Influence Over Reach

0:00 Josh

I had become a a number on a spreadsheet. And I was absolutely okay with it after three and a half minutes. Because I was pissed for three and a half minutes. I came into this office for 13 years

0:11 JD Dillon

And as I'm walking to the office, I look at the schedule again, and I realize I'm on the wrong page. I'm on the supervisor page. I had successfully promoted myself.

0:30 Sam Rogers

Welcome to Signals and Subtractions.

Mr. JD Dillon is in the co-host chair.

And JD, we've known each other for a while now. And and l although it's his first time here on signals and subtractions we first did our live stream I believe it was like Twine something like in 2016. It was a while ago. Anyway, really glad to have you here now. how do you introduce yourself these days, JD?

0:54 JD Dillon

Well, Sam, thank you so much for having me today. To all the people out there, good morning, good evening, good afternoon, where have you be? I am the author of the Frontline Enablement Playbook. I focus on enabling business outcomes through the performance and enablement of frontline and deskless workers around the world. My entire 25-year career is wrapped around being a member of management of learning and development in support of technology in support of and now.

advising around frontline and deskless performance. So I'm the frontline guy, formerly the guy from Disney, the guy who wears bright shoes at conferences, and now the guy who's helping make every shift count.

1:28 Sam Rogers

And now the guy who's on signals and subtractions, hopefully once a month. And he brought along a friend. Hey Josh. this is my first time meeting Josh Felix. And it's it's great hearing just a little bit from you before the show here. can you give yourself a little bit of an introduction, Josh?

1:45 Josh

Yeah, Sam, first and foremost, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's obviously awesome to be with JD again. I think it's probably been about a year since we've been live on the air.

my name is Josh Felix. I serve as the senior director of professional services at Oxford Global Resources. our focus is professional services that power

Business transformation. And the crazy part is, Sam, I just started at Oxford two days ago. I just

2:08 Sam Rogers

Okay, so

2:10 Josh

landed late last night from my two days of onboarding in Chicago.

2:14 Sam Rogers

Well, I'm really glad to to get you so fresh off of that experience. just for the folks at home, signals and subtractions, every one of us will bring a signal that we're currently watching, a subtraction that we're making. what to watch, what to drop, that's the whole show. we probably won't all agree about everything or say everything the same way, which is what makes it worth your time. and JD

for your frontline enablement perspective, I'd like you to listen carefully to Josh's story. We'll get your take in just a moment. Josh, would you mind giving a little bit of that play-by-play? Let me know a little bit about what came before this, if you wouldn't mind.

2:54 Josh

We're going to take a walk back to April 23rd, 9:30 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. That dreaded meeting lands on your calendar. Your VP, no agenda in the meeting. You reach out and say, How can I prepare for the meeting? we're just gonna have a conversation. I was already mentally prepared coming into this meeting. I knew exactly what was happening.

'Cause I had already been part of nine thirty in the morning Thursdays twice, and I knew what took place. Jumped on the meeting, VP logs in, guess who appears next, Sam? HR Jumps right in, right? I was

3:28 Sam Rogers

was yes.

3:30 Josh

like, this is fantastic. I know why we're all here. well we really appreciate you. Everything I said, guys, if we if all that was the case, then we wouldn't be having this meeting right now.

I had become a name on a spreadsheet or a number on a spreadsheet. And I was absolutely okay with it after three and a half minutes. Because I was pissed for three and a half minutes. Three and a half minutes, I was livid. I came into this office for 13 years excited to serve the front line every single day, passionate about serving the front line, knowing that I was going to take every challenge on and really drive that challenge. But that point, after that three and a half minutes, I took a walk.

picked up the phone, called a mentor of mine, and he said, Josh, he said, when in your life have you ever been paid to do absolutely nothing?

I said, hmm. Never. He said, here's the crazy part. I'm not going to allow you to do that. He goes, here's what you're gonna do for the next month. Monday's your day, Friday's your day. Mow the right side of the lawn on Monday, the left side of the lawn on Friday. But Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, you have to fill your calendar with any meeting you can get. Conversation after conversation.

