Designing Leadership Work That Is Worth It w/ Georgi Enthoven
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author, advisor, and entrepreneur Georgi Enthoven on balancing impact and income by designing leadership work that’s worth it.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is a seasoned entrepreneur, venture partner at Matterscale Ventures, an advisor through Yellowwoods helping global family businesses “give back” and she’s the author of the USA TODAY bestseller Work That’s Worth It: The Ambitious Professional’s Guide for a High-Impact, High-Reward Career. And she’s now a podcast host of the Work That’s Worth It Podcast.
Connect with Georgi and learn more about her work…
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“One of the areas of self-awareness is most people are not aware of where they shine. Like even if they’re an engineer, they’re in a pool of engineers. So they don’t really know what is extraordinary about them. And it takes, it does take some excavation work to figure out how you as an individual are unique and shine, and also what your team is, you know, particularly gifted at, or what your company does better than any other company.”
Georgi Enthoven
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Georgi Enthoven, and here is why she is awesome. She’s a seasoned entrepreneur, venture partner at MatterScale Ventures, an advisor through Yellowwoods helping global family businesses give back.
There’s so much. I’m just like a run on sentence here. There’s so much. And she’s the author of the USA Today bestseller Work That’s Worth It, The Ambitious Professionals Guide for a High Impact High Reward Career. And she’s in that pod… podcast space just like myself. She’s the podcast host of Work that’s Worth It Podcast, right? I, I assume it’s associated with the book. Not as dumb as I look. Hi, Georgi.
Georgi Enthoven: Hello. Thank you for the introduction. That was wonderful.
Russel Lolacher: You noted that we are speaking a little later in the day and we’re both grasping at that, that late afternoon energy that we’re working through. So I, I appreciate the, the, the pumping up as it were.
Georgi Enthoven: Yes, apparently this is all my fault.
Russel Lolacher: With love, with love. Before we get into the questions around leadership design, ’cause I’ve got a lot of questions. I wanna start with the question, ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I was thinking about this question and I was reminded of a time early in my career where I shared my salary information with another coworker who was in a different department, but had the same role, and we both got raises. We were both excited, and then we actually shared the numbers. And as it turns out that I had significantly higher salary than she did.
And that caused a whole chain of events, including going to HR, HR coming back and telling us that we should not have talked about salary. And this is something that really was to serve the company, but not the employee. But it was a mark of maybe against our record or knowing that holding that kind of information was something that we would potentially not do.
So it felt threatening to the company. And looking back, I, you know, realized now even getting reprimanded, it was something that probably should have been addressed. And often that does happen in companies where employees do have friction is not necessarily something’s wrong with the employee, but maybe the system is designed to not serve the employee.
Russel Lolacher: And I’m betting that you just shared the information, like it’s no big deal. It was just sort of like, oh, you got a number, I got a number.
Did you go into the conversation thinking it was gonna be different or were you just shocked?
Georgi Enthoven: No, I think we thought we’re in it together. We’re both so happy we got a raise. Like, and I, I, I do really believe that we both had good intentions and actually we’re probably pretty naive that it could even be different.
Russel Lolacher: And you did nothing wrong, like Abso like there is such a push nowadays, even for there to be transparency around job postings.
I think it’s even been mandated legally in some areas of the world where you actually have to be super clear. Of course, that’s super clear in the job posting, not necessarily in the promotions and bonuses as we go through our careers. You say you were kind of, I don’t, it wasn’t it blackballed or blacklisted, but you did say it might have had an impact on your career in that organization. Is that what you found?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. I mean, truthfully, I, it was one of my early jobs and I, we were promoted often. It was, I was young, it was as the tech industry was starting to really bloom, there was a shortage of talent, so we had a lot of wind in our sails, so to speak. So I don’t think it really had a long-term impact, but it definitely took us off a, like a list of obedient good workers.
Russel Lolacher: One of those career limiting moves I hear often about in the, in any industry where it’s like, well, I know you meant well but now you’re screwed. Sorry about that. So let’s, let’s design better, let’s make better places to work, which is really what we’re focusing on today around leadership design.
And I was super curious when we first talked about this as what we were gonna dig into. So I’m gonna shut up because I’m super curious how you define leadership design?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. Well, I, as you know, am really interested in the area of work where you can have a significant contribution to the world and earn meaningful compensation to match that. So, as when you think of leadership at work, I am particularly interested in organizations that are impact focused, but not only impact focused, impact focus, but with a business model behind that generates revenue and can compensate employees well.
