SNS83 Saturday Night Special - Interview with Jeff Wald author of The Future Of Work
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's. Saturday night, special episode 83.
[00:00:05] Jeff Wald: [00:00:05] I'm Jeff Wald. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to focus on how your work impacts the world is key.
[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer
[00:00:36] what it is you've been given, charged with and to treat it. Like it was your wrong. And so I always tell entrepreneurs, look, be very careful. Money comes with people attached. When you take outside capital, you now have a responsibility and you have a responsibility to those people that gave you the money.
[00:00:56] And what did they think you're responsible?
[00:01:00] [00:01:00] Scott Maderer: [00:01:00] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:01:17] We'll learn to invest in yourself. Invest in others. And develop your influence so that you can impact the world
[00:01:27]And tonight, Saturday night special, I interviewed Jeff Wald, Arthur of the book, the future of work about why it's important to have a network in success and in failure. I also Jeff, to share some of what he's discovered about the future of work and how it affects both self-employed and traditionally employed folks.
[00:01:45] Jeff also shares with you about a culture document and why this is a vital thing for all businesses, regardless of their size. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with
[00:01:58] is
[00:01:58] Scott Maderer: [00:01:58] around the [00:02:00] area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really tough.
[00:02:09] I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality.
[00:02:38] Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that in productivity for your passion.
[00:02:59] Check it out [00:03:00] over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch.
[00:03:04]Jeff as the founder of work market and enterprise software platform that enables companies to manage freelancers acquired by ADP. Jeff has founded several other technology companies, including spin back a social sharing platform that was eventually purchased by salesforce.com. Jeff is currently an active angel investor in a startup advisor, as well as serving on numerous public and private boards of directors.
[00:03:31] Jeff is also the author of the Amazon bestseller, the end of jobs, the rise of on-demand workers and agile corporations.
[00:03:41] Jeff Wald: [00:03:41] Welcome to the show, Jeff. Great to be here, Scott. Thank you for having me. So
[00:03:46] Scott Maderer: [00:03:46] we just talked about in the intro, a lot of these different successes you've had you, you've had an interesting journey with startups and had some great success with them, but I also wanted to talk a little bit about the fact that.
[00:04:00] [00:04:00] You're looking in from the outside. Everyone always sees the successes and sees the wins and sees the good things that we put out, but that usually doesn't come without struggle or difficulty. So would you talk a little bit about your very first venture into the startup world and how after that you continued to move forward effective?
[00:04:20] Jeff Wald: [00:04:20] Sure. Look, I applaud you for bringing it up because people do celebrate successes as well as they should. But people don't talk about the struggles they had getting there. And that is an important part of the journey. And for many people, it is the story of the journey. Meaning, just statistically, when you look at technology startups, 90% of them are gonna fail.
[00:04:41]That is your high probability outcome as you start these things. And so my first one failed. And I made the mistake of funding it myself. And so when it failed, it took me down with it from a financial standpoint and from an emotional standpoint, psychological [00:05:00] standpoint, I got to be honest when I was very depressed in, didn't leave my apartment for a month.
[00:05:05] Kind of just couldn't get out of bed situation. I couldn't believe this is what happened, but. Look as with any setback that we have from a business standpoint, from a personal standpoint, you have to pick yourself up, you have to reach for the hands that are reaching down to help you get up. And those hands are there.
[00:05:28] Those ans may come from family. They may come from friends. They may come from other members of your community, but they're there. If you look for them and. If you want to see them, for the first few weeks, I didn't want to see them. There were plenty of people trying to reach out and I was not having it.
[00:05:43] And so it was a conversation with my brother, actually, my older brother, who is one of the finest humans, I have met in all of my travels on this earth. And he just said to me, what w what would be different in your life if it had been successful? And I was like, rattling off all [00:06:00] these things, I'd be, this that'd be that.