CEOs, CLOs, chief human resource officers, competitors of the place that you came from, colleagues that you worked with. Every call can have absolutely no agenda. You're having a simple conversation. And you're gonna ask those individuals can I record the conversation? Recorded 64 conversations. I took all 64 conversations and I dumped them into AI tool.

And I said, synthesize this. Tell me what the trends are in every conversation. And the amazing part for me was after the 64 conversations, the trends that I got were exactly what I had been doing for 13 years of

5:18 Sam Rogers

Mm.

5:18 Josh

inviting people to sit on my virtual couch and share the challenges that existed for them and then presenting solutions back to them. Except I wasn't presenting solutions. I was simply listening to the challenges that existed across the globe.

And I sat down and I said, You know what, Josh? You're now faced with a challenge. You now have to solution for yourself. When in your life have you ever been two dimensional? When in your life have you ever been able to live on a piece of paper? And I said, Never. I said, I'm three dimensional. It's just who I am. So I'm gonna pause there because my signal was that I knew I had to do something different. I had to be different.

I had to really move forward. We'll talk about

5:57 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

5:57 Josh

our subtraction coming up.

5:59 Sam Rogers

Yeah, that's fantastic. And also in the chat, thank you, for adding to the chat. great point. Having a mentor to call well in advance of that dreaded Thursday meeting was a a critical setup point there

immediate frenzy of the moment and

6:17 Josh

Right.

6:17 Sam Rogers

hurt and disappointment, like, okay, what do I do next?

how about you, J D? What did you what did you hear in that and how does that line up with the with your signal?

6:26 JD Dillon

One, think it's an important conversation to have and an important story to tell given the challenges people are facing and finding right opportunity or just an opportunity right now. And anyone who follows me on LinkedIn has noticed something for the past five years that about half of my LinkedIn feed is job postings. Because I do what I consider a pretty simple thing.

I scroll job openings and I pull together lists or share individual openings and just drop them on my LinkedIn feed. And I started doing it because we were in the middle of a hiring boom at that point. And I know what happens when organizations start to change priorities and shift decision-making and...

change begins. I know what happens to people who are on the enablement side of the conversation. So it was just my simple way of saying, here is this helpful. And not only here are some opportunities that may fit somebody, but also here's maybe a bit of hope. Like there are things out there, like there are still chances. And I just started, I was not the first to do this. There's a bunch of other people that I list in the postings that I dropped that also post jobs that I kind of echoed their efforts in a different way.

And the reason I still do it is that a lot of people have messaged me or come up to me at events and made reference to those postings and that they were helpful in different ways. And I still remember the first person who ever came up to me and said, Hey, thanks for posting those jobs. I saw one and I applied and I got it.

And it was that moment where I was like, well, I'm just going to keep doing this. And what's cool is that people will now message me with jobs on my side. And they're things that maybe you didn't see or they're not posted on LinkedIn. And I add them into the stuff that I do. So if anyone out there has openings on their team, I'm happy to echo them into the network. Because again, I know how challenging, it can be.

especially in the current marketplace and just the nature of the changing workplace, which takes me to kind of the signal part of my conversation, which is influence is the most important skill in the workplace. And I don't think we properly value that. I think it's hiding underneath a lot of other conversations. One, we continue to talk about, and this is every function does this, We have a seat at the table conversation.

Like things would be different if we had a seat at the table, which I think is the wrong way to look at this, especially because if you're under the HR umbrella, the CHRO or chief people officer is sitting at said table already. So it's not a, it's not a representation challenge. It's something else. And then you add onto that challenge that, you know, I wish the nature of the workplace was that the best idea won. I don't think that's ever really the case.

Organizations make decisions or prioritize different things based on other factors and it's always that you're the expert and you you're hired to do a certain job and you you go in and pitch an idea you would hope that people would just respect that like that's what you do like we should listen to that person.

9:03 Sam Rogers

Mm.

