The Future Isn’t Hybrid: Phil Kirschner on Disrupting Work as We Know It

This transcription was made, in part, by an automated service. In some cases there may be errors. 

Rex: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Resilience Lab. I'm Rex Miller, and in this episode, we're going to take a deep dive into the future of work with one of the most original voices in workplace strategy. Phil Kirschner. We recorded this episode live in New York City.

thanks to our partners at the Surround podcast network.

Now, Phil has held key roles at Credit Suisse, JLL. We work in McKinsey. He's part futurist, part systems thinker, but more importantly, he's a full on truth teller. You'll hear why so many real estate leaders are just stuck in yesterday's playbook and how companies like Humana and Atlassian are quietly rewriting the rules.

We talk about hybrid as a halfway house. Why the real disruption is in space, it's time, and what it takes to lead [00:01:00] with reality based strategies in a world that's changing faster than most organizations can keep up. This is more than just a workplace conversation. I think it's a wake up call, so let's get into it.

 

 

Rex: welcome Phil. Thanks Rex. to The Resilience Lab. and Uh,

Phil: live. Live from New York City.

Rex: Live from New York City. Yeah. Right next to Radio City Music Hall. So we first met last year. I at Workspaces and you just got off the stage tell me a little bit about that talk.

what was the motivation behind the talk?

Phil: Yeah, I was really excited to have a chance to participate finally, after knowing about the Workspaces conference for a couple years. ever since it was started, I was in roles that put me in a weird gray space. I wasn't quite an occupier, so it wasn't getting an invite to come.

[00:02:00] and I wasn't really a service provider either. They, they got in touch with me when I was at McKinsey, said, Hey, you know, does McKinsey wanna sponsor? And I had to explain the same problem I have with Coordinate or ifma or anything else saying like, McKinsey is not a real estate service provider in the way that you are thinking about it.

but I got the same email around the same time every year. Hey, are you, are you interested in coming, really getting your service provider capacity? And I said, well, I'm leaving McKinsey. And the organizer said, well, that's interesting.

Um, would you like to speak? And I said, did you miss the part where I said, I'm, I'm leaving McKinsey? And they said, no, no, that's exactly why we want you to speak now because. You can say anything you want. Right? And I said, yeah. So right off the bat from the first conversation, Jason, who was the producer at the time, I remember him saying like, I, we want you to say something provocative.

And the, uh, the, the way he got me to know he was serious was that last year or the previous year's speaker in the same spot, was j Oleg, who's a friend and also is known to say very provocative things. It's your [00:03:00] rooms full of real estate people. So I'm like, if you're serious, let's do it. And even the title of the presentation, which eventually landed as, uh, the Future Work is being written just not by You, was the result of three or four go rounds of how do we make it a little bit more pushy?

Uh, which was fun. Uh, 'cause I've never had a conference organizer really open up that door and press for let, let's, let's, let's make the audience a little bit uncomfortable.

Rex: And you did.

Phil: Thank you.

Rex: Well, let's go into, how did you get us into that? discomfort space?

Phil: Well, really I'll credit due to, uh, another consultant of futurist, a guy named John Roue, who wrote an article not that long before, uh, before the conference, that another former McKinsey, uh, person who was a, not only a designer, but a trained futurist, had forwarded to me like just offhand, Hey, I think you're gonna like this because here's somebody who was drawing a connection between [00:04:00] a very established model for futures thinking across any topic, which I had heard about and only ever stuck in my head because it's called.

Uh, the Three Horizons model and there are multiple three Horizons models for different things. One of which comes from McKinsey. McKinsey's Three Horizons model is different than this one, but because of the, the name sharing, uh, this one had always just stuck in my head. And very simply put, it defines that there is, you know, horizon one is today for whatever system you're talking about.

Uh, horizon three is the one that's way out there in the future. Like not something we can see happening anytime in the next couple of years, but plausibly will come true. And then horizon two becomes the transition. And what John did really cleverly in this article was just point out the fact that for any conversation centering around hybrid in [00:05:00] particular.

That hybrid, by its very definition, is a restrained version of the transition state. It's when

Rex: When you say restrained, meaning

Phil: it's, oh. And, and to clarify, right? What, what's so interesting about this three horizons model is that the second horizon has two subversions of itself. Um, there's the version that is inspired by horizon three crazy ideas that, like, if you think of almost surfing a wave are, are pushing you forward, uh, towards the, the future, towards the beach, right?

Um, and others that are just holding you back and keeping you floating in the place where you are today. And so. Hybrid struck me. Uh, he mentioned it and I kind of dug into it deeper as a concession. It is a version of an office-based culture for work. It's just modified. It's not reinvented, it's not [00:06:00] like saying, um, we're gonna reimagine what it means to have a meeting or think more asynchronously about the time when work happens.

To really challenge the kind of who, what, when, where, why of, of the work happening, which is especially, you know, prevalent now with AI pushing on the question of who does what work, you know, us or the machine. And what really clicked for me in reading his article was that real estate as an industry, and I would argue the corporate real estate version of it, even more so, nine outta 10 words that come out of their mouth in a conversation supposedly about the future are.

At best a half step forward from today and feel

Rex: a half step.

Phil: yeah, at best, right? It's like, oh, we've, we're, we're responding to the current environment. We're trying to show you. Our building is new and different. Our occupancy program is new and different, but it's really [00:07:00]not that different from today. And you and I have seen enough conference presentations to know, I still hear a lot of things at a Cornet or an ifma or these larger presentations that feel like I could have shown you that 10 years ago and or I could show you a talk from 10 years ago that feels very similar.

Rex: I can go back. 40 years, 40 years ago and 40 years ago, we were talking about change, ergonomics, uh, customizing space and power.

Phil: Totally, totally. So that, yeah, it was the connection between, or I guess the happy accident between knowing about that framework before. Seeing someone else draw the connection between that framework and conversations on the future of work, in particular name dropping hybrid, and then my awareness of just the frustration of talking to real estate teams or talking about real estate teams.

While at [00:08:00] McKinsey, to your point, like I, I led the conversation at workspaces, having done a quick straw poll through the, uh, the event guide literally while sitting in the audience before getting up on stage and saying, uh, hey, there's about. 80 odd logos in this booklet. They had handed all of us from the guests and from my kinda three years of memory at McKinsey, I took a swag that maybe 40 to 50% of those companies I had been pulled into the room with one or more of their executives.

Uh, not because of my context personally, right? I this thanks to the McKinsey Senior partners having these, you know, decades of relationships with the executives. But I'd been pulled into the room to talk about the future work, future of the office, future workplace. And not once was the head of real estate from that company over there.

And I thought that was kind of

Rex: So who, was, who was in that room?

Phil: The execs and they're talking kinda about these decisions and [00:09:00] I couldn't remember really any conversation, say maybe one or two, where the executive team was invoking their own real estate leadership as a source of information about that problem.

Rex: So they don't have the context to know what you're talking about. It, it almost reminds me back in the seventies when Detroit executives would go from their executive suite down to their car, their car was maintenance and service, they'd drive down the road that they'd. their taxes paid for, and they're saying, why would anybody buy a Japanese car?

