008 - The Generation That Refused to Fake It at Work with Alex McCann

What happens if we dare to tear off the mask of professionalism and actually risk showing up for real? I'm your host, Myriam Hadnes, and this is Unprofessionalism.

Often I find myself In a room where I'm the youngest or the least experienced person. And instead of feeling like I've gotta prove myself or scared or nervous, I try my best to think of it as, oh my God, imagine what I could learn if I just asked questions and observed and was curious. And I spoke to people openly and honestly, and that's been working really well for me for the past few years. I've learned a lot. You learn a lot quicker as well, because if you give other people the space to share their knowledge with you, rather than constantly trying to like butt in and, and give your opinion, even though you don't really know what you're talking about, you just find yourself getting these mini lectures from experts all the time. And it's really helpful.

Hello, Alex. Welcome to the show. I am very excited to have you here. A colleague forwarded your newsletter, uh, where you speak about the, the death of the corporate job that went viral in no time. And then I got very curious about who you are and love what you write on LinkedIn that you have collected careers like stamps. You got a Substack fellowship of $10,000 within a week. Is that correct?

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it might've been a couple of weeks, but yeah, more or less.

Without anything further, I will ask you my standard opening question. When has being unprofessional turned out to be the smartest move you ever made?

Yeah, it's hard to give you one answer for that because I've been terribly unprofessional in so many different circumstances. I think from my first job, which was actually working at a cinema. It was kind of like serving popcorn. I got told off, I actually got for going in and like watching films when I was meant to be working. And I just really didn't respond to the authority there. So that was my first kind of inkling that working for other people maybe wasn't always gonna be on the cards for me. And then another circumstance was When I decided to go to university to study architecture and engineering, I did an internship before and went into it with the best intentions and I was going to give it my all and very quickly realized that it wasn't for me. And so I'd planned to do this kind of 6-month internship and I ended up leaving after about a month or 6 weeks or something. And I think that That and many other experiences, I won't go into all of them, but have kind of given me this ability to reflect, adapt, and move really quickly that I think have been, that's been really interesting. And you alluded to the kind of careers like stamps comment, and that means that I'm only 25, but now I've kind of, I feel like I've really landed on something that I'm happy to commit the next 10, 20 years to. And not a lot of people get to that point by 25, I don't think. So yeah, to answer your question, I think being unprofessional has allowed me to adapt and experiment really quickly and follow my curiosity as well.

Instead of sucking it up and playing by the rules and do what others expect. And, uh, I find it Your example's very interesting, especially the second one, because I can hear my mom, maybe even my generation. I think many of the people with whom I graduated high school, they're now in the management positions. They would say, oh, you cannot, it's so unprofessional to quit an internship after just 2 months and to job hop and would blame Gen Z or Gen Alpha. I forgot counting, so please. How do you react to such comments?

It was a, so yeah, the fact that you mentioned your mom is interesting because actually the reason I wanted to be an engineer was because that's what my dad does. And the internship I did was at his company. And so I was kind of very much following in his footsteps. And I was really lucky that, that it was a kind of weird, fairly rare circumstance where he really wasn't pushing any of this on me. It was, you know, I was good at maths and physics and I saw, you know, a context where I could use that and I just kind of went for it. And, you know, he never said, you should come and be an engineer at my company, but it made it a lot easier that when I got there and I really wasn't having a good time and I very quickly realized that it wasn't for me, he'd also noticed that and He kind of gave me permission to go and try something else. And he said, you know, it's okay that it's not for you. Like, really glad that you found this out. Now, I very nearly didn't do the internship and just went straight into uni. So it could have been a really different set of circumstances where I'd gone to uni and done the 3 years and paid, you know, £50,000 in tuition fees. And so I was really lucky in a way that I had that experience and that I was allowed to, yeah, move on quickly. Yeah. I'm not sure if that answers your question, but yeah, that was my experience.

Yeah. It raises definitely more curiosities also because, so from what you write, and I realized that you are an excellent observer, listener, sensemaker of what's going on. Otherwise you wouldn't have gained so much followership for the pieces you write. And you're criticizing the traditional career advice and the bullshit jobs. And I wonder what is going on that the traditional corporate jobs scare smart people of your generation away. And maybe they would have scared older generations away in the first place, but maybe they weren't courageous enough to do the move. So what is it that makes you, yeah, turns you into a career hopper?