[00:06:01] And he's just looked at me. He's but you are those things. Just beat them. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to go beat them. And I just pick myself up, dust myself off with his hand, helping me up and many others. And you get back in the game and you keep moving forward, never stop moving forward.
[00:06:22] And so that was an important thing for me to go through. I won't pretend it was fun, but that perseverance. As you get knocked down again and again, and startup world, look, I've never been knocked down again like that, but all of a sudden, the other knockdowns of you lose a customer and this round of funding doesn't close and this huge, this great team member leaves, those other knockdowns suddenly are much easier to get up from, and you'll learn how to get up from them.
[00:06:50] And you learn to look for those hands and you keep going.
[00:06:52] Scott Maderer: [00:06:52] What was, do you remember what were some of the things that you felt like, you would only be, if you have had that success, that your brother pointed out, Hey, wait a [00:07:00] minute, you are some of those things. Why don't, what are you complaining?
[00:07:03]Jeff Wald: [00:07:03] First of all, was a success. That I will have built and sold a startup that I would have been accomplished at something. And he points at all the other things I had accomplished. And but it was just, it was this notion that I wouldn't have the stink of failure on me. He's you don't, nobody sees that, but you, they see all these wonderful things about you.
[00:07:27] You're the one focused on the negative things. Nobody else thinks about it. Nobody else cares. And so those were the types of things that he talked about. Yeah.
[00:07:36]Scott Maderer: [00:07:36] And good advice, because I think it's that. I've talked before about action versus belief versus, which one comes first and which one comes second.
[00:07:45]Do you act first and believe second, or do you believe first and act second? And the short answer is yes. I don't think it's either direction. I think it's a circle, if that makes sense, but there is some of that and it's not fake [00:08:00] it till you make it, but that of until you've begun to move forward and do some things.
[00:08:07] You assume that you can't do those things, you know it because we self label ourselves, that's not doing it.
[00:08:15] Jeff Wald: [00:08:15] I will tell you I'm a big fan of cognitive behavioral therapy and it's actually rooted in a lot of theology. And when you read the Bible not to go all biblical, but there's a lot of talk about.
[00:08:30] Just start doing the thing and start building the habit, is it better to give charity once a year and just one big donation or is it better to do something every single day? And the answer theologians would have us believe. And I would believe is that it's better to do something every single day.
[00:08:47] And it starts building up that habit of this is a part of who I am, because if you continue to do something, then who you, what you do defines you.
[00:08:56]Scott Maderer: [00:08:56] Think about it. It's the second question that you're asked when you meet as [00:09:00] total stranger, the first one is what's your name? All right. And usually we actually don't get asked that one.
[00:09:05] We just volunteer that information, hi, my name is Scott. Stick out my hand, but what's the very first question. So what do you do every
[00:09:14] Jeff Wald: [00:09:14] time? What do I do? I give a little something to somebody every single day. That's a great answer to the what is it that you do? And then that is who you are.
[00:09:23] Would it be a good,
[00:09:24] Scott Maderer: [00:09:24] that would be a good answer to that question. So what are, let's talk a little bit about a lot of my listeners are people that want to have a business, want to start a business, maybe not necessarily a startup like you've started, but still that idea of creating something out into the world that serves others that helps others.
[00:09:40] And. Part of the reason they often want to do that. I know for me, when I started my own business, part of it was freedom about choices around my work and my time and my energy, and being able to spend time with family and having more control over those things. Now you've made a study on work and the [00:10:00] future of work.
[00:10:01] What are some things that you would give as advice to people? Today that maybe helps move them in that direction, whether that's within their career or whether that's starting their own business. Doesn't really matter. I'll leave that kind of wide open.
[00:10:13]Jeff Wald: [00:10:13] Broad brush advice is tough. I would say a lot of advice has to be very specific to the context and the industry, especially when you're starting to talk about work.
