How to Future Proof Your Career with Jake Woodward (55)
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Chris: In this episode of Great Practices, I'm joined by Jake Woodward, a community builder and AI educator that draws on over 25 years of experience leading product and technology teams listen in as Jake talks about his very personal experience of what it's like to find a job in this economy and how AI is changing the job search.
You'll also discover where most of us are on the adoption of AI scale. Hint, it's pretty low, and a couple of areas that we can focus on that will make a big impact in our day-to-day work.
Plus, Jake discusses two things you should be doing today to set yourself up for success in the future and find out what Legos and superpowers have to do with not getting blindsided with the change in employment.
[00:01:00] we'd like to welcome you to this episode of Great Practices and today.
We're going to get real. You know, we're not talking about PMO or project management great practices, but rather what it's gonna take to survive in an AI fueled economy. Where it feels like the employment ground is giving away beneath our feet as the rules of engagement change. Now, Jake Woodward is our guest today.
Jake has experienced the ground disappearing beneath his feet firsthand and is here to share his experience with us. His tagline is, I was the canary. Now I'm the cartographer. I helped disrupted professionals [00:02:00] build what comes next. So Jake spent years playing by the rules, doing the work, staying loyal, hitting the goals until the system that he trusted collapsed and made it painfully clear that it no longer works for people like him.
So after rebuilding from the ground up, he now helps disrupted professionals stop chasing approval, walk away from broken systems, and build stability on their own terms. Jake, welcome to Great Practices.
Jake: Thanks so much for having me, Chris. I really appreciate it.
Chris: Yeah, man. We're looking forward to the conversation today. And, uh, just start off with, let's let our listeners know just a little bit about yourself and, uh, what you do.
Jake: Y Yeah, thanks so much. So I've, uh, been in product and technology for over 25 years. Started off as a developer, progress through the engineering and. Product management world, uh, kind of reached the level of, uh, VP about a decade ago, uh, and have had a lot of [00:03:00] career success, uh, in mostly, healthcare, some FinTech SaaS.
and, uh, yeah, I got laid off, uh, a year and a half ago, and it's been, quite the ride since then. to, uh, put it mildly.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you made it what, to senior, senior VP of product, basically. Right. So I mean, that's, that's a high. That's a high climb up the corporate ladder there. so here you are. How different is the job search, you know, this time around? 'cause I'm assuming you've, you know, you've looked for jobs throughout the career and you've done, you know, different positions and moved from different companies.
But what, um, what's the difference this time around? What is that looking like?
Jake: Yeah, it's nothing like what it used to be like. Uh, you know, it's, uh, for anyone who's gone through this, and I've talked to so many people who were in similar situations, even in different, you know, phases of their career where people are just. Ever since COVID happened, you're getting this, uh, now that everyone can [00:04:00] kind of work from home and a lot of the people in this industry are gonna kind of work from home. Uh, what's happening now is just the competition for jobs has just increased so dramatically. You're having AI write resumes, AI read resumes. You are submitting resumes into a black hole. If you're not one of the first applicants to submit good luck. If you haven't managed to really build out a network of real humans that know you and can vouch for you and can help connect you with, with, with roles, good luck. It's just like looking back at the things that I have done wrong in my career, uh, like man, I really should have, uh, worked on my networking more. I really should have, uh. Built some things that were mine as opposed to, you know, investing all of my time into the companies that I was working for. Because when they hand you your box with your stapler in it, um, you know, you, you, you can't take much with you. Uh, so, you know, and I, I wish I would've, um, had a little bit [00:05:00] more foresight to see where things were headed, um, so that I wasn't caught on my heels the way that I was.
Chris: Well, but you know what though? Jake is like, like we started out, you, you played by the rules. You know, those, those were the rules. So, so, so the rules have, have clearly changed and, um. And to your point, the, the first thing you talked about, about the fact that, oh, you know, these remote jobs, it's like, hey, that's great man.
We can do, we can work remotely. And you know, that's fantastic. But it opens up so much competition. Like you, like you said, you know, I mean, it's like now you're just not, competing with a million people in your, in your hometown, but you know, almost globally at this point. So what a, what a game changer that is as far as looking for a job.
