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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortez.
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Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has
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been brought to you with passion and pride since February
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of twenty fifteen. Nice tuning in this week.
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Great to have you.
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I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. Most leaders are sitting
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on untapped human energy, and I help them unlock it.
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I'm an organizational psychologist, local therapist, workforce advisor and the
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founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I
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live by is much simpler. I traffic and energy, not
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the surface level motivation or another engagement initiative, but the
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deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for
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performance that drives the commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of
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a shared mission in the clients we serve. You can
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learn more about on how we can work together at
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Gusto dashnow dot com or my personal site, Eliscortes dot com.
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Getting into today's program we have with us are run Gupta,
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who is the CEO of Noble Reach Foundation, a public
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charity with a mission to develop and mobilize America's top
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talent and innovation networks across academia, industry, and government for
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high impact solutions that strengthened the security and prosperity of
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our nation. He's also a venture capitalist lecturer at Stanford
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University and adjunct Entrepreneurship professor at Georgetown University and author
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of Venture Meets Mission and The Mission Generation. Reclaim Your Purpose,
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Rewrite Success, Rebuild Our Future, which is what we're talking
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about today. His home is Washington, TC, but he joined
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it today from San Francisco, a ruin a hearty welcome
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to Working on Purpose.
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Thank you so much for having me, Elisa.
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Eric, so welcome. I'm so happy to meet you. And
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I told you before we got an air that I
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absolutely devoured and loved your book and totally aligned with
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Mission Generation.
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I meant it, you wrote it for me. Thank you
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for that.
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As I told you, I learned and got more pearls
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and insights about myself just reading your book too, and
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help me better understand just why I've been on the
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path that I've been on. So a lot of personal
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gain that I got out of it too, and I'm
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so happy to share this with our listeners and viewers
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around the world.
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I'm very kind to you the conversation well.
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And I also say this, as I shared before we
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got on air, in the last ten years, I have
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read more than five hundred books, and this book is outstanding.
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Okay, I mean a lot. I appreciate it.
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So so welcome.
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Well, listeners and viewers haven't snuggled up with your background
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and your experiences I have. So let's just open the
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conversation with you sharing a bit about your background and
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just why you were so compelled to write this book.
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Yeah, so the lens that I got to write this book,
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it's important for folks to understand. So, my father was
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in public service. He was in an Avy for forty
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five years. To public service was in our family. I
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grew up. In my professional career was in venture capital,
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so I started Carlisle and was at Columbia Capital. So
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the power of innovation and the power of entrepreneurship, and
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in the latter half of my career there was really
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mapping how that I could bring the entrepreneurle ecosystem to
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solve mission driven problems in government in areas like cybersecurity
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and national security.
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Uh.
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And you saw both the challenges of making that happen,
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but you also saw the magic when you could make
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it happen. And I think that really kind of it
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was hard to go back to just typical venture investing
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that you could do felt had both purpose to an
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and profit. Uh. After that, I started teaching uh and
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uh Georgetown, I was teaching in business school, and I
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was teaching at Stanford Stanford in Washington and created a
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class called Valley meets Mission Really around again, how do
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you take the entrepreneural spirit of the Valley but not
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wasted on candy Cross three point zero? Like, how do
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we take that that talent, that spirit, that vibrancy, but
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you pointed at solving large societal problems but any core
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profit way. And uh, you know what I saw is
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that students, when shown the opportunity, you know, naturally gravitated
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to it, but that the academic institutions themselves were kind
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of siloing students into you know, one of two lanes.
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Either you're going to go make money but you know
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your career may be hollow, or you go solve meaningful
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problems but then you you forego financial security.
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Uh.
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And those felt like two very unsustainable paths, and that,
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you know, showing them that there was a place in
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between was what inspired writing the first book, Venture Meets Mission, Uh,
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to highlight to them that there's a world there where
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you could try to do both. Around that, we raised
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a foundation where we have now half a billion dollar endowment. Uh.
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Really around two of the core tenants of that book,
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which was the superpowers of our country here in the US,
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is that we create talent better than anyone elsonal world,
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and we innovate better than any realsonal world. And the
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evidence is that everyone from around the world comes here
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to do. Both we haven't done is really invest in
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modernizing the infrastructure so that those two ecosystems are connect
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to government to solve problems at scale. So we're not
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getting our best talent going into government, and we're not
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getting our best innovators to collaborate with government to solve
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problems at scale. One a stack that brings that to
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life is less than seven percent of tech workers in
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government today or under the age of thirty. We have
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four times over the age of sixty. And if we
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really believe we need to tech forward government to meet
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our citizen demands but also maintain global leadership, that should
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feel like we're alert to people. And so we really
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set out to build a program that did that. And
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that's what Noble reached us today, which is like, how
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do we inspire this next generation around national service, but
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especially our top tech talent to go into government, and
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we can talk more about what that program is as
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we go forward. All I will say though, in tying
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it to the book, is that part of what inspired
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to write the second book, The Mission Generation, was really
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based on the energy, the positivity, the optimism, the desires
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of young folks wanting to serve right now, and we
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felt it was important to get that story out there.
