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1% Better Steve Meirink – Quick Links

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Key Takeaways

• Prioritizing Personal Fulfillment: Steve emphasizes the importance of making life decisions based on personal values and impact, such as choosing to move back to Minnesota to be closer to family. He believes career success will follow when you align your life with what truly matters.
• Overcoming Challenges through Determination: Steve shares his experience of overcoming a fear of flying to advance his career. His story highlights the importance of pushing through personal fears and challenges in order to achieve professional growth and success.
• Fostering a Culture of Innovation: In large organizations, innovation is not limited to startups; it can thrive within established companies too. Steve discusses the importance of leaders creating an environment where employees feel empowered to share ideas, ask questions, and contribute to the organization’s success.
• The Role of AI in Business: Steve reflects on the rapid adoption of AI, particularly Generative AI, and its potential to enhance human capabilities. He encourages businesses to focus on the problems they aim to solve and leverage AI as a tool to create value for their customers and community.
• The Power of Conversation and Learning: Steve advocates for the value of engaging in conversations with the intent to learn, whether with colleagues, mentors, or new acquaintances. He believes that open, inquisitive dialogue is key to personal and professional development.

1% Better Steve Meirink – Transcript

[00:00:02.02] – Craig
Hello, I’m Craig Thielen, and this is the 1% Better Podcast.

[00:00:14.00] – Steve
Today, I have Steve Meirink, CEO of Walters Kluwer‘s Financial and Corporate Compliance Division. Steve, welcome to 1% Better.

[00:00:21.08] – Steve
Hey, thanks, Craig. Super excited to be here.

[00:00:24.05] – Craig
Steve, maybe we just get started. Tell us a little about your background, where you’re born, raised, education, maybe early career, just to give us a little bit of a level set before we jump into what you’re doing now.

[00:00:37.03] – Steve
Sure. Well, I grew up in Rosemount, Minnesota, and I essentially live in the same community that I grew up in after a in a couple of years in Atlanta. So spending a couple of years in Atlanta. Spending a lot of time here in Minnesota is important to me. A little bit about my background. I’ve always been in the technology, financial services, and the advisory spaces through different opportunities, whether it was entrepreneurial, whether it was being an intrapreneur at a company or working with some Fortune 500 companies, similar to what I do today for Wolters Kluwer, just leading teams to drive and create value for ultimately the professionals that we serve, Craig. So glad to go into anything more deeply, but that’s really the general arc of my entire career.

[00:01:21.14] – Craig
Yeah, and I think you and I talked before, and it was a big decision for you. You’ve had multiple jobs, and you were moved… As you said, you lived in Atlanta. I think you lived in some other places… But for you to come back and just make a decision where you wanted to be around family and friends, and then let the career fall where it may. Just talk a little bit about that because I think a lot of people go through that at certain points of their life. What drives the bus? Is it my career path? Or reflecting back and said, What’s important to me? And then I’ll do great work where I want to live.

[00:01:57.14] – Steve
Yeah, I had a tremendous experience with a couple of great companies in Atlanta. At that moment, it was, Let’s try something new and move out of our comfort zone. My wife and I discussed that. But, Craig, sometimes you have conversations that just really hit you. It was about nine years, I had a conversation with someone that really asked me, what impact do you want to have? She paused me because I think the typical thing we do is we go down the path of our careers. She said, No, take us a broader step. What impact you want to have with those most important to you. And I highlighted clearly as many people would, kids, parents, family. And it really stuck with me over probably the next several weeks. And then I’m data-driven. And I did some math, and I said, we’re fortunate to see my in-laws and my parents about twice a year. And as grandparents, they’re phenomenal, but they lived in Minnesota and we were Atlanta. And so I did some math. I grew up in the insurance industry, so I might have been thinking mortality tables. And I’m like, wait a minute, if things play out average at this pace, my kids will only get to see their grandkids less than 39 more times.

