The Human Hive with Claude Silver

In this episode

That is, you know, old psychology sees things as abnormal or normal. That’s not.. that’s so linear, it’s so limiting. And it really is a… it’s a turnoff. Why not see people as works in progress? Look, we’re all messy, myself included.

 

Intro

In Western societies today, we typically frame our goals in individual terms – we want to be happy, healthy, wealthy – even relationship goals are studied and pursued to the degree they benefit us as individuals.

 But pursuing any truly big goal requires collective action. Building a business, or pursuing change through government, or making an impact in the community requires functional and adaptive teams. And when building teams, individual thinking only brings us so far.

The art and science of leading teams has fascinated politicians, captains of industry, and community leaders for millennia.

Today, these things are studied in somewhat dull disciplines like “organizational behaviour”, or “human resources” in business and political science faculties. 

But any business owner or leader will tell you – they’re critically important and quite difficult to acquire – it’s maybe the hardest form of knowledge and skill to master, because it touches on so many different areas, including human psychology.

 I had the pleasure of interviewing a legitimate modern-day master of this field, who brings a very unique spin on it, VaynerMedia’s Chief Heart Officer, Claude Silver.

We talked about a wide range of topics: the difference between a group and a team, how to navigate different cultural and generational values, the limits of different styles of leadership, why being empathetic is ultimately not about people’s “feelings”, how to have hard conversations, and much more.

Her practical knowledge on how to build fun, empathetic, high-performing teams in the 21^st century is top shelf. I learned a ton from her that I still try to put into practice as I build my teams at Pinto Legal and around my various projects.

Anyone with big goals or who wants to create better teams will benefit from this one.

I hope you enjoy it, this is my conversation with Claude Silver.

Chapter 1: Queen of Hearts

 

Fred

Claude Silver. Welcome and thank you so much for being here today.

 

Claude

It is a joy to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

Fred

Awesome. So I want to start with your title at Vayner. Chief Heart Officer, I know you love the title. To be honest, the first time I saw it, I thought, okay, it’s just a fancy or cute title for head of HR or something. And then I heard you say in an interview, you’re not head of HR. You guys have a head of HR. And as I learned more about your approach, it seems to me that you have a pretty unique spin on dealing with, let’s call it the human element inside your organization. You seem a lot more proactively involved in setting the tone for personal development, and for the culture that you guys are setting at Vayner than people in HR usually are. Typically, it’s more of a reactive thing and more of a problem-solving or fixing something that’s deficient approach. I don’t think there’s really an equivalent, in the standard corporate org chart for chief heart officer. Maybe we can start by you describing in your words how you define your role as a chief heart officer. And why do you think other organizations may benefit from a similar role?

 

Claude

Wonderful, wonderful. It is the best title in showbiz, I will say that. I would still be me without the title and still be doing what I do, what I love to do, which is being with people, which is showing up for people, which is really training people, teaching people, leading by example, so that people can also understand how to show up for themselves and how to show up for others. So my job is that I’m in the business of people, really, if I had to say it, I am here to take care of the overall vibe and culture, and I am here to take care of at the micro, the individual people and helping them understand what’s blocking them from getting to the next level, helping them through feedback, understanding that they might want to move some time, they might want to get married. This might not be a forever job. This might be their first job. Really assisting people, facilitating growth and change, connecting them to other wonderful people in this organization who can turn their lights on or who – they might turn other people’s lights on. So I think of myself as very much a part of a hub that is really filled with connective tissue, just kind of bringing people in, creating safe space, making sure that they feel like they belong and they matter, and then sending them out. And there’s this nice kind of seesaw element to it. I may not see another. I may not see the person I saw today for another two years, but I hear about that person. I’ll see them in the hallways. I’ll Slack them. You know, I’m keeping my tabs on them. And I mean that in the most positive way, because I do firmly believe that we’re all doing our best with what we have. And of course, we can do better. But it’s our job as leaders to help people get there. Can’t just poof, you know, you need, you know you need to be massaged like a stone?

 

 

Fred

And I see it almost as like, let me know if this is an accurate way of looking at it, almost like the positive psychology version of HR. So it’s like, looking at the human being as a whole, looking, you know, they’re not just like how they’re performing this quarter or this week, but like looking at the human being, like in terms of their growth, in terms of realizing their potential, in terms of like, you know, figuring out their strengths. And how do we keep building on those strengths… Is that a sort of productive way of looking at it?

 

Claude

You just hit a bullseye. First and foremost, you mentioned positive psychology, which is a study of mine and one that I think needs to be populated into the masses, just like this type of role, just like this type of care. That is, you know, old psychology sees things as abnormal or normal. That’s not.., that’s so linear, it’s so limiting. And it really is a… it’s a turnoff. Why not see people as works in progress? Look, we’re all messy, myself included. Work is messy. There’s no utopia. But if we can put our intention on thinking the best possible thing we can about this coworker, having good thoughts, being the bigger person, take accountability for stuff. Gosh, we would move through problems like that. So much quicker than now. What we do is we hang on, we’re triggered. He hurt me. I have a splinter, okay, we can fix all of that. And by the way, the splinter, the first aid kit is right over there for the splinter. You do that one. We’ll fix everything else.

 

Fred

Yeah. The resilience is something we’re definitely going to get back to because I think it’s a big, big topic that’s important. So everything you talk about makes a lot of sense in the micro. And I guess I’m going to talk to you about something that, you’ve talked about, in terms of like, you know, scaling. So how does this make sense in a context of growth? You know, our society tends to glorify heroes, you know, individuals who swoop in and save the day. But when the world changes for the better, it’s more often change by teams. Right? And groups of people, not just individuals. So and any individual is very limited in what they can do on their own at scale. And so, really, what we have to sort of the macro scale, I feel that we need to focus on is building and running teams. Right? And that’s what you’re involved in developing. And of course, there’s the skill of leadership that a lot of people talk about.

 

There’s also, the term that you refer to a lot, which is culture. So it’s a looser term and it’s more about, you know, the informal environment and the values in which a team operates without necessarily sort of top down micromanagement. And it’s a tremendous challenge to build this and maintain this as an organization grows. Right. So that’s what you referred to a lot as like we’re trying to scale the unscalable you guys are at Vayner are super committed to growth and speed. You talk about hustle a lot. You talk about, you know, building an empire. So I guess how do you sort of approach this challenge of kind of making sure that the culture that you’ve created and this approach that you have at the individual level stays really authentic as you guys grow. How do you go about scaling the unscalable?