They just don't have the context. They're not living in the front line. Was that the experience you were

Phil: Well, maybe it's both like a little bit of, a little bit of the white tower syndrome, right? Yeah, but also more, this is back to the conferences. Yeah. When if I ran around to every head of corporate real estate that I know and [00:10:00] said, what do you think the future of work workplaces, the office.

Is and probably get a lot of answers back that include, well, we've, we just made neighborhoods in our last office, which to your point is 10, 20, 30 years, whatever old of construct. And or they'll point to, here's the latest thing that I heard at a cornet event, which the people on the factory floor don't know what the people like me were telling their executives.

Right? Like, and, and if you spend enough time, or maybe my filter bubble on LinkedIn or on the internet, generally, I hear a lot of this messaging that's going to the CHRO. The CIO or the CEO, which doesn't mean that they're embracing it immediately. but there are a lot of very large and successful, you know, consultancies and NGOs.

And academic institutions who are hitting the execs with like the real [00:11:00]future and the real problem. so that if the corporate real estate team is stuck on that, the future of the office is like touchless entry or sensors everywhere. Mag, youre a few clicks below where you need to be for, for conviction about this change, which means if the CEO comes to their own conclusion, they're just gonna tell you what to do and not look at you as a source of inspiration and expertise around that problem.

Rex: So the real future and the real change, what, what are you telling those CEOs that they need to be watching? that The corporate real estate people are outta the loop on,

Phil: well, I'm not, I'm not one to sling statistics at the moment. At least I try not to or copy the headlines. But as, as much I've had that in my background, um, what I find myself saying, at least for let's just, well, I was gonna say for knowledge workers only, but it's not exclusively true.

Uh, I don't believe that there is [00:12:00] a version of the world where, because of what the pandemic has done to enable people to lean into or ask for flexibility that they've always wanted. Where AI is now really breaking the work down into smaller and smaller pieces and finding new and more innovative ways of.

Like radically altering what we do as individuals, what we could do as teams, how we can, uh, grow and profit as organizations and, and reimagine what is the truly human nature of the work that we're doing. And finally, for the first time, really bringing the who question into the future of the workforce as we're seeing more and more of a trend towards, let's just call it like freelance contract, gig, independent work, possibly out of economic necessity or possibly out of just the fact that it is possible now to make [00:13:00] enough or, you know, a lot of money as, uh, someone in control of their own destiny, right?

It's easier than ever to start a business. It's easier than ever to build a small audience of people who are willing to pay you for something. Uh, it's easier than ever to bring. Technical innovation to otherwise very small, local, even manual work. And so aligned with like, I want flexibility and when or where and how I interact with a large organization or employer.

A lot of people, especially in a downturn, are looking at like, yeah, maybe I have to do this on my own, or I can do something that I always wanted to do. So all of this is challenging together the nature of what an organization is, and it's going to be some version of more fluid, more flexible, uh, greater agency for individuals, greater management by outcome, greater evidence of the outcome.

When you introduce technologies like, uh, you know, [00:14:00] blockchain, greater ability to do things across space and time, not just because of remote work, but things like augmented reality and virtual reality, which have not gone away. Uh, I often say, have you Googled future of work? And McKinsey, let's say, or Deloitte or any other thought leader organization in 2019, the two big themes would've been gig and contract work and AI and automation.

Yeah. But then March of 2020, future work became hybrid and we sort of forgot that those other trains had already left the station. Uh, chat. GPT was proof that the AI train was speeding along, right? So now we've got kind of flex and remote plus ai and that gig and freelance one is still chugging along, but most people haven't quite come to appreciate.

So if that's the direction of travel, we have to be thinking in terms of fluidity, flexibility, rapid [00:15:00] change, personalization. And for most people in the real estate industry, that clashes with their sense of, I build big things that stand the test of time. Boxes. Boxes and quality. And the marble. Right? And the amenities.

The I Amen. Yeah. That the, that the thing I build Wow. Is the box. And it's true that right? No, no amount of robotic magic is going to turn a building on its head every hour, all day long, you know, all year long. we still want quality of, of spaces, but the thing that will change is the journeys through those spaces that can match the speed that organizations are going to.

So that's, that's where I think we're going.

Rex: Yeah. I wanna unpack yeah. a little bit of this here too. I want some context for this, positive outliers, because a lot of the description [00:16:00]people aren't going to be able to imagine. What it really looks like. One of my favorite quotes is from William Gibson. Um, he wrote Neuromancer, The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. the reason I have challenges with that is that there, you know, a digital first culture. So, Have you begun to see older generation companies that are beginning to adapt their decision structures, their infrastructures, their cultures, to leverage these new CAPA capabilities that we have?

Phil: broadly speaking, I think

Rex: companies

Phil: that get held back. In even just the imagination about what a different future could feel like when it comes to the built environment, writ large,

because of one or some small number of people's deeply held belief that we use offices just because, right?

Rex: right.

Phil: [00:17:00] they don't make similar statements about almost any other part of their business, but for the office it's like, yeah, yeah, we have to go back the way, the things it were, it's what I grew up learning. I like it in this spot and we're not gonna change it anytime soon. So that kinda cuts off a branch of the innovation tree.

And therefore, the companies that are inherently most interesting or horizon two positive are the ones that are at least virtual, digital, remote, flexible first. They don't believe that you have to go somewhere just because they look for a reason. Many of those firms are like Atlassian and many of them in truth, like have skin in the game, right?

They make tools that enable this kind of workings that helps that their culture and all the employees like almost automatically embrace the concept instead of having to be taught one by one and [00:18:00] convinced that this is the way, which is much, much, much harder if you are a less digital, more legacy organization, right?

So, um, they have a, a little bit of a headstart and possibly an unfair advantage, but it's still a really inspiring

Rex: So I look at this as almost manuscript to printing press

so those who leveraged what the book could do and the mass distribution and everybody could be on the same page, huge advantage.

And it was a revolution, right? Yeah. It. Spurred the change from medieval culture, mercantile economies into what we have today. It seems like we're going through something equally disruptive. and so those outliers really are the pacers. They're setting the pace for others. But can a company that has all the infrastructure, all the legacy, all the culture, make that leap over the chasm?

Or do they need to [00:19:00] start something separate and different with a different structure? Infrastructure, DNA?

Phil: Yeah. Uh, I do think so. Back to the, the talk a little bit. Uh, I told a couple of stories and one, or actually now I don't remember who I told specifically, but when I'm asked about what clients have been really successful and I think back.

Rex: back

Phil: Specifically to my time at McKinsey, the story I always lead with is about a US based financial services company where the CEO early in Covid called McKinsey Senior Partner, said, Hey, everything just changed and critically, I don't know what the answer's going to be. And as soon as that guy said, we've got to do something to reimagine in the employee experience and how we sell our wares, right?

Part of the initial product or project was not just like, do we, don't we come back to the office? How do we behave with each other? How do we have meetings? Um, but also [00:20:00] included questions and capabilities around hybrid selling. Like do our people who currently go and see other humans in real life to sell the thing that they sell?

