? Is it about the type of organization you want to build? And then what do you do? And I think Reese Witherspoon had a great line recently where she said, chase your talent, not your dreams. There's something you do instinctively well, something you love to do that you just want to keep getting better at it. You're curious about it. You don't have to push yourself to want to push yourself. If anything in that realm is something that the world wants and will pay you for and that organizations need and will promote you for it, that's your core. That's your, what do I do? So why do I work? What do I do? And then where do I want to be? And that's going to change constantly. But am I in an environment that I'm learning in the right way? Am I in an environment where I'm delivering at the impact level I want? It's really meant to give you this sense of optionality, which is going to be fear inducing for a lot of people because they won't know where to start. And so I don't know, maybe even in your own experience, those first climbs, when you could go anywhere, how you think about it. And I think ultimately for all of us, and maybe you can validate this, just think about the next step. So many rich things in there I want to explore and we will in a few moments, they're figuring out why we work and what makes us unique is really important. And that provides the beginning part of the story that we have to tell so people can understand. The freedom can be, as you said, daunting, but it can also be liberating as well. You argue that in this new age of work and the AI age that soft skills, I'm not a big fan of that term, but things like curiosity, creativity and communication are actually the hardest and most valuable. I agree absolutely 100%. I'd love to hear your perspective on how can people develop these skills and most importantly, how can they demonstrate and communicate them to help those who might employ them see that as valuable? One of the interesting things about the book is it's not a how to AI book. It's a how to human with AI. And so much of the conversation is almost entirely about AI alone. It's capabilities, it's future capabilities and it concedes a lot of the conversation, this I think very diminished view of what humans can do based on, again, this efficiency focus of the industrial age and what we've done. So as we were writing this book, one of the first things we had to do was articulate what makes us us as humans. What is unique human capability? And it actually isn't a mature conversation in humanity because in the industrial age, we focus entirely on IQ, technical, analytic skills. We built teaching, training, credentialing, assessing everything around that. And so we talked to neuroscientists, we talked to organizational psychologists, behavior economists. And so we came up with what we call the five C's and it's our offer of what sits at the intersection of IQ and EQ of consciousness and conscience, courage, curiosity, creativity, compassion and communication. That gave us a kind of foundation of what makes us us. And then you build from that with resilience, adaptability, ability to fail, handle hard well and you get to this entrepreneurialism that we think is actually the relevance at work. But those five C's and we go into each in the book, first of all, if you're a human, you have an inability on these five C's. It comes with your brain. And so you start with that skill. Now if you've been in a job or lived a life that led you to be less curious than you wish you were, less creative, we think of creativity as a talent, not a skill that people can develop, although there's a ton of neuroscience research now on that communication. Some people are gifted in it. Some people haven't. Storytelling is mystical and magical. They're all just skills. And so whatever you do have as skills, if they're technical skills, analytic skills, operational skills, it's the same thing. It's how do I identify what I want to get better at and how do I push myself in small ways but in daily ways to test it and try it and learn from it. I often tell folks who feel overwhelmed by the idea they could be a good storyteller, the attempt is the achievement. I mean, it's a stoicism line, but that's all you're going for. You're just going for that deliberate practice. So we talk about in the book, as you bring it into your day to day, we have a framework for how to break your job down into three buckets of tasks. And as you think about the tasks that are going to require these kind of human skills, push yourself on some of them. Be courageous in a small way, but in a way that pushes yourself. Communicate something bigger or bolder in a small way, but a way that pushes yourself. Post something on LinkedIn. See what happens. But so much of it is the attempt is the achievement. But you start with the ability because you're human. And the best things we do as humans are with others. Go find other people you want to get better with. When I was speech writing, one of the things I always did, especially in moments where I was most overwhelmed is I call my wife and I just say, OK, I'm trying to explain this policy. So the great thing about being human is we're surrounded by other humans who can be a feedback loop for us. So make sure you're taking advantage of that. The collaborative nature in all of this is important. I appreciate that we all have these abilities. You said something there that harkens back to some things we've talked about, which is the notion of find what's right for you. So it's this introspection. And you might not have that skill right now, but you know, that's the passion and something you want to work for. So finding what's right is really about understanding yourself and seeing where you want to take that. And I appreciate that very much. Break down for us the three buckets and then articulate once we find the things that you'll tell us is in bucket three. How do we then really lean into our bucket three skills? One of the things we noticed early on, Ryan and I, is that the conversation about AI and work was becoming entirely about job titles. What's going to happen to software engineers as if all software engineers engineer in the same way and where one goes, all will go or entry level work. What's going to happen to this entire category of jobs as if they're all the same and they're all going to stay or they're all going to go. And our view was how do we start engaging with this change as it happens? We have a data point that I think is a key signal. 