Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:29: Teamwork
00:04:53: Loneliness
00:08:48: New Year development …
00:09:24: … stick or switch
00:13:25: … pay rise negotiations
00:19:36: … looking to pivot
00:23:46: All about AI
00:33:38: Further learning goals
00:36:45: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This week's episode is something a bit different.  Earlier this year, well, a couple of weeks ago, we recorded a live show called The Careers Collective.  And it was a brilliant evening.  It was experimenting with a slightly different format and some new voices that we brought together, and we talked about things like teamwork, AI, because what's a conversation about work without AI at the moment, and also things like job changes and how to make the most of the roles that you're in. 

Helen Tupper: So, this episode is an edit of that evening with some of the main bits that we think are most useful for everyone to hear about.  And Sarah and I have got slightly different roles on the episode.  So, I'm going to be the person that you hear asking the questions, and Sarah is going to be representing Squiggly.  So, when we talk about new jobs and AI, Sarah is sort of the universal voice of Squiggly.  And also, you'll hear from Bruce Daisley, who is the host of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast; you'll hear from Isabel Berwick, who is the host of the FT's Working It podcast; and also, Jimmy McLoughlin, who is the host of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future.  So, you've got lots of different people, lots of different perspectives, all sharing their ideas and insights to help you work well across a few different areas in 2025.  So, let's get started. 

So, we're going to talk about teamwork first of all, and we thought we'd talk a bit about the dynamics of teams working remotely or in the office, like what's better, what works better.  So, Bruce, you're particularly opinionated, is that fair, on this topic of remote work versus being in the office; what's your view about, does work work better when teams work together in person?

Bruce Daisley: What you find is that some face-to-face time seems to be really important for relational energy, for just feeling connected with each other.  And the question then becomes, how much is the right amount of time?  And I suspect you will see some friends during the month of December who you only see once a year, or you only see once every few months, and yet your relationship can go back to being quite functional, be quite energising.  And it is just an illustration really that we don't necessarily have to see people every day for our relationship to be strong with them, but we probably need to invest some energy into building that relationship to start with.  Broadly, what you find with most companies is, the bigger they are and the more bureaucratic they are, the more face-to-face time they need.  So, the reason why big companies are asking for three days or four days or five days is because I think it comes as a cost of bureaucracy.  But if you work with anyone who's got a small company, or there's a small group of them, quite often one or two days a week can be perfectly adequate for building good energy up.  And look, where I end up thinking is that people working flexibly has been transformational for people's lives. 

The one commencement speech I really like is Shonda Rhimes, who's the woman behind Bridgerton and Grey's Anatomy and Scandal.  She's like the Charles Dickens of American TV.  And she did this brilliant commencement speech, probably a few years ago now, where she talked about, "Every time you see me succeeding somewhere in my life, that you can't see I'm failing somewhere else".  So she's like, "If you see me at an awards do, what you don't know is I was meant to see my mum that day, I look after her, I care for my mum; or if you saw me at the screening of the taping of Sandra Oh's last episode of Grey's Anatomy, what you missed was that I didn't go to my daughter's soccer game".  And what I love about it is that firstly, she's one of the most accomplished people in TV, but expresses the contradictions that we've all got running through our lives.  And flexibility has been transformational, from making people no longer feel like they're failing.  And so, broadly what you find is, the more male an organisation is, the more old-school, broadly if people wear quite traditional clothing, then it's often a sign that it's going to be quite traditional in terms of wanting people back in the office. 

I think the danger we've had is that we've been transported into a version of the future that seems more successful, and regressive voices, who are trying to tell you that the future of work is what work looked like in 2019, I think are setting us back, and they'll potentially set us back 10 years, 15 years, if we allow it to happen.  So, I think broadly two or three days seems to be a good equilibrium, a good balance.  Smaller teams definitely can be functional with far less than that.  But I did some research with someone in Australia and we found that, yeah, in Australia, the reason why it's beneficial to do it is that you can measure the gender balance of organisations.  And we found the more male organisations were, the more likely they were to ask for people back in the office.  So, I think there's often a hidden agenda to that.  So generally, I think two or three days is fine.

