#2.22 - Purpose at Work: What Does the Future Hold?

How can you find your purpose at work and help your employees do the same? 🤔 

In this episode of All About HR season 2, we sit down with AJ Thomas — Chaos Pilot @ X, the Moonshot Factory — to discuss how to find purpose at work and how to move from employee experience to human experience. 🎯

AJ is an experienced people leader with a knack for building culture. Her own definition of meaningful work is identifying and building the leaders and organizations of tomorrow. 🌟

In this episode, we’ll discuss: 

👉 How to find your purpose at work
👉 Employee experience vs. human experience
👉 Moving away from linear career paths

Watch the full episode to learn how introducing human experience to your HR strategy can promote a brighter future. 💡

Ready for the full experience? Watch the episode in video format. 

Useful resources:  

• HR Leadership — online training

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Transcript

AJ Thomas: Because it's not just about you as a young person, knowing your purpose. Think about those young organizations, those early-stage startups, right? Some of them have to pivot also, sometimes, because they discover their purpose in a very different way and create new products or new ways in which they have their unique contribution to the world by continuously knowing that it's something that is going to be continuously shaped, and never final.

Neelie Verlinden: Hi, everyone, and welcome to today's brand-new episode of All About HR. My name is Neelie. I'm your host, and for today's episode, I got to sit down with AJ Thomas. AJ is the Chaos Pilot at X. And she's also a nonprofit founder, advisor, and executive coach. I'm super happy that we're gonna have this conversation happening today, because it's been in the works for a long time. Now, before we dive straight in, if you haven't done so, yeah, we really appreciate it if you can subscribe to the channel, hit that notification bell, and like this video.

Neelie Verlinden: Welcome to another episode of All About HR. 

Neelie Verlinden: Now, AJ, let me welcome you to the show. How are you?

AJ Thomas: Hi, Neelie. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. So happy to be here with you this morning.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, I'm also very happy to have you, AJ. Maybe you can start by telling our audience a little bit more about yourself. You'll work as the Chaos Pilot at X, but also all of the super interesting things that you're doing outside of that.

AJ Thomas: Yeah, that sounds great. I do work as a Chaos Pilot at X, the Moonshot Factory, heading our talent team and working across all of our projects at X to help find the best talent that we can to really make sure that we have the teams that are creating those radical new technologies to solve some of the world's hardest problems. So it is such a privilege and an honor to be able to do that. And aside from that, I'm also a mom of three wonderful children who are currently 11, six, and one year old. Yes, you heard that right, huge spread there. So it's also chaos piloting at home. We're bringing that theme through, from professional to personal. And you know, you talked a little bit about my background as a nonprofit founder. I founded a nonprofit in 2010 that focuses on helping graduate at-risk youth by teaching them the principles of entrepreneurship. And then, we turn that into a focus on STEM for young women in that kind of environment through our opportunity to partner with the Women in Technology international team with an initiative called the Brain Candy Labs. I do advise startups as well, early-stage startups. And then I also serve as an executive coach for the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. So life is full and wonderful and really all about leaning into that purpose of making a radical contribution to life and humanity.

Neelie Verlinden: Okay, wow, that is a pretty impressive introduction, AJ, but there are a few things that strike me immediately there. There's, for instance, that you talk about being a Chaos Pilot at home, but also being a Chaos Pilot at X. And then there's also the fact that you mentioned this purpose and how it's always present. In a way, it doesn't just stop when we walk out of the workplace, but it's there as well in our personal lives. So perhaps we can start with your thoughts on that, really?

