I recently interviewed Chip Conley, author of “Learning to love Midlife”. He defines midlife as ages “35 to 75”. Watch the episode – he explains his own experience as a “modern elder” around much younger Airbnb founders and execs. Overall he has a very positive view on life and the interaction between various generations in the workplace.
HR executives are starting to realize they need to “Redefine retirement” as I wrote here. Margaret and I been interviewing what I call multi-dimensional financial advisers who broadly help you with investment, multi-year tax, estate, insurance and other planning as you age. Ideally these are advisers who can handle multi-year tax scenarios, not just file annual returns. They call themselves “retirement advisers” and many of them are fiduciaries.
I think you should start that evaluation process at 35 and rinse and repeat the process through Chip’s broad definition of mid-life.
Our evaluation of potential advisers been a humbling process (we are about 75% done). It’s like trying to solve Rubik’s Cube. There are more than 43 quintillion possible combinations for that cube.
In some ways Retirement planning is even more complex like solving an ever-changing, multi-dimensional hypercube. Markets swing wildly as does your portfolio. Politicians keep changing social security and private retirement rules. Wall Street keeps taking an ever bigger bite out of your investments. Insurance companies get you one way or another.
No wonder you get wildly divergent recommendations:
Some will tell you to apply for social security at 62. Get as much as you can before (if) the fund runs out or you pass away early. Others tell you each year you delay your benefit increases by 5% to 8% but it maxes out at the age of 70. So start then, but they don’t always factor that increases your income tax exposure by pushing you into a higher tax bracket since the IRS requires you to take Requirement Minimum Distributions starting at age 73. Uncle Sam wants the deferred taxes along with their accrued gains.
Most will tell you to convert your tax-deferred funds to Roth IRAs and take the tax bite now before marginal tax rates go up in 2026. They did not know of the work around we applied. We refinanced the house on a 10 year mortgage and took out immediate tax-free cash and are paying the mortgage from annual withdrawals and paying taxes on those tax deferred amounts.
No surprise, one of the advisers told us to pay off the mortgage. I asked him why? It is at a ridiculously attractive rate of 2.4%. He said their numbers say otherwise. “When you become a client, we will show you the calcs.” 😊
Our investments are currently fragmented across several managers. I did not realize how fragmented till an adviser ran our portfolio through their algorithms and pointed out we own Alphabet stock in 17 funds, Apple in 11 and so on. I thought we were diversified but fund managers move in tandem with their colleagues and negate the diversification.
Couple of advisers told us stocks rarely fall in a Presidential election year. Couple on the other hand showed us we had too much exposure to equities. That was timely, we sold a bunch before the recent decline.
Most advisers pointed out all the hidden fees and conflict of interests at most funds. As one adviser said, try and avoid anything that “comes with a prospectus”.
The other problem with institutions which hold most of our retirement funds is their limitations on diversification across asset classes. Try to find many which will allow you to invest in real estate, gold, Bitcoin etc. Unless it is with one of their own or partner funds which come with the dreaded “prospectus”
Most of the advisers told us to sell our life insurance policies. They were so right. We asked the insurance company for a rate card till age 99. Such a deal! Wish we had cut them off a decade ago. There is an arbitrage market for selling your coverage, but apparently those buyers like policies of terminally ill insured so they only have to pay premiums for a couple of years and collect the coverage. Apparently, we are too healthy to qualify! We plan to let our policies lapse.
I mentioned insurance companies don’t lose. Save on the life insurance policies, but pay for umbrella insurance. We asked our auto insurance company – after asking us 10 questions they still would not disclose the max umbrella coverage they offer. They wanted to know about our daughter’s car even though the umbrella policy did not apply. We went with another provider.
One of the main reasons I keep working is we want to leave behind a chunk for the kids. Our estate planning is not complex, multi-generational. Even there we have got conflicting advice. We have heard about “Ladybird”, "pour-over" and other deeds.
I could go on. Like I said it was a humbling but timely exercise. Now multiply that over the rest of the US.
