The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Claire Chandler, President and Founder of Talent Boost on Executive Leadership

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Claire Chandler, President and Founder of Talent Boost on Executive Leadership Clairechandler.net Biography President and Founder of Talent Boost, Claire Chandler specializes in aligning HR and business leaders so they can deliver strategic outcomes… both today and in the future. She taps into over 25 years of experience in people leadership, human resources, and business ownership to help leadership teams work together more effectively in less time, with less cultural resistance, so they can accelerate their business growth. She has broad-based expertise in management team due diligence, organizational design, acquisition integration and onboarding, strategic planning, executive coaching, and performance acceleration. Show Notes About The Guest(s): Claire Chandler is the President and Founder of Talent Boost. With over 25 years of experience in people leadership, human resources, and business ownership, Claire specializes in aligning HR and business leaders to deliver strategic outcomes. She helps leadership teams work together more effectively and accelerate their business growth. Summary: Claire Chandler joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss leadership, entrepreneurship, and her personal journey as a cancer survivor. Claire emphasizes the importance of engaging and nurturing the right people in an organization to drive growth. She also highlights the need for leaders to adapt to the changing workforce, particularly with the rise of the gig economy and remote work. Claire shares insights from her upcoming book, "Growth on Purpose," which explores the four pillars of her methodology for expanding businesses without losing top talent. Key Takeaways: The culture of an organization is shaped by its leaders and drives its success. The younger generation, such as millennials and Gen Z, advocate for themselves and demand purpose and fulfillment in their work. The three pillars of sustainable business growth are people, processes, and performance. AI has the potential to revolutionize industries and enhance productivity, but leaders must be open to embracing it. The gig economy and remote work offer opportunities for organizations to tap into talent from around the world. Quotes: "Culture drives success, and leaders are the ones who shape the culture." - Claire Chandler "Entrepreneurs understand that perfection is a myth." - Claire Chandler "The rise of the gig economy is changing the way organizations approach talent acquisition and retention." - Claire Chandler

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the show, my family and friends.

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And Christmas, one of the TikTok. And if you want to talk to the show on Facebook, you can go to ChristmasFacebook.com as well. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show. She's going to be talking to us about leadership, which is one of my favorite topics. And entrepreneurism and all that good stuff. And she's going to have some great stories of survival as well with cancer. We have Claire Chandler on the show with us today. She is the president and founder of Talent Boost.

She specializes in aligning HR and business leaders so they can deliver strategic outcomes both today and in the future. She taps in over 25 years of experience in people leadership, human resources, and business ownership to help leadership teams work together more effectively and in less time with less cultural resistance so they can accelerate their business growth. She has broad-based expertise in management team, due diligence, organizational design, acquisition integration, and onboarding, strategic planning, executive coaching, and performance acceleration. Ladies and gentlemen, she does it all. Welcome to the show, Claire. How are you? Thanks, Chris. I'm doing well. I love that you called me young lady, so already I am so happy to be here. There you go. That's what we do. I

mean, I have to just go with what we see. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, so ClaireChandler.net, which is a little bit more of my personal side, and then my business website is TalentBoost.net. There you go, TalentBoost.net. There's an e-book, too, that you have on there we'll talk about, and then there's another one you have in development uh you have one that's called the culture effect the five gears that

drive successful mna integration uh tell us a little bit about that if you want to lead off with that give us an overview of what people can expect out of that when they find on your site yeah i'd be happy to so it it seems to be more of the trend now that a lot of organizations especially in the united states are growing through mergers and acquisitions. They have found that trying to grow their company one higher at a time is just not the best way to best path to world domination, right? So M&A is kind of the way to go. And what they are often finding is they've got these brilliant growth

strategies. I'm sure you've got all the big brain trusts that come onto your show. I'm sure a lot of them have M&A experience. And they're always enamored with their growth strategy. And then they are always somewhat surprised when the people in the company that they have acquired dig their heels in and resist at every turn. So the culture effect is all based on the premise that you have to engage the people, you have to build and nurture the culture that is the foundation of that organization if you are truly going to implement your growth strategy and thrive as a business.