9:03 JD Dillon

Often not the case because other things are in mind or other priorities are above what that idea might be and then you add the AI of it all where

I don't know if anyone's heard this conversation yet or actually had these words said to them. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's increasing the amount of times people are at least thinking, like, why do I need you for this? I can just ask Claude and Claude

9:22 Sam Rogers

Yes.

9:23 JD Dillon

will give me awkwardly formatted information with lines and unnecessary places and many dashes.

if I can find this information differently, if I can construct this, and if I can analyze information differently, if I can just source the multitude of ideas that were scraped off of the internet, do I need someone to offer this idea for me? So you stack all of those considerations together. It creates a world where it's that much harder to move people, to drive change in a direction that you find as value add and to...

shift mindsets and transformation. That's why I come back to this idea. influence is the ultimate workplace skill, your ability to be able to convey information that drives people to action. And that shifts the way people think. And when it comes back to that seat at the table idea, I don't think we need to see at the table, you need everyone at that table on your side, pushing in your direction and believing in your expertise. The only way to do that

is to your ability to influence people, to think differently, to embrace different ideas, and to unlock the potential of what you bring to the conversation. So influence is my signal, and it's the topic of the next e-book that I'm currently writing.

10:31 Sam Rogers

Okay. Well, glad you're writing another book. and now's a good a time as any, JD. I believe you have a specific book that's already available, or maybe two that maybe you could give a quick plug for now with that that little layout. Yes,

yes, here we go.

10:48 JD Dillon

Speaking of book, everyone hold up, Sam?

10:51 Sam Rogers

I d I don't have that one. I have your other one. I should have got it. It's on a shelf right here.

10:55 JD Dillon

That's

okay. First book, the Modern

10:57 Sam Rogers

I know that one.

10:58 JD Dillon

Learning Ecosystem, the website is actually JDwroteaBook.com. So about transforming your approach to learning strategy in an organization. But most recently, the frontline enablement playbook. So if you support a frontline or deskless workforce in industry such as hospitality, food service, grocery, manufacturing, construction, retail, or anywhere else, the 80 % of the world and 2.7 billion people who work in frontline or deskless capacity serve.

This is for you. So it's written for HR, L &D, or operations professionals with the common goal of just helping frontline workers do their best every shift in order to drive outcomes for the organization. 650 pages of storytelling, practical ideas, insights, examples from various industries. And what I'm really excited about 50 other contributing authors shared their perspectives on the story. So we represented

different industries, different roles, different functions in different parts of the world. It's why it's 650 pages. And then also contributing to this story were 12 frontline workers and managers. So I did not want to be a person sitting in an office telling a story about people who do very physically and emotionally challenging work. So I reached out to and interviewed people who are doing the job today and then shared their perspective on what's most important to them and what helps them do their best at every shift So.

Frontlineplaybook.com is where you can check out the book. Is it a sequel to the first book? Yeah, it is. It'll be the two

12:18 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

12:20 JD Dillon

brightest books on your shelf.

12:21 Sam Rogers

Yes, just like JD's shoes. And that came in what when? In May? Like there there wasn't like any big world and society changing event that happened after the release of your second book, unlike with your your first one.

12:35 JD Dillon

Yeah, the fun

is, one, I wrote this book during the pandemic. So kind of similar to the tactics Josh applied to kind of gain perspective. I stopped writing in the middle of 2020, said, is this what the world needs right now? And then went on a listening tour and started to realize, there's actually commonalities between how people are navigating this disruption in the story that I'm working to tell. And that informed this book. And then a funny story, the book came out the day before Chat GPT released publicly.

So it was like, hey, I wrote a book. no. The world just changed. So I ended up writing a 12,000-word addendum to the book that was the, this still makes sense, I swear, And then I was able to both apply AI tactically, written by humans, leveraging different tools, and also talk about the impact and potential for AI when it comes to the frontline workforce in this book. So writing a book right before and then right after the conversation begins,

around AI is interesting because the process was meaningfully different based on this different tool set that I have available to write, you know, in the same amount of time wrote two very different types of books and very different types of projects.