Helen Tupper: One of the things I want to talk about with teamwork is loneliness.  So, Sarah and I had an event last week, the topic of loneliness came up.  There's some recent research that was featured in Harvard Business Review that said one in five people are lonely at work, which affects their engagement, their motivation, and their connection to their role in their career, so not a good thing.  And, Sarah, I wanted your perspective on loneliness at work, what's going on; and also, how do we help people feel more connected, feel a greater sense of belonging? 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think it's interesting, you can read that research on HBR for free, and they've put it on the cover of their magazine as well, so they're kind of taking it seriously.  And I think where lots of people go with loneliness is, it's to do with where we are working.  I think that's a really lazy answer to that question around loneliness, because I think it's much more about how connected do you feel to the work that you're doing.  So, can you connect the dots between why you go to work, why your team's there, how your team then contributes to the overall organisation, and starting from the individual and then kind of going out almost like, do I understand how what I do makes a difference?  And when we say, "Make a difference", as well, I don't think that has to be like, "I'm saving the world".  I think for a lot of people it's not that, but it sort of has to matter that I show up, that I get to the end of a week and I think, "Well, my week at work was well spent.  It was worth me being here.  I'm useful".  We love the word useful. 

I'll never forget interviewing brilliant social pioneer, a guy called Jack Graham.  And he said, "You shouldn't ever say, 'Do what you love', you should always just ask yourself the question, 'How can I be useful?'"  That question has always really stuck with me.  And I think when it comes to loneliness, thinking as a team, "How are we being useful?" is a really good question to ask.  I think the other thing, and loads of you will have come across Simon Sinek's work, which is good on Start With Why, but I think around loneliness, you've got to start with the who.  So, who are we all?  What motivates and drives us?  We would talk about understanding each other's values.  Now, that can start to feel maybe fluffy or too abstract for some organisations, but you don't have to frame it as values.  Okay, what motivates and drives each of us individually?  What's most important to us?  There's brilliant examples of American football teams doing this kind of work, and they showed up before as individual superstars that were losing, they understood who each other were and what mattered to them, suddenly they start winning because they're playing for each other.

Every time I have done values in really big organisations, before Amazing If, as a leader, I really understood my team.  I think it really transformed how well we worked together.  And I don't know, you do feel connected, you feel connected with the people that you work with.  Understanding each other's secret skills.  That is actually a really good example of a really easy way to get to know what's important to people.  You share a little slice of who you are and what matters to you.  Spotify playlist, we've done that before.  Get everyone to do a song that matters to them, talk about why.  You can make it really fun and really playful.  And I just wonder whether we've lost some of those things.  We either don't want to do cringy team days, like no one needs more marshmallows and spaghetti. 

Helen Tupper: Or grapevines. 

Sarah Ellis: Or grapevines, maybe.  But equally, you can't go back, because people are working in a different way.  I think you have to find new ways for people to get connected and not rely on what we've done before.  But just don't get lost.  I don't think we should get lost in the, it's about where people are working. 

Helen Tupper: And just to join some dots actually with the research and the how much you spend in the office or not in the office, I think some people make the assumption that the more time people are present physically together, then the less lonely they are.  But I think the really interesting thing that I read about the research is, that is not shown to be a connection.  Just spending more time together in person does not lead to people feeling less lonely.  You can be a remote team that can still feel more connected than a team that are in the office five days a week, if you do some of the things that Sarah was talking about.

Okay, so let's move on to New Year.  We are a month away from 2025.  It's often a time when people start thinking about resolutions, what they want to do with their development, what they're going to do with their career, and the thoughts of, "Should I do something different?" often come into people's minds.  So, I thought we would talk about how we know whether we should stick or switch in jobs; how we can pitch ourselves for pay rises and/or progression opportunities; and how we might plan for a pivot.  So, three things that we can talk about our development in the new year.  And I'm going to start with Isabel: sticking or switching?  It's 1 January, I'm thinking about my development, I don't know whether I should stick at what I'm doing or switch to something else.  How would you advise someone to go about that thinking?