Yeah, most definitely. I mean, mergers and acquisitions are so important for all this stuff. Now, when you wrote The Culture Effect, what are some of the five gears that you tease out? Yeah, so they're all around people development and they're around people, I'll call it engagement. And I don't want people to sort of back away from that and say, oh, that's all the squishy HR stuff. It's actually not. It is actually absolutely fundamental to growing a business the right way. If you have the right people who join your organization, who kind of buy into your mission, who are put in the right roles at the right time, who have the right motivation, who trust your leaders, who follow where you want to go, and who kind of align their passions, their roles, their skills,

their ideas with where you're trying to get to as an organization, you're dead in the water. So that book is really geared toward, no pun intended, five of the main drivers that really help to accelerate growth through engaging your people, giving them reasons to believe, and finding ways to spark their engagement, their buying, and their motivation so they can help you co-create a successful strategy. Definitely. So tell us a little bit about your hero's journey. I know that you went through some things and they got you to this point. Give us your story? Yeah, so I am a self-professed both cancer survivor and corporate survivor. I spent the first 20 or so years of my career within the walls of corporate America. By the way, after swearing, I was never going to work in corporate. That just wasn't in my DNA. I'm the product of a school teacher and a small business owner, but alas, that's where the opportunities were. So, so I spent the

first, you know, 20, 20 or so years in corporate. What really got me to break out of that, and it was, and I will call it a gift in retrospect, was that I got diagnosed with cancer. This was early in 2011. I was the vice president of human resources. I was traveling all the time. I was going 150 miles an hour and I literally had to take a month off of work. I had to go full stop. I had to go from 150 to zero. I had to deal with this. This was not something that I could postpone. This was not like a vacation where I could just, you know, there, this was a non-refundable ticket towards surgery. Right. So how to deal with that. And the reason I call it a gift is because when I had the surgery and then, and then took that time off, I finally couldn't out

run that voice in my head that had been trying to ask me for far too long, are you really doing what you're passionate about? And I had to acknowledge the answer was no. And so, you know, once you have an answer like that, you really have to do something with that. You owe it to yourself to do something with that answer. And so that was really what was the catalyst for reevaluating where I was in that corporate rat race and getting onto the path toward my entrepreneurial journey.

There you go. So, I mean, when you got the cancer, did it put you in a state where you kind of looked around your world and thought, you know, I might have limited time here or, you know, maybe the future is limited. I need to do more of what I want or what I feel is important is, you know, there's a lot of reevaluation many people take in that journey. Yeah, no doubt. It was definitely the reminder, the kind of the sledgehammer between

the eyes that life is too short. Now, spoiler alert, I am cancer free now. I was very fortunate. Thank you. I was very fortunate to be diagnosed early enough that we kind of deal with this through surgery and treatment. And, you know, I mean, I have scans and lab work and follow ups for, you know, forever into my future. So it wasn't that sort of wake up call around life is too short, like it was a terminal diagnosis. But it really did remind me that we only have so many years on earth. And so many of those years that are, you know, years when we do have our health, when we do have our wits about us, and we do have an opportunity to make an impact in the world. But that's why I call it a gift. Because I think had I not had that wake-up call

and that reckoning with myself, I don't know that I would have taken the leap. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how these cathartic times sometimes in our life, these pauses, these interruptions can awaken us. We're kind of on the train, and everything's going, and you're just kind of running the rat race, if you will, spinning the hamster wheel. And these interruptions make us go, hey, we got to take a moment to look around and maybe that's an important lesson. We need to

stop more and take a look around. Maybe we need to ask ourselves more, is this really what I want to do? Is this really how I want to do it? Is this really important to me? Am I living my purpose or am I living my values there? So how did you start your own consulting business? What was the pathway there? So I would love to be able to tell you that I had this bulletproof business plan from day one. But alas, that is not true. And I pride myself, I consult with corporations now from the outside looking in and I pride myself on being deeply self-aware and honest with yourself and vulnerable at all and all of that stuff. So it was certainly not a journey that was well plotted out. I just knew I had to take it. I had to take that leap. You know, one of the things about kind of taking stock of where

I was and what I was going to try in terms of going out on my own. I dealt with a lot of if onlys. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's so easy to talk ourselves out of our comfort zone. Well, to talk ourselves out of moving out of our comfort zone, I should say. And so for me, there were all these, right? If only I had a little more experience in what I'm really passionate about. If only I had a business plan, if only I had a backlog of clients ready to work with me, you know, and they just started to pile up. If only I didn't have more cancer treatments ahead of me this year, it was all of those things. And one of the things that I did was consult with people that I trusted. And I didn't invest in a formal business coach for a couple of years later. But I did reach out to a few people who knew me professionally, who cared

about me personally, and that I could sort of take this idea to them. And I remember a couple of conversations with some of those people. And I said, Am I nuts, like to think that I could make it out on my own as a consultant, and an advisor and a small business owner and an entrepreneur. You know, given where the economy is given the fact that I'm on an executive track and I'm in a cushy, safe corporate job and all of those things, am I nuts? And not one person said, when I presented them with that,

not one person said that I was. In fact, a couple of them said, I've been waiting for your call. I've been waiting for you to wake up to the fact that you've been wasting your gifts. They knew this is what was good for you all along. Yeah. And you know, and it's, it's like anything else, right? Like the, the, the people in your world who see you, who know you deeply and care about you, they may, they can see through your

forest more clearly than you can, but just because they tell you the right thing to do does not mean you're going to do it until you're ready and the universe is ready. So in those early days, while I was still working in corporate, I was reaching out to a couple of those people that I considered personal advisors. And, you know, they helped me think out loud, which is so important so that you're not just stuck wrestling with the voices in your head, But they helped me think out loud what this could look like, what this could be. And to get over myself and say, you know, with all those if-onlys, F the if, take the leap and learn as you go. There you go.

