Chief Change Officer - #265 Colin Savage: The Frequent Flyer of Change Has Thoughts on AI—and Lifelong Learning — Part Three

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Part Three.If change were a sport, Colin Savage would have a trophy room. He’s worked in 70+ countries, lived in 7, and reinvented himself more times than most of us change our passwords.In this episode, Colin calls out lifelong learning as passé and introduces his take: skill stacking. Plus, we get into why having a personal AI strategy might be just as important as having a LinkedIn profile. Buckle up—Colin’s not slowing down, and neither should you.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Skill Stacking: Building the Professional Toolkit“Skill stacking, by contrast, is about curating abilities that complement one another professionally. It’s not about learning everything, but about combining practical skills—like emotional intelligence and technical expertise—to tackle complex challenges with a well-rounded approach.”AI as a Symphony, Not a Solo“The real power of AI lies in its harmony with other tools and disciplines. No single tool can address every need, but by leveraging the strengths of multiple technologies in concert, professionals can tackle challenges faster, smarter, and more effectively.”Cheating AI? The Consequences Are Real“From students to professionals, relying on AI without human effort leads to steep penalties. A student might fail, a professional might face fraud charges. The higher the stakes, the more critical it is to leverage—not outsource—human intelligence.”From Problem-Solving to Value Creation“AI isn’t just a tool for fixing problems—it’s a way to grow and extend what’s already working. By pairing the strengths of people and machines, businesses can unlock untapped potential and deliver results that weren’t possible before._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Colin Savage  --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.10 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>130,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. This is a three-part series with Colin Selvidge. In part one, the first episode will dive into Colin's fascinating journey as the self-proclaimed change addict turned change guru. Colin's career spans continents, cultures, and industries.

Seven countries lived in, seven more seconded to, and projects in over 70 nations. From organizational transformation to personal reinvention, he has mastered the art of embracing change and applying those lessons to life. In this conversation, Cullen impacts his unique perspective on change. How throwing himself into the unknown led to unparalleled growth and insight. From leaving Canada with nothing but a suitcase and ambition, to navigating industries from telecommunications to financial services, Colin shares how the constant evolution around him became his greatest teacher. In the next episodes, we'll explore the learning required for transformation, why Colin believes lifelong learning is outdated and skills-decking is the future. And finally, in part 3, we'll tackle AI, human intelligence, and why every one of us

needs a personal AI strategy. Buckle up, this one is a ride. Lifelong learning is an outdated concept in this that it lacks focus for some people where the skill stacking is a little more concentrated and it will help you really build it cheese. But again, it's not going to be specific in an area, but you can apply it across a swath of area. And it'll really help you advance your career and invent whatever you want to do to be a standout kind of person. I kind of agree or disagree with what you just said. Lifelong learning is about the attitude, in my opinion.

Lifelong learning isn't just about acquiring new knowledge. It's about figuring out how you learn best. Some people thrive in classroom settings or in-person workshops, while others prefer self-paced digital formats. The methods vary, but the goal is the same, which is to keep growing, to keep learning. When it comes to skills-decking, I see it as something deeper. You mentioned it's about purposefully merging diverse skills to solve complex challenges. And I think you're right.

What's often missing isn't the means to learn. We have more access than ever to tools, training, and knowledge. The gap lies in connecting the dots between those skills and leveraging them in meaningful ways to multiply the impact. In my view, we are living in a tool economy, tool TOOL. Everything is about the tool, whether it's Check GPT today, Google yesterday, or whatever the next hot thing will be. The mindset is, if you have a problem, there's a tool for that.

Need a solution? Just grab a hammer, a screwdriver. What is the problem? Most of the time, those tools are just solving service-level symptoms, not addressing the deeper underlying issues. It's like putting a band-aid on a cup without treating the infection. Sure, the immediate problem looks solved, but the root cause persists, and people end up repeating the same mistakes. I see this pattern a lot, especially among knowledge workers. They buy into the idea of lifelong learning, sign up for courses, pay for certifications, and stack up all these skills.