It really hit me like a 2×4, Craig, of, okay, if I really want to think about what is important to me and the impact I want to have, I had a special relationship with my grandparents parents, I realized that while it was good, I can make some choices, ultimately, to make it better. I really think back to that conversation with Dr. Jill, who was a leadership coach and again, it just sometimes certain conversations really spur you to open your mind and maybe take a step back and think differently. So that’s how ultimately we ended up back in Minnesota. And then when we made that commitment to do that, I said, well, we’re not just going to move back to Minnesota. We’re not just going to move back to the Twin Cities. If we’re moving back to really think about that impact, we’re literally going to move back into our hometown. My oldest goes to Rosemount High School, where I graduated, and it’s been one of the best decisions my wife and I have ever made. The career stuff takes care of itself.

[00:04:23.01] – Craig
I love that story, Steve, because first of all, what a gift of having someone that asked you that question because, again, a lot of people just think about their career path, and we get very linear on that. But to ask the bigger question, that’s just a great conversation. Then I also love how you actually did the math. I don’t think we often do that. We don’t often think, Well, where are we going to be five years, 10 years, 20 years? Not just professionally, but personally, and then going, Yeah, 39 times. Is that all I want my kids to have interactions with their grandparents? It does hit you. I’ve never thought about it that way. I love that.

[00:05:00.04] – Steve
I will share, Craig. I’ve shared that story with my parents and in-laws. They’re like, Well, I hope your math is wrong. I hope there’ll be a few more years of whatever the multiplier was beyond that. But it was data driven.

[00:05:11.04] – Craig
Yeah. Even so, like 39 or 49, wouldn’t you want it to be hundreds of times? Hundreds. Yeah, thousands, hopefully. That’s great. One other thing before we jump into what you’re doing now. I also remember you sharing something about at one point in your career, you were doing a lot, or you had to do to take on a new role, you had to do a lot of travel, and you had a fear of travel, and you had to overcome that. So maybe talk a little bit about that.

[00:05:37.06] – Steve
Yeah. Well, I remember I talked about trying to take on a new opportunity and getting out of your comfort zone. When I joined Equifax, that was moving to Atlanta, and I thought that would be the end of moving outside of my comfort zone, just moving to a different part of the country and enjoying a new company. Little did I know as I got into that role, to be successful and to really deliver the value in the role that I was in, meant I was going to have to get on an airplane quite a bit. And as I shared with you, that wasn’t something that I was experienced in doing previously. And so I had to overcome that fear to do that. And so, again, I was looking to learn from friends. I was blessed to have a lot of Northwest Delta pilots in my circle. They gave me all kinds of tips of what to do, get a window, try to sit by the wing, look out far. I think there were more solutions that didn’t work, but I appreciated everyone was trying to help me out. I think what it really taught me and what I share with other people is if you’re really convicted about doing something really well, that gives you something to work towards, to push through whatever that obstacle is.

For me at that time, it was that fear of flying, and it really didn’t make sense. It was just, Hey, we’re 30,000 feet up in the air. Why am I putting a seatbelt on? It’s something weird. Is the seatbelt going to help me? I mean, really, It’s not logical, but I wanted to deliver for the team that I worked with enough that what worked for me, just to be very transparent, is I’d count to 60 over and over. When it was a short flight, Atlanta to Birmingham, very easy. Atlanta to San Francisco, a few more cycles. But over time, that practice and that experience. Now, I just got back from DC. I shared with you, I’m on a plane all the time. Again, do you want something enough? Are you committed to something to do hard things? You’ll find a way. At least for me personally, that was how I overcame that.

[00:07:35.05] – Craig
At this point now, many years later, do you not even think about it? It’s just like getting in a car, or is it still something that you think about and you have to use some techniques to overcome it?

[00:07:45.01] – Steve
You know what? I think habits, right? Those habits, it becomes subconscious. So I’m sure subconsciously, there’s some things that are still in play, but consciously, it’s like riding a bike now.

