AI for a Better World: Michael B. Horn on Navigating Jobs, AI, and Learning

Welcome to AI for a Better World. Today, we're diving into the future of work with our fantastic guest, Michael Horn. Michael's an expert in education and career innovation. helping people navigate career moves long before AI became a buzzword. From co-founding the Christensen Institute to teaching at Harvard and advising education companies, he's been at the forefront of helping people future-proof their careers. His latest book, Job Moves, is packed with tips to take charge of your career in this fast-changing world. Michael, welcome.

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure It's always a pleasure to be with you and always good to read and see and hear your good work.

Michael, you've worked closely with Clay Christensen, whose ideas transformed industries. How do you think Clay would view the AI revolution right now? Would his book Disrupting Class be different with today's rapid tech advances?

I'll let you in on a little bit of a secret, which was Clay was incredibly suspect in a very Strange way around newfangled technologies. He sort of didn't believe all the hype around them. The more hyped they were, or the more far-reaching or futuristic, the more cautious Clay was. And I think that's probably not the mindset most people have around who he was or what he thought. But what he would instead say is, let's take this new technology and take our theories, our well-worn and tried and tested theories, and we're gonna take this technology— and look at him through the theories that have been so predictive in so many fields, in so many areas. And I think as you think about the book that he and I co-authored together, Disrupting Class, what's clear to me is that in many ways, large premises from the book probably wouldn't have changed. That we have an outdated whole-class model where teachers talk way too much and students do way too little active learning, that we should be personalizing for each and every student, that we have the technology to do so, A lot of those things I think wouldn't change, but I think what would change is twofold. Before, online learning was our technology enabler. Now AI would clearly be part of that picture, right, of helping personalize learning opportunities for students. And second, and maybe more importantly, what I think we would say if we were looking at the world then is the world of work is changing so rapidly. Even if it doesn't change that much in the next year, surely over the next 5, 10, 15 years, just the pace of change is increasing. So fast. And so what we're preparing our students to do when they get out in the world of work is changing so much that particularly for middle and high schoolers, making experiential learning a core part of what they're doing so that they're learning to use the technology in the course of their actual work itself is going to be critical because we're not gonna be able to codify these things and say, here's the textbook of how you use AI. By the time you get that thing printed, it's outta date. So the best way to learn about AI and about work is to be part of it, is to bring the work-based experience into your actual classroom itself. And so I think creating more experiential learning, work-based learning would've been vital if we were to write Disrupting Class today.

In Job Moves, you talk about using the Jobs to Be Done framework to make better career choices. What's the real-life impact of this? Can you Can you share a few key results from people who've used it, especially with AI in the mix?

So our new book, Job Moves, is really about breaking this notion that career progression and your progress in your career are not in fact the same thing. Typically, we seem to think that they are, and that's because we have very organization-centered ways of thinking about your career progress. You come in as an entry-level worker, you move up to mid-level, you become a manager, director, on and on. The reality is that careers today zig and zag. They swirl. We jump. We switch jobs every 4 years. Frankly, with AI, we're probably gonna be switching even more frequently. Job descriptions are gonna be changing even more frequently. And so how we make progress through our careers does not match progression. And the big thing we want people to realize is just as much as employers are hiring you, You get to hire your next employer. You get to hire the job. And people say, wait a second, that, that, that's not right. People hire, you know, people don't hire their job. They get hired by. But I think the critical shift is no, you actually have agency over this move. You get to choose where you work, the compensation you'll take for it. And just like the jobs to be done allowed product designers to much better build things that help people make progress in their lives. As a result, individuals can much better pick the jobs that will help them make progress in their lives. And I think, frankly, organizations, managers, employers can much better design jobs and design pathways that help us make progress, which should become, you know, help them become places we want to rehire each and every day, not something maybe we want to move beyond. And so literally, you know, one individual we coached, Alex, He was at a consumer packaged goods company through a variety of restructuring efforts and so forth. The company said, we're closing our headquarters in Wisconsin, we're moving it. Everyone, you know, you're senior enough, you have to move as well. And he was like, I can't do this. My family has roots here. My wife's parents are nearby. We need to care for them. This is just not going to work. And through our process, what he realized was he actually liked large parts of his job, but he really wanted to be in a role where he could do much more agile development. And he wanted to introduce this in the consumer packaged goods world. So this is a classic case, right? Technology innovation process used on the cutting edge of tech. Now, can we use it in consumer packaged goods? And as he built his career narrative and this clear sense of what he wanted and how to build the job description to make progress for him, he actually pitched his manager And the manager was like, I didn't know that's what you wanted to do. We'll create a role for you. He didn't need to move. He got to do the work that he wanted to do. And yes, there were trade-offs. There's no magical dream job. He travels, he commutes here and there, but he would have otherwise left a team, an organization, a company he really believed in. This way, he got to do his work without leaving. I think it's a beautiful story of how in this world of technology automation, quickly changing job descriptions, We can really figure out what drives our energy, what are the skills we want to develop and lean into, and then pitch ourselves so we can find that magical fit between what the employer's trying to achieve and between what we're trying to achieve.