 

Claude

Is it? I’m really glad you brought up the word hustle because it is actually not a word we use anymore. It’s been about four years since Gary used it. He’s taken it out of his own nomenclature and we don’t use it anymore. Why? Because it created anxiety. Why? Because it created the comparison. Why? Because what’s hustle to you is not hustle to me. You and I are never going to be the same. But speed is important. Efficiency is important. And this is all under the umbrella of empathy, kindness, compassion. That has to come first… that has to come first. So I just wanted to say that about the hustle. The other thing is we are and we’re always going to be in growth mode because of our CEO, because he’s a disruptor. He’s always looking at the next thing, which is a wonderful feeling both in the micro and the macro, because you walk into any of our offices today, tomorrow or the next day and I promise you, you will feel momentum.

 

 And what’s wonderful about momentum is that we all want to progress in life. Every single individual wants to go somewhere, get a job, get a promotion, get married, whatever it is. If you look at that as individuals and you bring those types of people together with a vision in mind of building the single greatest human organization in the history of time or of being, you know, the best account team or the best creative team selling beer or whatever it is. You bring people together with a shared mission and goals and you, and you give them roles and responsibilities. That’s called a team. Respect, roles, responsibilities.

 

The antithesis of a team is a group. A group comes together. Maybe you’ll play, you know, quarterback today. Maybe you’ll play right wing tomorrow. Doesn’t really matter. We’re just here. There’s no sense of belonging necessarily in the long term. There’s a we’re in a team. We’re in a group. Here we go. Right now badda-bing badda-bang. A team comes back together, a team flourishes together. They live, they die, they breathe together. All of those things. That type of not only philosophy, but the way that that is practiced and executed on is how you scale. There’s osmosis involved in a team. And so I’m not going to be able to know what’s going on in Bangkok yesterday, I didn’t talk to anyone in Bangkok. In fact, I would need someone to help me translate if I spoke to someone in Bangkok. What’s important to me about Bangkok or the Netherlands or places that are not in America is I want to make sure those people at Vayner feel Vayner. That they know that they are at a company that loves them, that appreciates them, that will grow and nurture them, called VaynerMedia, not Bob Shop down the street.

 

And that’s my roundabout way of getting to scale. We need to have people that have the Vayner citizenship inside of them, that have the DNA, that do put people first, that really understand. When Maya Angelou says people will forget what we say, people will forget what we did, but people will never forget how we made them feel… that those people really understand that last line, because that is to have a generosity of a spirit, that is to be a giver, that is to be the bigger person in every situation, or try to be. And that is what we are trying to scale. It’s about relationships and people.

 

Fred

It’s very clear to me what you refer to when you say that, like having a spirit of service or like really caring. Again, on a micro level, do you sometimes feel that… because I felt that as an entrepreneur, I talk, I work with a lot of business owners, a lot of founders, and a lot of people talk about this being like sort of one of the main issues is that some people get it, some people don’t. And when you grow quickly, you can get the sense of like this feeling that you refer to is just being watered down. And so I see sometimes business owners like scaling back on growth because they feel like they don’t want to make that compromise with the culture, with the feeling that they want to sort of permeate the organization and with their clients. They’re not comfortable with that. And other entrepreneurs are just like, more sort of growth oriented and like, you know what? Let’s take the growth and we’ll figure out the feeling thing later. You know?

 

Claude

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Fred

How does that sort of play itself out at Vayner?

 

Claude

That’s phenomenal. Everything we do has to be has to be served on a plate called high touch. And we’re touching people all the time today, Jerry’s entire day. And I can show you the calendar is set up with 50 15 minute meetings.

 

Fred

Wow.

 

Claude

With employees. There’s not one meeting in his calendar today that is external. My day is filled with 15 minute meetings. My day started with London and Europe because that’s what we do in the morning. I just had Mexico City before you and I’ll have LA before I finish off. And then tonight on Mondays and Wednesdays nights, my night in New York, I’m speaking to Asia and it’s not Claude. This isn’t the Claude show. This is what we all have to do to show up and to make people feel like they are part of something. It is called high touch. It is called accessibility and availability. By no means is it utopia at all. But I will tell you with my hand on my heart, we do a really good job. Yesterday we had an all-hands which was on video which is recorded for the people that can’t make it, or in Australia or Singapore, but that’s Gary for an hour and 15 minutes with other people coming in and out to do Q&A. That’s pretty remarkable. That’s how we scale in the macro..

 

Fred

So you don’t sacrifice, you don’t sacrifice, really, the human element. It’s like, you know what? The human element has to stay human. It’s like you have to talk to the people. You have to be there for the people. Have to answer their questions. And it’s constant con-, right? There’s no there’s no magical solution. There’s no like, organ org chart or no sort of technology tool that’s going to magically sort of replace that.

 

Claude

None. None. And so, you know, people say, well, you know, Claude, you’re going to get bigger one day. And there’s only one of you. No, there’s me, there’s a team of people. There are people that I now call culture champions that I can drop into another office. Or I could say, hey, my friend New York, you are a great culture champion. We have a new employee named Fred. He started. He’s in the Netherlands, and I feel like he could probably use a, like a friend. Would you mind chatting 15 minutes with them? I’ll introduce you all, you know. So it’s the accessibility. And it’s the remembering that everything is about people and relationships. And while we are growing an empire, building an empire, it is called the Honey Empire. It’s not the empire of honey we call our culture internally, the Honey Empire. Funny people first, how we make people feel, showing up, being that person that other people want in the room.

 

 

Chapter 2: Caring with High Standards

 

Fred

I love that, I love the tactile, hands on, very much human, aspect of that answer. So you touched on two themes that I feel sometimes can, people can sort of, experience as maybe conflicting or maybe sometimes sort of coming in opposition. And that’s empathy. And it’s also having really, really high standards. So it’s very clear that you guys care very much about empathy. It’s one of your core values. And if he wines, right. How, the Vayner family wine company got started. So caring for others, kindness, putting people first.

 

All of this stuff is obviously very, very close to your heart and something that you guys really care about. And sometimes empathy is misunderstood as like just being nice and agreeable, even if that means kind of being a pushover or tolerating a lack of standards. You guys operate in a very cutthroat business, the agency business. You clearly maintain very high standards for your clients. You even said, this is not a place for the faint-hearted, right? So being a successful agency in order to keep growing, there’s no other way. You guys have to keep delivering results. Right? So how do you sort of frame the place of empathy and putting humans first in a culture where performance and having really high standards is critical to growth and to the continued success of the firm?

