Meg Bear, Board Director at Heidrick & Struggles

Siobhan Savage: All right. I'm ready when you are. Let's do this. Hello everyone and welcome to Skills Connect. Welcome there. How are you? I am so good. Thanks for having Megan. No problem. It's been super great to be connecting with you, on my relocation to you at the us so I really appreciate everything that you've been doing in terms of supporting me and the business.

Yeah, I'm super grateful

Meg Bear: I could not be more excited for what you're doing at region, and I think that's becoming obvious, not just between us, but, throughout the market as well.

Siobhan Savage: Oh, thank you. So welcome everyone to Skills Connect. This is where we explore conversations about shaping what is the future of work.

Ji. We want this world to be a bold, but also responsible new workforce strategy. I'm Siobhan Savage. I'm one of the founders and also CEO of Ji. Today I'm joined by the incredible and unstoppable Meg Bear. For those that don't know Meg, and there's only a few. She is the ex president of SAP and the and globally.

She's looked after the Hendrickson struggles from a board director position. She is a forward - leaning, no bullshit innovator and has one of the most strategic brains that I have seen in terms of my day - to - day unjamming ideas. Meg, it is incredible. Thank you for giving us all of your time today. Well,

Meg Bear: goodness, that with that, intro, what can I do?

I got nothing to say.

Siobhan Savage: Well, I, for those that don't know as well. So someone told me that I needed to meet Meg because I would 100% be on the same level of energy and that I would, we would vibe. So that was the, you need to meet Meg. Why do you not have a connection to Meg? Was the intro. So. We were, we ended up connecting and, the calls are long, put it that way.

Meg Bear: Well, and I would also say that you gave me religion as it relates to where the future of work was going. And, as a fellow innovator and deep thinker, I felt. Really inspired because it's very unusual for me to have someone drop an idea that I hadn't been pondering at some level. So, in the case of the way work was changing, it's been something I've been looking at for decades, but I think you were the first person I talked to that said, no, and I know how it will change.

So, obviously it, the vibe was very much on the shared nerd. Background of what is going to happen with work these days.

Siobhan Savage: I know, and it's become such a less of a HR conversation and more of a full business. I. Conversation as well. We're moving from classifications of HR tech and we really feel we sit as work tech more in the business, not just in hr.

So, those conversations where, when you've met us on our early days and how we've been evolving have been, invaluable in terms of just your deep expertise and actually living and breathing this and running a company of your skill at your size, and seeing all the potential roadblocks that will come up ahead for us.

it's been incredible. So I obviously know a lot about your career today, but why don't you give folks a little bit of where you've come from, the way your thinking has evolved. What are key moments for you that really shaped who you are? Me, because I think it's such a beautiful story.

Meg Bear: Yeah.

So I've been in tech my whole career. Got there a little bit accidentally and started out right away in manufacturing and enterprise software. This is back in the day of green screens and, no mouse was used in the early days of tech, so I got a chance to grow up with business systems, how they've changed, and also to work with customers to think about the future.

I've been in HR tech for over 20 years, and I have built on transformational technology and transformational shifts. I. For the majority of my career, so where I to spend my time is thinking around where is change happening in the market, in the industry, in humanity, and what is that going to be?

As I've grown up and taken on more operational roles, as you mentioned recently, president of SAP, SuccessFactors Global Business, growing it to over two and a half billion dollars in revenue. What I've come to learn is that there is a really unique moment happening right now, and that moment is not just what we to think of about as ai, but it's really something that was coming to us even before where the world is speeding up.

Volatility is everywhere. It's in the market. It's in the way that businesses are invested in. It's in the expectation of value creation. It is in what boards believe businesses need to be, and it's. Seen across a lot of different dimensions. And then for individuals, there's a lot of change as well. Oh my goodness, how I do my work is changing and it's changing really fast.

And so we started to really have this conversation for real at the beginning with Covid, and then started to have it even more when we started to think about what about back to work and what is it about what's going to happen in the world where zero interest rate is not? A norm anymore, and businesses have to think about profitability different and the expectations of productivity are different.