So I don't, I don't know that necessarily we're at the stage yet where the corporate path scares people away, but I think we're at the stage now where people, people are really, they feel the meaninglessness of the jobs and they feel a calling to something else. And there's There's so many different parts to this. I think one of the big things that's unique to my generation is it's the sheer scale of the number of jobs, the number of job choices. There's this whole kind of the idea of the paradox of choice. You know, my grandparents' generation had a handful of choices for careers and my generation has tens of thousands. And when you can be anything, it's hard to be something. And so many people I feel have this kind of grass is greener or the shiny object syndrome, whatever you want to call it. That coupled with the kind of social media, the impact of social media on people my age, where you are constantly being bombarded with, I'm doing better than you, you could do so much more. And so there's that element, which I think gives people the kind of itchy feet and pulls them in other directions. And then there's the other thing as well, which is that in these jobs that my grandparents had is that you felt a connection to the job in a different way. For the most part, you know, if you're a doctor and I mean, these jobs still exist today, but if you're a doctor, you see the impact you're having. If you're a teacher, you go in every day and you see the progress and you see the change that you are making in other people's lives. Whereas, I mean, it's a cliché, but if you're a cog in this machine and there's really no way for you to see the impact of your efforts, which is where I think we get this sense of meaninglessness.

So it's basically being more closer to the output, or is it closer to the team so that you feel as you're a part of something?

Yeah, I thought, like I said, I think it's a lack of connection to The problem that you are solving. I think that in these corporations, especially people that are kind of junior level, there's so much red tape and bureaucracy that every decision that you make has to go through, that by the time it produces an output, by the time your input produces an output, it doesn't look anything like, you know, what you might have expected it to. And You know, you send an email that has to, that's forwarded to somebody else who has to approve this other thing, and then it gets taken to a meeting and then they change this and that. And you can imagine how removed you would feel from the problem that you're solving.

And it's basically like a black box. So if you don't know what happens with the input that you're giving, then it makes you also very vulnerable in the sense, is it good enough? Who sees it? Does it have to be perfect? What are all the maybe implicit rules that I might not be aware of?

Yeah, exactly.

So what do you think, because you're now launching into the space of alternative career advice, and for me, how that sounds is how can we avoid the frustration and the job hopping? Because it's In economic terms, it's not efficient for anyone. Not for the person who goes in and out of jobs because it's frustrating and it has an emotional cost. And for the companies, it's even worse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think that the typical way of doing things nowadays, right? You finish university and you start applying to jobs and the job market now especially is in such a tough spot that I've got friends that are applying to 400 or 500 jobs before they hear anything back. And the majority of their time and effort goes into the application process, to sending out, to editing their CV. Virtually none of the time goes into thinking about what job do they actually want? What job would they be really good at? What's their specific makeup? What's unique to them? And what are some Problems that they uniquely positioned to solve. And so in this kind of thinking about things slightly alternatively, I want to flip things on their head a little bit. And I think that people should be spending the majority of their time on this part, on better understanding themselves, better understanding the problems that need solving, better understanding the conditions of the market and uncovering, you know, what's behind their passions, their interests, their skills, capabilities. So that when it comes time to apply for jobs, they're absolutely certain that they know that this is the right job for them and they'll do whatever they need to do to get that job and they'll go through the back doors and they'll, you know, go above and beyond. I have some examples of friends of mine who have done the work and have found one or two jobs that are really right for them. And, you know, they treat the application process after they've done the work, really like a full-time job for a couple of weeks where they build websites or they do videos or they send a pitch deck through. And it's really hard to say no to them because they're just so obviously committed to the role and they believe in their value. So yeah, it's kind of, in summary, flipping things on their head a little bit and spending more of our time and effort on understanding ourselves rather than trying to just kind of spray and pray and hope that something lands.

