The Career Framework That Helps You Make Smarter Moves | Michael Horn | 663

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Michael Horn. He strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose through his writing, speaking, and work with a portfolio of educational organizations. He's the author of several books. Probably the most notable is Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. He's the co-founder and a distinguished fellow at the Clay Christian Institute for Disruptive Innovation. And he's done, I'll give you the shorthand, a bunch of other amazing and cool stuff. So you could look that up yourself. I wanna, I'm, I'm eager to dive in. So welcome, Michael. How are you?

I'm good. It's good to see you, Peter. Thanks for having me.

So you sit in a really interesting place in the Clayton Christensen Institute, author, thought leader. So you, you wear multiple and have worn and evolved into multiple roles. Now you're in your sort of own lane.

Yeah.

As a thought leader. But before we go there, and we will go backwards a little bit and, and maybe just selfishly for me, 'cause I'm just such a Christensen fan, tell the story of the institute. 'Cause I love the way that it, it stood up, you know, Clay's work in a way that lives beyond him now.

Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. And, and it was by accident, right? I was a student of his at the Harvard Business School fall semester, my second year. I had a public policy background. As you know, I worked for David Gergen for several years before coming to the business school. And truth be told, I went to the business school to run away from the public policy and writing and all that world. And while there, Clay had this opportunity he threw out to his class. Anyone want to co-author a book with me about public K-12 education? And I stopped by and said I was interested. And he thought about it for a few months and signed me up. And initially it was work through Harvard for the first year. And, you know, Clay, classic fashion. He's like, it'll take a year to write and then you can do whatever you want. And the book actually took 2 years and midway through he was like, let's create something more enduring so that the ideas live on so that we can actually affect change so that we're not just, you know, another nice book on someone's shelves. And I said, that sounds like a nonprofit think tank. And so we, we, we started it together and I, I had the fun of running it for about a decade until 2015 when I, when I stepped out on my own in the gig economy. But, but obviously I've stayed, you know, I'm, I, I still do a day a week with them and chair the board still. Yeah.

And, and, and I think separately there's, there's some mapping that could be done from a thought leadership perspective of how many people are sort of disciples of and direct interactions of Clay, which speaks volumes to who he was and the work that he did. But so, so now let's go to your world, right? So it's 20, would you say 2014, 2015?

2015. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, my twins were 1 year old and I said, I'm, I'm done with managing and growing the institute. I want to do my own thing and have a little more flexibility.

Got it. Because a pair of 1-year-olds wasn't enough to keep you busy.

You said I gotta exactly, exactly.

I gotta pull more, some more uncertainty into this mix. So what did that look like and why? And you know, because before you did that, I'm assuming that you obviously had some ideas formulated. This is what I'm thinking about. This is where I'm going. You don't just wake up one day and say, I think I'm going to do this, right? Like what got you to that point where you said, and now is the time?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think it was a couple of things going on. One, at the Institute, you know, we were thinking, we were doing research, big thought leader ideas, right? You'd go to policymakers or entrepreneurs or whomever, and you were sort of giving these big broad brushstrokes. And for conflict of interest reasons, you never got your hands dirty yourself. Right. And I realized I actually really like some of these entrepreneurs. I want to get in business with them and be on their boards and advise them and help them in the early turns and things like that. So that was a big motivation of how do I actually use this set of thoughts? We've developed these things about views of how the world should be, if you will, and actually advise them and to, you know, as they're building all these tools, because there'd been a series of entrepreneurs inspired by the books and the white papers and the writing. But let's get messy, right? Let's do it. So that was one.

And then two is like, so there are other folks that have the opposite view of, I was tired of being in the trenches, being the consultant, doing the stuff, et cetera. And I wanted to move into thought leadership because I thought I could stay, sort of stay above it. Thinking, so I, I just love that there's a, there's a path for everyone and it's not that yours is right and someone else's wrong or better or worse or whatever the case may be. So I love that, that you said, you know, I want to get in the trenches here and see, you know, see how the sausage is made a little bit.