 

Claude

Empathy is a feeling. The action and the output of empathy is kindness and compassion. We learned that when we are two years old, three years old, five years old. We learn what that’s like and we hope that that never leaves us, right? It is how we treat our children. It’s how we treat our family. Yes, we go into the office and then we put up armor, and that’s a whole other story. But there’s no one out there that has said you cannot have an empathetic growth mindset culture and be ambitious and successful. And in fact, we are in the advertising world. And how in today’s day and age, are we going to get in front of that cohort and that niche cohort that niche cohort with empathy? By getting into their culture, by listening and watching their comments on social to see what they’re saying, and then to become part of that conversation. That is called showing, that again, that is called showing up. But that is also called understanding the other person, being a passenger with them, which is what I consider empathy to be. So if I’m going to insert myself, I’m a brand and I’m going to insert myself into a cohort of soccer players, well, I better do that with some integrity and authenticity. I better really a) understand what it is you’re talking about and understand how I can show up there. That’s empathy. How I can show up to serve you, to be with you, to make you laugh, to make you cry, whatever that is. The other thing I want to say is we put our people first. We could put our consumers second and our clients third. And that’s a very, very, very big switch from Madison Avenue advertising. Not that we don’t —

 

Fred

Can you explain that? Go deeper at that.

 

Claude

Not that we don’t care about our clients. Of course we do. But we are in the business of taking this loaf of bread, Mr. Client, and getting it in front of different populations so that we can increase sales for you, Mr. Client. So we don’t really care that much about you or trying to do something with your product. Getting people to buy it has nothing to-

 

Fred

So your client’s client. You’re thinking so far as like you’re really focusing on your client’s client.

 

Claude

That’s right.

 

Fred

Serving them.

 

Claude

That is right. That is right. We’re finding the right audiences, not broad. That’s TV. We’re finding the right audiences in these macro cultures, cohorts that are going to accept this bread company coming into their space. And that is a delicate dance, because, you know, it’s the TikTok world. It’s less than a second. You have less than a second to get someone’s attention. So you really need to get it right. And you don’t. You don’t get it right. That’s the greatest thing about social is that it is an instantaneous focus group telling you exactly where you messed up and exactly where you hit it out of the park, and then you, in real time, can go tweak it.

 

Fred

You have to be able to take the hard feedback because it comes really fast.

 

Claude

It does. Yes.

 

Fred

So I love how you sort of spun that question and you started talking about, you know, empathy of different stakeholders, right? So having empathy and caring for actually different stakeholders who… you got your people, you got your clients, you’ve got your clients’ clients. And I love how you guys rank ordered that. I think that’s really useful in an organization when you can create that kind of hierarchy because it just sort of creates a little bit of instant focus for everybody and kind of speeds things up a little. It’s like, okay, guys, this is what we really care about. This is where the focus is, this is where the energy is. And I find that something that’s a little bit different about when I listen to you talking and when I listen to a lot of people, you know, organizational behavior folks or HR people, is that you don’t strike me as a technician of that field. I think your background was also in the agency business. You were responsible for delivering work to clients.

 

Claude

Yes.

 

Fred

And so that gives you a different perspective. I find that a lot of, a lot of folks have sort of a, I guess, went up the ranks or studied the discipline and then started practicing it. Is that fair?

 

Claude

That is, again, another bullseye because I’ve been on that floor, working late nights, working on pitch decks, working with teams, getting terrible feedback, being fired from clients. I know what it’s like, and it is not for the faint of heart and is very, very true, like I said. But that gives me that much more of an advantage when I’m sitting with you and you’re coming to tell me that you haven’t had a week, a weeked in four weeks, or that you are burnt out, or that you really don’t think you’re being recognized as the creative copywriter you are, or whatever it is, I understand. And if I don’t understand, I’ll ask. You to tell me more about your day job. You know, a lot of times what I say to people in these conversations I get into, especially if they’re new people I haven’t met yet, is how did we find you? I just want to make people feel so seen and so important. Fred, how in the world did you get here? How did we find you? Like you are the rarest gem of all. Because that’s in this moment with you and the intimacy we are creating on a screen or in person. That is all that matters, is what can I do for you?

 

Fred

And that’s an interesting perspective, because I think some people will hear that as like kind of sweet talking or as just kind of like nice, like being nice, but it’s technically speaking, the journey of every individual is unique, the story of how they connected with you is kind of unique… I mean, their universe and their world and their N of one. This is their job right now. This is their only job. They could be working at 20 other places. They’re not. They’re working with you. So it’s a unique step in a unique journey of an actual individual. And I find that in the corporate world, what a lot of us, what turned a lot of people in my generation off from the corporate world and onto entrepreneurship is the fact that we were being sort of handled as replaceable cogs in a big machine. Right?

 

And it sort of didn’t matter. Like you’re me as a lawyer, it’s like, okay, now you’re a first year associate. These are the things you do. Okay? Now you’re a second year associate. This is what you do now you’re in this department. This is what you do. There was no recognition of the sort of unique journey of the individual, which is a fact. I mean, it’s not just you trying to sound nice or trying to say like, you’re special. You’re not special. It’s like the saying you’re special just like everybody else, right? We’re each unique in a sense, like, okay, we got to water that down against, you know, looking forward to sort of serving up all these different stakeholders that we serve. But it’s like if you want to get down to the truth of that individual, you almost have to go down to that sort of story level for that particular individual. And really connect with that.

 

Claude

And that takes time and that takes high touch. And it’s not only the uniqueness of the individual, it’s tell me what you want to do. When you were a kid, you, what did you want to do when you grew up? Like, that’s a great question for me to ask. And by the way, a great question for anyone to ask to be curious about another person. And maybe, just maybe, I can help you with that because of who I am in the company, because of who I can connect you with. Something really magical happened today, and it’s I’m going to take a left turn with you for a second, because it is so incredible.

 

Fred

Let’s do it.

 

Claude

There is a person that used to be in one of our other offices. We moved him to New York, and he does very well at his craft. And he has some, some challenges with people, with managing people. And managing people is a skill, as we know. So I would say he’s probably batting 60, 60% out of 100, which we need to get much, much, much higher. Yesterday I ran into him and he said, I just cut my first record. Oh, okay. What is that all about? Tell me about it. Tell me about it. Meanwhile, he sends me the song. I listen to it today at the same time, I look on Gary’s calendar and I see that Gary is meeting with him right now. I text Gary the song. Please ask this guy about music. This is where his passion is in. First of all, the song was great. Second of all, Gary did ask him about music. How do I know? Because the guy wrote me and he said, this is so weird. Gary asked me about my music today. Now that’s just an incredible example of working very quickly and of making someone feel seen.