[00:10:20] And that's one of the main thesis of my book, which is you can't really paint with a broad brush. You can't just simply say, Oh, this is happening in the entire labor market. The labor market is. A thousand subdivided things added together. Now that said there is a phrase out there that some people are like, Oh, it's an overused phrase.
[00:10:39] I would argue it is not using nearly enough. And that is that you have to be a lifelong learner and look, the data plays this out. Scott, the data would tell us that the amount of time in which a skill, a Bates is no longer, monetizeable used to be like 30 years. You could have the same skill for 30 years and continue making a living.
[00:10:58] Now it's. It's five years. So [00:11:00] in five years, whatever skill you have is no longer. Monetize it that's not to say you can't monetize it at all. It might some people's people that still want to employ you, even though your skills are outdated, but you are no longer in demand as much as you could be or should be.
[00:11:16] And so you have to constantly refresh because the rate of change and we have a hundred different data points we could point to on this data sets, we could point to the rate of change is just rapid now. And if you think you should
[00:11:31] Scott Maderer: [00:11:31] in the last year and a half, if you don't believe
[00:11:34] Jeff Wald: [00:11:34] that there's proof.
[00:11:35] Yeah. If you think you can just sit back and say that's happening other places? No. It's happening every place. It's one of those things that we can paint with a broad brush. I don't care what industry you're in. I don't care what job function you're in. It's changing and it's changing very quickly.
[00:11:50] Scott Maderer: [00:11:50] So when people are trying to take control of that you mentioned lifelong learning. How do you know, how do you know [00:12:00] what to learn? Is it just learning for learning's sake? Is it trying to find, what, how do they. How can
[00:12:08] Jeff Wald: [00:12:08] you unpack that? Learning for learning's sake, there's a lot of interesting threads.
[00:12:11] We can jump off there on one is the nature of that. We've pushed everyone to get a four year college degree when most people don't need that. So we have a lot of job function, a lot of job descriptions that require a four year degree, 60% of job descriptions require a four year degree. And even though 32% of the population workforce has a four year degree.
[00:12:30] So we have a huge mismatch because people are getting jobs without four year degrees. So why are we rolling wiring it? I will it's really becoming a huge problem in society and there are huge job gaps right now. And a lot of the skilled trades fucking and plumbing and electrician work, huge gaps of jobs that pay well above.
[00:12:51] Minimum wage middle-class wages and yet people aren't taking the jobs because there's a stigma attached to them, which is ridiculous. [00:13:00] And so that's it to answer your question specifically? No. I don't think this is, Hey, make sure you read the economist every week. So you're a well-rounded thinker.
[00:13:07] This is look at the trade and industry. Groups in your area and what kind of trainings? Yeah, this is industry specific certifications, right? It's these learning the specifics of your skill of your function and what are the new technologies to enable the function? What are the new technologies that made start to displace the function?
[00:13:27] Because functions almost never get fully replaced. It's just the people in that function that know how to use the technology that does some of the tasks. Are you able to upskill to the new tasks? Whereas the people that don't use know how to use the new technology are the people that are replaced. Sure.
[00:13:42] And so it is very industry specific. So if you're an industry, actually, you've got to find out what is everybody else doing? What are the new technologies? What are the new startups? And you have to go just spend time and read all that stuff, take online courses and things like that.
[00:13:58] Scott Maderer: [00:13:58] So it is looking [00:14:00] into what it is that you're doing or what to be doing.
[00:14:03] And doing a little for a little future casting and seeing, what's coming down the, of course it's coming down the road, the Avenue, but again, I would, I think most people, studies will tell you that most people haven't read a book since they graduated high school or college, whichever most people aren't reading industry journals.
[00:14:22]If they're in a particular industry instead, they're looking sometimes to their employer to tell them. What is it that I need to learn next?
[00:14:28] Jeff Wald: [00:14:28] Yeah, that's crazy. Just look, I get it. And it would be ideal if employers were doing it, it'd be ideal, but the data would tell us that the amount of training dollars being spent by employers per employee has declined consistently over the last 30 years.
