In this episode of 'It's a Customer's World,' Andy Murray is joined by co-host Professor Molly Rapert to interview Rishad Tobaccowala, a globally recognized strategist and author. The conversation spans various topics including leadership mindset shifts, the evolving landscape of work, and the role of technology in shaping the future.

Rishad offers deep insights into how businesses can thrive by focusing on employee satisfaction and continuous learning. Practical advice is given on how to build a successful career, emphasizing the value of mentorship, collaboration, and lifelong learning. The discussion also delves into the role of AI and the need for in-person interactions in the hybrid work environment.

Rishad shares actionable recommendations for students and professionals, stressing the significance of curiosity, creativity, and generosity.

00:00 Introduction and Special Co-Host Announcement

00:49 Introducing Rishad Tobaccowala

02:16 Defining Customer-Centric Organizations

04:01 Shifting Leader Mindsets

05:23 The Age of De-Boss-ification

08:34 The Importance of Lifelong Learning

18:06 The Role of Passion and Side Hustles

25:52 The Importance of In-Person Interaction

27:17 Mentorship and Learning in a Modern World

31:09 Career Advice for Young Professionals

34:00 Building a Strong Professional Reputation

36:07 Defining Personal Purpose in Education

39:16 Future-Proofing and Leadership

45:31 The Power of Generosity and Continuous Learning

46:50 Concluding Thoughts and Final Advice

Molly's a 30-year friend, extraordinary professor of marketing at the University of Arkansas, Sam M. Walton College of Business, and goes the extra mile in connecting industry with academia. Welcome, Molly.

Molly Rapert: Thank you so much, Andy. You know I've been a long-time fan of you, of the podcast. I use all of your content and thought leadership in my class, so for me to be invited to come talk with you and talk with Rishad, big fan of your work, and I'm delighted to be here.

Beyond his corporate career, Rishad is a sought-after speaker, thought leader, and the author of the widely acclaimed Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data. His latest book, Rethinking Work challenges, conventional wisdom about careers, leadership, and the Future of Work offering, a compelling roadmap for living in an era of rapid change.

We're thrilled to dive into this conversation with Rishad and explore his unique perspectives on how we can all rethink the way we work and lead. Rishad, welcome to the program.

Molly Rapert: I think it's safe to say that one thing I've never been referred to as is an interrogator, but I am a curator, and how lucky for me to curate content between the two of you this morning.

Rishad Tobaccowala: Fantastic. Well, thank you.

Andy Murray: It's going to be a fun show, and since the show is called It's a Customer's World Podcast, I like to kick it off with the first question, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Rishad, if you were visiting with a CEO of a company and they told you they were a customer-centric organization, what would you expect to see?

That's the first thing that I basically look at because often most senior management is far removed from customers or they see analysis and surveys without actually interfacing with human flesh and blood people. That's number one. Number two. I would expect them to invest deeply in the happiness and training of their employees.

Because there is no company, there is only employees. Your customers actually interact with your employees. And if your employees are happy and they are not only productive, but they keep your customers satisfied. So, if you look at something like a Starbucks, the issue is not. Quality of the stores. It's not basically technology; it's their baristas have turned to be very unhappy.

A student perspective and how she can look at it with students, and prepare them as they go into the workforce. So, Molly I'll turn it over to you.

Molly Rapert: Thank you so much, and Rishad, I'll say I have copious notes and ideas of questions to ask you, not to worry. Andy's given me a time limit, but when I read your book for the first time.

But I'd like to start with a few general questions first, if that's okay? You have a constant theme of the undergoing transformation that we live in today. What do you think is the most important mindset shift that leaders need to make to stay relevant in this world

Rishad Tobaccowala: As leaders, I think all leaders need to be aware of three things, and if they are, they're likely to continue to do very well.

The first is to make sure that they recognize we have entered an age of de-boss-ification, and there is a big difference between a leader and a boss. And every leader has some boss like tendencies. And it is important to have boss like tendencies. But what is the difference A boss tends to focus on zone of control.

A leader spends a majority of their time making, selling, guiding, and mentoring. That's number one. So, the age of de-boss-ification. The second thing that I think is extremely important is for most people to recognize that the half-life of knowledge is shrinking, and we're entering in a world where knowledge is going to increasingly be free.