I want to dive into skills, skills people need to really stand out in today's world. We all read about the importance of critical thinking and team collaboration, but what's really setting people apart? Are there any unexpected skills that you've seen that help people thrive in an AI-dominated landscape?

I would say actually the biggest skill people need in an AI-driven world is to quickly learn new skills, to become a lifelong learner. And maybe the most important thing you can show is that you are not some static, unmoving, piece of work, but that instead you have great potential to constantly be reskilling and upskilling and learning new things. And then not just learning them, but being able to apply them in meaningful ways that actually advance progress for your organization. And so I think those individuals that can show, I know how to learn, I know how to constantly do it, I am not standing still. That actually may be the killer app, if you will, of skills that gets people ahead in the future far more than just, yes, we need to think critically. Yes, we need to communicate well, on and on. We need empathy and so forth. But I think the reality is on their own, those are sort of vague and vacuous. It's more how do I quickly stay relevant and adding value? And you do that by being a lifelong learner.

You've written a lot about reinventing education. Can you share an example of a school or a program that's doing a really great job at adapting to all this tech disruption? What can others learn from them?

Western Governors University, I think, is a terrific example. They literally have noticed that increasingly important is people being able to upskill while they continue to work. That was sort of their origins. But they said, why not do it through apprenticeships? So they recently acquired a company, Craft Education, that's going to enable them to actually scale up apprenticeship-based degrees. So now you get the degree, but you also get work experience, you get paid for it. Really de-risks that value proposition for the student because you're not asking them to make a trade-off. This is a great example, I think, of a university that's fabulously successful. They have over a couple hundred thousand students at this point. Great outcomes, great satisfaction from the employers they work with saying, we can't stand still. We're going to make an acquisition. We're going to incorporate this in our IT programs, in our education programs, in our nursing programs, and make this the way that we skill. I'll give you one other example. The Quantic School of Business and Technology. They are a low-cost MBA program is where they got their origin, both exec ed as well as regular MBAs. They fill the equivalent of like a Sloan MI IT class in terms of the caliber of student, 6, 7, 8 times a year or something like that. And they have been so cutting edge with their mobile learning platform that they are constantly saying, how do we fit in digital skills, technical skills into the MBA so that our graduates are not generic sort of, you know, learned the business skills, but that they combine that with real data analysis, real understanding of AI, real statistical modeling understanding. etc., etc., etc., so that they can be on the cutting edge. That's an example, I think, of a university startup, to be clear, rapidly adapting curriculum, making sure that they stay in demand with what employers need and what students need to succeed as they go out into the workforce.

You often say that aligning passion with your career is key. What have you seen in your research about how this leads to better performance. Again, especially with AI shaking things up, any inspiring success stories you can share with us?

We're obviously in the beginning stages of this, and what people's passions are might change in a world of artificial intelligence. In a world of AI, understanding what drives your energy and what drains it is incredibly important for you understanding what progress looks like for you. Don't just jump into the great-sounding job that has all the buzzwords in it and the great title, it might have a great return on ego, but it's not going to have a great return to your career or frankly your performance in it. So having a real sense of what drives my energy, what are the actual activities? And then the second one is, and it goes along with this notion of being a lifelong learner, what are the capabilities that I really want to be developing in that next phase of my career? And what's the shelf life of those capabilities? And I think that's a critical question. You know, already the half-life of knowledge and skills was depreciating much quicker than ever before. In AI, there's a good chance that that's just going to accelerate. So you having a clear sense of, this is what I bring to the table, these are the capabilities that I'm most excited about developing, this is their shelf life so that I know this is the pace at which I have to continue to invest in them, is absolutely critical. A woman that we coached, she was in IT. She had been a star individual contributor, great programmer, and her bosses started saying, become a manager, start leading teams and so forth. And she felt torn because her team loved her IT expertise and her digital skills and just her deep knowledge. But her managers loved the fact that she could speak the digital language, but she was able to talk much more cross Culturally across the organization and across organizations, right? Across different departments. And she had this big choice. Do I continue to invest in my digital skill set, or do I invest in becoming a real team player, manager, less of an individual contributor? Through our process, she was able to see there is a clear trade-off here. I'm not going to be able to keep my digital skills on the cutting edge if I want to be an all-star manager and start leveling up and frankly directing the organizations over time. But that was a switch She said, I'm comfortable with because I'm so excited about the things that I get to do if that works out for me and the organizations and jobs I get to work with. And so she said consciously, I'm going to invest in becoming a great manager, learning how to manage across teams of difference, across different silos and departments and things of that nature. And I'm going to sacrifice some of my technical skills because the pace to keep those up just doesn't work with the clock speed of being a manager and investing my time there. There's a trade-off there. But because she recognized it, she could make a decision that really honored her passions and where she wanted to go and was the right decision for her in that point in time.

It's such a great story, Michael. Sadly, that's all we have time for today. Huge thanks to you for all your amazing insights. If you want more career wisdom, check out Michael's book, It's full of tips to help you take charge of your career in our AI-driven world. And Michael, thank you again so much for joining us. We hope you'll come back again soon.

Anytime. Thank you so much.