I mean, that's kind of the way entrepreneurism works. Like I've talked about this on the show ad nauseum, I'm sure. But, um, you know, you have to start, you have to begin.

It's like life, you know, you can't sit in the womb going, well, I'm going to come out when it's perfect and everything's, uh, you know, it's so comfy in here.

It's warm. Yeah, it's fit. Um, you know, I think I'm going to use this. I just made, I just thought this up,

but this is a perfect analogy because I get people in business to me all the time. They're like, hey, I'm going to start my own company. I'm like, okay, do it. They're like, I'm waiting until everything's perfect. I'm like, there's never going to be a perfect time. I'm waiting until the money's right. I've kind of got the business model down. I'm trying to write that business model mission statement.

I'm like, I've never written a business model mission statement i'm like i've never written a business model mission statement in my life like for 20 30 plus companies i've never written a mission statement um mainly because you know there's some business we started that within 30 days we were flipping the model and we didn't want that model to lock us in uh i had a model in my head i you know you kind of you've started enough companies you know you there's kind of a printing process we didn't want that model to lock us in. I had a model in my head. You've started enough companies. There's kind of a printing process that's kind of standard to it. But you kind of have a general idea.

But sometimes I've dived into companies and you're just like, no, I think our clients are telling us we need to go over here and not over there. That was a good idea at the time, but follow the money. But money. Uh, but I, I like this analogy that I, and, and so I'll meet these people like, you know, year after year, Hey, uh, you'll see me a year later. Hey, did you start that company? No, I'm still talking about it. Uh, yeah, I'm still, I'm just going to start it, you know, in three years, five years go by and you know, they're still talking about, but I like this analogy of this, you know, it's like the person who's sitting in the womb going, I'm not coming out until everything's perfect until my parents, you know, uh, have enough money to raise me and pay for college. And my parents, uh, have worked out all their psychological trauma

from childhood. That's going to make a bad childhood for me. I'm not coming out until everything's perfect. Well, that's not how life works. Um, uh, it just throws you right out as a baby into the bath water and basket, whatever you want to say. And it's sink or swim. And entrepreneurism is the same way. You just got to get into it. And a lot of it is problem solving. A lot of it is learning, education. And it's just like birth. You got to jump in or jump out. Well, and I think it's one of the biggest dividing lines between entrepreneurs and leaders and executives of large organizations. Entrepreneurs understand that perfection is a myth. And leaders of large organizations are still waiting for that. Like I said, I advise and counsel executive leaders in big organizations, and I constantly

have to to remind them, if you're waiting until you get 100% of the data that you need to make a decision, your competitors are already too far down the road. Like you're, you're, you're never going to get to that point. You're waiting for the perfect scenario. You know, and entrepreneurs kind of get it, I think the biggest difference is they know that they have to pivot. You ask a leader of a large established organization to pivot, it blows their minds. They can't do it. Yeah. I mean, you look at, I've had friends that were on the original iPhone building team. And when Steve Jobs is like, we're going to build this phone and you're going to put everything in it.

You're going to put a dial phone in it. You're going to put an email in it, mail, messaging, and you're going to put all this stuff into this unit, radio and CD player basically, and you're going to jam it all in and it's going to work. And they're just like, well, how are we going to do that? He's like, I don't know. Figure it out.

And so they literally had to figure it out. In fact, when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, the story's out there now. My friends told it to me years before. But, you know, it wasn't working. In fact, the only time it did work was when he presented on stage up until, up until the time, even the week that they were locked in the, uh,

I forget the name, Mars Capone center, whatever it's called in San Francisco. Even the week they were locked in there with Steve jobs, um, practicing his presentation. They were trying to get it to work. And every fourth,

every fourth action or app that you would open it would crash on the fourth movement so they had multiple phones in the desk for him and he was supposed to switch between the phones and he didn't uh he stuck with the one and the one single time that it didn't crash after four movements was when he was on stage live. And so you can imagine how it might turn out different. But, you know, that's an example of where you've just got to jump in with both feet and you've got to fight your way through it and you've got to have some luck and some grit. And it's not going to be perfect. It's going to be ugly.