[00:07:56.10] – Craig
Yeah, good. Well, I think it’s just a good example of, like you said, everybody overcoming challenges, and it’s a unique challenge. I know other people that have the same challenges there, but we all have challenges. And it’s just like, if you really want something enough and you focus on it and you work on it, you can overcome anything. And so everyone’s got those things. I think it’s good to share that. Again, CEO, you’re not bulletproof, you’re not Superman. You have challenges like everybody else in the organization, and you just find ways to overcome them, right? Yep. So let’s talk a little bit about today, you are running the Corporate Compliance Division for Wolters Kluwer. And for those that are not familiar with Wolters Kluwer, maybe just talk a little bit about what you do generally and then what your division does to help other organizations?

[00:08:49.10] – Steve
Yeah at the highest level, Walters Kluwer, nearly a 200-year-old, successful, I always say innovative company. At the end of the day, we broadly serve professionals so that she or he can make an impact for their customers, their community, the businesses they serve. If you think about Walters Kluwer, you should think about the professionals that we serve. Then very specifically in the division that I have the privilege to lead, we’re focused on financial services professionals, so bankers, lenders, and then also on the corporate compliance side, we’re serving really businesses and those that support businesses. If you start a business, there’s a lot of complexity around how to do that. We’re there to support them so that they can focus on why they got into the business, not how do I manage my business.

[00:09:39.08] – Craig
Okay. Yeah. I’d love to hear at some point here about just when you talk about innovation, just what you see, here, that’s really driving the industry, what’s changing. Before we get into that, I want to talk about one of the things I love to dig into that I look for now in leaders is how do you find ways to give back? I think you’ve done a couple of really interesting things to give back. You talk a lot about just being blessed and fortunate to lead. It’s a lot of work. You’ve worked really hard to get where you’re at, but you also at the same time are grateful and you want to give back. And a couple of things there. One is you have a scholarship program. I think you have a tennis center that’s in your family name. But maybe just talk a little bit about those things that you’re involved with.

[00:10:26.14] – Steve
Yeah, I think for me, Craig, it comes back to experiences. So I went to school at Wartburg College in Iowa. I was convinced I wanted to be a pediatrician, I wanted to play basketball and play tennis. I only ended up playing tennis. But the impact that, again, those important conversations can have on changing your life. I had a fantastic professor. I was in a lab, and I really didn’t enjoy doing the dissection part. I remember going to this professor saying, Yeah, I don’t think that’s for me. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. This advisor was like, you realize what you’re going to do in medical school, right? I’m like, No, I’m only going to help kids, and I’m just going to be a pediatrician. He’s like, no, all doctors, let me walk you through your journey that’s ahead of you for the next eight years. Then I’m like, I don’t know if I can do that. He goes, tomorrow, we’re going to find you a new major on something that you can be passionate about because he knew the road ahead of me, Craig. I just didn’t have experience or context yet. I think that’s the value of wisdom. Wisdom is, one, people care enough to give you advice and maybe shine a light of what’s ahead of you. But two, you have to act on it. I always tell people great advice adds no value if you then as the recipient, you aren’t willing to act on it. That’s just one story of my four years at Wartburg that really shaped it and gave me the confidence to pursue a profession in the business world and knowing that what I wanted to do was make a difference for others. I could do that through the world of business and commerce.

[00:12:07.14] – Craig
Okay and your scholarship program, how was that focused to help accomplish that?

[00:12:12.14] – Steve
Yeah. It’s focused on students that want to be entrepreneurial, but they could be a social work major, they could be a music major, they could be a theology major. They don’t just have to be a business administration major. Again, I leave it up to the advisors there to select a student every year. But again, it’s someone that’s demonstrating some innovative ideas within the area or the vocation that’s important to them. So it’s very inclusive in terms of the areas they could look to. But again, the common denominator, these are students that are bringing new ideas to the work that they’re pursuing.

