Notes from an on-site: The death of 40 hours

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:41)

It's not about how hard you work anymore. It's now, like, we have fully embraced work smarter, not harder, but where it immediately took my mind, oh, that's the end of the 40-hour work week. We're moving very quickly towards you're paid to accomplish a goal.

I don't care when and how you do it. That's up to you. What's up, Lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day.

I got my man, JP, here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:42 - 0:44)

Live long and make that money.

[Dillon] (0:45 - 0:52)

And prosper, I think that, yeah, I get what you're doing there. And Rob is here. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:52 - 0:54)

Welcome to the crib, MTV.

[Dillon] (0:57 - 1:32)

We'll show you my game room next. And I am your host.

My name is Dylan Young. That is in reference to the fact that we are sitting in Rob's beautiful abode here in South Boston. Many would describe it as boho chic.

Boho chic, yes, with the fake plants. Having just wrapped up Customer Success Collective's CS Festival Boston, and we're here just gathering our thoughts after a very long two days. We're all kind of like dragging to the finish line here.

I'm going to give you guys a shot in the arm. You ready?

[JP] (1:32 - 1:33)

Oh, I already have one.

[Dillon] (1:33 - 1:38)

Yeah, that's right. JP's sleepy because he got his flu and COVID shots.

[JP] (1:38 - 1:46)

But- Dylan, I ain't been under this many bright lights in a long time. Oh, shout out Aaron Rodgers. Shout out Aaron Rodgers.

[Dillon] (1:48 - 3:06)

Oh, God bless him. They just went, right? They won in the last game.

Yeah, we're not going to talk, we don't have to talk. You don't want to jinx it? We don't have to talk.

Anyway, I'm going to give you guys a shot in the arm. No more jokes, JP. I feel like we got to talk about AI, but I'm going to give you, that's my job.

Okay. Thank you for filling in. But I'm going to give it a bit of a loop here, throw you for a loop here.

Everybody there had the exact same reaction you did in one form or another. I think we are turning the corner and nobody considers it this crazy novel idea anymore. It is now just being integrated into our conversations as another tool, like Slack, basically.

Slack, sponsor us. Rob doesn't hate you that much. You can sponsor us.

Did you guys get the same vibe? I felt that. That people are exhausted?

Exhausted at this idea of it is our savior or our destroyer. Right. And it seems like we've all kind of come to the conclusion that we will, at least for now, coexist peacefully.

We'll continue to find ways to use it. Did you feel the same way, either in the presentations or in the conversations you had?

[Rob] (3:07 - 3:09)

Yeah. I'll step in if that's okay.

[Dillon] (3:10 - 3:14)

I mean, I... JP's right here, he could hit you.

[Rob] (3:15 - 4:29)

Yes. He looked at me. Yeah.

We don't get that in-person interaction all that much. But anyway, no, I think the thing that's really useful in the maturation of our conversation around AI that's happening right now is that we're starting to compartmentalize it so much more effectively. And maybe next year, we don't even just use the global term AI so commonly, because AI is this massive bucket of things, right?

And you can't just reach your hand in this mystery box that is AI and, you know, like, there's so many things. You can't expect they're all the same. You can't expect they're all the same.

Even just like, so if I look at it, you know, what I think was really useful is people are starting to think of different subdomain applications of AI, like AI applied to onboarding, AI applied to support, AI applied to customer health scoring and how each of those are different, even down to AI writing emails for me. And then within that subdomain, let's just take support for example, you can think of different applications within there as well. Because you can think about AI chatbots, which is different than AI insights on support trends, which is different than AI agent assist.

[Dillon] (4:30 - 4:42)

I think people also became much more responsible in the difference between AI and automation. Right. Which is a significant difference.

JP, what do you think?

[JP] (4:43 - 6:10)

Yeah, our buddy Alistair, great guy. He was definitely talking, and I think to him, it's not even really like a discussion topic. I think to him, it's like the other way.

I think to him, I'm not speaking for you, but it's almost, it seems as if it's like, yeah, like, come on. And I think one of the examples he used, I thought was really great was another subject that people sort of roll their eyes out about is when you're interviewing and you have to do like a project, right. And people just like hate that.

I mean, we can think, you know, obviously, right. And so he used a good example. He said, hey, if we give you a project and you spent hours and hours, blood, sweat and tears to put this presentation together, as opposed to utilizing something like ChatGPT to maybe get the basis of it down and then add personalization on top of it.

He was talking about a specific way of leveraging this AI tool to be more efficient, right. And I think that that's really good because he gave, I think, a bit of a counterexample. And I mean, we've seen it too, where people do not take that effort to personalize it.

And so they just present it and like, that's not good either, you know.

[Dillon] (6:10 - 7:28)

Well, because nobody really, I'm gonna try and tie this all together. Because what I think is interesting is that did a number of different things. Alistair's comment, for me.

It pointed out, we're seeing a bit of a sea change. It used to be respected if you poured your blood, sweat and tears into your work. Like, wow, this dude, he's a soldier.

Right. This chick, she really, she cares. She spent 15 hours on this project.

Like, that dedication alone, she'd be a great worker. And that no longer cuts the mustard. And in fact, in some ways it can be a bad look.

