GA 642 | The Future of Work with Jonathan David Lewis

When you see the crack, look for the light that's being let in. And then if you choose, that's truth. The light reveals the truth. If you choose, you can take responsibility and do something about it. We're not— we don't have to be simply victims to what's crumbling or cracking around us. We can actually rebuild. But I think that's our generation's moment. It's our challenge. It's our responsibility.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Jonathan David Lewis to the show. Now, Jonathan, as you'll hear, is an author, and he's written a book called The Rebuilders: Daily Foundations for the Leaders We Need. Now, this is not your typical sort of Lean Six Sigma type continuous improvement book, but I'll tell you, it's very applicable to the things that we're doing in our world. And so, what we really do is we get into the book, but more than that, we get into just a pretty deep conversation on sort of the future future of work, um, as it pertains to, you know, what I would call like sort of like the TikTok generation coming up. I, we, I talked about my son who's a TikTok musical artist, and, you know, there's lots of, lots of careers that are happening on just things like social media. And, uh, and, you know, perhaps the days of someone working at a company for 30, 40 years may be gone. That's Jonathan opines that that might be the case. So anyhow, we get into all of that, and it was a really, really fun conversation. In fact, we had a kind of a plan for how we're going to go. I always have a plan for each episode, but this one sort of— lots of zigs and zags in this episode. So it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. I think you're going to like it as well. So show notes can be found over at gembapodcast.com. This is episode 642. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 642. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

How's it going? Hey, good to see you. Honored to be here.

All right. Where are you calling in from?

Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Nice. Nice. Okay. Beautiful part of the country. So you've been there a long time, or—

This is home. I moved here when I was a young man and met my wife, and this is home.

Nice. Nice. All right. Well, good stuff. All right. Well, hey, Jonathan, I know you know the drill. We like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, so, uh, something that has stuck with me that I think about a lot is from, uh, G.K. Chesterton. He said, uh, every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. And, um, it's something that, that stuck with me. I think we're in a time in our own culture where things are changing dramatically and possibly decaying. Um, I think there's some obvious things we're all missing, but I see it a lot in business when leaders are going through a moment of transformation in their organization, it can be disorienting. There's a lot going on, there's a million decisions, and you'd be surprised how often just simply remembering almost like the origin story and where you're from and just remembering some of the obvious things can really help you figure out what to do next. So, we do, I like to spend a lot of time remembering in our practice.

That's so cool. And in fact, we were just even here at Gemba Academy, we're, you know, we're talking about sort of the early days of our company and, you know, obviously it's with any company, we grow, add people, and now we got Salesforce and this and that, you know, and back in the day it was me and a notebook, you know, and, and, grinding, right? And so I say sometimes it's interesting to sort of reflect back, and I think you're 100% right that sometimes you got to get back to the beginning and get back to what made you successful in the first place. And don't forget those early disciplines. Yeah. So good stuff, man. All right. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Jonathan. Tell us about your background and obviously what you're up to these days.

Absolutely. So, Jonathan David Lewis, I'm president at McKee Wallwork. We're a brand strategy firm. I purchased the firm from the founders about 10 years ago, been here over almost 20 years now. And we had just finished a national workforce study trying to understand sort of the workplace and the new values in the workplace. So that's a That's hot off the presses and it's been really interesting. It confirmed, I think, a lot of what we, we've been experiencing with the workforce, but also revealed some new things that hopefully will be helpful for leaders. So that's sort of the latest and greatest in my world.

And then talk a little bit about— obviously, we're going to dive into it here in the episode, but about your book, Rebuilders: Daily Foundations for the Leaders We Need. First of all, why did you write it? What problem were you trying to solve?

Yeah, it's sort of connected to the workforce research we conducted as well. Um, you know, the, the world's crazy, uh, things are changing fast. We have new technology we have to deal with, culture is changing, and, and then as I mentioned, the workforce has fundamentally changed. I, I think that's largely because generationally it is fundamentally changed the last few years, but there's just a lot going on that leaders have to deal with today. And I've seen so many different responses the last few years. We work with a lot of CEOs going through change, and I've seen owners just sort of throw up their hands and sell their businesses. You know, I'm out, I'm done, this is crazy, I don't, you know, whatever this is. I've seen people blame. I've seen, I've even seen people sort of enjoy watching institutions struggle, you know, or getting back at the other side. So I've seen a lot of reactions to the change we're experiencing today. And, you know, none of them seem that constructive. So The Rebuilders is about a pragmatic but positive outlook on the future. And it's really a job offer for leaders today. I think the proper response for any leader today is to look around, look at your community, look at your industry, see what's broken, but then take responsibility for it and rebuild. There's no one else. There's no one else coming to save us. It's just us if we're in leadership. So The Rebuilders is meant to be a daily reader because if you're going to take responsibility for what's broken, that's a heavy responsibility. That's a lot. And we need the character to be able to handle that sort of work. So this is meant to be a daily reader to work, to start where it all starts, which is our own leadership character.