[00:14:44] And no one owns your professional degree, but you it'd be great if others helped with you with it. It'd be great. If you had a manager that cared. That said, Hey, let's set up quarterly goals for your professional development. That'd be great. We certainly did that at my [00:15:00] last company at work market, but that if we didn't, it wasn't our responsibility.
[00:15:06] It is the employee's responsibility. You own your professional development. And so take control of it, take ownership of it and go and find these things and ask your employer. Hey, I want to take this course and it costs 500 bucks. Will you pay for it? And if they will. Great. And if they won't maybe think about changing employers, but take the course.
[00:15:27] Scott Maderer: [00:15:27] Yup. So a lot of what we were just talking about is in that relationship with oftentimes a larger employer or a larger company. I know, I worked in a corporate environment now. It was a privately owned. It wasn't a publicly traded company, but still we had 3000 plus employees, multiple locations, global, yada.
[00:15:47]And ironically it was an education company and I was always upset because we didn't do a lot of internal education and training. It's there's the irony, our whole business is helping other people learn and we don't do a lot of internal [00:16:00] learning. So let's take it down a notch and think more about the small businesses.
[00:16:04] Cause there's a ton of businesses out there that are. 50 fewer employees, a hundred fewer employees, 20
[00:16:09] Jeff Wald: [00:16:09] million employees. Yeah. Millions of them. And they employ half the people in the United States.
[00:16:12] Scott Maderer: [00:16:12] Yeah. Yeah. I'm more people are employed with small business than the big five fortune five hundreds.
[00:16:17] So how does this kind of conversation apply in the small business arena? Whether it's a solopreneur know. That 20 and under kind of employee company.
[00:16:26]Jeff Wald: [00:16:26] Look, the solar preneur has to be doing these things. And when you look at the on-demand economy, the entrepreneurial economy, gig economy, whatever you want to call it, those people understand there is nobody.
[00:16:40] That is looking out for them, but themselves. And that has to not to do just with their training and their development, but with their retirement and their healthcare and the marketing of their skills. They understand these trends very well and where they have total personal responsibility for these things.
[00:16:57] The full-time employee at any size [00:17:00] company should start taking total responsibility for these things. It's wonderful. If the employer, maybe contributes to your 401k, pays a good portion of your healthcare, but don't count on that. Happening for forever. It'd be wonderful. Again, if they did some of your training development, don't count on that, but the solo preneur knows that, right?
[00:17:16] Otherwise they want to take in that leap. They know that they're on their own, but if you're an employee at a small company, or if you're the boss of a small company, look, you still want to be an employer of choice. You still want to have a team. That is dedicated to the mission of your company that understands where your company's going and wants to be a part of helping the company get there.
[00:17:38] Because as good as everybody is, as good as all the entrepreneurs are out there, yang that good, that 20 additional brains thinking about the same problem, Mark and I come up with incremental solutions. I don't care who you are, right? Like you win or lose based on your team. And if that team is engaged, If that team is aware of where you want [00:18:00] to go and you should be very clear.
[00:18:01] This is why I'm a huge fan of a codified culture document, an actual piece of paper, Google doc, PowerPoint, whatever that is very clear about who you are, the one sentence that describes you. Why you're there your mission? And where you're going. What is that North star that you're marching towards?
[00:18:19] Because if you are very clear about it and you're very clear with your team, then your team goes, Oh, we're going there. My actions might, should really have to align with getting there. And if they are really bought in, if you're thinking about their training, their development, their professional development, then they are going to be giving you that extra hour or two where they're sitting at home thinking to themselves.
[00:18:42] Huh? What if I checked it this way, and that might be the change that just is the knee of a curve that drives you up because 20 people thinking about the problem are tremendously more likely to come up with a solution than just the one person. And if you don't care about your team, if they're like, yeah, they're [00:19:00] clock punchers and they're punching out, then you got the team you deserved.