AJ Thomas: Sure, I can tell you a little bit about that I think it's important. And by the way, I didn't just wake up one day and go, Oh, my gosh, I have a purpose. I think I'm still learning what that purpose is, I'm still asking questions, I'm still quite unsure about certain things as well. But I know that I want to lean into certain things because I've learned over the past decade about this need for me to be able to work in places and work on things, right? And when I say work, it's not just from a professional standpoint, but life's work standpoint that helps us think about the future in a different way. And so, you know, one of the mantras that have been a real guiding light for me is that if you want to work on the future, you've got to work with the future. And there's no better way to really put that responsibility on your shoulder than to professionally be working in a place where you are working with a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who are building and launching technologies to really improve millions, even billions, of people's lives. And when you think about it, in that scale, it really has all of the responsibility and the purpose of being able to work on the future and what this world could look like, what humanity could look like. So for me, if you want to work on the future, I want to be able to be in this place where I have the opportunity and the extreme privilege to help shape mindsets and hearts and build things from people and culture standpoints, and a talent standpoint that are going to shape that, I want to make sure that the voices of the future are included. And when I say that it's the young generation, it's the upcoming folks that are coming into the workplace, primarily also, thinking about it being younger and younger, you know. We do these career fair days or career days at elementary schools and middle schools, what do we really talk about? How do we inspire? And so helping us really realize that and helping me realize the purpose of that responsibility, it's also inclusive to us making sure that the decisions we're making, and the questions we're asking, are leaning into our future selves, you know. How do we want to show up for ourselves? What do we want to be, you know, 10, 15, 20 years from now? And what are we architecting today to help that? And so it's a really interesting way to have this kind of long-term thinking and then helping design that. What are the things that are going to help me get to where I eventually want to be, right? And so it sounds very large at scale. But when you think about it, it's really in the decisions you make today, who you choose to include in your meetings and your designs, how you choose to question and push the status quo, how you fight for whether or not something is just enough because it checks the box, or how you're able to lean in and say, yes, I understand that checks the box. But what other questions are we not asking? Right? How are we paying attention to the other different areas? Who are we not asking questions that could have an interesting insight, even if they haven't had all of the experience in the world, that the world defines his experience, for example, right? And so really creating that, and I think that's actually the beauty of the human experience, if you think about it, is the ability to be able to do that.

Neelie Verlinden: Absolutely. Yeah. Now, AJ, I was listening to you. Is it correct to make the assumption that for that to happen, we need to know our own purpose first?

AJ Thomas: I think I would shift that a little bit of a nuance. It starts with us getting curious about our purpose, I think you said it so beautifully. It's not that we will ever just know what it is. But when it does strike us, something that feels good, or even something that feels really hard, but you want to keep leaning in, you get those signals that you're headed in the right direction, right? So I would offer that it's not about knowing your purpose, but knowing that there's a question that will help answer that, that will get you to what that next thing is going to be or what it is, it's going to be your unique contribution in the world. And honestly, I think everyone has the capacity to have whatever that unique contribution is. It's our responsibility, I believe, as leaders, especially in the people and culture space where a lot of decisions are being made, you know, promotions, merit increases, people moving around in the organization for new opportunities, even in those very simple things. We help architect the conditions for somebody to make decisions as well. And so I think that the importance of this is not just about knowing your purpose at a very early stage. I mean, some people are very lucky and blessed with that, I believe, but it's the fact to go beyond that in knowing that you want to continue to get curious about it. Shankar Vedantam, I think he does a podcast called Hidden Brain. And he recently did this TED talk I listened to around like, we will never really know what our future selves want. And I think that is really interesting as well, because there's a responsibility in that statement, again, for us to continuously ask and to continue to pour into, you know, what that future could look like for us. So if you bring that down to, you know, the level in which we are making decisions from an HR space, right, I think that is not just about asking why something is important, but also how we then land those things, whether it's a benefit, open enrollment, whether it's this new, you know, like the pay Transparency Act that's happening, whether it's making a decision on whether or not to support certain policies or not, or anything around compensation or anything around, you know, what kind of leadership development programs you're offering for your organizations. I think it behooves us to also think about not just checking the box that we did those things but also making sure that we're pouring into how we did those things. Did we engage folks in dialogue? Were we transparent about these things that we're talking about? Did we create an opportunity for folks to be able to access that type of thinking of what it means for them as well, but also in balance, making sure that it's fulfilling the mission and the purpose of the organization that we're in? And so it sounds really big and meaty and abstract almost. But I think being able to spend some time in wonder of that, because it's not just about you as a young person, knowing your purpose. Think about those young organizations, those early-stage startups, right? Some of them have to pivot also, sometimes, because they discover their purpose in a very different way and create new products or new ways in which they have their unique contribution to the world by continuously knowing that it's something that is going to be continuously shaped, and never final.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah. And to me, it almost seems like this implies a new kind of way of thinking where asking yourself these questions all the time almost becomes like a reflex.