Isabel Berwick: That's such a good question.  I get asked this a lot actually when I do events, and I think there's two parts to it.  There's the external part, so there's the where are you working and is it the kind of environment you like?  Do you want to stay in that environment?  So, there's the kind of pressures that are coming into you.  And also, there's the internal stuff, can you afford emotionally or financially to switch?  For example, are you going to do something squiggly?  Are you going to go sideways?  Do you need to go up to make more money?  And I think when we talk about this stuff, and I'm guilty of this myself, we so often talk about, "Oh, it's really important to change jobs or get a promotion", whatever.  But actually, for a lot of people, that might not be possible.  You might be stuck in a situation where you're caring or your kids are in a particular time at school.  I always say take a step back, have a think about it.  Maybe 1 January isn't the best day.  Maybe spend a month thinking about it. 

I'm a big book reader, so I would probably read a few books that might help me to reflect on whether to stick or switch.  There's a book by Daniel Pink that I recommend to people, called The Power of Regret.  It's like, "Will I regret if I don't switch?"  As we age, we regret what we don't do, and that's a really important thing to remember.  So, you regret the terrible, I don't know, what happened at the office party when you were 25, but you will --

Helen Tupper: What happened at the office party when you were 25, Isabel?

Isabel Berwick: Honestly, I read my diaries recently, it was quite bad.  But you will regret what you don't do.  So, if you are offered something, if there is an opportunity and you can take it emotionally and financially, and you're over, say, 40, 45, go for it. 

Bruce Daisley: The challenge of a lot of organisations is that -- did you see the word of the year last year?  There was like a few different places to it, but Macquarie, which is an Australian dictionary, said the word of the year was 'enshittification'.  Do you know this word?  And enshittification is the way that over time, products become worse.  And so, the classic example of enshittification is that Google used to be really good when you searched it.  It would find what you wanted right at the top.  And now, you have to scroll through a page of ads.  Or Amazon's a good one.  You search something on Amazon and the thing you search isn't what comes up.  There's like four or five ads, and you've got to work out which one's sponsored.  

I think work's gone through enshittification where, in the last ten years, the amount of time we spend in meetings has gone up threefold.  And so, a lot of people find themselves in back-to-back meetings where there's no time for deep work, there's no time to actually think or get something done.  Or they're told to come into the office, but then they sit on video calls all day.  It's like, where's the good stuff here?  And I think, in truth, I did some work with one organisation, and they had the European boss in the room, they had the senior leaders, and we went through how much time people spent in meetings, and no one felt empowered to change it.  Everyone felt, this is just the realities of modern work.  And so, I think it does require leadership, it does require a recognition that we need to empower organisations to restructure how we're working, to do things differently.  I think it is a differentiator. 

When people feel that they can get solid blocks of work done, they can do some creative thinking or they can set time aside, it does make work feel a lot more satisfying, and you feel like you're in an organisation where you're doing something of more substance.  There was some really good work a few years ago researching when people felt like they'd had a good day at work.  It was really simple.  It was like, when they felt like they'd made progress in something meaningful.  And I think for most of us, work has just gone through an enshittification, where you just feel like you've dealt with emails all day, you don't feel like you did it very well -- sorry for swearing in front of this 7-month-old kid -- you don't feel like you've done anything of any quality.  So, when it comes down to thinking about whether you should stay at your job, there's nothing that's holding you there.

Helen Tupper: If someone's thinking, "I want to pitch for a pay rise.  It's new year, I want to take control of my career, I want to go to my manager and ask them for more money, for investment in me and my career", Bruce, what would your advice be to somebody to set themselves up for success pitching for a pay rise?

Bruce Daisley: Yeah, I think the first thing you've got to do is you've got to understand the situation of the place you work.  I remember joining a big company thinking, "I'm going to work hard and get promoted", and then being in a session about three months in and they said, "Oh, yeah, we've got structured promotions, you can't be promoted for two-and-a-half years".  I was like, "Oh, right, okay".  Well, if I knew that, it would have impacted how it worked.  I was a boss for quite a long time, and quite often you get people who will come and pitch you for a pay rise, or they'll pitch you for a promotion, and especially in American companies, those things are quite often not in the boss's control, or they're very, very regimented and structured.  So, the first thing is just to understand what the lay of the land is and understand what the rules are. 