So for me, that is what leadership is about, is by actually taking on one of the world problems or something in your local community and deciding that your business will integrate with that problem deeply and it may actually enhance your business.
Russel Lolacher: So the traditional career planning model for most leaders is, well first, how do I make more money? How do I, you know, there that, especially with the way the, you know, the economies are these days is that little bit extra helps and that does motivate a lot of people as they go through their careers. Also, more responsibility, profile.
How does leadership design and how you are explaining it differ from that?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, well. I, you know, nine out of 10 Gen Zers want companies to have some social and environmental responsibility. And Gen Zers are becoming 25% of the workforce faster than we know it. Soon, even more, And businesses are going to have to change, not just what Gen Z wants, but also we can look at our environment and we have all the knowledge now that the way we are operating in business no longer can, we can’t operate at that same pace.
So we are going to have to make some changes. So business as usual, the way we’ve usually done it that just looked at financials and financial success or what’s good for me is no longer going to be an option in the future. And what I have found as so many inspiring businesses are being formed and developed that are actually have a cause or a contribution built into the center of the business.
And so long term that is not only gonna be what we have to do, but it’s what the younger generation is inspired to do and asking and in many ways. I think of the millennials having changed how we think about mental health in the workforce. And before that could say, you know, how would that ever change you know, mental health days or aren’t gonna be a thing.
And millennials really demanded that, that become a norm. And companies are making job offers and saying, and you get X amount of mental health days. This is going to be the same case with this younger generation. They are going to demand that we care better for our planet and people. And so I’m excited to see what comes of it, but it’s not really a matter of, do you want to do this? It’s going to be a requirement, I believe.
Russel Lolacher: So I’m curious about that because I have a huge challenge with a lot of, well, people in the leadership space don’t seem to even know what leadership is, or they have varying definitions of what leadership is, and you’re defining leadership as a vision, a purpose that improves the environment, the ecosystem, the world in which we live. But I’ve heard leadership be more aligned to management or be more aligned to people and their growth, but you’re talking about something completely different. How does those, how do those mesh?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, well one thing that comes to mind is when I was writing my book, I interviewed Vincent Stanley, who’s one of the very first employees at Patagonia. And they’re obviously a company that has significant impact and also pays their employees well. So it’s an income impact scenario.
And what he said to me is, the reality is most jobs have, you know, a huge amount of work that’s mundane and boring. That’s just what work often involves for anyone, even somebody very inspired. And you need motivation to get that work done. And if you have a vision that you are collectively grouping behind and rooting for, and it’s interested to you, you are connected to it personally.
You want to see the results personally. You’re able to get work done that is not necessarily work that you find enjoyable. So it gives people a focus and let’s say a north star outside what the day-to-day task is. And like, I’ll give you an example for me writing my book editing I found incredibly tedious, but the message to me is so important that I really focused on the editing piece with my whole heart because I really wanted to get to the point where I could get the book out and get the message out.
And that is the same on any team. And so without that, especially the younger generation. I hear pushback of the generation is lazy. They don’t want to take partake in anything. They feel uninspired, they don’t like the work. Maybe they just need a vision that’s more compelling.
I see incredible Gen Z workers when they do have that, that are really motivated and really resourceful and know how to get things done.
And so part of it is just having something more inspiring that you’re working for.
Russel Lolacher: It’s funny you say that. I’ve, I’ve heard those, I heard it. I mean, I’m old enough to remember them saying, people saying the exact same thing about millennials, that they’re saying about Gen Z now. And I’m like, but the most entitled people I’ve ever seen have been Boomers, not Gen Z, not Millennials.
And we’re all different. The, the diversity side of this is astronomically impactful when we’re talking about leadership. So what does a designed leader look like, act like? How do they show up? Like what are we tangibly looking at
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I find so remarkable by the people who are focused on a contribution or building a contribution into the workforce is they say things like, I don’t mind Monday. I don’t mind coming back from vacation. I love what I do. I would do this for free. And I hear those words pretty consistently.
And then I think in the real world, like how often do I hear that? No, I hear people say, oh, I can’t believe it’s Sunday night. I don’t want Monday to come. Or like, the work week feels so long or I can’t wait for vacation. And we’re living in a world where most people show, have to show up at work with a different persona than they go home.