13:40 Sam Rogers

Well, thanks for that. and with this show, Signals and Subtractions, it's not really about AI, it's about the world after. okay, now that we've got all of this, now that we're looking for work or now that we're doing work in the workplace, how things have shifted, what are the things that make sense? What are the things that don't anymore? And for my signal this week, I wanted to bring

Something that I've been observing over the last year or so, but it's kind of flipped lately, which is expertise inversion, is what I'm calling it. a year ago, oftentimes leadership would have a person, their person, who would do the Claude interface thing, the chat GPT thing, who would be that that kind of human layer for them to be able to

curate information in a similar kind of workflow as they had always done. And now that's not so much the case. Now more and more we're seeing folks who maybe don't have a a senior title. They don't have seniority in the organization. But those who really have solid AI skills and who are able to move quickly and provide information to the business

they're able to kind of bypass some of the usual structure of the organization. And it's it's my premise, this is fresh still, that that's some of the flattening that we're starting to see in organizations, is related to not just that you can ask Claude a question, but that the people in your organization, oftentimes people who are maybe not in the management levels, but on the front lines of work.

Can get the answers to what they need, more importantly, ask better questions and establish processes within the organization that are still kind of in that shadow mode, as so often happens. Like there's the rules of how we do it, and then there's what happens on a daily basis. Unfortunately, that that tension will probably always exist. but AI has definitely changed that dynamic in some important ways.

So who gets listened to what gets that influence that you're talking about, JD? I've noticed just in the last few months changing in some real ways with some of my clients. from our signals portion to the subtractions portion

And check back in here with you, Josh. mid story. I'd love to hear a bit more.

16:01 Josh

Yeah, so that story cusps picks back up at the end of the sixty four conversations and synthesizing through what my focus was gonna be. and my mentor said, Okay, well the next step that you have, and this is a Monday morning, is I wanna review your resume. and I was like, I don't have one of those.

16:18 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

16:19 Josh

I've I've been at the same place for 13 years. Like I wasn't planning on this day to ever come. Like I I was serving the front line for the rest of my life. That was my goal. That was my focus. That was my desire. And he said, Well, we need to create a resume. And I said, You know, Matt, that's an interesting request. I said, Okay, I'm gonna sit down.

And I started working on a resume. By the time lunch rolled around, I deleted the file. I was done. I was like, I am not creating a resume. I'm just not doing it. So my subtraction was the resume's gone. I need to stand out. And how can I stand out? And that afternoon, I took everything I had thought about that morning.

Everything I was trying to put on that document. And I said, how do I present this out to the world? How do I let them know who I am? How do I think about that in that three dimensional aspect of what I do? And I said, You know what I'm gonna do? I'm using AI and I'm building a website. And that's where TheFutureWithJosh.com was developed. And that's turned into my resume.

But the biggest challenge that I had is that this world we live in is driven by this three letter thing in the recruiting world called the ATS.

17:31 Sam Rogers

Mm-hmm.

17:32 Josh

The applicant tracking system that is really the backbone of every job posting that's ever out there. And how do you break down that door when you don't have the resume? and I said, I'm reaching out to people the same way that I reached out to the 64 people and saying, This is who I am, this is the URL, this is my resume. Let me know if we're interested in having a conversation.

Those that said, hey, you have to have a resume, I knew that was never going to be the right place for me. Cause

18:01 Sam Rogers

Mm-hmm.

18:02 Josh

they're too bogged down in thinking that they have to use technology, which they truly don't need. Go out, recruit, find the people that fit the need that you have as a business. Don't rely on thousands of AI generated resumes that somebody literally took a job posting.

and just redid their resume for that job posting to come through the ATS to be reviewed by AI and all of a sudden you start missing out on great people.

Because the model might not be trained on how you think or how the organization thinks or how that leader thinks, Go out and recruit for the people. Allow people to be different. My mentor said, you know what, this reminds me of back in the day when people used to go to Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme and buy like dozens of donuts, right? And pay and

18:46 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

18:46 Josh

tape the resume to the middle the inside of the box and stop at different offices and drop them off just to try to get somebody's attention. But that's who I am.