[00:19:03] And then you're the only one thinking about the problem. If you don't think about them as clock punchers, even if that's technically what they are. And that's okay. If you think about them as this is my team, this is my best asset. And I want to know what's going on with them and how their professional development, what their professional development journeys are, where they want to be in five years, 10 years, then they will help you get to where you want to be in five years in 10 years.
[00:19:25]Scott Maderer: [00:19:25] It also changes how you hire even, way back at the very beginning relationship, if you're thinking about I'm just hiring somebody, who's going to be here for a little while, punch the clock, collect a paycheck, go home, and I've talked to business owners that literally, because of it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because they've had bad employees, they ended up hiring bad employees.
[00:19:44] Cause it's almost, that's what they can see.
[00:19:46] Jeff Wald: [00:19:46] Yeah. Look, this is why I keep, I will harp again and again, to any. Size companies, leader, you need a culture document about who you are, why you're here, where you're going, and you shouldn't just share it with your team. You [00:20:00] should share with people that are going to join your team, say, Hey, this is us.
[00:20:03] Do you want to be a part of this journey? If you don't. That's cool too. There are plenty of other people looking for work, but if you want to be a part of this journey, this is who we are. And every employee that came into work market after we had that document understood what they were signing up for.
[00:20:17] Can you give that misdemeanor
[00:20:18] Scott Maderer: [00:20:18] an example about what, it's easy enough to say, you know who you are, why you're there and where you're going, but yeah, I put a little bit more flesh on those bones. What do you mean by culture document?
[00:20:29] Jeff Wald: [00:20:29] Sure. So those three things, and the who you are look, the one sentence Scott is surprisingly.
[00:20:36] Complicated. When ADP bought work market, we were very fortunate to sell the company to this amazing behemoth of ADP. One of the world's largest software companies, HCM software, obviously the world's largest payroll company, which what they're more known for during diligence ATPs, and we had a couple hundred employees, they asked all the employees, what does work market.
[00:20:56] And they came back and they had 72 different answers, [00:21:00] 72 different answers. And that was a gut punch to me. I was like, Oh, I thought they all said the same sentence. I said, but they didn't. And it's fascinating because if they don't know what we are, as they're out there in the field, talking to prospects, talking to customers, talking to partners, they have a slightly different, maybe it's only one or two degrees.
[00:21:20] But, everyone that, look, if it's one or two degrees off, when you start traveling a couple of miles, you get real far apart, the real far apart, just one or two degrees off center off the, at North star. And and if they know where we're going, they're going to take those actions. But the rest of the culture document is this it's your values.
[00:21:36] Okay. So I always call them the big four, the who you are, why you're here, where you're going and then your values. But here's where it gets important. Because if your values are honesty and treat the customer right, and transparency and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that's all well and good. And you have your five to seven values, but then it's the next few pages that count.
[00:21:56] What are the policies and procedures and behaviors [00:22:00] that back up those values. Because if you say you're transparent, but everyone sits in a closed office. No one has any idea what it's on the other people's calendars and you're not sharing any information with anybody. Then you wrote the word transparency, write it down, and it means nothing.
[00:22:15] And you will come across as disingenuous to your employees. We say we're transparent, but I have no idea what's going on here. So don't write it down unless you want to. Once a month, hold a town hall and give everybody a total overview. What's going on warts and all say, Hey guys, here's some customers we lost.
[00:22:33] Let's talk about why we lost them because I want you all to learn. Hey, here are financial statements. If everybody reads this and they don't understand it, set some time on my calendar, let me go through it for you. Let me explain the difference between cost of goods sold and SGNA and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:22:47] Cause I want you guys all to understand not only what's going on at the company, but one of our other values was constant learning. I want you all. To understand all the different aspects of the business. You don't understand something's happening in sales, sit down with our [00:23:00] sales leader and ask because that was our value.