The numbers at stake across all of us ginormous. You hear in the media all the time that inequality keeps getting worse. It is if you compare King Charles or Elon Musk to the average Joe. What they don’t tell you is some research I have done for an unfinished book. The retirement assets of Americans (most in the middle class) – IRAs, 401ks, etc. were valued at $38 trillion at the end of 2023. There is even more in pension funds and other retirement vehicles.
Our real estate is worth $47.5 trillion. That does not include jewelry, heirlooms and other personal assets
In 2022, 92% of US households had at least 1 car. 22% had 3. Most of our real estate and vehicles are financed, but the net value of the assets are still significant
We are talking real money! No wonder politicians and Wall Street salivate at our pool of money.
There is a third group which also cannot wait to get its hand on these funds. They are export addicted countries like China, India, Germany and others. For decades they have run trade surpluses with the US and we have been chumps to dent our middle class that way. Unfortunately we have too many academics, economists and policy makers who cling to the notion of “free trade”. Hello it’s free trade when it is bi-directional, not when we keep running trade deficits year after year. We have a strong middle class – use access to that demographic as a bargaining tool.
Wish we had started the process at 35 and gone through a detailed review every few years.
We all have unique portfolios and goals. Too many people just park their savings. You should be actively managing it. Start early in life, be willing to move fiduciaries. Keep them honest. And work with them to keep the politicians and Wall Street (to include banks and insurance) companies and our trade policy makers honest.
For the 118th episode of Burning Platform, we host Chip Conley, author of “Learning to love Midlife” and a founder of MEA (Modern Elder Academy). He defines midlife broadly as “from 35 to 75”. The common word association for midlife is “crisis” and he says that is a shame because life actually gets better with age.
He was an owner/operator of a chain of boutique hotels. After selling them he joined the much younger founders and execs at Airbnb in the formative stages of its explosive growth. They called him a ‘modern elder” – “as curious as he is wise”.
Building on those experiences, he started MEA – Modern Elder Academy which is dedicated to “reframing the concept of aging” and helps professionals get ‘unstuck” in their careers. “We have been around now for over six years, we've had 5000 People from 48 countries come to our Baja campus to go through our week long programs, and we now have a new campus in Santa Fe”
He walks through 12 nuggets from his book including the one below
“If you're a 63 year old man like me, and you hear that the average man in the United States dies at age 74, you might think I have 11 years left. But the truth is the average age of 74 includes everybody who might have died at age 10, 20, 30 or 50. So if you've gotten to 63, number one, you're in good shape, you will live longer than 74 as a man. Number two, depending on your socio economic background, the more educated you are, the more prosperous you are, the healthier you are, the longer you will live.”
It is a very optimistic perspective on the core of our workforce which falls into his definition of midlife “from 35 to 75”
We then talk about the bookends of the range. The aging or recently retired worker and how they are a relatively untapped talent resource. Next, we discuss the other end and the perception that they are entitled, disloyal workers
Lots of great thoughts about all 5 generations of employees in today’s workplace. HR folks in particular will benefit from what his thoughts on “reframing the concept of aging”
For the 116th episode of Burning Platform, we host Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter, partners at Acadian Ventures which focuses on investments in the rapidly changing World of Work
It is a wide ranging conversation and they start by explaining their investment thesis and why they chose that market category. As Jason explains “Thomas and I have been operators in the HCM space for decades now. I thought, there's an interesting opportunity to create something specialized, where entrepreneurs want to come to us, because we have that knowledge of market, and other VCs want to co-invest with us, because we do something different from them. A lot of them are more generalist investors.”
They go through the many dimensions of how, where, when and why work is changing and how regulations are evolving to keep up. Jason summarizes “it's a very huge market (3.3 billion global workers) that's very broken. And we think that technology can be an equalizer at making work better for workers. And in doing so, making workforces way more efficient and ultimately, way more profitable. It's a pretty simple equation.”