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We talk about it not only in the young in
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terms of young folks, but mid career and late career
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folks as well, because we define the Mission Generation it's
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not about being about age, but about being about agency
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and a growing groups that really want to combine civic
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responsibility with personally ambition. They don't want the ore, they
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want the end. And I think there's a lot going
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on right now, which is why the time is now
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to really talk about that, highlight it and also have
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them not feel alone in feeling that way, And so
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we can chat more about that.
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Well, first, let me say that was beautifully articulated and
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incredibly inspiring, certainly up to something I don't know how
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how many Apparently you've been issued more hours in a
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day than most of us.
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That's what I'm getting out of this.
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So for otherseners and viewers who haven't read the book,
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like I have, you part of what you just said
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there towards the end starts to speak to what you
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mean by mission generation, But can you speak to that
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just more directly?
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Sure? You know, really, what we were really trying to
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get at and talking about the Mission generation was the
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spirit of folks that we're seeing out there that are
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really don't want to subscribe to the two binary choices
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that they feel like are put in front of them.
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One is going into a world where you can do
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meaningful work and have some responsibility and impact people, but
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in that path there's not a way to really establish
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financial security. And the other is to pursue a path
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of financial security in making money. But in that pathway
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you give up the opportunity to really have impact and
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have meaning. And what we were really highlighting is that,
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you know, what we were seeing is that people no
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longer wanted to subscribe to both either of those. They
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wanted to integrate those together into a meaningful career. And
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we started writing it arguably for early career folks, but
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saw that the same questions existed for mid career and
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late career folks, They just manifest themselves differently given the
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environments that they're in. And the reason we think now
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is the time to be talking about this again and
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why this is surfacing up again is that, you know, look,
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as I said, my dad had one job for forty years.
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I had one career, multiple employers, but I stayed in
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my lane. Going forward, you know, we believe people will
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have four to six careers over sixty years. So careers
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are extending longer and you'll have more of them, and
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so we don't have the scaffolding to support that. And
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the reason I say people will be working longer is,
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you know, I think most people would agree that people
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are just going to be living longer. We're just the
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early stages of a lot of advancements and life sciences
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and all the work that's being done around longevity. And
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so in that process, you know, we will need to
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be thinking about new scripts of how do we do this.
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The scripts we have today are built for a more
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stable world, and they're built for shorter careers, and so
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we tend to create career pathways that are singular, you know,
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you know, and that you're going to get on and
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you stay on for thirty years. I'm going to go
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and be in the private sector. I'm going to be
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in the public sector. I'm going to go in academia.
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I'm going to go into the not for profit sector.
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And we attach ourselves to institutions, and we attach ourselves
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to titles. Those are getting disrupted, and that's that's disconcerting
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the folks, right, Like you know, with AI and everything happening,
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there's a squirrel around that. Having said that, you know,
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the only thing that will be stable, We argue then
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is purpose and meaning And you know, what is the
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why you're doing what you're doing. What's the problem that
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you're solving that you care about, Right, That's how you
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need to be building your career, not about the institution
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that you want to attached to, but what the what's
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the problem that really gives you energy, as you said,
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really kind of like gets you up in the morning,
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right and as you thinking about it even late at night.
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And those problems are going to transcend sectors, and so
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building your career off that will be a more stable
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way to deal with the ever changing world that we're
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walking into in a meaningful way. And so you know,
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we we argue that stability is the new risk, right,
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It's it's riskier today to do the more stable thing
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because in that process you're also giving away agency, And
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in a process, in a time that's changing so quickly,
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you know, building your career and what you care about
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and maintaining that agency becomes incredibly important. And so what
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we try to talk about in the book is, you know,
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is right like, how do we think about career pathways
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differently as people have four to six careers over an
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extended period of time, and what's the scaffolding that we
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need to support that?
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So much good stuff in that ruin.
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So you're right now speaking of this topic from the
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vantage point of people and their individual's careers, and I
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want to now kind of pull it a little bit
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differently from the vantage point of how these organizations that
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are going to count on that talent to pull them
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forward can attract them. And so the numbers that you
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provide in the book are incredible, and I've seen them
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many of them in other forms before, but we just
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share a couple of them and let you comment on them.
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You have one cis you say that the data confirmed
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what we were seeing firsthand. Eighty six percent of gen
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Z and eighty nine percent of millennials consider a sense
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of purpose as essential to job satisfaction. Other researchers found
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that two thirds of older workers delay retirement specifically to