[00:12:50.12] – Craig
Very nice. You talk a lot about intrapreneurship as well. I think a lot of people that are in larger corporations go, I can’t really move the bar. We can’t be innovative. A lot of people think of startup companies, Silicon Valley or the like. That’s where the innovation happens. But I think you have a very different view, which is you can be innovative within an organization. Maybe just what’s your experience been with that? How do you… We work with companies of all size, from Fortune 50, Fortune 500, and mid-size, and we do see a very wide range of challenges. The bigger you get, the harder it is to, quote, unquote, drive innovation because there’s so much scale and size, and in some cases, bureaucracy, policy, standards, things like that. I’d love to just hear your thoughts around how you’ve seen that and how you think about entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship.

[00:13:52.00] – Steve
Yeah. Well, I think it’s the same formula, but I think you touched on, Craig, the scale gets bigger. Sometimes I think that creates just different dynamics between the startup versus the 200-year-old Fortune 500 company. But there’s some common things, at least, that I believe, personally. From a leadership perspective, one of our number one jobs is to draw out ideas from our own teams, our customers, partners, et cetera. Our job is to create a culture, processes, communication opportunities to draw out ideas. Then the second part as a leader, our job is when you have those ideas and people know where to go, then how do you quickly assess? Then it’s to prioritize and allocate resources or capital. If you think about that solopreneur, she or he doing the exact same thing. It’s just they only have themselves to think through, and the capital or the resources are themselves. If you think about a Fortune 100 company, the amount of capital resources that they have available to them, but also what you talked about, that scale, just requires a different operating model. But it’s still about drawing out ideas. People know where to go. They feel they can make a difference, and then they know what happens.

For me, it’s always, if we don’t pursue someone’s idea, you close the loop and you share why. It’s a not now… it’s you educate around the strategy or the strategic priorities, or maybe the capabilities in the organization aren’t aligned to where they see that opportunity. But you want to encourage that constant conversation. Because I think you know as well as I do, some of the biggest innovations, people say sometimes were accidents. I think it was actually a team member that found something innovative, and then they knew where to go. Or they had a manager that was an advocate to say, Don’t self-select and say, We can’t do that here. Let’s understand if that’s something that we can and should do here. You think of the story of the 3M Post-It, right? Or Scotch Tape, right? I think what was the environment that enabled that individual to say, No, we could do that here. It probably had a lot to do with the culture.

[00:16:16.00] – Craig
I’m so glad that you just touched on it because I think this is the single biggest challenge and opportunity of companies of all sizes. I think small companies, startups, and small companies, it’s just in their DNA. Every single day, they have a challenge, and they’re just problem solving every single day. But when you pick a number, $500 million, billion size, you have a different set of challenges. I think creating a culture of innovation, using the buzzword… but like you just said, it’s really about ideas and what do we do with these ideas? It’s really about saying that culture. The funny thing, I was just reading about 3M is the poster child. The Harvard Business Reviews have been writing about it for decades. And I was just reading the other day, you know how the Scotch Tape name was created?

[00:17:06.04] – Steve
No.

[00:17:06.13] – Craig
It was created because they were looking to solve a problem, and one of their customers said, We need it, but it’s got to be cheap. And so Scotch was a name of… Back then when they created it, it was the name of how you can do something very inexpensively. And so they created it as a very inexpensive… Because the guy that invented it created this very sticky tape, but it was expensive and it was hard to manufacture. Then the challenge was, how do we make it inexpensive? That’s the way it was originally created. I had no idea. I always thought, why Scotch? It’s a funny thing. But when we talk, 3M is one of our clients, and there’s this myth around that says every 3M employee gets 10% of their time to dedicate to innovation, play with things, tinker with things. We actually asked them about that, and they said, No, that’s actually not true. It’s never been a policy. It’s never written down. But people think it’s true, and they encourage… clearly, they encourage ideation, and they encourage people to solve problems. But it’s actually not something that was dictated or a program or something that was structured.