Jake: Yeah, it's been, uh, it's been quite the wild ride for sure. Um, you know, I'm up over, uh, 2000. In, uh, job applications over the past year and a half. Um, I was one of those people who, who was on LinkedIn and had this desperate plea, like you see [00:06:00] on LinkedIn sometimes
being like, I, I've submitted over 1500 applications at that point,
and I'm not finding a thing.
Like, what can I do? Uh. Business Insider, uh, uh, journalist from Business Center saw my, uh, post and interviewed me and published a, a piece on me in their online, online edition. And, uh, went kind of mini viral. Didn't really plan on spending my 15 minutes of fame that way, but, um, you know, hey, whatever works
right.
And, uh, yeah, yeah. So it's really enabled me to. See that I might never work again in a nine to five corporate setting as a product leader, I
think that I've seen enough where even if I could get a job in that role tomorrow,
I see where it's headed and that same role that I've been in for the past couple decades. Is completely transforming into something that we're not gonna recognize in a couple years. And I'm excited to be able to help other people who are gonna go through that same thing because of [00:07:00] ai. We're gonna have a lot of people who their, their roles are gonna be heavily transformed and need to know what to do, and I didn't. So if I can be kind of one of the first people disrupted by this, that can kind of help other people, uh, figure out what to do when this happens to them, I'm happy to do it.
Chris: Well, here's the thing. You have been anything less than idle, uh, during this time period, you know, so besides, besides looking for a job, what else, what else have you been doing, you know, during this time period while you've been searching for that, for that next opportunity.
Jake: I've been building like crazy. Uh, I've try, I've been trying to spend as much time working with ai, uh, as possible and not in a, um. Not in playtime mode. I,
you know, I've been exploring different things. I've been working with, uh, video generation and image generation and audio generation and agents and open claw and, uh, vibe coding, all these different elements, [00:08:00] but it's all for the lens of learning and building and trying to figure out what I can do, um, to. Provide some type of value to the people that need it. Um, and, you know, I've been building my own, um, community platform, uh, and a whole bunch of other things, uh, and just trying to, you know, have, have some consulting work on the side as well that's helping to pay some bills right now. Um, as we kind of like, you know, keep moving, but it's been, um, oh, I, I, I wrote a book, uh,
Chris: yeah, by the way.
Jake: Yeah, by the way. right. Uh, disrupted. Disrupted to Disruptor, available on Amazon. Uh, but it's basically a, the, the, the story of what to do when this happens to you and, uh, not, not be the victim, but to, uh, take agency of your, of your career and, uh, and of, and of, of your life, and kind of how to navigate that in a meaningful way.
Chris: Yeah, and I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not pushing a book, but this is a good book. I did order it and it's disrupted dis to [00:09:00] disruptor, the Professional's Guide to Reinvention and the AI Economy, and it is eye-opening. Um, you know, I I just like the fact that, you know, you kind of laid out, uh, what all these transformations are over a period of time and how you can prepare for it and how we should be preparing for it.
So it is, it is very good, nice assessment tool that's, you know, that's in there. and so yeah, it's good. It's good, it's good quality stuff based upon where we are now. So what I'm hearing you say is, is would you effectively say you've probably spent thousands of hours on AI over this, over this period of time now, right?
Jake: Yeah, my, my calculation has me well over 2000 hours of hands-on building in the past 18 months. Uh,
that's between six and eight hours a day every day, doing something meaningful with it. So, yeah, I've, uh, um, I'm well in the weeds.
Chris: Well, that's what I want to tap into then for the rest of this conversation, um, is, you know, we all say it doesn't matter what our profession is. You know, we all say, oh yeah, I use ai, um, I use [00:10:00] Gemini Chat, GPT, perplexity, whatever that is. Right. Um, on a scale of one to 10, where do you think that most of us are, you know, on the use of ai?
Jake: Yeah, from what I can gather, I think most people are probably at a two or a three on that scale. I, I think that a lot of people have a lot of room to grow.