Do they know how to do that in kind of a mixed reality world where maybe they go see them, maybe they don't, maybe some of the sales are purely remote, all of that. He put it all on the table at the same time, including the real estate portfolio and said, uh, everything has just changed. Can we figure this out?

Iteratively together and publicly said to the employees, like, I believe we have to turn around and go a different direction now, but I don't know what the answer is. And that was incredibly engaging for the employees. Sure. Just to say you, how could you know this? This happened to you as a human, just like it happened to me.

Covid hit all of us upside the head, and to the extent that I enjoy working for this company, I believe in the vision and mission values of this company. I'm here for it. I'm along for this ride with you, [00:21:00] and it was one of the few clients that I saw not only take a. Major chunk outta the real estate portfolio, but keep employee engagement and organizational health.

These scores really high because the executives were operating in a test and learn kind of fashion. So that's one. But then I also put three specific companies, uh, in the presentation who I said, if you are at least operating in more of a horizon to positive fashion, which does not mean you're trying to be minority report, you know, flying car future today, but just.

Acknowledging that, know, hybrid is a move back. Maybe we should be rethinking meeting culture. Maybe we need to think more about asynchronicity of work. Maybe we need to just acknowledge we have remote workers now and so that's not going anywhere. We will continue to take talent from places where it makes sense.

Uh, if we need to give them access to physical places, they don't necessarily have to be ours. Right. Just leaning a little bit [00:22:00] more off the back foot forward and the three companies that I mentioned that are not digital first, like natives, have all done really interesting things in the built environment that feel bold.

One is Allstate. Like, oh sure, insurance is, is not that sexy on the surface, right? But they went flexible and remote first, and then sold their headquarters. Um, another was Andreessen Horowitz, the VC fund. They came out early. Covid, we are remote first. And they said we will continue to maintain physical locations in places that are strategically important for us, not just to box up our employees, but for a business reason.

And one of the places that they went to early in the pandemic was Miami because of all of the kinda crypto and blockchain related innovation that was flooding the city. And so they set up [00:23:00] shop. Then two, three years later, when that energy cooled off a little bit, they left. And I saw these news headlines saying, oh my gosh, like Andreessen Horowitz closed their Miami office.

Oh no. And I was like, they literally just did exactly what they told you they were going to do. And I remember sharing on LinkedIn the original memo, we are gonna go places that make sense and when they no longer make sense, we will leave. So it was not a surprise. Uh, but the last one, which is a company that I am going to profile in slightly more depth in a couple of weeks on my newsletter, is one of the darlings that I mention all the time and their story deserves to be told, which is Humana.

there are a number of things that I consider them to be or they have done that I consider to be very progressive, uh, across the spectrum of workplace decisions. But the one that I shared there was, uh, in the middle of the pandemic, they took a fully, like recently renovated ready to go [00:24:00] office building that they decided they no longer needed and donated it to the University of Louisville.

Like basically just handed them the case. Um, and you know, most companies would've said, oh, I need to sublease this. But they looked at what ultimately became kind of a triple bottom line opportunity. They get something off of their books. Uh, so they don't need it for their portfolio. They. You know, solidify an already existing, or I guess, enhance an existing relationship with the university, especially related to, uh, kind of, uh, incubation acceleration of ideas around health equity, which is really important to them as a company.

But they also brought the university physically closer to downtown, uh, where human still has other buildings. And I look at that as just the kind of decision that companies that are still deeply office first would never make.

Rex: Yeah, [00:25:00] I, I wanna connect a few dots and, uh, one of them, one of the reasons I like workspaces is that I can't go to any of the other conferences and hear what I heard from you.

And there are others that came up with provocative things too. Uh, secondly, when I look at, and I've done this for a couple years, I've looked at all the classes or the training. In the major conferences, and I try to break them into three categories. One are the tactical ones. How do we do better, what we already know how to do, the strategic ones about leadership and then the adaptive ones.

How do we transform ourselves into whatever the new is going to be? Zero on adaptive, maybe 5% generously or about leadership and strategic [00:26:00]thinking. Yeah, Everything else is tactical.

Phil: Yeah. It does feel that way.

Rex: So that tells me a couple things. One, and I keep hearing this from the people. We, we need a seat at the table and just like you said in McKinsey, they're not in the rooms that you're in, the real estate people.

Um, and I think one reason maybe is. They're still trying to do what they know how to do better instead of understanding instead of leading. Uh, You know, another statistic on that, Amanda Schneider did at NeoCon when they surveyed how companies make decisions, 80% were waiting for their competition to move.

First. 20% said, we're willing to take a, take some risk to do something different. That was telling to me as well. And I don't know if [00:27:00] you run into those same kind of numbers or those same realities.

Phil: yeah, no, I definitely feel the same way about the conferences and the quality of the sessions. And I think it's really, I. Yeah. The, the thing that disappoints me in some of those larger conferences is I'm like, I just came from whatever, an executive meeting, uh, where your head of finance is sitting there looking at your facilities team, your occupancy team, and their reading stuff that they got from a JLL or CB who's saying, you know, uh, occupancy planning is a profession of the past.

Like, AI can do this, it's spreadsheet work. And I'm not minimizing my like dozens and dozens and dozens of friends who do this work, but like it's in a category of job that is sun setting. So we should talk about that. That doesn't mean those people should go away. It means that the job should evolve so that the technology can do a lot of it and you can go higher up the stack to working with your business partner.

Right. But like, you would never hear that [00:28:00] at Cornet with loads of occupancy planners walking around saying like, what? In practice is occupancy planning 2.0, 3.0. What should we be doing? What are the tools out there now that can do chunks of our job? How do we test and learn and pilot those things at our organizations, whether we are insourced or outsourced and like what?

What is the model of myself I should be thinking about and how do I upskill myself to be that person? I don't hear a lot of the reality of which jobs are a threat, where unfortunately, at the same time some consulting firm is in with the executives using their broad brush analysis of the kinds of roles that could or couldn't be offshore or automated or whatever it is, and telling them, yeah, rough math, 20% of your employees, whatever your industry is, are not automatable tomorrow.

But you saw it with Toby Lucky from Spotify just a couple days ago, right? He came out with like, you cannot hire new people. [00:29:00] Without at least proving to me that you've done the math on the role that AI can or should have, uh, for your domain, your group. Right? Like you show me that you then need human growth.

Great. Right? But you gotta prove it to me that you're doing that thinking first. That will cascade and find its way into,

Rex: well, we're already seeing it cascade from the west coast. On, you know, the, the numbers of developers, software programmers that are being replaced. Not eliminated, but one person now can do the work of multiple people because they can accelerate, um, a lot of the heavy lifting work they still have to do the creative thought architecture type of stuff.

So one final comment. About workspaces. And then I wanna move into a little bit about your background And how you got to where we

Phil: And I do have a thought actually on, on the how decisions are made only very recently rediscovered a quote that.[00:30:00]

Has been sitting on my phone, my notes for, oh gosh, how long now? Let's see, since 2013, so 12 years. It's one of the oldest notes on my phone still here, uh, from a guy named Eddie Ang, who did a TED talk back then. And he said something that was so great, I wrote it down, says, all CEOs want innovation. So they seek innovation and they say to their cre, uh, say to their people, take risks and be creative.

