The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:28:14
Kevin Eikenberry
The building block of most jobs and how we think about work is the job. I mean, our guest today says that we need to change that. He suggests that we need to build a skills powered organization. And if you want to know what he means and how that could change your organization and your career, you're in the right place.

00:00:28:16 - 00:00:50:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively, make a bigger, positive difference for their teams, organizations, and the world. If you are listening to this, you could have been with us live, or I guess you could be with us in the future for live episodes on your favorite social platform.

00:00:50:11 - 00:01:18:21
Kevin Eikenberry
You can maybe not your favorite, but we are on several. We you can get access to those live episodes and therefore interact with us and see them sooner by joining our Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linkedin to learn when they're happening and know how to join us. Today's episode is brought to you by my latest book, Flexible Leadership.

00:01:18:21 - 00:01:37:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence. It's time to realize that styles can get in our way and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach in a world that's more complex and uncertain than ever. Leaders need a new perspective and a new set of tools to create great results for their organizations and their team members.

00:01:37:15 - 00:02:08:21
Kevin Eikenberry
That's what. Flexible, excuse me, flexible leadership is all about. Learn more. Order your copy now. Flexible leadership. Excuse me. Remarkable podcast.com/flexible remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And so with that I'm going to bring in my guest. And I'm going to do the hardest part of this episode. I'm going to introduce him and try to get his name perfectly right. His name is Robin South and he is our guest.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:31:00
Kevin Eikenberry
He's written this fabulous book and I'm excited to have him join us. He is a recognized futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and AI. He is a senior partner and global leader for transformation services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum's Future Skills Executive Board and Global Foresight Network. He is a member of the faculty at Caltech.

00:02:31:03 - 00:03:05:08
Kevin Eikenberry
He's the coauthor of a number of books, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work Without Jobs, Also Transformative, HR Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs. But his latest book he's also coauthored is called The Skills Powered Organization The Journey to the Next Generation Enterprise. And with that, Robin, welcome. So glad to have you here for us to have a chat about some of these ideas that I think are things that most people haven't thought about, but I believe that after this conversation they will be thinking about.

00:03:05:08 - 00:03:22:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So, let's start here. What sort of led to this book? I mean, I gave that brief introduction, sort of gave a bit of the arc and the titles of the books give us a clue, but why I why this book specifically?

00:03:23:01 - 00:03:54:09
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah. Well, firstly, thank you for having me on, Kevin. It's lovely to be here with you. And hello from London. So the this book really is the continuation of work that I had started with my previous coauthor, John Boudreau, whom I'd written four books with. And if you don't mind me, just. I'll do a bit of a quick retrospective, you know, second book together, which is called Lead the Work Navigating a World Beyond Employment.

00:03:54:11 - 00:04:20:01
Ravin Jesuthasan
What we started to show Kevin was the opportunities for organizations to think beyond that legacy relationship between a person and a position, that legacy way in which work has been done for the better part of 140 years. And in that, in that book talked about how more and more work was escaping the traditional organizational boundary as gig work was starting to permeate our economy.

00:04:20:03 - 00:04:51:02
Ravin Jesuthasan
You fast forward to our third book together, Reinventing Jobs, and we overlaid the impact of artificial intelligence and process automation with about 135 case studies beginning the work of art of, of, of documenting what a new operating model would look like. Fast forward to work without jobs, which, you know, has been called, as someone once said to me, like, my gosh, that's like it's like 2007 on the iPhone, which I really appreciated that comment.

00:04:51:04 - 00:05:24:15
Ravin Jesuthasan
But in that book, we laid out that what that new work operating system would look like, one built on the smaller building blocks of tasks and activities and skills, as opposed to those larger, more cumbersome building blocks of of a job, because those smaller building blocks allowed us to solve different problems differently. With the talent we had with the machines, we had an opportunity to combine them in ever different combinations to solve many different problems.