Quite often, there is nothing more disempowering for a boss than for someone coming to try and pitch and ask for a pay increase and you know that you have got zero opportunity to do it, you can't help them with that.  So, sometimes understanding the process that is going to get you there is the most critical thing.  And for anyone who is trying to work through those things, probably what we end up doing is finding ourselves doing an end-of-term-style summary of eight bullet points of what we've been doing.  And the best thing that any of us can ever do is just to keep a running total of what you've done, your accomplishments, so it's ready to go if anyone asks.  And making a good account of yourself, representing yourself, is obviously the critical element there, making sure that it's not a secret, you're really clear on what you've accomplished, the situation you took over, what action you took, what the result was, just trying to spoon-feed that whenever you've got the opportunity, I think.

Helen Tupper: I always remember my sales training where they got taught about a BATNA.  I don't know if anyone's had this, a Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.  So, it always stuck with me, but let's say you go in with your pay rise and your number that you want, and then you need to have in the back of your head, "If I don't get that then [I would think] what else am I going to ask for?"  So, I might go in asking for a pay rise, but I'd be quite happy, as my BATNA, to get some investment in my learning.  So, I'd be like, "Oh, okay, I understand that that's not possible at the moment because we've got a pay freeze.  Could we talk about my learning and development and how I could possibly fund that instead?"  And having asked for something hard that they said no to, people don't like saying no twice.  So, having said no to one thing, they're actually more likely to say yes to your second ask.  So, it's a bit of a tactic. 

Isabel Berwick: My best bit of advice on pay rises is, be very careful about the timing.  So, don't approach your boss when they're hungry before lunch; don't approach your boss when they're in the middle of a child custody dispute; all of this stuff really matters.  And actually, there's a great acronym.  I love, what's yours, BATNA?

Helen Tupper: BATNA, yeah. 

Isabel Berwick: There's another great acronym, which Grace Lordan at LSE, who I am a great fan of, came up with, which is called FOBSAG: Fear Of Being Seen As Greedy, which is often something that afflicts women.  So, leave the FOBSAG at home when you're making your pay claim.

Helen Tupper: What's your take on breadcrumbing?  So, you're my manager and you're like, "Helen just keep working hard and we'll talk about your pay next time", that idea of somebody's going in with good intent and they're working hard, but the message they're getting back, nothing's basically changing, that kind of idea of being breadcrumbed by somebody. 

Bruce Daisley: Yeah, I think everyone needs to have a very direct conversation with their boss, "This is what I want to happen.  I want you to tell me, is this timescale realistic?"  I think speaking directly to your bosses frequently lets your boss know where you stand and knows what your expectations are.  So, yeah, it is very common.  Look, in big companies, people are always breadcrumbing you because they're always saying, "Oh, there's a few promotions coming, I'm going to really fight for you this time".  But the more frank you can be and the more comfortable you become… I often used to try and have these conversations almost disembodied, like I used to imagine, "What would my mate, Gavin, do in this situation?"  Because if I went in and I pretended to be Gavin, I could navigate awkward conversations in a way that I probably couldn't if I was feeling embarrassed as myself.  So, just try and disembody it, think about what someone else would do in that situation.

Helen Tupper: Jimmy, do you have an alter ego that you bring to your podcast conversations with Tony Blair, as interviewed today?

Jimmy McLoughlin: No, I don't, but I like the idea.  I might think of it.  I'm in very large agreement with Bruce on pretty much everything he said there.  I think one of the best tips I was given when I started out was, create a good work folder and put everything that you do in there, because it's amazing how much you forget over the course of a 6-month or 12-month period about review, and whether it's a client saying good things about work that you've done, or whatever.  It's really important to log that and then bring that forward, because if you forget it, you can be sure that your manager has probably got a good chance of forgetting it as well.  So, I think that's really important.  And I think being as commercial as possible as well, and that's to the point of understanding the organisation.  Everyone in here that is on a PAYE contract is going to cost the company more because of labour's tax changes, etc, without getting political, but there are all those challenges that are on a business at the moment.  But likewise, we've all been through a cost-of-living crisis, etc, and it's tough for people. 