 

Fred

And high touch.

 

Claude

And high touch, making them feel special. And you know what? Maybe his passion is music and we should think about. We have a music, we have a music department, and maybe we think about moving this person to a place where he’s not managing. He’s obviously an individual contributor, sitting in his garage, and he’s making music. So you have to get down to the minutia of what makes people tick. What do they want? And so, you know, Fred, I’m not sure if, you know, I was at Vayner for 16 months and I ended up leaving, and then I came back four months later. The day I went to Gary and said, you know what? This place is great. You’re the greatest. I love it here, but I don’t want to do advertising anymore. He said to me the following: what do you want to do? Such as simple question. And I said to him, I only care about the heartbeat of this place. I only care about the people, heartbeat. When it was time for him and he was ready to create such a role like this, he called me. He listened.

 

Fred

So down to the words, down to the words you use to express it. That’s how he kind of defined the role.

 

Claude

Exactly, he listened to me. And that goes a long way.

 

 

 

Chapter 3: Purpose and Grit

 

Fred

It’s very interesting. Yeah. So the way you talk about, creating a safe space for people is in relation to these things you just talk about now, like, like purpose or your story or kind of like, what are the minutia of the things that really make you tick. To very different from the way we normally hear, you know, the culture, people talk about a safe space. So like canceling or censoring folks who have views that you don’t agree with. In your case, you said the real goal of safety is getting people to rock n’ roll. So, to perform their best, to deliver more value. Again, a positive goal, like a goal of engagement, right? And so in relation to this stuff that you just talked about, now, you’ve mentioned the tool that you use your whiteboard or your Northstar sessions where you, you know, really unlock people’s childhood desires, what they wanted to be when they grew up, when they were, when they were a child, or what really resonates with them, what makes them tick. For example, the musician. Basically like, figure out their purpose a little bit and how they can be energized by this at work and their lives, I guess, more generously. And I really like the way that you, you also mentioned in one of your interviews how you start these sessions by asking people to be big in the room. So how do you go about tapping into a person’s, sense of purpose to unleash, I guess, the best version of themselves? Why is it so important from your perspective? And, you know, maybe you have other examples of how when this really made a difference for someone.

 

Claude

Yes. Love it. Okay. All of us carry limiting beliefs inside of us. Imposter syndrome, negative narratives, and every single one of us. And if someone says they don’t, that’s not true, because it is who we are. I don’t know why. You know, I’m not, I’d like to understand the neuroscience of it, but I don’t at this moment. But what I do know is when someone comes into the room to do something with me, explore, be curious about something, I want to know, I’m listening for, I’m looking for what is blocking them, what is limiting them. And it is always going to be something they are telling themselves, I am dumb, I don’t deserve this place. That person got the raise, I should have gotten a raise, but I guess they’re smarter than me. I’m going to get found out… all of that stuff. Everything that goes on in our brains right here, all of that negative narrative is a lie.

 

How do I know it’s a lie? Because this person comes in and they say, I’m dumb, I really shouldn’t be here. I think I should, I am, I think I’m going to quit. I’m just dumb. First of all, what a terrible thing to say to yourself. But I’m sure they said a lot worse, actually, that they’re just giving me that highlight. Okay, my friend, how do we know that you are not intelligent? Please tell me ‘cause I want to write that down. Here it is, I am dumb, I don’t get all of my work done on a daily basis. That is what they’re coming to me to say. How do we know? I’m still waiting? How do I know you’re dumb? Oh, what? What it sounds like you’re saying is we need to help you with your energy management and your time management. You’re not dumb. You just maybe get sidetracked or maybe do things at 3:00 when you’re like, I need a coffee, I shouldn’t be writing a whole 50-page PowerPoint deck. Okay, cool. So that’s what we know. The truth is, you’re not dumb. Let’s work on your energy management and your time management.

 

What do we know? That is true. Give me some evidence to show me that you actually do know what you’re talking about. Well, the client loved my presentation. Great. Client loved my presentation. What did your manager say in your last feedback session? Manager said I’m tracking for the promotion. Okay, so these two things don’t ladder up to dumb, these two things ladder up to high performance. But we need to help you maintain that. So what I’m and I’m using a whiteboard because I’m a visual thinker and visual learner. And I’m writing down all of these things. I’m circling the patterns for them. Why? Because it’s right there on the board. Who they are is showing up in these circles. You know, time management, energy management, high performance. What do you value? You value this this this this okay. Great. If I was going to ask your team why they value what do they say. This this this this it. Oh wow. Interesting similarities. The thing you value about yourself, you think they’re going to say the same thing? Like I turn everything into a possibility. Why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we? The reason I care so much about this is because I was that kid that didn’t feel like I had any potential. Dyslexic. Sucked at school. Really? I didn’t feel like I belonged at all. I got the lowest SAT scores in my school. I went to a small little private school and I took them three times untimed. And that mattered back then.

 

Fred

So how did you how did you, flip that around? Is it someone, something you read, something you saw? Was it a mentor, somebody that taught you how to sort of, think differently or kind of challenge your limiting beliefs?

 

Claude

Yeah. Well, it’s called falling. Falling on your butt about 100,000 times. And getting up.

 

Fred

Adversity.

 

Claude

Yeah. Getting up 101 times and doing it again and again. But I knew that my… look, I was I made very bad choices with bad boys, bad drugs, bad decisions. You know, I didn’t I didn’t like myself. I didn’t see the value in myself. I wanted to help people, but I couldn’t get out of my own way for a long time. So I had to take a hard look at, like how I was living my life as an adolescent and early 20s, and I told my parents I needed to find the longest outdoor course I could to get my butt kicked. I found a 93-day wilderness leadership outward bound, which was the single greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The first, single, greatest thing. Then I’ve done some more pivotal moment. And the first day I’m with nine young men. I’m 19. They’re 18, 19, 20. We’re all carrying 80 pounds on our back. We’re the Colorado Rockies. It’s snowing, it’s October, and we’re all traversing up this, you know, we got to climb 1000ft until we can put down a tarp, not a tent, and sleep, eat and sleep. And I’m way at the bottom of the line. I’m crying. I want to break my leg. Fred, please, please, please, let me break my leg.

 

Fred

How old are you? How old are you at this point?