00:05:24:17 - 00:05:44:06
Ravin Jesuthasan
And then you fast forward to this book, and I was really privileged to have written this book with, the skills about organization, with my goal, the challenge. Who is the chief strategy and chief people officer at Standard Chartered Bank. And what we really wanted was to write a book that was a practitioner's guide of how do you make skills, the currency for work?

00:05:44:08 - 00:06:29:06
Ravin Jesuthasan
Not easy by any means, because we have we as a society have a, you know, well, north of 150 year legacy of work being done in jobs. But, you know, the conditions for us to start to pivot away from just jobs as the currency for work are truly ripe. And I hope what we've done with this book is give business leaders, from CEOs to CFOs to Kairos, as one, as individuals, as you think about navigating the next in your in your life, your career, hopefully built the case and provided them with tangible tools, frameworks, methodologies and case studies to illustrate the art of the possible of how you go about making skills,

00:06:29:06 - 00:06:31:12
Ravin Jesuthasan
the currency of work.

00:06:31:14 - 00:07:00:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So one of the things that that, I thought about as I was reading and even as I was just thinking or listening to what you were saying, is that I grew up in a small family business, and, and I run a larger than that, but still small business relative to most, with 15 of us. And when I realized as excuse me as I was reading, was that I think it's this is relatively easy to think about in a small organization.

00:07:00:08 - 00:07:20:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I don't think all small organizations do it. Don't misunderstand me. I think the best of them do. I would like to think that my team does, and yet the more the bigger the organization gets, the harder and harder and harder it gets. So I like let's just start there, comment on that and am I off base?

00:07:20:01 - 00:07:23:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Am I right about that so far?

00:07:23:08 - 00:07:54:08
Ravin Jesuthasan
You are absolutely right, Kevin. And the reason for that is you know exactly what every person can and cannot do, regardless of the quote unquote job that he or she sits in. And, and that that is has been the fundamental obstacle. Right? It's as we scale up, how do we start to connect emerging work to the skills of the workforce above and beyond the particular job that they that person might sit in?

00:07:54:10 - 00:08:23:09
Ravin Jesuthasan
It's also where AI has certainly been a key driver of of that volatility and velocity that I talked about at the beginning. But it's also been a key enabler to provide the level of insight that you, as an individual, might have over your 15 people to providing that same level of insight to manage. In her role as chief strategy Officer, having insight into the capabilities of 100,000 people who make up Standard Chartered Bank.

00:08:23:11 - 00:08:41:11
Ravin Jesuthasan
And we can certainly dive deep into what that actually looks like. But I think that's been the the most significant unlock, if you will, for why this topic of the skills about organization has been such a hot, hot one for, you know, the last couple of years or so.

00:08:41:12 - 00:09:11:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Well. So let's talk about that. I mean, obviously this, this book, as you, as you laid out for us is sort of the next step in a logical sequence. If people are following you and reading your work. And yet, I think it's also safe to say that this in part because of AI, as you mentioned, we're really at a crossroads where if we can figure out how to be more skills powered or to be skills powered, we have a chance to create competitive advantage on lots of fronts.

00:09:11:22 - 00:09:31:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Why is now other than the AI, which we'll get to the AI piece other than the AI component of this, what's the compelling argument or compelling reason for thinking about this today, when we've been doing it a different way for 150 years?

00:09:31:11 - 00:09:40:18
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah. So so a couple of things before I jump into that. One is, while this book builds on the previous books, it certainly stands alone. So, you know, you don't have to read my previous.

00:09:40:18 - 00:09:54:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Books, I would agree. I mean, I haven't read the others and I didn't feel at a loss. I was just trying to put it in the arc of the read. You know, I would as a for all of you listening or watching as a reader, I would completely agree. Not like I have to go back and read for others before I can read this.

00:09:54:11 - 00:09:56:14
Kevin Eikenberry
I would agree with you 100%.