It's going to be messy. It's going to be trauma. It's going to be, but that's kind of the beauty of it because that's how you learn. That's how you shape it, you know. Maybe another good analogy that just came to me in my head is it's kind of like, you know, a blacksmith who turns a, you know, some blunt piece of steel by brutalizing it into this beautiful shaped, you know, almost perfect cutting device. That's beautiful. Uh, it takes that hammer and anvil and the ugliness of,

you know, the blacksmith shop to, to, to pound that into something that's, that's a worse something. Yeah. Love that. I'm just full of analogies this morning. It's really on one.

I'm still in the baby in the womb. I'm sorry. Are you, are you? It's really on one. I'm still on the baby in the womb. Are you? It's a perfect analogy. I'm not sure the jumping out of the womb idea is a good idea, though. We probably should have the lawyers put an exclaim on it. That doesn't sound like that's going to work out very well. Jumping out of the womb. It's like I have this vision in my head like, you know, mom's getting surprised.

Like, ta-da! I'm here! That might scare some people. The baby's head goes around. Pretty soon they're going to walk out with the iPhone in hand. I mean, it's scary. I'm surprised they don't now. It's coming.

I'm not sure. When you really think about how much, you know, mothers and fathers and everybody in this world walks around with an iPhone. I'm not surprised that has emerged into our DNA where you just birth with one. And they're going to just get updates every trimester. Like before they come out of the womb, right? It's like, move outside because you're interfering with the update. You know, some people press their head up against the mother's belly to hear the baby's heartbeat. Now you just do it to hear the notification beeps.

So there you go. So now you help people become better leaders. You help businesses become more successful. Why do businesses fail to achieve growth strategies? How long does your show? I mean, you know, there are a there's there are there are a lot of reasons there are a lot of reasons i think you know a couple of them we already sort of touched upon which is they're they're waiting for for perfection right they're waiting for all the stars to align

they're waiting for all of the data to come in and you know there are studies after studies and experts that are even smarter than you know than you than you and I are, although I think we're pretty smart. You know, who kind of remind us that the biggest, some of the biggest hurdles or obstacles or landmines to business growth, the majority of them center around the capacity and capability of the people at the top. So I know we already talked about kind of the how, you know, the people throughout an organization. It's super important that they're aligned, they're bought in, they're given an opportunity to kind of co-create. But it's got to come from the top. I talked to so many leaders who just have this mistaken belief that culture in an organization, one, is not fundamental, not true. And two, that it bubbles up organically from the ground level of an organization.

And it's just flat out not true. The leaders are the ones who shape the culture and culture drives success. And so really, you really find that that that leaders just think that culture, you know, oh, I just step in here and I just yell orders and everything drives success. So you really find that leaders just think that culture, oh, I just step in here and I just yell orders and everything works out. That really is a lot of mentality that's out there, huh? That explains everything, actually. That explains everything. I mean, when you kind of think about,

and there's a lot of stories about this as well, like the generation of leadership that is is i don't want to see dying off but okay in reality they're dying off are from a bygone era you know around the industrial economy they're all about command and control these are people who at the beginning of the industrial economy came out of the military so you had a bunch of retired military officers and generals and admirals and all this now running companies. And so that mentality of do as I say, not as I do, take the hill and don't ask questions. We're not here as a democracy. We're here for you to follow orders. The generations coming into the workforce now, they don't play that way. They don't want it like that.

And while we're on the subject, you know, I know millennials get a real bad rap. But I want to give credit to millennials. Now, I'm a Gen Xer. But these millennials kind of like they're on to something here. I've never seen a generation previous to them who advocate for themselves so strongly in the workplace. And so it's, you know, there are things that we can take from every single generation in the workforce. And I think for the millennials, they're kind of paving the way for you have to advocate

for yourself. Don't wait for a cancer diagnosis to stand up and say, I deserve more. The, yeah, uh, yeah, I, I don't know. I, I, uh,

asked for an egg and cheese, a sandwich at McDonald's yesterday and they'd left the egg off and they seem to be more interested in their phones and they really didn't. It took like a, it's like like an hour to calculate in the drive through. I was just going to say, you know, what's even scarier.

Yeah. Not only that they forgot the egg, they don't know how to make change. What is the deal? Yeah. And so, I mean, it took like seriously like the longest time I think I've ever spent at McDonald's waiting for them to tally a Coke, a hash brown, and an egg McMuffin. And then I didn't get the egg. And it's like, I don't know, who orders the egg McMuffin without the egg?

Like, I don't know, who orders the Egg McMuffin without the egg? Like, I don't know. Maybe some people do. I was kind of blown away. But, you know, you're right. They do have a key for themselves. I just, I want them to just take more value in their work and care about their work more. And, you know, I don't know. They're not a monolith.