I love the example. Thank you. And what I hear is also that in the previous, or the way how it's often treated, the job application is reading the job opening and then trying to dress up or to pretend to be a person that fits that job because I need a job. And then it's very easy to lose yourself in just trying to please and forgetting what is it actually that I need. And then obviously you're in the, you might say everything that they want to hear, but then find out, they will find out that it was actually half of it was fake and you find out that it was fake and that's not what you want.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that so much of, or, and actually to your, to your previous question, why people are feeling, or why people in my generation are feeling this meaninglessness, is that for so long since the Industrial Revolution, people have treated jobs as component labor. And so you have, you are trained to basically be homogenous. You're the same as everybody else doing the job. And so you've had all of this kind of uniqueness just drummed out of you. And you say people kind of dress up to fit into the molds that are given to them, and then when they get into the role and they have to suppress that uniqueness and they're made to feel like everybody else, I think that that can really wear on people, especially when, again, social media and just the way that my generation sees things now is that you've got so many examples of people that are living in accordance with that. You know, they're authentic selves and it just becomes so clear that you're not if you've got that comparison. Yeah.

And it's your, the example of the alternative application also reminds me that it gives the applicant so many more options to show what you're capable of. So there's so many more talents and then linking it back to what you just said about our grandparents' generation, were, there were not only were there fewer professions, they were very clearly defined as a set of skills you need to have. And that was enough. And nowadays a profession, A, there are so many more. And in every profession, it's very difficult actually to understand what are the skill sets. And now digital tools comes on top of everything. I wonder then also whether the traditional job descriptions think of the old set of tools, okay, this is what you need to do, and totally neglect the potential and the creativity because the younger generation can just pick up new skills in no time.

Yeah, I think that you're absolutely right. The job applications for a lot of these roles really focus on what we want from you in terms of requirements and qualifications. When I think that actually the employer of the future or the successful organizations of the future really focus on the type of people that they're looking for and not in some kind of generic way. I think really they understand this is the impact that we want to have as an organization. And in order to do that, we need this type of people. And so that's why I think that sometimes It's a bit of a flawed system, this whole kind of job application. You send your CV in, it's really hard to get a sense for what kind of person the applicant is, which is why I think that I don't have a statistic for this, but I'd be interested to know. My feeling is that the jobs where you don't apply, where you find, you know, you find it through your network or you, you know, you get in through a backdoor, have a much higher kind of satisfaction rate than the jobs where people apply to.

Yeah, because then you are basically selected and matched. So there was a matchmaking process behind it, assuming that it's not only vitamin B because your dad has contacts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's interesting because even, I think it was in the 1980s that Mark Granovetter, he was a sociologist, wrote a paper on the strength of weak ties that most jobs are found Through the network. And this is a much more efficient system. And then, and that's something we spoke about in our exploration call, it's also not really fair because who has the privilege to have the biggest system? If you grow up, I mean, my parents both don't even have a high school degree. So I didn't know anything about corporate careers beforehand. So I basically stalked people and sent them emails to ask them what they're actually doing in their job. And I think that's the other thing, people starting jobs and then finding out that actually they were totally screwed over by the description.

Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting point. And maybe that's the other side of the equation is that the employers can't get a sense of what the person is like from a CV or a cover letter. And also the applicants don't get a sense of what a day in the life of, of X job is like. And I think that that's, again, I don't have the exact statistic, but I remember reading a study that talks about the best way to kind of find a job that is suited to you or that high job satisfaction rate is to map out the day of, like, what are the daily tasks? Because then you forget about the status, you forget about the title, you forget about the salary. And, and you really kind of, you can visualize, do I want to spend my days for the next 10 years like this? Which is another really important thing that, yeah, actually I hadn't thought about very much, but it's a good point.

And you now make me think, yes, we can map out the things. Are these the things I want to work on? And are these the people I want to work with? Because if we, there's research that shows I assume maybe it's just urban legend that we turn into the 5 people or the average of the 5 people that we spend most time with. If we spend so much time at work, we turn into our coworkers. And are these really the people that we, A, want to turn into that will help us grow? And I think especially if it's our first career, there's a massive risk actually, or opportunity.

Yeah, it's a really good point. I think that that should be, for people early in their career, that should be very much top of the list of things to look for in an employer is the opportunity for mentorship. Yeah, I struggled to find that actually in my previous roles, but I've been lucky enough to have kind of been fairly proactive in networking and find mentors elsewhere, but not everybody has that opportunity. And so I think that, yeah, if, if you're in a position where there's a, an opportunity to kind of sacrifice salary or, or benefits or status for the opportunity to, to kind of get mentorship or learning, I would always advocate for the latter.