And so every board in pretty much on the planet. Is struggling with the idea that there is a need for faster and more sustained value creation. There's an expectation that AI is going to deliver all of that value creation. And there's a whole lot of uncertainty about what is gonna happen to me as a worker to my business, to even my skills as a leader.

what does it mean to be a leader in this moment? And so what I've been doing in the last couple years is really grounding on. The recognition that this is happening, whether we it or not, and I believe it is our responsibility to as leaders, as thought leaders, as industry leaders, as people that care both about humans and work.

It is our responsibility to not la this to change, but to invent a future that gives opportunity for everyone. And so it was really on that shared mission that I was drawn to you shahan. Not just that you as a person, but you as a vision with, excuse me, you as a vision with Reejig. That the future is ours.

It's happening right now, and we need to lean in and make this work not just for business, but for people as well.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah. Amen. And I think that this is exactly why what happened, right? Because, my mission is to create a world with zero wasted potential in people in business and society.

And I think exactly what you've just said, we are hurdling towards it. Now. This is not a thing that's going to happen. And what's really crazy? The amount of, meetings that I'm having with. CHROs. Big CPOs. CHROs of some of the most well - known companies in the world. And they don't think that this is a today thing.

And I'm, what? What? We're, the train has left, we're on this. Where are you? Because that's gonna be a problem. And I think. The reason why I'm so passionate about, one, I want you to boldly reinvent your workforce. So if you don't, then you don't have a business and you've got no jobs, right?

So one, we gotta help everyone reinvent, and as you said, the board narrative and the requirement for every CEO is to productivity, efficiency, velocity. Bottom line, that's the energy, right? But on the same hand, there is this incredible moment right now for leaders in the people space. To really step up and think about how do I turn this moment into a moment for me, my team, my business?

this is it. And I think there's, everyone's always had this, I wanna seat at the table conversation and the HR team, this is it. Be the table where actually these discussions are going to happen. And I think, the responsibility side directly correlates to how do we be bold, but also responsible Because, leaders right now.

They're gonna find themselves in two years time when we have really went into this new era where you're gonna see a backfire from that happening from society employees, there'll be a different level of expectation of our leaders to do good and to have that ripple effect into society. So, Meg, I think the way that you are thinking about this, we've got such deep connection on where the world, I expect the world and our leaders to be.

Right? And I think, I talked a little bit about. The CHRO and the CPO role, how do you feel, given you've had exposure to pretty much every major company around the world, from their CEOs to their boards, to the chief people officers, how have you seen or not seen those roles evolve?

where are you seeing We are honestly no BS answer. What is the maturity level of that role right now in market?

Meg Bear: So I think you nailed it precisely. I think there are bright spots for sure, but there are a lot of people who are. Frankly, followers, not leaders, and they're doing the best they can, either because their organization does not give them space to be leaders or because they themselves don't have the right set of skills and confidence to step up into those leadership positions.

I've completely shifted my thinking over this in this year, actually, probably mid 2024 and to this year, and I think I'm leaning closer to where you are, where. Early on, we spent a lot of time saying, AI's not gonna take your job. Somebody with AI is gonna take your job, and all this stuff.

And I just don't think we're doing anybody any favors anymore. So I've completely shifting what I believe and I actually believe the job that you have today. Does not exist anymore and you just haven't been informed yet. And so I think we need to think about this as thesis is ship, right? When you the, it's a metaphor of if you replaced every board on a ship, is it a new ship or is it the same ship?

And if you do this consistently, where are you and who are you? I believe that we are replacing every single board in our business. And I don't mean see boards of directors, the physical infrastructure that makes up a business. It, the jobs, the work, the people, every single one of us is changing, and I believe that if we don't build the right.

Intellectual and business agility to address that we are going to find ourselves in a real problem. So to your point, people are already late. They need to take this seriously. They don't need to have all of the answers today because it's impossible to have the answers. But they need to recognize that tomorrow is going to be different than today, and the day after is gonna be different than that.

And so what they really need to get good at is understanding more of the business principles that their roles are built upon. And when I think about what to do for hr. I think asking for a seat at the table is wrong. I think even thinking about that as some, as an entitlement is wrong. I think HR and leaders of all parts of the business need to recognize that there are new expectations.