There's, you know, sometimes I complain. It's that old man, Clint Eastwood, who's on the lawn with the hose going, get off my lawn. And I feel that way. And I think they have a great future ahead of them. But, you know, some of my folks that work with them you know they they don't they have a hard time with staying in the lane like here's your job you do this well i want to go do some other things this isn't instagram or tiktok you've gotta you've gotta do this job learn this job do it well success excel at it and then you can go you know move

the ladder and do something else so i don't know man they're going to redesign everything so it's their world now i don't i don't really have any say in it um you know we see what goes on with the um you know working remotely we see what goes on where they tend to job hop a little bit they they do like to find stuff that that enlivens them and i think they're going to challenge a lot of leadership and managers. And that's what they seem to be doing, where you can't just phone in as a leader and be like, well, let's just do their jobs and stuff. You know, you've got to inspire them. You've got to motivate them.

You've got to touch the hearts and minds of them to, you know, make them feel like there's something of value or purpose in what they're doing. I think you've got to kind of try and get in their heads and find out what they want more. So I think, I think in the end, it's going to demand more from leaders. I could be wrong, but I think, I think that's what it's going to do. It's going to, it's going to, there's going to be more leadership techniques. There's going to be more, uh, impression towards or, or pushing towards culture. And I, I, you know, I live in my own culture bubble because I've been building culture in our companies

all our life and I understood the importance of it. But like you said, a lot of companies haven't done it. And that's probably why they're seeing this overturn of these Gen Zers so much. And because they're looking for good leadership, I think most people are. Yeah. And I, and I think, you know, millennials will tell you what they need. I think more so than, than the previous generations, the rest of us sort of, sort of knew what we needed, but maybe we're waiting around for someone to ask us, you know, these, these, I can't believe I'm at the point where I'm going to say these kids today,

but these kids today are going to advocate and they're going to say, you know, what they need, what they're questioning, where they want to belong. And I think to your point, it is going to require, it is already requiring of leaders to customize much more so the way that they interact with everybody on their team. Yeah. It makes all the difference. And I think it will challenge them. Hopefully it will maybe develop them into better leaders.

But I don't know. I mean, it's their game to win or lose. So you talk about the three P's of sustainable business growth. Uh, can you tease out a little bit about the three P's are? Yeah. So the, the headline, or I guess the punchline is it's people, processes, and performance. Ah, that kind of ties into what we were just talking about. People.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Um, you know, and it's, and if you kind of picture this is going to be a flashback and millennials are going to lose their mind for a second. But, you know, if you if you picture that in a Venn diagram, right, that I just give you a flashback. But, you know, we're we're those three kind of converge. Right. You have to have it's not just about getting more people, because right now this war for talent that we've been talking about for 20, 30 years is here. But you got to have you have to have the right people and they have to have the right motivation. And we sort of talked about that. The processes, you have to have a mechanism for, for replicating success and filtering out inefficiencies. Because I think one of the things in this faster and faster paced world

is we don't have time for inefficiency. You know, we don't have time to keep tripping over the same mistakes. We have to iterate. We have to fail forward. We need to have processes that are going to help us replicate success. And then, of course, performance in all the different forms that that takes has to come together, right? You're in a business for a reason. You're not in a business to fail it.

You're in a business to grow it or at least to maintain and sustain that. And so all three of those have to come together and they have to converge around some common purpose. That's kind of the sweet spot in the middle of that. But those have to come together and coalesce if a business is actually going to succeed in the long run. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. It's, it's, it's something where people just need to figure it all out. And, and,

and, and it's not just a monolith of where I'm back to the monolith. I love that. It's not a monolith. Just do it. And like we were just talking about with Gen Z and even millennials, you know, the people are really important and helping them achieve what they want, you know, servant leadership in, in helping, knowing what the, you know, the people are really important, uh, and helping them achieve what they want, you know, servant leadership in, in helping, knowing what the, you know, the guts

are of people. What do you want to achieve? You know, I'm, we're here to help you. You know, people aren't just like, Hey, I want to slave away at a company anymore. And then those are dead and gone, especially with remote working. Um, you know, now, uh, to build on what we were talking about earlier, uh, you know, people have build on what we were talking about earlier, you know, people have so many different choices in the world. You're seeing this incredible rise of unions. I don't think what a lot of, I don't know, you tell me, I don't think a lot of leaders have realized where we're at right now.

Basically, what's happened is for, you know, I've been hearing about this for 40 years that the boomers were going to retire and they were going to leave a glut in the workforce market because we, you know, we weren't breeding like they did. And so their large generation was going to end up being kind of a hole in the economy. And with COVID, what they did is they left early. And some Gen Xers did too. They took their retirements and said, I don't want to work in a place where I'm going to die. I got better things to do.