00:09:56:16 - 00:10:44:11
Ravin Jesuthasan
Excellent. So. So let me give you a sense, Kevin. And it comes from the work that when John Boudreau and I were writing Reinventing Jobs, you know what? We we started to see across these 135 case studies was that the, you know, what had traditionally been our source of competitive advantage, right, in large companies, that legacy legacy of as my my good friend and colleague Gary Boles says, mindset, skill set and toolset, that legacy of how we've done things our customer relationships, our technology, our relationships with our people, that legacy was increasingly becoming the primary obstacle to the application of AI and realizing the possibilities from this new world of work, and that was

00:10:44:13 - 00:11:10:01
Ravin Jesuthasan
truly eye opening for us. And you fast forward from when we wrote that book in 2018 to in Davos this year. I was in a session with Sam Altman and he made the comment, maybe someone to a little overstated, but I think the gist of it was right. He said, you know, at no time in human history have we experienced the sheer volatility and velocity of change.

00:11:10:03 - 00:11:37:14
Ravin Jesuthasan
And then two months later, the IMF came out and said that Global Uncertainty Index, which they've been tracking for close to 50 years, was now 2.5 times, not 2.5%, but 2.5 times higher than the previous 30 years, which is saying something because we've had a fair bit of disruption the previous the last 30 years, to say that that uncertainty index is off the charts.

00:11:37:14 - 00:12:06:20
Ravin Jesuthasan
And there were four things, Kevin, that was sort of driving that, right. One is, you know, like it or not, the climate crisis is real. And we see that playing out around the world. And in many communities, the energy impact from the the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East, the geopolitical issues that are impacting the world, whether it, again, the war in the Middle East, whether it's the tensions between the United States and China, etc..

00:12:06:20 - 00:12:44:03
Ravin Jesuthasan
And then suddenly the granddaddy of them all, the technology shock that has been unleashed on us with, the impact of generative AI the last couple of years, which again, builds on lots and lots of advances in, you know, the earlier generations of AI, and process automation. So any one of these things on their own would be a true shock for us to have all four occurring at the same time, and the multiplier effect of all four, is what is driving the need for us to fundamentally rethink work.

00:12:44:05 - 00:13:07:13
Ravin Jesuthasan
And you know what? You see, I have this chart that I often use and, in in the speeches that I give, you know, we've always lived in a complicated world, Kevin, but we are now truly in a complex world, in a complicated world. Structure is our friend, right? Because it affords a scale, efficiency. This traditional country.

00:13:07:13 - 00:13:10:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Gets some knowns we can work with.

00:13:10:05 - 00:13:41:05
Ravin Jesuthasan
Precisely. Yeah. You know, expertise. Because the the knowns are known, right? Expertise is the key determinant of how we respond to that complicated world. In a complex world, that playbook goes out the window, and what instead kicks in is a need for speed, agility and an execution focus. How do I try, fail fast, learn and iterate at scale and speed and it changes how we think about work and how it's organized.

00:13:41:07 - 00:14:06:10
Ravin Jesuthasan
We need less hierarchical structure and more leadership from the edges. We need less of those structures that are governed around keeping variance in tight zones. And as my friend and colleague Lena Niro is the CEO at Chanel says, we need culture to be the new structure, a culture that organizes disparate interests into a common mission and purpose.

00:14:06:12 - 00:14:32:19
Ravin Jesuthasan
And as we think about the skills of the workforce from having a just in time model, that worked really well for Henry Ford, right? When we think about the ordered processes of the assembly line, the ability to predict revenue growth to the third decimal point next year, which we can't do for next month, that model shifts from a just in time approach to the development of an organization of work.

00:14:32:21 - 00:14:55:04
Ravin Jesuthasan
Can we just in case approach, because I need a workforce that is multi-skilled, able to pivot at a moment's notice. And I need the insights into how we can do that. I need the demand signals to be able to sort of pivot that workforce. And I need an operating model that enables that talent to flow, to work more seamlessly.

00:14:55:06 - 00:15:13:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, to shift, to flow, to work. You mentioned variables, and I notice that was in the book. And I don't know Gary as well as you, but I've had conversations with him and read his work and he talked and any of you and I've had this conversation, he talks about mindset, skill set, tool set. We it we talk about mindset, skill set, habits set.