Being asked of the business, that's where they gotta start. They have to start with serving their customers and growing the business and delivering the results that are necessary for the business to survive or is going to require. New things to happen, and so they need to start with the conversation.

Not saying, give me a seat at the table because I'm gonna do this or that. They need to start the conversation making sure that they deeply care about and understand what is changing and what is the strategic plan to address that change. And then ladder up every single thing that you're doing. As directly critical to making that strategic change happen effectively and quickly.

Mm - hmm. And that if you put your role as a people leader, as a operation leader, if you put your role in that context, you will have a seat at the table because people will recognize you are urgent to making that transformation happen. But if you start the conversation is, I need to be invited. You're not starting from a shared value creation mindset.

So you really need to get back to your acts of service and ask yourself, how can I contribute to this onslaught that's happening to our business? And what is my role in that with a lot of clarity that your role will be different than it was in the past. Mm - hmm. And if you're smart, it will be better and richer and more interesting.

But if you lean back, someone else is gonna step in for that better, interesting, richer part. And you are going to be brought down a level to be, not even not at the table, but focused on doing what other people figure out for you to do. Mm - hmm.

Siobhan Savage: Yep. Completely. I think as well, the way that I'm. So what you've said, the way that I'm talking to customers right now and have been evolving in my thinking has been evolving over the last, say, three years really.

And the thing that I can really see clearly now is that we're all wanting to build this AI powered workforce, right? So that is every CEO's agenda, non - negotiable, find a way. The infrastructure that we've built. So your floorboards on the boat are completely wrong. You're exactly right. We're working off old school job architectures that were built for the fifties.

We have, the way of putting people into jobs. We have the way we reward the whole infrastructure. Before everything is gone, and what we actually need to do is to completely redesign and build a new critical infrastructure to enable this new AI workforce. So that's why we've been growing so fast because a lot of what we are saying to customers is, if you keep trying to do this new thing, with all of that, this whole thing's just not gonna work.

And a lot of the pockets that I'm seeing of folks that are signing on with Reejig and the leaders that were, these are all people that have done what you said. They've looked around them, they've read the board report, they've went, okay, times have changed. How do I be of service to my company? How do I help?

How can I be valuable with the skills that I have to today to enable this AI part workforce? And then how do I protect my leader? From getting the reputational risk of harvesting people out of jobs. So they're not just thinking about it in the context of, be more profitable, everyone pedal faster.

They're actually thinking about it in the context of how do we do that? And also how do we make sure that folks are not being left behind? Because the last thing we want is a whole pile of uproar, internally on social media. A lot of leaders are really afraid right now about reputational risk.

Look at the CEO and what happened in New York. There is a definite stigma towards, there's a certainty of, they've all got bodyguards now for a reason, right? Yeah. And I think a lot of the smart folks that I'm seeing in co big companies right now. Are very focused on the how do I do that?

And also that because this is the sustainable journey of re - engineering. And that's exactly to your point, and I'm going to use this podcast to send it to folks when they're in that moment of, how do I, what do I do next? Listen to Meg, she'll coach you through this one. Right? Because it's exactly what needs to happen.

And, the other thing that I was talking about the other day to someone. They were, oh, why is this so? Why are you growing so much right now in a world where everything else is not getting sign off? How are you getting budget? Because I wanna get a budget sign off. For my program of work, and I was, well, your budget is connected to, access to, meaningful career paths and creating a culture of opportunity.

These are really lovely things, don't get me wrong, but they don't directly impact anything connected to the pain that the CEO's in right now. Maybe if you twisted that around a little bit and focused more on the how do I move work to work, or how do I speed up velocity? How do I use AI for critical areas that are high wastage, all of those things.

You'll get sign off because that's what customers are doing right now. They are getting sign off and are getting access to the really exciting projects. So I love that. And, getting sign off is one part of the puzzle. The second part becomes really what we're talking about is the biggest.

Once in a generation transformation to work in companies this is not a change management project. This is a complete overhaul of how we think about work. It's a huge transformation in terms of how we actually design and then deliver this to our organizations. You have led some major transformation projects at scale.