In addition, their fund brings another significant differentiation – a global perspective. They are a young fund and they already have investments in startups in 13 countries and are constantly scouring the world . We discuss how hyperscalers and mobile telcos have democratized technology talent around the globe. As Thomas nicely summarizes “talent is distributed equally but opportunity isn't.” We elaborate on how the cost of global expansion also has dropped dramatically with digital channels, yet remains largely unexplored.
Starting around 28.02, we spend a fair amount of time on Gen AI from a HR perspective. Thomas explains 4 AI angles for the fund
We then discuss the Air Canada bereavement fare chatbot incident and data plagiarism and the OpenAI/New York Times lawsuit and impact on how it will affect AI rollout across the industry
Jason summarizes it well “there's a lot of similarity between how AI will play out as we have seen with SAAS. We didn't have any sort of governance or data privacy; everyone was kind of doing it uniquely. And then something meaningful happened halfway through the 20 year SaaS journey. SOC 2 set the rules for all of the things that are very important in the SAAS world today but it took us 10 years to get there. I think something similar will eventually emerge in the AI world. But it will take a period of iteration and trial and failure and big flameouts. We will eventually get to a point with industry standards, regulation, whatever you want to call it, that will drive the industry forward.”
Great conversation with two pros (and good friends) who are the top of their game
As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Sukumar Rajagopal, founder and CEO of Tiny Magiq, whose aim is “to help organizations, anywhere in the globe, achieve their most ambitious outcomes through digital transformation, all by themselves, frugally.” I had come to know Sukumar during his stint as Global CIO and Chief Innovation Officer at Cognizant during their hypergrowth phase.
You have read and heard me talk about using automation – AI, robotics, drones etc. - to create high performing “superworkers” in every industry. Here, Sukumar talks about humans turbocharging themselves. By changing our habits – through tiny but disciplined improvement and instrumentation - we can dramatically improve many aspects of our life, work and play.
He talks about internal “demons” which encourage procrastination and stop us from achieving our fullest potential and shows how he has won his battle against them. There is talk of neuroscience, consistency thresholds and other discipline he brings to bear in a large spectrum of physical, mental, spiritual, social and other activities.
One of my favorite segments is around 30.23 where he talks about how it has helped relationships with his family. He describes how they practice a “gratitude habit” every evening. He emphasizes this nuance “Instead of doing a general purpose, gratitude to God, you name specific human beings that helped you on that day.”
I guarantee you will improve in one or more area if you apply his methodologies. Especially after the feasting this week for Thanksgiving, I know of at least one aspect of life which will benefit😊
Best place to connect with Sukumar is via LinkedIn. Here's his LI page.
In the 94th episode of Burning Platform, we host Thomas Otter of Acadian Ventures
Thomas talks about their HCM startup investments across 17 countries. As he says 3.3 billion people go to work every day – most of them in emerging economies. Not only do they represent a significant market opportunity, we can also learn from them – as in innovative use and massive scale of mobile/SMS technologies in some of these markets.
He emphasizes democratization in terms of access to platforms. “So, 15 years ago, if you were trying to build a software company in Africa, in, say, Kenya, you needed to find a data center, you needed to support the infrastructure and that was really difficult whereas today you've got a choice in Nairobi, between AWS, Azure and Google. The developer in Kenya, has access today to the same coding environments, the same infrastructures, the same technologies that a developer anywhere in the world has access to, so that boundary is now gone. You can build great software anywhere in the world.”
He discusses a slew of use cases serviced by their portfolio of startups. Some of the ones he mentions in the conversation include
Worky, Mexico City, Mexico
Techwolf, Ghent, Belgium
AG5, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Figures, Paris, France
Fifty, Paris, France
Brio HR, Malaysia / Singapore
Palm HR, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Workpay, Nairobi Kenya
Arist remote USA
Compa remote USA
Holiva, Marseilles, France
He also describes how by leveraging other VCs like Workday Ventures and accelerators like SAP.iO Foundries, his relatively small fund manages to have such a global reach.
Fascinating conversation about the changing “world” of work in about 35 minutes.