And when you can find work that’s worth. The, what I see unanimously is people feel aligned with who they are at home and who they feel at work. There’s something they’re, they’re excited about working on something that is not separate between work and home.
And so that really helps with different things. It helps with motivation, it helps with burnout, it helps with alignment, it helps with connection and collaboration and people forming relationships. And so it has a lot of positive impact on a community or within a team of office mates or even the individual feeling more fulfilled.
Russel Lolacher: So as an individual, and I’m working through this to understand and design my own leadership and my and I work within an organization that has values that may not necessarily align with what my vision is moving forward.
Or it’s not as altruistic, it’s not as charitable as I need it to be. Are we jumping ship? Or we are we making adjustments? What do we do in that situation?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I especially in the world we are in today, I think the workforce is very unstable. I think many young people, I just read 4 million Gen Zs are, are, Gen Zs are out of work right now. It’s a huge number and so I don’t believe that it’s a particularly good time to quit a job and not have something lined up.
But what I will say is that you can bring impact into any job wherever you are. And I’ll give you another example. Actually, this is also an example from Patagonia, but there was a woman who was maybe a mid-level employee. That was working on their catalog business. And you and I are old enough to know that that’s how companies used to sell, like in a paper catalog before they had everything on the web.
And so this woman was really interested in seeing if she could get the catalog printed on recycled paper. And they’re a company that really values their visuals, their photography. And so they said, as long as you can get the same quality. It’s a go. And so she found somebody to, who was able to produce the quality at the cost they needed and everything else.
And it not only was she able to convince Patagonia to go ahead with it, but it changed the whole industry. All sorts of other companies started to produce catalogs that also are on recycled paper. So one thing to note is you don’t have to go to a company that is specifically aligned with something that you care about.
You can bring that with you and use that as something to align and to motivate your team. And I often work when I work with people, like we think of a contribution sometimes for the really the first time. ’cause very seldom are we asked, what do you care about? We’re often asked, you know, what do you want to do? What skills do you have? But not who you know, what’s important to you? What do you really want to contribute to in your lifetime? And finding a purpose. Finding a passion, it sounds really overwhelming and maybe for the select few, but building a personal mission is not, and having that aligned with a company mission is ideal, but it can start with one word.
And that’s like where I like to start is if it’s just one thing that you want to align with, what is it? And it could be women, it could be the environment, it could be refugees, whatever it is. But what is the one word that you could bring in? And that could be at the individual level or at a company level.
Russel Lolacher: What I’m hearing though is that there needs to be a bit of work around self-awareness first before we can start throwing words or even one word around, we need to know ourselves a little bit better.
Is that a, I mean, I think it’s a great place to start because we can’t understand what our vision is if we don’t know ourselves enough to connect with a thing. How do you, what would you direct someone around that piece.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. Well, I I love that you asked that question and one of the first things that I noticed in coaching and also talking to these people who I call disruptors for good, who are the role models of doing this great work they are really aware of their capabilities, the gifts where they shine, and they not only are aware of it, but are able to communicate that well to others.
And one of the areas of self-awareness is most people are not aware of where they shine. Like even if they’re an engineer, they’re in a pool of engineers. So they don’t really know what is extraordinary about them. And it takes, it does take some excavation work to figure out how you as an individual are unique and shine, and also what your team is, you know, particularly gifted at, or what your company does better than any other company.
It takes some time and some research and observation, and probably a lot of conversations to get there. Obviously as an individual, there’s some tools like Myers-Briggs or StrengthFinder that can get you started. But even just asking the people in your life, you know, what do you come, what do people come to you for?
And if you even ask them like, where do I really shine? What am I gifted? Where do I stand out? People can come back and share like four or five things that you can then make sense of and start to understand who you are or who your team is, or who your company is and what they stand, what is uniquely gifted about, you know, any of those levels. And then also then how are you going to communicate that?
So on an individual level, many of us feel boastful owning our gifts and strengths and sort of shy away from that. But I have met some really interesting individuals who are able to just really say, I’m actually really good at this piece And, it feels so refreshing when someone does that in a non boastful way. And they’re also then equally aware of where they need support and, and help. And the people that I find who’ve done that extra work are able to have the awareness to lean into their strengths. I think often, and especially I did in my early career, I lent into my weaknesses thinking I needed to level up all these different areas that it weren’t as tangible or easy for me.