I think the other thing that I would say that I see younger people doing is, be willing to trade title and status in lieu of pay, and I think people should try and be really clear not to do that as much.  I see that happening more and more with the kind of younger generations, and hear about it more as well.  So, I think people have got to be, to that point as well though, you've got to be clear with what you want as well. 

Helen Tupper: Sarah and I do Win-Watch every quarter, so every quarter we kind of plan what we want to achieve that quarter, and then we probably review it every month and just give it a red/amber/green status.  And it is actually to keep us focused on the things that we want to do, but then it becomes a really good document.  Every quarter, you've got a document that has basically said what you've delivered.  And I think sometimes it's stuff that I would forget, but just looking at the Win-Watch helps you to reflect.  I would recommend.

The other thing that we get asked about a lot is pivots.  So, let's imagine, Sarah, it's January, somebody's thinking, "This is the year I want to do a bit of a pivot".  What would your advice be for somebody who wants to make that kind of move?

Sarah Ellis: When we're thinking about career change or pivots, there's the really big squiggles, the really significant ones.  You've been working for a company, as Helen and I were both doing, and then you start your own company.  That's a massive squiggle.  But the reality is, for most of us, our squiggles are smaller.  And I did a lot of this.  We call it often, "Squiggle and Stay" in organisations, where you're moving from one function to another, from one team to another; you're trying something out.  And I think there are three things to remember if you are thinking, "Yeah, next year, I do want to change roles". 

I think the first one is, be really clear about what your transferable talents are.  So, this is why people will hire you.  And it's even more important when you're going to do something different, because you're not doing same again.  And then, sometimes people say to me often when we're doing workshops, "Oh, I don't think I've got any", because maybe they're technical specialists or they've just been in the same role for a long time.  And my suggestion is always, "Think about how you get your job done, not what your job is".  So, if you think about how you get your job done, is it because you're a brilliant problem-solver?  Are you great at collaborating with a really wide range of people?  Are you really good at conflict or resolving difficult situations?  So, what is it that helps you to get your job done, almost regardless of the specific parts of your job?  And if it helps, I will often say to people, "Just imagine yourself in a different team and you don't know your stuff.  You don't know the ins and outs of that team, you've never worked in finance before, procurement before, so what do you bring?  What does that list look like?"  So, know your transferable talents because you will need to sell them, and you will need to be able to talk about them confidently and with really good examples when you're going for interviews.

The second: build relationships beyond your day job.  So, often we don't.  There's some good research by Linda Gratton at London Business School, that showed our relationships, the range of relationships that we have, got smaller during the pandemic.  And for most of us, they haven't got bigger since then.  So, we limit our relationships to the ones that we need to get our jobs done.  Really understandable, because of course that's how you spend most of your time, but we need to go beyond that, particularly if you are thinking about doing something different.  Start now, go and have curious career conversations.  People love talking about what they do.  It's not that hard to persuade people.  People are really happy to go -- it's a low-pressure chat, right?  You're just saying, "Can you share a bit about what your team does and what your role involves?"  You're not at the applying point.  And so, I think go and have those chats.  That doesn't need to be with more senior people.  You're just trying to get a window into other people's world.  And it's smart, because you're looking kind of before you leap and you're getting good connections. 

Then, I think the final part is, you can then start to spot, "Well, what gaps have I got?"  And it doesn't mean you need to fill all of those gaps, but what it does mean is you can think about, "Well, are there creative ways that I can talk about and be self-aware enough to know, I get that this is not the thing that I'm bringing, but hey, I've got these other skills and strengths and I have had a think about it?"  So, when I moved into corporate responsibility, I'd never worked in that function before.  I couldn't make that up.  I'd got that gap, but I could be really curious about it.  So, I turned up to that interview with case studies.  What do other organisations do that I've been impressed by, that I've been really interested by?  And look for those leaders who quite like taking a risk on people.  I would argue those people are not risky, but of course I would, but I do think you can see people in organisations who are more up for people transferring their talents than others.  They're the people who can see past maybe the CV, they can see beyond the more traditional job description.  Look for those people who are prepared to be slightly more maverick in their approach.  Sometimes that's a whole organisation, which is great, but sometimes that might be more about individuals.