Yeah. And I, this makes me think of something that you have mentioned before we hit the record button. And I think also in our exploration call. And I see there's a catch here that I would like to detangle. So you mentioned that you are very lucky with finding mentors and that what you're doing well, and I apologized for in our exploration call being the old lady giving you advice. Oh, let me tell you, boy. I felt miserable afterwards and you took it very lightly. Oh no, it's okay. I get that all the time. And I would like to unpack that because what you explained is that You're very, when you step into these conversations, you leave your ego and trying to prove yourself at the door, and hence you're receiving great advice that you can use. Where I think it might sound counterintuitive because many in your age and in my age and even older always want to impress the others. What have you observed? What works in the way that you do? And where have you—

So, In networking, I think, yeah, that's exactly it. It's leaving your ego at the door and really being committed to being a lifelong learner is really kind of making the most of those opportunities to learn. And often I find myself in a room where I'm the youngest or the least experienced person, and instead of feeling kind of like I've gotta prove myself or scared or nervous. I try my best to think of it as, oh my God, imagine what I could learn if I just asked questions and observed and was curious. And I kind of spoke to people openly and honestly, and that's been working really well for me for the past few years. I've learned a lot and it just, it helps you learn a lot quicker as well because if you give other people the space to share their knowledge with you rather than constantly trying to like butt in and give your opinion, even though you don't really know what you're talking about. You just find yourself getting kind of these mini lectures from experts all the time, and it's really helpful. And what I've now realized as I'm building this, as I'm building True North and experimenting with solutions to the problem that I'm trying to solve, is that I don't think that you have to be an expert to solve a problem at scale. I really don't. I'd always had that intuition, but But I thought, you know, maybe it was naivety, but now I really believe that you can solve a problem that a lot of people are having at scale in society without, you know, having to be qualified or whatever. You know, I'm not a qualified career coach. I'm not, I didn't do a degree in, you know, occupational psychology or anything like that. But if you are committed to understanding more about the problem you're trying to solve and you listen to the people, that are having that problem and you have a skillset that allows you to kind of abstract, then I think it's absolutely possible to solve the problem. I mean, I wrote a note because I was getting quite a lot of people after writing the article, a lot of people had kind of assumed that I was an expert or something, or were calling me out and holding me to a really high standard. And then I wrote a note afterwards saying basically like, I'm here to learn and I'm exploring, I'm sharing what I'm learning as I kind of go down this journey. And that was coupled with the kind of core belief that I think that you don't have to be an expert to solve the problem. And people responded really well to that.

Oh, wow. So there's so much to unpack. What I'm hearing is A, the beginner's mindset at work. Where I can see how it can work very well in coaching because you say, okay, I don't know much more than you do, but I've learned to ask questions and to listen and to make sense, help you make sense.

Mm-hmm.

What I also hear is the payoff of being perfectly transparent and saying, okay, I'm not trying to pretend as if I was an expert or a psychologist. And even being successful with that, although it could be perceived as highly unprofessional, who are you to sell career advice if you don't even have a degree or if you don't even have the years under your belt of being in a career?

Yeah. Yeah.

What I see now is a kind of status or gatekeeping of there are those who have spent years at university or getting all the certifications, all the kind of Uh, little logos and acronyms behind their names. Say, okay, I am certified to give you career advice, for instance. And now here you come, say, scratch all that. I'll be a little bit provocative because I've done exactly the same with most of what I'm doing now. I don't have a single facilitation certification. So you said, scratch that. Um, I give career advice. And you're being very transparent that you don't have the acronyms behind your name. 2 questions. Where do you see the benefit of going the air quotes unprofessional way, by which I mean not following the official professional path?