Um, and part of it is there's no instruction manual with this stuff. It's like someone just dumped an entire, you know, bin of Legos on a table and said, go, go build something. Uh, like you kind of, if you don't know what you're doing, you kind of need some help. And, um, every time there's a new feature, you know, released by one of these, uh, you know, model makers. Uh, there's no instruction manual for like, how the average everyday person should put that to work for them. Um, so people have to kind of figure it out on, on their own and there's really not a lot of, uh, you know, clear cut ways to get to that end point.
Chris: [00:11:00] I love that Lego example because that is exactly what it is. 'cause I'm thinking back, it's like, oh, you know, like when Microsoft Word and Excel and PowerPoint, when they would come out, they have that big, thick book. You know, the user manual that. Go with it, right? And be like, oh man, let's just, let's dig into this and see what the capabilities are and all this kind of stuff and take a path through.
There is nothing like that. I mean, it's all over the place right now about what the potential is. Um, so what, what do you see most people using it for today, you know, in the workplace and on their job? What's, what's the most common use cases?
Jake: I think you're having people use it as a glorified search engine for
the most part. Um, they're, they're using it to help them write emails. They're some of the most useful things that I've seen getting a lot of traction in most companies is just the AI meeting notes and things like
that, and detecting action items and being able to do things. That wouldn't have scaled previously. For example, like in the [00:12:00] PMO world, if you're, um, writing some type of report that needs to go to a large audience, um, what would be better? One report that goes to everybody or custom tailored reports that are written specifically for the audience that that is reading it, that's tailored to what they care about. Like you would say the latter, but the, the, the reason the letter hasn't happened historically is who has time for that?
Right, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna write 50 different customized emails, but when you can tailor, an AI setup to know who needs what, and you just write the one, the report one time and say, customize this for my audience and press a button.
That's an example of a way that you could get that level of quality. Now, whether or not you would do that example or not in, in real life, I, I'm not gonna advocate one way or the other, but it's, it's an example.
Chris: so what it sounds like is like probably most of us are using it as a glorified administrative assistant. Is, is kind of what we're, we're probably doing with that. You know, if we're down at that two to three level, [00:13:00] um.
So, so let's say, let's say that we do recognize that we're maybe a, you know, a two or a three on, on that scale of usage, you know, as far as how we're personally using it, um, with just like a little bit of training or learning what can, or what could and should we be using AI for?
What could we do to maybe, you know, almost double it to get us up to like a five or a six as far as usage goes?
Jake: Yeah, I think that, you know, information has always been at our fingertips with Google, right? You can always kind of find what you're looking for, but you have to dig sometimes. AI is phenomenal. At research and, uh, I, I think not enough people are using the deep research functionality of these different models.
If you have any type of need for anything, uh, you can use deep research and it is really fantastic at not only gathering all the information that you might need, but synthesizing it. In meaningful ways and [00:14:00] working with it in that capacity. I, I think that people have only scratched a surface of what can be done with, uh, automations, um, and, um, automated workflows.
So taking repetitive tasks that you might do daily or hourly or, or on a regular basis and, and automating those, you don't even have to need to do it, um, anymore. Um, you know, there's just. An entire world of possibilities out there that people are only scratching the surface on. And if and if your job is to sit behind a computer and produce some type of output, I would encourage people to start thinking through. How would I automate my entire job if I wanted to just sit back in a chair and watch an agent do my job for me, what would that look like knowing that, okay, it probably can't do all of it,
but what could it do And it could probably do today with current functionality way more of your job than you probably give it credit for. Um, [00:15:00] and I think that it, the quicker that people can start to understand that, okay, it's eventually going to be able to do x. Um, if you can help it do X or at least understand how that can be automated, uh, you'll be able to increase your value, um, to your organization and then upskill yourself so that those skills become more valuable out, out outside of that role.
Chris: Love it. It's, it's just, I was, you made me think about that. What was that book? The four Hour Work Week? You know, maybe it, uh, if he rewrites it now, it'd be like the two hour work week, something like that. You know,
Jake: Oh yeah, for sure.