They'd rather you essentially enslave a robot to do it for you, right? Like, it's not about how hard you work anymore. It's now, like, we have fully embraced work smarter, not harder.

But where it immediately took my mind is, oh, that's the end of the 40-hour work week. We're moving very quickly towards, you're paid to accomplish a goal. I don't care when and how you do it.

That's up to you. That's aspirational.

[JP] (7:29 - 7:30)

That's a twist.

[Dillon] (7:30 - 8:14)

Of course, and I do believe that it's still far away. But when leaders start thinking and making decisions based on that theory and understanding like he did, that's big. That's really big.

And maybe it's more, that's the new generation moving into leadership. But that's the way I took that, of like, oh, that's the future. But to the same, I think, to your point, he did a really good job of, I think he thinks very progressively overall.

The way he sort of brushed aside, of course you're using AI. If you're not, then you're behind the times at this point. It is no longer a novel concept.

[Rob] (8:16 - 8:20)

And it's no longer taboo. I think that's the interesting thing.

[Dillon] (8:21 - 8:36)

Which I think is interesting if you were to look at it through an academic perspective. It's still a little bit taboo. But you do see some of those progressive guys that are like, oh, I wanna see how you use it to accomplish the job.

Right, right. So I agree with you. Finish your thought.

[Rob] (8:36 - 8:53)

Well, yeah, I mean, I think the example that came up is interesting. We talked about, I think the analogy I gave was, there was a point in time where accountants feared calculators. And some didn't.

You had to go, oh, the calculators.

[JP] (8:53 - 8:55)

Yeah. That damn web because the low.

[Rob] (8:55 - 8:56)

Yeah. Yeah.

[JP] (8:57 - 8:57)

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rob] (8:58 - 9:13)

And some didn't adopt it. Because they were like, we don't want to adopt this newfangled technology and we don't want it to steal our jobs and it's on us as a profession to avoid it. Like these are Luddites in the most classic form, right?

[Dillon] (9:13 - 9:25)

Can we call this the calculator parable? The calculator parable. Can we just abbreviate this?

We don't have to do this every time. Second time. You could just.

Okay, it's the third time. Yes.

[Rob] (9:26 - 9:27)

The second time on the pod.

[Dillon] (9:28 - 9:30)

Yes, no, you did. You brought it up. Anyway.

[Rob] (9:30 - 9:37)

My point is to say it's just really interesting to see how technology moves from taboo to being an asset.

[Dillon] (9:38 - 9:49)

Or taboo or a threat. Or a threat. Yeah.

To being an asset. Yeah. Yeah, and then it just gets integrated.

Right. And then it's like if you're not adopting it then you're behind.

[JP] (9:49 - 9:49)

Yeah.

[Rob] (9:50 - 9:53)

But now accountants are still working 40 plus hour work weeks though, so.

[Dillon] (9:53 - 10:48)

Sure, because of course then the workload starts to catch up. And that's why the 40 hour work week is sort of a, it's a misnomer in my example. But it's more like evolving the way in which we think about work.

And our attitude towards the way we accomplish work. It used to be, I kind of don't even care if you're not doing anything, but you've got to sit at that desk for eight hours a day. And we've since moved to, well, especially when it's remote work, we don't actually care if you're sitting in front of the computer all day, but you do gotta get your work done.

And you gotta show face. And you've still gotta go to the office once a week, three times a week, whatever it ends up being. It's a sliding scale for sure, but I think that was big for me, to hear that come from a leader.

[Rob] (10:48 - 11:25)

Liberating, really. Yeah. It reminds me, I've got a friend, he worked at a company, a big company, let's just call them PJ, let's just call them PJ Porgan.

Anyway, big company, established financial institution, and- PJ Porgan sponsor us. And what he did, he wrote a script that automated his eight hours of his workday into two hours. And the rest of the time, he just sat there on Reddit.

[Dillon] (11:27 - 11:33)

What's so funny about people like that is that guy could be a multi-multi-millionaire. Oh, he will be.

[Rob] (11:33 - 11:47)

He eventually quit. But isn't that- Fortunately, we hired him at the company I was at, and he's been nothing but incredible. Still one of the best assets I have in my friend network.

So don't give too much away, but has he been on the podcast?

[Dillon] (11:47 - 11:53)

No, I invited him, but he hasn't been on yet. Okay. I didn't know if it, because you've had quite a few- Will Tyler's in the future.

[JP] (11:54 - 11:55)

PJ Porgan, look out for him.

[Dillon] (11:56 - 11:58)

Might make some merch for PJ Porgan.

[JP] (11:58 - 12:05)

We should talk about the, I think that this history of work topic is actually pretty interesting. I think that we should do a deep dive on that in the future.

[Rob] (12:05 - 12:07)

History of work. Yeah. History of work.

[JP] (12:07 - 12:19)

Yep, because you bring up your calculators, you're bringing up like- You give him another chance to bring up that peril. No, no, no, he knows not to bring it up. No, don't bring it up, children.

Don't bring it up. It's fun talking about that. Do you know?

[Dillon] (12:21 - 12:26)

That's our time, boys and girls. As always, been a pleasure.

[Voiceover] (12:30 - 13:01)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to dylan at lifetimevaluemedia.com.

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