But unfortunately, the words get transformed as they travel through the air entering their ears. And what they hear is do crazy things and then I'll fire you. And I always love that because you talk about like how decisions are made. Very few companies are seen to take those kind of risks, much less the teams that are 2, 3, 4, 5 levels down because real estate is still.

Treated like an asset, often buried in finance, sometimes buried, not just in finance, but into procurement.

Rex: Yeah.

Phil: cost, it's a right. And those, it just, [00:31:00] and I say this lovingly as someone who has worked in and with procurement as a practitioner, uh, it's where, you know, words like innovation and culture and experience tend to go to die.

So,

Rex: right.

Phil: It just, it, you

Rex: you just can't take the risk. It's

Phil: disadvantaged from climbing up the ladder and being in the room and held to fewer staff and have to deal with day-to-day fires to be put out. And it just, it, it rarely creates the space for that thinking. And I can near guarantee you that. No. Or very, you know this, like as a coach, very few of any corporate real estate teams have any sort of budget for help.

Two for their own development teamwork, uh, much less like futures thinking, innovation ideation, or someone to come talk to them where they are in their reality. So they have to get something only at a conference once a year. And as we discussed, like they're not hearing it enough at the conferences.

Rex: Right? That's right. Well, so you are a [00:32:00] practitioner. You have been, what I'd like to do is not go through all of the elements, but I'm going to highlight some of the stops along your journey. What I'd like to hear is, what was the biggest thing you took away from your time at Washington U Learning Computer science, then Credit Suisse.

Then you go to JLL, then you have this incredible roller coaster at WeWork

Phil: WeWork,

Rex: and then McKinsey. I mean, those are all, I mean. Very different.

Phil: they're very

Rex: context, Which is a little bit, we're gonna get into a little bit of how you're wired and why all that kind of feeds that intellectual side of you that, that, you know, that learning and that seeing things down the road that others don't see But Let's talk about what was the big thing you took away from your time at Washington U

Phil: I loved it, but look, [00:33:00] maybe as it pertained to my career, something I came to appreciate at WashU was I am, and I. I say this sort of modestly, like very extroverted and opinionated for someone in engineering school in particular in, in computer science.

Rex: Oh, yes.

Phil: And, uh, I deeply technical kinda architecture background and curiosity about how big systems work did not want to be a programmer.

Uh, so took a, as broad a, a spectrum of classes in and around computer science as I could from kind of AI and logic to the management of software development. But yeah, I just like big complicated systems. So I got as, as involved as I could within the engineering schools, sort of student leadership. And, uh, came out looking just to understand complexity and was very fortunate to be able to get to, uh, get Credit Suisse through their recruiting program.

Rex: So how does a computer science major end up in a financial firm? Were, you, were you in the real estate part of the

Phil: No. No, no, no. So I mean, so [00:34:00] I'm from New York City, right? My internship. History was even as is starting as technical support. You know, I used to be like crawling around on the floor at a market data company that is now part of Thomson Reuters, uh, on Wall Street, Fulton Street, broad Street.

Like this is where I, I grew up like working as a high schooler. So then I was an intern in Ernst and Young, uh, in their technology and risk assurance group. So that was like information security as a

Rex: got practice. Got it, got it. Yeah.

Phil: Yeah. Uh, the only reason I didn't go back to that is because my, uh, you could do the math from when I was a freshman with Mark McGuire, uh, my senior year fall was 2001.

So in September 11th happened here. It altered the job landscape and all, a lot of offers, including mine was rescinded. So that's how I eventually found Credit Suisse. But they hired me directly into the information security group because I had that experience. Interesting. Um, doing, yeah, doing kind of cybersecurity at ey.

Rex: ey.

Phil: And cyber became all the rage in the [00:35:00] fallout from 2001. So, uh, yeah, that like kind of created that opportunity for me. And I knew, unlike most of my recruiting colleagues who were coming generally into it, when I signed my contract, they're like, you're coming into information security. So that's why I spent the first five years of my time there.

But that was, you know, uh, architectural risk, getting to go business to business to business and having to learn really quickly, like, why do you have this piece of software? Why do you share data with that party? Why are you moving people in information around in this way? Because like, I have been asked as a 22-year-old to draw some kind of conclusion about the risks at play, but I can't make that assessment without spending some real time getting to understand your business.

And they'd be doing that for any number of groups. In any number of cities and, you know, at any time, uh, which is a really interesting way to get to see the underbelly of the organization and how it worked.

Rex: Then that leads [00:36:00] you to JLL, So when, when did the whole real estate.

Phil: So I mean, so I had three, three versions of myself of Credit Sus.

I went from, uh, hey, you're doing that, that's great, but it's too risky. Let me help you take some of the risk outta that, you know, technical equation. Uh, they went to cost management, which is, Hey, why are you hiring those consultants? That's awful pricey. Let me understand why and help you think about doing it differently.

That was when I spent time in and, uh, with my friends at Procurement. And then it was that group that sponsored Credit Suisse's original foray into activity-based work. Oh,

so they were on the receiving end of a report from DEGW. May they

Rex: rest I re Yeah. I remember those guys. And,

Phil: uh, the project was not started in the real estate team because the head of real estate at the time hated the idea.

And I was already in the expense management group that started it. So I was gaggled together with a bunch of colleagues, uh, [00:37:00] to pilot and grow that program. So we eventually were absorbed into corporate real estate, and that's what led me out eventually to JLL

Rex: Got it.

Phil: I, uh, the DEGW colleagues who had helped originally here, had since moved to JLL and look, the, the happy accident between going from a job that was quite literally help the bank spend less on consultants to, hey, we're gonna do this workplace thing.

But it was a project started by consultants and we weren't doing any physical renovations here in New York when I joined that team. So job one was lovingly like make sure we never have to call the consultants ever again to do at least pre and post occupancy kind of studies. So my entrance to it was not just figure out activity based work.

Figure out the history of sharing figure out like architecture. Yeah, it was understand the toolkit. Like why do all these firms do vision sessions, surveys, focus groups, interviews like [00:38:00] space planning and programming. Why do they do that? And how do you connect what they learn in advance to how they prove outcomes at the end?

Because I am not an architect or designer, it's not red couch, blue couch. For me, it has always been. Now thinking about like, how do I get you to make this change based on the number that I think I can move by doing this properly?

Rex: now, I know you're five Cliftons drinks, so I'm always going, oh my gosh, I see, you know, you're analytical at work, you're strategic, your futurist, your futuristic strength, but the maxim, that passion side coming out and then that activator is let's you're, you're what I call a creative catalyst.

Yeah.

Phil: really dangerous when I believe in a big idea that somebody.

Rex: Yeah.

Phil: Else supports. It was the same. Risk. Expense and workspace was

just, I think we can do it differently. And as long as I am backstopped by something, especially in more of a corporate context [00:39:00] or uh, real sponsors, I am very compelling. I think I've learned,

Rex: yeah, You move the, you Move the needle. The challenge is that once the needle is moved, is there, as you say, is there, what's the backstop to keep it and sustain it? Yeah. Yeah. So now that it springs you to WeWork from JLL to WeWork. Yep.