100%, right? And, and I will tell you, right, it's evolved over time, right? So I did that for 5 years. I was spending a lot of time with a venture studio. We were building edtech companies, investing in them. In the pandemic, we got acquired by one of the companies we had initially incubated and invested, which is like super awkward, right? And Part of the deal was me going full-time in with Guild Education and Rachel Romer, who was the founder, incredibly visionary, persuasive individual. She said, it's short-term. Short-term was 2 years. And eventually I was like, or one of the themes is everybody lies. Everyone lies. I suppose so. Or they're really good. Uh, they're really good talkers. But I realized at that point, Peter, that I wanted to spend more time actually back up a level, right? Like full-time leading this work. I had sort of gone back in too far into the trenches, if you will. And I wanted to level back up to the thought leadership because when I thought about where do you make the unique value add in the world of education and work and so forth, Michael, there were 12 people who could have come in and come up with a better comms or marketing or government affairs plan than me, like within a day. My value add, I thought, was a couple levels higher. And so I've gone back, you know, guns blazing into the thought leadership world.

Got it. So, so take that to the, not necessarily the actual next step, but one of those next steps was job moves, right? Was the book. So where did that come from and what has that meant to you?

Yeah. So there's a personal side of it and then there's like the research side of it. I'll do a little bit of both.

Perfect.

The research side is that Ethan Bernstein and Bob Mesta, who are my collaborators— Ethan is a professor at the Harvard Business School. He's— Clay was his dissertation advisor. Bob Mesta founded the Jobs to Be Done theory with Clay. The two of them start collaborating in 2010 after sitting through a class with Clay, and they start building a course together and advising people about their job moves, right? Using the Jobs to Be Done research.. And then simultaneously, Bob and I are using the work to write this book, Choosing College, helping people make this choice around where to get educated using Jobs to Be Done. And all of a sudden I find myself starting to use the work on my own career decisions, right? So I got offered a presidency of a university a couple years after I left the Christensen Institute. And Bob literally uses this on me and I realize Wow, that sounds great on paper and it's the last thing I want to do in actuality. And I'm like, this is powerful stuff. It starts to help me avoid mistakes, help me make some moves that are counterintuitive but really fulfilling. And then Clay passes away January of 2020.

Yeah.

The three of us look at each other and we're like, we've got something really powerful here. It would be a really cool testament to Clay if we put it together in a book. And that, that, that was the conversation, frankly, like a month after he passed away of like, how can we honor him? And it was, let's take this body of research. Let's double down on it. You know, we were in the pandemic then. So we had 3 years to go super deep on coaching and studying a lot more individuals. And then we, then we wrote the book and published it this past November.

So I love that the, the platform or the idea of Jobs to Be Done, which came from Christensen. You're using it in ways that I would imagine he had never thought of when he created that.

Yeah.

Which is really kind of cool. And I've seen that in other bodies of work. You know, years ago there was a while where, where Marcus Buckingham took some of the Strength Finders work and said, well, why aren't we introducing that to kids 16 to 22 to understand their strengths? It's like, geez, not everything has to be seen through the lens of a middle manager and a, you know, whatever. And sometimes there's use cases or markets for an idea that were way beyond, you know, what was on the drawing board.

100%. And that's the story of Clay's career, I think, more broadly, right? Is he came up with this theory of disruptive innovation that applied initially to disk drive industry, right? And then the steel mill people come to him and they're like, did you just tell our story but not realize it? And then like, you know, the mechanical shovel people came to him and were like, that's our story too. And it was like one after another. And he's like, holy cow, this is way more broadly applicable. I think we're learning the same thing is true with jobs to be done. It's not just for product design and marketing, but it's also for life choices that you make.

Yeah, no, that's great. So then the book, when did the book get published? So the middle of pandemic or?

November '24. So just came out.

Oh, tell me.

We're recording this in May. So I guess 7, 8 months ago. Yeah.

Oh yeah. May 24th. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Happy year.