But they don't actually go anywhere with them. Why? Because the key isn't just applying skills, it's in connecting them, applying them to real-life scenarios, case by case, and solving problems with them in an integrated manner. So the missing piece is less about technical skills and more about human skills, what most people call solved skills. Problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, communication, these are the connective tissue that make skills stacking impactful. Without them, you're just collecting tools in a toolbox you don't know how to use effectively.

That's where I think the future of lifelong learning needs to focus. Not just teaching new skills, but on helping people build the connections between them and apply them in meaningful, impactful ways. It's not about the tools themselves, it's about what you build with them. I agree. Yeah. Do you, you have brought the other hand that I'm not going to say that I forgot, but what I would add to what you're saying and you've played the court in the

skills stacking, I differentiate between calling the person and calling the professional all the time. So skill stacking, those are skills stacked for my person. Calling the person, that's where lifelong learning for me and always grow. And so I'm very clear on what's the differentiator. Because what you can do is if you're people like us or those listening that are like us, if you've got an all crazy horizon of areas that you're interested in and you've read about, studied, done whatever to build up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skip.

I love reading modern African history. up knowledge, it can be impossible to connect all the dots and make them all skilful. I love reading modern African history. I have three shelves of books in my house that are all about the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am never going to use that, at least not now. Oh, I gotta go get that PhD in red. Or I need to go in this thing that I've been invested in for a long time and I enjoy reading about and it is a form of learning, doesn't need to be something

that I'm going to incorporate into my work life. And I purposely keep it separate. And that's the same thing of the minivico instrument that happened to be gathered in bust, unfortunately, in the back of my room. Those are also skills that I'm learning throughout my life, just for my own enjoyment. And I'm totally with you on the law of the instrument, right? If everything, if you've got a hammer and you're good at it, then it will look like a meal. I sit on a number of groups where we support startups and tech founders and

entrepreneurs and the drive to just leap to the solution because I think I can sell a widget to somebody rather than understanding to your point like, is this actually a problem or is this a set up or something else? It just drives me nuts. And so we're just going to end up with now the toolkit is going to have 7,000 tools, 6,800 of which I don't know how to use, and 50 that are actually useful for me to figure out any kind of a dilemma that I'm approaching. I think you've done a good job of reminding me that maybe the lifelong learning thing should be just for life, and

the skill that should be where we focus on potentially getting the right kind of multi-skilled person who to your point doesn't just look down and build a tool, but is able to interact with others, is able to be empathetic, show emotional intelligence, all those kind of things. And I think maybe sometimes get sharp to the side over the let's build the technical experience and skill ourselves up with now I know not just C++, but I also know all of these other JavaScript and other kinds of software so I can build my own AI mark. Let's go. Right. So you've been diving deep into AI lately. As someone with a strong background in change management and leadership, how do you see this technology shaping the future of change management and

skills decking? What's your vision for where we're headed? That's a fantastic and a fascinating topic. I'm starting now because I'm not a very quiet person, often to my detriment, but I'm starting now to get people asking, hey, I see you're doing this stuff in particularly generative AI. I know that humans are very clear that I'm not a person. I don't build these things. I don't know the computer science behind it. I'm purely a practitioner of the tools. I get people asking a lot,

hey, could you do a short little limited learning course for 30 minutes on or the top 10 G generative AI tools? Or here's what you can do this. I'm all for it. I think it's a good idea. But what I often find too is the people that are asking me or those that are very early on in their technical journey of learning, so they're maybe late adopters, let's call them, they just want a silver bullet.