And they cut out early. And so we're left with a much smaller, much less skilled group of people. In fact, I think I was reading in the New York Times recently that out of every day, there's like 10 000 of them where they're retiring and these are people that are highly skilled you know they've got a whole career of 40 50 years um working and they're cutting out of the market and they said that for every seven people that are skilled workers like even in trades you you know, people that do welding or construction or whatever, and they have those, those really high end trade sort of, uh, uh, recognition, you know, that they've, you know, they, they, they know how to do stuff really well

because they've been doing it for decades for every seven people that's being replaced or that's, that's going into retirement. There's only one person to replace them. And these aren't people who've been doing this for a long time. These are people that are like, hey, I just began last week. And so not only do we have a glut in skill-based stuff that's happening right now and draining, but we don't have enough employees to fill the gap. And here we've got this economy that seems to be doing incredibly well in spite of everything, uh, and demand.

And it's, it's really hard for, um, people to hire right now. And there's not, you know, I just went out to a restaurant on Sunday and I'm like, yeah,

we just, we just went to, uh, you know, we give you the little number to put at your, at your table. We don't do service anymore to the table. And I'm like, what the hell? We just find employees to do service at the table.

It's a restaurant that's designed for service at the table. Yeah, to have service. In fact, I was kind of upset about it. I come here and I pay a lot of money to have the service. I don't want the cafeteria experience. Yeah, if I want that, I pay a lot of money to have the service. That's kind of your thing. Yeah, I don't want the cafeteria experience. Yeah, if I want that, I'll go to McDonald's. Right. And so we're seeing these unions that are going,

hey, man, we realize you're going to have to deal with us now. And you've got these employees like the Gen Zers that can hop around if they don't want to because they're going to find what leadership and purpose they have. And so people really need to get it, basically. That's the big picture. And it's so interesting because, again, to your point, we've been talking about this for decades. We have been warned and we have warned others that this war for talent, this scarcity of talent was coming. I think the global pandemic was the wake up call for a lot of people, much like for us individuals who have gone through a cancer experience or some other sort of catalyst.

That really woke up a lot of people to, you know, it doesn't have to be like this. I don't have to spend my remaining years on this earth working this way or for these people or doing this job. But I think, you know, part of it, too, was there was this, I think, myth that the union employees, the people who are boots on the ground in manufacturing other blue collar industries, that they could be replaced seven to one by automation, by technology, by, you know, better engineered processes. And we are finding that that is not true. And I think the other big challenge that you layer on top of that across any industry is people aren't staying with a company for their entire career anymore. In any level of an organization, you know, it used to be,

and my parents used to sort of say this, it was like, you know, in my day, the company you started with was the company you retired with. Yeah, they actually said in my day, I remember that, the pound of the table. Wait, I say that all the time. But I mean, like what I was telling them, I think I spent my first, my first job out of college, I spent like four years and I like what you know i was telling them i i think i spent my first uh my first job out of college i spent like four years and i said you know i was gonna move on to this other opportunity and i got the in my day speech you didn't you didn't move around um but it's you know what's interesting is not only are the um the individual contributors in your workforce moving around the average tenure of an executive leader is somewhere between three and five years,

and not just the CEO, it's everybody in the executive wing. So there's a lot of changeover and a lot of potential turbulence if organizations don't understand that they need to, first of all, find ways to retain and engage and grow their talent, build it from within, but also appreciate that people are not going to stay around for years and years anymore. So how do you bring in the best of what they've got, blend that, so that your organization outlasts their tenure? Definitely. And you have a vibrant culture that gives people that purpose and stuff you know people quit jobs not necessarily over money i think the stats and data show they quit over leadership they quit over the bad bosses they were uh uninspiring you know no one wants to go

to the funeral home company uh you know i'm not talking about funeral companies i'm talking about you know you go there and just every day is like kind of like a slow moving funeral procession where it's dead inside and there's no inspiration. I think, you know, maybe, you know, we give a lot of hand-wringing to the Gen Zers, but, you know, maybe they figured it out because they've looked at, you know, all the things that have gone on since the 80s where you know it's more about shareholder value and you can dump employees 40,000 50,000 at a time and and they don't care and they've just finally accepted it they're just like hey you know if you don't care then we're not going to care either so we're going to flop around and flip around to what we want to find we want to do. And you can just take your little thing

because we realize you're going to be transactional with us. We're going to be transactional with you. How about that? Yeah, and I think what's been interesting about that, and some organizations are starting to understand and try to leverage this, is the rise of the gig economy. You know, it's so interesting. Right before the lockdown, and if I say lockdown,, this, it's so interesting, right before the lockdown,

and if I say lockdown, everybody kind of knows what that is, right? But prior to like the big blow up of the global pandemic, I was working with clients on their longer term strategic plans and they were projecting out 20 years. So when I say strategic plan, they were looking at a 20-year horizon.