 

Claude

19. And I chose this, right? I knew I needed my butt kicked. I needed to come down from wherever I was. I’m the instructor, a female at that time. She, you know, comes all the way down the trail and I’m crying and it’s snowing. And I hate this and whatever, and I’m miserable. And she says to me, what is, Claude, what’s going on in your head? And I said to her the following through my tears, I’m seeing that Nine Inch Nails song, you know, head like a hole, black is your soul, I’d rather die than give you control. She looked right at me and she said, you better get another song in your head. And 93 days later, I came out of that program a very different person. Still Claude, still an emotional optimist. All of that. But I learned what it was to be of something bigger in this world. I came out understanding servant leadership, understanding that the emotional qualities I have are actually my superpower. It’s okay that I sucked on the SAT scores. No one cares. So I came out of there having different narratives in my head. Look what I did. I captained down a class five rapid in the Grand Canyon. I went 18 days at a time without a shower or a phone. We all did, you know, eating government supplied box of cheddar cheese and peanut butter jars, like, wow, look what you did.

 

Fred

So it feels like self-esteem as a result of doing something difficult as opposed to just generally.

 

Claude

Doing something difficult that I knew had promise for me, though. Doing drugs was difficult too. But there was no promise right? In many ways.

 

Fred

Is there a song? Is there a song that replace that Nine Inch Nails song? We reference music a couple times. Is there is there like a go-to now when things get rough or that that kind of symbolize your mindset?

 

Claude

You know, there is a song by Block Party called So Here We Are, and it’s got a beautiful like little tune to it. And I always say like a very meditational quote to myself when I’m listening to it, when I need to ground, I go to music that has like a thematic to it, almost like trance music. Yeah. Yeah. I love, music is my thing. I mean, but I’m like, I’m in a dark music too. I mean, I’m into the Cure. I’m going to see them next week, like I’m in Depeche Mode, girl. Like we, you know, and I are probably have similar generations. yeah. And there’s nothing wrong.

 

Fred

Fun stuff.

 

Claude

Yeah. Like Nine Inch Nails is the best, but like, not the best to be feeding myself in a moment of torture.

 

Fred

That’s right, that’s right. Sometimes there’s ideas or there’s certain kinds of lyrics that will capture our attention. And really, they’re just mapping onto an emotion or mapping onto a sort of pattern of thinking.

 

Claude

Yeah.

 

Fred

And it’s not always positive. Right?

 

Claude

It’s not always. Yeah. In that moment, it was not positive for me. I needed to hear something different. And I needed to figure that out. And it took me, you know, it took me good 45 days to, I think, start to change myself.

 

 

Chapter 4: Empathetic truth-telling

 

Fred

Wow. So we talked about like the positive, unlocking the positive in someone. What about the opposite. So there’s another value you reference a lot. And I know that you guys are very committed to. And you’ve referenced a few times in this conversation and that’s transparency, right? In one of your talks, you talk about managers sometimes who want their team members to succeed so much that sometimes they’ll shield their employees from upper management or hide the truth. You’ve said that you identify as an empathetic truth-teller. So someone who can deliver a hard truth with empathy, right? You talk also about radical candour, feedback, transparency sounds really good. Everybody likes to say that they’re transparent, but it can be really tricky sometimes because it’s not the honey, it’s the vinegar, it stings, it stings. Sometimes you can hurt people’s feelings. How do you go about this challenge of you’ve got an inconvenient truth, you’ve got a tough truth that you’ve got to deliver to someone. How do you deliver that with empathy, but also not sacrificing any truth?

 

Claude

Yeah. So first and foremost, it will always be a subjective truth. If it’s coming from me, it’s coming from Claude’s observations. And that is a party of one before I’m going to, usually, before I am delivering anything like that to someone, I have gathered enough info from others so that at least I’m delivering patterns. Again, subjective from Bob and Judy and Jack and Sarah. But all similar patterns, similar themes? Okay, that’s, that I can’t I can’t say that’s a lie. I mean, those are like in black and white, right? You are a bully. You create a toxic work environment. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla. So what I’m going to do is enter into that conversation. Great to see you. Thank you so much for your time. This is going to be a challenging conversation. I have to share some feedback with you. These are the themes I want to start on a high note though, I want you to know that people do think that you are an expert at your craft. You know something like that. And it’s not, I’m not doing a shit sandwich. I’m literally saying like, hey, it’s not all going to be, it’s not all terrible, but what they’re also saying, and I have some verbatims to read to you, is that you are a bully, a micromanager, and you expect people to do your work.

 

Fred

You’ll deliver it like that, like straight like that.

 

Claude

Just like that.

 

Fred

Love it.

 

Claude

And then I will say towards the end, or if they’re interjecting with an excuse or whatever I hear, I totally hear you, I get it. This is really hard to hear. However, it’s going to be your biggest vulnerability here if you don’t work with me and others on this, it’s not going to work out. And that’s it. And you heard my voice. There’s nothing mean in my voice. There’s not, my voice, in fact, didn’t really change. But I’m coming in the conversation. They already know me, right? For the most part. And so they know my aim is true. They know I’m here. I’m here for them, I mean, this is not the Claude. Like I said, it’s not the Claude show. I don’t need to be a hero. I’m good. Like I’m good. 54 I’m like going, I’m on the back nine over here, which is a wonderful back nine. But yeah, I mean, it’s literally like at the end of the day, after having a couple of those conversations with the same person, that’s, you know, Fred, let’s really talk about this, is this the place you want to be? Because if it’s not, that’s okay too. We are going to set you up. You want to go work at Netflix? Great. I will promise you we will at least get you an interview. Can’t get you the job. We will get you an interview. I work with you.

 

Fred

For this program. You’ve got this great program that you have for employees where you you’ll actually make introductions for them, or if they need to move on to the next challenge, you’re still kind of part of their journey. You’re not just like, okay, you’re nobody to me now, I really, really like that.

 

Claude

The alumni group, is what we call it.

 

Fred

The alumni group. It’s really great. And see, that’s something I really struggle with, the way that you delivered that with you’re right. You didn’t change your tone. I think that was, like, if we were role-playing here, it’d be like, you know, when these things have happened to me, I think I let sometimes my frustration get the better of me in terms of like, it’s not always frustration from the standpoint of talking down to the person. It’s really more like, you know, frustration that they’re not sometimes being true to their potential or that they’re not properly, let’s say, taking the client’s interests at heart. Right? And so sometimes I’ll let a little bit of that frustration go into the tone. And then that just creates interference. Right? So I love the way that you just deliver that neutral tone. But the information is all there. And there’s like, whatever direction we want to take here is all good. There’s no, we don’t need to go to like a negative place or make it personal or anything like that.