In the 92nd episode of Burning Platform, we host Meg Bear, President and Chief Product Officer for SAP SuccessFactors and Trish Steed, co-founder of H3HR Advisors, both longtime influencers of the world of work and workplaces
My team recently helped two SAP executives explore the impact of 4 major shocks – COVID, Ukraine crisis, climate change urgency and massive digital transformations on several industries and the resulting vertical “edge” applications which have emerged. The results were presented in a book titled “Business as Unusual with SAP” – the badge on left links to the Amazon page.
Did we naively believe the shocks would slow down or that the HCM function would be exempt from them?
Meg, Trish and I explore 2 macro trends - back to office mandates and re-balancing of employee, investor, consumer, other stakeholder voices and 2 exciting new technologies - Generative AI and Apple Vision Pro and their impact in the workplace.
We start with a discussion of work locations. Work from home, celebrated at the start of COVID is now being litigated in just about every workplace. Trish holds out hope we will not swing the pendulum all the way back. She quotes Pew Research which estimated in early 2020 at the start of COVID about 23% of people worked remotely. By October 2020, the number was up to 71%. In January of 2022, it was down to about 59. Will we go all the way back to 23% or settle at around 50%?
We then talk about Generative AI. Meg nicely summarizes we are going through an overabundance of both enthusiasm and fear and uncertainty. She talks about SAP’s announcements at Sapphire last month (see my commentary about the event here). Meg comments “AI is really about augmentation of what we as humans can do. It will change how we spend our days, that creates real opportunities for each of us to kind of re-imagine how we bring value to work, and how work brings value to us.”
We next talk about Apple’s recent release of its mixed-reality Vision Pro headset. We discuss fun uses in our personal lives and likely work use cases. We also discuss how it will play in a world where we are pondering the appropriate mix of remote v office work. We pause to wonder about eye fatigue most of us experienced over the last couple of years.
Next, we discuss the seesaw where HCM is pivoting toward focus on worker productivity and less on DEI and other topics which got more focus in recent years. Meg and Trish both comment that DEI needs continued maturation with the reality check that the voice of the shareholder, and especially of the consumer is as important as that of the employee.
No easy answers but continued change for HCM executives. It will be good for them to also adopt the “Business as Unusual” mindset. Meg and Trish do a great job covering a lot of ground in 35 minutes. We will have them back for more - we just scratched the surface!
Over the last few days, I have drooled plenty as I have watched videos and reviews of Vision Pro and Apple’s new era of spatial computing.
Personally I would love it as my virtual “IMAX theater”, as a HUD in a vehicle, as my companion on long flights.
But I am especially drooling as I see how far we have come since I was one of Gartner’s first remote analysts starting in 1995. The technology I had back then was-a-hand me down Apple laptop, a first-gen HP multi-function printer, and an additional phone line to support 14.4K baud digital communications. So, I am thinking ahead to the next decade as this device scales down to (even) more portable form-factors, longer battery life, and more affordable pricing and of course far speedier connectivity, especially on the road and in the air.
And a lot more enterprise use cases. I can see plenty of mixed reality applications in field service, on-boarding, training and other enterprise areas but I would like to see it enable even broader white collar collaboration.
Two reasons to pause:
Having spent inordinate time on video channels the last 3 years I worry about even more eye fatigue. Being so dependent on eye tracking, Apple wants eyeglass wearers to take them off and use Zeiss optical inserts for optimal performance with the new device. Interesting that Apple has simultaneously focused on digital eye strain in the iOS17 Health Feature set.
The launch comes smack-dab in the middle of an attempt by a number of employers to re-balance the hybrid workforce mix to encourage more in-person interaction. I have a feeling if Apple had this available in 2020, lots more of us would be using it and FaceTime compared to Teams or Zoom on laptops and mobile devices.