And it became this, I don't know, JD and I don't like using this word, portfolio. I didn't need a portfolio. This was real work. I was showing the real work that I was doing within the site. And the site lives on now. And that was what was so exciting. That immediately I had three job offers. Literally within a week and a half. The amazing part about those offers was the first two, I got all the way to the senior conversations. They were quick, right?

Once they find somebody they really want, the process moves quick. That's when you know that you're really heading down this right path. Got to the senior conversations. Both senior leadership conversations, Sam, ended with saying, I can't wait for you to start so I can learn all the secrets of where you came from.

19:35 Sam Rogers

Wow.

19:36 Josh

And you know, I received two offer letters from both those companies.

19:39 Sam Rogers

Yeah, well with a layup like that I'm not surprised.

19:41 Josh

Yep. And I sat down and I said, you know what, that's not who I am. I don't want you to hire me so I can come and give you the secrets of where I came from. I want you to hire me because you want who I am that helped drive success at the business I was at. I literally sent them the exact same email back saying, Thank you, but no thank you. And this is why. One never reached back out.

The other one was literally probably two and a half, three minutes after she received the email. Saying that's not what we meant, that's not what we meant. No, that's exactly what you meant, right? The third wanted me to travel 90% of the time. I'm just not in a season of life that I could do that. So turn both all three of those down. And then all of a sudden I was at the point of having a fourth which was feeling pretty good. But then the fifth came over the top rope.

And it was just something about everybody that I spoke to that was so genuine. They weren't worried about what I brought, the secrets or what the secret sauce was. They wanted to know that I was gonna fit, that I was gonna make a difference, that I was gonna be confident in the discussions that I could have. And I could help them as an organization really think about modernizing the operation, the ability to scale with confidence.

across a multitude of disciplines

And that was what drew me in because it all resonated back to the sixty four conversations. Now the real win, is that I've now turned this into the unplanned sabbatical boot camp. And I'm going to serve ten individuals starting in September to really walk them through this journey of how to create a brand for themselves, how to really think about that job hunt.

I said ten I have seventy six people that have applied to be part of the boot camp.

21:17 Sam Rogers

Wow. Nice.

21:18 Josh

Telling me

their story, but I want to find individuals that are driven, that are hungry, but hungry for the right reasons. People

21:24 Sam Rogers

Mm-hmm.

21:25 Josh

that were pissed like me for three minutes, but grabbed their bootstraps and stood up and said, you know what? I'm gonna tackle this head on. I'm not gonna feel sorry for myself. I'm not gonna allow others to feel sorry Somebody that wants to create a network around themselves and really drive it. So my subtraction and I know people out there are saying that's not gonna work.

Get rid of the resume. It's two-dimensional. It truly doesn't tell the story of who you are. Find something, and I'm not saying it has to be a website. I'm not saying it has to be a portfolio. But find something that tells the story about who you are, who you're going to be within that organization, and how you're going to make that difference. So that's my subtraction, Sam. I know I'm probably getting darts thrown at me from the HR world.

22:06 Sam Rogers

Well, maybe so, but not here. So in episode three of signals and subtractions, Christine Rodrigues came on talking as well about job search and very much in alignment with what you're talking about. I mean, when when a job description opens and suddenly there's like

In the span of a week, 1200 applicants. whether it's AI sorting through it or a human sorting through it, it's the same issue. And being able to cut through that and play on your own terms rather than play the game that doesn't really work out well for less than 1% of the of those applicants.

is a bold thing to say and and I'm glad that you're saying it here. go ahead, JD, tell us about your subtraction for this week.

22:49 JD Dillon

I'd just like to add, I have an affinity for this perspective on shaping path and shaping opportunity because it was a lesson I learned really early on and I didn't necessarily mean to learn it. Cause I came from the school of thought professionally that you do a real good job and you out compete everybody else to climb the ladder. And when you do a real good job, they promote you and then they promote you again and they promote you again. And that was what I thought career development was.

when I started working.