 

Claude

Exactly. And what’s – you said it, it’s noise, it’s interference, and it’s not about what Fred feels. Right? Or what Claude feels. I’m here because I want to deliver some news to you. And I want to know if this is something we can work on. The only way we’re really going to be able to work on it is if you can take some accountability for it, because then there’s an opening. But if you are a no, no, no, no then I know I will not be able to crack your no, that’s too strong for me.

 

Fred

It’s not about the feeling.

 

Claude

It’s not.

 

Fred

It’s not about the feeling.

 

Claude

Not.

 

 

 

Chapter 5: Of Chops and Culture

 

 

Fred

So accurate, so true, so simple. And can help, I think, people achieve their outcomes with so much more, clarity and directness. It’s really, really great. Maybe this, in connection to this somewhat. But maybe linking up to other themes as well. I like how you guys focus on life skills and not just technical skills. So this is something that that comes up over and over, when you look at people from different generations working with one another. Right? And then of course, whenever we talk about generations, we’re sort of broadly Gen Z, Gen X, when we talk about generations, there’s always the risk of overgeneralization or attaching reductive labels. It’s like the saying I heard once at a conference, I’m a millennial, I don’t believe in labels. Right. It’s like the irony of using those labels. So without generalizing too much, obviously one conclusion, can cover up like millions of exceptions.

 

I talk to a lot of Gen X, founders and business owners and many of them feel like younger generation, so millennial and under, lack the resilience that previous generations had. And maybe they’re more focused on feelings or than on the impact of their actions sometimes on others. Or maybe they didn’t learn mental toughness and resilience the way many of us did. Maybe part of this is growing up with a little bit more abundance and privilege. Maybe they’re less focused on money and achievement than previous generations are. Right? There could be some positive reasons for these sort of different, emotional parameters that, that we have and the way that we frame work, differently.

 

But looking at this from the perspective of team goals, and because in a way, building teams is often learning how to get people from different generations to work better with one another. And that’s one dimension, right? Adding another dimension could be, for instance, the diversity piece, which I want to get to. But this is the generational piece I think is really, really important, especially when you look at, you know, leaders and, and, and people sort of coming into the organization very often will be, will be different generations. One macro challenge seems to be teaching more general life skills like resilience, like purpose, like empathy, skills that go beyond just the technical skills that you need for the job. And I know you guys take that holistic approach to talent development very seriously. So what are some of the human and life skills that you aim to teach, and how do you go about doing this in a profession? Again, where the actual technical skills are still very important.

 

Claude

So we have created something called core competencies. We have foundational competencies and functional. Functional are the technical. What you need to actually do the job. The skills. The chops. Foundational are more important. The behaviors. And these are, we have whittled them down to four: leadership, communication, accountability and growth mindset. Within those four are definitions of how we want you to be, what we expect of you, the behaviors in which you carry and showcase at each rung in your career, at this level, at this level, at this level, based on life skills, based on based on growing and developing you as a human, while we’re also developing you as a technician.

 

When I started this role seven years ago, there are a few things I did immediately off the bat. One of them was, changed the way we hired and change and took away the word the phrase culture fit. Because culture fit doesn’t mean anything, right? It doesn’t mean anything. I like you, you have blue eyes, I like you, you like Dave Matthews. I like Dave Matthews. Cool. But I don’t know if you can do the job. Culture fit was fantastic for those first few years ramping up. It got us a lot of speed, a lot of likeness, a lot of, you know, same, same, same. But then I looked around and we had a lot of same, same, same, not a lot of diversity, first and foremost, but second, we had gaps in what we were trying to do. So I said, we’re going to hire for skill set fit and culture addition. And the culture addition – this gets to about what I think you’re going to we’re going to talk about in diversity – this the culture addition allowed us to look in different places for people that had the skills. People that might not have been, you know, didn’t grow up with Madison Avenue advertising, maybe people that didn’t even have a cell phone until they were 25 years old, whatever that is. And that really allowed us to diversify our floors. And I really, really mean that, to diversify our hallways. So far.

 

Fred

No, this is this is really great because just the way that you phrase that, I think you sort of, unpacked, confusion or a recurrent debate that people have around skill versus, let’s call it representation or, you just said, no, no, we were looking in different places for people who have the skills. In other words, you need to have the skill.

 

Claude

You need to have the skill.

 

Fred

But I find that your way of looking at it is actually a lot more… I hate the word tolerant because it’s like, who are you to tolerate someone if they’ve done something wrong, that you need to tolerate them? But more in line with the spirit of diversity, because you assume that people who are coming from different cultural backgrounds and so forth can also have the skill. It’s like, I don’t need to make a representation. I don’t need the token X from whatever group, because there are people in those groups with the skills. It’s a lot more respectful and a lot more kind of, I find, open-minded and human and realistic because the reality is there are people from all these different backgrounds who do have the skills. You don’t need to water down your merit or your meritocracy, or your commitment to skill in order to be a more representative organization. That is a huge fallacy from my perspective.

 

Claude

It’s enormous and I’m glad you really stopped and talked about that, because it’s not only and I’m not even, I talk about diversity in a very holistic way. Of course, we need representation from people that have, that pray to different people, deities and religion and political and race and ethnicity and sexuality. But gosh, don’t we need some neurodivergence in here to. Yes, we do now you can’t screen for that in an interview. Someone will come and tell you I’m dyslexic. Someone will come and tell you I’ve ADHD. You’ll notice that someone has a stutter. You will notice that someone is in a wheelchair. These people add tremendous value to our company because they will think very differently. The person in the wheelchair, the luxury I have to know that I can walk out a door and not have to worry if I fit through a door. That’s remarkable. The things that they’re going to see from their vantage point are going to help us empathize with that end user I was telling you about, the consumer.

 

Fred

So having those concentric circles of empathy again, caring about the end user, about the end consumer, it’s like you told a story once about, the Latinos at Vayner kind of like self-organized and built their own group. And now, like, maybe they’re going to speak to the Latino consumers better. Right? So it’s like using diversity as an additive. Right? So I like that, the culture additive, it’s like, you have the skill, you need to have the skill. That’s the baseline. We’re not watering down the meritocracy. We’re not like allowing sort of mediocre. No, no, no, no, no. Like there are people from these different groups who have the skill, number one. So that is I find a much more, a positive assumption to work with than oh, well, maybe they don’t have the skill we need to hire them anyway, which I think is kind of, demeaning, and… Right? It’s like it hides as tolerance, but it’s really kind of condescending to think that way. And not true.

 

Claude

It’s quota based. It’s quota based.