00:15:13:15 - 00:15:46:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of the challenges that all of this of making the shifts that you're talking about come from is the fact that we've got this habit of doing it the way we've done it for so very, very long. But there's another thing. We're talking about skills and, and and that's important. Obviously that's the focus of our conversation. I'm curious, can I'm going back to what you said about, well, if the if the leaders got ten people, 15 people, 20 people, they probably know the skills of those folks, but they also know hopefully the goals of those folks and the aspirations of those folks.

00:15:46:14 - 00:16:05:21
Kevin Eikenberry
So where would you put that into this model? Because we, you know, we're now trying to say we want to think about every human as a as the fundamental component of how this fits together, which means it's more than just their skills, right? It's also their mindset. And it is their aspirations and their goals. How does that fit into the model?

00:16:05:21 - 00:16:08:12
Kevin Eikenberry
When we think about this at an enterprise level?

00:16:08:14 - 00:16:41:11
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah, yeah. No. And I think that that passion right. That interest is what's key for anyone. Being good at anything is as we know. And so in the book, you know, what we do early on this. As you'll remember, Kevin, we level set to say, you know, when we say when we talk about skills, what we're talking about is both the individuals, you know, ability to do perform a piece of work and their expression of those skills in the form of capabilities that result in the proficient execution of work.

00:16:41:13 - 00:17:08:20
Ravin Jesuthasan
And we also define skills as both, you know, what have been, in the past, we would call hard skills. We prefer technical skills. And then what in the past was somewhat pejoratively called soft skills. We prefer human or enabling skills, because the thing that we've consistently seen is that it's a combination of both of those two that is critical to ensuring that skills translate into productive work.

00:17:08:22 - 00:17:31:18
Ravin Jesuthasan
And so one of the key benefits, I think, that we have, going back to your earlier question about the how, you know, what's fueling this is the power of AI to unearth someone's interests, the power of AI to unearth the skills that people might have, that they often discount, or ignore. And I'll share an example with you in a second.

00:17:31:20 - 00:18:03:13
Ravin Jesuthasan
And the ability to suggest, hey, you're really passionate about this, and you have these skills, you know, this would be used. Here's an opportunity for you to sort of take combine those two to take on a piece of work that you might never have thought of. You know, you might be a data scientist who's really passionate about gaining, you know, boy, an opportunity to build a scenario planning module for your strategy team as they look to, you know, as they look to plan for the next generation of what our products might look like.

00:18:03:15 - 00:18:12:17
Ravin Jesuthasan
And that's where you start to see some really interesting opportunities to drive greater agility in how work is done.

00:18:12:19 - 00:18:37:05
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's why, whether we want to call it a position or a role, the role of leader, is still so important because as a leader, we have a perspective that others don't necessarily see when they're doing the work. And that, I think, is one of the key, things that leaders need to bring regardless, but especially as we think about what we're talking about here, that perspective in that different view is critical and important.

00:18:37:05 - 00:19:02:10
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'm curious when you talk about in the book, so I'm not trying to send you a send you on a rabbit trail here, but what are the useless sort of five skills that are going to be exceptionally important for leaders? And we don't need to have the whole list. I've got one I'd like us to talk about, but where would what would you say we should be thinking about from a leadership perspective in terms of skills?

00:19:02:12 - 00:19:25:13
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah. So, so so there's there are actually two categories you'll remember from the book, two categories of sort of leader capabilities, if you will, that we saw as being critical. One was this pivot from leading through, and I love you, the fact that you started with your business, Kevin, because think of how you lead as a leader, right?

00:19:25:15 - 00:19:57:03
Ravin Jesuthasan
You don't rely on hierarchical authority, as we almost always do in large companies with a structure governs, you know, the and that these neatly ordered boxes, the foundation for how work gets done to I suspect you lead with empowerment and alignment, insight into someone's passions. I hope it's someone skills. And knowing that, you know, Susie may not think she's good at that, but boy, I can see how she could make a difference there.