Chris: how much time can be, you know, how much time can be saved there.
Jake: That, that, that's really interesting because I, I think about the movie office space and, and, and other movies that have made fun of corporate culture and all these people are like, I think, think about that scene from that movie where there's like, they interview the one guy who's like, what's your job?
And he's like, well, I. Take the requirements from the customers and I bring them to the engineers
Chris: Yeah.
Jake: and he just goes in circles about like how that's his job
and that's what he does. And when you stop back and think about it, like [00:16:00] business is overloaded with all this bloat, and I think that this, you know, um. This AI revolution that's in front of us is gonna help, I guess, consolidate some of that. But the, the, the negative aspect of it is it's going to mean that we require less people to do some of this work. Uh, and then what do people do next when they find themselves on the other side of it?
Chris: Yeah. So I'm gonna zero in on the two words that you said that would be at least a place that you could go from a two or three up to a five or six, um, dig into deep research. You know, that's a good term to look up and leverage and, you know, I mean, here's the deal. You, you go to YouTube and you just. You watch these tutorials and you watch the possibilities of what they do, and then you could figure it out, you know, from there.
So that's a good place to start. And then, like you're saying, automated workflows. So that gets it beyond, you know, just an administrative assistant, uh, that can, you know, look up cool stuff for you or, you know, a glorified search agent. So that's
Jake: That's right. Yep.
Chris: Um. [00:17:00] So let's, let's, let's talk about the project management space and the PMO space for just a little bit.
Like, let's say, let's say somebody has amped it up to a five or a six. What would that look like? Um, within A PMO or project management space? What could be done? What's the future look like there?
Jake: Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, weekly status reports are mostly automated at that point. AI is pulling from the tools that everyone else is using. It's synthesizing progress. It's, um, detecting flags and, and, and, and is flagging, or it's flagging risks. Um, you know, but I think that people are still need to add that human judgment layer.
That's not something that is. Fully automated. Um, I think that, that the risk management process, um, becomes a lot more proactive. I think that, you know, um, AI can continuously scan the project data, um, and surface things that might not be. Uh, easily evident to [00:18:00] human eyes. Um, it's gonna be able to detect themes that might be a little more buried so you can uncover new insights that you, that you weren't seeing before. Um, you know, I think that resource planning beca, uh, becomes a lot, a lot easier. Um, I think that, uh, as I mentioned in my earlier example, I think stakeholder communication can be, uh, personalized at scale, which I think could be, uh, pretty valuable. So I, I, I think that it's, um, there's a lot of room for improvement, um, or, or ways that AI can be leveraged to, give you superpowers.
That's kind of all the way I've kind of looked at it, is that you can do the job without the superpowers
or you can use the superpowers that AI can can provide to you.
Chris: So it sounds like we're almost at the, you know, we're almost at the point now, going back to your Lego illustration earlier, or example, you know, the Legos are on the table. These Legos are amazing and they're colorful and they bright and they can do all kinds of great things, but you still kind of need somebody to put them together.
Right? But [00:19:00] once they're put together, watch out. 'cause they're gonna go do, they're gonna go do what they're gonna do,
Jake: Exactly. Yeah, that, that, that's, yep, that's right.
Chris: Um, so let's just say, you know, you mentioned a couple things, deep research, automated workflows, you know, kind of going down the path. What does someone, where does someone even start to really, you know, use ai? Like what resources would you recommend? What path could they go down in order to really take it to the next level and not just putting in, you know, prompts and that kind of stuff?
Jake: YouTube is a gold mine.
Uh, I am there all the time. Whenever I need information on something, it is the first place I go. Uh, and I don't have to pay for a course or, uh, or paid access to a community. Uh, everything is on YouTube. Um, it's a gold mine, so if there's something that you're, you're interested in doing, there's likely going to be some type of tutorial on YouTube.
And if you don't know what to search for, have [00:20:00] AI search for it for you.
Chris: It's.
Jake: Just go to go to Gemini and say, uh, Hey Gemini, I'm looking for a video on this topic that teaches me this and that, and it will go to find it for you and give you the best three options.