Phil: So led a regional consultancy for JLL that turned me into a functioning real estate professional. As a functioning real estate professional, I trotted off to try to go sell WeWork consulting services.

That was my job. And as happened to many of my good friends, I think I took the wrong door on the way out and I ended up in orientation, you know, instead of, instead of back at JLL and I got hired. So I helped build the workplace strategy practice with my partner in crime, Liz Burrow, who was also at Workspaces.

Yeah, my, uh, my WeWork work wife, um, for life. And uh, so we built a workplace strategy practice largely as part of the Powered by We Business for WeWork. So that was WeWork going to clients. And there are many, many of these sites out there that [00:40:00] was designed, built and operated by WeWork that nobody talks about

Rex: anymore.

Interesting. Uh,

Phil: probably a another documentary for another time

Rex: after

WeWork. Absolutely.

Phil: But, uh, that was amazing.

Rex: And then when that. Kind of cratered,

Phil: that didn't go

the way

Rex: What was the escape hatch to McKinsey?

Phil: When I left WeWork, um, I was consulting my own for about a year and a half, but a former WeWork colleague who is now on the landlord's technology side, and a client of McKinsey's connected me to the McKinsey real estate practice saying, Hey, listen, you're, you're very smart in talking a great game about the evolution of the office and workplace experience, but I know, and you know, that you were never thinking about this before March of 2020, and there's a lot to learn there.

And if you want to be slightly less over your skis, here's my friend Phil. So the open role for me. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think they lie. I joke they, uh, the, the WeWork credibility mixed with my white [00:41:00] hair

seemed to be an interesting combination and, uh, having some consulting background.

So I joined with one foot in the real estate practice, which back to the workspaces point, is not real estate consulting in the way that JLL or CBRE or Cushman is helping any old company with their consumption of real estate. McKinsey's version of real estate consulting is, I'm going to the largest real estate companies in the world, right?

This is where you've got, uh, on the office side, you have a Hinz and SL Green and RXR. On the residential side, you have like a Gray Star and a Cortland and or Marriott and Hilton, right? You pick the asset. These are companies in the business of real estate. Who are asking management strategy consulting questions that are about real estate only in as much as that's their business, uh, just like McKinsey and Bain and BCG [00:42:00] have healthcare practices and education practices, right.

And, uh, technology companies. So they were an industry vertical looking for greater depth on the occupier side of the question. Uh, so that's how I got hired. And then my other foot was in the people practice.

Rex: what was the big thing you felt like McKinsey gave you?

Phil: I never fancied myself a management consulting in that way to see how those firms. Solve problems at the pace that they solve them with the internal capability and the talent that they use to solve, like seemingly unanswerable questions, uh, at speed with credibility, with the relationships and how you approach the kind of problems that, you know, make companies grow, shrink, smash together, break apart, Truly, I would do it again in a heartbeat. it's just a very difficult environment for people who don't grow up there, and I didn't,

Rex: Yeah, right. when you spoke at Workspaces, the thing that was kind of [00:43:00] a, oh my, goodness moment for me is when you talked about the echo chamber.

That all the CEOs are hearing the same, seeing the same slide deck, basically. So if that's what all the CEOs are hearing, I don't think that filters down into, so what does that mean to us? If this is what they're hearing, how much can I actually make change happen in my world if that's already the echo chamber they're living in?

Phil: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, maybe it, it ultimately is just in, in this is something that surprises me and maybe it's just less common, or maybe it's something that we need now. It's like failure to cascade the appropriate level of North Star vision for change. Right. Where do I think we need to

Rex: go?

Which is a recent

Phil: Yeah. A recent article of mine. And, um, I, I, [00:44:00] look, I get, it's hard, especially if you are a public and regulated company for a CEO to come out and say, Hey, we're, you know, I personally, as the executive of this company, or we as an executive team, broadly speaking, believe in some truth that in three years or five years or 10 years, something's gonna change that Any analyst looking at that company and how they're made up and how they make their money might go, gosh, like if that were to come true, 50% of your revenue is at risk.

Right. And like, I have not had to be in a position to answer that question on a recorded call, like as a regulated company. Right. That's, that's hard. And maybe they, maybe they have this idea of where. Where to go. But it doesn't get cascaded down to the general employees or even the second or third level leaders in areas related to workplace and employee experience to kind of be there on the front [00:45:00] foot, innovating along that long-term vision.

So then they also don't have, and to communicate a high level vision for where they think things are going. And that's the problem that I was articulating in workspace is real estate. You don't have your own belief system. And that doesn't mean it's all gonna come true, but at least it's guiding the decisions that you're making on a day-to-day, week to week, month to month basis.

Yeah. Um, and hopefully allowing you to have some policy that prevents you from going backwards.

Rex: the challenge is that the contract between. Employee and employer is broken. Yeah. How do you even get a north star that people will believe and buy into when the work covenant or the contract we have with, you know, I do good work, you take care of me.

That doesn't exist anymore. So how does a company build that [00:46:00] social capital, the trust and the alignment in this new world and environment?

Phil: a baby step. Simple example. I read a book recently from Tan Kami who's the now chief Talent and Strategy Officer for Standard Charter Bank. And they're another example of a big company that went. Like very flexible first.

Rex: Right.

Phil: Had that discussion moved on, um, coined a phrase that's so good that you and I hear it around real estate all the time, which is half the space and twice the experience.

And she wrote a book with her consulting partners from Mercer about skills based organizations and they apparently have been pretty transparent with large swaths of their workforce, whose, you know, core skills and roles. They expect to be sunset over time and it's not tomorrow.

Right. [00:47:00]

But I think that puts them in a better position being go, yeah, yeah, sure.

There are whole categories of jobs around here. We expect to be automateable or whatever it is. So we're gonna acknowledge that now. We are not laying anybody off about it. We're not, you know, changing anything we do tomorrow, but we're building talent and learning programs. For those people specifically to keep them in this organization and look for ways of evolving what those roles are.

Finding new roles for them. Right? Like instead of keeping it to themselves,

Rex: you know, that, so here's another maybe new phrase, reality based leadership. That's what I'm hearing you say. They're recognizing reality. They're not trying to, Uh, paint a pretty picture. They're not trying to, you know, you, one of your articles was another financial CEO that had a rant that became very public.

Mm-hmm. Which was on the opposite side, uh, charter. It's interesting, a lot of these organizations are [00:48:00] financial organizations that you're referencing, Charters to me always been innovative, culture driven, employee centric. I mean, They're probably not perfect. Um, but I've watched them for 30 years and they have always seemed to have been.

Phil: I agree completely. Um,

Rex: so why are they so different And the other one that says what the f are people doing on Fridays anyway? They're certainly not working.

Phil: I, I don't know. Yeah. It's, it's, it's people and leadership capability. I like that. Reality based leadership. Right. And where we see it, it's very easy for startups, right?

When you are at nothing and you can point to a big number or a problem and say, I want to fix that. Mm-hmm. It's super engaging. It's why a lot of people rush to smaller companies. 'cause it's just easier to, to feel authenticity from the leader. Easier to see, right. Here's like [00:49:00] the two or three things that we as a company are trying to do at all costs and nothing

Rex: else Well, those are Existential

Phil: Yeah. Yeah.