AJ Thomas: A muscle. 

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, good one.

AJ Thomas: I think it's really important because in the work that we do, when we think about the future, I mean, I would endeavor to say everybody's thinking about the future. It's just whether or not it's at the forefront of your mind or behind you. And the folks that are thinking, I think, very actively about, okay, this decision because you can be prone to overthinking as well. Sometimes you have to really just say, okay, if I'm leaning into this, how can I experiment with this? How can I start with something small and then see what comes from there, and then feed that into something that could be impactful in the future? Those things are really interesting as well. I'll give you an example. Personally for me, when I started a nonprofit organization, that wasn't the idea. I actually just felt that at that point in my career, I wanted to mentor young people. And I actually answered a newspaper ad. I don't even know if they do it these days now, but I actually answered a newspaper ad for an East Side High School that was looking for after-school program mentors. And the conversations that I had with the young people that I was interacting with really inspired me to think about what more we could do, which then 10 years later turned into an organization that graduated over 150 people. We had a faculty, we had adjunct faculty from Google and Facebook and Box and these large technology organizations that were really acting as the instructors for folks to show these young people what the future could look like and what they can see, maybe it's not even around the corner. But if you turn a couple more and then provide an opportunity for them to have scholarships, that was not something where I was like, I know, I'm going to wake up one day, and this is what I'm going to do. It just came from this idea, this poll that I had, that I want to mentor young people, which then has led me to the career that I have today, which led me then to this battle cry that I'm still questioning, that I'm still curious about, that if I have the responsibility of working on the future, that I want to make sure that I involve the future in that. You know, you put those mindsets and that feedback in and then curate a way in which we all can move forward. So that's just an example of, you know, it’s not always like, you have to know, knowing that there's more to know is actually where the key is. 

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, I think that's, that's beautiful, AJ, and I think what we can take from this is following that first hunch and taking that action, and then as we go, we will find out what the next step is. And the step after that. And after that, and I think AJ, this is also a nice bridge to something else I wanted to talk to you about, which is the human experience. Perhaps we can start with how would you describe the human experience within organizations?AJ Thomas: I mean, I think it's an interesting question. So I'll go directly from an organizational perspective, right? We talk about this thing called the employee experience. More and more as people get into their careers, you're seeing in current days, where especially as the pandemic has hit, right, a blurring of these lines of personal and professional, you're hearing organizations and leaders talking about bringing their whole selves to work, bringing their most authentic selves to work. I think everybody brings in who they are into the workplace, and there are certain markers of what you can and cannot be depending on what that culture looks like. And I think the work for leaders, especially for, you know, Chief People Officers or people in culture leaders, or anyone that's heading up talent and organization or helping shape how you're going to lead and develop folks, is a responsibility to also understand that the person that's coming in isn't just an employee, but the person that's coming in has a history that is probably untold or unsaid and realizing that people are making decisions every day not just to get that roadmap going or close the next milestone, though that is very important from an organizational standpoint, but as having the humility also to recognize as leaders that in an organization, how are you isn't just hey, how are you? Okay, you're doing great. I'll see you later. But it’s really about taking a little bit of a pause and just saying, how are you? Sometimes that's what some people really need to be able to open up. That's the door you can open for them to step into. And sometimes it's really also just being compassionate to the situation and knowing that, you know, you're in the middle of a product release, or in the middle of a heightened state of planning or strategic, whatever it may be. But knowing as a leader to take a pause and go, alright, mindfully, are we going into this just as a routine? Am I really honoring the different unique contributions that the team brings to the table as well? Stopping to recognize that, am I stopping to speak life into what people are working on? And by the way, speaking life into what people are working on is also having the ability to tell them the truth without blame or judgment. I like to say that there are cottage industries out there around how to give feedback, or how to receive feedback. And I think if we just go back to basics, I've been talking about this term of going back to basics around what is it really we're trying to have a conversation about? Is it really in service to the other person? That's a way to think about the human experience at work in service to another person, whether it's a direct report, whether it's your CEO, your C-suite, your senior leaders, whether it's the receptionist that you greet every day, do you even know their name? Or do you say, Hi, how are you, nice to see you, then going right in, right? Little interactions also set the pace and the culture of an organization. And I think it's really important for us not to miss that in between the big rocks of the milestones, and the product releases, and the big project pushes and the planning meetings that are happening. All of those are a reality. But it is also a reality that you have real humans in the workplace that sometimes just need a conversation and something deeper than just a hello and goodbye. Take insurance, right, and ask questions. And listen. You never know what you'll discover. I've met so many amazing people in organizations that I didn't even know, had these really amazing talents, you know, from sushi chefs that were office administrators to, you know, everyone has a wonderful story. And I think being able to metabolize that in an organization and make even just a space to breathe for it, that's an experience that is very important.