 

Fred

Quota based, its quota based like let’s create the image of a diverse organization. But for like all the wrong reasons, like to show, like to display an image of it. Yeah. As opposed to no, no, no, no. There are actually people from these different groups with the skills. Let’s pick them on that group and then they can bring their cultural, perspective to the table and add something in terms of creating value for our stakeholders. Such a much more productive way of looking at it than than what you see in corporate boardrooms all around America.

 

Claude

Yeah, that’s for sure. A couple of the other things I did immediately was I removed the need for college education because that in itself was a showstopper. And that was a well, okay, you didn’t go to college, so you can’t come in or you’re 25 and you went for one year and dropped out, but, oh, my God, you’ve been hacking, you know, Tetris in the background here. Come and show us those chops. Removing that which has been great with the exception of in certain areas where blah, blah, blah. You know, if you’re a lawyer, obviously. Yes. Let’s have you.

 

Fred

Accounting. Yeah. Yeah. But media for sure.

 

Claude

Yeah. Media. Creatives? Oh my gosh. You don’t need a college education. You have a frickin phone right?

 

Fred

And the college education, the college education in America probably selects for certain things that are not even connected to scale. Like the tuitions have skyrocketed to such a ridiculous level that it’s like, what are we screening for really? Like are we screening for quality or screening for wealth and income. You know?

 

Claude

It’s very the haves and the have nots and, and I don’t want to work in a place with the haves and have nots. I want to work in a place where there’s plenty to go around and whatever that is. And the last thing I did was just actually the first thing I did, which was change the name to people on experience, because a), I never wanted to be in HR. I didn’t know what HR was, I didn’t like HR, and it would be out of integrity to say I ran something that I never ran. But people and experience make sense to me. And so we changed it to people and experience. And then when I you know, initially Gary and I spoke about the job, I said, look, I’m not HR. Like, I don’t have the science. And he said, you will hire a strong team around you. And now I have, and someone runs it, and that’s fantastic. And we are Bonnie and Clyde with one another.

 

 

Chapter 6: The Balanced Life

 

Fred

That’s really cool. That’s really cool. So another, tension that you have some interesting ways of reframing, is work-life balance, right? I mean, this is everything’s so fast today. People are trying to divvy up the pie in the right way. It’s very hard today to reach that point of balance. So it’s like, how do we reach balance? And it’s like, well, maybe we don’t think about it as balance. You’ve reframed it and you focus on it in a more sort of tangible way. You refer to it as really, it’s just about energy management, right? It’s really about how much energy are we allocating to different things. And then we could be a lot more sort of practical and realistic about it, as opposed to trying to establish what the balance looks like on a sheet of paper. How do you approach the challenge of energy management and how do you help employees kind of guide their experience through this concept?

 

Claude

First and foremost, introducing the concept. That’s the first thing because it’s a what? What does that have to do with anything? Like I’m managing my time by half an hour, half an hour. But we’re silly like that because we’re expecting that you are going to be able to give 100% for eight straight hours with maybe a half an hour lunch break, and you’re like, that’s what we assume. No one I know can do that except for Gary Vaynerchuk, the only person I know that can go and go and go and, go and, go. But most of us need a bathroom break. Most of us need to get some water. Most of us start to fade out after we have lunch, an hour after we have lunch, because of whatever, and we need to walk around. Figure out where you’re where your energy is, where you spike, and where you go (crashing noises)? Because if you asked me to do something really at 4:00 on, you’re not getting the sharpest Claude from 9:30 until 3:30, you’ve got gold, you’ve got everything I got. But then I’m going to be honest with you, my energy really dips, and I know that enough about myself. And so when I try to force it, it’s bad work. And more than anything, I get upset with myself that I should be able, I should be able to do this, Claude, I should be able to. So introducing the concept and explaining to people like that example I just went through with me. And to have people start to charge their own energy, like, do you dip for the next week at 3:00? Did you dip? Did you dip at 1:00 or are you like ready to go and you’re a night owl? Cool. Well, let’s get the best work out of you there. In the night. So yeah.

 

Fred

And do you let teams kind of figure out, like how that sort of, like the ebbs and flows of that. So somebody like gives their- somebody wants to do more creative work in the afternoon, somebody likes to really attack it in the morning, some people like to work at night. Do you allow, teams as you guys are growing out? What’s what’s your headcount now? You guys are at like a over – like 2000. My gosh.

 

Claude

Yeah 2000.

 

Fred

Yeah. Yeah. You’re not joking. You’re not joking with this growth thing. Do you, do you allow sort of like a decentralized people to figure out at the team level? You know, you guys figure out what works, right?

 

Claude

Yeah. I mean, you’re not going to get any micromanage from me or from Gary. How could I possibly do that? I know nothing about your rhythms, you know, but on a team, you guys have to shimmy and shake. You’re all going to have to work together at some point. So talk to one another. And for managers and leaders, we must empower people to open their mouths and say, I have therapy every Thursday, right? That’s a big deal. Back in our day, you and I never would say we had therapy or a doctor’s appointment or dentist appointment.

 

Fred

We had to pretend, we’re to pretend we’re perfect robots. We are good robots. There is nothing broken with us. That’s good. But keep that image up. Yeah.

 

Claude

And then, oh my gosh, maybe we’ll see, you know, skirt out of work at five so we can get to the dentist, for crying out loud, right before it’s an emergency. Like, it just is such a very, very different a very different time. And now we have back to the five generations in the workforce. We have the boomers who just put their heads down. There were us. We were thought to, generation X was thought to be lazy, but we actually have put our heads down as well. I think there was some resentment. Some come from boomers because they came out of you know, a very strange time in America, for sure. And then we have, you know, the helicopter kids and the Gen Zers who are phenomenal, wonderful. You and I are going to be working for them and very, you know, very short time who are passionate and who talk a lot.

 

And they expect all of their needs to be delivered in the workplace. And that right there is not only the punchline, that’s what we have to be awake to. All of their relational needs, all of their therapeutic needs and wellness needs, all of their growth needs, all of their friendship needs and everything. That’s what they’re expecting. And so we need to be mindful of what we can and can’t do.

 

Fred

Do you think, do you think that’s a function of an overemphasis on the centrality of work in life? That’s a more general question, but do you think it’s ultimately tenable for somebody to get all of their needs met, like their intimacy needs, their emotional needs, their creative needs? Is it- are we expecting too much from work? I know that, yes, of course, the challenges for the workspace to sort of adapt itself and to be a lot more holistic and to touch all these different elements of the individual. But we used to have like this work-life split because we did not expect work to fill certain needs, and we had family and friends and hobbies and so on and so forth. Is this do you feel like, I feel like as you, as you were, as you were sort of drawing that painting, that picture, I was like, are these kids maybe expecting too much of the workspace that there was like, have a life outside of work too, right?