And there’s always maybe gonna be a piece of that, but if you’re not leaning into your strengths, you’re doing a disservice.
Russel Lolacher: Well, I mean, we’re both around. We’re GenXs to some degree. I think you’re GenX?.
Georgi Enthoven: A hundred . Agree.
Russel Lolacher: All right. I didn’t didn’t want assume. Could be a millennial, I didn’t know. But having said that, I remember growing up and it was, what are your weaknesses? Well, you need to work on that. Those are your we, yeah. Only in the last decade or so is it, you know, forget that, just lean into your strengths.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, well, not in school. I mean, I have children that are about to be all three teenagers and a lot about school is leveling up your weaknesses. So if you’re not performing great in math or in writing, then you need to get a tutor or somebody to help you with that area. And nobody is really saying, wow, you’re exceptional at this, like, this could be your go-to like, you know, magnificent shine area. So, I think a lot of the messaging we get all through schooling is still how to level up weaknesses.
Russel Lolacher: Oh, or at least get to a baseline so you can graduate. And it’s a, because it’s a checklist exercise, because you know that kid that’s horrible at math, they are gonna avoid anything and everything to do with math the minute they walk outta that school and never want to ever do it again. But there’s a baseline that they seem to have to achieve. Oh, well man, we could do a whole thing on school and education. Don’t even get me started on even getting into the college realm. I’ll shut up on that. But let’s go on the leadership design of things. What if alignment doesn’t work? I love that you connected the dots between having a tool like Strength Finder, the networking, mentorship, coaching thing where ask around, see if it’s right, and then communicating to get it.
Those are three of my baselines for a lot of leadership. Situational awareness, self-awareness, communication. What if you’re wrong? But what if you come up with a vision that you’re like, okay, I’ll try this, and then it doesn’t feel like a fit.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. Well, there’s different ways. I’m sure you have done a lot of podcasts on how you would know if it’s not a fit. But one of the ways that on the value side is you can feel it when there’s misalignment. You don’t wanna go to work. You’re feeling agitated, anxious, like, you know, when you’re feeling misaligned.
And if you’re ignoring that for too long, eventually you have a health issue that something shuts down. So I, I do believe on the value side is if you focus on what’s happening in your body, you will understand when you are misaligned. But sometimes it’s also realizing that you can bring to the table the piece that is missing.
So it doesn’t mean that you have to change jobs, it just means that you may need to find your allies or who to take initiative with that can get behind something or a piece that is missing. ’cause I find often people are when they run into a complication at work or feeling misaligned, their first reaction is to just go the other direction.
And I, without really, again, doing the research and understanding what is behind that misalignment and what you, what are the options, what you could do about it, you may very well find you’re in the same situation again.
Russel Lolacher: And might, you might even be close. You might be just, it might be just a slight tweak because a lot of people, to your point, will go back to, oh, I gotta start all over. Oh, I’m a failure. I did a horrible job trying to align. No, it’s new information.
You’ve learned something about yourself. This is a great opportunity to tweak and readjust for that vision statement. It’s those that I think beat themselves up a bit too harshly that I think might have to rethink it.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, and actually something that comes to mind also is when it comes to values, I really have seen that it’s important for teams to have a similar value system just like it is in a family to keep together and close. It’s really important to have different perspectives. So that is a big piece about alignment, that it’s okay if the perspectives are different.
It’s not okay if you are fundamentally different or on opposing values and making space for
Understanding different perspectives will allow you to reach your customer better, work better as a team, have more empathy for each other, and the people you serve.
Russel Lolacher: I’m glad you segued for me there, Georgi. You got me right into the teams conversation I wanted to have, because as leaders, designed leaders that have this purpose, have this vision, how can they bring their teams along? To your point with all that other perspectives, diversity without losing their own perspective and vision.
Because as much as I love hammering home, this is the promised land, this is the North Star, people are gonna have different perspectives because your vision could be a very personal one and your team might be like, eh, I’m not feeling it as much.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I, I, I think it’s important to be aligned on vision. How you get there is really the strategy, and that’s up for debate. So I think sometimes the strategy becomes our identity. And that can get really complicated. And we can see that in politics. So I’m a Democrat, I’m a Republican, or in the US anyway, right?