If you were to start with a day zero thinking, knowing everything that and, this new world. What would you do? What? How would you think about this?

Meg Bear: Yeah, so. Here's the thing that I think is uniquely different about this particular transformation, because there's been a lot of transformation in business and there's been a lot of momentum.

You can think of, oh, when e - commerce came about, a lot of retail had to figure out what to do, and then direct consumer and all of that. There's been lots of parallels you can look at where we've had to think about something differently because there was a force coming in and disrupting.

What it meant to compete in a market. What's unique about this period of time is that there really, it's so multidimensional and there really isn't just one force coming after work. Mm - hmm. And I think it is in this context that there everyone is looking for opportunity and risk mitigation and I think that's the right thing to do.

And I think they're getting stuck. This, my experience is people to be second. Right? They don't necessarily want to be the trailblazer to do something completely new. What I love about the direction with Reejig is I think the right path is to get a lot more clarity of what actually is happening in work.

Mm - hmm. So that as things change, you can adapt and evolve. And you can do better experiments because you're gonna have a lot more clarity. So I think what's really different is we need to not think about the transformation as a single thing or as an end state. It is completely unknowable and it is going to require us to start before we know where it ends.

Now, what we've learned in the years since we've done this in the past, is that. If we take a smart architectural approach to how we do this, we will build a better foundation for this iteration and evolution. And so what by that is instead of thinking that you're going to build the perfect job architecture or the perfect foundation and lay that down in concrete and roll that out into your entire organization, you should be.

Putting better instrumentation on what you're doing and start to understand as it changes, how it changes. So building the foundation for your future, this is not, again, a new pattern. When we started rolling out SaaS applications and people started moving to applications that would support things mobile and things,.

Better data access or self service, or all these other things. We did it with an I to how do we set ourselves up for things adapting and changing in the future? How do we make iteration more quick in the era of ai, we have the opportunity to do that again. But we need to be instrumenting, not both at the macro and the micro, because what we wanna understand is what is the impact to the bottom line?

I wrote a really provocative blog post recently about how retention was a terrible metric, and retention is the most common things. H HR people. Measure themselves about, and I argue that if you really care about retention, if you wanna protect your workforce, you have to put, systems in place to allow your workforce to adapt.

To be productive under the new expectations of them. Mm - hmm. So retention is not bagels and it is not ping pong games and it is not a whole bunch of things in the office or parties. Retention is getting grounded in the business and making sure your people are able to effectively be productive against the business.

Goals. That means driving more revenue. That means opening new markets. That means positioning you against your competition. The better we get at that, the more we solve the retention problem, because if we can have a bunch of really happy but not effective workforce, we're not going to protect jobs. We're gonna do the opposite.

Yeah. So this is a moment where we have to rethink what it is that we're trying to do to create outcomes. And I believe having a solid foundation of data instrumentation and a lot of flexibility built in to adaption and growth within your workforce is going to be the key difference. And that's why I love the Reejig.

Foundation and the way you think about work ontologies, because these are going to evolve and we need to have the right leverage to build that adaptation in. So it's not a disruptive force, but instead it's something that builds on investments we've done before. Do you have,

Siobhan Savage: inadvertently triggered me a little bit.

I've been having some, I have been, I've been having some sleepless nights. I feel I've cracked the, I feel I've cracked the. The part about the critical foundation, the critical infrastructure, the work ontology, the understanding I've cracked the, then making recommendations of agents based on tasks.

the part, that's what you just said. That's just so on point to where I am. I'm sleep not sleeping very well at. So that giving what that statement, I wanna find a quote from this if my marketing team are listening to this, because there's a quote you just said, and I'm gonna do a terrible job of repeating it, but the giving time for your people to adjust to the new normal.

And I was having a conversation the other day with a customer where you deploy AI and everyone's spending millions of dollars on this stuff, right? We are reinventing, we're doing all this stuff, but if only 20% of your population actually do anything with it. Is it? Is it success? And everyone keeps going.

Change management. Change management. And I'm, it's not just change management.