Now, on the other side now with the pandemic, that is absolutely laughable because what hubris these companies had, and I was right there along with them. It's like, yeah, let's paint that 20-year horizon and let's build a roadmap to get there. But what's interesting is a lot of these larger organizations who have since scaled back, gotten realistic and said,

we're going to build a five-year plan. And then we know by year three, we're going to have to massively evolve it. But they were starting to get a glimpse into the potential value of tapping into the gig economy, where not the entire workforce needed to be full-time employees on our benefits with some sort of massive compensation scheme. And now we're seeing that more and more. They're not necessarily calling them gig workers, but I'm loving the shift. I'm loving the evolution that even these larger established organizations are starting to look at more creative ways to borrow and build and buy talent to help contribute toward their longer-term strategy.

Ah, there you go. How do you think AI, you referenced AI in there, how do you think AI is going to change the marketplace too? I mean, when you really think about what we've talked about throughout the show, it's actually the thing that might save our butts in the end when it comes to people, not enough people being in the job market. We've got to somehow make that productivity curve happen with less people. Yeah, so there's kind of two camps in my view around AI. Those who are absolutely scared by it, and they are typically your HR departments in larger organizations.

AI completely scares them. scared by it. And they are typically your HR departments in larger organizations, AI completely scares them. And then there are those who are really intellectually curious about the potential of AI. And sitting here today having this conversation, I think we are only getting a little bit of a glimpse and a glimmer into what AI could become, but I'm starting to see companies taking, you know, the chat GPT or the Google BARD engine and starting to build that into much more robust, I don't want to say intelligent because that's AI, but really robust systems for taking that engine and really making that into something. I think it is going to evolve, first of all, as a technology beyond what we can imagine right now. And then I think the utility of that in terms of enabling individuals and organizations

to amplify their impact is going to be, I think it's going to be crazy. I think it's going to be explosive. And I think it's going to be for the better because I think a lot of these larger organizations, you know, everyone that I, that I work with, they are wrestling with in some way consolidating and centralizing, you know, whether they call it a shared services model or, you know, more of a transactional, like all of the, all the back office, you know, more of a transactional, like all the back office, you know, time intensive, but value, like non-value added activities from their main employees. And they're trying to centralize that. And they've struggled with it for all the reasons,

right? It's very complex. We've been really lax about documenting our best practices. So it's not a simple thing of just slicing it off and centralizing it. There's all the change resistance of letting go of that transactional work that, you know, people find, you know, equate that to job security. We have a scarcity of talent right now, folks. So don't worry about losing your job if you're doing it well, right? If you're really committed to that. But I think AI, the application of AI into that is going to be really interesting for large organizations sort of dipping their toe into that water. And on top of that, I think you nailed it. On top of that, employees or entrepreneurs out there need to really adopt to AI too, because the people who are going to be the most valuable

in the skills space in any job are going to need you to be able to master AI or at least try to master it. It's moving very fast. Even I'm sitting and going, can you just slow down a little bit, man? It's crazy. It's crazy. It's exciting, though. I mean, you have to be curious about it.

You have to be intrigued. Yeah. And the people who master it are going to be the people who do well. And they're going to, because it's such a game changer in enhancing everything. Like, you know, we use it for the show. We'll put in questions and say, hey, what questions would you ask this person? I don't even have to tell them who they are. They just go find who they are and they just come up with questions.

Show notes. I mean, we have several different services we've been trying lately to do show notes. And they put with questions uh show notes i mean we we have a several different services we've been trying lately to do show notes and they put out these these incredible show notes with quotes and stuff and i'm just like geez we never did any of that uh we're you know and and it doesn't like i don't know a minute or something 30 seconds it's freaking crazy it gives us a whole beautiful show notes sort of thing. But being able to master it is going to be the thing. I'm a big believer in we need to open up immigration more.

We don't seem to understand as Americans how immigration is what made us such a great country. being a melting pot and being the central hub of all the ideas that came to us. Nuclear is, nuclear bombs, nuclear fission, nuclear, you know, all that stuff. Those people were developing that in Germany. And if we hadn't welcomed them and got them over here, we might be living in a whole different world. And, you know, between China and their population being a large market, it really hasn't, it's starting to kind of fail.

And part of it's their one child policy that's nipped them in the butt. Uh, but India, you know, has now is rising is probably the most biggest future, uh, economy as ever. And their nuclear power too, as well. Um, they don't really need a military. They, they have a lot of freaking people and a very diverse uh potential economy and so we we've got a we've got to get more people in this country with great ideas there's there's no one person who's got all the

great ideas in fact if you look at a lot of the ceos of companies now they're all immigrants um who've come from other countries ceo of of google grew up on a dirt floor in india um you know steve jobs was an immigrant with his family um there's there's no there's no one person who has all the great ideas and uh some of them are life-changing what we were talking about before with ai you know they just announced they they just pulled a, I don't know, when did the iPhone come out? 2005, 2007 officially. Around there, yeah. And then I don't know when the exact opening of the app store was, but the app store was a game changer and it created so many industries and so many jobs.