And that identity is really hardship. We really move from one to the other. That should actually be the strategy. It depends. So you’re, you’re voting for something you care about and how you get there, you should be able to change. And so often when I see it go wrong is the strategy now becomes your identity and therefore you don’t have the flexibility to make the changes that need to be made.
Russel Lolacher: Any questions you’d suggest to start asking your team to sort of, I guess, co-create the journey?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I, I mean, I love that idea of co-creating, but a vision needs to be created for any brand company service so that you understand how to get, again, to communicate to your customers what you are able, how you’re able to serve them, and what is unique that you can bring to the table to make sure that you’re meeting their needs and you need to have a, a, a higher vision of how you see the world and how, and, and what you can deliver. And so either you’ve already got that and it’s well established and you have sort of a mission and values already established when the company that people buy into when they join or if it’s something that you don’t have, then it needs more work. And I’ll give you an example where things are in, in the world that I’m in seem like really misaligned on college campuses. So students come into college campuses with they or the, the admissions personnel require students to have an incredible vision of the world, already dedicated to solving world problems, have started a not-for-profit, have dedicated hours to making their communities better, wanting to change the world.
When the, when the students are in college, they get very little of that messaging, and when they leave college, the career centers are not bringing the people on campus to help those students change the world. They’re bringing the big corporate, so banking, consulting, or big tech and sometimes some small not-for-profits ’cause they help make the story look good, but they’re not aligned with the value system from start to finish.
And students are feeling that misalignment, is also, and feeling disappointed with what they’re being helped with when it comes to the careers of the on the other end. And so that’s an example. It’s not a office example, but where a value system is not clear and the losers in the situation are the customer, which is the student.
And so that often happens also in companies where you have a purpose or a mission that is a nice to have, but it’s on the periphery and it’s not really deeply integrated into how you do business and serve your customers.
Russel Lolacher: I’ve always found vision and mission to be underutilized in the workplace as A communication tools and B engagement tools. Because, if you get a vision right, your team will fully buy in. They want to feel like they’re part of something bigger. They want to feel like they’re fixing a problem that is beyond the and, and this can work in organizations and there are a lot of organizations that have horrible vision and mission statements. But individual teams can have their own.
I sometimes even call them purpose statements ’cause they don’t wanna have a, another vision on top of a vision for the organization. But it still has the same impact. It’s still like looking to a, a, a better place. What’s a bad vision? What is something within, and I’m still looking at teams at this point, not the macro, but more the micro a leadership, their team, their vision.
When is it too much or too narrow?
Georgi Enthoven: Well, I would say my number one red flag is if it’s too vague or difficult to communicate. So if you can say, if everybody on your team knows what the vision is and can say it, you’ve got the right vision. Sometimes people have visions of we’re going to help serve people, live a better life. It’s way too vague.
Like what does that actually mean? Or they have a vision of it’s very like detailed and complicated. And may have made sense with people wordsmithing something and fitting in all the right pieces to keep everybody happy, but it’s not something that can be repeated by every employee. And so when it’s easily repeatable or even the value system when it’s easily known, okay, I’m, I’m, I’m at a crossroads.
I need to make a choice for a client. What do I do? The values of the company should be things you can easily sort of step into, and now you’ll know what to do. And if that’s not the case, then I would call that an ineffective vision.
Russel Lolacher: I’ve, I’ve often gone and asked people from all different organizations and I go, so what’s your vision? They’d be like, I don’t know. I’m like, then it’s a crap vision because if you, if it, if it doesn’t, a, it doesn’t resonate with you obvious enough to even remember. B, do you even know what it like, sure. It might be on a poster or on a website somewhere where you have to go 17 clicks on it, but this should be hammered home and living and breathing and organic and something that you believe in every day, but if you don’t, you can’t even remember it. Or it’s to your point, it’s gobbly goop corporate corporate speak because they’re trying to please too many masters that want to feel like they’re a part of it.
And I’m like, then it’s useless to everybody when you’re trying to help everybody.
Georgi Enthoven: and I’ve actually been on a not-for-profit board where we as an offsite hired somebody to help us with vision work for the day, and then nothing was done with it. So I think often companies sort of think, okay, that would be an interesting thing to do. We should go do this work, we’ll do an offsite, we’ll take everybody’s day.