So I'll give the example. I don't know if you've had this experience, but definitely I had this experience where I actually found that the best teachers that I had in school Were the ones that had trained most recently or were youngest, or, you know, I think that there's something about being close to the problem. I had this one teacher when I was studying A-levels and I was doing kind of further maths and he was like undoubtedly a genius, like a really, really smart guy, but he was probably in his late 60s and everything just made sense to him and he couldn't really explain why. And it was so frustrating because he just couldn't, he couldn't get why we didn't understand it. And of course we don't understand it. We're there, you know, to learn things that we don't already know. What's the point of showing up otherwise? But he would just get really frustrated at us when we couldn't get it. And so he was unable to explain it and unable to empathize with us. And so that was a really kind of interesting example of somebody that's so, so obviously competent, but really not a very good teacher and therefore unable to kind of solve the problem that we were struggling with. And then I had the other end of the spectrum. I had a maths teacher in secondary school who was previously a kind of a sports teacher and had changed, and she was the best teacher I've had because she was so Oh, I don't know. Let's figure this out together. And so you got to see, and I think that that's the idea of going to university and getting all of these degrees and name, you know, letters after your name to understand a problem that you yourself haven't grappled with. You just immediately put a kind of a layer between yourself and the problem and therefore the people that you are trying to solve the problem for. If you are somebody that's struggling in your career, I don't think that necessarily you want somebody that's gonna give you a framework that they learned in a textbook. I think that you want somebody that's gonna relate to your experience, somebody that has seen the patterns in other people that they've spoken to and give you advice that is, yeah, I mean, based on their experiences, it's really important that they They understand themselves. I know exactly how you feel, and I know that if I was given this textbook solution, that wouldn't have been helpful for me. And so I'm gonna give you advice that might have been helpful if I was in your scenario, you know, 5 years ago or whatever it was. And so that, that's why I think that I'm not embarrassed about the fact that I'm not an expert is because I'm close to the problem and I'm close to the people I'm speaking to. I told you before, I'm doing this kind of career help desk thing where I basically just open up my calendar to anybody that wants to come and chat with me about their careers. And I caveat and I say to them, absolutely, I'm not an expert. I'm here to be a sounding board, but I do this, you know, 10, 15, 20 times a week. And I get to know what the, I get to know the shape of the problem and the way that it looks for different people really intimately. And I've, as I've said, collected careers like stamps and changed multiple times myself. And so I have that personal Yeah. Connection to the problem as well.

Thank you. I love how you cited your math teacher who said, oh, I'm not sure, let's figure that out together. And how this actually now, how it sounds, increased your respect for them and helped your learning instead of what very often happens, especially insecure teachers Academic, pretending as if, and then making you think that you're too stupid to understand that. And I just got goosebumps when you explained that, um, you opened your calendar and you have all these conversations. And I'm just wondering, for how long will you keep it up to say, I am not an expert? Because I was just thinking like my own trajectory. So I started calling myself a facilitator without a certification, started the podcast, and now after 350 episodes interviewing so many facilitators, I might know more about facilitation than many who have followed formal training schedules. And I find this actually so beautiful in what you explain, this staying close to the problem and thereby also Getting all the most recent information that you then can pass on in your practice.

Yeah, I don't know when I call myself an expert. I don't know if, if something will click or if I will avoid using the term expert for, for the rest of time. I think there's something quite interesting in the nature of the problem being so broad. I think that if it's, you're a professor of species of mold and Northern Denmark forests or something like you are so narrow that you can become an expert once you've kind of just studied enough content and you've got enough information. But I think that this problem that I'm trying to tackle is so broad and it comes in so many different forms. I can't understand the problem from everybody's particular, because the problem arises from your particular, a combination of your particular genetics, your particular makeup, your biology, and your experiences. And I can't understand that for everybody. I mean, I'm having a strange experience just because of the demographic on Substack, which is where the article has blown up, is typically people that are maybe kind of 35 plus. And so I'm having a lot of people reach out to me talking about like midlife crises. And until I get to that point, I don't think I can confidently call myself an expert on having midlife crisis or like how to navigate a midlife crisis because I'm not at that stage yet. And maybe when I get there, I'll be able to call myself an expert, you know? And I think that I probably could call myself an expert at navigating this quarter-life crisis, for example. But I think that the idea of expertise has to be in a problem this broad has to be tied to your own personal experience of it. So yeah, to answer your question, I think that because the problem is so broad, I don't think I could ever truly be an expert in the whole thing.

Yeah. And I, I think actually it's also good not to put the label expert on ourselves, but let others do that for us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That then it's just a much better look, isn't it? Yeah.

How do you think that in the future when more will follow your path, that, um, of not going down the, I will use the term again, the professional path of having traditional, either traditional career that you then leave to become freelance or the training. How can we distinguish between the imposter, not the one with the syndrome, but the real imposter who's pretending, and the one who actually genuinely cares and knows maybe they care all, but can actually help, delivers value?