Helen Tupper: So, let's tackle our third area, which is AI, which I appreciate that we talk about a lot, but I really wanted to get into, what are we as a community thinking about AI, in terms of how is it affecting work?  And also, just practically, what do we need to know?  And also, what is everyone doing now?  I'd love to just have a practical chat around you and your development.  How are you bringing AI into your work?  So, I was scrolling through LinkedIn earlier today, and I saw Isabel had gone to San Francisco to talk about AI.  So, I think, Isabel, let's start with you.  What's your perspective on AI?  Is this a lot of noise, or is this something that we all really need to be spending our days working on, in terms of our development?

Isabel Berwick: Both.

Helen Tupper: Okay. 

Isabel Berwick: Yeah, so there is a lot of noise, it's very hype-y.  I think a lot of companies are spending a lot of money on AI without really thinking about, is it going to give them gains?  A lot of CEOs are running around like headless chickens at the moment thinking, "Oh my God, I've got to implement AI".  So, Slack research shows two-thirds of desk workers have never used generative AI.  So, it's more talked about than done in a lot of offices.  So, don't worry if you're feeling that you're behind; you're not.  The advice I get from many, many people, and that I'm trying to implement myself, is experiment.  So, I have got ChatGPT, Claude, and PyAI all on my phone.

You do have to be careful about the guardrails at your work, but actually you can muck around with it on your phone.  So, I use it instead of Google now sometimes, and I'm trying to refine the prompts I give it.  So, if you talk about 'prompt engineering', which is a buzzword at the moment, what is it that we're asking AI to do?  At the weekend I said, "Which are the best charity shops near Oxford Street?", okay?  Claude AI came up with by far the best answers.  So, that has taught me something quite valuable about refining which AI I'm using and when.  And the other interesting thing I've learned from making the video is that some people are sending up to five bots into meetings.  So, there'll be a transcription bot, there'll be a summary bot, and there'll be a bot that gives you feedback on your performance in the meeting.  And that is really interesting and quite scary.

Helen Tupper: It is quite scary.  I find it really interesting because Sarah and I do loads of work with companies on how to create a feedback-rich culture.  We call it 'frequent fearless feedback', because people are really scared about getting feedback from other people.  However, we're happy to outsource it to a bot.  I guess it just feels a bit more distant and maybe, I don't know, a bit less sensitive to get it from a bit of technology rather than your colleague. 

Isabel Berwick: Yeah, I quite like it.  And actually, I heard today someone was saying on the West Coast, there are people who have therapy bots as part of their work.

Helen Tupper: Jimmy, when was the last time you used AI consciously?

Jimmy McLoughlin: Consciously, I used it this morning, genuinely, with my Tony Blair interview, because I wanted to find out exactly what Euan had said.  Euan Blair runs a company called Multiverse, and he's Tony Blair's son, and they are partly looking to kind of replace the university.  And I was sort of trying to get some information on what he'd precisely said in previous interviews, and I just thought it was going to be really difficult to dig that out.  And actually, it was amazing.  It pulled up the various interviews that Euan had done and what he'd said about it, which just meant at the margins, that was particularly useful.  But can I just throw some stats here slightly at it? 

Helen Tupper: Stat away!

Jimmy McLoughlin: Because I literally was talking to Blair about this big report he's done on AI and the impact on employment market, right?  So, I've read 120 pages so you don't have to.  And essentially, the predictions that they've got in there is that over the next 15 to 20 years, there is going to be between 1 and 3 million jobs taken from AI.  Bearing in mind we have 33 million people in the UK, you're looking at between 3% and 10% of the workforce changing.  However, we did a poll of the British public a year ago, and it said that one in three people believed that AI could do their job better than them within five years' time.  That's 10 million people, right?  So, I do think it is really hard, because I think it is quite choppy at the moment in terms of the sentiment, etc.  But I do think it could be quite a fundamental revolution. 