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, 100%. And I feel that the term employee experience versus human experience, words do matter. And so when we say employee experience, I feel that this creates distance in a way. And so while we're all human beings, and as you just described in what you were saying.

AJ Thomas: there are going to be organizations where yes, there is that employee experience. And that's okay to say, and you do have to draw certain lines for certain things. Just don't forget that you draw lines on the work, that you have to make sure that you understand that what's behind that work is an actual human being. And so those lines should be about how you get the best work done. But the culture should be about understanding that there are human beings behind that and the decisions that we make and how we have conversations and how we ask questions and share resources and insights and make things accessible. Or we say very directly, what needs to happen, that is being said to a human being, not just a bot that's out there going, you need to go do this work and do it now. And as I said, right, we have computers for that. Right? 

Neelie Verlinden: Yeah, more than enough, I would say. So. AJ, let's talk about the future for a bit as well. And then the human experience of the future. How would that look like in an ideal world? Because yeah, let's aim for the moon, right? How do you think about this?

AJ Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. As I like to say, whenever I'm also facilitating different leadership development courses, you know, you get your results. You can take like disk or anagrams or things like that was like to say, don't make any life decisions off of what I'm about to say. But it's a really interesting question because, again, the human experience of the future is going to rely a lot on what we pour into our current and present day. There are amazing people in the organization that I work with, particularly one that think you guys should check out, the literature that he just wrote a book with a bunch of really amazing folks that think about the stuff on a daily basis that is all about the work of design fiction and how it feeds into how we design for what the future could look like. Often when you are talking about the future, they think of flying cars or teleportation or all of these things, when actually what's really interesting is the artifacts that we create today. If you look at those things, 200, 100, I mean, you know, even 50 years from now, what is it going to tell about the society that we live in currently that shaped the current present that those folks 50, 100, 200 years out are living in? And so it's a really interesting work by our futurist at the Moonshot Factory named Nick Foster. I would say check that out and really look at, you know, some of the principles there. And I mentioned that because I think the work around the human experience of the future, I kind of go at it from a different angle. So I got it as who, you know, Whitney Houston, oh, she said, I believe that children are our future. My favorite quote, and also, really amazing song. But how are we getting curious? With those kids today and capturing, I mean, we always say, like, out of the mouths of babes, right, you know, oh, things kids say, which tends to be really simple, profound, and unguarded, unjaded by experiences of the real world. And I think the human experience of the future can create more room for us to bring that inner child, that sense of wonder. I was just at a conference this past week, where, you know, we were talking to a lot of leaders about creating art to, you know, manifest what their vision looks like. And a lot of groans in the room are, I don't color you know, things black and white, I gotta type things. And what's really interesting is that when we were all younger, you know, we were all artists, we're all designers, dancers, we all knew all of these things very innately. But somewhere along the way, as we have grown, these things have been pulled out so that we can major in the things we're doing now in life. But a lot of how we create is actually innate in all of us. And so another really great initiative that I think X has done very wonderfully, which was led by a couple of really amazing colleagues on our early stage pipeline teams, and one of our leads for our equity, inclusion, and diversity teams, Julia and Nabil have created this opportunity to actually bring in young people to X. We call it camp Moon Shah, we partnered with the Knowledge Society and the kids that are in that program right now and brought them in for an immersive experience at X and created a way for that collision to happen. One, it validated some of the assumptions we were making about what the future could look like. It gave them a view of what was being worked on today, which will likely influence how they think about shaping the future of tomorrow may. If you think about it, 20, 30 years from now, these are going to be the next CEOs making decisions, the next leaders that will be putting different things in the world. And so more things like that. ID Tech is another really interesting organization that does this as well where, you know, you take the power of building coding skills and STEM skills into young people and doing that with more underrepresented groups of young people, right, the black and brown communities, Native American communities, Asian communities that, you know, sometimes don't have access to that kind of environment. And you have them envision what the future could look like. I mean, there are so many ways in which the human experience is about the collision of people in the present but imagining what their roles will look like, years from now. One space that is a really interesting field is elderly care, for example, you know, we don't often think about there's a lot of ripe innovation that could happen in that space. But we don't often think about designing that. Because everything we're thinking about in front of us, there are a lot of people in the world that are thinking through that. Could there be more? Absolutely. But if you think about just looking at that juxtaposition, what if you had, you know, 10,15-year-olds in that mix going, oh, one day, I'm going to have to be doing this. I'm seeing the things that are happening with Grandma and Grandpa, what could happen when I'm in that state. So there are really interesting ways in which we can be curious about the human experience of the future. But I find again that it's really in the collision of activating the minds of today to think about what that could look like, not just the people that are working, but the people that will eventually be users or whatever that invention could be, right? And so I mean, for me, that is the point of inclusion that I think could be really interesting. Can you imagine having a young person part of your interview panel, for example, I'm helping curate what that could look like. I don't know. I mean, it's an interesting idea, and then how you thread and how you apply it is bespoke to any organization depending on their mission and their purpose and, of course, labor laws and whatnot. Right? So we're not naive to that. It's not a delusional idea. But it creates a way for us, again, going back to being curious, what are the things where we can start having these moments collide? And harnessing the power of how we think about the future. Right? So if you have 40, 50-year-olds thinking about initiatives of today, how do you create a way in which 20 years from now, the next set of 40, 50-year-olds who are, by the way, probably in their 20s and 30s, right, can help design what those solutions could look like. So it's an interesting dance. But that's how I think about the human experience. It's a set of asking, of being curious about what it could look like,  what might be possible or probable. And then the collision of those ideas.