Meg Bear: No,

Siobhan Savage: there is, change management is not the thing here. There is actually, and I don't have it fully in my brain, looked through, but the thing that I'm seeing is we're adjusting the bench of performance and expectations of the job.

Yes. No. It's exactly what you just said is exactly the thing that I'm grappling with because I'm. Okay, so successfully, you've figured out where to redesign your workforce and you've now started deploying agent and thinking about this. But if none of the people do the thing that you expect to do, and by the way, people will never do the thing, that's why the marketplace has not done so good, is 'cause people don't do things that you think they're gonna do.

So if we can assume that most people need some adjustment time or they need reset in terms of expectations, or the thing that's making me worried is, oh, does that mean that there's a whole pile of people that will just not meet the bar, the new bar of expectations and what happens in that world? And none of these things are change management.

These are realities of the exactly the way you just said about giving time for the adjustment. And the thing that I can tell you with my data is where they should be. Yeah, I can tell you what the new floor looks. I can tell you what the, it should be from a performance perspective if they do the things that we are expecting from a work design perspective.

And that's a really interesting theme because we're gonna start getting into that conversation very soon. Customers are now piloting and better testing and whatever you wanna call phase ones. They're all in this now. Most of them are not gonna go so well, and they're not gonna go so well because of the expectation requirement.

And, another thing I've seen, which I think is really silly that we're doing right now, everybody download, copilot and just play around with it and test it and get used to it. The way I was describing this to another customer is, so companies run on systems of processes and cogs and wheels of things happening and just weigh the flow of the water, right.

If you start allowing people to bolt on their own version of that, what they see in the process, can you imagine the chaos that you're gonna ensue? And not only that, for individuals to start building agents, it's really costly for the business without this one big transformation perspective as well, because of the.

The actual consumption costs of the models themselves. So it's, I know people were using that as a change management thing where it was, get comfortable in the next two years. Try and make and build yourself an agent. And it's, no, the critical event is not we've gotta do this now and gotta do it as a business and an enterprise, not as an individual.

when you. Given what I'm seeing right now in the trenches around this intern, what would you advise me to do? What would you advise me to tell them to do? Because that's the problem where I was, Hmm, that isn't just the change management thing. That's actually a completely different.

How would you go about that conversation, or what would you do?

Meg Bear: Okay. There's a lot of dimensions in that, but I really think this is the crux. I wrote something recently about the fact that I don't think change management is about giving people a relaxed amount of time. It's actually about going faster, but with real clarity of where you're going.

And so I don't. I do believe experimentation, great. Playing around, great, whatever. That's fine. That's separate. And actually really doesn't need to be something that the business spends a lot of time about on the business. Needs to spend time on a couple things, driving clarity of what it is that matters for results.

Otherwise, you get the Google, everybody, spend one day doing whatever the heck you want to build, whatever the heck you want, that we never actually use. Google can afford that at the time because it's not anymore

Siobhan Savage: printing money, but it can't afford

Meg Bear: it anymore. And to me, I don't think it drives joy because people build stuff and then nobody cares about it.

Yeah. And nobody, and then they spend all their time trying to get somebody to care about something that doesn't matter to the business. And so it's really the business's job to drive clarity of what is the strategy and what does good look. To your point about the bar is moving.

We have to start saying that, and we have to be really honest about that. I really believe in the radical candor approach, the clear is kind approach to say absolutely 100%. Your job is going to change. I don't know all of the de definition of why and how it will change, but it will change. So please recognize that the expectation for your job, how you do your job, what you do in your job is going to change, and we are gonna work on that together because that's an important thing.

It matters to you and it matters to me. That we figure out how to get the best return on investment for your time with our business.

Siobhan Savage: Mm - hmm. But

Meg Bear: that's not gonna be, go out and do a whole bunch of random stuff that may or may not. Mm - hmm. Be beneficial. It's about getting really clear. On and sharing transparently things revenue per employee, profit per employee, et cetera.

Just shifting from, more agents and fewer employees without understanding what it is you're trying to drive, just introduces a lot of different risk into the business. Being smart about how you're driving value for the business, and recognizing and getting everyone's collective intellect.