Back to my 1995 experience. Gartner was not exactly visionary with their decision to allow my cohort to work remotely. The stubborn fact is none of us was keen to relocate to HQ in Stamford, CT. Instead, I had to commit to relocate to a compromise location, Atlanta, within 12 months. I spent most of the first few months commuting to HQ learning the ropes. However, Gartner was a smart organization with tons of data. They could measure analyst productivity seven days to Sunday – number of client query calls, number of pages of new content generated, new presentation slides created etc. As part of my 6-month review they had enough data to see our remote cohort was off the charts in productivity and they listened to that data and told me to stay put in Tampa. As my boss told me “I can put the relocation budget to better use.” In the three decades since, while Gartner’s competitors stubbornly stuck to relocation policies, Gartner made remote work part of its culture, and expanded it to international recruiting and other talent sourcing.
I hope more companies who are mandating back to work are similarly smart about metering the hybrid-work mix and not just letting real estate economics and management egos drive the in-person time. And one smart technique for them will be to invest in Vision Pro pilot project. They need to see if they can get their productivity which should balance out commute time, family demands and other reasons staff prefer to work at remote locations. That will need a lot of metering and a lot of technology. Honestly, it is a shame that few HCM groups have evolved their talent metering over the 30 years since Gartner showed it could be done to measure a high-functioning, white collar role. Now is a good time, and Vision Pro could be an enabler.
And by the way, my experience at Gartner was a stark contrast to my previous experience at PwC which was was more of "drop everything and meet a client in person" culture. I have learned to work from anywhere - in an aisle seat, at a Starbucks, at hotels, at events. Six million air miles on Delta and others , over 1800 Marriott and 1500 elsewhere nights, over 500 Avis car rentals, visas from over 75 countries are proof of that.
Today's younger workers need to be similarly flexible. It is frustrating to see intransigent bosses and employees tussling over where and how to get work done. Just do it - ffs!
As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Sean Nolan, CEO of Blink, which offers mobile access for frontline workers in a variety of verticals – “nurses, refuge collectors, retail staff, hospitality staff, aged care workers, anyone who doesn't sit behind a desk all day, they probably don't have a workplace device, like a laptop or a phone given to them so probably has got personal devices. Most don't have a workplace email address or sort of digital identity necessarily.”
He provides a use case at the UK transit carrier, Stagecoach – where drivers use his app to access Trapeze rostering, GreenRoad telematics and Oracle HCM applications. The more useful the applications. the more engagement of the frontline workers and more chances they will adopt even more digital functionality
I know I am a broken record asking vendors to verticalize but it is heart breaking to hear so many essential workers are in his words “to a large part digitally disconnected from the organization.” His goal is to fix that but giving them access to a variety of relevant applications like training, benefits and even accident and near miss reporting, which he says is one of the more attractive use cases for their software.
Listen to his pitch and applicability in the verticals they are targeting. Nicely done in under 20 minutes. He was introduced to me by Workday Ventures, one of their investors.
As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Dr. Patti Fletcher, CMO and Larry Colagiovanni, Chief Product and Technology officer at Bellevue, WA based Limeade.
There is a lot of talk about “employee experience”. Of course, everyone wants happy, productive employees but a better UX in a transactional system may make them a bit more productive, but by itself does not contribute much to employee happiness.
Employers face a daunting set of challenges – coping with the “mass resignation” trend, employee burnout, trying to get the right mix of work-from-home and in physical office. They are responding with a variety of perks – Google offers employees free electric scooters to get them back to the office, many offer mental health aids in addition to many traditional benefits. Limeade helps employees navigate this menu of myriad benefits. Just as important via its "immersion" in ERP systems, employees have a personal reason to interact more often with the system.
As Limeade founder and CEO, Henry Albrecht commented in Forbes “Why can’t there be a great company that does for human well-being what Intuit software does for financial health, aligning what's good for people and what's good for business toward a common mission?”
Patti and Larry go through how Limeade aims to deliver both – what's good for people and what's good for business
As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission ) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
This time it is Dr. Frida Polli, co-founder and CEO of pymetrics which utilizes neuroscience and AI to assess candidates and employees across a range of cognitive, social, and emotional traits and algorithmically recommends the best-fit talent to companies. Using algorithms that are trained on high-performing employees at a company, Pymetrics builds a trait profile of a company's top performers to select best-fit talent.