Chris: Yeah. No, it is, it is, it is crazy that way. I, I, you know, I've, I've taken, I I, I've actually paid for some courses, like on Udemy and that kind of stuff, just 'cause, you know, there's like a flow and they're not, they're not expensive at all, you know, you know, they're 20 or $30 or something like that. But it's, at least, you know, it's, it is a kind of a flow that you could follow and it builds upon it and that kind of stuff.
But you're, you're absolutely right. You know, just, just watch a 30 minute. What are the capabilities of, of, of AI and whatever the platform is that you're using or the, you know, the agent that you're using, it's just, it's eye-opening. What could be done there?
Jake: For.
Chris: so at, at the beginning you had mentioned a couple of things we're gonna kind of maybe get away from AI and just talk about career management in general. Um, when you look back over your career, what do you [00:21:00] wish that you had done more of or done differently? You know, now where you are at based upon what you know now.
What, what would you have done differently there?
Jake: Um hmm. I think I would've spent more time. Building actual relationships, relationships with people. Um, I think that a lot of my relationships and connections that I've had over the years are, have, have ended up being very superficial. Um, and, you know, I have a lot of connections on LinkedIn, but not many people that I talk to, uh, as, as you know, as peers. Um, I would've spent more time cultivating that. Um, I also wouldn't have. Given so much blind faith in just expecting that if I start my career in this area, that I'm going to be able to retire from this in x number of years and have, uh, you know, this perfect arc of, uh, starting, uh, a career and being [00:22:00] able to retire from that same career.
Um, I, you know, with the, with the pace of technology. Um, you know, and how fast it, it, it progresses. I wish I would've, um, diversified myself a little more. Um, and the reality is, is I should have kind of seen this coming. Uh, it, it, you know, it's like this was inevitably, this was inevitably going to happen and I wish I would've, uh, spent time, um, betting on myself sooner and not only doing it because I was kind of forced to.
Chris: Yeah. I lo I, I love it. Those are some very profound lessons that you have learned and shared. If, if I, if I could share an experience that I went through, 'cause I was in your, your shoes, you know, many years ago. we were on vacation and my boss called and he said, you know, hey, I got some good news.
I got some bad news. And uh, I said, oh, let's go with the good news. He says, the good news is, is you know, you could take a longer vacation. I was like, oh, that's fantastic, thank you. I said, what's the bad news? He says, well, you could take a real long vacation because the [00:23:00] company went out of business. So, you know, I got two small kids.
I'm at the most expensive place on Earth at Disney World, and I'm like, man, I gotta come back and I gotta. I gotta find a job. And to your point, I didn't do a good job of staying connected with people either. And I was like, I, I was, you know, picking up the phone and like, Hey, this is Chris. I, I know I haven't talked to you for 10 years, but I, I need something.
You know? And it's like, Hey, oh. Oh yeah, you got, uh, oh, your grandkids are 30 years old now. Oh, okay. You know, it's like, it was just, it was just a terrible feeling to reach out to somebody when the only time you're reaching out to 'em was when you needed, when you needed something. So that was a le that was a lesson that I learned many years ago.
Very much to your point about, you know, you gotta have some depth, you gotta have some depth in those relationships. For sure.
Jake: And I, and I think that, that for me, uh, I wish I was building while I was still earning a paycheck. Um, right. Because I think that when you have, um, a family that needs you and they're depending on you, the pressure that comes with needing it to be a [00:24:00] success, uh, just gets amplified.
And, uh, that type of pressure, uh, can break you. Uh, and like I've, I've been through some moments of just despair where I'm just like, what am I gonna do? Um, and I think a lot of people that I've, I've spoken with go through that, go through that same kind of cycle of these ups and downs where. One minute, they feel excited that they get to take agency over their own life again and not have to just like, uh, work for the man for the rest of their, their lives. Um, but at the same time they realize, oh boy, I need to go into my 401k if I'm gonna pay my mortgage this month.
Right. So it's, it's, uh, it's, it can be a, a roller coaster.