Rex: Um. oftentimes.

Phil: Totally. But that's, uh, existential is, uh, is fun. It's super compelling. Sure. And motivating. If you're like, I believe in that problem, let's go. And I will, I will be scrappy. I will work long hours, I'll do whatever. But the large established company, right, for them to be reductive or transformative is just harder to say out loud.

Uh, there is a sort of existential risk coming that we believe is likely. So we're doing some things to prepare us for that Eventuality just feels like a, a story that you don't hear a lot of.

Rex: companies would do well to have more strategic foresight.

Phil: If you say [00:50:00] test, learn, innovate, fail fast in front of anyone who comes from facilities management, they may well have a heart attack right in front

Rex: of

you. I just spoke to a group of facility managers

Phil: and, um,

Rex: it was a joint kind of association event and it was glazing over, you know, it was kind of like dead audience.

And you know what that feeling is like, oh, this isn't being well received. Or it's just cluelessness. Part of it is the conditioning. You know, they live at a level of dealing with changing the light bulbs and making sure this works and the maintenance, and that's their, that's their existential world.

we got a big gap to get over. you know, when I look at what we're doing, it still shocks me that people are still using their computer cameras we're still looking up people's noses in terms of angles and we, I mean, the very basics of working in this hybrid virtual world Good audio, good video, knowing [00:51:00] the software, I, I can't tell you how many times we spend 10, 15 minutes just trying to get, okay, is your audio working, my audio, all of that.

it's doesn't bode well for living in this hybrid world, but you've done extremely well making the transition. vo I need to hear. How do you become a top voice on

Phil: LinkedIn? Oh, I mean the, the LinkedIn trajectory, sort of as you talked about my career as a happy accident of 1, 2, 3 punch.

Like I, I was on LinkedIn while at Credit Suisse years ago. If I look back at those posts, it's mostly helping people like. You hear about events or jobs? I wasn't super pushy about workplace yet, but no one really was, uh, I would post about, Hey, I'm speaking at work tech, or this thing just came out maybe getting, as the program got more established and I started speaking more, I was a, a little bit more open to share, but when I got to JLL, they said, we do social selling,

Rex: Ah, so

Phil: you should learn how to use LinkedIn [00:52:00] properly.

And now feeling like, oh, we have proprietary research I can share. I became much chattier, much quicker with someone saying, let me look at your profile and help you figure out how to do this a little bit better. Then got to WeWork. And WeWork was the ultimate example of, we like to talk about ourselves.

So, uh, again, leaned in very hard to that network and sharing. Information from the inside I think was really compelling. 'cause everyone in corporate real estate was like, what are you, you know, kombucha, chugging frat boys doing over there? And why are you so popular? What is going on? And I was one of a few number of like, again, gray hair adults coming from real corporate real estate who was sharing the story from the inside.

So I think that did a number for my audience and then got to McKinsey and that being able to say, Hey, I met McKinsey. This is what McKinsey said.

Rex: They've got a

Phil: Yeah, it just accelerated. And that's when I became a right. And I think they were looking for more top voices and around future work, right place, right time. If I wasn't at McKinsey, it wouldn't have happened.

[00:53:00] And so I'm very fortunate to still have it.

Rex: And, But you had the foundation, you, I mean, nobody becomes an overnight success. Right.

Phil: No. I'm not that viral.

Rex: Yeah. It's, But, but you had built the, you know, you've done the reps, you got the basics, I think. That's what people don't, don't realize. Just start

Phil: someplace.

Just start and just keep doing it. Now that I'm, I'm on week seven or thereabouts of trying a newsletter and trying to

Yeah. With the

Rex: work line. Good. I read it.

Phil: Thank you. Uh, and it, it's been interesting to think about branding myself and branding a newsletter, but also very, what's the word? Like, it, it's really reassuring.

I would never tell someone to follow me on LinkedIn because some days I post really serious data-driven comments and other days I am snarky and flippant and will say terrible things about, about something I see in about, right. But it's inconsistent. So I'd never say follow me there, but I am much more, uh, um, likely to say, please follow or subscribe for the work line, because you only [00:54:00] get the most comprehensive thinking that I have once a week.

That's my promise to you. And you know, I hope it, I hope it continues

Rex: go. Yeah. You, you have a voice and I think that's what people are looking for. What's the voice behind the information? Well, let's talk about the rhythms article tell me the difference between rhythms and just having good schedules and processes.

Phil: Yeah, I think the, the one-two punch of article first on everybody agreeing that where work matters happens, but it's really the digital version of it. And then the, when work happens in terms of rhythms and cadence, um, broadly being about consistency and communication from the top about how things should be done.

And for the cadences and rhythms, it's when they happen and how the big things, the big moments that happen, feed into each other and that input and output. Idea, uh, credit really came from the [00:55:00] leaders at a, uh, kinda global experience consultancy called Gen That Not only for themselves. Yeah. Um, David Lancaster runs it and Kelly Moran, who, who builds their kind of toolkit and capability, um, they, for their, for their own business uses input output language.

When we have, you know, meeting a feeds into meeting BCDE, like every week, the cycle complete, uh, repeats and everybody knows when those things happen. Everybody knows the information that comes tumbling outta one and then into the next. So it allows you to know when you have to be where, but even if you zoom out, I just realized like in this.

Moment of work where things are less predictable, people come go, right? Uh, they're onboarding remotely or their manager's not around. There is no harm in creating some transparency about when certain things take place and building a culture that's not just like, okay, the board meets once a quarter and if you put [00:56:00] that on a webpage, that's pretty boring in and of itself.

The executives all know that, but why shouldn't the junior person who, you know, just started in finance know that for the two weeks before every board meeting? Like anyone who could be construed as a senior leader in finance vanishes. Right? Right. Yeah. Like, so then when they're thinking, oh, I have to launch a new product, or we have an idea for an offsite that like, it just cannot happen in the two weeks that lead up to the board meeting.

That's very informative for them, but. Department to department and for all but the born remote companies like a GitLab who I also cited in the article. This feels like a crazy idea. Why shouldn't I, in engineering, be able to find out when the marketing department has its monthly lunch and learn community get together thing.

Like it's on the calendar, it's there. Maybe, you know, I don't need it most of the time, but if I don't [00:57:00] know when that's happening

Rex: brilliant. and

Phil: I have an idea, I have to schedule a meeting or kick off a whole thread of emails just to get one piece of information and it's that times a thousand, right? Happening all the time.

All the time. That bogs us down in this sludge even

Rex: employee review season.

Phil: the worst.

Rex: managers, you know, they're kind of in this, I gotta do 15 reviews and it's gotta be in this format. And I've gotta look at the competencies and all the research around employee reviews.

You know, Marcus Buckingham Yep. Says it's, it's more about manager bias than it is about true coaching and feedback. So that, that's a whole nother,

Phil: yeah. And look, uh, is it plausible that some poor intern in the communications department goes and has to maintain a static website of every department's, you know, regularly [00:58:00] occurring business influencing meetings and other operational things?