Their major differentiators include their focus on soft skills, AI fueled by plenty of data which maps skills to wide range of occupations and validation across several global customers. Throughout the presentation, the word “unbiased” came up often (especially when it comes to ethnicity and gender), with concerns about bias being built into machine learning algorithms.
She makes a strong case for why measuring soft skills is critical. She quotes that 89% of HR leaders believe that failed hires lacked appropriate soft skills. She believes such skills are inherent, durable and future-facing.
Pymterics has patented a set of 12 core exercises which capture cognitive, emotional and social traits. They measure soft skills like generosity and focus which have been matched to various occupations. They are supplemented with assessments of quantitative and communication skills.
It is a testament to how the workforce environment has changed when she says half the use cases she sees now have an internal mobility/reskilling and workforce insights focus. When they started a decade ago, it was primarily focused on talent acquisition.
She covers wide ground including ROI from her platform and 3 case studies (including two in Asia/Pacific). That brings out nuggets about soft skills across global cultures, and the applicability of her tools to entry level staff v experienced hires.
I was introduced to them by Workday Ventures. They are an investor along with many others like General Atlantic and Khosla. It is a fascinating conversation with someone who is a Harvard PhD and has spent plenty of time in the cognitive sciences.
Retire at 75. Start planning to retire from age 35.
I recently interviewed Chip Conley, author of “Learning to love Midlife”. He defines midlife as ages “35 to 75”. Watch the episode – he explains his own experience as a “modern elder” around much younger Airbnb founders and execs. Overall he has a very positive view on life and the interaction between various generations in the workplace.
HR executives are starting to realize they need to “Redefine retirement” as I wrote here. Margaret and I been interviewing what I call multi-dimensional financial advisers who broadly help you with investment, multi-year tax, estate, insurance and other planning as you age. Ideally these are advisers who can handle multi-year tax scenarios, not just file annual returns. They call themselves “retirement advisers” and many of them are fiduciaries.
I think you should start that evaluation process at 35 and rinse and repeat the process through Chip’s broad definition of mid-life.
Our evaluation of potential advisers been a humbling process (we are about 75% done). It’s like trying to solve Rubik’s Cube. There are more than 43 quintillion possible combinations for that cube.
In some ways Retirement planning is even more complex like solving an ever-changing, multi-dimensional hypercube. Markets swing wildly as does your portfolio. Politicians keep changing social security and private retirement rules. Wall Street keeps taking an ever bigger bite out of your investments. Insurance companies get you one way or another.
No wonder you get wildly divergent recommendations:
I could go on. Like I said it was a humbling but timely exercise. Now multiply that over the rest of the US.
The numbers at stake across all of us ginormous. You hear in the media all the time that inequality keeps getting worse. It is if you compare King Charles or Elon Musk to the average Joe. What they don’t tell you is some research I have done for an unfinished book. The retirement assets of Americans (most in the middle class) – IRAs, 401ks, etc. were valued at $38 trillion at the end of 2023. There is even more in pension funds and other retirement vehicles.
Our real estate is worth $47.5 trillion. That does not include jewelry, heirlooms and other personal assets
In 2022, 92% of US households had at least 1 car. 22% had 3. Most of our real estate and vehicles are financed, but the net value of the assets are still significant
We are talking real money! No wonder politicians and Wall Street salivate at our pool of money.
There is a third group which also cannot wait to get its hand on these funds. They are export addicted countries like China, India, Germany and others. For decades they have run trade surpluses with the US and we have been chumps to dent our middle class that way. Unfortunately we have too many academics, economists and policy makers who cling to the notion of “free trade”. Hello it’s free trade when it is bi-directional, not when we keep running trade deficits year after year. We have a strong middle class – use access to that demographic as a bargaining tool.
Wish we had started the process at 35 and gone through a detailed review every few years.
We all have unique portfolios and goals. Too many people just park their savings. You should be actively managing it. Start early in life, be willing to move fiduciaries. Keep them honest. And work with them to keep the politicians and Wall Street (to include banks and insurance) companies and our trade policy makers honest.
April 29, 2024 in Future of Work, Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)