I mean, I'm trying not to repeat myself, but I think that it's hard not to come back to the To the personal connection to the problem. I mean, yeah, I was having a call earlier with somebody and they were so clear on their skillset and their passion and their interests, but so unclear about the problem that they believed that they could solve. And so I was asking, you know, what are some things that maybe you've struggled with in your life, or are there any things that you look at in society in general and think somebody should do something about that? And I just kind of left them with that and left them to ponder a little bit. But I think that that's where the, your point about standing out, I think that's where that comes from. If nobody, nobody has your specific experience of the problem, and so nobody can deliver the value in the same way that you can. And so, Yeah. People that are taking this path, which is, I mean, it's called the entrepreneurial path, but like, you know, I would be described as an entrepreneur, but I think really what it is, is solving problems and being paid for that. You know, I think that that's all being an entrepreneur is. I think the key thing in finding success on that route is really, yeah, is the understanding of your personal connection to the problem. And yeah, I know we kind of said that in the last question, but I think That is the answer. So sorry if I'm repeating myself.

Oh no, please. Um, I think it's good to repeat, um, an idea. And as I heard you speaking, something came up for me, just looking through the work that you're sharing with the world on social media is the, the unique voice. So there, I haven't seen a single Okay, and here's the template. Here's the thing that you can do. Here's the model. It's okay, here's the conversation I had and that's what I make out of it. Here are the 100 conversations I had and here's what I make out of it. Here's my experience and what I make out of it. So this maybe authenticity or speaking from your own experience instead of, and now I'm repeating myself, instead of trying to put on a professional mask or to tried to show off with external knowledge.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.

What's the most unprofessional thing that you would advise others to do?

I would advise others to experiment while they've got a job. I think, uh, another call I had earlier today was somebody that was working in a job and it, and pays really well and they have great benefits, but they've got, you know, they work 5 or 6 hours a day and they're paid for a full-time wage and they have this kind of extra time and, you know, they're not sure what they want to do, but they know that they don't want to stay in this role forever. So it's a really unprofessional thing to go and experiment. But a friend of mine, Simone Stoltzoff, has written a book called Good Enough Jobs. And he talks about this a little bit, but I think that it's absolutely fine to, if you can hide it, great. Because your company won't like it. Typically it'll be a conflict of interest or, you know, not an efficient use of company time or whatever they call it. But I think that that's the way to figure out what's next. If you're not actively experimenting, I think that you'll struggle. You can't think yourself to clarity, which is why I've been very clear about like the tool that we're building is meant to be used as a supplement to these kind of experiments. So yeah, not very professional, but yeah, use your privilege and your, the advantage you have of if you're somebody that has a role where you have enough free time to, to go and do other stuff on the side, do it.

Thank you. And now you make me curious if you would turn it around and could speak to The employers of these people, what would you advise them?

Well, I just think that for these big corporations, I just think that you're, I think that this is a unique moment in time where that will be possible, where people will have these jobs where they have free time to go and do stuff. But I just think that, like I said, the corporate role is dying and I think that in in 5, 10 years' time, we'll see these companies massively reducing in size. And I think that the organization of the future looks a lot more small, looks a lot more agile, looks a lot more purpose-aligned. And so I think to these companies, just be aware that this change is coming. I don't see them maintaining their size for very long. And think about what, rather than what are the qualifications you need in your employees, Understand what are the people, or who are the people that are uniquely positioned to solve the problem that you're trying to solve as a company.

And what could they do to retain these people? Or you think it's lost?

Pay them well. The thing is, I don't think it's hard to align incentives if you are working with people that care about the problem. I don't think it's, I mean, yeah, of course pay them well, but if you've got people that don't care about money or title or all of these things in large part are to mask a lack of meaning, or there's a really interesting podcast I listened to with Rutger Bregman and Ryan Holiday where he talked about why they get paid so much for these jobs when they're not doing a whole lot, why people in these kind of big corporates, and it's because They think that they're paying for the opportunity cost to go and do something else, right?

Meaningful. Yeah.

And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. And so if organizations get to a position where their values are aligned with the values of their employees, then I don't think retention becomes so much of an issue. Retention becomes an issue when you have to start throwing things at your employees to try and get them to care, you know?

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much, Alex.

Thank you for having me. It's been, been great.

This was a conversation without the script. Now it's your turn. I'm Myriam Hadnes, and this has been Unprofessionalism.