Great. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. I, I'll get a little wonky with you. How did you choose to publish it? What publishing model?

Yeah, so we went with a traditional publisher, one of the big three, HarperCollins. I've self-published, I've published through trade publishing. I had never had the experience of one of the big three, so I was super curious about what that would look what the large advance— I've had some big advances, but not this big before. And I was super curious what it'd be like to run with them through it and have their support. And then frankly, bring in a lot of marketing and PR to supplement that, right? To really try to get it out there. Yeah. Dialog.

So stay there a second. So the, you, you've obviously have, have a reputation, a brand, you choose to go the traditional path. What about that? Choice met your expectations and what were things that you were like, wow, I didn't realize that even though I did that, I still have to do this. Like what would—

Yeah, I will say it has been eye-opening to me how much people still rely on outside folks to support the launch of a book. Uh, even when you're going with quote unquote, the most resourced, right, of, of the publishers. You know, we had an editor, uh, who's a former editor of the Harvard Business Review helping us with the manuscript. She was terrific. That's not free. Uh, you had, we had a marketing team, we paid for a PR team. It's like you're pulling in everything. And so that was really eye-opening to me how much this game is still played, even when you go through a well-resourced model. Like I'm used to that, right? If I'm doing something, the Trade Publisher or something like that, but this was another step up on every single dimension.

And then the benefits, and now you're sitting a half a year plus on the other side.

Yeah. Right.

And not so much on, you know, number of units sold and all that, but at a, at a higher level, how would you say the book has done relative to what your objectives were for the business, for yourself, for your speaking, and, and maybe book sales?

Yeah. I mean, I think candidly we're still learning, right? Like I have a couple big conferences coming up where I'm speaking at the, at the target audience. So like we will see, right, how this all plays out.

Sure.

The book launch was terrific. Came out of the gate super hot.

Great.

And I think we're now asking the question, like, what's the enduring story here? Does it change my business model in the sense of, can I move more into sort of a more popular or larger market, right? Not just education, which I'm super passionate about, but individual development up to scale, right? Through careers. Still an open question to be super candid. I will tell you, I thought the large, you know, having a big publisher The reach, the seriousness you get off the bat, that, that was something I noticed. And then the editorial advice on the front end, not, not so much in the weeds of the manuscript, but the shaping of the manuscript was terrific. Right. And super helpful of, hey, this is how this audience is going to think about this. This is our experience with this and things of that nature, which were insights that I didn't have access to before.

Got it. And what is the current business, right? Who are you serving and how are you serving them?

Yeah. So my business is a couple funnels, right? One is advisory, which is a lot of university presidents, foundations, folks like that, that fund either constant advice, strategic questions, introductions and connections. And then secondly, content creation.

Wait a minute. Yeah. I mean, you, you, you say university presidents, et cetera, like, oh, of course. Well, not everybody could go after that market, right? Like as, as we all know, or many of us know, A, just to get access to them. That doesn't just happen. B, the time it takes them to make a decision and then to be in that relationship, that inner circle. Yeah. So you were in a special place that gave you the access and you know, that, that wasn't just you open the doors on the shop and then said, I think I'll target university presidents. Like it's right.

Yeah, no, correct. I mean, look, these are, these are relationships that I've cultivated over 20 years at this point.

Right.

And so. And the universities that I have the advisory relationships with, I would describe them as sort of like the next cut of innovators. Uh, and so they, these are not the Research 1 institutions that have their well-established models and sort of do what they do and well-resourced, nor are they the Southern New Hampshire universities or Western Governors universities that are serving a quarter million students.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's sort of that next cut. They move pretty quick. There may be 20,000, 25,000 students. They tend to grow pretty quickly and they're willing to take risk, right? Like they're one of the institutions. They were one of the, I think they were the first partner of Guild Education because of a connection that I made there. Right. And so it's like, do you understand their business objectives, what they see as success for their students and what unlocks growth for them and their business model? And can you make the right introductions? And I think that's something people don't think about. Maybe they do a little bit more at the moment, but universities are businesses.