I got my first job at a movie theater in my hometown and when I moved to college I wanted to pick up where I left off and I was promoted quickly to supervisor at home But when I got the job in Orlando, they hired me but they didn't keep me on as a supervisor

And I understood because they didn't know who I was. And this was the fourth busiest movie theater in the world. So I OK, fine. I'm not a supervisor right away. And the way that we designated supervisor staff, we have these shoulder epaulettes on our button up shirts and the staff had multiple colors and supervisors had greens. So I had to take off the greens and put back on the multicolored ones. And I bristled at it. But, you know, OK. So then I went on for months working as a staff member and very quickly they started to realize I knew how to do stuff because I was

the supervisor somewhere else. And it went from, okay, it's an opportunity to stretch, stretch assignment, right? Like come in early, stay late, special project supervisor called out, I stepped in those types of things. And eventually started to wear on me because they're not promoting me. There's not an opportunity. There's no room. I'm not getting paid to do this stuff. Where am I going here? And then one Saturday night, really busy.

the supervisor called out sick. So I'm managing the busiest concessions and on earth, literally, and I am running for hours. And around nine o'clock that night, I snapped because I was just not doing this anymore. Most people say they leave, they quit, like they walk out. This is it. Go get a better job somewhere else. I did not quit. I went to the back of the concession stand. I ripped off the staff eplets.

And I put on the green eplets that I'd been carrying in my back pocket the entire time as a bit of a silent protest that how dare you take this away from me. So I put my gear back on and then I just went back to work expecting to be called out. No one said anything. I was okay. I came in the next day dressed as a supervisor. No one said anything.

24:58 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

24:59 JD Dillon

It's like, all right, so this is what we're doing. And it went on for like two weeks. I just kept coming in dressed like a supervisor. No one said anything. Now remember I'm good at the job.

So if I was bad at the job, someone would have stepped in, because then I would just be impersonating a good employee. And then I came in one day to get the staff schedule, and I wasn't on the schedule.

And I was like, uh-oh, I have to go to the office now. Like, here it is. We're going to have a conversation. And as I'm walking to the office, I look at the schedule again, and I realize I'm on the wrong page. I'm on the supervisor page. I had successfully promoted myself.

25:28 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

25:29 JD Dillon

So the one caveat, though, anyone out there, especially if you're in HR, you might be thinking, when you promote yourself, there's no paperwork. No paperwork means no pay raise. So what had happened was,

The manager who made the schedule saw me wearing supervisor gear, assumed I missed a memo and just moved me on the schedule. So now everyone thinks that someone else promoted me, but the company doesn't know that yet. So I waited for a couple of weeks. I'm not gonna get in the way of this. I'm gonna keep this going.

25:59 Sam Rogers

Now's

when you get the popcorn at the movie theater and say, Ooh, what's happening?

26:03 JD Dillon

I'm real good at popcorn, real good at popcorn. And I wait a couple of weeks and eventually there's a moment where a coordinator on the staff is getting promoted to manager and she's doing the thing new managers do, which is go around and ask people how they can make their lives better. So I cornered her one day and I said, hi, remember a couple of weeks ago when I got promoted to supervisor and she said, yeah. And I'm thinking, no, you don't. It didn't happen.

26:24 Sam Rogers

Ha ha ha.

26:25 JD Dillon

Well, there's an issue. My paycheck hasn't changed.

I don't think I have my supervisor rates or something must have gone wrong. She said, I'll get that fixed for you. And I said, you're going to be a great manager. And not only did she give me my pay bump for being a supervisor, she backpaid me to the day that I decided that I got promoted. So it's a kooky story. I still carry the eplets. They're sitting on the shelf right behind me right now as this kind of learning moment of

Okay, this is kind of a wacky way to take ownership of how you're going to represent yourself and how you're going to carve your own path rather than waiting for someone else to give you a path forward.

27:01 Sam Rogers

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

27:03 JD Dillon

And it was, you know, most people can't pull that off. kind of just snuck in the middle of a gap in the kind of system. But I find that over and over again, you know, if you follow the system, you go where the system takes you. If you figure out how to break your way through the system while still doing a good job.