The third is the world of new technology. Provides three very big advantages to companies. One is increased efficiency, which everybody should implement. The other is greater effectiveness. But the third one, which people don't spend enough time on, is what I basically call existential opportunity and risk.

So, if you use modern technology as a leader to make yourself more efficient and effective and not think about how the technology might change your business model. You might end up doing silly things. The New York Times did not. The New York Times understood that digital technology was not just about making their printing presses work faster or new algorithms for their trucks to deliver newspapers.

They began to realize it meant there would be no need for newspapers or trucks in the future.

And how that stretches you, I was just wondering what's your current favorite tool and. How do you take the time in your busy world to continue self-training and learning about all of these opportunities that are out there? It's a bit overwhelming for my seniors and even for myself, my state.

Rishad Tobaccowala: It is a bit overwhelming, but you are a few things to think about. In fact. Your seniors are better suited for this than maybe you and I. So, I believe that you never graduate from school. You just graduate from having to pay tuition.

So, the thing I always did in my career, even when I was working at a full-time job, is I spent an hour a day to learn. And what do you learn about is anything that interests you. So today I spend time in three broad areas. So, I spend a little bit more than an hour a day because A, I have more time, or b, maybe I become dumber over time, but I need some more time.

But what basically happens is I do the three broad areas, one, not surprisingly, is I'm playing around with whatever are the latest AI tools. So, what I have done is I've invested, and I'm not suggesting people have to spend this scale of money. Which is, I spent about $160 subscribing to different AI services.

I read his stuff to also keep updated on what's going on. So, I play around and I read some stuff about ai. The second area that I spend a lot of time as a learning interface is podcasts. Because in effect, what tends to happen is. One of the best universities in the world is YouTube, the other great universities podcast.

And now for some reason people are videotaping podcasts and putting it on YouTube. But it's the same thing, right? Podcast means you can have the world's greatest mentors on any subject, usually for free.

So, for instance, the other day I saw somebody saying, “Hey, there's this amazing article on Apple.” So, I went and read this article by a gentleman called John Gruber, who writes a thing called Daring Fireball, and it's his most recent article who says there's something rotten in the state of Cupertino.

Okay. Something like that where actually any business analysis why Apple is now really in trouble because they really don't know how to make AI work and they've now been showing fake ai, even in their ads, it doesn't actually work. And up to now whenever Apple showed you things that actually was ready to ship where it worked, right?

So, this is something really, really wrong. So, I read that, but then I noticed that he was in conversation with someone else. He had a person I follow called Ben Thompson on Straty, have a thing called dithering. So then, I'm spending an hour listening to everything that they're saying on this topic.

That happened, but they said, okay, on this episode, let's talk about the music. And they have the musical people coming in and talking about that. This one, let's talk about set design. I got to appreciate how a work of art is made while enjoying a work of art. So, this is not just about , it's school kind of thing.

The idea is to learn more and to be curious and see how other people are being creative and that will help your cognition.

Molly Rapert: I'm so excited about this answer and a little embarrassed to admit that I've already printed out your six Cs. Cognition, creativity, curiosity, communication, collaboration and convincing.

Their work. And those six Cs focusing on what you just talked about, creativity and curiosity, I think are going to be the key to my student success. We may not talk to each other in future semesters, but you will have a presence in my class from here until I retire.

Rishad Tobaccowala: Well, thank you Molly.

The reason I think it's very important for people who I call seasoned. That's what I call you and myself. I call it the age of the season is in effect. We are likely to have 50-year careers, so even when you are like finished a 35-year career, you've got another 15 ahead of you. It might be a different type of career like I have these days versus what I was doing the first 37 years of my life at Publicis, but part of it is this constant lifelong learning and that's why the cognition, creativity, and curiosity comes to mind.

So, we have to collaborate with them. We have to convince, which is when everybody has the same data. To make a case, we're going to have to learn how to story, tell, and convince people. And finally, communication, which is going to be very important to know how to write well and how to speak well.

Because if you're very moderate, then the machine talk can be as good as your talk and you're not needed.