00:19:57:05 - 00:20:22:12
Ravin Jesuthasan
So that that's one thing I think. And this is a really big one, Kevin, because we, you know, we talk about the core capabilities of the of, the skills about organization. This notion of work design is, is truly becoming pivotal. The options we have for getting work done, gig workers, AI, process automation, shared services, centralization, near shoring, offshoring.

00:20:22:14 - 00:20:45:05
Ravin Jesuthasan
The savvy business leader. The next generation business leader has to pivot from saying new work has come. I'm going to open a requisition and fill a job to actually understanding what is the work, what am I options for getting the work done and how how do I make the right choice with the right metrics, not just near-term, but long term of picking that option?

00:20:45:05 - 00:21:12:17
Ravin Jesuthasan
And do I understand the secondary and tertiary considerations? Yeah. From a tech, from a technical view of automation to a much more humanistic view of automation. We have, particularly with Jenny, as we look at the democratization of knowledge and creativity, we have lots and lots of examples of leaders who are making shortsighted decisions because there is an immediate bump to earnings per share.

00:21:12:19 - 00:21:56:19
Ravin Jesuthasan
We did a study, several months ago that looked at the companies who, you know, every time someone talked about using generative AI and what the bump to their stock price was, you know, from the analyst with within the next two weeks. But a more humanistic view where we understand the nuances and long term consequences from an episodic view of thinking about how do we make work more accessible to kind of an ongoing view of ensuring that we've got a pipeline of talent that is, that has the that represents the communities we're in, from a relatively low bar of digital savvy for leaders to true AI, fluency, AI, you know, every one of us

00:21:56:21 - 00:22:20:00
Ravin Jesuthasan
have needs to really understand what ChatGPT can do and what the next iteration of these large language models and I will be. And then lastly, and probably the most significant one for us, I'll go back to my Henry Ford example. We've organized work in jobs and processes a lots, lots of for a long time. Worked great in that complicated environment.

00:22:20:02 - 00:22:33:15
Ravin Jesuthasan
In that complex environment, how do we stop thinking about the only way of getting work done is to connect people to the process, to thinking about how work is connected to the skills of the workforce. You have.

00:22:33:17 - 00:22:54:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. You know, yeah, we could, we could, we could have an entire conversation on that one point. But I but I promised at the start we would say a lot. We would talk a little bit more about the AI piece. And I did note that you did Namedrop Sam Altman. You did a session with Sam Altman. I just want everyone to note that they're on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

00:22:54:20 - 00:23:19:16
Kevin Eikenberry
You never know who might show up here. So, I do want to go to the AI piece for a second. And so, how we've you've talked about AI, and it's a big part of the book, but in terms of sort of starting to wrap our conversation, we've talked about it here. You've talked about it here from the context of it's it's a driver of the change.

00:23:19:18 - 00:23:54:14
Kevin Eikenberry
It's, it's, it's a create aider for the compelling need to change. But I want to have you talk for a minute about how can it help us make the transformation happen, rather than being a poke? How, you know, in a prod. How can it be, an enabler to us if we really want to start to think more, less process focused, more project focused, if we want to think less job and job title and more skill and capability, then how can I help us with that transformation?

00:23:54:16 - 00:24:22:07
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah. So let me sort of, break it down to sort of it's brass tacks. So in the model we have today, right, 1 to 1 relationship between a degree, a person and a position, HR functions, business leaders easily able to manage how I progressed in the organization, how I'm connected to work. Because the building blocks are really simple when we think about skills.

00:24:22:09 - 00:24:46:11
Ravin Jesuthasan
Now I've got the unique bundle of skills that's Kevin and the unique bundle of skills. That's Robin. What you go from is that 1 to 1 relationship that is easily managed by our simple minds, to the many, to many, and the numerous ways in which I can tap Kevin's interests is skills, is potential to acquire new skills and connect them to opportunities.

