In this motivational address, Richard Milligan warns that many recruiting leaders are becoming irrelevant because they have failed to keep pace with rapid changes such as AI, virtual work, virtual selling, virtual culture, and the rise of social media. He argues that a lack of vision—rooted in an absent growth mindset and insufficient education—prevents leaders from anticipating and adapting to these shifts. Milligan stresses the need for "major‑league" education to develop foresight, enabling leaders to make bold belief statements about AI usage, virtual strategies, and digital branding. By doing so, leaders become polarizing, magnetic figures who attract top talent and retain their teams. He also hints at a looming credit event that will impact macro‑economic conditions, underscoring the urgency for leaders to position themselves as credible authorities. The talk concludes with a call to action: recruiting leaders must embrace continuous learning, develop a clear vision, and become outlier, visionary leaders to thrive in the evolving landscape.
Chapters
Most recruiting leaders are experiencing a slow death and don't even realize it. The world is moving at an unprecedented pace, and the implications to recruiting leaders are that many are quickly becoming irrelevant due to the pace of change that they're just not staying current with. Let me give, let me give you an example of some of the changes that are impacting you right now. AI is accelerating and it's hard to put your finger on the pace that it's moving. Virtual work, virtual selling, virtual culture. Those are words we didn't even know and didn't even use 3 or 4 years ago. And there's a significant acceptance around that. So it's not hypothetical. It's here. It's now. Social media. Average American spends around 147 minutes a day inside social. That continues to grow. Digital and the implications as it relates to the consumer, the consumer making decisions using digital, using software, the scale of company mergers that's creating what I have called a sea of sameness, similar technology, similar points of sale, similar experiences for the consumer. And there's so much more that we could, that we could talk about in this conversation. What that has led to is non-relevant leaders over the, just the past few years. The reason why is that many don't understand or even use AI. They keep calling employees back to work because they don't understand virtual and haven't created a virtual culture. They don't have a playbook for virtual selling. They have no social media presence. They don't understand leadership branding. They haven't established a roadmap to be relevant in digital for their company or for their teams. They don't understand the difference between a macro brand and a micro brand or a me brand versus a company brand. Look, I could keep going on and on here in the changes that have taken place over this window of time. But let me give you a big reason for this. The reason for this is due to a lack of vision. Let me establish where vision comes from. Vision comes from embracing a growth mindset, this mindset that you must grow in order to stay relevant, that you must grow in order to be a growing team, to be a growing company. So let's just look at that word grow, like growth. Where does growth come from? Well, Growth comes from continuing to evolve your education. You don't know what you don't know until you know something different. That seems like such an obvious statement. A lack of growth can actually be comfortable. Let's just name it. Change is happening all around you, and if you're not actually embracing that change, you don't have to stress about the future. You don't have to come to the realization that you're not prepared for what's coming. at you, what's coming at your team. What if I told you this? We're on the cusp of a significant credit event. As part of this significant credit event, the things that will be impacted are mortgage rates, the US dollar, US Treasuries, stock market's going to be impacted in a major way. If I told you that, I would have your attention. Now, what if I told you this, that I believe there were 3 things that you needed to do in order to prepare for the major change that's coming? Let's go one step, one step further. Now let's say that credit event, that major credit event takes place. What have I done? I've established myself as an authority, as someone to look to, as a person of credibility. Why? Because I had the foresight that allowed me to predict what was coming. Foresight. Let's just define it. What is foresight? Foresight is the ability to interpret the future so that you can prepare today. As leaders, we're lacking enough foresight to create the vision necessary to lead our teams and to Inspire people to join our teams. The only place that this vision foresight's going to come is through you educating yourself. And I don't mean kind of educating yourself. I mean major league education. I'm talking about let's go get a master's degree in this space of what's changing in our businesses. Recruiting leaders, I'm begging you. Get some foresight. Okay? Get enough foresight that you can come to a place where you can make what I call I believe statements. What do you believe our industry is headed for? What the digital world is impacting us in what ways? The 3 ways you're using AI, the 3 ways you're coaching your team to use AI. What are they? The future of virtual in our business. What is it as it relates to virtual selling and the virtual customer experience and virtual culture within our teams. What is that? If you could make those statements around that, what you believe, you would be an incredibly polarizing leader. And a polarizing leader is magnetic, is attractive. We always talk about this attractive leader framework, like you want to attract the best talent in your market. Be polarizing. Be polarizing because you are able to interpret what is going on in your business and where your business is going. The leader who is polarizing, the leader that has vision, that leader is an outlier. The world needs outlier leaders with vision today. Those leaders are going to have massive success on the retention side of their current team and on the recruiting side of the team that's out there. That's an opportunity for you to actually go grow and build around. My challenge for you is go become that. May that become you.