Molly Rapert: Which brings me up to one of my favorite quotes that you have where you talk about machines just are producing mediocre and that there's really going to still be room for my students who I love to excel, but they have to take ownership of not being mediocre.

And what I explain to people is this is Hemingway is an amazing writer, and I'm trying to be a writer, but I'm maybe one third or 20% of Hemingway's capabilities. Because I have Substack, I now reach people faster and more often than Hemingway might do, but if Hemingway had Substack, he would not just be three times better than me.

He might be nine times better than me. Because what tends to basically happen is technology is like a lever, and if you're really good at something, it allows you to scale it in amazing ways, but you have to be good at something. If you're just moderate it doesn't do much, right? So, the whole idea is to find a thing that you're not only passionate about, but you can hone a skill, a craft and expertise, and use technology to do it.

Just like I say, Hey, listen the advent of Adobe Photoshop did not put illustrators out of business. It just made the best illustrators more interesting. I've always believed that if you look at history, technology has not actually replaced jobs. It has created new opportunities and it has created new types of jobs.

But what happens to happen is you have to adapt what you do to be available for that new job. It's not just like it's going to create new jobs, it's going to destroy some jobs in the process, right? And so those are some of the things where I remind people that you must embrace ai, you must adapt and complement ai, but the reality of it is AI is a enabler to your future and not a destroyer of your future.

Rishad Tobaccowala: Sure.

Molly Rapert: Passion has to be one of the most common words that is used throughout this book and right. I was thinking in chapter four where you talk about gig work, side hustles, passion projects.

It really made me stop to think, what are some of the underlying factors that are causing that trend that you mentioned that two out of three people less than 35 years old will have a side hustle? In your experience, is it that they are running from the boredom of their job and they're finding their passion in these projects or what's pushing them in that direction? Why aren't we finding our passion in our primary workplace?

Rishad Tobaccowala: So, I will tell you this, there's no one answer because everybody's a composite of different needs and opportunities and situations.

What has happened is now you can actually separate some of those things. That's what people don't realize, up to now we always conflated two things. We conflated a job and work as being the same thing.

I now believe that there'll be fewer and fewer jobs, but there'll always be lots of work. What will happen is more and more the world of work will turn out to be like the world of music. So, if you think about it, in the old days, you had to basically go to where the musician and the musical instrument was to listen to music.

Over time, what happened is, even the instrument was not necessarily with garage band. You could actually create the sound of an instrument without an instrument, and then you no longer had the music even connected to a physical artifact, like a CD or a vinyl record. It was in the cloud. And now what we basically do, we listen to music through the interface of playlists, which we curate based on our needs. So that's what's going to happen. Jobs are going to be basically a series of tasks, and the tasks are going to be done based on people's needs.

But my real passion is art. Now I can do this art. Now I can actually monetize this art in a small way by selling my art on Etsy. So, what happens is now you have options to actually have your cake and eat it too. That's one reason. Second reason.

I'm going to build my business here until it is good enough to supplement and really replace my income. I'm going to do the two simultaneously. The third, and this is the thing that most organizations and companies don't realize, and this advice I give young people, I give even older people. I said, there's this famous line in a song.

They are a guidance thing. You listen to HR as a navigation part of your taking the wheel, but it's your wheel. And the reason is that people are doing this is because they realize that we are working in a world where they need options. So, this maximizes their optionality. It has different income streams; it has different skill sets that they're growing.

Molly Rapert: So, I don't know, Andy, if you're thinking the same thing.

As I was listening to the first part of that, I kept waiting for Andy to bring out his guitar and start playing a little Bob Dylan or Guy Clark for us, because music is his passion

Rishad Tobaccowala: but now see what he can do, which he couldn't do in the past, is he can basically record his own music.

He can stream it on Spotify. It's no longer him playing music or if he was a singer singing in the shower. If he wants, he can now put it out. Now nobody besides Andy might listen to it, but he now is a published guitarist, and that's the key thing, which is why one of the chapters in my book is marketplaces.

For instance, someone will basically tell me, Rishad, we can introduce you and give you access to our client. So, I obviously look at them and say, okay, who is this client? And they say, it's so and so. So, I said just to let you know, every Sunday the CEO of this company reads me. I write a free Substack and I have 350 CEOs of companies, so I don't need permission.