Chris: Yeah. Yep. There is no doubt about that. Well, Jake, if there's one great practice that you'd like to leave with our listeners today, what would that be?
Jake: Build something with your name on it.
Uh, today, not tomorrow. Don't wait. Right. Write something, teach something, create something. Um, and put it where people can find it. [00:25:00] And when you work for an employer, they own your title, your work, email address, your access, your platform. But you know, they can't when, when they take those away. Um, and at some point they will, like, what do you have left? Do something yourself. I think that the professionals out there who are um, creating and building are the ones that are gonna have a really great head start, uh, when they need it.
Chris: Well, what is a that adage? Uh, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Second best time is now. You know, so, so just, just, just do it now. That is great advice, uh, that you have provided for all of us here. So what is the best way for someone to contact you to continue this discussion? And I'll tell you what, man, you're, you're, you're a good guy.
I could tell you know what you're doing. If, if somebody wants to even talk to you about, you know, consulting or even job opportunity, just go and throw it out there, what you're looking for, man.
Jake: Uh, yeah, I've, uh, I've got [00:26:00] my personal website is Jacob woodward.dev. Um, from there you can get access to. Uh, disruptor u.com, which is a community that I've built for disrupted professionals. It is completely free. There is no money for that. Uh, it's, uh, this is just a way to kind of bring people together to kind of support each other. Um, and, uh, you can also schedule time with me on that same site. I've got a, a free 30 minute, uh, coffee meeting on there, like if anyone wants to chat about anything. Uh, just. Throw something on my calendar. I, I'm always looking to meet new people and, um, I'm open to any opportunities that might come my way.
Chris: Perfect. Well, we appreciate you, uh, being on today and just, and just your willingness to share, you know, this painful experience and, uh, being able to help others and, uh, I'm sure something will come out of that there. So. Again, appreciate it, Jake, and uh, we will talk soon.
Jake: Sounds good. Thank you so much.
Chris: Well, that was another great episode of great practices and we certainly do appreciate Jake joining us [00:27:00] today. So what were some of the great practices and insights that came from today's episode? Well, I like the fact that he just really tuned into how different the job search is today, and he pinpointed it back to really what changed with COVID, with the ability for people to work remotely now.
It's amazing and it's amazing perk to be able to work remote. But it also opened up just a tremendous amount of competition because so many more. People are now applying toward or for the same job that you're applying for. So that definitely has changed things. And then obviously with the advent of AI being able to, you know, read resumes, people are using 'em to write resumes, feels like that you're just submitting them into a black hole and not even connecting with a person at any level.
Uh, just really has just showed how different the job search is now. Certainly not the way it used to be over the past decades. For sure. Now he did bring up the points [00:28:00] and he just really doubled down on this later in the conversation as well, is you need to have a network of real humans that know you and can vouch for you, uh, in order to, you know, really just gotta, you've gotta circumvent or shortcut what the normal.
Process is for finding a job and what it used to be because it just is not the way it works anymore. Although, you know, really even in the past, having a network of real human beings helping, uh, made it that much easier. But it's just so much more critical with the way that things are, uh, when it comes to job searching in today's time.
I thought it was also interesting what he said, his, uh, perspective of where people are on a scale of like one to 10 with their usage of ai. You know, he's basically saying we're, uh, maybe a two or a three, you know, now we're not talking developers and coders and that type of thing, but just normal people that are going to work and they're.[00:29:00]
In a department or they're running a business, basically we've got a lot of room to grow, you know, um, we're using it to write emails. We're using it as a glorified search engine. Uh, we're using it to take meeting notes, detect action items, you know, all of those things are great and they're very useful, but there's so much more that could be done with it.
So his point about the fact that, you know, maybe just take it from a two to a three, crank it up to a five or a six by looking at these two areas, uh, deep research. That was one keyword I guess you would say that he, we, that he used, you know, we've got all of this information at our fingertips, but with deep research, we can dig.
Way deeper. You know, not just gathering this information but synthesizing it in meaningful ways. So that's definitely an area to look into if you're looking for where to explore AI further. And then also automated [00:30:00] workflows, uh, a automating workflows, automation in general, you know, those repetitive tasks.