They want, oh, what's the one tool I can use that can do everything. And I have to constantly pull back and I have to remind them all, AI is like anything else. It's going to be a combination of tools. It's going to be interdisciplinary. So you're going to need not just an understanding of the AI tools and the skills that are required to use those tools, but you're going to need to know, you're going to need to understand strategy, how business development skills work. You're going to need to know how human resources, the team leadership, all these kinds of things. You're going to need to know all of the soft skills that are always going to be fundamental

and important. to be fundamental in reporting. And then how does these, how does a mitt of your AI toolkit help you in individual instance? And for example, right now I'm working with a human resources consulting company. We don't really know how it works, but then what you could do is if you use 3D, 3D report for tool, you could help the company build its own GPT Feed it with its own policies You could build a tool for HR professionals that said here's where all our policies are Here's where all of our channel plates are so instead of reading through 400 pages of documentation You can use tools to then figure out identify the policies that they may have to help you to contravene, figure out some of the

path forward, and then put together a plan that you as a professional are then bringing to review with your expertise and those interdisciplinary skills, and then present to senior leadership and say, this is what happened, this is what I think we should do, and this would be the underlying evidence for what I want. And you'll be able to do that in a day rather than checking two weeks. So there's, I think there's a way forward, but they am constantly. Surprised by how, how people with limited technology in particular experience and expertise, they just want a silver bullet.

They just want what's the one tool that's going to do everything? Nothing. There's no one tool that's going to do it all. And in fact, if you think that's the case, then you need to go back and we actually need to think about what exactly are you trying to solve? It's a little bit of like maybe sort of expectation resetting and then let's start at the beginning with what these tools are and explain to people how they work in concert and not to build the best thing for you and all that's going to have to be

tailored which as you said before if we're always building tool for everything that's not yet a problem without understanding them then we're just building tool for everything that's not yet a problem without understanding the system, then we're just adding more tools and making more distractions. Destruction and wastage is just noise. It's a wasted effort, right? One thing that many people agree on, but I don't think they're fully figured out yet, but I don't think they're fully figured out yet. It's the importance of human skills in an AI-driven world. I like to call it human intelligence. In fact, that's the essence of this podcast. My goal is to elevate human intelligence by uniting global voices like yours.

For me, human intelligence is about being experience-driven, time-tested, and grounded in real-life skills. It's about tapping into high-sight, insight, and foresight. Exactly like the wisdom you shared over the past hour. And while we talked about human intelligence being crucial in the AI era, I think that's exactly what we're lacking. With all these tools, social media platforms, and tech innovations, people aren't developing essential skills like communication, which is at the core of human intelligence. So my question to you is this. Human skills are critical, but how do we bring them back?

How do we nurture and develop these skills as we move forward? I love this idea of human intelligence, Vincent. I'm going to steal it and share it with the Red Lord. Chief Brooke, we've always been referencing you because I think that is incredibly important and it will always be. I'm not a... We all see what leaders in the AI space and other things say, you know, in three years, the AI doing all of its work for human experience, in five years, the AI will more say, okay, fine.

There's a lot of rudimentary activities and repetitive stuff that AI might be able to take over and do more efficiently, more rapidly, 24 hours a day, whatever. But it's always going to require human oversight, because it's going to be producing things for human. If the end consumer, the end result, the definition of whatever is being done, the person who has strengths and weaknesses, valid, boy gold, all those kind of things, personal, they need to be addressed, all that kind of stuff, then it can't be the AI tool or tool can't address that, that's enough and it's more efficiently enough.

I gave a speech at a conference a couple of months ago, and I was introducing a gentleman in his company that you did analysis and how are efficient. And I got up on stage and had two things to admit. The first one is that I thought about printing out my speech and giving and reading it to the audience. And then the second one is I used AI to write my speech. But it took me an hour. Going through all the prompts, all the things