I'm already in contact with your client. The days of gatekeepers are gone. Now there are certain gatekeepers in Toll booth they call Meta and Google, but that's a different world. But in this world, that world has gone.

And the more I mastered the fundamentals, the more the tools gave me the flexibility to leverage those tools, like you said. One of the questions I have is, or a belief I have is that your first five to 10 years, you really need to build some mastery and then that also increases your optionality, but.

In the day's remote workforce, that apprenticeship is really key to get to mastery, and I'd love to get your thoughts on the leaders that have maybe just left college or they're entering into the workforce in this hybrid space that I'm still getting used to.

The apprenticeship, the community, the energy, the learning. I'm sure you get the same question a million times. On your thoughts about how do we do that in this hybrid world? Because it feels different. I can't put my finger on it. Molly and I were talking about it, but it feels different. It feels that we're missing something.

But I remind people for somebody who can work from anywhere, be anywhere. We are now, basically about 62 days into the year, and I have flown 24 times. Which basically says. I believe in the importance of in-person interaction.

What I think a lot of people confuse is that in-person interaction means the office, and I'm not saying it can't be done in the office, but if you get people to come into the office to do exactly what they're doing sitting at home, then you're basically not earning the commute. And what I would basically say is, in-person interaction varies based on where you are earlier in your career.

And maybe in this modern world, you can do it in a very strange way. For instance, I'm going to on this rethinking work, I'm going to launch a YouTube channel and one of my first guests is going to be a leading professor from Harvard who just finished a book showing how people learn and he's now convinced that people can have learning and mentoring even virtually.

So, what I would say to young people is ask and look and find. One of the big opportunities is, get as many mentors as you can. And some of them may not be in your physical space, but some could be in other places. Some mentors may actually know you, that you actually have an interaction with them, that's important.

And other mentors you just plug into by listening to them and watching them. Then when you combine the two, you can learn a lot, but I do believe one of the reasons why it's very important to connect with people is in order to be collaborative, communication and convincing, you have to actually see real human beings.

What happens with real human beings- they're messy, they're terribly messy. everything is easy if we can just get rid of all the people. Which you can do in a virtual world by basically putting them on mute or swiping them away. In the real world, you can't do that.

I think it's a multi-variate model versus one, but I think the reason people are feeling lost is because they're trying to figure out how to get people into an office versus how do we program in-person interaction and teaching and learning and brainstorming.

But this is my question for you. You've described this environment that as a student I would long to be in, but how do my students go into a job interview and know the right questions to ask to figure out what environment they're stepping into? Has there been a de falsification in the company that they're going to?

Rishad Tobaccowala: So, first of all, I'll just end with what you mentioned about, Andy and mentoring, which. He does extremely well. But here's the key thing, that what happens, I believe spending 25 hours in person in the office is less valuable than spending an hour and a half being mentored by Andy.

Rishad Tobaccowala: Now, moving to the question of how do we ask, right? So, I've written a piece, which one of the most popular pieces I've written on my Substack called Career Lessons Revisited, and it's all the lessons I've learned, and the first six of the 12 lessons are for people coming out of school. it's called the Early Career.

First is. Recognize that whatever job you're going to get is likely to be sucky, so find the least sucky job you can get. Because if you don't talk about vision and mission and all of that, because the reality of it is the worst stuff in a company comes to the lowest level. So, stop plotting that way.

So, try to understand and align with future trends, as they say in Star Wars, may the force be with you. That's number two. Number three, what's very, very important more than anything else, is to understand who you will be working for, because the reality of it is I built my career the last 25 years working for two or three incredible people.

That was me. I said, yes, I was working at the publicist group, but I was working for Jack Ls, I was working for Maurice Levy, and I was working alongside people like Andy. So, I said that is more important than anything else. If that changes, I don't care about anything else. So, what you're really doing is you're selecting people as much as a company.

The only reason you're selecting a company is people may not know the people. So, the company early on is like a good housekeeping seal. It's a reputation model, but really what you're trying to do is, am I working in a place where I'm going to work with some good people? So, you can say, who are my bosses?