70% of the average skills in a job are going to have changed by 2030, 70, 70. So even if you're not changing jobs, your job is changing on you into an entirely new job. Now, if you hear that and you're like, oh, gosh, OK, I got to just bear through this as if that change is coming to you as if AI has already figured out what it's going to change about your job or your boss has figured it out and is going to come one day and say, here's the 70% that's different about your job. That's actually not how it's going to play out. You're going to decide how that job changes by that 70% in what way, in what order, at what pace. And so how do you do that? That's by seeing jobs as tasks. And the lived experience for me here is when I tell you that the three things I do best are explanatory storytelling to build coalitions around an expertise of economic opportunity. You would never get that from a description of my career by job title, like never in a million years. But if you look at the tasks of what I did in those jobs and how they built and reorganized and I built from them, you would get to that pretty easily. So take your job. It doesn't matter if you're CEO, you just got hired, you're in marketing, you're in engineering. Put aside your title, put aside your goals. Every week you do about a dozen things. Call them tasks, list them down. What are they? I do a lot of coding. I talk to customers. I organize team meetings, whatever it is, you list them out. And you're going to put them in three buckets. The first bucket is, well, stuff that AI can kind of already do or is quickly going to be able to do. Coding, summarizing, quick analytics, quick research. That goes in bucket one. Bucket two is stuff you're doing with these tools. This is actually the most important bucket. This is where high performers are emerging from new corners in new ways because they're leveraging the tools to quickly close an experience gap. I don't speak sales, but I really want to partner with them on that. Oh, this is how they talk about it. This is or I have this idea, but when I visualize it, no one gets excited. Let me turn it into a video or turn it into this whole PowerPoint I never could have done. Okay, closes that gap. So bucket two is how do I liberate myself from the efficiency machine like tasks that I don't have to do? And how do I do more of what I'm into and what I get excited about? And then bucket three is the stuff with other humans. I mean, there are a lot of conversations that you just see it end with humans running a bunch of agents. That isn't the end state. It's humans with a bunch of tools working with other humans with a bunch of tools doing all sorts of cool new things that humans have never done before across a broader set of areas where we can be entrepreneurial and innovate. That's partnering in new ways. That's thinking about ethics in new ways. That's thinking about community building or organizing in new ways. Ideation and brainstorming in new ways. I appreciate how you delineated the different buckets. So there's the things that AI can do. That's bucket one, the things that we can do in partnership together and then the things that are uniquely human. And as you look at your tasks and you itemize and figure out where they are, you see how you can move them towards bucket three. And then that helps pinpoint the work you need to do and to lean into it. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. One pattern I see a lot, especially with people who have strong ideas, is that the hardest part isn't the idea itself. It's getting started. Turning something in your head into something real that others can actually see and engage with. That's where tools really matter. Squarespace makes it much easier to take that first step. It's an all in one platform where you can build a professional website, claim your domain and create a clear home for what you're offering. You can set up scheduling, take payments and manage your work without stitching together multiple systems. And the design tools are flexible enough that your site can reflect your voice and your brand. If you're thinking about building something, even in a small way, Squarespace helps you move from idea to action. Head to squarespace.com slash TFTS for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code TFTS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. What do a tech CEO, a beauty brand founder and a former president have in common? They've scaled bold ideas into movements and shared what they learned on masters of scale. Recently, I joined host Jeff Berman to talk about communication. How to think on your feet, structure your ideas under pressure and make your message land. We had such a practical, wide-ranging conversation that I wanted to share it with you here. So please take a listen and then tune in every week to Masters of Scale to learn more about the strategies and mindsets behind extraordinary growth. Find Masters of Scale wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to our conversation. Before we end, I'd like to ask everybody three questions. One, I'm going to create just for you and two that are similar across all the episodes. You'd write about the value in all of this of your peer network. And that's not surprising. You work at LinkedIn. Beyond LinkedIn as a tool for this, what are other ways that we can leverage our peer network to help us as we grow and redefine our careers? I think for a lot of folks, it starts with just building it and maintaining it. Again, if you're insatiably curious and you're curious about humans, which has been a through line for me, whether it was what is it like to be a human in a war zone or a human that is living in an economy where they don't have a mobility? A lot of our Obama speeches were about the American dream. You're just constantly curious about what other people are up to and you're connecting with people, you're keeping in touch with people. And so I think starting with who you know and who you like to go to is really key because a lot of times people think