[00:23:02] And those were the behaviors, the policies and procedures that back them up. And that is what a culture document is.
[00:23:08]Scott Maderer: [00:23:08] And that then becomes quote in forcible. And I don't mean that in a negative, that word sounds like a negative connotation, but it's there's a positive connotation to it in that case.
[00:23:17] Jeff Wald: [00:23:17] Yeah, it's true. But it has to have both positive and negative because if someone isn't living those values. The old, the proverbial brilliant jerk. They got to go, yeah, they have to go or change your values, which is, Hey, we're results oriented. And we don't really care if you're a brilliant, that's fine too.
[00:23:32] But be authentic, our friends at Enron and, honesty and integrity up on the wall. They would have been better off and might still be here. If they rode, get a dollar everywhere you can and follow the rules only if, you really think, and what their lawyers would have been like, all right, guys, we're going to do this, but we might get caught.
[00:23:50] So let's protect ourselves this way. They might still be around instead. They pretended that they were honest and intact and it had full integrity. And a lot of their employees obviously did. I don't mean to paint [00:24:00] everybody there with a broad brush, but that's something that. Some didn't.
[00:24:04] Scott Maderer: [00:24:04] Yeah. And unfortunately, some in positions of power, in that example positions that were really could cause bigger problems.
[00:24:11]And I will, again I've been in different job environments in different corporate environments and I've had that situation of, they talk about. We support team players. We want everyone to work together and then you see the one person that's constantly given bonuses. Who's out there just leaving bodies in their wake, and left. And it's I guess maybe that team player thing, isn't really what we think,
[00:24:30]Jeff Wald: [00:24:30] A hundred percent, no, a hundred percent. And I think applies to companies of all size. Oh, absolutely. My biggest mistakes of the 10,000 plus mistakes I made while building and running work market not having a culture document sooner was, is very high in that list.
[00:24:46] Might be number one, quite frankly. And look, we were very fortunate. We had a great outcome and my investors made money and my team made money and it was wonderful, but it could have been better.
[00:24:56]Scott Maderer: [00:24:56] And I would argue just for anyone [00:25:00] who's listening, who is in that solar preneur, freelancer, or whatever kind of thing it's for you to, cause again, it becomes a filter because now all of a sudden, cause I know one of my problems as a solar printer is it is really easy to get distracted by shiny objects.
[00:25:14]Everything that comes along, it seems like a great opportunity, but by narrowing it down and saying. This is what I am. This is where I'm going. A lot of those distractions go away because it's like that's not taking me where I want to go ignore
[00:25:29] Jeff Wald: [00:25:29] it. I will say, if you were very clear with yourself about where you want to go, you're much more likely to get there.
[00:25:36] If you're just floating in the wind and just being opportunistic. And the next thing that comes up, you might get to where you want to be professionally personally asked for whatever it is. You just have a,
[00:25:47] Scott Maderer: [00:25:47] yeah. So one of the questions that I like to ask everybody, obviously the name of the show is inspired stewardship.
[00:25:54] So stewardship is an important thing to me. Talk to you about going back to culture and values. This is one of my [00:26:00] values that I try to exhibit. So I like to ask everybody else their definition of that word, because the truth is what I've discovered over the years is I almost never get the same definition twice depending on who I ask.
[00:26:12] So how would you define that word in your life and what does it mean to you?
[00:26:17] Jeff Wald: [00:26:17] So it means a lot to me. And I think about the teams that we built at work market and my responsibility as the leader of those teams. I think about the money we took from people and my responsibility to be a steward of their capital.
[00:26:32] And I think it means to think about others, to think about what it is you've been given charge with and to treat it like it was your own. And I always tell entrepreneurs, look, be very careful. Money comes with people attached. When you take outside capital, you now have a responsibility and you have responsibility to those people that gave you the money.