00:24:46:11 - 00:25:17:23
Ravin Jesuthasan
And so what I does is it generates insights. And I'm going to give you a specific example in a second. It generates insights. It creates the matchmaking or the market making capability. And it creates the nudges. And here's what I mean by that. Just to pick on those three things in terms of insights, we did an experiment at the World Economic Forum, with one of the consumer goods sectors, I should say the World Economic Forum did the experiment.

00:25:18:00 - 00:25:38:08
Ravin Jesuthasan
I had the privilege of watching the experiment and it was about looking at industry transition of talent. You know, if, let's say, this particular industry was starting to change its business model, it didn't need so much of these skills. Could those skills be moved to another part of the industry. So did this with the consumer goods organization sector.

00:25:38:10 - 00:26:04:22
Ravin Jesuthasan
Everyone from Unilever to Walmart to Ikea, etc. and we asked people, tell us your skills. The average list was about 70, and most people only told you that technical skills, oh, I can do analytics. You know, I can do process design. And then you had the algorithm go through and infer people's skills from their work history, from their education.

00:26:05:00 - 00:26:27:08
Ravin Jesuthasan
The fact that Kevin has led a multinational team with eight people from eight countries means he's got cross-cultural sensitivity that way, communication skills, etc., and the average analyst was 28 deep. And it put people in a position of saying, you know, oh, yeah, you know, when you shared that list, it was like, oh, yeah. I didn't think communication was a skill.

00:26:27:10 - 00:27:07:02
Ravin Jesuthasan
I didn't think critical thinking was a skill. And but it put people in the position of verifying and validating that their skills. And so that level of insight was, was the first thing. Right. The second thing was the ability of AI to sort of be the matchmaker that tons of organizations with these internal talent marketplaces and what these marketplaces do is take those inferred skills, match them up against who has, you know, who has a passion for this type of work, who's interested in this, who's got the capacity and, and, and space to take on work and connecting them to opportunities seamlessly.

00:27:07:04 - 00:27:36:04
Ravin Jesuthasan
If you think of how we've traditionally done this manually, all I would do is I figure out, you know, well, Kevin's ready to move up a role because his boss is retiring or Kevin's interested in moving from finance into it, and he has an opening, a deeply manual process done by a business leader and someone from HR. And now you've got this, this massive volume of data populating and powering the many to many, and the numerous ways in which people can be connected to work.

00:27:36:06 - 00:28:01:03
Ravin Jesuthasan
Unilever was one of the first companies to recognize this, and in 2018 introduced a marketplace. And today, all 70,000 white collar workers at Unilever have the opportunity to create projects and post them to the marketplace and take on projects or assignments that they're passionate about, that they, they have the skills to do so. That's the second part about the matchmaking.

00:28:01:05 - 00:28:37:06
Ravin Jesuthasan
And the third part of this is around how do we sort of sustain the work and nudge people? We've got a great case study. You may remember in the book, Kevin, of a insurance company that moved all its data scientists from being in a traditional job based model to being in what we call the flow model. And so people were still employees, but they were connecting to work through their skills to projects and assignments and gigs and the algorithm, as more work was done, would learn, you know, it would say, Kevin, you're a great Python developer.

00:28:37:08 - 00:29:01:22
Ravin Jesuthasan
But you know what? Demand for Python in our organization is trending down. But demand for Julia is trending up. Here are access to the two learning resources. You need to be Upskilled and Julia to be able to keep contributing to our organization. And because we have a skills based pay architecture, you know, today you've got this market premium based on our ability to commercialize Python skills.

00:29:02:00 - 00:29:19:04
Ravin Jesuthasan
A year from now, when we revisit those premiums, your premium. If you choose not to be upskilled, it's likely that your premium will be adjusted down. But if you choose to be upskilled, it's more than likely that you're premium will be adjusted up because the demand for those skills in our business is going up.

00:29:19:05 - 00:29:38:17
Kevin Eikenberry
It's growing. Yep, absolutely. I knew everyone that when we started this conversation, it was going to that the kind of thing would be give you less to think about, the less kind thing it would be. Make your head explode. And I hope it's the answer for you personally is somewhere between those two things. My head, you all can.