No, but that's what the technology's for. You know, why, why can't some, like some agents, some AI say at least give you the list or allow you to ask in natural language, Hey, I got a crazy idea for the marketing team. When might be a good time to approach them or not? How could I inject an idea into their three without having to ask them even for permission.

Right? Because it may even cause you like not to do it at all, to realize where their priorities are. So that that sort of radical transparency is what makes the remote. Yeah. Only companies tick and the rest of us should be learning from them.

Rex: You just gave me one of my future guests. I gotta get

gent

Phil: They're great. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Rex: Well, I'm going to shift gears a little bit to the reflective Phil and [00:59:00] kinda lessons learned resilience. But I wanna start out when you left McKinsey, I don't know how soon after we connected, gave you the Clifton strengths. We went through the strengths and looked at things.

Um, I've never heard from your standpoint what you know. I. What you took away from that conversation. Um, I'm a big believer, as you know, in the Clifton strengths and our system, how we help unpack that. But for you, um, and you have a very unique profile, by the

Phil: way.

Thank you. I guess,

Rex: I mean, uh, well, I'm gonna go through the Strategic number one, you know, you see the end of the story. You, you already see where the story's going ahead of time. So you're like that terrible person in the movie that tells your partner, oh, this is gonna happen next. Uh, then you've got the opposite side, the analytical, the skeptic, the logic, the data.

I want all of that. That's very unique. [01:00:00] Then you've got this, a, d, d, urgency. Gotta do it Now, catalyst, if it's a good idea, get things going. That's why I call you the creative catalyst. You've got maximizer, which pushes out others outside the comfort zone. That passion, I call it the Braveheart. Strength, you know, die for the crusade.

And then you've got the ideation, the ability to take different sides, not not land on any issue, but to be able to argue many sides and look at many angles, that novel, creative side of you. Um, so what, when you go through that, um, how does it help you in terms of understanding what you do best and where your magic comes from?

Phil: Yeah. It, it, I guess it's nice to hear some affirmation that I have a unique profile or maybe a rare profile that I, I

Rex: I at least a standout [01:01:00] profile.

Phil: Yeah. Which I, I, I love and it's hard, it's hard to say that, to wear, kind of wear it on the t-shirt and be like, I am, like, I guess I said it before and I, I know it about myself now, and it is the ultimate challenge that I have in figuring out what I want to do next.

Uh, back said, if, if someone has a really great idea for the kind of change that is going to be difficult to get to and relies on an interesting combination of not just systemic understanding and complexity, but ultimately human behavior, I like, I'm in, I, I want a problem like that to the extent that it could be related to employee experience in the built environment, even better, but they're hard to come by, right?

Say I'm, I'm a, like, hammer looking for a nail, or whatever the, uh, the appropriate expression is. But this feels like a very safe and fraught. In a moment, economically. Right? And [01:02:00] there are very few companies who, even early Covid, when there was more change, positivity, very few that really took a bite and like elevated roles or created teams to go after and change.

Not just the, do we, don't we office question, but as I mentioned that client, like reimagine the employee's day-to-day experience, the relationship with the organization, how it affects how we sell, how we communicate, our values, all of that. Uh, those roles that like chief of Work construct, what does it feel like to work here?

Construct breaking, breaking these norms and lines between ITHR real estate, arguably creating new functions at the office of the CEO level that I believe is going to happen. It just isn't happening immediately. And so like very inspiring to hear the profile, but also realizing that my ideal operating state.

Is in a role that is

Rex: kind of fit for the time,

Phil: fit [01:03:00] for the time and, and very situational and like it worked for Core pandemic. McKinsey worked especially like for WeWork, and that's the one I kind of missed the most. Um, and I loved being able to do that at, uh, at JLL and certainly thought about that kind of real estate consulting role again.

Uh, but I, it's like I know what I'm good at and, and as you said, inspiring the middle layer, but I need someone who really wants that change and means

it.

And if they don't mean it, I will kind of like this strategic one.

Rex: I will

your

energy will drop. Yeah, you'll sniff it out that maximizer. You know, if they don't want to take that bold step.

Phil: Yeah. Uh, co credit to, uh, my friend, maybe our friend Tim Oldman from Lisa now ATO strategy, he. Uh, randomly saw me at a hotel recently when I was meeting with somebody else who he happened to know and said to that guy in front of me, sort of about me that same point. He goes, you know, [01:04:00]Phil needs someone who like, really wants big change and means it.

'cause if they don't, he'll get bored

Rex: to

tears. No passion. Yeah. Yeah. No passion. Well, so how do you stay at your best? I mean, this is, these are challenging times for everybody. Do you have a process, a routine? You know, body, mind, uh, soul, how do you keep that ready in reserve? what is it that you do?

Phil: Yeah. Um, I intellectually know about a lot more kind of ritual and, and rigor and process than I necessarily follow on a day to day basis. Being in a.

Rex: you

Phil: A moment of, of split mind, right? Both investigating and evaluating, uh, new full-time opportunities. And while doing consulting, uh, means my rhythms change very quickly or the, I have to adhere to other people's serving multiple clients.

So it, it is always difficult, I think, for anyone in, uh, in [01:05:00] client service to completely control their schedule. Uh, then you layer in two small kids and a dog and the whole thing. So, I'm very good and pretty ruthless about information tracking, uh, across different modalities. How I think about everything from, uh, ideas and publication, planning for the newsletter to, um, kind of job and consulting opportunities to notes for projects and how I, what systems I use to share those with other people.

I don't have one because again, oftentimes I'm. Sharing with someone else. So I have to roll with it. Uh, I never am stressed out about like, is there something I forgot

Rex: about? So

Phil: So the information control is very tight, um, on my calendar when given more flexibility, I, I try to lean into doing kind of as much as I can earlier, late, when the kids aren't as much of a factor.

Uh, using AI more now to make, um, productive time out of dog walks and like getting ideas out of my head and into some system for [01:06:00] evaluation later. And like very looking forward to, uh, longer term structured engagements to give me a little bit more predictability schedule wise. 'cause they seem to just be shorter and more mixed at the moment.

Um, or get a new full-time role where inherently then there's some, uh, more consistent rhythm, uh, because I know it is better for my wellbeing, broadly speaking.

Rex: Yeah. Got it.

Phil: Yeah. Got it.

Rex: So Phil, a year from now, what. What do you envision? Where are you headed?

Phil: I would love to say, I mean work, work line is the newest project for me and I would like to be able to say then that I have crossed a catalyst point where I'm seeing what I'm not honestly seeing yet. I hear from a lot of kind of workplace leaders and I say that broadly, uh, it side, HR side, real estate side saying you, you're saying something that either no one else is willing to say or offering a perspective that I'm not hearing.

I like that you're not just regurgitating headlines and statistics. 'cause I certainly see the same articles quoted I [01:07:00] think the leaders of these groups, they know this stuff.

They don't need the help, but I know from hearing from people in their organizations that the people on the ground don't know this stuff. And there needs to be a moment, and I am trying for my part to say, if this topic feels unfamiliar to them and you don't know where to start, just send them this. Like, let them engage with it.