Neelie Verlinden: I find this super interesting, AJ and I think it makes so much sense when you're thinking right now about products for people who are in their 50s and 60s, if you involve people who are now 20 years younger than that group, you're actually literally involving the future. And so they might have a very different perspective and ideas, which might be super valuable. So I'm actually very fascinated by this idea. Now, slightly changing tack here, AJ, because I'd love to talk about something else that I know you're passionate about, which is talent and careers. And we know a lot has changed in that space over the past two years. So perhaps you can share your thoughts about that with us as well. 

AJ Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the trio for me is the intersection of talent, culture, and careers. Right. And so let's start starting with the culture piece. It really is about everything we just talked about, you know, humanity, the human experience, talent is like, who is in there, right? How does that work? How do you actually connect those dots and careers really like what? What are ways in which that becomes a conduit to whatever that next step is for somebody else? I tend to think about how careers have transitioned since I've been in the workplace. And I've been in the workplace for almost 20 years now. And what's been really interesting about it is when I first got into the workplace, there was this thing. I think, Professor Ed Lawler coined this part of the USC Marshall School of Business, who talked about this linear career path. The change is like, as I was getting into the workplace, it was starting to be a rising popularity of nonlinear career paths, right? So before it was an associate to a senior associate to, you know, a manager and a senior managing director, senior resident, okay, great. And now those things have kind of become part of the background of how people kind of ascend. And in this interesting space, I've also seen it evolve from linear to this nonlinear where you're collecting different perspectives. And then you're able to make kind of these time hops, right, quantum leaps into other kinds of careers. So I'm a product of that I started in sales, and I have a very nontraditional, nonlinear career path. And what's really interesting is, as I started seeing this, right, linear to nonlinear, then this notion of the T-shaped talent came in, right? For me, that's having very broad skills but has depth and subject matter expertise in an area. And what I'm starting to actually notice that's coming up next is maybe a conversation around Z-shaped talent, right? So we think about Z-shaped talent and careers. Z-shaped talent, you know, it used to be a tablet, oh, this person has moved around a lot. Not really, like, can they really hang and see? The reality is things are changing all the time, and what you should really be paying attention to is someone's capacity to learn, and how are they able to sustain those skills and the things that they're doing. So if I think about the Z-shaped person, it is somebody that has gone from one place to another but has progressively collected these things. Then as that Z, right, the little zigzag comes through, visualize that as a line, like an accordion. How many of the skills you've collected? Do you need to expand upon it? How much does it need to be narrowed to focus? I went from an HR operating role to a recruiting role, back to an operator role into product management, then into support engineering, then into talent, engagement, and communications, which then eventually led me to my, you know, CHRO role, which eventually led me to work in a different industry that is then focused on the future with all of those things I had collected in that accordion. And so I think about careers in a sense of how it's progressed. And I'm hoping we can embrace that more in people and find ways to unlock those things, those experiences and what people have learned, and how they can think about applying that. I hope in the future that job titles will give us an indicator, but it will not be the thing that makes or breaks whether or not somebody can step into a new thing in their career. I really do want to see if that's a place we can get to. Because for me, the impact is you can then help them bring their unique perspectives to the table. And you can design more accessible, more inclusive, more diverse workplaces, with people thinking about their careers in that way. But everything that I’ve said requires us to change. 