Focused on that problem. Yeah. I believe in marshaling the power of a group, but it only works if you give really good context of what does winning look. Mm - hmm. And this is where I think a lot of people break down because they're, it's ai, it's over here, it's separate, it's, write a sonnet, you'll feel smart, whatever,?

And I just don't think that's going to create. The thing that we want, which is for people to thrive in this new world of work, for them to be adding real value for them to be able to grow their skills in a way that is marketable for them and valuable for the company. That's what we want.

That's why. Mm - hmm. That's the objective. And so getting really clear on communication, thinking about how things are changing, being clear on how you make money. The, it shocks me the number of people in the HR discipline or across the business overall that have no idea how your business makes money.

that is step one, how do you make money and where do you spend money? Mm - hmm. And where is it to helping to drive things that you care about and where is it just bleeding out into, non useful places because that's what your investors are expecting. That's what your leadership team is going to be driving towards.

So get good at understanding that. And then really be thoughtful about paving paths for people to see why and what is changing, why is changing? 'cause we're driving for higher order outcomes. What is changing? We're leaning on technology here, we're shifting your role to focus more here, et cetera.

But, again, people can't think that this is going to be a one and done. It's just gonna be something that we're gonna be doing for the next decade. As more things become available to us, we need to start signaling to the workforce. We're gonna keep at this, we're gonna keep working on optimizing at every level, and we want and value your participation with us in that process.

But your participation isn't to go, double think everything. Your participation is to really deeply understand how you're helping the business and making sure that you're doing the things that make the most value. As opposed to just the things you want to work on or have worked on in the past, which is the worst of all possible definitions.

Yep.

Siobhan Savage: Yeah, and it's really interesting because what you're saying is exactly where I'm at. We're past all of those checkpoints. We're right at the front of this Reejig, in terms of market playing with real customers, doing this in real life, and I think that's the one that I'm, how do we really truly make this moment be a real moment?

But also how do you amplify your employees in a way where they feel AI is not a, something to be afraid of. It's that amplification of themselves where. To your point that they can use it to do the things that, meaningful work and get home on time and do really creative things.

But there's this thing that I just, I think we're gonna have to work through and most organizations are too afraid to admit right now that jobs might be impacted by ai. Everyone's still saying, oh no, humans and AI together. It's this thing that I think if the companies just actually were really honest and say, Hey, we're on this journey.

We're gonna tell you as much as we can because we know the data and we can see it, but here's what we're doing about it. So that they feel there's that transparency and honesty around that. I think those will be the companies that'll do really well. Because they're doing exactly what you just said.

We're raising the bar and we're being really transparent about why.

Meg Bear: Here's what's in it for you, right? You are going to be building marketable skills, through that journey. And here's what's in it for us. We are going to crush the competition and exceed our business plans. Yep. I really do believe this is a moment where transparency and clarity really matter, and that starts with integrity of.

you have to understand what's gonna happen to be able to communicate it. And I think that's where a lot of people are stuck. They don't totally know, so they're afraid to communicate. Mm - hmm. I think we have to get better at recognizing this is what we know, this is what we don't know, but this is where we're going.

Right. And it shouldn't be something that people have trouble, because again, it should be tied to your business strategy. Your business strategy shouldn't have to change your execution opportunity should, and so you, we should just be able to present that and help everybody get really clear on what is the business strategy and how am I contributing to it, and how is my role adaption and shift part of that growth opportunity for the business overall.

Siobhan Savage: Yep. And I think the thing for on the Reejig side is we, what we've tapped into really well and what my team have done really well is that business strategy and that transparency comes from understanding the work and the impact to the work and how I work can evolve because then that's the data.

That helps you tell, this is where we're at today. This is where we're going, but hey, this is where we're gonna be. Right? And right. The path to that looks here and all in between here, these are the things we're gonna do to make sure you, I love that way. You described make someone really marketable, what can we do about, every individual has that amplification moment around them too, and.