We feel bonded, we feel close that day. And then there’s silence. And so, you know, not integrating it or not building a vision that is integratable into the business is also you know, ineffective.
Russel Lolacher: Too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah. Yeah. Or it’s like anything else that we’re doing today. We’re consuming so much and putting so many inputs in, but what are we actually implementing And you know, just even on the individual level, the amount of information we’re all consuming is becomes almost addictive. It’s like junk food, but if we’re not doing anything with that information, then it’s not really worth it or worth the investment. And so if you are a company that is needing to build out a vision or a team that’s needing to strategically build in a vision, I would even build in the time afterwards that it’s gonna take to implement it and then to think effectively, how have we used it and what do we need to adjust or not adjust, but it can’t just be a one day affair.
Russel Lolacher: Who are the right people to come up with a vision? Because you’ve talked about leadership design, and you’ve talked about it. Not every leader is built for vision building. This is where I kind of get, this is where I kind of clash on defining leaders because there will be a lot of people that are bums in seats and they’re called quote unquote leaders, and they have influence and they have, you know, whether on their team within the larger organization, but some of them should not be leaders.
And yet, and yet we’re looking to design visions in this. Is this a matter of an organization going, you know what, you don’t fit. You’re not the kind of leaders we want. I’m just trying to figure out, not everybody is created equal when it comes to leadership, but we’re talking about all of them should have visions themselves.
Is that realistic?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, what comes to mind when you’re saying that is I think, again, we have this genera generational change. So business as usual for a Gen Xer is to work an environment without a vision, to roll up your sleeves, do the work, and get it done. Don’t complain. Separate business and personal life.
It’s okay if you’ve got these two different personas and the younger generation is not willing to do that. And so I don’t know if in this particular time we can isolate like one sort of lead on creating a vision, but I do believe the desire for a vision should come from leadership and how we get people involved in creating it and building it, it may very well come from the younger generation who is, more influenced and have greater desire for their alignment with their own values and their work and what they’re doing. And I hear things from people. I mean, my, when I was writing my book, I interviewed a lot of different people and people doing great work in the world, like very impact focused and other people who really just climbed a corporate ladder with no thought of impact.
And a lot of my Harvard Business School classmates are in the no impact. Very financially driven, have done work, been really successful ambitious, but a lot of them said, I am doing this work and I actually hate it. I, or I don’t like it, or, I’m unfulfilled. And the worst that I heard is I’m embarrassed by the work that I do, but our generation was not asking those questions.
And so it’s not that I want to give our generation a free pass at this, but I think what we notice, and there’s many organizations and books on this regret about the career choices you’ve made and then how on this last act you get to go and give impact. We don’t need to wait till then, we can build it in earlier, and there’s great models that do this now and examples.
So it’s not that we don’t have examples or this is pioneering for the first time. We’ve got many examples that are doing a really good job at this.
Russel Lolacher: So what advice are you giving, and I’m splitting this up, Gen X, Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z.
I’m being a little too general in this. What advice are you giving to the older demographics? Get out of the way, like your time is dead dinosaur. Like what do you say? I hope not. ’cause I’m one of those people. The other half is the younger people coming in wondering if their visions are gonna be listened, wondering if their expectations of a better work environment and better impact.
So what advice should we be giving them?
Georgi Enthoven: I mean my biggest advice, and I have been walking this myself, is for anyone in the job world right now, given what’s happening is be willing to be a beginner. And so that could be whether you’ve got 20 years experience, 50 years experience, five years experience. The world is changing under our feet so fast, and it’s not just on impact, it’s obviously on AI and all businesses are going to change.
And so we have to be willing to be a beginner. And when you’re willing to become a beginner, it gives you so much freedom and it just means that you’re not gonna start off at the same level of expertise and skills and even credibility as you have had, and that’s part of the discomfort. But without it, I do believe you’ll become obsolete.
Russel Lolacher: Being humble, I think will also because there’ll be people like ourselves and older generations where this is what success looks like. This is the ladder I climb to be successful, to get the role that I am, and not maybe being quite curious enough to those that are younger, that may have different visions that could take the organization even further with their idea and vision.