And I mean, it created my job, you know, we were able to podcast through, you know, the craziness of microphones and everything else, you know, radio became democratized where anybody could do it. And it was a game changer. It changed everything, the app store. And now I think just last week, they just dropped it basically an app store for chat GPT and some of these other things for AI where you can literally custom design it. And so everyone's going to be turning this into SaaS businesses and other things as well. So it's a crazy time to be alive,

but it's definitely something where, like you say, people are going to have the potential to compete with companies that want people to work for them as opposed to people like, hey, I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. I'm going to make my own thing. So either you come up with something better when it comes to culture, fun and purpose in my life, or I'm going,

I'm going to go do something else. Well, and, and figure out a way to do that where you don't have to have borders in terms of your workforce. I think, you know, other than the manufacturing industry where you very much have to be connected to the machinery as part of your workforce. I think, you know, other than the manufacturing industry,

where you very much have to be connected to the machinery as part of your job, we're in an extraordinary time, because we can tap into talent in all the corners of the world that you just mentioned, including Africa, by the way. So I have a friend of mine through my extended network, who is living in Africarica and is teaching people in africa customer service skills so that that can become the next outsourced area for customer service does that not blow your mind i mean it's and it's crazy because we don't we don't have to physically have um people in the same building in the same location anymore. So even the immigration conversation that people lose their minds over, we can tap into talent and intellectual, you know,

the knowledge economy without requiring people to actually move here. Yeah. I think remote workers can give us a lot more freedom as companies try to adapt to that. You know, Africa was a great country rising and then AIDS hit it. And AIDS wiped out, you know, Africa was a, was a great country rising, um, and then AIDS hit it and AIDS wiped out, I believe one out of four. Um, and they wiped out their young generation, their old generation. It was devastating to the future of that continent. And, um, now, like you say, I think it's rising. I mean, they, they're a resource rich, uh, country. Sadly, they you say, I think it's rising. I mean, they're a resource-rich country.

Sadly, they're being just ripped apart or taken advantage of by China and Russia. But, of course, we're the ones feeding that because we're demanding those resources through chips. But we've ignored, as a country, Africa for a long time. I think President Biden is going there for some economic recognition here soon, or maybe he was supposed to go there before the Israeli Hamas blow up. But it's definitely a country we need to spend more time focusing on, and

the potential there is huge because, I mean, they're a research country. If they could somehow obtain some sort of balance without all the wars and civil wars and all that stuff they've had going on that have really held them back. And I think AIDS, I suppose there's some sort of control there. There you go. As we round out, let's get a tease out on the new book you're working on that people can hear about.

What's going on with the book that you're working on? And is it going to be available on your website or Amazon? What's the status on that? Yeah, so I am currently drafting a new book that's going to be a real deep dive into my methodology that I follow when I'm working with my corporate clients. It is called Growth on purpose, how to expand your business without losing your best talent. And it really is an exploration in great detail around the four pillars of that model, which are aspiration, awareness, acceleration, and alignment. We don't have time to go into all of that, but it will be available on Amazon and my website. I am aiming for releasing that around January, and I just keep

saying that out loud to hold myself accountable to try to meet that timeline. There you go. So that sounds like it's going to be fun to do. Well, we've had a super in-depth discussion, just brilliant. Thank you very much for coming on. Give us your final pitch out to people on the show. How can they onboard with you? How can they reach out to you, see if they're a good fit, work with you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So connect with me on LinkedIn. That is my social media of choice, but really the fast path to getting a conversation with me or getting connected with me, go to clairechandler.net. There's a big bright orange button on the top right of that screen that says work with Claire. It does not require any sort of money to just to talk to me,

but you can fill out an application. Let's have a conversation. And if I can help point you in the right direction or find an opportunity for us to partner up, I will enthusiastically do that. There you go. And I think this came somewhere mid-show, but thanks, Chuck. I thought the stork brought babies to life. And you are correct, sir.

Everybody knows that. Everybody knows it's the stork. It flies in just like the cartoons. So thank you very much for coming to the show, Claire. We really appreciate it. We've got your dot-coms and everything, right? Yes, we do. There you go.

Thanks to my audience for tuning in. We couldn't do it without you for 15 years. Three to four shows a day, 15 to 20 shows a week. If you're not watching every show, I got to tell you, and you've heard me say this before, every show I come away with epiphanies and I learn so much. And you would think that somebody like me, because of my astounding amount of brilliance,

my incredible good lookingness, my Brad Pitt sort of exterior George Clooney mix, that I would know everything, but I don't. And I come out of these interviews that we do, and I learn something. So if you're not listening to the show and learning something, you can go back and listen to the show. That or put your phone down.

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