Neelie Verlinden: Yes. As you as you said before, I think all of this requires a leadership change. And at the same time, I think it also needs patience, but I do believe that we can get there. 

AJ Thomas: Yeah, there's a lot of really good proven work here. Annie-Jean Baptise is the head of product inclusion at Google, she talks a lot about this kind of work also, right? Like how do you create more inclusive products for the people of the future and the people of this world currently? I think it does require a different perspective. And so, if we always search for people with linear career paths, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think the world is changing in a way in which those perspectives can be really interesting. If you had somebody in a linear career path, and you put them in a different role that might be from a parallel universe, like take somebody in accounting and put them into sales operations, right, take somebody in product and put them into HR business partnership, what could that look like? And I think there are interdisciplinary skills, and we'll find that unique contribution will start popping up without us having to force that. That's a belief I have. I'm still getting curious about it. 

Neelie Verlinden: Wow, I think that's really beautiful, AJ, what you're saying. And I also think that that really closes the circle of the entire conversation that we just had. So thank you for that. I do have one last question for you. Because I always like to ask our guests, what do you believe is the biggest cliche that exists about HR, so feel free to share your thoughts on that.

AJ Thomas: The biggest cliche that exists about HR, I would say, is that people think it is just a function that is a service function. I don't deny that that is a lot of what comes to the table. But I think if we were to demystify that cliche, where it's like, oh, I have this task, I need a rec field, give it to the recruiting team, I need a workforce plan, give it to the HR business partner team or whatever, I need a training thing, give it to the L&D people, I need a communication plan, give it to the, you know, I have an issue with an ERD, give it to the EID. I mean, whatever it may be. I think if we get rid of that cliche and start really thinking about asking HR folks their perspectives and shift from the service to a strategic partner. And again, I'm saying that knowing that that journey is also earned by trust. I think we can also be a better industry and function in general. I also believe that helping demystify that cliche of just being a service function is if you get more interdisciplinary folks in the world of HR, we can actually help demystify that as well. Because then you start getting more operators understanding the overall operating system of what it's like to run a people and culture organization. That's very, very rich. 

Neelie Verlinden: Thank you very much for sharing that, AJ. And that also brings us to the end of this conversation. So thank you so much for joining me. I really enjoyed it. I hope you did, too.

AJ Thomas: Thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation, just encouraging everyone you know, keep asking those questions. What's the next best question? And involve different perspectives and your current dialogue. It's more important now than ever, I think, also for trying to shape what the future looks like.

Neelie Verlinden: Thank you, everybody, for tuning into today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. And if you haven't done so, please subscribe to our channel, hit that notification bell, and share this episode with a colleague or friend or family member. Thank you very much. And I see you soon here again for another episode of All About HR