your network has to be really established people who are really successful and are going to help you open doors and mentor you. And yes, that's like a key part of it. And in the industrial age, in the org chart, in the latter, that was probably the most important part. Also very limiting if you didn't have access to those folks. But if you did, that was the most important part. The reasons we think about what you're climbing as a wall is because in climbing, your peer group is a network because they have visibility into routes that you want to know. Beta information, I think it's called stuff that they've seen when they've gone. So it's not just who's done it and been really good at it. It's other people who are failing at doing it and why are they failing and what are they learning? It's people that you're giving advice to because they're going to give you advice too about how they're coming up and you're going to have this sort of weird reverse mentorship asymmetric relationship going. So if you think you have a limited network, start with pro you. And then it's just as simple as human to human interaction. And this where you can practice all those five C's. Talk to folks, get on the phone. So much about our day to day right now is about texting over talking. It's about quick summary over long exploratory winding, you know, brainstorms. Let me be the one to tell you, you know, this stuff that life right now doesn't feel like it's valuing is going to matter a ton. So go give yourself the time and space and permission to do that work. So the simple thing I'd say is, I mean, obviously, LinkedIn is a great tool, but pick up the phone. Go meet people, go for a walk. Just go experience whatever the question is you're trying to figure out with another human. Question number two, who is a communicator you admire and why? Joan Didion is the person I am going to every once in a while because there are a bunch of writers, but it's the writing where you're like, oh, my God, that sentence is like seven words. But it speaks volumes. Like, how did she do that? And a lot of what I'm trying to do, even in the selling of a book, you have to simplify the book. So the book is about the past, present and future of work for humans. There's an unlimited number of themes and topics. And I've been working on a list of just one liners. Like everything we just said about fear and all this company to me is summarized by, if you know one thing and one thing only, work is changing, not ending. Like that simplicity, I find seductive and still hard. And so like Didion is an example of someone I go to just to be in awe of how she got there to push myself. The ability to leverage language to communicate effectively is a true gift and skill in one we can all work at. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Well, I was going to say there's no right answer because it's all about the audience, but I guess that makes that number one. The audience matters most. And again, that audience is you every day, all day in terms of the thoughts in your head. But in any moment where you're communicating with a purpose, the audience matters in terms of who they are, why they are, what's going on in their head on that day. And so you have to start there. The second is, I think intent, that purpose. You're not just up there in front of that audience to speak for the sake of speaking, but you've got a purpose there. There's something you're trying to mobilize or whatnot. And the third thing, I mean, I have recent bias on it, but I think it's emotion. It's something in that belief. It's what do you want them to feel, which is different than who is the audience? You can have a sense of who's in the room, what's on their mind, what you're trying to convince them of based on what's on their mind. But when you get to what do you want them to feel? That goes beyond the audience in front of you. That goes to the human condition because that audience, they're all human and they might think what they think and you're thinking about that. But they're underneath that they might not even realize what they're feeling. So an example, I guess, would be like even with this story, you're talking about AI and work, AI tools, you're coming into a corporate setting. These people are eager to know what these tools are because they know that they've got to shift their jobs around it. They work at a tech company. So I'm assuming they're pretty excited about the tools or knowledge about the tools. My point of view is to try and help them appreciate these tools. So you're going to come in with a story about, isn't AI amazing and everyone's trying to figure it out and I'm here to help you figure it out. And here's why our tools amazing. And you might miss it underneath all that existential fear across that room that this tool you're talking about, even as it helps them, is just helping them help it replace them. And if you don't feel that, understand that, if you haven't tapped into that in your own gut, then I don't think you land that story. As you've mentioned earlier, it's really about the internal focus first. The first audience and foremost audiences, you understanding your purpose and understanding the emotion that might be underlying the communication. And then from there, craft a purpose and a message that connects. I really appreciate not only the insight into what makes for effective communication from your point of view in various roles that you've had, but I appreciate the detailed advice and guidance on how we can all prepare our careers and ourselves for this new way of working, which after listening to you, sounds pretty exciting. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about portfolio career building, listen to episode 226 with Alon Golan. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to the Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out Fastersmartr.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning community at Fastersmartr.io slash learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, an AI coach, and book club opportunities. Again, that's Fastersmartr.io slash learning to become part of our global Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning community. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast, Talk Smart.