Are they teaching subjects I'm particularly interested and are they preparing me

Molly Rapert: I'm thinking through the fact that the three of us have all managed many teams over the years. If we're living in this world of fractionalized work, how does a new entrant, somebody new in their career, stand out in the sea of same, I'm stealing that quote from a guest speaker that comes to my class, and it's made much more difficult when we are dealing in these environments where people are truly scattered.

Rishad Tobaccowala: So the way to think about it is you eventually are going to differentiate yourself in a few ways, but the three most important ways are, one, is what Andy mentioned, increasingly become good at what you do, so what I basically say, the first thing is you hone a craft, hone a skill, become really good at what you do. People reach out for people who are good at what they do, if you also do the second and third. The second is spend time building a great reputation. And a reputation is not just a brand, but a reputation is basically being known for two or three other things.

Third is they're continuously learning and open to hunger to learn. You'll stand out. Here's why people will come wanting to teach you. You'll go looking out for people to, teach you, you'll keep honing your craft. And people want to come there and people say, Andy is not only really good at guitar, but Andy is great to play along with.

So, we want him on a band, right? We want him in a act. Which is important. And by the way, Andy is now learning different types. He was only rock and roll, but now he's decided, to be classical guitar. And so, what happens is, I like Andy because

Andy is good in what he does, good to work with and good over time. Once you do that, everything else works out right. But part of it is building reputation, reaching out to people, continuously learning. So, saying, how do I learn that is almost independent of where you are.

Maybe you can ask her and reverse roles here a bit. But unlike any other marketing professor that I've worked with or known, she spends a quite a bit of time at the very beginning of a semester on helping students define their personal purpose. And it's like, wow, I first thought that was strange. When are they going to learn the marketing skills and techniques and disciplines and data science and all the things you gotta be to be a great marketer? Molly, I'd love you to say why you do that. And Rishad, I'd love to hear you critique that as a good approach or not all.

Molly Rapert: So, the reason I do it, it was a project brought to me by four very talented executives. These executives come into my class and walk the students through in small groups.

And it's so surface, and they're launching into the biggest transition of their life, and I think they need to be more prepared. So, it sets a tone for my class where we talk about very personal things in the first few weeks. And my students, I am obsessed with. I think I have the world's best job at exactly where I want to be.

Rishad Tobaccowala: And I think that's absolutely brilliant and I'm going to go back to something I learned.

Many, many, many, many years ago, like 43 years ago. So, when I started my career, I joined a company called Leo Burnett. And Leo Burnett, the man, the advertising guy, he basically said, there are two things that are important if you want to convince people anything, and those two are that you're relevant and you're likable.

And what you're basically saying they come to like you, because you're thinking about them, but everything is built around them initially. So, they say, whatever I'm going to be taught is going to be relevant, and this teacher will tell me things that I'm upset about, but I like her.

That opening week is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.

Molly Rapert: So, I've got a question that brings a couple of things together that are throughout your book and our conversation. Which is values, purpose, de falsification, fractionalized, workplace, all of this together, and your love for technology.

My first thought when I read your book was, when do you sleep? And then my second thought after that was, if you are doing all of these things, you're pulled in so many different directions, how do you keep your purpose? In front of you, what's your North star at this season in life and how in a 24 hour day is it staying in front of you?

His name is Maurice Levy and he said, you've gone insane. And I said, no, I've not gone insane. I said, you're going to become executive chairman. I'm going to do my own thing. I explained what I was doing, but then over time I made it much better. So, here's what I'm actually doing.

What I do is my purpose is to help people. See, think, and feel differently about how to grow themselves, their teams, or their business. So, what I do is I'm going to help you grow either yourself, your team, or your business by making you see, think, and feel differently. So, after you've either read me or interacted with me, you said, didn't think about that.

I do executive offsite keynote notes, and workshops. And that is hopefully leaving people with actionable inspiration, which is not an inspiring people. What can I go do? The last one is one-to-one, which is a fancy way of saying advisory. Which is not consulting, and I continue to advise my old place of work, which is Publicis, but also private equity and some startups, and there it's augmented intelligence. So, it's a different form of ai, accelerated, concise, actionable inspiration, augmented intelligence.

and the third area to me, which I believe we both have a crisis and opportunity, is leadership. So, with somebody else, I've launched something, a program called Athena, which is about modern leadership. And so my belief, my current triangle is I focus on interrelated things, which is work, future proofing and leadership.