I want to get into that as well, that whole daily. I actually, I'm a fan, you know, like a big— I'm a big fan of like reading about the Stoics. Like Ryan Holiday has his Daily Stoic book, you know, and it's like each day it's just like, you know, Marcus Aurelius said this and you can just like really just deeply dive into this one concept for that day and then just sit with that for the rest of the day. So I think it's a great model. But maybe before we get into that, because I do want to ask you a little bit more about that. In the book, you open things up with this idea that something is passing away and you opine that work is one of the first casualties. So I'm wondering, first of all, What did you mean by that? And what do you think leaders are missing about, about this shift, if anything?

Well, I'll start really big and abstract, and then I'll bring it back home to the workplace. But I think anyone who's paying attention has noticed that an era has ended, sort of this, this period of time post-World War II, probably to around 2010, 2020. There was a common story of how things work. There was a common understanding of the global order, geopolitics. There were norms in our national politics. You had the largest workforce in human history in the boomers, who not only are the largest population or generation in human history, but we doubled the workforce. With women entering the workforce. So you, we had this norm and 2010, 2020, COVID kind of revealed how that era is over. But we're now in this new time where a lot of the, what we thought, a lot of how we thought the world worked is changing or over, not everything, but a lot of it. And so, so that applies across many domains. To be more specific, in the workforce, we now have the proof that the old shared story of work that many of us grew up with, which is if you go to college, you're going to earn X percent more over your lifetime. There is such a thing as a career, which is sort of an old idea now. There's just a series of jobs. There's not— there's not— or periods of reinvention. So careers are sort of an old idea. The idea that we're all aiming to retire at 65, or you get with your wealth manager and the first question they ask is, when do you want to retire? These are old stories of work that are not shared now with the modern workforce. So something is passing away. And that is, at the very least, we know, we know now quantitatively that the old story of work is not shared anymore. It's fragmented. There's little pockets of it certain groups or industries still hold on to parts of it. But we're now left with fragmented stories of work, different reasons we work. And it's certainly not what our parents or grandparents used to look to, to work for.

What do you think about— let's say, do you think that applies like to all sort of domains? Like, for example, someone wants to become a brain surgeon. So they go and study to be a brain surgeon and it takes a lot of school and now they're in, they're a brain surgeon. Are you thinking that they're going to stop doing that and then now they're going to become an online marketer because they are tired of brain surgery? You know what I mean? That's like an extreme example, but—

Yeah, of course. I think, yes, a great question. I think it absolutely applies in different ways to different industries. We do know that the shared story of work is over. So Most of us now do not agree that, for instance, that we can believe in investing in our 401 or Social Security. Most of the workforce is— I think it's 46% believe it feels like gambling to invest in retirement.

I didn't know that. Okay.

There's these shared stories of work where it's hard to say that, you know, we all share it anymore. So let me give you an example. Our biggest finding from the workforce study is that the current workforce is struggling with TFS. We call it TFS. They're feeling transactional, futureless, and suffering. So we have these clusters of data that they're feeling transactional, where we have this growing proportion of the workforce who thinks it's okay to ghosts an employer, who thinks it's okay to steal from work, who is acting transactional, not relational, in the workforce. Futureless, which is one that really concerns me, is over 50% of the current workforce is concerned that the world as we know it might end due to climate change. So regardless of what you think about climate change, if the workforce believes that the world as they know it might end due to climate change, they— what kind of decisions are they going to make around the benefit package if they're going to stick around for a career or if this is a short-term stint?

Who were you asking? Like in the survey, like what was the demographic? Like, I'm curious, like age and totally—

so we—

background and, you know, that sort of thing.

This is a massive study you can have a lot of confidence in. Over 3,000 participants across the entire United States that were representative of the US. We use the census to direct demographics, but we evenly distributed the industries and work types. So this is truly representative.

Were you asking 50-year-olds or was it primarily 25-year-olds?