We're completely aligned on that. And by the way, there's no excuse anymore because the data exists. It didn't, it didn't exist before. It does not. So that's where really then you're making a conscious decision to choose, not to say it out loud. If you've got, 'cause the data's available, from a board perspective, right?

So you get to sit on all these boards, you get to talk to all these CEOs,. What does the leadership requirement need to be now? So someone who is in charge of an organization who is leading through this once in a generation change to work. What do you believe the leadership challenges are, but also what does our leaders need to be?

who are they in this new world?

Meg Bear: Right. So the board part I think is really important for people to understand. Boards are interested in strategy, execution, and risk management, and both of these. Directly in the line of sight of work transformation. So keeping that in mind, thinking in terms of risk mitigation and opportunity capture is going to be very top of mind for board for C - Suite.

On the other hand, I think we have a moment where the skills and. The skills and capabilities of high performing C - suite leaders are actually the one place that I think is very clearly being put under threat. In the past, getting to the C - Suite was often about your expertise, and so you would get to the C - suite and you would be expected to apply your expertise and the playbooks that are built underneath that.

To executing the strategy of the business today, you need to not just apply your expertise blindly, but you also need to be able to adapt your expertise against a slew of change, and that's gonna require a fair bit of unlearning in addition. To execution capability. Mm - hmm. The other thing that's interesting is in the past when it, when expertise in each line within the executive team was reasonably autonomous, was all tied to strategy, but reasonably autonomous, you would, the marketing person would execute marketing things and the sales person would execute sales things and they would work together on the places where they intersected.

Right. Same with product and engineering, same with financial, CFO, hr, et cetera. All of these parts of the business were well understood and executing and coming together to report out status. But what is different now is that a lot of this innovation opportunity and a lot of this shift to the business is going to be more.

Interdisciplinary the skills that you need to do it well, and the changes you need to make are going to go across, not just down. And here, I think it hasn't been fully appreciated yet how much that becomes across function thing. If you're thinking about risk and opportunity, you really need to have a strong partner in legal to help you navigate those things in ways you probably didn't have to do.

On a day - to - day basis, if you're thinking about changing your, how your products are priced or how you create value with your customers. You're going to need a lot more intersection with finance and sales and marketing than you probably do when you're just executing day - to - day strategy. And what this means is that there's a little bit of vulnerability in the C - suite of not having all the answers and not having the strength of your experience being the only thing that you needed.

You need. Some new tools you need intellectual humility and curiosity, collaboration and while you've maybe have some of those things, they're not things you've been leaning on to be excellent at your job. Mm - hmm. So I truly believe that the. That executive teams are going to need to build a stronger alliances with each other, and they're also going to need to reevaluate ownership of certain parts of the business operations because things are gonna change so structurally.

That they're going to need to let go things that they were doing so that they can take on new things that they should be doing based on what their teams are capable of handling. And that is where things get really shaky because organizational leaders, c - suite leaders, really. Owning things and executing things and these things that are a little bit more squishy become really difficult.

So I perceive that there's going to be a real upskill required in the learning agility and, intellectual humility of the C - suite. And I think we're gonna see exactly what you would imagine with that. Some will gravitate towards it naturally, and some will go kicking and screaming, and it will be very, challenging.

But I do think that is a big part. Of what's gonna change as we, find ourselves in a new future.

Siobhan Savage: My favorite thing about this new world is that no one knows. Yes. What? It's, so. It's, not nice is probably the worst word to use, but I find it so exciting because no one knows.

It's you're on an adventure and no one knows. We've got an idea where we're heading, but there's all these dragons to slay on the way and we just don't know yet. And I'm built for that type of environment. And for me then going in and taking all my learnings back and sharing 'em with all my customers is, Hey, we also see this thing up head with this customer.

You guys need to know this because don't do that. Because that, and that's, I've never seen anything this before.? And. There's something really beautiful that's happening is, you'll see that we're spending a lot of money right now in creating community and really focused on sharing wisdom and not a Reejig wisdom, but each of you together collectively share in these, collectives, what they're, what we're calling them.

and I think that's the, everyone else now telling everyone else in a beautiful way, good, bad, ugly, what to look out for. The other thing I'm seeing is this dynamic trio that's happening between the chief people officer, the CFO and the CIO, all now having this little sink where they are now, suddenly becoming more embedded together than we've ever seen before.