 

Claude

Oh yeah, of course. Of course. Well, we’ve opened the door for that. The pandemic opened the door for that. And there’s and there’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to course correct to a point. Emotions are allowed in the workspace. You and I didn’t show emotions in the workspace because they weren’t allowed back then. They are allowed. What we ask for and what we try to teach in every single way we possibly can is the self-regulation of emotions so that you’re not spewing and causing chaos and freaking people out. You’re having a bad day. You need to go cry. Okay, let’s talk about it. Go home, whatever. But like, at the end of the day, we are working here. This is a business. We have a P & L and that is the truth. And you can bring yourself to work. All of these things can be true. All of these things can be true.

 

Fred

I love the way you blend blend all these things together, because you’ll talk about the importance of, you know, the emotional aspect and being open and all that. And at the end of the day, then there’s just that New York. It’s like, okay, yeah, but you know, right, end of the day we are working. We are delivering work. We’re delivering for clients. And you can’t keep a healthy organization if you don’t also have that emphasis on satisfying your end game sort of stakeholders, your clients, maintaining standards, being excellent, being disruptive, being innovative. That comes at a price. You’ve got to be focused and we’ve got to be on task here.

 

Claude

Right? We have to. And you know, I’m a newish parent. I’m a four-and-a-half-year-old and a two-year-old. And what I learn from parenting is something I didn’t know before, which is a) you have to parent differently to each child. I cannot treat them both as apples and apples, and b) I have to draw a line somewhere. No, they’re not getting a toy every time I come home from an airplane trip. No, that’s not practical. It’s not how the world works. Let’s talk about how the world works. Otherwise, I bring toys home every single day, and they’re going to expect everyone to bring them a toy. And you and I know that will be a very big disappointment to them.

 

Fred

And then when they don’t get a toy, they feel like they’ve done something wrong

 

Claude

Exaclty. You don’t love me.

 

Fred

…Or they feel judged or they. Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

 

Claude

That’s not how we want our children to live. So at the end of the day, we are, you know, when I say to my daughter the other day, you know, I’m taking this trip because I have a job and that’s actually like, what allows me to buy you a toy.

 

Fred

And so yeah, that’s good. It’s really good for them to be aware of, of these rallies. I deal with that with my kids as well because, you know, we want to give them, we want to give them a lot. We want to give them more than we had growing up. But at the same time, you also want to prepare them for the world, and you’ve got to have the boundaries, and you don’t want them to grow up entitled and so forth. So it’s an interesting dynamic. I want to end with the future of human teams, with, with this wave of technological disruption. I know it’s like, it’s been a theme for us, Gen X, our entire career, really. Like when we sort of. I remember being in university and there was no email one year, and then the next year there was email forever. Right? It was like pre-Google. Right.

 

But now with generative AI, it feels like a Google moment, feels like, okay, this is the beginning of the next 20 years here. It’s not like just a new toy. It’s something really, really fundamental, a lot of really intelligent observers that I listen to around the issue of AI, talk about things that in a way that I wanted to sort of put to you, they feel that the the future of human productivity will center around those things that only humans can provide. So, things like care, things like empathy, purpose, understanding each other as humans, right? Maybe even some aspects of human creativity. Although as AI tools keep developing, they’re going to keep testing the boundaries of all these things, right? They’re going to keep sort of getting better and better at different tasks that interestingly, they did an experiment with ChatGPT where they sort of turned into a chat function and they ranked their, users ranked the answers to medical questions from the answers they were getting from doctors and users, ranked ChatGPT as more empathetic than the doctors. Okay, so even empathy, right?

 

Claude

Wow. Wow.

 

Fred

You could program these things to be more empathetic than some humans. I feel like you’re uniquely positioned to comment on that, seeing sort of the hard deliverables on the agency side, but also the heart, the empathy, the holistic human development at work. Right? That really work and life is all about what’s your sense about this forthcoming AI revolution and how you feel it might reshape the work landscape.

 

Claude

I’m really glad you listed so many of those things out because it is, it’s here and it’s coming, and it is a big worry for people. And I am of the mindset and I think I have a very open mind, but I am still of the mindset that there is nothing that will be able to replace human to human connection. And so, I understand that ChatGPT responded in a more empathetic way than a doctor because a doctor isn’t there for you. You know, let’s be honest, a doctor is there to deliver you the news and to heal you. They’re not there to make nice, nice, nice. You go other places to make nice nice nice. We want our doctors to have an incredible bedside manner because we feel so vulnerable in their care. But at the end of the day, they’re not taught that that’s not the M.O.. So just using that example, I can see how you can say, you know, talk to this patient as Maya Angelou would have talked to her and it would be fantastic, right? The ChatGPT would say it in her voice and everything would feel great. But nothing is going to replace this.

 

Even the screen, this, this is what is magical about the fact that we use Zoom or we use the room. You and I are still creating an intimate space here. Our eyes are only on one another. There’s no one and no noise in here. And so in this hour, in this moment, we’re together. It is here. We’re… This is our space. This is our connection. In the room it’s the same thing. I just don’t see that going away. But I do see AI making us smarter. And I actually think that can be smarter from both a qual and a quant perspective. All of the work that’s being done. So in a soft skill type of way and in a hard skill type of way, measurable. I also think that all, in tandem, all the work that’s going on in the discovery of what goes on in our brains, what goes on in our guts now, like these things are happening, happening in a parallel path, human development, like who we are, the biology of who we are is, is coming to us in our fingertips. You and I soon will be able to diagnose our own stuff, our own illnesses most likely. So I don’t, you know. So I guess what I’m saying is, I think we need both. And I think we’re at that place in life where both will benefit us. Well, as long as we don’t demonize the other, if that makes sense.

 

Fred

Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. So it’s likely to make us a lot more effective at a lot of different things, but it’s not going to replace the sort of human-to-human connection that you guys have built an entire organization around, both from understanding culture from not only an internal perspective but also understanding what the end consumer wants. Right? That really comes from the human realm.

 

Claude

Yeah.

 

Fred

And so, I think you guys are the kind of organization you guys are building is focused on the right things in terms of, of managing that transition. And you can serve as a model for a lot of other teams and organizations out there. So…

 

Claude

Yeah,

 

Fred

I want to thank you so much. This has been fantastic.

 

Claude

Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

Fred

Great and hopefully we’ll talk very soon.

 

Claude

I hope so. Thank you.

 

Fred

All right. Bye bye. Take care, Claude. Have a good one. Bye bye.