Obviously there's interconnection and anything that isn't those three. I say, why am I going to spend time doing it, and then the other thing I will tell you of students is one thing that I do is I eat my own dog food. So, the reason I get a lot of this stuff done, it's not me doing it by myself. Yes. I'm a one person company, my podcast is produced by Publicis. I have an entire team that does that.

I continuously try to keep up to date. So that even though I'm writing a book about, I wrote in a book about rethinking work and on my website @rethinkingwork.io, people are interviewing me about my book but that's one way. So, this YouTube thing I'm launching is basically I'm going to talk to world class people about what they think about the future of work.

Who says, I've got the answer right, including by the way, your book is stupid. Here's what we think the future of work is, and when you can do that, then people say, okay, the person's really good, because he is not bringing in people who say he's silly.

Rishad Tobaccowala: One of the things that's very important and what people don't realize is because I respect people's time. I talk to people for an hour, but then it's very tightly edited down to 35, 40 minutes. My editor works at the BBC in the uk, my showrunner is in Costa Rica.

So, we have this entire team all over the place, which we put together, but as importantly, it's a street. So, the only department and division I never worked in my publicist 37-year career was a creative department,

And this gentleman, his name is Sir John Heti, and he founded BBH. He's like a legend in the world of creative, and I said, oh my God. Now I arrived. I'm actually on this creative guru's thing talking about creativity. But immediately after we finished, because we engaged, I said, so Hagar, would you like to come to what next?

He said, I love it. So, you're going to hear about the future of creativity from one of the most amazing legends. And that's what people basically say. And one of the things I will tell all your students that two or three lines I would like them to think about, one, is because they hear a lot of people saying, masculine energy and hardcore and everything else.

I believe generosity is the world's best strategy. You just give, you help people. It's wonderful what happens. There're obviously amazing people but my whole stuff is, what are they trying to sell you? be very careful when everyone's just trying to sell you stuff,

I want people who come and give me stuff, not just sell me stuff.

Andy Murray: I love that. Matter of fact, I think, Molly, I would summarize your whole course about learning the practice of generosity. As the core piece, but you do it in a subtle way through purpose, helping them discover their own purpose. That's a generous gift to students to walk out of college with a clarity of personal purpose and being able to also connect with industry leaders because you've been generous with your time in how you work with students.

Molly Rapert: Okay, so I'll say first Rishad. I'm in the Walton College of Business and I study Sam Walton a lot.

And one quote he says is steal and steal shamelessly. So, I want to tell you in addition to my typed notes, now, my handwritten notes are copious. Your presence will be felt next semester. I've already realigned my topics. I've got great advice for my students and I really have so much that I have to look forward to.

So, thank you for that. My last question comes from your podcast because your theme of that podcast is asking every thought leader what's next. For them, what's next in their field. So, I would love to wrap up by asking you what is next?

So, this Athe project, which really bore about, and hopefully I will get people like Andy and you involved because there's a lot of things about, both academia, but leadership. So for instance Seth Green is part of program as our, CEOs of companies it's more for people, I would say in the demographic of 45 to 65 or 40 to 65.

So the next is what is leadership? The other one, is I always look forward and I will leave you with this one thing, which is for your students and for listeners . If you really want to be creative, you really want to be innovative, you really want to be alive, ask yourself if you can do this, try to have one new experience every day.

And I said, I must go and see some fish. So, I spent two hours in the Georgia Aquarium, which is the world's biggest aquarium. The next day it was going to be a very tight day, and I said, what's the one new thing I can do? And so, I got up early in the morning, and I basically decided I had never experienced the Waffle House, so I went to have breakfast at the Waffle House and paid attention to the Waffle House.

And that's what I mean. It's not go to a Beyonce concert. There are lots of things that you can do because when you do that, you pay attention. It grows you so I sort leave you as that as a gift.

Andy Murray: Love, love, love listening to you talk and the world needs what you're saying today, so much.

So really appreciate your time. You've really been an insightful guest today. And so, thank you so much.

Rishad Tobaccowala: You're most welcome.