Right. Still have to be good at what you do. It's just an influencing example of how to take what you're earning as opposed to waiting for the world to hand it to you, which again, I wish the best idea always won, but that's simply not the case coming all the way around. Not exactly related to my subtraction for our conversation, but I think it's an important one, especially in a world where you see a lot of creators burning out, like people who are trying to feed the machine,

And now with AI, the easy ease with which you can post dozens of pieces of content or slop a day just

27:52 Sam Rogers

Yeah.

27:52 JD Dillon

to feed the algorithm, just to try to get maximum exposure, just to try to put yourself out there where I've realized over time, it's not about finding thousands of people to listen to you. It's about finding the right people to listen to you. And there was a point, especially as a regular speaker of conferences where I programmed.

And I picked topics, again, topics where I had some insight to share and there was going to be valuable conversation. But I, made decisions and prioritize things based on the biggest room. right. The biggest audience, most exposure, which is good. There is a branding element to it and awareness element to it. So there's some value to that, but I've over time realized like, I'd rather have a conversation with the right 10 people than the wrong thousand people. I think that's beneficial both as a business to say, you know, I

depending on what products or services that you're coming to market with, you need to find the right audience, you need the right thing for the right people, not the wrong thing to everybody. And think it's, really hard to be something to everyone. And I think that's where organizations can make mistakes and can start to engage in unnatural acts is when you don't know what that purpose is, what makes you different and who you provide value to, cause you can't provide value to everybody. So

Whether it's you're writing a blog or a newsletter or you're looking for new opportunities and trying to shape your brand and awareness of the value that you provide, how do you tilt in the direction of finding the right audience and the right people to have a conversation with versus just throwing content into the wind? Because the algorithm's not working for you. You have to own the conversation.

29:20 Sam Rogers

That's very true. Yeah. The the algorithm is is using us just as much as we're using it.

Thanks so much for bringing that here today. And for my subtraction this will come back around to what we're talking about today.

In the AI world, both the floor and the ceiling have moved just in the last couple weeks in an important way. I think that affects how we work. Some of the newest, flashiest, new and improved models are showing some signs of wear in that they're not actually better. They're just newer.

okay, it's the it's the new and improved thing, but does it actually do what I need it to do better? that ceiling has gotten a little shaky, but also at the same time, the floor the quality of responses that you can get from LLMs in general.

Because there's been such a race, especially from lately open weights models, it's now maybe not permissible in your workplace. I'm not saying that Microsoft Copilot is just as good as everything else. It isn't. But there is now a raising floor on what you can get from those kinds of systems and how it is that you use them.

Now makes more of a difference than the model that you are picking. So for this week's subtraction, I'm saying don't worry about the model so much anymore. There are several good answers. There's not just one. asking for what is the best system. I think all of us you know, coming from the learning and development world, you're you tire of the question: what's the best LMS? You know, the best.

For what? Like the best for what I'm trying to do may be very different than what someone else is trying to do. There's now a general intelligence floor that's good enough for most of what we want to do. And the workflow itself is what makes more leverage, more difference than the model that you would be picking. How it is that you manage that context, as we've talked about in previous episodes.

makes more of a difference than ever. So we can actually drop the question of what is the best model and focus on the work that we're doing and how it is that we are enabling the best workflow for where we're at, for the the company that we're at, how we're managing that context, the specific tasks that we're executing against.

With looking for work and and bringing it back to Josh's wonderful success story, where you you really only need to find one. And when you have options, when you've got the first offer, the second offer, the third offer, the fourth one's good, but this fifth one is the one that I I want to take. that same methodology works great with AI options as well.

32:15 Josh

Yeah.

32:16 Sam Rogers

They don't need to be the same to be useful to me. Having more than one.

means that I can then pick the one that works best for me.