It’s actually just a myth in some ways. But creating… We like to talk about one of the terms is business-as-usual, but innovation-as-usual. So Innovation, we shouldn’t think about innovation as it’s the R&D team, or it’s this really smart think tank team… It’s everyone. Everyone in the organization owns it. But my question back to you is, those are easy things for leaders to say, Oh, we want all your ideas. 20 years ago, we said, Where’s an idea box? And there actually was physical boxes around that people would put notes in. Now, sometimes companies get new techniques. We’re going to do a shark tank. We’re going to do a development jam day, or we’re going to do these things. But I’m just curious, from your perspective, how do you actually put that into practice? Clearly, you want it from your team, your organization. You want their ideas, you want their passions, but you also have goals, objectives, day jobs. So what techniques can you do to encourage it and shift that culture so people believe what you’re saying?

[00:19:22.09] – Steve
Well, I think it starts with being very intentional and to draw that out. First, people have I need to actually believe, to your point, Craig, that if I take a risk, because that’s what it is, if I take a risk, whether I’m excited about it or not, if I take a risk to do something above and beyond, what happens and what are the norms in the culture? I would say be very intentional. I have 4,000 plus team members. I meet with every new class of team members every month that join within their first 30 days because I want to be very intentional as part their new team member onboarding experience. I call out very specifically, Craig, I only have one goal for the meeting to know that communication is critical to what we do here. So reach out anytime to anyone. If you have a question, don’t try to solve it on your own? And then two, I have one ask, and maybe it builds on what you shared about, it’s just part of what we do. I ask them to use their superpower, especially in this first year, because they bring new experiences, different experiences… They worked at other They maybe worked in different industries. But more importantly, they get to ask a bunch of questions.

Of those of us, I’ve been here eight and a half years. Hey, I have a lot to offer, but I also don’t bring necessarily like, I just joined and I’m trying to figure out what this acronym means. I might just accept it to just use that as an example. So I really encourage the team members to use their superpower. And then once I got them pulled in a little bit, and we have a number of other things we do in that onboarding experience, but then you point them to where are the processes of where do I go? So the suggestion box, I don’t know if we have one of those still around, Craig, but they know where to go to our new product innovation submission portal. And then the last component that I think helps drive what we do as a team is it doesn’t become, Well, what happened? Or only the really good ideas we ever hear about.

Every one of those is followed up on, and there’s an explanation provided of how we prioritize, Tell me more about the idea. Here’s what could happen. Here’s where we’re going to say we’re not going to move it forward today. But it’s that say-do ratio. We want you to submit ideas, but then you got to show what you’re actually doing and then close that loop for team members. Ultimately, that’s what drives, and I guess I believe the 3M myth, so thank you. But I think maybe another way to explain that is it sounds like great discretion discretionary effort from team members. And I think that’s, again, something that’s really important for us as leaders. Are we creating a culture where people want to give that discretionary effort to pursue an idea, to pursue making it happen for a team member to go the extra mile for a customer? Again, it just comes back to culture, but discretionary effort. And I think as leaders, we got to be really intentional then of what we communicate and then the processes and the follow-up that we do, Craig.

[00:22:27.06] – Craig
Right. Yeah. And I love what you’re saying about you got to follow through with what you’re saying and measure it, communicate it, because then it’s real. If people hear things, I mean, sometimes we say seven times seven ways, people won’t believe something unless it’s consistently discussed, and you track it and you measure it. But I’m curious. I also love the superpowers because I’m a big believer that everybody brings very unique talent and skills outside of their job description to the table. But do people know when you say that, do know what their superpowers are? Do you guys do the superpower behavior test, or is it something that makes them think like, jeez, I better go figure that out?

[00:23:08.00] – Steve
Yeah, I think I share it more as a question and encouragement to have them pause and reflect and go, Okay. Because I think, at least if I think back to the early days of my own career, when you onboarded, it’s like, I don’t know anything. I’m plugging in… All these other folks know a lot of information. I got to learn, learn, learn. Maybe is it that new team member persona, should I say something? Because you know what? Craig’s been here 25 years, and he knows everything. Who am I to even bring up an idea? So part of why I asked that question, then I walked through an example, is to be like, There’s an opportunity for me to learn from you and you to learn from me, and to change that dynamic, Craig. So again, no matter what their background, skill set, instead of experiences are, it’s just changing the dynamic in how they frame up my first year as part of Wolters Kluwer is that actually the company’s success is relying on me, bringing fresh questions, asking questions, asking why we do things.