Because they're really gonna lead this whole charge. And I think it's been very interesting to watch that dynamic start to evolve. When you're, when you are thinking about, that we've been very tasked and work focused for nearly three years now. And you're seeing the language of work has always been skill powered, and there's this whole debate that's happening right now, whether it's skills or tasks, what do you think?

what's your take on that?

Meg Bear: Well. Here's, I think where, I love where you're going with Reejig and also where I think there's real space for, bringing together multiple ideas and multiple initiatives. And I think a really interesting way. So the entire push to skills. I've been a part of actually multiple times.

Right. I tried to push this early in, my PeopleSoft days of course. And then as we moved to the cloud in Oracle again, and then with my time at SuccessFactors working on building the ecosystem for skills and for the whole self model, and all of these iterations really matter to me because.

They get it. Attempting to quantify what we've been talking about the bar moving and to help make clear for people and what do I do? What I love about the Reejig model is instead of just thinking about skills, thinking about work, because that gives you a sense of urgency, order of operations, which things impact, at which time, it also gives better clarity to.

The goal isn't skills. The goal is to do more, to be more effective, and to be able to do more and to be equipped to do your job right? It's skill is an abstraction around a really important concept, which is, am I do I have everything I need to do? Good work. And if I am missing anything, what do I do about it?

Right? That's the high order intent. And I really do think that matters more than ever in a world where we are clear that you, what you need to do for work is going to change dramatically. So I believe that the challenge with skills is the fact that it is such an abstract concept.

And so people either do their best to,. To simplify it so people understand it or they get so abstract that people have no idea, well, am I a good communicator or not? My family thinks I am my mom said my kids think I am. My kids think I am. My husband thinks I'm not. All can be true.

there's context matters. Outcome matters, use case matters. So I think the reality is the skills are always going to struggle in that sense of being an abstraction, but they're always going to matter in the metaconcept of, Hey, if we are going to help the workforce, the people thrive as their jobs change, as this ship athe happens and every single thing about their job is different at some point than it was.

When they started, we're gonna have to figure out how do we equip them to do that? And we're gonna have to figure out how do we support them in making this transition from what it was to what it becomes. And so in that context, I think skills really do matter, but I don't believe that we've completely, I think we've just gotten so fixated on the mechanics and somewhat lost the plot on how do we think about success.

Success has to be. Are people thriving at work and doing great work, right? That's the definition that we need to use with the understanding that the work is changing. So thriving is not a static moment. Thriving involves a lot of pieces, and a big part of thriving is if I don't have the tools to do good work, if I don't know how to do the work that I'm supposed to do.

I'm not gonna be high performing, right? I'm just not gonna be high performing for, and it's not gonna feel good for me and it's not gonna feel good for the business and the all the possible outcomes after that just suck, right? So helping people be high performing should always be front and center and Ma and matter to us, and helping them adapt into that really moving definition,.

I think it's gonna be on us to help graduate people through this and to graduate through that, through this in a way that they feel that they've got some skin in the game about it.

Siobhan Savage: Yep. Completely agree. People have skills. Work has tasks and you require skills to complete those tasks.

Right? That's where we've, and I truly believe exactly what you say, and I don't want people thinking that because I'm so obsessed with work and tasks that I don't care about the people skills,. People complete the tasks and they have those skills. So that's really where we focus.

Meg, I could talk to you for days and days. Firstly, thank you so much for your expertise. Secondly, I am now not gonna have another night's sleep because I'm gonna try and figure out how the hell to solve this in my head because of you. So again, thank you. This has been incredible folks. Meg is incredible in terms of the writing that she does.

She doesn't, mince her words. She's very clear. You can take really great insights from, short blog posts, little insights from her posts. I would highly recommend you follow her. On LinkedIn. We'll put in the channel as well, her, direct LinkedIn so you can catch up. You can obviously DM her if you ever wanna connect.

thank you so much Meg. Thank you to everyone for joining. Till next time on Skills Connect. See you folks. Bye.