Personally, I don't think governments are taking it seriously enough.  Like, you talk about the whole economic model changing here in the space of two or three electoral cycles; that's quite a big deal.  But I would also say to the people that are here and listening to podcasts about all this stuff, it's probably not going to be those people that are hugely impacted by it.  I just try to find time to learn and experiment with it every so often. 

Helen Tupper: So, what are you playing with?  Isabel mentioned her tools and said Claude, which I've not tried out, was the best.  What are you finding?

Jimmy McLoughlin: No, I haven't used Claude, but I switch between Gemini and ChatGPT.  But my wife is currently writing a PhD thesis on diabetes and endocrine, and it is amazing how much it's helping with a lot of that heavy-lifting side of writing a dissertation, and so on.  It's extraordinary to see it up close, and it's going to be all about how you can learn to use the tools.  Because the people that are slightly older in here, and so on, that maybe had 15 years in the workforce, plus, your jobs will have completely changed how you've done them in the last 15 years, right?  So, I don't think what we're about to see is extraordinarily new in that regard of like, jobs have always changed, no one's job remains the same over the period of a decade actually, right; it evolves. 

Helen Tupper: Bruce what's your take?

Bruce Daisley: Right, so a couple of things.  Firstly, it's the end of the year, so loads of companies are publishing their trend deck.  And so, it's quite helpful to see what other organisations are saying.  So, Microsoft published their trend deck and they said broadly, everyone's in the situation where they're working this stuff out as they go along.  But most people are bringing their own AIs to work.  Meaning, in other words, they're using either Gemini or ChatGPT, because it's free and workers are using it.  We've got an interesting position where if you look at college students, about 99% of college students are using AI.  But I think Isabel mentioned that most people in work aren't using it.  So, you've got this really interesting difference in incentives. 

When people's own work is being helped by college students, they're all over it.  They realise that this could save them loads of time.  When they're in work, people are like, "Well, what's the point of that?  I'm not sure it's going to benefit me".  So, it's an illustration.  I think Microsoft's point was, if people can see the incentive, they're using it loads.  Companies just need to get a bit more structured in training people on these things and trying to bring in policies on how to use them.  I use it all the time.  I used it last week to plan a holiday somewhere, I use it for my podcast art all the time.  I really enjoy the art side of it just because, if you use something like Midjourney, there's a page when you first go on which is a gallery of what everyone else has done, and it's just so inspiring to see what everyone else has done, lift their prompt, experiment with that yourself.  So, I really enjoy staying fresh on those things.  The podcast studio I use, or the app I use, has a lot of AI built into it in terms of populating some of the stuff.  So, I experiment with all these things all the time.  But I think the most critical thing is probably just getting into the habitual habit of using it. 

When ChatGPT Voice used to be free, they've just made it a premium product, it was the most amazing thing to experiment with, because you could put your headphones in and you could have a conversation with it.  And there's something extraordinary, something like the movie Her, about having a conversation with an AI that makes you far more aware of the quality of the response you're getting and whether it's in tune with what you want.  There's something about reading it where you sort of glaze over, whereas when something's being read to you, it works a lot more.  But I personally love just playing around with those things.

Jimmy McLoughlin: Yeah, that's really interesting.  I mean Midjourney and using some of the images are brilliant ways of doing it, actually, and you can learn.  Lots of people will be on LinkedIn here and a LinkedIn post now is nothing without a picture attached to it, and it does make a big difference and you can have it.  But it's funny, because Google have obviously had that auto-complete in place for six years, or so on, but I definitely find myself, you've got to make sure you don't get lazy with these things, because you would start putting stuff into Google and being like, "I wonder what everyone else has said about it", and you almost stop thinking while you're doing it.  But I think that ability and that preparation to know that you're going to be a bit rubbish at this at the beginning, and if you start using Midjourney for the first time tomorrow, your image is going to look a bit rubbish at first, but trying to get comfortable with that.  And that gets harder as you get along in your career, because again, it goes back to that point I was making about asking simple questions, and whatever.  You're supposed to know what you're doing when you get to a certain age, and to admit that you don't know things and say that you need help, etc, is really daunting, particularly in a corporate hierarchy.