And we have a global innovation award contest, tournament every year. I think about one of the finalists last year had been part of Walters Kluwer for two weeks, learned about this global innovation award tournament for new ideas that could be very innovative for the company and make something happen. He submitted an idea, jumped on a team, and made one of the finalist teams. He had been here two weeks.

[00:24:36.06] – Craig
That’s amazing.

[00:24:37.01] – Steve
There’s somebody that was diving in to use their, as I call it, superpower.

[00:24:41.14] – Craig
Well, and that’s… So stepping away from just what an individual’s superpower is. I love what you are doing with every new employee by the nature of them being a new employee has a superpower, which is they have a completely fresh perspective. Yeah. Wherever they’re from, their background, personal, ancestry, corporate, you name it, part of the country, whatever their background is, they have the power of asking questions that people that have been there 8 or 10 years don’t ask because we know this is how we’ve always done it. I don’t have to ask. Those are some of the most powerful questions and ideas. I think the companies, and we live in the Midwest, you and I, and we have a lot of very strong mature corporations that have lots of history. We’re talking 3M and Cargill and General Mills and companies that have world-class organizations, Medtronic, Mayo Clinic, and that’s a huge strength. But it’s also they have to fight against it because what made them successful is not what’s going to make them successful in the next five years or ten years. One of the things I see that some of them are doing better than others is bringing in fresh new ideas, new leaders or new people at every level because the world is changing very quickly.

Maybe that’s a segue for you. What’s changing? So anyways, I think that’s a great technique to basically give people the license to ask what we used to call the dumb questions. You’re here the first 30, 90 days. But those are not dumb questions. Actually, we all have cognitive bias around just what we’ve done and what we’ve seen. The challenge that can be very powerful. Tell us maybe just a little bit what trends, changes you’re seeing, digital changes. We’re in a GenAI world now… that’s the hottest topic in every organization. What are you guys seeing there and what are you doing to try to keep up with it?

[00:26:46.06] – Steve
Well, it comes up in every conversation, right? And when it hit, I’ll say the public mindset, right? Because large language models and other emerging technologies have decades of history. But as we’ve made them available more generally into the public domain, it is in almost every conversation. I remember, Craig, maybe back when ChatGPT1, I think we’re on ChatGPT4 Pro now, came out, right? And it was capturing the imagination of, I think, the broader population. We got questions like that first week… Hey, in your solution, do you use ChatGPT? And it was almost like, If you don’t, I have concerns. A week later, someone would go, Okay, do you use ChatGPT in solution? Because then I have questions, and it was almost more from a concern perspective, right? In terms of just the cycle time of Generative AI overall, I think it’s a capture just business and consumer imaginations of what’s possible. I look at it and just as we engage, it’s how does it improve the value that, again, is created for whoever your end customer or constituent is?

So again, coming back to who we serve, we serve professionals. We’ve done that for almost 200 years. No matter the medium of technology, if I go way back in time, I’m going to guess in the 1800s, the printing press was the new emerging technology to deliver value to those professionals to help them do their jobs better. And so, Craig, I like to always bring the conversation back to artificial intelligence, AI, GenAI, is something I think is going to be fascinating, and we’re in the early days of that. And so there’s so much creativity and innovation there. But I always zoom people up to say, What’s the business you’re in? Are you in the business of, and I say human intelligence. These are all enabling tools to actually unlock or advance or increase, generally speaking, I think, humans’ ability to do more than they could do before without the technology. And so then what problem are you trying to solve? What opportunity are you trying to unlock? And my caution to team members is don’t narrow in on just one technique, one process, one type of technology, because the one thing we know is it’s going to change a year from now. But understand those capabilities and then apply them to, again, what problems are you trying to solve? What opportunities are you trying to create for your customers or in your ecosystem? And really connect the two. You might hear me talk once in a while. I always say, Hey, we’re in the business of advancing and investing in human intelligence.