So 18 to 65-year-olds. We— so there is a portion in the workforce over 65. It's pretty small, but we capped it at 65 and we used everything else as representative based on the US Census. So we have the proper representative of ethnicity and age and sex based on the actual population in America.

That's super interesting. Yeah, I mean, I'm not— I mean, I feel like for sure, like I have you know, young, well, kids age from like 23 down to 11, you know. So like, I, I've got my own sort of story right in front of me. And yeah, like my, my, my son Ryan, he's a, he's a musician and he's made all of his money on TikTok. Like, he's not gonna get a job right now. He's working hard, don't get me wrong. And he's touring now and, you know, he's playing out live. And so he's, he's got a job, if you will, but it's not a, you know, clocking in for 40 hours kind of thing. So, but they were, there were Ryans 30 years ago as well, right? I mean, so like a musician is maybe a special thing, but I sense like I, my, maybe I'm a just okay boomer, you know, but like my thing is like I call it the TikTok generation, right? Like, like their attention span, my kids in particular, I'm talking about them, like their attention span is very short, right? Because if it's like, I got to watch more than a 1-minute TikTok video, like what, a 10-minute video? Like, are you kidding me? You know? So I'm wondering if these changes of, I don't know, like attention span, for lack of a better word, I don't know how else to phrase it, are playing into this.

It's all part of it. Absolutely. But I think what you're describing I just want to say publicly, and I want to confirm that that is true. So that what you're feeling, the, the old notions of longer attention spans, I'm going to stick with an employer for a long period of time, I'm going to plan for the future, and all these things that were part of the old story of work, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a college degree, and etc., etc. These are not shared among the majority of the workforce anymore. They're fragmented. So that old story is over. And as what you're calling the TikTok generation, that is the new workforce. So the oldest portion of our workforce is, you have younger boomers and who are still part of the workforce, but it's vanishingly small. The vast majority of the workforce are Xers and below.

And you have the data, obviously. I don't have the data. It's scary in a way, like, who's going to be our plumber? Exactly. Like, because they're all on TikTok, so no one can fix the toilet. And so, you know what I mean? Like, and all joking aside, but no, no, this is where the—

this is where I think there's a lot of opportunity and why our recommendation is to think of ourselves as rebuilders. There are really interesting counter-trends occurring. So there's actually, for years and years, there's been a rise in secularism and a decline in church attendance and general faith adherence. That has stopped and reversed with Gen Z, where we're seeing rising trends in terms of church attendance. Same thing in the trades. For many years, you know, the trades were looked down upon. Go to college. Don't break your back working. We're now starting to see new trends where people are returning to the trades as maybe one of the few secure careers or jobs in this new AI world. So I think there's a— we're in a really strange time where we're sort of in this liminal space between the old story that we all— that many of us adhere to and whatever the new story becomes of work. And our admonition is, if you're a leader today, your responsibility is to help rebuild that story of work in— not for everyone, but in your community, in your industry, in your workplace. Rebuild. What is the story of work today?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And as you were talking, I was thinking like with AI and all the rest of it, even thinking about my son, I was like, yeah, Ryan, you're killing it right now on TikTok until there's no more real music, right? Or there's no more artists. It's just like, well, they've got your voice now so they can make you sing anything they want. You know, it's like, is that going to be the future of music?

We're in a strange new world. I mean, really, truly, it's hard to make predictions now. I've really tried to stop because we're in a moment where I think the optimistic view is there's so much opportunity for those with agency who want to impact the future. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity, but we're also in a moment where nobody truly knows what's about to happen.

Right. Yeah. I was wondering, I was thinking about recently, like, if there's ever been a Obviously there's been times in the story of man and woman, you know, like coming up through the, you know, as cave people and, you know, and so forth. There's been huge leaps in technology and, you know, thinking about when an airplane first took off, like that was mind-blowing, right? Like the change. So I'm wondering if like, you know, as crazy as all this AI stuff is and this are we really that special in the grand scheme of things? You know what I mean? Like, it's not like it's flight, you know, taking off from the ground, right? Like, when Orville and Wilbur figured that out, like, that was a pretty mind-blowing idea, right? So like, I sometimes I wonder if like, yeah, I agree, it's crazy and it's life-changing, but, um, yeah, we've seen it before. Mankind has seen it before., right?