I do think, to anyone that's really young in the audience who's got really young people, I do think those that are coming through now have got a real opportunity to add something to the workforce knowing, and it's a proper kind of quantum-leap moment.  It's probably the best time to be entering the workforce as a young person for about 20 years, I would say, and that's converse with what you would hear and what a lot of them think as well actually.

Helen Tupper: I've seen some really interesting research on that from Microsoft actually, about it being a leapfrog for learning for young people.  And not just young people actually, people that might not, I don't know, they might not have qualifications or certifications in certain areas.  Actually, if you can proactively learn about AI, it can be a real accelerator for your development.  So, Sarah and I are currently writing a book about learning, so this is a bit of a loaded question, but I guess one of my concerns is, AI is so dominant that it's become like, the only thing that people need to be learning right now is to learn about AI skills.  Sarah, what else should people be learning to stay relevant in their roles and resilient in their careers, other than AI competence and experimenting; what else should we be learning at work? 

Sarah Ellis: Well, one of the things that always worries me is, most people don't have learning goals.  So, I ask that question really frequently all across the world to loads of different companies in lots of different cultures.  And it could be the phrasing, so it could be maybe we're not just naming it or we're not labelling it as a learning goal.  And sometimes I'll rephrase it and say, "Well, tell me one thing you want to learn in the next six months".  And the problem is that either way, they'll either say, "Well, I haven't got a learning goal, just not really thought about it", or if I ask, "What do you want to learn in the next six months?" people just say AI.  But they can't tell me what they want to use AI for or how they're going to start experimenting, or what the answer to that question is.  And I do think learning has to start by feeling really personal.  And so, this idea that there are universal tick-box things that we all need to learn, I think doesn't work.  So, you've got to ask yourself, "Well, what do I want to get better at?" 

There probably are some skills that help all of us.  So, I would probably take something like critical thinking as a good starting point, because actually, whether you're using AI, you've got to be a good critical thinker, because you need to get better at asking your prompts and know, "Do I believe what this AI is telling me or not, and how do I navigate my way through this world?"  But also, if you're good at critical thinking, you'll ask better questions to other people, but to AIs as well.  But the thing that I would like to see much more of is just people taking that ownership for thinking, "What do I want to learn; how do I learn best; who can help me learn that skill?"  And whether that is being a beginner, taking that beginner's mindset to something like AI, which I think is a good sort of experimenting beginner mindset; whether that's critical thinking; whether that's listening; but avoiding those big general words that you often do hear in learning. 

The other classic one is 'leadership'.  "What do I want to learn?  Leadership".  And you're like, "Whoa, okay", and that's a really big word.  And I think we benefit from breaking those things down and go, "Okay, well, what is it about leadership?  Is it influencing and persuading?  Is it, I don't know, how to present?"  Sometimes when people say leadership, they actually just mean getting better at presenting.  And so, encouraging ourselves to keep asking that extra question, like you the know the five whys, when we keep asking ourselves whys to get to root causes?  I think you need to do that with learning as well like, "Okay, what do you want to learn?  Why do you want to learn that?  Why do you want to learn?" so that actually, you can then make progress.  Because otherwise, we often ask a coaching question, "What do you want to be true in 12 months' time that isn't true today?"  And for lots of people, they end up feeling frustrated or disappointed that their learning isn't further forward, because I think we've not been specific enough about answering that question. 

Helen Tupper: Brilliant.  So, learning goals.  Learning goals are the things that we should all have.  And AI might be part of that, but connecting AI to how it's actually going to help you in your careers.  Brilliant.  Okay, So, we have covered our three topics.  We've covered teamwork; we've talked about setting yourself up for success in the New Year; and hopefully, we've started to tackle AI and what it might mean for you and your development.  Thank you all for being here and learning with The Career Collective.  Thank you everyone.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you!