[00:29:37.08] – Craig
Yeah, and I think what I like about that is that there’s a lot of fear around AI, and rightly so. There’s some big questions there, but you got to put that fear to bed for people to be able to focus on doing their job and say, Well, how do I play? What’s my role in it? To put it in the context of thinking about it as augmenting you, it’s a partner. One of the things we do, we do a lot of GenAI immersions. We want to get people educated because otherwise, it’s just this black box, don’t know how it works. Then every myth or everything that you hear, you don’t know how to deal with it or where to put it. We really try to educate people on the foundation. Once you understand something, all of a sudden you go, Oh, well, now I understand. Well, this is where I could apply it or not apply it. One of those steps towards… It is a different animal anything else we’ve seen before. But one of those steps is to transition from what we’re used to as Google… give me an answer to, how about a thought partner?

Just like I’m talking to you and we could talk about a lot of different topics and you could share and I could go, Yeah, this is my experience, and we could bounce ideas off each other, and we’re going to both learn from each other and we’re going to get to a better place. I think we can do that in a lot of topics as you could with anyone, really. And GenAI can be a thought partner. It’s like talking to a million people at once, and the way that you talk to it, it’ll talk back to you. Now, it doesn’t mean if you have a conversation with your neighbor and they say, Hey, you should go buy this new module of SAP because it’s going to do this. You go, Oh, I better go do that. You’re going to go, okay, that’s a data point. And I’m going to put it in context of what I know. So that’s an interesting thing.

One other thing that we had a gentleman who I’ve worked with for a number of years. He was on the podcast. His name is Gerd Leonhard, and he wrote a book called Technology versus Humanity. What it’s so great about, and he actually wrote it eight years ago, and everything in it is pretty predictive of where we are now, almost to a T. It’s very scary. Some of the things that… He’s called a futurist. He’s a great guy. But essentially what he does is he thinks, Steve, like you were doing before when you thought 20 years ahead and said, Where do I want to be at the end of my life? I want my kids to be around my family and my grandparents… You are being a futurist. He does that with technology. One of the big questions he asked in the book, it’s a lot around, what is the role of a human? It challenged you, just like you were challenging people to go, Hey, you’re new here. Here’s your power to challenge the rest of us. Well, as a human, we go, Wait a minute. What I’m good at is not repetition, or what I’m good at is not being in a spreadsheet and comparing numbers. Computers can be way better at that stuff than I am. I can be one that can put things in perspective, or I can have empathy, or I can…

I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to go, What are our superpowers? What are we good at? And how do we want to leverage this to augment us so we can do what we do best. I think GenAI is challenged yet because a lot of times, I think as humans, we thought, Well, we have to be the one that comes up with the idea. Now GenAI can actually ideate just as well as we can or better. But it doesn’t mean that GenAI is going make the decision or something you trust. You have to make very ethical decisions and you have to have context.

[00:33:06.08] – Steve
Just to even build on that, I think one of the things as I’ve interacted with the technology is, it’s like the Socratic learning method.

[00:33:15.14] – Craig
Love it.

[00:33:16.12] – Steve
It means we like to ask questions. To use your example, with more traditional search, we want to ask questions. I’m sure people put into that search bar, and what you get back is lists that are trying to match that up. What I found in just my personal experience is I feel like, to your point, I’m having a conversation. I’m asking a question and I’m getting a more contextual response, and then I can ask another question and I get back a more refined contextual response. But I think that’s one way that I think humans like to learn is through asking good questions and having a conversation. At least for me in my own personal experience, that’s the interplay when I think about the advance there of what this Generative AI experience for me is evolving to. I feel like I can just… the prompts, but it’s asking good questions. So back to your point, Craig, and I wrote down Technology Versus Humanity, I’m going to have to check out that book. But it still starts with, are you asking the right questions? Are you solving the right problems? Are you pursuing the right opportunities? And then how can you augment that and take advantage of the tools available? And GenAI is one of those tools.