Let them come to you with ideas. I'm not selling you something by saying we should talk about transparency and cadence. So I'd like to see that, that growth and um, would love examples of people being like, I've used this as a teaching moment, uh, in our team and with our leadership. That'd be fabulous. And honestly, my stronger preference is still to find that chief of work kind of energy, whether or not it's a specific role.

Uh, 'cause I miss the clients. I work, I miss getting to do it longer haul. That's where I think I see myself next. Although I continue to [01:08:00] explore both the independent consulting work that I'm doing, uh, or other full-time jobs that are consulting oriented. I've not abandoned it, but I miss I miss the doing

Rex: you've done the co consult. I mean, I'm, I'm a consultant. so it, It's a feast or famine, you know, kind of business. And you always have to stay a little bit ahead of the curve and, and, uh, you want some stability. Some, some clients that. Uh, that you're their go-to person and then you want the variety for the learning.

Phil: Yeah, totally. And I love, I mean, there are elements of it that I absolutely love for the freedom and autonomy and getting to follow where my interests lie, right. Any one time doing three to five wildly different things with clients. Um, but again, I miss, I miss the long haul change. I am actually a patient person really with complicated problems.

You know, I

worked at a Swiss

Rex: Right. And you've got analytical, so you, you love [01:09:00] getting into,

Phil: I like digging in and I am, yeah. Maybe back, you know, I'm not an entrepreneur Right. I'm not a interesting, I don't want to build a business that is not an energy that I feel that I have maybe at this stage of my life. Yeah. So being part of a complicated system and changing it over time really

Rex: that's, that's a sweet spot. Yeah. So I'd like to do kind of a lightning round. Love it. With some questions. So, what book has changed your thinking in the last couple years? And I saw you quoted Cal

Phil: Newport. Yeah, I was just gonna say from where I sit at home, which is where most people see me in my little box, my little flowers behind me, uh, the book that I can physically reach the closest from my chair without moving is A World Without Email by Cal Newport.

So that

Rex: one, I love it. Uh,

what's a mistake That

Phil: that

Rex: you're grateful for?

Phil: The most visceral moment of mistake that I still remember to this day from when I [01:10:00] was in my smart working in real estate career.

Credit Suisse was kind of misuse of information that I had once in front of an executive who didn't know I knew that information. And you know, when you're in a real estate group, you know stuff right? Head count coming, going buildings. And uh, it was the first and only time in my career where, you know, by myself with someone far outranking me in that moment where like, you know, I was up against the point of resistance and, you know, whatever.

I, I lost my cool and didn't yell, but I, I like dropped an information bomb. To sort of assert that maybe something should go my way. And that guy basically said, get the f outta my office. And um,

Rex: so what was the lesson

Phil: from

that? Well, I mean, so I clearly not to do, not to not to do

Rex: that not to do politically.

Phil: Yeah.

But I went, I mean, to his credit also, I, I went back to my desk and while I was sitting there thinking like, am I about to get fired from this company? Um, he called me a, a [01:11:00] remarkable guy, both said in the same breath, like a more senior established, like a, let me make this a teaching moment for you.

Why kind of what you did set me off in the way that it didn't, wasn't appropriate in that context. And also acknowledged like he got very hot, really fast and it triggered him in ways. That were both related to the project I was invoking and just interpersonally. Right. For all I knew he was dealing with that and stress in people and as a people leader, uh, I triggered something which I'm much more sensitive to now, especially my wife has become a therapist.

But, um, I'm very grateful for him having talked me down off the ledge, but just thinking of, uh, information use as a weapon, like for dry is not a great idea in all, but a few circumstances. Yeah.

Rex: So with that said, what's one trait that you're working on to become a better version of Phil?

Phil: Not, well, always working on like, [01:12:00] kind of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I am a,

Rex: yeah. Well, that's the maximizer.

Phil: Yeah. But I'm also, I'm, I am past oriented in the sense that like from other assessment methodologies I've learned, like I like to think about the problem, right? There's an analytical side and if I'm under stress, I will think and think and think and think and think and think and think and have the

ability to over, yeah, have the ability to overanalyze at the expense of sort of moving forward, um, or wanting something, wanting to be really sure.

So those two, those two,

Rex: characteristics I hadn't put that

Phil: can cause attention. If I'm under stress. stress. So like recognizing when that's happening and.

Rex: uh,

Phil: People, people in teams who work for me. I come across this pretty analytical, I'm a New Yorker. I'm very chatty. I get very excited about the work stuff. Uh, but I think in my heart I'm much more introverted than I let on.

So usually if I stop

Rex: talking in

Yeah. I mean, it shows up in your

Phil: profile. Yeah. If I, if I stop talking though, in a work context, it usually means something's [01:13:00] wrong and people work for me will help me point

Rex: that out. Yeah. Your profile with the thinking strengths and the motivating strengths. There's this public energy, but once that energy goes, it's kind of like, I gotta go back in my green cave and recover.

I get it. So we've got Gen Z coming out, we've got lots of challenges in the workplace. Any advice for people coming into this new crazy work environment?

Phil: someone told me recently when I was moaning a little bit about what I'm gonna do next, and he was like a former mentor, uh, said, you know, how many jobs have you had, like, companies you work for? And I'm like, uh, four plus me five, whatever. He's like, well, if you just take the same pace you've been on, you're gonna have worked for 10 to 12 by the time you retire.

So like, you got a lot more to go. And I'm not growing up in this radical, totally portfolio, uh, kind of career world. So I think it's much more likely that people will either permanently [01:14:00] or over time have moments of like working for themselves, working multiple gigs, either or, like being 50% employed by someone and then 50% doing something on the side that's just gonna become more common.

So arming yourself.

Rex: Wow

Phil: for that eventuality. Even something as stupid, I was like, why not just have your own LLC and go find someone to pay you $5 to do something that you charge like to your business and start to feel like, yeah, I have a business that does stuff on the side so that when you get let go from somewhere, you have an opportunity.

It doesn't feel net new and scary all the time, uh, as it has been for me. Coming back to independent work,

Rex: you're right. I think that's going to be the norm.

The last question is, what does the resilient organization look like over the next five years?

Phil: One that maybe gets me on that quote and actually can demonstrate not just sort of. Psychological safety from employees to say like they have [01:15:00] ideas, but to try things out in the open and feel like they're not gonna get fired if something doesn't go well.

Right. Like truly owns the, the micro failures because that helps groups learn from each other. It's gonna be absolutely critical for AI exploration. I tried this, it was weird. Try something else. So what'd you do? I don't know. This wasn't great. Uh, and just can you see that pervasively in an organization sharing not just the, in the knowledge, but things you're actively trying and the r and aren't working.

Rex: So the future is the new version of the learning

Phil: adaptive? I think so. I, I think, yeah, for sure.

 

Rex: So that was Phil Kirschner, and I hope you'll agree. He doesn't just speak truth to power, but he gives us a roadmap to navigate uncertainty.

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A special thanks to the Surround podcast network for making this series possible and to my behind the scenes dream team, Rob Schulte, our producer, and Rachel Csar, who keeps everything moving with precision and grace. Until next time, keep building resilience, keep leading with courage, and keep showing up for the future.