[00:26:57] And what do they [00:27:00] think your responsibility is? Do they think that they, you owe them weekly? Check-ins because they give you money. Okay, then that's the kind of stewardship they expect and you guys should be aligned. Do they expect to be on the board? Do they expect some sort of control over decisions?
[00:27:15]Then they have different views on stewardship. I always have those conversations. What are your expectations of my responsibilities? When I take people's money, but with a team I am responsible for that team. And they've put their trust in me because it's got the reality is they could go and work anywhere.
[00:27:37] And they've trusted me with their careers for a period of time, because if we're successful their careers go one way. And if we're not successful, They don't need to lock themselves in their apartment for a month, the way I did in the first failure, but it impacts their career trajectory because they no longer say, Oh, was part of a team that built this and we had a big exit and now I'm ready for my next thing.
[00:27:58] That's a great conversation versus, [00:28:00] Hey, I was a part of the team. We built something and felt, and the leader bankrupted the company and now he's locked in his apartment and can't, walk and talk to him. That's a very different interview, but my responsibility to them.
[00:28:11] Translated to their professional development because I wanted to help with their careers. So when people ask me what I'm the most proud of at work Mark, and I start rattling off names like Caitlin Mann and Ryan Bellard and Mike Schwartz and Liz Sue. These are men and women that came in and I was responsible for them and they more than stepped up to the plate.
[00:28:37] And therefore I gave them more and more to do, and they know to this day that I will still help them in their careers. And I've just picked four, their tens of others. And it is the thing I am easily the most proud of is that my stewardship of that team led that team to go off and do things much greater than us, which is fantastic.
[00:29:02] [00:29:00] Scott Maderer: [00:29:02] So building off of that. If you could go into the far future, maybe 50, a hundred years whatever it is, and you could look back on your life, what impact do you hope you've actually had on the world and left behind?
[00:29:16] Jeff Wald: [00:29:16] The one that I hope for is deeply rooted in the American political system. I think we're at a point in time where a host of factors.
[00:29:27] And a host of people have driven the political process in the United States to a potentially unsustainable path. And it is vital for this country. And it's vital for this planet that America has strong stable leadership internally and on the world stage. And I don't see a path in our existing political system.
[00:29:56] The way it's structured now for [00:30:00] the kind of leadership and long-term decision-making and thinking that is necessary for the structural, societal and environmental problems that I think we are facing. And I don't think there are big changes. And I think one of the most wonderful things about the American political system is its ability to.
[00:30:20] Adapt and iterate, but the iterations, I believe we need are focused around the primary system, around the district and system, around the registration system of voters and around term limits. And if I can move this country's political system in a direction that incorporates some of those things, then I would be elated.
[00:30:46] That being said, if it's simply said of me, That he helped. That's what I'd love on, the tombstone is he helped that when people reach out and I have the ability to help them, I was always able to help. And to [00:31:00] be that hand reaching down when somebody else got knocked into the dirt, the way hands reached down to me,
[00:31:07]Scott Maderer: [00:31:07] you can find out more about Jeff and all he does over at. Jeff Wald that's w a L d.com. You can also follow him on LinkedIn as Jeff Wald or on Twitter is Jeffrey Wall. Of course I'll have links to all of this over the show notes as well. Jeff, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners?
[00:31:28]Jeff Wald: [00:31:28] The only thing else I would say is, the book I wrote the end of jobs is available on Amazon. We were lucky enough to hit number one in all of Amazon's HR categories. It is a look, Scott deep into the future of work by looking at history, looking at data and talking to the HR leaders that are shaping the future of work.
[00:31:48] And I think it gives a very measured and sober look as to what reality we may face over the next 20 years in the world of work. And always happy to chat with anybody that wants to talk [00:32:00] about the future of work.
[00:32:01] Scott Maderer: [00:32:01] Awesome. Thanks so
[00:32:02] Jeff Wald: [00:32:02] much for being here. Thank you for so much for having me.
[00:32:04]Scott Maderer: [00:32:04] thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.
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