[00:34:30.00] – Craig
Steve, I love that as well, because if you think about one of the things that I’ve heard, and I just love this saying, which is the person asking the questions in the conversation has really the power of the conversation or in control of the conversation. Sometimes we hear a lot of people say, Oh, there’s all this hallucination. And GenAI just comes up with these crazy, invalid, incorrect responses. And then when we dig into it, we say, Well, actually, the job of GenAI is not to come back with the correct answers. The job is it’s trying to just predict what you want. And so a lot of times when we get false or responses back that we don’t like or don’t think are quality, it’s because the question wasn’t asked properly or the prompt wasn’t engineered properly. But that could go through a human reaction. If you ask a question and just say, Give me the best value, give me the best price house I can, well, you’re probably going to get lower end. Or if you say, I want the best life experience in a home that I’m going to love, that’s a whole different… The questions that you ask, even humans, and this, I think, can teach us the quality of the question is going to be the quality of the answer… garbage in, garbage out. But it’s really teaching people to say, Well, what is the question in the context that’s going to give me the response I want? It teaches us how to do that better, I think.

[00:35:49.07] – Steve
I think just from… I get questions sometimes of, What advice do you have for our business or in our industry through my own network? I just say, You’ve been probably successful for many reasons, but you’ve been open to learning. So just even, I’m looking at the screen right now, Craig, 1% Better, right? Yes. I think we always want everything to be perfect right away, absolute, and maybe just taking a step back and saying, as I’m leaning into some of these new technologies, how do I… It just makes what I do 1% Better. Let’s start there and get the snowball going versus going, Hey, I asked that question and it wasn’t perfect yet. Okay, but did it help you advance and improve what you’re doing and make that advancement incrementally? I think, again, sometimes we want to jump to the end instead of thinking through the process.

[00:36:44.03] – Craig
Yeah, love it. I mean, it’s a powerful concept in itself. Well, Steve, time’s flown by. Kind of come full circle here to where you started with your grandparents and wanting to spend your kids spend more time and your whole family. So if you’re a grandparent, you’re talking with your grandchildren, or you’re maybe talking to young people about just what you would pass along to that generation, things that you’ve learned that you’d say, I would have wanted to know if I was that age, what things would you pass along to them?

[00:37:17.14] – Steve
It’s a great question, Craig. It’s timely, maybe not grandchildren. I have a 17-year-old, so we’re starting to have some of those conversations. But what comes to mind just immediately is have conversations where you’re looking to learn. Even our conversation today, Craig, I have a new book to go check out. Gotten to know you a little bit. I’m learning different things of what other companies are doing. So I would probably just offer up, seek out conversations and with a mindset to learn from that conversation, not to judge, not to convince, not to change a perspective, But truly just go in and say, I’m going to learn from having a conversation with people I know. And also take a risk and have a conversation with someone you don’t know as well, especially for college graduates right now. There’s a lot of great advice out there. I would just say, show up and get to know people. It’s still that relationship and learning from others that I think is the force multiplier in everything we do, whether that’s a career, whether that’s your personal network, whether that’s, quite frankly, just even amongst family. Start conversations. It’s probably the advice I would offer. I fast forward 20, 30 years as a futurist and thinking about possibly being lucky enough to be a grandfather.

[00:38:50.14] – Craig
I mean, speaking of great advice, sometimes the best advice are simple truths. Just that one piece of advice of have a conversation, try to learn from every conversation. That’s pretty timeless great advice. You gave a lot of nuggets of wisdom. Thank you for sharing. We can go a lot deeper. Maybe we will someday, but I want to just thank you for your time and just sharing your life experience and your nuggets of wisdom with us.

[00:39:15.10] – Steve
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Craig, for the opportunity. I love the theme of the podcast and also the past conversations you’ve had. So again, keep putting great content out there. It’s highly valued by this individual.

[00:39:29.04] – Craig
Thanks, Steve.

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