32:23 Josh

Yeah. And I and you Sam, it's so interesting, you know, when you mention it, I think like pre-COVID, we were all in offices, right? And you had a question and you either went down the hall or you looked in the cube farm. And it's kind of like a model. You know, you just you ask the question of whoever wasn't on the phone or whoever's red light wasn't lit up, who had the green light on, right, on top of the cubicle. It's kind of the same thing that we're doing right now. But

People are looking at models being like, I need the best. Well, you didn't always get the best. Like it just didn't exist. Find the right solution for your priorities. And

If people start thinking about that, what's the priority that I have when I'm utilizing AI? What am I looking to accomplish? And thinking about those solutions, it's kinda like when I was in the office and JD was down the hall, but he was on a call and I went to somebody else. Like you just think about it in a different way.

Like, just use it, right? But the one thing I'm gonna ask is please stop getting taking the answer you get in Copilot and putting in a chat GPT and then taking that answer and put asking Claude if it's a good answer, and then you know, taking Claude's answer and putting it like that's where the mess just comes. Like just choose one. Choose

33:29 Sam Rogers

Yeah. Yeah.

33:31 Josh

one. They're all

33:31 JD Dillon

I

33:31 Josh

good.

33:32 JD Dillon

I mean,

33:32 Sam Rogers

And and there are

other ways to collaborate. I I have a multiagenic harness that's free and open source. There's there's other ways to to go about it. Yeah.

33:37 Josh

Right. But stop copying and pasting. Yeah.

33:41 JD Dillon

at very,

very least copy, remove the formatting and then paste like just little steps. But for me, it comes back to some conversations I've had with with executive teams that people are just less and less interested in chasing AI and more and more interested in not losing sense of purpose. And the question

34:00 Sam Rogers

Yes.

34:01 JD Dillon

I'm using in a lot of conversations now is what do we really do here? Or what do

34:04 Sam Rogers

Yes.

34:05 JD Dillon

you really do here? And it's

And there's plenty of examples of this in the corporate space right now of organizations that have lost that clear sense of purpose and what made them different and what made them attractive to customers and employees to start. And they started following others and they started using strange terms like AI first company, which I don't know what that means.

34:26 Sam Rogers

Ha ha.

34:27 JD Dillon

and there's a ton of examples of companies ripping out AI systems and stopping projects because it clashed with how the work was done.

And that wouldn't have happened if they had that kind of cornerstone identity of this is what we are. This is what we do. This is our purpose. And every decision is made in service of that. And if a technology or a process change or whatever it is, a new product clashes with that purpose, we either don't do it or we have to reassess the purpose. And that's the epic brands that a lot of people and companies look up to. That's what they're really good at is Trader Joe's is a great example.

Have you ever seen a self checkout and Trader Joe's? No. Have you ever seen in-store media and a Trader Joe's? No. Why? Because they are ruthlessly committed to what they are, their position in the marketplace, and they have the most profitable square footage in the grocery space. Not trying to grow and be as big and bad as some of the other competitors, because they know what they are and they know how they got there and they know what it means to innovate and transform around that purpose.

And I think that's the path forward in the AI conversation, because it's real easy. when you're getting demos of technology, you're trying to make expensive career-defining decisions when it comes to implementing different systems is if you root it in purpose and you can answer the question, what do I really do and what do we really do here, you'll make a better decision.

35:45 Sam Rogers

Well, that's a a great layup for next week when we'll be talking about how it is that we express intent and keep that as a as a through line with some more AI-specific practices. next week Lee Rodrigues back in the co-host chair with a special guest to explore that. Thank you so much, JD. people don't know, they ask what JD stands for. It is job description.

Please follow

36:07 JD Dillon

Yes.

36:07 Sam Rogers

his his LinkedIn and you'll see plenty of job descriptions. And thank you, JD, for all that you've done to help others find the work that they need and enable frontline workers to really do well, not just from their role, but also helping it be seen, what it is that they're doing and advocating for them. thanks, Josh, for coming along. I really appreciate

the personal story here and how well you tell it. it sounds like Oxford is very lucky to have you.

JD and Josh, wishing you the best of luck and thanks so much. yes, every shift counts. So it does.

Thanks so much, guys. Take care.