Yeah, one of, one of the, my favorite concepts, um, was something that Mary Harrington has been writing a lot about, and she calls this, I think she calls this the third singularity, and meaning the rise of AI. And the idea is the first singularity in human history is, uh, when we invented writing, and we don't realize how much it, it fundamentally changed the human mind when you're able to document and pass on knowledge. She calls the second singularity the invention of the Gutenberg press. Now this is really important because for people like you and I who straddle both worlds, our formation occurred with print-first thinking. So everything from our childhood and our education was— if you think of print, so what is print? It's left to right, top to bottom, logical arguments that build on, on itself over the course of a book, right? So we're trained to think that way. This third singularity is— and she defines the singularity as like when, when humans merge with their machines. This third singularity is really represented by digital and the, the internet. Yes, but AI is really just the culmination of what the internet has promised. And what's so interesting about her idea is that as she claims that the latest adopters of digital adopted formally during COVID because you could be, you know, you could be 85 and you're like, I'm never gonna pay a bill online until you're stuck in your house for a year and everything has to be on. So literally every— the entire population mostly, right, had to adopt. So we've moved from print-first thinking to digital-first thinking. And digital-first is not rational. It's pattern matching. It's based on feelings over facts. It's not hierarchical. It's more emergent. And so when you— one thing that there's been a couple interesting studies with the younger workforce, they're not as strong in some of the print-first logical thinking as older workforce, but they are very quick at pattern matching. So they can walk in a room and catch the vibe. They can tell culturally what's going on there. They have a different sense or intuition about things. It's very online. It's very sort of algorithmic. And it's probably describing the future workforce because the current and future workforce that is not print first, it's digital first. And so we're in this really unusual time. And I think there's, I think it's hard to predict the future, but I think what we know is that there's going to be good from it that we should probably learn and appreciate. And of course there's negatives that, you know, there's going to be blind spots if you're digital first that those of us who are print first can easily pick out, you know, because we know that world.

Yeah, like, I, I, you know, we always joke about when you read an article like, oh, they didn't remove the em dashes, that was clearly ChatGPT, you know, like writing that, right? It's like, well, make sure remove the em dashes now, or you tell your chatbot, do not use em dashes, you know. Um, but like, I really worry about, like, will people be able to pick up a pen and paper and write?

Totally.

And articulate their thoughts if all we're doing is just prompting and really good at prompting, you know what I mean?

Oh yeah, it's sort of like what happened when Google Maps took over. Nobody knows where they're actually going anymore, but they—

seriously? Yeah, I'm the worst. Yeah.

One of my favorite quotes on that is from Steve McKee. He said that— he gave this analogy that when he's older than I am and he used to use a typewriter at a very early part of his career, and he said when you had a typewriter, you literally, you had to think before you wrote, because if you made too many mistakes, you had to rip it up and start over. Right. And then with the advent of white stuff and like, try to like— exactly, and then put it back. And then, yeah, yeah. And then he said, you know, with the advent of the word processor, you could think while you're writing.

Yeah.

So you're— you are thinking, you— and you— and the writing is part of the thinking, but you're able to quickly— yeah, yeah, delete, delete, rethink, whatever. Yeah. And, and, um, his concern, of course, is what you're describing with, with, uh, ChatGPT or other LLMs. We're now at the point where you can act, you can write before you think. But there's also an interesting idea of maybe we're going into a world where you write and then think. The trick is just don't publish until you've thought, right? If you just prompt and publish, then you're gonna, it's AI slop. But there is an interesting moment of like you can prompt, think, reprompt, and then publish. Yeah, so the thinking is shifting. And so there's probably something good in that, there's probably something negative, and we're about to find out.

Yeah, ready or not, it's, it's already here, right? It's already here. So you, you, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I want to dig in a little bit deeper. Um, and in your book, you, you talk about builders— or sorry, leaders, uh, rebuilding from what you call the inside out. So Maybe expand on that a little bit more. And what do you mean by, by inside out?