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, you’re absolutely right and I act, I called my book Work That’s Worth It because that’s the words I hear from the younger generation. Hmm. It’s not worth it, not worth my time, not worth my energy. And so I think that’s what feels frustrating for anyone who has been in the workforce for a long time and the, the feeling is, well, I did it. I didn’t question it. I got to work. I, you know, rolled up my sleeves and did what my boss asked me. And the younger generation are saying, ah, I think I’d rather go to the beach. And we’re wondering why. And really it’s a shift in mindset like these younger people are, activists, they’re rebels, they’re disruptors, they want to change the world. And I think all of us have been there. I think all young generations emerging into the workforce are feeling like that. And so how do we harness that for good? And there is a great opportunity for any company to be able to do that.
And the ideas may very well come from those younger, new entrants.
Russel Lolacher: So what do you suggest we do tomorrow, georgie? What do you suggest are, are we talking about reverse mentorship possibly for older generations? Are we, what would you recommend that we do to fix all the problems?
Georgi Enthoven: I like your, I like your conversation about reverse mentorship and I actually was talking with a group of Stanford students last night, and that is something that came up. And I talked about when I graduated from UC Berkeley, I graduated at a time when the marketed crash. And these young graduates are also graduating at a difficult time where there’s a lot of freezing in hiring within companies and they are feeling anxious about this after, you know, spending lots of money on their education and feeling like they made it to the top of the funnel and realizing, but wait, that’s still not enough. And I shared with them when I graduated from Berkeley, the same thing happened in 1994.
There was you know, the market was in a difficult situation and it was right before the tech boom. And I ended up getting a job in techno. I wanted to do good in the world, but I was not able to find something that met my ambition and so I ended up in consumer technology. And the people that I was working for, I was the youngest person on the team and the people that I was working for had no idea about the internet or what it was.
And I had already started using it in my last year of college. And then I took a class that first year working of like designing a website for your business. And I was just more curious about what this was about. I ended up being an expert in the business that I was in, even though I had people, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years older than me because they had no knowledge or understanding how to do this.
And I was literally sitting at the computers helping them type www as like they were getting into it.
And this younger generation has that same gift and they have it on two levels. The first is on AI. So I actually, the students I talked to last night, what a gift that they’ve all actually learned to write.
Like they actually got through school and they know how to write, which I think the younger generations is gonna be so tempting not to ever learn to write and to do a lot of the work. But this generation right where they are right now, they know how to write. But they also have a very flexible mindset.
They are resourceful. They know how to shift gears, so they may not understand everything about AI, but this is something they’re gonna pick up easily and that they may find that they accelerate very quickly in the workforce. And the second aspect is understanding sustainability and the desire for sustainability.
And again, people in the workforce do not have the skill. And so I work with a lot of young individuals that are in corporate environments and they are heading up or building sustainability areas within companies. And they’re young. They’re like 26 heading up sustainability area, but they can do this because what they’ve been educated on and and their understanding is a lot more progressive and current than people in the workforce. And that’s why if you’re older, becoming a beginner or be willing to become a beginner or willing to have this reverse mentorship, like I can give the wisdom and I can show you the staying power and how to make it work and how to solve real problems and why to solve real problems. And you can show me how to be how to do this quickly, how to be incredibly resourceful, what we need to think about, and the partnership is really great.
Russel Lolacher: Last question, what is a culture look like based on your interviews, based on everything you’ve learned, what is a good culture look like that embraces leadership design like this. Like what are the qualities, what are they getting right?
Georgi Enthoven: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is people feel inspired by where they work. I love the example of people saying, I’m proud of what I do.
So I think that’s something that we never really asked of, of a company. Most of us went to work and thought yeah, I’m gonna pick up some skills and learn some stuff.
And whether I’m proud of it or not is not part of it. I think. So having something inspiring. I believe that in the world of feeling very disconnected. Especially with AI and a lot of these younger generation having to go to school during COVID on remotely or part of college, but like it being remote and a lot of young people have not had training and leadership skill training because they’re working remotely.
That building community is really important aspect as well. So those are the two pieces that I would say really define success.
Russel Lolacher: Thank you. That’s Georgi Enthoven. She’s a seasoned entrepreneur. She’s the author of the USA Today bestseller Work That’s Worth It, The Ambitious Professional Professionals Guide for High Impact High Reward Career, and she’s got herself a podcast you should check out as well called Work That’s Worth it.
Thank you so much for being here.
Georgi Enthoven: Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you for the interesting conversation.