What is it that AI can help do in those areas? And he brought up a challenge, and it could be also seen as a little bit of a threat, to be honest with you. 'cause he said, you know, if your job is to sit behind a computer and produce output, like if that's your job, you need to be asking yourself, how would I automate my entire job?
What is it that AI could do that would just make me or allow me to focus on other things? it's a challenge, but it's also a threat because here's the deal, if you're not doing that, somebody else is gonna be doing that. So you want to get ahead of that as much as you possibly can so that you can go focus on, you know, other areas of the business where you could continue to bring value and productivity.
So when it comes to the PMO space project management space, what could a five or a six look like? if we were able [00:31:00] to crank up on that scale of, you know, one to 10 with, uh. AI usage. What does a 5 0 6 look like in a PMO space? Well, he talked about some of those areas that we could focus on, you know, weekly status reports.
Use AI to pull that information from all the tools that everybody is using or dump it in and just have it able to be able to synthesize a. those reports for you, those far as those weekly status reports. Uh, synthesizing progress, detecting risks, risk management is a process that can become much more proactive with AI because AI can scan and surface things that just aren't evident to human eyes Now.
There needs to be a human layer. There needs to be this judgment that still comes in and discretion and that type of thing. But man, it is just a huge place to start and can take you a really far away or take you a long distance when it comes to detecting some of these [00:32:00] risks and. Other areas that we may not be able to just detect right on the surface.
Resource planning talked about the fact that that can become so much easier, and even stakeholder communication can be personalized at an almost an individual scale or like by a group because an executive, uh, communication is gonna be very different than a team member communication. So
We could use AI to, Communicate differently to these different members, which we should be doing anyway, but it's gonna make it easier and it may open up more audiences for us to communicate differently with
going back to his career in general and how AI and how everything has changed so much with this new job landscape. Very insightful what he said about what would he do differently or what would he have done more of over his career. He said he would've spent more time building actual [00:33:00] relationships with people.
What he said was, he knows a lot of people, but he doesn't know a lot of people, you know, so it's been superficial. And he admitted that and he's realized that that would be something that he's done differently and certainly is doing differently going forward.
And the second thing that I thought was really very insightful was the fact that he wouldn't have put so much blind faith. The fact that if he started here in his career and then he took these steps and then in a 20 or 30 year arc, he's gonna just end up here. And that's the way it works. Those rules have changed of that game, so it's not gonna be a perfect arc anymore.
You need to be much more diversified. And he said he would've spent more time betting on himself sooner and earlier on his career. And, uh, not so much relied upon just kind of the old way of doing things that, uh, people used to be accustomed to. But that's just not the way it works anymore.
I had a great conversation the other day about the fact that it's not a [00:34:00] career ladder anymore. It's a career climbing wall. like you got those climbing walls, they've got the, the things that you hold onto and places you put your toes and all that kind of stuff. Um, but the fact is you don't necessarily go up all the time.
You're going to go sideways. You may have to go down for a little bit, then you go back up, and then you may, go to the left and go to the right and then go up again. So the trajectory is not that clean or that clear arc that so many people have been used to, but now it's just a different way in order to, progress throughout your career.
Which brought us to the final great practice. He said, build something that has your name on it. You know, write, create, build something and put it somewhere where people can see it. so that if your employment ends, if your job situation changes, if you find yourself, like you said, just walking out with that, stapler in a box [00:35:00] that.
You've got something that's already been built that you can point people to in order to take you to whatever that next transition step is in your career. So we certainly do appreciate, and we'd like to thank Jake for being on great practices today. And do you have a great practice that you'd like to share?
We'll go ahead and email Chris Kopp, That's CHIS dot kpp@gmail.com. And, uh, someone will get in touch with you shortly. Also, be sure not to miss out on a single episode by subscribing to great practices on your favorite podcast platform.
And if you like what you hear, we've had some great guests on, we've got many more booked. Be sure to share this with your manager, your colleagues, and anybody else you think would benefit. So thanks again for listening to this episode and keep putting great practices in the practice. I.