00:29:38:17 - 00:30:04:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Some of you are watching me. And so my head has not exploded. But I certainly have plenty to think about and talk about. And, with our team moving forward, I want to ask a couple of more questions. Sort of shifting gears, Raymond, before we finish. And, and one of those is. I'm curious, when I when we have the chance to interact with these really insightful, wise, smart, accomplished people here, I always want to know what they do for fun.

00:30:04:18 - 00:30:07:08
Kevin Eikenberry
What do you do for fun?

00:30:07:10 - 00:30:18:17
Ravin Jesuthasan
Oh, Kevin, the fact that I've written now six books in 12 years tells you, you know, I, my choices leave a lot to be desired.

00:30:18:18 - 00:30:34:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, you're making choices. At least you recognize them as choices, right? I hope that you derive at least some pleasure from the writing process. I do, and yet I know that it's not all pleasure. So you got to give me something else.

00:30:34:11 - 00:31:03:06
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yes. So I, I, I really enjoy golf. It's my my quiet time. It's also probably my, my wife's salvation because I'm a, you know, she gets up quite I do, and I am a deeply avid and passionate, fan of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club in the UK. I grew up in the UK. I've been a fan of Tottenham Hotspur since 1979.

00:31:03:08 - 00:31:18:20
Ravin Jesuthasan
They are a mediocre middling team. So it's actually quite. I don't really relieve stress as much as incites more stress. Actually. But, but, they are my passion and I love that.

00:31:18:22 - 00:31:26:13
Kevin Eikenberry
One other question. Well, two other questions, but the next one is the only one you knew I was going to ask you. What are you reading these days?

00:31:26:15 - 00:31:36:01
Ravin Jesuthasan
So I've actually just started reading War by Bob Woodward, which, is proving to be quite eye opening.

00:31:36:03 - 00:31:53:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome. We will put the link to that, as well as the link to the skills powered organization, on the website, on the show notes and all that sort of thing. But I'm curious where where can people learn more about you? Where do you want to point people? They want to find the book. They want to find you.

00:31:53:00 - 00:31:57:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Where should they go? I'll hold the book up here for for those watching. Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:57:23 - 00:32:13:06
Ravin Jesuthasan
So I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Onex. The my website is Robin. Jason Boston.com. And the website for the book where people can download a free excerpt is the skill, skills powered organization.com.

00:32:13:08 - 00:32:33:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Skills powered organization.com. We'll have both of those links on the show notes as well. I hope that you will connect with those things. And so before we go, everyone in before I thank Robin for being here. My question that I have for all of you, if you've been here before, you know what it is, because I can be predictable in some ways.

00:32:33:19 - 00:32:59:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And here it is. Now, what what action will you take as a result of being here? What did you take from this? That not you won't just find interesting, but you will find actionable. And so maybe you got some new ideas about how to use and even think about AI. Maybe you were, convicted a bit about your how you're choosing to think about and using ChatGPT and tools of its ilk.

00:32:59:19 - 00:33:27:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Maybe you want to spend some time thinking about the connection between the technical skills and the human skills, and how they are being valued by you or in your organization. I don't know what those. So maybe you want to start thinking about work design or work redesign, even if you're just a manager in the middle. I'm just challenge you to take action on what you've got, because if you don't, the value of our time together is diminished.

00:33:27:15 - 00:33:44:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And our time, of course, is valuable. I appreciate that you spent some of it, of it with us today. Robin, thank you so much for being here. It was so much fun to have you. I really enjoyed our conversation. I learned a lot, and, I hope that you feel the same.

00:33:44:17 - 00:33:48:12
Ravin Jesuthasan
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on your show, Kevin.

00:33:48:13 - 00:34:13:04
Kevin Eikenberry
It. My pleasure. So everybody, you know the drill. You've been here, so you want to come back. And if you've been here before, hopefully you're already subscribed. Wherever you're viewing this. If you're not, now's the chance to do that. Make sure you referred someone else to come watch or listen to this one or any other episode. And and please do come back next week for another episode of Because there will be another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.