Yeah, no, they are. Let me ask this question and it will probably come out coarse, which is not the intent.

All good.

So the university model up until about 5 years ago was the university model. They could afford to move slow and they could do their thing and they could form a committee and think about thinking about thinking about whatever. And then COVID happens. And I would argue that more change happened in 30, 60, 90 days than happened in 20, 30 years. Net-net, was COVID a— and this is where, like, I don't know the right word— like, was COVID a good thing for secondary education? Or maybe the ripple effects or the forcing of them to do things quickly?

It's a great question. I think TBD still, right? In the sense that— let's do the negative first, okay? So in 2012 or '13, I can't remember exactly when, Clay Christensen and I make this prediction that a quarter of colleges and universities will consolidate over the next 2 decades. Right.

We're now at 15%. Like the other industry, you're looking at that going, there's too much supply and demand.

Too much supply, demand's about to fall off a cliff. Prices have gone up. There's online entrants that are much lower cost coming in. We've seen this movie, right? By the way, everyone sort of poo-pooed the prediction. We're at 15% have consolidated.

So I was not the polite, I told you so.

That's the polite, I told you so, right? It's happening. I will tell you, I thought COVID would accelerate that. It actually didn't in the sense of there was a lot of federal dollars that sustained these business models short-term. I think we're about to enter a lot of pain for a lot of traditional institutions that did not take the chance to move their models more aggressively.

Federal dollars are basically a crutch that they have.

100%.

Enables them to be a little bit lax or cushy or, or not. If, if that was a true private sector and you didn't have that, you'd figure it out, you know, innovate or die, right?

Correct. 100%. And that's what we're about to see, I think, right? Like, because we are at peak high school graduation right now. And the numbers demographically start to fall off precipitously over the next 20 years, frankly, right? Like we already know birth rates are—

demographics. We know that that's—

yeah. People stopped having babies in the Great Recession at nearly the same rate and it's gone down except for one blip for one year up. So we know that there's about to be fewer high school graduates. We know that the business models are already breaking these institutions for the reasons you just described earlier. And so there's about to be a world of pain if you didn't innovate. Now, if you're Southern New Hampshire University or one of these innovators, you actually saw a lot of growth. And so it's been really good for you, I would argue, because students went to the places that knew how to do online well. They went to the places that knew how to meet student demand, how to connect you to the workforce. That's been a positive.

Love it. So interesting. So net-net, it could have been a better thing. I want to sort of play back what I heard.

Yeah.

For them, if they didn't have this artificial sort of crutch of federal funding.

I think so.

I know it's an act though in these days.

Yeah, I, well, right. I mean, we know it's being obliterated as we're, as we're recording this. I think it's interesting that you, the way you phrase the question, 'cause I agree there was more change in those 30 days than there had been in the previous 30 years, right?

Yep.

And universities didn't really change the business models as much as they probably should have in accordance with them, right? They kept a lot of the fixed costs baked in. And so while they now have experience with these alternative modalities, more flexible ways of learning for students, et cetera, et cetera. The cost structure still keeps going up and that is just not sustainable.

Yeah. And the cost structure is like, it defies gravity, inflation, you know, other than healthcare, it's probably the only thing that can go up in the double digits.

100%. 100%. Right. And people will say, well, tuition, if you look at it, like they discount so much because they're trying desperately to get students to come that it's not quite as high fare, but actually just look at their expenditures.

Yeah.

Like the cost basis that's rising faster than is tuition, which is even worse. 'Cause that means you're losing money. It's like, right, right, right.

Yeah. Interesting. Well, this has been phenomenal. I appreciate you sharing 'cause you've had, you've been at the center of so many cool things, your own story, the Clay story, whatever. And to see it through various lenses and sort of the little bit of the behind the scenes has been really refreshing. Appreciate the candor, Michael.

Yeah, no, appreciate you and thanks for having me.

Great. This is great. Talk to you soon. Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.