I wanted it to say, changing my voice, changing my tone, style, being punchy, all those kind of things. It took me an hour because I have the experience, tools, and the skills to be able to write it. You said we've learned this over time. I could have just done it and it would have been finished in 15 minutes. If we do not continue to encourage people to build human intelligence that is supplemented or complemented by artificial intelligence tools and other ones, then all we get is something that's artificial. And I don't know about you and others, but I can tell when something's not genuine. If it's artificial sweetener, an artificial voice,

an annoying robo-call, whatever else, you can smell a steak right away. And I don't think that's ever gonna go away from humanity. On the flip side, or on another angle, I often get asked to go and talk to university class. And we're talking about the economic development, which is my focus today, in my room and we got on to AI and we had people ask me why would we use you why can't I just use AI to do everything and that's that okay

you could you certainly could do that but what is the purpose of generating like why if you're just going to generate a whole lot of paper, why would anyone on the other end wanna read it? We have to think about what is the ultimate goal of what we're trying to achieve. And then we delve into other things about what about students using AI, she, them, this and that, and the other.

But then we'll put it this way, if you're a high school student and you use AI to write your essay, you get it. If you're a university student and you use AI to write your essay, you get it. If you're a university student and you use AI to write a thesis, you get kids to go to school. If you are working as an analyst or a bank

and you use AI to write your entire investment perspective or other people that name to something, and you've put that out there, you've committed fraud. And you're moving up the scale of what the penalty is for not using human intelligence. Which we all have and we all value, which is all important. The other factor to add to this, to then go back to you is, the level that we're going up, the way to counter that is to make people do things person to person. So if I have somebody that generates a resume on AI and all the things they've done,

and the way they speak and the level of knowledge of the thing in the information doesn't match or exceed, I know they're faking it. So I know they're not ready to do it, they will be called out. So it's beginning to be authenticity here. The difference between artificial, which is alien intelligent, and authentic. And I think that for human intelligence we need to... Let me share with you one live example, which is this podcast show. When I first started, it was a weekly show, one episode per week on average.

Now seven episodes one week, which means it has become a daily show, one episode per day. Then some people joke with me, Hey Vince, are you using AI for all of this? And my answer is simple, there's no tool out there right now that can holistically handle the entire process of creating 7 episodes a week. Sure, I use JetGPT to check grammar or refine some copywriting when I need a bit of inspiration. But beyond that, everything else is on me. I invite every guest personally, schedule pre-calls, talk with them for at least 30

minutes before actual recording, send follow-up emails, handle all the nitty-gritty details, and of course, host the show myself. This voice you hear, that's all human. Behind editing every single piece, I do it myself, with the soundtrack. I know there's so-called AI-driven tools that claim to pick segments for audiograms or do the heavy lifting. But honestly, I do it manually. lifting, but honestly, I do it manually. I'm so immersed in each conversation that I know exactly which moments stand out and deserve to be highlighted.

It is a lot of human touch, a lot of my personal footprint, my single print in every part of the process. And that's what creates the final product. Looking ahead, I think the strategy for individuals, whether in work or life, has to involve finding the balance. Along the way, we need to decide which parts of the process need more human touch, where monitoring, intuition, and judgment are essential. And then identify which parts can be standardized or delegated to AI to work faster, with more precision, and on a larger scale.

That's what I see as a way forward, creating your own strategy for division of labor between the human and the machine. I'm currently working in our own organization, albeit on my own right now, and then with others to try to figure out their AI strategy and again to use your coin to create human intelligence. I was just scribbling on a paper here. I think that we made up this morning figured out what the piece was for me, which is I believe now, and you've given me the term, human intelligence and artificial intelligence will create authentic, enhanced knowledge and value.

So I've been searching, trying to figure out a way to pair the two together. And the reality is that's now what we're able to do. If we can take the human, we can take the artificial and supplement it. We're creating, we're maintaining the authenticity, we're enhancing the knowledge, and all together we're growing the value. So it's not going to be one or the other. They're only providing out of the potential value that we could deliver here. That's what I'm trying to do when I talk to people for introducing AI tools into their business. So your point is more about what is it, not just the problem you're trying to overcome,

but what are the intentions you're trying to create? Where are you trying to attend? We have great people, you have great people in your company. How do you make them better at what they can do with it? To watch your show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.