And we're, as I mentioned before, we're in this moment of if you exercise your agency, you can change the world. Things are in motion, things are changing. And when the future is uncertain, you can get paralyzed and afraid, or you can recognize this is when you can have the greatest impact on the world around you. So we don't think you just have any impact, and it's not, it's not just, just make money. It's like, what is this all for? What are we trying to do here? So if you look around your community, your industry, your company, and you, you look for what is breaking or broken and you take responsibility for it, and as you do so, you'll notice the burden starts, you know, building up and it's heavier and heavier. It's not an easy task. This is not an easy thing. To do. But as you do that, if you think that your current level of character and maturity are enough to handle all that weight, you're about to find out, because that burden is a lot of weight. So the inside-out nature of this is we all have a lot to learn in this journey of leadership. And as we all know, the next heavy burden will reveal the crack in your own character, the thing that you still need to work on. So it's inside out. It's the same. We've learned this in branding. I bought the firm when it was founded 30 years ago as an advertising agency, and back then the whole concept of branding was really outside in. It's like, let's come in— I'm kind of being stereotypical here, but let's figure out what they want, the customer. Let's build a message that will appeal to it, and if it works, that'll bring us, you know, a benefit and maybe change us. That whole concept is flipped in branding today where it's really inside-out branding, where it matters far more now to the employee base and to the customer base that you are— you have integrity and you actually live and believe what you say you want to live and believe. And so you start internally with the culture, and then you extend that out to the customer base. This is inside-out branding. And all of it has to have integrity and all of it has to make sense, has to be coherent. The same thing we've observed is required on the leadership side, where in our work as we help people with brand strategy, the leaders involved, we are walking alongside them as usually whatever burden or challenge they're facing in business is challenging them as a person and their own identity. They're like little mini identity crises as the company is being challenged. And so the answer to that isn't me or someone else telling you who you are or, or, you know, telling you all the answers. It usually starts inside. It's a process of transformation from the inside out. And that's why the book is even formatted, as we talked earlier, formatted that way. It's recognize the internal work needed to make an external change. Don't get the two confused.

Mm-hmm. So, wow, this has been a fun conversation. It took a different direction than what I had planned on, but it was super fun. I'm wondering though, like, maybe to wrap things up, like, what is your personal take? Again, it's your opinion really. Like, are you hopeful for the future? Are you scared for the future?

Both?

What do you think?

I am seeking to be realistic and choosing to be optimistic. I wake up every morning with a lot of anxiety and a lot of concerns, and I choose through my own practices to see the world the way I think we should see it, which, which is one of One of my favorite quotes is Leonard Cohen said, "There's a crack, there's a crack in everything, but that's how the light gets in." So, we're living in a time where the cracks are being revealed in our institutions, in our politics, in our companies, in our industries, in our workforce. And you can stop there and blame and complain and ride it out or hide, but that's not who we are and that's not who we work with. When you see the crack, look for the light that's being let in. And then if you choose, that's truth. The light reveals the truth. If you choose, you can take responsibility and do something about it. We're not— we don't have to be simply victims to what's crumbling or cracking around us. We can actually rebuild. And I think that's our— none of us asked for this. I could never have predicted any of this. 20 years ago, but I think that's our generation's moment. It's our challenge. It's our responsibility. And so, in business and other nonprofits, etc., where we work, this is the worthy challenge. This is the quest of our time. And so, you have an opportunity if you choose to be a rebuilder and to even rebuild the story of work.

It was funny you mentioned truth. I was thinking earlier on when you were talking about, you know, religion and so forth, like I'm devout Roman Catholic, so like I'm all bought in, right? And, but I kept thinking about that famous Pontius Pilate's famous line, like, what is truth? You know, like it's deep, man. It's profound to really sit with that. Like, what is truth?

Yeah. And this is another moment. If you recognize that the era of postmodernism is over, It's over. It had its time. It ended around 2022, 2021. It's over. Younger generations are seeking fundamental truth. You're seeing it in rising church attendance and other practices. So we are in a new time, and I'm not sure how many of us really have recognized how new our time is and how much influence we can have over it.

Yeah. Ah, fantastic. What's the name of the book again, Jonathan?

"The Rebuilders." And you can— today you can buy it on mckee-wallwork.com. We'll have the audiobook available in the next couple months on Amazon.

Are you the audiobook narrator?

I am, and it's been a journey to record that thing. You got a good voice, man.

You got that smooth radio voice. I'm trying. Well, fantastic, man. I want everybody to go out and get it. And full disclosure, I haven't read it yet. So I don't want to read it, but maybe I'll have you back on and we'll get back into it. Absolutely. Awesome. All right. Hey, and if folks wanted to connect with you, what's the best way?

Yeah, so you can find me Jonathan David Lewis on LinkedIn. And of course you can find my company, uh, mckee-wallwork.com.

Okay. And we'll link everything up in the show notes. So just everybody scroll down and, and be sure to connect with Jonathan. So, all right. Well, hey, thanks again for coming on, man. This has been a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me.

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